The Cabinet of Curiosities

ONE

PAUL KARP COULD hardly believe he was actually going to get some. Finally. Seventeen years old and now finally he was going to get some.

He pulled the girl deeper into the Ramble. It was the wildest, least visited part of Central Park. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do.

“Why don’t we just go back to your place?” the girl asked.

“My folks are home.” Paul put his arms around her and kissed her. “Don’t worry, this is great right here.” Her face was flushed, and he could hear her breathing. He looked ahead for the darkest, the most private place he could find. Quickly, unwilling to lose the moment, he turned off the paved walk and plunged into a thicket of rhododendron bushes. She was following, gladly. The thought sent a little shiver of anticipation coursing through him. It only seemed deserted, he told himself. People came in here all the time.

He pushed his way into the densest part of the thicket. Even though the autumn sun still hovered low in the sky, the canopy of sycamores, laurels, and azaleas created a verdant half-light. He tried to tell himself it was cozy, almost romantic.

Finally they came to a hidden spot, a thick bed of myrtle surrounded by dark bushes. No one would see them here. They were utterly alone.

“Paul? What if a mugger—?”

“No mugger’s going to see us in here,” he quickly said, taking the girl in his arms and kissing her. She responded, first hesitantly, then more eagerly.

“Are you sure this place is okay?” she whispered.

“Sure. We’re totally alone.”

After a last look around, Paul lay down on the myrtle, pulling her beside him. They kissed again. Paul slid his hands up her blouse and she didn’t stop him. He could feel her chest heaving, breasts rising and falling. The birds made a racket over their heads, and the myrtle rose around them like a thick, green carpet. It was very nice. Paul thought this was a great way for it to happen. He could tell the story later. But the important thing was it was going to happen. No longer would it be a joke among his friends: the last virgin of Horace Mann’s senior class.

With renewed urgency, he pressed closer to her, undid some buttons.

“Don’t push so hard,” she whispered, squirming. “The ground is bumpy.”

“Sorry.” They wriggled on the thick myrtle, searching for a more comfortable spot.

“Now there’s a branch digging into my back.”

Suddenly she stopped.

“What?”

“I heard a rustle.”

“It’s just the wind.” Paul shifted some more and they embraced again. His fingers felt thick and awkward as he unzipped her pants, unbuttoned the rest of her shirt. Her breasts swung free and at the sight he felt himself grow even harder. He put his hand on her bare midriff, sliding it downward. Her much more expert hand reached him first. As she took him in her cool gentle grasp, he gasped and thrust forward.

“Ouch. Wait. There’s still a branch underneath me.” She sat up, breathing hard, her blond hair falling over her shoulders. Paul sat up, too, frustration mingling with desire. He could see the flattened area where they had been lying. The myrtle was crushed and beneath he could see the outline of the light-colored branch. He stuck his hand through the myrtle and grabbed it, yanking at it angrily, struggling to wrest it free. Goddamn branch.

But something was very wrong: it felt strange, cold, rubbery, and as it came up out of the myrtle he saw it wasn’t a branch at all, but an arm. Leaves slid away exposing the rest of the body, languorously, unwillingly. As his fingers went slack the arm fell away again, flopping back into the greenery.

The girl screamed first, scrambling backward, standing, tripping, standing up again and running, jeans unzipped and shirt flapping around her. Paul was on his feet but all he seemed able to hear was her crashing through the undergrowth. It had all happened so fast it seemed like some sort of dream. He could feel the lust dying away within him, horror flooding in to take its place. He turned to run. Then he paused and glanced wildly back, driven by some impulse to see if it were actually real. The fingers were partly curled, white skin smeared with mud. And in the dimness beyond, under the thick undergrowth, lay the rest of it.

TWO

DR. BILL DOWSON lounged against the sink, examining his precisely trimmed fingernails without interest. One more, then lunch. Thank God. A cup of coffee and a BLT at the corner deli would hit the spot. He wasn’t sure why he wanted a BLT, exactly: maybe it was the lividity of the last stiff that started him thinking about bacon. Anyway, that Dominican behind the deli counter had elevated the sandwich into an art form. Dowson could practically taste the crisp lettuce, the tang of tomato against the mayonnaise…

The nurse brought in the clipboard and he glanced up. She had short black hair and a trim body. He glanced at the clipboard without picking it up and smiled at her.

“What have we here?” he asked.

“Homicide.”

He gave an exaggerated sigh, rolled his eyes. “What is that, the fourth today? It must be hunting season. Gunshot?”

“No. Some kind of multiple stabbing. They found it in Central Park, in the Ramble.”

He nodded. “The dumping ground, eh? Figures.” Great. Another piece-of-shit killing. He glanced at his watch. “Bring it in, please.”

He watched the nurse walk out. Nice, very nice. She returned a moment later with a gurney, covered by a green sheet.

He made no move toward the body. “So, how about that dinner tonight?”

The nurse smiled. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Doctor.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve told you before. I don’t date doctors. Especially ones I work with.”

He nodded, pushed down his glasses, and grinned. “But I’m your soul mate, remember?”

She smiled. “Hardly.”

But he could tell she was flattered by his interest. Better not push it, though, not these days. Sexual harassment and all that.

He sighed, eased himself off the sink. Then he pulled on a fresh pair of gloves. “Turn on the videocams,” he said to the nurse as he prepped.

“Yes, Doctor.”

He picked up the clipboard. “Says here we have a Caucasian woman, identified as Doreen Hollander, age 27, of Pine Creek, Oklahoma. Identified by her husband.” He scanned the rest of the top sheet. Then he hung the clipboard on the gurney, drew on his surgical mask, and with the nurse’s help lifted the sheeted corpse onto the stainless steel examining table.

He sensed a presence behind him and turned. In the doorway was a tall, slender man. His face and hands looked remarkably pale against the black of his suit. Behind the man stood a uniformed cop.

“Yes?” Dowson asked.

The man approached, opening his wallet. “I’m Special Agent Pendergast, Dr. Dowson. And this is Sergeant O’Shaughnessy of the NYPD.”

Dowson looked him over. This was very irregular. And there was something strange about the man: hair so very blond, eyes so very pale, accent so very, very southern. “And?”

“May I observe?”

“This an FBI case?”

“No.”

“Where’s your clearance?”

“I don’t have one.”

Dowson sighed with irritation. “You know the rules. You can’t just watch for the hell of it.”

The FBI agent took a step closer to him, closer than he liked, invading his personal space. He controlled an impulse to step backward.

“Look, Mr. Pendergast, get the necessary paperwork and come back. Okay?”

“That will be time-consuming,” said the man named Pendergast. “It will hold you up considerably. I would appreciate your courtesy in letting us observe.”

There was something in the man’s tone that sounded a lot harder than the mellifluous accent and genteel words suggested. Dowson hesitated. “Look, with all due respect—”

“With all due respect, Dr. Dowson, I’m in no mood to bandy civilities with you. Proceed with the autopsy.”

The voice was now cold as dry ice. Dowson remembered the videocam was on. He glanced covertly at the nurse. He had a strong sense that a humiliation at the hands of this man might be just around the corner. This would not look good and it might cause trouble later. The guy was FBI, after all. Anyway, his own ass was covered: he was on record stating the man needed clearance.

Dowson sighed. “All right, Pendergast. You and the sergeant, don scrubs.”

He waited until they returned, then pulled back the sheet with a single motion. The cadaver lay on its back: blonde hair, young, fresh. The chill of the previous night had kept it from decomposing. Dowson leaned toward the mike and began a description. The FBI man was looking at the corpse with interest. But Dowson could see that the uniformed cop was beginning to look uneasy, shifting from one foot to another, lips pressed tight together. The last thing he needed was a puker.

“Is he going to be all right?” Dowson asked Pendergast in an undertone, nodding to the cop.

Pendergast turned. “You don’t have to see this, Sergeant.”

The cop swallowed, glancing from the corpse to Pendergast and back again. “I’ll be in the lounge.”

“Drop your scrubs in the bin on your way out,” said Dowson with sarcastic satisfaction.

Pendergast watched the cop leave. Then he turned to Dowson. “I suggest you turn the body over before making your Y-incision.”

“And why is that?”

Pendergast nodded toward the clipboard. “Page two.”

Dowson picked it up, flipped over the top page. Extensive lacerations… deep knife wounds… Looked like the girl had been stabbed repeatedly in the lower back. Or worse. As usual, it was hard to make out from the police report what had actually taken place, from a medical standpoint. There had been no investigating ME. It had been given a low priority. This Doreen Hollander didn’t count for much, it seemed.

Dowson returned the clipboard. “Sue, help me turn her over.”

They turned the body, exposing the back. The nurse gasped and stepped away.

Dowson stared in surprise. “Looks like she died on the operating table, in the middle of an operation to remove a spinal tumor.” Had they screwed up again downstairs? Just last week — twice — they had sent him the wrong paperwork with the wrong corpse. But immediately Dowson realized this was no hospital stiff. Not with dirt and leaves sticking to the raw wound that covered the entire lower back and sacrum area.

This was weird. Seriously weird.

He peered closer and began describing the wound for the benefit of the camera, trying to keep the surprise out of his voice.

“Superficially, this does not resemble the random knife slashing, stabbing, or cutting described in the report. It has the appearance of — of a dissection. The incision — if it is one — begins about ten inches below the scapula and seven inches above the belt line. It appears as if the entire cauda equina has been dissected out, starting at L1 and terminating at the sacrum.”

At this, the FBI agent looked at him abruptly.

“The dissection includes the filum terminale.” Dowson bent closer. “Nurse, sponge along here.”

The nurse removed some of the debris around the wound. The room had fallen silent except for the whirr of the camera, and there was a clattering sound as twigs and leaves slid into the table’s drainage channel.

“The spinal cord — more precisely, the cauda equina — is missing. It has been removed. The dissection extends peripherally to the neuroforamen and out to the transverse processes. Nurse, irrigate L1 to L5.”

The nurse quickly irrigated the requested area.

“The, er, dissection has stripped off the skin, the subcutaneous tissue, and paraspinous musculature. It appears as if a self-retaining retractor was used. I can see the marks of it here, and here, and here.” He carefully indicated the areas for the benefit of the video.

“The spinous processes and laminae have been removed, along with the ligamentum flavum. The dura is still present. There is a longitudinal incision in the dura from L1 to the sacrum, allowing full removal of the cord. It has the appearance of a… of a very professional incision. Nurse, the stereozoom.”

The nurse rolled over a large microscope. Quickly, Dowson inspected the spinous processes. “It looks as if a rongeur has been used to remove the processes and laminae from the dura.”

He straightened up, running a gowned arm across his forehead. This was not a standard dissection one would do in medical school. It was more like the kind of thing neurosurgeons practiced in advanced neuroanatomy classes. Then he remembered the FBI agent, Pendergast. He glanced at him, to see how he was taking it. He had seen a lot of shocked people at autopsies, but nothing like this: the man looked, not shocked exactly, so much as grim Death himself.

The man spoke. “Doctor, may I interrupt with a few questions?”

Dowson nodded.

“Was this dissection the cause of death?”

This was a new thought to Dowson. He shuddered. “If the subject were alive when this was done, yes, it would have caused death.”

“At what point?”

“As soon as the incision was made in the dura, the cerebrospinal fluid would have drained. That alone would have been enough to cause death.” He examined the wound again. It looked as if the operation had caused a great deal of bleeding from the epidural veins, and some of them had retracted — an indication of live trauma. Yet the dissector had not worked around the veins, as a surgeon on a live patient would have done, but had cut right through them. The operation, while done with great skill, had also apparently been done with haste. “A large number of veins have been cut, and only the largest — whose bleeding would have interfered with the work — have been ligated. The subject might have bled to death before the opening of the dura, depending on how fast the, er, person worked.”

“But was the subject alive when the operation began?”

“It seems she was.” Dowson swallowed weakly. “However, it seems no effort was made to keep the subject alive while the, ah, dissection was progressing.”

“I would suggest some blood and tissue work to see if the subject had been tranquilized.”

The doctor nodded. “It’s standard.”

“In your opinion, Doctor, how professional was this dissection?”

Dowson did not answer. He was trying to order his thoughts. This had the potential of being big and unpleasant. For the time being, no doubt they’d try to keep a low profile on this, try to fly it as long as possible beneath the radar of the New York press. But it would come out — it always did — and then there would be a lot of people second-guessing his actions. He’d better slow down, take it one step at a time. This was not the run-of-the-mill murder the police report indicated. Thank God he hadn’t actually begun the autopsy. He had the FBI agent to thank for that.

He turned to the nurse. “Get Jones up here with the large-format camera and the camera for the stereozoom. And I want a second ME to assist. Who’s on call?”

“Dr. Lofton.”

“I need him within the half-hour. I also want to consult with our neurosurgeon, Dr. Feldman. Get him up here as soon as possible.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

He turned to Pendergast. “I’m not sure I can let you stay without some kind of official sanction.”

To his surprise, the man seemed to accept this. “I understand, Doctor. I believe this autopsy is in good hands. I, personally, have seen enough.”

So have I, thought Dowson. He now felt sure that a surgeon had done this. The thought made him feel sick.

O’Shaughnessy stood in the lounge. He debated whether to buy a cup of coffee from a vending machine, then decided against it. He felt distinctly embarrassed. Here he was, supposed to be a tough, sardonic New York City cop, and he’d wimped out. All but tossed his cookies right there on the examining room floor. The sight of that poor chubby naked girl on the table, blue and dirty, her young face all puffed up, eyes open, leaves and sticks in her hair… he shuddered afresh at the image.

He also felt a burning anger for the person who had done it. He wasn’t a homicide cop, had never wanted to be one, even in the early days. He hated the sight of blood. But his own sister-in-law lived in Oklahoma. About this girl’s age, too. Now, he felt he could stand whatever it took to catch that killer.

Pendergast glided through the stainless steel doors like a wraith. He barely glanced at O’Shaughnessy. The sergeant fell into step behind him, and they left the building and climbed into the waiting car in silence.

Something had definitely put Pendergast into a black mood. The guy was moody, but this was the darkest he had ever seen him. O’Shaughnessy still had no idea why Pendergast was suddenly so interested in this new murder, interrupting his work on the nineteenth-century killings. But somehow, this didn’t seem to be the time to ask.

“We will drop the sergeant off at the precinct house,” said Pendergast to his chauffeur. “And then you may take me home.”

Pendergast settled back in the leather seat. O’Shaughnessy looked over at him.

“What happened?” he managed to ask. “What did you see?”

Pendergast looked out his window. “Evil.” And he spoke no more.

THREE

WILLIAM SMITHBACK JR., in his best suit (the Amani, recently dry-cleaned), crispest white shirt, and most business-like tie, stood on the corner of Avenue of the Americas and Fifty-fifth Street. His eyes strayed upward along the vast glass-and-chrome monolith that was the Moegen-Fairhaven Building, rippling blue-green in the sunlight like some vast slab of water. Somewhere in that hundred-million-dollar pile was his prey.

He felt pretty sure he could talk his way into seeing Fairhaven. He was good at that kind of thing. This assignment was a lot more promising than that tourist murder in the Ramble his editor had wanted him to cover today. He conjured up the grizzled face of his editor, red eyes bug-big behind thick glasses, smoke-cured finger pointing, telling him that this dead lady from Oklahoma was going to be big. Big? Tourists were getting smoked all the time in New York City. It was too bad, but there it was. Homicide reporting was hackwork. He had a hunch about Fairhaven, the Museum, and these old killings Pendergast was so interested in. He always trusted his hunches. His editor wouldn’t be disappointed. He was going to cast his fly onto the water, and by God Fairhaven might just bite.

Taking one more deep breath, he crossed the street — giving the finger to a cabbie that shot past inches away, horn blaring — and approached the granite and titanium entry. Another vast acreage of granite greeted him upon entering the interior. There was a large desk, manned by half a dozen security officers, and several banks of elevators beyond.

Smithback strode resolutely toward the security desk. He leaned on it aggressively.

“I’m here to see Mr. Fairhaven.”

The closest guard was shuffling through a computer printout. “Name?” he asked, not bothering to look up.

“William Smithback Jr., of the New York Times.”

“Moment,” mumbled the guard, picking up a telephone. He dialed, then handed it to Smithback. A crisp voice sounded. “May I help you?”

“This is William Smithback Jr. of the New York Times. I’m here to see Mr. Fairhaven.”

It was Saturday, but Smithback was gambling he’d be in his office. Guys like Fairhaven never took Saturdays off. And on Saturdays, they were usually less fortified with secretaries and guards.

“Do you have an appointment?” the female voice asked, reaching down to him from fifty stories.

“No. I’m the reporter doing the story on Enoch Leng and the bodies found at his jobsite on Catherine Street and I need to speak with him immediately. It’s urgent.”

“You need to call for an appointment.” It was an utterly neutral voice.

“Good. Consider this the call. I’d like to make an appointment for”—Smithback checked his watch—“ten o’clock.”

“Mr. Fairhaven is presently engaged,” the voice instantly responded.

Smithback took a deep breath. So he was in. Time to press the attack. There were probably ten layers of secretaries beyond the one on the phone, but he’d gotten through that many before. “Look, if Mr. Fairhaven is too busy to talk to me, I’ll just have to report in the article I’m writing for the Monday edition that he refused to comment.”

“He is presently engaged,” the robotic voice repeated.

“No comment. That’ll do wonders for his public image. And come Monday, Mr. Fairhaven will be wanting to know who in his office turned away the reporter. Get my drift?”

There was a long silence. Smithback drew in some more air. This was often a long process. “You know when you’re reading an article in the paper, and it’s about some sleazy guy, and the guy says I have no comment? How does that make you feel about the guy? Especially a real estate developer. No comment. I could do a lot with no comment.”

There was more silence. Smithback wondered if she had hung up. But no, there was a sound on a line. It was a chuckle.

“That’s good,” said a low, pleasant, masculine voice. “I like that. Nicely done.”

“Who’s this?” Smithback demanded.

“Just some sleazy real estate developer.”

“Who?” Smithback was not going to stand being made fun of by some lackey.

“Anthony Fairhaven.”

“Oh.” Smithback was momentarily struck speechless. He recovered quickly. “Mr. Fairhaven, is it true that—”

“Why don’t you come on up, so we can talk face-to-face, like grownup people? Forty-ninth floor.”

“What?” Smithback was still surprised at the rapidity of his success.

“I said, come up. I was wondering when you’d call, being the ambitious, careerist reporter that you so evidently are.”

Fairhaven’s office was not quite what Smithback had envisioned. True, there were several layers of secretaries and assistants guarding the sanctum sanctorum. But when he finally gained Fairhaven’s office, it wasn’t the vast screw-you space of chrome-gold-ebony-old-master-paintings-African-primitives he’d expected. It was rather simple and small. True, there was art on the walls, but it consisted of some understated Thomas Hart Benton lithographs of yeoman farmers. Beside these was a glassed panel — locked and clearly alarmed — containing a variety of handguns, mounted on a black velvet backdrop. The sole desk was small and made of birch. There were a couple of easy chairs and a worn Persian rug on the floor. One wall was covered with bookshelves, filled with books that had clearly been read instead of purchased by the yard as furniture. Except for the gun case, it looked more like a professor’s office than that of a real estate magnate. And yet, unlike any professor’s office Smithback had ever been in, the space was meticulously clean. Every surface sparkled with an unblemished shine. Even the books appeared to have been polished. There was a faint smell of cleaning agents, a little chemical but not unpleasant.

“Please sit down,” said Fairhaven, sweeping a hand toward the easy chairs. “Would you care for anything? Coffee? Water? Soda? Whisky?” He grinned.

“Nothing, thanks,” said Smithback as he took a seat. He felt the familiar shudder of expectation that came before an intense interview. Fairhaven was clearly savvy, but he was rich and pampered; he no doubt lacked street-smarts. Smithback had interviewed — and skewered — dozens like him. It wouldn’t even be a contest.

Fairhaven opened a refrigerator and took out a small bottle of mineral water. He poured himself a glass and then sat, not at his desk, but in an easy chair opposite Smithback. He crossed his legs, smiled. The bottle of water sparkled in the sunlight that slanted through the windows. Smithback glanced past him. The view, at least, was killer.

He turned his attention back to the man. Black wavy hair, strong brow, athletic frame, easy movements, sardonic look in the eye. Could be thirty, thirty-five. He jotted a few impressions.

“So,” Fairhaven said with a small, self-deprecating smile, “the sleazy real estate developer is ready to take your questions.”

“May I record this?”

“I would expect no less.”

Smithback slipped a recorder out of his pocket. Of course he seemed charming. People like him were experts at charm and manipulation. But he’d never allow himself to be spun. All he had to do was remember who he was dealing with: a heartless, money-grubbing businessman who would sell his own mother for the back rent alone.

“Why did you destroy the site on Catherine Street?” he asked.

Fairhaven bowed his head slightly. “The project was behind schedule. We were fast-tracking the excavation. It would’ve cost me forty thousand dollars a day. I’m not in the archaeology business.”

“Some archaeologists say you destroyed one of the most important sites to be discovered in Manhattan in a quarter-century.”

Fairhaven cocked his head. “Really? Which archaeologists?”

“The Society for American Archaeology, for example.”

A cynical smile broke out on Fairhaven’s face. “Ah. I see. Well of course they’d be against it. If they had their way, no one in America would turn over a spadeful of soil without an archaeologist standing by with screen, trowel, and toothbrush.”

“Getting back to the site—”

“Mr. Smithback, what I did was perfectly legal. When we discovered those remains, I personally stopped all work. I personally examined the site. We called in forensic experts, who photographed everything. We removed the remains with great care, had them examined, and then properly buried, all at my own expense. We did not restart work until we had direct authorization from the mayor. What more would you have me do?”

Smithback felt a small twinge. This was not proceeding quite as expected. He was letting Fairhaven control the agenda; that was the problem.

“You say you had the remains buried. Why? Was there anything perhaps you were trying to hide?”

At this Fairhaven actually laughed, leaning back in his chair, exposing beautiful teeth. “You make it sound suspicious. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I’m a man with some small religious values. These poor people were killed in a hideous way. I wanted to give them a decent burial with an ecumenical service, quiet and dignified, free of the whole media circus. That’s what I did — buried them together with their little effects in a real cemetery. I didn’t want their bones ending up in a museum drawer. So I purchased a beautiful tract in the Gates of Heaven Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. I’m sure the cemetery director would be happy to show you the plot. The remains were my responsibility and, frankly, I had to do something with them. The city certainly didn’t want them.”

“Right, right,” said Smithback, thinking. It would make a nice sidebar, this quiet burial under the leafy elms. But then he frowned. Christ, was he getting spun here?

Time for a new tack. “According to the records, you’re a major donor to the mayor’s re-election campaign. You get in a pinch at your construction site and he bails you out. Coincidence?”

Fairhaven leaned back in the chair. “Drop the wide-eyed, babe-in-the-woods look. You know perfectly well how things work in this town. When I give money to the mayor’s campaign, I am exercising my constitutional rights. I don’t expect any special treatment, and I don’t ask for it.”

“But if you get it, so much the better.”

Fairhaven smiled broadly, cynically, but said nothing. Smithback felt another twinge of concern. This guy was being very careful about what he actually said. Trouble was, you couldn’t record a cynical grin.

He stood and walked with what he hoped looked like casual confidence toward the paintings, hands behind his back, studying them, trying to frame a new strategy. Then he moved to the gun case. Inside, polished weapons gleamed. “Interesting choice of office decor,” he said, gesturing at the case.

“I collect the rarest of handguns. I can afford to. That one you are pointing at, for example, is a Luger, chambered in.45. The only one ever made. I also have a collection of Mercedes-Benz roadsters. But they take up rather more display space, so I keep them at my place in Sag Harbor.” Fairhaven looked at him, still smiling cynically. “We all collect things, Mr. Smithback. What’s your passion? Museum monographs and chapbooks, perhaps: removed for research, then not returned? By accident, of course.”

Smithback looked at him sharply. Had the guy searched his apartment? But no: Fairhaven was merely fishing. He returned to the chair. “Mr. Fairhaven—”

Fairhaven interrupted him, his tone suddenly brisk, unfriendly. “Look, Smithback, I know you’re exercising your constitutional right to skewer me. The big bad real estate developer is always an easy target. And you like easy targets. Because you fellows are all cut from the same cloth. You all think your work is important. But today’s newspaper is lining tomorrow’s bird cage. It’s ephemera. What you do, in the larger scheme of things, is nugatory.”

Nugatory? What the hell did that mean? It didn’t matter: clearly it was an insult. He was getting under Fairhaven’s skin. That was good — wasn’t it?

“Mr. Fairhaven, I have reason to believe that you’ve been pressuring the Museum to stop this investigation.”

“I’m sorry. What investigation?”

“The one into Enoch Leng and the nineteenth-century killings.”

“That investigation? Why should I care one way or another about it? It didn’t stop my construction project, and frankly that’s all I care about. They can investigate it now until they’re blue in the face, if they so choose. And I love this phrase all you journalists use: I have reason to believe. What you really mean is: I want to believe but I haven’t a shred of evidence. All you fellows must’ve taken the same Journalism 101 class: Making an Ass of Yourself While Pretending to Get the Story.” Fairhaven allowed himself a cynical laugh.

Smithback sat stiffly, listening to the laughter subside. Once again he tried to tell himself he was getting under Fairhaven’s skin. He spoke at last, keeping his voice as cool as possible.

“Tell me, Mr. Fairhaven, just why is it that you’re so interested in the Museum?”

“I happen to love the Museum. It’s my favorite museum in the world. I practically grew up in that place looking at the dinosaurs, the meteorites, the gems. I had a nanny who used to take me. She necked with her boyfriend behind the elephants while I wandered around by myself. But you’re not interested in that, because it doesn’t fit your image of the greedy real estate developer. Really, Smithback, I’m wise to your game.”

“Mr. Fairhaven—”

Fairhaven grinned. “You want a confession?”

This temporarily stopped Smithback.

Fairhaven lowered his voice to confessional level. “I have committed two unforgivable crimes.”

Smithback tried to maintain the hard-bitten reportorial look he cultivated in instances like these. He knew this was going to be some kind of trick, or joke.

“My two crimes are these — are you ready?”

Smithback checked to see if the recorder was still running.

“I am rich, and I am a developer. My two truly unforgivable sins. Mea culpa.”

Against all his better journalistic instincts, Smithback found himself getting pissed off. He’d lost the interview. It was, in fact, a dead loss. The guy was a slimeball, but he was remarkably adroit at dealing with the press. So far Smithback had nothing, and he was going to get nothing. He made one last push anyway. “You still haven’t explained—”

Fairhaven stood. “Smithback, if you only knew how utterly predictable you and your questions are — if you only knew how tiresome and mediocre you are as a reporter and, I’m sorry to say, as a human being — you’d be mortified.”

“I’d like an explanation—”

But Fairhaven was pressing a buzzer. His voice smothered the rest of Smithback’s question. “Miss Gallagher, would you kindly show Mr. Smithback out?”

“Yes, Mr. Fairhaven.”

“This is rather abrupt—”

“Mr. Smithback, I am tired. I saw you because I didn’t want to read about myself in the paper having refused comment. I was also curious to meet you, to see if you were perhaps a cut above the rest. Now that I’ve satisfied myself on that score, I don’t see any reason to continue this conversation.”

The secretary stood in the door, stout and unmovable. “Mr. Smithback? This way, please.”

On his way out, Smithback paused in the outermost secretary’s office. Despite his efforts at self-control, his frame was quivering with indignation. Fairhaven had been parrying a hostile press for more than a decade; naturally, he’d gotten damn good at it. Smithback had dealt with nasty interviewees before, but this one really got under his skin. Calling him tiresome, mediocre, ephemeral, nugatory (he’d have to look that up) — who did he think he was?

Fairhaven himself was too slippery to pin down. No big surprise there. There were other ways to find things out about people. People in power had enemies, and enemies loved to talk. Sometimes the enemies were working for them, right under their noses.

He glanced at the secretary. She was young, sweet, and looked more approachable than the battle-axes manning the inner offices.

“Here every Saturday?” He smiled nonchalantly.

“Most of them,” she said, looking up from her computer. She was cute, with glossy red hair and a small splash of freckles. He winced inwardly, suddenly reminded of Nora.

“Works you hard, doesn’t he?”

“Mr. Fairhaven? Sure does.”

“Probably makes you work Sundays, too.”

“Oh no,” she said. “Mr. Fairhaven never works on Sunday. He goes to church.”

Smithback feigned surprise. “Church? Is he Catholic?”

“Presbyterian.”

“Probably a tough man to work for, I bet.”

“No, he’s one of the best supervisors I’ve had. He actually seems to care about us little folk.”

“Never would have guessed it,” Smithback said with a wink, drifting out the door. Probably boning her and the other “little folk” on the side, he thought.

Back on the street, Smithback allowed himself a most un-Presbyterian string of oaths. He was going to dig into this guy’s past until he knew every detail, down to the name of his goddamn teddy bear. You couldn’t become a big-time real estate developer in New York City and keep your hands clean. There would be dirt, and he would find it. Yes, there would be dirt. By God, there would be dirt.

FOUR

MANDY EKLUND CLIMBED the filthy subway stairs to First Street, turned north at Avenue A, and trudged toward Tompkins Square Park. Ahead, the park’s anemic trees rose up against a sky faintly smeared with the purple stain of dawn. The morning star, low on the horizon, was fading into oblivion.

Mandy pulled her wrap more tightly around her shoulders in a futile attempt to keep out the early morning chill. She felt a little groggy, and her feet ached each time they hit the pavement. It had been a great night at Club Pissoir, though: music, free drinks, dancing. The whole Ford crowd had been there, along with a bunch of photographers, the Mademoiselle and Cosmo people, everyone who mattered in the fashion world. She really was making it. The thought still amazed her. Only six months before, she’d been working at Rodney’s in Bismarck, giving free makeovers. Then, the right person happened to come through the shop. And now she was on the testing board at the Ford agency. Eileen Ford herself had taken her under her wing. It was all coming together faster than she’d ever dreamed possible.

Her father called almost every day from the farm. It was funny, kind of cute really, how worried he was about her living in New York City. He thought the place was a den of iniquity. He’d freak if he knew she stayed out till dawn. He still wanted her to go to college. And maybe she would — someday. But right now she was eighteen and having the time of her life. She smiled affectionately at the thought of her conservative old father, riding his John Deere, worrying himself about her. She’d make the call this time, give him a surprise.

She turned onto Seventh Street, passing the darkened park, keeping a wary eye out for muggers. New York was a lot safer now, but it was still wise to be careful. She felt into her purse, hand closing comfortingly around the small bottle of pepper spray attached to her key chain.

There were a couple of homeless sleeping on pieces of cardboard, and a man in a threadbare corduroy suit sat on a bench, drinking and nodding. An early breeze passed through the listless sycamore branches, rattling the leaves. They were just beginning to turn a jaundiced yellow.

Once again, she wished her walk-up apartment wasn’t so far from a subway station. She couldn’t afford cabs — not yet, anyway — and walking the nine blocks home at night was a hassle. At first it had seemed like a cool neighborhood, but the seediness was starting to get to her. Gentrification was creeping in, but not fast enough: the dingy squats and the old hollow buildings, sealed shut with cinderblock, were depressing. The Flatiron District would be better, or maybe even Yorkville. A lot of the Ford models, the ones who’d made it, lived up there.

She left the park behind and turned up Avenue C. Silent brownstones rose on either side, and the wind sent trash along the gutters with a dry, skittery sound. The faint ammoniac tang of urine floated out from dark doorways. Nobody picked up after their dogs, and she made her way with care through a disgusting minefield of dog shit. This part of the walk was always the worst.

She saw, ahead of her, a figure approaching down the sidewalk. She stiffened, considered crossing the street, then relaxed: it was an old man, walking painfully with a cane. As he approached she could see he was wearing a funny derby hat. His head was bowed, and she could make out its even brim, the crisp black lines of its crown. She didn’t recall ever seeing anybody wearing a derby, except in old black-and-white movies. He looked very old-fashioned, shuffling along with cautious steps. She wondered what he was doing out so early. Probably insomnia. Old people had it a lot, she’d heard. Waking up at four in the morning, couldn’t go back to sleep. She wondered if her father had insomnia.

They were almost even now. The old man suddenly seemed to grow aware of her presence; he raised his head and lifted his arm to grasp his hat. He was actually going to tip his hat to her.

The hat came up, the arm obscuring everything except the eyes. They were remarkably bright and cold, and they seemed to be regarding her intently. Must be insomnia, she thought — despite the hour, this old fellow wasn’t sleepy at all.

“Good morning, miss,” said an old, creaky voice.

“Good morning,” she replied, trying to keep the surprise from her voice. Nobody ever said anything to you on the street. It was so un — New York. It charmed her.

As she passed him, she suddenly felt something whip around her neck with horrible speed.

She struggled and tried to cry out, but found her face covered with a cloth, damp and reeking with a sickly-sweet chemical smell. Instinctively, she tried to hold her breath. Her hand scrabbled in her purse and pulled out the bottle of pepper spray, but a terrible blow knocked it to the sidewalk. She twisted and thrashed, moaning in pain and fear, her lungs on fire; she gasped once; and then all swirled into oblivion.

FIVE

IN HIS MESSY cubicle on the fifth floor of the Times building, Smithback examined with dissatisfaction the list he had handwritten in his notebook. At the top of the list, the phrase “Fairhaven’s employees” had been crossed out. He hadn’t been able to get back into the Moegen-Fairhaven Building — Fairhaven had seen to that. Likewise, “neighbors” had also been crossed out: he’d been given the bum’s rush at Fairhaven’s apartment building, despite all his best stratagems and tricks. He’d looked into Fairhaven’s past, to his early business associates, but they were either full of phony praise or simply refused comment.

Next, he’d checked out Fairhaven’s charities. The New York Museum was a dead loss — no one who knew Fairhaven would talk about him, for obvious reasons — but he had more success with one of Fairhaven’s other projects, the Little Arthur Clinic for Children. If success was the right word for it. The clinic was a small research hospital that cared for sick children with “orphaned” diseases: very rare illnesses that the big drug companies had no interest in finding cures for. Smithback had managed to get in posing as himself — a New York Times reporter interested in their work — without rousing suspicion. They had even given him an informal tour. But in the end that, too, had been a snow job: The doctors, nurses, parents, even the children sang hosannas for Fairhaven. It was enough to make you sick: turkeys at Thanksgiving, bonuses at Christmas, toys and books for the kids, trips to Yankee Stadium. Fairhaven had even attended a few funerals, which must have been tough. And yet, thought Smithback grumpily, all it proved was that Fairhaven carefully cultivated his public image.

The guy was a public relations pro from way back. Smithback had found nothing. Nothing.

That reminded him: he turned, grabbed a battered dictionary from a nearby shelf, flipped through the pages until he reached “n.” Nugatory: of no importance, trifling.

Smithback put back the dictionary.

What was needed here was some deeper digging. Before the time when Fairhaven had gone pro with his life. Back when he was just another pimply high school kid. So Fairhaven thought Smithback was just another run-of-the-mill reporter, doing nugatory work? Well, he’d wouldn’t be laughing so hard when he opened his Monday paper.

All it took was ten minutes on the Web to hit paydirt. Fairhaven’s class at P.S. 1984, up on Amsterdam Avenue, had recently celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of their graduation. They had created a Web page reproducing their yearbook. Fairhaven hadn’t shown up for the reunion, and he might not have even known of the Web page — but all the information about him from his old yearbook was posted, for all to see: photos, nicknames, clubs, interests, everything.

There he was: a clean-cut, all-around kid, smiling cockily out of a blurry graduation photograph. He was wearing a tennis sweater and a checked shirt — a typical well-heeled city boy. His father was in real estate, his mother a homemaker. Smithback quickly learned all kinds of things: that he was captain of the swim team; that he was born under the sign of Gemini; that he was head of the debating club; that his favorite rock group was the Eagles; that he played the guitar badly; that he wanted to be a doctor; that his favorite color was burgundy; and that he had been voted most likely to become a millionaire.

As Smithback scrolled through the Web site, the sinking feeling returned. It was all so unspeakably boring. But there was one detail that caught his eye. Every student had been given a nickname, and Fairhaven’s was “The Slasher.” He felt his disappointment abate just slightly. The Slasher. It would be nice if the nickname turned up a secret interest in torturing animals. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

And he’d graduated only sixteen years ago. There would be people who remembered him. If there was anything unsavory, Smithback would find it. Let that bastard crack his paper next week and see how fast that smug smile got wiped off.

P.S. 1984. Luckily, the school was only a cab ride away. Turning his back on the computer, Smithback stood up and reached for his jacket.

The school stood on a leafy Upper West Side block between Amsterdam and Columbus, not far from the Museum, a long building of yellow brick, surrounded by a wrought iron fence. As far as New York City schools went, it was rather nice. Smithback strode to the front door, found it locked — security, of course — and buzzed. A policeman answered. Smithback flashed his press card and the cop let him in.

It was amazing how the place smelled: just like his own high school, far away and long ago. And there was the same taupe paint on the cinderblock walls, too. All school principals must’ve read the same how-to manual, Smithback thought as the cop escorted him through the metal detector and to the principal’s office.

The principal referred him to Miss Kite. Smithback found her at her desk, working on student assignments between classes. She was a handsome, gray-haired woman, and when Smithback mentioned Fairhaven’s name, he was gratified to see the smile of memory on her face.

“Oh yes,” she said. Her voice was kind, but there was a no-nonsense edge to it that told Smithback this was no pushover granny. “I remember Tony Fairhaven well, because he was in my first twelfth-grade class, and he was one of our top students. He was a National Merit Scholar runner-up.”

Smithback nodded deferentially and jotted a few notes. He wasn’t going to tape-record this — that was a good way to shut people up.

“Tell me about him. Informally. What was he like?”

“He was a bright boy, quite popular. I believe he was the head of the swim team. A good, all-around, hardworking student.”

“Did he ever get into trouble?”

“Sure. They all did.”

Smithback tried to look casual. “Really?”

“He used to bring his guitar to school and play in the halls, which was against regulations. He played very badly and it was mostly to make the other students laugh.” She thought for a moment. “One day he caused a hall jam.”

“A hall jam.” Smithback waited. “And then?”

“We confiscated the guitar and that ended it. We gave it back to him after graduation.”

Smithback nodded, the polite smile freezing on his face. “Did you know his parents?”

“His father was in real estate, though of course it was Tony who really made such a success in the business. I don’t remember the mother.”

“Brothers? Sisters?”

“At that time he was an only child. Of course, there was the family tragedy.”

Smithback involuntarily leaned forward. “Tragedy?”

“His older brother, Arthur, died. Some rare disease.”

Smithback abruptly made the connection. “Did they call him Little Arthur, by any chance?”

“I believe they did. His father was Big Arthur. It hit Tony very hard.”

“When did it happen?”

“When Tony was in tenth grade.”

“So it was his older brother? Was he in the school, too?”

“No. He’d been hospitalized for years. Some very rare and disfiguring disease.”

“What disease?”

“I really don’t know.”

“When you say it hit Fairhaven hard, how so?”

“He became withdrawn, antisocial. But he came out of it, eventually.”

“Yes, yes. Let me see…” Smithback checked his notes. “Let’s see. Any problems with alcohol, drugs, delinquency…?” Smithback tried to make it sound casual.

“No, no, just the opposite,” came the curt reply. The look on the teacher’s face had hardened. “Tell me, Mr. Smithback, exactly why are you writing this article?”

Smithback put on his most innocent face. “I’m just doing a little biographical feature on Mr. Fairhaven. You understand, we want to get a well-rounded picture, the good and the bad. I’m not fishing for anything in particular.” Right.

“I see. Well, Tony Fairhaven was a good boy, and he was very anti-drug, anti-drinking, even anti-smoking. I remember he wouldn’t even drink coffee.” She hesitated. “I don’t know, if anything, he might have been a little too good. And it was sometimes hard to tell what he was thinking. He was a rather closed boy.”

Smithback jotted a few more pro forma notes.

“Any hobbies?”

“He talked about making money quite a bit. He worked hard after school, and he had a lot of spending money as a result. I don’t suppose any of this is surprising, considering what he’s done. I’ve read from time to time articles about him, how he pushed through this development or that over a neighborhood’s protests. And of course I read your piece on the Catherine Street discoveries. Nothing surprising. The boy has grown into the man, that’s all.”

Smithback was startled: she’d given no indication she even knew who he was, let alone read his pieces.

“By the way, I thought your article was very interesting. And disturbing.”

Smithback felt a flush of pleasure. “Thank you.”

“I imagine that’s why you’re interested in Tony. Well, rushing in and digging up that site so he could finish his building was just like him. He was always very goal-oriented, impatient to get to the end, to finish, to succeed. I suppose that’s why he’s been so successful as a developer. And he could be rather sarcastic and impatient with people he considered his inferiors.”

Right, thought Smithback.

“What about enemies. Did he have any?”

“Let me see… I just can’t remember. He was the kind of boy that was never impulsive, always very deliberate in his actions. Although it seems to me there was something about a girl once. He got into a shoving match and was suspended for the afternoon. No blows were exchanged, though.”

“And the boy?”

“That would have been Joel Amberson.”

“What happened to Joel Amberson?”

“Why, nothing.”

Smithback nodded, crossed his legs. This was getting nowhere. Time to move in for the kill. “Did he have any nicknames? You know how kids always seem to have a nickname in high school.”

“I don’t remember any other names.”

“I took a look at the yearbook, posted on your Web site.”

The teacher smiled. “We started doing that a few years ago. It’s proven to be quite popular.”

“No doubt. But in the yearbook, he had a nickname.”

“Really? What was it?”

“The Slasher.”

Her face furrowed, then suddenly cleared. “Ah, yes. That.”

Smithback leaned forward. “That?”

The teacher gave a little laugh. “They had to dissect frogs for biology class.”

“And—?”

“Tony was a little squeamish — for two days he tried and tried but he couldn’t do it. The kids teased him about it, and somebody started calling him that, The Slasher. It kind of stuck, as a joke, you know. He did eventually overcome his qualms — and got an A in biology, as I recall — but you know how it is once they start calling you a name.”

Smithback didn’t move a muscle. He couldn’t believe it. It got worse and worse. The guy was a candidate for beatification.

“Mr. Smithback?”

Smithback made a show of checking his notes. “Anything else?

The kindly gray-haired teacher laughed softly. “Look, Mr. Smithback, if it’s dirt you’re looking for on Tony — and I can see that it is, it’s written all over your face — you’re just not going to find it. He was a normal, all-around, high-achieving boy who seems to have grown into a normal, all-around, high-achieving man. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to my grading.”

Smithback stepped out of P.S. 1984 and began walking, rather mournfully, in the direction of Columbus Avenue. This hadn’t turned out the way he’d planned, at all. He’d wasted a colossal amount of time, energy, and effort, and without anything at all to show for it. Was it possible his instincts were wrong — that this was all a wild-goose chase, a dead end, inspired by a thirst for revenge? But no — that would be unthinkable. He was a seasoned reporter. When he had a hunch, it was usually right. So how was it he couldn’t find the goods on Fairhaven?

As he reached the corner, his eye happened to stray toward a newsstand and the front page of a freshly printed New York Post. The headline froze him in his tracks.

EXCLUSIVE

SECOND MUTILATED BODY FOUND

The story that followed was bylined by Bryce Harriman.

Smithback fumbled in his pocket for change, dropped it on the scarred wooden counter, and grabbed a paper. He read with trembling hands:

NEW YORK, Oct. 10—An as-yet-unidentified body of a young woman was discovered this morning in Tompkins Square Park, in the East Village. She is apparently the victim of the same brutal killer who murdered a tourist in Central Park two days ago.

In both cases, the killer dissected part of the spinal cord at the time of death, removing a section known as the cauda equina, a bundle of nerves at the base of the spinal cord that resembles a horse’s tail, The Post has learned.

The actual cause of death appears to have been the dissection itself.

The mutilations in both cases appear to have been done with care and precision, possibly with surgical instruments. An anonymous source confirmed the police are investigating the possibility that the killer is a surgeon or other medical specialist.

The dissection mimics a description of a surgical procedure, discovered in an old document in the New York Museum. The document, found hidden in the archives, describes in detail a series of experiments conducted in the late nineteenth century by an Enoch Leng. These experiments were an attempt by Leng to prolong his own life span. On October 1, thirty-six alleged victims of Leng were uncovered during the excavation of a building foundation on Catherine Street. Nothing more is known about Leng, except that he was associated with the New York Museum of Natural History.

“What we have here is a copycat killer,” said Police Commissioner Karl C. Rocker. “A very twisted individual read the article about Leng and is trying to duplicate his work.” He declined to comment further on any details of the investigation, except to say that more than fifty detectives had been assigned to the case, and that it was being given “the highest priority.”

Smithback let out a howl of anguish. The tourist in Central Park was the murder assignment that, like a complete fool, he’d turned down. Instead, he had promised his editor Fairhaven’s head on a platter. Now, not only did he have nothing to show for his day of pounding the pavement, but he’d been scooped on the very story he himself had broken — and by none other than his old nemesis, Bryce Harriman.

It was his own head that would be on a platter.

SIX

NORA TURNED OFF Canal Street onto Mott, moving slowly through the throngs of people. It was seven o’clock on a Friday evening, and Chinatown was packed. Sheets of densely printed Chinese newspapers lay strewn in the gutters. The stalls of the fish sellers were set up along the sidewalks, vast arrays of exotic-looking fish laid out on ice. In the windows, pressed duck and cooked squid hung on hooks. The buyers, primarily Chinese, pushed and shouted frantically, under the curious gaze of passing tourists.

Ten Ren’s Tea and Ginseng Company was a few hundred feet down the block. She pushed through the door into a long, bright, orderly space. The air of the tea shop was perfumed with innumerable faint scents. At first she thought the shop was empty. But then, as she looked around once more, she noticed Pendergast at a rear table, nestled between display cases of ginseng and ginger. She could have sworn that the table had been empty just a moment before.

“Are you a tea drinker?” he asked as she approached, motioning her to a seat.

“Sometimes.” Her subway had stalled between stations for twenty minutes, and she’d had plenty of time to rehearse what she would say. She would get it over with quickly and get out.

But Pendergast was clearly in no hurry. They sat in silence while he consulted a sheet filled with Chinese ideographs. Nora wondered if it was a list of tea offerings, but there seemed to be far too many items — surely there weren’t that many kinds of tea in the world.

Pendergast turned to the shopkeeper — a small, vivacious woman — and began speaking rapidly.

“Nin hao, lao bin liang. Li mama hao ma?”

The woman shook her head. “Bu, ta hai shi lao yang zi, shen ti bu hao.”

“Qing li Dai wo xiang ta wen an. Qing gei wo yi bei Wu Long cha hao ma?”

The woman walked away, returning with a ceramic pot from which she poured a minuscule cup of tea. She placed the cup in front of Nora.

“You speak Chinese?” Nora asked Pendergast.

“A little Mandarin. I confess to speaking Cantonese somewhat more fluently.”

Nora fell silent. Somehow, she was not surprised.

“King’s Tea of Osmanthus Oolong,” said Pendergast, nodding toward her cup. “One of the finest in the world. From bushes grown on the sunny sides of the mountains, new shoots gathered only in the spring.”

Nora picked up the cup. A delicate aroma rose to her nostrils. She took a sip, tasting a complex blend of green tea and other exquisitely delicate flavors.

“Very nice,” she said, putting down the cup.

“Indeed.” Pendergast glanced at her for a moment. Then he spoke again in Mandarin, and the woman filled up a bag, weighed it, and sealed it, scribbling a price on the plastic wrapping. She handed it to Nora.

“For me?” Nora asked.

Pendergast nodded.

“I don’t want any gifts from you.”

“Please take it. It’s excellent for the digestion. As well as being a superb antioxidant.”

Nora took it irritably, then saw the price. “Wait a minute, this is two hundred dollars?”

“It will last three or four months,” said Pendergast. “A small price when one considers—”

“Look,” said Nora, setting down the bag. “Mr. Pendergast, I came here to tell you that I can’t work for you anymore. My career at the Museum is at stake. A bag of tea isn’t going to change my mind, even if it is two hundred bucks.”

Pendergast listened attentively, his head slightly bowed.

“They implied — and the implication was very clear — that I wasn’t to work with you anymore. I like what I do. I keep this up, I’ll lose my job. I already lost one job when the Lloyd Museum closed down. I can’t afford to lose another. I need this job.”

Pendergast nodded.

“Brisbane and Collopy gave me the money I need for my carbon dates. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me now. I can’t spare the time.”

Pendergast waited, still listening.

“What do you need me for, anyway? I’m an archaeologist, and there’s no longer any site to investigate. You’ve got a copy of the letter. You’re FBI. You must have dozens of specialists at your beck and call.”

Pendergast remained silent as Nora took a sip of tea. The cup rattled loudly in the saucer when she replaced it.

“So,” she said. “Now that’s settled.”

Now Pendergast spoke. “Mary Greene lived a few blocks from here, down on Water Street. Number 16. The house is still there. It’s a five-minute walk.”

Nora looked at him, eyebrows narrowing in surprise. It had never occurred to her how close they were to Mary Greene’s neighborhood. She recalled the note, written in blood. Mary Greene had known she was going to die. Her want had been simple: not to die in complete anonymity.

Pendergast gently took her arm. “Come,” he said.

She did not shrug him off. He spoke again to the shopkeeper, took the tea with a slight bow, and in a moment they were outside on the crowded street. They walked down Mott, crossing first Bayard, then Chatham Square, entering into a maze of dark narrow streets abutting the East River. The noise and bustle of Chinatown gave way to the silence of industrial buildings. The sun had set, leaving a glow in the sky that barely outlined the tops of the buildings. Reaching Catherine Street, they turned southeast. Nora glanced over curiously as they passed Henry and the site of Moegen-Fairhaven’s new residential tower. The excavation was much bigger now; massive foundations and stem walls rose out of the gloom, rebar popping like reeds from the freshly poured concrete. Nothing was left of the old coal tunnel.

Another few minutes, and they were on Water Street. Old manufacturing buildings, warehouses, and decrepit tenements lined the street. Beyond, the East River moved sluggishly, dark purple in the moonlight. The Brooklyn Bridge loomed almost above them; and to its left, the Manhattan Bridge arced across the dark river, its span of brilliant lights reflected in the water below.

Near Market Slip, Pendergast stopped in front of an old tenement. It was still inhabited: a single window glowed with yellow light. A metal door was set into the first-floor facade. Beside it was a dented intercom and a series of buttons.

“Here it is,” said Pendergast. “Number sixteen.”

They stood in the gathering darkness.

Pendergast began to speak quietly in the gloom. “Mary Greene came from a working-class family. After her father’s upstate farm failed, he brought his family down here. He worked as a stevedore on the docks. But both he and Mary’s mother died in a minor cholera epidemic when the girl was fifteen. Bad water. She had a younger brother: Joseph, seven; and a younger sister: Constance, five.”

Nora said nothing.

“Mary Greene tried to take in washing and sewing, but apparently it wasn’t enough to pay the rent. There was no other work, no way to earn money. They were evicted. Mary finally did what she had to do to support her younger siblings, whom she evidently loved very much. She became a prostitute.”

“How awful,” Nora murmured.

“That’s not the worst. She was arrested when she was sixteen. It was probably at that point her two younger siblings became street children. They called them guttersnipes in those days. There’s no more record of them in any city files; they probably starved to death. In 1871 it was estimated there were twenty-eight thousand homeless children living on the streets of New York. In any case, later Mary was sent to a workhouse known as the Five Points Mission. It was basically a sweatshop. But it was better than prison. On the surface, that would have seemed to be Mary Greene’s lucky break.”

Pendergast fell silent. A barge on the river gave out a distant, mournful bellow.

“What happened to her then?”

“The paper trail ends at the lodging house door,” Pendergast replied.

He turned to her, his pale face almost luminous in the gloaming. “Enoch Leng—Doctor Enoch Leng — placed himself and his medical expertise at the service of the Five Points Mission as well as the House of Industry, an orphanage that stood near where Chatham Square is today. He offered his time pro bono. As we know, Dr. Leng kept rooms on the top floor of Shottum’s Cabinet throughout the 1870s. No doubt he had a house somewhere else in the city. He affiliated himself with the two workhouses about a year before Shottum’s Cabinet burned down.”

“We already know from Shottum’s letter that Leng committed those murders.”

“No question.”

“Then why do you need my help?”

“There’s almost nothing on record about Leng anywhere. I’ve tried the Historical Society, the New York Public Library, City Hall. It’s as if he’s been expunged from the historical record, and I have reason to think Leng himself might have eradicated his files. It seems that Leng was an early supporter of the Museum and an enthusiastic taxonomist. I believe there may be more papers in the Museum concerning Leng, at least indirectly. Their archives are so vast and disorganized that it would be virtually impossible to purge them.”

“Why me? Why doesn’t the FBI just subpoena the files or something?”

“Files have a way of disappearing as soon as they are officially requested. Even if one knew which files to request. Besides, I’ve seen how you operate. That kind of competence is rare.”

Nora merely shook her head.

“Mr. Puck has been, and no doubt will continue to be, most helpful. And there’s something else. Tinbury McFadden’s daughter is still alive. She lives in an old house in Peekskill. She’s ninety-five, but I understand very much compos mentis. She may have a lot to say about her father. She may have even known Leng. I have a sense she’d be more willing to speak to a young woman like yourself than to an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“You’ve still never really explained why you’ve taken such an interest in this case.”

“The reasons for my interest in the case are unimportant. What is important is that a human being should not be allowed to get away with a crime like this. Even if that person is long dead. We do not forgive or forget Hitler. It’s important to remember. The past is part of the present. At the moment, in fact, it’s all too much a part of the present.”

“You’re talking about these two new murders.” The whole city was buzzing with the news. And the same words seemed to be on everyone’s lips: copycat killer.

Pendergast nodded silently.

“But do you really think the murders are connected? That there’s some madman out there who read Smithback’s article, and is now trying to duplicate Leng’s experiments?”

“I believe the murders are connected, yes.”

It was now dark. Water Street and the piers beyond were deserted. Nora shuddered again. “Look, Mr. Pendergast, I’d like to help. But it’s like I said. I just don’t think there’s anything more I can do for you. Personally, I think you’d do better to investigate the new murders, not the old.”

“That is precisely what I am doing. The solution to the new murders lies in the old.”

She looked at him curiously. “How so?”

“Now is not the time, Nora. I don’t have sufficient information to answer, not yet. In fact, I may have already said too much.”

Nora sighed with irritation. “Then I’m sorry, but the bottom line is that I simply can’t afford to put my job in jeopardy a second time. Especially without more information. You understand, don’t you?”

There was a moment’s silence. “Of course. I respect your decision.” Pendergast bowed slightly. Somehow, he managed to give even this simple gesture a touch of elegance.

Pendergast asked the driver to let him out a block from his apartment building. As the Rolls-Royce glided silently away, Pendergast walked down the pavement, deep in thought. After a few minutes he stopped, staring up at his residence: the Dakota, the vast, gargoyle-haunted pile on a corner of Central Park West. But it was not this structure that remained in his mind: it was the small, crumbling tenement at Number 16 Water Street, where Mary Greene had once lived.

The house would contain no specific information; it had not been worth searching. And yet it possessed something less definable. It was not just the facts and figures of the past that he needed to know, but its shape and feel. Mary Greene had grown up there. Her father had been part of that great post — Civil War exodus from the farms to the cities. Her childhood had been hard, but it may well have been happy. Stevedores earned a living wage. Once upon a time, she had played on those cobbles. Her childish shouts had echoed off some of those very bricks. And then cholera carried away her parents and changed her life forever. There were at least thirty-five other stories like hers, all of which ended so cruelly in that basement charnel.

There was a faint movement at the end of the block, and Pendergast turned. An old man in black, wearing a derby hat and carrying a Gladstone bag, was painfully making his way up the sidewalk. He was bowed, moving with the help of a cane. It was almost as if Pendergast’s musings had conjured a figure out of the past. The man slowly made his way toward him, his cane making a faint tapping noise.

Pendergast watched him curiously for a moment. Then he turned back toward the Dakota, lingering a moment to allow the brisk night air to clear his mind. But there was little clarity to be found; instead there was Mary Greene, the little girl laughing on the cobbles.

SEVEN

IT HAD BEEN days since Nora was last in her laboratory. She eased the old metal door open and flicked on the lights, pausing. Everything was as she had left it. A white table ran along the far wall: binocular microscope, flotation kit, computer. To the side stood black metal cabinets containing her specimens — charcoal, lithics, bone, other organics. The still air smelled of dust, with a faint overlay of smoke, piñon, juniper. It momentarily made her homesick for New Mexico. What was she doing in New York City, anyway? She was a Southwestern archaeologist. Her brother, Skip, was demanding she come home to Santa Fe on almost a weekly basis. She had told Pendergast she couldn’t afford to lose her job here at the Museum. But what was the worst that could happen? She could get a position at the University of New Mexico, or Arizona State. They both had superb archaeology departments where she wouldn’t have to defend the value of her work to cretins like Brisbane.

The thought of Brisbane roused her. Cretins or not, this was the New York Museum. She’d never get another opportunity like this again — not ever.

Briskly, she stepped into the office, closing and locking the door behind her. Now that she had the money for the carbon-14 dates, she could get back to real work. At least that was one thing this whole fiasco had done for her: get her the money. Now she could prepare the charcoal and organics for shipping to the radiocarbon lab at the University of Michigan. Once she had the dates, her work on the Anasazi-Aztec connection could begin in earnest.

She opened the first cabinet and carefully removed a tray containing dozens of stoppered test tubes. Each was labeled, and each contained a single specimen: a bit of charcoal, a carbonized seed, a fragment of a corn cob, a bit of wood or bone. She removed three of the trays, placing them on the white table. Then she booted her workstation and called up the catalogue matrices. She began cross-checking, making sure every specimen had the proper label and site location. At $275 a shot for the dating, it was important to be accurate.

As she worked, her mind began to wander back to the events of the past few days. She wondered if the relationship with Brisbane could ever be repaired. He was a difficult boss, but a boss nonetheless. And he was shrewd; sooner or later he’d realize that it would be best for everyone if they could bury the hatchet and—

Nora shook her head abruptly, a little guilty about this selfish line of thought. Smithback’s article hadn’t just gotten her into hot water — it had apparently inspired a copycat killer the tabloids were already dubbing “The Surgeon.” She couldn’t understand how Smithback thought the article would help. She’d always known he was a careerist, but this was too much. A bumbling egomaniac. She remembered her first sight of him in Page, Arizona, surrounded by bimbos in bathing suits, giving out autographs. Trying to, anyway. What a joke. She should have trusted her first impression of him.

Her mind wandered from Smithback to Pendergast. A strange man. She wasn’t even sure he was authorized to be working on the case. Would the FBI just let one of their agents freelance like this? Why was he so evasive about his interest? Was he just secretive by nature? Whatever the situation, it was most peculiar. She was out of it now, and glad. Very glad.

And yet, as she went back to the tubes, she realized she wasn’t feeling all that glad. Maybe it was just that this sorting and checking was tedious work, but she realized Mary Greene and her sad life was lingering in the back of her mind. The dim tenement, the pathetic dress, the pitiful note…

With an effort, she pushed it all away. Mary Greene and her family were long gone. It was tragic, it was horrifying — but it was no concern of hers.

Sorting completed, she began packing the tubes in their special Styrofoam shipping containers. Better to break it down into three batches, just in case one got lost. Sealing the containers, she turned to the bills of lading and FedEx shipping labels.

A knock sounded at the door. The knob turned, but the locked door merely rattled in its frame. She glanced over.

“Who is it?” she called.

The hoarse whisper was muffled by the door.

“Who?” She felt a sudden fear.

“Me. Bill.” The furtive voice was louder.

Nora stood up with a mixture of relief and anger. “What are you doing here?”

“Open up.”

“Are you kidding? Get out of here. Now.”

“Nora, please. It’s important.”

“It’s important that you stay the hell away from me. I’m warning you.”

“I’ve got to talk to you.”

“That’s it. I’m calling security.”

“No, Nora. Wait.”

Nora picked up the phone, dialed. The officer she reached said he would be only too glad to remove the intruder. They would be there right away.

“Nora!” Smithback cried.

Nora sat down at her worktable, trying to compose her mind. She closed her eyes. Ignore him. Just ignore him. Security would be there in a moment.

Smithback continued to plead at the door. “Just let me in for a minute. There’s something you have to know. Last night—”

She heard heavy footfalls and a firm voice. “Sir, you’re in an off-limits area.”

“Hey! Let go! I’m a reporter for—”

“You will come with us, please, sir.”

There was the sound of a scuffle.

“Nora!”

A new note of desperation sounded strong in Smithback’s voice. Despite herself, Nora went to the door, unlocked it, and stuck out her head. Smithback was being held between two burly security men. He glanced at her, cowlick bobbing reproachfully as he tried to extricate himself. “Nora, I can’t believe you called security.”

“Are you all right, miss?” one of the men asked.

“I’m fine. But that man shouldn’t be here.”

“This way, sir. We’ll walk you to the door.” The men started dragging Smithback off.

“Unhand me, oaf! I’ll report you, Mister 3467.”

“Yes, sir, you do that, sir.”

“Stop calling me ‘sir.’This is assault.”

“Yes, sir.”

The men, imperturbable, led him down the hall toward the elevator.

As Nora watched, she felt a turmoil of conflicting emotion. Poor Smithback. What an undignified exit. But then, he’d brought it on himself — hadn’t he? He needed the lesson. He couldn’t just show up like this, all mystery and high drama, and expect her to—

“Nora!” came the cry from down the hall. “You have to listen, please! Pendergast was attacked, I heard it on the police scanner. He’s in St. Luke’s — Roosevelt, down on Fifty-ninth. He—”

Then Smithback was gone, his shouts cut off by the elevator doors.

EIGHT

NOBODY WOULD TELL Nora anything. It was more than an hour before the doctor could see her. At last he showed up in the lounge, very young: a tired, hunted look in his face and a two-day growth of beard.

“Dr. Kelly?” he asked the room while looking at his clipboard.

She rose and their eyes met. “How is he?”

A wintry smile broke on the doctor’s face. “He’s going to be fine.” He looked at her curiously. “Dr. Kelly, are you a medical—?”

“Archaeologist.”

“Oh. And your relationship to the patient?”

“A friend. Can I see him? What happened?”

“He was stabbed last night.”

“My God.”

“Missed his heart by less than an inch. He was very lucky.”

“How is he?”

“He’s in…” the doctor paused. The faint smile returned. “Excellent spirits. An odd fellow, Mr. Pendergast. He insisted on a local anesthetic for the operation — highly unusual, unheard of actually, but he refused to sign the consent forms otherwise. Then he demanded a mirror. We had to bring one up from obstetrics. I’ve never had quite such a, er, demanding patient. I thought for a moment I had a surgeon on my operating table. They make the worst patients, you know.”

“What did he want a mirror for?”

“He insisted on watching. His vitals were dropping and he was losing blood, but he absolutely insisted on getting a view of the wound from various angles before he would allow us to operate. Very odd. What kind of profession is Mr. Pendergast in?”

“FBI.”

The smile evaporated. “I see. Well, that explains quite a bit. We put him in a shared room at first — no private ones were available — but then we quickly had to make one available for him. Moved out a state senator to get it.”

“Why? Did Pendergast complain?”

“No… he didn’t.” The doctor hesitated a moment. “He began watching the video of an autopsy. Very graphic. His roommate naturally objected. But it was really just as well. Because an hour ago, the things started to arrive.” He shrugged. “He refused to eat hospital food, insisted on ordering in from Balducci’s. Refused an IV drip. Refused painkillers — no OxyContin, not even Vicodin or Tylenol Number 3. He must be in dreadful pain, but doesn’t show it. With these new patient-rights guidelines, my hands are tied.”

“It sounds just like him.”

“The bright side is that the most difficult patients usually make the fastest recovery. I just feel sorry for the nurses.” The doctor glanced at his watch. “You might as well head over there now. Room 1501.”

As Nora approached the room, she noticed a faint odor in the air: something out of place among the aromas of stale food and rubbing alcohol. Something exotic, fragrant. A shrill voice echoed out of the open door. She paused in the doorway and gave a little knock.

The floor of the room was stacked high with old books, and a riot of maps and papers lay across them. Tall sticks of sandalwood incense were propped inside silver cups, sending up slender coils of smoke. That accounts for the smell, Nora thought. A nurse was standing near the bed, clutching a plastic pill box in one hand and a syringe in the other. Pendergast lay on the bed in a black silk dressing gown. The overhead television showed a splayed body, grotesque and bloody, being worked on by no fewer than three doctors. One of the doctors was in the middle of lifting a wobbly brain out of the skull. She looked away. On the bedside table was a dish of drawn butter and the remains of coldwater lobster tails.

“Mr. Pendergast, I insist you take this injection,” the nurse was saying. “You’ve just undergone a serious operation. You must have your sleep.”

Pendergast withdrew his arms from behind his head, picked up a dusty volume lying atop the sheets, and began leafing through it nonchalantly. “Nurse, I have no intention of taking that. I shall sleep when I’m ready.” Pendergast blew dust from the book’s spine and turned the page.

“I’m going to call the doctor. This is completely unacceptable. And this filth is highly unsanitary.” She waved her hand through the clouds of dust.

Pendergast nodded, leafed over another page.

The nurse stormed past Nora on her way out.

Pendergast glanced at her and smiled. “Ah, Dr. Kelly. Please come in and make yourself comfortable.”

Nora took a seat in a chair at the foot of the bed. “Are you all right?”

He nodded.

“What happened?”

“I was careless.”

“But who did it? Where? When?”

“Outside my residence,” said Pendergast. He held up the remote and turned off the video, then laid the book aside. “A man in black, with a cane, wearing a derby hat. He tried to chloroform me. I held my breath and pretended to faint; then broke away. But he was extraordinarily strong and swift, and I underestimated him. He stabbed me, then escaped.”

“You could have been killed!”

“That was the intention.”

“The doctor said it missed your heart by an inch.”

“Yes. When I realized he was going to stab me, I directed his hand to a nonvital place. A useful trick, by the way, if you ever find yourself in a similar position.”

He leaned forward slightly. “Dr. Kelly, I’m convinced he’s the same man who killed Doreen Hollander and Mandy Eklund.”

Nora looked at him sharply. “What makes you say that?”

“I caught a glimpse of the weapon — a surgeon’s scalpel with a myringotomy blade.”

“But… but why you?”

Pendergast smiled, but the smile held more pain than mirth. “That shouldn’t be hard to answer. Somewhere along the way, we brushed up a little too close to the truth. We flushed him out. This is a very positive development.”

“A positive development? You could still be in danger!”

Pendergast raised his pale eyes and looked at her intently. “I am not the only one, Dr. Kelly. You and Mr. Smithback must take precautions.” He winced slightly.

“You should have taken that painkiller.”

“For what I plan to do, it’s essential to keep my head clear. People did without painkillers for countless centuries. As I was saying, you should take precautions. Don’t venture out alone on the streets at night. I have a great deal of trust in Sergeant O’Shaughnessy.” He slipped a card into her hand. “If you need anything, call him. I’ll be up and about in a few days.”

She nodded.

“Meanwhile, it might be a good idea for you to get out of town for a day. There’s a talkative, lonely old lady up in Peekskill who would love to have visitors.”

She sighed. “I told you why I couldn’t help anymore. And you still haven’t told me why you’re spending your time with these old murders.”

“Anything I told you now would be incomplete. I have more work of my own to do, more pieces of the puzzle to fit together. But let me assure you of one thing, Dr. Kelly: this is no frivolous field trip. It is vital that we learn more about Enoch Leng.”

There was a silence.

“Do it for Mary Greene, if not for me.”

Nora rose to leave.

“And Dr. Kelly?”

“Yes?”

“Smithback isn’t such a bad fellow. I know from experience that he’s a reliable man in a pinch. It would ease my mind if, while all this is going on, you two worked together—”

Nora shook her head. “No way.”

Pendergast held up his hand with a certain impatience. “Do it for your own safety. And now, I need to get back to my work. I look forward to hearing back from you tomorrow.”

His tone was peremptory. Nora left, feeling annoyed. Yet again Pendergast had dragged her back into the case, and now he wanted to burden her with that ass Smithback. Well, forget Smithback. He’d just love to get his hands on part two of the story. Him and his Pulitzer. She’d go to Peekskill, all right. But she’d go by herself.

NINE

THE BASEMENT ROOM was small and silent. In its simplicity it resembled a monk’s cell. Only a narrow-legged wooden table and stiff, uncomfortable chair broke the monotony of the uneven stone floor, the damp unfinished walls. A black light in the ceiling threw a spectral blue pall over the four items upon the table: a scarred and rotting leather notebook; a lacquer fountain pen; a tan-colored length of India-rubber; and a hypodermic syringe.

The figure in the chair glanced at each of the carefully aligned items in turn. Then, very slowly, he reached for the hypodermic. The needle glowed with strange enchantment in the ultraviolet light, and the serum inside the glass tube seemed almost to smoke.

He stared at the serum, turning it this way and that, fascinated by its eddies, its countless miniature whorls. This was what the ancients had been searching for: the Philosopher’s Stone, the Holy Grail, the one true name of God. Much sacrifice had been made to get it — on his part, on the part of the long stream of resources who had donated their lives to its refinement. But any amount of sacrifice was acceptable. Here before him was a universe of life, encased in a prison of glass. His life. And to think it all started with a single material: the neuronal membrane of the cauda equina, the divergent sheaf of spinal ganglia with the longest nerve roots of all. To bathe all the cells of the body with the essence of neurons, the cells that did not die: such a simple concept, yet so damnably complicated in development.

The process of synthesis and refinement was tortuous. And yet he took great pleasure in it, just as he did in the ritual he was about to perform. Creating the final reduction, moving from step to step to step, had become a religious experience for him. It was like the countless Gnostic keys the believer must perform before true prayer can begin. Or the harpsichordist who works his way through the twenty-nine Goldberg Variations before arriving at the final, pure, unadorned truth Bach intended.

The pleasure of these reflections was troubled briefly by the thought of those who would stop him, if they could: who would seek him out, follow the carefully obscured trail to this room, put a halt to his noble work. The most troublesome one had already been punished for his presumption — though not as fully punished as intended. Still, there would be other methods, other opportunities.

Placing the hypodermic gently aside, he reached for the leather-bound journal, turned over the front cover. Abruptly, a new smell was introduced into the room: must, rot, decomposition. He was always struck by the irony of how a volume that, over the years, had itself grown so decayed managed to contain the secret that banished decay.

He turned the pages, slowly, lovingly, examining the early years of painstaking work and research. At last, he reached the end, where the notations were still new and fresh. He unscrewed the fountain pen and laid it by the last entry, ready to record his new observations.

He would have liked to linger further but did not dare: the serum required a specific temperature and was not stable beyond a brief interval. He scanned the tabletop with a sigh of something almost like regret. Though of course it was not regret, because in the wake of the injection would come nullification of corporeal poisons and oxidants and the arresting of the aging process — in short, that which had evaded the best minds for three dozen centuries.

More quickly now, he picked up the rubber strap, tied it off above the elbow of his right arm, tapped the rising vein with the side of a fingernail, placed the needle against the antecubital fossa, slid it home.

And closed his eyes.

TEN

NORA WALKED AWAY from the red gingerbread Peekskill station, squinting against the bright morning sun. It had been raining when she’d boarded the train at Grand Central. But here, only a few small clouds dotted the blue sky above the old riverfront downtown. Three-story brick buildings were set close together, faded facades looking toward the Hudson. Behind them, narrow streets climbed away from the river, toward the public library and City Hall. Farther still, perched on the rocky hillside, lay the houses of the old neighborhoods, their narrow lawns dotted with ancient trees. Between the aging structures lay a scattering of smaller and newer houses, a car repair shop, the occasional Spanish-American mini-market. Everything looked shabby and superannuated. It was a proud old town in uncomfortable transition, clutching to its dignity in the face of decay and neglect.

She checked the directions Clara McFadden had given her over the telephone, then began climbing Central Avenue. She turned right on Washington, her old leather portfolio swinging from one hand, working her way toward Simpson Place. It was a steep climb, and she found herself panting slightly. Across the river, the ramparts of Bear Mountain could be glimpsed through the trees: a patchwork of autumnal yellows and reds, interspersed with darker stands of spruce and pine.

Clara McFadden’s house was a dilapidated Queen Anne, with a slate mansard roof, gables, and a pair of turrets decorated with oriel windows. The white paint was peeling. A wraparound porch surrounded the first floor, set off by a spindlework frieze. As she walked up the short drive, the wind blew through the trees, sending leaves swirling around her. She mounted the porch and rang the heavy bronze bell.

A minute passed, then two. She was about to ring again when she remembered the old lady had told her to walk in.

She grasped the large bronze knob and pushed; the door swung open with the creak of rarely used hinges. She stepped into an entryway, hanging her coat on a lone hook. There was a smell of dust, old fabric, and cats. A worn set of stairs swept upward, and to her right she could see a broad arched doorway, framed in carved oak, leading into what looked like a parlor.

A voice, riven with age but surprisingly strong, issued from within. “Do come in,” it said.

Nora paused at the entrance to the parlor. After the bright day outside, it was shockingly dim, the tall windows covered with thick green drapes ending in gold tassels. As her eyes slowly adjusted, she saw an old woman, dressed in crepe and dark bombazine, ensconced on a Victorian wing chair. It was so dark that at first all Nora could see was a white face and white hands, hovering as if disconnected in the dimness. The woman’s eyes were half closed.

“Do not be afraid,” said the disembodied voice from the deep chair.

Nora took another step inside. The white hand moved, indicating another wing chair, draped with a lace antimacassar. “Sit down.”

Nora took a seat gingerly. Dust rose from the chair. There was a rustling sound as a black cat shot from behind a curtain and disappeared into the dim recesses of the room.

“Thank you for seeing me,” Nora said.

The bombazine crackled as the lady raised her head. “What do you want, child?”

The question was unexpectedly direct, and the tone of the voice behind it sharp.

“Miss McFadden, I wanted to ask you about your father, Tinbury McFadden.”

“My dear, you’re going to have to tell me your name again. I am an old lady with a fading memory.”

“Nora Kelly.”

The old woman’s claw reached out and pulled the chain of a lamp that stood beside her chair. It had a heavy tasseled lamp shade, and it threw out a dim yellow light. Now Nora could see Clara McFadden more clearly. Her face was ancient and sunken, pale veins showing through parchment-paper skin. The lady examined her for a few minutes with a pair of glittering eyes.

“Thank you, Miss Kelly,” she said, turning off the lamp again. “What exactly do you want to know about my father?”

Nora took a folder out of the portfolio, squinting through the dimness at the questions she’d scribbled on the train north from Grand Central. She was glad she’d come prepared; the interview was becoming unexpectedly intimidating.

The old woman picked up something from a small table beside the wing chair: an old-fashioned pint bottle with a green label. She poured a bit of the liquid into a teaspoon, swallowed it, replaced the spoon. Another black cat, or perhaps the same one, leapt into the old lady’s lap. She began stroking it and it rumbled with pleasure.

“Your father was a curator at the New York Museum of Natural History. He was a colleague of John Canaday Shottum, who owned a cabinet of curiosities in lower Manhattan.”

There was no response from the old lady.

“And he was acquainted with a scientist by the name of Enoch Leng.”

Miss McFadden seemed to grow very still. Then she spoke with acidic sharpness, her voice cutting through the heavy air. It was as if the name had woken her up. “Leng? What about Leng?”

“I was curious if you knew anything about Dr. Leng, or had any letters or papers relating to him.”

“I certainly do know about Leng,” came the shrill voice. “He’s the man who murdered my father.”

Nora sat in stunned silence. There was nothing about a murder in anything she had read about McFadden. “I’m sorry?” she said.

“Oh, I know they all said he merely disappeared. But they were wrong.”

“How do you know this?”

There was another rustle. “How? Let me tell you how.”

Miss McFadden turned on the light again, directing Nora’s attention to a large, old framed photograph. It was a faded portrait of a young man in a severe, high-buttoned suit. He was smiling: two silver front teeth gleamed out of the frame. A roguish eyepatch covered one eye. The man had Clara McFadden’s narrow forehead and prominent cheekbones.

She began to speak, her voice unnaturally loud and angry. “That was taken shortly after my father lost his right eye in Borneo. He was a collector, you must understand. As a young man, he spent several years in British East Africa. He built up quite a collection of African mammals and artifacts collected from the natives. When he returned to New York he became a curator at the new museum just started by one of his fellow Lyceum members. The New York Museum of Natural History. It was very different back then, Miss Kelly. Most of the early Museum curators were gentlemen of leisure, like my father. They did not have systematic scientific training. They were amateurs in the best sense of the word. My father was always interested in oddities, queer things. You are familiar, Miss Kelly, with the cabinets of curiosities?”

“Yes,” Nora said as she scribbled notes as quickly as she could. She wished she had brought a voice recorder.

“There were quite a few in New York at the time. But the New York Museum quickly started putting them out of business. It became my father’s role at the Museum to acquire these bankrupt cabinet collections. He corresponded with many of the cabinet owners: the Delacourte family, Phineas Barnum, the Cadwalader brothers. One of these cabinet owners was John Canaday Shottum.” The old lady poured herself another spoonful from the bottle. In the light, Nora could make out the label: Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Tonic.

Nora nodded. “J. C. Shottum’s Cabinet of Natural Productions and Curiosities.”

“Precisely. There was only a small circle of scientific men in those days, and they all belonged to the Lyceum. Men of varying abilities, I might add. Shottum belonged to the Lyceum, but he was as much a showman as he was a scientist. He had opened a cabinet down on Catherine Street, where he charged a minimal admission. It was mostly patronized by the lower classes. Unlike most of his colleagues, Shottum had these notions of bettering the plight of the poor through education. That’s why he situated his cabinet in such a disagreeable neighborhood. He was especially interested in using natural history to inform and educate the young. In any case, he needed help with identifying and classifying his collections, which he had acquired from the family of a young man who had been killed by natives in Madagascar.”

“Alexander Marysas.”

There was a rustle from the old lady. Once again, she extinguished the light, shrouding the room in darkness, throwing the portrait of her father into shadow. “You seem to know a great deal about this, Miss Kelly,” Clara McFadden said suspiciously. “I hope I am not annoying you with my story.”

“Not at all. Please go on.”

“Shottum’s was a rather wretched cabinet. My father helped him from time to time, but it was burdensome to him. It was not a good collection. Very haphazard, not systematic. To lure in the poor, especially the urchins, his exhibits tended toward the sensational. There was even something he called a ‘gallery of unnatural monstrosities.’ It was, I believe, inspired by Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors. There were rumors that some people who went into that gallery never came out again. All rubbish, of course, most likely cooked up by Shottum to increase foot traffic.”

Clara McFadden removed a lace handkerchief and coughed into it. “It was around that time a man named Leng joined the Lyceum. Enoch Leng.” Her voice conveyed a depth of hatred.

Nora felt her heart quicken. “Did you know Leng?”

“My father talked about him a great deal. Especially toward the end. My father, you see, had a bad eye and bad teeth. Leng helped him get some silver bridgework and a special pair of eyeglasses with an unusually thick lens. He seemed to be something of a polymath.”

She tucked the handkerchief back into some fold of her clothing, took another spoonful of the elixir. “It was said he came from France, a small mountain town near the Belgian border. There was talk that he was a baron, born into a noble family. These scientists are all gossips, you know. New York City at the time was a very provincial place and Leng made quite an impression. No one doubted he was a very learned man. He called himself a doctor, by the way, and it was said he had been a surgeon and a chemist.” She made a vinegary sound.

Motes drifted in the heavy air. The cat’s purr rumbled on endlessly, like a turbine.

The strident voice cut the air again. “Shottum was looking for a curator for his cabinet. Leng took an interest in it, although it was certainly the poorest curatorial appointment among the cabinets of curiosities. Nevertheless, Leng took rooms on the top floor of the cabinet.”

So far, all this matched the details provided in Shottum’s letter. “And when was this?” Nora asked.

“In the spring of 1870.”

“Did Leng live at the cabinet?”

“A man of Leng’s breeding, living in the Five Points? Certainly not. But he kept to himself. He was a strange, elusive man, very formal in his diction and mannerisms. No one, not even my father, knew where he lived. Leng did not encourage intimacy.

“He spent most of his time at Shottum’s or the Lyceum. As I recall, his work at Shottum’s Cabinet was originally supposed to last only a year or two. At first, Shottum was very pleased with Leng’s work. Leng catalogued the collection, wrote up label copy for everything. But then something happened — my father never knew what — and Shottum seemed to grow suspicious of Leng. Shottum wanted to ask him to leave, but was reluctant. Leng paid handsomely for the use of the third floor, and Shottum needed the money.”

“What kind of experiments did Leng perform?”

“I expect the usual. All scientific men had laboratories. My father had one.”

“You said your father never knew what made Shottum suspicious?” That would mean McFadden never read the letter hidden in the elephant’s-foot box.

“That’s correct. My father didn’t press him on the subject. Shottum had always been a rather eccentric man, prone to opium and fits of melancholy, and my father suspected he might be mentally unstable. Then, one summer evening in 1881, Shottum’s Cabinet burned. It was such a fierce fire that they found only a few crumbling remains of Shottum’s bones. It was said the fire started on the first floor. A faulty gas lamp.” Another bitter noise.

“But you think otherwise?”

“My father became convinced that Leng started that fire.”

“Do you know why?”

The lady slowly shook her head. “He did not confide in me.”

After a moment, she continued. “It was around the time of the fire that Leng stopped attending the meetings at the Lyceum. He stopped coming to the New York Museum. My father lost touch with him. He seemed to disappear from scientific circles. Thirty years must have passed before he resurfaced.”

“When was this?”

“During the Great War. I was a little girl at the time. My father married late, you see. He received a letter from Leng. A very friendly letter, wishing to renew the acquaintance. My father refused. Leng persisted. He began coming to the Museum, attending my father’s lectures, spending time in the Museum’s archives. My father became disturbed, and after a while even frightened. He was so concerned I believe he even consulted certain fellow Lyceum members he was close to on the subject. James Henry Perceval and Dumont Burleigh are two names that come to mind. They came to the house more than once, shortly before the end.”

“I see.” Nora scribbled some more notes. “But you never met Leng?”

There was a pause. “I met him once. He came to our house late one night, with a specimen for my father, and was turned away at the door. He left the specimen behind. A graven artifact from the South Seas, of little value.”

“And?”

“My father disappeared the next day.”

“And you’re convinced it was Leng’s doing?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

The old lady patted her hair. Her sharp eyes fixed on hers. “My dear child, how could I possibly know that?”

“But why would Leng murder him?”

“I believe my father found out something about Leng.”

“Didn’t the Museum investigate?”

“No one had seen Leng in the Museum. No one had seen him visit my father. There was no proof of anything. Neither Perceval nor Burleigh spoke up. The Museum found it easier to smear my father’s name — to imply that he ran away for some unknown reason — than to investigate. I was just a girl at the time. When I grew older and demanded a reopening of the case, I had nothing to offer. I was rebuffed.”

“And your mother? Was she suspicious?”

“She was dead by that time.”

“What happened to Leng?”

“After his visit to my father, nobody ever saw or heard from him again.”

Nora took a breath. “What did Leng look like?”

Clara McFadden did not answer immediately. “I’ll never forget him,” she said at last. “Have you read Poe’s ‘Fall of the House of Usher’? There’s a description in the story that, when I came upon it, struck me terribly. It seemed to describe Leng precisely. It’s stayed with me to this day, I can still quote the odd line of it from memory: ‘a cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and very luminous… finely molded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy.’ Leng had blond hair, blue eyes, an aquiline nose. Old-fashioned black coat, formally dressed.”

“That’s a very vivid description.”

“Leng was the kind of person who stayed with you long after he was gone. And yet, you know, it was his voice I remember most. It was low, resonant, strongly accented, with the peculiar quality of sounding like two people speaking in unison.”

The gloom that filled the parlor seemed inexplicably to deepen. Nora swallowed. She had already asked all the questions she had planned to. “Thank you very much for your time, Ms. McFadden,” she said as she rose.

“Why do you bring all this up now?” the old lady asked abruptly.

Nora realized that she must not have seen the newspaper article or heard anything about the recent copycat killings of the Surgeon. She wondered just what she should say. She looked about the room, dark, frozen in shadowy Victorian clutter. She did not want to be the one to upset this woman’s world.

“I’m researching the early cabinets of curiosities.”

The old lady transfixed her with a glittering eye. “An interesting subject, child. And perhaps a dangerous one.”

ELEVEN

SPECIAL AGENT PENDERGAST lay in the hospital bed, motionless save for his pale eyes. He watched Nora Kelly leave the room and close the door. He glanced over at the wall clock: nine P.M. precisely. A good time to begin.

He thought back over each word Nora had uttered during her visit, looking for any trivial fact or passing reference that he might have overlooked on first hearing. But there was nothing more.

Her visit to Peekskill had confirmed his darkest suspicions: Pendergast had long believed Leng killed Shottum and burned the cabinet. And he felt sure that McFadden’s disappearance was also at the hands of Leng. No doubt Shottum had challenged Leng shortly after placing his letter in the elephant’s-foot box. Leng had murdered him, and covered it up with the fire.

Yet the most pressing questions remained. Why had Leng chosen the cabinet as his base of operations? Why did he begin volunteering his services at the houses of industry a year before killing Shottum? And where did he relocate his laboratory after the cabinet burned?

In Pendergast’s experience, serial killers were messy: they were incautious, they left clues. But Leng was, of course, very different. He was not, strictly speaking, a serial killer. He had been remarkably clever. Leng had left a kind of negative imprint wherever he went; the man seemed defined by how little was known about him. There was more to be learned, but it was deeply hidden in the masses of information strewn about his hospital room. There was only one way to coax this information out. Research alone would not suffice.

And then there was the growing problem of his increasing lack of objectivity regarding this case, his growing emotional involvement. If he did not bring himself sharply under control, if he did not reassert his habitual discipline, he would fail. And he could not fail.

It was time to make his journey.

Pendergast’s gaze shifted to the massings of books, maps, and old periodicals that filled half a dozen surgical carts in his room. His eyes moved from surface to tottering surface. The single most important piece of paper lay on his bedside table: the plans for Shottum’s Cabinet. One last time, he picked it up and gazed at it, memorizing every detail. The seconds ticked on. He laid down the yellowing plat.

It was time. But first, something had to be done about the intolerable landscape of noise that surrounded him.

After his condition was upgraded from serious to stable, Pendergast had himself transferred from St. Luke’s — Roosevelt to Lenox Hill Hospital. The old facility on Lexington Avenue had the thickest walls of any building in the city, save for his own Dakota. Even here, however, he was assaulted by sounds: the bleat of the blood-oxygen meter above his bed; the gossiping voices at the nurses’ station; the hissings and beepings of the telemetry machines and ventilators; the adenoidal patient snoring in the adjacent room; the rumble of the forced-air ducts deep in the walls and ceiling. There was nothing he could do that would physically stop these sounds; yet they could be made to disappear through other means. It was a powerful mind game he had developed, an adaptation of Chongg Ran, an ancient Bhutanese Buddhist meditative practice.

Pendergast closed his eyes. He imagined a chessboard inside his head, on a wooden table, standing in a pool of yellow light. Then he created two players. The first player made his opening move; the second followed. A game of speed chess ensued; and then another, and another. The two players changed strategies, forming adaptive counterattacks: Inverted Hanham, Two Knights Defense, Vienna Gambit.

One by one, the more distant noises dropped away.

When the final game ended in a draw, Pendergast dissolved the chess set. Then, in the darkness of his mind’s eye, he created four players, seated around a card table. Pendergast had always found bridge a nobler and subtler game than chess, but he rarely played it with others because, outside of his late family, he had found few worthy partners. Now the game began, each player ignorant of all but his own thirteen cards, each player with his own strategies and intellectual capabilities. The game began, with ruffs and slams and deep finesses. Pendergast toyed with the players, shifting Blackwood, Gerber, and Stayman conventions, positing a forgetful declarer, misunderstood signals between East and West.

By the time the first rubber was completed, all distractions were gone. The noises had ceased. In his mind, only a profound silence reigned. Pendergast turned further inward.

It was time for the memory crossing to begin.

Several minutes of intense mental concentration passed. Finally, he felt ready.

In his mind’s eye, he rose from his bed. He felt light, airy, like a ghost. He saw himself walk through the empty hospital corridors, down the stairwell, across the arched foyer, and out onto the wide front steps of the hospital.

Only the building was no longer a hospital. A hundred and twenty years before, it had been known as the New York Rest Home for Consumptives.

Pendergast stood on the steps for a moment, glancing around in the gathering dusk. To the west, toward Central Park, the Upper East Side had become a patchwork of hog farms, wild lands, and rocky eminences. Small groups of hovels sprouted up here and there, huddled together as if for protection against the elements. Gas lamps stood along the avenue, infrequent this far north of the populous downtown, throwing small circles of light down onto the dusky macadam.

The prospect was vague, indistinct: detail at this location was unimportant. Pendergast did, however, allow himself to sample the air. It smelled strongly of coal smoke, damp earth, and horse manure.

He descended the steps, turning onto Seventy-sixth Street and walking east toward the river. Here it was more thickly settled, newer brownstones abutting old wood-and-frame structures. Carriages swayed down the straw-strewn street. People passed him silently, the men dressed in long suits with thin lapels, women in bustles and veiled hats.

At the next intersection he boarded a streetcar, paying five cents for the ride down to Forty-second Street. There, he transferred to the Bowery & Third Avenue elevated railway, paying another twenty cents. This extravagant price ensured him a palace car, with curtained windows and plush seats. The steam locomotive heading the train was named the Chauncey M. Depew. As it hurtled southward, Pendergast sat without moving in his velveteen chair. Slowly, he allowed sound to intrude once more into his world: first the clatter of the wheels on the tracks, and then the chatter of his passengers. They were engrossed with the concerns of 1881: the president’s recovery and the imminent removal of the pistol ball; the Columbia Yacht Club sailing regatta on the Hudson earlier that afternoon; the miraculous curative properties of the Wilsonia Magnetic Garment.

There were still gaps, of course — hazy dark patches, like fog — about which Pendergast had little or no information. No memory crossing was ever complete. There were details of history that had been irrevocably lost.

When the train at last reached the lower stretches of the Bowery, Pendergast disembarked. He stood on the platform a moment, looking around a little more intently now. The elevated tracks were erected over the sidewalks, rather than along the middle of the street, and the awnings below were covered in a greasy film of oil drippings and ash. The Chauncey M. Depew gave a shriek, beginning its furious dash to the next stop. Smoke and hot cinders belched from its stack, scattering into the leaden air.

He descended skeletal wooden stairs to ground level, alighting outside a small shop. He glanced at its signboard: George Washington Abacus, Physiognomic Operator and Professor of the Tonsorial Art. The broad thoroughfare before him was a sea of bobbing plug hats. Trams and horsecars went careering down the center of the road. Peddlers of all kinds jostled the narrow sidewalk, crying out their trade to all who would listen. “Pots and pans!” called a tinker. “Mend your pots and pans!” A young woman trundling a steaming cauldron on wheels cried, “Oysters! Here’s your brave, good oysters!” At Pendergast’s left elbow, a man selling hot corn out of a baby’s perambulator fished out an ear, smeared it with a butter-soaked rag, and held it out invitingly. Pendergast shook his head and eased his way into the milling crowd. He was jostled; there was a momentary fog, a loss of concentration; and then Pendergast recovered. The scene returned.

He moved south, gradually bringing all five senses fully alive to the surroundings. The noise was almost overwhelming: clattering horseshoes, countless snatches of music and song, yelling, screaming, whinnying, cursing. The air was supercharged with the odors of sweat, dung, cheap perfume, and roasting meats.

Down the street, at 43 Bowery, Buffalo Bill was playing in the Scout of the Plains stage show at the Windsor. Several other theaters followed, huge signs advertising current performances: Fedora, Peck’s Bad Boy, The Darkness to the North, Kit, the Arkansas Traveler. A blind Civil War veteran lay between two entrances, cap held out imploringly.

Pendergast glided past with barely a glance.

At a corner, he paused to get his bearings, then turned onto East Broadway Street. After the frenzy of Bowery, he entered a more silent world. He moved past the myriad shops of the old city, shuttered and dark at this hour: saddleries, millinery shops, pawnbrokers, slaughterhouses. Some of these buildings were distinct. Others — places Pendergast had not succeeded in identifying — were vague and shadowy, shrouded in that same indistinct fog.

At Catherine Street he turned toward the river. Unlike on East Broadway, all the establishments here — grog shops, sailors’ lodging houses, oyster-cellars — were open. Lamps cast lurid red stripes out into the street. A brick building loomed at the corner, low and long, streaked with soot. Its granite cornices and arched lintels spoke of a building done in a poor imitation of the Neo-Gothic style. A wooden sign, gold letters edged in black, hung over the door:

J. C. SHOTTUM’S CABINET

OF

NATURAL PRODUCTIONS

&

CURIOSITIES

A trio of bare electric bulbs in metal cages illuminated the doorway, casting a harsh glare onto the street. Shottum’s was open for business. A hired hawker shouted at the door. Pendergast could not catch the words above the noise and bustle. A large signboard standing on the pavement in front advertised the featured attractions—See the Double-Brained Child & Visit Our New Annex Showing Bewitching Female Bathers in Real Water.

Pendergast stood on the corner, the rest of the city fading into fog as he focused his concentration on the building ahead, meticulously reconstructing every detail. Slowly, the walls came into sharper focus — the dingy windows, the interiors, the bizarre collections, the maze of exhibit halls — as his mind integrated and shaped the vast quantity of information he had amassed.

When he was ready, he stepped forward and queued up. He paid his two pennies to a man in a greasy stovepipe hat and stepped inside. A low foyer greeted his eye, dominated on the far side with a mammoth skull. Standing next to it was a moth-eaten Kodiak bear, an Indian birchbark canoe, a petrified log. His eyes traveled around the room. The large thighbone of an Antediluvian Monster stood against the far wall, and there were other eclectic specimens laid out, helter-skelter. The better exhibits, he knew, were deeper inside the cabinet.

Corridors ran off to the left and right, leading to halls packed with teeming humanity. In a world without movies, television, or radio — and where travel was an option only for the wealthiest — the popularity of this diversion was not surprising. Pendergast bore left.

The first part of the hall consisted of a systematic collection of stuffed birds, laid out on shelves. This exhibit, a feeble attempt to insinuate a little education, held no interest to the crowd, which streamed past on the way to less edifying exhibits ahead.

The corridor debouched into a large hall, the air hot and close. In the center stood what appeared to be a stuffed man, brown and wizened, with severely bowed legs, gripping a post. The label pinned below it read: Pygmy Man of Darkest Africa, Who Lived to Be Three Hundred Fifty-Five Years of Age Before Death by Snakebite. Closer inspection revealed it to be a shaved orangutan, doctored to look human, apparently preserved through smoking. It gave off a fearful smell. Nearby was an Egyptian mummy, standing against the wall in a wooden sarcophagus. There was a mounted skeleton missing its skull, labeled Remains of the Beautiful Countess Adele de Brissac, Executed by Guillotine, Paris, 1789. Next to it was a rusty piece of iron, dabbed with red paint, marked: The Blade That Cut Her.

Pendergast stood at the center of the hall and turned his attention to the noisy audience. He found himself mildly surprised. There were many more young people than he had assumed, as well as a greater cross section of humanity, from high to low. Young bloods and fancy men strolled by, puffing on cigars, laughing condescendingly at the exhibits. A group of tough-looking youths swaggered past, sporting the red flannel firemen’s shirts, broadcloth pantaloons, and greased “soap-lock” hair that identified them as Bowery Boys. There were workhouse girls, whores, urchins, street peddlers, and barmen. It was, in short, the same kind of crowd that thronged the streets outside. Now that the workday was done for many, they came to Shottum’s for an evening’s entertainment. The two-penny admission was within reach of all.

Two doors at the far end of the hall led to more exhibits, one to the bewitching ladies, the other marked Gallery of Unnatural Monstrosities. This latter was narrow and dark, and it was the exhibit that Pendergast had come to see.

The sounds of the crowds were muffled here, and there were fewer visitors, mostly nervous, gaping youngsters. The carnival atmosphere had changed into something quieter, more eerie. The darkness, the closeness, the stillness, all conspired to create the effect of fear.

At the first turn of the gallery stood a table, on which was a large jar of thick glass, stoppered and sealed, containing a floating human baby. Two miniature, perfectly formed arms stuck out from its forehead. Pendergast peered closer and saw that, unlike many of the other exhibits, this one had not been doctored. He passed on. There was a small alcove containing a dog with a cat’s head, this one clearly fake, the sewing marks visible through the thinning hair. It stood next to a giant clam, propped open, showing a skeletonized foot inside. The label copy told the gruesome story of the hapless pearl diver. Around another corner, there was a great miscellany of objects in jars of formaldehyde: a Portuguese man-of-war, a giant rat from Sumatra, a hideous brown thing the size of a flattened watermelon, marked Liver, from a Woolly Mammoth Frozen in Siberian Ice. Next to it was a Siamese-twinned giraffe fetus. The next turn revealed a shelf with a human skull with a hideous bony growth on the forehead, labeled The Rhinoceros Man of Cincinnati.

Pendergast paused, listening. Now the sounds of the crowd were very faint, and he was alone. Beyond, the darkened hall made one last sharp turn. An elaborately stylized arrow pointed toward an unseen exhibit around the corner. A sign read: Visit Wilson One-Handed: For Those Who Dare.

Pendergast glided around the corner. Here, it was almost silent. At the moment, there were no other visitors. The hall terminated in a small alcove. In the alcove was a single exhibit: a glass case containing a desiccated head. The shriveled tongue still protruded from the mouth, looking like a cheroot clamped between the twisted lips. Next to it lay what appeared to be a dried sausage, about a foot long, with a rusty hook attached to one end by leather straps. Next to that, the frayed end of a hangman’s noose.

A label identified them:

THE HEAD

OF THE NOTORIOUS MURDERER

AND ROBBER

WILSON ONE-HANDED

HUNG BY THE NECK UNTIL DEAD

DAKOTA TERRITORY

JULY 4, 1868

THE NOOSE

FROM WHICH HE SWUNG

THE FOREARM STUMP AND HOOK OF WILSON ONE-HANDED

WHICH BROUGHT IN A BOUNTY

OF ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS

Pendergast examined the cramped room. It was isolated and very dark. It was cut off from view of the other exhibits by a sharp turn of the corridor. It would comfortably admit only one person at a time.

A cry for help here would be unheard, out in the main galleries.

The little alcove ended in a cul-de-sac. As Pendergast stared at it, pondering, the wall wavered, then disappeared, as fog once again enshrouded his memory construct and the mental image fell away. But it did not matter: he had seen enough, threaded his way through sufficient passages, to understand.

And now — at last — he knew how Leng had procured his victims.

TWELVE

PATRICK O’SHAUGHNESSY STOOD on the corner of Seventy-second and Central Park West, staring at the facade of the Dakota apartment building. There was a vast arched entrance to an inner courtyard, and beyond the entrance the building ran at least a third of the way down the block. It was there, in the darkness, that Pendergast had been attacked.

In fact, it probably looked just about like this when Pendergast was stabbed — except for the old man, of course; the one Pendergast had seen wearing a derby hat. Astonishing that the guy had almost managed to overpower the FBI agent, even factoring in the element of surprise.

O’Shaughnessy wondered again just what the hell he was doing here. He was off duty. He should be in J. W.’s hoisting a few with friends, or messing about his apartment, listening to that new recording of The Bartered Bride. They weren’t paying him: so why should he care?

But he found, strangely enough, that he did care.

Custer, naturally, had dismissed it as a simple mugging: “Friggin’ rube out-of-towner, no surprise he got his ass mugged.” Well, O’Shaughnessy knew Pendergast was no rube. The man probably played up his New Orleans roots just to keep people like Custer off guard. And he didn’t think Pendergast had gotten mugged, either. But now it was time to decide: just what was he going to do about it?

Slowly, he began to walk toward the site of the attack.

Earlier in the day, he’d visited Pendergast in the hospital. Pendergast had hinted to him that it would be useful — more than useful — to have the coroner’s report on the bones found at the construction site. To get it, O’Shaughnessy realized, he would have to go around Custer. Pendergast also wanted more information on the developer, Fairhaven — who Custer had made it clear was off-limits. It was then O’Shaughnessy realized he had crossed some invisible line, from working for Custer to working for Pendergast. It was a new, almost heady feeling: for the first time in his life, he was working with someone he respected. Someone who wasn’t going to prejudge him on old history, or treat him as a disposable, fifth-generation Irish cop. That was the reason he was here, at the Dakota, on his night off. That’s what a partner did when the other one got into trouble.

Pendergast, as usual, was silent on the attack. But to O’Shaughnessy, it had none of the earmarks of a mugging. He remembered, dimly, his days at the academy, all the statistics on various types of crimes and how they were committed. Back then, he had big ideas about where he was going in the force. That was before he took two hundred bucks from a prostitute because he felt sorry for her.

And — he had to admit to himself — because he needed the money.

O’Shaughnessy stopped, coughed, spat on the sidewalk.

Back at the academy, it had been Motive, Means, Opportunity. Take motive, for starters. Why kill Pendergast?

Put the facts in order. One: the guy is investigating a 130-year-old serial killer. No motive there: killer’s dead.

Two: a copycat killer springs up. Pendergast is at the autopsy before there’s even an autopsy. Christ, thought O’Shaughnessy, he must have known what was going on even before the doctor did. Pendergast had already made the connection between the murder of the tourist and the nineteenth-century killings.

How?

Three: Pendergast gets attacked.

Those were the facts, as O’Shaughnessy saw them. So what could he conclude?

That Pendergast already knew something important. And the copycat serial killer knew it, too. Whatever it was, it was important enough that this killer took a big risk in targeting him, on Seventy-second Street — not exactly deserted, even at nine o’clock in the evening — and had almost succeeded in killing him, which was the most astonishing thing of all.

O’Shaughnessy swore. The big mystery here was Pendergast himself. He wished Pendergast would level with him, share more information. The man was keeping him in the dark. Why? Now that was a question worth asking.

He swore again. Pendergast was asking a hell of a lot, but he wasn’t giving anything in return. Why was he wasting a fine fall evening tramping around the Dakota, looking for clues that weren’t there, for a guy who didn’t want help?

Cool it, O’Shaughnessy told himself. Pendergast was the most logical, methodical guy he’d ever met. He’d have his reasons. All in good time. Meanwhile, this was a waste. Time for dinner and the latest issue of Opera News.

O’Shaughnessy turned to head home. And that’s when he saw the tall, shadowy figure come into view at the corner.

Instinctively, O’Shaughnessy shrank into the nearest doorway. He waited. The figure stood on the corner, precisely where he himself had stood only a few minutes before, glancing around. Then it started down the street toward him, slowly and furtively.

O’Shaughnessy stiffened, receding deeper into the shadows. The figure crept down to the angle of the building, pausing right at the spot where Pendergast had been assaulted. The beam of a flashlight went on. He seemed to be inspecting the pavement, looking around. He was dressed in a long dark coat, which could easily be concealing a weapon. He was certainly no cop. And the attack had not been in the papers.

O’Shaughnessy made a quick decision. He grasped his service revolver in his right hand and pulled out his shield with his left. Then he stepped out of the shadows.

“Police officer,” he said quietly but firmly. “Don’t move. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

The figure jumped sideways with a yelp, holding up a pair of gangly arms. “Wait! Don’t shoot! I’m a reporter!”

O’Shaughnessy relaxed as he recognized the man. “So it’s you,” he said, holstering his gun, feeling disappointed.

“Yeah, and it’s you,” Smithback lowered his trembling arms. “The cop from the opening.”

“Sergeant O’Shaughnessy.”

“Right. What are you doing here?”

“Same as you, probably,” said O’Shaughnessy. Then he stopped abruptly, remembering he was speaking to a reporter. It wouldn’t be good for this to get back to Custer.

Smithback mopped his brow with a soiled handkerchief. “You scared the piss out of me.”

“Sorry. You looked suspicious.”

Smithback shook his head. “I imagine I did.” He glanced around. “Find anything?”

“No.”

There was a brief silence.

“Who do you think did it? Think it was just some mugger?”

Although Smithback was echoing the same question he’d asked himself moments before, O’Shaughnessy merely shrugged. The best thing to do was to keep his mouth shut.

“Surely the police have some kind of theory.”

O’Shaughnessy shrugged again.

Smithback stepped closer, lowering his voice. “Look, I understand if it’s confidential. I can quote you ‘not for attribution.’ ”

O’Shaughnessy wasn’t going to fall into that trap.

Smithback sighed, looking up at the buildings with an air of finality. “Well, there’s nothing much else to be seen around here. And if you’re going to clam up, I might as well go get a drink. Try to recover from that fright you gave me.” He snugged the handkerchief back into his pocket. “Night, Officer.”

He began to walk away. Then he stopped, as if struck by an idea.

“Want to come along?”

“No, thanks.”

“Come on,” the reporter said. “You don’t look like you’re on duty.”

“I said no.”

Smithback took a step closer. “You know, now that I think about it, maybe we could help each other out here. Know what I mean? I need to keep in touch with this investigation into the Surgeon.”

“The Surgeon?”

“Haven’t you heard? That’s what the Post is calling this serial killer. Cheesy, huh? Anyway, I need information, and I’ll bet you need information. Am I right?”

O’Shaughnessy said nothing. He did need information. But he wondered if Smithback really had something, or was just bullshitting.

“I’ll level with you, Sergeant. I got scooped on that tourist killing in Central Park. And now, I have to scramble to get new developments, or my editor will have my ass for brunch. A little advance notice here and there, nothing too specific, just a nod from a friend — you, for instance. That’s all.”

“What kind of information do you have?” O’Shaughnessy asked guardedly. He thought back a minute to what Pendergast had said. “Do you have anything on, say, Fairhaven?”

Smithback rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding? I’ve got a sackful on him. Not that it’ll do you much good, but I’m willing to share. Let’s talk about it over a drink.”

O’Shaughnessy glanced up and down the street. Despite his better judgment, he found himself tempted. Smithback might be a hustler, but he seemed a decent sort of hustler. And he’d even worked with Pendergast in the past, though the reporter didn’t seem too eager to reminisce about it. And finally, Pendergast had asked him to put together a file on Fairhaven.

“Where?”

Smithback smiled. “Are you kidding? The best bars in New York City are just one block west, on Columbus. I know a great place, where all the Museum types go. It’s called the Bones. Come on, the first round’s on me.”

THIRTEEN

THE FOG GREW thicker for a moment. Pendergast waited, maintaining his concentration. Then through the fog came flickerings of orange and yellow. Pendergast felt heat upon his face. The fog began to clear.

He was standing outside J. C. Shottum’s Cabinet of Natural Productions and Curiosities. It was night. The cabinet was burning. Angry flames leapt from the first- and second-story windows, punching through billowing clouds of black, acrid smoke. Several firemen and a bevy of police were frantically roping off the street around the building and pushing curious onlookers back from the conflagration. Inside the rope, several knots of firefighters arced hopeless streams of water into the blaze, while others scurried to douse the gaslights along the sidewalk.

The heat was a physical force, a wall. Standing on the street corner, Pendergast’s gaze lingered appreciatively on the fire engine: a big black boiler on carriage wheels, belching steam, Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in gold letters on its sweating sides. Then he turned toward the onlookers. Would Leng be among them, admiring his handiwork? No, he would have been long gone. Leng was no pyromaniac. He would be safely ensconced in his uptown house, location unknown.

The location of the house was a great question. But another, perhaps more pressing, question remained: where had Leng moved his laboratory?

There was a tremendous, searing crack; roof timbers collapsed inward with a roiling shower of sparks; an appreciative murmur rose from the crowd. With a final look at the doomed structure, Pendergast began threading his way through the crowd.

A little girl rushed up, no older than six, threadbare and frighteningly gaunt. She had a battered straw broom in her hand, and she swept the street corner ahead of him industriously, clearing away the dung and pestilential garbage, hoping pathetically for a coin. “Thank you,” Pendergast said, tossing her several broad copper pennies. She looked at the coins, eyes wide at her good fortune, then curtsied awkwardly.

“What’s your name, child?” Pendergast asked gently.

The girl looked up at him, as if surprised to hear an adult speak to her in a solicitous tone. “Constance Greene, sir,” she said.

“Greene?” Pendergast frowned. “Of Water Street?”

“No, sir. Not — not anymore.” Something seemed to have frightened the girl, and, with another curtsy, she turned and melted away down a crowded side street.

Pendergast stared down the foul street and its seething crowds for some time. Then, with a troubled expression on his face, he turned and slowly retraced his steps. A barker stood in the doorway of Brown’s Restaurant, delivering the bill of fare in a loud, breathless, ceaseless litany:

Biledlamancapersors.

Rosebeefrosegoorosemuttonan‌taters—

Biledamancabbage, vegetaybles—

Walkinsirtakaseatsir.

Pendergast moved on thoughtfully, listening to the City Hall bell toll the urgent fire alarm. Making his way to Park Street, he passed a chemist’s shop, closed and shuttered, an array of bottles in diverse sizes and colors decorating the window: Paine’s Celery Compound; Swamp Root; D. & A. Younce’s Indian Cure Oil (Good for Man and Beast).

Two blocks down Park, he stopped abruptly. He was fully attentive now, eyes open to every detail. He had painstakingly researched this region of old New York, and the fog of his memory construct retreated well into the distance. Here, Baxter and Worth Streets angled in sharply, creating a crazy-quilt of intersections known as the Five Points. In the bleak landscape of urban decay that stretched before him, there was none of the carefree revelry Pendergast had found earlier, along Bowery.

Thirty years before, in the 1850s, the “Points” had been the worst slum in all New York, in all America, worse even than London’s Seven Dials. It remained a miserable, squalid, dangerous place: home to fifty thousand criminals, drug addicts, prostitutes, orphans, confidence men, villains of all shape and description. The uneven streets were broken and scored into dangerous ruts, brimming with garbage and offal. Hogs wandered about, rooting and wallowing in the fouled gutters. The houses seemed prematurely aged, their windows broken, tarpaper roofs hanging free, timbers sagging. A single gas lamp threw light into the intersection. On all sides, narrow streets marched off into endless darkness. The doors of the first-floor taverns were flung wide against the summer heat. The smells of liquor and cigar smoke issued forth. Women, bare-breasted, lolled in the doorways, exchanging obscene jeers with whores in the neighboring saloons or soliciting passersby in lurid tones. Across the way, nickel-a-night flophouses, riddled with vermin and pestilence, sat between the shabby cow-sheds of fencers of stolen goods.

Pendergast gazed carefully around at the scene, scrutinizing the topography, the architecture, for any clue, any hidden link that a mere study of historical records could not provide. At last he turned eastward, where a vast, five-story structure sat, decayed and listing, dark even in the light of the gas lamp. This was the former Old Brewery, at one time the worst of all the Five Points tenements. Children who had the misfortune to be born within were known to pass months or even years without tasting the outside air. Now, thanks to the efforts of a charitable group, it had been rebuilt as the Five Points Mission. An early urban renewal project for which, in 1880, the good Dr. Enoch Leng had volunteered his medical services, pro bono. He had continued to work there into the early ’90s, when the historical record on Leng vanished abruptly.

Pendergast walked slowly toward the building. An ancient sign for the Old Brewery remained painted along its upper story, dominating the far newer and cleaner Five Points Mission sign beneath. He considered entering the building, then decided against it. There was another visit he had to make first.

Behind the Five Points Mission, a tiny alley ran north into a dark cul-de-sac. Moist, fetid air seeped out from the darkness. Many years before, when the Points region had been a marshy pond known as the Collect, Aaron Burr had installed a large subterranean pump for the natural springs at this spot, founding the New Amsterdam Water Company. The pond grew increasingly foul, however, and eventually had been filled in to make way for tenements.

Pendergast paused thoughtfully. Later, this alleyway had been known as Cow Bay, the most dangerous street in the Five Points. It had been crowded with tall wooden tenements with names like “Brickbat Mansion” and “The Gates of Hell,” tenanted by violent alcoholics who would stab a man for the clothes on his back. Like many structures in the Five Points, these were warrens of vile-smelling chambers, honeycombed with secret panels and doors that connected to other houses on adjoining streets by networks of underground passageways, allowing criminals easy escape from pursuing law enforcement. In the mid-nineteenth century, the street had averaged a murder a night. Now it was home to an ice delivery company, a slaughterhouse, and an abandoned substation of the city’s waterworks, shut down in 1879 when the uptown reservoir rendered it obsolete.

Pendergast moved on another block, then turned left onto Little Water Street. At the far corner was the Five Points House of Industry, the other orphanage graced with the medical attention of Enoch Leng. It was a tall Beaux Arts building, punctuated along its north end by a tower. A small rectangular widow’s walk, buttressed by iron fencing, sat atop its mansard roof. The building looked woefully out of place among the shabby wooden houses and ramshackle squatteries.

He stared up at the heavy-browed windows. Why had Leng chosen to lend his services to these two missions, one after the other, in 1880—the year before Shottum’s Cabinet burned? If he was looking for an endless source of impoverished victims whose absence would cause no alarm, the cabinet was a better choice than a workhouse. After all, one could have only so many mysterious disappearances before someone grew suspicious. And why had Leng chosen these missions in particular? There were countless others in lower Manhattan. Why had Leng decided to work — and, presumably, draw his pool of victims — from this spot?

Pendergast stepped back onto the cobbles, glancing up and down the lane, thinking. Of all the streets he had traveled, Little Water Street was the only one no longer extant in the twentieth century. It had been paved over, built upon, forgotten. He had seen old maps that showed it, naturally; but no map ever drawn had superimposed its course onto present-day Manhattan…

An incredibly shabby man with a horse and cart came down the street, ringing a bell, collecting garbage for tips, a brace of tame hogs following behind. Pendergast did not heed him. Instead, he glided back down the narrow road, pausing at the entrance to Cow Bay. Although with the disappearance of Little Water Street it was difficult to tell on modern maps, Pendergast now saw that the two missions would both have backed onto these terrible old tenements. Those dwellings were gone, but the warren of tunnels that once served their criminal residents would have remained.

He glanced down both sides of the alley. Slaughterhouse, ice factory, abandoned waterworks… It suddenly made perfect sense.

More slowly now, Pendergast walked away, headed for Baxter Street and points north. He could, of course, have ended his journey at this point — have opened his eyes to the present-day books and tubes and monitor screens — but he preferred to continue the discipline of this mental exercise, to take the long way back to Lenox Hill Hospital. He was curious to see if the fire at Shottum’s Cabinet had been brought under control. Perhaps he would hire a carriage uptown. Or better yet, walk up past the Madison Square Garden circus, past Delmonico’s, past the palaces of Fifth Avenue. There was much to think about, much more than he had previously imagined — and 1881 was as good a place as any to do it in.

FOURTEEN

NORA STOPPED AT the nurses’ station to ask directions to Pendergast’s new room. A sea of hostile faces greeted the question. Clearly, Nora thought, Pendergast was as popular at Lenox as he had been at St. Luke’s — Roosevelt.

She found him lying up in bed, the blinds shut tight against the sun. He looked very tired, his face gray. His blond-white hair hung limply over his high forehead, and his eyes were closed. As she entered, they slowly opened.

“I’m sorry,” Nora said. “This is a bad time.”

“Not at all. I did ask you to see me. Please clear off that chair and sit down.”

Nora moved the stack of books and papers from the chair to the floor, wondering again what this was about. She’d already given him her report about her visit with the old lady and told him it would be her last assignment for him. He had to understand that it was time for her to get back to her own career. As intriguing as it was, she was not about to commit professional hara kiri over this business.

Pendergast’s eyes had drooped until they were almost closed, but she could still see the pale irises behind the slitted lids.

“How are you?” Courtesy required she ask that question, but there wouldn’t be any others. She’d listen to what he had to say, then leave.

“Leng acquired his victims from the cabinet itself,” Pendergast said.

“How do you know?”

“He captured them at the back of one of the halls, most likely a small cul-de-sac housing a particularly gruesome exhibit. He would lie in wait until a visitor was alone, then he’d snatch his victim, take the unfortunate through a door at the rear of the exhibit, which led down the back stairs to the coal cellar. It was a perfect setup. Street people vanished all the time in that neighborhood. Undoubtably, Leng selected victims that would not be missed: street urchins, workhouse boys and girls.”

He spoke in a monotone, as if reviewing his findings within his own mind instead of explaining them to her.

“From 1872 to 1881 he used the cabinet for this purpose. Nine years. Thirty-six victims that we know of, perhaps many more Leng disposed of in some other way. As you know, there had in fact been rumors of people vanishing in the cabinet. These no doubt served to increase its popularity.”

Nora shuddered.

“Then in 1881 he killed Shottum and burned the cabinet. We of course know why: Shottum found out what he was up to. He said as much in his letter to McFadden. But that letter has, in its own way, been misleading me all this time. Leng would have killed Shottum anyway.” Pendergast paused to take a few breaths. “The confrontation with Shottum merely gave him the excuse he needed to burn the cabinet. You see, phase one of his work was complete.”

“Phase one?”

“He had achieved what he set out to do. He perfected his formula.”

“You don’t seriously mean Leng was able to prolong his own life?”

“He clearly believed he could. In his mind, the experimentation phase could cease. Production could begin. Victims would still be required, but many fewer than before. The cabinet, with its high volume of foot traffic, was no longer necessary. In fact, it had become a liability. It was imperative for Leng to cover his tracks and start afresh.”

There was a silence. Then Pendergast resumed.

“A year before the cabinet burned, Leng offered his services to two workhouses in the vicinity — the Five Points House of Industry and the Five Points Mission. The two were connected by the warren of old underground tunnels that riddled the entire Five Points area in the nineteenth century. In Leng’s day, a foul alley known as Cow Bay lay between the workhouses. Along with the sordid tenements you’d expect, Cow Bay was home to an ancient subterranean pumping station dating back to the days of the Collect Pond. The waterworks were shut down and sealed for good about a month before Leng allied himself with the workhouses. That is no mere coincidence of dates.”

“What are you saying?”

“The abandoned waterworks was the site of Leng’s production laboratory. The place he went after burning Shottum’s Cabinet. It was secure, and better still it provided easy underground access to both workhouses. An ideal place to begin production of the substance he believed would prolong his life. I have the old plans for the waterworks, here.” Pendergast waved his hand, weakly.

Nora glanced over at the complex set of diagrams. She wondered what had so exhausted the agent. He had seemed much better the day before. She hoped he hadn’t taken a turn for the worse.

“Today, of course, the workhouses, the tenements, even many of the streets are gone. A three-story brownstone was built directly above the site of Leng’s production laboratory. Number 99 Doyers Street, erected in the 1920s off Chatham Square. Broken into one-bedroom flats, with a separate two-bedroom apartment in the basement. Any traces of Leng’s laboratory would lie under that building.”

Nora thought for a moment. Excavating Leng’s production laboratory would no doubt be a fascinating archaeological project. There would be evidence there, and as an archaeologist she could find it. She wondered, once again, why Pendergast was so interested in these nineteenth-century murders. It would be of some historical solace to know that Mary Greene’s killer had been brought to light — She abruptly terminated the line of thought. She had her own work to do, her own career to salvage. She had to remind herself once again that this was history.

Pendergast sighed, turned slightly in the bed. “Thank you, Dr. Kelly. Now, you’d better go. I’m badly in need of sleep.”

Nora glanced at him in surprise. She had been expecting another plea for her help. “Why did you ask to see me, exactly?”

“You’ve been a great help to me in this investigation. More than once, you’ve asked for more information than I could give you. I assumed you wished to know what I’ve discovered. You’ve earned that, at the very least. There’s a detestable term one hears bandied about these days: ‘closure.’ Detestable, but in this case appropriate. I hope this knowledge will bring you some degree of closure, and allow you to continue your work at the Museum without a sense of unfinished business. I offer my sincerest thanks for your help. It has been invaluable.”

Nora felt a twinge of offense at this abrupt dismissal. She reminded herself that this was what she had wanted… Wasn’t it? After a moment she spoke. “Thanks for saying so. But if you ask me, this business sounds totally unfinished. If you’re right about this, 99 Doyers Street seems like the next logical stop.”

“That is correct. The basement apartment is currently unoccupied, and an excavation below the living room floor would be most instructive. I plan to rent the apartment myself and undertake that excavation. And that is why I must recover as quickly as possible. Take care, Dr. Kelly.” He shifted with an air of finality.

“Who’s going to do the excavation?” she asked.

“I will find another archaeologist.”

Nora looked at him sharply. “Where?”

“Through the New Orleans field office. They are most flexible when it comes to my, ah, projects.”

“Right,” said Nora briskly. “But this isn’t a job for just any archaeologist. This requires someone with special skills in—”

“Are you offering?”

Nora was silent.

“Of course you’re not. That’s why I didn’t ask. You’ve more than once expressed your desire to return to a more normal course of work. I’ve imposed upon you too much as it is. Besides, this investigation has taken a dangerous turn, far more so than I initially assumed. An assumption I have paid for, as you can see. I would not wish you exposed to any more danger than you have been already.”

Nora stood up.

“Well,” she said, “I guess that’s settled. I’ve enjoyed working with you, Mr. Pendergast — if ‘enjoy’ is the right word. It’s certainly been interesting.” She felt vaguely dissatisfied with this outcome, even though it was what she had come down here to achieve.

“Indeed,” said Pendergast. “Most interesting.”

She began to walk toward the door, then stopped, remembering something. “But I may be in touch with you again. I got a note from Reinhart Puck in the Archives. Says he’s found some new information, asked me to stop by later this afternoon. If it seems useful, I’ll pass it on.”

Pendergast’s pale eyes were still regarding her attentively. “Do that. And again, Dr. Kelly, you have my thanks. Be very careful.”

She nodded, then turned to leave, smiling at the baleful stares that greeted her as she passed the nurses’ station.

FIFTEEN

THE DOOR TO the Archives gave out a sharp creak as Nora eased it open. There had been no response to her knocking, and the door was unlocked, in clear violation of regulations. Very strange.

The smell of old books, papers, and the odor of corruption that seemed to suffuse the entire Museum hung in her nostrils. Puck’s desk lay in the center of a pool of light, a wall of darkness beyond. Puck himself was nowhere to be seen.

Nora checked her watch. Four P.M. She was right on time.

She released the door and it sighed back into place. She turned the lock, then approached the desk, heels clicking on the marble floor. She signed in automatically, scrawling her name at the top of a fresh page in the logbook. Puck’s desk was neater than usual, and a single typewritten note sat in the middle of the green felt pad. She glanced at it. I’m on the triceratops in the back.

The triceratops, Nora thought, looking into the gloom. Leave it to Puck to be off dusting old relics. But where the hell was the triceratops? She didn’t recall having seen one. And there were no lights on in the back that she could see. The damn triceratops could be anywhere. She looked around: no diagram of the Archives, either. Typical.

Feeling an undercurrent of irritation, she moved to the banks of ivory light switches. She snapped a few on at random. Lights sprang up here and there, deep within the Archives, casting long shadows down the rows of metal shelving. Might as well turn them all on, she thought, flipping whole rows of switches with the edge of her hand. But even with all the lights, the Archives remained curiously shadowy and dim, large pools of darkness and long dim aisles predominating.

She waited, half expecting Puck to call out to her. There was no sound except the distant ticking of steam pipes and the hiss of the forced-air ducts.

“Mr. Puck?” she called tentatively.

Her voice reverberated and died. No answer.

She called again, louder this time. The Archives were so vast she wondered if her voice could penetrate to the rear.

For a minute, she considered coming back another time. But Puck’s message had been most insistent.

Vaguely, she recalled seeing some mounted fossil skeletons on her last visit. Maybe she would find the triceratops among them.

With a sigh, she began walking down one of the aisles, listening to the clatter of her shoes against the marble. Although the entrance to the aisle had been brightly lit, it soon grew shadowy and dim. It was amazing how poorly illuminated the place was; in the middle sections of the aisles, far from the lights, one almost needed a flashlight to make out the objects stacked on the shelves.

At the next pool of light, Nora found herself at a junction from which several aisles wandered away at a variety of angles. She paused, considering which to take. It’s like Hansel and Gretel in here, she thought. And I’m fresh out of bread crumbs.

The aisle closest to her left went in a direction that, she remembered, led to a grouping of stuffed animals. But its few lights were burned out and it vanished into darkness. Nora shrugged and took the next aisle over.

It felt so different, walking these passages alone. The last time, she’d been with Pendergast and Puck. She had been thinking about Shottum and hadn’t paid much attention to her surroundings. With Puck guiding their steps, she hadn’t even bothered to notice the strange jogs these aisles took, the odd angles at which they met. It was the most eccentric layout imaginable, made even more eccentric by its vast size.

Her thoughts were interrupted as the aisle took a sharp turn to the left. Around the corner, she unexpectedly came upon a number of freestanding African mammals — giraffes, a hippo, a pair of lions, wildebeests, kudu, water buffalo. Each was wrapped in plastic, bestowing a muffled, ghostly appearance.

Nora stopped. No sign of a triceratops. And once again, the aisles led away in half a dozen directions. She chose one at random, followed it through one jog, then another, coming abruptly to another intersection.

This was getting ridiculous. “Mr. Puck!” she called out loudly.

The echoes of her voice gradually faded away. The hiss of forced air filled the ensuing silence.

She didn’t have time for this. She would come back later, and she’d call first to make sure Puck was waiting at his desk. Better still, she’d just tell him to take whatever it was he wanted to show her directly to Pendergast. She was off the case, anyway.

She turned to walk out of the Archives, taking what she thought would be the shortest path. After a few minutes, she came to a stop beside a rhino and several zebras. They looked like lumpy sentinels beneath the omnipresent plastic, giving off a strong smell of paradichlorobenzene.

These aisles didn’t look familiar. And she didn’t seem to be any closer to the exit.

For a moment, she felt a small current of anxiety. Then she shook it away with a forced laugh. She’d just make her way back to the giraffes, then retrace her steps from there.

As she turned, her foot landed in a small puddle of water. She looked up just as a drop of water splattered on her forehead. Condensation from the pipes far overhead. She shook it away and moved on.

But she couldn’t seem to find her way back to the giraffes.

This was crazy. She’d navigated through trackless deserts and dense rainforests. How could she be lost in a museum in the middle of New York City?

She looked around, realizing it was her sense of direction she had lost. With all these angled aisles, these dimly lit intersections, it had become impossible to tell where the front desk was. She’d have to—

She abruptly froze, listening intently. A soft pattering sound. It was hard to tell where it had come from, but it was close.

“Mr. Puck? Is that you?”

Nothing.

She listened, and the pattering sound came again. Just more water dripping somewhere, she thought. Even so, she was more eager than ever to find the door.

She chose an aisle at random and moved down it at a brisk walk, heels clicking rapidly against the marble. On both sides of the aisle, the shelves were covered with bones stacked like cordwood, each with a yellowing tag tied to its end. The tags flapped and fluttered in the dead air stirred by her passage. The place was like a crypt. Amid the silence, the darkness, and the ghoulish specimens, it was hard not to think about the set of grisly murders that had occurred just a few years before, within this very subbasement. It was still the subject of rumor and speculation in the staff lounge.

The aisle ended in another jog.

Damn it, thought Nora, looking up and down the long rows of shelving that vanished into the gloom. Another welling of anxiety, harder to fight down this time. And then, once again, she heard — or thought she heard — a noise from behind. This time it wasn’t a pattering, so much as the scrape of a foot on stone.

“Who’s there?” she demanded, spinning around. “Mr. Puck?”

Nothing save the hiss of steam and the drip of water.

She began walking again, a little faster now, telling herself not to be afraid; that the noises were merely the incessant shiftings and settlings of an old, decrepit building. The very corridors seemed watchful. The click of her heels was unbearably loud.

She turned a corner and stepped in another puddle of water. She pulled back in disgust. Why didn’t they do something about these old pipes?

She looked at the puddle again. The water was black, greasy — not, in fact, water at all. Oil had leaked on the floor, or maybe some chemical preservative. It had a strange, sour smell. But it didn’t look like it had leaked from anywhere: she was surrounded by shelves covered with mounted birds, beaks open, eyes wide, wings upraised.

What a mess, she thought, turning her expensive Bally shoe sideways to find that the oily liquid had soiled the sole and part of the stitching. This place was a disgrace. She pulled an oversized handkerchief from her pocket — a necessary accoutrement to working in a dusty museum — and wiped it along the edge of the shoe. And then, abruptly, she froze. Against the white background of the handkerchief, the liquid was not black. It was a deep, glistening red.

She dropped the handkerchief and took an involuntary step back, heart hammering. She looked at the pool, stared at it with sudden horror. It was blood — a whole lot of blood. She looked around wildly: where had it come from? Had it leaked out of a specimen? But it seemed to be just sitting there, all alone — a large pool of blood in the middle of the aisle. She glanced up, but there was nothing: just the dim ceiling thirty feet above, crisscrossed with pipes.

Then she heard what sounded like another footfall, and, through a shelf of specimens, she glimpsed movement. Then, silence returned.

But she had definitely heard something. Move, move, all her instincts cried out.

Nora turned and walked quickly down the long aisle. Another sound came — fast footsteps? The rustle of fabric? — and she paused again to listen. Nothing but the faint drips from the pipes. She tried to stare through the isolated gaps in the shelves. There was a wall of specimen jars, snakes coiled in formaldehyde, and she strained to see through. There seemed to be a shape on the other side, large and black, rippled and distorted by the stacks of glass jars. She moved… and it moved in turn. She was sure of it.

She backtracked quickly, breath coming faster, and the dark shape moved as well. It seemed to be pacing her in the next aisle — perhaps waiting for her to reach either one end or the other.

She slowed and, struggling to master her fear, tried walking as calmly as she could toward the end of the aisle. She could see, hear, the shape — so near now — moving as well, keeping pace.

“Mr. Puck?” she ventured, voice quavering.

There was no answer.

Suddenly, Nora found herself running. She arrowed down the aisle, sprinting as fast as she could. Swift footfalls sounded in the adjoining aisle.

Ahead was a gap, where her aisle joined the next. She had to get past, outrun the person in the adjoining aisle.

She dashed through the gap, glimpsing for a split second a huge black figure, metal flashing in its gloved hand. She sprinted down the next aisle, through another gap, and on down the aisle again. At the next gap, she veered sharply right, heading down a new corridor. Selecting another aisle at random, she turned into it and ran on through the dimness ahead.

Halfway to the next intersection, she stopped again, heart pounding. There was silence, and for a moment relief surged through her: she had managed to lose her pursuer.

And then she caught the sound of faint breathing from the adjoining aisle.

Relief disappeared as quickly as it had come. She had not outrun him. No matter what she did, no matter where she ran, he had continued to pace her, one aisle over.

“Who are you?” she asked.

There was a faint rustle, then an almost silent laugh.

Nora looked to the left and right, fighting back panic, desperately trying to determine the best way out. These shelves were covered with stacks of folded skins, parchment-dry, smelling fearfully of decay. Nothing looked familiar.

Twenty feet farther down the aisle, she spied a gap in the shelving, on the side away from the unknown presence. She sprinted ahead and turned into the gap, then doubled back into yet another adjoining aisle. She stopped, crouched, waited.

Footfalls sounded several aisles over, coming closer, then receding again. He had lost her.

Nora turned and began moving, as stealthily as possible, through the aisles, trying to put as much distance as possible between herself and the pursuer. But no matter which way she turned, or how fast she ran, whenever she stopped she could hear the footfalls, rapid and purposeful, seeming to keep pace.

She had to figure out where she was. If she kept running around aimlessly, eventually he — it — would catch her.

She looked around. This aisle ended in a wall. She was at the edge of the Archives. Now, at least, she could follow the wall, make her way to the front.

Crouching, she moved along as quickly as she could, listening intently for the sound of footsteps, her eye scanning the dimness ahead. Suddenly, something yawned out from the gloom: it was a triceratops skull, mounted on the wall, its outlines shadowy and vague in the poor light.

Relief flooded through her. Puck must be around here somewhere; the intruder wouldn’t dare approach them simultaneously.

She opened her mouth to call out softly. But then she paused, looking more closely at the dim outline of the dinosaur. Something was odd — the silhouette was all wrong. She began to move cautiously toward it. And then, abruptly, she stopped once again.

There, impaled on the horns of the triceratops, hung a body, naked from the waist up, arms and legs hanging loose. Three bloody horns stuck right through the man’s back. It looked as if the triceratops had gored the person, hoisting him into the air.

Nora took a step back. Her mind took in the details, as if from a long distance away: the balding head with a fringe of gray hair; the flabby skin; the withered arms. Where the horns had speared through the lower back, the flesh was one long, open wound. Blood had collected around the base of the horns, running in dark rivulets around the torso and dripping onto the marble.

I’m on the triceratops in the back.

In the back.

She heard a scream, realized that it had come from her own throat.

Blindly, she wheeled away and ran, veering once, and again, and then again, racing down the aisles as quickly as she could move her legs. And then, abruptly, she found herself in a cul-de-sac. She spun to retrace her steps — and there, blocking the end of the row, stood an antique, black-hatted figure.

Something gleamed in his gloved hands.

There was nowhere to go but up. Without an instant’s thought, she turned, grabbed the edge of a shelf, and began climbing.

The figure came flying down the aisle, black cloak billowing behind.

Nora was an experienced rock climber. Her years as an archaeologist in Utah, climbing to caves and Anasazi cliff dwellings, were not forgotten. In a minute she had reached the top shelf, which swayed and groaned under the unexpected weight. She turned frantically, grabbed the first thing that came to hand — a stuffed falcon — and looked down once again.

The black-hatted man was already below, climbing, face obscured in deep shadow. Nora aimed, then threw.

The falcon bounced harmlessly off one shoulder.

She looked around desperately for something else. A box of papers; another stuffed animal; more boxes. She threw one, then another. But they were too light, useless.

Still the man climbed.

With a sob of terror, she swung over the top shelf and started descending the other side. Abruptly, a gloved hand darted between the shelving, caught hold of her shirt. Nora screamed, ripping herself free. A dim flash of steel and a tiny blade swept past her, missing her eye by inches. She swung away as the blade made another glittering arc toward her. Pain abruptly blossomed in her right shoulder.

She cried out, lost her grip. Landing on her feet, she broke her fall by rolling to one side.

On the far side of the shelving, the man had quickly climbed back down to the ground. Now he began climbing directly through the shelf, kicking and knocking specimen jars and boxes aside.

Again she ran, running wildly, blindly, from aisle to aisle.

Suddenly, a vast shape rose out of the dimness before her. It was a woolly mammoth. Nora recognized it immediately: she’d been here, once before, with Puck.

But which direction was out? As she looked around, Nora realized she would never make it — the pursuer would be upon her in a matter of seconds.

Suddenly, she knew there was only one thing to do.

Reaching for the light switches at the end of the aisle, she brushed them off with a single movement, plunging the surrounding corridors once again into darkness. Quickly, she felt beneath the mammoth’s scratchy belly. There it was: a wooden lever. She tugged, and the trap door fell open.

Trying to make as little noise as possible, she climbed into the hot, stuffy belly, pulling the trapdoor up behind her.

Then she waited, inside the mammoth. The air stank of rot, dust, jerked meat, mushrooms.

She heard a rapid series of clicks. The lights came back on. A stray beam worked through a small hole in the animal’s chest: an eyehole, for the circus worker.

Nora looked out, trying to control her rapid breathing, to push away the panic that threatened to overwhelm her. The man in the derby hat stood not five feet away, back turned. Slowly, he rotated himself through 360 degrees, looking, listening intently. He was holding a strange instrument in his hands: two polished ivory handles joined by a thin, flexible steel saw with tiny serrations. It looked like some kind of dreadful antique surgical instrument. He flexed it, causing the steel wire to bend and shimmy.

His gaze came to rest on the mammoth. He took a step toward it, his face in shadow. It was as if he knew this was where she was hiding. Nora tensed, readying herself to fight to the end.

And then, just as suddenly as he’d approached, he was gone.

“Mr. Puck?” a voice was calling. “Mr. Puck, I’m here! Mr. Puck?”

It was Oscar Gibbs.

Nora waited, too terrified to move. The voice came closer and, finally, Oscar Gibbs appeared around the corner of the aisle.

“Mr. Puck? Where are you?”

With a trembling hand, Nora reached down, unlatched the trapdoor, and lowered herself out of the belly of the mammoth. Gibbs turned, jumped back, and stood there, staring at her open-mouthed.

“Did you see him?” Nora gasped. “Did you see him?”

“Who? What were you doing in there? Hey, you’re bleeding!”

Nora looked at her shoulder. There was a spreading stain of blood where the scalpel had nicked her.

Gibbs came closer. “Look, I don’t know what you’re doing here, or what’s going on, but let’s get you to the nurse’s office. Okay?”

Nora shook her head. “No. Oscar, you have to call the police, right away. Mr. Puck”—her voice broke for a moment—“Mr. Puck’s been murdered. And the murderer is right here. In the Museum.”