by Brad Meltzer
“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 were 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 is 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 saving. “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 st
ill 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.