Текст книги "The Cabinet of Curiosities"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

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 Timesreporter 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 whyare 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 toogood. 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 likewhat 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 needthis 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– DoctorEnoch 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 isimportant 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 herinto 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. Tryingto, 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.