The Cabinet of Curiosities (44 page)

The only illumination came from a single pinprick of light in the far wall, which sent a pencil-thin beam of light through the dusty air. A tiny hole in one of the boarded windows. With a huge sense of relief he quickly crossed the room and began feeling along the wall with his fingers. There was a heavy oak door here. The hope that was rising within him grew stronger. His fingers fell on a marble doorknob, oversized and terribly cold in his hands. He grasped it eagerly, turned.

The knob refused to budge.

With desperate strength, he tried again. No luck.

He stepped back and, with a groan of despair, felt along the edge of the door with his hands, searching for a deadbolt, lock,
anything.
An overwhelming sense of fear returned.

Heedless of the noise now, he threw himself against the door, once, twice, rushing at it with all his weight, trying desperately to break it down. The hollow thumps echoed through the room and down the hall. When the door still refused to budge, he stopped and leaned against it with a gasp of panic.

As the last echoes died away, something stirred from within the well of blackness in a far corner of the room. A voice, low and dry as mummy dust, spoke.

“My dear fellow, leaving so soon? You’ve only just got here.”

C
USTER BURST THROUGH THE DOOR TO THE
A
RCHIVES AND PLANTED
himself in the middle of the entryway, hands on his hips. He could hear the patter of heavy-shod feet as his officers fanned out behind him.
Fast and furious,
he reminded himself.
Don’t give ’em time to think.
He observed—with more than a little satisfaction—the consternation of the two staff members who had leapt up at the sight of a dozen uniformed officers bearing down on them.

“This area is to be searched,” Custer barked out. Noyes, stepping forward out of Custer’s shadow, held up the warrant in a superfluous gesture. Custer noted, with approval, that Noyes was glaring almost as balefully at the archivists as he was himself.

“But, Captain,” he heard Manetti protest, “the place has already
been
searched. Right after the body of Puck was found, the NYPD had forensics teams, dogs, fingerprint sweepers, photographers, and—”

“I’ve seen the report, Manetti. But that was then. This is now. We have new evidence, important evidence.” Custer looked around impatiently. “Let’s get some light in here, for chrissakes!”

One of the staff jumped and, passing his hand over a vast cluster of ancient-looking switches, turned on a bank of lights within.

“Is that the best you can do? It’s as dark as a tomb in here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right.” Custer turned to his detectives. “You know what to do. Work row by row, shelf by shelf. Leave no stone unturned.”

There was a pause.

“Well? Get to it, gentlemen!”

The men exchanged brief, uncertain glances. But without a questioning word they dutifully fanned out into the stacks. In a moment they were gone, like water absorbed into a sponge, leaving Manetti and Custer and the two frightened staffers alone by the reference desk. The sound of thumping, banging, and rattling began to echo back down the stacks as Custer’s men started to pull things off the shelves. It was a satisfying sound, the sound of progress.

“Have a seat, Manetti,” said Custer, unable now to keep condescension completely out of his voice. “Let’s talk.”

Manetti looked around, saw no available chairs, and remained standing.

“Okay.” Custer removed a leather-covered notebook and gold pen—purchased in Macy’s just after the commissioner gave him the new assignment—and prepared to take notes. “So, what we got here in these Archives? A bunch of papers? Newspapers? Old takeout menus? What?”

Manetti sighed. “The Archives contain documents, as well as specimens not considered important enough for the main collections. These materials are available to historians and others with a professional interest. It’s a low-security area.”

“Low security is right,” Custer replied. “Low enough to get this man Puck’s ass hoisted on a goddamned petrified antler. So where’s the valuable stuff kept?”

“What’s not in the general collection is kept in the Secure Area, a location with a separate security system.”

“What about signing in to these Archives, and all that?”

“There’s a logbook.”

“Where’s the book?”

Manetti nodded at a massive volume on the desk. “It was photocopied for the police after Puck’s death.”

“And what does it record?”

“Everybody who enters or leaves the Archives area. But the police already noticed that some of the most recent pages were razored out—”

“Everybody? Staff as well as visiting researchers?”

“Everybody. But—”

Custer turned to Noyes, then pointed at the book. “Bag it.”

Manetti looked at him quickly. “That’s Museum property.”

“It was. Now it’s evidence.”

“But you’ve already taken all the important evidence, like the typewriter those notes were written on, and the—”

“When we’re done here, you’ll get a receipt for everything.”
If you ask nicely,
Custer thought to himself. “So, what we got here?” he repeated.

“Dead files, mostly, from other Museum departments. Papers of historical value, memos, letters, reports. Everything but the personnel files and some departmental files. The Museum saves everything, naturally, as a public institution.”

“What about that letter found here? The one reported in the papers, describing those killings. How was that found?”

“You’ll have to ask Special Agent Pendergast, who found it along with Nora Kelly. He found it hidden in some kind of box. Made out of an elephant’s foot, I believe.”

That Nora Kelly again. Custer made a mental note to question her himself once he was done here. She’d be his prime suspect, if he thought her capable of hoisting a heavyset man onto a dinosaur horn. Maybe she had accomplices.

Custer jotted some notes. “Has anything been moved in or out of here in the past month?”

“There may have been some routine additions to the collection. I believe that once a month or so they send dead files down here.” Manetti paused. “And, after the discovery of the letter, it and all related documents were sent upstairs for curating. Along with other material.”

Custer nodded. “And Collopy ordered that, did he not?”

“Actually, I believe it was done at the order of the Museum’s vice president and general counsel, Roger Brisbane.”

Brisbane: he’d heard that name before, too. Custer made another note. “And what, exactly, did the related documents consist of?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Mr. Brisbane.”

Custer turned to the two museum employees behind the desk. “This guy, Brisbane. You see him down here a lot?”

“Quite a bit, recently,” said one.

“What’s he been doing?”

The man shrugged. “Just asking a lot of questions, that’s all.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Questions about Nora Kelly, that FBI guy… He wanted to know what they’d been looking at, where they went, that kind of thing. And some journalist. He wanted to know if a journalist had been in here. I can’t

remember the name.”

“Smithbrick?”

“No, but something like that.”

Custer picked up his notebook, flipped through it. There it was. “William Smithback, Junior.”

“That’s it.”

Custer nodded. “How about this Agent Pendergast? Any of you see him?”

The two exchanged glances. “Just once,” the first man said.

“Nora Kelly?”

“Yup,” said the same man: a young fellow with hair so short he looked almost bald.

Custer turned toward him. “Did you know Puck?”

The man nodded.

“Your name?”

“Oscar. Oscar Gibbs. I was his assistant.”

“Gibbs, did Puck have any enemies?”

Custer noticed the two men exchanging another glance, more significant this time.

“Well…” Gibbs hesitated, then began again. “Once, Brisbane came down here and really lit into Mr. Puck. Screaming and yelling, threatening to bury him, to have him fired.”

“Is that right? Why?”

“Something about Mr. Puck leaking damaging information, failing to respect the Museum’s intellectual property rights. Things like that. I think he was mad because Human Resources hadn’t backed up his recommendation to fire Mr. Puck. Said he wasn’t through with him, not by a long shot. That’s really all I remember.”

“When was this, exactly?”

Gibbs thought a moment. “Let’s see. That would have been the thirteenth. No, the twelfth. October twelfth.”

Custer picked up his notebook again and made another notation, longer this time. He heard a shattering crash from the bowels of the Archives; a shout; then a protracted ripping noise. He felt a warm feeling of satisfaction. There would be no more letters hidden in elephants’ feet when he was done. He turned his attention back to Gibbs.

“Any other enemies?”

“No. To tell you the truth, Mr. Puck was one of the nicest people in the whole Museum. It was a big shock to see Brisbane come down on him like that.”

This Brisbane’s not a popular guy,
thought Custer. He turned to Noyes. “Get this man Brisbane for me, will you? I want to talk to him.”

Noyes moved toward the front desk just as the Archives door burst open. Custer turned to see a man dressed in a tuxedo, his black tie askew, brilliantined hair hanging across his outraged face.

“What the hell is going on here?” the man shouted in Custer’s direction. “You just can’t come bursting in here like this, turning the place upside down. Let me see your warrant!”

Noyes began fumbling for the warrant, but Custer stayed him with a single hand. It was remarkable, really, how steady his hand felt, how calm and collected he was during all this, the turning point of his entire career. “And who might you be?” he asked in his coolest voice.

“Roger C. Brisbane III. First vice president and general counsel of the Museum.”

Custer nodded. “Ah, Mr. Brisbane. You’re just the man I wanted to see.”

S
MITHBACK FROZE, STARING INTO THE POOL OF DARKNESS THAT LAY AT
the far corner of the room. “Who is that?” he finally managed to croak.

There was no response.

“Are you the caretaker?” He gave a strained laugh. “Can you believe it? I’ve locked myself in.”

Again, silence.

Perhaps the voice had been his imagination. God knows, he’d seen enough in this house to cure him of ever wanting to watch another horror movie.

He tried again. “Well, all I can say is, I’m glad you happened by. If you could help me find my way to the door—”

The sentence was choked off by an involuntary spasm of fright.

A figure had stepped out into the dim light. It was muffled in a long dark coat, features in deep shadow under a derby hat. In one upraised hand was a heavy, old-fashioned scalpel. The razor edge gleamed faintly as the man turned it slowly, almost lovingly, between slender fingers. In the other hand, a hypodermic syringe winked and glimmered.

“An unexpected pleasure to see you here,” the figure said in a low, dry voice as he caressed the scalpel. “But convenient. In fact, you’ve arrived just in time.”

Some primitive instinct of self-preservation, stronger even than the horror that had seized him, spurred Smithback into action. He spun and ran. But it was so dark, and the figure moved so blindingly fast…

Later—he didn’t know how much later—Smithback woke up. There was a torpor, and a strange, languorous kind of confusion. He’d had a dream, a terrible dream, he remembered; but it was over now and everything was fine, he would wake to a beautiful fall morning, the hideous fragmented memories of the nightmare melting away into his subconscious. He’d rise, dress, have his usual breakfast of red flannel hash at his favorite Greek coffeeshop, and slowly take on once again, as he did every morning, his mundane, workaday life.

But as his mind gradually grew more alert, he realized that the broken memories, the horrible hinted fragments, were not evaporating. He had somehow been caught. In the dark. In Leng’s house.

Leng’s house…

He shook his head. It throbbed violently at the movement.

The man in the derby hat was the Surgeon. In Leng’s house.

Suddenly, Smithback was struck dumb by shock and fear. Of all the terrible thoughts that darted through his mind at that terrible moment, one stood out from the rest:
Pendergast was right. Pendergast was right all along.

Enoch Leng was still alive.

It was Leng himself who was the Surgeon.

And Smithback had walked
right into his house.

That noise he was hearing, that hideous gasping, was his own hyperventilation, the suck of air through tape covering his mouth. He forced himself to slow down, to take stock. There was a strong smell of mold around him, and it was pitch black. The air was cold, damp. The pain in his head increased. Smithback moved his arm toward his forehead, felt it stop abruptly—felt the tug of an iron cuff around his wrist, heard the clank of a chain. What the hell was this?

His heart began to race, faster and faster, as one by one the holes in his memory filled: the endless echoing rooms, the voice from the darkness, the man stepping out of the shadows… the glittering scalpel.
Oh, God, was it really Leng? After 130 years? Leng?

He tried to stand in automatic groggy panic but fell back again immediately, to a chorus of clinks and clatterings. He was stark naked, chained to the ground by his arms and legs, his mouth sealed with heavy tape.

This couldn’t be happening. Oh, Jesus, this was insane.

He hadn’t told anyone he was coming up here. Nobody knew where he was. Nobody even knew he was missing. If only he’d told someone, the pool secretary, O’Shaughnessy, his great-grandfather, his half-sister,
anyone…

He lay back, head pounding, hyperventilating again, heart battering in his rib cage.

He had been drugged and chained by the man in black—the man in the derby hat. That much was clear. The same man who tried to kill Pendergast, no doubt; the same man, probably, who had killed Puck and the others. The Surgeon. He was in the dungeon of the Surgeon.