“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 walclass="underline" 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.
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.