Brisbane finally managed to speak. “I’m no murderer! Why would I kill those people?”
Custer shrugged philosophically. “The very question I asked you. But then, why do any serial killers kill? Why did Jack the Ripper kill? Why Jeffrey Dahmer? That’s a question for the psychiatrists to answer. Or maybe for God.”
On this note, Custer turned back to Noyes. “Set up a press conference for midnight. One Police Plaza. No, hold on—let’s make it on the front steps of the Museum. Call the commissioner, call the press. And most importantly, call the mayor, on his private line at Gracie Mansion. This is one call he’ll be happy to get out of bed for. Tell them we collared the Surgeon.”
“Yes, sir!” said Noyes, turning to go.
“My God, the publicity…” Brisbane’s voice was high, strangled. “Captain, I’ll have your badge for this…” He choked up with fear and rage, unable to continue.
But Custer wasn’t listening. He’d had another masterstroke.
“Just a minute!” he called to Noyes. “Make sure the mayor knows that he’ll be the star of our show. We’ll let him make the announcement.”
As the door closed, Custer turned his thoughts to the mayor. The election was a week away. He would need the boost. Letting him make the announcement was a clever move; very clever. Rumor had it that the job of commissioner would become vacant after reelection. And, after all, it was never too early to hope.
SEVEN
AGAIN, NORA LOOKED AT PENDERGAST. AND AGAIN SHE WAS UNNERVED by the depth of his shock. His eyes seemed glued to the face of the corpse: the parchment skin, the delicate, aristocratic features, the hair so blond it could have been white.
“The face. It looks just like—” Nora struggled to understand, to articulate her thoughts.
Pendergast did not respond.
“It looks just like you,” Nora finally managed.
“Yes,” came the whispered response. “Very much like me.”
“But who is it—?”
“Enoch Leng.”
Something in the way he said this caused Nora’s skin to crawl.
“Leng? But how can that be? I thought you said he was alive.”
With a visible effort Pendergast wrenched his eyes from the glass case and turned them on her. In them, she read many things: horror, pain, dread. His face remained colorless in the dim light.
“He was. Until recently. Someone appears to have killed Leng. Tortured him to death. And put him in that case. It seems we are now dealing with that other someone.”
“I still don’t—”
Pendergast held up one hand. “I cannot speak of it now,” was all he said.
He turned from the figure, slowly, almost painfully, his light stabbing farther into the gloom.
Nora inhaled the antique, dust-laden air. Everything was so strange, so terrible and unexpected; the kind of weirdness that happened only in a nightmare. She tried to calm her pounding heart.
“Now he is unconscious, being dragged,” whispered Pendergast. His eyes were once again on the floor, but his voice and manner remained dreadfully changed.
With the flashlight as a guide, they followed the marks across the reception hall to a set of closed doors. Pendergast opened them to reveal a carpeted, well-appointed space: a two-story library, filled with leather-bound books. The beam probed farther, slicing through drifting clouds of dust. In addition to books, Nora saw that, again, many of the shelves were lined with specimens, all carefully labeled. There were also numerous freestanding specimens in the room, draped in rotting duck canvas. A variety of wing chairs and sofas were positioned around the library, the leather dry and split, the stuffing unraveling.
The beam of the flashlight licked over the walls. A salver sat on a nearby table, holding a crystal decanter of what had once been port or sherry: a brown crust lined its bottom. Next to the tray sat a small, empty glass. An unsmoked cigar, shriveled and furred with mold, lay alongside it. A fireplace carved of gray marble was set into one of the walls, a fire laid but not lit. Before it was a tattered zebra skin, well chewed by mice. A sideboard nearby held more crystal decanters, each with a brown or black substance dried within. A hominid skull—Nora recognized it as Australopithecine—sat on a side table with a candle set into it. An open book lay nearby.
Pendergast’s light lingered on the open book. Nora could see it was an ancient medical treatise, written in Latin. The page showed engravings of a cadaver in various stages of dissection. Of all the objects in the library, only this looked fresh, as if it had been handled recently. Everything else was layered with dust.