He remained in his seat, calm, legs folded, tape recorder loaded, and shotgun mike poised, while pandemonium raged around him. To his professional nose, it smelled different today. There was an undertone of fear. More than fear, actually: closer to ill-suppressed hysteria. He’d seen it as he’d ridden the subway downtown that morning, walked the streets around City Hall. These three copycat killings, one on top of another, were just too strange. People were talking of nothing else. The whole city was on the verge of panic.
Off to one side he caught sight of Bryce Harriman, expostulating with a policeman who refused to let him move closer to the front. All that fine vocational training at Columbia journalism school, wasted on the New York Post. He should have taken a nice quiet professorship at his old alma mater, teaching callow youth how to write a flawless inverted pyramid. True, the bastard had scooped him on the second murder, on the copycat angle, but surely that was just luck. Wasn’t it?
There was a stir in the crowd. The wing doors of the press room belched out a group of blue suits, followed by the mayor of New York City, Edward Montefiori. The man was tall and solid, very much aware that all eyes were upon him. He paused, nodding to acquaintances here and there, his face reflecting the gravity of the moment. The New York City mayoral race was in full swing, being conducted as usual at the level of two-year-olds. It was imperative that he catch this killer, bring the copycat murders to an end; the last thing the mayor wanted was to give his rival yet more fodder for his nasty television advertisements, which had been decrying the city’s recent upsurge in crime.
More people were coming onto the stage. The mayor’s spokesperson, Mary Hill, a tall, extremely poised African-American woman; the fat police captain Sherwood Custer, in whose precinct this whole mess had started; the police commissioner, Rocker—a tall, weary-looking man—and, finally, Dr. Frederick Collopy, director of the Museum, followed by Roger Brisbane. Smithback felt a surge of anger when he saw Brisbane, looking urbane in a neatly tailored gray suit. Brisbane was the one who had screwed up everything between him and Nora. Even after Nora’s horrible discovery of Puck’s murdered corpse, after being chased and nearly caught herself by the Surgeon, she had refused to see him, to let him comfort her. It was almost as if she blamed him for what happened to Puck and Pendergast.
The noise level in the room was becoming deafening. The mayor mounted the podium and raised his hand. At the gesture, the room quickly fell silent.
The mayor read from a prepared statement, his Brooklyn accent filling the room.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” he began. “From time to time our great city, because of its size and diversity, has been stalked by serial killers. Thankfully, it has been many years since the last such plague. Now, however, it appears we are faced with a new serial killer, a true psychopath. Three people have been murdered in the space of a week, and in a particularly violent way. While the city is now enjoying the lowest murder rate of any major metropolitan area in the country—thanks to our vigorous enforcement efforts and zero tolerance for lawbreaking—this is clearly three murders too many. I called this press conference to share with the public the strong and effective steps we are taking to find this killer, and to answer as best we can questions you might have about this case and its somewhat sensational aspects. As you know, openness has always been a top priority of my administration. I therefore have brought with me Karl Rocker, the police commissioner; Sherwood Custer, precinct captain; Director Frederick Collopy and Vice President Roger Brisbane of the New York Museum of Natural History, where the latest homicide was discovered. My spokesperson, Mary Hill, will field the questions. But first, I will ask Commissioner Rocker to give you a briefing on the case.”
He stepped back and Rocker took the microphone.
“Thank you, Mr. Mayor.” His low, intelligent voice, dry as parchment, filled the room. “Last Thursday, the body of a young woman, Doreen Hollander, was discovered in Central Park. She had been murdered, and a peculiar kind of dissection or surgical operation performed on her lower back. While the official autopsy was in progress and the results were being evaluated, a second killing took place. Another young woman, Mandy Eklund, was found in Tompkins Square Park. Forensic analysis indicated that her manner of death, and the violence done to her person, matched the killing of Doreen Hollander. And yesterday, the body of a fifty-four-year-old man, Reinhart Puck, was discovered in the Archives of the New York Museum. He was the Museum’s head archivist. The body showed mutilations identical to Ms. Eklund’s and Ms. Hollander’s.”
There was a flurry of raised hands, shouts, gestures. The commissioner quelled them by holding up both hands. “As you know, a letter was discovered in these same Archives, referring to a nineteenth-century serial killer. This letter described similar mutilations, conducted as a scientific experiment by a doctor named Leng, in lower Manhattan, one hundred and twenty years ago. The remains of thirty-six individuals were discovered at a building site on Catherine Street, presumably the spot where Dr. Leng did his depraved work.”