The Cabinet of Curiosities

The thought gave him a delicious shudder of anticipation.

FOUR

O’SHAUGHNESSY STOOD ON the steps outside the Jacob Javits Federal Building. The rain had stopped, and puddles lay here and there in the narrow streets of lower Manhattan. Pendergast had not been at the Dakota, and he was not here, at the Bureau. O’Shaughnessy felt an odd blend of emotions: impatience, curiosity, eagerness. He’d been almost disappointed that he couldn’t show his find to Pendergast right away. Pendergast would surely see the value of the discovery. Maybe it would be the clue they needed to break the case.

He ducked behind one of the building’s granite pillars to inspect the journals once again. His eye ran down the columned pages, the countless entries of faded blue ink. It had everything: names of purchasers, lists of chemicals, amounts, prices, delivery addresses, dates. Poisons were listed in red. Pendergast was going to love this. Of course, Leng would have made his purchases under a pseudonym, probably using a false address—but he would have had to use the same pseudonym for each purchase. Since Pendergast had already compiled a list of at least some of the rare chemicals Leng had used, it would be a simple matter to match that with the purchases in this book, and, through that, discover Leng’s pseudonym. If it was a name Leng used in other transactions, this little book was going to take them very far indeed.

O’Shaughnessy glanced at the volumes another minute, then tucked them back beneath his arm and began walking thoughtfully down Broadway, toward City Hall and the subway. The volumes covered the years 1917 through 1923, antedating the fire that burned the chemist’s shop. Clearly, they’d been the only things to survive the fire. They had been in the possession of the grandfather, and the father had had them rebound. That was why the antiques dealer hadn’t bothered to examine them: they looked modern. It had been sheer luck that he himself had—

Antiques dealer. Now that he thought about it, it seemed suspicious that some dealer just happened to walk into the store a few weeks after the old man’s death, interested in the safe. Perhaps that death hadn’t been an accident, after all. Perhaps the copycat killer had been there before him, looking for more information on Leng’s chemical purchases. But no—that was impossible. The copycat killings had begun as a result of the article. This had happened before. O’Shaughnessy chastised himself for not getting a description of the dealer. Well, he could always go back. Pendergast might want to come along himself.

Suddenly, he stopped. Of their own accord, his feet had taken him past the subway station to Ann Street. He began to turn back, then hesitated. He wasn’t far, he realized, from 16 Water Street, the house where Mary Greene had lived. Pendergast had already been down there with Nora, but O’Shaughnessy hadn’t seen it. Not that there was anything to see, of course. But now that he was committed to this case, he wanted to see everything, miss nothing. He thought back to the Metropolitan Museum of Art: to the pathetic bit of dress, the desperate note.

It was worth a ten-minute detour. Dinner could wait.

He continued down Ann Street, then turned onto Gold, whistling Costa Diva from Bellini’s Norma. It was Maria Callas’s signature piece, and one of his favorite arias. He was in high spirits. Detective work, he was rediscovering, could actually be fun. And he was rediscovering something else: he had a knack for it.

The setting sun broke through the clouds, casting his own shadow before him, long and lonely down the street. To his left lay the South Street Viaduct and, beyond, the East River piers. As he walked, office and financial buildings began giving way to tenements—some sporting re-pointed brick facades, others vacant and hollow-looking.

It was growing chilly, but the last rays of the sun felt good on his face. He cut left onto John Street, heading toward the river. Ahead lay the rows of old piers. A few had been asphalted and still in use; others tilted into the water at alarming angles; and some were so decayed they were nothing more than double rows of posts, sticking out of the water. As the sun dipped out of sight, a dome of afterglow lay across the sky, deep purple grading to yellow against a rising fog. Across the East River, lights were coming on in the low brownstones of Brooklyn. He quickened his pace, seeing his breath in the air.

It was as he passed Pearl Street that O’Shaughnessy began to feel that he was being followed. He wasn’t sure why, exactly; if, subliminally, he had heard something, or if it was simply the sixth sense of a beat cop. But he kept walking, not checking his stride, not turning around. Administrative leave or no, he had his own .38 Special strapped under his arm, and he knew how to use it. Woe to the mugger who thought he looked like an easy target.