The Cabinet of Curiosities

Once the police got their hands on the place, he’d lose his chance to learn anything more.

It would be very interesting to see inside.

He looked up, his eye following the lines of the house. He’d had some rock climbing experience, gained from a trip to the canyon country of Utah. The trip where he’d met Nora. He stepped away, studying the facade. There were lots of cornices and carvings that would make good handholds. Here, away from the street, he wasn’t as likely to be noticed. With a little luck, he might be able to climb to one of the second-story windows. Just for a look.

He glanced back down the carriageway. The street was deserted, the house deathly silent.

Smithback rubbed his hands together, smoothed his cowlick. And then he set his left wing tip into a gap in the lower course of masonry and began to climb.

TWO

CAPTAIN CUSTER CHECKED the clock on the wall of his office. It was nearly noon. He felt a growl in his capacious stomach and wished, for at least the twentieth time, that noon would hurry up and come so he could head out to Dilly’s Deli, purchase a double corned beef and swiss on rye with extra mayo, and place the monstrous sandwich in his mouth. He always got hungry when he was nervous, and today he was very, very nervous. It had been barely forty-eight hours since he’d been put in charge of the Surgeon case, but already he was getting impatient calls. The mayor had called, the commissioner had called. The three murders had the entire city close to panicking. And yet he had nothing to report. The breathing space he’d bought himself with that article on the old bones was just about used up. The fifty detectives working the case were desperately following up leads, for all the good it did them. But to where? Nowhere. He snorted, shook his head. Incompetent ass-wipes.

His stomach growled again, louder this time. Pressure and agitation encircled him like a damp bathhouse towel. If this was what it felt like to be in charge of a big case, he wasn’t sure he liked it.

He glanced at the clock again. Five more minutes. Not going to lunch before noon was a matter of discipline with him. As a police officer, he knew discipline was key. That was what it was all about. He couldn’t let the pressure get to him.

He remembered how the commissioner had stared sidelong at him, back in that little hovel on Doyers Street when he’d assigned him the investigation. Rocker hadn’t seemed exactly confident in his abilities. Custer remembered, all too clearly, his words of advice: I’d suggest you get to work on this new case of yours. Get right to work. Catch that killer. You don’t want another, fresher stiff turning up on your watch—do you?

The minute hand moved another notch.

Maybe more manpower is the answer, he thought. He should put another dozen detectives on that murder in the Museum Archives. That was the most recent murder, that’s where the freshest clues would be. That curator who’d found the corpse—the frosty bitch, what’s her name—had been pretty close-mouthed. If he could—

And then, just as the second hand swept toward noon, he had the revelation.

The Museum Archives. The Museum curator . . .

It was so overwhelming, so blinding, that it temporarily drove all thoughts of corned beef from his head.

The Museum. The Museum was the center around which everything revolved.

The third murder, the brutal operation? It took place in the Museum.

That archaeologist, Nora Kelly? Worked for the Museum.

The incriminating letter that reporter, Smithbank or whatever, had leaked? The letter that started the whole thing? Found in the Museum’s Archives.

That creepy old guy, Collopy, who’d authorized the removal of the letter? Director of the Museum.

Fairhaven? On the Museum’s board.

The nineteenth-century killer? Connected to the Museum.

And the archivist himself, Puck, had been murdered. Why? Because he had discovered something. Something in the Archives.

Custer’s mind, unusually clear, began racing over the possibilities, the myriad combinations and permutations. What was needed was strong, decisive action. Whatever it was Puck had found, he would find, too. And that would be key to the murderer.

There was no time to lose, not one minute.

He stood up and punched the intercom. “Noyes? Get in here. Right away.”

The man was in the doorway even before Custer’s finger was off the button.

“I want the top ten detectives assigned to the Surgeon case over here for a confidential briefing in my office. Half an hour.”