Nora and Smithback had found an apartment on West End Avenue in the Nineties. When Pendergast had contacted them and asked them to meet him at 891 Riverside Drive, they had decided to walk the two miles, taking advantage of the beautiful day.
For the first time since the hideous discovery on Catherine Street, Nora had felt a certain peace return to her life. Her work at the Museum was progressing well. All the carbon-14 dates on her Utah specimens had come back, and they were a gratifying confirmation of her theory regarding the Anasazi-Aztec connection. There had been a terrific housecleaning at the Museum, with a whole new administration put in place—except Collopy, who had somehow come through it all with his reputation and prestige intact, if not enhanced. In fact, Collopy had offered Nora an important administrative post—which she had politely declined. The unfortunate Roger Brisbane had been released: the arrest warrant voided a day before the election, after Brisbane’s lawyer provided airtight alibis for the time periods of all three copycat murders, and an angry judge pointed out there was no physical evidence linking the man to any crime. Now, Brisbane was suing the city for wrongful arrest. The papers were screaming that the Surgeon was still at large. The mayor had lost his re-election bid. Captain Custer had been busted all the way down to street cop.
There had been a flurry of newspaper stories about the sudden disappearance of Anthony Fairhaven, but the speculation had ended with an IRS raid on his company. After that, everyone assumed tax problems were the reason for his disappearance. Word was Fairhaven had been last spotted on a beach somewhere in the Netherlands Antilles, drinking daiquiris and reading the Wall Street Journal.
Smithback had spent two weeks at the Feversham Clinic, north of Cold Spring, where his wound had been sewn and dressed. It had healed surprisingly quickly. Pendergast had also spent several weeks recuperating at Feversham after a series of operations to his elbow and abdomen. Then he had disappeared, and neither Nora nor Smithback had heard from him. Until this mysterious summons.
“I still can’t believe we’re up here again,” Smithback said as they walked northward.
“Come on, Bill. Aren’t you curious to see what Pendergast wants?”
“Of course. I just don’t see why it couldn’t be someplace else. Someplace comfortable. Like, say, the restaurant at the Carlyle.”
“I’m sure we’ll learn the reason.”
“I’m sure we will. But if he offers me a Leng cocktail out of one of those mason jars, I’m leaving.”
Now the old house appeared in the distance, up the Drive. Even in the bright sunlight it seemed somehow dark: sprawling, haunted, framed by bare trees, black upper windows staring westward like empty eye sockets.
As if at a single thought, Nora and Smithback paused.
“You know, just the sight of that old pile still scares the bejesus out of me,” Smithback muttered. “I’ll tell you, when Fairhaven had me laid out on that operating table, and I felt the knife slice into my—”
“Bill, please,” Nora pleaded. Smithback had grown fond of regaling her with gory details.
He drew his arm around her. He was wearing the blue Armani suit, but it hung a little loosely now, his gaunt frame thinner for the ordeal. His face was pale and drawn, but the old humor, the mischievous twinkle, had returned to his eyes.
They continued walking north, crossing 137th Street. There was the carriage entrance, still partially blocked by windblown piles of trash. Smithback stopped again, and Nora watched his eye travel up the facade of the building, toward a broken window on the second floor. For all his display of bravado, the writer’s face paled for a moment. Then he stepped forward resolutely, following Nora under the porte-cochère, and they knocked.
A minute passed, then two. And then at last the door creaked open, and Pendergast stood before them. He was wearing heavy rubber gloves, and his elegant black suit was covered in plaster dust. Without a word of greeting he turned away, and they followed him through silent echoing passages toward the library. Portable halogen lamps were arrayed along the hallways, throwing cold white light onto the surfaces of the old house. Even with the light, however, Nora felt a shiver of fear as she retraced the corridors. The foul odor of decay was gone, replaced by a faint chemical wash. The interior was barely recognizable: panels had been taken off walls, drawers stood open, plumbing and gas lines exposed or removed, boards ripped from the floor. It looked as if the house had been torn apart in an unbelievably exhaustive search.
Within the library, all the sheets had been removed from the skeletons and mounted animals. The light was dimmer here, but Nora could see that half the shelves were empty, and the floor covered with carefully piled stacks of books. Pendergast threaded his way through them to the vast fireplace in the far wall, then—at last—turned back toward his two guests.