The Cabinet of Curiosities (Pendergast #3)(108)

Custer motioned to the rest of his men, and they followed him through great echoing halls, up several floors in a giant elevator, and along yet more halls filled with displays—Christ, this place had more than its share of weird shit—until at last they reached a grand paneled door leading to an even grander paneled office. The door was half open, and beyond sat a small woman at a desk. She rose at their approach.

“We’re here to see Dr. Collopy,” said Custer, looking around, wondering why a secretary had such a fancy office.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the woman said. “Dr. Collopy’s not here.”

“He’s not?” Custer and Manetti said in chorus.

The secretary shook her head, looking flustered. “He hasn’t been back since lunch. Said he had some important business to take care of.”

“But lunch was hours ago,” Custer said. “Isn’t there some way he can be reached?”

“There’s his private cell phone,” the secretary said.

“Dial it.” Custer turned to Manetti. “And you, call around to some of the other top brass. See if they know where this Collopy is.”

Manetti moved off to another desk, picked up a phone. The large office fell silent, save for the beep of numbers being dialed. Custer looked around. The space was paneled in very dark wood, and it was chock-full of bleak oil paintings and forbidding-looking displays parked behind glass-fronted cabinets. Christ, it was like a house of horrors.

“The cell phone’s turned off, sir,” the secretary said.

Custer shook his head. “Isn’t there any other number you can call? His house, for example?”

The secretary and Manetti exchanged looks. “We aren’t supposed to call there,” she said, looking even more flustered.

“I don’t care what you’re supposed to do. This is urgent police business. Call his house.”

The secretary unlocked a desk drawer, rummaged through a file of index cards, plucked one out. She looked at it a moment, shielding it from Custer’s and Manetti’s view. Then she replaced the card, locked the drawer, and dialed a number.

“Nobody’s picking up,” she said after a moment.

“Keep ringing.”

Half a minute went by. Finally, the secretary replaced the phone in its cradle. “There’s no answer.”

Custer rolled his eyes. “All right, listen. We can’t waste any more time. We have good reason to believe that the key to the serial killer known as the Surgeon—perhaps even the killer himself—will be found here in the Museum. Time is of the essence. I’m going to personally supervise a thorough search of the Archives. Lieutenant Detective Piles will be in charge of questioning certain staff members.”

Manetti was silent.

“With the Museum’s cooperation, I think we can get through this by midnight, if not sooner. We’ll need a room for interrogation. We will require power for our recording machinery, a sound engineer, and an electrician. I will require identification from everyone, and access to personnel files on an ongoing basis.”

“Just which staff members are you going to question?” Manetti asked.

“We will determine that from the files.”

“We have two thousand five hundred employees.”

This temporarily floored Custer. Twenty-five hundred people to run a museum? What a welfare program. He took a breath, carefully recomposing his features. “We will deal with that. As a start, we’ll need to interview, let’s see… night watchmen who might have noticed any unusual comings or goings. And that archaeologist who excavated those skeletons, found the others down on Doyers Street, and—”

“Nora Kelly.”

“Right.”

“The police have already spoken with her, I believe.”

“So we’ll be speaking with her again. And we’ll want to talk to the head of security—that’s you—about your security arrangements, in the Archives and elsewhere. I want to question everyone connected with the Archives and the discovery of, ah, Mr. Puck’s body. How’s that for a start?” He gave a quick, artificial smile.

There was a silence.

“Now, direct me to the Archives, please.”

For a moment, Manetti just stared at him, as if the situation was beyond his powers of comprehension.

“Direct me to the Archives, Mr. Manetti, and make it now, if you please.”

Manetti blinked. “Very well, Captain. If you’ll follow me.”

As they walked down the storied halls, cops and administrators in tow, Custer felt a huge swelling of excitement at his newly found self-confidence. He’d finally discovered his true calling. Homicide was where he should have been all along. It was obvious he was a natural; he had a knack for the work. His being put in charge of this case had not been a fluke. It had been destiny.





FIVE




SMITHBACK STOOD IN THE DARK HALL, STRUGGLING TO CONTROL HIS fright. It was fright that was his problem here, not locked doors. Clearly, at least one of them must be unlocked: he had just come through it.

As deliberately as he could, he went down the hall once again, trying all the doors, shaking harder this time, even at the cost of making some noise, pushing at the jambs, making sure they weren’t simply stuck. But no, it wasn’t his imagination. They were all securely locked.