The Cabinet of Curiosities (Pendergast #3)(95)

FIVE




PATRICK O’SHAUGHNESSY AWOKE VERY SLOWLY. HIS HEAD FELT AS IF IT had been split open with an axe, his knuckles throbbed, and his tongue was swollen and metallic in his mouth. He opened his eyes, but all was darkness. Fearing he’d gone blind, he instinctively drew his arms toward his face. He realized, with a kind of leaden numbness, that they were restrained. He tugged, and something rattled.

Chains. He was shackled with chains.

He moved his legs and found they were chained as well.

Almost instantly, the numbness fled, and cold reality flooded over him. The memory of the footsteps, the cat-and-mouse in the deserted streets, the smothering hood, returned with stark, pitiless clarity. For a moment, he struggled fiercely, a terrible panic bubbling up in his chest. Then he lay back, trying to master himself. Panic’s not going to solve anything. You have to think.

Where was he?

In a cell of some sort. He’d been taken prisoner. But by whom?

Almost as soon as he asked this question, the answer came: by the copycat killer. By the Surgeon.

The fresh wave of panic that greeted this realization was cut short by a sudden shaft of light—bright, even painful after the enveloping darkness.

He looked around quickly. He was in a small, bare room of rough-hewn stone, chained to a floor of cold, damp concrete. One wall held a door of rusted metal, and the light was streaming in through a small slot in its face. The light suddenly diminished, and a voice sounded in the slot. O’Shaughnessy could see wet red lips moving.

“Please do not discompose yourself,” the voice said soothingly. “All this will be over soon. Struggle is unnecessary.”

The slot rattled shut, and O’Shaughnessy was once again plunged into darkness.

He listened as the retreating steps rang against the stone floor. It was all too clear what was coming next. He’d seen the results at the medical examiner’s office. The Surgeon would come back; he’d come back, and…

Don’t think about that. Think about how to escape.

O’Shaughnessy tried to relax, to concentrate on taking long, slow breaths. Now his police training helped. He felt calmness settle over him. No situation was ever hopeless, and even the most cautious criminals made mistakes.

He’d been stupid, his habitual caution lost in his excitement over finding the ledgers. He’d forgotten Pendergast’s warning of constant danger.

Well, he wouldn’t be stupid any longer.

All this will be over soon, the voice had said. That meant it wouldn’t be long before he’d be coming back. O’Shaughnessy would be ready.

Before the Surgeon could do anything, he’d have to remove the shackles. And that’s when O’Shaughnessy would jump him.

But the Surgeon was clearly no fool. The way he’d shadowed him, ambushed him: that had taken cunning, strong nerves. If O’Shaughnessy merely pretended to be asleep, it wouldn’t be enough.

This was it: do or die. He’d have to make it good.

He took a deep breath, then another. And then, closing his eyes, he smashed the shackles of his arm against his forehead, raking them laterally from left to right.

The blood began to flow almost at once. There was pain, too, but that was good: it kept him sharp, gave him something to think about. Wounds to the forehead tended to bleed a lot; that was good, too.

Now he carefully lay to one side, positioning himself to look as if he’d passed out, scraping his head against the rough wall as he slumped to the floor. The stone felt cold against his cheek; the blood warm as it trickled through his eyelashes, down his nose. It would work. It would work. He didn’t want to go out like Doreen Hollander, torn and stiff on a morgue gurney.

Once again, O’Shaughnessy quelled a rising panic. It would be over soon. The Surgeon would return, he’d hear the footsteps on the stones. The door would open. When the shackles were removed, he’d surprise the man, overwhelm him. He’d escape with his life, collar the copycat killer in the process.

Stay calm. Stay calm. Eyes shut, blood trickling onto the cold damp stone, O’Shaughnessy deliberately turned his thoughts to opera. His breathing grew calmer. And soon, in his mind, the bleak walls of the little cell began to ring with the exquisitely beautiful strains of O Isis Und Osiris, rising effortlessly toward street level and the inviolate sky far above.





SIX




PENDERGAST STOOD ON THE BROAD PAVEMENT, SMALL BROWN PACKAGE beneath one arm, looking thoughtfully up at the brace of lions that guarded the entrance to the New York Public Library. A brief, drenching rain had passed over the city, and the headlights of the buses and taxis shimmered in countless puddles of water. Pendergast raised his eyes from the lions to the facade behind them, long and imposing, heavy Corinthian columns rising toward a vast architrave. It was past nine P.M., and the library had long since closed: the tides of students, researchers, tourists, unpublished poets and scholars that swirled about its portals by day had receded hours before.

He glanced around once more, eyes sweeping the stone plaza and the sidewalk beyond. Then he adjusted the package beneath his arm, and made his way slowly up the broad stairs.

To one side of the massive entrance, a smaller door had been set into the granite face of the library. Pendergast approached it, rapped his knuckles lightly on the bronze. Almost immediately it swung inward, revealing a library guard. He was very tall, with closely cropped blond hair, heavily muscled. A copy of Orlando Furioso was in one meaty hand.