The Inner Circle

by Brad Meltzer

  But she had definitely heard something. Move, move, all her instincts cried out.

  Nora turned and walked quickly down the long aisle. Another sound came—fast footsteps? The rustle of fabric?—and she paused again to listen. Nothing but the faint drips from the pipes. She tried to stare through the isolated gaps in the shelves. There was a wall of specimen jars, snakes coiled in formaldehyde, and she strained to see through. There seemed to be a shape on the other side, large and black, rippled and distorted by the stacks of glass jars. She moved… and it moved in turn. She was sure of it.

  She backtracked quickly, breath coming faster, and the dark shape moved as well. It seemed to be pacing her in the next aisle—perhaps waiting for her to reach either one end or the other.

  She slowed and, struggling to master her fear, tried walking as calmly as she could toward the end of the aisle. She could see, hear, the shape—so near now—moving as well, keeping pace.

  “Mr. Puck?” she ventured, voice quavering.

  There was no answer.

  Suddenly, Nora found herself running. She arrowed down the aisle, sprinting as fast as she could. Swift footfalls sounded in the adjoining aisle.

  Ahead was a gap, where her aisle joined the next. She had to get past, outrun the person in the adjoining aisle.

  She dashed through the gap, glimpsing for a split second a huge black figure, metal flashing in its gloved hand. She sprinted down the next aisle, through another gap, and on down the aisle again. At the next gap, she veered sharply right, heading down a new corridor. Selecting another aisle at random, she turned into it and ran on through the dimness ahead.

  Halfway to the next intersection, she stopped again, heart pounding. There was silence, and for a moment relief surged through her: she had managed to lose her pursuer.

  And then she caught the sound of faint breathing from the adjoining aisle.

  Relief disappeared as quickly as it had come. She had not outrun him. No matter what she did, no matter where she ran, he had continued to pace her, one aisle over.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  There was a faint rustle, then an almost silent laugh.

  Nora looked to the left and right, fighting back panic, desperately trying to determine the best way out. These shelves were covered with stacks of folded skins, parchment-dry, smelling fearfully of decay. Nothing looked familiar.

  Twenty feet farther down the aisle, she spied a gap in the shelving, on the side away from the unknown presence. She sprinted ahead and turned into the gap, then doubled back into yet another adjoining aisle. She stopped, crouched, waited.

  Footfalls sounded several aisles over, coming closer, then receding again. He had lost her.

  Nora turned and began moving, as stealthily as possible, through the aisles, trying to put as much distance as possible between herself and the pursuer. But no matter which way she turned, or how fast she ran, whenever she stopped she could hear the footfalls, rapid and purposeful, seeming to keep pace.

  She had to figure out where she was. If she kept running around aimlessly, eventually he—it—would catch her.

  She looked around. This aisle ended in a wall. She was at the edge of the Archives. Now, at least, she could follow the wall, make her way to the front.

  Crouching, she moved along as quickly as she could, listening intently for the sound of footsteps, her eye scanning the dimness ahead. Suddenly, something yawned out from the gloom: it was a triceratops skull, mounted on the wall, its outlines shadowy and vague in the poor light.

  Relief flooded through her. Puck must be around here somewhere; the intruder wouldn’t dare approach them simultaneously.

  She opened her mouth to call out softly. But then she paused, looking more closely at the dim outline of the dinosaur. Something was odd—the silhouette was all wrong. She began to move cautiously toward it. And then, abruptly, she stopped once again.

  There, impaled on the horns of the triceratops, hung a body, naked from the waist up, arms and legs hanging loose. Three bloody horns stuck right through the man’s back. It looked as if the triceratops had gored the person, hoisting him into the air.

  Nora took a step back. Her mind took in the details, as if from a long distance away: the balding head with a fringe of gray hair; the flabby skin; the withered arms. Where the horns had speared through the lower back, the flesh was one long, open wound. Blood had collected around the base of the horns, running in dark rivulets around the torso and dripping onto the marble.

  I’m on the triceratops in the back.

  In the back.

  She heard a scream, realized that it had come from her own throat.

  Blindly, she wheeled away and ran, veering once, and again, and then again, racing down the aisles as quickly as she could move her legs. And then, abruptly, she found herself in a cul-de-sac. She spun to retrace her steps—and there, blocking the end of the row, stood an antique, black-hatted figure.

  Something gleamed in his gloved hands.

  There was nowhere to go but up. Without an instant’s thought, she turned, grabbed the edge of a shelf, and began climbing.

  The figure came flying down the aisle, black cloak billowing behind.

  Nora was an experienced rock climber. Her years as an archaeologist in Utah, climbing to caves and Anasazi cliff dwellings, were not forgotten. In a minute she had reached the top shelf, which swayed and groaned under the unexpected weight. She turned frantically, grabbed the first thing that came to hand—a stuffed falcon—and looked down once again.

  The black-hatted man was already below, climbing, face obscured in deep shadow. Nora aimed, then threw.

  The falcon bounced harmlessly off one shoulder.

  She looked around desperately for something else. A box of papers; another stuffed animal; more boxes. She threw one, then another. But they were too light, useless.

  Still the man climbed.

  With a sob of terror, she swung over the top shelf and started descending the other side. Abruptly, a gloved hand darted between the shelving, caught hold of her shirt. Nora screamed, ripping herself free. A dim flash of steel and a tiny blade swept past her, missing her eye by inches. She swung away as the blade made another glittering arc toward her. Pain abruptly blossomed in her right shoulder.

  She cried out, lost her grip. Landing on her feet, she broke her fall by rolling to one side.

  On the far side of the shelving, the man had quickly climbed back down to the ground. Now he began climbing directly through the shelf, kicking and knocking specimen jars and boxes aside.

  Again she ran, running wildly, blindly, from aisle to aisle.

  Suddenly, a vast shape rose out of the dimness before her. It was a woolly mammoth. Nora recognized it immediately: she’d been here, once before, with Puck.

  But which direction was out? As she looked around, Nora realized she would never make it—the pursuer would be upon her in a matter of seconds.

  Suddenly, she knew there was only one thing to do.

  Reaching for the light switches at the end of the aisle, she brushed them off with a single movement, plunging the surrounding corridors once again into darkness. Quickly, she felt beneath the mammoth’s scratchy belly. There it was: a wooden lever. She tugged, and the trap door fell open.

  Trying to make as little noise as possible, she climbed into the hot, stuffy belly, pulling the trapdoor up behind her.

  Then she waited, inside the mammoth. The air stank of rot, dust, jerked meat, mushrooms.

  She heard a rapid series of clicks. The lights came back on. A stray beam worked through a small hole in the animal’s chest: an eyehole, for the circus worker.

  Nora looked out, trying to control her rapid breathing, to push away the panic that threatened to overwhelm her. The man in the derby hat stood not five feet away, back turned. Slowly, he rotated himself through 360 degrees, looking, listening intently. He was holding a strange instrument in his hands: two polished ivory handles joined by a thin, flexible steel saw wit
h tiny serrations. It looked like some kind of dreadful antique surgical instrument. He flexed it, causing the steel wire to bend and shimmy.

  His gaze came to rest on the mammoth. He took a step toward it, his face in shadow. It was as if he knew this was where she was hiding. Nora tensed, readying herself to fight to the end.

  And then, just as suddenly as he’d approached, he was gone.

  “Mr. Puck?” a voice was calling. “Mr. Puck, I’m here! Mr. Puck?”

  It was Oscar Gibbs.

  Nora waited, too terrified to move. The voice came closer and, finally, Oscar Gibbs appeared around the corner of the aisle.

  “Mr. Puck? Where are you?”

  With a trembling hand, Nora reached down, unlatched the trapdoor, and lowered herself out of the belly of the mammoth. Gibbs turned, jumped back, and stood there, staring at her open-mouthed.

  “Did you see him?” Nora gasped. “Did you see him?”

  “Who? What were you doing in there? Hey, you’re bleeding!”

  Nora looked at her shoulder. There was a spreading stain of blood where the scalpel had nicked her.

  Gibbs came closer. “Look, I don’t know what you’re doing here, or what’s going on, but let’s get you to the nurse’s office. Okay?”

  Nora shook her head. “No. Oscar, you have to call the police, right away. Mr. Puck”—her voice broke for a moment—“Mr. Puck’s been murdered. And the murderer is right here. In the Museum.”

  Many Worm

  ONE

  BILL SMITHBACK HAD MANAGED, WITH A LITTLE NAME-dropping here and a little intimidation there, to get the best seat in the house.“The house” was the press room of One Police Plaza, a cavernous space painted the institutional color known universally as Vomit Green. It was now filled to overflowing with scurrying television news crews and frantic journalists. Smithback loved the electric atmosphere of a big press conference, called hastily after some dreadful event, packed with city officials and police brass laboring under the misapprehension that they could spin the unruly fourth estate of New York.

  He remained in his seat, calm, legs folded, tape recorder loaded, and shotgun mike poised, while pandemonium raged around him. To his professional nose, it smelled different today. There was an undertone of fear. More than fear, actually: closer to ill-suppressed hysteria. He’d seen it as he’d ridden the subway downtown that morning, walked the streets around City Hall. These three copycat killings, one on top of another, were just too strange. People were talking of nothing else. The whole city was on the verge of panic.

  Off to one side he caught sight of Bryce Harriman, expostulating with a policeman who refused to let him move closer to the front. All that fine vocational training at Columbia journalism school, wasted on the New York Post. He should have taken a nice quiet professorship at his old alma mater, teaching callow youth how to write a flawless inverted pyramid. True, the bastard had scooped him on the second murder, on the copycat angle, but surely that was just luck. Wasn’t it?

  There was a stir in the crowd. The wing doors of the press room belched out a group of blue suits, followed by the mayor of New York City, Edward Montefiori. The man was tall and solid, very much aware that all eyes were upon him. He paused, nodding to acquaintances here and there, his face reflecting the gravity of the moment. The New York City mayoral race was in full swing, being conducted as usual at the level of two-year-olds. It was imperative that he catch this killer, bring the copycat murders to an end; the last thing the mayor wanted was to give his rival yet more fodder for his nasty television advertisements, which had been decrying the city’s recent upsurge in crime.

  More people were coming onto the stage. The mayor’s spokesperson, Mary Hill, a tall, extremely poised African-American woman; the fat police captain Sherwood Custer, in whose precinct this whole mess had started; the police commissioner, Rocker—a tall, weary-looking man—and, finally, Dr. Frederick Collopy, director of the Museum, followed by Roger Brisbane. Smithback felt a surge of anger when he saw Brisbane, looking urbane in a neatly tailored gray suit. Brisbane was the one who had screwed up everything between him and Nora. Even after Nora’s horrible discovery of Puck’s murdered corpse, after being chased and nearly caught herself by the Surgeon, she had refused to see him, to let him comfort her. It was almost as if she blamed him for what happened to Puck and Pendergast.

  The noise level in the room was becoming deafening. The mayor mounted the podium and raised his hand. At the gesture, the room quickly fell silent.

  The mayor read from a prepared statement, his Brooklyn accent filling the room.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” he began. “From time to time our great city, because of its size and diversity, has been stalked by serial killers. Thankfully, it has been many years since the last such plague. Now, however, it appears we are faced with a new serial killer, a true psychopath. Three people have been murdered in the space of a week, and in a particularly violent way. While the city is now enjoying the lowest murder rate of any major metropolitan area in the country—thanks to our vigorous enforcement efforts and zero tolerance for lawbreaking—this is clearly three murders too many. I called this press conference to share with the public the strong and effective steps we are taking to find this killer, and to answer as best we can questions you might have about this case and its somewhat sensational aspects. As you know, openness has always been a top priority of my administration. I therefore have brought with me Karl Rocker, the police commissioner; Sherwood Custer, precinct captain; Director Frederick Collopy and Vice President Roger Brisbane of the New York Museum of Natural History, where the latest homicide was discovered. My spokesperson, Mary Hill, will field the questions. But first, I will ask Commissioner Rocker to give you a briefing on the case.”

  He stepped back and Rocker took the microphone.

  “Thank you, Mr. Mayor.” His low, intelligent voice, dry as parchment, filled the room. “Last Thursday, the body of a young woman, Doreen Hollander, was discovered in Central Park. She had been murdered, and a peculiar kind of dissection or surgical operation performed on her lower back. While the official autopsy was in progress and the results were being evaluated, a second killing took place. Another young woman, Mandy Eklund, was found in Tompkins Square Park. Forensic analysis indicated that her manner of death, and the violence done to her person, matched the killing of Doreen Hollander. And yesterday, the body of a fifty-four-year-old man, Reinhart Puck, was discovered in the Archives of the New York Museum. He was the Museum’s head archivist. The body showed mutilations identical to Ms. Eklund’s and Ms. Hollander’s.”

  There was a flurry of raised hands, shouts, gestures. The commissioner quelled them by holding up both hands. “As you know, a letter was discovered in these same Archives, referring to a nineteenth-century serial killer. This letter described similar mutilations, conducted as a scientific experiment by a doctor named Leng, in lower Manhattan, one hundred and twenty years ago. The remains of thirty-six individuals were discovered at a building site on Catherine Street, presumably the spot where Dr. Leng did his depraved work.”

  There was another flurry of shouts.

  Now, the mayor broke in again. “An article about the letter appeared in last week’s New York Times. It described, in detail, the kind of mutilations Leng had performed on his victims more than a century ago, as well as the reason why he had carried them out.”

  The mayor’s eyes roved the crowd and paused momentarily on Smithback. The journalist felt a shiver of pride at the implied recognition. His article.

  “That article appears to have had an unfortunate effect: it appears to have stimulated a copycat killer. A modern psychopath.”

  What was this? Smithback’s smugness vanished before a quickly rising sense of outrage.

  “I am told by police psychiatrists this killer believes, in some twisted way, that by killing these people he will accomplish what Leng tried to accomplish a century ago—that is, extend his life span. The, er, sensationalistic app
roach of the Times article we believe inflamed the killer and stimulated him to act.”

  This was outrageous. The mayor was blaming him.

  Smithback looked around and saw that many eyes in the room were on him. He stifled his first impulse to stand up and protest. He had been doing his job as a reporter. It was just a story. How dare the mayor make him the scapegoat?

  “I am not blaming anyone in particular,” Montefiori droned on, “but I would ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the press, to please show restraint in your coverage. We already have three brutal killings on our hands. We are determined not to allow any more. All leads are being followed up vigorously. Let us not inflame the situation further. Thank you.”

  Mary Hill stepped forward to take questions. There was a roar, an instant outcry, as everyone stood up, gesturing madly. Smithback remained seated, flushing deeply. He felt violated. He tried to collect his thoughts, but his shock and outrage made him unable to think.

  Mary Hill was taking the first question.

  “You said the murderer performed an operation on his victims,” somebody asked. “Can you elaborate?”

  “Basically, the lower portion of the spinal cord had been removed in all three victims,” the commissioner himself answered.

  “It’s being said that the latest operation was actually performed in the Museum,” shouted another reporter. “Is that so?”

  “It is true that a large pool of blood was discovered in the Archives, not far from the victim. It appears the blood was, in fact, from the victim, but more forensic tests are underway. Whether the, er, operation was actually performed there must await further lab work.”

  “I understand that the FBI have been on the scene,” a young woman shouted. “Could you tell us the nature of their involvement?”

  “That is not entirely correct,” Rocker answered. “An FBI agent has taken an unofficial interest in the nineteenth-century serial killings. But he has no connection to this case.”

  “Is it true that the third body was impaled on the horns of a dinosaur?”