The Inner Circle

by Brad Meltzer

  “Can I have a look at this safe?”

  The man shrugged. “Why not?”

  The safe stood in a dimly lit back room, amid stacks of musty boxes and decaying wooden crates. It was shoulder high, made of thick green metal. There was a shiny cylindrical hole where the lock mechanism had been drilled out.

  The man pulled the door open, then stepped back as O’Shaughnessy came forward. He knelt and peered inside. Dust motes hung like a pall in the air. The contents of the safe lay in deep shadow.

  “Can you turn on some more lights?” O’Shaughnessy asked.

  “Can’t. Aren’t any more.”

  “Got a flashlight handy?”

  The man shook his head. “But hold on a second.” He shuffled away, then returned a minute later, carrying a lighted taper in a brass holder.

  Jesus, this is unbelievable, O’Shaughnessy thought. But he accepted the candle with murmured thanks and held it inside the safe.

  Considering its large size, the safe was rather empty. O’Shaughnessy moved the candle around, making a mental inventory of its contents. Stacks of old newspapers in one corner; various yellowed papers, tied into small bundles; several rows of ancient-looking ledger books; two more modern-looking volumes, bound in garish red plastic; half a dozen shoe boxes with dates scrawled on their faces.

  Setting the candle on the floor of the safe, O’Shaughnessy grabbed eagerly at the old ledgers. The first one he opened was simply a shop inventory, for the year 1925: page after page of items, written in a spidery hand. The other volumes were similar: semiannual inventories, ending in 1942.

  “When did your father take over the shop?” O’Shaughnessy asked.

  The man thought for a moment. “During the war. ’41 maybe, or ’42.”

  Makes sense, O’Shaughnessy thought. Replacing the ledgers, he flipped through the stack of newspapers. He found nothing but a fresh cloud of dust.

  Moving the candle to one side, and fighting back a rising sense of disappointment, he reached for the bundles of papers. These were all bills and invoices from wholesalers, covering the same period: 1925 to 1942. No doubt they would match the inventory ledgers.

  The red plastic volumes were clearly far too recent to be of any interest. That left just the shoe boxes. One more chance. O’Shaughnessy plucked a shoe box from the top of the pile, blew the dust from its lid, opened it.

  Inside were old tax returns.

  Damn it, O’Shaughnessy thought as he replaced the box. He chose another at random, opened the lid. More returns.

  O’Shaughnessy sat back on his haunches, candle in one hand and shoe box in the other. No wonder the antiques dealer left empty-handed, he thought. Oh, well. It was worth a try.

  With a sigh, he leaned forward to replace the box. As he did so, he glanced once again at the red plastic folders. It was strange: the man said his father only used the safe for storing things of the grandfather. But plastic was a recent invention, right? Surely later than 1942. Curious, he plucked up one of the volumes and flipped it open.

  Within, he saw a dark-ruled page, full of old, handwritten entries. The page was sooty, partially burned, its edges crumbling away into ash.

  He glanced around. The proprietor of the shop had moved away, and was rummaging inside a cardboard box.

  Eagerly O’Shaughnessy snatched both the plastic volume and its mate from the safe. Then he blew out the candle and stood up.

  “Nothing much of interest, I’m afraid.” He held up the volumes with feigned nonchalance. “But as a formality, I’d like to take these down to our office, just for a day or two. With your permission, of course. It’ll save you and me lots of paperwork, court orders, all that kind of thing.”

  “Court orders?” the man said, a worried expression coming over his face. “Sure, sure. Keep them as long as you want.”

  Outside on the street, O’Shaughnessy paused to brush dust from his shoulders. Rain was threatening, and lights were coming on in the shotgun flats and coffeehouses that lined the street. A peal of distant thunder sounded over the hum of traffic. O’Shaughnessy turned up the collar of his jacket and tucked the volumes carefully under one arm as he hurried off toward Third Avenue.

  From the opposite sidewalk, in the shadow of a brownstone staircase, a man watched O’Shaughnessy depart. Now he came forward, derby hat low over a long black coat, cane tapping lightly on the sidewalk, and—after looking carefully left and right—slowly crossed the street, in the direction of New Amsterdam Chemists.

  THREE

  BILL SMITHBACK LOVED THE NEW YORK TIMES NEWSPAPER morgue: a tall, cool room with rows of metal shelves groaning under the weight of leather-bound volumes. On this particular morning, the room was completely empty. It was rarely used anymore by other reporters, who preferred to use the digitized, online editions, which went back only twenty-five years. Or, if necessary, the microfilm machines, which were a pain but relatively fast. Still, Smithback found there was nothing more interesting, or so curiously useful, as paging through the old numbers themselves. You often found little strings of information in successive issues—or on adjoining pages—that you would have missed by cranking through reels of microfilm at top speed.

  When he proposed to his editor the idea of a story on Leng, the man had grunted noncommittally—a sure sign he liked it. As he was leaving, he heard the bug-eyed monster mutter: “Just make damn sure it’s better than that Fairhaven piece, okay? Something with marrow.”

  Well, it would be better than Fairhaven. It had to be.

  It was afternoon by the time he settled into the morgue. The librarian brought him the first of the volumes he’d requested, and he opened it with reverence, inhaling the smell of decaying wood pulp, old ink, mold, and dust. The volume was dated January 1881, and he quickly found the article he was looking for: the burning of Shottum’s cabinet. It was a front-page story, with a handsome engraving of the flames. The article mentioned that the eminent Professor John C. Shottum was missing and feared dead. Also missing, the article stated, was a man named Enoch Leng, who was vaguely billed as a boarder at the cabinet and Shottum’s “assistant.” Clearly, the writer knew nothing about Leng.

  Smithback paged forward until he found a follow-up story on the fire, reporting that remains believed to be Shottum had been found. No mention was made of Leng.

  Now working backward, Smithback paged through the city sections, looking for articles on the Museum, the Lyceum, or any mention of Leng, Shottum, or McFadden. It was slow going, and Smithback often found himself sidetracked by various fascinating, but unrelated, articles.

  After a few hours, he began to get a little nervous. There were plenty of articles on the Museum, a few on the Lyceum, and even occasional mentions of Shottum and his colleague, Tinbury McFadden. But he could find nothing at all on Leng, except in the reports of the meetings of the Lyceum, where a “Prof. Enoch Leng” was occasionally listed among the attendees. Leng clearly kept a low profile.

  This is going nowhere, fast, he thought.

  He launched into a second line of attack, which promised to be much more difficult.

  Starting in 1917, the date that Enoch Leng abandoned his Doyers Street laboratory, Smithback began paging forward, looking for any murders that fit the profile. There were 365 editions of the Times every year. In those days, murders were a rare enough occurrence to usually land on the front page, so Smithback confined himself to perusing the front pages—and the obituaries, looking for the announcement of Leng’s death which would interest O’Shaughnessy as well as himself.

  There were many murders to read about, and a number of highly interesting obituaries, and Smithback found himself fascinated—too fascinated. It was slow going.

  But then, in the September 10, 1918, edition, he came across a headline, just below the fold: Mutilated Body in Peck Slip Tenement. The article, in an old-fashioned attempt to preserve readers’ delicate sensibilities, did not go into detail about what the mutilations were, but it appeared to involve the lower back.
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  He read on, all his reporter’s instincts aroused once again. So Leng was still active, still killing, even after he abandoned his Doyers Street lab.

  By the end of the day he had netted a half-dozen additional murders, about one every two years, that could be the work of Leng. There might have been others, undiscovered; or it might be that Leng had stopped hiding the bodies and was simply leaving them in tenements in widely scattered sections of the city. The victims were always homeless paupers. In only one case was the body even identified. They had all been sent to Potter’s Field for burial. As a result, nobody had remarked on the similarities. The police had never made the connection among them.

  The last murder with Leng’s modus operandi seemed to occur in 1930. After that, there were plenty of murders, but none involving the “peculiar mutilations” that were Leng’s signature.

  Smithback did a quick calculation: Leng appeared in New York in the 1870s—probably as a young man of, say, thirty. In 1930, he would have been over eighty. So why did the murders cease?

  The answer was perfectly obvious: Leng had died. He hadn’t found an obituary; but then, Leng had kept such a low profile that an obituary would have been highly unlikely.

  So much for Pendergast’s theory, thought Smithback.

  And the more he thought about it, the more he felt sure that Pendergast couldn’t really believe such an absurd thing. No; Pendergast was throwing this out as a red herring for some devious purpose of his own. That was Pendergast through and through—artful, winding, oblique. You never knew what he was really thinking, or what his plan was. He would explain all this to O’Shaughnessy the next time he saw him; no doubt the cop would be relieved to hear Pendergast hadn’t gone off the deep end.

  Smithback scanned another year’s worth of obituaries, but nothing on Leng appeared. Figures: the guy just cast no shadow at all on the historical record. It was almost creepy.

  He checked his watch: quitting time. He’d been at it for ten straight hours.

  But he was off to a good start. In one stroke, he’d uncovered another half-dozen unsolved murders which could likely be attributed to Leng. He had maybe two more days before his editor started demanding results. More, if he could show his work was turning up some nuggets of gold.

  He eased himself out of the comfortable chair, rubbed his hands together. Now that he’d combed the public record, he was ready to take the next step: Leng’s private record.

  One thing the day’s research had revealed was that Leng had been a guest researcher at the Museum. Smithback knew that, back then, all visiting scientists had to undergo an academic review in order to gain unfettered access to the collections. The review gave such details as the person’s age, education, degrees, fields of specialty, publications, marital status, and address. This might lead to other treasure troves of documents—deeds, leases, legal actions, so forth. Perhaps Leng could hide from the public eye—but the Museum’s records would be a different story.

  By the time Smithback was done, he would know Leng like a brother.

  The thought gave him a delicious shudder of anticipation.

  FOUR

  O’SHAUGHNESSY STOOD ON THE STEPS OUTSIDE THE Jacob Javits Federal Building. The rain had stopped, and puddles lay here and there in the narrow streets of lower Manhattan. Pendergast had not been at the Dakota, and he was not here, at the Bureau. O’Shaughnessy felt an odd blend of emotions: impatience, curiosity, eagerness. He’d been almost disappointed that he couldn’t show his find to Pendergast right away. Pendergast would surely see the value of the discovery. Maybe it would be the clue they needed to break the case.

  He ducked behind one of the building’s granite pillars to inspect the journals once again. His eye ran down the columned pages, the countless entries of faded blue ink. It had everything: names of purchasers, lists of chemicals, amounts, prices, delivery addresses, dates. Poisons were listed in red. Pendergast was going to love this. Of course, Leng would have made his purchases under a pseudonym, probably using a false address—but he would have had to use the same pseudonym for each purchase. Since Pendergast had already compiled a list of at least some of the rare chemicals Leng had used, it would be a simple matter to match that with the purchases in this book, and, through that, discover Leng’s pseudonym. If it was a name Leng used in other transactions, this little book was going to take them very far indeed.

  O’Shaughnessy glanced at the volumes another minute, then tucked them back beneath his arm and began walking thoughtfully down Broadway, toward City Hall and the subway. The volumes covered the years 1917 through 1923, antedating the fire that burned the chemist’s shop. Clearly, they’d been the only things to survive the fire. They had been in the possession of the grandfather, and the father had had them rebound. That was why the antiques dealer hadn’t bothered to examine them: they looked modern. It had been sheer luck that he himself had—

  Antiques dealer. Now that he thought about it, it seemed suspicious that some dealer just happened to walk into the store a few weeks after the old man’s death, interested in the safe. Perhaps that death hadn’t been an accident, after all. Perhaps the copycat killer had been there before him, looking for more information on Leng’s chemical purchases. But no—that was impossible. The copycat killings had begun as a result of the article. This had happened before. O’Shaughnessy chastised himself for not getting a description of the dealer. Well, he could always go back. Pendergast might want to come along himself.

  Suddenly, he stopped. Of their own accord, his feet had taken him past the subway station to Ann Street. He began to turn back, then hesitated. He wasn’t far, he realized, from 16 Water Street, the house where Mary Greene had lived. Pendergast had already been down there with Nora, but O’Shaughnessy hadn’t seen it. Not that there was anything to see, of course. But now that he was committed to this case, he wanted to see everything, miss nothing. He thought back to the Metropolitan Museum of Art: to the pathetic bit of dress, the desperate note.

  It was worth a ten-minute detour. Dinner could wait.

  He continued down Ann Street, then turned onto Gold, whistling Casta Diva from Bellini’s Norma. It was Maria Callas’s signature piece, and one of his favorite arias. He was in high spirits. Detective work, he was rediscovering, could actually be fun. And he was rediscovering something else: he had a knack for it.

  The setting sun broke through the clouds, casting his own shadow before him, long and lonely down the street. To his left lay the South Street Viaduct and, beyond, the East River piers. As he walked, office and financial buildings began giving way to tenements—some sporting re-pointed brick facades, others vacant and hollow-looking.

  It was growing chilly, but the last rays of the sun felt good on his face. He cut left onto John Street, heading toward the river. Ahead lay the rows of old piers. A few had been asphalted and still in use; others tilted into the water at alarming angles; and some were so decayed they were nothing more than double rows of posts, sticking out of the water. As the sun dipped out of sight, a dome of afterglow lay across the sky, deep purple grading to yellow against a rising fog. Across the East River, lights were coming on in the low brownstones of Brooklyn. He quickened his pace, seeing his breath in the air.

  It was as he passed Pearl Street that O’Shaughnessy began to feel that he was being followed. He wasn’t sure why, exactly; if, subliminally, he had heard something, or if it was simply the sixth sense of a beat cop. But he kept walking, not checking his stride, not turning around. Administrative leave or no, he had his own .38 Special strapped under his arm, and he knew how to use it. Woe to the mugger who thought he looked like an easy target.

  He stopped, glancing along the tiny, crooked maze of streets that led down to the waterfront. As he did so, the feeling grew stronger. O’Shaughnessy had long ago learned to trust such feelings. Like most beat cops, he had developed a highly sensitive street radar that sensed when something was wrong. As a cop, you either developed this radar fast, or you got your ass s
hot off and returned to you, gift-wrapped by St. Peter in a box with a nice pretty red ribbon. He’d almost forgotten he had the instinct. It had seen years of disuse, but such things died hard.

  He continued walking until he reached the corner of Burling Slip. He turned the corner, stepping into the shadows, and quickly pressed himself against the wall, removing his Smith & Wesson at the same time. He waited, breathing shallowly. He could hear the faint sound of water lapping the piers, the distant sound of traffic, a barking dog. But there was nothing else.

  He cast an eye around the corner. There was still enough light to see clearly. The tenements and dockside warehouses looked deserted.

  He stepped out into the half-light, gun ready, waiting. If somebody was following, they’d see his gun. And they would go away.

  He slowly reholstered the weapon, looked around again, then turned down Water Street. Why did he still feel he was being followed? Had his instincts rung a false alarm, after all?

  As he approached the middle of the block, and Number 16, he thought he saw a dark shape disappear around the corner, thought he heard the scrape of a shoe on pavement. He sprang forward, thoughts of Mary Greene forgotten, and whipped around the corner, gun drawn once again.

  Fletcher Street stretched ahead of him, dark and empty. But at the far corner a street lamp shone, and in its glow he could see a shadow quickly disappearing. It had been unmistakable.

  He sprinted down the block, turned another corner. Then he stopped.

  A black cat strolled across the empty street, tail held high, tip twitching with each step. He was a few blocks downwind of the Fulton Fish Market, and the stench of seafood wafted into his nostrils. A tugboat’s horn floated mournfully up from the harbor.

  O’Shaughnessy laughed ruefully to himself. He was not normally predisposed to paranoia, but there was no other word for it. He had been chasing a cat. This case must be getting to him.