Page 51 of The Cabinet of Dr. Leng

The man paused at the door handle.

“All right, I’m in. But I want the first payment today.”

The man calling himself Proctor smiled. “And you shall have it. Today. Now get in, please.” He went to the rear door and opened it.

“I need to pack first.”

“Absolutely everything you will need—from clothing and lodging to your migraine medication, to a laboratory with massive computing power and a high-tech machine shop—will be provided. And leave the gun. There will be better ones where you’re going.”

What the…“So, about the money?”

“It will be wired into your account before we arrive at our destination.”

Ferenc turned back to his house, set the alarm, locked the door, and slid into the leather-perfumed interior of the SUV.

“What destination, exactly?”

“New York City.”

31

THE FBI’S FORENSIC IMAGINGlaboratory must have worked through the night, because their report reached Coldmoon’s cell phone at six the next morning. They were certainly efficient, Coldmoon thought with appreciation. He was already up, preparing coffee on the hot plate in the sitting room of their White Feather Motel suite, Pologna still racked out in the bedroom.

He opened it eagerly. It was short and to the point: the ceremonial pipe in the original photograph of Sitting Bull was not the same as the object he’d photographed in the Rosebud museum. Forensic imaging technicians had taken both pipes and interposed one over the other: the grain in the wood of the twisted stem of the museum’s pipe almost, but not quite, matched the grain in the sharp glass-plate photograph of Sitting Bull.

The results were conclusive beyond doubt.

Coldmoon’s first impulse was to wake up Pologna and get his ass out of bed. Dudek had set a noon deadline for returning to Denver. But Coldmoon figured he could act more nimbly alone. He would finish his coffee and take off, leaving Pologna to wallow.

He forwarded a copy of the report to Dudek, who must have already received it but probably hadn’t looked at it. Coldmoon added a note to the effect that this did indeed suggest another possible motive for Twoeagle’s murder, and that he was looking into it with all possible speed.

His coffee wasn’t quite ready, but he poured out a cup anyway and considered his course of action. It was six fifteen, which by Dudek’s clock gave him a little less than six hours to identify a suspect. The Rosebud PD would be no help: they believed they had their guy and would resist him overturning that. Coldmoon would have to figure this out on his own. But it shouldn’t be that hard, he thought, because he was convinced the killer was not Lakota—based on the natural reluctance of a Lakota to use the ledge near those old burial caves as a sniper’s nest. Even a non-traditionalist would be wary, in case the spirits of the dead might jinx or otherwise interfere with the success of the killing. The killer had to be an outsider. Such a person would be noticed on the Rez—that was a given. Of course, there were many non-Lakotans living there: doctors, clinicians, teachers, missionaries, activists, wannabes. But the theft of Sitting Bull’s peace pipe was a sophisticated crime requiring specialized knowledge and ability. He just couldn’t see any of those types being involved.

Another curious thing: the pipe, while worth millions, wasn’t an object that could be sold. It was like theMona Lisa; it was too famous. So it must have been stolen to order by someone with connections. And whoever stole the pipe probably murdered Twoeagle, its maker, to cover up the crime or stop him from talking.

He gulped the last of his coffee and began to rise, when he suddenly realized he alreadyknewwho the thief must be. It was that curator Mrs. Twoeagle had mentioned: the old friend of her husband’s from New York’s Natural History Museum. What was his name?

Mancow.

Hell, yes. Mancow was the killer, or was at least deeply involved with the killer or killers. It was the obvious, theonlyanswer. Mancow had all the necessary local knowledge. He knew where Twoeagle got his stone. He probably knew Running, knew about the debt, and realized Running could be framed. Mancow, a curator, surely had contacts on the other end who would buy the pipe—he’d know collectors who might pay millions for an artifact that could never be sold or publicly displayed. Mancow also knew that Twoeagle was the only person alive who could make a replica so exact the theft would never be discovered. One way or another, he was at the very heart of this crime—the theftandthe murder.

Mancow.Was there a first name? Mrs. Twoeagle hadn’t mentioned it. Thank God it was such a unique name.

He quickly logged into the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting database to see if there was any crime data associated with someone named Mancow. It only took a moment for the UCR system to provide a hit. Coldmoon stared, hardly able to believe his eyes: a homicide had been reported to the UCR database just three days before by the NYPD. It had taken place in the New York Museum of Natural History, a curator named Eugene Mancow, Boaz Distinguished Curator of Ethnology in the Department of Anthropology.

Son of a bitch, Coldmoon thought. Twoeagle murdered, Mancow murdered—this had all the ingredients of a mopping-up operation.

He opened the bedroom door and looked upon the sprawled form of Pologna. He banged his fist on the wall, the agent abruptly bolting upright in bed.

“What the hell?”

“Get your clothes on, partner, looks like we’re out of here.”

“Christ, about time,” Pologna said sleepily. “Back to Denver?”

“Only long enough to change planes and get me on a flight to New York.”

32

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