"We can't excavate until the debris is out of the way," said Giordino.
Pitt turned to Chase. "Have one of your men remove a few fragments from the original truss connections with a cutting torch. I'd like to run them by an analytical chemistry lab."
"What do you expect to find?" Chase asked.
"Maybe why the bridge failed," Pitt replied.
A man with a hard hat held up a portable loudspeaker and shouted over the noise of the crane's diesel engine: "Mr. Pitt, you're wanted on the phone."
Pitt excused himself and entered the barge's command office. The call was from Moon. "Any news?"
"None," Pitt answered.
There was a pause. "The President must have the treaty copy by Monday." Pitt was stunned. "That's only five days away."
"If you come up empty-handed by one o'clock in the afternoon on Monday, all search activities will be canceled."
Pitt's lips pressed together. "Dammit, Moon! You can't set impossible deadlines on a project like this."
"I'm sorry, that's the way it is."
"Why such short notice?"
"I can only tell you that the urgency is critical."
The knuckles of Pitt's hand clenched around the receiver turned ivory. He could think of nothing to say. "Are you still there?" queried Moon.
"Yes, I'm here."
"The President is anxious to hear of your progress."
"What progress?"
"You'll have to do better than that," Moon said testily.
"Everything hangs on whether we come across the train and the coach Essex was riding in."
"Care to give me an estimate?"
"There's an old saying among archaeologists," said Pitt. "Nothing is found until it wants to be found."
"I'm sure the President would prefer a more optimistic report. What should I tell him the chances are of having the treaty in his hands by Monday?"
"Tell the President," said Pitt, his voice like ice, "he doesn't have a prayer."
Pitt reached the Heiser Foundation analytic labs in Brooklyn at midnight. He backed the pickup truck against a loading dock and switched off the ignition. Dr. Walter McComb, the chief chemist, and two of his assistants were there, waiting for him. Pitt said, "I appreciate your staying up so late."
McComb, fifteen years older than Pitt and about seventy pounds heavier, hoisted one of the heavy bridge fragments without a grunt and shrugged. "I've never had a request from the White House before. How could I refuse?"
The four of them manhandled the steel scrap into a corner of a small warehouse. There the lab people used electric saws with moly steel blades to cut off samples which were soaked in a solution and cleaned by acoustics. Then they filtered away to different laboratories to begin their respective analytic specialities.
It was four in the morning when McComb conferred with his assistants and approached Pitt in the employees' lounge. "I.think we have something interesting for you," he said, grinning.
"How interesting?" Pitt asked.
"We've solved the mystery behind the Deauville-Hudson bridge collapse." McComb motioned for Pitt to follow him into a room crammed with exotic-looking chemistry equipment. He handed Pitt a large magnifying glass and pointed at two objects on the table. "See for yourself."
Pitt did as he was told and looked up questioningly. "What am I looking for?"
"Metal that separates under heavy stress leaves fracture lines. They're obvious in the sample on the left."
Pitt looked again. "Okay, I see them."
"You'll note that there are no fracture lines on the sample from the bridge to your right. The deformation is too extreme to have come from natural causes. We put specimens of it under a scanning electron microscope, which shows us the characteristic electrons in each element present. The results revealed residue from iron sulfide."
"What does it all mean?"
"What it all means, Mr. Pitt, is that the Deauville-Hudson bridge was cleverly. and systematically blown up."
"A grisly business," Preston Beatty exclaimed with an odd sort of pleasure. "One thing to butcher a human body, but quite another to serve it for dinner."
"Would you care for another beer?" asked Pitt.
"Please." Beatty downed the final swallow in his glass. "Fascinating people, Hattie and Nathan Pilcher. You might say they came up with the perfect solution for disposing of the corpus delicti." He motioned around the bar, which was busy with the early evening two-for-one drinks crowd. "This tavern we're sitting in rests on the very foundations of Pilcher's inn. The townspeople of Poughkeepsie burned down the original in 1823 when they learned of the ghastly deeds that had gone on behind its walls."
Pitt gestured for a barmaid. "What you're saying is that the Pilchers murdered overnight guests for their money and then put them on the menu."
"Yes, exactly." It was clear that Beatty was in his element. He recited the events with relish. "No way to take a body count, of course. A few scattered bones were dug up. But the best guess is that the Pilchers cooked between fifteen and twenty innocent travelers in the five years they were in business."
Professor Beatty was considered the leading authority on unsolved crimes. His books sold widely in Canada and the United States and had on occasion touched the nonfiction best-seller lists. He slouched comfortably in the booth and peered at Pitt through blue-green eyes over a salt-and-pepper beard. His age, Pitt guessed from the stern, craggy features and the silver-edged hair, was late forties. He looked more like a hardened pirate than a writer.
"The truly incredible part," Beatty continued, "is how the killers were exposed."
"A restaurant critic gave them a bad review," Pitt suggested.
"You're closer than you know." Beatty laughed. "One evening a retired sea captain stopped overnight. He was accompanied by a manservant, a Melanesian he'd brought on board his ship many years before in the Solomon Islands. Unfortunately for the Pilchers, the Melanesian had once been a cannibal and his educated taste buds correctly identified the meat in the stew."
"Not very appetizing," said Pitt. "So what happened to the Pilchers? Were they executed?"
"No, while awaiting trial they escaped and were never seen again."
The beers arrived and Beatty paused while Pitt signed the tab.
"I've pored through old crime reports here and in Canada trying to connect their modus operandi with later unsolved murders, but they passed into oblivion along with Jack the Ripper.
"And Clement Massey," said Pitt, broaching the subject on his mind.
"Ah, yes, Clement Massey, alias Dapper Doyle." Beatty spoke as if fondly recalling a favorite relative. "A robber years ahead of his time. He could have given lessons to the best of them."