Pendergast 06 - Dance of Death

by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Preston-Child - Dance Of Death

DANCE OF DEATH

Dou­glas Pre­ston

and

Lin­coln Child

WARN­ER BOOKS

NEW YORK BOSTON

This book is a work of fic­tion. Names, char­ac­ters, places, and in­ci­dents are the prod­uct of

the au­thors’ imag­ina­tion or are used fic­ti­tious­ly. Any re­sem­blance to ac­tu­al events, lo­cales, or per­sons, liv­ing or dead, is co­in­ci­den­tal.

Orig­inal po­et­ry on page 406 is from “Pi­ano” by D. H. Lawrence © 1918.

Copy­right © 2005 by Lin­coln Child and Splen­dide Men­dax, Inc.

All rights re­served.

Warn­er Books

Time Warn­er Book Group

1271 Av­enue of the Amer­ic­as, New York, NY 10020

Vis­it our Web site at www.twbook­mark.com.

Print­ed in the Unit­ed States of Amer­ica

First Print­ing: June 2005

10 987654321

Li­brary of Congress Cat­aloging-​in-​Pub­li­ca­tion Da­ta

Pre­ston, Dou­glas J.

Dance of death / Dou­glas Pre­ston and Lin­coln Child.— 1st ed.

p. cm.

Sum­ma­ry: “FBI Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast is pit­ted against his most per­son­al foe: His

broth­er, Dio­genes, has planned a hor­ren­dous crime and is fram­ing Pen­der­gast for a se­ries of ter­ri­ble mur­ders.”—Pro­vid­ed by the pub­lish­er.

IS­BN 0-446-57697-2 (reg­ular hard­cov­er ed.) — IS­BN 0-446-57830-4 (large print ed.)

1. Gov­ern­ment in­ves­ti­ga­tors—Fic­tion. 2. False tes­ti­mo­ny—Fic­tion. 3. Sib­ling ri­val­ry­Fic­tion. 4. Se­ri­al mur­ders—Fic­tion. 5. Broth­ers—Fic­tion. I. Child, Lin­coln. II. Ti­tle.

PS3566.R3982D36 2005

813.54 -dc22 2005003933

Book de­sign by Gior­get­ta Bell McRee

Lin­coln Child

ded­icates this book to his daugh­ter, Veron­ica

Dou­glas Pre­ston

ded­icates this book to his daugh­ter, Aletheia

AC­KNOWL­EDG­MENTS

At Warn­er Books, we would like to thank the fol­low­ing: Jamie Raab, Lar­ry Kir­sh­baum, Mau­reen Egen, De­vi Pil­lai, Chris­tine Bar­ba and the Sales Team, Karen Tor­res and Mar­ket­ing, Martha Otis and the Ad­ver­tis­ing and Pro­mo­tions De­part­ment, Jen­nifer Ro­manel­lo, Dan Rosen, Ma­ja Thomas, Flag Tonuzi, Bob Castil­lo, Pen­ina Sacks, Jim Spivey, Miri­am Park­er, Beth de Guz­man, and Les Pock­ell.

A spe­cial thanks to our ed­itor, Jaime Levine, for be­ing a tire­less cham­pi­on of the Pre­ston-​Child nov­els. We owe much of our suc­cess to her fine edit­ing, en­thu­si­asm, and ad­vo­ca­cy.

Thanks al­so to our agents, Er­ic Si­monoff at Jan­klow & Nes­bit, and Matthew Sny­der of Cre­ative Artists Agen­cy. Gar­lands of lau­rel leaves to Spe­cial Agent Dou­glas Margi­ni, Jon Couch, John Ro­gan, and Jill Nowak, for their di­verse and sundry min­is­tra­tions.

And, as al­ways, we want to thank our wives and chil­dren for their love and sup­port.

It goes with­out say­ing that the char­ac­ters, cor­po­ra­tions, events, lo­cales, po­lice precincts, pe­ri­od­icals, mu­se­ums, and gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies de­scribed on these pages are all fic­ti­tious, or are used fic­tious­ly.

ONE

De­wayne Michaels sat in the sec­ond row of the lec­ture hall, star­ing at the pro­fes­sor with what he hoped passed for in­ter­est. His eye­lids were so heavy they felt as if lead sinkers had been sewn to them. His head pound­ed in rhythm with his heart and his tongue tast­ed like some­thing had curled up and died on it. He’d ar­rived late, on­ly to find the huge hall packed and just one seat avail­able: sec­ond row cen­ter, smack-​dab in front of the lectern. Just great.

De­wayne was ma­jor­ing in elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer­ing. He’d elect­ed this class for the same rea­son en­gi­neer­ing stu­dents had done so for three decades—it was a gimme. “En­glish Lit­er­ature—A Hu­man­ist Per­spec­tive” had al­ways been a course you could breeze through and bare­ly crack a book. The usu­al pro­fes­sor, a fos­silized old turd named May­hew, droned on like a hyp­no­tist, hard­ly ev­er look­ing up from his forty-​year-​old lec­ture notes, his voice per­fect­ly pitched for sleep­ing. The old fart nev­er even changed his ex­ams, and copies were all over De­wayne’s dorm. Just his luck, then, that—for this one semester— a cer­tain renowned Dr. Tor­rance Hamil­ton was teach­ing the course. It was as if Er­ic Clap­ton had agreed to play the ju­nior prom, the way they fawned over Hamil­ton.

De­wayne shift­ed dis­con­so­late­ly. His butt had al­ready fall­en asleep in the cold plas­tic seat. He glanced to his left, to his right. All around, stu­dents—up­per­class­men, most­ly—were typ­ing notes, run­ning mi­cro­cas­sette recorders, hang­ing on the pro­fes­sor’s ev­ery word. It was the first time ev­er the course had been filled to ca­pac­ity. Not an en­gi­neer­ing stu­dent in sight.

What a crock.

De­wayne re­mind­ed him­self he still had a week to drop the course. But he need­ed this cred­it and it was still pos­si­ble Pro­fes­sor Hamil­ton was an easy grad­er. Hell, all these stu­dents wouldn’t have shown up on a Sat­ur­day morn­ing if they thought they were go­ing to get reamed out… would they?

In the mean­time, front and cen­ter, De­wayne fig­ured he’d bet­ter make an ef­fort to look awake.

Hamil­ton walked back and forth on the podi­um, his deep voice ring­ing. He was like a gray li­on, his hair swept back in a mane, dressed in a snazzy char­coal suit in­stead of the usu­al thread­bare set of tweeds. He had an un­usu­al ac­cent, not lo­cal to New Or­leans, cer­tain­ly not Yan­kee. Didn’t ex­act­ly sound En­glish, ei­ther. A teach­ing as­sis­tant sat in a chair be­hind the pro­fes­sor, as­sid­uous­ly tak­ing notes.

“And so,” Dr. Hamil­ton was say­ing, “to­day we’re look­ing at Eliot’s The Waste Land—the po­em that pack­aged the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry in all its alien­ation and empti­ness. One of the great­est po­ems ev­er writ­ten.”

The Waste Land. De­wayne re­mem­bered now. What a ti­tle. He hadn’t both­ered to read it, of course. Why should he? It was a po­em, not a damn nov­el: he could read it right now, in class.

He picked up the book of T. S. Eliot’s po­ems—he’d bor­rowed it from a friend, no use wast­ing good mon­ey on some­thing he’d nev­er look at again—and opened it. There, next to the ti­tle page, was a pho­to of the man him­self: a re­al wee­nie, tiny lit­tle granny glass­es, lips pursed like he had two feet of broom­stick shoved up his ass. De­wayne snort­ed and be­gan turn­ing pages. Waste Land, Waste Land… here it was.

Oh, shit. This was no lim­er­ick. The son of a bitch went on for page af­ter page.

“The first lines are by now so well known that it’s hard for us to imag­ine the sen­sa­tion—the shock—that peo­ple felt up­on first read­ing it in The Di­al in 1922. This was not what peo­ple con­sid­ered po­et­ry. It was, rather, a kind of an­ti-​po­em. The per­sona of the po­et was oblit­er­at­ed. To whom be­long these grim and dis­turb­ing thoughts? There is, of course, the fa­mous­ly bit­ter al­lu­sion to Chaucer in the open­ing line. But there is much more go­ing on here. Re­flect on the open­ing im­ages: ‘lilacs out of the dead land,’ ‘dull roots,’ ‘for­get­ful snow.’ No oth­er po­et in the his­to­ry of the world, my friends, ev­er wrote about spring in quite this way be­fore.”

De­wayne flipped to the end of the po­em, found it con­tained over four hun­dred lines. Oh, no. No…

“It’s in­trigu­ing that Eliot chose lilacs in the sec­ond line, rather than pop­pies, which would have been a more tra­di­tion­al choice at the time. Pop­pies were then grow­ing in an abun­dance Eu­rope hadn’t seen for cen­turies, due to the num­ber­less pu­tre­fy­ing corpses from the Great War. But more im­por­tant, the pop­py—with its con­no­ta­tions of nar­cot­ic sleep—seems the bet­ter fit to Eliot’s im­agery. So why did Eliot choose lilacs? Let’s take a look at Eliot’s use of al­lu­sion, here most like­ly in­volv­ing Whit­man’s ‘When Lilacs Last in the Door-​yard Bloom’d.’”

Oh, my God, it was like a night­mare: here he was in the front of the class and not un­der­stand­ing a word the pro­fes­sor was say­ing. Who’d have thought you could write four hun­dred lines of po­et­ry on a freak­ing waste land? Speak­ing of wast­ed, his head felt like it was packed full of ball bear­ings. Served him right for hang­ing out un­til four last night, do­ing shots of cit­ron Grey Goose.

He re­al­ized the class around him had gone still, and that the voice from be­hind the lectern had fall­en silent. Glanc­ing up at Dr. Hamil­ton, he no­ticed the pro­fes­sor was stand­ing mo­tion­less, a strange ex­pres­sion on his face. El­egant or not, the old fel­low looked as if he’d just dropped a steam­ing loaf in his draw­ers. His face had gone strange­ly slack. As De­wayne watched, Hamil­ton slow­ly with­drew a hand­ker­chief, care­ful­ly pat­ted his fore­head, then fold­ed the hand­ker­chief neat­ly and re­turned it to his pock­et. He cleared his throat.

“Par­don me,” he said as he reached for a glass of wa­ter on the lectern, took a small sip. “As I was say­ing, let’s look at the me­ter Eliot em­ploys in this first sec­tion of the po­em. His free verse is ag­gres­sive­ly en­jambed: the on­ly stopped lines are those that fin­ish his sen­tences. Note al­so the heavy stress­ing of verbs: breed­ing, mix­ing, stir­ring. It’s like the omi­nous, iso­lat­ed beat of a drum; it’s ug­ly; it shat­ters the mean­ing of the phrase; it cre­ates a sense of dis­qui­etude. It an­nounces to us that some­thing’s go­ing to hap­pen in this po­em, and that it won’t be pret­ty.”

The cu­rios­ity that had stirred in De­wayne dur­ing the un­ex­pect­ed pause fad­ed away. The odd­ly strick­en look had left the pro­fes­sor’s face as quick­ly as it came, and his fea­tures—though still pale—had lost their ashen qual­ity.

De­wayne re­turned his at­ten­tion to the book. He could quick­ly scan the po­em, fig­ure out what the damn thing meant. He glanced at the ti­tle, then moved his eye down to the epi­gram, or epi­graph, or what­ev­er you called it.

He stopped. What the hell was this? Nam Sibyl­lam qui­dem… What­ev­er it was, it wasn’t En­glish. And there, buried in the mid­dle of it, some weird-​ass squig­gles that weren’t even part of the nor­mal al­pha­bet. He glanced at the ex­plana­to­ry notes at the bot­tom of the page and found the first bit was Latin, the sec­ond Greek. Next came the ded­ica­tion: For Ezra Pound, il miglior fab­bro. The notes said that last bit was Ital­ian.

Latin, Greek, Ital­ian. And the frig­ging po­em hadn’t even start­ed yet. What next, hi­ero­glyph­ics?

It was a night­mare.

He scanned the first page, then the sec­ond. Gib­ber­ish, plain and sim­ple. “I will show you fear in a hand­ful of dust.” What was that sup­posed to mean? His eye fell on the next line. Frisch we­ht der Wind…

Abrupt­ly, De­wayne closed the book, feel­ing sick. That did it. On­ly thir­ty lines in­to the po­em and al­ready five damn lan­guages. First thing to­mor­row morn­ing, he’d go down to the reg­is­trar and drop this turkey.

He sat back, head pound­ing. Now that the de­ci­sion was made, he won­dered how he was go­ing to make it through the next forty min­utes with­out climb­ing the walls. If on­ly there’d been a seat up in the back, where he could slip out un­seen…

Up at the podi­um, the pro­fes­sor was dron­ing on. “All that be­ing said, then, let’s move on to an ex­am­ina­tion of—“

Sud­den­ly, Hamil­ton stopped once again.

“Ex­cuse me.” His face went slack again. He looked—what? Con­fused? Flus­tered? No: he looked scared.

De­wayne sat up, sud­den­ly in­ter­est­ed.

The pro­fes­sor’s hand flut­tered up to his hand­ker­chief, fum­bled it out, then dropped it as he tried to bring it to his fore­head. He looked around vague­ly, hand still flut­ter­ing about, as if to ward off a fly. The hand sought out his face, be­gan touch­ing it light­ly, like a blind per­son. The trem­bling fin­gers pal­pat­ed his lips, eyes, nose, hair, then swat­ted the air again.

The lec­ture hall had gone still. The teach­ing as­sis­tant in the seat be­hind the pro­fes­sor put down his pen, a con­cerned look on his face. What’s go­ing on? De­wayne won­dered. Heart at­tack?

The pro­fes­sor took a small, lurch­ing step for­ward, bump­ing in­to the podi­um. And now his oth­er hand flew to his face, feel­ing it all over, on­ly hard­er now, push­ing, stretch­ing the skin, pulling down the low­er lip, giv­ing him­self a few light slaps.

The pro­fes­sor sud­den­ly stopped and scanned the room. “Is there some­thing wrong with my face?”

Dead si­lence.

Slow­ly, very slow­ly, Dr. Hamil­ton re­laxed. He took a shaky breath, then an­oth­er, and grad­ual­ly his fea­tures re­laxed. He cleared his throat.

“As I was say­ing—“

De­wayne saw the fin­gers of one hand come back to life again, twitch­ing, trem­bling. The hand re­turned to his face, the fin­gers pluck­ing, pluck­ing the skin.

This was too weird.

“I—” the pro­fes­sor be­gan, but the hand in­ter­fered with his speech. His mouth opened and closed, emit­ting noth­ing more than a wheeze. An­oth­er shuf­fled step, like a robot, bump­ing in­to the podi­um.

“What are these things?” he asked, his voice crack­ing.

God, now he was pulling at his skin, eye­lids stretched grotesque­ly, both hands scrab­bling—then a long, un­even scratch from a fin­ger­nail, and a line of blood ap­peared on one cheek.

A rip­ple coursed through the class­room, like an un­easy sigh.

“Is there some­thing wrong, Pro­fes­sor?” the T.A. said.

“I… asked … a ques­tion.” The pro­fes­sor growled it out, al­most against his will, his voice muf­fled and dis­tort­ed by the hands pulling at his face.

An­oth­er lurch­ing step, and then he let out a sud­den scream: “My face! Why will no one tell me what’s wrong with my face!”

More death­ly si­lence.

The fin­gers were dig­ging in, the fist now pound­ing at the nose, which cracked faint­ly.

“Get them off me! They’re eat­ing in­to my face!”

Oh, shit: blood was now gush­ing from the nos­trils, splash­ing down on the white shirt and char­coal suit. The fin­gers were like claws on the face, rip­ping, tear­ing; and now one fin­ger hooked up and—De­wayne saw with ut­ter hor­ror—worked it­self in­to one eye sock­et. “Out! Get them out!”

There was a sharp, ro­tat­ing mo­tion that re­mind­ed De­wayne of the scoop­ing of ice cream, and sud­den­ly the globe of the eye bulged out, grotesque­ly large, jit­ter­ing, star­ing di­rect­ly at De­wayne from an im­pos­si­ble an­gle.

Screams echoed across the lec­ture hall. Stu­dents in the front row re­coiled. The T.A. jumped from his seat and ran up to Hamil­ton, who vi­olent­ly shrugged him off.

De­wayne found him­self root­ed to his seat, his mind a blank, his limbs par­alyzed.

Pro­fes­sor Hamil­ton now took a me­chan­ical step, and an­oth­er, rip­ping at his face, tear­ing out clumps of hair, stag­ger­ing as if he might fall di­rect­ly on top of De­wayne.

“A doc­tor!” the T.A. screamed. “Get a doc­tor!”

The spell was bro­ken. There was a sud­den com­mo­tion, ev­ery­one ris­ing at once, the sound of falling books, a loud hub­bub of pan­icked voic­es.

“My face!” the pro­fes­sor shrieked over the din. “Where is it?”

Chaos took over, stu­dents run­ning for the door, some cry­ing. Oth­ers rushed for­ward, to­ward the strick­en pro­fes­sor, jump­ing on­to the podi­um, try­ing to stop his mur­der­ous self­as­sault. The pro­fes­sor lashed out at them blind­ly, mak­ing a high-​pitched, keen­ing sound, his face a mask of red. Some­one forc­ing his way down the row trod hard on De­wayne’s foot. Drops of fly­ing blood had spat­tered De­wayne’s face: he could feel their warmth on his skin. Yet still he did not move. He found him­self un­able to take his eyes off the pro­fes­sor, un­able to es­cape this night­mare.

The stu­dents had wres­tled the pro­fes­sor to the sur­face of the podi­um and were now slid­ing about in his blood, try­ing to hold down his thrash­ing arms and buck­ing body. As De­wayne watched, the pro­fes­sor threw them off with de­mon­ic strength, grabbed the cup of wa­ter, smashed it against the podi­um, and—scream­ing— be­gan to work the shards in­to his own neck, twist­ing and scoop­ing, as if try­ing to dig some­thing out.

And then, quite sud­den­ly, De­wayne found he could move. He scram­bled to his feet, skid­ded, ran along the row of seats to the aisle, and be­gan sprint­ing up the stairs to­ward the back ex­it of the lec­ture hall. All he could think about was get­ting away from the un­ex­plain­able hor­ror of what he’d just wit­nessed. As he shot out the door and dashed full speed down the cor­ri­dor be­yond, one phrase kept echo­ing in his mind, over and over and over:

I will show you fear in a hand­ful of dust.

TWO

“Din­nie? Vin? Sure you don’t want any help in there?”

“No!” Lieu­tenant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta tried to keep his voice cool and even. “No. It’s all right.

Just a cou­ple more min­utes.”

He glanced up at the clock: al­most nine. A cou­ple more min­utes. Yeah, right. He’d be

lucky if he had din­ner on the ta­ble by ten.

Lau­ra Hay­ward’s kitchen—he still thought of it as hers; he’d on­ly moved in six weeks be­fore—was usu­al­ly an oa­sis of or­der, as calm and im­mac­ulate as Hay­ward her­self. Now the

place looked like a war zone. The sink was over­flow­ing with soiled pots. Half a dozen emp­ty

cans lay in and around the waste­bas­ket, drib­bling out rem­nants of toma­to sauce and olive oil.

Al­most as many cook­books lay open on the counter, their pages ob­scured by bread crusts

and bliz­zards of flour. The lone win­dow look­ing down on the snowy in­ter­sec­tion of 77th and

First was speck­led with grease from fry­ing sausages. Al­though the vent fan was go­ing full

blast, the odor of burned meat lin­gered stub­born­ly in the air.

For weeks now, when­ev­er their sched­ules al­lowed time with each oth­er, Lau­ra had thrown

to­geth­er—al­most ef­fort­less­ly, it seemed— meal af­ter de­li­cious meal. D’Agos­ta had been as­ton­ished. For his soon-​to-​be-​ex-​wife, now up in Cana­da, cook­ing had al­ways been an or­deal

ac­com­pa­nied by histri­on­ic sighs, clang­ing of pans, and— more of­ten than not—dis­agree­able

re­sults. It was like night and day with Lau­ra.

But along with his as­ton­ish­ment, D’Agos­ta al­so felt a bit threat­ened. As a de­tec­tive cap­tain

in the NYPD, not on­ly did Lau­ra Hay­ward out­rank him, but she out­cooked him as well. Ev­ery­body knew men made the best chefs, es­pe­cial­ly Ital­ians. They blew the French out of the wa­ter. And so he’d kept promis­ing to cook her a re­al Ital­ian din­ner, just like his grand­moth­er

used to make. Each time he re­peat­ed the promise, the meal seemed to grow in com­plex­ity

and spec­ta­cle. And at last, tonight was the night he would cook his grand­moth­er’s lasagna

napo­le­tana.

Ex­cept that once he got in the kitchen, he re­al­ized he didn’t re­mem­ber ex­act­ly how his

grand­moth­er cooked lasagna napo­le­tana. Oh, he’d watched dozens of times. He’d of­ten

helped out. But what pre­cise­ly went in­to that ragù she spooned over the lay­ers of pas­ta? And

what was it she’d added to those tiny meat­balls that—along with the sausage and var­ious

cheeses—made up the fill­ing? He had turned in his des­per­ation to Lau­ra’s cook­books, but

each one had of­fered con­flict­ing sug­ges­tions. And so now here he was, hours lat­er,

ev­ery­thing at vary­ing stages of com­ple­tion, frus­tra­tion mount­ing by the sec­ond. He heard Lau­ra say some­thing from her ban­ish­ment in the liv­ing room. He took a deep

breath.

“What was that, babe?”

“I said I’ll be home late to­mor­row. Rock­er’s hav­ing a state-​of-​the-​force meet­ing with all the

cap­tains on Jan­uary 22. That leaves me on­ly Mon­day evening to get sta­tus re­ports and per­son­nel records up to date.”

“Rock­er and his pa­per­work. How is your pal the com­mis­sion­er, by the way?” “He’s not my pal.”

D’Agos­ta turned back to the ragù, boil­ing away on the stove. He re­mained con­vinced that

he’d got­ten his old job on the force back, his se­nior­ity re­stored, on­ly be­cause Lau­ra had put a

word in Rock­er’s ear. He didn’t like it, but there it was.

A huge bub­ble of ragù rose from the pot, burst like a vol­canic erup­tion, and spewed sauce

over his hand. “Ouch!” he cried, dous­ing the hand in dish­wa­ter while turn­ing down the flame. “What’s up?”

“Noth­ing. Ev­ery­thing’s just fine.” He stirred the sauce with a wood­en spoon, re­al­ized the

bot­tom had burned, moved it hasti­ly on­to a back burn­er. He raised the spoon to his lips a lit­tle

gin­ger­ly. Not bad, not bad at all. De­cent tex­ture, nice mouth feel, on­ly a slight burned taste.

Not like his grand­moth­er’s, though.

“What else goes in the ragù, Non­na?” he mur­mured.

If there was any re­sponse from the choir in­vis­ible, D’Agos­ta couldn’t hear it. Sud­den­ly, there was a loud hiss­ing from the stove. The gi­ant pot of salt­ed wa­ter was bub­bling over. Swal­low­ing a curse, D’Agos­ta turned down the heat on that as well, tore open a

box of pas­ta, dumped in a pound of lasagna.

The sound of mu­sic fil­tered in from the liv­ing room: Lau­ra had put on a Steely Dan CD. “I

swear I’m go­ing to speak to the land­lord about that door­man,” she said through the door. “Which door­man?”

“That new one who came on a few weeks ago. He’s the surli­est guy I’ve ev­er met. What

kind of a door­man doesn’t even open the door for you? And this morn­ing he wouldn’t call me

a cab. Just shook his head and walked away. I don’t think he speaks En­glish. At least, he pre­tends he doesn’t.”

What do you ex­pect for twen­ty-​five hun­dred a month? D’Agos­ta thought to him­self. But it

was her apart­ment, so he kept his mouth shut. And it was her mon­ey that paid the rent—at

least for now. He was de­ter­mined to change that as soon as pos­si­ble.

When he’d moved in, he hadn’t brought any ex­pec­ta­tions with him. He’d just gone through

one of the worst times in his life, and he re­fused to let him­self think more than a day ahead.

Al­so, he was still in the ear­ly stages of what promised to be an un­pleas­ant di­vorce: a new ro­man­tic en­tan­gle­ment prob­ably wasn’t the smartest thing for him right now. But this had turned

out far bet­ter than he could ev­er have hoped. Lau­ra Hay­ward was more than a girl­friend or lover—she’d be­come a soul­mate. He’d thought that their both be­ing on the job, her rank­ing him, would be a prob­lem. It was just the op­po­site: it gave them com­mon ground, a chance to help each oth­er, to talk about their cas­es with­out wor­ry­ing about con­fi­den­tial­ity or sec­ond

guessers.

“Any new leads on the Dan­gler?” he heard Lau­ra ask from the liv­ing room. The Dan­gler was the NYPD’s pet name for a perp who’d re­cent­ly been steal­ing mon­ey

from ATMs with a hacked bank card, then ex­pos­ing his john­son to the se­cu­ri­ty cam­era. Most

of the in­ci­dents had been in D’Agos­ta’s precinct.

“Got a pos­si­ble eye­wit­ness to yes­ter­day’s job.”

“Eye­wit­ness to what?” Lau­ra asked sug­ges­tive­ly.

“To the face, of course.” D’Agos­ta gave the pas­ta a stir, reg­ulat­ed the boil. He glanced at

the oven, made sure it was up to tem­per­ature. Then he turned back to the messy counter,

men­tal­ly go­ing over ev­ery­thing. Sausage: check. Meat­balls: check. Ri­cot­ta, Parme­san, and

moz­zarel­la fiordi­lat­te: all check. Looks like I might pull this one out of a hat, af­ter all… Hell. He still had to grate the Parme­san.

He threw open a draw­er, be­gan rum­mag­ing fran­ti­cal­ly. As he did so, he thought he heard

the door­bell ring.

Maybe it was his imag­ina­tion: Lau­ra didn’t get all that many callers, and he sure as hell

didn’t get any. Es­pe­cial­ly this time of night. It was prob­ably a de­liv­ery from the Viet­namese

restau­rant down­stairs, knock­ing at the wrong door.

His hand closed over the box grater. He yanked it out, set it on the counter, grabbed the

brick of Parme­san. He chose the face with the finest grate, raised the Parme­san to the steel. “Vin­nie?” Lau­ra said. “You’d bet­ter come out here.”

D’Agos­ta hes­itat­ed on­ly a mo­ment. Some­thing in her tone made him drop ev­ery­thing on

the counter and walk out of the kitchen.

She was stand­ing in the front door­way of the apart­ment, speak­ing to a stranger. The

man’s face was in shad­ow, and he was dressed in an ex­pen­sive trench coat. Some­thing

about him seemed fa­mil­iar.

Then the man took a step for­ward, in­to the light. D’Agos­ta caught his breath. “You!” he said.

The man bowed. “And you are Vin­cent D’Agos­ta.”

Lau­ra glanced back at him. Who’s he? her ex­pres­sion read.

Slow­ly, D’Agos­ta re­leased the breath. “Lau­ra,” he said, “I’d like you to meet Proc­tor. Agent

Pen­der­gast’s chauf­feur.”

Her eyes widened in sur­prise.

Proc­tor bowed. “De­light­ed to make your ac­quain­tance, ma’am.”

She sim­ply nod­ded in re­ply.

Proc­tor turned back to D’Agos­ta. “Now, sir, if you’d kind­ly come with me?” “Where?” But al­ready D’Agos­ta knew the an­swer.

“Eight nine­ty-​one River­side Drive.”

D’Agos­ta licked his lips. “Why?”

“Be­cause some­one is wait­ing for you there. Some­one who has re­quest­ed your pres­ence.” “Now?”

Proc­tor sim­ply bowed again in re­ply.

THREE

D’Agos­ta sat in the back­seat of the vin­tage ‘59 Rolls-​Royce Sil­ver Wraith, look­ing out the win­dow but not re­al­ly see­ing any­thing. Proc­tor had tak­en him west through the park, and the big car was now rock­et­ing up Broad­way.

D’Agos­ta shift­ed in the white leather in­te­ri­or, bare­ly able to con­tain his cu­rios­ity and im­pa­tience. He was tempt­ed to pep­per Proc­tor with ques­tions, but he felt sure the chauf­feur would not re­spond.

Eight nine­ty-​one River­side Drive. The home—one of the homes— of Spe­cial Agent Aloy­sius Pen­der­gast, D’Agos­ta’s friend and part­ner in sev­er­al un­usu­al cas­es. The mys­te­ri­ous FBI agent whom D’Agos­ta knew, and yet did not know, who seemed to have as many lives as a cat…

Un­til that day not two months ago, when he’d seen Pen­der­gast for the last time. It had been on the steep flank of a hill south of Flo­rence, Italy. The spe­cial agent had been be­low him, sur­round­ed by a raven­ing pack of boar-​hunt­ing dogs, backed up by a dozen armed men. Pen­der­gast had sac­ri­ficed him­self so D’Agos­ta could get away.

And D’Agos­ta had let him do it.

D’Agos­ta stirred rest­less­ly at the mem­ory. Some­one who has re­quest­ed your pres­ence, Proc­tor had said. Was it pos­si­ble that, de­spite ev­ery­thing, Pen­der­gast had some­how man­aged to es­cape? It wouldn’t be the first time. He sup­pressed a surge of hope…

But no, it was not pos­si­ble. He knew in his heart that Pen­der­gast was dead.

Now the Rolls was cruis­ing up River­side Drive. D’Agos­ta shift­ed again, glanc­ing out at the pass­ing street signs: 125th Street, 130th. Very quick­ly, the well-​tend­ed neigh­bor­hood sur­round­ing Columbia Uni­ver­si­ty gave way to di­lap­idat­ed brown­stones and de­cay­ing hulks. The usu­al loi­ter­ers had been chased in­doors by the Jan­uary chill, and in the dim light of evening the street looked de­sert­ed.

Up ahead now, just past 137th Street, D’Agos­ta could make out the board­ed-​up fa­cade and wid­ow’s walk of Pen­der­gast’s man­sion. The dark lines of the vast struc­ture sent a chill through him.

The Rolls pulled past the gates of the spiked iron fence and stopped be­neath the porte­cochere. With­out wait­ing for Proc­tor, D’Agos­ta let him­self out and stared up at the fa­mil­iar lines of the ram­bling man­sion, win­dows cov­ered with tin, look­ing for all the world like the oth­er aban­doned man­sions along the drive. In­side, it was home to won­ders and se­crets al­most be­yond be­lief. He felt his heart be­gin to race. Maybe Pen­der­gast was in­side, af­ter all, in his usu­al black suit, sit­ting in the li­brary be­fore a blaz­ing fire, the danc­ing flames cast­ing strange shad­ows over his pale face. “My dear Vin­cent,” he would say, “thank you for com­ing. May I in­ter­est you in a glass of Ar­magnac?”

D’Agos­ta wait­ed as Proc­tor un­locked, then opened, the heavy door. Pale yel­low light streamed out on­to the worn brick­work. He stepped for­ward while Proc­tor care­ful­ly re­locked the door be­hind him. He felt his heart beat still faster. Just be­ing back in­side the man­sion sent a strange mix of emo­tions cours­ing through him: ex­cite­ment, anx­iety, re­gret.

Proc­tor turned to­ward him. “This way, sir, if you please.”

The chauf­feur led the way down the length of the gallery and in­to the blue-​domed re­cep­tion hall. Here, dozens of rip­pled-​glass cab­inets dis­played an ar­ray of fab­ulous spec­imens: me­te­orites, gems, fos­sils, but­ter­flies. D’Agos­ta’s eyes stole across the par­quet floor to the far side, where the dou­ble doors of the li­brary lay open. If Pen­der­gast was wait­ing for him, that’s where he’d be: sit­ting in a wing chair, a half-​smile play­ing across his lips, en­joy­ing the ef­fect of this lit­tle dra­ma on his friend.

Proc­tor ush­ered D’Agos­ta to­ward the li­brary. Heart pound­ing, he stepped through the doors and in­to the sump­tu­ous room.

The smell of the place was as he re­mem­bered it: leather, buck­ram, a faint hint of woodsmoke. But to­day there was no fire crack­ling mer­ri­ly on the hearth. The room was cold. The in­laid book­shelves, full of leather-​bound vol­umes tooled in gold, were dim and in­dis­tinct. On­ly a sin­gle lamp glowed—a Tiffany piece stand­ing on a side ta­ble—cast­ing a small pool of light in a vast lake of dark­ness.

Af­ter a mo­ment, D’Agos­ta made out a form stand­ing be­side the ta­ble, just out­side the cir­cle of light. As he watched, the form ad­vanced to­ward him across the car­pet­ing. He rec­og­nized im­me­di­ate­ly the young girl as Con­stance Greene, Pen­der­gast’s ward and as­sis­tant. She was per­haps twen­ty, wear­ing a long, old-​fash­ioned vel­vet dress that snugged her slen­der waist and fell in lines al­most to the floor. De­spite her ob­vi­ous youth, her bear­ing had the poise of a much old­er wom­an. And her eyes, too—D’Agos­ta re­mem­bered her strange eyes, full of ex­pe­ri­ence and learn­ing, her speech old-​fash­ioned, even quaint. And then there was that some­thing else, some­thing just the oth­er side of nor­mal, that seemed to cling to her like the an­tique air that ex­haled from her dress­es.

Those eyes seemed dif­fer­ent to­day. They looked haunt­ed, dark, heavy with loss … and fear?

Con­stance held out her right hand. “Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta,” she said in a mea­sured tone.

D’Agos­ta took the hand, un­cer­tain as al­ways whether to shake it or kiss it. He did nei­ther, and af­ter a mo­ment the hand was with­drawn.

Nor­mal­ly, Con­stance was po­lite to a fault. But to­day she sim­ply stood be­fore D’Agos­ta, with­out of­fer­ing him a chair or in­quir­ing af­ter his health. She seemed un­cer­tain. And D’Agos­ta could guess why. The hope that had been stir­ring with­in him be­gan to fade.

“Have you heard any­thing?” she asked, her voice al­most too low to make out. “Any­thing at all?”

D’Agos­ta shook his head, the flame of hope dashed out.

Con­stance held his glance a mo­ment longer. Then she nod­ded her un­der­stand­ing, her gaze drop­ping to the floor, her hands flut­ter­ing at her sides like con­fused white moths.

They stood there to­geth­er in si­lence for a minute, per­haps two.

Con­stance raised her eyes again. “It’s fool­ish for me to con­tin­ue to hope. More than six weeks have passed with­out a word.”

“I know.”

“He is dead,” she said, voice even low­er.

D’Agos­ta said noth­ing.

She roused her­self. “That means it is time for me to give you this.” She went to the man­tel­piece, took down a small san­dal­wood box in­laid with moth­er-​of-​pearl. A tiny key al­ready in her hand, she un­locked it and, with­out open­ing it, held it out to­ward D’Agos­ta.

“I have de­layed this mo­ment too long al­ready. I felt that there was still a chance he might ap­pear.”

D’Agos­ta stared at the box. It looked fa­mil­iar, but for a mo­ment he could not place where he’d seen it be­fore. Then it came to him: it had been in this house, this very room, the pre­vi­ous Oc­to­ber. He’d en­tered the li­brary and dis­turbed Pen­der­gast in the act of writ­ing a note. The agent had slipped it in­to this same box. That had been the night be­fore they left on their fate­ful trip to Italy—the night Pen­der­gast told him about his broth­er, Dio­genes.

“Take it, Lieu­tenant,” Con­stance said, her voice break­ing. “Please don’t draw this out.”

“Sor­ry.” D’Agos­ta gen­tly took the box, opened it. In­side lay a sin­gle sheet of heavy cream­col­ored pa­per, fold­ed once.

Sud­den­ly, the very last thing D’Agos­ta want­ed to do was to take out that piece of pa­per. With deep mis­giv­ings, he reached for it, opened it, and be­gan to read.

My dear Vin­cent,

If you are read­ing this let­ter, it means that I am dead. It al­so means I died be­fore I could ac­com­plish a task that, right­ful­ly, be­longs to me and no oth­er. That task is pre­vent­ing my broth­er, Dio­genes, from com­mit­ting what he once boast­ed would be the “per­fect” crime.

I wish I could tell you more about this crime, but all I know of it is that he has been plan­ning it for many years and that he in­tends it to be his apotheo­sis. What­ev­er this “per­fect” crime is, it will be in­fa­mous. It will make the world a dark­er place. Dio­genes is a man with ex­cep­tion­al stan­dards. He would not set­tle for less.

I’m afraid, Vin­cent, that the task of stop­ping Dio­genes must now fall to you. I can­not tell you how much I re­gret this. It is some­thing I would not wish on my worst en­emy, and es­pe­cial­ly not on some­body I’ve come to re­gard as a trust­ed friend. But it is some­thing I be­lieve you are best equipped to han­dle. Dio­genes’s threat is too amor­phous for me to take to the FBI or oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cy, since he con­trived his own false death some years ago. A sin­gle, ded­icat­ed in­di­vid­ual has the best chance of pre­vent­ing my broth­er from car­ry­ing out this crime. That in­di­vid­ual is you.

Dio­genes has sent me a let­ter con­sist­ing of on­ly one thing: a date, Jan­uary 28. In all like­li­hood, the crime will be com­mit­ted on that date. I would not, how­ev­er, make any as­sump­tions—the date could mean noth­ing at all. Dio­genes is, if any­thing, un­pre­dictable.

You will need to take a leave of ab­sence from the Southamp­ton P.D. or wher­ev­er you are cur­rent­ly em­ployed. This can­not be avoid­ed. Get all the in­for­ma­tion you can from De­tec­tive Cap­tain Lau­ra Hay­ward, but for her own sake min­imize her in­volve­ment. Dio­genes is an ex­pert on foren­sics and po­lice pro­ce­dure, and any in­for­ma­tion left at the scene of the crime—as­sum­ing, God for­bid, you are not in time to stop said crime—will no doubt be clev­er­ly con­trived to mis­lead the po­lice. Hay­ward, as fine an of­fi­cer as she is, is no match for my broth­er.

I’ve left a sep­arate note for Con­stance, who will at this point know all the par­tic­ulars of this mat­ter. She will make my house, my fi­nances, and all my re­sources avail­able to you. She will im­me­di­ate­ly put at your dis­pos­al a bank ac­count con­tain­ing $500,000 in your name, to use as you see fit. I rec­om­mend that you use her in­valu­able re­search skills, though I ask that you keep her out of your di­rect in­ves­ti­ga­tion for ob­vi­ous rea­sons. She must nev­er leave the man­sion—ev­er. And you must watch her very, very care­ful­ly. She is still frag­ile, both men­tal­ly and phys­ical­ly.

As a first step, you should pay a vis­it to my Great-​Aunt Cor­nelia, who is con­fined to a hos­pi­tal on Lit­tle Gov­er­nors Is­land. She knew Dio­genes as a boy, and she will pro­vide you with the per­son­al and fam­ily in­for­ma­tion you will un­doubt­ed­ly need. Treat this in­for­ma­tion—and her—with great care.

One fi­nal word. Dio­genes is con­sum­mate­ly dan­ger­ous. He is my in­tel­lec­tu­al equal, but he was some­how formed with­out the slight­est shred of moral con­science. In ad­di­tion, a se­vere child­hood ill­ness left him dam­aged. He is mo­ti­vat­ed by an undy­ing ha­tred of my­self and an ut­ter con­tempt for hu­man­ity. Do not gain his at­ten­tion any ear­li­er than you have to. Be vig­ilant at all times.

Good­bye, my friend—and good luck.

Aloy­sius Pen­der­gast

D’Agos­ta looked up. “Jan­uary 28? My God, that’s just one week away.”

Con­stance on­ly bowed her head.

FOUR

IT was the smell of the place, she thought, that re­al­ly brought home the fact she was back in the mu­se­um: that mix­ture of moth­balls, dust, old var­nish, and a whiff of de­cay. She walked down the great fifth-​floor cor­ri­dor, past the oak­en of­fice doors, each sport­ing the name of a cu­ra­tor in black-​edged gold leaf. She was sur­prised at how few new names there were. A lot of things had changed in six years, but here, in the mu­se­um, time seemed to run at a dif­fer­ent pace.

She had been wor­ried—more wor­ried than she cared to ad­mit— about how it would feel to be back in the mu­se­um sev­er­al years af­ter the most fright­en­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of her life. In fact, that wor­ry had de­layed her de­ci­sion to re­turn. But she had to ad­mit, af­ter a slight­ly rough first cou­ple of days, that lit­tle of the old ter­ror still clung to the place. Her night­mares, the lin­ger­ing sense of vul­ner­abil­ity, had fad­ed with the years. The old events, the bad events, were now an­cient his­to­ry. And the mu­se­um was still a won­der­ful old pile, a Goth­ic cas­tle of Brob­ding­na­gian pro­por­tions, full of won­der­ful, ec­cen­tric peo­ple—and burst­ing with strange and fas­ci­nat­ing spec­imens. The most ex­ten­sive col­lec­tion of trilo­bites in the world. Lu­cifer’s Heart, the most pre­cious di­amond ev­er found. “Snag­gle­tooth,” the largest and best-​pre­served T. rex fos­sil known.

Nev­er­the­less, she had been care­ful not to stray in­to the mu­se­um’s sub-​base­ment. And it was not lazi­ness that made her lim­it the num­ber of nights she worked much past clos­ing.

She re­mem­bered the time when she had walked down this au­gust cor­ri­dor for the first time as a grad­uate stu­dent of no ac­count. Grad­uate stu­dents were so low on the mu­se­um’s totem pole they were not even de­spised—they were sim­ply in­vis­ible. Not that she’d been re­sent­ful: it was a rite of pas­sage ev­ery­one had to go through. Back then she was a no­body—a “you,” or, at best, a “Miss.”

How things had changed. Now she was “Doc­tor,” some­times even “Pro­fes­sor,” and her name ap­peared in print with a string of ti­tles af­ter it: Pier­pont Re­search Fel­low (the “fel­low” part al­ways made her smile); ad­junct pro­fes­sor of ethnophar­ma­col­ogy; and her most re­cent ti­tle, on­ly three weeks old: ed­itor in chief of Muse­ol­ogy. While she’d al­ways told her­self that ti­tles meant noth­ing, she was sur­prised to dis­cov­er that, once she’d ac­quired them, they were most grat­ify­ing. Pro­fes­sor … that had a nice round sound to it, es­pe­cial­ly on the lips of those crusty old cu­ra­tors who, six years ago, wouldn’t even give her the time of day. Now they went out of their way to ask her opin­ion or press their mono­graphs on her. Just that morn­ing, no less a per­son­age than the head of an­thro­pol­ogy and her tit­ular boss, Hugo Men­zies, had asked so­lic­itous­ly af­ter the sub­ject of her pan­el dis­cus­sion for the forth­com­ing So­ci­ety of Amer­ican An­thro­pol­ogists meet­ing.

Yes: a re­fresh­ing change, in­deed.

The of­fice of the di­rec­tor lay at the end of the hall, in one of the cov­et­ed tow­er of­fices. She paused be­fore the great oak­en door, dark­ened with the pati­na of a cen­tu­ry. She raised her hand, then low­ered it, sud­den­ly feel­ing ner­vous. She took a deep breath. She felt hap­py to be back in the mu­se­um, and she won­dered yet again if the sud­den con­tro­ver­sy she was about to launch her­self in­to wasn’t a se­ri­ous mis­take. She re­mind­ed her­self that this con­tro­ver­sy had been forced on her and that as ed­itor of Muse­ol­ogy she had to take a stand. If she ducked this one, she would im­me­di­ate­ly lose her cred­ibil­ity as an ar­biter of ethics and free ex­pres­sion. Worse, she wouldn’t be able to live with her­self.

Her hand fell firm­ly up­on the oak­en door, once, twice, three times, each knock firmer than the last.

A mo­ment of si­lence. Then the door was opened by Mrs. Surd, the dry and ef­fi­cient sec­re­tary to the mu­se­um’s di­rec­tor. The sharp blue eyes gave her a rapid once-​over as she stepped aside.

“Dr. Green? Dr. Col­lopy is ex­pect­ing you. You may go straight in.”

Mar­go ap­proached the in­ner door, if any­thing dark­er and more mas­sive than the oth­er, grasped the ice-​cold brass knob, turned it, and pushed it open on well-​oiled hinges.

There, be­hind the great nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry desk, un­der a vast paint­ing by De Cle­fisse of Vic­to­ria Falls, sat Fred­er­ick Wat­son Col­lopy, di­rec­tor of the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry. He rose gra­cious­ly, a smile creas­ing his hand­some face. He was dressed in a somber gray suit of old-​fash­ioned cut, the starched white shirt­front en­livened on­ly by a bright red silk bow tie.

“Ah, Mar­go. How good of you to come. Please take a seat.”

How good of you to come. The note she had re­ceived had more the fla­vor of a sum­mons than an in­vi­ta­tion.

Col­lopy came around his desk and in­di­cat­ed a plush leather arm­chair which formed part of a group ar­rayed be­fore a pink mar­ble fire­place. Mar­go sat down and Col­lopy fol­lowed, tak­ing a seat op­po­site her.

“Care for any­thing? Cof­fee, tea, min­er­al wa­ter?”

“Noth­ing, thank you, Dr. Col­lopy.”

He leaned back, threw one leg ca­su­al­ly over the oth­er.

“We’re so pleased to have you back at the mu­se­um, Mar­go,” he said in his old New York so­ci­ety drawl. “I was de­light­ed when you agreed to ac­cept the ed­itor­ship of Muse­ol­ogy. We felt so lucky to lure you away from Gene­Dyne. Those re­search pa­pers you pub­lished re­al­ly im­pressed us, and your back­ground here in ethnophar­ma­col­ogy made you the per­fect can­di­date.”

“Thank you, Dr. Col­lopy.”

“And how do you find it? Ev­ery­thing to your sat­is­fac­tion?” His voice was gen­teel, even kind.

“Ev­ery­thing is well, thank you.”

“I am glad to hear it. Muse­ol­ogy is the old­est jour­nal in its field, pub­lish­ing con­tin­uous­ly since 1892, and still the most re­spect­ed. It is a great re­spon­si­bil­ity and chal­lenge you’ve tak­en on, Mar­go.”

“I hope to car­ry on the tra­di­tion.”

“And so do we.” He stroked his close­ly trimmed iron-​gray beard med­ita­tive­ly. “One of the things we are proud of is the strong­ly in­de­pen­dent ed­ito­ri­al voice of Muse­ol­ogy.”

“Yes,” said Mar­go. She knew where this was go­ing, and she was ready.

“The mu­se­um has nev­er in­ter­fered with the ed­ito­ri­al opin­ions ex­pressed in Muse­ol­ogy, and we nev­er will. We con­sid­er the ed­ito­ri­al in­de­pen­dence of the jour­nal to be well-​nigh sa­cred.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“On the oth­er hand, we would not like to see Muse­ol­ogy de­volve in­to a … what should one call it? An op-​ed or­gan.” The way he said it made it sound like an­oth­er kind of or­gan en­tire­ly. “With in­de­pen­dence comes re­spon­si­bil­ity. Af­ter all, Muse­ol­ogy bears the name of the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry.”

The voice re­mained soft-​spo­ken, and yet it had tak­en on an edge. Mar­go wait­ed. She would re­main cool and pro­fes­sion­al. In fact, she had al­ready pre­pared her re­sponse—even writ­ten it out and mem­orized it so she could ex­press her­self more elo­quent­ly—but it was im­por­tant to let Col­lopy have his say.

“That is why the pre­vi­ous ed­itors of Muse­ol­ogy have al­ways been ex­ceed­ing­ly care­ful about how they ex­er­cised their ed­ito­ri­al free­dom.” He let the words hang in the air.

“I as­sume you’re re­fer­ring to the ed­ito­ri­al I am about to pub­lish on the repa­tri­ation re­quest of the Tano In­di­ans.”

“Ex­act­ly. The let­ter from the tribe, ask­ing for the re­turn of the Great Ki­va masks, ar­rived on­ly last week. The board of trustees has not yet dis­cussed it. The mu­se­um hasn’t even had time to con­sult its lawyers. Isn’t it a bit pre­ma­ture to be ed­ito­ri­al­iz­ing on some­thing that hasn’t even be­gun to be eval­uat­ed? Es­pe­cial­ly when you’re so new to the po­si­tion?”

“It seems to me a straight­for­ward is­sue,” she said qui­et­ly.

At this, Col­lopy leaned back in his chair, a pa­tron­iz­ing smile on his face. “It is any­thing but straight­for­ward, Mar­go. Those masks have been in the mu­se­um’s col­lec­tions for one hun­dred and thir­ty-​five years. And they’re to be the cen­ter­piece of the Sa­cred Im­ages show, the biggest ex­hi­bi­tion in the mu­se­um since Su­per­sti­tion, six years ago.”

An­oth­er heavy si­lence.

“Nat­ural­ly,” Col­lopy went on, “I’m not go­ing to ask you to al­ter your ed­ito­ri­al stand. I will mere­ly point out that there may be a few facts you are un­aware of.” He pressed an al­most in­vis­ible but­ton on his desk and said in­to an equal­ly in­vis­ible speak­er: “The file, Mrs. Surd?”

A mo­ment lat­er, the sec­re­tary ap­peared with an an­cient file in her hand. He thanked her, glanced at it, then hand­ed it to Mar­go.

Mar­go took the file. It was very old and brit­tle and gave off a fear­ful smell of dust and dry rot. She opened it care­ful­ly. In­side were some hand­writ­ten pa­pers in spi­dery mid-​nine­teen­th­cen­tu­ry script, a con­tract, some draw­ings.

“That is the orig­inal ac­ces­sion file of the Great Ki­va masks you seem so anx­ious to re­turn to the Tano In­di­ans. Have you seen it?”

“No, but—“

“Per­haps you should have be­fore you draft­ed your ed­ito­ri­al. That first doc­ument is a bill of sale, item­iz­ing two hun­dred dol­lars for the masks: a lot of mon­ey back in 1870. The mu­se­um didn’t pay for those Great Ki­va masks in trin­kets and beads. The sec­ond doc­ument is the con­tract. That X is the sig­na­ture of the chief of the Great Ki­va So­ci­ety—the man who sold the masks to Kendall Swope, the mu­se­um’s an­thro­pol­ogist. The third doc­ument, there, is the let­ter of thanks the mu­se­um wrote to the chief, in care of the In­di­an agent, which was read to him by the agent, promis­ing the chief that the masks would be well tak­en care of.”

Mar­go stared at the an­cient pa­pers. It con­tin­ual­ly amazed her how tena­cious the mu­se­um was with ev­ery­thing, es­pe­cial­ly doc­uments.

“The point is, Mar­go, the mu­se­um bought those masks in good faith. We paid an ex­cel­lent price for them. We’ve now owned them for al­most one and a half cen­turies. We’ve tak­en beau­ti­ful care of them. On top of that, they’re among the most im­por­tant ob­jects in our en­tire Na­tive Amer­ican col­lec­tion. Many thou­sands of peo­ple view them—are ed­ucat­ed by them, make ca­reer choic­es in an­thro­pol­ogy or ar­chae­ol­ogy be­cause of them—ev­ery week. Not once in a hun­dred and thir­ty-​five years did any mem­ber of the Tano tribe com­plain or ac­cuse the mu­se­um of ac­quir­ing them il­le­gal­ly. Now, doesn’t it seem just a tad un­fair for them to sud­den­ly be de­mand­ing them back? And right be­fore a block­buster ex­hi­bi­tion in which they are the fea­tured at­trac­tion?”

Si­lence fell in the grand tow­er of­fice, with its tall win­dows over­look­ing Mu­se­um Drive, its dark-​pan­eled walls graced with Audubon paint­ings.

“It does seem a bit un­fair,” Mar­go said even­ly.

A broad smile creased Col­lopy’s face. “I knew you would un­der­stand.”

“But it won’t change my ed­ito­ri­al po­si­tion.”

A grad­ual freez­ing of the air. “Ex­cuse me?”

It was time for her speech. “Noth­ing in that ac­ces­sion file changes the facts. It’s quite sim­ple. The chief of the Great Ki­va So­ci­ety didn’t own the masks to be­gin with. They weren’t his. They be­longed to the en­tire tribe. It would be like a priest sell­ing off church relics. By law, you can’t sell some­thing you don’t own. That bill of sale and con­tract in that fold­er are not legal­ly valid. What’s more, when he bought the masks, Kendall Swope knew that, and that is clear from the book he wrote, Tano Cer­emo­ni­als. He knew the chief didn’t have the right to sell them. He knew the masks were a sa­cred part of the Great Ki­va cer­emo­ny and must nev­er leave the ki­va. He even ad­mits the chief was a crook. It’s all right there in Tano Cer­emo­ni­als.”

“Mar­go—“

“Please let me fin­ish, Dr. Col­lopy. There’s an even more im­por­tant prin­ci­ple at stake here. Those masks are sa­cred to the Tano In­di­ans. Ev­ery­one rec­og­nizes that. They can’t be re­placed or re­made. The Tanos be­lieve each mask has a spir­it and is alive. These aren’t con­ve­nient­ly made-​up be­liefs; they’re sin­cere and deeply held re­li­gious con­vic­tions.”

“But af­ter one hun­dred and thir­ty-​five years? Come, now. Why hadn’t we heard a peep from those peo­ple all this time?”

“The Tano had no idea where the masks had gone un­til they read about the up­com­ing ex­hi­bi­tion.”

“I sim­ply can­not be­lieve they were mourn­ing the loss of those masks for all this time. They were long for­got­ten. This is all too con­ve­nient, Mar­go. Those masks are worth five, maybe ten mil­lion dol­lars. It’s about mon­ey, not about re­li­gion.”

“No, it isn’t. I’ve spo­ken to them.”

“You’ve spo­ken to them?”

“Of course. I called and spoke to the gov­er­nor of Tano Pueblo.”

For a mo­ment, Col­lopy’s mask of im­pla­ca­bil­ity fell away. “The le­gal im­pli­ca­tions of this are stag­ger­ing.”

“I was sim­ply ful­fill­ing my re­spon­si­bil­ity as ed­itor of Muse­ol­ogy to learn the facts. The Tanos do re­mem­ber, they re­mem­bered all along—those masks, as your own car­bon dat­ing proved, were al­most sev­en hun­dred years old when they were col­lect­ed. Be­lieve me, the Tanos re­mem­ber their loss.”

“They won’t be prop­er­ly cu­rat­ed—the Tanos don’t have the prop­er fa­cil­ities to take care of them!”

“They should nev­er have left the ki­va to be­gin with. They aren’t ‘mu­se­um spec­imens’—they’re a liv­ing part of Tano re­li­gion. Do you think the bones of St. Pe­ter un­der the Vat­ican are be­ing ‘prop­er­ly cu­rat­ed’? The masks be­long in that ki­va, whether it’s cli­mate-​con­trolled or not.”

“If we give these masks back, it would set a ter­ri­ble prece­dent. We’ll be in­un­dat­ed with de­mands from ev­ery tribe in Amer­ica.”

“Per­haps. But that’s not a valid ar­gu­ment. Giv­ing back those masks is the right thing to do. You know it, and I’m go­ing to pub­lish an ed­ito­ri­al say­ing so!”

She stopped, swal­lowed, re­al­iz­ing she had vi­olat­ed all her res­olu­tions by rais­ing her voice.

“And that is my fi­nal, and in­de­pen­dent, ed­ito­ri­al judg­ment,” she added more qui­et­ly.

FIVE

There were no sec­re­taries, re­cep­tion­ists, or low-​ech­elon flunkies seat­ed out­side the en­trance to Glen Sin­gle­ton’s of­fice. The room it­self was no larg­er than any of the oth­er few dozen of­fices scat­tered around the cramped and dusty con­fines of the precinct house. There was no sign on the door an­nounc­ing the ex­alt­ed sta­tus of its ten­ant. Un­less you were a cop your­self, there would be no way of know­ing this was the of­fice of the head hon­cho.

But that, D’Agos­ta re­flect­ed as he ap­proached, was the cap­tain’s style. Cap­tain Sin­gle­ton was that rarest of po­lice brass, a guy who’d worked his way up hon­or­ably through the ranks, built a rep­uta­tion not from kiss­ing ass, but by solv­ing tough cas­es with sol­id po­lice work. He lived and breathed for one rea­son: to get crim­inals off the streets. He was per­haps the hard­est-​work­ing cop D’Agos­ta had ev­er known, save Lau­ra Hay­ward. D’Agos­ta had worked for more than his fair share of in­com­pe­tent desk jock­eys, and that made him re­spect Sin­gle­ton’s pro­fes­sion­al­ism all the more. He sensed that Sin­gle­ton re­spect­ed him, too, and to D’Agos­ta that meant a great deal.

All this made what he was about to do even hard­er.

Sin­gle­ton’s door was wide open, as usu­al. It wasn’t his style to lim­it ac­cess—any cop who want­ed to see him could do so at any time. D’Agos­ta knocked, half lean­ing in­to the door­way. Sin­gle­ton was there, stand­ing be­hind the desk, talk­ing in­to the phone. Even at his desk, the man nev­er seemed to sit down. He was in his late for­ties, tall and lean, with a swim­mer’s physique—he swam laps ev­ery morn­ing at six, with­out fail. He had a long face and an aquiline pro­file. Ev­ery oth­er week he had his salt-​and-​pep­per hair cut by the ridicu­lous­ly ex­pen­sive bar­ber in the base­ment of the Car­lyle, and he al­ways looked as well groomed as a pres­iden­tial can­di­date.

Sin­gle­ton flashed a smile at D’Agos­ta and ges­tured for him to come in.

D’Agos­ta stepped in­side. Sin­gle­ton point­ed to a seat, but D’Agos­ta shook his head: some­thing about the cap­tain’s rest­less en­er­gy made him feel more com­fort­able on his feet.

Sin­gle­ton was clear­ly talk­ing to some­body in NYPD pub­lic re­la­tions. His voice was po­lite, but D’Agos­ta knew that, in­side, Sin­gle­ton was do­ing a slow boil: his in­ter­est lay in po­lice work, not P.R. He hat­ed the very con­cept, telling D’Agos­ta, “Ei­ther you catch the perp or you don’t. So what’s there to spin?”

D’Agos­ta glanced around. The of­fice was dec­orat­ed so min­imal­ly it was al­most anony­mous. No pho­tos of fam­ily; no oblig­atory pic­ture of the cap­tain shak­ing hands with the may­or or com­mis­sion­er. Sin­gle­ton was one of the most dec­orat­ed cops on ac­tive du­ty, but there were no com­men­da­tions for brav­ery, no plaques or ci­ta­tions framed on the walls. In­stead, there was just some pa­per­work sit­ting on a cor­ner of his desk, fif­teen or twen­ty mani­la fold­ers on a near­by shelf. On a sec­ond shelf, D’Agos­ta could see hand­books on foren­sic tech­nique and crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tion, half a dozen well-​thumbed books on ju­rispru­dence.

Sin­gle­ton hung up the phone with a sigh of re­lief. “Hell,” he said. “I feel like I spend more time jug­gling com­mu­ni­ty ac­tion groups than I do catch­ing bad guys. It’s enough to make me wish I was on foot pa­trol again.” He turned to­ward D’Agos­ta with an­oth­er short smile. “Vin­nie, how’s it go­ing?”

“Okay,” D’Agos­ta replied, not feel­ing okay at all. Sin­gle­ton’s friend­li­ness and ap­proach­abil­ity made this lit­tle vis­it all the more dif­fi­cult.

The cap­tain hadn’t re­quest­ed D’Agos­ta: he’d been as­signed to the di­vi­sion by the com­mis­sion­er’s of­fice. This would have guar­an­teed D’Agos­ta a sus­pi­cious, hos­tile re­cep­tion from oth­er brass he’d known—Jack Wax­ie, for in­stance. Wax­ie would have felt threat­ened, kept D’Agos­ta at arm’s length, made sure he got the low-​pro­file cas­es. But Sin­gle­ton was just the op­po­site. He’d wel­comed D’Agos­ta, per­son­al­ly brought him up to speed on the de­tails and pro­ce­dures unique to his of­fice, even put him in charge of the Dan­gler in­ves­ti­ga­tion—and, at the mo­ment, cas­es didn’t get any high­er-​pro­file than that.

The Dan­gler hadn’t killed any­body. He hadn’t even used a gun. But he’d done some­thing al­most as bad: he’d sub­ject­ed the NYPD to pub­lic ridicule. A thief who emp­tied ATMs of cash, then whipped out his dong for the ben­efit of their se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras, was per­fect fod­der for the dai­ly tabloids. So far, the Dan­gler had paid vis­its to eleven ATMs. Each new rob­bery meant more front-​page head­lines, smirk­ing, full of in­nu­en­do. Each time, the NYPD had its face rubbed in it afresh. Dan­gler’s streak grows longer, the Post had trum­pet­ed af­ter the last rob­bery, three days be­fore. Po­lice find them­selves short.

“How’s our wit­ness?” Sin­gle­ton asked. “She pan­ning out?” He stood be­hind his desk, look­ing at D’Agos­ta. The cap­tain had pierc­ing blue eyes, and when they looked at you, it was like you were the cen­ter of the uni­verse: for that brief mo­ment, at least, you had his com­plete and un­di­vid­ed at­ten­tion. It was un­nerv­ing.

“Her sto­ry checks out against the se­cu­ri­ty cam.”

“Good, good. Hell, you’d think in this dig­ital age the banks would be able to man­age bet­ter cov­er­age with their se­cu­ri­ty cams. The guy seems to know their sweep, their range—you think he worked in se­cu­ri­ty once?”

“We’re look­ing in­to that.”

“Eleven hits and all we still know for sure is he’s Cau­casian.”

And cir­cum­cised, D’Agos­ta thought mirth­less­ly. “I had our de­tec­tives call all the branch man­agers on the hot list. They’re in­stalling ad­di­tion­al hid­den cam­eras.”

“The perp might be work­ing for the se­cu­ri­ty firm that pro­vides the cam­eras.”

“Look­ing in­to that, too.”

“One step ahead of me. That’s what I like to hear.” Sin­gle­ton moved to­ward the pile of pa­per­work, be­gan rif­fling through it. “This guy’s pret­ty ter­ri­to­ri­al. All his jobs have been with­in a twen­ty-​square-​block area. So the next step is to stake out the choic­est ma­chines he hasn’t hit yet. Un­less we can nar­row down the list of po­ten­tials, we’ll be spread too thin. Thank God we aren’t work­ing any ac­tive homi­cides at the mo­ment. Vin­nie, I’ll leave it to you to in­ter­face with the task force, draw up a list of most like­ly ATMs based on the ear­li­er hits, and al­lo­cate man­pow­er for the stake­outs. Who knows? We might just get lucky.”

Here it comes, D’Agos­ta thought. He licked his lips. “Ac­tu­al­ly, that’s what I came in to talk to you about.”

Sin­gle­ton stopped, fixed him once again with his in­tense gaze. Wrapped up in his work the way he was, it hadn’t oc­curred to the cap­tain that D’Agos­ta might have come in about any­thing else. “What’s on your mind?”

“I don’t re­al­ly know how to say this, but… sir, I wish to re­quest a leave of ab­sence.”

Sin­gle­ton’s eye­brows shot up in sur­prise. “A leave of ab­sence?”

“Yes, sir.” D’Agos­ta knew how it sound­ed. But no mat­ter how he’d re­hearsed in his mind, it nev­er seemed to come out right.

Sin­gle­ton held his gaze a mo­ment longer. He didn’t say any­thing; he didn’t need to. A leave of ab­sence. You’ve been here six weeks, and you want a leave of ab­sence?

“Any­thing I should know, Vin­nie?” he asked in a low voice.

“It’s a fam­ily mat­ter,” D’Agos­ta replied af­ter a brief pause. He hat­ed him­self for stam­mer­ing un­der Sin­gle­ton’s gaze, and hat­ed him­self even more for ly­ing. But just what the hell was he sup­posed to say? Sor­ry, Cap, but I’m tak­ing un­lim­it­ed time off to go chase a man who’s of­fi­cial­ly dead, whose where­abouts are un­known, for a crime that hasn’t yet been com­mit­ted? There was no ques­tion in his mind, no ques­tion at all, this was some­thing he had to do. It was so im­por­tant to Pen­der­gast that he’d left in­struc­tions from be­yond the grave. That was more than enough. But that didn’t make this any eas­ier or feel any more right.

Sin­gle­ton held him in a look that was both con­cerned and spec­ula­tive.

“Vin­nie, you know I can’t do that.”

With a sink­ing sen­sa­tion, D’Agos­ta re­al­ized it was go­ing to be even hard­er than he an­tic­ipat­ed. Even if he had to quit, he would— but that would be the end of his ca­reer. A cop could quit once, but not twice.

“It’s my moth­er,” he said. “She’s got can­cer. They think it’s ter­mi­nal.”

Sin­gle­ton stood quite still for a mo­ment, tak­ing this in. Then he rocked slight­ly on his heels. “I’m very, very sor­ry to hear that.”

There was an­oth­er si­lence. D’Agos­ta wished some­body would knock on the door, or the phone would ring, or a me­te­or would strike the precinct house—any­thing to de­flect Sin­gle­ton’s at­ten­tion.

“We just found out,” he went on. “It was a shock, a re­al shock.” He paused, sick at heart. He’d just blurt­ed out the first ex­cuse he could think of, but al­ready it seemed an ap­palling choice. His own moth­er, can­cer… shit, he’d have to go to con­fes­sion af­ter this, big-​time. And call his mom in Vero Beach, send her two dozen ros­es.

Sin­gle­ton was nod­ding slow­ly. “How much time do you need?”

“The doc­tors don’t know. A week, maybe two.”

Sin­gle­ton nod­ded again, even more slow­ly. D’Agos­ta felt him­self flush­ing all over. He won­dered what the cap­tain was think­ing.

“She doesn’t have much time left,” he went on. “You know how it is. I haven’t ex­act­ly been a mod­el son. I just feel I need to be with her, right now, through this … Just like any son would,” he con­clud­ed lame­ly. “You could rack it up against fu­ture va­ca­tion and sick leave.”

Sin­gle­ton lis­tened close­ly, but this time he didn’t nod. “Of course,” he said.

He gazed at D’Agos­ta a long time. His look seemed to say: A lot of peo­ple have sick par­ents, per­son­al tragedies. But they’re pro­fes­sion­als. What’s so dif­fer­ent about you? Break­ing eye con­tact at last, he turned away, pick­ing up the sheaf of pa­pers that lay on his desk.

“I’ll have Mer­cer and Sabriskie co­or­di­nate the stake­outs,” he said crisply over his shoul­der. “Take what­ev­er time you need, Lieu­tenant.”

SIX

A dense FOG lay over the stag­nant marsh­lands of Lit­tle Gov­er­nors Is­land. From out of the murk came the mourn­ful blast of a tug­boat drift­ing down the East Riv­er. Man­hat­tan was less than a mile across the icy black wa­ters, but no lights from the cityscape pierced the veil of mist.

D’Agos­ta sat in the front pas­sen­ger seat, hold­ing grim­ly to the door han­dle as Lau­ra Hay­ward’s un­marked pool car bounced and swayed over the rough one-​lane road. The head­lights stabbed in­to the gloom, twin shafts of yel­low that car­omed wild­ly up and down, briefly il­lu­mi­nat­ing the rut­ted drive and the skele­tal chest­nut trees that lined it.

“I think you missed one pot­hole back there,” he said.

“Nev­er mind about that. Let me get this straight. You told Sin­gle­ton your mom has can­cer?”

D’Agos­ta sighed. “It was the first thing that came in­to my head.”

“Jeez, Vin­nie. Sin­gle­ton’s own moth­er died of can­cer. And guess what? He nev­er missed a day of work. Had the fu­ner­al on a Sun­day. Ev­ery­body knows that sto­ry.”

“I didn’t.” D’Agos­ta winced, think­ing back over what he’d said to his cap­tain that morn­ing. You know how it is. I just feel I need to be with her, right now, through this. Just like any son would. Nice go­ing, Vin­nie.

“And I still can’t be­lieve you’re tak­ing a leave of ab­sence to hunt for this broth­er of Pen­der­gast’s, based on a let­ter and a hunch. Don’t get me wrong: no­body re­spect­ed Pen­der­gast more than me, he was the most bril­liant law en­force­ment of­fi­cer I ev­er met. But he had a fa­tal weak­ness, Vin­nie, and you know what it was. He didn’t re­spect the rules. He thought he was above the rest of us schmucks who are bound by the reg­ula­tions. And I hate to see you pick­ing up that at­ti­tude.”

“I’m not pick­ing up that at­ti­tude.”

“This search for Pen­der­gast’s broth­er is so far be­yond the rule book it isn’t even fun­ny. I mean what, ex­act­ly, are you plan­ning to do if you find this Dio­genes?”

D’Agos­ta didn’t an­swer. He hadn’t got­ten that far yet.

The car shud­dered as the front left tire sank in­to a rut. “Are you sure this is the right way?” she asked. “I can’t be­lieve there’s a hos­pi­tal out here.”

“It’s the right way.”

Ahead, vague shapes were grad­ual­ly be­com­ing vis­ible through the fog. As the car ap­proached, the shapes re­solved them­selves in­to the point­ed bars of a wrought-​iron gate, set in a ten-​foot-​high wall of moss-​cov­ered bricks. The sedan pulled up be­fore the closed gate, an an­cient guard­house be­side it. A plaque on the gate read Mount Mer­cy Hos­pi­tal for the Crim­inal­ly In­sane.

A guard ap­peared, flash­light in hand. D’Agos­ta leaned across Hay­ward, dis­play­ing his badge. “Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta. I have an ap­point­ment to see Dr. Os­trom.”

The man re­treat­ed in­to the guard­house, checked a print­ed list. A mo­ment lat­er, the gate creaked slow­ly open. Hay­ward drove past and up a cob­bled drive to a ram­bling struc­ture, its bat­tle­ments and tow­ers half ob­scured by drift­ing mist. Along its up­per edge, D’Agos­ta could see rows of crenel­lat­ed stone, like bro­ken teeth against the black­ness.

“My God,” Hay­ward said, peer­ing through the wind­shield. “Pen­der­gast’s great-​aunt is in there!”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded. “Ap­par­ent­ly, this place used to be an ex­pen­sive sana­to­ri­um for tu­ber­cu­lar mil­lion­aires. Now it’s a loony bin for mur­der­ers found not guilty by rea­son of in­san­ity.”

“What did she do, ex­act­ly?”

“Con­stance tells me she poi­soned her whole fam­ily.”

Hay­ward glanced at him. “Her whole fam­ily?”

“Moth­er, fa­ther, hus­band, broth­er, and two chil­dren. She thought they’d been pos­sessed by dev­ils. Or maybe the souls of Yan­kee sol­diers shot dead by her fa­ther. No­body seems to be quite sure. What­ev­er the case, be sure to keep your dis­tance. She’s ap­par­ent­ly skilled at ac­quir­ing ra­zor blades and con­ceal­ing them on her per­son. Put two or­der­lies in the emer­gen­cy room in the last twelve months.”

“No kid­ding.”

In­side, Mount Mer­cy Hos­pi­tal smelled of rub­bing al­co­hol and damp stone. Be­neath the drab in­sti­tu­tion­al paint, D’Agos­ta could still glimpse the re­mains of an el­egant build­ing, with hand-​carved wood ceil­ings and pan­eled walls, the hall­way floors of well-​worn mar­ble.

Dr. Os­trom was wait­ing for them in a “qui­et room” on the sec­ond floor. He was a tall man in a spot­less med­ical coat who, even with­out speak­ing, man­aged to con­vey the air of hav­ing sev­er­al more im­por­tant things to do. Glanc­ing around the sparse­ly ap­point­ed space, D’Agos­ta no­ticed that ev­ery­thing—ta­ble, plas­tic chairs, light fix­ture—was ei­ther bolt­ed to the floor or hid­den be­hind steel mesh.

D’Agos­ta in­tro­duced him­self and Hay­ward to Os­trom, who nod­ded po­lite­ly in re­turn but did not of­fer to shake hands. “You’re here to see Cor­nelia Pen­der­gast,” he said.

“At her grand­nephew’s re­quest.”

“And you’re fa­mil­iar with the, ah, spe­cial re­quire­ments nec­es­sary for such a vis­it?”

“Yes.”

“Keep well back at all times. Make no sud­den move­ments. Do not, at any time, touch her or al­low her to touch you. You’ll on­ly be able to spend a few min­utes with her; any longer and she’s like­ly to be­come ex­cit­ed. And it’s of paramount im­por­tance she not be­come ex­cit­ed. When I see any such in­di­ca­tions, I’ll be forced to con­clude the in­ter­view im­me­di­ate­ly.” “I un­der­stand.”

“She doesn’t like re­ceiv­ing strangers and may not see you, and there’s noth­ing I can do to force the is­sue. Even if you had a war­rant…”

“Tell her I’m Am­ber­gris Pen­der­gast. Her broth­er.” This was the name Con­stance Greene had sug­gest­ed.

Dr. Os­trom frowned. “I don’t ap­prove of de­cep­tion, Lieu­tenant.”

“Then don’t call it de­cep­tion. Call it a white lie. It’s im­por­tant, Doc­tor. Lives may be at stake.”

Dr. Os­trom seemed to con­sid­er this. Then he nod­ded brusque­ly, turned, and left the room through a heavy steel door set in the back wall.

All was silent for sev­er­al min­utes. Then—at what seemed a great dis­tance—the voice of an el­der­ly la­dy could be heard raised in queru­lous com­plaint. D’Agos­ta and Hay­ward ex­changed glances.

The raillery grew loud­er. Then the steel door opened again and Cor­nelia Pen­der­gast was wheeled in­to view.

She was sit­ting in a wheelchair whose ev­ery sur­face was en­cased in thick black rub­ber. A small needle­point pil­low sat in her lap, on which rest­ed her two with­ered hands. Os­trom him­self pushed the wheelchair, and be­hind him came two or­der­lies wear­ing padded pro­tec­tive gar­ments. She was wear­ing a long, old-​fash­ioned dress of black taffe­ta. She looked tiny, with stick­like arms and a nar­row frame, her face ob­scured by a mourn­ing veil. It seemed im­pos­si­ble to D’Agos­ta that this frail-​look­ing crea­ture had re­cent­ly slashed two or­der­lies. As she came in­to view and the wheelchair stopped, the string of in­vec­tives ceased.

“Raise my veil,” she com­mand­ed. Her south­ern ac­cent was cul­ti­vat­ed, al­most British, in its mod­ula­tions.

One of the or­der­lies ap­proached and—stand­ing at arm’s length— lift­ed the veil with a gloved hand. Un­con­scious­ly, D’Agos­ta leaned for­ward, star­ing cu­ri­ous­ly.

Cor­nelia Pen­der­gast stared back. She had a sharp, cat­like face and pale blue eyes. De­spite her ad­vanc­ing years, her liv­er-​spot­ted skin had a strange­ly youth­ful glow. As he looked at her, D’Agos­ta’s heart ac­cel­er­at­ed. He could see—in her in­tent gaze, in the lines of her cheek­bones and jaw—faint out­lines of his van­ished friend. The re­sem­blance would have been stronger but for the gleam of mad­ness in her eyes.

For a mo­ment, the room fell ut­ter­ly silent. As Great-​Aunt Cor­nelia held his gaze, D’Agos­ta be­came afraid she would erupt with anger at his lie.

But then she smiled. “Dear broth­er. So good of you to come all this way to vis­it me. You’ve kept away so very long, you bad crea­ture. Not that I blame you, of course—it’s al­most more than I can bear, liv­ing in the North with all these bar­barous Yan­kees.” She gave a lit­tle laugh.

Okay, D’Agos­ta thought to him­self. Con­stance had told him Great-​Aunt Cor­nelia lived in a fan­ta­sy world and would be­lieve her­self to be in one of two places: Raven­scry, her hus­band’s es­tate north of New York City, or in the old Pen­der­gast fam­ily man­sion in New Or­leans. Ob­vi­ous­ly, to­day she was in the for­mer.

“Nice to see you, Cor­nelia,” D’Agos­ta replied guard­ed­ly.

“And who is this love­ly young la­dy at your side?”

“This is Lau­ra, my … my wife.”

Hay­ward shot him a glance.

“How de­light­ful! I al­ways won­dered when you’d take a bride. High time the Pen­der­gast line was in­vig­orat­ed by new blood. May I of­fer you some re­fresh­ment? Tea, per­haps? Or bet­ter still, your fa­vorite, a mint julep?”

She glanced at the or­der­lies, who had tak­en up po­si­tions as far away from the wom­an as pos­si­ble. They re­mained mo­tion­less.

“We’re fine, thank you,” D’Agos­ta said.

“I sup­pose it’s just as well. We have such dread­ful help these days.” She flapped a hand to­ward the two or­der­lies be­hind her, who fair­ly jumped. Then she leaned for­ward, as if to im­part a con­fi­dence across the room. “I en­vy you. Life is so much more gra­cious in the South. Peo­ple up here take no pride in be­ing mem­bers of the servile class.”

As D’Agos­ta nod­ded in sym­pa­thy, a strange, dream­like un­re­al­ity be­gan to set­tle over him. Here was this el­egant old wom­an chat­ting ami­ably to a broth­er she’d poi­soned al­most forty years be­fore. He won­dered just how he was go­ing to go about this. Os­trom had said to keep the meet­ing short. He’d bet­ter get to the point.

“How, ah, how is the fam­ily?” he asked.

“I’ll nev­er for­give my hus­band for bring­ing us up to this drafty pile. Not on­ly is the cli­mate drea­ry, but the lack of cul­ture is shock­ing. My dear chil­dren are my com­fort.”

The fond smile that ac­com­pa­nied this ob­ser­va­tion chilled D’Agos­ta. He won­dered if she’d watched them die.

“Of course, there are no neigh­bors fit for com­pa­ny. As a re­sult, my days are my own. I try to walk for the sake of my health, but the air is so raw I’m fre­quent­ly driv­en in­side. I’ve gone as pale as a ghost. See for your­self.” And from the pil­low, she lift­ed up a thin, palsied hand for his in­spec­tion.

Au­to­mat­ical­ly, D’Agos­ta stepped for­ward. Os­trom frowned and nod­ded for him to stay back.

“How about the rest of the fam­ily?” D’Agos­ta asked. “I haven’t heard from—from our nephews in a long time.”

“Aloy­sius comes to vis­it me here ev­ery now and then. When he needs ad­vice.” She smiled again, and her eyes flashed. “He’s such a good boy. At­ten­tive to his el­ders. Not like the oth­er one.”

“Dio­genes,” D’Agos­ta said.

Great-​Aunt Cor­nelia nod­ded. “Dio­genes.” She gave a shud­der. “From the day he was born, he was dif­fer­ent. And then there was his ill­ness … and those pe­cu­liar eyes of his.” She paused. “You know what they said about him.”

“Tell me.”

“Dear me, Am­ber­gris, have you for­got­ten?”

For an un­com­fort­able mo­ment, D’Agos­ta thought a look of skep­ti­cism passed over the old wom­an’s face. But it soon van­ished as her ex­pres­sion turned in­ward. “The Pen­der­gast blood­line has been taint­ed for cen­turies. There but for the grace of God go you and I, Am­ber­gris.”

A suit­ably pi­ous pause fol­lowed this state­ment. “Young Dio­genes was touched even from the be­gin­ning. A bad seed in­deed. Af­ter his sud­den ill­ness, the dark­er side of our lin­eage reached full flow­er in him.”

D’Agos­ta re­mained silent, not dar­ing to say more. Af­ter a mo­ment, Great-​Aunt Cor­nelia stirred and be­gan again.

“He was a mis­an­thrope from the be­gin­ning. Both boys were lon­ers, of course—they were Pen­der­gasts—but with Dio­genes it was dif­fer­ent. Young Aloy­sius had one close friend his age, I re­call—he be­came quite a fa­mous painter. And, dear me, Aloy­sius would spend a lot of time in the bay­ou among the Ca­juns and oth­ers of that sort, to which I nat­ural­ly ob­ject­ed. But Dio­genes had no friends at all. Not a one. You re­mem­ber how none of the oth­er chil­dren would go near him. They were all scared to death of him. The ill­ness made it so much worse.”

“Ill­ness?”

“Very sud­den—scar­let fever, they said. That’s when his eye changed col­or, went milky. He’s blind in that eye, you know.” She shud­dered.

“Now, Aloy­sius, he was just the op­po­site. The poor boy was bul­lied. You know how we Pen­der­gasts are fre­quent ob­jects of scorn among the com­mon folk. Aloy­sius was ten, I be­lieve, when he be­gan vis­it­ing that queer old Ti­betan man down on Bour­bon Street—he al­ways had the most un­com­mon ac­quain­tances. The man taught him all that Ti­betan non­sense, you know, with the un­pro­nounce­able name, chang or choong some­thing or oth­er. He al­so taught Aloy­sius that pe­cu­liar way of fight­ing which guar­an­teed he was nev­er both­ered by bul­lies again.”

“But the bul­lies nev­er picked on Dio­genes.”

“Chil­dren have a sixth sense about that kind of thing. And to think Dio­genes was younger and small­er than Aloy­sius.”

“How did the two broth­ers get along?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“Am­ber­gris, you’re not get­ting for­get­ful in your old age, are you, dear? You know Dio­genes hat­ed his old­er broth­er. Dio­genes nev­er cared for any­one but his moth­er, of course, but he seemed to put Aloy­sius in a spe­cial cat­ego­ry al­to­geth­er. Af­ter the ill­ness par­tic­ular­ly.”

She paused, and for a mo­ment her mad eyes seemed to dim, as if she was peer­ing far in­to the past. “Sure­ly, you re­mem­ber Aloy­sius’s pet mouse.”

“Oh, sure. Of course.”

“In­ci­ta­tus he called it, af­ter the em­per­or Caligu­la’s fa­vorite horse.

He was read­ing Sue­to­nius at the time, and he used to walk around with the tiny beast on his shoul­der, chant­ing: ‘All hail Cae­sar’s beau­ti­ful mouse, In­ci­ta­tus!’ I have a per­fect hor­ror of mice, you know, but the lit­tle white thing was so friend­ly and calm I found my­self able to bear it. Aloy­sius was so pa­tient with the crea­ture, he loved it so. Oh, the tricks he taught it! In­ci­ta­tus could walk up­right on his hind legs. He must have re­spond­ed to a dozen dif­fer­ent com­mands. He could fetch a Ping-​Pong ball for you and bal­ance it on his nose like a seal. I re­mem­ber you laugh­ing so, dear, I feared your sides would split.”

“I re­mem­ber.”

Great-​Aunt Cor­nelia paused. Even the im­pas­sive guards seemed to be lis­ten­ing.

“And then one morn­ing young Aloy­sius woke to find a wood­en cross plant­ed at the foot of his bed. A lit­tle cross, no more than six inch­es high, beau­ti­ful­ly and lov­ing­ly made. In­ci­ta­tus had been cru­ci­fied up­on it.”

D’Agos­ta heard Lau­ra Hay­ward in­hale sharply.

“No­body had to ask. Ev­ery­one knew who’d done it. It changed Aloy­sius. He nev­er had an­oth­er pet af­ter In­ci­ta­tus. As for Dio­genes, that was just the be­gin­ning of his, ah, ex­per­iments on an­imals. Cats, dogs, even poul­try and live­stock be­gan to dis­ap­pear. I re­call one par­tic­ular­ly un­pleas­ant in­ci­dent with a neigh­bor’s goat…”

At this, Great-​Aunt Cor­nelia stopped speak­ing and be­gan to laugh, quite soft­ly, un­der her breath. It went on for a long time. Dr. Os­trom, grow­ing alarmed, frowned at D’Agos­ta and point­ed to his watch.

“When did you last see Dio­genes?” D’Agos­ta asked quick­ly.

“Two days af­ter the fire,” the old wom­an replied.

“The fire,” D’Agos­ta re­peat­ed, try­ing not to make it sound like a ques­tion.

“Of course, the fire,” Great-​Aunt Cor­nelia said, her voice sud­den­ly ag­itat­ed. “When else? The dread­ful, dread­ful fire that de­stroyed the fam­ily and con­vinced my hus­band to bring me and the chil­dren up to this drafty man­sion. Away from New Or­leans, away from all that.”

“I think we’re done here,” Dr. Os­trom said. He nod­ded to the guards.

“Tell me about the fire,” D’Agos­ta pressed.

The old wom­an’s face, which had gone al­most fierce, now took on a look of great sor­row. Her low­er lip trem­bled, and her hands twitched be­neath the re­straints. De­spite him­self, D’Agos­ta couldn’t help but mar­vel at the sud­den­ness with which these changes over­took her.

“Now, lis­ten,” Dr. Os­trom be­gan.

D’Agos­ta held up his hand. “One minute more. Please.” When he looked back at GreatAunt Cor­nelia, he found she was star­ing di­rect­ly at him.

“That su­per­sti­tious, hate­ful, ig­no­rant mob. They burned our an­ces­tral home, may the curse of Lu­cifer be on them and their chil­dren for all eter­ni­ty. By that time, Aloy­sius was twen­ty and away at Ox­ford. But Dio­genes was home that night. He saw his own moth­er and fa­ther burned alive. The look on his face when the au­thor­ities pulled him from the base­ment, where he’d gone to hide…” She shud­dered. “Two days lat­er, Aloy­sius re­turned. We were stay­ing with rel­atives by then, in Ba­ton Rouge. I re­call Dio­genes tak­ing his old­er broth­er in­to an­oth­er room and clos­ing the door. They were on­ly in­side for five min­utes. When Aloy­sius came out, his face was dead white. And Dio­genes im­me­di­ate­ly walked out the front door and dis­ap­peared. He didn’t take any­thing, not even a change of cloth­ing. I nev­er saw him again. The few times we heard from him, it was ei­ther by let­ter or through fam­ily bankers or so­lic­itors, and then noth­ing. Un­til, of course, the news of his death.”

There was a mo­ment of tense si­lence. The sor­row had left the old wom­an’s face, leav­ing it calm, com­posed.

“I do be­lieve it’s time for that mint julep, Am­ber­gris.” She turned sharply. “John! Three mint juleps, well chilled, if you please. Use the ice­house ice, it’s so much sweet­er.”

Os­trom spoke sharply. “I’m sor­ry, your guests have to go.”

“A pity.”

An or­der­ly ar­rived with a plas­tic cup of wa­ter. He hand­ed it gin­ger­ly to the old wom­an, who took it in her with­ered hand. “That’s enough, John. You are dis­missed.”

She turned to D’Agos­ta. “Dear Am­ber­gris, you’re leav­ing an old wom­an to drink alone, shame on you.”

“It was nice see­ing you,” D’Agos­ta said.

“I do hope you and your love­ly bride will come again. It’s al­ways a plea­sure to see you … broth­er.” Then she abrupt­ly bared her teeth in what seemed half-​smile, half-​snarl; raised a spot­ted hand; and drew the black veil down over her face once again.

SEVEN

Some­where, a clock chimed mid­night, its deep, bell-​like tones mut­ed by the plush drapes and hang­ing tapestries of the li­brary in the old man­sion at 891 River­side Drive.

D’Agos­ta sat back from the ta­ble and stretched in the leather arm­chair, fin­ger­tips work­ing the kinks out of the small of his back. This time the li­brary felt a lot more cheery: a fire was crack­ling atop wrought-​iron fire­dogs, and light from half a dozen lamps threw a mel­low glow in­to the re­motest cor­ners. Con­stance was sit­ting be­side the fire, sip­ping ti­sane from a chi­na cup and read­ing Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Proc­tor, who had not for­got­ten D’Agos­ta’s own taste in bev­er­ages, had drift­ed in a few times, re­plac­ing warm, half-​fin­ished glass­es of Bud­weis­er with chilled ones.

Con­stance had pro­duced all the ma­te­ri­als Pen­der­gast saved con­cern­ing his broth­er, and D’Agos­ta had spent the evening por­ing over them. Here, in this fa­mil­iar room, with its walls of books and its scent of leather and woodsmoke, D’Agos­ta could al­most imag­ine Pen­der­gast at his side, help­ing him take up the long-​cold trail, pale eyes glit­ter­ing with cu­rios­ity at the on­set of the chase.

Ex­cept there was pre­cious lit­tle here to chase. D’Agos­ta glanced over the doc­uments, clip­pings, let­ters, pho­tographs, and old re­ports that lit­tered the ta­ble. Pen­der­gast had clear­ly tak­en his broth­er’s threat se­ri­ous­ly: the col­lec­tion was beau­ti­ful­ly or­ga­nized and an­no­tat­ed. It was al­most as if Pen­der­gast knew that, when the time ul­ti­mate­ly came, he might not be around to face the chal­lenge; that the task might be left to oth­ers. He’d saved ev­ery scrap of in­for­ma­tion, it seemed, that he had been able to ob­tain.

Over the last sev­er­al hours, D’Agos­ta had read ev­ery­thing on the ta­ble two and, in some cas­es, three times. Af­ter Dio­genes had sev­ered his con­nec­tion with the Pen­der­gast clan fol­low­ing the death of his moth­er and fa­ther, he had gone large­ly in­to hid­ing. For al­most a year, there was no word at all. Then a let­ter ar­rived from a fam­ily lawyer, ask­ing that a sum of $100,000 be wired to a Zurich bank for Dio­genes’s ben­efit. This was fol­lowed a year lat­er by an­oth­er, sim­ilar let­ter, de­mand­ing that $250,000 be wired to a bank in Hei­del­berg. The fam­ily re­ject­ed this sec­ond re­quest, and it prompt­ed a re­sponse from Dio­genes. That let­ter now sat on the ta­ble, sealed be­tween two pan­els of clear Lu­cite. D’Agos­ta glanced once again at the spi­dery, metic­ulous script, so cu­ri­ous­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate for a boy of sev­en­teen. There was no date or lo­ca­tion, and it was ad­dressed to Pen­der­gast:

Ave, frater—

I find it dis­agree­able to write you on this sub­ject, or any oth­er for that mat­ter. But you force my hand. For I have no doubt you are the one be­hind the de­nial of my re­quest for funds.

I need not re­mind you I will come in­to my in­her­itance in a few years. Un­til that time I shall now and then re­quire cer­tain tri­fling sums such as I re­quest­ed last month. You will find it in your best in­ter­ests, and in the best in­ter­ests of oth­ers you may or may not know, to hon­or such re­quests. I should have thought our fi­nal dis­cus­sion in Ba­ton Rouge would have made that clear. I am very much pre­oc­cu­pied at present with var­ious lines of re­search and study and have no time to earn mon­ey in the con­ven­tion­al man­ner. If forced to do so, I will ob­tain the funds I need—in a man­ner amus­ing to my­self. If you do not wish to see my at­ten­tions di­vert­ed in this way, you will hon­or my re­quest with all haste.

The next time I write you, it shall be on a mat­ter of my own choos­ing, not yours. I will not bring this up again. Good-​bye, broth­er. And bonne chance.

D’Agos­ta put the let­ter aside. Records showed that the mon­ey was prompt­ly sent. The fol­low­ing year, a sim­ilar sum was wired to a bank in Thread­nee­dle Street, Lon­don. A year lat­er, an­oth­er sum was sent to a bank in Kent. Dio­genes sur­faced briefly on his twen­ty-​first birth­day to claim his in­her­itance—eighty-​sev­en mil­lion dol­lars. Two months lat­er, he was re­port­ed to have been killed in an au­to­mo­bile ac­ci­dent in Can­ter­bury High Street. Burned be­yond recog­ni­tion. The in­her­itance was nev­er found.

D’Agos­ta turned the bo­gus death cer­tifi­cate over in his hands.

I am very much pre­oc­cu­pied at present with var­ious lines of re­search and study. But what, ex­act­ly? Dio­genes cer­tain­ly didn’t say, and his broth­er was silent on the mat­ter. Or al­most silent. D’Agos­ta let his eye fall on a pile of news clip­pings. They had been tak­en from a va­ri­ety of for­eign mag­azines and news­pa­pers. Each had been la­beled with an at­tri­bu­tion and a date, and those in for­eign lan­guages had trans­la­tions at­tached—once again, Pen­der­gast think­ing ahead.

Most of these clip­pings dealt with un­solved crimes. There was an en­tire fam­ily in Lis­bon, killed by bo­tulism, yet with­out any trace of food found in their stom­achs. A chemist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris, Sor­bonne, was dis­cov­ered with ra­di­al ar­ter­ies of both wrists sev­ered and the body care­ful­ly exsan­guinat­ed. Yet there was no blood at the mur­der scene. Files on sev­er­al of the chemist’s ex­per­iments were found to be miss­ing. Ad­di­tion­al clip­pings de­scribed still oth­er deaths, more gris­ly, in which the corpses seemed to have been vic­tims of var­ious tor­tures or ex­per­imen­ta­tion—the bod­ies were too bad­ly dam­aged to be cer­tain. And yet oth­er clip­pings were mere obit­uar­ies. There seemed to be no log­ic or pat­tern to the deaths, and Pen­der­gast did not leave any com­men­tary on what it was that he had found in­ter­est­ing.

D’Agos­ta picked up the pile, rif­fled through it. There was a va­ri­ety of thefts, too. A phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­ufac­tur­ing com­pa­ny, re­port­ing the rob­bery of a freez­er full of ex­per­imen­tal drugs. A col­lec­tion of di­amonds mys­te­ri­ous­ly van­ished from a vault in Is­rael. A rare, fist-​sized piece of am­ber con­tain­ing a leaf from a long-​ex­tinct plant, lift­ed from a wealthy cou­ple’s apart­ment in Paris. A unique, pol­ished T. rex co­pro­lite, dat­ing pre­cise­ly from the K-T bound­ary. He re­placed the clip­pings on the ta­ble with a sigh.

Next his eye fell on a small sheaf of pa­pers from San­dring­ham, a pri­vate school in the south of Eng­land that Dio­genes at­tend­ed—un­known to his fam­ily—to fin­ish out his last year of up­per school. He had man­aged to get him­self ac­cept­ed on the strength of sev­er­al forged doc­uments and a pho­ny set of par­ents hired for the oc­ca­sion. De­spite a first- semester re­port card putting him in the first of ev­ery form, he was ex­pelled a few months lat­er. Judg­ing from the pa­per­work, the school gave no rea­son for the ex­pul­sion and re­spond­ed to Pen­der­gast’s queries with eva­sion, even ag­ita­tion. Oth­er pa­pers showed that Pen­der­gast had con­tact­ed a cer­tain Bri­an Coop­er on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions—Coop­er had briefly been the room­mate of Dio­genes at San­dring­ham—but it seemed the boy re­fused to re­spond. A fi­nal let­ter from the youth’s par­ents said Bri­an had been placed in an in­sti­tu­tion, where he was be­ing treat­ed for acute cata­to­nia.

Fol­low­ing the ex­pul­sion, Dio­genes slipped com­plete­ly out of view for more than two years. And then he had sur­faced to claim his in­her­itance. Four months lat­er, he staged his own death in Can­ter­bury.

Af­ter that, si­lence.

No—that wasn’t quite true. There was one fi­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. D’Agos­ta turned to­ward a fold­ed sheet of heavy linen pa­per, sit­ting alone at one cor­ner of the ta­ble. He reached for it, opened it thought­ful­ly. At the top was an em­bossed coat of arms, a lid­less eye over two moons, a li­on crouched be­neath. And at the very cen­ter of the sheet was a date, writ­ten in vi­olet ink with what D’Agos­ta now rec­og­nized as Dio­genes’s hand­writ­ing: Jan­uary 28.

In­ex­orably, D’Agos­ta’s mind re­turned once again to the Oc­to­ber day when he’d first held the let­ter—here, in this room, on the eve of their de­par­ture to Italy. Pen­der­gast had shown it to him and spo­ken briefly of Dio­genes’s plan to com­mit the per­fect crime.

But D’Agos­ta had re­turned from Italy alone. And now it was up to him—and no­body else—to fol­low through for his dead part­ner, to stop the crime that pre­sum­ably would oc­cur on Jan­uary 28.

Less than a week away.

He felt a ris­ing pan­ic; there was so lit­tle time left. The room­mate at San­dring­ham: now, there was a lead. He’d call the par­ents to­mor­row, see if the boy was talk­ing. Even if he struck out there, un­doubt­ed­ly there were oth­er boys at the school who had known Dio­genes.

D’Agos­ta fold­ed the pa­per care­ful­ly and re­turned it to the ta­ble. Be­side it lay a sin­gle black-​and-​white pho­to­graph, scuffed and creased with age. He picked it up, held it to the light. A man, a wom­an, and two young boys, stand­ing be­fore an elab­orate wrought-​iron rail­ing. An im­pos­ing man­sion could be seen in the mid­dle dis­tance. It was a warm day: the boys were in shorts, and the wom­an wore a sum­mer dress. The man stared at the cam­era with a pa­tri­cian face. The wom­an was beau­ti­ful, with light hair and a mys­te­ri­ous smile. The boys were per­haps eight and five. The el­der stood straight, arms be­hind his back, look­ing grave­ly in­to the lens. His light blond hair was care­ful­ly part­ed, his clothes pressed. Some­thing about the shape of the cheek­bones, the aquiline fea­tures, told D’Agos­ta this was Agent Pen­der­gast.

Be­side him was a younger boy with gin­ger hair, hands pressed to­geth­er, fin­gers point­ed sky­ward, as if in prayer. Un­like his old­er sib­ling, Dio­genes seemed faint­ly di­sheveled. But there was noth­ing in his dress or his groom­ing to ac­count for this. Maybe it was some­thing in the re­laxed, al­most lan­guid drap­ing of his limbs, so out of con­text with the chaste­ly po­si­tioned hands. Maybe it was the part­ed lips, too full and sen­su­al for a per­son so young. Both eyes looked the same— this must have been be­fore the ill­ness.

Still, D’Agos­ta was drawn to the eyes. They weren’t look­ing at the cam­era, but at some point past it if they were look­ing at any­thing at all. They seemed dull, al­most dead, out of place in that child­ish lit­tle face. D’Agos­ta felt an un­com­fort­able sen­sa­tion in the pit of his stom­ach.

There was a rus­tle be­side him and D’Agos­ta jumped. Con­stance Greene had sud­den­ly ma­te­ri­al­ized at his side. She seemed to have Pen­der­gast’s abil­ity to ap­proach with al­most to­tal si­lence.

“I’m sor­ry,” Con­stance said. “I didn’t mean to star­tle you.”

“No prob­lem. Look­ing at all this stuff is enough to creep any­one out.”

“Ex­cuse me. Creep out?”

“It’s just an ex­pres­sion.”

“Have you found any­thing in­ter­est­ing? Any­thing at all?”

D’Agos­ta shook his head. “Noth­ing we didn’t talk about ear­li­er.” He paused. “The on­ly thing is, I didn’t see any­thing in here about Dio­genes’s ill­ness. Scar­let fever, ac­cord­ing to Aunt Cor­nelia. She said it changed him.”

“I wish there was more in­for­ma­tion I could give you. I’ve searched the col­lec­tions and the fam­ily pa­pers, just in case there was some­thing Aloy­sius over­looked. But he was very thor­ough. There’s noth­ing else.”

Noth­ing else. Dio­genes’s where­abouts, his ap­pear­ance, his ac­tiv­ities, even the crime he planned to com­mit: ev­ery­thing was a blank.

There was on­ly a date—Jan­uary 28. Next Mon­day.

“Maybe Pen­der­gast was wrong,” D’Agos­ta said, try­ing to sound hope­ful. “About the date, I mean. Maybe it’s not for an­oth­er year. Or maybe it’s some­thing else en­tire­ly.” He ges­tured at the doc­uments strewn across the ta­ble. “All this seems so far away and long ago. It’s hard to be­lieve some­thing big’s about to hap­pen.”

The on­ly re­sponse from Con­stance was a faint, and fleet­ing, smile.

EIGHT

Lo­race Sawtelle passed the over­size vel­lum menu back to the wait­er with re­lief. He wished that once—just once—a client would come to him. He hat­ed the sprawl­ing con­crete jun­gles they all worked in: Chica­go, De­troit, and now New York. Once you got to know it, Keokuk wasn’t so bad. He knew all the best wa­ter­ing holes and tit­ty bars. Some of his clients might even de­vel­op a deep ad­mi­ra­tion for cer­tain Iowan charms.

Across the ta­ble, his client was or­der­ing some­thing that sound­ed like cough-​up of veal. Ho­race Sawtelle won­dered if the man re­al­ly knew what the hell he was ask­ing for. He him­self had scanned the menu, first one side and then the oth­er, with deep mis­giv­ings. Hand­writ­ten French script, and un­pro­nounce­able at that. He’d set­tled on some­thing called steak tartare. Hell, how bad could it be? Even the French couldn’t ru­in steak. And he liked tar­tar sauce on fish sticks.

“You don’t mind if I glance through them once more be­fore sign­ing?” the client asked, hold­ing up the sheaf of con­tracts.

Sawtelle nod­ded. “You go right ahead.” Nev­er mind that they’d spent the last two hours go­ing over them with a damn mag­ni­fy­ing glass. You’d think the guy was buy­ing a mil­lion dol­lars’ worth of Palm Beach re­al es­tate in­stead of fifty grand in ma­chine parts.

The client buried his nose in the pa­per­work and Sawtelle looked around, idly crunch­ing on a bread­stick. They were sit­ting in what looked to him like a glassed-​in side­walk cafe, pro­trud­ing out in­to the side­walk from the main restau­rant. Ev­ery ta­ble was full: these pasty-​faced New York­ers need­ed all the sun­light they could get. Three wom­en sat at the next ta­ble, black­haired and gaunt, pick­ing at huge fruit sal­ads. On the far side, a fat busi­ness­man was dig­ging in­to a plate of some­thing yel­low and slip­pery.

A truck passed in a shriek of grind­ing gears, seem­ing­ly inch­es away from the glass wall, and Sawtelle’s hand closed re­flex­ive­ly, break­ing the bread­stick. He wiped his hand on the table­cloth in dis­gust. Why the hell had the client in­sist­ed on eat­ing out here, in the Jan­uary chill? He glanced up through the glass ceil­ing at the pink awning, La Vielle Ville stitched on it in white. Above tow­ered one of the huge cliff dwellings that passed for apart­ments in New York City. Sawtelle eyed the rows of iden­ti­cal win­dows ris­ing to­ward the sooty sky. Like a damn high-​rise prison. Prob­ably held a thou­sand peo­ple. How could they stand it?

There was a flur­ry of ac­tiv­ity near the en­trance to the kitchen and Sawtelle glanced over dis­in­ter­est­ed­ly. Maybe it was his lunch. Pre­pared ta­ble­side, the menu had said. And just how the hell were they go­ing to do that: wheel a We­ber grill over and fire up the char­coal? But sure enough, here they came, a whole damn pro­ces­sion of men in white smocks, push­ing what looked like a small gur­ney in front of them.

The chef parked the rolling ta­ble at Sawtelle’s el­bow with a proud flour­ish. He barked a few or­ders in rapid-​fire French and sev­er­al un­der­lings be­gan to scur­ry around, one chop­ping onions, an­oth­er fren­zied­ly beat­ing a raw egg. Sawtelle scanned the rolling ta­ble. There were lit­tle white toast points, a pile of round green things he guessed were ca­pers, spices and dish­es of un­known liq­uids, and a cup­ful of minced gar­lic. In the cen­ter, a fist-​sized wad of raw ham­burg­er. No steak or tar­tar sauce to be had for love or mon­ey.

With great cer­emo­ny, the chef dropped the ham­burg­er in­to a stain­less bowl, poured in the raw egg, the gar­lic, and onions, then be­gan mash­ing ev­ery­thing to­geth­er. In a few mo­ments, he re­moved the sticky mass and dropped it back on­to the rolling ta­ble, work­ing it slow­ly be­tween his fin­gers. Sawtelle glanced away, mak­ing a men­tal note to ask that the ham­burg­er be cooked ex­tra-​well-​done. You nev­er know what kinds of dis­eases these New York­ers car­ry around. And where was the damn grill, any­way?

At that mo­ment, a wait­er ap­peared at the client’s side and slipped a plate on­to the ta­ble. Sawtelle looked over in sur­prise just as an­oth­er wait­er dart­ed in and slid some­thing in be­tween his own knife and fork. Look­ing down, Sawtelle saw with in­creduli­ty that the glis­ten­ing pat­ty of raw beef—now tamped down in­to a neat lit­tle mound—sat in front of him, sur­round­ed by wedges of toast, chopped eggs, and ca­pers.

Sawtelle looked up again quick­ly, un­com­pre­hend­ing. Across the ta­ble, the client was nod­ding ap­prov­ing­ly.

The chef beamed at them briefly from the far side of the ta­ble, then stepped back as his flunkies be­gan wheel­ing the ap­pa­ra­tus away.

“Ex­cuse me,” Sawtelle said in a low voice. “You haven’t cooked it.”

The chef stopped. “Pourquoi?”

Sawtelle jerked a fin­ger in the di­rec­tion of his plate. “I said, you haven’t cooked it. You know, heat. Fire. Flam­bé.”

The chef shook his head vig­or­ous­ly. “No, mon­sieur. Is no cook.”

“You don’t cook steak tartare,” the client said, paus­ing as he was about to sign the con­tracts. “It’s served raw. You didn’t know?” A su­pe­ri­or smile came briefly to his lips, then van­ished.

Sawtelle sat back, rolling his eyes heav­en­ward, strug­gling to keep his tem­per. On­ly in New York. Twen­ty-​five bucks for a mound of raw ham­burg­er.

Sud­den­ly, he stiff­ened. “Sweet Cae­sar, what the hell is that?”

Far above him, a man dan­gled in the sky: limbs flung wide and flail­ing silent­ly in the chill air. For a mo­ment, it seemed to Sawtelle that the man was just hov­er­ing there, as if by mag­ic. But then he made out the thin taut line of rope that ar­rowed up­ward from the man’s neck. It dis­ap­peared in­to a win­dow above, black and bro­ken. Sawtelle stared open­mouthed, thun­der­struck by the sight.

Oth­ers in the restau­rant had fol­lowed his gaze. There were sharp in­takes of breath, a sud­den gasp.

The fig­ure jerked and shud­dered, its back arch­ing in agony un­til the vic­tim seemed al­most bent dou­ble. Sawtelle watched, trans­fixed with hor­ror.

Then, sud­den­ly, the rope part­ed. The man, flap­ping his arms and churn­ing his legs, dropped di­rect­ly to­ward him.

Just as sud­den­ly, Sawtelle found he could move again. With an inar­tic­ulate cry, he threw him­self back­ward in his chair. A split sec­ond lat­er, there came an ex­plo­sion of glass, and a shape hur­tled past in a show­er of glass and land­ed with a deaf­en­ing crash on the wom­en and their fruit sal­ads, which dis­in­te­grat­ed in­to a strange pas­tel erup­tion of reds and yel­lows and greens. From his po­si­tion on his back on the floor, Sawtelle felt some­thing warm and wet slap him hard across the side of the face, fol­lowed al­most im­me­di­ate­ly by a show­er of bro­ken glass, dish­es, cups, forks, spoons, and flow­ers, all rain­ing down from the im­pact.

A strange si­lence. And then the cries be­gan, the screams of pain, hor­ror, and fear, but they seemed strange­ly soft and far away. Then he re­al­ized that his right ear was full of an un­known sub­stance.

As he lay on his back, the full im­pact of what had just hap­pened fi­nal­ly reg­is­tered. Dis­be­lief and hor­ror washed over him once again. For a minute, maybe two, he found him­self un­able to move. The cries and shrieks grew steadi­ly loud­er.

At last, with a hero­ic ef­fort, he forced his un­will­ing limbs to re­spond. He rose to his knees, then stag­gered to his feet. Oth­er peo­ple were now climb­ing to their feet, the room fill­ing with the muf­fled shrieks and moans of the damned. Glass lay ev­ery­where. The ta­ble at his right had turned in­to a crum­pled mound of food, gore, flow­ers, table­cloth, nap­kins, and splin­tered wood. His own ta­ble was cov­ered with glass. The twen­ty-​five-​dol­lar mound of raw ham­burg­er was the on­ly thing that had been spared, and it sat in soli­tary splen­dor, fresh and gleam­ing, all by it­self.

His eyes moved to his client, who was still sit­ting, mo­tion­less, his suit splat­tered with some­thing in­de­scrib­able.

Abrupt­ly, in­vol­un­tar­ily, Sawtelle’s limbs went in­to ac­tion. He swiveled about, found the door, took a step, lost his bal­ance, re­cov­ered, took an­oth­er.

The client voice fol­lowed him. “Are—are you go­ing?”

The ques­tion was so inane, so in­ap­pro­pri­ate, that Sawtelle broke in­to a chok­ing, hoarse laugh. “Go­ing?” he re­peat­ed, clear­ing his ear with a tug. “Yeah. I’m go­ing.” He lurched to­ward the door, cough­ing with laugh­ter, his feet crunch­ing across glass and ru­in, any­thing to get away from this ter­ri­ble place. He hit the side­walk and turned south, his walk break­ing in­to a run, scat­ter­ing pedes­tri­ans in his wake.

From now on, peo­ple would just have to come to Keokuk.

NINE

William Smith­back Jr. got out of the cab, tossed a crum­pled twen­ty through the front pas­sen­ger win­dow, and looked up Broad­way to­ward Lin­coln Cen­ter. A few blocks up­town he could make out a vast throng of peo­ple. They’d spilled out in­to Colum­bus and across 65th Street, cre­at­ing one moth­er of a traf­fic jam. He could hear peo­ple lean­ing on their horns, the shriek of sirens, the oc­ca­sion­al earth-​shud­der­ing blaaaat of a truck’s air horn.

Smith­back thread­ed his way through the sea of mo­tion­less ve­hi­cles, then turned north and be­gan jog­ging up Broad­way, his breath mist­ing in the cold Jan­uary air. It seemed he ran just about ev­ery­where these days. Gone was the dig­ni­fied, mea­sured step of the ace New York Times re­porter. Now he rushed to get his copy in on time, dashed to each new as­sign­ment, and some­times filed two sto­ries a day. His wife of two months, No­ra Kel­ly, was not hap­py. She’d had ex­pec­ta­tions of un­hur­ried din­ners, shar­ing with each oth­er the events of the day, be­fore re­tir­ing to a night of lin­ger­ing plea­sure. But Smith­back found he had lit­tle time for ei­ther eat­ing or lin­ger­ing. Yes, he was on the run these days: and for good rea­son. Bryce Har­ri­man was run­ning, too, and he was hard on Smith­back’s heels.

It had been one of the worst shocks of Smith­back’s life to re­turn from his hon­ey­moon and find Bryce Har­ri­man loung­ing in his of­fice door­way, grin­ning smug­ly, wear­ing the usu­al in­suf­fer­ably prep­pie clothes, wel­com­ing him back to “our pa­per.”

Our pa­per. Oh, God.

Ev­ery­thing had been go­ing his way. He was a ris­ing star at the Times, had nailed half a dozen great scoops in as many months. Fen-​ton Davies, his ed­itor, had start­ed turn­ing au­to­mat­ical­ly to Smith­back when it came time to hand out the big as­sign­ments. He’d fi­nal­ly con­vinced his girl­friend No­ra to stop chas­ing old bones and dig­ging up pots long enough to get hitched. And their hon­ey­moon at Angkor Wat had been a dream—es­pe­cial­ly the week they’d spent at the lost tem­ple of Ban­teay Chh­mar, hack­ing through the jun­gle, brav­ing snakes, malar­ia, and sting­ing ants while ex­plor­ing the vast ru­ins. He re­mem­bered think­ing, on the plane ride home, that life couldn’t pos­si­bly get any bet­ter.

And he’d been right.

De­spite Har­ri­man’s smarmy col­le­gial­ity, it was clear from day one that he was gun­ning for Smith­back. It wasn’t the first time they’d crossed swords, but nev­er be­fore at the same pa­per. How had he man­aged to get re­hired by the Times while Smith­back was halfway around the world? The way Har­ri­man sucked up to Davies, bring­ing the ed­itor lat­tes ev­ery morn­ing, hang­ing on his ev­ery word like he was the Or­acle of Del­phi, made Smith­back’s gorge rise. But it seemed to be work­ing: just last week, Har­ri­man had bagged the Dan­gler sto­ry, which by rights be­longed to Smith­back.

Smith­back quick­ened his jog. Six­ty-​fifth and Broad­way—the spot where some guy had re­port­ed­ly fall­en right in­to the midst of dozens of peo­ple eat­ing lunch—was just ahead now. He could see the clus­ter of tele­vi­sion cam­eras, re­porters check­ing their cas­sette recorders, sound­men set­ting up boom mi­cro­phones. This was his chance to out­shine Har­ri­man, seize the mo­men­tum.

No brief­ing un­der way yet, thank God.

He shook his head, mut­ter­ing un­der his breath as he el­bowed his way through the crowd.

Up ahead, he could see the glassed-​in cafe of La Vielle Ville. In­side, po­lice were still work­ing the scene: the pe­ri­od­ic flash of the po­lice pho­tog­ra­pher lit up the glass restau­rant. Crime scene tape was draped ev­ery­where like yel­low bunting. His eye rose to the glass roof of the cafe and the huge, jagged hole where the vic­tim had fall­en through, and still far­ther, up the broad fa­cade of Lin­coln Tow­ers, un­til it reached the bro­ken win­dow from which the vic­tim had pre­cip­itat­ed. He could see cops there, too, and the bright bursts of a flash unit.

He pushed for­ward, look­ing around for wit­ness­es. “I’m a re­porter,” he said loud­ly. “Bill Smith­back, New York Times. Any­body see what hap­pened?”

Sev­er­al faces turned to re­gard him silent­ly. Smith­back took them in: a West Side ma­tron car­ry­ing a mi­cro­scop­ic Pomera­ni­an; a bi­cy­cle mes­sen­ger; a man bal­anc­ing a large box filled with Chi­nese take­out on one shoul­der; half a dozen oth­ers.

“I’m look­ing for a wit­ness. Any­body see any­thing?”

Si­lence. Most of them prob­ably don’t even speak En­glish, he thought.

“Any­body know any­thing?”

At this, a man wear­ing ear­muffs and a heavy coat nod­ded vig­or­ous­ly. “A man,” he said in a thick In­di­an ac­cent. “He fall.”

This was use­less. Smith­back pushed him­self deep­er in­to the crowd. Up ahead, he spot­ted a po­lice­man, shoo­ing peo­ple on­to the side­walk, try­ing to clear the cross street.

“Hey, Of­fi­cer!” Smith­back called out, us­ing his el­bows to dig through the gawk­ing herd. “I’m from the Times. What hap­pened here?”

The of­fi­cer stopped bark­ing or­ders long enough to glance his way. Then he went back to his work.

“Any ID on the vic­tim?”

But the cop ig­nored him com­plete­ly.

Smith­back watched his re­treat­ing back. Typ­ical. A less­er re­porter might be con­tent to wait for the of­fi­cial brief­ing, but not him. He’d get the in­side scoop, and he wouldn’t even break a sweat try­ing.

As he looked around again, his eye stopped at the main en­trance to the apart­ment tow­er. The build­ing was huge, prob­ably sport­ed a thou­sand apart­ments at least. There’d be peo­ple in­side who knew the vic­tim, could pro­vide some col­or, maybe even spec­ulate on what hap­pened. He craned his neck, count­ing floors, un­til he again reached the open win­dow. Twen­ty-​fourth floor.

He be­gan push­ing his way through the crowd again, avoid­ing the mega­phone-​wield­ing cops, tack­ing as di­rect­ly as he could to­ward the build­ing’s en­trance. It was guard­ed by three large po­lice­men who looked like they meant busi­ness. How on earth was he go­ing to get in? Claim to be a ten­ant? That wasn’t like­ly to work.

As he paused to sur­vey the milling throng of press out­side, his equa­nim­ity quick­ly re­turned. They were all wait­ing, like rest­less sheep, for some po­lice brass to come out and be­gin the brief­ing. Smith­back looked on pity­ing­ly. He didn’t want the same sto­ry ev­ery­body else got: spoon-​fed by the au­thor­ities, telling on­ly what they want­ed to tell with the req­ui­site spin at­tached. He want­ed the re­al sto­ry: the sto­ry that lay on the twen­ty-​fourth floor of Lin­coln Tow­ers.

He turned away from the crowd and head­ed in the op­po­site di­rec­tion. All big apart­ment build­ings like this had a ser­vice en­trance.

He fol­lowed the fa­cade of the build­ing up Broad­way un­til he fi­nal­ly reached its end, where a nar­row al­ley sep­arat­ed it from the next build­ing. Thrust­ing his hands back in­to his pock­ets, he turned down the al­ley, whistling jaun­ti­ly.

A mo­ment lat­er, his whistling stopped. Up ahead lay a large met­al door marked Ser­vice En­trance—De­liv­er­ies. Stand­ing be­side the door was an­oth­er cop. He was star­ing at Smith­back and speak­ing in­to a small ra­dio clipped to his col­lar.

Damn. Well, he couldn’t just stop dead in his tracks and turn around—that would look sus­pi­cious. He’d just walk right past the cop like he was tak­ing a short­cut be­hind the build­ing.

“Morn­ing, Of­fi­cer,” he said as he came abreast of the po­lice­man.

“Af­ter­noon, Mr. Smith­back,” the cop replied.

Smith­back felt his jaw tight­en.

Who­ev­er was in charge of this homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tion was a pro, did things by the book. But Smith­back was not some third-​rate line stringer. If there was an­oth­er way in, he’d find it. He fol­lowed the al­ley around the back of the build­ing un­til it turned a right an­gle, head­ing once again to­ward 65th.

Yes. There, not thir­ty yards in front of him, was the staff en­trance to La Vielle Ville. De­sert­ed, with no cop loi­ter­ing around out­side. If he couldn’t get to the twen­ty-​fourth floor, at least he could check out the place where the man had land­ed.

He moved for­ward quick­ly, ex­cite­ment adding spring to his step. Once he’d checked out the restau­rant, there might even be a way to get in­to the high-​rise. There had to be con­nect­ing pas­sages, per­haps through the base­ment.

Smith­back reached the bat­tered met­al door, pulled it ajar, be­gan to step in.

Then he froze. There, be­side a brace of mas­sive stoves, sev­er­al po­lice­men were tak­ing state­ments from cooks and wait­ers.

Ev­ery­body slow­ly turned to look at him.

He put a ten­ta­tive foot in, like he was go­ing some­where.

“No press,” barked one of the cops.

“Sor­ry,” he said, flash­ing what he feared was a ghast­ly smile. “Wrong way.”

And, very gen­tly, he closed the door and stepped back, walk­ing back around to the front of the build­ing, where he was once more re­pelled by the sight of the vast herd of re­porters, all wait­ing like sheep to the slaugh­ter.

No way, not him, not Bill Smith­back of the Times. His eye cast around for some an­gle of at­tack, some idea that hadn’t oc­curred to the oth­ers—and then he saw it: a piz­za de­liv­ery man on a mo­tor­bike, hope­less­ly try­ing to work his way through the crowd. He was a skin­ny man with no chin wear­ing a sil­ly hat that said Romeo’s Pizze­ria, and his face was splotched and red with frus­tra­tion.

Smith­back ap­proached him, nod­ded to­ward the car­ri­er mount­ed on the back. “Got a piz­za in there?”

“Two,” the man said. “Look at this shit. They’re gonna be stone-​cold, and there goes my tip. On top of that, if I don’t get it there in twen­ty min­utes, they don’t have to pay—“

Smith­back cut him off. “Fifty bucks for your two piz­zas and the hat.”

The man looked at him blankly, like a com­plete id­iot.

Smith­back pulled out a fifty. “Here. Take it.”

“But what about—“

“Tell them you got robbed.”

The man couldn’t help but take the mon­ey. Smith­back swiped the hat off the man’s head, stuck it on his own, opened the rear car­ri­er on the mo­tor­bike, and hauled out the piz­za box­es. He moved through the crowd to­ward the door, car­ry­ing the piz­zas in one hand and jerk­ing off his tie with the oth­er, stuff­ing it in his pock­et.

“Piz­za de­liv­ery, com­ing through!” He el­bowed his way to the front, came up against the blue bar­ri­cades draped in crime scene tape.

“Piz­za de­liv­ery, SOC team, twen­ty-​fourth floor.”

It worked like a dream. The fat cop man­ning the bar­ri­cade shoved it aside and Smith­back hiked through.

Now for the tri­umvi­rate at the door.

He strode con­fi­dent­ly for­ward as the three cops turned to face him.

“Piz­za de­liv­ery, twen­ty-​fourth floor.”

They moved to block his way.

“I’ll take the piz­zas up,” one said.

“Sor­ry. Against com­pa­ny rules. I got to de­liv­er di­rect­ly to the cus­tomer.”

“No­body’s al­lowed in.”

“Yeah, but this is for the SOC team. And if you take it up, how am I go­ing to col­lect my mon­ey?”

The cops ex­changed an un­cer­tain glance. One shrugged. Smith­back felt a glow. It was go­ing to work. He was as good as in.

“They’re get­ting cold, come on.” Smith­back pressed for­ward.

“How much?”

“Like I said, I have to de­liv­er di­rect­ly to the cus­tomer. May I?” He made one more ten­ta­tive step, al­most bumped in­to the large gut of the lead cop.

“No one’s al­lowed up.”

“Yes, but it’s just for a—“

“Give me the piz­zas.”

“Like I said—“

The cop reached out. “I said, give me the damn piz­zas.”

And just like that, Smith­back re­al­ized he was de­feat­ed. He docile­ly held them out and the cop took them.

“How much?” the cop asked.

“Ten bucks.”

The cop gave him ten, no tip. “Who’s it for?”

“The SOC team.”

“Your cus­tomer got a name? There’re a dozen SOC up there.”

“Ah, I think it was Miller.”

The cop grunt­ed, dis­ap­peared in the dim lob­by car­ry­ing the piz­zas, while the oth­er two closed rank, block­ing the door. The one who had shrugged turned back. “Sor­ry, pal, but could you bring me a fif­teen-​inch pie, pep­per­oni, gar­lic, and onions with ex­tra cheese?”

“Up yours,” Smith­back said, turn­ing and walk­ing back to the bar­ri­ers. As he squeezed through the press of re­porters, he heard some snick­ers and some­one called out, “Nice try, Bill.” And an­oth­er shrilled out in an ef­fem­inate voice, “Why, Bil­ly dar­ling, that hat looks dreamy on you.”

Smith­back pulled the hat off in dis­gust and tossed it. For once, his re­por­to­ri­al ge­nius had failed. He was al­ready get­ting a bad feel­ing about this as­sign­ment. It had bare­ly start­ed and al­ready it was smelling rot­ten. De­spite the Jan­uary frost in the air, he could al­most feel Har­ri­man’s hot breath on the back of his neck.

He turned and—with heavy heart—took his place in the crowd to wait for the of­fi­cial brief­ing.

TEN

Lieu­tenant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta pushed open the door of McFee­ley’s Ale House, feel­ing bone­tired. McFee­ley’s was about as cozy an Irish bar as you could still find in New York, and D’Agos­ta need­ed a lit­tle com­fort right about now. The place was dark, long, and nar­row, with a thick­ly var­nished wood­en bar on one side, booths along the oth­er. An­cient sport­ing prints hung from the walls, in­dis­tin­guish­able un­der­neath a heavy man­tle of dust. Be­hind the bar, bot­tles stood six rows deep in front of the mir­rored wall. An old juke­box sat near the door, the kind where the Irish se­lec­tions were print­ed in green ink. On tap were Guin­ness, Harp, and Bass. The place smelled of greasy cook­ing and spilled beer. Just about the on­ly nos­tal­gic touch miss­ing, in fact, was to­bac­co smoke, and D’Agos­ta didn’t miss that at all: he’d giv­en up cigars years be­fore, when he quit the force and moved to Cana­da to write.

McFee­ley’s was half emp­ty, the way D’Agos­ta liked it. He chose a stool, pulled it up to the bar.

Patrick, the bar­tender, caught sight of him and came over. “Hey, Lieu­tenant,” he said, slid­ing a coast­er in front of him. “How’s it go­ing?”

“It’s go­ing.”

“The usu­al?”

“No, Pad­dy, a black and tan, please. And a cheese­burg­er, rare.’

A pint ap­peared a mo­ment lat­er and D’Agos­ta sank his up­per lip med­ita­tive­ly in­to the mocha-​col­ored foam. He al­most nev­er al­lowed him­self this kind of in­dul­gence any­more—he had lost twen­ty pounds in the last few months and didn’t in­tend to gain them back— but tonight he’d make an ex­cep­tion. Lau­ra Hay­ward wouldn’t be home un­til late: she was work­ing the bizarre hang­ing that had tak­en place on the Up­per West Side at lunchtime.

He’d spent a fruit­less morn­ing chas­ing leads. There was noth­ing in the pub­lic records of­fice on Raven­scry, Great-​Aunt Cor­nelia’s es­tate in Dutchess Coun­ty. He’d made in­quiries with the NOPD about the long-​burned Pen­der­gast res­idence in New Or­leans, with sim­ilar re­sults. In both cas­es, there was noth­ing about Dio­genes Pen­der­gast.

From head­quar­ters, he’d jour­neyed back to 891 River­side to re­ex­am­ine Pen­der­gast’s scanty col­lec­tion of ev­idence. He’d called the Lon­don bank to which, ac­cord­ing to Pen­der­gast’s records, Dio­genes had re­quest­ed mon­ey be de­posit­ed years be­fore. The ac­count had been closed for twen­ty years, no for­ward­ing in­for­ma­tion avail­able. In­quiries at the banks in Hei­del­berg and Zurich brought the same an­swer. He spoke with the fam­ily in Eng­land whose son had briefly been Dio­genes’s room­mate at San­dring­ham, on­ly to learn the youth had killed him­self one day af­ter be­ing re­moved from pro­tec­tive re­straints.

Next, he called the firm of lawyers that had act­ed as in­ter­me­di­aries in the cor­re­spon­dence be­tween Dio­genes and his fam­ily. This time the red tape was al­most in­ter­minable: he was trans­ferred from one le­gal sec­re­tary to an­oth­er, each re­quir­ing a rep­eti­tion of his re­quest. At long last, an at­tor­ney who would not iden­ti­fy him­self came on the line and in­formed D’Agos­ta that Dio­genes Pen­der­gast was no longer a client; that at­tor­ney-​client priv­ilege for­bade giv­ing out fur­ther in­for­ma­tion; and that, be­sides, all rel­evant files had long been de­stroyed at said per­son’s re­quest.

Five hours and at least thir­ty phone calls lat­er, D’Agos­ta had learned pre­cise­ly zip.

Next, he turned to the news­pa­per clip­pings Pen­der­gast had col­lect­ed of var­ious odd crimes. He’d con­sid­ered call­ing the case of­fi­cers in­volved but de­cid­ed against it. Pen­der­gast had no doubt done this al­ready; if there had been any in­for­ma­tion worth shar­ing, he would have put it in the files. Any­way, D’Agos­ta still had no clue what Pen­der­gast thought im­por­tant about these clip­pings, scat­tered as they were across the globe, the crimes they re­port­ed bizarre yet seem­ing­ly un­con­nect­ed.

It was now past two o’clock. D’Agos­ta knew his boss, Cap­tain Sin­gle­ton, would be out: he in­vari­ably spent his af­ter­noons in the field, fol­low­ing up per­son­al­ly on the im­por­tant cas­es. So D’Agos­ta left 891 River­side and made his way down to the precinct house, where he slunk to his desk, turned on his com­put­er ter­mi­nal, and punched in his pass­word. For the rest of the af­ter­noon, he had moused his way through ev­ery law en­force­ment and gov­ern­men­tal database he could ac­cess: NYPD, state, fed­er­al, WICAPS, In­ter­pol, even the So­cial Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­min­is­tra­tion. Noth­ing. De­spite all the crush­ing, end­less doc­umen­ta­tion gen­er­at­ed by the in­ter­lock­ing tan­gle of gov­ern­ment bu­reau­cra­cies, Dio­genes walked through it all like a wraith, leav­ing no im­pres­sion be­hind him. It was al­most as if the guy were re­al­ly dead, af­ter all.

That was when he gave up and went to McFee­ley’s.

His cheese­burg­er ar­rived and he be­gan to eat, bare­ly tast­ing it. His in­ves­ti­ga­tion wasn’t even forty-​eight hours old, and al­ready he’d just about run out of leads. Pen­der­gast’s vast re­sources seemed of lit­tle use against a ghost.

He took a few more half­heart­ed bites from his burg­er, fin­ished his drink, dropped some bills on the bar, nod­ded to Patrick, and left. Get all the in­for­ma­tion you can from De­tec­tive Cap­tain Lau­ra Hay­ward, but for her own sake min­imize her in­volve­ment. D’Agos­ta had, in fact, told her lit­tle of his in­ves­ti­ga­tions since their vis­it to Great-​Aunt Cor­nelia. In a per­verse way, it seemed best.

Why?

He thrust his hands in­to his pock­ets, bent in­to the chill Jan­uary wind. Was it be­cause of the lev­el­head­ed things he was cer­tain she’d say? Vin­nie, this is crazy. A let­ter con­tain­ing noth­ing but a date. Some half-​baked threats made twen­ty, thir­ty years ago. I can’t be­lieve you’re wast­ing your time.

And maybe—just maybe—he was afraid she’d con­vince him it was crazy, too.

Strolling along, he ap­proached the in­ter­sec­tion of 77th and First Av­enue. The ug­ly white brick apart­ment build­ing he shared with Lau­ra Hay­ward rose at the cor­ner. Shiv­er­ing, he glanced at his watch. Eight o’clock. Lau­ra wouldn’t be home yet. He’d set the ta­ble for her, put what was left of the lasagna napo­le­tana in the mi­crowave. He was cu­ri­ous to hear more about this new mur­der case she was work­ing. Any­thing to keep his mind from run­ning in cir­cles.

The door­man made a be­lat­ed, in­so­lent at­tempt to open the door for him. D’Agos­ta walked past in­to the nar­row lob­by, sound­ing his pock­et for the key. Ahead, one of the el­eva­tors stood open invit­ing­ly. D’Agos­ta stepped in, press­ing the but­ton for the fif­teenth floor.

Just as the el­eva­tor doors were clos­ing, a gloved hand shot in, forc­ing them open. It was the ob­nox­ious door­man. He stepped in, then turned to face for­ward, cross­ing his arms be­fore him and ig­nor­ing D’Agos­ta. The un­pleas­ant smell of body odor filled the small space.

D’Agos­ta glanced at him with ir­ri­ta­tion. He was a swarthy-​look­ing fel­low with a fleshy face, brown eyes, over­weight. Strange: he hadn’t pressed a floor but­ton of his own. D’Agos­ta looked away, los­ing in­ter­est, di­rect­ing his gaze to the floor in­di­ca­tor as the el­eva­tor rose. Five, six, sev­en…

The door­man leaned for­ward, pressed the stop but­ton. The el­eva­tor came to an abrupt halt.

D’Agos­ta glanced over. “What’s your prob­lem?”

The door­man didn’t both­er look­ing at him. In­stead, he pulled an over­ride key from his pock­et, in­sert­ed it in­to the con­trol pan­el, turned it, and with­drew it. With a jerk, the el­eva­tor be­gan de­scend­ing again.

Lau­ra’s right, D’Agos­ta thought. This jerk’s got a se­ri­ous at­ti­tude prob­lem. “Look, I don’t know where the hell you think you’re go­ing, but you can wait un­til I’ve reached my floor.” D’Agos­ta pressed the but­ton marked 15 again.

The el­eva­tor didn’t re­spond. It was still de­scend­ing, past the lob­by now and head­ing for the base­ment.

In a heart­beat, D’Agos­ta’s ir­ri­ta­tion turned to alarm. His cop radar went off full blast. The cau­tion­ary words of Pen­der­gast’s note sud­den­ly flashed through his mind: Dio­genes is con­sum­mate­ly dan­ger­ous. Do not gain his at­ten­tion any ear­li­er than you have to. Al­most with­out think­ing, he reached in­to his coat and yanked out his ser­vice piece.

But even as he did so, the door­man spun to­ward him and, with an amaz­ing, light­ning­like move, thrust him up against the el­eva­tor wall, pin­ning his arms be­hind his back in a vise­like grip. D’Agos­ta strug­gled, on­ly to find he had been ex­pert­ly re­strained. He drew breath to yell for help, but—al­most as if by telepa­thy—a gloved hand clamped down hard over his mouth. D’Agos­ta strug­gled briefly again, hard­ly be­liev­ing how swift­ly and to­tal­ly he had been dis­armed and im­mo­bi­lized.

And then the door­man did a strange thing. He leaned for­ward, brought his lips di­rect­ly to D’Agos­ta’s ear. When he spoke, it was in the faintest of whis­pers.

“My sin­cer­est apolo­gies, Vin­cent…”

ELEVEN

De­tec­tive Cap­tain Lau­ra Hay­ward walked across the liv­ing room and glanced out the win­dow, care­ful not to brush against the ta­ble that had been placed be­neath it. Through the shat­tered hole, she could see that, far be­low, Broad­way was fi­nal­ly qui­et. She’d giv­en her men strict or­ders to seal off the scene, and they’d done a good job: the in­jured had been quick­ly re­moved by am­bu­lance, the gawk­ers and rub­ber­neck­ers had even­tu­al­ly grown tired and cold and had drift­ed away. The press had been more tena­cious, but they, too, had even­tu­al­ly set­tled for the terse state­ment she’d giv­en late in the af­ter­noon. It had proved a com­pli­cat­ed, messy crime scene, in­volv­ing the apart­ment and the restau­rant be­low, but she’d co­or­di­nat­ed all the in­ves­tiga­tive teams per­son­al­ly and now—at last—the on-​site foren­sic work was wrap­ping up. The fin­ger­print ex­am­in­ers, pho­to tech­ni­cians, and crime scene an­alysts had al­ready left. On­ly the ev­idence cus­to­di­an re­mained, and she would be gone with­in the hour.

Lau­ra Hay­ward de­rived im­mense sat­is­fac­tion from a well-​worked homi­cide. Vi­olent death was a dis­or­der­ly af­fair. But as a scene was an­alyzed—as wave af­ter wave of foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tors, med­ical ex­am­in­ers, tech­ni­cians, and crim­inal­ists went about their jobs in the script­ed fash­ion—the chaos and hor­ror were com­part­men­tal­ized, or­dered, and la­beled. It was as if the in­ves­ti­ga­tion it­self re­stored some of the nat­ural or­der that the act of mur­der had over­turned.

And yet, as she looked over this scene, Hay­ward felt no sat­is­fac­tion. She felt in­stead an in­ex­pli­ca­ble sense of un­ease.

She shiv­ered, blew on her hands, but­toned the top but­ton of her coat. What with the bro­ken win­dow, and her in­struc­tions to touch noth­ing (not even the heat), the room was on­ly a few de­grees warmer than out­side. For a mo­ment, she found her­self wish­ing D’Agos­ta were there. No mat­ter: she’d tell him about the case when she got home. He’d be in­ter­est­ed, she knew, and he of­ten sur­prised her with prac­ti­cal, cre­ative sug­ges­tions. Maybe it would get his mind off his un­healthy ob­ses­sion with Pen­der­gast’s broth­er. Just when he’d got­ten over Pen­der­gast’s death, just when his sense of guilt had seemed to ease, he’d been sum­moned by that damned chauf­feur…

“Ma’am?” a sergeant said, pop­ping his head in­to the liv­ing room. “Cap­tain Sin­gle­ton is here.”

“Show him in, please.” Sin­gle­ton was the lo­cal precinct cap­tain, and Hay­ward ex­pect­ed he would show up per­son­al­ly. He was one of those old-​fash­ioned cap­tains who felt their place was with their men, work­ing cas­es, on the street or at the scene of a crime. Hay­ward had worked with Sin­gle­ton be­fore and found him one of the best cap­tains in the city when it came to work­ing with Homi­cide—co­op­er­ative, de­fer­ring when it came to foren­sics, but in­volv­ing him­self use­ful­ly in ev­ery step of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

And now in the door­way the man him­self ap­peared, nat­ty in a long camel’s-​hair coat, his care­ful­ly trimmed hair im­pec­ca­ble as al­ways. He paused, eyes mov­ing about rest­less­ly, tak­ing in the scene. Then he smiled, stepped for­ward, and of­fered his hand. “Lau­ra.”

“Glen. Nice to see you.” The hand­shake was brief and busi­nesslike. She won­dered if Sin­gle­ton knew about her and D’Agos­ta, de­cid­ed im­me­di­ate­ly that he didn’t: they had both been care­ful to keep their re­la­tion­ship out of the NYPD ru­mor mill.

Sin­gle­ton waved his hand around the room. “Beau­ti­ful work, as usu­al. Hope you don’t mind my stick­ing my nose in.”

“Not at all. We’re just about squared away.”

“How’s it go­ing?”

“Just fine.” She hes­itat­ed. No rea­son not to tell Sin­gle­ton: un­like most po­lice brass, he got no joy out of back­stab­bing po­ten­tial ri­vals for ad­vance­ment—nor was he threat­ened by be­ing up­staged by Homi­cide. Be­sides, he was a cap­tain, too—she could re­ly on his dis­cre­tion.

“Ac­tu­al­ly, I’m not so sure,” she said in a qui­eter tone.

Sin­gle­ton glanced over at the ev­idence cus­to­di­an, who was stand­ing in a far cor­ner of the room jot­ting some no­ta­tions on a clip­board. “Want to tell me about it?”

“The lock on the front door was ex­pert­ly picked. It’s a small apart­ment, just two bed­rooms, one con­vert­ed in­to an artist’s stu­dio. The per­pe­tra­tor en­tered the apart­ment un­de­tect­ed and ap­par­ent­ly hid here—” She point­ed to a dark cor­ner near the door­way. “He jumped the vic­tim as he en­tered the liv­ing room, prob­ably hit him over the head. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the body was so bad­ly dam­aged by the fall that it might be dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine the weapon the at­tack­er used.” She point­ed to the ad­join­ing wall, where a spray of blood de­faced a paint­ing of Cen­tral Park’s boat pond. “Take a look at that im­pact splat­ter.”

Sin­gle­ton ex­am­ined. “Fair­ly small, medi­um-​ve­loc­ity drops. A blunt in­stru­ment of some kind?”

“That’s our take. The cast-​off pat­terns, here and here, back up the as­sump­tion. And the height of the spray rel­ative to the wall is what in­di­cates a blow to the head. Judg­ing by the pat­tern of trav­el—note the crown droplets mov­ing across the rug—the vic­tim stag­gered a few feet, then col­lapsed where that pond­ing stain has been marked. The amount of blood is al­so sug­ges­tive of a head wound—you know how much they bleed.”

“I take it no weapon was re­cov­ered?”

“None. What­ev­er was used, the perp took it with him.”

Sin­gle­ton nod­ded slow­ly. “Go on.”

“It ap­pears that the at­tack­er then dragged the stunned vic­tim to the so­fa, where—and this is strange—he tend­ed the wound he’d just in­flict­ed.”

“Tend­ed?”

“Dabbed at it with gauze pads from the medicine cab­inet in the bath­room. Sev­er­al emp­ty pack­ages were found next to the so­fa, some bloody pads tossed in the trash.”

“Any prints?”

“The guys from La­tents lift­ed about fifty from all over the apart­ment. Even took a few from the blood of the vic­tim, Duchamp, with an ami­do black methanol so­lu­tion. All the prints matched Duchamp, his help, or known ac­quain­tances. There were no oth­ers: not on the medicine cab­inet, not on the door­knob, not on the pack­ets of gauze.”

“The mur­der­er wore gloves.”

“Sur­gi­cal rub­ber, based on trace residues. The lab will be able to con­firm by morn­ing.” Hay­ward ges­tured at the so­fa. “Next the vic­tim was bound, arms tied be­hind his back in a se­ries of elab­orate knots. The same heavy cordage was used to fash­ion the hang­man’s noose. I had foren­sics re­move the ropes from the body and bag them. The knots are like noth­ing I’ve ev­er seen be­fore.” She nod­ded to a se­ries of over­size plas­tic bags which lay, tagged and sealed, atop a blue ev­idence lock­er.

“Strange-​look­ing ropes, too.”

“It’s about the on­ly ev­idence the perp left be­hind. That, and a few fibers from his cloth­ing.” It’s the on­ly bit of good news in the whole case, Hay­ward thought to her­self. Rope had al­most as many char­ac­ter­is­tics as fin­ger­prints: type of twist, turns per inch, num­ber of plies, fil­ament at­tributes. That, along with the par­tic­ular type and style of knot, could speak vol­umes.

“By the time Duchamp came to again, he was prob­ably al­ready bound. The mur­der­er shoved that long desk in­to po­si­tion there be­neath the win­dow. Then—some­how—he forced Duchamp to climb on­to the desk and, in ef­fect, walk the plank. Or, I should say, run the plank. The man ba­si­cal­ly leaped out through the win­dow, hang­ing him­self.”

Sin­gle­ton frowned. “You sure about that?”

“Take a look at the desk.” Hay­ward showed him a se­ries of bloody foot­prints across the desk­top, each flagged and la­beled.

“Duchamp walked through his own blood on the way to the desk. See how, in the first set of prints, he’s stand­ing at rest? As the oth­ers lead to­ward the win­dow, the dis­tance be­tween them grows larg­er. And look how, in this last print be­fore the win­dow, on­ly the ball of the shoe hit the desk. These are ac­cel­er­ation marks.”

Sin­gle­ton stared at the desk for at least a minute. Then he glanced over at Hay­ward. “They couldn’t have been faked? The mur­der­er couldn’t, say, have tak­en off Duchamp’s shoes, made the marks, then re­placed them on his feet?”

“I won­dered about that, too. But the foren­sics boys said that would have been im­pos­si­ble. You can’t fake prints like that. Be­sides, the pat­tern of break­age of the win­dow frame is con­sis­tent with some­body leap­ing through it, rather than some­body be­ing man­han­dled, or pushed, out of it.”

“Holy crap.” Sin­gle­ton stepped for­ward. The shat­tered win­dow was like a jagged eye star­ing out in­to the Man­hat­tan night. “Imag­ine Duchamp stand­ing there, arms tied be­hind his back, a hang­man’s noose hang­ing from his neck. What could some­body say that would in­duce him to take a run­ning leap out his own win­dow?”

He turned back again. “Un­less it was vol­un­tary. As­sist­ed sui­cide. Af­ter all, there was no sign of strug­gle—was there?”

“None. But then, what are we to make of the perp pick­ing the lock? Wear­ing gloves? As­sault­ing Duchamp be­fore ty­ing him up? The foot­prints on the desk show none of the false starts, the hes­ita­tion, you usu­al­ly see in sui­cide at­tempts. Be­sides, we’ve done pre­lim­inary in­ter­views of Duchamp’s neigh­bors, some friends, a few clients. Ev­ery­body said he was the sweet­est, gen­tlest man they’d ev­er met. Al­ways a kind word for ev­ery­one, al­ways smil­ing. His doc­tor backed that up as well. No psy­cho­log­ical trou­bles. Un­mar­ried, but no signs of any re­cent breakup. Fi­nan­cial­ly sta­ble. Made plen­ty of mon­ey from his paint­ings.” Hay­ward shrugged. “No stres­sors of any kind that we know about.”

“Any of the neigh­bors see any­thing?”

“No­body. We’ve im­pound­ed the video­tapes from build­ing se­cu­ri­ty. They’re be­ing gone over now.”

Sin­gle­ton pursed his lips, nod­ding. Then, putting his hands be­hind his back, he strolled slow­ly around the room, look­ing care­ful­ly at the traces of fin­ger­print pow­der, the la­beled pins, and the ev­idence mark­ers. At last, he stopped be­side the lock­er. Hay­ward came over and to­geth­er they stared at the heavy length of rope with­in the sealed bag. It was a very un­usu­al ma­te­ri­al, glossy rather than rough, and the col­or was equal­ly strange: dark pur­ple verg­ing on black, the col­or of egg­plant. The hang­man’s noose was wrapped in the req­ui­site thir­teen loops, but they were the strangest loops Hay­ward had ev­er seen: thick and com­plex, like a mass of knot­ted in­tes­tine. In an­oth­er, small­er bag lay the cord used to bind Duchamp’s wrists. Hay­ward had in­struct­ed the work­ers to cut the cord, not the knot, which was al­most as ex­ot­ic and ser­pen­tine as the hang­man’s noose.

“Look at those,” Sin­gle­ton said, whistling. “Big, fat id­iot knots.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Hay­ward replied. “I’ll have the lig­ature spe­cial­ist run them through the FBI’s knot database.” She hes­itat­ed. “Here’s some­thing un­usu­al. The rope he was hung from was cut part­way through with a sharp knife, maybe a ra­zor, at the cen­ter of its length.”

“You mean—” Sin­gle­ton stopped.

“Right. The rope was sup­posed to break the way it did.”

They stared a mo­ment longer at the strange coils of rope, shim­mer­ing faint­ly in the in­can­des­cent light.

From be­hind, the ev­idence cus­to­di­an cleared her throat. “Ex­cuse me, Cap­tain,” she said. “Can I re­move that now?”

“Sure.” Hay­ward stepped back as the wom­an care­ful­ly placed the bags in­to the ev­idence lock­er, sealed it, then be­gan wheel­ing the lock­er to­ward the front door.

Sin­gle­ton watched her go. “Any­thing tak­en? Valu­ables, mon­ey, paint­ings?”

“Not a thing. Duchamp had close to three hun­dred dol­lars in his wal­let and some re­al­ly valu­able old jew­el­ry on his dress­er. Not to men­tion a stu­dio full of ex­pen­sive paint­ings. Noth­ing was touched.”

Sin­gle­ton’s eyes were on her. “And this feel­ing of un­easi­ness you spoke about?”

She turned to face him. “I can’t re­al­ly put a fin­ger on it. On the one hand, the whole scene feels a lit­tle too clear and cold—al­most like it’s a set­up. This was cer­tain­ly a care­ful­ly, al­most mas­ter­ful­ly ex­ecut­ed crime. And yet noth­ing makes any sense. Why knock the guy over the head, then doc­tor the wound? Why tie him up, put a noose around his neck, force him to jump out a win­dow, but then de­lib­er­ate­ly weak­en the rope so he falls to his death af­ter a brief strug­gle? What could Duchamp pos­si­bly have been told that would make him leap to his own death like that? And above all: why go to all this trou­ble to kill a harm­less wa­ter­col­or artist who nev­er hurt a fly? I get the sense that there’s a deep and sub­tle mo­tive for this crime, and so far we haven’t even be­gun to guess at it. I’ve al­ready got Psych work­ing on a pro­file. I can on­ly hope we’ll learn what makes him tick. Be­cause un­less we find the mo­tive, how the hell are we sup­posed to find the killer?”

TWELVE

FOR A mo­ment, D’Agos­ta went rigid in shock and dis­be­lief. The voice was fa­mil­iar and yet strange. In­stinc­tive­ly, he tried to speak again, but the gloved hand clamped down still hard­er over his mouth.

“Shh­hh.”

The el­eva­tor doors rolled open with a faint chime. Still hold­ing D’Agos­ta in a tight re­straint, the man peered cau­tious­ly out in­to the dark base­ment cor­ri­dor, look­ing care­ful­ly in both di­rec­tions. Then he gave D’Agos­ta a gen­tle shove out in­to the dingy hall, steer­ing him through a se­ries of nar­row, high-​ceilinged pas­sages of yel­low cin­der block. At last, he brought D’Agos­ta up short be­fore a scuffed met­al door, un­la­beled and paint­ed the same col­or as the walls. They were near the build­ing’s pow­er plant: the low rum­ble of fur­naces was clear­ly au­di­ble. The man glanced around once again, then stopped to ex­am­ine a small cob­web that stretched across one edge of the door frame. On­ly then did he with­draw a key from his pock­et, un­lock the door, and ush­er D’Agos­ta quick­ly in­side, clos­ing the door and care­ful­ly lock­ing it.

“Glad to see you look­ing so well, Vin­cent.”

D’Agos­ta could not sum­mon a word.

“My sin­cer­est apolo­gies for the brusque be­hav­ior,” the man said, cross­ing the room with

swift steps and check­ing the lone base­ment win­dow. “We may speak freely here.”

D’Agos­ta re­mained as­tound­ed by the dis­con­nect be­tween the man’s voice—those un­mis­tak­able, mel­liflu­ous south­ern tones with the lazy con­sis­ten­cy of mo­lasses—and the man him­self: a to­tal stranger in a spot­ty door­man’s uni­form, stocky, dark-​com­plect­ed, with brown hair and eyes and a round face. Even his bear­ing, his man­ner of walk­ing, was un­fa­mil­iar.

“Pen­der­gast?” D’Agos­ta asked, fi­nal­ly find­ing his voice.

The man bowed. “The very same, Vin­cent.”

“Pen­der­gast!” And be­fore he re­al­ized what he was do­ing, D’Agos­ta had crushed the FBI

agent in a bear hug.

Pen­der­gast went rigid for a few sec­onds. Then, gen­tly but firm­ly, he dis­en­gaged him­self from the em­brace and took a step back. “Vin­cent, I can’t tell you how de­light­ed I am to see you again. I have missed you.”

D’Agos­ta seized his hand and shook it, em­bar­rass­ment min­gling with the sur­prise, re­lief, and joy. “I thought you were dead. How—?”

“I must apol­ogize for the de­cep­tion. I’d in­tend­ed to re­main ‘dead’ even longer. But cir­cum­stances have forced my hand.” He turned his back. “Now, if you don’t mind…” He slipped out of the door­man’s coat, which D’Agos­ta could now see was clev­er­ly padded around the shoul­ders and midriff, and hung it on the back of the door.

“What hap­pened to you?” D’Agos­ta asked. “How did you es­cape? I turned Fos­co’s cas­tle up­side down look­ing for you. Where the hell have you been?” As the ini­tial shock be­gan to re­cede, he felt him­self fill­ing with a thou­sand ques­tions.

Pen­der­gast smiled faint­ly un­der this bar­rage. “You shall know all, I promise. But first, make your­self com­fort­able—I’ll on­ly be a mo­ment.” And with that, he turned and van­ished in­to a back room.

For the first time, D’Agos­ta ex­am­ined his sur­round­ings. He was in the liv­ing room of a small, dingy apart­ment. A thread­bare so­fa was shoved against one wall, flanked by two wing chairs, their arms spot­ted with stains. A cheap cof­fee ta­ble held a stack of Pop­ular Me­chan­ics mag­azines. A bat­tered roll­top desk sat against one wall, its writ­ing sur­face bare save for a sleek Ap­ple Power­Book: the on­ly thing out of place in the monochro­mat­ic room. Some fad­ed Hum­mel pic­tures of big-​eyed chil­dren hung on the non­de­script walls. A book­shelf was stuffed with pa­per­backs, most­ly pop­ular nov­els and cheesy best sell­ers. D’Agos­ta was amused to find a per­son­al fa­vorite, Ice Lim­it III: Re­turn to Cape Horn, among the well-​thumbed reads. Be­yond the liv­ing room, an open door led to a kitchen, small but tidy. The place was about as far re­moved from Pen­der­gast’s digs at the Dako­ta or his River­side Drive man­sion as you could get.

There was a faint rus­tle and D’Agos­ta jumped to find Pen­der­gast—the re­al Pen­der­gast—stand­ing in the door­way: tall, slen­der, his sil­ver eyes glit­ter­ing. His hair was still brown, his skin swarthy, but his face had mor­phed back in­to the fine, aquiline fea­tures D’Agos­ta knew so well.

Pen­der­gast smiled again, as if read­ing D’Agos­ta’s mind. “Cheek pads,” he said. “Re­mark­able how ef­fec­tive­ly they can change one’s ap­pear­ance. I’ve re­moved them for the present, how­ev­er, since I find them rather un­com­fort­able. Along with the brown con­tact lens­es.”

“I’m floored. I knew you were a mas­ter of dis­guis­es, but this beats all… I mean, even the room…” D’Agos­ta jerked a thumb in the di­rec­tion of the book­case.

Pen­der­gast looked pained. “Even here, alas, noth­ing can ap­pear out of place. I must keep up the im­age of door­man.”

“And a surly one at that.”

“I find that ex­hibit­ing un­pleas­ant per­son­al­ity traits helps one evade deep­er scruti­ny. Once peo­ple type­cast me as a pee­vish door­man with a chip on his shoul­der, they look no far­ther. May I of­fer you a bev­er­age?”

“Bud?”

Pen­der­gast shud­dered in­vol­un­tar­ily. “My dis­sem­bling has its lim­its. Per­haps a Pern­od or Cam­pari?”

“No, thanks.” D’Agos­ta grinned.

“I take it you re­ceived my let­ter.”

“That’s right. And I’ve been on the case ev­er since.”

“Progress?”

“Pre­cious lit­tle. I paid a vis­it to your great-​aunt. But that can wait a bit. Right now, my friend, you have some se­ri­ous ex­plain­ing to do.”

“Nat­ural­ly.” Pen­der­gast mo­tioned him to a seat and took a chair op­po­site. “I re­call we part­ed in haste on a moun­tain­side in Tus­cany.”

“You could say that. I’ll nev­er for­get the last time I saw you, sur­round­ed by a pack of boarhunt­ing dogs, ev­ery one ea­ger to take a chunk out of you.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded slow­ly, and his eyes seemed to go far away. “I was cap­tured, bound, se­dat­ed, and car­ried back to the cas­tle. Our cor­pu­lent friend had me trans­port­ed deep in­to the tun­nels be­neath. There he chained me in a tomb whose for­mer oc­cu­pant had been un­cer­emo­ni­ous­ly swept out. He pro­ceed­ed—in the most gen­teel way, of course—to wall me in.”

“Good God.” D’Agos­ta shud­dered. “I brought the Ital­ian po­lice in to search for you the next morn­ing, but it was no use. Fos­co had re­moved all traces of our stay. The Ital­ians thought I was a lu­natic.”

“I learned lat­er of the count’s cu­ri­ous death. Was that you?”

“Sure was.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded ap­prov­ing­ly. “What hap­pened to the vi­olin?”

“I couldn’t leave it ly­ing around the cas­tle, so I took it and…” He paused, feel­ing un­cer­tain how Pen­der­gast would feel about what he had done.

Pen­der­gast raised his eye­brows in query.

“I brought it to Vi­ola Maske­lene. I told her you were dead.”

“I see. How did she re­act?”

“She was very shocked, very up­set. Al­though she tried to cov­er that up. I think…” D’Agos­ta hes­itat­ed. “I think she cares for you.”

Pen­der­gast was silent, his face a mask.

D’Agos­ta and Pen­der­gast had first met Vi­ola Maske­lene the pri­or Novem­ber, while work­ing on a case in Italy. It had been ob­vi­ous to D’Agos­ta that, from the mo­ment the two saw each oth­er, some­thing in­ef­fa­ble had passed be­tween Pen­der­gast and the young En­glish­wom­an. He could on­ly guess what Pen­der­gast was now think­ing.

Pen­der­gast sud­den­ly roused him­self. “You did the cor­rect thing, and now we can con­sid­er the case of the Storm­cloud vi­olin defini­tive­ly closed.”

“But look,” D’Agos­ta said, “how did you es­cape the cas­tle? How long were you walled up down there?”

“I was chained in the tomb for al­most forty-​eight hours.”

“In the dark?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “Slow­ly suf­fo­cat­ing, I might add. I found a cer­tain spe­cial­ized form of med­ita­tion to be most use­ful.”

“And then?”

“I was res­cued.”

“By who?”

“My broth­er.”

D’Agos­ta, still reel­ing from Pen­der­gast’s near-​mirac­ulous reap­pear­ance, felt him­self go numb with shock. “Your broth­er? Dio­genes?”

“Yes.”

“But I thought he hat­ed you.”

“Yes. And be­cause he hates me, he needs me.”

“For what?”

“For at least the past six months, Dio­genes had made it his busi­ness to mon­itor my move­ments, as part of his prepa­ra­tion for the crime. I re­gret to say I was com­plete­ly un­aware of it. I had al­ways be­lieved my­self the biggest im­ped­iment to his suc­cess and that some­day he would at­tempt to kill me. But I was wrong—fool­ish­ly wrong. The op­po­site was true. When Dio­genes learned of my per­il, he launched a dar­ing res­cue. He en­tered the cas­tle, dis­guised as a lo­cal—he is more the mas­ter of dis­guise than I am—and freed me from the tomb.”

D’Agos­ta was seized by a sud­den thought. “Wait. His eyes are two dif­fer­ent col­ors, right?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded again. “One is hazel, the oth­er a milky blue.”

“I saw him. On the hill­side there, above Fos­co’s cas­tle. Just af­ter we were sep­arat­ed. He was stand­ing in the shad­ow of a rock ledge, watch­ing the pro­ceed­ings, as calm as if it was the first race at Aque­duct.”

“That was him. Af­ter free­ing me from my im­pris­on­ment, he trans­port­ed me to a pri­vate clin­ic out­side Pisa, where I re­cu­per­at­ed from de­hy­dra­tion, ex­po­sure, and the wounds in­flict­ed by Fos­co’s dogs.”

“I still don’t get it. If he hat­ed you—if he planned to com­mit this so-​called per­fect crime—why not just leave you walled up?”

Pen­der­gast smiled again, but this time the smile held no mirth. “You must al­ways re­mem­ber, Vin­cent, that we are deal­ing with a unique­ly de­viant crim­inal mind. How lit­tle I un­der­stood his re­al plans.”

At this, Pen­der­gast abrupt­ly rose and went to the kitchen. A mo­ment lat­er, D’Agos­ta heard the clink of ice in a glass. When the agent re­turned, he held a bot­tle of Lil­let in one hand and a tum­bler in the oth­er.

“Are you sure I can’t in­ter­est you in a drink?”

“No. Now tell me, for God’s sake, what you mean.”

Pen­der­gast splashed a few fin­gers of Lil­let in­to the glass. “If I had died, I would have ru­ined ev­ery­thing for Dio­genes. You see, Vin­cent, I am the pri­ma­ry ob­ject of his crime.”

“You? You’re go­ing to be the vic­tim? Then why—?”

“I am not go­ing to be the vic­tim. I al­ready am the vic­tim.”

“What?”

“The crime has com­menced. It is be­ing suc­cess­ful­ly ex­ecut­ed as we speak.”

“You’re not se­ri­ous.”

“I have nev­er been more se­ri­ous in my life.” Pen­der­gast took a long gulp of Lil­let, re­filled the glass. “Dio­genes dis­ap­peared dur­ing my re­cov­ery at the pri­vate clin­ic in Pisa. As soon as I re­cov­ered, I re­turned to New York, incog­ni­to. I knew his plans were al­most ma­ture, and New York seemed the best place to mount the ef­fort to stop him. I had lit­tle doubt the crime would take place here. This city of­fers the great­est anonymi­ty, the best op­por­tu­ni­ties to hide, adopt an al­ter ego, de­vel­op his plan of at­tack. And so now—aware that my broth­er had been keep­ing tabs on my move­ments—I re­mained ‘dead’ as a way to move about un­seen. It meant keep­ing all of you in the dark. Even Con­stance.” At this, a stab of pain crossed Pen­der­gast’s face. “I re­gret that more than I can say. Still, it seemed the most pru­dent way to pro­ceed.”

“And so you be­came a door­man.”

“The po­si­tion al­lowed me to keep an eye on you and, through you, oth­ers im­por­tant to me. I have a bet­ter chance of hunt­ing Dio­genes from the shad­ows. And I would not have re­vealed my­self had cer­tain events not forced my hand pre­ma­ture­ly.”

“What events?”

“The hang­ing of Charles Duchamp.”

“That bizarre mur­der over by Lin­coln Cen­ter?”

“Cor­rect. That, and an­oth­er mur­der in New Or­leans three days ago. Tor­rance Hamil­ton, pro­fes­sor emer­itus. Poi­soned in front of a crowd­ed lec­ture hall.”

“What’s the con­nec­tion?”

“Hamil­ton was one of my tu­tors in high school, the man who taught me French, Ital­ian, and Man­darin. We were very close. Duchamp was my dear­est—in fact, my on­ly—child­hood friend. He’s the on­ly per­son from my youth I’ve re­mained in touch with. Both mur­dered by Dio­genes.”

“It couldn’t be a co­in­ci­dence?”

“Im­pos­si­ble. Hamil­ton was poi­soned by a rare nerve tox­in, placed in his wa­ter glass. It’s a syn­thet­ic tox­in, very sim­ilar to that pro­duced by a cer­tain spi­der na­tive to Goa. An an­ces­tor of my fa­ther’s died of a bite from that same spi­der when he was a mi­nor func­tionary in In­dia dur­ing the Raj.” Pen­der­gast took an­oth­er sip. “Duchamp was hung from a noose, which then part­ed, plung­ing him twen­ty sto­ries to his death. My Great-​Great-​Un­cle Mau­rice died in pre­cise­ly the same man­ner. He was hanged in New Or­leans in 1871 for mur­der­ing his wife and her lover. Be­cause the gib­bet had been bad­ly dam­aged in re­cent ri­ots, they hung him in­stead from one of the up­per court­house win­dows on De­catur Street. But Mau­rice’s vi­olent strug­gles, com­bined with a de­fec­tive rope, caused it to part, send­ing him plum­met­ing to his death.”

D’Agos­ta stared at his friend in hor­ror.

“These deaths, and the man­ner in which they were staged, were Dio­genes’s way of at­tract­ing my at­ten­tion. Per­haps now, Vin­cent, you can un­der­stand why Dio­genes needs me alive.”

“You can’t mean that he’s—“

“Pre­cise­ly. I had al­ways as­sumed his crime would be against hu­man­ity. But now I know I am his tar­get. My broth­er’s so-​called per­fect crime is to mur­der ev­ery­one close to me. That’s the re­al rea­son he res­cued me from Fos­co’s cas­tle. He doesn’t want me dead, he wants me alive—alive so he can de­stroy me in a far more exquisite way, leav­ing me filled with mis­ery and self-​re­proach, tor­tur­ing my­self with the knowl­edge that I was un­able to save those few peo­ple on earth…” Pen­der­gast paused, took a steady­ing breath. “Those few peo­ple on earth I tru­ly care about.”

D’Agos­ta swal­lowed. “I can’t be­lieve this mon­ster’s re­lat­ed to you.”

“Now that I know the true na­ture of his crime, I’ve been forced to aban­don my ini­tial plan and de­vel­op a new one. It’s not an ide­al plan, but it is the best pos­si­ble un­der the cir­cum­stances.”

“Tell me.”

“We must pre­vent Dio­genes from killing again. That means lo­cat­ing him. And here’s where I’ll need your help, Vin­cent. You must use your ac­cess as a law en­force­ment of­fi­cer to glean as much as you can from the crime scene ev­idence.”

He hand­ed a cell phone to D’Agos­ta. “Here’s a phone I’ll use to keep in con­tact with you. Be­cause time is of the essence, we’ll need to start lo­cal­ly, with Charles Duchamp. Dig up what­ev­er ev­idence you can find and bring it to me. No crumb is too small. Find out ev­ery­thing you can from Lau­ra Hay­ward—but for God’s sake don’t tell her what you’re up to. Not even Dio­genes can leave a to­tal­ly clean crime scene.”

“Good as done.” D’Agos­ta paused. “So what’s with the date on the let­ter? Jan­uary 28?”

“I no longer have any doubt that is the day he plans to com­plete his crime. But it is vi­tal you keep in mind that the crime has al­ready be­gun. To­day is the twen­ty-​sec­ond. My broth­er has been plan­ning this in­famy for years, maybe decades. All his prepa­ra­tions are in place. I shud­der to think who he might kill in the next six days.” And at this, Pen­der­gast sat for­ward and stared at D’Agos­ta, his eyes glit­ter­ing in the dim room. “Un­less Dio­genes can be stopped, ev­ery­one close to me—and that would cer­tain­ly in­clude you, Vin­cent—may die.”

THIRTEEN

Smith­back took his usu­al place in the dark­est cor­ner of the Bones, the dingy restau­rant be­hind the mu­se­um fa­vored as an af­ter-​hours hang­out by mu­se­um em­ploy­ees who—it seemed—nev­er tired of the sight of bones. The of­fi­cial name of the place was the Blar­ney Stone Tav­ern; it had ac­quired its nick­name from the own­er’s pen­chant for ham­mer­ing bones of all shapes, sizes, and sources on­to the walls and ceil­ing.

Smith­back looked at his watch. Mir­acle of mir­acles, he was ten min­utes ear­ly. Maybe No­ra would be ear­ly, too, and they could have a few ex­tra min­utes to talk. He felt like he hadn’t seen his new wife in ages. She had promised to meet him here for a burg­er and beer be­fore she re­turned to the mu­se­um to work late on the big up­com­ing show. And he him­self had a sto­ry of sorts to write up and file be­fore the 2 a.m. dead­line.

He shook his head. What a life: two months mar­ried and he hadn’t been laid in a week. But it wasn’t so much mak­ing love he missed as No­ra’s com­pan­ion­ship. Talk. Friend­ship. The truth was, No­ra was Smith­back’s best friend, and right now he need­ed his best friend. The Duchamp mur­der sto­ry was go­ing bad­ly: he’d got­ten noth­ing more than the same crap as the oth­er pa­pers. The cops were keep­ing a tight lid on in­for­ma­tion, and his usu­al sources could of­fer noth­ing. Here he was, Smith­back of the Times, and his lat­est sto­ries were noth­ing more than the re­heat­ed left­overs of a few brief­in­gs. Mean­while, he could al­most smell Bryce Har­ri­man’s am­bi­tion to mus­cle in on the sto­ry, take it away from him, leave him with the damn Dan­gler as­sign­ment he’d man­aged to slough off so adroit­ly when the Duchamp case first broke.

“Whence the dark look?”

Smith­back looked up, and there was No­ra. No­ra, her bronze-​col­ored hair spilling over her shoul­ders, her freck­led nose wrin­kled by a smile, her green eyes sparkling with life.

“This seat tak­en?” she asked.

“Are you kid­ding? Je­sus, wom­an, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

She slid her bag to the floor and sat down. The oblig­atory droopy-​eared, hang­dog-​faced wait­er ap­peared, like a pall­bear­er at a fu­ner­al, and stood silent­ly await­ing their or­der.

“Bangers and mash, fries, glass of milk,” said No­ra.

“Noth­ing stronger?” Smith­back asked.

“I’m go­ing back to work.”

“So am I, but that nev­er stopped me. I’ll take a shot of that fifty-​year-​old Glen Grant, backed up by a steak and kid­ney pie.”

The wait­er gave a mourn­ful dip of his head and was gone.

Smith­back took her hand. “No­ra, I miss you.”

“Like­wise. What a crazy life we lead.”

“What are we do­ing here in New York City? We should go back to Angkor Wat and live in some Bud­dhist tem­ple in the jun­gle for the rest of our lives.”

“And take a vow of celiba­cy?”

Smith­back waved his hand. “Celiba­cy? We’ll be like Tris­tan and Isol­de in our own jew­eled cave, mak­ing love all day long.”

No­ra blushed. “It was quite a shock, com­ing back to re­al­ity af­ter that hon­ey­moon.”

“Yeah. Es­pe­cial­ly to find that cir­cus ape Har­ri­man, grin­ning and bob­bing in my door­way.”

“Bill, you’re too ob­sessed with Har­ri­man. The world’s full of peo­ple like that. Ig­nore him and move on. You should see the peo­ple I have to work with at the mu­se­um. Some of them should be num­bered and put in a glass case.”

Their food ar­rived with­in min­utes, along with Smith­back’s drink. He picked it up, clinked No­ra’s glass of milk. “Slainte.”

“Chin-​chin.”

Smith­back took a sip. Thir­ty-​six dol­lars a shot and worth ev­ery pen­ny. He watched No­ra tuck in­to her meal. Now, there was a wom­an with healthy ap­petites—no fussy lit­tle sal­ads for her. He re­called a cer­tain mo­ment that il­lus­trat­ed his point, back in the ru­ins of Ban­teay Chh­mar, and felt an amorous stir­ring in his loins.

“So how are things at the mu­se­um?” he asked. “You whip­ping them in­to shape over that new show?”

“I’m on­ly the ju­nior cu­ra­tor, which means I’m most­ly a whippee.”

“Ouch.”

“Here we are, six days from open­ing, and a quar­ter of the ar­ti­facts haven’t even been mount­ed yet. It’s a zoo. I’ve got on­ly one more day to write la­bel copy for thir­ty ob­jects, and then I have to cu­rate and or­ga­nize an en­tire ex­hib­it on Anasazi buri­al prac­tices. And just to­day they said they want me to give a lec­ture on south­west­ern pre­his­to­ry for the lec­ture se­ries. Can you be­lieve it? Thir­teen thou­sand years of south­west­ern pre­his­to­ry in nine­ty min­utes, com­plete with slides.” She took an­oth­er bite.

“They’re ask­ing too much of you, No­ra.”

“Ev­ery­body’s in the same boat. Sa­cred Im­ages is the biggest thing to hit the mu­se­um in years. And on top of that, the ge­nius­es that run the place have de­cid­ed to up­grade the mu­se­um’s se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem. You re­mem­ber what hap­pened with the se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem the last time they had a block­buster ex­hi­bi­tion? You know, Su­per­sti­tion?”

“Oh, God. Don’t re­mind me.”

“They don’t want even the pos­si­bil­ity of a rep­eti­tion. Ex­cept that ev­ery time they up­grade the se­cu­ri­ty for a new hall, they have to shut and lock the damn place down. It’s im­pos­si­ble to get around—you nev­er know what’s go­ing to be closed off. The bright side is that in six days it’ll be over.”

“Yeah, and then we’ll be ready for an­oth­er va­ca­tion.”

“Or a stretch in a padded cell.”

“We’ll al­ways have Angkor,” Smith­back in­toned dra­mat­ical­ly.

No­ra laughed, squeezed his hand. “And how’s the Duchamp sto­ry go­ing?”

“Ter­ri­ble. The homi­cide cap­tain in charge is a wom­an named Hay­ward, a re­al ball­buster. Runs a tight ship. No leaks any­where. I can’t get a scoop to save my life.”

“I’m sor­ry, Bill.”

“No­ra Kel­ly?”

A voice broke in, vague­ly fa­mil­iar. Smith­back looked up to see a wom­an ap­proach­ing their ta­ble—small, in­tense, brown hair, glass­es. He froze in as­ton­ish­ment, and so did she. They stared at each oth­er in si­lence.

Sud­den­ly, she smiled. “Bill?”

Smith­back grinned. “Mar­go Green! I thought you were liv­ing up in Boston, work­ing for that com­pa­ny, what’s its name?”

“Gene­Dyne. I was, but cor­po­rate life wasn’t for me. Great mon­ey, but no ful­fill­ment. So now I’m back at the mu­se­um.”

“I had no idea.”

“Just start­ed six weeks ago. And you?”

“Wrote a few more books, as you prob­ably know. I’m now at the Times. Got back from my hon­ey­moon just a few weeks ago.”

“Con­grat­ula­tions. Guess that means you won’t be call­ing me Lo­tus Blos­som any­more. I as­sume this is the lucky wom­an?”

“She sure is. No­ra, meet an old friend of mine, Mar­go Green. No­ra works at the mu­se­um, too.”

“I know.” Mar­go turned. “In fact, Bill, no of­fense, but I was ac­tu­al­ly look­ing for her, not you.” She stretched out her hand. “Per­haps you don’t re­mem­ber, Dr. Kel­ly, but I’m the new ed­itor of Muse­ol­ogy. We met at the last de­part­men­tal meet­ing.”

No­ra re­turned the hand­shake. “Of course. I read all about you in Bill’s book Rel­ic. How are things?”

“May I sit down?”

“To tell you the truth, we…” No­ra’s voice trailed off as Mar­go took a seat.

“I’ll on­ly be here for a mo­ment.”

Smith­back stared. Mar­go Green. It seemed like an­oth­er life­time, it was so long ago. She hadn’t changed much, ex­cept that maybe she seemed more re­laxed, more con­fi­dent. Still trim and ath­let­ic. She was wear­ing an ex­pen­sive tai­lored suit, a far cry from the bag­gy L. L. Bean shirts and Levi’s of her grad­uate stu­dent days. He glanced down at his own Hugo Boss suit. They had all grown up a lit­tle.

“I can’t be­lieve it,” he said. “Two hero­ines from my books, to­geth­er for the first time.”

Mar­go cocked her head ques­tion­ing­ly. “Oh, re­al­ly? How’s that?”

“No­ra was the hero­ine of my book Thun­der­head.”

“Oh. Sor­ry. Haven’t read it.”

Smith­back kept smil­ing game­ly. “What’s it like to be back at the mu­se­um?”

“It’s changed a lot since we were first there.”

Smith­back felt No­ra’s gaze up­on him. He won­dered if she as­sumed Mar­go was an old girl­friend and that per­haps there were cer­tain salty things he’d left out of his mem­oirs.

“Seems like ages ago,” Mar­go went on.

“It was ages ago.”

“I of­ten won­der what hap­pened to Lavinia Rick­man and Dr. Cuth­bert.”

“No doubt there’s a spe­cial cir­cle of hell re­served for those two.”

Mar­go chuck­led. “What about that cop D’Agos­ta? And Agent Pen­der­gast?”

“Don’t know about D’Agos­ta,” Smith­back said. “But the word around the Times for­eign desk is that Pen­der­gast went miss­ing un­der mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances a few months ago. Flew to Italy on as­sign­ment and nev­er came back.”

A shocked look came over Mar­go’s face. “Re­al­ly? How strange.”

A brief si­lence set­tled over the ta­ble.

“Any­way,” Mar­go re­sumed, turn­ing once again to No­ra, “I want­ed to ask your help.”

“Sure,” No­ra said. “What is it?”

“I’m about to pub­lish an ed­ito­ri­al on the im­por­tance of repa­tri­at­ing Great Ki­va masks to the Tano tribe. You know about their re­quest?”

“I do. I’ve al­so read the ed­ito­ri­al. It’s cir­cu­lat­ing the de­part­ment in draft.”

“Nat­ural­ly, I’ve run in­to op­po­si­tion from the mu­se­um ad­min­is­tra­tion, Col­lopy in par­tic­ular. I’ve start­ed con­tact­ing all the mem­bers of the An­thro­pol­ogy De­part­ment to see if I can build a unit­ed front. The in­de­pen­dence of Muse­ol­ogy must be main­tained, and those masks must be re­turned. We’ve got to be to­geth­er on this as a de­part­ment.”

“What is it you want me to do?” asked No­ra.

“I’m not cir­cu­lat­ing a pe­ti­tion or any­thing quite so overt. I’m just ask­ing for in­for­mal sup­port from mem­bers of the de­part­ment if it comes to a show­down. A ver­bal as­sur­ance. That’s all.”

Smith­back grinned. “Sure, no prob­lem, you can al­ways count on No­ra—“

“Just a minute,” No­ra said.

Smith­back fell silent, sur­prised at the sharp tone.

“Mar­go was speak­ing to me,” No­ra said dry­ly.

“Right.” Smith­back hasti­ly smoothed down an un­re­pen­tant cowlick and re­treat­ed to his drink.

No­ra turned to Mar­go with a rather chilly smile. “I’m sor­ry, I won’t be able to help.”

Smith­back stared from No­ra to Mar­go in sur­prise.

“May I ask why not?” Mar­go asked calm­ly.

“Be­cause I don’t agree with you.”

“But it’s ob­vi­ous that those Great Ki­va masks be­long to the Tanos—“

No­ra held up a hand. “Mar­go, I am thor­ough­ly fa­mil­iar with them and with your ar­gu­ments. In one sense, you’re right. They be­longed to the Tano and they shouldn’t have been col­lect­ed. But now they be­long to all of hu­man­ity—they’ve be­come a part of the hu­man record. What’s more, tak­ing those masks out of the Sa­cred Im­ages ex­hi­bi­tion would be dev­as­tat­ing this late in the game—and I’m one of the cu­ra­tors of the show. Fi­nal­ly, I’m a south­west­ern ar­chae­ol­ogist by train­ing. If we start­ed giv­ing back ev­ery sa­cred item in the mu­se­um, there’d be noth­ing left. Ev­ery­thing is sa­cred to Na­tive Amer­icans—that’s one of the beau­ti­ful things about Na­tive Amer­ican cul­ture.” She paused. “Look, what’s done is done, the world is the way it is, and not all wrongs can be right­ed. I’m sor­ry I can’t give you a bet­ter an­swer, but there it is. I have to be hon­est.”

“But the is­sue of ed­ito­ri­al free­dom…”

“I’m with you one hun­dred per­cent on that one. Pub­lish your ed­ito­ri­al. But don’t ask me to back your ar­gu­ments. And don’t ask the de­part­ment to en­dorse your pri­vate opin­ions.”

With that, Mar­go stared first at No­ra, then at Smith­back.

Smith­back grinned ner­vous­ly, took an­oth­er sip of his drink.

Mar­go rose. “Thank you for your di­rect­ness.”

“You’re wel­come.”

She turned to Smith­back. “It’s great to see you again, Bill.”

“Sure thing,” he mum­bled.

He watched Mar­go walk away. Then he re­al­ized No­ra’s gaze was on him.

” ‘Lo­tus Blos­som’?” she said tart­ly.

“It was just a joke.”

“For­mer girl­friend of yours?”

“No, nev­er,” he replied hasti­ly.

“You’re sure about that?”

“Not even a kiss.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I can’t stand that wom­an.” She turned to stare at Mar­go’s de­part­ing fig­ure. Then she looked back. “And to think she hasn’t read Thun­der­head. I mean, that’s much bet­ter than some of the ear­li­er stuff you wrote. I’m sor­ry, Bill, but that book Rel­ic—well, let’s just say you’ve ma­tured a lot as a writ­er.”

“Hey, what was wrong with Rel­ic?”

She picked up her fork and fin­ished her meal in si­lence.

FOURTEEN

When D’Agos­ta ar­rived at the Omele­te­ria, Hay­ward had al­ready tak­en their usu­al booth by the win­dow. He hadn’t seen her for twen­ty-​four hours—she’d pulled an all-​nighter at the of­fice. He paused in the door­way of the restau­rant, look­ing at her. The morn­ing sun­light had turned her glossy black hair al­most blue, giv­en her pale skin the sheen of fine mar­ble. She was in­dus­tri­ous­ly mak­ing notes on a Pock­et PC, chew­ing her low­er lip, brow knit­ted in con­cen­tra­tion. Just see­ing her sent a throb of af­fec­tion through him so sharp it was al­most painful.

He didn’t know if he was go­ing to be able to do this.

She looked up sud­den­ly, as if aware of his gaze. The look of con­cen­tra­tion van­ished and a smile broke over her beau­ti­ful fea­tures.

“Vin­nie,” she said as he ap­proached. “Sor­ry I missed your lasagna napo­le­tana.”

He kissed her, then took a seat op­po­site. “It’s okay. Lasagna’s lasagna. I’m wor­ried you’re work­ing too hard.”

“Na­ture of the busi­ness.”

Just then a skin­ny wait­ress came up, placed an egg white omelette be­fore Hay­ward, start­ed to re­fill her cof­fee cup.

“Just leave the pot, please,” Hay­ward said.

The wait­ress nod­ded, turned to D’Agos­ta. “Need a menu, hon?”

“No. Give me two fried eggs, over well, with rye toast.”

“I went ahead and or­dered,” Hay­ward said, tak­ing a gulp of her cof­fee. “Hope you don’t mind. I’ve got to get back to the of­fice and—“

“You’re go­ing back?”

Hay­ward frowned, gave her head a sin­gle vig­or­ous shake. “I’ll rest tonight.”

“Pres­sure from on high?”

“There’s al­ways pres­sure from on high. No, it’s the case it­self. I just can’t get a han­dle on it.”

D’Agos­ta watched as she tucked in­to her omelet, feel­ing the dis­may grow in­side him. Un­less Dio­genes can be stopped, ev­ery­one close to me may die, Pen­der­gast had told him the night be­fore. Find out ev­ery­thing you can from Lau­ra Hay­ward. He glanced around the cof­fee shop, look­ing at the faces, look­ing for one bluish-​white, one hazel eye. But, of course, Dio­genes would be wear­ing con­tacts, dis­guis­ing his most strik­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic.

“Why don’t you tell me about the case?” he asked as eas­ily as he could.

She took an­oth­er bite, dabbed at her mouth. “The au­top­sy re­sults came back. No sur­prise there. Duchamp died of mas­sive in­ter­nal in­juries re­sult­ing from his fall. Sev­er­al pha­ryn­geal bones were frac­tured, but the hang­ing it­self didn’t cause death: the spinal cord had not been sev­ered and as­phyx­ia­tion hadn’t yet oc­curred. And here’s the first of many weird things. The rope had been cut al­most through be­fore­hand with a very sharp blade. The killer want­ed it to part dur­ing the hang­ing.”

D’Agos­ta felt him­self go cold. My Great-​Great-​Un­cle Mau­rice died in pre­cise­ly the same man­ner…

“Duchamp was ini­tial­ly sub­dued in his apart­ment, then tied up. There was a con­tu­sion on the left tem­ple, but the head it­self was so bad­ly crushed in the fall we can’t be cer­tain that’s what caused all the blood in the apart­ment. But get this: the con­tu­sion had been doc­tored and ban­daged, ap­par­ent­ly by the killer.”

“I see.” The case made sense to D’Agos­ta … too much sense. And he could say noth­ing to Hay­ward.

“Then the perp pushed a long desk up against the win­dow, con­vinced Duchamp to climb on it, and take a run­ning jump out the win­dow.”

“Unas­sist­ed?”

Hay­ward nod­ded. “With his hands bound be­hind him and a noose around his neck.”

“Any­one see the perp?” D’Agos­ta felt a con­stric­tion in his chest; he knew who the perp was, yet he couldn’t tell her di­rect­ly. It was an un­ex­pect­ed­ly dif­fi­cult feel­ing.

“No­body in the apart­ment build­ing re­mem­bers see­ing any­body un­usu­al. There’s on­ly one pos­si­ble sight­ing, by a base­ment se­cu­ri­ty cam­era. Just a rear view of a man in a trench coat. Tall, thin. Light hair. We’re hav­ing the im­age dig­ital­ly en­hanced, but the techs aren’t hope­ful we’ll get enough to be use­ful. He knew the cam­era was there and took care pass­ing through its field of view.” She fin­ished her cof­fee and poured her­self an­oth­er.

“We went through the vic­tim’s pa­pers, his stu­dio, look­ing for any mo­tive,” she went on. “None. Then we used his Rolodex to call up friends and ac­quain­tances. No­body we spoke with could be­lieve it. A re­al Mis­ter Rogers, this guy Duchamp. Oh, and here’s a bizarre co­in­ci­dence. Duchamp knew Agent Pen­der­gast.”

D’Agos­ta froze. He didn’t know what to say, how to act. Some­how, he just couldn’t be pho­ny with Lau­ra Hay­ward. He felt a flush spread across his face.

“Seems they were friends. Pen­der­gast’s Dako­ta ad­dress was on the Rolodex. Ac­cord­ing to Duchamp’s ap­point­ment book, the two had lunch three times last year, al­ways at ‘21.’ Too bad we can’t get Pen­der­gast’s take on this from be­yond the grave. Right about now I think I’d wel­come even his help.”

Sud­den­ly, she stopped, catch­ing sight of D’Agos­ta’s ex­pres­sion. “Oh, Vin­nie,” she said, slid­ing a hand across the ta­ble and grasp­ing his. “I’m sor­ry. That was a thought­less thing to say.”

This made D’Agos­ta feel ten times worse. “Maybe this is the crime Pen­der­gast warned me about in his note.”

Slow­ly, Hay­ward with­drew her hand. “I’m sor­ry?”

“Well…” D’Agos­ta stam­mered. “Dio­genes hat­ed his broth­er.

Maybe he plans to re­venge him­self on Pen­der­gast by killing off Pen­der­gast’s friends.”

Hay­ward looked at him, her eyes nar­row­ing.

“I heard there was an­oth­er friend of Pen­der­gast’s killed re­cent­ly. A pro­fes­sor in New Or­leans.”

“But, Vin­nie, Pen­der­gast is dead. Why kill his broth­er’s friends now?”

“Who knows how crazy peo­ple think? All I’m say­ing is that, if it were my case, I’d con­sid­er it a sus­pi­cious co­in­ci­dence.”

“How’d you hear about this New Or­leans mur­der?”

D’Agos­ta looked down, ar­ranged his nap­kin on his lap. “I can’t re­call. I think maybe his—his sec­re­tary, Con­stance, men­tioned it to me.”

“Well, there are lots of strange as­pects to the case, I’ll give you that.” Hay­ward sighed. “It’s far-​fetched, but I’ll look in­to it.”

The wait­ress reap­peared with his break­fast or­der.

D’Agos­ta hard­ly dared meet Lau­ra’s eyes. In­stead, he lift­ed his fork and knife and sliced in­to the glis­ten­ing egg. A jet of yel­low spurt­ed across the plate.

D’Agos­ta jerked back. “Wait­ress!”

The wom­an, half a dozen booths away al­ready, turned and walked slow­ly back.

D’Agos­ta hand­ed her the plate. “These eggs are run­ny. I said over well. I didn’t say over easy.”

“All right, hon, hold your wa­ter.” The wom­an took the plate and walked away.

“Ouch,” Hay­ward said in a low voice. “Don’t you think you were hard on the poor wom­an?”

“I hate run­ny eggs,” D’Agos­ta said, star­ing in­to his cof­fee once again. “I can’t stand look­ing at them.”

There was a brief si­lence. “What’s wrong, Vin­nie?” she asked.

“This Dio­genes busi­ness.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s time you dropped this wild-​goose chase and got back on the job. It’s not go­ing to bring Pen­der­gast back. Sin­gle­ton’s not go­ing to let this go on for­ev­er. On top of that, you’re not act­ing like your­self. Noth­ing like get­ting back to work as a way of cur­ing the blues.”

You’re right, he thought. He wasn’t act­ing like him­self be­cause he wasn’t feel­ing like him­self. It felt bad enough, not telling Hay­ward the truth. But it went even be­yond that: here he was, pump­ing her for in­for­ma­tion while with­hold­ing the fact Pen­der­gast was still alive. He ar­ranged his lips in­to what he hoped was a sheep­ish smile.

“I’m sor­ry, Lau­ra. You’re right: it’s time I got back on the job. And here I am, act­ing cranky, when you’re the one who’s had no sleep. What else about the case kept you up all night?”

She glanced at him search­ing­ly for a mo­ment. Then she took an­oth­er bite of her omelet, pushed it away. “I’ve nev­er seen such a care­ful mur­der. It’s not just the fact there are so few clues, but the ones we have are so damn puz­zling. The on­ly ev­idence left be­hind by the perp, oth­er than the ropes, was some cloth­ing fibers.”

“Well, that gives you three clues to work, at least.”

“That’s right. The fibers, the rope, and the struc­ture of the knots. And so far, we’ve come up blank on all three. That’s what kept me away all night: that, and the usu­al pa­per­work. The fibers are of some kind of ex­ot­ic wool that foren­sics hasn’t seen be­fore. It’s in none of the lo­cal or fed­er­al databas­es. We’ve got a tex­tile ex­pert work­ing on it. Same with the ropes. The ma­te­ri­al is noth­ing man­ufac­tured in Amer­ica, Eu­rope, Aus­tralia, the Mid­dle East.”

“And the knots?”

“They’re even more bizarre. The lig­ature spe­cial­ist—who we dragged out of bed at three, by the way—was fas­ci­nat­ed. At first glance, they look ran­dom, mas­sive, like some bondage fetishist gone crazy. But they’re not that at all. Turns out they’re ex­pert­ly fash­ioned. Very in­tri­cate. The spe­cial­ist was stag­gered: he said he’d nev­er seen the knot be­fore, that it seemed to be of a new type en­tire­ly. He went in­to a whole riff on math­emat­ics and knot the­ory that I couldn’t even be­gin to fol­low.”

“I’d like to see a pho­to­graph of the knots, if I could.”

She flashed him an­oth­er ques­tion­ing gaze.

“Hey, I was in the Boy Scouts,” he said with a lev­ity he didn’t feel.

She nod­ded slow­ly. “I had this in­struc­tor at the Acade­my, Rid­er-​back. Re­mem­ber him?”

“Nope.”

“He was fas­ci­nat­ed by knots. He used to say they were a three-​di­men­sion­al man­ifes­ta­tion of a fourth-​di­men­sion­al prob­lem. What­ev­er that means.” She took an­oth­er sip of cof­fee. “Soon­er or lat­er, those knots are go­ing to help us crack this case.”

The wait­ress came back, plac­ing D’Agos­ta’s eggs be­fore him with a look of tri­umph. Now they were wiz­ened-​look­ing, al­most des­ic­cat­ed, crisp around the edges.

Hay­ward glanced at the plate, a smile re­turn­ing to her lips. “En­joy,” she said with a gig­gle.

Sud­den­ly, his coat be­gan to vi­brate. For a mo­ment, D’Agos­ta went rigid in sur­prise. Then, re­mem­ber­ing the cell phone Pen­der­gast had giv­en him, he dug a hand in­to his pock­et and pulled it out.

“New phone?” Hay­ward asked. “When’d you pick that up?”

D’Agos­ta hes­itat­ed. Then, rather abrupt­ly, he de­cid­ed that he just couldn’t tell her one more lie.

“Sor­ry,” he said, stand­ing up. “Got­ta go. I’ll ex­plain lat­er.”

Hay­ward half rose as well, a look of sur­prise on her face. “But, Vin—“

“Will you get break­fast?” he asked, putting his hands on her shoul­ders and kiss­ing her. “I’ll get the next.”

“But—“

“See you tonight, sweet­heart. Good luck with the case.” And— hold­ing her ques­tion­ing stare with his own for a brief mo­ment—he gave her shoul­ders a part­ing squeeze, turned, and hur­ried­ly left the restau­rant.

He glanced once more at the mes­sage dis­played on the tiny cell screen:

SW Cor­ner 77 and York. NOW.

FIFTEEN

The big black limo, tear­ing south­ward on York Av­enue, ap­peared sec­onds af­ter D’Agos­ta reached the cor­ner. It slewed to a stop; the door flew open. Even be­fore D’Agos­ta shut the door, the limo was ac­cel­er­at­ing from the curb, driv­er lean­ing on the horn, cars be­hind them screech­ing to a halt to let the big car pass.

D’Agos­ta turned in as­ton­ish­ment. A stranger sat in the seat be­side him: tall, slen­der, well tanned, dressed in an im­pec­ca­ble gray suit, slim black at­taché case across his knees.

“Don’t be alarmed, Vin­cent,” said the fa­mil­iar voice of Pen­der­gast. “An emer­gen­cy has forced me to change my spots again. To­day I am an in­vest­ment banker.”

“Emer­gen­cy?”

Pen­der­gast hand­ed D’Agos­ta a sheet of pa­per, care­ful­ly sealed with­in lay­ers of glas­sine. It read:

Nine of Swords: Tor­rance Hamil­ton

Ten of Swords: Charles Duchamp

King of Swords, Re­versed: Michael Deck­er

The Five of Swords—?

“Dio­genes is tele­graph­ing his move in ad­vance. Bait­ing me.” Dis­guise or no dis­guise, Pen­der­gast’s face was as grim as D’Agos­ta had ev­er seen it.

“What are those—tarot cards?”

“Dio­genes al­ways had an in­ter­est in tarot. As you may have guessed, those cards in­volve death and be­tray­al.”

“Who’s Michael Deck­er?”

“He was my men­tor when I first moved to the FBI. Be­fore, I’d been in more, ah, ex­ot­ic forms of gov­ern­ment ser­vice, and he helped me make a rather dif­fi­cult tran­si­tion. Mike’s high­ly placed in Quan­ti­co these days, and he’s been in­valu­able in clear­ing the way for my some­what un­ortho­dox meth­ods. It was thanks to Mike that I was able to get the FBI in­volved so quick­ly on the Jere­my Grove mur­der last fall, and he helped smooth some ruf­fled feath­ers af­ter a small case I han­dled in the Mid­west pri­or to that.”

“So Dio­genes is threat­en­ing an­oth­er one of your friends.”

“Yes. I can’t raise Mike on his cell or at home. His sec­re­tary tells me he’s on el­evat­ed as­sign­ment, which means they won’t re­lease any de­tails about it—even if I were to re­veal my­self as a col­league. I must warn him in per­son, if I can find him.”

“As an FBI agent, though, he must be pret­ty hard to get the jump on.”

“He’s one of the best field agents in the Bu­reau. I fear that would de­ter Dio­genes not at all.”

D’Agos­ta glanced back at the let­ter. “Your broth­er wrote this?”

“Yes. Cu­ri­ous: it doesn’t look like his hand­writ­ing—more like a crude at­tempt to dis­guise his hand­writ­ing, rather. Far too crude, in fact, for him. And yet there’s some­thing strange­ly fa­mil­iar about it…” Pen­der­gast’s voice trailed off.

“How’d you get it?”

“It ar­rived at my Dako­ta apart­ment ear­ly this morn­ing. I em­ploy a door­man there, Mar­tyn, to take care of spe­cial things for me. He got it to Proc­tor, and Proc­tor got it to me through a pri­or ar­range­ment.”

“Proc­tor knows you’re alive?”

“Yes. Con­stance Greene does, too, as of last night.”

“What about her? Does she still think you’re dead?”

D’Agos­ta didn’t say the name—he didn’t need to. Pen­der­gast would know he was re­fer­ring to Vi­ola Maske­lene.

“I haven’t com­mu­ni­cat­ed with her. It would put her in grave dan­ger. Ig­no­rance, as painful as it is, will keep her safe.”

There was a brief, awk­ward si­lence.

D’Agos­ta changed di­rec­tion. “So your broth­er took this let­ter to the Dako­ta? Aren’t you hav­ing the place watched?”

“Of course. Very care­ful­ly. It was de­liv­ered by a derelict. When we caught him and ques­tioned him, he said he was paid to de­liv­er it by a man on Broad­way. His de­scrip­tion was too vague to be of use.”

The limo sheared to­ward the on-​ramp for the FDR Drive, lean­ing in­to the turn, wheels smok­ing.

“You think your FBI friend will lis­ten?”

“Mike Deck­er knows me.”

“It seems to me that you rush­ing down to warn Deck­er is ex­act­ly what Dio­genes ex­pects.”

“Cor­rect. It is like a forced move in chess: I’m falling in­to a trap and there’s not a thing I can do about it.” Pen­der­gast looked at D’Agos­ta, eyes bright even be­hind brown con­tact lens­es. “We must find some way to re­verse the pat­tern, get on the of­fen­sive. Have you learned any­thing more from Cap­tain Hay­ward?”

“They re­cov­ered some fibers from the site. That and the ropes are the on­ly hard ev­idence they’ve got so far. There are some oth­er weird things about the mur­der, too. For ex­am­ple, it seems Dio­genes stunned Duchamp with a blow to the head, then doc­tored and ban­daged the in­jury be­fore killing him.”

Pen­der­gast shook his head. “Vin­cent, I must know more. I must. Even the small­est, least sig­nif­icant de­tail could be crit­ical. I have, shall we say, a con­nec­tion in New Or­leans who is get­ting me the po­lice dossier on the Hamil­ton poi­son­ing. But I have no such con­nec­tion here, for the Duchamp case.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded. “Un­der­stood.”

“There’s an­oth­er thing. Dio­genes seems to be work­ing for­ward, choos­ing his vic­tims chrono­log­ical­ly. That means you might soon be at risk. We worked to­geth­er on my first re­al­ly large-​scale case on the FBI—the mu­se­um mur­ders.”

D’Agos­ta swal­lowed. “Don’t wor­ry about me.”

“It seems Dio­genes has be­gun to take plea­sure in giv­ing me ad­vance warn­ing. We might as­sume you and oth­er po­ten­tial tar­gets are tem­porar­ily safe—at least un­til I re­ceive the next mes­sage. Even so, Vin­cent, you must take ev­ery pre­cau­tion pos­si­ble. The safest thing is to go back to work im­me­di­ate­ly. Sur­round your­self with po­lice, re­main in the precinct house when not on call. Most im­por­tant, al­ter all your habits—ev­ery sin­gle one. Tem­porar­ily move your res­idence. Take cabs in­stead of walk­ing or rid­ing the sub­way. Go to bed and rise at dif­fer­ent hours. Change ev­ery­thing in your life that might cause you dan­ger—or dan­ger to those you care about. An at­tempt on your life could eas­ily re­sult in col­lat­er­al dam­age to oth­ers, in par­tic­ular Cap­tain Hay­ward. Vin­cent, you’re a good of­fi­cer—I don’t need to tell you what to do.”

The limo came screech­ing to a stop. The black­topped ex­panse of the East 34th Street He­li­port lay di­rect­ly ahead, its stub­by, three-​hun­dred-​foot run­way gleam­ing dul­ly in the morn­ing sun. A red Bell 206 Jet Ranger was wait­ing on the tar­mac, ro­tors turn­ing. Pen­der­gast abrupt­ly slipped in­to in­vest­ment banker mode, his face re­lax­ing, the glit­ter­ing ha­tred and de­ter­mi­na­tion van­ish­ing from his eyes, leav­ing be­hind a pleas­ant bland­ness.

“One oth­er thing,” D’Agos­ta said.

Pen­der­gast turned back.

D’Agos­ta reached in­to his jack­et pock­et, re­trieved some­thing, held it out in a closed fist. Pen­der­gast reached out and D’Agos­ta dropped in­to his palm a plat­inum medal­lion, slight­ly melt­ed along one edge, on a chain. On one side of the medal­lion was the im­age of a lid­less eye hov­er­ing over a phoenix, ris­ing from the ash­es of a fire. A crest of some sort had been stamped in­to the oth­er side.

Pen­der­gast stared at it, a strange ex­pres­sion pass­ing over his face.

“Count Fos­co was wear­ing this when I went back to his cas­tle with the Ital­ian po­lice. He showed it to me, pri­vate­ly, as proof you were dead. You’ll see the bas­tard en­graved his own crest on the back—his fi­nal trick against me. I thought you’d want it.”

Pen­der­gast turned it over, peered at it, turned it over again.

“I took it from him the night I … paid him a fi­nal vis­it. Maybe it’ll bring you good luck.”

“Nor­mal­ly I de­spise luck, but at the mo­ment I find my­self in sin­gu­lar need of it. Thank you, Vin­cent.” Pen­der­gast’s voice was al­most too low to be heard above the revving of the ro­tors. He placed the medal­lion around his neck, tucked it in­to his shirt, and grasped D’Agos­ta’s hand.

And then, with­out an­oth­er word, he strode across the tar­mac to­ward the wait­ing chop­per.

SIXTEEN

The chop­per land­ed at a cor­po­rate he­li­port in Chevy Chase, Mary­land, where a car with­out a driv­er await­ed. By nine o’clock, Pen­der­gast was cross­ing in­to D.C. It was a cold, sun­ny Jan­uary day, with a weak yel­low sun fil­ter­ing through the bare branch­es of the trees, leav­ing frost in the shad­ows.

In a few min­utes, he was driv­ing along Ore­gon Av­enue, lined with state­ly man­sions—one of Wash­ing­ton’s most ex­clu­sive sub­urbs. He slowed as he passed Mike Deck­er’s house. The tidy, brick-​front­ed Geor­gian seemed as som­no­lent as the rest of the neigh­bor­hood. No car was parked out­side, but that in it­self meant noth­ing: Deck­er ranked a car and driv­er when he want­ed one.

Pen­der­gast drove a block far­ther, then pulled over to the curb. Tak­ing out a cell phone, he once again tried Deck­er’s home and mo­bile. No an­swer.

Be­hind the row of man­sions lay the wood­ed fast­ness of Rock Creek Park. Pen­der­gast got out of the car with his at­taché case and walked thought­ful­ly in­to the park. Dio­genes, he felt sure, would be watch­ing the scene and would rec­og­nize him de­spite his dis­guise— just as he felt sure he would rec­og­nize his broth­er, no mat­ter what.

But he saw no one and heard noth­ing but the faint rush of wa­ter from Rock Creek.

He walked briskly along the fringe of the park, then dart­ed across a drive­way, crossed a gar­den, and came up through a hedge in­to Deck­er’s back­yard. The yard was deep and well tend­ed, falling away at the rear in­to the dense woods of the park. There, hid­den from the neigh­bors by thick shrub­bery, he glanced up at the win­dows. They were closed, white cur­tains pulled shut. Glanc­ing at the ad­join­ing hous­es, he pro­ceed­ed, with prac­ticed ca­su­al­ness, across the yard and to the back door, pulling on a pair of gloves as he did so and leav­ing his at­taché on the stoop.

Pen­der­gast paused again, his alert eyes tak­ing in ev­ery de­tail. Then, with­out knock­ing, he peered through the small win­dow.

Deck­er’s kitchen was mod­ern and al­most spar­tan in its bach­elor empti­ness. A fold­ed news­pa­per lay on a counter be­side the phone; a suit jack­et had been draped over the back of a chair. On one side of the room, a door—shut—opened no doubt on­to the base­ment stair­way; on the oth­er side, a dark cor­ri­dor led in­to the front rooms of the house.

A shape lay on the floor of the cor­ri­dor, vague in the dim light. It moved fee­bly, once, twice.

In an in­stant, Pen­der­gast moved to pick the lock, on­ly to find that the knob—bro­ken—turned eas­ily in his hand. There was a tell­tale cut wire: a se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem had been by­passed. Near­by, the phone wire had al­so been snipped. He swept in­side, dart­ing to­ward the shape in the hall and kneel­ing on the broad floor­boards.

A male Weimaran­er lay there, eyes glassy, rear legs still twitch­ing in slow­ing spasms. Pen­der­gast ran his gloved fin­gers quick­ly over the dog’s frame. Its neck had been bro­ken in two places.

Now, ris­ing, Pen­der­gast reached in­to his pock­et. When his hand ap­peared again, it was hold­ing a gleam­ing Wil­son Com­bat TS­GC .45. Mov­ing quick­ly and with ut­ter si­lence, Pen­der­gast searched the first floor of the house: wheel­ing around cor­ners, gun ex­tend­ed, eyes dart­ing over ev­ery sur­face and place of con­ceal­ment. Liv­ing room, din­ing room, front hall, bath: all emp­ty and still.

Next, Pen­der­gast flew up the stairs, paus­ing to glance around at the up­per land­ing. Four rooms gave on­to a cen­tral hall­way. Sun­light lanced in through the open doors, il­lu­mi­nat­ing a few dust motes danc­ing lazi­ly in the slug­gish air.

Gun at the ready, he spun around the first door­way, which led in­to a back bed­room. In­side, the guest beds were made with al­most mil­itary per­fec­tion, bed­spreads tight across the mat­tress­es and over the pil­lows. Be­yond, the gaunt trees of Rock Creek Park were vis­ible through the win­dow. Ev­ery­thing was wrapped in a deep si­lence.

A faint sound came from near­by.

Pen­der­gast froze, his hy­per­acute sens­es strained to the max­imum. There had been one sound, on­ly one: the slow out­rush of air, like a lan­guorous sigh.

He ex­it­ed the back bed­room, dart­ed across the hall, paused out­side the en­trance to the room op­po­site. Tall book­shelves and the edge of a ta­ble could be seen through the open door: a study. Here, clos­er, an­oth­er sound could just be dis­cerned—a fast, run­ning pat­ter as of a faucet im­prop­er­ly closed.

Tens­ing, gun for­ward, Pen­der­gast wheeled around the door frame.

Mike Deck­er sat in a leather chair, fac­ing his desk. He was ex-​mil­itary and had al­ways en­dowed his move­ments with econ­omy and pre­ci­sion, yet it was not pre­cise­ness that kept him so erect in the chair. A heavy steel bay­onet had been driv­en in­to his mouth, an­gling down through his neck and pin­ning him to the head­rest. The point of the old bay­onet pierced all the way through the chair back, stick­ing out the back side, its rough edge heavy with blood. Drops fell from its tip on­to the sod­den car­pet.

An­oth­er low sigh sound­ed in Deck­er’s ru­ined throat, like the col­laps­ing of a bel­lows. It died in­to a faint, bloody gar­gle. The man stared sight­less­ly at Pen­der­gast, white shirt stained a uni­form red. Streams of blood still flowed across the ta­ble, run­ning in slow me­an­ders and drain­ing, with a pat­ter­ing sound, to the floor.

For a mo­ment, Pen­der­gast re­mained still, as if thun­der­struck. Then he re­moved one glove and—lean­ing for­ward, care­ful not to step in the blood that had pond­ed be­neath the chair—placed the back of his hand against Deck­er’s fore­head. The man’s skin felt sup­ple, elas­tic, and its sur­face tem­per­ature was no cool­er than Pen­der­gast’s own.

Abrupt­ly, Pen­der­gast drew back. The house was silent—ex­cept for the steady drip­ping.

The sighs, Pen­der­gast knew, were post­mortem: air bleed­ing from the lungs as the body re­laxed against the bay­onet. Even so, Mike Deck­er had been dead less than five min­utes. Prob­ably less than three.

Yet again, he hes­itat­ed. The pre­cise time of death was ir­rel­evant. What was far more im­por­tant was Pen­der­gast’s re­al­iza­tion that Dio­genes had wait­ed un­til Pen­der­gast en­tered the house be­fore killing Deck­er.

And that meant his broth­er might still be here, in this house.

In the dis­tance, at the thresh­old of hear­ing, came the wail of po­lice sirens.

Pen­der­gast swept the room, eyes glit­ter­ing, search­ing for the slight­est clue that might help him track down his broth­er. His eye fi­nal­ly rest­ed on the bay­onet—and, abrupt­ly, he rec­og­nized it.

A mo­ment lat­er, his gaze fell to Deck­er’s hands. One lay slack; the oth­er was clenched in a ball.

Ig­nor­ing the ap­proach­ing sirens, Pen­der­gast with­drew a gold pen from his pock­et and care­ful­ly teased the clenched hand open. In­side lay three strands of blond hair.

Re­triev­ing a jew­el­er’s loupe from his pock­et, he bent for­ward and ex­am­ined the hairs. Re­turn­ing his hand back in­to his pock­et, he ex­changed the loupe for a pair of tweez­ers. Very care­ful­ly, he plucked ev­ery strand from the mo­tion­less hand.

The sirens were loud­er now.

By now, Dio­genes was cer­tain­ly gone. He had chore­ographed the scene, man­aged its many vari­ables, with per­fec­tion. He had en­tered the house, no doubt im­mo­bi­lized Deck­er with some kind of drug, then wait­ed for Pen­der­gast to ar­rive be­fore killing him. Chances were that Dio­genes had de­lib­er­ate­ly tripped the bur­glar alarm while leav­ing the house.

A se­nior FBI agent lay dead, and the house would be picked apart in the search for clues. Dio­genes would not risk stick­ing around— and nei­ther could he.

He heard a screech­ing of tires, a con­fu­sion of sirens, as a pha­lanx of po­lice cars bar­reled down Ore­gon Av­enue, now just sec­onds from the house. Pen­der­gast glanced back at his friend one last time, briskly wiped a trace of ex­cess mois­ture from one eye, then dashed down the stairs.

The front door was now wide open, a se­cu­ri­ty pan­el be­side it blink­ing red. He leaped over the in­ert form of the Weimaran­er, ex­it­ed through the back door, snagged his at­taché case, sprint­ed across the yard, and—toss­ing the strands of hair in­to a pile of dead leaves— van­ished like a ghost in­to the shad­owy depths of Rock Creek Park.

SEVENTEEN

Mar­go Green was the first to ar­rive at the mu­se­um’s grand old Murchi­son Con­fer­ence Room. As she set­tled in­to one of the old leather chairs flank­ing the mas­sive nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry oak ta­ble, she took in the mar­velous—but some­what dis­con­cert­ing—de­tails: the tro­phy heads of now en­dan­gered species grac­ing the walls; the brace of ele­phant tusks flank­ing the door; the African masks, leop­ard, ze­bra, and li­on skins. Murchi­son had done his field­work in Africa over a cen­tu­ry be­fore, and had en­joyed a ca­reer as a great white hunter along­side his more se­ri­ous pro­fes­sion of an­thro­pol­ogy. There was even a pair of ele­phant’s-​foot waste­bas­kets at op­po­site ends of the room. But this was a mu­se­um, and a mu­se­um must not throw any­thing away, no mat­ter how po­lit­ical­ly in­cor­rect it may have be­come.

Mar­go used the few mo­ments of qui­et be­fore the rest of the de­part­ment ar­rived to look through her notes and or­ga­nize her thoughts. She felt a ris­ing ner­vous­ness she seemed un­able to quell. Was she do­ing the right thing? She’d been here all of six weeks, and now, with her very first is­sue of Muse­ol­ogy, she was in­ject­ing her­self in­to the midst of con­tro­ver­sy. Why was it so im­por­tant to her?

But she al­ready knew the an­swer. Per­son­al­ly, she had to make a stand on some­thing she be­lieved in. And pro­fes­sion­al­ly, as ed­itor of Muse­ol­ogy, it was the right thing to do. Peo­ple would ex­pect the jour­nal to com­ment on the is­sue. Si­lence, or a weak, waf­fling ed­ito­ri­al, would be not­ed by all. It would set the tone of her ed­itor­ship. No— it was im­por­tant to show that Muse­ol­ogy would con­tin­ue to be rel­evant and top­ical while not fear­ing the con­tro­ver­sial. This was her op­por­tu­ni­ty to show the pro­fes­sion that she meant busi­ness.

She went back to her notes. Be­cause the item in ques­tion was owned by the An­thro­pol­ogy De­part­ment, it was the an­thro cu­ra­tors who were most con­cerned. She would not get a sec­ond chance to make her case to the whole de­part­ment, and she want­ed to get it right.

Oth­er cu­ra­tors were now drift­ing in, nod­ding to her, chat­ting among them­selves, rat­tling the al­most emp­ty cof­fee urn, which was boil­ing in­to tar the re­mains of the cof­fee pre­pared that morn­ing. Some­one poured a cup, then re­placed it with a clat­ter and a sup­pressed ex­pres­sion of dis­gust. No­ra Kel­ly ar­rived, greet­ed Mar­go cor­dial­ly, and took her seat on the op­po­site side of the ta­ble. Mar­go looked around the room.

All ten cu­ra­tors were now here.

The last to ar­rive was Hugo Men­zies, chair­man of the An­thro­pol­ogy De­part­ment since the un­time­ly death of Dr. Frock six years be­fore. Men­zies gave Mar­go a spe­cial smile and nod, then took his seat at the head of the vast ta­ble. Be­cause the bulk of Muse­ol­ogy ar­ti­cles were on an­thro­po­log­ical sub­jects, he had been ap­point­ed as her su­per­vi­sor. And—she sus­pect­ed—he had al­so been in­stru­men­tal in her hir­ing. Un­like ev­ery­body else on staff—who fa­vored lawyer­ly brief­cas­es—Men­zies car­ried around a classy can­vas shoul­der bag by John Chap­man & Com­pa­ny, a top man­ufac­tur­er of En­glish fish­ing and shoot­ing gear. At the mo­ment, he was tak­ing some pa­pers out of the bag, squar­ing and or­ga­niz­ing them. Next, he put on his read­ing glass­es, ad­just­ed his tie, and smoothed down his un­tidy thatch of white hair. Fi­nal­ly, he checked his watch, raised his live­ly blue eyes to the wait­ing group, cleared his throat.

“Glad to see you all here,” he said, his voice reedy and old-​fash­ioned. “Shall we com­mence?”

There was a gen­er­al shuf­fling of pa­pers.

“Rather than go through the usu­al busi­ness,” he said, glanc­ing at Mar­go, “let’s go straight to a sub­ject I know is on all your minds: the prob­lem of the Great Ki­va masks.”

More shuf­fling of pa­pers, glances at Mar­go. She straight­ened her back, kept her face neu­tral and com­posed. Deep in her heart, she be­lieved she was right, and that helped give her the strength and con­vic­tion she need­ed.

“Mar­go Green, the new ed­itor of Muse­ol­ogy, has asked to speak to you all. As you know, the Tano In­di­ans are re­quest­ing the re­turn of the Great Ki­va masks, a cen­ter­piece of our up­com­ing show. As chair­man of the de­part­ment, it’s my job to make a rec­om­men­da­tion to the di­rec­tor on this mat­ter: whether we give up the masks, keep them, or seek some com­pro­mise. We are not a democ­ra­cy, but I can promise you your opin­ions will car­ry great weight with me. I might add that the di­rec­tor him­self will al­so be seek­ing the ad­vice of the board and the mu­se­um’s at­tor­neys be­fore he makes his fi­nal de­ci­sion, so mine is not the last word.” He smiled, turned to Mar­go. “And now, Mar­go, would you like to take the floor?”

Mar­go rose, looked around the room.

“Most of you prob­ably know I’m plan­ning to run an ed­ito­ri­al in the next is­sue of Muse­ol­ogy, call­ing for the re­turn of the Great Ki­va masks to the Tanos. A draft of the ed­ito­ri­al has cir­cu­lat­ed, and it’s caused some con­ster­na­tion in the ad­min­is­tra­tion.” She swal­lowed, try­ing to con­ceal the ner­vous flut­ter she could hear in her voice.

She went on to speak about the his­to­ry of the masks and how they were col­lect­ed, gain­ing con­fi­dence and poise.

“For those of you who aren’t fa­mil­iar with the Tano In­di­ans,” she said, “they live on a re­mote reser­va­tion on the New Mex­ico-​Ari­zona bor­der. Be­cause of their iso­la­tion, they still re­tain their orig­inal lan­guage, re­li­gion, and cus­toms, while liv­ing with one foot in the mod­ern world. Less than twen­ty per­cent of the tribe iden­ti­fy them­selves as Chris­tian. An­thro­pol­ogists be­lieve they set­tled in their present area along the Tano Riv­er al­most a thou­sand years ago. They speak a unique lan­guage, ap­par­ent­ly un­re­lat­ed to any oth­er. I’m telling you these things be­cause it’s im­por­tant to em­pha­size that these are not Na­tive Amer­icans in geno­type alone, try­ing be­lat­ed­ly to re­cap­ture long-​lost tra­di­tions. The Tano are one of the few tribes who have nev­er lost their tra­di­tions.”

She paused. Peo­ple were lis­ten­ing at­ten­tive­ly, and while she knew not all agreed with her, at least they were giv­ing her a re­spect­ful hear­ing.

“The tribe is di­vid­ed in­to moi­eties—that is, two re­li­gious groups. The Great Ki­va So­ci­ety masks are used on­ly when these moi­eties come to­geth­er for re­li­gious cer­emonies in the Great Ki­va—the ki­va be­ing the cir­cu­lar un­der­ground cham­ber that serves as their place of wor­ship. They hold these great cer­emonies on­ly once ev­ery four years. They be­lieve these cer­emonies main­tain bal­ance and har­mo­ny in the tribe, in all peo­ple of the earth, and in the nat­ural world. They be­lieve—and I’m not ex­ag­ger­at­ing here—that the ter­ri­ble wars and nat­ural dis­as­ters of the last hun­dred years are due to the fact that they don’t have the Great Ki­va masks and have been un­able to per­form prop­er­ly the cer­emo­ny restor­ing bal­ance and beau­ty to the world.”

She went on for an­oth­er five min­utes and then wrapped it up, glad that she’d been able to keep it rel­ative­ly short.

Men­zies thanked her, glanced around the ta­ble. “And now, let the de­bate be­gin.”

There was a shuf­fling. Then a thin voice piped up, car­ry­ing a slight­ly ag­grieved tone. It was Dr. Prine. The slope-​shoul­dered cu­ra­tor rose to his feet. “Be­ing a spe­cial­ist in Etr­uscan ar­chae­ol­ogy, I don’t know much about the Tano In­di­ans, but I think the whole busi­ness has a bad odor to it. Why are the Tano sud­den­ly so in­ter­est­ed in these masks? How do we know the Tano won’t just turn around and sell them? They must be worth mil­lions. I’m very sus­pi­cious about their mo­tives.”

Mar­go bit her lip. She re­mem­bered Prine from her grad­uate stu­dent days: a dim bulb that had on­ly grown dim­mer with the pas­sage of years. His life’s re­search, she re­called, was a study of Etr­uscan liv­er div­ina­tion.

“For these rea­sons and many oth­ers,” Prine went on, “I’m strong­ly in fa­vor of keep­ing the masks. In fact, I can’t be­lieve we’re se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing re­turn­ing them. We bought them, we own them, and we should keep them.” He sat down abrupt­ly.

A short chub­by man with a furze of red hair en­cir­cling a large bald spot rose next. Mar­go rec­og­nized him as George Ash­ton, chief cu­ra­tor of the Sa­cred Im­ages ex­hi­bi­tion. Ash­ton was a ca­pa­ble an­thro­pol­ogist, if tem­per­amen­tal and eas­ily riled. And he looked riled now.

“I agree with Dr. Prine, and I take strong ob­jec­tion to this ed­ito­ri­al.” He turned to Mar­go, his eyes al­most pop­ping from his round red face, chin dou­bling and tripling in his ex­cite­ment. “I con­sid­er it high­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate that Dr. Green raised this ques­tion at this time. We’re less than a week from the open­ing of the biggest show at the mu­se­um in years, cost­ing al­most five mil­lion dol­lars. The Great Ki­va masks are the cen­ter­piece of the show. If we pull those masks, there’s no way the show will open on time. Re­al­ly, Dr. Green, I find your tim­ing on this mat­ter to be tru­ly un­for­tu­nate.” He paused long enough to give Mar­go a fiery stare, then turned to Men­zies. “Hugo, I pro­pose we ta­ble this ques­tion un­til af­ter the show has closed. Then we can de­bate it at leisure. Of course, giv­ing back the masks is un­think­able, but for heav­en’s sake let’s make that de­ci­sion af­ter the show.”

Mar­go wait­ed. She would re­spond at the end—if Men­zies gave her the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Men­zies smiled placid­ly at the in­dig­nant cu­ra­tor. “For the record, George, I would note that the tim­ing has noth­ing to do with Dr. Green—it’s in re­sponse to the re­ceipt of a let­ter from the Tano In­di­ans, which was trig­gered by your own pre-​pub­lic­ity cam­paign for the show.”

“Yes, but does she have to pub­lish this ed­ito­ri­al?” Ash­ton slashed the air with a piece of pa­per. “She could at least wait un­til af­ter the show clos­es. This is go­ing to cre­ate a pub­lic re­la­tions night­mare!”

“We are not in the busi­ness of pub­lic re­la­tions,” said Men­zies mild­ly.

Mar­go cast him a grate­ful look. She had ex­pect­ed his sup­port, but this was more than just sup­port.

“Pub­lic re­la­tions are a re­al­ity! We can’t just sit in our ivory tow­er and ig­nore pub­lic opin­ion, can we? I’m try­ing to open a show un­der the most try­ing con­di­tions, and I do not ap­pre­ci­ate be­ing un­der­cut like this—not by Dr. Green and cer­tain­ly not by you, Hugo!”

He sat down, breath­ing hard.

Men­zies said qui­et­ly, “Thank you for your opin­ion, George.”

Ash­ton nod­ded curt­ly.

Pa­tri­cia Wong, a re­search as­so­ciate in the Tex­tile De­part­ment, stood up. “The is­sue, it seems to me, is sim­ple. The mu­se­um ac­quired the masks un­eth­ical­ly, per­haps even il­le­gal­ly. Mar­go demon­strates that clear­ly in her ed­ito­ri­al. The Tano asked for them back. If we as a mu­se­um have any pre­tense to ethics, we should re­turn them right away. I re­spect­ful­ly dis­agree with Dr. Ash­ton. To keep the masks for the show and dis­play them to all the world and then re­turn them ad­mit­ting we were wrong to have them—that would look hyp­ocrit­ical, or at best op­por­tunis­tic.”

“Hear, hear,” said an­oth­er cu­ra­tor.

“Thank you, Dr. Wong,” said Men­zies as the wom­an sat back down.

And now No­ra Kel­ly was stand­ing up, sweep­ing cin­na­mon hair from her face, slen­der and tall. She looked around, poised and con­fi­dent. Mar­go felt a swelling of ir­ri­ta­tion.

“There are two ques­tions be­fore us,” she be­gan, her voice low and rea­son­able. “The first is whether Mar­go has the right to pub­lish the ed­ito­ri­al. I think we all agree that the ed­ito­ri­al in­de­pen­dence of Muse­ol­ogy must be pre­served, even if some of us don’t like the opin­ions ex­pressed.”

There was a gen­er­al mur­mur­ing of agree­ment, ex­cept from Ash­ton, who crossed his arms and snort­ed au­di­bly.

“And I am one of those who does not agree with this ed­ito­ri­al.”

Here it comes, thought Mar­go.

“It’s more than a ques­tion of mere own­er­ship. I mean, who owns Michelan­ge­lo’s David? If the Ital­ians want­ed to break it up to make mar­ble bath­room tiles, would that be ac­cept­able? If the Egyp­tians de­cid­ed to lev­el the Great Pyra­mid for a park­ing lot, would that be okay? Do they own it? If the Greeks want­ed to sell the Parthenon to a Las Ve­gas casi­no, would that be their right?”

She paused.

“The an­swer to these ques­tions must be no. These things are owned by all of hu­man­ity. They are the high­est ex­pres­sions of the hu­man spir­it, and their val­ue tran­scends all ques­tions of own­er­ship. So it is with the Great Ki­va masks. Yes, the mu­se­um ac­quired them un­eth­ical­ly. But they are so ex­traor­di­nary, so im­por­tant, and so mag­nif­icent that they can­not be re­turned to the Tano to dis­ap­pear for­ev­er in­to a dark ki­va. So I say: pub­lish the ed­ito­ri­al. Let’s have the de­bate. But for God’s sake, don’t give back the masks.” She paused again, thanked them for lis­ten­ing, and sat down.

Mar­go felt a red­ness creep­ing in­to her face. As much as she hat­ed to ad­mit it, No­ra Kel­ly was formidable.

Men­zies looked around, but it ap­peared that no one had any more com­ments. He turned to Mar­go. “Any­thing fur­ther to add? Now is the time to speak.”

She sprang to her feet. “Yes. I’d like to re­but Dr. Kel­ly.”

“Please.”

“Dr. Kel­ly has con­ve­nient­ly over­looked one crit­ical point: the masks are re­li­gious ob­jects, un­like ev­ery­thing else she cit­ed.”

No­ra was im­me­di­ate­ly on her feet. “The Parthenon isn’t a tem­ple? The David isn’t a fig­ure from the Bible? The Great Pyra­mid isn’t a sa­cred tomb?”

“For heav­en’s sakes, they’re not re­li­gious ob­jects now. No one goes to the Parthenon to sac­ri­fice rams any­more!”

“Ex­act­ly my point. Those ob­jects have tran­scend­ed their orig­inal lim­it­ed re­li­gious func­tion. Now they be­long to all of us, re­gard­less of re­li­gion. Just so with the Great Ki­va masks. The Tano may have cre­at­ed them for re­li­gious pur­pos­es, but now they be­long to the world.”

Mar­go felt the flush spread through her body. “Dr. Kel­ly, may I sug­gest that your log­ic is bet­ter suit­ed to an un­der­grad­uate class­room in phi­los­ophy than a meet­ing of an­thro­pol­ogists in the great­est nat­ural his­to­ry mu­se­um in the world?”

A si­lence fol­lowed. Men­zies slow­ly turned to­ward Mar­go, fixed her with his blue eyes, over which his eye­brows were drawn down in dis­plea­sure. “Dr. Green, pas­sion in sci­ence is a mar­velous qual­ity. But we must in­sist up­on ci­vil­ity as well.”

Mar­go swal­lowed. “Yes, Dr. Men­zies.” Her face flamed. How had she al­lowed her­self to lose her tem­per? She didn’t even dare glance over at No­ra Kel­ly. Here she was, not on­ly cre­at­ing con­tro­ver­sy but mak­ing en­emies in her own de­part­ment.

There was a gen­er­al ner­vous clear­ing of throats, a few whis­pers.

“Very well,” Men­zies said, his voice back to its sooth­ing note. “I’ve got­ten the drift of opin­ion from both sides, and it ap­pears we are more or less even­ly di­vid­ed. At least among those with opin­ions. I have made my de­ci­sion.”

He paused, cast­ing his eye around the group.

“I will be bring­ing two rec­om­men­da­tions to the di­rec­tor. The first is that the ed­ito­ri­al be pub­lished. Mar­go is to be com­mend­ed for ini­ti­at­ing the de­bate with a well-​rea­soned ed­ito­ri­al, which up­holds the best tra­di­tions of Muse­ol­ogy jour­nal.”

He took a breath. “My sec­ond rec­om­men­da­tion is that the masks be re­turned to the Tano. Forth­with.”

There was a stunned si­lence. Mar­go could hard­ly be­lieve it— Men­zies had come down one hun­dred per­cent on her side. She had won. She sneaked a glance at No­ra, saw the wom­an’s face now red­den­ing as well.

“The ethics of our pro­fes­sion are clear,” Men­zies went on. “Those ethics state, and I quote: ‘The first re­spon­si­bil­ity of an an­thro­pol­ogist is to the peo­ple un­der study.’ It pains me more than I can say to see the mu­se­um lose those masks. But I have to agree with Drs. Green and Wong: if we are to set an eth­ical ex­am­ple, we must re­turn them. Yes, the tim­ing is cer­tain­ly awk­ward, and it cre­ates an enor­mous prob­lem with the ex­hi­bi­tion. I’m sor­ry, George. It can’t be helped.”

“But the loss to an­thro­pol­ogy, to the world—” No­ra be­gan.

“I have said what I have to say,” said Men­zies, just a shade of tart­ness en­ter­ing his voice. “This meet­ing is ad­journed.”

EIGHTEEN

Bill Smith­back round­ed a cor­ner, stopped, then breathed a sigh of re­lief. There, at the far end of the cor­ri­dor, lay the door to Fen­ton Davies’s of­fice, open and un­vexed by the lin­ger­ing shade of Bryce Har­ri­man. In fact, come to think of it, Smith­back hadn’t seen much of Har­ri­man at all to­day. As he walked to­ward Davies’s of­fice, a fresh spring in his step, he rubbed his hands to­geth­er, feel­ing a de­li­cious shud­der of schaden­freude at Har­ri­man’s bad luck. To think Har­ri­man had been so ea­ger to get his mitts on the Dan­gler sto­ry. Well, he was wel­come to it. In ret­ro­spect, it wasn’t re­al­ly much of a Times sto­ry, any­way: far too undig­ni­fied, tend­ing to­ward the bur­lesque. Still, Har­ri­man—what with his re­cent stint at the Post—would prob­ably find it right up his al­ley.

Smith­back chuck­led as he walked.

He, on the oth­er hand, had scored a ma­jor coup by land­ing the Duchamp mur­der. It was ev­ery­thing a big sto­ry should be: un­usu­al, com­pelling, gal­van­ic. It was the num­ber one top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion around wa­ter­cool­ers all over the city: the gen­tle, kind­ly artist who— for no ap­par­ent rea­son—had been bound, a hang­man’s noose fit­ted around his neck, then forced out of a twen­ty-​fourth-​sto­ry win­dow and sent crash­ing through the roof of one of Man­hat­tan’s fan­cy French restau­rants. All this in broad day­light in front of hun­dreds of wit­ness­es.

Smith­back slowed a lit­tle as he ap­proached Davies’s of­fice. True, those many wit­ness­es were prov­ing hard as hell to track down. And so far, he’d had to con­tent him­self with the po­lice de­part­ment’s of­fi­cial line and what dis­creet con­jec­tures he’d drummed out of those usu­al­ly in the know, who were prov­ing dis­con­cert­ing­ly out of the know in this case. But the sto­ry would break open. No­ra was right when she said he al­ways came through in the end. How well she un­der­stood him. It was just a mat­ter of work­ing ev­ery an­gle, main­tain­ing trac­tion.

No doubt that was why Davies had sum­moned him: the ed­itor was ea­ger for more. No sweat, he’d tell Davies he was chas­ing down some choice leads from his con­fi­den­tial sources. He’d get his ass back up to Broad­way and 65th. To­day there wouldn’t be any cops around to cramp his style. Then he’d go haunt the precinct house, talk to an old pal there, see what crumbs he could pick up. No, he cor­rect­ed him­self: crumbs wasn’t the right word. Oth­er re­porters picked up crumbs, while Smith­back found the cake—and ate it, too.

Chuck­ling at his own metaphor­ical wit, he paused at the sec­re­tar­ial sta­tion out­side Davies’s of­fice. Va­cant. Late lunch, Smith­back thought. Strid­ing for­ward, feel­ing and look­ing ev­ery inch the ace re­porter, he breezed up, rais­ing his hand to knock on the open door.

Davies was sit­ting, Bud­dha-​like, be­hind his clut­tered desk. He was short and per­fect­ly bald, with fas­tid­ious lit­tle hands that al­ways seemed to be do­ing some­thing: smooth­ing his tie or play­ing with a pen­cil or trac­ing the lines of his eye­brows. He fa­vored blue shirts with white col­lars and tight­ly knot­ted pais­ley ties. With his high, soft voice and ef­fem­inate man­ner­isms, Davies might look to the unini­ti­at­ed like a pushover. But Smith­back had learned that this was not the case. You didn’t get to be an ed­itor at the Times with­out at least a few pints of bar­racu­da blood cours­ing through your veins. But his de­liv­ery was so mild it some­times took a mo­ment to re­al­ize you’d just been dis­em­bow­eled. He played his cards close to his vest, lis­tened more than he spoke, and one rarely knew what he was re­al­ly think­ing. He didn’t frat­er­nize with his re­porters, didn’t hang out with the oth­er ed­itors, and seemed to pre­fer his own com­pa­ny. There was on­ly one ex­tra chair in his of­fice, and it was nev­er oc­cu­pied.

Ex­cept that to­day it was oc­cu­pied by Bryce Har­ri­man.

Smith­back froze in the door­way, hand still raised in mid­knock.

“Ah, Bill.” Davies nod­ded. “Good tim­ing. Please come in.”

Smith­back took a step for­ward, then an­oth­er. He strug­gled to keep his eyes from meet­ing Har­ri­man’s.

“Plan­ning to file a fol­low-​up on the Duchamp mur­der?” Davies asked.

Smith­back nod­ded. He felt dazed, as if some­body had just suck­er-​punched him in the gut. He hoped to hell it didn’t show.

Davies ran his fin­ger­tips along the edge of his desk. “What’s the an­gle go­ing to be?”

Smith­back was ready with his an­swer. This was Davies’s fa­vorite ques­tion, and it was a rhetor­ical one: his way of let­ting re­porters know he didn’t want any grass grow­ing un­der their feet.

“I was plan­ning a lo­cal-​in­ter­est an­gle,” he said. “You know, the ef­fect of the killing on the build­ing, the neigh­bor­hood, friends and fam­ily of the vic­tim. And, of course, I was plan­ning a fol­low-​up sto­ry on the progress of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The de­tec­tive in charge, Hay­ward, is the youngest homi­cide cap­tain in the force and a wom­an to boot.”

Davies nod­ded slow­ly, al­low­ing a med­ita­tive hm­mmm to es­cape his lips. As usu­al, the re­sponse com­mu­ni­cat­ed noth­ing about what he was re­al­ly think­ing.

Smith­back, his ner­vous­ness height­ened, elab­orat­ed. “You know the drill: un­nat­ural death comes to the Up­per West Side, ma­trons afraid to walk their poo­dles at night. I’ll weave in a sketch of the vic­tim, his work, that sort of thing. Might even do a side­bar on Cap­tain Hay­ward.”

Davies nod­ded again, picked up a pen, rolled it slow­ly be­tween his palms.

“You know, some­thing that could run on the first page of the Metro Sec­tion,” Smith­back said game­ly, still pitch­ing.

Davies put down the pen. “Bill, this is big­ger than a Metro sto­ry, the biggest homi­cide in Man­hat­tan since the Cut­forth mur­der, which Bryce here cov­ered when he was at the Post.”

Bryce here. Smith­back kept his face pleas­ant.

“It’s a sto­ry with a lot of an­gles. Not on­ly do we have the sen­sa­tion­al man­ner of death, but we al­so have—as you point out—the posh lo­ca­tion. Then we have the man him­self. An artist. And the fe­male homi­cide de­tec­tive.” He paused. “Aren’t you bit­ing off a lit­tle more than you can chew—for a sin­gle sto­ry, that is?”

“I could make it two, even three. No prob­lem.”

“No doubt you could, but then the stretched-​out time frame be­comes prob­lem­at­ic.”

Smith­back licked his lips. He was acute­ly aware of the fact that he was stand­ing and Har­ri­man was sit­ting.

Davies went on. “I per­son­al­ly had no idea that Duchamp was, in his own qui­et way, a painter of some renown. He wasn’t trendy or pop­ular with the So­Ho crowd. More of a Sut­ton Place style of artist, a Fair­field Porter. Bryce and I were just talk­ing about it last night.”

“Bryce,” Smith­back re­peat­ed. The name tast­ed like bile in his mouth. “Last night?”

Davies waved his hand with stud­ied non­cha­lance. “Over drinks at the Metropoli­tan Club.”

Smith­back felt him­self stiff­en. So that was how the smarmy prick had man­aged it. He’d tak­en Davies for drinks at his fa­ther’s fan­cy club. And Davies, it seemed, like any num­ber of ed­itors Smith­back had known, was a suck­er for that kind of thing. Ed­itors were the worst so­cial climbers, al­ways hang­ing around the fringes of the rich and fa­mous, hop­ing to catch a few scraps that dropped from the ta­ble. Smith­back could just imag­ine Davies be­ing ush­ered in­to the clois­tered fast­ness of the Metropoli­tan Club; shown to a lux­uri­ous chair in some gild­ed sa­lon; served drinks by def­er­en­tial men in uni­form; all the while ex­chang­ing hushed greet­ings with var­ious Rock­efellers, De Me­nils, Van­der­bilts—that was just the thing to turn Davies’s Maple­wood, New Jer­sey, head all the way around.

Now, at last, he glanced again in Har­ri­man’s di­rec­tion. The scum­bag was sit­ting there, one leg tucked prim­ly over the oth­er, look­ing as non­cha­lant as if he did this ev­ery day. He didn’t both­er re­turn­ing Smith­back’s look. He didn’t need to.

“We haven’t just lost a cit­izen here,” Davies went on. “We’ve lost an artist. And New York is a poor­er place for his loss. See, Bill, you just nev­er know who lives in that apart­ment next door. It could be a hot dog ven­dor or a san­ita­tion work­er. Or it could be a fine artist whose paint­ings hang in half the apart­ments in Riv­er House.”

Smith­back nod­ded again, frozen smile on his lips.

Davies smoothed his tie. “It’s a great an­gle. My friend Bryce here will han­dle it.”

Oh, God. For a bleak and ter­ri­ble mo­ment, Smith­back thought he was about to be re­as­signed to the Dan­gler.

“He’ll cov­er the so­ci­ety as­pect of the sto­ry. He knows sev­er­al of Duchamp’s im­por­tant for­mer clients, he’s got the fam­ily con­nec­tions. They’ll talk to him, where­as…” His voice trailed off, but Smith­back got the mes­sage: where­as they won’t talk to you.

“In short, Bryce can give us the silk-​stock­ing view that Times read­ers ap­pre­ci­ate. I’m glad to see you have a han­dle on the cop and street an­gle. You keep that up.”

The cop and street an­gle. Smith­back felt his jaw mus­cles flex in­vol­un­tar­ily.

“It goes with­out say­ing that you’ll both share in­for­ma­tion and leads. I’d sug­gest reg­ular meet­ings, keep­ing in touch. This sto­ry is cer­tain­ly big enough for the both of you, and it doesn’t look like it’s go­ing away any time soon.”

Si­lence de­scend­ed briefly over the of­fice.

“Was there any­thing else, Bill?” Davies asked mild­ly.

“What? Oh, no. Noth­ing.”

“Then don’t let me keep you.”

“No, of course not,” Smith­back said. He was prac­ti­cal­ly stam­mer­ing now with shock, mor­ti­fi­ca­tion, and fury. “Thanks.” And as he turned to leave the of­fice, Har­ri­man fi­nal­ly glanced in his di­rec­tion. There was a smug half-​smile on his shit-​eat­ing face. It was a smile that seemed to say: See you around, part­ner.

And watch your back.

NINETEEN

“SO how was your first day back?” Hay­ward asked, game­ly saw­ing away at a chick­en breast. “Fine,” D’Agos­ta replied.

“Sin­gle­ton didn’t give you a hard time?”

“Nope.”

“Well, you were just out two days, which prob­ably helped mat­ters. He’s in­tense—some­times too in­tense—but he’s a hell of a cop. So are you. That’s why I know you two will get along.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded, pushed a piece of plum toma­to around his plate, then lift­ed it to his mouth. Chick­en cac­cia­tore was the one recipe he could pull off with­out think­ing—bare­ly.

“This is pret­ty good, Vin­nie. Re­al­ly. I’ll have to let you in­to the kitchen more of­ten.” And she smiled across the ta­ble.

D’Agos­ta smiled back. He put down his fork for a mo­ment and just watched her eat.

She’d made a spe­cial ef­fort to get home on time. She praised his cook­ing even though he’d over­cooked the chick­en. She hadn’t even asked about his hasty de­par­ture from break­fast that morn­ing. She was clear­ly mak­ing a spe­cial ef­fort to give him some space and let him work out what­ev­er he was work­ing out. He re­al­ized, with a sud­den up­welling of af­fec­tion, that he re­al­ly loved this wom­an.

That made what he was about to do all the hard­er.

“Sor­ry I can’t do your din­ner jus­tice,” she said. “It de­serves to be lin­gered over. But I’ve got to rush out again.”

“New de­vel­op­ments?”

“Not re­al­ly. The lig­ature spe­cial­ist wants to brief us on the knots. Prob­ably just a way of cov­er­ing his ass—he hasn’t been much help.”

“No?”

“He thinks the knots are Asi­at­ic, maybe Chi­nese, but that isn’t nar­row­ing it down very much.”

D’Agos­ta took a deep breath. “Have you looked in­to the pos­si­bil­ity I men­tioned at the din­er? That Pen­der­gast’s broth­er might be be­hind these mur­ders?”

Hay­ward paused, fork halfway to her mouth. “There’s so lit­tle ev­idence to sup­port that the­ory that it verges on crank. You know I’m a pro­fes­sion­al. You have to trust me to con­duct this case in the best way pos­si­ble. I’ll look in­to it when I have time.”

There was noth­ing D’Agos­ta could say to this. They ate for a mo­ment in si­lence.

“Vin­nie,” she said, and some­thing in her tone made him look up at her again. “Sor­ry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“It’s all right.”

She was smil­ing again, and her dark eyes shone in the ar­ti­fi­cial light. “Be­cause the fact is, I’m re­al­ly hap­py you’re back on the job.”

D’Agos­ta swal­lowed. “Thanks.”

“This crazy posthu­mous case of Pen­der­gast’s has just been a dis­trac­tion for you at the worst pos­si­ble time. He may have been a pro­duc­tive agent, but he wasn’t—well, nor­mal. I know you were a friend of his, but I think—” She paused. “I think he had an un­healthy in­flu­ence on you. And then, this re­quest from be­yond the grave, all this stuff about his broth­er … I have to tell you, I re­sent that.”

De­spite ev­ery­thing, D’Agos­ta felt a stab of ir­ri­ta­tion. “I know you nev­er liked the guy. But he got re­sults.”

“I know, I know. I shouldn’t crit­icize the dead. Sor­ry.”

The ir­ri­ta­tion was swept away by a sud­den flood of guilt. D’Agos­ta said noth­ing.

“Any­way, all that’s past. The Dan­gler case is high-​pro­file, a great starter case. You’re go­ing to shine, Vin­nie, I know you are. It’ll be just like old times.”

D’Agos­ta cut in­to a chick­en thigh, then dropped his knife on the plate with a clat­ter. This was agony. He couldn’t put it off any longer.

“Lau­ra,” he be­gan. “There’s no easy way to say this.”

“Say what?”

He took a deep breath. “I’m mov­ing out.”

She froze, as if un­com­pre­hend­ing. Then a look slow­ly crept over her face: a look of dis­be­lief and pain, like a child who had just been un­ex­pect­ed­ly struck by a beloved par­ent. See­ing that ex­pres­sion, D’Agos­ta felt just about as bad as he’d ev­er felt in his life.

“Vin­nie?” she asked, dazed.

D’Agos­ta low­ered his eyes. There was a long, ex­cru­ci­at­ing si­lence.

“Why?”

He didn’t know what to say. He knew on­ly that the one thing he could not do was tell her the truth. Lau­ra, hon­ey, I may be in dan­ger. You’re not a tar­get, but I def­inite­ly am. And by stay­ing here, I could put you in dan­ger, as well.

“Is it some­thing I’ve done? Some­thing I haven’t done?”

“No,” he said im­me­di­ate­ly. He had to make up some­thing, and with Lau­ra Hay­ward, that some­thing had bet­ter be good.

“No,” he said again, more slow­ly. “You’ve been great. It has noth­ing to do with you. I re­al­ly care about you. It has to do with me. Our re­la­tion­ship … maybe we start­ed off just a lit­tle too fast.”

Hay­ward did not re­ply.

D’Agos­ta felt like he was walk­ing him­self off a cliff. There was noth­ing he want­ed more right now than to stay with this wom­an— this beau­ti­ful, car­ing, sup­port­ive wom­an. He’d rather hurt him­self than her. And yet he was hurt­ing her, hurt­ing her deeply, with ev­ery word. It was an aw­ful thing to do, but he had no choice. Vin­cent, you must take ev­ery pre­cau­tion pos­si­ble. D’Agos­ta knew that the on­ly way to save this re­la­tion­ship—and, per­haps, Lau­ra Hay­ward’s life—was by in­ter­rupt­ing it.

“I just need a lit­tle space, that’s all,” he went on. “To think things through. Get some per­spec­tive on my life.” The plat­itudes sound­ed hol­low, and rather than con­tin­ue, he stopped short.

He sat there, wait­ing for Hay­ward to blow up, curse him out, or­der him to leave. Yet there was on­ly an­oth­er long, aw­ful si­lence. Fi­nal­ly, he looked up. Lau­ra was sit­ting there, hands in her lap, din­ner grow­ing cold, her face pale and her eyes cast down­ward. Her beau­ti­ful blue­black hair had fall­en for­ward, cov­er­ing one eye. This wasn’t the re­ac­tion he’d ex­pect­ed. This sur­prise, this hurt, was even worse than anger.

At last, she sniffed, rubbed a fin­ger be­neath her nose, pushed away her plate. Then she rose.

“I’ve got to get back to work,” she said, so qui­et­ly D’Agos­ta bare­ly heard her. He sat mo­tion­less as she brushed her hair away from her face. Then she turned and walked quick­ly to­ward the door. It wasn’t un­til her hand was on the door­knob that she stopped, re­al­iz­ing she’d for­got­ten her coat and her brief­case. She turned, walked slow­ly to the clos­et, shrugged in­to her coat, picked up the case. And then she left, clos­ing the door qui­et­ly be­hind her.

She did not look back.

D’Agos­ta sat at the din­ner ta­ble for a long time, lis­ten­ing to the tick of the clock, to the faint street nois­es fil­ter­ing up from be­low. Fi­nal­ly, he stood, brought the dish­es in­to the lit­tle kitchen, threw the half-​eat­en din­ners in­to the garbage, and washed up.

Then he turned and—feel­ing very old—head­ed for the bed­room to pack.

TWENTY

AT three o’clock in the morn­ing, the board­ed-​up Beaux Arts man­sion at 891 River­side Drive looked asleep, per­haps even dead. But deep be­low the shut­tered win­dows and dou­ble-​locked doors, ac­tiv­ity flick­ered in one of the base­ment tun­nels cut in­to the Man­hat­tan bedrock be­neath the old house. The longest tun­nel—ac­tu­al­ly a se­ries of con­nect­ed base­ment rooms—lay in a line due west, drilling be­neath River­side Drive and River­side Park to­ward the Hud­son Riv­er. At the end, a crude stair­case spi­raled down a nat­ural cav­ity to a stone quay, where a wa­tery tun­nel led out past a small, weed-​draped open­ing on­to the riv­er it­self. More than two cen­turies be­fore, the riv­er pi­rate who owned the man­sion’s ear­li­er in­car­na­tion had used this se­cret pas­sage on noc­tur­nal er­rands of mis­chief. To­day, on­ly a hand­ful of peo­ple knew of the hid­den en­trance.

In this iso­lat­ed spot, the soft lap­ping of oars could be heard. There was a faint plash as the green veil of weeds was lift­ed aside, ex­pos­ing an un­der­wa­ter pas­sage. It was a fog­gy, moon­less night, and on­ly the palest glint of light out­lined a skiff as it en­tered the tun­nel. Noise­less­ly, it slid for­ward be­neath a low, rocky ceil­ing, eas­ing up at last to the stone quay.

Pen­der­gast stepped out of the skiff, teth­ered it to a cleat, and looked around, eyes glint­ing in the dark­ness. He re­mained still for sev­er­al min­utes, lis­ten­ing. Then he pulled a flash­light from his pock­et, snapped it on, and head­ed up the stair­case. At the top, he stepped out in­to a large room filled with wood­en cas­es dis­play­ing weapons and ar­mor, some mod­ern, oth­ers dat­ing back two thou­sand years. He passed through the room and in­to an old lab­ora­to­ry, beakers and re­torts gleam­ing on long black-​topped ta­bles.

In one cor­ner of the lab­ora­to­ry stood a silent, shad­owy fig­ure.

Pen­der­gast came for­ward cau­tious­ly, one hand steal­ing to­ward his weapon. “Proc­tor?” “Sir?”

Pen­der­gast re­laxed. “I got the sig­nal from Con­stance.”

“And I, in turn, got your mes­sage to meet here. But I must say I’m sur­prised to see you in

per­son, sir.”

“I had hoped it wouldn’t be nec­es­sary. But as it hap­pens, there’s a mes­sage that I, in turn,

must de­liv­er to Con­stance, and it’s one I felt had to be de­liv­ered in per­son.” Proc­tor nod­ded. “I un­der­stand, sir.”

“From now on, it is vi­tal that you keep a close eye on her. You know Con­stance, how frag­ile her men­tal con­di­tion is. How she ap­pears on the sur­face is no in­di­ca­tion at all of her true

emo­tion­al state. You al­so know that she’s been through what no oth­er hu­man be­ing has. I

fear that, if she is not treat­ed with ex­cep­tion­al care and cau­tion…”

His voice trailed off. Af­ter a mo­ment, Proc­tor nod­ded again.

“This all couldn’t have come at a worse time. I’m go­ing to tell her that she needs to be

ready at all times to re­turn to that place … where she first hid from us. Where no­body,

no­body, could ev­er find her.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You found the breach?”

“It has been found and sealed.”

“Where was it?”

“It seems that a nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry sew­er tun­nel runs un­der Broad­way, just be­yond the

base­ment fruit cel­lars. It has not been used for fifty years. He was able to pen­etrate the fruit

cel­lars from that tun­nel, knock­ing a hole in the pipe.”

Pen­der­gast looked at him sharply. “He didn’t find the stair­case lead­ing to this sub­base­ment?”

“No. It seems he was in the house for on­ly a few mo­ments. He was there just long enough

to take the item from a first-​floor cab­inet and leave.”

Pen­der­gast con­tin­ued to look fixed­ly at Proc­tor. “You must make sure the man­sion is per­fect­ly sealed. This can­not be al­lowed to hap­pen again. Is that clear?”

“Per­fect­ly, sir.”

“Good. Then let’s go speak with her.”

They passed out of the lab­ora­to­ry and through a se­ries of cham­bers filled with glass­front­ed cab­inets and tall cas­es full of seem­ing­ly end­less and im­pos­si­bly eclec­tic col­lec­tions:

stuffed mi­gra­to­ry birds, Ama­zo­ni­an in­sects, rare min­er­als, bot­tled chem­icals. At last, in a room full of but­ter­flies, they stopped. Pen­der­gast licked the flash­light over the

ranks of dis­play cas­es. Then he spoke qui­et­ly in­to the dark­ness.

“Con­stance?”

On­ly si­lence an­swered.

“Con­stance?” he said again, just a tri­fle loud­er.

There was a faint rus­tle of linen; then a wom­an of about twen­ty ap­peared seem­ing­ly out of

nowhere. She wore a long, old-​fash­ioned white dress with lace ruf­fling around the throat. Her

del­icate skin was very pale in the light of the flash­light.

“Aloy­sius,” she said, em­brac­ing him. “Thank God.”

For a mo­ment, Pen­der­gast sim­ply held her close. Then he gen­tly de­tached him­self and

turned away for a minute, twist­ing a small brass knob set in­to one wall. The cham­ber filled

with faint light.

“Aloy­sius, what’s the mat­ter?” Her eyes—strange­ly wise for a face so young—grew

anx­ious.

“I’ll tell you in a mo­ment.” Pen­der­gast placed a re­as­sur­ing hand on her shoul­der. “Tell me

about the mes­sage.”

“It ar­rived late this evening.”

“Method of de­liv­ery?”

“It was slipped in­to a crack be­neath the front door.”

“You took the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions?”

Con­stance nod­ded. Then she reached in­to one of her sleeves and drew out a small ivory

busi­ness card, care­ful­ly sealed in­side a glas­sine en­ve­lope.

Pen­der­gast took the card, turned it over. Dio­genes Pen­der­gast was en­graved in fine cop­per­plate on the card’s face: be­low that, in rose-​col­ored ink, had been writ­ten: The Five of

Swords is Smith­back.

He stared at the card for a long mo­ment. Then he slipped it in­to his coat pock­et. “What does it mean?” Con­stance asked.

“I hes­itate to tell you more. Your nerves have been strained enough al­ready.” Con­stance smiled faint­ly. “I must say, when you walked in­to the li­brary, I was sure I was

see­ing a—a revenant.”

“You know my broth­er’s plans, how he in­tends to de­stroy me.”

“Yes.” Con­stance went even paler and for a mo­ment seemed to stag­ger slight­ly. Pen­der­gast placed his hand on her shoul­der.

She mas­tered her­self with ef­fort. “I’m fine, thank you. Do go on.”

“He has al­ready be­gun. Over the last sev­er­al days, three of my clos­est friends have been

killed.” Pen­der­gast touched his jack­et pock­et. “This note from Dio­genes puts me on no­tice

that William Smith­back is the next tar­get.”

“William Smith­back?”

“He’s a re­porter for the New York Times.” Pen­der­gast hes­itat­ed again.

“And?” Con­stance asked. “There’s some­thing else trou­bling you— I can see it in your

face.”

“Yes. The first three who died were all very close to me. But that isn’t the case with Bill

Smith­back. I’ve known him for sev­er­al years. He was in­volved in three cas­es of mine, a very

ef­fec­tive jour­nal­ist. And de­spite an im­pul­sive and some­what ca­reerist ex­te­ri­or, he is a good

man. What trou­bles me, how­ev­er, is that he’s more an ac­quain­tance than a friend. Dio­genes

is cast­ing his net wider than I thought. It isn’t just close friends who are at risk. And that

makes the sit­ua­tion even more dif­fi­cult than I thought.”

“How can I help?” Con­stance asked in a low tone.

“By keep­ing your­self ab­so­lute­ly safe.”

“You think—?”

“That you’re a pos­si­ble tar­get? Yes. And there’s some­thing more. The third man to die

was Michael Deck­er, an old FBI as­so­ciate of mine. I found Mike’s body yes­ter­day, in his

Wash­ing­ton house. He had been killed with an old bay­onet. The modus operan­di was a nod

to a dis­tant an­ces­tor of mine, who died in a very sim­ilar fash­ion as an of­fi­cer in Napoleon’s

army, dur­ing the Rus­sian cam­paign of 1812.”

Con­stance shiv­ered.

“What con­cerned me was the weapon it­self. Con­stance, that bay­onet came from the col­lec­tions of this very house.”

She froze for a mo­ment as the im­pli­ca­tions of this sank home. “The chase­pot or the

lebel?” she asked faint­ly, al­most robot­ical­ly.

“The chase­pot. It had the ini­tials P.S.P. en­graved on­to the quil­lon. Quite un­mis­tak­able.” But Con­stance did not re­ply. Her alert, in­tel­li­gent eyes had sharp­ened, deep­ened, with

fear.

“Dio­genes has found en­trance to this house. No doubt that was the mes­sage he in­tend­ed

to de­liv­er to me with that par­tic­ular bay­onet.”

“I un­der­stand.”

“You’re still safer with­in this house than with­out, and for now you are not in Dio­genes’s

sights. Proc­tor here has found and sealed the weak point through which Dio­genes en­tered,

and as you know, this man­sion has been hard­ened against in­trud­ers in many ways. Proc­tor

will be cease­less­ly vig­ilant, and he is more formidable than he looks. Still, you must be on

con­stant guard. This is a very old and vast house. It has a great many se­crets. You know

those se­crets bet­ter than any­one. Fol­low your in­stincts. If they tell you some­thing is not right,

melt in­to those re­cess­es of the house that on­ly you know. Be ready at a mo­ment’s no­tice. And

un­til we can once again feel safe from this threat, I want you to sleep in that se­cret space

where you first hid from me and from Wren.”

At this, Con­stance’s eyes went wide and wild. She clutched at Pen­der­gast. “No!” she cried

pas­sion­ate­ly. “No, I don’t ev­er want to go back there again!”

Pen­der­gast im­me­di­ate­ly put his arms around her. “Con­stance—“

“You know how it re­minds me of that time! The dark spaces, the ter­ri­ble things … I don’t

wish to be re­mind­ed, ev­er again!”

“Con­stance, lis­ten to me. You’ll be safe there. And I can’t do what needs to be done

with­out know­ing you’re safe.”

Con­stance did not re­spond, and Pen­der­gast pressed her more tight­ly. “Will you promise

me that?”

She laid her fore­head against his chest.

“Aloy­sius,” she said, her voice break­ing. “It was just a few months ago we sat in the lib

rary, up­stairs. You read to me from the news­pa­pers. Do you re­mem­ber?” Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“I was be­gin­ning to com­pre­hend. I felt like a swim­mer, com­ing to the sur­face af­ter be­ing

so long un­der­wa­ter. I want that again. I don’t want to go … to go down again. You do un­der­stand, don’t you, Aloy­sius?”

Pen­der­gast ca­ressed her brown hair gen­tly. “Yes, I un­der­stand. And ev­ery­thing will be as

you want it, Con­stance. You will get bet­ter, I promise. But we must get through this first. Will

you help me do that?”

She nod­ded.

Slow­ly, Pen­der­gast low­ered his arms. Then he took her fore­head be­tween his hands and,

bring­ing her close, kissed it gen­tly. “I must go.”

And he turned, dart­ed back in­to the wait­ing dark­ness, and was gone.

TWENTY-ONE

IT was quar­ter to eight when Smith­back emerged from his apart­ment build­ing, glanced up West End Av­enue, and stretched out his hand for a taxi. A beat-​up yel­low cab that had been idling at the far end of the block pulled for­ward obe­di­ent­ly, and Smith­back got in with a sigh of re­gret.

“Forty-​fourth and Sev­enth,” he said. The driv­er—a thin, olive-​skinned man with black hair and a bad com­plex­ion—mut­tered a few words in some un­known tongue and screeched away from the curb.

Smith­back set­tled back, glanc­ing out at the pass­ing cityscape. By rights, he should still be in bed, arms around his new wife, deliri­ous­ly asleep. But the im­age of Har­ri­man, sit­ting in their ed­itor’s of­fice with that in­suf­fer­ably smug look on his face, had spurred him in­to ris­ing ear­ly to flog the sto­ry some more.

You’ll both share in­for­ma­tion and leads, Davies had said. Hell with that. Smith­back knew Har­ri­man wasn’t plan­ning to share jack shit, and for that mat­ter nei­ther was he. He’d check in at the of­fice, make sure noth­ing dis­agree­able had hap­pened overnight, and then hit the pave­ment. The ar­ti­cle he’d turned in the night be­fore had been weak, and he had to get some­thing bet­ter. He had to, even if it meant buy­ing a damn apart­ment in Duchamp’s build­ing. Now, there was an idea: call­ing a re­al es­tate agent and pos­ing as a prospec­tive buy­er ….

The driv­er turned sharply left on­to 72nd. “Hey, watch it,” Smith­back said. “I’m nurs­ing a war wound back here.” For once, the driv­er had closed the shield of Plex­iglas that sep­arat­ed the front from the back. The cab stank of gar­lic, onions, and cumin, and Smith­back opened the rear win­dow. As usu­al, the damn thing on­ly went down about a third of the way. Smith­back’s mood, al­ready low, fell low­er.

It was prob­ably just as well he’d left the apart­ment nine­ty min­utes ear­ly. No­ra had been in a foul mood for sev­er­al days now, get­ting hard­ly any sleep and work­ing at the mu­se­um un­til well past mid­night. That, plus the frosty ex­change be­tween her and Mar­go Green the oth­er night at the Bones, was weigh­ing on him heav­ily. Mar­go was an old friend and it pained him the two didn’t get along. They’re too much alike, he thought. Strong-​willed and smart.

Ahead lay the West Side High­way and the Hud­son Riv­er. In­stead of turn­ing south on­to the high­way and head­ing to­ward Mid­town, the driv­er gunned the cab up the merge ramp on­to the north­bound lanes.

“What the hell?” Smith­back said. “Hey, you’re go­ing the wrong way!”

In re­sponse, the driv­er jammed down hard­er on the ac­cel­er­ator, veer­ing past blar­ing horns and in­to the far left lane.

Shit, the guy’s En­glish is worse than I thought. Smith­back pound­ed on the heavy shield of scratched Plex­iglas. “You’re go­ing the wrong way. Okay? The—wrong—way. I said 44th Street. Get off at 95th and turn around!”

The driv­er didn’t re­spond. In­stead, he con­tin­ued to ac­cel­er­ate, weav­ing in and out of lanes as he passed car af­ter car. The 95th Street ex­it came and went in a flash.

Smith­back’s mouth went dry. Je­sus, am I be­ing kid­napped or some­thing? He grabbed for the door lock, but as with most cabs the out­er knob had been re­moved and the pull it­self was en­gaged, sunk be­neath the lev­el of the win­dow frame.

He re­newed his fran­tic tat­too against the Plex­iglas shield. “Stop the car!” he yelled as the cab squealed around a bend. “Let me out!”

When there was no an­swer, Smith­back reached in­to his pock­et and plucked out his cell phone to di­al 911.

“Put that thing away, Mr. Smith­back,” came the voice from the front seat. “You’re in good hands, I as­sure you.”

Smith­back froze in the act of di­al­ing. He knew that voice: knew it well. But it cer­tain­ly didn’t be­long to the Mediter­ranean-​look­ing man in the front seat.

“Pen­der­gast?” he said in­cred­ulous­ly.

The man nod­ded. He was look­ing in the rearview mir­ror, scan­ning the cars be­hind them.

The fear abat­ed—slow­ly, slow­ly—to be re­placed by sur­prise. Pen­der­gast, Smith­back thought. Oh, God. Why do I get a sink­ing feel­ing ev­ery lime I run in­to him?

“So the ru­mors were wrong,” he said.

“Of my death? Most cer­tain­ly.”

Smith­back guessed they were go­ing at least a hun­dred miles an hour. Cars were flash­ing past, vague shapes and blurs of col­or.

“You mind telling me what’s go­ing on? Or why you’re in dis­guise? You look like a fugi­tive from a Turk­ish prison—if you don’t mind my say­ing so,” he added hasti­ly.

Pen­der­gast glanced again in the rearview mir­ror. “I’m tak­ing you to a place of safe­ty.”

This didn’t im­me­di­ate­ly reg­is­ter. “You’re tak­ing me where?”

“You’re a marked man. There’s a dan­ger­ous killer af­ter you. The na­ture of the threat forces me to take un­usu­al mea­sures.”

Smith­back opened his mouth to protest, then stopped. Alarm, in­creduli­ty, as­ton­ish­ment, min­gled in equal mea­sures with­in him. The 125th Street ex­it passed in a heart­beat.

Smith­back found his voice. “A killer af­ter me? What for?”

“The more you know, the more dan­ger­ous it will be for you.”

“How do you know I’m in dan­ger? I haven’t pissed off any­body— not late­ly, any­way.”

To the left, the North Riv­er Con­trol Plant shot by. Glanc­ing un­easi­ly to his right, Smith­back thought he caught the briefest glimpse of 891 River­side Drive—an­cient, shad­ow-​haunt­ed—ris­ing above the green­ery of River­side Park.

The car was mov­ing so fast now the tires bare­ly seemed to touch the road. Smith­back looked around for a seat belt, but the cab had none. Cars flashed past as if sta­tion­ary. What the hell kind of an en­gine does this thing have? He swal­lowed. “I’m not go­ing any­where un­til I know what’s go­ing on. I’m a mar­ried man now.”

“No­ra will be fine. She’ll be told you’re on as­sign­ment for the Times and will be in­com­mu­ni­ca­do for a while. I’ll see to that my­self.”

“Yeah, and what about the Times? I’m in the mid­dle of an im­por­tant as­sign­ment.”

“They will hear from a doc­tor of your sud­den, se­ri­ous ill­ness.”

“Oh, no. No way. The Times is a dog-​eat-​dog place. It doesn’t mat­ter if I’m sick or dy­ing, I’ll lose the as­sign­ment.”

“There will be oth­er as­sign­ments.”

“Not like this one. Look, Mr. Pen­der­gast, the an­swer is—shit!”

Smith­back braced him­self as the cab whipped around a clus­ter of cars, weav­ing across three lanes, swerv­ing at the last mo­ment to avoid rear-​end­ing a lum­ber­ing truck and shoot­ing back in­to the fast lane. Smith­back gripped the seat, si­lenced by ter­ror.

Pen­der­gast glanced once again in the rearview mir­ror. Look­ing around, Smith­back could see—four or five cars back—a black Mer­cedes, weav­ing in and out of the traf­fic, pac­ing them.

Smith­back faced for­ward again, feel­ing a rush of pan­ic. Ahead on the shoul­der, an NYPD cruis­er had pulled over a van and the of­fi­cer was out writ­ing a tick­et. As they flew past, Smith­back saw the cop whirl around in dis­be­lief, then run back to his cruis­er.

“For God’s sake, slow down,” he choked out, but if Pen­der­gast heard him, he gave no re­sponse.

Smith­back glanced back again. De­spite the aw­ful speed, the black Mer­cedes wasn’t falling be­hind. If any­thing, it seemed to be gain­ing. It had heav­ily tint­ed win­dows, and he could not make out the driv­er.

Ahead were signs for In­ter­state 95 and the George Wash­ing­ton Bridge. “Brace your­self, Mr. Smith­back,” Pen­der­gast said over the roar of the en­gine and the scream­ing of wind.

Smith­back seized a door han­dle, plant­ed his feet on the plas­tic floor mats. He was so fright­ened he could hard­ly think.

Traf­fic had be­gun to thick­en as the two-​lane ex­it ap­proached, one stream of cars head­ing for the bridge and New Jer­sey, the oth­er head­ing east­ward to­ward the Bronx. Pen­der­gast slowed, al­ter­nate­ly watch­ing the traf­fic ahead and the Mer­cedes in the rearview mir­ror. Then, seiz­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty, he sheared across all four lanes of traf­fic on­to the right shoul­der. A squeal of brakes and a tor­rent of an­gry horns erupt­ed, Doppler-​shift­ing low­er as Pen­der­gast jammed on the ac­cel­er­ator again, blast­ing up the nar­row shoul­der, send­ing loose trash and hub­caps fly­ing be­hind them.

“Holy shit!” Smith­back yelled.

Ahead, the shoul­der nar­rowed, the curb of the me­di­an an­gling in from the right. But in­stead of slow­ing, Pen­der­gast pushed the car re­lent­less­ly for­ward. The tires on the pas­sen­ger side reared up on­to the curb and the ve­hi­cle charged ahead at an un­wieldy an­gle, rock­ing crazi­ly back and forth, tires squeal­ing, the stone wall of the ex­it per­ilous­ly close at hand.

From be­hind came the faint wail of a siren.

Pen­der­gast braked abrupt­ly, then turned in­to a bru­tal, four-​wheel pow­er slide, just merg­ing in­to a hole in the traf­fic con­verg­ing on the Trans-​Man­hat­tan Ex­press­way. He changed lanes once—so fast Smith­back was thrown side­ways on the seat—twice, a third time, dart­ing back and forth, all the while ac­cel­er­at­ing. The car blast­ed along be­neath the hulk­ing apart­ments like a bul­let through the bar­rel of a gun.

A quar­ter mile ahead, a sea of red lights winked back out of the gloom as traf­fic bunched up in the in­evitable grid­lock of the Cross Bronx Ex­press­way. The right-​hand lane was blocked off by or­ange cones, signs an­nounc­ing a high­way re­pair project that—typ­ical­ly— was emp­ty and un­manned. Pen­der­gast veered in­to the lane, scat­ter­ing cones left and right.

Smith­back glanced back. The black Mer­cedes was still there, no more than six cars back, pac­ing them de­spite all Pen­der­gast could do. Much far­ther be­hind now were two po­lice cars, lights flash­ing and sirens wail­ing.

Sud­den­ly, Smith­back was thrown to one side. Pen­der­gast had abrupt­ly veered on­to the off-​ramp for the Harlem Riv­er Drive. In­stead of slow­ing, he main­tained a speed close to a hun­dred miles an hour. With a shriek of stressed rub­ber, the car drift­ed side­ways, its flank con­tact­ing the stone re­tain­ing wall that en­cir­cled the ramp.

There was a scream of rip­ping steel, and an ex­plo­sion of sparks flew back­ward.

“Son of a bitch! You’re go­ing to kill—!”

Smith­back’s voice was cut off as Pen­der­gast braked vi­olent­ly once again. With a buck­ing mo­tion, the car shot over a di­vider on­to the op­pos­ing en­trance he­lix to a small bridge span­ning the Harlem Riv­er. The ve­hi­cle fish­tailed wild­ly be­fore Pen­der­gast re­gained con­trol. Then he ac­cel­er­at­ed yet again as they shot over the riv­er and in­to a tan­gle of nar­row streets lead­ing to­ward the South Bronx.

Heart in mouth, Smith­back glanced once again over his shoul­der. Im­pos­si­bly, the Mer­cedes was still there, far­ther back now but gain­ing once again. Even as he watched, the driv­er’s win­dow of the Mer­cedes opened and there was a sud­den puff of smoke, fol­lowed by the crack of a gun­shot.

With a thunk!, the pas­sen­ger side mir­ror van­ished in a spray of glass and plas­tic, an­ni­hi­lat­ed by a high-​cal­iber bul­let.

“Shit!” Smith­back screamed.

“Get down,” Pen­der­gast said, but Smith­back was al­ready on the floor, hands over his head.

From this po­si­tion, the night­mare was even worse: un­able to see any­thing, Smith­back could on­ly imag­ine the chaos of the chase, the vi­olent changes of di­rec­tion, the screech­ing of tires, the roar of the en­gine, the blar­ing of horns, snatch­es of curs­ing in En­glish and Span­ish. And above it all, the ev­er-​grow­ing wail of po­lice sirens. Again and again, he was thrown for­ward against the un­der­sup­ports of the front seat as Pen­der­gast braked vi­olent­ly; again and again, he was thrown back as the agent ac­cel­er­at­ed.

Af­ter a few end­less min­utes, Pen­der­gast spoke again. “I need you to get up, Mr. Smith­back. Do so care­ful­ly.”

Smith­back rose, grip­ping the seat. The car was rac­ing along a wide av­enue through an im­pov­er­ished bar­rio of the Bronx, dart­ing from left to right. In­stinc­tive­ly, he glanced over his shoul­der. In the dis­tance, he could see the Mer­cedes still pac­ing them, swerv­ing back and forth among slow-​mov­ing de­liv­ery vans and lowrid­ers. Far­ther back were strung out at least half a dozen po­lice cars.

“We’re go­ing to be stop­ping in a mo­ment,” Pen­der­gast said. “It is im­per­ative that you fol­low me out of the car as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.”

“Fol­low—?” Smith­back was so ter­ror­ized his mind had stopped work­ing.

“Just do as I say, please. Stay right be­hind me. Right be­hind me. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” Smith­back croaked.

Ahead, the road end­ed in a vast fence of barbed wire and met­al pipe, in­ter­rupt­ed on­ly by a heavy gate di­rect­ly be­fore them. The fence en­closed at least five acres of cars, SU­Vs, and vans, squeezed im­pos­si­bly close to one an­oth­er, ex­tend­ing from one end of the fence to the oth­er, a sea of ve­hi­cles, all makes and mod­els and vin­tages. They were all packed so tight­ly not even a scoot­er could get be­tween them. Atop the gate was a bat­tered sign that read Di­vi­sion of Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles—Mott Haven Im­pound Fa­cil­ity.

Pen­der­gast plucked a small re­mote con­trol from one pock­et and punched a code on­to its key­pad. Slow­ly, the gate be­gan to open. When Pen­der­gast did not re­duce speed, Smith­back clasped the door han­dle again and clenched his teeth.

The car blew past the gate with an inch to spare and, with a shud­der­ing squeal of brakes, spun side­ways and stopped at the wall of cars. With­out both­er­ing to turn off the en­gine, Pen­der­gast leaped out and took off, with a brusque wave for Smith­back to fol­low. The re­porter tum­bled out of the back­seat and dashed af­ter Pen­der­gast, who was al­ready run­ning through the maze of cars. They made di­rect­ly for the rear of the fa­cil­ity, run­ning and dodg­ing through the sea of parked ve­hi­cles. Smith­back could bare­ly keep up with the agent fly­ing along in front of him.

It was close to a half-​mile sprint to the rear wall of the im­pound fa­cil­ity. At last, Pen­der­gast stopped at the fi­nal row of ve­hi­cles, which were parked a few dozen yards in from the rear of the yard, blocked by the same heavy steel pipe fence. Tak­ing a key from his pock­et, he un­locked a bat­tered Chevy van parked in the last row and ges­tured for Smith­back to get in the back. Pen­der­gast leaped be­hind the wheel, turned the key, and the van roared to life.

“Hold on,” he said. Then he put the van in gear and shot for­ward, ac­cel­er­at­ing di­rect­ly to­ward the pipe fence.

“Wait,” Smith­back said. “You’ll nev­er bash through that fence. We’ll be—oh, shit!” He turned away, shield­ing his face from the in­evitable catas­troph­ic im­pact.

There was a loud clang; a brief jolt; but the van was still ac­cel­er­at­ing for­ward. Smith­back raised his head and low­ered his arms, heart pound­ing, and looked back. He saw that a sec­tion of the fence had been knocked away, leav­ing a clean rect­an­gu­lar hole in its place.

“The met­al pipes had al­ready been cut, then spot-​weld­ed back in­to place,” Pen­der­gast said by way of ex­pla­na­tion, driv­ing more slow­ly now, mak­ing a num­ber of turns through a war­ren of side streets while re­mov­ing his wig and wip­ing the stage make­up from his face with a silk hand­ker­chief. The black Mer­cedes and the po­lice cars were gone. “Help me with this.”

Smith­back climbed in­to the front seat and helped Pen­der­gast pull off the cheap, stained brown polyester top, re­veal­ing a dress shirt and tie un­der­neath.

“Hand me my jack­et back there, if you’d be so kind.”

Smith­back pulled a beau­ti­ful­ly pressed suit coat off a rack hang­ing be­hind the front seat. Pen­der­gast slid in­to it quick­ly.

“You planned this whole thing, didn’t you?” Smith­back said.

Pen­der­gast turned on­to East 138th Street. “This is a case where ad­vance prepa­ra­tion meant the dif­fer­ence be­tween life and death.”

All at once, Smith­back un­der­stood the plan. “That guy who was af­ter us—you lured him in­to the one place he couldn’t fol­low. There’s no way around that im­pound fa­cil­ity.”

“There is a way around, yes, in­volv­ing three miles of driv­ing through con­gest­ed side streets.” Pen­der­gast turned north, head­ing for the Sheri­dan Ex­press­way.

“So who the hell was that? The man you say is try­ing to kill me?”

“As I said, the less you know, the bet­ter. Al­though I must say that the high-​speed chase and the use of firearms were un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly crude of him. Per­haps he saw his op­por­tu­ni­ty evap­orat­ing and be­came des­per­ate.” He looked over at Smith­back with a la­con­ic ex­pres­sion. “Well, Mr. Smith­back? Con­vinced?”

Smith­back nod­ded slow­ly. “But why me? What’d I do?”

“That is, un­for­tu­nate­ly, the very ques­tion I can’t an­swer.”

Smith­back’s heart was on­ly now slow­ing down, and he felt as wrung out and limp as a dishrag. He’d been in tight spots with Pen­der­gast be­fore. Deep down, he knew the man wouldn’t do some­thing like this un­less it was ab­so­lute­ly nec­es­sary. All of a sud­den, his ca­reer at the Times seemed a lot less im­por­tant.

“Hand me your cell phone and wal­let, please.”

Smith­back did as re­quest­ed. Pen­der­gast shoved them in the glove com­part­ment and hand­ed him an ex­pen­sive leather bill­fold.

“What’s this?”

“Your new iden­ti­ty.”

Smith­back opened it. There was no mon­ey, on­ly a So­cial Se­cu­ri­ty card and a New York driv­er’s li­cense.

“Ed­ward Mur­dhouse Jones?” he read off.

“Cor­rect.”

“Yes, but Jones? Come on, what a cliché.”

“That’s pre­cise­ly why you’ll have no trou­ble re­mem­ber­ing it… Ed­ward.”

Smith­back shoved the wal­let in his back pock­et. “How long is this go­ing to last?”

“Not long, I hope.”

“What do you mean not long? A day or two?”

No an­swer.

“Where the hell are you tak­ing me, any­way?”

“Riv­er Oaks.”

“Riv­er Oaks? The mil­lion­aire fun­ny farm?”

“You are now the trou­bled son of a Wall Street in­vest­ment banker, in need of rest, re­lax­ation, a bit of un­de­mand­ing ther­apy, and iso­la­tion from the hec­tic world.”

“Hold on, I’m not check­ing in­to any men­tal hos­pi­tal—“

“You’ll find Riv­er Oaks to be quite lux­uri­ous. You’ll have a pri­vate room, gourmet food, and el­egant sur­round­ings. The grounds are beau­ti­ful—pity they are buried in two feet of snow at the mo­ment. There’s a spa, li­brary, game room, and ev­ery imag­in­able com­fort. It’s housed in a for­mer Van­der­bilt man­sion in Ul­ster Coun­ty. The di­rec­tor is a very sym­pa­thet­ic man. He’ll be most so­lic­itous, I as­sure you. Most im­por­tant, it is ut­ter­ly se­cure from the killer who is de­ter­mined to end your life. I am sor­ry I can’t tell you more, I re­al­ly am.”

Smith­back sighed. “This di­rec­tor, he’ll know all about me, right?”

“He’s got all the in­for­ma­tion he could pos­si­bly need. You will be well treat­ed. In­deed, you are guar­an­teed spe­cial treat­ment.”

“No force-​fed meds? Strait­jack­ets? Shock ther­apy?”

Pen­der­gast smiled faint­ly. “Noth­ing like that, trust me. You’ll be wait­ed on hand and foot. An hour of coun­sel­ing a day, that’s all. The di­rec­tor is ful­ly in­formed, he has all the nec­es­sary doc­uments. I’ve pur­chased some clothes that I think will fit you.”

Smith­back was silent a mo­ment. “Gourmet food, you say?”

“As much as you could wish.”

Smith­back sat for­ward. “But No­ra. She’ll wor­ry about me.”

“As I men­tioned, she’ll be led to un­der­stand you are on a spe­cial as­sign­ment for the Times. Giv­en the work she’s do­ing for the open­ing, she’ll hard­ly have time to think about you at all.”

“If they’re af­ter me, she’ll be in dan­ger. I need to be there to pro­tect her.”

“I can tell you that No­ra is in ab­so­lute­ly no dan­ger at present. How­ev­er, she will be in dan­ger if you re­main near her. Be­cause you are the tar­get. It is for her sake as much as yours that you must go in­to hid­ing. The far­ther away you are, the safer she’ll be.”

Smith­back groaned. “This is go­ing to be a dis­as­ter for my ca­reer.”

“Your ca­reer will suf­fer more from your un­time­ly death.”

Smith­back could feel the lump of the wal­let in his back pock­et. Ed­ward Mur­dhouse Jones. “I’m sor­ry, but I don’t like this at all.”

“Like it or not, I’m sav­ing your life.”

Smith­back did not re­ply.

“Are we clear on that, Mr. Smith­back?”

“Yes,” Smith­back said, with a dread­ful sink­ing feel­ing.

TWENTY-TWO

No­ra Kel­ly tried to shut out the din of the ex­hi­bi­tion hall and fo­cus her at­ten­tion on the box of sand in front of her. On one side, she had laid out the ob­jects to be ar­ranged: a skele­ton in plas­ticine, along with a suite of grave goods—price­less ob­jects in gold, jade, poly­chrome ce­ram­ics, bone, and carved shell. On the oth­er side of the large box, she had set up a pho­to­graph of a re­al tomb, a pho­to tak­en on­ly mo­ments af­ter its as­ton­ish­ing dis­cov­ery. It was the grave of a ninth-​cen­tu­ry Mayan princess named Chac Xel, and No­ra’s job was to re-​cre­ate it—in painstak­ing de­tail—for the Sa­cred Im­ages ex­hi­bi­tion.

As she con­tem­plat­ed the work, she could hear, over her shoul­der, the heavy breath­ing from one very an­noyed guard, up­set at be­ing pulled from his usu­al du­ty man­ning the sleepy Hall of Pelag­ic Birds and thrust in­to a man­ic hive of ac­tiv­ity at the very cen­ter of the Sa­cred Im­ages show. She heard the guard shift his enor­mous bulk and sigh the­atri­cal­ly as if to hur­ry her along.

But No­ra wouldn’t al­low her­self to be rushed. This was one of the most im­por­tant ex­hibits in the en­tire ex­hi­bi­tion. The ar­ti­facts to be ar­ranged were ex­traor­di­nar­ily del­icate and de­mand­ed the ut­most at­ten­tion and care. Once again, she tried to shut out the up­roar of con­struc­tion, the growl of drills and the whine of Skil­saws, the shout­ings back and forth, the fu­ri­ous com­ings and go­ings of cu­ra­tors, de­sign­ers, and as­sis­tants. And on top of that, with the mu­se­um’s se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem be­ing beefed up for the umpteenth time in prepa­ra­tion for the new open­ing, they had to drop ev­ery­thing and leave the ex­hi­bi­tion now and then as sen­sors were in­stalled and soft­ware test­ed. It was pure bed­lam.

No­ra re­fo­cused her at­ten­tion on the sand­box in front of her. She be­gan by ar­rang­ing the bones, lay­ing them in the sand af­ter their orig­inal place­ment in the pho­to­graph. The princess had not been laid out flat, West­ern style; rather, her body had been bound in­to a mum­my bun­dle, knees drawn up to the face, arms fold­ed in front, the whole wrapped up like a pack­age in beau­ti­ful wo­ven blan­kets. The rot­ting of the bun­dle had caused the skele­ton to fall open, spilling the bones in a crazy pat­tern on the floor of the tomb, which No­ra care­ful­ly repli­cat­ed.

Next came the place­ment of the ob­jects found in the tomb. Un­like the bones, these were the re­al thing—and vir­tu­al­ly price­less. She slipped on a pair of cot­ton gloves and lift­ed the largest ob­ject, a heavy pec­toral in beat­en elec­trum de­pict­ing a jaguar sur­round­ed by glyphs. She held it up, mo­men­tar­ily spell­bound by the daz­zle of light off its gold­en curves. She laid it with care on the skele­ton’s chest. Next came a gold neck­lace, which she placed around the cer­vi­cal ver­te­brae. Half a dozen gold rings were slipped on­to the bony fin­gers. A sol­id-​gold tiara set with jades and turquois­es went atop the skull. She care­ful­ly ar­ranged pots in a semi­cir­cle, filled with of­fer­ings of pol­ished jade, turquois­es, and glossy pieces of black ob­sid­ian. Next came a cer­emo­ni­al ob­sid­ian knife, al­most a foot long with many barbs, still sharp enough to make a nasty cut if not han­dled just so.

She paused. The last thing was the jade mask, worth mil­lions, carved from a sin­gle flaw­less block of deep green nephrite jade, with ru­bies and white quartz set in the eyes, and turquoise teeth.

“La­dy,” said the guard, in­ter­rupt­ing her rever­ie, “I’ve got a break in fif­teen.” “I’m aware of that,” said No­ra dry­ly.

She was about to reach for the mask when she heard the voice of Hugo Men­zies at some

dis­tance, not loud but some­how rid­ing above the din. “Won­der­ful work!” he was say­ing. “Mar­velous!”

No­ra looked up to see the bushy-​haired fig­ure pick­ing his way down the hall, step­ping fas­tid­ious­ly across a floor strewn with elec­tri­cal ca­bles, saw­dust, pieces of Bub­ble Wrap, and oth­er con­struc­tion de­tri­tus. The om­nipresent can­vas fish­ing bag he used in­stead of a brief­case was slung over one shoul­der. He was shak­ing hands, nod­ding in ap­proval, en­cour­ag­ing as he went along, know­ing ev­ery­one’s name, from the car­pen­ters to the cu­ra­tors. Ev­ery­one got a nod, a smile, a word of en­cour­age­ment. How dif­fer­ent from Ash­ton, chief cu­ra­tor of this ex­hi­bi­tion, who felt it be­neath him to talk to any­body lack­ing a doc­tor­al de­gree.

Af­ter the meet­ing, No­ra had been fu­ri­ous with Men­zies for com­ing down on Mar­go Green’s side. But it was im­pos­si­ble to stay an­gry with a man like Men­zies: he so clear­ly be­lieved in what he was do­ing, and she’d per­son­al­ly wit­nessed so many oth­er ways, large and small, in which he’d sup­port­ed the de­part­ment. No, you couldn’t stay mad at Hugo Men­zies.

It was a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, though, with Mar­go Green.

Men­zies ap­proached. “Hel­lo, Frank,” he said to the guard, lay­ing a hand on his shoul­der.

“Nice to see you here.”

“You, too, sir,” the guard said, straight­en­ing up and wip­ing the scowl off his face. “Ahh,” said Men­zies, turn­ing to No­ra. “That High Clas­sic jade mask is one of my fa­vorite

ob­jects in the en­tire mu­se­um. You know how they made it so thin? Pol­ished it down by hand with blades of grass. But I ex­pect you al­ready knew that.”

“As a mat­ter of fact, I did.”

Men­zies laughed. “Of course. What am I think­ing? Ex­cel­lent work, No­ra. This is go­ing to be a high­light of the show. May I watch while you place the mask?”

“Of course.”

She reached down and picked it up with her white-​gloved hands, not with­out trep­ida­tion. Care­ful­ly, she placed it in the sand above the head of the body, where it had been found, ad­just­ing it and mak­ing sure it was se­cure.

“A tri­fle to the left, No­ra.”

She moved it slight­ly.

“Per­fect. I’m glad I was in time to see that.” He smiled, winked, and moved on through the chaos, leav­ing in his wake peo­ple who were work­ing all the hard­er, if such a thing were pos­si­ble. No­ra had to ad­mire his peo­ple skills.

The case was com­plete, but she want­ed to check it one more time. She ran through the list of items, match­ing them to the pho­to­graph. She had on­ly one shot to get this right: once the case was sealed un­der bul­let­proof, shat­ter­proof glass, it wouldn’t be opened un­til the end of the show, four months lat­er.

As she ran the fi­nal check, for some rea­son her mind wan­dered to Bill. He’d run off to At­lantic City cov­er­ing some casi­no sto­ry and wouldn’t be back for—she re­al­ized she wasn’t sure when he’d be back. He’d been so vague. And it had all hap­pened so sud­den­ly. Was this what it was like to be mar­ried to a re­porter? What had hap­pened to the mur­der he was cov­er­ing? And wasn’t he on the city desk? She sup­posed that a casi­no sto­ry in New Jer­sey might qual­ify for the city desk, but still… He’d sound­ed so strange on the tele­phone, so breath­less, so tense.

She sighed, shook her head. It was prob­ably for the bet­ter, giv­en that she’d hard­ly been able to see him with all the crazi­ness sur­round­ing the open­ing. Ev­ery­thing was, as usu­al, be­hind sched­ule, and Ash-​ton was on the warpath. She could hear the chief cu­ra­tor’s voice, pitched high in queru­lous com­plaint in some far cor­ner of the hall.

The guard is­sued an­oth­er os­ten­ta­tious sigh be­hind her, break­ing her rever­ie.

“Just a minute,” she said over her shoul­der. “As soon as we get this sealed.” She glanced at her watch. Three-​thir­ty al­ready. And she’d been go­ing since six. She was go­ing to be work­ing at least un­til mid­night, and ev­ery minute she wast­ed now was a minute of sleep lost at the end of the day.

No­ra turned to the fore­man, who had been near­by, wait­ing for this mo­ment. “Ready to seal the case.”

Soon a group of ex­hi­bi­tion as­sis­tants, un­der the fore­man’s di­rec­tion, be­gan fit­ting the mon­strous­ly heavy sheet of glass over the tomb, ac­com­pa­nied by grunts and curs­es.

“No­ra?”

She turned. It was Mar­go Green. Bad tim­ing, as usu­al.

“Hel­lo, Mar­go,” she said.

“Wow. Beau­ti­ful ex­hib­it.”

No­ra saw out of the cor­ner of her eye the scowl­ing face of the guard, the gag­gle of la­bor­ers seal­ing up the tomb.

“Thanks. We’re re­al­ly un­der the gun here, as you can see.”

“I can.” She hes­itat­ed. “I don’t want to take up any more of your time than I have to.”

Then don’t, thought No­ra, try­ing to main­tain her fake smile. She had four oth­er cas­es to mount and seal. She couldn’t help but watch as the work­ers strug­gled to seat the glass. If they dropped it…

Mar­go stepped clos­er, low­ered her voice. “I want­ed to apol­ogize for my snarky com­ment in the meet­ing.”

No­ra straight­ened. This was un­ex­pect­ed.

“It was un­called-​for. Your points were all well tak­en and to­tal­ly with­in pro­fes­sion­al bounds. I was the one who act­ed un­pro­fes­sion­al­ly. It’s just…” Mar­go hes­itat­ed.

“Just what?”

“You’re so damned… com­pe­tent. And ar­tic­ulate. I was in­tim­idat­ed.”

No­ra didn’t quite know how to an­swer this. She looked close­ly at Mar­go, who was red­den­ing from the ef­fort to apol­ogize. “You’re not ex­act­ly a pushover your­self,” she fi­nal­ly said.

“I know. We’re both kind of stub­born. But stub­born is good—es­pe­cial­ly if you’re a wom­an.”

No­ra couldn’t help but smile, this time for re­al. “Let’s not call it stub­born­ness. Let’s call it the courage of our con­vic­tions.”

Mar­go smiled in turn. “That sounds bet­ter. Al­though a lot of peo­ple might call it plain old bitch­iness.”

“Hey,” said No­ra. “Bitchy is good, too.”

Mar­go laughed. “Any­way, No­ra, I just want­ed to say I was sor­ry.”

“I ap­pre­ci­ate the apol­ogy. I re­al­ly do. Thank you, Mar­go.”

“See you around.”

No­ra paused, the case tem­porar­ily for­got­ten in her sur­prise, as she watched Mar­go’s slen­der form make its way back through the bare­ly con­trolled chaos of the ex­hi­bi­tion.

TWENTY-THREE

Cap­tain Lau­ra Hay­ward sat in a plas­tic chair in the trace ev­idence lab on the twelfth floor of One Po­lice Plaza, mak­ing a con­scious ef­fort not to glance at her watch. Archibald Quince, chief sci­en­tist of the fiber anal­ysis unit, was hold­ing forth: walk­ing back and forth be­fore a crowd­ed ev­idence ta­ble, hands clasped be­hind the white lab coat one minute, then ges­tic­ulat­ing the next. It was a ram­bling, rep­eti­tious tale, full of sound and fury, and yet it all came down to one eas­ily grasped point: the man didn’t have shit.

Quince paused in mid­step, then turned to­ward her, his tall, bony frame all an­gles and el­bows. “Al­low me to sum­ma­rize.”

Thank God, Hay­ward thought. At least there was light at the end of the tun­nel.

“On­ly a hand­ful of fibers were re­cov­ered that were for­eign to the site. A few were stuck to the ropes used to bind the vic­tim; an­oth­er was found on the couch where the vic­tim was placed, peri-​mortem. We can thus rea­son­ably as­sume a fiber ex­change be­tween the mur­der­er and the mur­der scene. Cor­rect?”

“Cor­rect.”

“Since all fibers were the same—length, com­po­si­tion, spin­ning method, and so forth—we can al­so as­sume they are pri­ma­ry rather than sec­ondary fiber trans­fers. In oth­er words, they’re fibers from the killer’s clothes rather than fibers that hap­pened to be on the killer’s clothes.”

Hay­ward nod­ded, forc­ing her­self to pay at­ten­tion. All day, as she’d gone about her work, she’d felt the strangest sen­sa­tion: as if she were float­ing, de­tached, just out­side her own body. She didn’t know if it was due to weari­ness or to the shock of Vin­cent D’Agos­ta’s abrupt, un­ex­pect­ed de­par­ture. She wished she could get mad about it, but some­how anger wouldn’t come—just grief. She won­dered where he was, what he was do­ing now. And, more ur­gent­ly, she won­dered how in his mind such a good thing could have sud­den­ly gone so wrong.

“Cap­tain?”

Hay­ward re­al­ized there was a ques­tion hang­ing in the air, unan­swered. She looked up quick­ly. “Ex­cuse me?”

“I said would you like to see a sam­ple?”

Hay­ward rose. “Sure.”

“It’s an ex­treme­ly fine an­imal fiber, one I’ve nev­er seen be­fore. We’ve iden­ti­fied it as an ex­cep­tion­al­ly rare kind of cash­mere, blend­ed with a small per­cent­age of meri­no. Very, very ex­pen­sive. As you’ll no­tice, both fiber types were dyed black pri­or to be­ing spun to­geth­er. But take a look for your­self.” Step­ping back, Quince ges­tured to­ward the stereo­scop­ic mi­cro­scope that stood be­side the lab ta­ble.

Hay­ward came for­ward and glanced through the oc­ulars. Half a dozen slen­der black threads were dis­played against a light back­ground, sleek and glossy and very even.

Very, very ex­pen­sive. Though she was still wait­ing for Psych to de­liv­er the pro­file, a few things about the perp were al­ready ob­vi­ous. He—or per­haps she—was very so­phis­ti­cat­ed, high­ly in­tel­li­gent, and had ac­cess to funds.

“The dye has al­so proven elu­sive to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. It’s made from a nat­ural veg­eta­tive pig­men­ta­tion, not syn­thet­ic chem­icals, but we haven’t yet been able to track down the col­or­ing agent. It’s not in any database we’ve checked. The clos­est we’ve come is a cer­tain rare berry grown on the moun­tain slopes of Ti­bet, used by lo­cal tribes­men and Sher­pas.”

Hay­ward stepped back from the scope. As she lis­tened, she felt a faint fris­son of recog­ni­tion. She had ex­cel­lent in­stincts, and nor­mal­ly that lit­tle tin­gle meant two pieces of a puz­zle com­ing to­geth­er. But at the mo­ment, she couldn’t imag­ine what those pieces might be. She was prob­ably even more tired than she thought. She would go home, have an ear­ly din­ner, then try to get some sleep.

“De­spite their fine­ness, the fibers are very tight­ly wo­ven,” Quince said. “Do you know what that means?”

“An ex­treme­ly soft and com­fy gar­ment?”

“Yes. But that’s not the point. Such a gar­ment doesn’t shed eas­ily. It isn’t usu­al­ly a donor gar­ment. Hence the small num­ber of fibers.”

“And, per­haps, ev­idence of a strug­gle.”

“My thought as well.” Quince frowned. “Nor­mal­ly, the fact that the fab­ric is un­com­mon is im­por­tant to a fiber ex­am­in­er. It’s help­ful in iden­ti­fy­ing the sus­pect. But here the fab­ric is so un­com­mon it’s ac­tu­al­ly prov­ing to be the op­po­site. There’s noth­ing ex­act­ly like it in any of the tex­tile fiber databas­es. Then there’s an­oth­er odd thing: the age of the fiber.”

“Which is?”

“Our tests have in­di­cat­ed the fab­ric was spun at least twen­ty years ago. Yet there is no ev­idence the cloth­ing it­self is old. The fibers aren’t worn. There isn’t the kind of fad­ing or dam­age you’d ex­pect from years of us­age and dry clean­ing. It’s as if the fab­ric came off the store rack yes­ter­day.”

At last, Quince shut up. He stretched out his arms, palms up, as if in sup­pli­ca­tion.

“And?” Hay­ward asked.

“That’s it. As I said, all our search­es have come up emp­ty. We’ve checked with tex­tile mills, cloth­ing man­ufac­tur­ers, ev­ery­thing. For­eign and do­mes­tic. It’s the same as with the rope. This fab­ric seems to have been made on the moon, for all we can learn.”

For all we can learn? “I’m sor­ry, but that’s just not good enough.” Fa­tigue and im­pa­tience gave her tone a sud­den edge. “We have on­ly a hand­ful of ev­idence in this case, Dr. Quince, and these fibers are some of the most im­por­tant of that ev­idence. You said your­self the fab­ric is ex­treme­ly rare. If you’ve al­ready checked with the mills and the man­ufac­tur­ers, then you should be check­ing with in­di­vid­ual tai­lors.”

Quince shrank back at this scold­ing. His large, moist, hound­like eyes blinked back at her, full of hurt. “But, Cap­tain Hay­ward, with all the tai­lors in the world, that would be like look­ing for a nee­dle in—“

“If the fab­ric’s as fine as you say it is, then you’d need to con­tact on­ly the most ex­clu­sive and ex­pen­sive tai­lors. And in on­ly three cities: New York, Lon­don, and Hong Kong.”

Hay­ward re­al­ized she was breath­ing heav­ily and that her voice had risen. Calm down, she told her­self.

In the un­com­fort­able si­lence that set­tled over the lab, Hay­ward heard a throat be­ing tact­ful­ly cleared. She glanced over her shoul­der and saw Cap­tain Sin­gle­ton stand­ing in the door­way.

“Glen,” she said, won­der­ing how long he’d been stand­ing there.

“Lau­ra.” Sin­gle­ton nod­ded. “Mind if we have a word?”

“Of course.” Hay­ward turned back to Quince. “Give me a fol­low-​up re­port to­mor­row, please.” Then she fol­lowed Sin­gle­ton out in­to the cor­ri­dor.

“What’s up?” she asked as they paused in the bustling hall­way. “It’s al­most time for Rock­er’s state-​of-​the-​force meet­ing.”

Sin­gle­ton wait­ed a mo­ment be­fore an­swer­ing. He was dressed in a dap­per chalk-​stripe suit, and de­spite its be­ing late af­ter­noon, his white shirt was still as crisp as if he’d just put it on.

“I got a call from Spe­cial Agent in Charge Carl­ton of the New York field of­fice,” he said, mo­tion­ing her to step to one side, out of the traf­fic. “He was fol­low­ing up on a re­quest from Quan­ti­co.”

“What re­quest is that?”

“Have you heard the name Michael Deck­er?”

Hay­ward thought a mo­ment, shook her head.

“He was a top FBI hon­cho, lived in a classy D.C. neigh­bor­hood. The man was mur­dered yes­ter­day. Speared through the mouth with a bay­onet. Nasty piece of busi­ness, and, as you can imag­ine, the FBI are on the case ham­mer and tongs. They’re fol­low­ing up with Deck­er’s col­leagues, try­ing to find out if there might be any bad guys in the man’s past who had a score to set­tle.” Sin­gle­ton shrugged. “It seems one of Deck­er’s col­leagues, and clos­est friends, was a man named Pen­der­gast.”

Hay­ward glanced at him abrupt­ly. “Agent Pen­der­gast?”

“That’s right. You worked with him on the Cut­forth mur­der, right?”

“He’s been in­volved in a few pri­ors of mine.”

Sin­gle­ton nod­ded. “Since Agent Pen­der­gast is miss­ing and pre­sumed dead, Carl­ton asked me to check with any as­so­ciates of his in the NYPD. See if he ev­er talked about Deck­er, maybe men­tioned en­emies the man might have had. I fig­ured you might know some­thing.”

Hay­ward thought a mo­ment. “No, Pen­der­gast nev­er spoke of Deck­er to me.” She hes­itat­ed. “You might talk to Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta, who worked with him on at least three cas­es go­ing back sev­en years.”

“That so?”

Hay­ward nod­ded, hop­ing that her ex­pres­sion re­mained pro­fes­sion­al­ly neu­tral.

Sin­gle­ton shook his head. “The thing is, I can’t find D’Agos­ta. He hasn’t re­port­ed in since lunch, and no­body else work­ing his case has seen him. And for some rea­son, we can’t raise him on his ra­dio. You wouldn’t hap­pen to know where he is, would you?” As Sin­gle­ton spoke, he kept his voice stu­dious­ly neu­tral, his eyes fixed on the peo­ple walk­ing past them.

In that mo­ment, Hay­ward re­al­ized he knew about her and D’Agos­ta. She felt a sud­den, con­sum­ing em­bar­rass­ment. So it’s not the big se­cret we thought it was. She won­dered how soon Sin­gle­ton would learn D’Agos­ta had moved out.

She licked her lips. “Sor­ry. I’ve no idea where Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta might be.”

He hes­itat­ed. “Pen­der­gast nev­er men­tioned Deck­er to you?”

“Nev­er. He was the kind of guy who re­al­ly kept his cards close, nev­er talked about any­one, least of all him­self. Sor­ry I can’t be of more help.”

“Like I said, it was a long shot. Let the FBI take care of their own.”

Now, at last, he looked di­rect­ly at her. “Can I buy you a cup of cof­fee? We’ve got a few min­utes be­fore that meet­ing.”

“No, thanks. I need to make a cou­ple of quick phone calls first.”

Sin­gle­ton nod­ded, shook her hand, then turned away.

Hay­ward watched his re­ced­ing form, think­ing. Then, slow­ly, she turned the oth­er way, prepar­ing to head back to her of­fice. As she did so, ev­ery­thing else sud­den­ly fell away: the mur­mur of con­ver­sa­tions, the peo­ple walk­ing past; even the fresh and painful ache in her heart.

She had made the con­nec­tion.

TWENTY-FOUR

William Smith­back Jr. paced around his sump­tu­ous third-​floor room at Riv­er Oaks. He had to ad­mit that Pen­der­gast was right: the place was gor­geous. His room was lux­uri­ous­ly fur­nished, al­beit in a style that went out with the Vic­to­ri­ans: dark crushed-​vel­vet wall­pa­per, over­size bed with canopy, hulk­ing ma­hogany fur­ni­ture. Paint­ings in gilt frames hung on all four walls: a still life of fruit in a bowl; sun­set over the ocean; a pas­toral coun­try­side of cows and hayricks. They were re­al oils, too, not re­pro­duc­tions. While noth­ing had been ac­tu­al­ly screwed to the floors or walls, Smith­back had no­ticed an ab­sence of sharp im­ple­ments, and he’d had the in­dig­ni­ty of hav­ing his belt and tie tak­en away up­on en­trance. There was al­so a marked ab­sence of tele­phones.

He strolled thought­ful­ly over to the large win­dow and stared out. It was snow­ing, the fat flakes tick­ing against the glass. Out­side, in the dy­ing light, he could see a vast lawn deep in snow, bor­dered with hedges and gar­dens—all lumps and mounds of white—and dot­ted with ici­cled stat­uary. The gar­den was sur­round­ed by a high stone wall, be­yond which stood for­est and a wind­ing road that led down the moun­tain to the near­est town, six miles away. There were no bars on the win­dow, but the small, thick lead­ed panes looked like they’d be very dif­fi­cult to break.

Just for the hell of it, he tried to push the win­dow open. Al­though there was no vis­ible lock, it re­fused to budge. Smith­back tried a lit­tle hard­er. Noth­ing. He turned away with a shrug.

Riv­er Oaks was a huge and ram­bling struc­ture, perched atop one of the low­er peaks of the Catskills: the coun­try re­treat of Com­modore Cor­nelius Van­der­bilt in the days be­fore New­port, now con­vert­ed to a men­tal hos­pi­tal for the ul­tra-​priv­ileged. The or­der­lies and nurs­es wore dis­creet black uni­forms in­stead of the usu­al white, and were ready to at­tend to ev­ery need of the “guests.” Aside from light work du­ty and the dai­ly hour of ther­apy, he had no set sched­ule. And the food was fan­tas­tic: Smith­back, whose work du­ty was in the kitchen, had learned the head chef was a Cor­don Bleu grad­uate.

But still, Smith­back felt mis­er­able. In the few hours he’d been here, he had tried to con­vince him­self to take it easy, that this was for his own good, that he should wal­low in lux­ury. It was a kind of lifestyle that, un­der oth­er cir­cum­stances, he’d al­most wel­come. He’d told him­self to treat it as dra­ma, one he could maybe turn in­to a book some­day. It seemed in­cred­ible some­one was out to kill him.

But al­ready this per­son­al pep talk was grow­ing stale. At the time of his ad­mit­tance, he’d still been dazed from the high-​speed chase, struck dumb by the sud­den­ness with which his life had been turned around. But now he’d had time to think. Plen­ty of time. And the ques­tions—and dark spec­ula­tions —just kept com­ing.

He told him­self that at least there was no need to wor­ry about No­ra. On the drive up the New York Thruway, he’d called her him­self us­ing Pen­der­gast’s phone, mak­ing up a sto­ry about how the Times was send­ing him on an un­der­cov­er as­sign­ment to At­lantic City to cov­er a casi­no scan­dal, ren­der­ing him in­com­mu­ni­ca­do for a while. He had Pen­der­gast’s as­sur­ance No­ra would be safe, and he had nev­er known Pen­der­gast to be wrong. He felt guilty about ly­ing to her, but, af­ter all, he had done it for her sake, and he could ex­plain it all lat­er.

It was his job that preyed most on his mind. Sure, they’d ac­cept he was sick, and no doubt Pen­der­gast would make it con­vinc­ing. But in the mean­time, Har­ri­man would have free reign. Smith­back knew that, when he fi­nal­ly got back af­ter his “con­va­les­cence,” he’d be lucky to get as­signed even the Dan­gler sto­ry.

The worst of it was, he didn’t even know how long he’d have to stay here.

He turned, pac­ing again, half mad with wor­ry.

There came a soft knock at the door.

“What is it?” Smith­back said ir­ri­ta­bly.

An el­der­ly nurse stuck her gaunt head in­side the room, raven hair pulled back in a se­vere bun. “Din­ner is served, Mr. Jones.”

“I’ll be right down, thanks.”

Ed­ward Jones, trou­bled son of a Wall Street in­vest­ment banker, in need of rest, re­lax­ation, and a bit of iso­la­tion from the hec­tic world. It seemed very strange in­deed to be play­ing Ed­ward Jones, to be liv­ing in a place where ev­ery­body thought you were some­body else. Es­pe­cial­ly some­body not quite right in the head. On­ly Pen­der­gast’s ac­quain­tance, the di­rec­tor of Riv­er Oaks—a Dr. Ti­sander—knew the truth. And Smith­back had seen him on­ly in pass­ing while Pen­der­gast was deal­ing with the ad­mit­tance pa­per­work; they hadn’t yet had a chance to speak pri­vate­ly.

Ex­it­ing his room and clos­ing the door be­hind him—there were no locks on any of the guests’ doors, it seemed—Smith­back walked down the long hall­way. His foot­falls made no noise on the thick rose-​col­ored car­pet­ing. The cor­ri­dor was of pol­ished, fig­ured ma­hogany, dark with carved mold­ings. More oils lined the walls. The on­ly sound was the faint moan of the wind out­side. The huge man­sion seemed cloaked in a preter­nat­ural si­lence.

Ahead, the cor­ri­dor opened on­to a large land­ing, fram­ing a grand stair­case. From around the cor­ner, he heard low voic­es. Im­me­di­ate­ly, with a re­porter’s in­stinc­tive cu­rios­ity, he slowed his walk.

“…don’t know how much longer I can take work­ing in this loony bin,” came a gruff male voice.

“Ah, quit com­plain­ing,” came a sec­ond, high­er voice. “The work’s easy, the pay’s good. The food’s great. The cra­zies are nice and qui­et. What the hell’s wrong with that?” It was two or­der­lies. Smith­back, un­able to help him­self, stopped short, lis­ten­ing.

“It’s be­ing stuck out here in the mid­dle of frig­ging nowhere. On top of a moun­tain in the dead of win­ter, noth­ing around ex­cept miles of woods. It mess­es with your mind.”

“Maybe you should come back as a guest.” The sec­ond or­der­ly guf­fawed loud­ly.

“This is se­ri­ous,” came the ag­grieved re­ply. “You know Miss Hav­isham?”

“Nut­case Nel­lie? What about her?”

“How she al­ways claims to be see­ing peo­ple who aren’t there?”

“Ev­ery­one in this joint sees peo­ple who aren’t there.”

“Well, she’s got me see­ing things, too. It was ear­ly this af­ter­noon. I was head­ing back up to the fifth floor when I hap­pened to look out the stair­case win­dow. There was some­one out there, I could swear it. Out there in the snow.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m telling you, I saw it. A dark form, mov­ing fast in the trees. But when I looked back, it was gone.”

“Yeah. And how much J.D. had you had be­fore this?”

“None. It’s like I told you, this place is—“

Smith­back, who’d been edg­ing clos­er and clos­er to the edge of the cor­ri­dor, over­bal­anced and stum­bled for­ward in­to the land­ing. The two men—or­der­lies in somber black uni­forms—abrupt­ly drew apart, their ex­pres­sions dis­solv­ing in­to emo­tion­less masks.

“May we help you, Mr.—Mr. Jones?” one of them said.

“No, thanks. Just on my way down to the din­ing room.” Smith­back made his way down the broad stair­case with as much dig­ni­ty as he could muster.

The din­ing room was a grand space on the sec­ond floor that re­mind­ed Smith­back of a Park Av­enue men’s club. There were at least thir­ty ta­bles with­in, but the room was so big it could have held dozens more com­fort­ably. Each was cov­ered with a crisp linen table­cloth and ar­rayed with gleam­ing—and ex­treme­ly dull—sil­ver­ware. Bril­liant chan­de­liers hung from a Wedg­wood-​blue ceil­ing. De­spite the el­egant room, it seemed bar­bar­ic to eat din­ner at 5 p.m. Guests were al­ready seat­ed at some of the ta­bles, eat­ing me­thod­ical­ly, chat­ting qui­et­ly, or star­ing mood­ily at noth­ing. Oth­ers were shuf­fling slow­ly to their seats.

Oh, God, Smith­back thought. The din­ner of the liv­ing dead. He looked around.

“Mr. Jones?” An or­der­ly came over, as ob­se­quious as any maître d’, with the same smirk of su­pe­ri­or­ity be­hind the mask of ser­vil­ity. “Where would you care to sit?”

“I’ll try that ta­ble,” he said, point­ing to one cur­rent­ly oc­cu­pied by on­ly one young man, who was but­ter­ing a din­ner roll. He was flaw­less­ly at­tired—ex­pen­sive suit, snowy white shirt, gleam­ing shoes— and he looked the most nor­mal of the bunch. He nod­ded to Smith­back as the jour­nal­ist sat down.

“Roger Throck­mor­ton,” the man said, ris­ing. “De­light­ed to meet you.”

“Ed­ward Jones,” Smith­back replied, grat­ified at the cor­dial re­cep­tion. He ac­cept­ed the menu from the wait­er and, de­spite him­self, grew quick­ly ab­sorbed in the long list of of­fer­ings. He fi­nal­ly set­tled on not one, but two main cours­es—plaice à la Mor­nay and rack of spring lamb—along with an arugu­la sal­ad and plover eggs in as­pic. He marked his choic­es on the card be­side his place set­ting, hand­ed the card and the menu to the wait­er, then turned once again to­ward Mr. Throck­mor­ton. He was about Smith­back’s age, strik­ing­ly good-​look­ing, with blond hair care­ful­ly part­ed, and smelling faint­ly of ex­pen­sive af­ter­shave. Some­thing about him re­mind­ed Smith­back of Bryce Har­ri­man; he had that same air of old mon­ey and en­ti­tle­ment.

Bryce Har­ri­man…

With a mighty ef­fort, Smith­back drove the im­age from his mind. He caught the eye of the man across the ta­ble. “So,” he said, “what brings you here?” He re­al­ized on­ly af­ter ask­ing the ques­tion how in­ap­pro­pri­ate it was.

But the man didn’t seem to take it amiss. “Prob­ably the same as you. I’m crazy.” And then he chuck­led to show he was kid­ding. “Se­ri­ous­ly, I got in a bit of a scrape, and my fa­ther sent me up here for a short, ah, rest. Noth­ing se­ri­ous.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Cou­ple of months. And what brings you here?”

“Same. Rest.” Smith­back cast around for a way to redi­rect the con­ver­sa­tion. What do lu­natics talk about, any­way? He re­mind­ed him­self the ex­treme nut­cas­es were kept in the qui­et ward, lo­cat­ed in an­oth­er wing. Guests here, in the main sec­tion of the man­sion, were sim­ply “trou­bled.”

Throck­mor­ton placed his din­ner roll on a plate, dabbed prim­ly at his mouth with a nap­kin. “You just ar­rived to­day, didn’t you?”

“That’s right.”

The wait­er brought their drinks—tea for Throck­mor­ton, a toma­to juice for Smith­back, who was an­noyed he couldn’t get his usu­al sin­gle-​malt Scotch. His eye stole once again around the room. Ev­ery­body in the place moved so slug­gish­ly, spoke so soft­ly: it all seemed like a ban­quet in slow mo­tion. Je­sus, I don’t think I can take much more of this. He tried to re­mind him­self of what Pen­der­gast had said—how he was the tar­get of a mur­der­er, how be­ing here not on­ly kept him safe, but No­ra as well—yet al­ready, even af­ter a sin­gle day, it was get­ting hard to bear. Why would a dan­ger­ous killer be af­ter him? It made no sense. For all he knew, that Mer­cedes, that bul­let, had been meant for Pen­der­gast, not him. Be­sides, Smith­back knew how to han­dle him­self. He’d been in rough sit­ua­tions be­fore—some of them re­al­ly rough…

Once again, he forced his thoughts back to his din­ner com­pan­ion.

“So what do you … think of the place?” he asked a lit­tle lame­ly.

“Oh, not a bad old pile, ac­tu­al­ly.” There was an amused gleam in the man’s eye as he spoke that made Smith­back think he might have found an al­ly.

“You don’t get tired of all this? Of not get­ting out?”

“It was much nicer in the fall, of course. The grounds are spec­tac­ular. The snow is a bit con­fin­ing, I’ll ad­mit, but what’s there to ‘get out’ to, any­way?”

Smith­back di­gest­ed this a mo­ment.

“So what do you do, Ed­ward?” Throck­mor­ton asked. “For a liv­ing.”

Smith­back men­tal­ly re­viewed Pen­der­gast’s brief­ing. “My fa­ther’s an in­vest­ment banker. Wall Street. I work for his firm.”

“My fam­ily’s on Wall Street, too.”

A light­bulb went on in Smith­back’s head. “You’re not that Throck­mor­ton, are you?”

The man across the ta­ble smiled. “I’m afraid so. At least, one of them. We’re a rather large fam­ily.”

The wait­er re­turned with their en­trées—brook trout for Throck­mor­ton, the twin dish­es of plaice and lamb for Smith­back. Throck­mor­ton looked over at Smith­back’s heap­ing por­tions. “I hate to see a man with no ap­petite,” he said.

Smith­back laughed. This fel­low wasn’t crazy at all. “I nev­er pass up a free meal.”

He raised his knife and fork and tucked in­to the plaice. He be­gan to feel ev­er so slight­ly bet­ter. The food was su­perb. And this Roger Throck­mor­ton seemed a de­cent enough guy. Riv­er Oaks might just be bear­able for an­oth­er day or two if he had some­body to talk to. Of course, he’d have to be care­ful not to blow his cov­er.

“What do peo­ple here do all day?” he mum­bled through a mouth­ful of fish.

“I’m sor­ry?”

Smith­back swal­lowed. “How do you pass the time?”

Throck­mor­ton chuck­led. “I keep a jour­nal and write po­et­ry. I try to keep up with the mar­ket, in a desul­to­ry kind of way. In good weath­er, I like to stroll the grounds.”

Smith­back nod­ded, speared an­oth­er piece of fish. “And the evenings?”

“Well, they have bil­liard ta­bles in the first-​floor sa­lon, and games of bridge and whist in the li­brary. And there’s chess—that’s fun when I can find a part­ner. But a lot of the time I just read. Re­cent­ly, I’ve been read­ing a lot of po­et­ry. Last night, for ex­am­ple, I be­gan The Can­ter­bury Tales.”

Smith­back nod­ded his ap­proval. “My fa­vorite bit is ‘The Miller’s Tale.’ “

“I think mine is the Gen­er­al Pro­logue. It’s full of so much hope for re­new­al, for re­birth.” Throck­mor­ton sat back in his chair and quot­ed the open­ing lines. “Whan that April with his showres soote / The droughte of March hath perced to the roote.”

Smith­back cast his mem­ory back over the pro­logue, man­aged to dredge up a few lines. “Or how about this: Bifel that in that seson on a day, / In South­werk at the Tabard as I lay—“

“Fish­ing, with the arid plain be­hind me.”

It took Smith­back, who had turned his at­ten­tion to the lamb, a mo­ment to reg­is­ter this change. “Wait a minute. That’s not Chaucer, that’s—“

“Out, out, brief can­dle!” Throck­mor­ton sat up very stiff, al­most as if at at­ten­tion.

Smith­back paused in the midst of fork­ing up a piece of lamb, the smile freez­ing on his face. “I’m sor­ry?”

“Did you hear some­thing just now?” Throck­mor­ton had paused as if lis­ten­ing, head cocked to one side.

“Ah … no.”

Throck­mor­ton cocked his head again. “Yes, I’ll take care of it right away.”

“Take care of what?”

Throck­mor­ton fixed him with an an­noyed eye. “I wasn’t speak­ing to you.”

“Oh. Sor­ry.”

Throck­mor­ton rose from the ta­ble, dabbed prim­ly at his lips, care­ful­ly fold­ed his nap­kin. “I hope you’ll for­give me, Ed­ward, but I have a busi­ness ap­point­ment.”

“Right,” said Smith­back, aware that the smile was still frozen on his lips.

“Yes.” Throck­mor­ton leaned over and said, in a con­spir­ato­ri­al whis­per: “And it’s a dread­ful re­spon­si­bil­ity, I don’t mind telling you. But when He comes call­ing, who are we to refuse?”

“He?”

“The Lord our God.” Throck­mor­ton straight­ened up, shook Smith­back’s hand. “It’s been a plea­sure. I hope we’ll meet again soon.”

And he walked with a jaun­ty step out of the room.

TWENTY-FIVE

D’Agos­ta walked slow­ly through the cav­ernous open space of the Homi­cide Di­vi­sion, feel­ing self-​con­scious. Even though he was a lieu­tenant in the NYPD, and had more or less carte blanche to wan­der the halls of One Po­lice Plaza as he chose, he nonethe­less felt as if he were a spy with­in en­emy ter­ri­to­ry.

I must know more, Pen­der­gast had said. Even the small­est, least sig­nif­icant de­tail could be crit­ical. It was crys­tal clear what he meant: he need­ed the file on Charles Duchamp. And it was just as clear he ex­pect­ed D’Agos­ta to get it for him.

On­ly it hadn’t been as easy as D’Agos­ta ini­tial­ly an­tic­ipat­ed. He’d been back on the job just two days, and he’d been forced to spend more time than ex­pect­ed catch­ing up on the Dan­gler case. The wack-​job seemed to be get­ting more brazen with each crime: al­ready he’d robbed three more ATMs in the two days D’Agos­ta was away. And now, with the Duchamp mur­der, there was less man­pow­er avail­able for stake­outs. Co­or­di­nat­ing the two-​man teams, talk­ing with the branch man­agers at the af­fect­ed banks, had eat­en up a lot of time. The fact was, he’d been al­lo­cat­ing more of the work than he should have, and he was way be­hind on in­ter­view­ing po­ten­tial eye­wit­ness­es. But al­ways, he re­mem­bered the ur­gen­cy in Pen­der­gast’s voice. There was a mes­sage in that ur­gen­cy: We have to work fast, Vin­cent. Be­fore he kills again.

And yet, though he’d wast­ed pre­cious work hours por­ing through on­line records of the Duchamp mur­der, there was lit­tle in the wide-​ac­cess database he didn’t al­ready know—or that Pen­der­gast him­self didn’t have ac­cess to with his lap­top. There was noth­ing else for it: he’d have to go get the case file.

In his left hand, he car­ried a small sheaf of pa­pers: yes­ter­day’s in­ter­views with a pos­si­ble Dan­gler eye­wit­ness, brought along mere­ly as cam­ou­flage, some­thing to hold. He glanced at his watch as he walked. Ten min­utes to six. The huge room was still buzzing with ac­tiv­ity—po­lice of­fi­cers talk­ing to­geth­er in small groups, on the phone, or, more com­mon­ly, typ­ing at com­put­ers. Di­vi­sion­al of­fices al­ways had 24/7 cov­er­age, and in any precinct house, you were guar­an­teed to find—at any hour of the day or night—some­body at their desk, do­ing pa­per­work. Most of a cop’s life was spent do­ing pa­per­work, it seemed, and nowhere was there more pa­per­work than in Homi­cide.

But D’Agos­ta didn’t mind all the ac­tiv­ity. In fact, he wel­comed it. If any­thing, it helped him blend in. The im­por­tant thing was that Lau­ra Hay­ward would be away from her of­fice. It was Thurs­day, and Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er would be hold­ing one of his state-​of-​the-​force meet­ings. Thanks to the Duchamp case, she was sure to be there.

He glanced a lit­tle guilti­ly to­ward the far end of the room. Her of­fice was there, door wide open, desk cov­ered with pa­per­work. At the sight of the desk, an elec­tric cur­rent ran briefly through his loins. It wasn’t many months ago that Lau­ra’s desk had been used for some­thing quite dif­fer­ent from pa­per­work. He sighed. But, of course, her of­fice then had been on the floor above. And a hell of a lot had hap­pened since—most of it bad.

He pulled his gaze away and glanced around. To his right was a se­ries of emp­ty desks, name­plates at their fronts and com­put­er ter­mi­nals to one side. Ahead and along the left wall were at least a dozen hor­izon­tal file cab­inets, stacked from floor to ceil­ing. These held the files of all ac­tive homi­cide cas­es.

The good news was that Duchamp was an ac­tive case. All closed cas­es were kept in stor­age, which meant sign­ing in and out and a host of re­lat­ed se­cu­ri­ty prob­lems. The bad news was that, be­cause it was an ac­tive case, he had to ex­am­ine the ev­idence right here, in front of the en­tire Homi­cide Di­vi­sion.

He glanced around again, still feel­ing ridicu­lous­ly ex­posed. Hes­ita­tion is what’s go­ing to do you in here, pal, he told him­self. Forc­ing him­self to move as slow­ly and ca­su­al­ly as pos­si­ble, he ap­proached the cab­inets. Un­like oth­er di­vi­sions, which sort­ed their cas­es by case num­ber, Homi­cide sort­ed ac­tive files by vic­tim’s last name. He slowed fur­ther, eye­ing the la­bels covert­ly: DA-​DE. DE-​DO. DO-​EB.

Here we go. D’Agos­ta stopped at the ap­pro­pri­ate cab­inet, pulled out the draw­er. Dozens of green hang­ing fold­ers met his eye. My God, how many ac­tive homi­cides are they in­ves­ti­gat­ing here?

Now was the time to move quick­ly. Turn­ing away from the rows of desks, he be­gan flip­ping the files from left to right, push­ing the name tabs with an in­dex fin­ger. Do­natel­li, Do­na­to, Don­azzi… what, was it Mafia Week here in Homi­cide? Dow­son. Dubli­awitz.

Dug­gins.

Oh, shit.

D’Agos­ta paused, fin­ger on the case file of a Ran­dall Dug­gins. The one thing he hadn’t

want­ed to con­sid­er was the pos­si­bil­ity that the Duchamp case file wouldn’t be in the cab­inet. Could Lau­ra have it? Would she have left it on her desk when she went to meet with

Rock­er? Or was it per­haps with one of her de­tec­tives?

What­ev­er the case, he was screwed. He’d have to come back again, some oth­er

time—some oth­er shift, so as not to arouse sus­pi­cion with the same group. But when else

could he come back and still be sure Lau­ra wouldn’t be here? She was a worka­holic; she

could be here at al­most any hour. Es­pe­cial­ly now, when she didn’t have a rea­son to be home. D’Agos­ta felt his shoul­ders sag. He fetched a sigh, then dropped his hand from the file to

the cab­inet, prepar­ing to close it.

As he did so, he got a glimpse of the file be­hind Ran­dall Dug­gins’s. It was la­beled Charles

Duchamp.

Now, there’s a break. Some­body in a hur­ry must have mis­filed it.

D’Agos­ta plucked it from the cab­inet and be­gan leaf­ing through it. The case file was much

heav­ier than he ex­pect­ed. Lau­ra had com­plained about the pauci­ty of ev­idence. But there had

to be a dozen thick doc­uments here: fin­ger­print anal­yses and com­par­isons, re­ports of in­ves­ti­ga­tion, de­brief­ing re­ports, in­ter­view sum­maries, ev­idence ac­qui­si­tion re­ports, tox­icol­ogy and

lab re­ports. Leave it to Hay­ward to some­how doc­ument even a shit­ty case well. He’d been hop­ing to give ev­ery­thing a quick once-​over, re­turn the case file, then find Pen­der­gast and give him an oral re­port. But there was way too much here for that. No choice:

he’d have to pho­to­copy ev­ery­thing, and fast.

Once again mov­ing as ca­su­al­ly as pos­si­ble, he slid the cab­inet closed, look­ing left and

right as he did so. A large pho­to­copi­er stood in the mid­dle of the room, but it was sur­round­ed

by desks, and, as he watched, an of­fi­cer went over to use it. Tak­ing the case file off the floor

and copy­ing it else­where was out of the ques­tion: too risky. But large di­vi­sions like Homi­cide

usu­al­ly had sev­er­al copiers. There had to be an­oth­er one close by. Where the hell was it? There. On the far wall, close to Hay­ward’s of­fice, a copi­er sat be­tween a bul­letin board

and a wa­ter­cool­er.

Quick­ly, D’Agos­ta ap­proached. It was work­ing, and it didn’t re­quire an ac­cess code to use:

his luck, such as it was, still held. But he’d have to hur­ry: it was get­ting close to six, and Rock­er’s meet­ing wouldn’t last much longer.

He dumped the case file on the edge of the copi­er, placed the Dan­gler pa­per­work on top.

Just in case he was in­ter­rupt­ed, he de­cid­ed to start with the most im­por­tant—the case of­fi­cer’s re­port— and work his way from there. He pulled the re­port from the fold­er and start­ed

copy­ing.

The min­utes crawled slow­ly by. Maybe it was the fact he had a tall stack of pa­pers, or

maybe it was be­cause this ma­chine was far from the desks of the homi­cide squad, but

no­body else came up to use the ma­chine. He made his way through the lab re­sults, tox­icol­ogy re­ports, fin­ger­print anal­yses, and in­ter­views, work­ing as fast as he could, stuff­ing each

com­plet­ed sheet be­neath the Dan­gler pa­per­work.

He glanced again at his watch. It was past 6:15 now, al­most 6:20. He had to get the hell

out: Lau­ra could come back at any time…

At that mo­ment, a homi­cide lieu­tenant—some­body D’Agos­ta rec­og­nized as one of Hay­ward’s most trust­ed as­so­ciates—ap­peared at the far end of the di­vi­sion. That was it: his cue

to leave. Fin­ish­ing up the last in­ter­view re­port, he re­ar­ranged the files, stacked the pho­to­copies in­to a crisp pile, and re­turned the hang­ing fold­er to the file cab­inet. He hadn’t copied

ev­ery­thing, but he’d got­ten the most im­por­tant doc­uments. This, along with what ev­idence

Pen­der­gast had ob­tained from New Or­leans, should be a huge help. Clos­ing the cab­inet, he

be­gan mak­ing his way to the ex­it, once again care­ful to main­tain an air of ca­su­al­ness. The walk seemed to take for­ev­er, and at any mo­ment he ex­pect­ed to see Lau­ra ap­pear in

the door­way ahead. But at last, he gained the rel­ative safe­ty of the cen­tral cor­ri­dor. Now it

was just a ques­tion of gain­ing the el­eva­tor that lay di­rect­ly ahead.

The cor­ri­dor was rel­ative­ly emp­ty, and no­body was wait­ing at the el­eva­tor bank. He

stepped for­ward, pressed the down but­ton. With­in mo­ments, a de­scend­ing el­eva­tor chimed,

and he walked to­ward it just as the doors opened.

The el­eva­tor com­part­ment be­yond was emp­ty ex­cept for one per­son: Glen Sin­gle­ton. For a mo­ment, D’Agos­ta stood mo­tion­less, root­ed in place with sur­prise. This had to be a

night­mare, he de­cid­ed: this kind of thing just didn’t hap­pen in re­al life.

Sin­gle­ton gazed back at him, cool and lev­el. “You’re hold­ing up the el­eva­tor, Vin­cent,” he

said.

Quick­ly, D’Agos­ta stepped in. Sin­gle­ton punched a but­ton and the doors whis­pered

closed.

Sin­gle­ton wait­ed un­til the el­eva­tor was de­scend­ing again be­fore speak­ing. “I’m just com­ing from Rock­er’s state-​of-​the-​force meet­ing,” he said.

D’Agos­ta silent­ly cursed him­self. He should have known Sin­gle­ton might have at­tend­ed

the meet­ing; he wasn’t think­ing straight.

Sin­gle­ton glanced to­ward D’Agos­ta again. He didn’t say any­thing fur­ther; he didn’t need

to. And just what are you do­ing here your­self? the gaze clear­ly said.

D’Agos­ta thought fast. He’d spent the last two days do­ing his best to avoid Sin­gle­ton and

this very ques­tion. What­ev­er he said, it had to sound be­liev­able.

“I’d heard a homi­cide de­tec­tive might have been an in­ad­ver­tent wit­ness, post-​fact, to the

most re­cent Dan­gler job,” he said. “I thought I’d take a minute to check it out.” And he raised

his sheaf of Dan­gler pa­per­work as if to un­der­score the point.

Sin­gle­ton nod­ded slow­ly. It sound­ed cred­ible, yet was just amor­phous enough to al­low

D’Agos­ta some wig­gle room.

“What was the de­tec­tive’s name again?” Sin­gle­ton asked in his mild voice. D’Agos­ta held his ex­pres­sion, care­ful not to be­tray any sur­prise or doubt. He thought back

to the rows of emp­ty desks he’d just passed, tried to re­call the names on the name­plates.

“De­tec­tive Con­te,” he said. “Michael Con­te.”

Sin­gle­ton nod­ded again.

“He wasn’t around,” D’Agos­ta said. “Next time I’ll just call.”

There was a mo­ment of si­lence as the el­eva­tor de­scend­ed.

“You haven’t heard of an FBI agent named Deck­er, have you?” Sin­gle­ton asked. Once again, D’Agos­ta had to work to keep the sur­prise from show­ing on his face.

“Deck­er? I don’t think so. Why?”

“The man was killed in his house in D.C. the oth­er day. Seems he was good friends with

Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast, who I know you worked with be­fore his dis­ap­pear­ance. Did Pen­der­gast ev­er men­tion Deck­er—any en­emies he might have had, for ex­am­ple?” D’Agos­ta pre­tend­ed to think. “No, I don’t think he ev­er did.”

An­oth­er brief si­lence.

“I’m glad to see you’re at work,” Sin­gle­ton went on. “Be­cause I’ve been get­ting a few re­ports of items left unat­tend­ed these last two days. Tasks half done, or not done at all. Jobs

del­egat­ed un­nec­es­sar­ily.”

“Sir,” D’Agos­ta said. This was all true, but he tried to let a lit­tle righ­teous in­dig­na­tion trick­le

in­to his voice. “I’m play­ing catch-​up as quick­ly as I can. There’s a lot to do.” “I’ve al­so heard that, in­stead of work­ing the an­gles on the Dan­gler case, you’ve been ask­ing a lot of ques­tions about the Duchamp mur­der.”

“Duchamp?” D’Agos­ta re­peat­ed. “It’s an un­usu­al case, Cap­tain. I guess I’m as cu­ri­ous as

the next man.”

Sin­gle­ton nod­ded again, more slow­ly. He had a unique way of let­ting his ex­pres­sion tele­graph his thoughts for him, and right now that ex­pres­sion was say­ing, You mean a lot more

cu­ri­ous than the next man. But once again, he changed tack. “Some­thing wrong with your ra­dio, Lieu­tenant?”

Hell. D’Agos­ta had in­ten­tion­al­ly left it off that af­ter­noon, in hopes of avoid­ing just such a

cross-​ex­am­ina­tion. He should have known this would ex­cite even more sus­pi­cion. “As a mat­ter of fact, it seems to be act­ing kind of wonky to­day,” he said, pat­ting his jack­et

pock­et.

“Bet­ter have it checked out. Or get your­self is­sued a new one.”

“Right away.”

“Is there some­thing the mat­ter, Lieu­tenant?”

The ques­tion was asked so quick­ly on the heels of the last one that D’Agos­ta was mo­men­tar­ily tak­en aback. “Sir?”

“I mean, with your moth­er. Is ev­ery­thing all right?”

“Oh. Oh, yes. The prog­no­sis is bet­ter than I’d hoped. Thank you for ask­ing.” “And you’re okay with be­ing back on the job?”

“Com­plete­ly okay, Cap­tain.”

The el­eva­tor slowed, but Sin­gle­ton still held D’Agos­ta’s gaze. “That’s good,” he said.

“That’s good to hear. Be­cause the truth is, Vin­cent, I’d rather have some­body not here at all

than have him on­ly half here. You know what I mean?”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded. “Yes, I do.”

Sin­gle­ton smiled faint­ly as the doors opened. Then he ex­tend­ed one hand. “Af­ter you,

Lieu­tenant.”

TWENTY-SIX

Mar­go hes­itat­ed at the door to Men­zies’s of­fice, took a deep breath, and knocked. The door was an­swered by Men­zies him­self; he’d done away with the pre­rog­ative of a sec­re­tary years be­fore, com­plain­ing it dis­tract­ed him. He smiled, nod­ded, and stepped aside, ges­tur­ing for her to en­ter.

She knew the of­fice well. Dur­ing her first stint at the mu­se­um as a grad­uate stu­dent, it had been the of­fice of Men­zies’s pre­de­ces­sor, her old the­sis ad­vis­er, Dr. Frock. Back then it had been stuffed with Vic­to­ri­an fur­ni­ture, fos­sils, and cu­riosi­ties. With Men­zies, it seemed more spa­cious and pleas­ant, the dusty fos­sil plaques re­placed by taste­ful prints, the heavy old fur­ni­ture re­tired in fa­vor of com­fort­able leather chairs. A new flat-​pan­el iMac sat in a cor­ner. The last rays of the set­ting sun came through one of the west-​fac­ing win­dows, cut­ting a par­al­lel­ogram of red across the wall be­hind Men­zies’s ma­hogany desk.

Men­zies steered Mar­go to an arm­chair, then took his own seat be­hind the desk. He clasped his hands to­geth­er and leaned for­ward. “Thank you for com­ing at such short no­tice, Mar­go.”

“No prob­lem.”

“Work­ing late, I see?”

“I’ve got to put Muse­ol­ogy to bed this evening.”

“Of course.” He un­clasped his hands and leaned back in­to the sun, his un­ruly white hair

sud­den­ly haloed in gold. “As you may have guessed, I asked you here be­cause I re­ceived an an­swer from the board of trustees in re­la­tion to the Tano masks.”

Mar­go ad­just­ed her­self in the arm­chair, tried to look con­fi­dent and as­sertive.

He is­sued a long sigh. “I won’t beat around the bush. We lost. The board vot­ed to keep the masks.”

Mar­go felt her­self go rigid. “I can’t tell you how sor­ry I am to hear that.”

“I’m sor­ry, too. Lord knows I gave it my best shot. Col­lopy was not un­sym­pa­thet­ic, but the is­sue hit a wall with the trustees. Most of them are lawyers and bankers who have as much knowl­edge of an­thro­pol­ogy as I have of writs or cur­ren­cy fu­tures. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the world is such that they can pre­sume to tell us what to do, and not vice ver­sa. Frankly, I don’t find the out­come sur­pris­ing in the least.”

Mar­go could see that the usu­al­ly even-​tem­pered cu­ra­tor was net­tled. She had been hop­ing that the trustees, de­spite all in­di­ca­tions to the con­trary, would do the right thing. It seemed so ob­vi­ous to her. But then again, it wasn’t even ob­vi­ous to oth­er mem­bers of her de­part­ment, so how could she ex­pect a bunch of Wall Street lawyers to un­der­stand?

Men­zies leaned on the ta­ble, look­ing at her in­tent­ly. “This puts you rather more in the hot seat than be­fore.”

“I re­al­ize that.”

“There’s go­ing to be a lot of pres­sure on you not to pub­lish this ed­ito­ri­al. They’ll say the de­ci­sion’s been made, it’s done—why stir up trou­ble?”

“I’m pub­lish­ing, any­way.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say. Mar­go, I want you to know that I’m be­hind you one hun­dred per­cent. But you must be re­al­is­tic and ex­pect some fall­out.”

“I’m ready. Muse­ol­ogy’s been an in­de­pen­dent voice in mu­se­um af­fairs for more than a cen­tu­ry, and I’m not about to knuck­le un­der— not with my first is­sue.”

Men­zies smiled. “I ad­mire your spir­it. But there’s an­oth­er com­pli­ca­tion I must share with you.”

“And what’s that?”

“The Tanos are plan­ning a cross-​coun­try protest car­avan, due to ar­rive at the mu­se­um the night of the open­ing. It isn’t just to call at­ten­tion to their de­mands, but os­ten­si­bly to ‘call back the lost souls of the masks’ or some­thing along those lines. They’re go­ing to stage an all-​night re­li­gious cer­emo­ny and dances on Mu­se­um Drive, di­rect­ly out­side the mu­se­um. The trustees re­ceived no­tice ear­li­er to­day.”

Mar­go frowned. “The press is go­ing to eat it up.”

“In­deed.”

“The ad­min­is­tra­tion’s go­ing to be em­bar­rassed.”

“Un­doubtably.”

“The open­ing’s go­ing to be to­tal chaos.”

“With­out ques­tion.”

“God, what a mess.”

“My sen­ti­ments ex­act­ly.”

There was a long pause. Fi­nal­ly, Men­zies spoke. “You do what you have to do. Aca­dem­ic free­dom is a crit­ical is­sue in these par­lous times. May I ven­ture a piece of ad­vice?”

“Please.”

“Don’t speak to the press—at all. When they come call­ing, po­lite­ly re­fer them to the ed­ito­ri­al you wrote and tell them that’s all you have to say on the mat­ter. The mu­se­um can’t fire you over the ed­ito­ri­al, but you can bet they’ll be look­ing for an­oth­er rea­son. Lie low, keep your mouth shut, and don’t give it to them.”

Mar­go rose. “Dr. Men­zies, I thank you more than I can say.”

The man smoothed down his un­ruly mane and rose as well, tak­ing Mar­go’s hand. “You’re a brave wom­an,” he said with a smile of ad­mi­ra­tion.

TWENTY-SEVEN

A light rap sound­ed on the glass of the of­fice door. Lau­ra Hay­ward, who’d been peer­ing in­tent­ly at her com­put­er screen, sat up in sur­prise. For a ridicu­lous mo­ment, she thought it might be D’Agos­ta, suit­case in hand, of­fer­ing to take her home. But it was just the Guatemalan clean­ing la­dy, armed with mop and pail, smil­ing and nod­ding her head.

“Is okay I clean?” she asked.

“Sure.” Hay­ward wheeled away from her desk to al­low the wom­an ac­cess to her waste­bas­ket. She glanced up at the clock: al­most 2:30 in the morn­ing. So much for get­ting to bed ear­ly. But all of a sud­den, she found she had a lot to do—any­thing to avoid go­ing back to her emp­ty apart­ment.

She wait­ed un­til the wom­an had gone, then wheeled back to the ter­mi­nal, scrolling through the fed­er­al database once again. But it was re­al­ly just a per­func­to­ry check: she had what she need­ed, for now.

Af­ter a few more mo­ments, she turned to her desk. Messy on the best of days, it was now awash in com­put­er print­outs, mani­la fold­ers, SOC pho­tographs, CD-​ROMs, fax­es, and in­dex cards—the re­sults of her search of re­cent un­solved homi­cides meet­ing cer­tain cri­te­ria. The pa­pers formed a vague sort of pile. On a far cor­ner of the desk, neater and very much small­er, sat an­oth­er pile con­tain­ing on­ly three fold­ers. Each had been la­beled with a name: Duchamp. Deck­er. Hamil­ton. All ac­quain­tances of Pen­der­gast. And now all dead.

Duchamp and Deck­er: one a friend of Pen­der­gast, the oth­er a col­league. Was it re­al­ly a co­in­ci­dence they were mur­dered with­in days of each oth­er?

Pen­der­gast had dis­ap­peared in Italy—un­der strange and al­most un­be­liev­able cir­cum­stances, as re­lat­ed by D’Agos­ta. There were no wit­ness­es to his death, no body, no proof. Sev­en weeks lat­er, three ac­quain­tances of his were bru­tal­ly mur­dered, one af­ter the oth­er. She glanced at the pile. For all she knew, there might be oth­er vic­tims whose con­nec­tions to Pen­der­gast she had not yet un­cov­ered. Three was trou­bling enough.

What the hell was go­ing on here?

She sat for a mo­ment, tap­ping the small pile of fold­ers rest­less­ly. Then she pulled out the one marked Hamil­ton, opened it, reached for her phone, and di­aled a long-​dis­tance num­ber.

The phone rang sev­en, eight, nine times. At last, some­one picked up. There was a si­lence so long Hay­ward thought she’d been dis­con­nect­ed. Then, heavy breath­ing and a slurred, sleep-​heavy voice came on.

“Some­body’d bet­ter be dy­ing.”

“Lieu­tenant Cas­son? I’m Cap­tain Hay­ward of the NYPD.”

“I don’t care if you’re Cap­tain Kan­ga­roo. You know what time it is in New Or­leans?”

“It’s an hour lat­er in New York, sir. I apol­ogize for the late call, but it’s im­por­tant. I need to ask you a few ques­tions about one of your cas­es.”

“Damn it all, can’t it wait un­til morn­ing?”

“It’s the Hamil­ton mur­der. Tor­rance Hamil­ton, the pro­fes­sor.”

There was a long, ex­as­per­at­ed sigh. “What about it?”

“Do you have any sus­pects?”

“No.”

“Any leads?”

“No.”

“Ev­idence?”

“Pre­cious lit­tle.”

“What, ex­act­ly?”

“We have the poi­son that killed him.”

Hay­ward sat up. “Tell me about it.”

“It’s as nasty as they come—a neu­ro­tox­in sim­ilar to what you find in cer­tain spi­ders. On­ly this stuff was syn­thet­ic and high­ly con­cen­trat­ed. A de­sign­er poi­son. It gave our chemists quite a thrill.”

Hay­ward tucked the phone un­der her chin and be­gan to type. “And the ef­fects?”

“Leads to brain hem­or­rhag­ing, en­cephalitic shock, sud­den de­men­tia, psy­chosis, grand mal seizures, and death. I’ve had a med­ical ed­uca­tion from this case you wouldn’t be­lieve. Hap­pened right in front of his class at Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty.”

“Must’ve been quite a scene.”

“You’re not kid­ding.”

“How’d you iso­late the poi­son?”

“We didn’t need to. The killer thought­ful­ly left us a sam­ple. On Hamil­ton’s desk.”

Hay­ward stopped typ­ing. “What?”

“Seems he walked, bold as brass, in­to Hamil­ton’s tem­po­rary of­fice and left it on the desk. Right while the old guy was de­liv­er­ing the last lec­ture of his life. He’d spiked Hamil­ton’s cof­fee with it half an hour ear­li­er, which means he’d been on the premis­es for a while. The perp left it there in plain sight, like he was send­ing some kind of mes­sage. Or maybe it was just a taunt to the po­lice.”

“Any sus­pects?”

“None. No­body no­ticed any­body go­ing in or out of Hamil­ton’s of­fice that morn­ing.”

“Is this in­for­ma­tion pub­lic? About the poi­son, I mean.”

“That it was poi­son, yes. As to what kind, no.”

“Any oth­er ev­idence? La­tents, foot­prints, any­thing?”

“You know how it is, the SOC team picks up a shit­load of crap that has to be an­alyzed, hard­ly any of it rel­evant. With one pos­si­ble ex­cep­tion: a re­cent­ly shed hu­man hair with root, enough to get a DNA read­ing. Doesn’t match Hamil­ton’s DNA, or his sec­re­tary’s, or any­one else’s who fre­quent­ed the of­fice. Kind of an un­usu­al col­or—sec­re­tary said she couldn’t re­call any re­cent vis­itors with that hair col­or.”

“Which was?”

“Light blond. Ul­tra-​light blond.”

Hay­ward felt her heart sud­den­ly pound­ing in her chest.

“Hel­lo? Are you still there?”

“I’m here,” said Hay­ward. “Can you fax me the ev­idence list and the DNA da­ta?”

“Sure can.”

“I’ll call your of­fice first thing, leave my fax num­ber.”

“No prob­lem.”

“One oth­er thing. I as­sume you’re in­ves­ti­gat­ing Hamil­ton’s past, his ac­quain­tances, that sort of busi­ness.”

“Nat­ural­ly.”

“Run across the name Pen­der­gast?”

“Can’t say I have. Is this a lead?”

“Take it for what you will.”

“All right, then. But do me a fa­vor—next time, call me dur­ing the day. I’m a lot more charm­ing awake.”

“You were charm­ing enough, Lieu­tenant.”

“I’m from the South—I sup­pose it’s ge­net­ic.”

Hay­ward re­placed the phone in its cra­dle. For a long time, per­haps ten min­utes, she re­mained mo­tion­less, star­ing at it. Then, slow­ly and de­lib­er­ate­ly, she re­placed the file marked Hamil­ton, picked up the one marked Deck­er, lift­ed the phone again, and be­gan to di­al.

TWENTY-EIGHT

a nurse—tall, slen­der, wiz­ened, dressed in black with white shoes and stock­ings, a re­al Ad­dams Fam­ily cre­ation—stuck her head out from be­hind a ma­hogany door. “The di­rec­tor will see you now, Mr. Jones.”

Smith­back, who’d been cool­ing his heels in a long hall­way on the sec­ond floor of Riv­er Oaks, jumped so fast he sent the an­ti­macas­sar fly­ing. “Thanks,” he said hasti­ly as he pat­ted it back on the chair.

“This way.” And ush­er­ing Smith­back through the door­way, she be­gan lead­ing him down an­oth­er one of the man­sion’s dim, or­nate, and seem­ing­ly end­less cor­ri­dors.

It had been sur­pris­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to se­cure an au­di­ence with the di­rec­tor. It seemed “guests” of­ten de­mand­ed to see Dr. Ti­sander, usu­al­ly to an­nounce that the walls were whis­per­ing to them in French or to de­mand that he stop beam­ing com­mands in­to their heads. The fact that Smith­back had been un­will­ing to di­vulge the mat­ter he wished to see the di­rec­tor about had made things even more dif­fi­cult. But Smith­back had in­sist­ed. Last night’s din­ner with Throck­mor­ton, and the stroll around the manor house that had fol­lowed—with side­long glances at the shuf­fling, emp­ty-​eyed wax­works and glum-​look­ing fos­sils in­hab­it­ing the li­brary and the var­ious par­lors—had been the fi­nal straw. Pen­der­gast’s con­cern was all very well, but he sim­ply couldn’t face the thought of an­oth­er day—or an­oth­er night—in this creepy mau­soleum.

Smith­back had worked it all out. He’d get a ho­tel room in Jer­sey City, take the PATH train to work, stay well away from No­ra un­til all this blew over. He could take care of him­self. He’d ex­plain it all to the di­rec­tor. They couldn’t very well keep him here against his will.

He fol­lowed the tiny fig­ure of the nurse down the end­less cor­ri­dor, pass­ing rows of closed doors bear­ing gold-​leaf num­bers. At some point, two burly or­der­lies had slipped in­to step be­hind him. At last, the cor­ri­dor end­ed in a par­tic­ular­ly grand door bear­ing the sin­gle word Di­rec­tor. The nurse knocked on it, then stepped aside, ges­tur­ing for Smith­back to en­ter.

Smith­back thanked her and stepped through. Be­yond lay an el­egant suite of rooms dressed in dark wood, il­lu­mi­nat­ed by sconces. A fire flick­ered in an or­nate mar­ble fire­place. Sport­ing prints dec­orat­ed the walls. The rear wall of the main room was dom­inat­ed by a bow win­dow, which af­ford­ed a view of the win­try land­scape be­yond. There were no book­shelves or any­thing else to sug­gest this was the of­fice of a hos­pi­tal di­rec­tor, al­though through one of the two side doors of the suite, Smith­back made out what looked like a med­ical li­brary.

In the cen­ter of the room was a huge desk, sur­faced in glass, with heavy, ea­gle-​claw feet. Be­hind the desk sat Dr. Ti­sander, writ­ing busi­ly with a foun­tain pen. He looked up briefly, gave Smith­back a warm smile.

“How nice to see you, Ed­ward. Have a seat.”

Smith­back seat­ed him­self. For a minute or so, the on­ly sound in the room was the crack­le of the fire, the scratch of the pen. Then Ti­sander placed the pen back in­to its desk set, blot­ted the pa­per, and set it aside. He leaned back in his heavy leather chair and smiled con­fi­den­tial­ly, giv­ing Smith­back his ut­most at­ten­tion.

“There, that’s fin­ished. Tell me what’s on your mind, Ed­ward. How’s the ad­just­ment to life at Riv­er Oaks?” His voice was low and mel­liflu­ous, and the kind­ly lines of his face were smoothed by age. He had a domed fore­head, from which white hair arose in a grav­ity-​de­fy­ing leo­nine shock not un­like Ein­stein’s.

Smith­back no­ticed that the two or­der­lies were stand­ing against the wall be­hind him.

“Can I of­fer you any re­fresh­ment? Seltzer? Di­et so­da?”

“Noth­ing, thanks.” Smith­back ges­tured at the or­der­lies. “Do they have to be here?”

Ti­sander gave a sym­pa­thet­ic smile. “One of the house rules, alas. Just be­cause I’m the di­rec­tor of Riv­er Oaks doesn’t mean I’m above its rules.”

“Well, if you’re sure they can be trust­ed to keep qui­et.”

“I have ab­so­lute con­fi­dence in them.” Ti­sander nod­ded en­cour­ag­ing­ly, ges­tured for Smith­back to pro­ceed.

Smith­back leaned for­ward. “You know all about me, why I’m here, I as­sume.”

“Nat­ural­ly.” A warm, con­cerned smile lit up the di­rec­tor’s wise fea­tures.

“I agreed to come here for pro­tec­tion, for my own safe­ty. But I have to tell you, Dr. Ti­sander, that I’ve changed my mind. I don’t know how much you know about this killer who’s sup­pos­ed­ly af­ter me, but bot­tom line, I can take care of my­self. I don’t need to be here any longer.”

“I see.”

“I’ve got to get back to my job in New York at the Times.”

“And why is that?”

Smith­back was en­cour­aged by Dr. Ti­sander’s re­cep­tive­ness. “I was work­ing on a very im­por­tant sto­ry, and if I don’t get back there, I’ll lose it to an­oth­er re­porter. I can’t af­ford that. This is my ca­reer. A lot’s at stake here.”

“Tell me about this sto­ry you’re work­ing on.”

“It’s about the Duchamp mur­der—you know it?”

“Tell me about it.”

“A killer hung an artist named Duchamp out of a high-​rise win­dow, dropped him through the glass roof of a restau­rant. This is one of those sen­sa­tion­al sto­ries that don’t come along ev­ery day.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The bizarre mode of death, the promi­nence of the vic­tim, the fact that the killer seems to have es­caped all de­tec­tion—it’s a su­per sto­ry. I can’t let it go.”

“Can you be more spe­cif­ic?”

“The de­tails aren’t im­por­tant. I need to get out of here.”

“The de­tails are al­ways im­por­tant.”

Smith­back’s feel­ing of en­cour­age­ment be­gan to evap­orate. “It isn’t just my job. There’s my wife. No­ra. She thinks I’m in At­lantic City un­der­cov­er, work­ing an­oth­er sto­ry, but I’m sure she’s wor­ried about me. If I could just get out and call her, let her know I’m all right. We’ve on­ly been mar­ried a few months. Sure­ly, you un­der­stand.”

“I cer­tain­ly do.” The di­rec­tor was lis­ten­ing with ut­most sym­pa­thy and at­ten­tion.

Smith­back, en­cour­aged anew, went on. “This sup­posed killer who’s af­ter me, I’m not con­cerned about him. I can look out for my­self. I don’t need to hide up here any longer, pre­tend­ing to be some nut­case.”

Dr. Ti­sander nod­ded again.

“So, any­way, that’s it. Even though I was placed in here with the best of in­ten­tions, the fact is, I can’t stay a mo­ment longer.” He rose. “Now, if you’d be so kind as to call for a car? I’m sure that Agent Pen­der­gast will cov­er the cost. Or I’ll be hap­py to send you a check once I get back to New York. He took away my wal­let and cred­it cards on the way up here.” He re­mained stand­ing.

For a mo­ment, the room was silent. Then the di­rec­tor sat for­ward slow­ly, leaned his arms on the desk, and in­ter­laced his fin­gers. “Now, Ed­ward,” he be­gan in his calm, kind­ly voice, “as you know—“

“And no more of this Ed­ward busi­ness,” Smith­back in­ter­rupt­ed with a flare of ir­ri­ta­tion. “The name’s Smith­back. William Smith­back Jr.”

“Please al­low me to con­tin­ue.” A pause, an­oth­er sym­pa­thet­ic smile. “I’m afraid I can­not ac­cede to your re­quest.”

“This isn’t a re­quest: it’s a de­mand. I’m telling you, I’m leav­ing. You can’t keep me here against my will.”

Ti­sander cleared his throat pa­tient­ly. “Your care has been en­trust­ed to us. Your fam­ily has signed pa­pers to that ef­fect. You’ve been com­mit­ted here for a pe­ri­od of ob­ser­va­tion and treat­ment. We’re here to help you, and to do that, we need time.”

Smith­back stared in­cred­ulous­ly. “Ex­cuse me, Dr. Ti­sander, but do you think we could dis­pense with the cov­er?”

“What cov­er might that be, Ed­ward?”

“I’m not Ed­ward! Je­sus. I know what you’ve been told, and there’s no need for this pre­tense any longer. I need to get back to my job, to my wife, to my life. I tell you, I’m not wor­ried about any killer. I’m leav­ing here. Now.”

Dr. Ti­sander’s face re­tained its kind­ly, pa­tient smile. “You are here, Ed­ward, be­cause you are ill. All this talk of a job with the New York Times, about a cov­er sto­ry, about be­ing hunt­ed by a killer—that’s what we’re here to help you with.”

“What?” Smith­back splut­tered again.

“As I said, we know a great deal about you. I have a file two feet thick. The on­ly way for you to get bet­ter is to face the truth, to aban­don these delu­sions and fan­tasies, this dream­world you in­hab­it. You’ve nev­er had a job at the Times or any­place else. You’re not mar­ried. There’s no killer af­ter you.”

Smith­back slow­ly sank back in­to his chair, hold­ing on to the arms for sup­port. A ter­ri­ble chill came over him. Pen­der­gast’s words on the drive up from New York City re­turned to him, preg­nant with omi­nous new mean­ing: The di­rec­tor knows all about you. He’s ful­ly in­formed, he has all the nec­es­sary doc­uments. Smith­back re­al­ized that, de­spite what he’d as­sumed—de­spite what Pen­der­gast im­plied—the di­rec­tor was not in on the de­cep­tion. The “nec­es­sary doc­uments” were prob­ably le­gal pa­pers of com­mit­ment. The full scope of Pen­der­gast’s plan to pro­tect him lay sud­den­ly re­vealed. He couldn’t leave even if he want­ed to. And ev­ery­thing he said—all his protes­ta­tions and de­nials and talk of a killer—on­ly con­firmed what the di­rec­tor had learned from read­ing his case files: that he was delu­sion­al. He swal­lowed, tried to sound as rea­son­able and sane as pos­si­ble.

“Dr. Ti­sander, let me ex­plain. The man who brought me up here, Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast? He gave me a false iden­ti­ty, put me here in or­der to pro­tect me from a killer. All those pa­pers you have are forged. It’s all a ruse. If you don’t be­lieve me, call the New York Times.

Ask them to fax up a pic­ture of me, a de­scrip­tion. You’ll see that I’m William Smith­back. Ed­ward Jones doesn’t ex­ist.”

He stopped, re­al­iz­ing how crazy it must all sound. Dr. Ti­sander was still lis­ten­ing to him, smil­ing, giv­ing him his full at­ten­tion—but now Smith­back rec­og­nized the nu­ances of that ex­pres­sion. It was pity, mixed per­haps with a faint ex­pres­sion of that re­lief with which the sane view the in­sane. That same ex­pres­sion had no doubt been on his own face at din­ner last night as he lis­tened to Throck­mor­ton talk about a busi­ness meet­ing with God.

“Look,” he be­gan again. “Sure­ly, you’ve heard of me, read my books. I’ve writ­ten three best-​sell­ing nov­els: Rel­ic, Reli­quary, and Thun­der­head. If you have them in your li­brary, you can see for your­self. My pic­ture’s on the back of all three.”

“So now you’re a best-​sell­ing au­thor as well?” Dr. Ti­sander al­lowed his smile to widen slight­ly. “We don’t stock our li­brary with best sell­ers. They pan­der to the low­est com­mon de­nom­ina­tor of read­er and—worse—tend to overex­cite our guests.”

Smith­back swal­lowed, tried to make him­self sound the soul of san­ity and rea­son. “Dr. Ti­sander, I un­der­stand that I must sound crazy to you. If you would please al­low me to make one call with that phone on your desk—just one—I’ll show you oth­er­wise. I’ll talk to my wife or my ed­itor at the Times. Ei­ther one will im­me­di­ate­ly con­firm I’m Bill Smith­back. Just one call—that’s all I ask.”

“Thank you, Ed­ward,” said Ti­sander, ris­ing. “I can see you’ll have a lot to dis­cuss with your ther­apist at your next ses­sion. I have to get back to work.”

“Damn you, make the call!” Smith­back ex­plod­ed, leap­ing to his feet and lung­ing for the phone. Ti­sander jumped back with amaz­ing quick­ness, and Smith­back felt his arms seized from be­hind by the two or­der­lies.

He strug­gled. “I’m not crazy! You cretin, can’t you tell I’m as sane as you are? Make the frig­ging call!”

“You’ll feel bet­ter once you’re back in your room, Ed­ward,” the di­rec­tor said, set­tling back in his chair, com­po­sure re­turn­ing. “We will speak again soon. Please don’t be dis­cour­aged; it’s of­ten dif­fi­cult to tran­si­tion to a new sit­ua­tion. I want you to know that we’re here to help.”

“No!” Smith­back cried. “This is ridicu­lous! This is a trav­es­ty! You can’t do this to me—“

Howl­ing in protest, Smith­back was gen­tly—but firm­ly—es­cort­ed from the of­fice.

TWENTY-NINE

while Mar­go was in the kitchen prepar­ing din­ner, No­ra took a mo­ment to look around the wom­an’s un­ex­pect­ed­ly large and el­egant apart­ment. An up­right pi­ano stood against one wall, with some Broad­way show tunes propped up on the mu­sic stand; next to it hung a num­ber of nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry zo­olog­ical en­grav­ings of odd an­imals. A set of shelves against one wall was packed with books, and a sec­ond set of shelves con­tained an as­sort­ment of in­ter­est­ing ob­jects: Ro­man coins, an Egyp­tian glass per­fume bot­tle, a small col­lec­tion of bird’s eggs, ar­row­heads, an In­di­an pot, a piece of gnarled drift­wood, a fos­silized crab, seashells, a cou­ple of bird skulls, some min­er­al spec­imens, and a gold nugget—a minia­ture cab­inet of cu­riosi­ties. Hang­ing on the far wall was what No­ra rec­og­nized as an ex­cep­tion­al­ly fine Eye­daz­zler Nava­jo rug.

It said some­thing about Mar­go, No­ra thought—that she was a more in­ter­est­ing per­son than she first ap­peared. And she had a lot more mon­ey than No­ra had ex­pect­ed. This was no cheap apart­ment, and in a co-​op build­ing, no less.

Mar­go’s voice echoed out of the kitchen. “Sor­ry to aban­don you, No­ra. I’ll just be an­oth­er minute.”

“Can’t I help?”

“No way, you re­lax. Red or white?”

“I’ll drink what­ev­er you’re drink­ing.”

“White, then. We’re hav­ing fish.”

No­ra had al­ready been sa­vor­ing the smell of salmon poach­ing in a del­icate court bouil­lon waft­ing from the kitchen. A mo­ment lat­er, Mar­go came in car­ry­ing a plat­ter with a beau­ti­ful piece of fish, gar­nished with dill and slices of lemon. She set it down, re­turned to the kitchen, and came back with a cool bot­tle of wine. She filled No­ra’s glass and then her own, then sat down.

“This is quite a din­ner,” said No­ra, im­pressed not on­ly with the cook­ing but with the trou­ble Mar­go had gone to.

“I just thought, with Bill away on as­sign­ment and the show com­ing up, maybe you need­ed a break.”

“I do, but I didn’t ex­pect any­thing quite this nice.”

“I like to cook, but I rarely have the op­por­tu­ni­ty—just like I nev­er seem to have time to meet guys.” She sat down with a wry smile, brush­ing her short brown hair from her face with a quick ges­ture. “So how’s the show go­ing?”

“This is the first night in a week that I’ve got­ten out of there be­fore mid­night.”

“Ouch.”

“We’re down to the wire. I don’t see how they’re go­ing to make it, but ev­ery­one who’s been through this be­fore swears they al­ways pull through in the end.”

“I know how that goes. I have to get back to the mu­se­um tonight as it is.”

“Re­al­ly?”

Mar­go nod­ded. “To put the next is­sue of Muse­ol­ogy to bed.”

“My God, Mar­go. Then you shouldn’t be wast­ing time mak­ing me sup­per.”

“Are you kid­ding? I had to get out of that dusty old heap, even if on­ly for a few hours. Be­lieve me, this is a treat for me as well.” She cut a piece of salmon and served No­ra, then served her­self, adding some spears of per­fect­ly cooked as­para­gus and some wild rice.

No­ra watched her ar­range the food, won­der­ing how she could have been so wrong about a per­son. It was true Mar­go had come on rather strong in their first few en­coun­ters, brit­tle and de­fen­sive, but out­side of the mu­se­um she seemed a dif­fer­ent per­son, with a large­ness of spir­it that sur­prised No­ra. Mar­go was try­ing hard to make up for her nasty com­ment in the staff meet­ing, go­ing be­yond the gen­er­ous apol­ogy she had al­ready made to treat No­ra to a home­cooked din­ner.

“By the way, I just want­ed you to know that I’m go­ing ahead with that ed­ito­ri­al. It may be a lost cause, but it’s just some­thing I feel I have to do.”

No­ra felt a sense of ad­mi­ra­tion. Even with Men­zies’s sup­port, it was a gut­sy move. She her­self had gone up against the mu­se­um ad­min­is­tra­tion, and it was no cake­walk—some of them could be ex­treme­ly vin­dic­tive.

“That’s aw­ful­ly brave of you.”

“Well, I don’t know about brav­ery. It’s sheer stu­pid­ity, re­al­ly, I said I was go­ing to do it, and now I feel like I have to, even though the trustees have al­ready ruled against me.”

“And your first is­sue, too.”

“First and per­haps last.”

“I meant what I said ear­li­er. Even though I don’t agree with you, I sup­port your right to pub­lish. You can count on me. I think ev­ery­one in the de­part­ment would agree, ex­cept maybe Ash­ton.”

Mar­go smiled. “I know. And I re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate that, No­ra.”

No­ra sipped the wine. She glanced at the la­bel: a Ver­menti­no, and a very good one. Bill, an in­vet­er­ate wine snob, had taught her a lot over the last year or two.

“It’s tough be­ing a wom­an in the mu­se­um,” she said. “While things are a lot bet­ter than they used to be, you still don’t see a lot of fe­male deans or de­part­men­tal heads. And if you look at the board of trustees, well, it’s ba­si­cal­ly made up of so­cial­ly am­bi­tious lawyers and in­vest­ment bankers, two-​thirds of them male, with lit­tle re­al in­ter­est in sci­ence or pub­lic ed­uca­tion.”

“It’s dis­cour­ag­ing that a top mu­se­um like this can’t do bet­ter.”

“It’s the way of the world.” No­ra took a bite of the salmon. It was good, just about the best she’d tast­ed.

“So tell me, No­ra, how did you and Bill meet? I knew him at the mu­se­um back when I was still a stu­dent. He didn’t seem like the mar­ry­ing sort. I was fond of him, de­spite ev­ery­thing—though I’d nev­er let him know that. He was quite a char­ac­ter.”

“Fond of him? When I first saw him, I thought he was the biggest jerk I’d ev­er met.” She smiled at the mem­ory. “He was in a limo, sign­ing books in the god-​aw­ful town of Page, Ari­zona.”

Mar­go laughed. “I can just see it. Fun­ny, he tends to make a bad first im­pres­sion, un­til you re­al­ize he’s got a heart of gold … and the courage of a li­on to match.”

No­ra nod­ded slow­ly, a lit­tle sur­prised at this in­sight. “It took me a while to fig­ure that out, though, to cut through his ‘in­trepid re­porter’ pose. We’re very dif­fer­ent, Bill and I, but I think that helps in a mar­riage. I couldn’t stand be­ing mar­ried to some­one like me—I’m way too bossy.”

“Me, too,” said Mar­go. “What were you do­ing in Page, Ari­zona?”

“That’s a sto­ry. I was lead­ing an ar­chae­olog­ical ex­pe­di­tion in­to the canyon coun­try of Utah, and Page was our ren­dezvous point.”

“Sounds fas­ci­nat­ing.”

“It was. Too fas­ci­nat­ing, as it turned out. Af­ter­wards I took a job at the Lloyd Mu­se­um.”

“No kid­ding! So you were there when it fold­ed?”

“It more or less fold­ed even be­fore it opened. Palmer Lloyd sup­pos­ed­ly went off the deep end. But by that point I’d burned my bridges, and the up­shot was I was out of work again. So I land­ed a job here.”

“Well, the Lloyd Mu­se­um’s loss is our gain.”

“You mean, the di­amond hall,” No­ra said jok­ing­ly. When the plans to open the Lloyd Mu­se­um fell apart, the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry had swooped down and—with the help of a huge do­na­tion by a wealthy pa­tron—pur­chased Palmer Lloyd’s world-​renowned di­amond col­lec­tion for their own gem halls.

Mar­go laughed. “Don’t be sil­ly. I’m talk­ing about you.”

No­ra took an­oth­er sip of wine. “How about you, Mar­go? What’s your back­ground?”

“I worked here as a grad­uate stu­dent in ethnophar­ma­col­ogy. That was dur­ing the time of the mu­se­um mur­ders—the ones Bill wrote up in that first book of his. Did you read it?”

“Are you kid­ding? One of the pre­req­ui­sites of dat­ing Bill was read­ing all his books. He didn’t ac­tu­al­ly in­sist on it, but the hints came thick and fast.”

Mar­go laughed.

“From what I read,” No­ra said, “you’ve had some pret­ty amaz­ing ad­ven­tures.” “Yeah. Who says sci­ence is bor­ing?”

“What brought you back to the mu­se­um?”

“Af­ter get­ting my doc­tor­ate, I went to work for the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal con­glom­er­ate Gene­Dyne. I did it to please my moth­er, re­al­ly: she’d des­per­ate­ly want­ed me to go in­to the fam­ily busi­ness, which I ab­so­lute­ly re­fused to do. Work­ing for Gene­Dyne, mak­ing lots of mon­ey in a cor­po­rate en­vi­ron­ment, was like throw­ing her a bone. Poor Mom. She liked to say she couldn’t fath­om why I want­ed to spend my life study­ing peo­ple with bones through their noses. Any­way, the mon­ey was great, but the cor­po­rate world just wasn’t to my lik­ing. I guess I’m not a team play­er—or an ass-​kiss­er. Then one day Hugo Men­zies called. He knew of my ear­li­er work at the mu­se­um, and he’d come across some of my Gene­Dyne re­search pa­pers on tra­di­tion­al Khoisan medicine. He won­dered if I’d ev­er con­sid­er com­ing back to the mu­se­um. The po­si­tion at Muse­ol­ogy had just opened up and he want­ed me to ap­ply. So I did, and here I am.” She point­ed to No­ra’s plate. “Sec­onds?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Mar­go placed an­oth­er piece of salmon on her plate, took a lit­tle more for her­self. “I don’t sup­pose you’ve heard about the Tano cross­coun­try march,” she said, eyes on her plate.

No­ra looked up sharply. “No. Noth­ing.”

“The mu­se­um is try­ing to keep it un­der wraps, hop­ing it won’t come off. But I think that since you’re one of the cu­ra­tors of the show, you should know about it. The Tanos have be­gun a sort of protest car­avan from New Mex­ico to New York to ask for the re­turn of those masks. They plan to set up in front of the mu­se­um the night of the open­ing, per­form dances, sing songs, and hand out leaflets.”

“Oh, no,” No­ra groaned.

“I man­aged to speak to the lead­er of the group, a re­li­gious el­der. He was a very nice man, but he was al­so ex­treme­ly firm about what they were do­ing and why. They be­lieve there’s a spir­it in­side each mask, and the Tanos want to pla­cate them—to let them know they haven’t been for­got­ten.”

“But on open­ing night? It’ll be a dis­as­ter.”

“They’re sin­cere,” Mar­go said gen­tly.

No­ra glanced at her, a re­tort al­ready on her lips. Then she soft­ened. “I sup­pose you’re right.”

“I re­al­ly did try to talk them out of it. Any­way, I on­ly men­tion this be­cause I fig­ured you might ap­pre­ci­ate a heads-​up.”

“Thanks.” No­ra thought for a mo­ment. “Ash­ton’s go­ing to have a shit-​fit.” “How can you stand work­ing with that man? What a dork.”

No­ra burst out laugh­ing, amazed at Mar­go’s di­rect­ness. It was, of course, true. “You should see him these days, run­ning around the ex­hi­bi­tion, yelling at ev­ery­one, wav­ing his hands, the wat­tle on his fore­arms flap­ping back and forth.”

“Stop! I don’t want to pic­ture it.”

“And then Men­zies comes through, and with a qui­et word here and a nod there, he gets more ac­com­plished in five min­utes than Ash-​ton does in a whole morn­ing.”

“Now, there’s a les­son in man­age­ment.” Mar­go point­ed at No­ra’s glass. “An­oth­er?”

“Please.”

She filled up both their glass­es, then raised hers. “Too bad Men­zies’s soft-​spo­ken ap­proach doesn’t yet work for us wom­en. So here’s to you and me, No­ra, kick­ing ass in that fos­silized pile.”

No­ra laughed. “I’ll drink to that.”

And they clinked glass­es.

THIRTY

IT was ex­act­ly two in the morn­ing when Smith­back cracked open the door of his room. Hold­ing his breath, he glanced out through the nar­row gap. The third-​floor cor­ri­dor was de­sert­ed and dark. Eas­ing the door open still far­ther, he ven­tured a look in the oth­er di­rec­tion.

De­sert­ed, as well.

Smith­back closed the door again, leaned against it. His heart pound­ed in his chest, and he told him­self it was be­cause he’d been wait­ing so long for this mo­ment. He had lain in bed for hours, feign­ing sleep, all the while putting the fin­ish­ing touch­es on his plan. Ear­li­er in the evening, there had been the oc­ca­sion­al hushed foot­fall out­side; around eleven, a nurse had looked in on him and—see­ing him mo­tion­less in bed—left him to sleep. Since mid­night, there had been no sound at all out­side the door.

Smith­back grasped the door han­dle again. It was time to put his plan in­to ac­tion.

Af­ter his out­burst with the di­rec­tor, Smith­back had been sum­moned to din­ner that evening as usu­al. He was shown to a seat and giv­en a menu as if noth­ing had hap­pened—it seemed that delu­sion­al out­bursts were par for the course at Riv­er Oaks. Af­ter din­ner, he’d put in his req­ui­site hour of work de­tail in the kitchen, re­turn­ing per­ish­able goods to the walk-​in re­frig­er­ators of the ram­bling kitchen com­plex on the man­sion’s first floor.

It was while on du­ty Smith­back had man­aged to pur­loin a key to the base­ment.

Though he’d worked on­ly two shifts, Smith­back al­ready had a pret­ty good sense of how the kitchen op­er­at­ed. De­liv­er­ies came in through a load­ing dock in the back of the man­sion, and were then brought through the base­ment and up in­to the kitchen. Se­cu­ri­ty at Riv­er Oaks was a joke: half the kitchen staff seemed to have keys to the base­ment, from the head chef on down to the dish­wash­ers, and the door was al­ways be­ing un­locked, opened, and re­locked dur­ing work­ing hours. When the sous chef had gone down to get a piece of equip­ment, Smith­back seized his chance and—when no­body was look­ing—pock­et­ed the key that had been left in the lock. The chef had come back up, grunt­ing un­der the weight of a ver­ti­cal broil­er, the key com­plete­ly for­got­ten.

It had been that easy.

Now Smith­back tensed, prepar­ing to open his door again. He was wear­ing three shirts, a sweater, and two pairs of pants, and was sweat­ing pro­fuse­ly. It was a nec­es­sary pre­cau­tion: if ev­ery­thing went ac­cord­ing to plan, he had a long, cold ride ahead of him.

While on du­ty in the kitchen, he’d learned that the first food ser­vice truck ar­rived at the load­ing dock at 5:30 a.m. If he could make his way through the base­ment, wait un­til the truck ar­rived, and then sneak in­to its rear com­part­ment just be­fore it de­part­ed, no­body would be the wis­er. Two hours or more would pass un­til his ab­sence was dis­cov­ered—and by then he’d be well on his way back to New York, be­yond the grasp of Dr. Ti­sander and his le­gion of creepy, black-​uni­formed nurs­es.

He cracked the door open again. Death­ly si­lence. He opened it wider, then slipped out in­to the cor­ri­dor and closed it noise­less­ly be­hind him.

He glanced over his shoul­der, then be­gan mak­ing his way cau­tious­ly down the cor­ri­dor to­ward the land­ing, keep­ing close to the walls. He stood lit­tle chance of be­ing spot­ted: the chan­de­liers were dimmed and their am­ber pools of light faint. The land­scapes and por­traits hang­ing on the walls were dark, in­dis­tin­guish­able rect­an­gles. The soft car­pet­ing was a riv­er of ma­roon so deep it looked al­most black.

It was the work of five min­utes to reach the land­ing. Here the light was a lit­tle brighter and he hung back, lis­ten­ing for the sound of foot­steps on the stair­way. He took a step, then an­oth­er, lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly.

Noth­ing.

Glid­ing for­ward, hand on the ban­is­ter, Smith­back made his way down, ready to dart back up the stairs at the first sign of an en­counter. Reach­ing the sec­ond-​floor land­ing, he re­treat­ed to a dark cor­ner, crouch­ing be­hind a side­board. Here he paused to re­con­noi­ter. The land­ing widened in­to four cor­ri­dors: one lead­ing to the din­ing room, an­oth­er to the li­brary and west par­lor, the oth­ers to treat­ment ar­eas and ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fices. This floor seemed as silent and de­sert­ed as the first, and Smith­back, en­cour­aged, be­gan creep­ing out.

From down the ad­min­is­tra­tive hall­way came the sound of a clos­ing door.

Quick­ly, he dart­ed back to his hid­ing place, crouched down, and wait­ed.

He heard a key turn­ing in a lock. Then, for per­haps a minute, noth­ing more. Had some­body been lock­ing him­self in­side an of­fice? Or out?

He wait­ed an­oth­er minute. Still noth­ing.

Just as he was gath­er­ing him­self to rise again, some­one came in­to view from the dark­ness of the ad­min­is­tra­tive cor­ri­dor: an or­der­ly, walk­ing slow­ly, hands clasped be­hind him. The man was look­ing from left to right as he strolled, as if check­ing that all doors were prop­er­ly closed.

Smith­back shrank back far­ther in­to the dark­ness be­hind the side­board, not mov­ing, not even breath­ing, as the man walked across the far side of the land­ing and van­ished down the cor­ri­dor lead­ing to the li­brary.

Smith­back wait­ed, mo­tion­less, an­oth­er five min­utes. Then, keep­ing low, he made his way down the stair­case to the first floor.

Here it seemed even gloomi­er. Af­ter mak­ing sure no­body was in sight, Smith­back dart­ed down the wide cor­ri­dor that led to the kitchen.

It was the work of thir­ty sec­onds to reach the heavy dou­ble doors. Tak­ing one last look over his shoul­der, he pushed against the door, prepar­ing to back in­to the kitchen. The door didn’t budge.

Smith­back turned to face it, pressed hard­er.

Locked.

Shit. This was some­thing he hadn’t an­tic­ipat­ed: a door that was nev­er locked dur­ing the day.

He sound­ed his pock­et for the base­ment key, hop­ing against hope it would open the kitchen door as well. No luck.

He glanced over his shoul­der again, dis­ap­point­ment and a ris­ing de­spair flood­ing over him. It had been such a good plan. And he’d been so close to get­ting out. To be thwart­ed like this…

Then he paused. There might—just might—still be a chance.

Cau­tious­ly, he made his way back to the land­ing. He peered up, strain­ing for any sound, but the vel­vety dark­ness re­mained silent. Noise­less­ly, he crept up the stair­way to the sec­ond floor, flit­ted across the land­ing, and en­tered the din­ing room.

The vast, ghost­ly space seemed sepul­chral in its still­ness. A few bars of pale moon­light slant­ed in through tall win­dows, bathing the room in an eerie, al­most phos­pho­res­cent il­lu­mi­na­tion. Smith­back thread­ed his way quick­ly be­tween the ta­bles—al­ready laid for break­fast—un­til he reached the rear. Here, a dec­ora­tive par­ti­tion ran par­al­lel to the wall, con­ceal­ing the ser­vice ports and wait­ers’ sta­tions be­hind. Smith­back ducked be­hind the par­ti­tion and—now in deep­er dark­ness—moved care­ful­ly to­ward his des­ti­na­tion: the dumb­wait­er, cov­ered by a four­by-​three-​foot met­al pan­el set in­to the back wall.

Slow­ly, care­ful to make no noise, Smith­back grasped the met­al pan­el and pulled it open. In­side was an emp­ty shaft. A heavy rope, mount­ed to a pul­ley mech­anism on the chute’s ceil­ing, van­ished in inky depths be­low.

Smith­back couldn’t help but smile.

Dur­ing his kitchen du­ty, he’d seen gray tubs of sil­ver­ware and dirty dish­es come down from the din­ing room via this same dumb­wait­er. Now, with any luck, it would car­ry a very dif­fer­ent car­go.

There were a se­ries of but­tons be­side the ac­cess pan­el, used to raise and low­er the dumb­wait­er. Smith­back peered at them in the faint il­lu­mi­na­tion, then reached out to press the up but­ton. He’d bring the thing up from the kitchen, clam­ber in, and de­scend…

Then he froze. The mo­tor would make a lot of noise in the still­ness. And there was the faintest chance some­body might still be in­side the kitchen: the last thing he want­ed was to be­tray his pres­ence.

Lean­ing for­ward, he grasped the heavy rope, gave one or two ex­plorato­ry tugs, and then—with a grunt—be­gan to haul up­ward with all his might.

It took ages to hoist the dumb­wait­er from the kitchen be­low. By the time he was done, Smith­back was gasp­ing and puff­ing, his triple lay­er of shirts soaked in sweat. He paused to rest a mo­ment and look around. Still no­body.

Re­turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the dumb­wait­er, he clam­bered in­side, squeez­ing his long limbs in­to its nar­row con­fines. He pulled the ac­cess pan­el closed be­hind him.

Ut­ter dark­ness.

Sit­ting in­side the dumb­wait­er, knees up around his ears, Smith­back re­al­ized there was no easy way to low­er the de­vice. Then he dis­cov­ered that, by plac­ing his hands against the front wall of the chute and ex­ert­ing up­ward pres­sure, he could force the dumb­wait­er down, inch by inch. It was blind, sweaty, ex­haust­ing work, but in a few min­utes he felt his hands brush­ing against the steel frame of an­oth­er ac­cess pan­el. He’d reached the first floor—and the kitchen.

He paused a mo­ment, de­spite the sti­fling, claus­tro­pho­bic space, to lis­ten. Hear­ing noth­ing, he pushed open the pan­el.

The kitchen was emp­ty. The on­ly light came from the emer­gen­cy ex­it signs, which threw a faint crim­son light over the sprawl­ing space.

Smith­back climbed out, worked the kinks out of his limbs, and looked around. There, set in­to a far wall, was the door to the base­ment.

He stiff­ened with ex­cite­ment. Al­most there. Noth­ing could stop him now. Riv­er Oaks might be able to in­car­cer­ate slack-​jawed wack­os like Roger Throck­mor­ton, but it couldn’t hold the likes of William Smith­back.

The kitchen was a strange melange of old and new. The soot-​black­ened walk-​in fire­place was flanked by pro­fes­sion­al stain­less-​steel mix­ers large enough to hold a fam­ily. Long bunch­es of braid­ed gar­lic cloves, pep­pers, and fines herbes hung from the ceil­ing: the head chef was a na­tive of Brit­tany. The gran­ite coun­ter­tops gleamed with ranks of cook­ware. Dozens of top-​qual­ity Ger­man carv­ing knives sat be­hind locked frames of steel and meshed glass.

But Smith­back had eyes for on­ly one thing: the heavy wood­en door set in the far wall. He quick­ly walked over to it, un­locked it. A stone stair­way led down in­to a well of dark­ness.

Gin­ger­ly, Smith­back stepped down, care­ful not to slip on the clam­my stone. He closed and locked the door be­hind him, shut­ting out the pale red glow of the ex­it signs and plung­ing the stair­well in­to ut­ter dark­ness. He made his way down­ward with exquisite care, count­ing steps as he went.

At the twen­ty-​fourth step he reached bot­tom.

He stopped to look around. But there was noth­ing to see: the sur­round­ing black­ness was, if any­thing, even more com­plete. The air smelled of mold and damp. For the first time, it oc­curred to him that he should have nicked a flash­light, made some dis­creet in­quiries about the lay­out of the base­ment and the route to the load­ing dock. Maybe he should put this es­cape at­tempt off for a day or two, go back to his room, and try again an­oth­er night…

He pushed these thoughts away. It was too late to go back: he could nev­er force the dumb­wait­er back up to the din­ing room. Be­sides, his job was at stake. And he want­ed, need­ed, to talk to No­ra. He had three hours un­til the first de­liv­ery of the morn­ing: that was more than enough time to find his way.

He took a deep, steady­ing breath, then an­oth­er, sup­press­ing a faint susurrus of fear. Then, arms stretched out be­fore him, he be­gan to move slow­ly for­ward, slid­ing one foot ahead, then the oth­er. Af­ter about a dozen steps, he made con­tact with a brick wall run­ning per­pen­dic­ular to his po­si­tion. He turned right and be­gan mov­ing again, a lit­tle more quick­ly now, one hand brush­ing the wall.

There was an­oth­er sound, Smith­back re­al­ized, in ad­di­tion to his steps: the low pat­ter­ing and squeak­ing of rats.

His foot came in sud­den con­tact with some­thing on the floor, squat and heavy and im­mov­able. He pitched for­ward, sav­ing him­self at the last minute from sprawl­ing. He rose, rubbed his shin with a curse, then felt for­ward with his hands. Some kind of a slop sink, bolt­ed to the brick face, barred his way. He moved care­ful­ly around it, then con­tin­ued for­ward. The squeak­ing of rats died away, as if the ro­dents were flee­ing at his ap­proach.

The wall to his left end­ed abrupt­ly, leav­ing him once again ma­rooned in the black.

This was crazy. He need­ed to think this out.

Men­tal­ly, he went over what he knew of the lay­out of the man­sion. As he re­viewed his twist­ings and turn­ings from the base of the stairs, it seemed to him the rear must lie to the left.

The mo­ment he turned, he saw it: a pin­point glim­mer in the dis­tance. It was the faintest smudge of light, a mere at­ten­ua­tion of black, but he made for it with the greed­iness of a drown­ing man for ter­ra fir­ma. As he walked, it seemed to re­cede be­fore him, mi­rage­like. The floor lev­el rose, then fell again. At last, as he drew close, he could see that the il­lu­mi­na­tion was set at eye lev­el: a set of small green dis­play pan­els fas­tened to an au­to­mat­ic ther­mo­stat of some kind. They threw a faint glow over a strange room: groined and vault­ed in dressed lime­stone, it con­tained a half dozen steam boil­ers of pol­ished brass and cop­per. They dat­ed back to the mid-​nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, at least, and had been retrofitted to the ther­mo­stat con­trols by bun­dles of col­ored wires. The gi­ant boil­ers hissed and rum­bled soft­ly, al­most as if snor­ing in rhythm to the sleep­ing man­sion they warmed.

Over the sound of the boil­ers came again the scam­per­ing and squeak­ing of rats.

And then, quite dis­tinct­ly, the clump of a boot on stone.

Smith­back whirled around. “Who is it?” he blurt­ed out, his voice echo­ing among the vaults and boil­ers.

No an­swer.

“Who’s there?” Smith­back said a lit­tle loud­er. And, as he took a slow step back­ward, the on­ly re­sponse was the thud­ding of his heart.

THIRTY-ONE

mar­go made the fi­nal cor­rec­tion to the last page of the blue­lines for Muse­ol­ogy and laid the proof aside. I’m prob­ably the on­ly ed­itor in the coun­try who still works with hard copy, she thought to her­self. She set­tled back in­to her chair with a sigh and glanced at the clock: 2 a.m. ex­act­ly. She yawned, stretched, the old oak­en chair creak­ing in protest, and rose.

The of­fices of Muse­ol­ogy were lo­cat­ed in a stuffy set of rooms half a flight up from the fifth floor, jammed un­der the eaves of the mu­se­um’s west wing. A dirty sky­light pro­vid­ed il­lu­mi­na­tion dur­ing the day, but now the sky­light was a rect­an­gle of black, and the on­ly light came from a fee­ble Vic­to­ri­an lamp that sprout­ed from the an­cient desk like an iron mush­room.

Mar­go slipped the cor­rect­ed blue­lines in­to a mani­la en­ve­lope and wrote a quick note to the jour­nal’s pro­duc­tion man­ag­er. She would drop them off at the mu­se­um’s print­ing of­fice on her way out. The jour­nal would be print­ed first thing in the morn­ing, and by noon proof copies would be go­ing out by hand to the mu­se­um’s pres­ident, the dean of sci­ence, Men­zies, and the oth­er de­part­ment heads.

She shiv­ered in­vol­un­tar­ily, ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a mo­ment of self-​doubt. Was it re­al­ly her du­ty to mount this cru­sade? She loved work­ing again at the mu­se­um—she could see her­self work­ing here hap­pi­ly for the rest of her life. Why mess it up?

She shook her head. It was too late now, and be­sides, it was some­thing she had to do. With Men­zies be­hind her, it was doubt­ful they’d fire her.

She climbed down the met­al stairs and en­tered the enor­mous fifth-​floor cor­ri­dor, stretch­ing four city blocks, said to be the longest hor­izon­tal cor­ri­dor in all of New York City. She walked along its length, heels click­ing on the mar­ble floor. At last, she stopped at the el­eva­tor, pressed the down but­ton. A rum­ble sound­ed in the bow­els of the build­ing as the el­eva­tor rose. Af­ter about a minute, the doors opened.

She stepped in and pressed the but­ton for the sec­ond floor, ad­mir­ing as she did so the once-​el­egant el­eva­tor, with its nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry brass grille and fit­tings and its an­cient bird’s-​eye-​maple pan­el­ing, much scarred by time and use. It creaked and groaned its way back down, then stopped with a jolt, the doors rum­bling open again. She made her way through a suc­ces­sion of old, fa­mil­iar mu­se­um halls— Africa, Asian Birds, Shells, the Trilo­bite Al­cove. The lights in the cas­es had been turned off, which gave them a creepy as­pect, the ob­jects in­side sunken in shad­ow.

She paused in the gloom. For a mo­ment, mem­ories of a ter­ri­ble night sev­en years ear­li­er threat­ened to re­turn. She pushed them aside and quick­ened her step, ar­riv­ing at the un­marked door to the print­ing di­vi­sion. She slipped the blue­lines in­to the slot, turned, then made her way back through the echo­ing, de­sert­ed gal­leries.

At the top of the sec­ond-​floor stairs, she paused. When she spoke to the Tano el­der, he’d told her that, if the masks had to be dis­played, they must be placed fac­ing in the prop­er di­rec­tions. Each of the four masks em­bod­ied the spir­it of a car­di­nal di­rec­tion: as a con­se­quence, it was crit­ical that each faced its re­spec­tive di­rec­tion. Any oth­er ar­range­ment would threat­en the world with chaos—or so the Tanos be­lieved. More like­ly, it would threat­en the mu­se­um with even more con­tro­ver­sy, and that was some­thing Mar­go was most anx­ious to avoid. She had for­ward­ed the in­for­ma­tion to Ash­ton, but Ash­ton was over­worked and snap­pish, and she had lit­tle faith he’d car­ried it out.

In­stead of de­scend­ing the stairs to the em­ploy­ee se­cu­ri­ty en­trance, Mar­go turned left, head­ing for the Sa­cred Im­ages en­trance. In a few mo­ments, she ar­rived. The door to the ex­hi­bi­tion had been de­signed to look like the por­tal to an an­cient Hin­du tomb of the Khmer style, the carved stone lin­tels de­pict­ing gods and demons en­gaged in a ti­tan­ic strug­gle. The fig­ures were in vi­olent mo­tion: fly­ing ap­saras, danc­ing Shiv­as, gods with thir­ty-​two arms, along with demons vom­it­ing fire and co­bras with hu­man heads. It was un­set­tling enough that Mar­go stopped, won­der­ing if it wouldn’t be bet­ter to call it a night and do this er­rand in the morn­ing. But to­mor­row the hall would be a mad­house again, and Ash­ton would be there, im­ped­ing her and— in the wake of her ed­ito­ri­al—per­haps even deny­ing her ac­cess.

She shook her head rue­ful­ly. She couldn’t just give in to the demons of the past. If she walked away now, her fears would have won.

She stepped for­ward and slid her mag­net­ic card through the read­er be­side the en­trance door; there was a soft click of well-​oiled steel dis­en­gag­ing, and the se­cu­ri­ty light went green. She pushed the door open and en­tered, care­ful­ly clos­ing it be­hind her and mak­ing sure the se­cu­ri­ty LED re­turned to red.

The hall was silent and emp­ty, lit soft­ly by ex­te­ri­or spots, the cas­es dark. Two o’clock was too late for even the most ded­icat­ed cu­ra­tor. The air smelled of fresh lum­ber, saw­dust, and glue. Most of the ex­hibits were in place, with on­ly a few re­main­ing un­mount­ed. Here and there a cu­ra­to­ri­al cart stood load­ed with ob­jects not yet in place. The floor was strewn with saw­dust, lum­ber, pieces of Plex­iglas, and elec­tri­cal wires. Mar­go looked around, won­der­ing how they could pos­si­bly open in three days. She shrugged, glad the open­ing was Ash-​ton’s prob­lem and not hers.

As she walked through the ini­tial room of the ex­hi­bi­tion, her cu­rios­ity rose de­spite the sense of un­ease. Last time, she’d been look­ing for No­ra and hadn’t both­ered to pay much at­ten­tion to the sur­round­ings. Even in its un­fin­ished state, it was clear this was go­ing to be an ex­cep­tion­al­ly dra­mat­ic ex­hib­it. The room was a repli­ca of the buri­al cham­ber of the an­cient Egyp­tian queen Ne­fer­tari, lo­cat­ed in the Val­ley of the Queens in Lux­or. In­stead of de­pict­ing the un­loot­ed tomb, the de­sign­ers had re­con­struct­ed what the tomb might have looked like just af­ter be­ing loot­ed. The enor­mous gran­ite sar­coph­agus had been bro­ken in­to sev­er­al pieces, the in­ner coffins all stolen. The mum­my lay to one side, a gap­ing hole in its chest where the loot­ers had cut it open to steal the gold and lapis scarab that lay next to the heart as a promise of eter­nal life. She paused to ex­am­ine the mum­my, care­ful­ly pro­tect­ed by glass: it was the re­al Mc­Coy, the la­bel iden­ti­fy­ing it as be­long­ing to the ac­tu­al queen her­self, on loan from the Cairo Mu­se­um in Egypt.

She con­tin­ued to read the la­bel, her mis­sion tem­porar­ily for­got­ten. It ex­plained that the tomb had been robbed not long af­ter the queen’s buri­al by the very priests who had been as­signed to guard it. The thieves had been in mor­tal dread of the pow­er of the dead queen and had tried to de­stroy that pow­er by smash­ing all her grave goods in or­der to purge the ob­jects of their sa­cred pow­er. As a re­sult, ev­ery­thing not stolen had been smashed and was ly­ing about hel­ter-​skel­ter.

She ducked un­der a low stone arch­way, its dark sur­faces busy with graven im­ages, and found her­self sud­den­ly plunged un­der­ground in­to the ear­ly Chris­tian cat­acombs be­neath Rome. She was in a nar­row pas­sage­way cut in­to the bedrock. Lo­culi and ar­coso­lia ra­di­at­ed out­ward in sev­er­al di­rec­tions, nich­es in their sides packed with bones. Crude in­scrip­tions in Latin graced some of the nich­es, along with carved cross­es and oth­er sa­cred Chris­tian im­agery. It was dis­turbing­ly nat­ural­is­tic, down to the mod­els of rats scam­per­ing around the bones.

Ash­ton had gone for the sen­sa­tion­al, but Mar­go had to ad­mit it was ef­fec­tive. This would def­inite­ly pack in the crowds.

She has­tened on in­to a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent space that de­pict­ed the Japanese tea cer­emo­ny. There was an or­der­ly gar­den, the plant­ings and peb­bled walk­way in metic­ulous or­der. Be­yond lay the sukiya, the tea room it­self. It was a re­lief to en­ter this open, or­der­ly space af­ter the claus­tro­pho­bia of the cat­acombs. The tea room was the liv­ing em­bod­iment of pu­ri­ty and tran­quil­li­ty, with its pol­ished wood, pa­per screens, moth­er-​of-​pearl in­lays, and tatamis, along with the sim­ple ac­cou­ter­ments of the cer­emo­ny: the iron ket­tle, the bam­boo dip­per, the linen nap­kin. Even so, the empti­ness of it, the deep shad­ows and dark spaces, start­ed to un­nerve Mar­go again.

Time to wrap up this er­rand and get out.

She walked briskly through the tea room and wound her way deep­er in­to the ex­hi­bi­tion, pass­ing an eclec­tic pa­rade of ex­hibits in­clud­ing a dark In­di­an fu­ner­ary lodge, a hogan filled with Nava­jo sand paint­ings, and a vi­olent Chukchi shaman­is­tic rite in which the shaman had to be phys­ical­ly chained to the ground to keep his soul from be­ing stolen by demons.

She fi­nal­ly ar­rived at the four Ki­va So­ci­ety masks. They stood in a glass case in the cen­ter of the room, mount­ed on slen­der rods, each fac­ing in a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion. Around the cir­cu­lar walls had been paint­ed a mag­nif­icent de­pic­tion of the New Mex­ico land­scape, and each mask faced one of the four sa­cred moun­tains that sur­round­ed Tanoland.

Mar­go gazed at them, awestruck anew by their pow­er. They were amaz­ing­ly evoca­tive masks, se­vere, fierce, and yet at the same time over­flow­ing with hu­man ex­pres­sion. Al­though they were close to eight hun­dred years old, they looked mod­ern in their for­mal ab­strac­tion. They were true mas­ter­pieces.

She glanced at her notes, then walked to the near­est wall map to ori­ent her­self. Then she moved around the cen­tral dis­play, check­ing each mask—and was sur­prised to find that they were, in fact, fac­ing the cor­rect di­rec­tions. Ash­ton, for all his blus­ter, had got­ten it right. In fact, she grudg­ing­ly had to ad­mit he’d put to­geth­er an out­stand­ing ex­hi­bi­tion.

She stuffed the notes back in her purse. The si­lence, the dim­ness, was start­ing to get to her. She’d take in the rest of the show some oth­er time, in broad day­light, when the halls were bustling with peo­ple.

She had just turned to re­trace her steps when she heard a loud clat­ter, like a board falling, in the next room.

She jumped, heart sud­den­ly pound­ing in her ears. A minute passed with no fur­ther sound.

Her heart slow­ing again, Mar­go ad­vanced to the arch­way and peered in­to the dim­ness of the ex­hib­it be­yond. It was a de­pic­tion of the in­te­ri­or of Ari­zona’s haunt­ing House of Hands Cave, paint­ed by the Anasazi a thou­sand years ago. But the room was emp­ty, and the quan­ti­ty of cut lum­ber still ly­ing around in­di­cat­ed that what she’d heard was just a propped-​up board which had fi­nal­ly got­ten around to falling.

She took a deep breath. The watch­ful still­ness, the spook­iness of the ex­hi­bi­tion, had fi­nal­ly got­ten to her. That was all. Don’t think about what hap­pened be­fore. The mu­se­um’s changed since then, changed ut­ter­ly She was prob­ably in the safest place in New York City. The se­cu­ri­ty had been up­grad­ed half a dozen times since the de­ba­cle sev­en years ago. This lat­est sys­tem—still be­ing fi­nal­ized—was the best mon­ey could buy. No­body could get in­to this hall with­out a mag­net­ic key card, and the card read­er record­ed the iden­ti­ty of each per­son who passed through, as well as the time.

She turned again, prepar­ing to walk back out of the ex­hi­bi­tion, hum­ming to her­self as a de­fense against the si­lence. But be­fore she had even crossed the ex­hib­it, she was stopped again by the clat­ter of lum­ber—this time from the room ahead of her.

“Hel­lo?” she called out, her voice un­nat­ural­ly loud in the qui­et hall. “Some­body there?”

There was no an­swer.

She de­cid­ed it must be the guard mak­ing his rounds, trip­ping over loose boards. In the old days, the guards, hav­ing dis­cov­ered the tanks of grain al­co­hol preser­va­tive stored in the En­to­mol­ogy De­part­ment, were some­times found drunk at night. I guess some things nev­er change.

Once again, she head­ed back in the di­rec­tion of the en­trance, wend­ing her way through the dark ex­hibits, walk­ing briskly, her heels mak­ing a re­as­sur­ing click-​click on the tiled floor.

With a sud­den snap!, the ex­hi­bi­tion was plunged in­to black­ness.

An in­stant lat­er, the emer­gen­cy lights came to life, rows of flu­ores­cent tubes set in the ceil­ing, pop­ping and hum­ming as they winked on, one by one.

Once again, she tried to calm her wild­ly beat­ing heart. This was sil­ly. It wasn’t the first time she’d been in the mu­se­um dur­ing a pow­er fail­ure; they hap­pened all the time in the old build­ing. There was noth­ing, ab­so­lute­ly noth­ing, to wor­ry about.

She had bare­ly tak­en an­oth­er step when she heard yet an­oth­er clat­ter of lum­ber, this time from the room she had just passed through. It sound­ed al­most de­lib­er­ate—as if some­one were de­lib­er­ate­ly try­ing to spook her.

“Who’s there?” she asked, whirling around, sud­den­ly an­gry.

But the hall be­hind her—a crim­son-​paint­ed crypt ar­rayed with the cru­el trap­pings of a black mass—was emp­ty.

“If this is some kind of joke, I don’t ap­pre­ci­ate it.”

She wait­ed, tense as a spring, but there was no sound.

She won­dered if it was just a co­in­ci­dence: an­oth­er board falling on its own, the ex­hi­bi­tion set­tling down af­ter a hec­tic day. She reached in­to her hand­bag, feel­ing around for some­thing she might use as a weapon. There was noth­ing. In years past, fol­low­ing the trau­ma of the mu­se­um killings and their af­ter­math, she had tak­en to keep­ing a pis­tol in her bag. But this was a habit she’d dropped when she left the mu­se­um and went to work for Gene­Dyne. Now she cursed her­self for let­ting down her guard.

Then she spied a box cut­ter, sit­ting on a work­table on the far side of the ex­hib­it. She ran to it, snatched it up, and—hold­ing it out ag­gres­sive­ly be­fore her—re­sumed her walk to­ward the en­trance.

An­oth­er clat­ter, this one loud­er than the oth­ers, as if some­one had tossed some­thing.

Now Mar­go was sure there was some­one else with her in the ex­hi­bi­tion: some­one de­lib­er­ate­ly try­ing to scare her. Was it pos­si­ble it was some­body who ob­ject­ed to her ed­ito­ri­al and was now try­ing to in­tim­idate her? She’d find out from se­cu­ri­ty who else had been in the hall and re­port them im­me­di­ate­ly.

She broke in­to a trot. She passed through the Japanese tea room and had just en­tered the loot­ed Egyp­tian tomb when there was an­oth­er sharp snap! This time the emer­gen­cy lights went out and the win­dow­less hall was plunged in­to to­tal black­ness.

She halt­ed, al­most par­alyzed by sud­den fear and a chill­ing sense of déjà vu as she re­called a sim­ilar mo­ment in an­oth­er ex­hi­bi­tion, years ear­li­er, in this same mu­se­um. “Who is it?” she cried. “It’s just me,” a voice said.

THIRTY-TWO

Smith­back froze, all sens­es on high alert. He looked left and right, eyes strain­ing in the green­ish dark. But there was no sound; no fig­ure rush­ing to­ward him, black up­on black.

Must be my imag­ina­tion, he thought. The creepy place was enough to give any­body the hee­bie-​jee­bies.

Much as he hat­ed to leave the faint light of the boil­er room, he knew he had to move on. He need­ed to find the load­ing dock and— just as im­por­tant—a good hid­ing place near­by. If the last ten min­utes were any in­di­ca­tion, it might take him a while.

He wait­ed a good five min­utes, lis­ten­ing, mak­ing sure the coast was clear. Then he crept back out of the vast room and, turn­ing, be­gan mak­ing his way to­ward what he thought must be the back of the man­sion. The pale light fad­ed away and he once again slowed his pace, putting his arms out in front of him, shuf­fling his feet gin­ger­ly so as not to bark his shins a sec­ond time.

He paused. Was that an­oth­er sound? Was some­body down here with him?

Heart still ham­mer­ing un­com­fort­ably in his chest, he stopped to wait again. But he heard noth­ing but the faint squeak of mice and, af­ter an­oth­er minute, re­sumed his slow progress.

Sud­den­ly, his hands en­coun­tered an­oth­er wall: rough stone, slick with mois­ture. Fol­low­ing it to the right, he en­coun­tered a per­pen­dic­ular wall, with what felt like a steel door bolt­ed in­to it. His fin­gers probed along the jamb un­til they found the han­dle. He seized it, turned.

The han­dle re­fused to move.

Tak­ing a deep breath, he yanked with all his might. No good: the thing wouldn’t budge.

With a curse, he went back along the wall in the oth­er di­rec­tion. Af­ter about twen­ty paces, the wall end­ed and his hands groped once again on open space. He turned the cor­ner, then stopped, his heart in his throat.

There was a sud­den glow of light ahead, fram­ing a turn in the cor­ri­dor. Some­one had just turned on the lights up ahead. Or had they been on all this time?

Smith­back paused, frozen with in­de­ci­sion. That was the way he had to go, he was sure of it, and the light was wel­com­ing. But was any­one wait­ing up there for him?

He crept for­ward, keep­ing close to the wall, and peered around the cor­ner.

The cor­ri­dor ahead was lit by a string of dim bulbs hang­ing from the ceil­ing. They were few and far be­tween, and the light they shed was fee­ble, but at least he’d be able to see where he was go­ing. Best of all, the cor­ri­dor was emp­ty. No­body had turned on the lights, Smith­back de­cid­ed—they’d been on all along. He just hadn’t no­ticed them at first. Or maybe he’d been too far away to catch their light.

He walked slow­ly down the stone cor­ri­dor. On both sides, an­cient doors lay open, yawn­ing gulfs of bare­ly pen­etra­ble murk. He paused to look in­to a few. A wine cel­lar, rows of bot­tles and heavy oak­en kegs cov­ered in dense cob­webs. An old stor­age room, wood­en file cab­inets burst­ing with yel­low­ing doc­uments. A bil­liard room, the felt of its ta­ble torn and curled. Just what you’d ex­pect in a manor house that had been con­vert­ed in­to an in­sane asy­lum for the rich.

Smith­back walked on, con­fi­dence re­turn­ing. It was a good plan.

The base­ment couldn’t go on for­ev­er. He had to be get­ting near the load­ing dock. He had to…

There it was again: that nag­ging sen­sa­tion he was be­ing stalked; that some­one was de­lib­er­ate­ly try­ing to con­ceal the sound of their foot­steps with his own.

He stopped abrupt­ly. He couldn’t be cer­tain, but he thought he’d heard the sound of an in­ter­rupt­ed tread, as if some­one in the dark­ness be­hind had frozen in the act of tak­ing a step. He wheeled. The cor­ri­dor, at least the light­ed part, stretched emp­ty be­hind him.

Smith­back licked his lips. “Pen­der­gast?” he tried to say, but his throat was thick and dry and his tongue didn’t want to work. Just as well, be­cause he knew in his gut there was some­body back there, and it wasn’t Pen­der­gast; oh, God, no, it wasn’t Pen­der­gast…

He be­gan walk­ing for­ward again, heart pound­ing fu­ri­ous­ly. Sud­den­ly, the pools of faint light were no longer a god­send. They were treach­er­ous, re­veal­ing… And he was sud­den­ly ter­ri­bly cer­tain some­body had turned on the lights, the bet­ter to see him with.

There is a killer af­ter you. A supreme­ly dan­ger­ous killer of al­most su­per­nat­ural abil­ity…

He fought against the in­stinct to run. Pan­ic wasn’t the an­swer here. He need­ed to think this through. He need­ed to find a dark cor­ner, a place where he could hide. But first he had to be sure. Ab­so­lute­ly sure.

He passed quick­ly be­neath an­oth­er bulb and in­to the in­ter­val of dark­ness be­yond. He slowed his pace, try­ing to get the tim­ing right. Then, tens­ing, he turned abrupt­ly.

Be­hind, a dark form—cloaked, strange­ly muf­fled—shrank back from the light in­to the dark obliv­ion of the base­ment.

At this sight, ex­pect­ed yet un­ut­ter­ably aw­ful, Smith­back’s fail­ing nerves de­sert­ed him. He turned and ran like a fright­ened rab­bit, tear­ing down the cor­ri­dor, heed­less of any hid­den ob­sta­cles to his es­cape.

The sound of heavy boots clos­ing in from be­hind spurred him on.

Lungs burn­ing, Smith­back tore down the cor­ri­dor, be­yond the last of the hang­ing bulbs and back in­to ab­so­lute, end­less, pro­tec­tive dark­ness…

And then some­thing cold and un­yield­ing slammed up against him, stop­ping him dead. A sav­age pain tore through his head and chest; white light ex­plod­ed in his skull; and, as con­scious­ness fled away and he sank to the ground, his last im­pres­sion was of a claw-​like grasp, hard as steel, fas­ten­ing on­to his shoul­der.

THIRTY-THREE

“who?” Mar­go al­most shrieked, hold­ing the box cut­ter to­ward the sound, swing­ing it back and forth. “Who is it?”

“Me.”

“Who is ‘me’ and what the hell do you want?”

“I’m look­ing for an hon­est man … or wom­an, as the case may be.” The voice was small and al­most ef­fem­inate in its ex­ac­ti­tude.

“Don’t you come near me,” she cried, bran­dish­ing the box cut­ter in the black­ness. She tried to calm her pound­ing heart and fo­cus. This was no jok­er: she sensed in­stinc­tive­ly that this man was dan­ger­ous. The emer­gen­cy lights would come back on short­ly; they must—it was au­to­mat­ic. But as the sec­onds ticked by, she felt her ter­ror con­tin­ue to es­ca­late. Had the man him­self cut the emer­gen­cy back­up? It didn’t seem pos­si­ble. What was go­ing on?

Strug­gling to mas­ter her­self, she inched for­ward as silent­ly as pos­si­ble, slid­ing her feet along the floor, step­ping care­ful­ly over ob­jects as she en­coun­tered them, pok­ing the box cut­ter out in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions. She had a vague idea of where the en­trance was, and for now the man seemed to have shut up—per­haps as con­found­ed by the dark­ness as she was. She reached the far wall and be­gan feel­ing her way along it. Then her hands en­coun­tered the cool steel of the se­cu­ri­ty door. With a flood of re­lief, she felt for the han­dle, found the card read­er, pulled her card from her bag, and swiped it through.

Noth­ing.

As quick­ly as it had come, the re­lief ebbed away, re­placed by a dull, pound­ing fear. Of course: the mag­net­ic lock was elec­tric and the pow­er was off. She tried open­ing the door, rat­tling the knob and throw­ing her weight against it, but it didn’t budge.

“When the pow­er goes off,” came the thin voice, “the se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem locks ev­ery­thing down. You can’t get out.”

“Get close to me and I’ll cut you!” she cried, spin­ning around and putting her back to the door, bran­dish­ing the box cut­ter at the dark­ness.

“You wouldn’t want to do that. The sight of blood leaves me faint… faint with plea­sure.”

In the clar­ity of her fear, Mar­go re­al­ized that she had to stop re­spond­ing. She had to go on the of­fen­sive. She fought to con­trol her breath­ing, con­trol her fear. She had to do some­thing un­pre­dictable, sur­prise him, turn the ta­bles. She took a noise­less step for­ward.

“What does the sight of blood do to you, Mar­go?” came the gen­tle whis­per.

She inched to­ward the voice.

“Blood is such a strange sub­stance, isn’t it? Such a per­fect, exquisite col­or, and so teem­ing with life, packed with all those red and white cells and an­ti­bod­ies and hor­mones. It’s a liv­ing liq­uid. Even spilled on a dirty mu­se­um floor, it lives on—at least for a time.”

She took an­oth­er step to­ward the voice. She was very close now. She braced her­self. Then, in one des­per­ate mo­tion, she sprang for­ward and brought the box cut­ter around in a slash­ing arc; it con­tact­ed some­thing and ripped through it. As she jumped back, she heard a stum­bling noise, a muf­fled sound of sur­prise.

She wait­ed, tens­ing in the black­ness, hop­ing she’d opened up an artery.

“Bra­va, Mar­go,” came the whis­pery voice. “I’m im­pressed. Why, you’ve ru­ined my great­coat.”

She be­gan cir­cling the voice again, in­tend­ing to strike a sec­ond time. She had him on the de­fen­sive now. If she could wound him, pre­oc­cu­py him, she’d buy her­self enough time to run back in­to the ex­hi­bi­tion. If she could do that, put half a dozen rooms be­tween her­self and this evil, dis­em­bod­ied voice, he’d nev­er find her in the black­ness. She could wait for the guards to make their next set of rounds.

There was a low, breathy chuck­le. The per­son seemed to be cir­cling her at the same time. “Mar­go, Mar­go, Mar­go. You didn’t re­al­ly think you’d cut me?”

She lunged again, her arm sweep­ing on­ly air.

“Good, good,” came the voice with an­oth­er dry chuck­le. The chuck­le went on and on, hang­ing in the black­ness, cir­cling slow­ly.

“Leave me alone or I’ll kill you,” said Mar­go, sur­prised at how calm her voice sound­ed.

“What spunk!”

In­stant­ly, Mar­go tossed her purse to­ward his voice, heard it strike, and fol­lowed up with a light­ning-​fast slash that met with just enough re­sis­tance to let her know she’d struck home.

“My, my, an­oth­er good trick. You are far more formidable than I had sup­posed. And now you have cut me.”

As she turned to run, she felt, rather than heard, a sud­den move­ment; she threw her­self side­ways, but the man seized her wrist and—with one ter­ri­ble twist that cracked her bones—sent the box cut­ter fly­ing. She cried out, strug­gling de­spite the un­bear­able pain shoot­ing up her arm. He twist­ed again and she screamed, lash­ing out with her foot, land­ing a punch with her free hand, but the man pulled her up against him in a brusque, hor­rid move­ment that al­most caused her to faint from the pain to her bro­ken wrist. His hand was like a steel man­acle around her arm, and his hot breath, smelling faint­ly of damp earth, washed over her.

“You cut me,” he whis­pered.

With a hard shove, he re­leased her, step­ping back. Mar­go fell to her knees, close to black­ing out from shock and pain, hold­ing her shat­tered wrist close against her­self, try­ing to gath­er her wits, to de­ter­mine where in the dark­ness the box cut­ter had fall­en.

“Al­though I am a cru­el man,” came the voice, “I will not let you suf­fer.”

There was an­oth­er swift move­ment, like the rush of a gi­ant bat above her. And then she felt a stun­ning, sear­ing blow from be­hind that dropped her to the ground. And as she lay there, she re­al­ized, with a sense of strange dis­be­lief, that he had driv­en a knife in­to her back; that she’d been giv­en a mor­tal blow. Yet still she clawed the floor, try­ing to rise, the sheer force of her will bring­ing her to her knees. It was no use. Some­thing warm was run­ning down her arm now, run­ning on­to the floor, as a dif­fer­ent kind of black­ness rushed in on her from all sides. The last thing she heard, com­ing from a great dis­tance as if in a dream, was a fi­nal as­trin­gent chuck­le…

THIRTY-FOUR

Lau­ra Hay­ward walked quick­ly through the mu­se­um’s Great Hall, the ear­ly morn­ing light cast­ing par­al­lel ban­ners through its tall bronze win­dows. She strode through the bands of light with pur­pose, as if the phys­ical act of walk­ing would some­how pre­pare her for what was to come. Be­side her, al­most skip­ping to keep up, was Jack Manet­ti, head of mu­se­um se­cu­ri­ty. Be­hind them fol­lowed a silent but swift pha­lanx of NYPD homi­cide de­tec­tives and mu­se­um per­son­nel.

“Mr. Manet­ti, I’m as­sum­ing the ex­hi­bi­tion has a se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem. Cor­rect?” “State-​of-​the-​art. We’re just com­plet­ing a full over­haul.”

“Over­haul? Wasn’t the ex­hib­it alarmed?”

“It was. We’ve got re­dun­dan­cies built in­to each zone. Strange thing is, no alarm went off.” “Then how’d the perp get in?”

“At this point, we have no idea. We’ve com­piled a list of ev­ery­one who had ac­cess to the

ex­hi­bi­tion space.”

“I’ll want to talk to them all.”

“Here’s the list.” Manet­ti pulled a print­out from his jack­et pock­et.

“Good man.” Hay­ward took it, scanned it, hand­ed it to one of the de­tec­tives be­hind her.

“Tell me about the sys­tem.”

“It’s based on mag­net­ic keys. The sys­tem keeps track of ev­ery­one com­ing and go­ing af­ter

hours. I have a reg­is­ter of that, as well.” He hand­ed her an­oth­er doc­ument.

They round­ed the cor­ner of the Hall of Ocean Life. Hay­ward walked past the great blue

whale, hang­ing omi­nous­ly from the ceil­ing, with­out even a glance.

“Any key cards re­port­ed miss­ing?”

“No.”

“Can they be du­pli­cat­ed?”

“I’m told it’s im­pos­si­ble.”

“Some­one could have bor­rowed a card, per­haps?”

“That’s pos­si­ble, al­though as of now all cards ex­cept the vic­tim’s are ac­count­ed for. I’ll be

look­ing in­to that spe­cif­ic ques­tion.”

“So will we. Of course, the perp might be a mu­se­um em­ploy­ee with pri­or ac­cess.” “I doubt it.”

Hay­ward grunt­ed. She doubt­ed it her­self, but you nev­er knew— she’d seen more than her

share of cer­ti­fi­able lu­natics wan­der­ing around this old pile. As soon as she’d heard about this

case, she’d asked to be as­signed, de­spite still be­ing busy with the Duchamp mur­der. She had

a the­ory—no, call it more of a pre­mo­ni­tion—that the two were con­nect­ed. And if she was

right, it was go­ing to be big. Very big.

They passed through the Hall of North­west Coast In­di­ans, then stopped be­fore the over­size por­tal lead­ing to the Sa­cred Im­ages ex­hi­bi­tion. The door it­self was open but taped off, and be­yond, Hay­ward could hear the mur­mur­ings of the SOC team work­ing the scene. “You, you, and you”—she jabbed her fin­ger at de­tec­tives in turn— “pass the tape with me. The rest

wait here and keep back the cu­ri­ous. Mr. Manet­ti? You come, too.”

“When Dr. Col­lopy ar­rives—?”

“This is a crime scene. Keep him out. I’m sor­ry.”

Manet­ti didn’t even ar­gue. His face was the col­or of put­ty and it was pret­ty clear he hadn’t

even had time for his morn­ing cup of cof­fee.

She ducked un­der the po­lice tape, nod­ded to the wait­ing sergeant, signed his clip­board.

Then she en­tered the foy­er of the ex­hi­bi­tion, mov­ing slow­er now, far more de­lib­er­ate. SOC

and foren­sics would have al­ready gone over ingress and egress, but it was al­ways good to

keep an eye open.

The trun­cat­ed group wound its way through the first room, past al­most com­plet­ed ex­hibits,

step­ping over the odd piece of lum­ber, and then in­to the ex­hi­bi­tion’s sec­ond room: the scene

of the crime it­self. Here a chalk out­line de­lin­eat­ed where the vic­tim had fall­en. There was

quite a lot of blood. The SOC pho­tog­ra­pher had al­ready doc­ument­ed the scene and was

await­ing any spe­cial re­quests Hay­ward, as the in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cer, might have. Two mem­bers of the SOC team were still on their hands and knees with tweez­ers.

She eyed the scene al­most fierce­ly, her eye rov­ing over the cen­tral pool of blood, across

var­ious splat­ters, bloody foot­prints, smears. She ges­tured to Hank Bar­ris, the se­nior SOC of­fi­cer. He rose, put away his tweez­ers, came over.

“What a damn mess,” she said.

“The paramedics worked on the vic­tim for a while.”

“The mur­der weapon?”

“A knife. It went with the vic­tim to the hos­pi­tal. You know, you can’t pull it out—“ “I’m aware of that,” snapped Hay­ward. “Did you see the orig­inal scene?” “No. The EMTs had al­ready messed it up by the time I ar­rived.”

“ID on the vic­tim?”

“Not that I know of, at least not yet. I could call the hos­pi­tal.”

“Any wit­ness­es to the orig­inal scene?”

Bar­ris nod­ded. “One. A tech­ni­cian named En­der­by. Lar­ry En­der­by.”

Hay­ward turned. “Bring him in.”

“In here?”

“That’s what I said.”

A si­lence en­sued while Hay­ward looked around, body com­plete­ly still, her dark eyes the

on­ly thing mov­ing. She scru­ti­nized the blood splat­ters, mak­ing rough es­ti­mates of tra­jec­to­ries,

speed, and ori­gin.

Slow­ly, a gen­er­al pic­ture of the crime be­gan to come to­geth­er in her mind. “Cap­tain? Mr. En­der­by is ready.”

Hay­ward turned to see a sur­pris­ing­ly young, pim­ply man with black hair and a nine­tyeight-​pound-​weak­ling physique. A T-​shirt, a Mets cap worn back­ward, and a pair of rat­ty

jeans com­plet­ed the pic­ture.

At first, she thought his high-​tops were dyed red, un­til she saw them clos­er. A po­lice­man ush­ered him for­ward.

“You were the first to find the vic­tim?”

“Yes, ma’am … I mean … Of­fi­cer.” He was al­ready flus­tered.

“You may call me Cap­tain,” she said gen­tly. “What’s your po­si­tion at the mu­se­um, Mr. En­der­by?”

“I’m a sys­tems tech­ni­cian, grade one.”

“What were you do­ing in the hall at three a.m.?”

The voice was high and qua­very, ready to break. Al­ways the timidest who find the dead­est, Hay­ward re­mem­bered her for­mer pro­fes­sor of foren­sic psy­chol­ogy at NYU jok­ing. Hay­ward swal­lowed, tried to make her voice sym­pa­thet­ic. It wouldn’t do to have En­der­by crack

up.

“Check­ing the in­stall of the new se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem.”

“I see. Was se­cu­ri­ty up and run­ning in the hall?”

“Most­ly. We’re run­ning some up­dat­ed soft­ware rou­tines, and there was a glitch. My

boss—“

“His name?”

“Walt Smith.”

“Pro­ceed.”

“My boss sent me down to see if the pow­er had been cut.”

“Was it?”

“Yeah. It was. Some­one had cut a pow­er ca­ble.”

Hay­ward glanced at Bar­ris.

“We know about it, Cap­tain. It ap­pears the perp cut the ca­ble to kill the emer­gen­cy lights,

the bet­ter to am­bush the vic­tim.”

“So what is this new se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem?” she asked, turn­ing back to En­der­by. “Well, it’s mul­ti­lay­ered and re­dun­dant. There are mo­tion sen­sors, live video feeds, criss­cross­ing in­frared laser beams, vi­bra­tion sen­sors, and air pres­sure sen­sors.” “Sounds im­pres­sive.”

“It is. For the past six months, the mu­se­um’s been up­grad­ing the se­cu­ri­ty in each hall, one

af­ter an­oth­er, to the lat­est ver­sion of the sys­tem.”

“What does that in­volve?”

En­der­by took a deep breath. “In­ter­fac­ing with the se­cu­ri­ty con­trac­tors, re­con­fig­ur­ing the

mon­itor­ing soft­ware, run­ning a test bed, that sort of thing. All on a rigid sched­ule cal­ibrat­ed to

an atom­ic satel­lite clock. And it has to hap­pen at night, when the mu­se­um’s closed,” “I see. So you came down here to check the pow­er fail­ure and found the body.” “That’s right.”

“If you can man­age it, Mr. En­der­by, could you look at the scene here and de­scribe for me

ex­act­ly how the vic­tim was ly­ing?”

“Well… the body … the body was ly­ing just as it’s out­lined, one arm thrown out like you

see. There was an ivory-​han­dled knife stick­ing out of the small of the back, buried to the hilt.” “Did you touch or try to re­move the knife?”

“No.”

Hay­ward nod­ded. “The vic­tim’s right hand, was it open or closed?”

“Ah, it seems to me it was open.” En­der­by swal­lowed painful­ly.

“Bear with me, Mr. En­der­by. The vic­tim was moved be­fore the pho­tog­ra­pher ar­rived, so all

we have is your mem­ory.”

He wiped his brow with the back of his hand.

“The left foot: turned in or out?”

“Out.”

“And the right?”

“In.”

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t think I’ll ev­er for­get. The body was kind of twist­ed a lit­tle.”

“How so?”

“Kind of ly­ing face­down, but with the legs al­most crossed.”

The act of talk­ing seemed to be help­ing En­der­by get a grip on him­self. He was turn­ing out

to be a good wit­ness.

“And the blood on your shoes? How’d that hap­pen?”

En­der­by stared at his shoes, eyes widen­ing. “Oh. I… I rushed over and tried to help.” Hay­ward’s re­spect for the young man went up a notch. “De­scribe your move­ments.” “Let’s see … I was stand­ing there when I saw the body. I stopped, ran over. I knelt, felt for

a pulse, and I guess that’s when I… stepped in the blood. I got blood on my hands, too, but I

washed that off.”

Hay­ward nod­ded, adding those facts to her men­tal re­con­struc­tion.

“Any pulse?”

“I don’t think so. I was hy­per­ven­ti­lat­ing, it was hard to tell. I don’t re­al­ly know how to read a

pulse too well. First I rang se­cu­ri­ty—“

“On a house phone?”

“Yes, around the cor­ner. Then I tried mouth-​to-​mouth, but with­in a minute, a guard ar­rived.”

“The guard’s name?”

“Roscoe Wall.”

Hay­ward nod­ded to one of the de­tec­tives to note this.

“Then the paramedics came. They ba­si­cal­ly pushed me away.”

Hay­ward nod­ded. “Mr. En­der­by, if you could just step aside with De­tec­tive Hard­cas­tle for

a few min­utes, I might have more ques­tions.”

She re­turned to the first room of the ex­hi­bi­tion, looked around, then walked slow­ly back. A

thin scat­ter­ing of saw­dust on the floor, de­spite hav­ing been stirred up, re­tained traces of the

strug­gle. She bent to ex­am­ine the small sprays of blood. A men­tal splat­ter anal­ysis helped fi­nal­ize her gen­er­al un­der­stand­ing of what had hap­pened. The vic­tim had been am­bushed in

the first ex­hib­it room of the hall. Per­haps he’d even been fol­lowed from the op­po­site end of

the ex­hi­bi­tion—there was a rear door, she’d been told, al­though it had been found se­cured

and locked. It looked like they had cir­cled each oth­er for a mo­ment. Then the killer grabbed

the vic­tim, twist­ed him side­ways; struck him with the knife while mov­ing fast in a lat­er­al mo­tion…

She closed her eyes a mo­ment, vi­su­al­iz­ing the chore­og­ra­phy of mur­der. Then she re­opened them, ze­ro­ing in at a tiny spot, off to one side, that she’d no­ticed in

pass­ing on her ini­tial cir­cuit of the room. She walked over and stood look­ing down at it: a drop

of blood about the size of a dime, a qui­et lit­tle drop that ap­peared to have fall­en ver­ti­cal­ly,

from a sta­tion­ary sub­ject, from a height of about five feet.

She point­ed at it. “Hank, I want this en­tire drop tak­en out, floor­board and all. Pho­to­graph it

in situ first. I want DNA on it, yes­ter­day. Run it against all the databas­es.”

“Sure thing, Cap­tain.”

She looked around, her eyes trav­el­ing on a tan­gent from the chalk out­line, through the

lone drop of blood, to the far wall. There she saw a large dent in the new wood­en floor mold­ing. Her eyes sharply nar­rowed. “And Hank?”

He looked up.

“I think you might find the vic­tim’s own weapon be­hind that ex­hib­it case.” The man rose, walked over, peered be­hind.

“I’ll be damned.”

“What is it?” Hay­ward asked.

“A box cut­ter.”

“Blood?”

“Not that I can see.”

“Bag it and run ev­ery test in the book. And run it against that spot you just took out. You’ll

find a match, I’ll bet my last dol­lar.”

As she stood there, some­how un­will­ing to take her eyes off the scene, an­oth­er thought oc­curred to her. “Bring En­der­by back.”

A mo­ment lat­er, De­tec­tive Hard­cas­tle re­turned, En­der­by in tow.

“You said you gave the vic­tim mouth-​to-​mouth?”

“Yes, Cap­tain.”

“You rec­og­nized him, I as­sume.”

“Her, not him. Yes, I did.”

“Who was it?”

“Mar­go Green.”

Hay­ward stiff­ened, as if com­ing to at­ten­tion. “Mar­go Green?”

“Yes. I un­der­stand she used to be a grad­uate stu­dent here. Any­way, she’d re­turned to be

ed­itor of…”

His voice fad­ed in­to the back­ground. Hay­ward was no longer lis­ten­ing. She was think­ing

back half a dozen years to the sub­way mur­ders and the fa­mous Cen­tral Park ri­ot, when she

was a low­ly T.A. cop, and to the Mar­go Green she had met back then—the young, feisty, and

deeply coura­geous wom­an who’d risked her life and helped crack open the case. What a shit­ty world it was.

THIRTY-FIVE

Smith­back SAT glum­ly in the same chair he had oc­cu­pied the day be­fore, feel­ing an un­pleas­ant sense of déjà vu. The same fire seemed to be flick­er­ing in the or­nate mar­ble fire­place, lend­ing a faint per­fume of burn­ing birch­wood to the air; the same sport­ing prints dec­orat­ed the walls; and the same snowy land­scape pre­sent­ed it­self through the bow win­dows.

Worse, the same di­rec­tor sat be­hind his gi­gan­tic desk with the same pity­ing, con­de­scend­ing smile on his well-​shaven face. He was giv­ing Smith­back the re­proach­ful-​stare treat­ment. Smith­back’s head still throbbed painful­ly from run­ning full tilt in­to a ce­ment wall in the dark, and he felt deeply hu­mil­iat­ed for pan­ick­ing at the foot­steps of a mere or­der­ly. And he al­so felt like a re­al jerk for think­ing he could beat the se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem in such a ham-​hand­ed way. All he had ac­com­plished was to con­firm the di­rec­tor’s opin­ion that he was a nut­case.

“Well, well, Ed­ward,” said Dr. Ti­sander, clasp­ing his veined hands to­geth­er. “That was quite an es­capade you had last night. I do apol­ogize if or­der­ly Mon­taney gave you a start. I trust you found the med­ical care at our in­fir­mary sat­is­fac­to­ry?”

Smith­back ig­nored the pa­tron­iz­ing ques­tion. “What I want to know is, why was he sneak­ing around af­ter me like that in the first place? I could’ve been killed!”

“Run­ning in­to a wall? I hard­ly think so.” An­oth­er ge­nial smile. “Al­though you were lucky to avoid a con­cus­sion.”

Smith­back didn’t re­spond. The dress­ing on the side of his head” tight­ened un­com­fort­ably when­ev­er he moved his jaw.

“I am sur­prised at you, Ed­ward. I thought I’d al­ready ex­plained it to you: just be­cause we don’t ap­pear to have se­cu­ri­ty doesn’t mean we don’t have se­cu­ri­ty. That’s the whole pur­pose of our fa­cil­ity. The se­cu­ri­ty is un­ob­tru­sive, so that our guests don’t feel un­com­fort­able.”

Smith­back felt ir­ri­tat­ed by the word guest. They were in­mates, pure and sim­ple.

“We fol­lowed your noc­tur­nal per­am­bu­la­tions via the in­frared beams you in­ter­rupt­ed and the mo­tion sen­sors you moved past. It wasn’t un­til you ac­tu­al­ly pen­etrat­ed the base­ment that or­der­ly Mon­taney was dis­patched to tail you un­ob­tru­sive­ly. He fol­lowed pro­to­col to the let­ter. I imag­ine you thought you’d es­cape on one of the food ser­vice trucks; that’s usu­al­ly what they try first.”

Smith­back felt like leap­ing up and wrap­ping his hands around the good doc­tor’s neck. They? I’m not crazy, you id­iot! But he didn’t. He re­al­ized now what an exquisite catch-22 he was in: the more he in­sist­ed he was sane, the more ex­cit­ed he be­came, the more he val­idat­ed the doc­tor’s opin­ion to the con­trary.

“I just want to know how much longer I’m go­ing to be here,” he said.

“That re­mains to be seen. I must say, this es­cape at­tempt does not lead me to think your de­par­ture will be any time soon. It shows re­sis­tance on your part to be­ing helped. We can’t help you un­til we have your co­op­er­ation, Mr. Jones. And we can’t re­lease you un­til we’ve helped you. As I am fond of say­ing, you are the most im­por­tant per­son in your cure.”

Smith­back balled his fists, mak­ing a supreme ef­fort not to re­spond.

“I have to tell you, Ed­ward, that an­oth­er es­cape at­tempt will re­sult in cer­tain changes to your do­mes­tic ar­range­ments that might not be to your lik­ing. My ad­vice is, ac­cept your sit­ua­tion and work with us.

Right from the be­gin­ning, I have sensed an un­usu­al amount of pas­sive-​ag­gres­sive re­sis­tance on your part.”

That’s be­cause I’m as sane as you are. Smith­back swal­lowed, tried to muster an ob­se­quious smile. He need­ed to be a lot more clever if he was go­ing to es­cape, that much was clear.

“Yes, Dr. Ti­sander. I un­der­stand.”

“Good, good! Now we’re mak­ing progress.”

There had to be a way out. If the Count of Monte Cristo could es­cape the Château d’If, William Smith­back could es­cape from Riv­er Oaks.

“Dr. Ti­sander, what do I have to do to get out of here?”

“Co­op­er­ate. Let us help you. Go to your ses­sions, de­vote all your en­er­gies to get­ting bet­ter, make a per­son­al com­mit­ment to co­op­er­ate with the staff and or­der­lies. The on­ly way any­one leaves here is car­ry­ing a doc­ument with my sig­na­ture re­lease on it.”

“The on­ly way?”

“That’s cor­rect. I make the fi­nal de­ci­sion—based, of course, on ex­pert med­ical and, if nec­es­sary, le­gal ad­vice.”

Smith­back looked at him. “Le­gal?”

“Psy­chi­atry has two mas­ters: medicine and law.”

“I don’t un­der­stand.”

Ti­sander was clear­ly get­ting in­to his fa­vorite sub­ject. His voice took on a pon­tif­ical ring. “Yes, Ed­ward, we must deal with le­gal as well as med­ical is­sues. Take your­self, for in­stance. Your fam­ily, who love you and are con­cerned for your wel­fare, have com­mit­ted you here. That’s a le­gal as well as a med­ical pro­cess. It is a grave step to de­prive a per­son of his free­dom, and due pro­cess must be fol­lowed with ut­ter scrupu­lous­ness.”

“I’m sor­ry … did you say my fam­ily?”

“That’s right. Who else would com­mit you, Ed­ward?”

“You know my fam­ily?”

“I’ve met your fa­ther, Jack Jones. A fine man in­deed. We all want to do what’s right for you, Ed­ward.”

“What’d he look like?”

A puz­zled ex­pres­sion crossed Ti­sander’s face, and Smith­back cursed him­self for ask­ing such an ob­vi­ous­ly crazy ques­tion. “I mean, when did you see him?”

“When you were brought here. He signed all the req­ui­site pa­pers.”

Pen­der­gast, Smith­back thought. Damn him.

Ti­sander rose, held out his hand. “And now, Ed­ward, is there any­thing else?”

Smith­back took it. The germ of an idea had seed­ed it­self in his mind. “Yes, one thing.”

Ti­sander raised his eye­brows, the same con­de­scend­ing smile on his face.

“There’s a li­brary here, isn’t there?”

“Of course. Be­yond the bil­liard room.”

“Thank you.”

As he ex­it­ed, Smith­back caught a glimpse of Ti­sander set­tling back down at his enor­mous claw-​foot­ed desk, smooth­ing his tie, his face still wear­ing a self-​sat­is­fied smile.

THIRTY-SIX

A wa­tery win­ter light was fad­ing over the riv­er as D’Agos­ta reached the old door on Hud­son Street. He paused for a mo­ment, tak­ing a few deep breaths, try­ing to get him­self un­der con­trol. He’d fol­lowed Pen­der­gast’s com­pli­cat­ed in­struc­tions to the let­ter. The agent had moved yet again—he seemed de­ter­mined to keep one step ahead of Dio­genes—and D’Agos­ta won­dered, with a dull cu­rios­ity, what dis­guise he had as­sumed now.

Fi­nal­ly, hav­ing com­posed him­self and tak­en one last look around to make sure there was no one near, he tapped on the door sev­en times and wait­ed. A mo­ment lat­er, it was opened by a man who, from all ap­pear­ances, was a derelict in the last stages of ad­dic­tion. Even though D’Agos­ta knew this was Pen­der­gast, he was star­tled— once again—by the ef­fec­tive­ness of his ap­pear­ance.

With­out a word, Pen­der­gast ush­ered him in, pad­locked the door be­hind him, and led him down a dank stair­well to a noi­some base­ment room filled by a large boil­er and heat­ing pipes. An over­size card­board car­ton piled with soiled blan­kets, a plas­tic milk crate with a can­dle and some dish­ware, and a neat stack of tinned food com­plet­ed the pic­ture.

Pen­der­gast swiped a rag from the floor, ex­pos­ing an iMac G5 with a Blue­tooth wire­less In­ter­net con­nec­tion. Be­side it lay a well-​thumbed stack of pa­pers: the pho­to­copied case file that D’Agos­ta had pur­loined from head­quar­ters, along with oth­er re­ports that, D’Agos­ta as­sumed, were from the po­lice dossier on the Hamil­ton poi­son­ing. Clear­ly, Pen­der­gast had been study­ing ev­ery­thing with great care.

“I…” D’Agos­ta didn’t quite know how to be­gin. He felt rage take hold once again. “That bas­tard. That son of a bitch. My God, to mur­der Mar­go—“

He fell silent. Words just couldn’t con­vey the shak­ing fury, tur­moil, and dis­be­lief he felt in­side. He hadn’t known Mar­go was back in New York, let alone work­ing at the mu­se­um, but he’d known her well in years past. They’d worked to­geth­er on the mu­se­um and sub­way mur­ders. She’d been a brave, re­source­ful, in­tel­li­gent wom­an. She hadn’t de­served to go out like this: stalked and killed in a dark­ened ex­hi­bi­tion hall.

Pen­der­gast was silent as he rapped at the com­put­er key­board. But his face was bathed in sweat, and D’Agos­ta could see that was not part of the act. He was feel­ing it, too.

“Dio­genes lied when he said Smith­back would be the next vic­tim,” D’Agos­ta said.

With­out look­ing up, Pen­der­gast reached in­to the crate and pulled out a zi­plock bag with a tarot card and a note in­side, hand­ing it to D’Agos­ta.

He glanced at the tarot card. It de­pict­ed a tall, or­ange brick tow­er, be­ing struck by mul­ti­ple bolts of light­ning. It was afire, and tiny fig­ures were falling from its tur­rets to­ward the grass far be­neath. He turned his at­ten­tion to the note.

Ave, frater!

Since when did I ev­er tell you the truth? One would think af­ter all these years you’d have learned by now I am a skill­ful liar. While you were busy hid­ing the brag­gart Smith­back—and I com­mend you for your clev­er­ness there, for I haven’t yet found him—I was free to plot the death of Mar­go Green. Who, by the way, put up a most spir­it­ed strug­gle.

Wasn’t it all so very clever of me?

I’ll tell you a se­cret, broth­er: I’m in a con­fes­sion­al mood. And so I will name my next vic­tim: Lieu­tenant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta.

Amus­ing, what? Am I telling the truth? Am I ly­ing again? What a de­li­cious co­nun­drum for you, dear broth­er.

I bid you, not adieu, but au revoir.

Dio­genes

D’Agos­ta hand­ed the note back to Pen­der­gast. He felt a strange sen­sa­tion in his gut. It wasn’t fear—no, not fear at all—but a fresh groundswell of ha­tred. He was shak­ing with it.

“Bring the moth­er­fuck­er on,” he said.

“Have a seat, Vin­cent. We have very lit­tle time.”

It was the first thing Pen­der­gast had said, and D’Agos­ta was si­lenced by the deep se­ri­ous­ness in his voice. He eased him­self down on­to a crate.

“What’s with the tarot card?” he asked.

“It’s the Tow­er, from El Gran Tarot Es­otéri­co vari­ant of the deck. The card is said to in­di­cate de­struc­tion, a time of sud­den change.”

“No kid­ding.”

“I’ve spent all day com­pil­ing a list of po­ten­tial vic­tims and mak­ing ar­range­ments for their pro­tec­tion. I’ve had to call in vir­tu­al­ly ev­ery fa­vor I’m owed, which will have the un­for­tu­nate col­lat­er­al ef­fect of blow­ing my cov­er. Those I have dealt with have promised to keep things to them­selves, but it’s on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore the news will come out that I’m alive. Vin­cent, take a look at this list.”

D’Agos­ta leaned over and looked at the doc­ument on the screen. On it were a lot of names he rec­og­nized, along with many oth­ers he didn’t know.

“Is there any­one else you feel should be on here?”

D’Agos­ta stared at the list. “Hay­ward.” The thought of her sent a twinge through his gut.

“Hay­ward is the one per­son I know whom Dio­genes will cer­tain­ly not tar­get. There are rea­sons for this that I can­not yet ex­plain to you.”

“And what about…” D’Agos­ta hes­itat­ed. Pen­der­gast was an ex­treme­ly pri­vate per­son and he won­dered how he would re­act to him men­tion­ing her name. “Vi­ola Maske­lene?”

“I have thought a great deal about her,” he said in a low tone. He looked down at his white hands. “She’s still on the is­land of Capra­ia, which in many ways is a per­fect fortress for her. It’s al­most im­pos­si­ble to get to, in­volv­ing sev­er­al days’ trav­el. There’s on­ly one small har­bor, and a stranger—no mat­ter how dis­guised—would be in­stant­ly not­ed. Dio­genes is here in New York. He can’t reach her quick­ly, nor would he ev­er op­er­ate with a proxy. And fi­nal­ly”—his voice dropped—“Dio­genes can know noth­ing of my—my in­ter­est in her. No one else in the world but you are aware of that. As far as Dio­genes is con­cerned, she’s sim­ply a per­son I in­ter­viewed once with re­gard to a vi­olin. On the oth­er hand, if I were to take steps to pro­tect her, it might ac­tu­al­ly alert Dio­genes to her ex­is­tence.”

“I can see that.”

“So in her case I have opt­ed to leave things as is.”

He un­clasped his hands. “I have tak­en steps to pro­tect the oth­ers, whether they like it or not. Which brings us to the most dif­fi­cult ques­tion: what about you, Vin­cent?”

“I’m not go­ing in­to hid­ing. As I said, bring him on. I’ll be the bait. I’d rather die than run like a dog from Mar­go’s killer.”

“I’m not go­ing to ar­gue with you. The risk you’re tak­ing is enor­mous—you know that.”

“I cer­tain­ly do. And I’m pre­pared for it.”

“I be­lieve you are. Mar­go’s at­tack was pat­terned af­ter the mur­der of a spin­ster aunt of mine, who was stabbed in the back with a pearl-​han­dled let­ter open­er by a dis­grun­tled ser­vant. It’s still pos­si­ble that there’s ev­idence from the scene of the at­tack that can help lead us to Dio­genes—I’ll need your help there. When word of my con­tin­uing ex­is­tence reach­es the po­lice, there is go­ing to be a se­ri­ous prob­lem.”

“How so?”

Pen­der­gast shook his head. “When the time comes, you’ll un­der­stand. How long you choose to stay with me is, of course, up to you. At a cer­tain point, I in­tend to take the law in­to my own hands. I would nev­er en­trust Dio­genes to the crim­inal jus­tice sys­tem.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded brusque­ly. “I’m with you all the way.”

“The worst is yet to come. For me, and es­pe­cial­ly for you.”

“That bas­tard killed Mar­go. End of dis­cus­sion.”

Pen­der­gast placed a hand on his shoul­der. “You’re a good man, Vin­cent. One of the best.”

D’Agos­ta did not re­spond. He was won­der­ing at Pen­der­gast’s enig­mat­ic words.

“I’ve ar­ranged for all who might be like­ly tar­gets of Dio­genes to go to ground. That is phase one. And this brings us to phase two: stop­ping Dio­genes. My ini­tial plan failed ut­ter­ly. It has been said: ‘When you lose, don’t lose the les­son.’ The les­son here is that I can­not de­feat my broth­er alone. I as­sumed that I knew him best, that I could pre­dict his next move, that with enough ev­idence I could stop him my­self. I’ve been proven wrong—dev­as­tat­ing­ly so. I need help.”

“You’ve got me.”

“Yes, and I’m grate­ful. But I was re­fer­ring to an­oth­er kind of help. Pro­fes­sion­al help.”

“Like what?”

“I’m too close to Dio­genes. I’m not ob­jec­tive, and I’m not calm—es­pe­cial­ly now. I have learned the hard way that I don’t un­der­stand my broth­er and nev­er have. What I need is an ex­pert psy­cho­log­ical pro­fil­er to cre­ate a foren­sic mod­el of my broth­er. It will be an ex­traor­di­nar­ily dif­fi­cult task, as he is a psy­cho­log­ical­ly unique in­di­vid­ual.”

“I know of sev­er­al ex­cel­lent foren­sic pro­fil­ers.”

“Not just any will do. I need one who is tru­ly ex­cep­tion­al.” He turned and be­gan scrib­bling a note. “Go to the River­side Drive house and give this to my man Proc­tor, who will pass it on to Con­stance. If this in­di­vid­ual ex­ists, Con­stance will find him.”

D’Agos­ta took the note, fold­ed it in­to his pock­et.

“We’re al­most out of time: two days un­til Jan­uary 28.”

“Any idea yet what the date could mean?”

“None, ex­cept that it will be the cli­max of my broth­er’s crime.”

“How do you know he isn’t ly­ing about the date, too?”

Pen­der­gast paused. “I don’t. But in­stinct tells me it’s re­al. And at the mo­ment, that’s all I have left: in­stinct.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

Whit DeWin­ter III hunched over his fif­teen-​pound cal­cu­lus text­book in the bow­els of the Class of 1945 Li­brary at Phillips Ex­eter Acade­my. He was star­ing at a for­mu­la made en­tire­ly of Greek let­ters, try­ing to pound it in­to his mud­dy brain. The midterm was in less than an hour and he hadn’t even mem­orized half the for­mu­las he’d need. He wished to hell he’d stud­ied the night be­fore in­stead of stay­ing up so late, smok­ing weed with his girl­friend Jen­nifer. It had seemed like a good idea at the time … Stupid, so stupid. If he failed this test, his B in cal­cu­lus would drop to a C, he’d have to go to UMass in­stead of Yale, and that would be it. He’d nev­er get in­to med­ical school, he’d nev­er have a de­cent job, he’d end up liv­ing out his mis­er­able life in a split-​lev­el in Med­ford with some cow of a wife and a house­ful of squalling brats…

He took a deep breath and dived once again in­to the tome, on­ly to have his con­cen­tra­tion bro­ken by a raised voice from one of the near­by car­rels. Whit straight­ened up. He rec­og­nized the voice: it was that sar­cas­tic girl in his En­glish lit class, the Goth with retro pur­ple hair … Cor­rie. Cor­rie Swan­son.

“What’s your prob­lem? Can’t you see I’m study­ing here?” the voice echoed loud­ly across the sleek atri­um of Acade­my Li­brary.

Whit strained and failed to catch the calm, mur­mured an­swer.

“Aus­tralia? Are you nuts’?” came the raised re­ply. “I’m in the mid­dle of midterms! What’re you, some kind of per­vert?”

A cou­ple of shush­es came from stu­dents study­ing near­by. Whit peered above the edge of his car­rel, glad for the di­ver­sion. He could see a man in a dark suit lean­ing over a car­rel a few dozen yards away.

“He told you that? Yeah, right, let’s see some ID.”

More mur­mur­ing.

“All right, hey, I be­lieve you, and I’m all for a beach va­ca­tion. But right now? You’ve got to be kid­ding.”

More talk. More shush­es.

“Okay, okay. All I can say is, if I fail bi­ol­ogy, it’ll be Pen­der­gast’s fault.”

He heard a chair scrap­ing and saw Cor­rie Swan­son rise from the car­rel and fol­low the man in the suit. He looked like Se­cret Ser­vice, all but­toned down, square jaw, dark glass­es. He won­dered what kind of trou­ble Cor­rie was in now.

Whit watched her pass, her trim be­hind twitch­ing invit­ing­ly in a slinky black dress with pieces of met­al jin­gling from it, her pur­ple hair falling in a thick cas­cade down her back, grad­ing al­most to black at the ends. Damn, she was cute, just as long as he didn’t try to take her home to Fa­ther. The old man would kill him for dat­ing a girl like that.

Whit turned his throb­bing eye­balls back to the for­mu­la for find­ing the ra­dius of cur­va­ture for a func­tion of two vari­ables, but it re­mained all Greek to him. Lit­er­al­ly. The damn for­mu­la had so many squig­gly let­ters it could be the first line of the Il­iad, for all he knew.

He groaned again. His life was about to end. And all be­cause of Jen­nifer and her mag­ic bong…

A light snow had fall­en on the white clap­board house that stood on the cor­ner of Church Street and Sycamore Ter­race in the qui­et Cleve­land sub­urb of Riv­er Pointe. The whitened streets were broad and silent, the street­lights cast­ing pools of yel­low light across the noc­tur­nal land­scape. The dis­tant whis­tle of a train added a melan­choly note to the silent neigh­bor­hood.

A shad­ow moved be­hind a shut­tered win­dow in a sec­ond-​sto­ry gable—a fig­ure in a wheelchair—bare­ly out­lined in the soft blue light that em­anat­ed from the depths of the room. Back and forth the fig­ure went in silent pan­tomime, busy at some un­known task. In­side the room, met­al racks stood from floor to ceil­ing, packed with elec­tron­ic equip­ment: mon­itors, CPUs, print­ers, ter­abytes of hard drives, units for the re­mote seizure of com­put­er screen im­ages, cel­lu­lar tele­phone scan­ner-​in­ter­cep­tors, wire­less routers, NAS de­vices, and In­ter­net port snif­fers. The room smelled of hot elec­tron­ics and men­thol.

The fig­ure rolled this way and that, a sin­gle with­ered hand tap­ping key­boards, press­ing but­tons, turn­ing di­als, and punch­ing key­pads. Slow­ly, one by one, the units were be­ing pow­ered down, shut off, closed out. One by one, the lights went off, LAN and broad­band con­nec­tions were cut, screens went dark, hard drives spun down, LEDs winked out. The man known in the un­der­ground hack­ing com­mu­ni­ty by the sin­gle name of Mime was shut­ting him­self off from the world.

The last light to go off—a large blue flat-​pan­el LCD—plunged the room in­to dark­ness.

Mime rest­ed when he was fin­ished, breath­ing in the un­ac­cus­tomed dark­ness. He was now com­plete­ly cut off from the out­side world. He knew that, blacked out like this, he could not be found. Still, the in­for­ma­tion that had reached him from the man known as Pen­der­gast, one of on­ly two peo­ple in the world he trust­ed im­plic­it­ly, made him un­easy.

Mime had not been cut off in many years from the vast tor­rents of da­ta that washed over his house like an in­vis­ible ocean. It was a cold, lone­ly feel­ing.

He sat brood­ing. In a minute, he would turn to an en­tire­ly new set of con­trols, and new lights would come on in the room: the lights from a bat­tery of video cam­era mon­itors and se­cu­ri­ty read­outs from a surveil­lance sys­tem set up around and with­in his house. It was a pro­tec­tive mea­sure that had been in­stalled years be­fore, but that had nev­er been need­ed. Un­til now.

Mime breathed in the dark­ness, and—for the first time in his life—he was afraid.

Proc­tor care­ful­ly locked the door to the great shut­tered man­sion at 891 River­side Drive, looked around, then slipped in­to the wait­ing Hum­mer. The build­ing was shut up tight­ly, ev­ery po­ten­tial breach or en­try point care­ful­ly sealed. Con­stance was still with­in, hid­ing in the se­cret spaces that had shield­ed her in the past, spaces that not even he—not even Pen­der­gast—knew about. She had sup­plies, an emer­gen­cy cell phone, med­ica­tion: ev­ery­thing she need­ed.

Proc­tor ac­cel­er­at­ed from the curb, eas­ing the enor­mous ar­mored ve­hi­cle around the cor­ner, mov­ing south on River­side Drive. Out of habit, he glanced in his rearview mir­ror to see if he was be­ing fol­lowed. There was no ev­idence of it, but—as Proc­tor well knew— the lack of ev­idence of be­ing fol­lowed was not ev­idence of a lack of be­ing fol­lowed.

At the cor­ner of 95th and River­side, he slowed as he ap­proached an over­flow­ing pub­lic trash re­cep­ta­cle; as he passed, he tossed in­to it a sack of greasy, con­gealed Mc­Don­ald’s french fries al­most com­plete­ly coat­ed with so­lid­ified ketchup. Then he ac­cel­er­at­ed on­to the on-​ramp to the West Side High­way, where he head­ed north, keep­ing to the speed lim­it and check­ing his mir­rors fre­quent­ly. He con­tin­ued up through Riverdale and Yonkers to the Saw Mill Riv­er Park­way, then the Tacon­ic, then I-90, and then I-87 and the North­way. He would drive all night and much of the next morn­ing, un­til he reached a cer­tain small cab­in on a cer­tain small lake twen­ty-​odd miles north of St. Amand l’Eglise, Que­bec.

He glanced to his right, where an AR-15 lay on the seat, ful­ly load­ed with 5.56mm NA­TO rounds. Proc­tor al­most hoped he was be­ing fol­lowed. He’d like noth­ing more than to teach the fel­low a les­son he’d nev­er for­get as long as he lived—which in any case would not be long, not long at all.

As the sky paled and a dirty dawn broke across the Hud­son Riv­er, and a freez­ing wind whipped scraps of news­pa­per down the emp­ty streets, a lone derelict, shuf­fling along River­side Drive, paused at an over­flow­ing garbage can and be­gan rum­mag­ing about. With a grunt of sat­is­fac­tion, he ex­tract­ed a bag of half-​frozen Mc­Don­ald’s french fries. As he stuffed them greed­ily in­to his mouth, his left hand deft­ly pock­et­ed a small piece of pa­per hid­den in the bot­tom of the bag, a pa­per with a few lines writ­ten in a beau­ti­ful, old-​fash­ioned script:

There is on­ly one man in the world who meets your par­tic­ular re­quire­ments:

Eli Glinn of Ef­fec­tive En­gi­neer­ing So­lu­tions

Lit­tle West 12th Street, Green­wich Vil­lage, New York

THIRTY-EIGHT

A bril­liant moon, huge and in­tense­ly white, seemed to gild the vast ex­panse of sea far, far be­low. Look­ing out her win­dow, Vi­ola Maske­lene could see a long white wake like a pen­cil laid across the bur­nished wa­ter, at the head of which was an enor­mous ocean lin­er, look­ing like a toy boat from 33,000 feet. It was the Queen Mary, she thought, on its way to New York from Southamp­ton.

She gazed at it, feel­ing the en­chant­ment of it, imag­in­ing the thou­sands of peo­ple be­low on that great ship in the mid­dle of the ocean, eat­ing, drink­ing, danc­ing, mak­ing love—an en­tire world on a ship so small it seemed she could hold it in her hand. She watched un­til it van­ished on the far hori­zon. Fun­ny how she’d flown at least a thou­sand times and still it was such an ex­cit­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for her. She glanced at the man across the aisle, doz­ing over his copy of the Fi­nan­cial Times, hav­ing nev­er once looked out the win­dow. That was some­thing she couldn’t un­der­stand.

She set­tled back in her seat, won­der­ing how to amuse her­self next. This was the sec­ond leg of her jour­ney from Italy, hav­ing changed planes in Lon­don, and she’d al­ready read her book and flipped through the trashy in-​flight mag­azine. The first-​class cab­in was al­most emp­ty, and as it was al­most 2 A.M. Lon­don time, what few pas­sen­gers shared the cab­in were asleep. She had the flight at­ten­dant to her­self. She caught the wom­an’s eye.

“Can I be of as­sis­tance, La­dy Maske­lene?”

She winced at the use of her ti­tle. How in the world did they all seem to know? “Cham­pagne. And if you don’t mind, please don’t call me La­dy Maske­lene. It makes me feel like an old bag. Call me Vi­ola in­stead.”

“My apolo­gies. I’ll bring the cham­pagne right away.”

“Thanks ev­er so.”

While Vi­ola wait­ed, she rum­maged in her purse and with­drew the let­ter she had re­ceived

at her house on the Ital­ian is­land of Capra­ia three days be­fore. It al­ready showed signs of be­ing opened and closed one too many times, but she read it again, any­way.

My dear Vi­ola,

This let­ter will no doubt come as a shock to you, and for that I’m sor­ry. I find my­self in the same po­si­tion as Mark Twain in hav­ing to an­nounce that the re­ports of my death are much ex­ag­ger­at­ed. I am alive and well, but I was forced to go un­der­ground due to an ex­cep­tion­al­ly del­icate case I have been work­ing on. That, com­bined with cer­tain re­cent events in Tus­cany with which you are no doubt ac­quaint­ed, cre­at­ed the un­for­tu­nate im­pres­sion among my friends and col­leagues that I was dead. For a time, it was use­ful for me not to cor­rect that im­pres­sion. But I am alive, Vi­ola—though I ex­pe­ri­enced a sit­ua­tion that put me as close to death as a hu­man be­ing can get.

That ter­ri­ble ex­pe­ri­ence is the rea­son for this let­ter. I re­al­ized dur­ing those dread­ful hours of near-​death how short life is, how frag­ile, and how we must none of us let slip those rare op­por­tu­ni­ties for hap­pi­ness. When we met by chance on Capra­ia scant hours be­fore that ex­pe­ri­ence be­gan, I was tak­en by sur­prise—and so, if you’ll par­don my say­ing so, were you. Some­thing hap­pened be­tween us. You made an in­deli­ble im­pres­sion on me, and I en­ter­tain hopes that I made a not dis­sim­ilar im­pres­sion on you. I would there­fore like to in­vite you to stay with me in New York for ten days, so that we may get to know each oth­er bet­ter. To see, in ef­fect, if in­deed that im­pres­sion is as in­deli­ble, and as fa­vor­able, as I strong­ly be­lieve it to be.

At this, Vi­ola had to smile; the old-​fash­ioned, some­what awk­ward word­ing was so like Pen­der­gast that she could al­most hear his voice. But the fact was, this was an ex­traor­di­nary let­ter, un­like any she had ev­er re­ceived. Vi­ola had been ap­proached by many dif­fer­ent men in many dif­fer­ent ways, but nev­er quite like this. Some­thing hap­pened be­tween us. It was true. Even so, most wom­en would be sur­prised and even shocked to re­ceive an in­vi­ta­tion like this. Some­how, even on one meet­ing, Aloy­sius al­ready knew her well enough to un­der­stand that such a let­ter would not dis­please her. On the con­trary…

She re­turned her at­ten­tion to the let­ter.

If you ac­cept this ad­mit­ted­ly un­con­ven­tion­al in­vi­ta­tion, please ar­range to be on the Jan­uary 27 British Air­ways Flight 822 from Gatwick to Kennedy. Do not tell any­one why you are com­ing. I will ex­plain when you get here; suf­fice to say that, if word of your vis­it got out, it could even now en­dan­ger my life.

When you ar­rive at Kennedy, my dear broth­er, Dio­genes, will meet you at the lug­gage carousel.

Dio­genes. She found her­self smil­ing, re­mem­ber­ing how Aloy­sius had said on Capra­ia that ec­cen­tric names ran in his fam­ily. He wasn’t kid­ding—who would ev­er name their child Dio­genes?

You will rec­og­nize him in­stant­ly be­cause of his strong re­sem­blance to me—ex­cept that he sports a neat­ly trimmed beard. What is most strik­ing about him is that, due to a child­hood ac­ci­dent, he has eyes of two dif­fer­ent col­ors: one hazel, the oth­er a milky blue. He will car­ry no sign and he, of course, does not know what you look like, so you will have to find him your­self. I wouldn’t trust you with any­one less than my broth­er, who is ut­ter­ly dis­creet.

Dio­genes will es­cort you to my cot­tage out on Long Is­land, in a lit­tle town on Gar­diners Bay, where I will be wait­ing for you. This will al­low us sev­er­al days in each oth­er’s com­pa­ny. The cot­tage is well equipped but rus­tic, with a splen­did view of Shel­ter Is­land across the bay. You will nat­ural­ly have your own cham­bers, and we will com­port our­selves with pro­pri­ety—un­less, of course, cir­cum­stances dic­tate oth­er­wise.

At this, Vi­ola gig­gled out loud. He was so old-​fash­ioned, and yet here he was, ba­si­cal­ly propo­si­tion­ing her in a way that wasn’t even sub­tle—but man­ag­ing to do it taste­ful­ly, with the dri­est sense of hu­mor.

In three days fol­low­ing your ar­rival, the case I’ve been in­volved in will con­clude. We will then emerge and I will once again show my­self to the liv­ing, with (I trust) you on my arm. We will pro­ceed to en­joy a splen­did week of the­ater, mu­sic, art, and culi­nary ex­plo­ration in New York City be­fore your re­turn to Capra­ia.

Vi­ola, I beg you again, tell no one of this. Please give me your an­swer by old-​fash­ioned tele­gram to the fol­low­ing ad­dress:

A. Pendle­ton

15 Glover’s Box Road

The Springs, NY 10511

and sign it, “An­na Livia Plura­belle.”

You will make me very hap­py if you ac­cept my in­vi­ta­tion. I know I am not very clever with sen­ti­ment and flow­ery phrase­ol­ogy—that is not my way. I will save fur­ther demon­stra­tions of af­fec­tion for when we meet in per­son.

Sin­cere­ly,

Aloy­sius

Again, Vi­ola had to smile. She could al­most hear Pen­der­gast, with his el­egant but rather se­vere air, speak­ing the sen­tences. An­na Livia Plura­belle, in­deed; nice to know that Pen­der­gast wasn’t above toss­ing in a wit­ty lit­er­ary al­lu­sion, and an es­oter­ic, high­brow one at that. How ap­peal­ing he was; she fair­ly tin­gled with the thought of see­ing him again. And the faint whiff of dan­ger he al­lud­ed to in the let­ter sim­ply added spice to the ad­ven­ture. Once again, she couldn’t help but re­flect on how odd it was she seemed to know him so well af­ter spend­ing on­ly that one af­ter­noon to­geth­er. She had nev­er be­fore be­lieved in that non­sense about soul­mates, about love at first sight, about match­es made in heav­en. But some­how…

She fold­ed up the let­ter and took out the sec­ond one. It was a tele­gram, and it read sim­ply:

De­light­ed you are coin­ing! Con­firmed my broth­er will meet you. I know I can trust you to be dis­creet. Fond­ly, A.X.L.P.

She care­ful­ly put both let­ters back in­to her hand­bag and sipped the cham­pagne, her mind drift­ing back to that meet­ing on Capra­ia. She re­mem­bered how she had been dig­ging ma­nure in­to her vine­yard when she saw a man in a black suit ap­proach­ing, pick­ing his way gin­ger­ly among the clods, ac­com­pa­nied by an Amer­ican po­lice­man in mufti. It was such an odd sight it had al­most made her laugh. They had called out to her, think­ing she was a peas­ant la­bor­er. And then they’d drawn clos­er and she had looked at Pen­der­gast’s strange and beau­ti­ful face for the first time. Noth­ing like that sud­den, queer feel­ing had hap­pened to her be­fore. She could read the same ex­pe­ri­ence in his face, de­spite his ef­forts to con­ceal it. It had been a short vis­it— an hour’s talk over glass­es of white wine on her ter­race over­look­ing the sea—and yet her mind had re­turned again and again to that af­ter­noon, as if some­thing mo­men­tous had hap­pened.

Then there was that sec­ond vis­it—by D’Agos­ta alone, his face wan and trou­bled, and his ter­ri­ble news of Pen­der­gast’s death. It wasn’t un­til that aw­ful mo­ment that she had re­al­ized just how much she’d looked for­ward to see­ing Agent Pen­der­gast again—and how cer­tain she had some­how been that he would fig­ure in the rest of her life.

How dread­ful that day had been. And how joy­ful things had be­come, now that she’d re­ceived his let­ter.

She smiled, think­ing about see­ing him again. She loved in­trigue. She had nev­er shied away from any­thing life had thrown at her. Her im­pul­sive­ness had got­ten her in­to trou­ble on oc­ca­sion, but it had al­so giv­en her a col­or­ful and fas­ci­nat­ing life she wouldn’t trade for any­thing. This mys­te­ri­ous in­vi­ta­tion was like some­thing out of the ro­mance nov­els she used to de­vour in her ear­ly teen years. A week­end in a cot­tage hid­den away on Long Is­land, with a man who fas­ci­nat­ed her like no oth­er, fol­lowed by a whirl­wind week in New York City. How could she refuse? She cer­tain­ly didn’t have to sleep with him— he was the very soul of a gen­tle­man—al­though just the thought brought an elec­tric tin­gle that caused her to blush…

She fin­ished off the cham­pagne, which was ex­cel­lent, as it al­ways was in first class. She some­times felt guilty about fly­ing first class— it seemed eli­tist—but on a transat­lantic flight, it was so much more com­fort­able. Vi­ola was used to dis­com­fort from her many years dig­ging up tombs in Egypt, but she had nev­er seen any sense in be­ing un­com­fort­able for its own sake.

She checked her watch. She’d be land­ing at Kennedy in just over four hours.

It would cer­tain­ly be in­ter­est­ing to meet this broth­er of Pen­der­gast’s—this Dio­genes. You could tell a lot about a per­son by meet­ing his broth­er.

THIRTY-NINE

D’Agos­ta fol­lowed Pen­der­gast’s down­trod­den form as the agent sham­bled around the cor­ner of Ninth Av­enue on­to Lit­tle West 12th Street. It was nine o’clock in the evening and a bit­ter wind was blow­ing hard off the Hud­son Riv­er. The old meat­pack­ing dis­trict—sand­wiched in­to a nar­row cor­ri­dor south of Chelsea and north of Green­wich Vil­lage—had changed in the years D’Agos­ta was away. Now hip restau­rants, bou­tiques, and tech­nol­ogy start-​ups were sprin­kled among the whole­sale meat dis­trib­utors and com­mer­cial butcheries. It seemed like a hell of a place for a foren­sic pro­fil­er to hang up his shin­gle.

Halfway down the block, Pen­der­gast halt­ed be­fore a large twelve-​sto­ry ware­house that had seen bet­ter days. The steel-​mesh win­dows were opaque with age, and the low­er sto­ries were caked with soot. There was no sign of any kind, no name, noth­ing to an­nounce the ex­is­tence of any firm with­in be­yond a weath­ered sign paint­ed di­rect­ly on­to the old brick which read Price & Price Pork Pack­ing Inc. Be­low that was an over­size en­trance for truck de­liv­er­ies, closed and barred, and a small­er door be­side it with an un­la­beled buzzer. Pen­der­gast’s fin­ger went up to it and gave it a jab.

“Yes?” a voice asked im­me­di­ate­ly from the ad­join­ing speak­er grille.

Pen­der­gast mur­mured some­thing and there was the sound of an elec­tron­ic lock dis­en­gag­ing. The door opened in­to a small white space, emp­ty save for a tiny cam­era mount­ed high on the rear wall. The door closed be­hind them with a faint click. They stood there, fac­ing the cam­era, for thir­ty sec­onds. Then an al­most in­vis­ible door in the rear wall slid back. Pen­der­gast and D’Agos­ta walked down a white cor­ri­dor, then stepped in­to a dim room—an amaz­ing room.

The low­er floors of the ware­house had been gut­ted, leav­ing a large, six-​sto­ry shell. Ahead, the sprawl­ing main floor was a maze of dis­play ta­bles, hulk­ing sci­en­tif­ic equip­ment, com­put­er work­sta­tions, and in­tri­cate mod­els and dio­ra­mas, all cloaked in shad­ow. D’Agos­ta’s at­ten­tion was drawn to a gi­gan­tic ta­ble dis­play­ing what ap­peared to be a mod­el of the ocean floor some­where around Antarc­ti­ca, cut away to show sub-​seafloor ge­ol­ogy, along with what looked like a strange vol­cano of some kind. There were oth­er in­tri­cate mod­els, in­clud­ing one of a ship packed with mys­te­ri­ous-​look­ing ROVs, sci­en­tif­ic equip­ment, and mil­itary hard­ware.

A voice sound­ed from the shad­ows. “Wel­come.”

D’Agos­ta turned in­to the dim­ness and saw a fig­ure in a wheelchair ap­proach­ing be­tween two rows of long ta­bles: a man with close­ly cropped brown hair and thin lips set above a square jaw. He wore an unas­sum­ing but well-​cut suit and con­trolled the wheelchair with a small joy­stick op­er­at­ed by a black-​gloved hand. D’Agos­ta re­al­ized that one of the man’s eyes must be glass, be­cause it con­veyed none of the fierce gleam of its mate. A pur­ple scar ran down the right side of his face, from hair­line to jaw, giv­ing the il­lu­sion of a du­el­ing wound.

“I am Eli Glinn,” he said, his voice low, mild, and neu­tral. “You must be Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta and Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast.” He stopped the wheelchair and ex­tend­ed his hand. “Wel­come to Ef­fec­tive En­gi­neer­ing So­lu­tions.”

They fol­lowed him back be­tween the ta­bles and past a small green­house, its grow-​lamps flick­er­ing eeri­ly, then got in­to an el­eva­tor cage that took them up to a fourth-​floor cat­walk. As he fol­lowed the wheelchair down the cat­walk, D’Agos­ta felt a twinge of doubt. Ef­fec­tive En­gi­neer­ing So­lu­tions? Mr.—not Dr.—Eli Glinn? He won­dered if, de­spite her vaunt­ed re­search skills, Con­stance Greene had made a mis­take. This didn’t look like any foren­sic pro­fil­ing con­sul­tant he had ev­er seen be­fore—and he had dealt with quite a few.

Glinn glanced back, ran his good eye over D’Agos­ta’s uni­form. “You might as well turn off your ra­dio and cell phone, Lieu­tenant. We block all wire­less sig­nals and ra­dio fre­quen­cies in this build­ing.”

He led the way in­to a small con­fer­ence room dec­orat­ed in pol­ished wood, dosed the door, then ges­tured for them to be seat­ed. He wheeled him­self to the far side of the lone ta­ble, where a gap be­tween the char­coal-​col­ored Her­man Miller chairs was clear­ly re­served for him. A thin en­ve­lope lay on the ta­ble be­fore him; oth­er­wise, the spot­less ta­ble was emp­ty. Lean­ing back in the wheelchair, he fixed them both with a pen­etrat­ing gaze.

“Yours is an un­usu­al re­quest,” he said.

“Mine is an un­usu­al prob­lem,” Pen­der­gast replied.

Glinn eyed him up and down. “That is a rather ef­fec­tive dis­guise, Mr. Pen­der­gast.”

“In­deed.”

Glinn fold­ed his hands. “Tell me the na­ture of your prob­lem.”

Pen­der­gast glanced around. “Tell me the na­ture of your com­pa­ny. I ask be­cause all this”—he ges­tured—“does not look like the of­fice of a foren­sic pro­fil­er.”

A slow, mirth­less smile stretched the fea­tures of the man’s face, dis­tort­ing and in­flam­ing the scar. “A fair ques­tion. Ef­fec­tive En­gi­neer­ing So­lu­tions is in the busi­ness of solv­ing unique en­gi­neer­ing prob­lems and per­form­ing fail­ure anal­ysis.”

“What kind of en­gi­neer­ing prob­lems?” Pen­der­gast asked.

“How to neu­tral­ize an un­der­ground nu­cle­ar re­ac­tor in a cer­tain rogue Mid­dle East­ern state be­ing used to pro­duce weapons-​grade fu­el. The anal­ysis of the mys­te­ri­ous and sud­den loss of a bil­lion-​dol­lar clas­si­fied satel­lite.” He twitched a fin­ger, a small ges­ture that car­ried sur­pris­ing weight, so mo­tion­less had the man been up to that point. “You’ll un­der­stand if I don’t go in­to de­tails. You see, Mr. Pen­der­gast, ‘fail­ure anal­ysis’ is the oth­er side of the en­gi­neer­ing coin: it is the art of un­der­stand­ing how things fail, and thus pre­vent­ing fail­ure be­fore it hap­pens. Or find­ing out why fail­ure oc­curred af­ter it hap­pens. Sad­ly, the lat­ter is more com­mon than the for­mer.”

D’Agos­ta spoke. “I still don’t get it. What does fail­ure anal­ysis have to do with foren­sic pro­fil­ing?”

“I’m get­ting to that, Lieu­tenant. Fail­ure anal­ysis be­gins and ends with psy­cho­log­ical pro­fil­ing. EES re­al­ized long ago that the key to un­der­stand­ing fail­ure was un­der­stand­ing ex­act­ly how hu­man be­ings make mis­takes. Which is the same as un­der­stand­ing how hu­man be­ings make de­ci­sions in gen­er­al. We need­ed pre­dic­tive pow­er—a way to pre­dict how a giv­en per­son would act in a giv­en sit­ua­tion. We there­fore de­vel­oped a mus­cu­lar pro­pri­etary sys­tem for psy­cho­log­ical pro­fil­ing. It cur­rent­ly runs on a grid-​pow­ered su­per­com­put­er of IBM eS­erv­er nodes. We do psy­cho­log­ical pro­fil­ing bet­ter than any­one else in the world. And I do not tell you this by way of sales­man­ship. It’s a sim­ple fact.”

Pen­der­gast in­clined his head. “Most in­ter­est­ing. How is it I have nev­er heard of you?”

“We do not gen­er­al­ly wish to be known—be­yond, that is, a small cir­cle of clients.”

“Be­fore we be­gin, I must be as­sured of dis­cre­tion.”

“Mr. Pen­der­gast, EES makes two guar­an­tees. First, ut­ter dis­cre­tion. Sec­ond, guar­an­teed suc­cess. Now, please tell me your prob­lem.”

“The tar­get is a man named Dio­genes Pen­der­gast—my broth­er. He dis­ap­peared over two decades ago, af­ter con­triv­ing to stage his own false death. He seems to have van­ished off the face of the earth—at least of­fi­cial­ly. He’s not in any gov­ern­ment databas­es, be­yond a death cer­tifi­cate which I know to be forged. There are no adult records of him at all. No ad­dress, no pho­tos, noth­ing.” He re­moved a thick mani­la fold­er from his coat and placed it on the ta­ble. “Ev­ery­thing I know is in here.”

“How do you know he’s still alive?”

“We had a cu­ri­ous en­counter last sum­mer. It’s in the re­port. That, and the fact he has turned in­to a se­ri­al killer.”

Glinn gave a slow nod.

“From a young age, Dio­genes hat­ed me, and he’s made it his life’s work to de­stroy me. On Jan­uary 19 of this year, he fi­nal­ly put his plan in­to ac­tion. He has be­gun mur­der­ing my friends and as­so­ciates, one by one, and taunt­ing me with my in­abil­ity to save them. He’s killed four so far. For the last two, he’s mocked me with notes ahead of time, nam­ing the vic­tim—the first time cor­rect­ly, and the sec­ond time as a ruse to make me pro­tect the wrong per­son. In short, I have ut­ter­ly failed to stop him. He claims to be tar­get­ing Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta here next. Again, the sum­maries of the homi­cides are in that fold­er.”

D’Agos­ta saw Glinn’s good eye gleam with new in­ter­est. “How in­tel­li­gent is this Dio­genes?”

“As a child, his I.Q. was test­ed at 210. That was, in­ci­den­tal­ly, af­ter he had scar­let fever, which al­tered him per­ma­nent­ly.”

Glinn raised an eye­brow. “Are we deal­ing with or­gan­ic brain dam­age?”

“Not like­ly. He was strange be­fore the fever. The ill­ness seems to have fo­cused it, brought it to the fore.”

“And this is why you need me. You need a com­plete psy­cho­log­ical, crim­inal, and be­hav­ioral anal­ysis of this man. Nat­ural­ly, be­cause you are his broth­er, you are too close to him—you can­not do it your­self.”

“Cor­rect. Dio­genes has had years to plan this. He’s been three steps ahead of me all the way. He leaves no clues at his crime scenes—none that are un­in­ten­tion­al at least. The on­ly way to stop him is to an­tic­ipate what he’ll do next. I must stress this is an emer­gen­cy sit­ua­tion. Dio­genes has threat­ened to com­plete his crime to­mor­row, Jan­uary 28. He named this day as the cul­mi­na­tion of all his plan­ning. There is no telling how many more lives are in jeop­ardy.”

Glinn opened the fold­er with his good hand and be­gan leaf­ing through it, scan­ning the pages. “I can­not pro­duce a pro­file in twen­ty-​four hours.”

“You must.”

“It’s im­pos­si­ble. The ear­li­est I can do it—as­sum­ing I drop all oth­er work and fo­cus sole­ly on this—is sev­en­ty-​two hours from now. You have come to me too late, Mr. Pen­der­gast. At least too late for the date your broth­er named. Not too late, per­haps, to take ef­fec­tive ac­tion af­ter­wards.” He gave his head a cu­ri­ous tilt as he eyed Pen­der­gast.

The agent was very still for a mo­ment. “So be it, then,” he said in a low voice.

“Let’s not waste any more time.” Glinn put a hand on the fold­er be­fore him and slid it across the ta­ble. “Here is our stan­dard con­tract. My fee is one mil­lion dol­lars.”

D’Agos­ta rose from his chair. “A mil­lion bucks? Are you crazy!”

Pen­der­gast stilled him with a wave of his hand. “Ac­cept­ed.” He took the fold­er, opened it, scanned the con­tract rapid­ly.

“At the back,” said Glinn, “you’ll find our stan­dard dis­claimers and war­ranties. We of­fer an ab­so­lute, un­con­di­tion­al guar­an­tee of suc­cess.”

“This is the sec­ond time you’ve men­tioned that cu­ri­ous guar­an­tee. How do you de­fine ’suc­cess,’ Mr. Glinn?”

An­oth­er ghost­ly smile lin­gered on Glinn’s face. “Nat­ural­ly, we can­not guar­an­tee that you will ap­pre­hend Dio­genes. Nor can we guar­an­tee to stop him from killing. That lies in your hands. Here’s what we do guar­an­tee. First: we will give you a foren­sic pro­file of Dio­genes Pen­der­gast that will ac­cu­rate­ly elu­ci­date his mo­tive.”

“I al­ready know his mo­tive.”

Glinn ig­nored this. “Sec­ond: our foren­sic pro­file will have pre­dic­tive pow­er. It will tell you, with­in a lim­it­ed range of op­tions, what Dio­genes Pen­der­gast’s next ac­tions will be. We of­fer fol­low-​up ser­vices— if you have spe­cif­ic ques­tions about the tar­get’s fu­ture ac­tions, we will run them through our sys­tem and pro­vide you with re­li­able an­swers.”

“I ques­tion whether that’s pos­si­ble with any hu­man be­ing, let alone some­one like Dio­genes.”

“I do not wish to bandy philo­soph­ical ques­tions with you, Mr. Pen­der­gast. Hu­man be­ings are dis­gust­ing­ly pre­dictable, and this is as true of psy­chopaths as it is of grand­moth­ers. We shall do what we say.”

“Have you ev­er failed?”

“Nev­er. There is one as­sign­ment that re­mains—shall we say— open.”

“The one in­volv­ing the ther­monu­cle­ar de­vice?”

If Glinn was sur­prised by this ques­tion, he did not show it. “What ther­monu­cle­ar de­vice is that?”

“The one you are de­sign­ing down­stairs. I saw sev­er­al equa­tions on a white­board re­lat­ing to the curve of bind­ing en­er­gy. On a near­by ta­ble lay a pa­per with the de­sign for ma­chin­ing a piece of H.E. that could on­ly be used to com­press a core.”

“I shall have to speak to my chief en­gi­neer about his care­less­ness with re­gard to our oth­er project.”

“I al­so see you’re de­vel­op­ing a ge­net­ical­ly en­gi­neered plant mo­sa­ic virus. Does that al­so re­late to that oth­er project?”

“We of­fer the same guar­an­tee of con­fi­den­tial­ity to our oth­er clients that we of­fer you. Shall we re­turn to the sub­ject of Dio­genes? In par­tic­ular, the ques­tion of his mo­tive.”

“Not quite yet,” said Pen­der­gast. “I do not speak frivolous­ly. Your en­tire man­ner—your speech, your move­ments, your very in­ten­si­ty, Mr. Glinn—speaks of some­one with an over­rid­ing ob­ses­sion. I have al­so not­ed that, at least if the scar on your face is an in­di­ca­tion, your in­juries are re­cent. When I weigh that with what I saw down­stairs, I find my­self grow­ing con­cerned.”

Glinn raised his eye­brows. “Con­cerned?”

“Con­cerned that a man such as you, wrestling with a prob­lem far greater than my own, wouldn’t be able to de­vote his full at­ten­tion to mine.”

Glinn re­mained very still, not an­swer­ing. Pen­der­gast looked across the ta­ble at him, equal­ly mo­tion­less.

A minute went by, then two, with­out ei­ther man speak­ing. Watch­ing, wait­ing, D’Agos­ta grew in­creas­ing­ly alarmed. It was as if the two men were fight­ing a du­el, wag­ing a bat­tle of turn and coun­ter­turn, all with­out speak­ing or even mov­ing.

Sud­den­ly, with­out pream­ble, Glinn be­gan to speak again in the same calm, neu­tral voice. “If you ev­er de­cide to leave the FBI, Mr. Pen­der­gast, I be­lieve I could find a place for you here. There is no ob­ses­sion on my part, how­ev­er—on­ly the sim­ple ful­fill­ment of our guar­an­tee of suc­cess. You see, we don’t make that guar­an­tee just for our clients: we make it for our­selves. I in­tend to com­plete that oth­er project suc­cess­ful­ly, al­though the orig­inal client is no longer in a con­di­tion to ap­pre­ci­ate it. That project in­volves a se­vere seis­mic dis­lo­ca­tion at a cer­tain site in the South At­lantic that re­quires a, ah, nu­cle­ar ad­just­ment. And that is more than you need to know. It is true that I am tak­ing on your lit­tle prob­lem chiefly be­cause I find my­self em­bar­rassed for funds. How­ev­er, I will de­vote all my en­er­gy to see­ing your project through, be­cause to fail would mean hav­ing to re­turn your mon­ey and to suf­fer per­son­al hu­mil­ia­tion. And, as I said, EES does not fail. Clear enough?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“And now, let us re­turn to your broth­er’s mo­tive—the foun­tain-​head of his ha­tred. Some­thing hap­pened be­tween you and him, and I must know what it is.”

“It’s all de­scribed in that fold­er. He al­ways hat­ed me. The fi­nal straw was when I burned my broth­er’s jour­nals.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I was four­teen, and he was twelve. We had nev­er got­ten along. He was al­ways cru­el and strange—much more so af­ter the scar­let fever.”

“When was that?”

“When he was sev­en.”

“Are there any med­ical records?”

“None. He was treat­ed by the pri­vate fam­ily physi­cian.”

“Pro­ceed.”

“One day I came across his jour­nals, which were filled with the most vile things ev­er put on pa­per—abom­ina­tions be­yond the reach of any nor­mal mind. He’d been keep­ing them for years. I burned them—and that was the pre­cip­itant. Some years lat­er, our home burned, and our par­ents died in the fire. I was away at school, but Dio­genes saw it all, heard their cries for help. That drove him over the edge.”

A cold smile played at the cor­ners of Glinn’s lips. “I think not.”

“You think not?”

“I have no doubt that he was jeal­ous of you and that the de­struc­tion of his jour­nals in­fu­ri­at­ed him. But that hap­pened far too late to pro­duce such a deep, patho­log­ical, ob­ses­sive ha­tred. Nor can a mere bout with scar­let fever cre­ate ha­tred out of thin air. No, Mr. Pen­der­gast: this ha­tred stems from some­thing else that hap­pened be­tween you and your broth­er at a much ear­li­er age. That is the in­for­ma­tion we lack. And you are the on­ly per­son who can sup­ply it.”

“Ev­ery­thing of rel­evance that hap­pened be­tween me and my broth­er is in that file, in­clud­ing our re­cent en­counter in Italy. I can as­sure you there is no sin­gle in­ci­dent, no smok­ing gun, which ex­plains his ha­tred.”

Glinn picked up the file, leafed through it. Three min­utes passed, then five. Then Glinn put the fold­er down. “You’re right. There is no smok­ing gun here.”

“Just as I said.”

“It’s quite pos­si­ble you’ve re­pressed it.”

“I re­press noth­ing. I have an ex­cep­tion­al mem­ory go­ing back to be­fore my first birth­day.”

“Then you are de­lib­er­ate­ly with­hold­ing some­thing.”

Pen­der­gast went very still. D’Agos­ta watched the two men, sur­prised. He had nev­er seen any­one chal­lenge Pen­der­gast in quite this way be­fore.

As he eyed Pen­der­gast, Glinn had be­come, if pos­si­ble, even more ex­pres­sion­less. “We can’t pro­ceed with­out this in­for­ma­tion. I need it, and I need it now.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m go­ing to call in sev­er­al of my trust­ed as­so­ciates. They’ll be here with­in the hour. Mr. Pen­der­gast, there’s a small room with a bed be­hind that door in the back; please make your­self com­fort­able and await fur­ther in­struc­tions. Lieu­tenant, your pres­ence here is no longer re­quired.”

D’Agos­ta looked at Pen­der­gast. For the first time in his mem­ory, the agent’s face wore a look of some­thing like ap­pre­hen­sion.

“I’m not go­ing any­where,” D’Agos­ta said im­me­di­ate­ly, ir­ri­tat­ed at Glinn’s ar­ro­gance.

Pen­der­gast smiled thin­ly, shook his head. “It’s all right, Vin­cent— much as I loathe the idea of rum­mag­ing around in my past for some­thing that prob­ably doesn’t ex­ist, I see the ne­ces­si­ty for do­ing so. I will meet you back at our pre­ar­ranged place.”

“Are you sure?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “And nev­er for­get: you are the one named next by Dio­genes. Jan­uary 28 is less than three hours away. Vin­cent: be tran­scen­den­tal­ly cau­tious.”

FORTY

Lau­ra Hay­ward paced the small room like a caged li­oness, glanc­ing fre­quent­ly at the ug­ly clock be­hind her desk. She felt that, if she didn’t work off her ner­vous en­er­gy, she would ex­plode. And since she couldn’t leave her of­fice, she paced.

She had spent al­most the en­tire evening or­ga­niz­ing the ev­idence from the Duchamp and Green killings, and cross-​com­par­ing it to ev­idence she had ca­joled, pried, and blud­geoned out of the New Or­leans and D.C. po­lice de­part­ments. She had cleared her cork wall of all oth­er cas­es and had di­vid­ed it in­to four can­tons, one for each homi­cide: Pro­fes­sor Tor­rance Hamil­ton on Jan­uary 19; Charles Duchamp on Jan­uary 22; Spe­cial Agent Michael Deck­er on Jan­uary 23; and Dr. Mar­go Green on Jan­uary 26. There were mi­cro­graphs of fibers and hair, pho­tographs of knots and foot­prints, ab­stracts of the M.E. re­ports, blood splat­ter anal­yses, pho­tographs of the mur­der scenes and weapons, fin­ger­print re­ports, di­agrams show­ing ingress and egress where de­ter­mined, along with an em­bar­rass­ment of oth­er ev­idence, rel­evant or not. Push­pins with col­ored strings drew red, yel­low, green, and blue con­nec­tions among the ev­idence. And there were a sur­pris­ing num­ber of con­nec­tions: while the M.O.’s were all quite dif­fer­ent, there was no doubt in Hay­ward’s mind the same per­son had com­mit­ted all four homi­cides.

No doubt.

Sit­ting on the mid­dle of her desk was a thin re­port, just in, from the top guy in the foren­sic pro­fil­ing di­vi­sion. He had con­firmed that the homi­cides were psy­cho­log­ical­ly con­sis­tent and could have been com­mit­ted by the same perp. What’s more, he had pre­pared a pro­file of the killer. It was startling, to say the least.

D.C. and New Or­leans didn’t know it yet; the FBI didn’t know it yet; not even Sin­gle­ton or Rock­er knew it yet: but they were deal­ing with a se­ri­al killer. A metic­ulous, in­tel­li­gent, me­thod­ical, cool, and ut­ter­ly in­sane se­ri­al killer.

She spun, strode, spun again. As soon as she showed Rock­er that she’d con­nect­ed the cas­es, the shit would hit the fan. The FBI, al­ready in­volved be­cause of Deck­er’s mur­der, would de­scend like a ton of bricks. There would be an earth­quake of pub­lic­ity—se­ri­al killers al­ways gar­nered big head­lines. But a se­ri­al killer like this was to­tal­ly un­heard of. She could al­most see the scream­ing 72-point head­line in the Post. The may­or would get in­volved, maybe even the gov­er­nor. It was go­ing to be a mess. A god-​aw­ful mess.

But she couldn’t call Rock­er un­til she had the last piece of ev­idence, the last piece of the puz­zle. The smok­ing gun. She was go­ing to get raked over the coals, no mat­ter what. The po­lit­ical fall­out would be ter­ri­ble. It was im­por­tant she had all her ducks in a row— that was the on­ly thing that could save her ass.

A timid rap came on the door, and she halt­ed mid­stride. “Come in,” she said.

A man hold­ing a mani­la en­ve­lope poked his head in.

“Where’ve you been? I was sup­posed to have this re­port two hours ago!”

“I’m sor­ry,” the man stam­mered, tak­ing a few ten­ta­tive steps in­side the of­fice. “As I ex­plained on the phone, we had to run the match three times be­cause—“

“Nev­er mind. Just give me the re­port, please.”

He held it out from a dis­tance, al­most as if fear­ful of be­ing bit­ten.

“You got a DNA match?” she asked, tak­ing the re­port.

“Yes. A pair of beau­ti­ful match­es, blood from the box cut­ter and the spot on the floor. Both from the same in­di­vid­ual, not the vic­tim. But here’s the prob­lem: the DNA wasn’t in any of the FBI crim­inal or ju­ve­nile databas­es, so we did like you asked and ran it against all the DNA databas­es. When we fi­nal­ly did get a match, it was in a fed­er­al database, and we had a ma­jor prob­lem be­cause of con­fi­den­tial­ity is­sues and … well…” He hes­itat­ed.

“Go on,” Hay­ward said as gen­tly as she could.

“The rea­son I had to run the pro­gram three times was to be ab­so­lute­ly sure about this match. This is ex­plo­sive stuff, Cap­tain. We can’t af­ford to be wrong.”

“And?” Hay­ward could hard­ly breathe.

“You aren’t go­ing to be­lieve this. The DNA matched one of the Bu­reau’s top agents.”

Hay­ward breathed out. “I be­lieve it. God help us, I be­lieve it.”

FORTY-​ONE

ELI Glinn wait­ed in his small pri­vate of­fice on the fourth floor of the Ef­fec­tive En­gi­neer­ing So­lu­tions build­ing. It was a sober room, con­tain­ing on­ly a ta­ble, sev­er­al com­put­ers, a small book­shelf, and a clock. The walls were paint­ed gray, and there was noth­ing of a per­son­al na­ture in the of­fice, save for a small pho­to­graph of a state­ly blonde wom­an wear­ing the uni­form of a ship’s cap­tain, wav­ing from what ap­peared to be the bridge of a tanker. A line from a W. H. Au­den po­em was hand­writ­ten be­neath.

The of­fice lights had been turned off, and the on­ly il­lu­mi­na­tion came from a large flat-​pan­el mon­itor, which car­ried a high-​def­ini­tion dig­ital feed from an of­fice in the base­ment of the EES build­ing. The video feed showed two peo­ple: the sub­ject, Pen­der­gast, with EES’s psy­cho­log­ical spe­cial­ist, Rolf Kras­ner, who was prepar­ing the sub­ject for ques­tion­ing.

Glinn ob­served the slen­der fig­ure of Pen­der­gast with in­ter­est. The man’s in­sight in­to Glinn’s own psy­chol­ogy, his ex­traor­di­nary abil­ity to pick out and in­ter­pret a few de­tails scat­tered about a room which it­self was a very morass of de­tail, had near­ly un­nerved Glinn—and, in a cu­ri­ous way, deeply im­pressed him.

While still watch­ing the pro­ceed­ings on the mon­itor, the au­dio turned off, he turned again to the fold­er Pen­der­gast had giv­en him.

Al­though unim­por­tant in the larg­er scheme of things, Pen­der­gast’s case was not with­out its points. For ex­am­ple, there was the near myth­ical Cain and Abel re­la­tion­ship be­tween these two ex­traor­di­nary broth­ers. For Pen­der­gast was ex­traor­di­nary—Glinn had nev­er be­fore met a man whose in­tel­lect he could re­spect as equal to his own. Glinn had al­ways felt some­what alien­at­ed from the mass of hu­man­ity—and yet here was a man he could, in the re­volt­ing par­lance of the present age, iden­ti­fy with. That Pen­der­gast’s broth­er ap­peared to be even more in­tel­li­gent, and yet ut­ter­ly malev­olent, Glinn found even more in­trigu­ing. This was a man so con­sumed by ha­tred that he had de­vot­ed his life to the ob­ject of his ha­tred, not un­like a man un­der the spell of ob­ses­sive love. What­ev­er lay at the bot­tom of that ha­tred was some­thing per­haps unique in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

Glinn glanced back at the mon­itor. The chitchat was over and Rolf Kras­ner was get­ting down to busi­ness. The EES psy­chol­ogist com­bined a dis­arm­ing­ly friend­ly air with con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­al­ism. You could hard­ly be­lieve that this cheer­ful, round-​faced, unas­sum­ing man with the Vi­en­nese ac­cent could be con­sid­ered a threat. In­deed, at first glance, he seemed about the most un­threat­en­ing per­son­al­ity imag­in­able—un­til you saw him in ac­tion. Glinn knew just how ef­fec­tive that Jekyll and Hyde strat­egy could be with an un­sus­pect­ing sub­ject.

On the oth­er hand, Kras­ner had nev­er had a sub­ject like this one.

Glinn leaned over and switched on the au­dio feed.

“Mr. Pen­der­gast,” Kras­ner was say­ing cheer­ily, “is there any­thing I can get you be­fore we be­gin? Wa­ter? A soft drink? A dou­ble mar­ti­ni?” A chuck­le.

“Noth­ing, thank you.”

Pen­der­gast ap­peared ill at ease, as well he should. EES had de­vel­oped three dif­fer­ent modes of in­ter­ro­ga­tion, each for a par­tic­ular per­son­al­ity type, along with an ex­per­imen­tal fourth mode to be used on­ly on the most dif­fi­cult, re­sis­tant—and in­tel­li­gent—sub­jects. Af­ter they had read through Pen­der­gast’s fold­er and dis­cussed the sit­ua­tion, there was no ar­gu­ment over which mode would be used. Pen­der­gast would be on­ly the sixth per­son to un­der­go this fourth type of in­ter­ro­ga­tion. It had nev­er failed.

“We use some of the tech­niques of good, old-​fash­ioned psy­cho­anal­ysis,” Kras­ner said. “And one of them is that we ask you to lie down on a couch, out of view of the ques­tion­er. Would you please make your­self com­fort­able?”

The fig­ure lay down on the rich­ly bro­cad­ed couch and fold­ed his white hands on his chest. Ex­cept for the ragged clothes, he looked alarm­ing­ly like the corpse at a wake. What a fas­ci­nat­ing crea­ture this man is, Glinn thought as he moved his wheelchair clos­er to the mon­itor.

“Per­haps you rec­og­nize the of­fice we’re in, Mr. Pen­der­gast?” Kras­ner said, bustling about, get­ting ready.

“I do. Num­ber 19 Berggasse.”

“Ex­act­ly! Mod­eled af­ter Freud’s own of­fice in Vi­en­na. We even man­aged to ac­quire some of his African carv­ings. And that Per­sian car­pet in the cen­ter al­so be­longed to him. Freud called his of­fice gemütlich, which is an al­most un­trans­lat­able Ger­man word mean­ing agree­able, com­fort­able, cozy, friend­ly—and that is the at­mo­sphere we have strived to cre­ate. Do you speak Ger­man, Mr. Pen­der­gast?”

“Ger­man is not one of my lan­guages, much to my re­gret. I should have liked to read Goethe’s Faust in the orig­inal.”

“A mar­velous work, vig­or­ous and yet po­et­ic.” Kras­ner took a seat on a wood­en stool out of Pen­der­gast’s view.

“Do you em­ploy the free-​as­so­ci­ation meth­ods of psy­cho­anal­ysis?” Pen­der­gast asked dry­ly.

“Oh, no! We’ve de­vel­oped a tech­nique all our own. It’s very straight­for­ward, ac­tu­al­ly—no tricks, no dream in­ter­pre­ta­tions. The on­ly thing Freudi­an about our tech­nique is the of­fice decor.” He chuck­led again.

Glinn found him­self smil­ing. The fourth in­ter­ro­ga­tion mode used tricks—they all did—but, of course, the sub­ject wasn’t sup­posed to see them. In­deed, this fourth mode seemed like pure sim­plic­ity it­self … on the sur­face. High­ly in­tel­li­gent peo­ple could be fooled, but on­ly with the great­est of care and sub­tle­ty.

“I’m go­ing to help you through some sim­ple vi­su­al­iza­tion tech­niques, which will al­so in­volve ques­tion­ing. It’s sim­ple and there is no hyp­no­sis in­volved. It’s just a way to in­duce a calm and fo­cused mind, re­cep­tive to ques­tion­ing. Does that suit you, Aloy­sius? May I call you by your first name?”

“You may, and I am at your dis­pos­al, Dr. Kras­ner. I am on­ly con­cerned that I may not be able to give you the in­for­ma­tion you de­sire, be­cause I do not be­lieve it ex­ists.”

“Do not con­cern your­self with that. Sim­ply re­lax, fol­low my in­struc­tions, and an­swer the ques­tions as best you can.”

Re­lax. Glinn knew this was about the last thing Pen­der­gast would be able to do, once Kras­ner got start­ed.

“Won­der­ful. Now I’m go­ing to turn down the lights. I will al­so ask you to close your eyes.”

“As you wish.”

The lights dimmed to a faint dif­fuse glow.

“Now we will al­low three min­utes to pass in si­lence,” said Kras­ner.

The min­utes crawled by.

“Let us be­gin.” Kras­ner’s voice had tak­en on a hushed, vel­vety tone. An­oth­er long si­lence, and then he re­sumed.

“Breathe in slow­ly. Hold it. Now let it out even more slow­ly. Again. Breathe in, hold, breathe out. Re­lax. Very good. Now, I want you to imag­ine you are at your fa­vorite place in all the world. The place where you feel most at home, most com­fort­able. Take a minute to place your­self there. Now turn around, ex­am­ine your sur­round­ings. Sam­ple the air. Take in the scents, the sounds. Now, tell me: What do you see?”

A mo­men­tary si­lence. Glinn leaned still clos­er to the mon­itor.

“I am on a vast green lawn at the edge of an an­cient beech­wood for­est. There is a sum­mer­house at the far end of the lawn. There are gar­dens and a mill­house to the west, where a brook flows. The lawn sweeps up to a stone man­sion, shad­ed by elms.”

“What is this place?”

“Raven­scry. The es­tate of my Great-​Aunt Cor­nelia.”

“And what is the year and sea­son?”

“It is 1972, the ides of Au­gust.”

“How old are you?”

“Twelve.”

“In­hale the air again. What scents can you smell?”

“Fresh­ly cut grass, with a faint over­lay of pe­onies from the gar­den.”

“What are the sounds?”

“A whip-​poor-​will. The rus­tle of beech leaves. The dis­tant mur­mur of wa­ter.”

“Good. Very good. Now I want you to rise. Rise off the ground, let your­self float… Look down as you rise. Do you see the lawn, the house, from above?”

“Yes.”

“Now rise fur­ther. One hun­dred feet. Two hun­dred. Look down again. What do you see?”

“The great sprawl­ing house, the car­riage house, the gar­dens, lawns, mill­house, trout hatch­ery, ar­bore­tum, green­hous­es, the beech­wood for­est, and the drive wind­ing to the stone gates. The en­cir­cling wall.”

“And be­yond that?”

“The road to Had­dam.”

“Now. Make it night.”

“It is night.”

“Make it day.”

“It is day.”

“Do you un­der­stand that you are in con­trol, that all this is in your head, that none of this is re­al?”

“Yes.”

“Dur­ing this pro­cess, you must al­ways keep that in mind. You are in con­trol, and none of what is hap­pen­ing is re­al. It is all in your mind.”

“I un­der­stand that.”

“Be­low, on the lawn, put the mem­bers of your fam­ily. Who are they? Name them, please.”

“My fa­ther, Lin­naeus. My moth­er, Is­abel­la. My Great-​Aunt Cor­nelia. Cyril, the gar­den­er, work­ing to one side…”

There was a long pause.

“Any­one else?”

“And my broth­er. Dio­genes.”

“His age?”

“Ten.”

“What are they do­ing?”

“Stand­ing around just where I put them.” The voice sound­ed dry and iron­ic. Glinn could see very well that Pen­der­gast was main­tain­ing an iron­ic de­tach­ment and would at­tempt to do so as long as pos­si­ble.

“Put them in some kind of typ­ical ac­tiv­ity,” Kras­ner went on smooth­ly. “What are they do­ing now?”

“Fin­ish­ing tea on a blan­ket spread out on the lawn.”

“Now I want you to drift down. Slow­ly. Join them.”

“I am there.”

“What are you do­ing, ex­act­ly?”

“Tea is over and Great-​Aunt Cor­nelia is pass­ing a plate of pe­tits fours. She has them brought up from New Or­leans.”

“Are they good?”

“Nat­ural­ly. Great-​Aunt Cor­nelia has the high­est stan­dards.” The tone of Pen­der­gast’s voice was laden with irony, and Glinn won­dered just who this Great-​Aunt Cor­nelia was. He glanced down at an ab­stract at­tached to Pen­der­gast’s file, flipped through it, and came to the an­swer of his ques­tion. A chill crept up his spine. He quick­ly shut the file—right now that was a dis­trac­tion.

“What kind of tea did you take?” asked Kras­ner.

“Great-​Aunt Cor­nelia will on­ly drink T. G. Tips, which she has sent over from Eng­land.”

“Now look around the blan­ket. Look at ev­ery­one. Gaze around un­til your eyes come to rest on Dio­genes.”

A long si­lence.

“What does Dio­genes look like?”

“Tall for his age, pale, with very short hair, eyes of two dif­fer­ent col­ors. He is very thin and his lips are over­ly red.”

“Those eyes, look in­to them. Is he look­ing at you?”

“No. He has turned his head away. He does not like to be stared at.”

“Keep star­ing at him. Stare hard.”

A longer si­lence. “I have avert­ed my eyes.”

“No. Re­mem­ber, you con­trol the scene. Keep star­ing.”

“I don’t choose to.”

“Speak to your broth­er. Tell him to rise, that you wish to speak to him in pri­vate.” An­oth­er, longer si­lence. “Done.”

“Tell him to come with you to the sum­mer­house.”

“He re­fus­es.”

“He can­not refuse. You con­trol him.”

Even through the mon­itor, Glinn could see that a small sheen of sweat had ap­peared on Pen­der­gast’s brow. It’s be­gin­ning, he thought.

“Tell Dio­genes that there is a man wait­ing for him in the sum­mer­house who wants to ask you both some ques­tions. A Dr. Kras­ner. Tell him that.”

“Yes. He will come to see the doc­tor. He is cu­ri­ous that way.”

“Ex­cuse your­selves and walk to the sum­mer­house. Where I am wait­ing.”

“All right.”

A brief si­lence. “Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now, what do you see?”

“We’re in­side. My broth­er is stand­ing here, you’re here, I’m here.”

“Good. We shall re­main stand­ing. Now, I will ask you and your broth­er some ques­tions. You will re­lay your broth­er’s an­swers to my ques­tions, since he can­not speak to me di­rect­ly.”

“If you in­sist,” said Pen­der­gast, a touch of irony re­turn­ing to his voice.

“You con­trol the sit­ua­tion, Aloy­sius. Dio­genes can­not evade an­swer­ing, be­cause it is you who is re­al­ly an­swer­ing for him. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Tell Dio­genes to look at you. To stare at you.”

“He won’t.”

“Make him. With your mind, make him do it.”

A si­lence. “All right.”

“Dio­genes, I am now speak­ing to you. What is your first mem­ory of your old­er broth­er, Aloy­sius?”

“He said he re­mem­bers me draw­ing a pic­ture.”

“What is the pic­ture?”

“Scrib­bles.”

“How old are you, Dio­genes?”

“He says six months.”

“Ask Dio­genes what he thinks of you.”

“He thinks of me as the next Jack­son Pol­lock.”

That iron­ic tone again, thought Glinn. This was one very re­sis­tant client.

“That would not nor­mal­ly be the thought of a six-​month-​old ba­by.”

“Dio­genes is an­swer­ing as a ten-​year-​old, Dr. Kras­ner.”

“Fine. Ask Dio­genes to keep look­ing at you. What does he see?”

“He says noth­ing.”

“What do you mean, noth­ing? He isn’t speak­ing?”

“He spoke. He said the word noth­ing.”

“What do you mean by the word noth­ing!”

“He says, ‘I see noth­ing that is not there and the noth­ing that is.’”

“Ex­cuse me?”

“It’s a quo­ta­tion from Wal­lace Stevens,” said Pen­der­gast dry­ly. “Even at ten, Dio­genes was par­tial to Stevens.”

“Dio­genes, when you say ‘noth­ing,’ does that mean you feel your broth­er, Aloy­sius, is a nonen­ti­ty?”

“He laughs and says the words are yours, not his.”

“Why?”

“He is laugh­ing hard­er.”

“How long will you be at Raven­scry, Dio­genes?”

“He says un­til he goes back to school.”

“And where is that?”

“St. Ig­natius Loy­ola on Lafayette Street, New Or­leans.”

“How do you like school, Dio­genes?”

“He says he likes it as much as you would like be­ing shut up in a room with twen­ty-​five men­tal de­fec­tives and a mid­dle-​aged hys­ter­ic.”

“What is your fa­vorite sub­ject?”

“He says ex­per­imen­tal bi­ol­ogy … on the play­ground.”

“Now I want you, Aloy­sius, to ask Dio­genes three ques­tions, which he must an­swer. You must make him an­swer them. Re­mem­ber, you are in con­trol. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“What is your fa­vorite food, Dio­genes?”

“Worm­wood and gall.”

“I want a straight an­swer.”

“That, Dr. Kras­ner, is the one thing you will nev­er get from Dio­genes,” said Pen­der­gast.

“Re­mem­ber, Aloy­sius, that it is you who are ac­tu­al­ly an­swer­ing the ques­tions.”

“And with great for­bear­ance, I might add,” said Pen­der­gast. “I am do­ing all I can to sus­pend my dis­be­lief.”

Glinn leaned back in his wheelchair. This wasn’t quite work­ing. Clients re­sist­ed, some with ev­ery fiber of their be­ing, but not quite like this. Irony was the ul­ti­mate re­sis­tance—he had nev­er be­fore seen it so skill­ful­ly em­ployed. And yet Glinn felt a shiv­er of self-​recog­ni­tion: Pen­der­gast was a man who was hy­per­aware of him­self, un­able ev­er to step out­side of him­self, to let go, to low­er, even for an in­stant, the elab­orate de­fen­sive mask he had cre­at­ed to place be­tween him­self and the world.

Glinn could un­der­stand a man like that.

“All right. Aloy­sius, you are still in the sum­mer­house with Dio­genes. Imag­ine you have a load­ed pis­tol in your hand.”

“Fine.”

Glinn sat up, a lit­tle star­tled. Kras­ner was al­ready mov­ing to what they termed phase two—and very abrupt­ly. Clear­ly, he, too, re­al­ized this ses­sion need­ed to be jump-​start­ed.

“What kind of pis­tol is it?”

“It’s a gun from my col­lec­tion, a Sig­na­ture Grade 1911 .45 ACP by Hilton Yam.”

“Give it to him.”

“It would be most un­wise to give a pis­tol to a ten-​year-​old, don’t you think?” Again, that iron­ic, amused tone.

“Nev­er­the­less, do it.”

“Done.”

“Tell him to point the gun at you and pull the trig­ger.”

“Done.”

“What hap­pened?”

“He’s laugh­ing up­roar­ious­ly. He didn’t pull the trig­ger.”

“Why not?”

“He says it’s too soon.”

“Does he in­tend to kill you?”

“Nat­ural­ly. But he wants…” His voice trailed off.

Kras­ner pounced. “What does he want?”

“To play with me for a while.”

“What kind of play?”

“He says he wants to pull off my wings and watch what hap­pens. I am his ul­ti­mate in­sect.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ask him.”

“He’s laugh­ing.”

“Grab him and de­mand an an­swer.”

“I would pre­fer not to touch him.”

“Grab him. Get phys­ical. Force him to an­swer.”

“He’s still laugh­ing.”

“Hit him.”

“Don’t be ridicu­lous.”

“Hit him.”

“I won’t car­ry on with this cha­rade.”

“Take the gun away from him.”

“He’s dropped the gun, but—“

“Pick it up.”

“All right.”

“Shoot him. Kill him.”

“This is ut­ter­ly ab­surd—“

“Kill him. Do it. You’ve killed be­fore; you know how to do it. You can and you must do it.” A long si­lence.

“Did you do it?”

“This is an asi­nine ex­er­cise, Dr. Kras­ner.”

“But you did imag­ine it. Didn’t you? You imag­ined killing him.”

“I imag­ined no such thing.”

“Yes, you did. You killed him. You imag­ined it. And now you are imag­in­ing his dead body on the ground. You see it be­cause you can­not help but see it.”

“This is…” Pen­der­gast’s voice trailed of.

“You see it, you can’t help but see it. Be­cause I am telling you to, you are see­ing it… But wait—he’s not yet dead … He moves, he still lives … He wants to say some­thing. With his last dy­ing strength, he beck­ons you clos­er, says some­thing to you. What did he just say?”

A long si­lence. Then Pen­der­gast an­swered dry­ly, “Qualis ar­tifex pereo.”

Glinn winced. He rec­og­nized the quo­ta­tion but could see that Kras­ner did not. What should have been a break­ing point for Pen­der­gast had sud­den­ly turned in­to an in­tel­lec­tu­al game.

“What does that mean?”

“It’s Latin.”

“I re­peat: what does it mean?”

“It means ‘O, what an artist dies with me!’”

“Why did he say that?”

“Those were Nero’s last words. I be­lieve Dio­genes was speak­ing face­tious­ly.” “You have killed your broth­er, Aloy­sius, and now look on his body.”

An ir­ri­tat­ed sigh.

“This is the sec­ond time you have done it.”

“The sec­ond time?”

“You killed him once be­fore, years ago.”

“Par­don me?”

“Yes, you did. You killed what­ev­er good­ness was in him; you left him a hol­low shell filled with mal­ice and ha­tred. You did some­thing to him that mur­dered his very soul!”

De­spite him­self, Glinn found he was hold­ing his breath. The gen­tle, sooth­ing tones were long gone: Dr. Kras­ner had slipped in­to phase three, once again with un­usu­al swift­ness.

“I did no such thing. He was born that way, emp­ty and cru­el.”

“No. You. killed his good­ness! There is no oth­er pos­si­ble an­swer.

Don’t you see, Aloy­sius? The ha­tred Dio­genes feels for you is mytho­log­ical in its im­men­si­ty. It can­not have sprung from noth­ing; en­er­gy can nei­ther be cre­at­ed nor de­stroyed. You cre­at­ed that ha­tred, you did some­thing to him that struck out his heart. All these years, you have re­pressed this ter­ri­ble deed. And now you have killed him again, lit­er­al­ly as well as fig­ura­tive­ly. What you must face, Aloy­sius, is that you are the au­thor of your own fate. You are at fault. You did it.”

An­oth­er long si­lence. Pen­der­gast lay on the couch, un­mov­ing, his skin gray, wax­like.

“Now Dio­genes is ris­ing. He is look­ing at you again. I want you to ask him some­thing.”

“What?”

“Ask Dio­genes what you did to him to make him hate you so.”

“Done.”

“His an­swer?”

“An­oth­er laugh. He said, ‘I hate you be­cause you are you.’”

“Ask again.”

“He says that is rea­son enough, that his ha­tred has noth­ing to do with any­thing I did, it sim­ply ex­ists, like the sun, moon, and stars.”

“No, no, no. What is it that you did, Aloy­sius?” Kras­ner’s voice was once again gen­tle, but it had great ur­gen­cy. “Un­bur­den your­self of it. How ter­ri­ble it must be to car­ry that weight on your shoul­ders. Un­bur­den your­self.”

Slow­ly, Pen­der­gast arose from the couch, swing­ing his legs over the side. For a mo­ment, he sat mo­tion­less. Then he passed a hand across his fore­head, looked at his watch. “It is mid­night. It is now Jan­uary 28, and I am out of time. I can’t be both­ered with this ex­er­cise any­more.”

He stood and turned to Dr. Kras­ner. “I com­mend you on your valiant ef­fort, Doc­tor. Trust me, there’s noth­ing in my past that would jus­ti­fy Dio­genes’s con­duct. In the course of my ca­reer study­ing the crim­inal mind, I have come to re­al­ize a sim­ple truth: some peo­ple are born mon­sters. You can elu­ci­date their mo­tives and re­con­struct their crimes—but you can­not ex­plain the evil with­in them.”

Kras­ner looked at him, great sad­ness in his face. “There’s where you’re wrong, my friend. No­body is born evil.”

Pen­der­gast held out his hand. “We shall dif­fer, then.” Then his eyes turned di­rect­ly to­ward the hid­den cam­era, startling Glinn. How could Pen­der­gast know where it was?

“Mr. Glinn? I thank you, too, for your ef­fort. You should have plen­ty in that fold­er to com­plete the job at hand. I can help you no fur­ther. Some­thing ter­ri­ble will hap­pen to­day, and I must do ev­ery­thing in my pow­er to stop it.”

And he turned and walked briskly from the room.

FORTY-​TWO

The man­sion at 891 River­side Drive lay above one of the most com­plex ge­olog­ical ar­eas of Man­hat­tan. Here, be­neath the lit­ter-​strewn streets, the bedrock of Hart­land schist yield­ed to a dif­fer­ent for­ma­tion, the Cam­bri­an Man­hat­tan. The gneiss of the Man­hat­tan For­ma­tion was par­tic­ular­ly fault­ed and con­tort­ed, and rid­dled with weak ar­eas, cracks, and nat­ural tun­nels. One such weak area, sev­er­al cen­turies ago, had been en­larged to form the pas­sage from the man­sion’s sub-​base­ment to the weed-​choked shore of the Hud­son Riv­er. But there were oth­er tun­nels, old­er and more se­cret, that bur­rowed be­neath the man­sion in­to dark and un­known depths.

Un­known to all, that is, but one.

Con­stance Greene moved slow­ly through one of these tun­nels, de­scend­ing with prac­ticed ease in­to the black­ness. Though she held a torch in one slim hand, it was not lit: she knew these deep and hid­den spaces so well that light was not nec­es­sary. The pas­sage was fre­quent­ly nar­row enough to al­low her to fol­low both walls with her out­stretched hands. Though the tun­nel was of nat­ural rock, the ceil­ing was tall and quite reg­ular, and the floor was even enough to ap­pear al­most like steps fash­ioned by man.

But on­ly Con­stance had ev­er walked this way be­fore.

Un­til a few days ago, she had hoped nev­er to come here again. It was a re­minder of the old times—the bad times—when she had seen things no liv­ing be­ing should ev­er have to wit­ness. When he had come, with vi­olence and mur­der, and had tak­en from her the on­ly hu­man be­ing she had known, a man who was like a fa­ther to her. The mur­der­er had up­end­ed the or­dered world she had grown so used to. She had fled here then, in­to the chill re­cess­es of the earth. For a time, it seemed, san­ity it­self al­so fled, un­der the shock.

But her mind had been too care­ful­ly trained, over too many years, to ev­er be­come ful­ly lost. Slow­ly, slow­ly, she came back. Once again, she grew in­ter­est­ed in the ways of the wak­ing, the liv­ing; once again, she be­gan creep­ing back up to her old home, her world, the man­sion at 891 River­side. That was when she be­gan watch­ing the man named Wren and—fi­nal­ly—re­vealed her­self to the kind­ly old gen­tle­man.

Who, in turn, had brought her to Pen­der­gast.

Pen­der­gast. He had rein­tro­duced her to the world, helped her move out of a shad­owy past in­to a brighter present.

But the work was not yet done. All too well, she was aware of that ten­uous line still sep­arat­ing her from in­sta­bil­ity. And now this had hap­pened…

As she walked, Con­stance bit her lip to keep back a sob.

But it shall be all right, she tried to tell her­self. It shall be all right. Aloy­sius had promised her so. And he could do any­thing, it seemed; even rise from the dead.

She had made a promise to him as well, and she would keep it: to spend her nights here, where not even Dio­genes Pen­der­gast could ev­er find her. She would keep her promise, de­spite the dread­ful weight this place, and its mem­ories, placed on her heart.

Ahead, the pas­sage nar­rowed, then split in­to two. To the right, the tun­nel kept corkscrew­ing down in­to dark­ness. To the left, a nar­row­er way led off hor­izon­tal­ly. Con­stance chose this pas­sage, fol­low­ing its twists and turns for a hun­dred yards. Then she stopped and, at last, turned on the lamp.

Its yel­low light re­vealed that the pas­sage widened abrupt­ly, dead-​end­ing in a small, snug cham­ber, per­haps ten feet by six. Its floor was cov­ered by an ex­pen­sive Per­sian car­pet, tak­en from one of the base­ment stor­age rooms of the man­sion above. The lines of the bare rock walls were soft­ened by re­pro­duc­tions of Re­nais­sance paint­ings: Parmi­gian­ino’s Madon­na with the Long Neck, Gior­gione’s Tem­pest, half a dozen oth­ers. A cot was set in­to the rear of the niche, and a small ta­ble lay at one side. Works by Thack­er­ay, Trol­lope, and George Eliot were stacked neat­ly be­side Pla­to’s Re­pub­lic and St. Au­gus­tine’s Con­fes­sions.

It was much warmer here, be­low­ground. The air smelled, not un­pleas­ant­ly, of rock and earth. Yet the rel­ative warmth, the small at­tempts at do­mes­tic­ity, af­ford­ed Con­stance lit­tle com­fort.

She set the lamp up­on the ta­ble, sat down be­fore it, and glanced to one side. There was a re­cess in the rock face here, per­haps three feet above the lev­el of the floor. She pulled a leather-​bound book from it: the most re­cent vol­ume of a di­ary she had kept in the old days, when she had been the ward of Pen­der­gast’s an­ces­tor.

She opened the di­ary and turned its pages over slow­ly, thought­ful­ly, un­til she reached the fi­nal en­try. It was dat­ed Ju­ly of the pre­vi­ous year.

Con­stance read the en­try once, then again, brush­ing away a stray tear as she did so. Then, with a qui­et sigh, she re­placed the di­ary in­to the re­cess, be­side its mates.

Forty-​two oth­er vol­umes, iden­ti­cal in size and shape, stood there. While the clos­er vol­umes looked quite new, the ones far­ther along the re­cess grew in­creas­ing­ly cracked and worn with age.

Con­stance sat there, look­ing at them, her hand rest­ing pen­sive­ly on the edge of the niche. The move­ment had pulled back the ma­te­ri­al of her sleeve, ex­pos­ing a long row of small, healed scars on her fore­arm: twen­ty or thir­ty iden­ti­cal marks, lined up pre­cise­ly in par­al­lel with one an­oth­er.

With an­oth­er sigh, she turned away. Then she ex­tin­guished the light and—say­ing a brief prayer to the close and watch­ful dark­ness—she stole to­ward the cot, turned her face to the wall, and lay down, eyes open, prepar­ing her­self as best she could for the night­mares that would in­evitably come.

FORTY-​THREE

vi­ola Maske­lene picked up her lug­gage at the in­ter­na­tion­al ar­rivals carousel at Kennedy Air­port, en­gaged a lug­gage porter to load it on­to a cart, and fol­lowed it through cus­toms. It was af­ter mid­night, and the wait was brief; the bored of­fi­cial asked her a few desul­to­ry ques­tions, stamped her U.K. pass­port, and ush­ered her through.

A small crowd of peo­ple was wait­ing at the ar­rivals area. She paused, scan­ning the crowd, un­til she no­ticed a tall man in a gray flan­nel suit stand­ing at the fringe. She rec­og­nized him in­stant­ly, so un­can­ny was the re­sem­blance to his broth­er, with his high smooth fore­head, aquiline nose, and aris­to­crat­ic bear­ing. Just see­ing a per­son with such a close re­sem­blance to Pen­der­gast made her heart ac­cel­er­ate. But there were dif­fer­ences, too. He was taller and less wiry, a lit­tle more heav­ily built per­haps; but his face was sharp­er, the cheek­bones and bony ridges around the eyes more pro­nounced, all of which, tak­en to­geth­er, gave his face a cu­ri­ous­ly asym­met­ri­cal feel­ing. His hair was gin­ger-​col­ored and he sport­ed a thick, neat­ly trimmed beard. But the most startling dif­fer­ence was in his eyes: one was a rich hazel green, the oth­er a glau­cous blue. She won­dered if he was blind in the pale eye—it looked dead.

She smiled, gave him a quick wave.

He, too, broke in­to a smile and came walk­ing over with a lan­guid step, his hands out­stretched. He grasped her hand in both of his, hands cool and soft. “La­dy Maske­lene?”

“Call me Vi­ola.”

“Vi­ola. I’m charmed.” His voice had much of his broth­er’s but­tery south­ern tones, yet al­though his man­ner of speech was al­most as lan­guorous as his walk, his words were very pre­cise­ly enun­ci­at­ed, as if bit­ten off at the ends. It was an un­usu­al, al­most strange com­bi­na­tion. “A plea­sure to meet you, Dio­genes.”

“My broth­er has been quite mys­te­ri­ous about you, but I know he’s anx­ious to see you. Is this your lug­gage?” He snapped his fin­gers and a porter came rush­ing over. “See that this la­dy’s lug­gage is brought to the black Lin­coln parked just out­side,” Dio­genes told him. “The trunk is open.” A twen­ty ap­peared in his hand as if by mag­ic, but the man was so cap­ti­vat­ed by Vi­ola that he bare­ly saw it.

Dio­genes turned back to Vi­ola. “And how was your trip?”

“Bloody aw­ful.”

“I’m sor­ry I couldn’t sug­gest a more con­ve­nient flight. It’s been rather a hec­tic time for my broth­er, as you know, and the lo­gis­tics of ar­rang­ing the meet­ing were a bit daunt­ing.”

“No mat­ter. The im­por­tant thing is that I’m here.”

“In­deed it is. Shall we go?” He of­fered her his arm and she took it. It was sur­pris­ing­ly strong, the mus­cles hard as steel ca­bles, very dif­fer­ent from the soft, lan­guid im­pres­sion his move­ments gave.

“There’d be no mis­tak­ing you for any­one but Aloy­sius’s broth­er,” she said as they walked out of the bag­gage claim area.

“I’ll take that as a com­pli­ment.”

They went through the re­volv­ing doors in­to a blast of cold air. A dust­ing of fresh snow glit­tered on the side­walks be­yond the cov­ered walk­way.

“Br­rr!” Vi­ola said, re­coil­ing. “When I left Capra­ia, it was a balmy twen­ty de­grees. This is bar­bar­ic!”

“That would be twen­ty de­grees Cel­sius, of course,” said Dio­genes with a wink. “How I en­vy you, able to live there year-​round. My car.” He opened the door for her, then went around, wait­ed for the sky­cap to dose the trunk, then slipped in the oth­er side.

“I don’t ac­tu­al­ly live there year-​round. Nor­mal­ly at this time of year, I’m in Lux­or, work­ing on a dig in the Val­ley of the No­bles. But this year, with the blast­ed state of the Mid­dle East, I ran in­to some per­mit prob­lems.”

Dio­genes ac­cel­er­at­ed smooth­ly from the curb and merged in­to the traf­fic head­ed for the air­port ex­it. “An Egyp­tol­ogist,” he said. “How fas­ci­nat­ing. I my­self spent some time in Egypt, a ju­nior mem­ber of the von Herts­gaard ex­pe­di­tion.”

“Not the one that went in­to So­ma­lia look­ing for the di­amond mines of Queen Hat­shep­sut? The one where Herts­gaard was found de­cap­itat­ed?”

“The very one.”

“How ex­cit­ing! I’d love to hear about it.”

” ‘Ex­cit­ing’ is cer­tain­ly one way to de­scribe it.”

“Is it true that Herts­gaard may have found the Hat­shep­sut mines just be­fore he was mur­dered?”

Dio­genes laughed qui­et­ly. “I sin­cere­ly doubt it. You know how these ru­mors get start­ed. What I find more in­ter­est­ing than those myth­ical mines is the very re­al Queen Hat­shep­sut her­self—the on­ly fe­male pharaoh—but, of course, you know all about her, I’m sure.”

“Fas­ci­nat­ing wom­an.”

“She claimed le­git­ima­cy by say­ing that her moth­er slept with the god Amon and that she was the is­sue. How does that fa­mous in­scrip­tion go? Amon found the queen sleep­ing in her room. When the pleas­ant odors that pro­ceed­ed from him an­nounced his pres­ence she awoke. He showed him­self in his god­like splen­dor, and when he ap­proached the queen she wept for joy at his strength and beau­ty and gave her­self to him.”

Vi­ola was in­trigued: Dio­genes seemed to be as much of a poly­math as his broth­er.

“So tell me, Vi­ola. What kind of work are you do­ing in the Val­ley of the No­bles?”

“We’ve been ex­ca­vat­ing the tombs of sev­er­al roy­al scribes.”

“Find any trea­sures—gold or, even bet­ter, jew­els?”

“Noth­ing like that. They were all robbed in an­tiq­ui­ty. We’re af­ter in­scrip­tions.”

“What a mar­velous pro­fes­sion, Egyp­tol­ogy. It seems my broth­er ap­pre­ci­ates in­ter­est­ing wom­en.”

“I hard­ly know your broth­er, to tell you the truth.”

“That will change this week, I have lit­tle doubt.”

“I’m look­ing for­ward to it.” She laughed a lit­tle self-​con­scious­ly. “Ac­tu­al­ly, I still can’t be­lieve I’m here. This whole trip is such a … a caprice. So mys­te­ri­ous. I love mys­ter­ies.”

“So does Aloy­sius. It seems you two are made for each oth­er.”

Vi­ola felt her­self col­or­ing. She quick­ly changed the sub­ject. “Do you know any­thing about this case he’s been work­ing on?”

“It’s been one of the most dif­fi­cult of his ca­reer. For­tu­nate­ly, it’s al­most over. To­day, in fact, will come the de­noue­ment—and then he’ll be free. The case in­volves a se­ri­al killer, a tru­ly in­sane in­di­vid­ual, who for var­ious ob­scure rea­sons has con­ceived a deep ha­tred for Aloy­sius. He’s been killing peo­ple and taunt­ing my broth­er with his in­abil­ity to catch him.”

“How ter­ri­ble.”

“Yes. My broth­er was forced to go un­der­ground so abrupt­ly in or­der to con­duct his in­ves­ti­ga­tion that it gave ev­ery­one the im­pres­sion he’d been killed.”

“I thought he was dead. Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta told me as much.”

“On­ly I knew the truth. I helped him af­ter that Ital­ian or­deal, nursed him back to health. I saved his life, if I may be al­lowed a mo­ment of self-​con­grat­ula­tion.”

“I’m so glad he has a broth­er like you.”

“Aloy­sius has few re­al friends. He’s very old-​fash­ioned, some­what for­bid­ding, a bit stand­off­ish. And so I’ve tried to be his friend as well as his broth­er. I’m so glad he found you. I was so wor­ried about him af­ter that dread­ful ac­ci­dent with his wife in Tan­za­nia.”

Wife? Tan­za­nia? Sud­den­ly, Vi­ola found her­self want­ing very much to ask what had hap­pened. She re­sist­ed: Aloy­sius would tell her in good time, and she had al­ways had the En­glish ab­hor­rence of pry­ing in­to some­one else’s per­son­al life.

“He hasn’t re­al­ly found me yet. We’re just the most ca­su­al of new friends, you know.”

Dio­genes turned his strange, bi­col­ored eyes to her and smiled. “I be­lieve my broth­er is al­ready in love with you.”

This time Vi­ola col­ored vi­olent­ly, feel­ing a sud­den mix­ture of ex­cite­ment, em­bar­rass­ment, and fool­ish­ness. Stuff, she thought. How could he be in love with me af­ter one meet­ing?

“And I have rea­son to be­lieve you are in love with him.”

Vi­ola man­aged a care­less laugh, but she was tin­gling all over with the strangest sen­sa­tion. The car hur­tled through the frosty night. “This is all far too pre­ma­ture,” she fi­nal­ly man­aged to say.

“While Aloy­sius and I are much alike, I do dif­fer from him in terms of di­rect­ness. For­give me if I’ve em­bar­rassed you.”

“Think noth­ing of it.”

The Long Is­land Ex­press­way stretched ahead, a snowy al­ley of dark­ness. It was al­most one o’clock in the morn­ing and there were few cars on the road. Flakes of snow were drift­ing down, whip­ping up and over the wind­shield of the car as they hur­tled along.

“Aloy­sius was al­ways the in­di­rect one. I could nev­er tell what he was think­ing, even when he was a boy.”

“He does seem a bit in­scrutable, I sup­pose.”

“Very in­scrutable. Rarely does he ev­er re­veal his re­al mo­ti­va­tions for do­ing things. For ex­am­ple, I’ve al­ways be­lieved he de­vot­ed him­self to pub­lic ser­vice to make up for some of the black sheep in the Pen­der­gast line.”

“Re­al­ly?” Vi­ola’s cu­rios­ity was piqued again.

An easy laugh. “Yes. Take Great-​Aunt Cor­nelia, for ex­am­ple. Lives not far from here, at the Mount Mer­cy Hos­pi­tal for the Crim­inal­ly In­sane.”

Cu­rios­ity was re­placed by sur­prise. “Crim­inal­ly in­sane?”

“That’s right. Ev­ery fam­ily has its black sheep, I sup­pose.”

Vi­ola thought of her own great-​grand­fa­ther. “Yes, that’s true.”

“Some fam­ilies more than oth­ers.”

She nod­ded, glanced over, found Dio­genes look­ing at her, quick­ly low­ered her eyes.

“I think it adds in­ter­est, spice, to a fam­ily lin­eage. Much bet­ter to have a mur­der­er for a great-​grand­fa­ther than a shop­keep­er.”

“A rather unique point of view.” Dio­genes might be a lit­tle odd­er than first im­pres­sions in­di­cat­ed, but he was cer­tain­ly amus­ing.

“Any in­ter­est­ing crim­inals in your an­ces­try?” Dio­genes asked. “If you don’t mind me pry­ing.”

“Not at all. No crim­inals, ex­act­ly, but I did have an an­ces­tor who was one of the great vi­olin vir­tu­osi of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. He went in­sane, froze to death in a shep­herd’s hut in the Dolomites.”

“Ex­act­ly my point! I felt sure you would have some in­ter­est­ing an­ces­tors. No dull ac­coun­tants or trav­el­ing sales­men in your lin­eage, eh?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Ac­tu­al­ly, we did have a trav­el­ing sales­man in our own an­ces­try— con­tribut­ed great­ly to the Pen­der­gast for­tune, in fact.”

“Re­al­ly?”

“In­deed. He con­coct­ed a quack medicine by the name of Hezeki­ah’s Com­pound Elixir and Glan­du­lar Restora­tive. Start­ed by sell­ing it from the back of a wag­on.”

Vi­ola laughed. “What a fun­ny name for a medicine.”

“Hi­lar­ious. Ex­cept it con­sist­ed of a dead­ly com­bi­na­tion of co­caine, ac­etanilid, and some rather nasty al­ka­loid botan­icals. It caused un­count­ed num­bers of ad­dic­tions and thou­sands of deaths, in­clud­ing that of his own wife.”

The laugh­ter died in Vi­ola’s throat. She felt a twinge of un­easi­ness. “I see.”

“Of course, no­body knew back then of the dan­gers of drugs like co­caine. You can’t fault Great-​Great-​Grand­fa­ther Hezeki­ah for that.”

“No, of course not.”

They fell silent. The light snow con­tin­ued to fall, the flakes drift­ing out of the dark sky, a glit­ter flash­ing through the head­lights—and then were gone.

“Do you think there’s such a thing as a crim­inal gene?” asked Dio­genes.

“No,” said Vi­ola. “I think that’s rub­bish.”

“Some­times I won­der. There have been so many in our own fam­ily. There was Un­cle An­toine, for ex­am­ple, one of the tru­ly great mass mur­der­ers of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. Killed and mu­ti­lat­ed al­most a hun­dred work­house girls and boys.”

“How aw­ful,” mur­mured Vi­ola.

The feel­ing of un­easi­ness grew stronger.

Dio­genes gave an easy laugh. “The En­glish trans­port­ed their crim­inals to the colonies—Geor­gia and then Aus­tralia. They fig­ured it would purge the An­glo-​Sax­on race of the crim­inal class­es, but the more crim­inals they trans­port­ed, the high­er the crime rate be­came.”

“Crime ob­vi­ous­ly had a lot more to do with eco­nom­ic con­di­tions than ge­net­ics,” said Vi­ola.

“You think so? True: I would not have want­ed to be poor in nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry Eng­land. In my view, the re­al crim­inals back then were the ti­tled class­es. Less than one per­cent of the peo­ple owned more than nine­ty-​five per­cent of the land. And with the en­clo­sure laws, the En­glish lords could evict their ten­ant farm­ers, who flocked to the cities and ei­ther starved or turned to crime.”

“True,” Vi­ola mur­mured. It seemed Dio­genes had for­got­ten that she came from those ti­tled class­es.

“But here in Amer­ica, it was dif­fer­ent. How would you ex­plain the fact that crim­inals run in some fam­ilies like blue eyes or blond hair? In ev­ery gen­er­ation, the Pen­der­gast fam­ily seems to have pro­duced a killer. Af­ter An­toine, let’s see … There was Com­stock Pen­der­gast, famed mes­merist, ma­gi­cian, and men­tor of Har­ry Hou­di­ni. He killed his busi­ness part­ner and the man’s poor fam­ily, and then com­mit­ted sui­cide. Cut his own throat twice. Then…”

“Par­don?” Vi­ola re­al­ized that she was un­con­scious­ly grip­ping the door han­dle.

“Oh, yes. Twice. The first time he didn’t quite get it deep enough, you see. I guess he didn’t rel­ish the thought of bleed­ing slow­ly to death. My­self, I wouldn’t mind dy­ing a slow death by exsan­guina­tion—I hear it’s rather like go­ing to sleep. I would have plen­ty of time to ad­mire the blood, which has such an exquisite col­or. Do you like the col­or of blood, Vi­ola?”

“Ex­cuse me?” Vi­ola felt pan­ic well up with­in her.

“Blood. The col­or of a fine ru­by. Or vice ver­sa. I per­son­al­ly find it to be the most com­pelling col­or there is. Some might call me ec­cen­tric, but there it is.”

Vi­ola tried to quell her feel­ings of fear and un­cer­tain­ty. They were now far from the city, and the dark night rushed by, on­ly a few lights on in the dark­ened neigh­bor­hoods they passed, bare­ly vis­ible from the high­way.

“Where are we go­ing?” she asked.

“To a lit­tle place called the Springs. A charm­ing cot­tage on the shore. It’s about two more hours.”

“And Aloy­sius is there?”

“Of course. Dy­ing to see you.”

This whole trip was a colos­sal mis­take, she could see that now. An­oth­er fool­ish, im­pul­sive de­ci­sion. She’d been caught up in the heady ro­mance of it, in the re­lief of learn­ing Pen­der­gast was still alive. But the truth was, she hard­ly knew the man. And this broth­er of his… Sud­den­ly, the thought of spend­ing two more hours in a car with him was un­think­able. “Vi­ola,” came the soft voice, “I’m sor­ry. Are you all right?”

“Fine. Just fine.”

“You look wor­ried.”

She took a deep breath. “To tell you the truth, Dio­genes, I’d pre­fer to stay in New York tonight. I’m more tired than I re­al­ized. I’ll see Aloy­sius when he comes to town.”

“Oh, no! He’ll be crushed.”

“I can’t help that. If you would, please turn the car around? Re­al­ly, I’m ter­ri­bly sor­ry for the sud­den change of mind, but this will be best. You’ve been very kind. Please take me back to New York.”

“If that’s what you want. I’ll have to get off at the next ex­it to re­verse di­rec­tion.”

She felt a wave of re­lief. “Thank you. I’m re­al­ly aw­ful­ly sor­ry for putting you to all this trou­ble.”

The ex­it soon came: Hemp­stead. The car slowed, ex­it­ed. It ap­proached the stop sign at the top of the ex­it ramp and cruised to a stop. There were no cars in sight and Vi­ola sat back, hand still un­con­scious­ly clutch­ing the door han­dle, and wait­ed for Dio­genes to pro­ceed.

But he didn’t pro­ceed. And then, sud­den­ly, she smelled the queer­est chem­ical odor.

She turned quick­ly. “What is—?”

A hand hold­ing a bunched cloth clamped it­self over her mouth while an arm lashed around her neck with light­ning speed and wrenched her bru­tal­ly down to the seat. She was pinned, the stink­ing cloth jammed mer­ci­less­ly over her nose and mouth. She strug­gled, try­ing to breathe, but it was as if a door of dark­ness had just opened be­fore her: against her will, she leaned for­ward, falling and falling in­to dark­ness, and then the world went blank.

FORTY-​FOUR

The win­try scene could not have been more bleak: a thin snow had fall­en on the ceme­tery the night be­fore, and now a bit­ter wind blew through the bare trees, rat­tling the branch­es and send­ing wisps of snow whip­ping across the frozen ground. The grave it­self looked like a black wound in the earth, sur­round­ed by bright green As­tro­turf laid on the snow, with a sec­ond As­tro­turf car­pet laid over the pile of dirt. The cof­fin rest­ed be­side the hideous hole, strapped to a ma­chine that would low­er it in­to the grave. Huge bou­quets of fresh flow­ers stood about, jit­ter­ing in the wind, adding a sur­re­al fe­cun­di­ty to the frozen scene.

No­ra could not take her gaze from the cof­fin. Wher­ev­er she turned, she al­ways seemed drawn back to it. It was a high­ly pol­ished af­fair, with brass han­dles and trim. No­ra couldn’t ac­cept that her friend, her new friend, lay in­side. Dead. How ter­ri­ble to think that, just a few days be­fore, she and Mar­go had been en­joy­ing din­ner to­geth­er in Mar­go’s apart­ment, chat­ting about the mu­se­um.

That same night she had been mur­dered.

And then, yes­ter­day, the very dis­turb­ing, very ur­gent call from Pen­der­gast…

She shiv­ered un­con­trol­lably, took a few deep breaths. Her fin­gers were freez­ing even through her gloves, and her nose felt like it had lost all sen­sa­tion. She was so cold that she thought the tears might freeze on her face.

The min­is­ter, dressed in a long black down coat, was read­ing Rite One of the Buri­al of the Dead from the Book of Com­mon Prayer, his voice sonorous in the freez­ing air. A large crowd had turned out— amaz­ing­ly large when you con­sid­ered the weath­er. An enor­mous quan­ti­ty of peo­ple had come from the mu­se­um. Mar­go had clear­ly made a large im­pres­sion even dur­ing her short tenure there: but then, she had al­so been a grad­uate stu­dent there years be­fore. Stand­ing near the front was the mu­se­um’s di­rec­tor, Col­lopy, with a stun­ning­ly beau­ti­ful wife even younger than No­ra. Most of the An­thro­pol­ogy De­part­ment had showed up, ex­cept for those who were su­per­vis­ing the des­per­ate last-​minute work on the Sa­cred Im­ages show: the open­ing gala was this evening. She her­self should have stayed at the show, but she would nev­er have for­giv­en her­self if she’d missed Mar­go’s fu­ner­al. There was Prine, bun­dled up like an Es­ki­mo and dab­bing at his bright red nose with a cot­ton hand­ker­chief; the se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor, Manet­ti, look­ing gen­uine­ly strick­en, prob­ably feel­ing that Mar­go’s death had been a per­son­al fail­ure. Her eye roamed the crowd. A qui­et­ly weep­ing wom­an stood at the front, sup­port­ed on ei­ther side by ush­ers: no doubt Mar­go’s moth­er. She had Mar­go’s light brown hair, her same fine fea­tures and slim build. She seemed to be the on­ly mem­ber of Mar­go’s fam­ily—and No­ra re­mem­bered Mar­go say­ing at din­ner that she was an on­ly child.

A par­tic­ular­ly strong gust of wind rat­tled through the ceme­tery, tem­porar­ily over­whelm­ing the min­is­ter’s voice. Then it re­turned: “In­to thy hands, O Lord, we com­mend thy ser­vant Mar­go, our dear sis­ter, as in­to the hands of a faith­ful Cre­ator and most mer­ci­ful Sav­ior, be­seech­ing thee that she may be pre­cious in thy sight…”

No­ra bent against the bit­ter wind and drew her coat tighter as she lis­tened to the sad, sooth­ing words. She wished with all her heart that Bill was there with her. The bizarre tele­phone call from Pen­der­gast—and it was Pen­der­gast, she had no doubt—had left her shak­en. Bill’s life threat­ened, and he in hid­ing? And now her own life in dan­ger? It all seemed in­cred­ible, fright­en­ing, as if a dark cloud had de­scend­ed on her world. And yet the ev­idence was di­rect­ly in front of her. Mar­go was dead.

A hum­ming noise broke her black rever­ie. The ma­chine was low­er­ing Mar­go’s cof­fin in­to the grave with a grind­ing of gears and the whirring of a mo­tor. The min­is­ter’s voice raised slight­ly as the cof­fin de­scend­ed. Mak­ing the sign of the cross with an up­raised hand, he read the last words of the ser­vice. With a faint thump, the cof­fin came to rest, and then the min­is­ter in­vit­ed Mar­go’s moth­er to throw in a clod of dirt. She did so, and some oth­ers fol­lowed, the frozen clods mak­ing a dis­turbing­ly hol­low sound as they struck the cof­fin lid.

No­ra felt as if her heart would break. Her friend­ship with Mar­go, which had got­ten off to such a bad start, had just be­gun to blos­som. Her death was a tragedy in the truest sense of the word—she was so brave, so full of con­vic­tion.

The ser­vice over, the crowd be­gan to drift back to­ward the nar­row ceme­tery lane where their cars wait­ed, frosty breath ris­ing in the air. No­ra checked her watch: ten o’clock. She had to get back to the mu­se­um im­me­di­ate­ly, to work on the fi­nal prepa­ra­tions for the open­ing.

As she turned to leave, she saw a man dressed in black ap­proach oblique­ly; a few more mo­ments and he had fall­en in­to step be­side her. He looked hag­gard with grief, and she won­dered if Mar­go didn’t have oth­er close rel­atives, af­ter all.

“No­ra?” came the low voice.

No­ra was star­tled. She paused.

“Keep walk­ing, please.”

She kept walk­ing, feel­ing mount­ing alarm. “Who are you?”

“Agent Pen­der­gast. Why are you out in the open af­ter my warn­ing?”

“I have to live my life.”

“You can’t live a life if you’ve lost it.”

No­ra sighed. “I want to know what’s hap­pened to Bill.”

“Bill is safe, as I ex­plained. It is you I’m wor­ried about. You’re a prime tar­get.”

“Tar­get of what?”

“I can’t tell you that. What I can tell you is that you must take steps to pro­tect your­self. You should be afraid.”

“Agent Pen­der­gast, I am afraid. Your call scared me half to death. But you can’t ex­pect me to drop ev­ery­thing. As I told you, I’ve got an open­ing I’ve got to pre­pare for tonight.”

A sharp, ex­as­per­at­ed ex­ha­la­tion. “He’s killing ev­ery­one around me. He will kill you, too. And then you’ll miss not on­ly your open­ing but the rest of your life.”

The voice, far from the hon­eyed drawl she re­mem­bered, was tense and ur­gent.

“I have to take the risk. I’ll be in the mu­se­um the rest of the day, un­der high se­cu­ri­ty in the ex­hib­it. And then I’ll be at the open­ing tonight, sur­round­ed by thou­sands.”

“High se­cu­ri­ty did not stop him be­fore.”

“Who is this him?”

“As I’ve said, to tell you more would on­ly put you at greater risk. Oh, No­ra, what must I do to pro­tect you?”

She fal­tered, shocked at the near de­spair in his voice. “I’m sor­ry. Look, it’s just not in my na­ture to run and hide. I’ve worked too long for this open­ing. Peo­ple are count­ing on me. Okay? To­mor­row— let’s take this up again to­mor­row. Just not to­day.”

“So be it.” The anony­mous fig­ure turned away—strange how lit­tle he looked like the Pen­der­gast No­ra re­mem­bered—melt­ed in­to the dark dusters of peo­ple walk­ing to­ward their cars, and was gone.

FORTY-​FIVE

D’Agos­ta paused at the door of Hay­ward’s of­fice, feel­ing al­most afraid to knock. The painful mem­ory of their first en­counter in her of­fice came in­to his mind un­bid­den, and he forced it away with great ef­fort, rap­ping more loud­ly than he in­tend­ed.

“Come in.” The very sound of her voice caused his heart to pause. He grasped the han­dle, pushed open the door.

The of­fice looked very dif­fer­ent. Gone were the var­ious piles of pa­per, the pleas­ant, con­trolled un­tidi­ness. Now it was se­vere in its or­ga­ni­za­tion—and it was clear Hay­ward was work­ing, liv­ing, and breath­ing a sin­gle case.

And there she was, stand­ing be­hind her desk, her short, slim fig­ure in a neat gray suit with cap­tain’s bars on the shoul­der, look­ing di­rect­ly at him. The look was so in­tense D’Agos­ta found him­self al­most pushed back by it.

“Have a seat.” The voice was cold­ly neu­tral.

“Lis­ten, Lau­ra, be­fore we be­gin, I just want to say—“

“Lieu­tenant,” came the crisp re­sponse. “You’ve been sum­moned here on po­lice busi­ness, and any­thing you might have to say of a per­son­al na­ture is in­ap­pro­pri­ate.”

D’Agos­ta looked at her. This was un­fair. “Lau­ra, please…”

Her face soft­ened, but on­ly for a mo­ment, and she spoke in a low vice. “Vin­cent, don’t do this to me or to your­self. Es­pe­cial­ly not now. I have some­thing very, very dif­fi­cult to show you.”

This stopped D’Agos­ta.

“Please take a seat.”

“I’ll stand.”

Brief si­lence while she stared at him. Then she spoke again. “Pen­der­gast is alive.”

D’Agos­ta felt him­self go cold. He hadn’t known why she’d sum­moned him, hadn’t even dared to guess—but this was the last thing he’d ex­pect­ed. “How did you find out?” he blurt­ed.

Her face tight­ened with anger. “So you did know.”

An­oth­er tense si­lence. Then she reached down and picked up a piece of pa­per, drew it in front of her. D’Agos­ta could see it was a list of hand­writ­ten notes. What was this about? He had nev­er seen Lau­ra so wound up.

“On Jan­uary 19, Pro­fes­sor Tor­rance Hamil­ton was poi­soned in front of a lec­ture hall of two hun­dred stu­dents in his class at Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty and died about an hour lat­er. The on­ly use­ful ev­idence un­cov­ered from the crime scene, some black fibers found in his of­fice, is an­alyzed in this re­port.” She dropped a slim fold­er on her desk.

D’Agos­ta glanced at it but did not pick it up.

“The re­port states that the fibers were from a very cost­ly cash­mere-​meri­no blend­ed-​wool fab­ric made for on­ly a few years in the 1950s in a fac­to­ry out­side Pra­to, Italy. The on­ly place it was sold in Amer­ica— the on­ly place—was a small shop on Rue Lespinard in New Or­leans. A shop pa­tron­ized by the Pen­der­gast fam­ily.”

D’Agos­ta felt a sud­den hope. Was it pos­si­ble, af­ter all, that she be­lieved him? That she’d checked in­to Dio­genes? “Lau­ra, I—“

“Lieu­tenant, let me fin­ish. My foren­sic team searched Pen­der­gast’s apart­ment in the Dako­ta—at least the rooms we could get in­to— and took fiber sam­ples. In ad­di­tion, we found two dozen iden­ti­cal black suits in a clos­et. The suits and the fibers all came from the same source: those bolts of cash­mere-​meri­no wool, dyed black. This is a vir­tu­al­ly unique fiber. There can be no mis­take.”

D’Agos­ta felt a very strange sen­sa­tion crawl up his spine. He sud­den­ly had a pre­mo­ni­tion of where this might be go­ing.

“On Jan­uary 22, Charles Duchamp was hung from his apart­ment build­ing on 65th and Broad­way. Again, the crime scene was un­usu­al­ly clean. How­ev­er, our foren­sic team did re­cov­er a few more of the same black fibers that were found at the Tor­rance homi­cide. In ad­di­tion, the rope used to hang Duchamp was wo­ven of a rare type of gray silk. We ul­ti­mate­ly learned it is a spe­cial type of rope used in Bud­dhist re­li­gious cer­emonies in Bhutan. The monks tie these silk ropes in­to in­cred­ibly com­plex knots for med­ita­tive and con­tem­pla­tive pur­pos­es. These are unique knots, found nowhere else in the world.”

She paused, laid down a pho­to­graph of the rope that hung Duchamp, show­ing the knot, smeared with blood. “That par­tic­ular knot is known as Ran t’ankha durdag, ‘the tan­gled path to hell.’ It has come to my at­ten­tion that Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast spent time in Bhutan study­ing with the very monks who make these knots.”

“There’s a sim­ple an­swer—“

“Vin­cent, if you in­ter­rupt me one more time, I’ll have you muz­zled.”

D’Agos­ta fell silent.

“The next day, on Jan­uary 23, FBI Spe­cial Agent Michael Deck­er was mur­dered in his house in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., stabbed through the mouth with an an­tique Civ­il War bay­onet. This crime scene was equal­ly clean. The foren­sic team re­cov­ered fibers from the same bolt of cash­mere-​meri­no wool found at the Hamil­ton poi­son­ing.” She laid an­oth­er re­port be­fore D’Agos­ta.

“At around two o’clock in the morn­ing of Jan­uary 26, Mar­go Green was fa­tal­ly stabbed in the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry. I’ve gone over the mu­se­um’s per­son­nel lists, and she was the last per­son to en­ter the ex­hi­bi­tion hall. But she al­so checked out of the hall—the mur­der­er must have used her card to leave. This crime scene wasn’t near­ly as clean as the oth­ers. Green was a formidable op­po­nent, and she put up a strug­gle. She de­fend­ed her­self with a box cut­ter and wound­ed her as­sailant. Blood not be­long­ing to the vic­tim was re­cov­ered from the scene, both on the box cut­ter—which had been im­per­fect­ly wiped clean—and from a sin­gle spot on the floor.” She paused. “The DNA tests came back late last night.”

She picked up a piece of pa­per and, with a snap, dropped it, too, in front of D’Agos­ta. “Those are the re­sults.”

D’Agos­ta couldn’t bring him­self to look. He knew the an­swer al­ready.

“That’s right. Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast.”

D’Agos­ta knew bet­ter than to say any­thing.

“Which brings me to mo­tive. All these peo­ple had some­thing in com­mon—they were close ac­quain­tances of Pen­der­gast. Hamil­ton was Pen­der­gast’s lan­guage tu­tor in high school. Duchamp was Pen­der­gast’s clos­est—and per­haps on­ly—child­hood friend. Michael Deck­er was Pen­der­gast’s men­tor at the FBI. He’s one of the main rea­sons Pen­der­gast has even sur­vived in the FBI, af­ter all the trou­ble his un­ortho­dox meth­ods got him in­to. And fi­nal­ly—as you well know—Mar­go Green was a close friend of Pen­der­gast’s from two cas­es dat­ing back sev­er­al years, the mu­se­um mur­ders and the sub­way killings.

“All this ev­idence, all these tests, have been checked and rechecked. There can be no mis­take. Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast is a psy­cho­path­ic killer.”

D’Agos­ta had gone cold. He re­al­ized now why Dio­genes had saved Pen­der­gast the way he did, why he’d helped nurse him back to life af­ter what had hap­pened in the Cas­tel Fos­co. It wasn’t enough just to mur­der his broth­er’s friends. No—he would al­so frame him for the crimes.

“And now this,” Hay­ward said. She showed him an­oth­er re­port. It was bound in plas­tic, and the ti­tle was vis­ible:

Psy­cho­log­ical Pro­file

Hamil­ton/Duchamp/Deck­er/Green Killer

Be­hav­ioral Sci­ence Unit

Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion, Quan­ti­co

“I didn’t tell them that I sus­pect­ed one of their own. I just told them we thought the crimes might be con­nect­ed and asked them to draw up a pro­file. Be­cause of the Deck­er killing, I got it back in twen­ty-​four. Go ahead and read it if you want, but here’s the short ver­sion. The killer is a high­ly ed­ucat­ed male with at least four years of post­grad­uate ed­uca­tion. He’s an ex­pert chemist. He’s thor­ough­ly fa­mil­iar with foren­sic and po­lice pro­ce­dure and he prob­ably once worked, or still works, in law en­force­ment. He has a broad knowl­edge across a range of sub­jects in sci­ence, lit­er­ature, math, his­to­ry, mu­sic, and art—in short, he is a Re­nais­sance man. His I.Q. lies in the 180 to 200 range. His age is prob­ably be­tween thir­ty and fifty. He is well trav­eled and prob­ably mul­ti­lin­gual. He is like­ly ex-​mil­itary. He is a per­son of con­sid­er­able fi­nan­cial means. He is very adept at dis­guis­es.”

She looked D’Agos­ta in the eye. “This re­mind you of any­one, Vin­cent?”

D’Agos­ta didn’t re­ply.

“Those are the out­ward de­tails. Now comes the psych anal­ysis.” She paused, find­ing the place in the re­port. “The killer is a self-​con­trolled and con­trol­ling per­son. He’s ex­treme­ly well or­ga­nized, neat, and places a high pre­mi­um on log­ic. He re­press­es any out­ward show of emo­tion and rarely, if ev­er, con­fides in any­one. He has few, if any, re­al friends and has dif­fi­cul­ty form­ing re­la­tion­ships with the op­po­site sex. This in­di­vid­ual prob­ably suf­fered a dif­fi­cult child­hood, with a cold, con­trol­ling moth­er and a dis­tant or ab­sent fa­ther. His fam­ily re­la­tion­ships were not close. There will prob­ably be a his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness or crime in the fam­ily. As a young boy, he suf­fered a crip­pling emo­tion­al trau­ma in­volv­ing a close fam­ily mem­ber— moth­er, fa­ther, or sib­ling—that he has spent the rest of his life com­pen­sat­ing for. He is deeply sus­pi­cious of au­thor­ity, con­sid­ers him­self in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly and moral­ly su­pe­ri­or to oth­ers—“

“What a load of psy­chob­ab­ble!” D’Agos­ta ex­plod­ed. “It’s all twist­ed up. This isn’t the way he is at all!”

He stopped abrupt­ly. Hay­ward was look­ing at him with raised eye­brows.

“So you do rec­og­nize this per­son.”

“Of course I rec­og­nize him! But this is a twist­ing of who he re­al­ly is. Pen­der­gast didn’t mur­der those peo­ple. He was framed. The ev­idence, the blood, was plant­ed. His broth­er, Dio­genes, is the killer.”

An­oth­er long si­lence. “Go on,” she said, her tone neu­tral.

“Af­ter Pen­der­gast’s or­deal in Italy, when we all thought he was dead, Dio­genes took him to a clin­ic to re­cov­er. He was sick, drugged. It must have al­lowed Dio­genes plen­ty of op­por­tu­ni­ty to har­vest all the foren­sic ev­idence he need­ed to frame Pen­der­gast—hair, fibers, blood. It’s Dio­genes. Don’t you see? He’s hat­ed Pen­der­gast all his life, he’s been plan­ning this for years. He sent Pen­der­gast a taunt­ing let­ter say­ing he was go­ing to com­mit the per­fect crime and nam­ing the date—to­day.”

“You’re not go­ing to lay this crazy the­ory on me again, Vin­cent—“

“It’s my turn to talk. Dio­genes want­ed to com­mit a crime even more hor­ri­ble than killing his broth­er. He want­ed to kill ev­ery­one his broth­er loves but leave his broth­er alive. Now it seems he’s al­so fram­ing his broth­er for those same crimes—“

D’Agos­ta stopped. She was look­ing at him with an ex­pres­sion of pity bor­der­ing al­most on pain.

“Vin­nie, you re­mem­ber how you told me to look in­to Dio­genes? Well, I did. I had a hell of a time trac­ing him, but here’s what I found.” She opened a fold­er, took out yet an­oth­er doc­ument, and slid it in front of him. It was stamped and em­bossed and no­ta­rized.

“What is it?”

“A death cer­tifi­cate. Of Dio­genes Da­gre­pont Bernoul­li Pen­der­gast. He was killed twen­ty years ago in a car ac­ci­dent in the U.K.”

“A forgery. I saw a let­ter from him. I know he’s alive.”

“What makes you think Pen­der­gast didn’t write the let­ter?”

D’Agos­ta stared at her. “Be­cause I saw Dio­genes. With my own eyes.”

“Is that so? Where?”

“Out­side Fos­co’s cas­tle. When we were be­ing chased. He had eyes of two dif­fer­ent col­ors, just like Cor­nelia Pen­der­gast told us.”

“And how do you know it was Dio­genes?”

D’Agos­ta hes­itat­ed. “Pen­der­gast told me.”

“Did you speak to him?”

“No. But I saw a pic­ture of him as a child, just re­cent­ly. It was the same face.”

A long si­lence fol­lowed. Hay­ward reached down and picked up the foren­sic pro­file again. “There’s some­thing else in here. Read it.” She pushed a piece of pa­per over to him.

The tar­get sub­ject may man­ifest symp­toms of a rare form of mul­ti­ple per­son­al­ity dis­or­der, a vari­ant of Mun­chausen syn­drome by proxy, in which the sub­ject acts out two sep­arate, di­amet­ri­cal­ly op­po­site roles: that of killer and of in­ves­ti­ga­tor. In this un­usu­al con­di­tion, the killer may al­so be a law en­force­ment of­fi­cer as­signed to the case or an in­ves­ti­ga­tor con­nect­ed to the case. In an­oth­er vari­ant of this pathol­ogy, the killer is a pri­vate cit­izen who ini­ti­ates his own in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the killings, of­ten mak­ing ap­par­ent­ly bril­liant dis­cov­er­ies of ev­idence that law en­force­ment has over­looked. In both vari­ants, the killer per­son­al­ity leaves minute clues for the in­ves­ti­ga­tor per­son­al­ity to dis­cov­er, such dis­cov­er­ies of­ten made ap­par­ent­ly through ex­traor­di­nary pow­ers of ob­ser­va­tion and/or de­duc­tion. The killer per­son­al­ity and in­ves­ti­ga­tor per­son­al­ity are not aware of each oth­er’s ex­is­tence on a con­scious lev­el, al­though much co­op­er­ation is not­ed on the sub­con­scious, patho­log­ical lev­el.

“Bull­shit. Mun­chausen by proxy is about some­body want­ing at­ten­tion. Pen­der­gast goes out of his way to avoid the lime­light. This doesn’t de­scribe Pen­der­gast. You know the guy, you’ve worked with him. What does your gut tell you?”

“You don’t want to know what my gut tells me.” Her dark eyes were scru­ti­niz­ing him. “Vin­nie, you know why I’m shar­ing this in­for­ma­tion with you?”

“Why?”

“For one thing, be­cause I think you’re in ter­ri­ble dan­ger. Pen­der­gast is a crazy son of a bitch and he’s go­ing to kill you next. I know he will.”

“He won’t kill me be­cause he isn’t the killer.”

“The Pen­der­gast you know isn’t even aware he’s the killer. He be­lieves in this Dio­genes. He gen­uine­ly thinks his broth­er is still alive and that you two are go­ing to find him. It’s all part of the pathol­ogy men­tioned here.” She slapped the re­port. “There’s the oth­er per­son­al­ity of his … Dio­genes. Who ex­ists with­in the same body. That per­son­al­ity you haven’t met yet. But you will… when he kills you.”

D’Agos­ta couldn’t even find the words to re­spond.

“I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you all this.” Her voice hard­ened. “You don’t have a right to know any of this af­ter how roy­al­ly you’ve screwed up. I went out on a ten-​mile limb for you, got you a great po­si­tion on the force—and you be­trayed my trust, you re­ject­ed my…” She paused, breath­ing hard, re­cov­er­ing her com­po­sure.

Now D’Agos­ta felt a flash of re­al anger. “I be­trayed you? Lis­ten, Lau­ra: I tried to talk with you about this. I tried to ex­plain. But you pushed me away, say­ing I was ob­sess­ing over some­one’s death. How do you think that felt? Or how do you think I feel now, lis­ten­ing to you say how naive I am, how gullible, trust­ing Pen­der­gast like this? You’ve seen my case­work in the past, you know what I’m ca­pa­ble of. Why do you think I’m so wrong now?”

The ques­tion hung in the air.

“This isn’t the time or place for that dis­cus­sion,” Hay­ward replied af­ter a mo­ment. Her tone had grown qui­et and busi­nesslike. “And we’re stray­ing from the point.”

“And what, ex­act­ly, is the point?”

“I want you to bring Pen­der­gast in.”

D’Agos­ta stood root­ed in place, thun­der­struck. He should have seen it com­ing.

“Bring him in. Save your­self. Save your ca­reer. If he’s in­no­cent, let him have his day in court.”

“But the ev­idence against him is over­whelm­ing—“

“That’s right. It’s damn­ing as hell. And you didn’t even see the half of it. But that’s the way our sys­tem works: bring him in and let him face a ju­ry of his peers.”

“Bring him in? How?”

“I’ve got it all worked out. You’re the on­ly man he trusts.”

“You’re ask­ing me to be­tray him?”

“Be­tray? My God, Vin­nie, the man’s a se­ri­al killer. Four in­no­cent peo­ple are dead. And there’s an­oth­er thing you seem to be over­look­ing. Your ac­tions to date—keep­ing Pen­der­gast’s ex­is­tence se­cret, ly­ing to me, ly­ing to Cap­tain Sin­gle­ton—bor­der on ob­struc­tion of jus­tice. Now that you know Pen­der­gast is a fugi­tive—that’s right, a war­rant for his ar­rest has al­ready been sworn out—any fur­ther ac­tions on your part to pro­tect him will amount to crim­inal ob­struc­tion and ac­ces­so­ry af­ter the fact. You’re al­ready in deep shit, and this is the on­ly way you’re go­ing to get out of it. You bring him in, or you go to jail. It’s that sim­ple.”

For a long mo­ment, D’Agos­ta said noth­ing. When he spoke, his voice sound­ed dead, wood­en, even in his own ears. “Give me a day to think it over.”

“A day?” She looked at him in­cred­ulous­ly. “You’ve got ten min­utes.”

FORTY-​SIX

Vi­ola woke with a split­ting headache. For a mo­ment, she stared blankly, un­com­pre­hend­ing­ly, at the frilled top of a canopied bed ris­ing above her. And then it all came back: the drive along the dark high­way, the in­creas­ing­ly bizarre com­ments by Pen­der­gast’s broth­er, the sud­den at­tack…

She fought down a ris­ing wave of pan­ic, ly­ing still, con­cen­trat­ing on­ly on her breath­ing, try­ing not to think of any­thing at all.

Fi­nal­ly—when she felt she was mas­ter of her­self—she sat up slow­ly. Her head reeled, and dark spots danced across her vi­sion. She closed her eyes. When at last the throb­bing had sub­sid­ed a lit­tle, she opened her eyes once again and looked around the room.

It was a small bed­room with rose-​pat­terned wall­pa­per, some old Vic­to­ri­an fur­ni­ture, and a sin­gle barred win­dow. Mov­ing care­ful­ly— for the sake of both her headache and si­lence—she swung her legs over the bed and stood un­steadi­ly on the floor. Qui­et­ly, she reached for the door han­dle and gave it a turn, but, as she ex­pect­ed, it was locked. A sec­ond twinge of pan­ic was sup­pressed more quick­ly than the first.

She went to the win­dow and looked out. The house was set a few hun­dred yards back from a marshy bay. Be­yond a line of scrag­gly dunes, she could see a pound­ing line of surf and a dark ocean flecked with white­caps. The sky was a met­al gray and, with the in­stinct of some­body who had spent many nights un­der the open sky, she sensed it was morn­ing. On both the right and the left, she could just make out a pair of ramshack­le beach hous­es, their win­dows board­ed up for the sea­son. The beach was emp­ty.

She reached through the bars and tapped on the glass. It seemed to be un­usu­al­ly blue and thick—per­haps un­break­able. And sound­proofed, too—at least, she could not hear the surf.

Still mov­ing slow­ly, and mak­ing ev­ery ef­fort to be silent, she walked in­to a small ad­join­ing bath­room. Like the bed­room, it was old-​fash­ioned and neat, with a sink, a claw-​foot­ed tub, and an­oth­er small win­dow, al­so barred and paned in the same odd­ly thick glass. She turned on the tap and out came a gush of wa­ter, which quick­ly went from cold to pip­ing hot. Shut­ting it off, she re­turned to the bed­room.

She sat back down on the bed, think­ing. It was all so un­re­al, so ut­ter­ly bizarre, it was im­pos­si­ble to com­pre­hend. That the per­son who had picked her up was Pen­der­gast’s broth­er, she had ab­so­lute­ly no doubt—in many ways, he was prac­ti­cal­ly a twin of the man. But why had he kid­napped her like this? What were his in­ten­tions? And, most im­por­tant: what on earth was Pen­der­gast’s role in it? How could she have been so wrong about him?

But then, when she thought back to their brief meet­ing on the is­land of Capra­ia last fall, she re­al­ized how strange it all was. Per­haps word of his trag­ic death that made her ro­man­ti­cize their lone en­counter and made it seem more than it re­al­ly was. And then that let­ter, with its news that Pen­der­gast was still alive, and its ro­man­tic, im­pul­sive re­quest…

Im­pul­sive. That was the word. Once, again she had al­lowed her im­pul­sive­ness to get her in­to trou­ble—and this time it looked like dead­ly se­ri­ous trou­ble.

Was it pos­si­ble that D’Agos­ta was in on it, too? That the en­tire sto­ry of Pen­der­gast’s death had been a sham, part of some com­plex plot to lure her here? Was this some kind of so­phis­ti­cat­ed kid­nap­ping net­work? Or were they hold­ing her for ran­som? The more she thought about this com­plete and ut­ter dog’s break­fast, the more she felt fear giv­ing way to anger and out­rage. But even that emo­tion she re­pressed. Bet­ter to di­rect her en­er­gies to­ward es­cape.

She went back in­to the bath­room and made a quick in­ven­to­ry: plas­tic comb, tooth­brush, tooth­paste, wa­ter glass, clean tow­els, wash­cloth, sham­poo. She reached down and picked up the glass. It was heavy and cold, re­al glass.

She turned it over thought­ful­ly in her hands. A sharp piece would make a weapon, but it could al­so dou­ble as a tool. Es­cape through the win­dows was out of the ques­tion, and no doubt the door would be re­in­forced and se­cure. But this was an old house, and the walls would prob­ably be plas­ter and lath be­neath the wall­pa­per.

She took a tow­el, wrapped it tight­ly around the glass, and gave it sev­er­al sharp taps on the edge of the sink un­til it broke. She un­wrapped the tow­el: as she’d hoped, the glass had bro­ken in­to sev­er­al large pieces. She took the sharpest, walked back in­to the bed­room, and ap­proached the op­po­site wall. Care­ful to min­imize noise, she stuck the point­ed edge in­to the wall­pa­per and gave an ex­plorato­ry thrust.

It im­me­di­ate­ly slipped, tak­ing with it a piece of the wall­pa­per. She saw, to her dis­may, the glint of met­al un­der­neath. With her fin­ger­nails, she caught the cut edge of wall­pa­per and peeled it back, re­veal­ing a smooth, cold ex­panse of steel.

A chill went up her spine. And in that mo­ment, a knock came at the door.

She start­ed, then quick­ly climbed back in­to the bed, pre­tend­ing to be asleep.

The knock came again, and a third time, and then she heard the scrape of a key in the lock. The door creaked open. She lay there, eyes closed, shard of glass con­cealed be­side her body.

“Dear Vi­ola. I know you have been up and about.”

Still she lay there.

“I see you have al­ready dis­cov­ered I’ve dec­orat­ed your room in met­al. Now, please sit up and stop this tire­some cha­rade. I have some­thing im­por­tant to tell you.”

Vi­ola sat up, anger re­turn­ing. A man stood in the door­way whom she did not rec­og­nize, al­though the voice was un­mis­tak­ably that of Dio­genes.

“For­give my un­usu­al ap­pear­ance; I am dressed for the city. To which I am head­ed in a few min­utes.”

“In dis­guise, it seems. You fan­cy your­self a right Sher­lock Holmes.”

The man bowed his head.

“What do you want, Dio­genes?”

“I have what I want—you.”

“What­ev­er for?”

The strange man gave a broad smile. “What do I want with you? Frankly, I could care less about you, ex­cept for one thing: you aroused the in­ter­est of my broth­er. I heard your name pass his lips just once, no more. It piqued my cu­rios­ity. Luck­ily, your name is unique, your fam­ily is promi­nent, and I was able to find out a great deal—a great deal—about you. I sus­pect­ed ten­der feel­ings on your part for my broth­er. When you re­spond­ed to my let­ter, I knew my hunch was right, and that I had land­ed a prize be­yond com­pare.”

“You’re an ass. You don’t know any­thing about me.”

“My dear Vi­ola, rather than wor­ry­ing about what I know, you should be wor­ry­ing about two things you don’t know—and should. First, you need to know that you can­not get out of this room. The walls, floor, ceil­ing, and door are made of riv­et­ed ship’s hull steel. The win­dows are two lay­ers of un­break­able, sound­proof, bul­let­proof glass. The glass is one-​way, which means that you can see out but those out­side—and there will not be any—can­not see in. I tell you this on­ly to save you trou­ble. There are books in the book­case, drink­ing wa­ter from the tap, and some hard can­dies in the bot­tom draw­er of the bu­reau for you to suck on.”

“My, you’ve gone to a lot of trou­ble and ex­pense. Boiled sweets, even.”

“In­deed.”

“In­deed.” She mocked his court­ly drawl. “You said you had two things to tell me. What’s the sec­ond?”

“That you must die. If you be­lieve in a supreme be­ing, be sure to re­solve any un­fin­ished busi­ness you have with Him. Your death will take place to­mor­row morn­ing, at the tra­di­tion­al time: dawn.”

Al­most with­out in­tent, Vi­ola laughed: an an­gry, bit­ter laugh. “If you could on­ly hear what a pompous ass you sound! You will die at dawn. How histri­on­ic.”

Dio­genes took a step back, a frown pass­ing fleet­ing­ly over his face be­fore neu­tral­ity re­turned. “What a spright­ly vix­en you are.”

“What have I done to you, you bloody nut­ter?”

“Noth­ing. It is what you did to my broth­er.”

“I did noth­ing to your broth­er! Is this some kind of sick joke?”

A dry chuck­le. “It is in­deed a sick joke, a very sick joke.”

Anger and frus­tra­tion burned away her fear. Vi­ola slow­ly tight­ened her grip on the shard of glass. “For such a re­volt­ing man, you seem in­suf­fer­ably pleased with your­self.”

The dry chuck­le died off. “My, my. We cer­tain­ly have a sharp tongue this morn­ing.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I have no doubt that, by the stan­dards of so­ci­ety, I am clin­ical­ly in­sane.”

Vi­ola’s eyes nar­rowed. “So you’re a fol­low­er of the Scot­tish psy­chi­atrist R. D. Laing.”

“I fol­low no­body.”

“So you be­lieve, in your ig­no­rance. Laing said, ‘Men­tal ill­ness is the sane re­sponse to an in­sane world.’”

“I com­mend the gen­tle­man—who­ev­er he is—for his in­sight. But my dear Vi­ola, I don’t have all day to ex­change pleas­antries—“

“My dear Dio­genes—if on­ly you knew just how boor­ish you sound.” She put on a dead­ly ac­cu­rate im­ita­tion of his lan­guid ac­cent. “How dread­ful­ly sor­ry I am that we can’t con­tin­ue this charm­ing con­ver­sa­tion. You and your fee­ble at­tempts at breed­ing.”

There was a si­lence. Dio­genes had lost his smile, but if oth­er thoughts were go­ing through his head, they did not ex­press them­selves on his face. Vi­ola was amazed at the depth and clar­ity of her own anger. She was breath­ing fast, and her heart was go­ing like mad in her chest.

Dio­genes fi­nal­ly sighed. “You are as chat­tery as a mon­key and al­most as smart. If I were you, I’d be a lit­tle less gar­ru­lous and face your end with dig­ni­ty, as be­fits your sta­tion.”

“My sta­tion? Oh my God, don’t tell me you’re an­oth­er of those Amer­ican poons who get their willy up meet­ing some red-​nosed baronet or dod­der­ing old vis­count. I should have known.”

“Vi­ola, please. You’re get­ting overex­cit­ed.”

“Wouldn’t you be a lit­tle overex­cit­ed if you had been lured over­seas, drugged and kid­napped, locked in a room, and threat­ened—“

“Vi­ola, ça suf­fit! I will be back in the wee hours of the morn­ing to car­ry out my promise. Specif­ical­ly, I will cut your throat. Twice. In hon­or of our Un­cle Com­stock.”

She sud­den­ly stopped. The fear had come back in full force. “Why?”

“Fi­nal­ly, a sen­si­ble ques­tion. I am an ex­is­ten­tial­ist. I carve my own mean­ing out of the sup­pu­rat­ing car­cass of this rot­ting uni­verse. Through no fault of your own, you have be­come part of that mean­ing. But I do not feel sor­ry for you. The world is abrim with pain and suf­fer­ing. I sim­ply choose to di­rect the fes­tiv­ities in­stead of of­fer­ing my­self up as an­oth­er wit­less vic­tim. I take no plea­sure in the suf­fer­ing of oth­ers—ex­cept one. That is my mean­ing. I live for my broth­er, Vi­ola; he gives me strength, he gives me pur­pose, he gives me life. He is my sal­va­tion.”

“You and your broth­er can go to hell!”

“Ah, dear Vi­ola. Didn’t you know? This is hell. Ex­cept that you are about to gain your re­lease.”

Vi­ola leaped off the bed and rushed at him, shard raised, but in the blur of an in­stant she found her­self pinned to the floor. Some­how Dio­genes now lay on top of her, his face inch­es from hers, his breath, sweet­ly smelling of cloves, in her face.

“Good-​bye, my live­ly lit­tle mon­key,” he mur­mured, and kissed her ten­der­ly on the lips.

And then, in one swift, bat­like move­ment, he rose and was gone, the door slam­ming be­hind him. She flung her­self on it but it was too late: there was the sound of oiled steel slid­ing in­to steel, and the door felt as cold and un­yield­ing as a bank vault.

FORTY-​SEV­EN

D’Agos­ta didn’t need a day to con­sid­er Hay­ward’s of­fer; he didn’t even need ten min­utes. He walked straight out of the build­ing, pulled out the cell phone Pen­der­gast had giv­en him, and asked for an emer­gen­cy meet­ing.

A quar­ter of an hour lat­er, as he stepped out of a cab at the cor­ner of Broad­way and 72nd, the mem­ory of his en­counter with Lau­ra was still raw. But he told him­self he couldn’t think about that right now. He had to bury his per­son­al feel­ings un­til the cri­sis was over— as­sum­ing, that is, it would ev­er be over.

He walked east down 72nd. Ahead, in the dis­tance, he could see Cen­tral Park, the brown trees skele­tal in the Jan­uary chill. At the next in­ter­sec­tion, he stopped and pulled out the cell phone again. Call me again once you reach Colum­bus and 72nd, Pen­der­gast had said. D’Agos­ta was on­ly a block away from Pen­der­gast’s apart­ment at the Dako­ta. Could he pos­si­bly be at home? It seemed out­ra­geous, giv­en the cir­cum­stances.

He flipped open the phone, di­aled the num­ber.

“Yes?” came the voice of Pen­der­gast. In the back­ground, D’Agos­ta could hear the tap­ping of keys.

“I’m at the cor­ner,” he replied.

“Very good. Make your way un­ob­served to 24 West 72nd. The build­ing is mixed res­iden­tial and com­mer­cial. The en­trance is locked dur­ing work­ing hours, but the re­cep­tion­ist ha­bit­ual­ly buzzes in any­one who looks nor­mal. Take the stairs to the base­ment and lo­cate the door marked B-14. Make sure you are alone. Then knock slow­ly, sev­en times. Have you got that?”

“Got it.”

The line went dead.

Putting the phone away, D’Agos­ta crossed the street and con­tin­ued to­ward the park. Up ahead, at the far cor­ner, he could see the crenel­lat­ed, sand-​col­ored bulk of the Dako­ta. It looked like some­thing out of a Charles Ad­dams car­toon. At its base, be­side a huge Goth­ic en­trance, was a door­man’s sen­try box. Two cops in uni­form loi­tered near­by, and three squad cars were parked along Cen­tral Park West.

It seemed the cav­al­ry was al­ready in place.

D’Agos­ta slowed his pace, keep­ing as near as he could to the build­ing fronts, a wary eye on the po­lice.

Twen­ty-​four West 72nd Street was a large brown­stone struc­ture halfway down the block. He glanced around again, saw no­body sus­pi­cious, rang the buzzer, gained ad­mit­tance, and quick­ly ducked in­side.

The lob­by was small and dark, the walls cov­ered with dingy-​look­ing gray mar­ble. D’Agos­ta nod­ded to the re­cep­tion­ist, then made his way down the stair­case at the rear of the lob­by. There was a sin­gle base­ment hall­way, with met­al doors set in­to the cin­der-​block walls at reg­ular in­ter­vals. It was the work of six­ty sec­onds to find the door marked B-14. He glanced around once again, then rapped on the door sev­en times, as in­struct­ed.

For a mo­ment, si­lence. Then, from with­in, the sound of a bolt be­ing slid back. The door opened and a man wear­ing the black and white uni­form of a door­man ap­peared. He glanced up and down the hall, then nod­ded to D’Agos­ta and ush­ered him in­side.

To his sur­prise, D’Agos­ta found him­self, not in a room, but in a very nar­row hall­way—bare­ly more than a crawl space—that ran on ahead in­to dark­ness. The door­man switched on a flash­light, then led the way along the cor­ri­dor.

It seemed to go on for­ev­er. The walls changed from cin­der block, to brick, to plas­ter, then back to brick again. At times, the cor­ri­dor widened; at oth­ers, it grew so nar­row it al­most brushed against D’Agos­ta’s shoul­ders. It jogged left a few times, then right. At one point, they emerged in­to a tiny court­yard, lit­tle more than an air shaft, and D’Agos­ta could see a small patch of blue sky far above. It felt like be­ing at the base of a chim­ney. Then they climbed a short stair­way, the door­man opened an­oth­er door with a large, old-​fash­ioned key, and they en­tered yet an­oth­er nar­row cor­ri­dor.

At length, the cor­ri­dor dead-​end­ed at a small ser­vice el­eva­tor. The door­man pulled back the brass grill­work, un­locked the el­eva­tor door with a dif­fer­ent key, and mo­tioned for D’Agos­ta to step in. The man stepped in be­hind D’Agos­ta, closed the grille and the el­eva­tor door, then grasped a large, cir­cu­lar han­dle in one wall. With a protest­ing chuff, the el­eva­tor creaked up­ward.

The an­cient door was win­dow­less, and D’Agos­ta had no idea how many floors they as­cend­ed: he guessed four or five. The el­eva­tor stopped of its own ac­cord and the door­man opened its door. As the bronze grille was pulled back, D’Agos­ta saw a short pas­sage­way be­yond, lead­ing to a sin­gle door. The door was open, and Pen­der­gast stood with­in it, once again clad in his ha­bit­ual black suit.

D’Agos­ta paused, star­ing at him. Ev­er since his sur­prise reap­pear­ance, the man had ap­peared in some dis­guise or oth­er—his face or cloth­ing, or more usu­al­ly both, dra­mat­ical­ly al­tered—and it gave D’Agos­ta a strange chill to see his old friend as he re­al­ly was.

“Vin­cent,” Pen­der­gast said. “Do come in.” And he led the way in­to a small, al­most fea­ture­less room. There was an oak­en dress­er and a leather so­fa along one wall, and a work­table along an­oth­er. Four iMac lap­tops were lined up on the work­table, along with some NAS de­vices and what looked to D’Agos­ta like a net­work hub. There were two doors in the rear of the room; one was closed, and the oth­er opened on­to a small bath­room.

“This is your Dako­ta apart­ment?” D’Agos­ta asked in dis­be­lief.

A wan smile ap­peared on Pen­der­gast’s face, then dis­ap­peared again. “Hard­ly,” he said, clos­ing the door. “My apart­ment is on the floor above this one.”

“Then what’s this place?”

“Think of it as a bolt-​hole. A rather high-​tech bolt-​hole. It was set up last year on the ad­vice of an Ohio ac­quain­tance of mine, in case his ser­vices were tem­porar­ily un­avail­able.”

“Well, you can’t stay here. The cops are crawl­ing all over the en­trance to the Dako­ta. I’ve just come from Lau­ra Hay­ward’s of­fice, and she’s got a red-​hot sus­pect.”

“Me.”

“And how in hell did you learn that?”

“I’ve known it for some time.” Pen­der­gast’s eyes dart­ed from mon­itor to mon­itor as his hands flew over the keys. “When I came up­on the mur­der scene of my friend Michael Deck­er, I found sev­er­al strands of hair clutched in his hand. Blond hair. My broth­er’s hair is not blond: it’s a gin­gery red. Im­me­di­ate­ly, I re­al­ized that Dio­genes’s plan was even more ‘in­ter­est­ing’ than I’d sus­pect­ed. Not on­ly did he plan to kill ev­ery­one close to me—he planned to frame me for their mur­ders.”

“But what about the notes Dio­genes wrote you? Don’t they in­di­cate he’s alive?”

“No. Re­call the odd hand­writ­ing, the hand­writ­ing I said was strange­ly fa­mil­iar? That was my hand­writ­ing, but al­tered just enough so it would ap­pear—to a hand­writ­ing ex­pert, any­way—that I was try­ing to dis­guise it.”

D’Agos­ta took a mo­ment to di­gest this. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I saw no rea­son to bur­den you with all this be­fore it was nec­es­sary. When I saw those hairs, it was per­fect­ly clear to me that Dio­genes would have salt­ed the oth­er crime scenes with false ev­idence as well. I’m sure, dur­ing my con­va­les­cence in Italy, he stocked up on all the phys­ical ev­idence he need­ed, tak­en from my per­son, in­clud­ing my blood. It was on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore they con­nect­ed me to the killings. I had hoped I’d have a lit­tle more time than this. Hay­ward did a com­mend­able job.”

“That’s not all. Lau­ra asked me to set you up. I walked out on that one. They’ve sworn out a war­rant on you. You can’t stay here.”

“On the con­trary, Vin­cent, I must stay here. It’s the on­ly place with the re­sources I need on short no­tice. And it is a bit like Poe’s pur­loined let­ter—the last place they ex­pect to find me is at home. The po­lice pres­ence is a mere for­mal­ity.”

D’Agos­ta stared at him. “So that’s how you knew Dio­genes wouldn’t tar­get Lau­ra. She’s the one in­ves­ti­gat­ing Duchamp’s mur­der. He was bank­ing on her sus­pect­ing you.”

“Pre­cise­ly. Now, pull up a chair and let me show you what I’m do­ing.” Pen­der­gast waved his hands to­ward the four lap­tops.

“These com­put­ers are tapped in par­asit­ical­ly to the city’s web of street cor­ner surveil­lance cam­eras, along with a cou­ple of ma­jor pri­vate sys­tems—ATMs and banks, for ex­am­ple.” He point­ed at one of the screens, which was cur­rent­ly sub­di­vid­ed in­to a dozen small win­dows: in each win­dow, black-​and-​white video feeds of side­walks, street in­ter­sec­tions, and toll plazas were zip­ping by in ac­cel­er­at­ed re­verse mo­tion.

“Why?”

“I’m con­vinced Dio­genes’s fi­nal crime is go­ing to take place in or around Man­hat­tan. And you can­not move around a city like New York these days with­out be­ing pho­tographed, taped, or oth­er­wise sur­veyed dozens of times ev­ery hour.”

“But Dio­genes is dis­guised.”

“To most, yes. Not to me. You can dis­guise your ap­pear­ance, but you can’t dis­guise ev­ery­thing—your man­ner­isms, the way you walk, even the way you blink your eyes. Dio­genes and I are very alike phys­ical­ly. I’ve video­taped my­self, and now I’m run­ning im­age-​recog­ni­tion and pat­tern-​recog­ni­tion al­go­rithms against these video-​in-​var­ious-​states-​of-​mo­tion feeds.” He waved at an­oth­er of the lap­tops. “As you can see, I’m con­cen­trat­ing par­tic­ular­ly on feeds near the Dako­ta and the in­ter­sec­tions around the River­side Drive man­sion. We know Dio­genes has been to the man­sion, and he has prob­ably been here as well. If I can lo­cate him, ac­quire an im­age print, I can track him back­wards and for­wards vi­su­al­ly from that point, try to find a pat­tern in his move­ments.”

“Wouldn’t that need more com­put­ing horse­pow­er than you’d find at a small uni­ver­si­ty?” “Hence the wiring clos­et.” And Pen­der­gast reached over and opened the closed door. In­side, stacked from floor to ceil­ing, were rack-​mount­ed blade servers and RAID ar­rays.

D’Agos­ta whis­tled. “You un­der­stand all this shit?”

“No. But I know how to use it.”

Pen­der­gast swiveled to look at him. Al­though his skin was paler than D’Agos­ta had ev­er seen it, the agent’s eyes glit­tered with a dan­ger­ous bright­ness. He had the man­ic en­er­gy, the de­cep­tive sec­ond wind, of some­body who had not slept in sev­er­al days.

“Dio­genes is out there, Vin­cent. He’s lurk­ing some­where in this myr­iad of da­ta streams. To com­mit his ul­ti­mate crime, he’s go­ing to have to sur­face. And that’s my chance—my last, my on­ly chance— to stop him. This room is the on­ly place any­more where I have ac­cess to the tech­nol­ogy that can ac­com­plish that.” More clat­ter­ing of keys. “The ac­quain­tance I spoke of just now, the one in Ohio? He would be far bet­ter suit­ed to this job than I. But he has been forced to make him­self in­vis­ible for … for rea­sons of his own pro­tec­tion.”

“Lau­ra isn’t the type to wait around. They’re prob­ably al­ready com­ing af­ter you.”

“And no doubt you, too.”

D’Agos­ta said noth­ing.

“They’ve searched my apart­ment, they’ve prob­ably searched the River­side Drive house. As for this lit­tle war­ren … well, you saw your­self that I have a pri­vate ex­it from the Dako­ta. Even the door­men here don’t know about it. On­ly Mar­tyn, who you just met.”

He paused in his typ­ing. “Vin­cent, there is some­thing you must do.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll go straight to Lau­ra Hay­ward, say that you’ll co­op­er­ate in ev­ery way, but that I seem to have dis­ap­peared and that you’ve no idea where I am. There’s no need for you to dam­age your ca­reer any fur­ther over this.”

“I al­ready told you, I’m with you all the way.”

“Vin­cent, I am de­mand­ing that you leave.”

“Hey, Aloy­sius?”

Pen­der­gast looked at him.

“Up yours.”

He saw Pen­der­gast’s eyes were up­on him. “I won’t for­get this,

Vin­cent.”

“Nev­er mind.”

The agent went back to his work. Ten min­utes passed, twen­ty— and then Pen­der­gast sud­den­ly stiff­ened.

“A hit?”

“I be­lieve so,” Pen­der­gast said. He was star­ing in­tent­ly at one of the com­put­ers, play­ing a grainy im­age over and over, for­ward and back­ward.

D’Agos­ta looked over his shoul­der. “Is that him?”

“The com­put­er be­lieves so. And I do, as well. It’s odd, though— the im­age isn’t tak­en from out­side the Dako­ta, as I’d ex­pect­ed. It’s about six blocks north, out­side of—“

At that mo­ment, a low chime sound­ed from a box on the ta­ble. Pen­der­gast turned to­ward it quick­ly.

“What’s that?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“It’s Mar­tyn. It seems there’s some­body to see me.”

D’Agos­ta tensed. “Po­lice?”

Pen­der­gast shook his head. He leaned to­ward the box, de­pressed a switch.

“A bi­cy­cle mes­sen­ger, sir,” came the voice. “He has an en­ve­lope for you.”

“You’ve asked him to wait?”

“Yes.”

“And the po­lice are un­aware of his pres­ence?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Bring him up. Take the usu­al pre­cau­tions.” Pen­der­gast took his fin­ger from the switch and straight­ened. “Let’s see what this is about.” His tone was ca­su­al, but his face looked drawn.

They walked down the short hall­way to the el­eva­tor. A minute passed with­out a word be­ing ex­changed. Then, from be­low, the el­eva­tor gave a clank and be­gan to rise. Short­ly, the brass grille was drawn back and two fig­ures emerged: the door­man D’Agos­ta had met ear­li­er and the bi­cy­cle mes­sen­ger, a slim His­pan­ic youth wear­ing a scarf and a heavy jack­et. He held an over­size en­ve­lope in one hand.

Look­ing at the pack­age, Pen­der­gast’s pale face went gray. Word­less­ly, he reached in­to a pock­et of his black jack­et, with­drew a pair of med­ical gloves, and drew them on. Then he took a twen­ty-​dol­lar bill from his wal­let and gave it to the mes­sen­ger.

“Would you mind wait­ing here a few mo­ments, please?” he asked.

“I guess,” the mes­sen­ger said, look­ing sus­pi­cious­ly at the gloves.

Pen­der­gast took the en­ve­lope, ex­changed a pri­vate look with the door­man. Then, nod­ding to D’Agos­ta, he strode quick­ly back in­to the room.

“Is it from Dio­genes?” D’Agos­ta asked, clos­ing the door be­hind them.

Pen­der­gast didn’t re­spond. In­stead, he spread a sheet of white pa­per on the desk, laid the en­ve­lope on top of it, and ex­am­ined it care­ful­ly. It was un­sealed, the rear flap loose­ly fas­tened by twist­ed red thread. Pen­der­gast gave the thread a brief, close scruti­ny. Then he un­wound it and care­ful­ly up­end­ed the en­ve­lope.

A small sheet of fold­ed pa­per fell out, fol­lowed by a lock of glossy dark hair.

Pen­der­gast drew in his breath sharply. In the room, it sound­ed ex­plo­sive­ly loud. Quick­ly, he knelt and opened the fold­ed sheet.

The pa­per was a beau­ti­ful, hand-​pressed linen, with an em­bossed coat of arms at its top: a lid­less eye over two moons, with a li­on couchant. Be­neath, writ­ten in to­bac­co-​col­ored ink with a foun­tain pen or quill, was a date: Jan­uary 28.

D’Agos­ta re­al­ized it was iden­ti­cal to the note Pen­der­gast had re­ceived a few months ear­li­er, at the man­sion on River­side Drive. Un­like that note, how­ev­er, this one had more writ­ten up­on it than just a date. His eye fell to the words be­low:

She’s very spir­it­ed, broth­er. I can see why you like her.

Sa­vor this to­ken as earnest of my claim: a lock of her love­ly hair. Sa­vor it al­so as a me­men­to of her pass­ing. If you ca­ress it you can al­most smell the sweet air of Capra­ia.

Of course, I could be ly­ing about ev­ery­thing. This lock could be­long to some­one else. Search your heart for the truth.

Frater, ave atque vale.

“Oh, my…” D’Agos­ta said. The words were cut off as his throat closed up in­vol­un­tar­ily. He glanced over at the agent. He was sit­ting on the floor, gen­tly stroking the lock of hair. The look on his face was so ter­ri­ble D’Agos­ta had to turn away.

“It could be a lie,” he said. “Your broth­er’s lied be­fore.”

Pen­der­gast did not an­swer. There was a brief and aw­ful si­lence.

“I’ll go ques­tion the mes­sen­ger,” D’Agos­ta said, not dar­ing to look back.

Ex­it­ing the room, he walked down the cor­ri­dor to the el­eva­tor. The mes­sen­ger was there, wait­ing, watched over by Mar­tyn.

“NYPD,” he said, briefly show­ing his badge. Ev­ery­thing had slowed down, as in a night­mare. He felt cu­ri­ous­ly heavy, as if he could bare­ly move his limbs. He won­dered if this was what it was like to be in shock.

The youth nod­ded.

“Who gave you the pack­age to de­liv­er?”

“Some­body in a cab dropped it off at our ser­vice.”

“What did the pas­sen­ger look like?”

“It was just the cab­bie. There was no pas­sen­ger.”

“What kind of ve­hi­cle, ex­act­ly?”

“Typ­ical yel­low cab. From the city.”

“Did you get a name or medal­lion num­ber?” Even as he asked the ques­tion, D’Agos­ta knew it wouldn’t mat­ter whether the kid had got­ten one or not; no doubt Dio­genes had cov­ered his trail.

The mes­sen­ger shook his head.

“How were you paid?”

“The driv­er paid fifty bucks. Said his in­struc­tions were to get a mes­sen­ger to de­liv­er the pack­age to a Dr. Pen­der­gast, 1 West 72nd Street. In per­son, if pos­si­ble. And not to talk to any­body but Dr. Pen­der­gast or the door­man.”

“Very well.” D’Agos­ta got the youth’s name and em­ploy­er. Then he took Mar­tyn aside, ask­ing him to make sure the cops didn’t stop the mes­sen­ger as he left the build­ing. The strange feel­ing of heav­iness had not left him. He walked back down the cor­ri­dor to the small room.

Pen­der­gast did not look up at his en­trance. He was still sit­ting on the floor, hunched for­ward, the lock of hair placed be­fore him. One hand rest­ed on each knee, palm in­ward, each thumb form­ing a small cir­cle with the mid­dle fin­ger. The bereft, grief-​strick­en ex­pres­sion on his face had dis­ap­peared, and in its place was ut­ter im­pas­siv­ity. He did not move, did not blink, didn’t even seem to breathe. He looked to D’Agos­ta as if he were a mil­lion miles away.

Maybe he is, D’Agos­ta thought. Maybe he’s med­itat­ing or some­thing. Or maybe he’s just try­ing to keep him­self sane.

“The mes­sen­ger knew noth­ing,” he said as gen­tly as he could. “The trail’s too well cov­ered.”

Pen­der­gast did not ac­knowl­edge this. He re­mained mo­tion­less. His face had lost none of its pal­lor.

“How the hell did Dio­genes find out about Vi­ola?” D’Agos­ta burst out.

Pen­der­gast spoke al­most robot­ical­ly. “For the first week, while in Dio­genes’s care, I was rav­ing. Deliri­ous. It’s pos­si­ble I men­tioned her name. Noth­ing es­capes Dio­genes—noth­ing.”

D’Agos­ta sank in­to a near­by chair. Right now, he didn’t think he cared if Lau­ra Hay­ward, a dozen FBI agents, and an army corps came storm­ing in­to the apart­ment. They could lock him up and throw away the key. It wouldn’t make any dif­fer­ence. Life was shit.

The two sat in the room, mo­tion­less, silent, as half an hour ticked by.

Then, with­out warn­ing, Pen­der­gast leaped to his feet, so sud­den­ly that D’Agos­ta’s heart turned over in his chest.

“She would have trav­eled un­der her own name!” he said, eyes glit­ter­ing in­tent­ly.

“What?” D’Agos­ta said, ris­ing him­self.

“She wouldn’t have come if he’d asked her to use a pseudonym or ar­ranged for a false pass­port. And she must have just ar­rived; he wouldn’t de­lay the note—he wouldn’t have had time!”

He raced to­ward the near­est lap­top and be­gan typ­ing fu­ri­ous­ly. With­in twen­ty sec­onds, the typ­ing stopped.

“Here she is!” he cried.

D’Agos­ta raced to look at Pen­der­gast’s screen:

Folke­stone Dat­aCen­tre PRO­PRI­ETARY

SQL En­gine 4.041.a & CON­FI­DEN­TIAL

Pas­sen­ger Man­ifest Lookup

Re­sults of in­quiry fol­low

One record(s) found:

BA-0002359148

Maske­lene, La­dy Vi­ola

British Air­ways Flight 822

De­part­ed: Lon­don Gatwick LGW, 27 Jan­uary, 11:54 P.M. GMT

Ar­rived: Kennedy Intl JFK, 28 Jan­uary, 12:10 A.M. EST

End of In­quiry

Pen­der­gast turned away from the screen. His en­tire be­ing seemed to crack­le with en­er­gy, and his eyes—be­fore so emp­ty and dis­tant— were on fire.

“Come, Vin­cent—we’re off to JFK. Ev­ery minute we waste, the trail grows cold­er.” And with­out an­oth­er word, he dashed out of the room and down the hall.

FORTY-​EIGHT

It was like the old days, D’Agos­ta thought grim­ly: Pen­der­gast in his black suit, rac­ing along the streets of New York City in his Rolls. Ex­cept that, re­al­ly, it wasn’t like the old days at all. Pen­der­gast was a hunt­ed man, and D’Agos­ta him­self was in such deep shit he’d need a de­com­pres­sion cham­ber when he sur­faced— as­sum­ing he ev­er sur­faced at all.

The Rolls pulled up to the curb at Ter­mi­nal 7 Ar­rivals. Pen­der­gast leaped out, leav­ing the ve­hi­cle run­ning. A Port Au­thor­ity po­lice­man was strolling along the curb, and Pen­der­gast swooped down on him.

“Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion.” He passed his gold shield in front of the of­fi­cer briefly, then closed it up and slid it back in­to his suit.

“What can I do for you, sir?” the of­fi­cer re­spond­ed, in­stant­ly in­tim­idat­ed.

“We’re here on an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the ut­most im­por­tance. Can I ask you to watch my ve­hi­cle, Of­fi­cer?”

“Yes, sir.” The man prac­ti­cal­ly salut­ed.

Pen­der­gast strode in­to the ter­mi­nal, black coat flap­ping be­hind him. D’Agos­ta fol­lowed him to bag­gage claim se­cu­ri­ty. With­in, a heavy­set guard was lis­ten­ing pa­tient­ly to a man in a suit shout­ing an­gri­ly about a stolen bag.

Again, Pen­der­gast opened his badge, “Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast, Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion. My as­so­ciate, Vin­cent D’Agos­ta, NYPD.”

“Well, it’s about time!” the man cried an­gri­ly. “My wife’s ex­treme­ly valu­able jew­el­ry—“

“Nev­er put valu­able jew­el­ry in check-​in lug­gage,” said Pen­der­gast smooth­ly, link­ing his arm in the man’s and pro­pelling him to the door and out, then step­ping quick­ly back and shut­ting and lock­ing it.

“You make it look so easy,” said the guard with a grin.

“Is there an Of­fi­cer Carter on du­ty?” said Pen­der­gast, his eye just flit­ting over the man’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion badge.

“That’s me. Ran­dall Carter. What can I do for you?”

“I was told you were the best man to han­dle my prob­lem.”

“Re­al­ly?” The man’s face lit up. “Who—?”

“We need to re­view some se­cu­ri­ty video­tapes from last night. Just af­ter mid­night. It’s a mat­ter of great ur­gen­cy.”

“Yes, sir, let me just call the di­rec­tor of se­cu­ri­ty.”

Pen­der­gast shook his head won­der­ing­ly. “Didn’t they tell you this was al­ready cleared?”

“It is? I didn’t know. Fun­ny they didn’t send down an S.C… .”

“Well,” Pen­der­gast in­ter­rupt­ed briskly, “I’m glad they at least had the sense to send me to you. You think for your­self; you’re not one of those bu­reau­crat­ic types.” He sud­den­ly leaned in­to the man’s face and grasped his shoul­der. “Are you wear­ing body ar­mor, Of­fi­cer?”

“Body ar­mor? We’re not re­quired … Hey, but why—?”

“We’d bet­ter get go­ing.”

“Yes, sir.” The of­fi­cer need­ed no more per­sua­sion. He hus­tled to the back of his of­fice and un­locked a se­cu­ri­ty door.

Down a beige cor­ri­dor, past an­oth­er locked door, and D’Agos­ta found him­self in a large com­put­er room fes­tooned with mon­itors play­ing back live video feeds from all over the ter­mi­nal. A few se­cu­ri­ty guards were sit­ting around a cafe­te­ria-​style ta­ble drink­ing cof­fee, while a thin, ir­ri­tat­ed tech­ni­cian rapped away on a key­board in one cor­ner.

“These gen­tle­men need to see some video,” Carter said to the tech­ni­cian.

“Mo­ment,” said the tech­ni­cian.

“No, now. This man’s FBI and it’s a mat­ter of grave im­por­tance.”

The tech­ni­cian got up, ex­pelling an ir­ri­tat­ed hiss. “Right. Let’s see the S.C.” He held out his hand.

“It’s been cleared. You got my okay on that.”

A roll of the eyes. “So what do you want?”

Pen­der­gast stepped up. “British Air­ways Flight 822 ar­rived here from Gatwick just af­ter mid­night. I want the se­cu­ri­ty video­tapes of the carousel where that flight’s lug­gage ar­rived and, most im­por­tant, I need to re­view the feed from the greet­ing area just be­yond cus­toms clear­ance.”

“Have a seat. This might take a while.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have a while.”

“Give me a break. I’ll do what I can, but don’t hold your breath.”

Pen­der­gast broke in­to a gen­tle smile. See­ing that smile, D’Agos­ta felt him­self tense up in­stinc­tive­ly.

“You’re Jonathan Mur­phy, are you not?” Pen­der­gast asked in his hon­eyed voice.

“So you can read an ID card. Bra­vo.”

“I be­lieve in the car­rot-​and-​stick method of do­ing things, Jonathan,” Pen­der­gast said, still pleas­ant­ly. “Get me those video­tapes in five min­utes and you will re­ceive a ten-​thou­sand­dol­lar re­ward from the FBI’s Pub­lic In­cen­tive and Re­ward Pro­gram, al­so known as PIRP. No doubt you’ve heard of it. On the oth­er hand, fail to get me that video­tape and I’ll put a red se­cu­ri­ty flag in your file, which will mean that you’ll nev­er work at an­oth­er air­port, or any oth­er se­cured site, in the coun­try again. Now, which is it to be: car­rot or stick?”

A si­lence. The se­cu­ri­ty guards were nudg­ing each oth­er and grin­ning. Clear­ly, the tech­ni­cian wasn’t pop­ular.

Mur­phy smirked. “I’ll take the ten grand.”

“Ex­cel­lent.”

The tech­ni­cian sat down again and went to work with a vengeance, fin­gers ham­mer­ing at the keys. D’Agos­ta watched as num­bers scrolled fran­ti­cal­ly across the CRT.

“We don’t use video­tapes any­more,” he said. “We have ev­ery­thing stored dig­ital­ly, on-​site. The ganged feeds use up an en­tire ter­abyte of our RAID-1 ar­ray ev­ery…”

Sud­den­ly, he stopped bash­ing at the key­board. “Okay. The flight ar­rived at ten min­utes af­ter mid­night, gate 34. Let’s see … It takes about fif­teen min­utes, on av­er­age, to go through pre-​cus­toms and walk to the carousel… I’ll cue up to twelve-​twen­ty, just to be safe.”

A video sprang to life on Mur­phy’s screen. Pen­der­gast bent for­ward, scru­ti­niz­ing it in­tent­ly. D’Agos­ta peered over his shoul­der. He could see the in­ter­na­tion­al bag­gage area, an emp­ty carousel turn­ing.

“I’ll nudge up the speed un­til peo­ple start ar­riv­ing,” Mur­phy said.

Now the carousel turned much faster. The sec­onds spun by, in fast mo­tion, at the bot­tom of the screen. Short­ly, peo­ple be­gan ar­riv­ing at the carousel, look­ing for their lug­gage. Mur­phy tapped a set of keys, slow­ing the video down to nor­mal speed.

“That’s her!” Pen­der­gast whis­pered ur­gent­ly, point­ing at the screen.

D’Agos­ta made out the slen­der form of Vi­ola Maske­lene, car­ry­ing a small bag. She ap­proached the carousel, pulled her tick­et out of the bag, ex­am­ined the bag­gage claim checks, then crossed her arms to wait.

For a minute, Pen­der­gast just stared at the im­age. Then he spoke again. “Switch to the greet­ing area, please. Same time frame.”

The tech­ni­cian typed in some more com­mands. The im­age of the bag­gage area dis­ap­peared, re­placed by the wait­ing area out­side cus­toms. It was sparse­ly pop­ulat­ed, a few knots of peo­ple stand­ing around rest­less­ly, wait­ing to meet ar­rivals.

“There,” said Pen­der­gast.

A man stood off to one side, tall, slen­der, dressed in a dark over­coat. He had gin­gery hair, and he was look­ing around the room rather lan­guid­ly, peer­ing in­to var­ious cor­ners. His eye turned and stopped, fixed on the se­cu­ri­ty cam­era.

D’Agos­ta had to stop him­self from tak­ing an in­stinc­tu­al step back. The man was star­ing right at them. His face was tan and an­gu­lar and he had a close­ly trimmed beard, one eye milky blue, the oth­er hazel. D’Agos­ta rec­og­nized him in­stant­ly as the man he had seen on the slopes above Cas­tel Fos­co in Italy that fate­ful day not two months ear­li­er.

The man nod­ded for­mal­ly at the cam­era, raised his hand just a lit­tle, and tipped a wave. His lips moved as if in speech.

D’Agos­ta glanced at Pen­der­gast. His face was white—with rage.

Pen­der­gast turned to the tech­ni­cian. “Back that up and print it out, there—when the man waves.”

“Yes, sir.”

A mo­ment lat­er and the com­put­er print­er was hum­ming. Pen­der­gast ripped the col­or im­age out and stuffed it in his pock­et.

“Fast-​for­ward, please, un­til a la­dy conies out and greets him.”

Once again, the im­ages on the screen scur­ried briefly in ac­cel­er­at­ed mo­tion, slow­ing again when Vi­ola emerged. Dio­genes ap­proached with two out­stretched hands and a large smile. D’Agos­ta watched breath­less­ly as the two ex­changed what ap­peared to be pleas­antries; then Dio­genes waved a bill and a sky­cap came rush­ing over. They turned and head­ed to­ward the door, the sky­cap fol­low­ing with Vi­ola’s bags.

Pen­der­gast point­ed at the screen. “Who’s that sky­cap?”

Carter, the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer, squint­ed at the screen. “Looks like Norm. Nor­man Saun­ders.”

“Is he still on?”

Carter shook his head. “Couldn’t say.”

“He goes off at eight,” one of the oth­er guards said. “But some­times he works over­time.”

The fig­ures dis­ap­peared out the glass doors.

“Go to the curb­side cam­era.”

“Right.”

More rap­ping of keys. The scene abrupt­ly changed again. There was Dio­genes strid­ing to­ward a dark Lin­coln. He grasped the door han­dle, opened the door for Vi­ola, helped her in. He wait­ed for the sky­cap to close the trunk; then he walked around the car and got in­to the driv­er’s seat.

The car pulled away, ac­cel­er­at­ing in­to the dark­ness be­yond, and was gone.

“Back up,” said Pen­der­gast, “and get me a print of the car. When the door is open, please: I want to see the in­te­ri­or. And an­oth­er print when the car’s pulling away, so we can get a make on the plate.”

A mo­ment lat­er, the com­put­er was spit­ting out the im­ages, which Pen­der­gast im­me­di­ate­ly thrust in­to his jack­et. “Good. Now we’re go­ing to find Saun­ders.”

“If he’s here, he’ll be at the east carousels,” Carter said.

“Thank you.” Pen­der­gast turned to go.

“So,” said the tech­ni­cian, “how do I col­lect my ten grand?”

Pen­der­gast paused. “Ten thou­sand dol­lars? Just for do­ing your job? A ridicu­lous idea.”

To much muf­fled laugh­ter and shak­ing of heads, they left the room. “If Saun­ders is on, he’ll be over by bag­gage,” said Carter. “I’ll show you.”

Sev­er­al flights had re­cent­ly ar­rived, and streams of trav­el­ers were crowd­ing in­to bag­gage claim. All carousels were run­ning full-​bore, packed with lug­gage, and sky­caps were com­ing and go­ing busi­ly.

Carter stopped one of them. “Saun­ders take an ex­tra shift?”

The man shook his head. “He’s off un­til mid­night.”

Look­ing past the sky­cap, D’Agos­ta no­ticed four Port Au­thor­ity cops on the land­ing above the bag­gage claim con­course, scan­ning the crowd. Im­me­di­ate­ly, he nudged Pen­der­gast. “I don’t like that.”

“Nei­ther do I.”

Carter’s ra­dio went off and he grabbed it.

“We bet­ter get the hell out of here,” mur­mured D’Agos­ta.

They be­gan walk­ing briskly to­ward the ex­it.

“Hey!” came a dis­tant shout. “Wait!”

D’Agos­ta glanced back to see the of­fi­cers spilling in­to the crowd, push­ing their way through. “You two! Wait!”

Pen­der­gast broke in­to a run, dart­ing through the throngs of peo­ple and head­ing back out to the curb. The P.A. cop was still be­side the idling Rolls, talk­ing on his ra­dio. Pen­der­gast shot past him, and D’Agos­ta half jumped, half tum­bled in­to the pas­sen­ger seat. The man’s protest was lost in the roar of the big en­gine and the tremen­dous screech of rub­ber as the Rolls shot away from the pick­up area at high speed.

As they ac­cel­er­at­ed on­to the JFK Ex­press­way, Pen­der­gast pulled the print­outs from his suit coat.

“Boot up my lap­top, there in the car­ri­er, and do a make on a Lin­coln Town Car, New York li­cense 453A WQ6. Ra­dio the mile­post 11 toll plaza on the Van Wyck Ex­press­way and talk some­one in­to re­view­ing the se­cu­ri­ty tapes for be­tween twelve-​thir­ty and one a.m., go­ing both east and west.”

“What about us?”

“We’re go­ing east.”

“East? You don’t think he took her in­to the city?”

“That’s ex­act­ly what I do think he did. But giv­en that Dio­genes seems to be able to an­tic­ipate what I think, I’m go­ing east—to the far end of the is­land.”

“Right.”

“An­oth­er thing: we’re go­ing to need to trade down.” And Pen­der­gast abrupt­ly pulled off the air­port ex­press­way in­to the re­turns lot of a Hertz of­fice, steered the big car in­to an emp­ty spot, and killed the en­gine.

D’Agos­ta looked up from the lap­top. “What, rent some­thing?”

“No. Steal some­thing.”

FORTY-​NINE

Once again, Smith­back en­tered the gra­cious con­fines of Dr. Ti­sander’s of­fice, a load of text­books un­der one arm. It was eight o’clock, well past the bar­bar­ic 5:30 p.m. din­ner hour of Riv­er Oaks. He found the psy­chi­atrist seat­ed be­hind his desk, but this evening the usu­al look of gen­teel con­de­scen­sion was marred by an ir­ri­tat­ed flash in the eyes.

“Ed­ward,” Dr. Ti­sander said. “Al­though I am ex­treme­ly busy, I am hap­py to give you five min­utes of my un­di­vid­ed at­ten­tion.”

Smith­back seat­ed him­self with­out an in­vi­ta­tion and thumped the load of books on­to the man’s desk.

“I’ve been think­ing about some­thing you said in our con­ver­sa­tion the day be­fore yes­ter­day,” he be­gan. “You told me: ‘It is a grave step to de­prive a per­son of his free­dom, and due pro­cess must be fol­lowed with to­tal scrupu­los­ity’”

“I may have said some­thing like that, yes.”

“You said ex­act­ly that. It made me cu­ri­ous to know just what that pro­cess is.”

Ti­sander nod­ded con­de­scend­ing­ly. “You seem to have found our li­brary to your sat­is­fac­tion.”

“Very much so. In fact, I found ex­act­ly what I was look­ing for.”

“How nice,” said Ti­sander, feign­ing in­ter­est while tak­ing a sur­rep­ti­tious glance at his watch.

Smith­back pat­ted the top book. “The laws of New York State re­gard­ing the in­vol­un­tary com­mit­ment of the men­tal­ly ill are among the strictest in the na­tion.”

“I am well aware of that. It’s one rea­son why we have so many home­less peo­ple on the street.”

“It isn’t enough for a fam­ily to sign the doc­uments in or­der to com­mit some­one against his will. There’s a whole pro­cess in­volved.”

An­oth­er sage nod from Ti­sander.

“Isn’t it true, for ex­am­ple, that a judge has to de­clare the per­son non com­pos men­tis?”

“Yes.”

“And even a judge can­not make that dec­la­ra­tion un­less two con­di­tions are met. Do you re­call those two con­di­tions, Dr. Ti­sander?”

This time the psy­chi­atrist gave a gen­uine smile, de­light­ed to show off his eru­di­tion. “I cer­tain­ly do. The per­son is ei­ther a dan­ger to him­self—men­tal­ly or phys­ical­ly—or a dan­ger to so­ci­ety.”

“Right. In the first case, sui­cide ideation or an ac­tu­al at­tempt must usu­al­ly be present, which must be at­test­ed to by a signed let­ter from a doc­tor. In the case of a per­son be­ing a dan­ger to so­ci­ety, it’s usu­al­ly nec­es­sary for the per­son to have been ar­rest­ed.”

“You have been busy, Ed­ward,” said Ti­sander.

“And then, af­ter the dec­la­ra­tion of non com­pos men­tis, there must be a psy­chi­atric eval­ua­tion rec­om­mend­ing in­vol­un­tary com­mit­ment.”

“All stan­dard pro­ce­dure. Now, Ed­ward, it’s af­ter eight, and it isn’t long un­til lights-​out, so if you’d—“

Smith­back pulled one of the books from the pile. “I’ll be done in a minute.”

Ti­sander rose, squar­ing pa­pers on his desk. “If you make it quick.” He nod­ded im­per­cep­ti­bly, and an or­der­ly emerged from the shad­ows near the door.

Smith­back hasti­ly pulled a sheet of pa­per from the book and hand­ed it over the desk. “I drew up a list of doc­uments that must, by law, be in my file.”

Ti­sander took the list, scanned it with a frown. “A judge’s dec­la­ra­tion. A sui­cide-​at­tempt re­port—signed by a doc­tor—or an ar­rest record. A psy­chi­atric eval­ua­tion.” He read them off. “I’ve no doubt they’re all there. Now, Ed­ward, it’s time.”

The or­der­ly ad­vanced.

“One oth­er thing,” Smith­back said.

“Thank you, Ed­ward.” A note of ex­as­per­ation had crept in­to Ti­sander’s oro­tund voice.

“A ques­tion. That psy­chi­atric eval­ua­tion that must be in the file— who ad­min­is­ters it?”

“We do. Al­ways. Sure­ly, Ed­ward, you re­mem­ber the in­ter­view and tests you took on ad­mit­tance.”

“There’s where you blew it, Ti­sander.” Smith­back dropped the heavy tome back on the desk, for ef­fect. “It says right in here—“

“Jonathan?”

The or­der­ly ap­peared at Smith­back’s el­bow, a hulk­ing pres­ence. “This way, Mr. Jones.”

“—by law,” Smith­back went on loud­ly, “the psy­chi­atric eval­ua­tion can’t be done by any­one on the staff of the ad­mit­ting in­sti­tu­tion.”

“Rub­bish. Show Mr. Jones to his room, Jonathan.”

“It’s true!” Smith­back cried as the or­der­ly took his arm. “Back in the fifties, a young man was com­mit­ted by his fam­ily in col­lu­sion with the asy­lum. They stole his in­her­itance. In the af­ter­math, a law was passed stat­ing the eval­ua­tion had to be done by an in­de­pen­dent psy­chi­atrist. Check it out. Page 337, Ro­man­ski v. Rey­nauld State Hos­pi­tal!”

“This way, Mr. Jones,” said the or­der­ly, pro­pelling him firm­ly across the Per­sian car­pet.

Smith­back dug in his heels. “Ti­sander, when I get out, I’m go­ing to sue Riv­er Oaks and you per­son­al­ly. If you can’t pro­duce that in­de­pen­dent eval­ua­tion, you’ll lose the suit—and it’ll cost you dear­ly.”

“Good night, Ed­ward.”

“I’ll make it my mis­sion in life! I’ll dog you like the Fu­ries dogged Orestes. I’ll take away ev­ery­thing you have, your job, your rep­uta­tion, this whole pile. As you know, I’m as rich as Croe­sus. Check my file. I know for a fact you cut that cor­ner! There’s no in­de­pen­dent eval­ua­tion, and you know it!”

Smith­back felt him­self be­ing dragged bod­ily to­ward the door.

“Shut the door on your way out, will you, Jonathan?” Dr. Ti­sander said.

“Ti­sander?” Smith­back raised his voice. “Can you af­ford to make this mis­take? You’ll lose the whole en­chi­la­da, you son of a—!”

Jonathan shut the door to the of­fice. “Come on, Jones,” he said, giv­ing Smith­back a gen­tle push down the hall. “Give it a rest.”

“Get your hands off me!” Smith­back cried, strug­gling.

“Hey, man, I’m just do­ing my job,” said the or­der­ly calm­ly.

Smith­back re­laxed. “Right. Sor­ry. I imag­ine it’s about as much fun work­ing here as it is be­ing a ‘guest.’”

The or­der­ly re­leased him and Smith­back dust­ed off his jack­et. “All right, Jonathan,” he said, mus­ter­ing a fee­ble smile. “Es­cort me back to my cage. I’ll work up a new an­gle to­mor­row.”

Just as they were turn­ing the cor­ner, Ti­sander’s voice came echo­ing down the hall. “Jonathan? Bring Mr. Jones back.”

Jonathan paused. “Looks like you get an­oth­er hear­ing.”

“Yeah, right.”

As they turned back to­ward Ti­sander’s of­fice, Smith­back heard the low voice of the or­der­ly be­hind him. “Good luck.”

Smith­back en­tered the of­fice. Ti­sander was stand­ing be­hind the desk, his fig­ure rigid. Smith­back saw his own file open on the di­rec­tor’s desk. Next to it was the book he’d in­di­cat­ed—opened to page 337.

“Sit down,” Ti­sander said terse­ly. He nod­ded at the or­der­ly. “You can wait out­side.”

Smith­back took a seat.

“You think you’re a clever fel­low,” Ti­sander said. All the pho­ny good hu­mor and con­de­scen­sion was gone. His face was now as hard and gray as a boiled pota­to.

“I was right,” Smith­back mur­mured, more to him­self than to Ti­sander.

“A sheer tech­ni­cal­ity. There isn’t a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal in the state that does in­de­pen­dent eval­ua­tions. I don’t think any­one’s even aware of this ridicu­lous law. But un­der the cir­cum­stances, I can’t af­ford to keep you here.”

“You’re damn right you can’t af­ford it. I’ll sue your ass from here to Al­bany—“

Ti­sander closed his eyes and held up a hand. “Mr. Jones, please. Our in­ten­tion was to help you, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let some spoiled brat un­do all the good I’ve built up over the years. Frankly, you’re not worth it.”

“So I’m free?”

“As soon as I write up the de­com­mit­ment pa­pers. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it’s al­most lock­down. You won’t be able to leave un­til six a.m. to­mor­row.”

“To­mor­row?” Smith­back echoed, al­most afraid to be­lieve his ears.

“Be­lieve me, I’d love to get rid of you now. Jonathan?”

The or­der­ly came back in.

“Mr. Jones is to be dis­charged in the morn­ing. See to it he’s giv­en ev­ery con­sid­er­ation un­til then.”

They ex­it­ed the of­fice, and as soon as the door closed, Smith­back grinned. “Jonathan, I’m out­ta here.”

Jonathan high-​fived him with a big smile. “Man, how’d you do it?”

Smith­back shrugged. “Sheer bril­liance.”

FIFTY

No­ra Kel­ly paused on the cor­ner of 77th Street and Mu­se­um Drive, look­ing north­ward. The great Ro­manesque en­trance to the mu­se­um was lit up with spot­lights, a five-​sto­ry ban­ner tout­ing the open­ing hung on the fa­cade. Be­low, the drive was packed with the usu­al New York chaos of limos and black Mer­cedes, dis­gorg­ing pa­trons and celebri­ties in furs and black tie to suc­ces­sive waves of flash­es. The in­evitable red car­pet had been rolled down the gran­ite steps, which were roped off as if at a movie pre­miere, to keep back the press and the un­in­vit­ed. The whole spec­ta­cle made her sick.

Mar­go Green had been bru­tal­ly mur­dered just two days ago and buried this very morn­ing—yet it was as if the mu­se­um had al­ready dis­missed and for­got­ten her. No­ra won­dered what would hap­pen if she just turned around and went back to her apart­ment; but she al­ready knew the an­swer: she might as well kiss her ca­reer good-​bye. She was sup­pos­ed­ly one of the stars of this show, as George Ash­ton had made all too clear to her. The show must go on.

Tak­ing a deep breath, and pulling her woolen coat more tight­ly about her shoul­ders, she start­ed for­ward. As she drew clos­er, she no­ticed a com­mo­tion off to one side. A group of short, heavy­set men dressed in buck­skins and wrapped in dec­orat­ed blan­kets was stand­ing in a cir­cle, beat­ing drums and chant­ing—some wav­ing bun­dles of smok­ing sage­brush. Af­ter a mo­ment of in­com­pre­hen­sion, she sud­den­ly re­al­ized what it was all about: the Tano protesters had ar­rived. She could see Manet­ti, the se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor, talk­ing with them and ges­tur­ing, flanked by a cou­ple of NYPD cops and some mu­se­um guards. It seemed the com­mo­tion had be­gun to at­tract the at­ten­tion of the guests, and some of them were com­ing over to see what was hap­pen­ing.

“Ex­cuse me!” No­ra pushed her way through some gawk­ers, ducked un­der the vel­vet rope, stuck her mu­se­um badge in the face of a protest­ing guard, and ap­proached the group of In­di­ans. At that very mo­ment, a beau­ti­ful young wom­an came sweep­ing up: a star or star­let of some kind, judg­ing by the trail of pa­parazzi that fol­lowed in her wake.

“This is pri­vate prop­er­ty,” Manet­ti was say­ing to what No­ra as­sumed was the lead­er of the Tanos. “We don’t ob­ject to your protest­ing, but you have to do it down there, on the side­walk—“

“Sir,” the lead­er be­gan in a qui­et voice, “we are not protest­ing, we are pray­ing—“

“What­ev­er. This is pri­vate prop­er­ty.”

The celebri­ty wad­ed in. With a jolt, No­ra rec­og­nized her as movie star Wan­da Meur­sault, tall, ex­ot­ic, and vague­ly for­eign, ru­mored to be in line for best ac­tress at the up­com­ing Acade­my Awards.

“Hold on! Why shouldn’t these peo­ple have a right to pray?” she de­mand­ed to a dozen si­mul­ta­ne­ous flash­es. A thick­et of boomed mikes came swing­ing around to cap­ture ev­ery death­less word that might drop from her lips, and TV lights fired up.

In­stant­ly, No­ra saw a P.R. dis­as­ter in the mak­ing.

“I’m not say­ing they can’t pray,” Manet­ti said, ex­as­per­ation strong in his voice. “All I’m say­ing is that this is pri­vate prop­er­ty—“

“These Na­tive Amer­icans are pray­ing.” Meur­sault turned and asked, as an af­terthought: “Why are you pray­ing?”

“We’re pray­ing for our sa­cred masks, locked in a case in the mu­se­um,” the lead­er said.

“They’ve locked up your sa­cred masks?” The ac­tress’s face bloomed in mock hor­ror.

The cam­eras ze­roed in.

Some­thing had to be done—and fast. No­ra shoved for­ward, push­ing aside a po­lice­man and jostling Manet­ti to one side.

“Hey, just a minute,” the se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor be­gan.

“No­ra Kel­ly, as­sis­tant cu­ra­tor of the ex­hi­bi­tion,” No­ra ex­plained to the cop, dan­gling her badge be­fore ev­ery of­fi­cial face with­in reach. She turned to the se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor. “I’ll han­dle this, Mr. Manet­ti.”

“Dr. Kel­ly, these peo­ple are tres­pass­ing on mu­se­um prop­er­ty—“

“I know that. I’ll han­dle it.”

Manet­ti fell silent. Amaz­ing, No­ra thought, how quick­ly a sharp tone and an air of au­thor­ity—an au­thor­ity she didn’t have—could turn the ta­bles.

She turned to the Tano lead­er, star­tled to see he was old, at least sev­en­ty. The calm­ness and dig­ni­ty in his face was re­mark­able. This wasn’t the young, an­gry ac­tivist she had imag­ined. The oth­er men were equal­ly aged, all some­what ro­tund, wrapped in Pendle­ton wool blan­kets. The old VW bus they’d ar­rived in, a re­al junker, was parked il­le­gal­ly on Mu­se­um Drive and would no doubt soon be towed.

“Y’aah shas slit dz’in nit­sa,” she said to the man.

The lead­er stared at her dumb­found­ed. “Y’aah shas,” he said hasti­ly, as if re­mem­ber­ing him­self. “How—?”

“I spent some time at Tano Pueblo,” said No­ra. “That’s all I know of your lan­guage, so please don’t try to re­ply!” She smiled and held out her hand. “No­ra Kel­ly, one of the cu­ra­tors of the show. I be­lieve I spoke to one of your col­leagues.”

“You spoke to me.”

“Then you must be Mr. Wame­towa.”

The old man nod­ded.

“How can I help you?” No­ra asked.

“They want to pray!” Meur­sault shout­ed from the side­lines.

No­ra ig­nored her, keep­ing her at­ten­tion on Wame­towa.

“We’re pray­ing to the masks,” he said. “That’s all we’re ask­ing, to speak to our masks.”

“Speak to the masks?”

“Yes. To re­as­sure them that we’re here, that we care about them, that they haven’t been for­got­ten.”

No­ra could see Manet­ti rolling his eyes.

“That’s so beau­ti­ful,” said Meur­sault, turn­ing her head to bet­ter ex­pose her pro­file to the cam­eras. An­oth­er dozen flash­es went off.

“We be­lieve the masks are alive, that they have a spir­it. They’ve been alone and away from us for a long time. We’ve come to bless them, com­fort them.”

Sud­den­ly, No­ra re­al­ized just what the so­lu­tion was.

She pre­tend­ed to think for a mo­ment. She knew, from her brief week at Tano Pueblo back in her grad­uate stu­dent days, that they viewed any de­ci­sion ar­rived at quick­ly as a poor de­ci­sion. “This doesn’t seem like a good place to do that,” she said at last.

“That’s just what I was say­ing—” Manet­ti be­gan.

No­ra paid no at­ten­tion. “I won­der if there might be a bet­ter place…”

“There is,” Manet­ti said. “Down there on the side­walk.”

No­ra flashed a look at Manet­ti.

“We would like to be clos­er to our masks, not fur­ther,” said Wame­towa.

“Why don’t you come in, then?” No­ra asked.

“They won’t let us.”

“Come in as my guests. I’ll take you to the masks right now, so you can speak to them in pri­vate—be­fore the un­veil­ing of the hall.”

“Dr. Kel­ly, are you crazy?” Manet­ti protest­ed.

The Tano el­der stared at her a minute. Then his broad, an­cient face broke in­to a ra­di­ant smile. He gave a dig­ni­fied bow. “Ee­sha ?at dzi?. You are a hu­man be­ing, Miss No­ra.”

“Bra­vo!” cried Meur­sault.

“I won’t per­mit this,” the se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor said.

“Mr. Manet­ti, I’ll take full re­spon­si­bil­ity.”

“You can’t just bring these peo­ple in­to the hall be­fore the rib­bon cut­ting—that’s im­pos­si­ble!”

“Noth­ing’s im­pos­si­ble. In fact, this is the way it should be.” She turned to the In­di­ans. “Would you gen­tle­men like to fol­low me?”

“We’d be hap­py to,” said the Tano.

Meur­sault linked her arm with the star­tled old In­di­an’s and they marched for­ward be­hind No­ra, the crowd of press and on­look­ers surg­ing be­hind. “Make way for the Tano el­ders!” Meur­sault cried. “Make way!” Her se­quined dress shim­mered un­der the lights, her face ra­di­ant at seiz­ing so bril­liant­ly the cen­ter of at­ten­tion.

Like mag­ic, the crowd part­ed as they mount­ed the red-​car­pet­ed steps. The Tanos be­gan soft­ly chant­ing and beat­ing their drums again as they passed through the Ro­tun­da and en­tered the Hall of the Heav­ens, and No­ra found her­self fac­ing a line of gala par­ty­go­ers who had fall­en rapt at the sight of Na­tive Amer­icans march­ing to­ward the hall. No doubt they all thought the pro­ces­sion was part of the pro­gram. The may­or came for­ward, sens­ing, like Meur­sault, an op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Manet­ti fol­lowed be­hind, his face red but his mouth shut, ob­vi­ous­ly re­al­iz­ing it would be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive to con­tin­ue the ar­gu­ment in front of the whole city.

Now Col­lopy came rush­ing for­ward from the greet­ing line. “No­ra! What in the world?”

She bent to­ward him and whis­pered quick­ly. “The Tanos would like to have a pri­vate mo­ment with the masks alone, be­fore the rib­bon cut­ting.”

“What­ev­er for?”

“To pray for and bless the masks. That’s all.”

Col­lopy frowned. “No­ra, this is not the time. Sure­ly, this can wait!”

No­ra looked straight in­to his eyes. “Dr. Col­lopy. Please trust me on this. I know the In­di­ans of the South­west well, I’ve lived and worked among them for years. They’re not here to cause you trou­ble or pub­lic em­bar­rass­ment. They just want a lit­tle pri­vate time with their masks. By the time the cer­emo­ny’s over, they’ll be gone. And the whole sit­ua­tion will be de­fused. This is the very best way to han­dle things, and I know if you give it care­ful con­sid­er­ation, you’ll agree.” She dropped her voice even fur­ther. “It al­so hap­pens to be a great pub­lic re­la­tions op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

Col­lopy looked at No­ra, his pa­tri­cian face wide with as­ton­ish­ment. Then he looked at Manet­ti. Fi­nal­ly, he turned to­ward the wait­ing Tanos. He cleared his throat and smoothed his hair, his brow wrin­kled in thought.

And then sud­den­ly, his face broke in­to a wel­com­ing smile. He reached out his hand to­ward the Tano lead­er. “Wel­come! Mr… . ?”

“Wame­towa.”

“Of course! Wel­come! The mu­se­um is de­light­ed to re­ceive you and your group as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Tano peo­ple. I un­der­stand you’ve come a long way to see the Great Ki­va masks.”

“Two thou­sand miles.”

A mur­mur went up in the crowd. The cam­eras were whirring.

“We are so glad you could make it. This is a spe­cial hon­or for the mu­se­um and for me per­son­al­ly.”

The press was eat­ing it up. No­ra felt a huge re­lief: it was go­ing to turn out all right.

“Our se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor, Mr. Manet­ti, will take you in­to the hall to, ah, vis­it with the masks in pri­vate. Mr. Manet­ti? You can han­dle the se­cu­ri­ty zones a tad ahead of sched­ule, I’m sure. And leave them alone while they pray.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Will half an hour suf­fice?” Col­lopy asked the lead­er.

“Yes, thank you,” replied the Tano el­der.

“Splen­did! Af­ter­wards, you’re all in­vit­ed to join the fes­tiv­ities, Mr. Wem, ah, Wem…” “Wame­towa.”

“Ex­cel­lent! Is there any­thing else we can do?”

“For now, this will suf­fice.” The Tanos nod­ded, look­ing around and nod­ding to one an­oth­er. “To tell you the truth, we didn’t ex­pect to be treat­ed with this kind of re­spect.”

“Non­sense! We’re de­light­ed to have you!” Col­lopy turned to­ward the cam­eras, hav­ing ful­ly re­cov­ered his com­po­sure. “The mu­se­um thanks the Tano peo­ple for the priv­ilege of be­ing al­lowed to share these re­mark­able masks with the rest of the world.”

Meur­sault be­gan the clap­ping and soon the hall was thun­der­ing with ap­plause, the tele­vi­sion cam­eras cap­tur­ing ev­ery de­tail.

No­ra watched Manet­ti lead the group of In­di­ans down the cor­ri­dor, speak­ing in­to a twoway ra­dio as he did so. Then she turned, walked to the near­est chair she could find, and col­lapsed in it. She couldn’t be­lieve she’d spo­ken to the mu­se­um di­rec­tor like that. Her knees felt like rub­ber.

In a de­tached, al­most weary way, it oc­curred to her how fit­ting an el­egy this was for Mar­go. It had been so im­por­tant to her, this is­sue of the masks and the Tanos’ sovereign­ty over them. See­ing these In­di­ans ush­ered in­to the ex­hi­bi­tion with so­lic­itous­ness and re­spect would have made her very hap­py.

Sud­den­ly, a cold glass of cham­pagne ap­peared be­fore her. She looked up in sur­prise to see Hugo Men­zies stand­ing be­hind her, re­splen­dent in a mag­nif­icent shawl-​col­lared tuxe­do, his flow­ing white hair combed back, face beam­ing.

He took No­ra’s hand, placed the cold glass in­to it, pat­ted her on the back, and sat down. “Did any­one ev­er tell you what a ge­nius you are?” He chuck­led. “That was the most dash­ing pub­lic­ity coup it has been my priv­ilege to wit­ness.”

No­ra shook her head. “It could have been a pub­lic­ity dis­as­ter.”

“It would have been a dis­as­ter if you hadn’t been on the scene. But not on­ly did you han­dle the Tanos, but you made the mu­se­um look down­right benev­olent. Bril­liant, just bril­liant.” He prac­ti­cal­ly chor­tled with plea­sure, his eyes sparkling. No­ra had nev­er seen him so an­imat­ed.

She took a slug of cham­pagne. It had been the week from hell, with Bill threat­ened and in hid­ing, Mar­go’s mur­der, the stress of the open­ing, the warn­ings from Pen­der­gast… But right now she was too tired and ex­haust­ed to feel any fear. All she want­ed to do was go home, dou­ble-​lock the door, and crawl in­to bed. In­stead, she had to en­dure hours of speechi­fy­ing, min­gling, and forced gai­ety.

Men­zies placed a gen­tle hand on her shoul­der. “When this is all over, I’d like you to take a week’s va­ca­tion. You de­serve it.”

“Thanks. I wish I could be­gin now.”

“Three more hours.”

No­ra held up her glass. “Three more hours,” she said, and took an­oth­er gulp of cham­pagne.

A string en­sem­ble struck up Haydn’s Em­per­or Quar­tet as the crowd be­gan to move to­ward the food ta­bles. They were load­ed with bli­ni au caviar, prosci­ut­to, rare French and Ital­ian cheeses, mounds of crusty baguettes, cru­dites, fresh oys­ters on beds of crushed ice, cold lob­ster tails, smoked stur­geon—the works. Oth­er ta­bles groaned with wines and cham­pagne, and ev­ery third per­son seemed to be a wait­er rush­ing about with a sil­ver tray load­ed with drinks and food.

“No­ra,” said Men­zies, “you must cir­cu­late.”

She groaned. “God help me.”

“Come on. We’ll face the raven­ing hordes to­geth­er.” He took her arm and they be­gan mak­ing their way slow­ly through the crowd. No­ra found that she was greet­ed at ev­ery turn by con­grat­ula­tors, pep­pered with ques­tions from the press. Her stunt with the Tanos had ap­par­ent­ly gone down ex­cep­tion­al­ly well, ev­ery­one as­sum­ing it had been long planned.

When at length she re­turned to their as­signed ta­ble, she found that sev­er­al oth­er mem­bers of the de­part­ment were there, in­clud­ing Ash­ton, the show’s chief cu­ra­tor. As the se­ri­ous eat­ing got un­der way, Col­lopy, flanked by his young wife, mount­ed the podi­um and gave a short, wit­ty speech.

Then it was time for the cut­ting of the rib­bon. No­ra, Men­zies, Ash­ton, and a few oth­er cu­ra­tors lined up at the podi­um while Col­lopy, wield­ing the gi­gan­tic pair of scis­sors used for such oc­ca­sions, went to the rib­bon and made a hash of try­ing to cut it. When it was fi­nal­ly ac­com­plished, a cheer went up and the huge doors lead­ing to the Sa­cred Im­ages ex­hi­bi­tion swung open. Smil­ing and nod­ding, Men­zies, No­ra, and the rest of the An­thro­pol­ogy De­part­ment led the way, the par­ty­go­ers fol­low­ing in an ex­cit­ed crush be­hind.

It took about half an hour to reach the far end of the hall, pro­pelled along by the mass of peo­ple be­hind them. No­ra felt a shud­der as she passed through the room Mar­go had been mur­dered in, but, of course, all trace of the crime scene had been re­moved and no­body but her even seemed aware of it. As she moved far­ther and far­ther be­yond the scene of the mur­der, No­ra felt the hor­ror re­placed by a qui­et sense of pride. She could hard­ly be­lieve they’d man­aged to pull it off.

Men­zies stayed close be­side her, oc­ca­sion­al­ly mur­mur­ing com­pli­ments on the cas­es she had cu­rat­ed or ar­ranged. The Tanos had come and gone, leav­ing some bits of turquoise, pollen, and corn­meal on the top of the mask case, which ev­ery­body took care to leave in place. At last, when they reached the fi­nal hall, Men­zies turned to No­ra and bowed.

“I do be­lieve we have done our du­ty.” He smiled, face twin­kling. “And now you may beat a dis­creet re­treat home. I, un­for­tu­nate­ly, have some work to do up­stairs in my of­fice. Let’s talk next week about that va­ca­tion I owe you.”

He bowed again and No­ra, with re­lief, turned to make her way to the near­est ex­it—and home.

FIFTY-​ONE

For per­haps the fifti­eth time in the last two days, Lar­ry En der­by had made up his mind to quit, get the hell out of the mu­se­um.

It wasn’t enough that he worked in a win­dow­less base­ment room in the Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry, the spook­iest damn place in all of New York City. He couldn’t get the hor­ror of what he’d found two days ago out of his head. They hadn’t even giv­en him a frig­ging day off, of­fered him coun­sel­ing, or even thanked him. It was like he didn’t count. It was like she didn’t count, the way they just moved right ahead with the ex­hi­bi­tion as if noth­ing had hap­pened.

Mar­go Green. He didn’t know her well, but she’d gone out of her way to be nice to him the few times they’d met. Which was more than he could say for most of the cu­ra­tors and all the ad­min­is­tra­tors. It was just the way the mu­se­um treat­ed ev­ery­body be­low a cer­tain lev­el: hired help.

But, if he could ad­mit it to him­self, En­der­by was main­ly dis­grun­tled be­cause the mu­se­um had cho­sen this ex­act time—dur­ing the biggest par­ty in five years—to switch over yet an­oth­er mu­se­um hall to the new se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem. So, in­stead of scarf­ing down caviar and cham­pagne with the beau­ti­ful peo­ple two flights up, they were down there in the base­ment once again, toil­ing over soft­ware sub­rou­tines.

Sure, they’d been in­vit­ed to the par­ty, like ev­ery­one else in the mu­se­um. That just added in­sult to in­jury.

He rolled back from the com­put­er con­sole with an ex­ag­ger­at­ed sigh.

“Hold­ing up?” Walt Smith, project man­ag­er for the mu­se­um’s se­cu­ri­ty up­grade, asked from be­hind a near­by mon­itor­ing screen.

Smit­ty had been un­usu­al­ly gen­tle since En­der­by’s dis­cov­ery, two days be­fore. Ev­ery­one was tip­toe­ing around him, like some­body had died in his fam­ily.

“How about a short break to check out the par­ty?” En­der­by asked him. “I wouldn’t mind a few of those cock­tail shrimp.”

Smit­ty shook his head. He held a Black­Ber­ry in one hand and a cell phone in the oth­er. “I don’t think that’s go­ing to be pos­si­ble, Lar­ry. Sor­ry.”

“Come on, Smit­ty,” Jim Choi, the soft­ware en­gi­neer, said from the far side of the di­ag­nos­tic dis­play unit. “Just give us half an hour. You’d be sur­prised how many shrimp I can in­gest in half an hour. The par­ty’s al­most over, they’ll run out of food soon.”

“You know we can’t al­ter the sched­ule. The As­tor Hall’s just like any oth­er, one more on the list. What, we’re go­ing to sneak the hands of the atom­ic clock back five min­utes, maybe no­body will no­tice?” Smit­ty laughed at his own mis­er­able joke.

Choi rolled his eyes. Smit­ty was not known for his rapi­er-​like wit.

En­der­by watched the goa­tee on Smith’s chin wag­gle up and down as he laughed. It was a strag­gly lit­tle thing, seem­ing­ly at­tached by on­ly a few hairs, and En­der­by half hoped it might fall off one of these days. De­spite En­der­by’s gen­er­al ir­ri­ta­tion, he had to ad­mit Smit­ty wasn’t a bad guy to work for. He’d worked his way up through the ranks and, de­spite be­ing on­ly thir­ty­five, was as Old Mu­se­um as they came. A re­al stick­ler, rel­ative­ly hu­mor­less, but as long as you were a con­sci­en­tious work­er and did your job, he looked out for you. It wasn’t Smit­ty’s fault the mu­se­um big­wigs were de­mand­ing that the new se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem be ful­ly in­stalled and op­er­ational, yes­ter­day.

Smit­ty stood up and walked across the room, past racks of com­put­er work­sta­tions and servers, to a bank of six dozen small CCTV mon­itors mount­ed in the far wall. Most of the mon­itors showed black-​and-​white still lifes of emp­ty mu­se­um hall­ways and dis­play cas­es. Half a dozen in the low­er right cor­ner, how­ev­er—the video feeds from the Hall of the Heav­ens, where the open­ing par­ty was go­ing on—were a ri­ot of move­ment. From his ter­mi­nal, En­der­by watched the lit­tle im­ages dance and jit­ter their way across the screen with a heavy heart. Up­stairs, the mu­se­um’s slope-​shoul­dered, mouth-​breath­ing cu­ra­tors were rub­bing el­bows with star­lets and nymphets; and here he was, toil­ing in this cave like some troglodyte. True, it could be worse—he could be work­ing in the “Pit,” the mu­se­um’s Cen­tral Se­cu­ri­ty Of­fice, which was twice as large but un­pleas­ant­ly hot and crammed full of even more screens and key­boards than this Ad­vanced Tech­nol­ogy Cen­ter. Worse, but not much worse.

Smit­ty was squint­ing at his Black­Ber­ry. “Okay, set to ini­tial­ize the fi­nal test?”

No­body replied.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He turned back to his con­sole, tapped briefly on the key­board. “As­tor Hall,” he in­toned, “fi­nal fail-​safe test of the se­cu­ri­ty up­grade, Jan­uary 28, 8:28 p.m.”

Jeez, he al­ways makes it sound like it’s Mis­sion Con­trol in here, En­der­by thought. He glanced over at Jim Choi, who once again rolled his eyes.

“Lar­ry, what’s the sta­tus of the lega­cy sys­tem?” Smit­ty asked.

“Looks good.”

“Jim, give me an up­date on the laser grid in the As­tor Hall.”

A brief tap­ping of keys. “Ready to go,” Choi said.

“Then let’s run the low-​lev­el di­ag­nos­tics.”

There was a brief si­lence as both Smit­ty and Choi ran in­de­pen­dent tests. En­der­by, whose job was to mon­itor the be­hav­ior of the pre­ex­ist­ing se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem as the up­dat­ed laser se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem was brought on­line, stared at his mon­itor. This was prob­ably the for­ti­eth hall they’d con­vert­ed to the new sys­tem. And for each con­ver­sion, there were a hun­dred steps to per­form: on-​site anal­ysis, sys­tem ar­chi­tec­ture, cod­ing, in­stal­la­tion … He could be mak­ing three times his salary in some slick start-​up in Pa­lo Al­to, with stock op­tions to boot. And he prob­ably wouldn’t stum­ble over any bod­ies in the mid­dle of the night, ei­ther.

Smit­ty looked up from his key­board. “Jim, what’s your check­sum?”

“It’s 780E4F3 hex.”

“I con­cur. Let’s pro­ceed.” Smit­ty picked up a phone, di­aled.

En­der­by watched with­out in­ter­est. He knew Smit­ty was call­ing the boys in the Pit, giv­ing them a heads-​up that the switchover was about to hap­pen, just a re­minder in case some new­bie went apeshit when he saw the hic­cup on their screens. It was al­ways the same. The old sys­tem would be dis­abled; there would be a nine­ty-​sec­ond pe­ri­od in which the new sys­tem was ini­tial­ized and the “hand­shake” per­formed; then a fi­nal twen­ty-​minute test of the new sys­tem would fol­low, to en­sure the in­stal­la­tion was cor­rect and that it had been brought on­line suc­cess­ful­ly. Twen­ty min­utes in which they had noth­ing to do but twid­dle their thumbs. Then, at last, the new sys­tem would be­come ful­ly op­er­ational and the old sys­tem put in back­up mode. He fetched a huge yawn. As he did so, his stom­ach grum­bled un­hap­pi­ly.

“Cen­tral Se­cu­ri­ty?” Smit­ty was say­ing in­to the phone. “Who is this, Car­los? Hey, it’s Walt Smith in ATC. We’re ac­ti­vat­ing the lasers in the As­tor Hall. We’ll be ini­tial­iz­ing in about five min­utes. Right. I’ll call back once the hand­shake’s com­plete.”

He put the phone down, then looked back at En­der­by. “Hey, Lar­ry,” he said gen­tly.

“What?”

“Just how much time did Choi there say he need­ed to con­sume that trawler-​load of shrimp?”

“I told you,” Choi piped up. “Thir­ty min­utes.”

Smit­ty leaned for­ward, rest­ing his arm on the con­sole. “Tell you what. If we can get this ini­tial­iza­tion done and the twen­ty-​minute test phase start­ed, I’ll give you fif­teen. In­clud­ing the time it’ll take us to get there and back again.”

En­der­by sat up. “On the lev­el?”

Smit­ty nod­ded.

Choi grinned wide­ly. “You just pur­chased your­self a boy.”

“Good. Then let’s see how fast we can get through this check­list.” And Smit­ty turned back to his ter­mi­nal.

FIFTY-​TWO

Hugo Men­zies in­sert­ed his key in­to the staff el­eva­tor and rode it from the sec­ond to the fifth floor. Ex­it­ing the el­eva­tor, he strolled med­ita­tive­ly down the long, pol­ished cor­ri­dor. The cu­ra­to­ri­al of­fices lay on ei­ther side: old oak­en doors with pan­els of frost­ed glass, each bear­ing the name of a cu­ra­tor in old-​fash­ioned gold-​leaf let­ter­ing, even those most re­cent­ly ap­point­ed. Men­zies smiled, al­ready feel­ing a nos­tal­gia for the old pile and its quaint tra­di­tions.

He paused be­fore his own of­fice door, opened it, and en­tered just long enough to pick up the can­vas satchel that ac­com­pa­nied him al­most ev­ery­where. Then he closed and locked the door and con­tin­ued his stroll to the far­thest end of the hall, where there was an un­marked door. He un­locked it, stepped in­to the stair­well be­yond, de­scend­ed two flights, and ex­it­ed in­to a dark, de­sert­ed hall—the Hall of North­west Coast In­di­ans. It was one of the old­est halls in the mu­se­um, a true gem of late-​nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry muse­ol­ogy, and it smelled of old cedar and smoke. Trans­for­ma­tion masks, totem poles, slate bowls gleamed in the dark re­cess­es. Men­zies paused to in­hale the air with de­light. Then he walked briskly through the de­sert­ed hall and sev­er­al oth­ers, fi­nal­ly ar­riv­ing at a large met­al door bear­ing the leg­end The As­tor Hall of Di­amonds.

His eye dwelled lov­ing­ly on the door in all its brushed-​steel splen­dor, tak­ing spe­cial note of the two video cam­eras on ei­ther side, star­ing down at him like beady black eyes—ex­cept, as he knew, they were cur­rent­ly not func­tion­ing. He smiled again, then re­moved a large round watch from his vest pock­et and gazed at it. Al­though in shape it re­sem­bled a pock­et watch, it was, in fact, a mod­ern dig­ital stop­watch. On its face, num­bers were count­ing down with enor­mous ra­pid­ity, at an ac­cu­ra­cy to the thou­sandths of a sec­ond.

The watch was read­ing time sig­nals from the same satel­lite that the mu­se­um’s se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem used.

He wait­ed un­til the watch sig­naled a cer­tain point in time with a soft beep. Men­zies im­me­di­ate­ly put the watch away, stepped rapid­ly to the door, placed his ear against it, and then quick­ly swiped a mag­net­ic card through the read­er. The door did not open; in­stead, a small eye-​lev­el win­dow shot open, re­veal­ing a reti­nal op­ti­cal scan­ner.

Men­zies bowed his head, popped two soft con­tact lens­es out from his eyes and in­to a wait­ing plas­tic con­tain­er, then stepped up to the op­ti­cal read­er. A quick bar of light passed across his face; there was a mo­ment’s still­ness, and then a soft click an­nounced the dis­en­gage­ment of the lock. He stepped through the door in­to the hall be­yond, the door au­to­mat­ical­ly clos­ing be­hind him.

With a ra­pid­ity of move­ment mar­velous for his ad­vanced age, Men­zies knelt, opened his satchel, and got to work. First he reached up and, with a sharp tug, re­moved his leo­nine thatch of white hair, shoved the wig in­to the satchel, then reached in­to his mouth and pulled out five mold­ed rub­ber cheek and chin pieces. This act alone caused an as­ton­ish­ing trans­for­ma­tion in the shape and ap­par­ent age of his face. An­oth­er pair of quick tugs took off the bushy eye­brows and a few small blem­ish­es, liv­er spots, a mole.

Next, still kneel­ing, the man re­moved more than a dozen small den­tal mir­rors from the satchel, mount­ed on bizarre lit­tle stands in a va­ri­ety of odd shapes and sizes, all made of beau­ti­ful­ly hand-​ma­chined brass. Next came an ar­ray of black ob­jects wired to­geth­er, a stack of thin My­lar sheets, sev­er­al small cut­ting tools, ex­ot­ic-​look­ing met­al in­stru­ments, and a flat of sticky pads, each the size and shape of a lentil.

When these had been ar­ranged on the floor with mil­itary pre­ci­sion, the man wait­ed, still crouch­ing, un­mov­ing, stop­watch again in his hands. He raised his head once to look at the hall in front of him. It was dark—ut­ter­ly dark—with­out even the slight­est gleam an­nounc­ing its ex­traor­di­nary con­tents. The dark­ness was part of the se­cu­ri­ty, be­cause the on­ly elec­tro­mag­net­ic ra­di­ation in the hall af­ter clos­ing was in­vis­ible in­frared and far-​in­frared wave­lengths. Even the myr­iad laser beams criss­cross­ing the hall were in­frared, un­de­tectable to the naked eye. But he did not need light: he had re­hearsed this many hun­dreds of times, in an ex­act du­pli­cate of this room which he had con­struct­ed him­self.

The watch gave an­oth­er soft beep, and the man ex­plod­ed in­to move­ment. With the speed of a fer­ret, he dart­ed about the room, plac­ing the den­tal mir­rors in pre­cise­ly fixed and cal­ibrat­ed lo­ca­tions, each mir­ror turned to the pre­cise an­gle.

In two min­utes, he was done and back in his place by the door, breath­ing slow­ly and reg­ular­ly, watch in hand.

An­oth­er soft beep in­di­cat­ed the laser beams had gone back on— each one now redi­rect­ed to a dif­fer­ent path, run­ning around the out­er walls in­stead of criss­cross­ing the hall it­self. This ro­tat­ing se­ries of laser grids was one of the fea­tures of the new se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem. No doubt the tech­ni­cians in the base­ment were con­grat­ulat­ing them­selves on an­oth­er suc­cess­ful test.

Again, the man wait­ed, look­ing at his watch. An­oth­er soft beep and he was up again, this time car­ry­ing the My­lar sheets, which he stuck over the video cam­era lens­es which had been placed in nu­mer­ous strate­gic lo­ca­tions. The My­lar sheets, clear to the naked eye, were ac­tu­al­ly etched with holo­graphs which re­spond­ed strong­ly to in­frared light, and which re­pro­duced the pre­cise scene that the in­frared video cam­eras were point­ed at—mi­nus, of course, the man. When the video cam­eras came back on, they would see the same bor­ing scene they had seen be­fore. On­ly it would not be re­al.

Again, like a cat, the man re­treat­ed to his safe cor­ner. Again, he wait­ed un­til the stop­watch beeped an­oth­er soft warn­ing.

This time he scur­ried around the perime­ter of the hall, set­ting a sleek black box in each cor­ner, con­nect­ed by wires to a small pow­er pack. These were pow­er­ful radar guns of the type used by state po­lice, mod­ified to jam the mu­se­um’s new in­frared Doppler radar sys­tem, said to be so sen­si­tive it could de­tect the mo­tion of a cock­roach across the car­pet­ing.

Once the radar jam­mers were in place and ac­tive, the man straight­ened up, dust­ed his knees, and gave a low, dry chuck­le. Move­ments now al­most lan­guid, he re­moved a flash­light from the satchel, turned it on, and played the dull green beam about the hall— a pre­cise wave­length of green light cho­sen be­cause none of the so­phis­ti­cat­ed elec­tro­mag­net­ic sen­sors in the hall could see it.

The man strolled ca­su­al­ly to the cen­ter of the hall where a square, four-​foot pil­lar had been con­struct­ed, on top of which was set a thick Plex­iglas box. He bent down and looked in the box. Rest­ing in­side on thick satin was the dark form of a heart-​cut di­amond of ex­traor­di­nary, al­most in­cred­ible size: Lu­cifer’s Heart, the mu­se­um’s prize gem, which had been called the most valu­able di­amond in the world. It was cer­tain­ly the most beau­ti­ful.

A fine place to start.

With a small cut­ting tool, the man opened a hole in the Plex­iglas. Then, with a se­ries of slen­der tools ma­chined pre­cise­ly for this pur­pose and some of the tiny, sticky pads, he reached in and re­moved the di­amond, be­ing care­ful to pre­vent the trig­ger pin un­der the di­amond from ris­ing. An­oth­er deft move­ment placed a large glass mar­ble on the same stand, which would keep the pin de­pressed.

The man held the di­amond in his hand, shin­ing the flash­light up through it for a mo­ment. In the green light it looked black and dead, with­out col­or, al­most like a piece of coal. But the man was not per­turbed: he knew that a red di­amond un­der green light al­ways looked black. And this di­amond was red—or more pre­cise­ly, a rich cin­na­mon, but with­out a trace of brown. It was the on­ly di­amond of its col­or in the world. Blue di­amonds were cre­at­ed by boron or hy­dro­gen trapped in the crys­tal ma­trix, green di­amonds by nat­ural ra­di­ation, yel­low and brown di­amonds by ni­tro­gen, and pink di­amonds by the pres­ence of mi­cro­scop­ic lamel­lae. But this col­or? No­body knew.

He held it up and peered through it to the flash­light be­low. He could see his own eyes re­flect­ed and mul­ti­plied by the di­amond’s facets, cre­at­ing a sur­re­al kalei­do­scope of eyes and more eyes, hun­dreds of them, star­ing ev­ery which way in­side the gem. He moved the gem back and forth, from eye to eye, en­joy­ing the spec­ta­cle.

And the strangest thing of all was that the eyes were of dif­fer­ent col­ors: one hazel, the oth­er a milky, whitish blue.

FIFTY-​THREE

Lar­ry En­der­by sat at his con­sole in the Ad­vanced Tech­nol­ogy Cen­ter, puff­ing slight­ly. The hol­low­ness in his stom­ach had gone, re­placed with an un­com­fort­able bloat­ed feel­ing. He felt like a frig­ging suck­ling pig, to tell the truth. He belched, let out his belt a notch. All that was miss­ing was the shiny red ap­ple for his mouth.

He glanced over at his co-​work­ers, Walt Smith and Jim Choi. Smit­ty—who, true to his na­ture, had act­ed with re­straint—was star­ing at a bank of mon­itors, no worse for wear. The same couldn’t be said for Choi, who was slumped at his ter­mi­nal, a glazed ex­pres­sion on his face. Dur­ing the fif­teen min­utes Smit­ty had al­lot­ted, Choi had in­deed shown a re­mark­able abil­ity to bolt down jum­bo shrimp and glass­es of cham­pagne. En­der­by had giv­en up count­ing shrimp at six­ty-​two.

He eased up an­oth­er bo­lus of air, then pat­ted his stom­ach gin­ger­ly. They’d got­ten to the food ta­ble just in time: the feed­ing fren­zy was al­most over. There was a drib­ble of caviar on his shirt­front, and he flicked it away with a fin­ger­nail. But that fourth glass of cham­pagne he’d chugged at the last mo­ment had prob­ably been a mis­take. He just hoped he could keep it to­geth­er for the rest of his shift. He glanced up at the clock: on­ly an­oth­er hour. They’d ver­ify that the As­tor Hall’s up­grad­ed se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem was ful­ly op­er­ational, then go through the pro­ce­dure of moth­balling the old sys­tem. No sweat: he’d done it dozens of times be­fore, he could prob­ably do it in his sleep.

A low chime sound­ed. “That’s it,” Smit­ty said. “Twen­ty min­utes.” He glanced over at Choi. “What’s the sta­tus of the As­tor Hall sys­tem?”

Choi blinked a lit­tle bleari­ly at his screen. “Test com­plet­ed with­out in­ci­dent.” His eye swept the clus­ter of video feeds. “Hall looks fine.”

“Er­ror logs?”

“None. The sys­tem’s nom­inal.”

“And the beam mod­ula­tion?”

“Ev­ery five min­utes, as pro­grammed. No de­vi­ation.”

Smit­ty walked over to the wall of mon­itors. En­der­by watched as he peered at the video feeds de­vot­ed to the As­tor Hall of Di­amonds. He could see case af­ter case of the pre­cious gems, gleam­ing faint­ly in the in­frared light. There was no move­ment, of course: once the laser beams were ac­ti­vat­ed af­ter lock­down, not even guards were per­mit­ted in the high-​se­cu­ri­ty ex­hi­bi­tion halls.

Smit­ty grunt­ed his ap­proval, then walked over to his mon­itor­ing sta­tion and picked up the in­ter­nal phone. “Car­los? It’s Walt in the ATC. We’ve com­plet­ed the twen­ty-​minute shake­down of the As­tor Hall laser grid. How’d it look from Cen­tral Se­cu­ri­ty?” A pause. “Okay, good. We’ll get the stan­dard schedul­ing on­line and moth­ball the pri­or.”

He hung up the phone and glanced over at En­der­by. “The Pit says that ev­ery­thing’s five by five. Lar­ry, put it to bed. I’ll help Jim fi­nal­ize the au­toma­tion rou­tines for the laser grid.”

Lar­ry nod­ded and pulled his chair clos­er to the con­sole. Time to put the old se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem in back­up mode. He blinked, wiped the back of a hand across his mouth, then be­gan typ­ing in a se­ries of com­mands.

Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, he sat back. “That’s strange.”

Smit­ty looked over. “What is?”

En­der­by point­ed at an LED screen sit­ting on the side of his work-​sta­tion. A sin­gle red dot glowed in its up­per left cor­ner. “When I rolled back the first zone in­to stand­by mode, the sys­tem gave me a code red.”

Smit­ty frowned. A “code red” was the lega­cy sys­tem’s alarm set­ting. In the As­tor Hall, this would have been ac­ti­vat­ed on­ly when a di­amond was re­moved from its set­ting. “What zone was that?”

“Zone 1.”

“What’s it con­tain?”

En­der­by turned to a sep­arate con­sole, ac­cessed the ac­ces­sion and in­ven­to­ry database, typed in a SQL query. “Just a sin­gle di­amond. Lu­cifer’s Heart.”

“That’s right in the cen­ter of the room.” Smit­ty walked over to the bank of video mon­itors, peered at one close­ly “Looks fine to me. We’re deal­ing with some kind of soft­ware glitch here.”

He glanced back to­ward En­der­by. “Roll back zone 2.”

En­der­by typed a few more com­mands in­to his pri­ma­ry ter­mi­nal. Im­me­di­ate­ly, a sec­ond red dot glowed in­to view on the LED screen. “That’s giv­ing me a code red, too.”

Smit­ty walked over, a wor­ried look com­ing on­to his face.

En­der­by stared at the screen. His mouth was dry, and the al­co­hol haze was dis­si­pat­ing fast.

“Do a glob­al roll­back,” Smit­ty said. “All zones in the hall.”

En­der­by took a deep breath, then typed a short se­quence on his key­board. Im­me­di­ate­ly, he was flood­ed with dis­may.

“Oh, no,” he breathed. “No.”

The lit­tle LED screen on En­der­by’s desk had just blos­somed in­to a Christ­mas tree of red.

For a mo­ment, there was a shocked si­lence. Then Smit­ty waved his hand dis­mis­sive­ly.

“Let’s not have a cow here. What we’ve got is a soft­ware glitch. In­com­pat­ibil­ity be­tween the new sys­tem and the old prob­ably crashed the lega­cy sys­tem. Must’ve hap­pened when we pulled it off-​line. Noth­ing to get ex­cit­ed about. Lar­ry, shut down the old sys­tem, one mod­ule at a time. Then re­boot from the back­up mas­ter.”

“Shouldn’t we re­port to Cen­tral?”

“What, and make our­selves look like id­iots? We’ll re­port af­ter we’ve solved the prob­lem.”

“Okay. You’re the boss.” And En­der­by be­gan to type.

Smit­ty mus­tered a weak grin and ges­tured at the video screens of the emp­ty hall, the di­amonds glit­ter­ing with­in their cas­es. “I mean, hey—take a look. Does the hall look robbed to you?”

En­der­by had to chuck­le. Maybe Smit­ty was ac­quir­ing a sense of hu­mor, af­ter all.

FIFTY-​FOUR

D’Agos­ta moved through the chan­nels on the portable po­lice-​band ra­dio he’d pulled from the Rolls, search­ing for more of­fi­cial chat­ter about him and Pen­der­gast. Their ap­pear­ance at Kennedy had set off an APB across the en­tire length of Long Is­land, from Queens to Bridge­hamp­ton. The Rolls had been im­pound­ed at the rental lot, and in time the au­thor­ities had iden­ti­fied the Toy­ota Cam­ry they’d stolen, and put out an ad­vi­so­ry on that, as well. They’d man­aged to evade sev­er­al road­blocks es­tab­lished on the Long Is­land Ex­press­way by keep­ing to back roads and tak­ing their cues from the ra­dio ad­vi­sories.

They were in a net, and the net was draw­ing tighter.

Still, Pen­der­gast searched, stop­ping at one all-​night ser­vice area af­ter an­oth­er, re­fus­ing to give up—and yet to D’Agos­ta it seemed a hope­less task, the kind of last-​re­sort, brute-​force po­lice work that soaked up man-​hours and rarely yield­ed re­sults. It was a num­bers game in which the num­bers were just too damn big.

Pen­der­gast screeched in­to an all-​night ser­vice area at Yaphank, which looked just like the two dozen oth­ers they had al­ready vis­it­ed: glassed-​in front, sick­ly green flu­ores­cent lights beat­ing back the bit­ter dark­ness. At some point, D’Agos­ta mused, they were go­ing to get an at­ten­dant who had heard about the APB. And that would be it.

Yet again, Pen­der­gast leaped out of the Cam­ry like a cat. The man seemed to burn with a fierce, in­ex­tin­guish­able flame. They’d been at it more than twelve hours straight, and dur­ing all that time spent al­ter­nate­ly search­ing and evad­ing, he’d said few words not di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to the game at hand. D’Agos­ta won­dered how long the agent could keep it up.

Pen­der­gast was in­to the lit­tle store and in the sleepy at­ten­dant’s face be­fore the man could even rouse him­self from his cozy chair be­hind the counter, where he’d ap­par­ent­ly been watch­ing a mar­tial arts movie.

“Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast, FBI,” he said in his usu­al cool voice, which some­how man­aged to con­vey men­ace with­out be­ing of­fen­sive, as he passed his shield across the man’s field of view. At the same time, D’Agos­ta reached over and snapped off the tele­vi­sion, cre­at­ing a sud­den, un­nerv­ing si­lence.

The man’s chair legs clunked down on the floor as he hasti­ly right­ed him­self. “FBI? Sure, yeah, right. What can I do for you?”

“When do you go on shift?” Pen­der­gast asked.

“At mid­night.”

“I want you to look at these.” He re­moved the prints he had col­lect­ed at Kennedy, held one in front of the at­ten­dant. “Have you seen this man? He would have come in last night, some­time be­tween one and three.”

The at­ten­dant took the pho­to, screw­ing up his face. D’Agos­ta watched care­ful­ly, re­lax­ing slight­ly. Clear­ly, the guy knew noth­ing of the APB. He glanced out to­ward the dark high­way. It was al­most four in the morn­ing. It was on­ly a mat­ter of time. They weren’t ev­er go­ing to get a lead, this was nee­dle-​and-​haystack stuff. The po­lice would find them, and…

“Yeah,” the guy said. “I saw him.”

The air in the tiny store went elec­tric.

“Look at this pho­to as well, please.” Pen­der­gast passed the man a sec­ond im­age. “I want you to be sure.” He spoke qui­et­ly, but his body was tense as a coiled spring.

“That’s him again,” the man mur­mured. “I re­mem­ber those fun­ny eyes, kind of freaked me out.”

“Did you see this car?” Pen­der­gast mur­mured, show­ing him a third im­age.

“Well, I can’t say I re­mem­ber that. He did the self-​serve, you know?”

Pen­der­gast took back the pho­tographs. “And your name is—?”

“Art Malek.”

“Mr. Malek, can you tell us if any­one was with him?”

“He came in­to the store alone. And like I said, I didn’t go out, so I re­al­ly can’t say if there was any­body in the car. Sor­ry.”

“That’s all right.” Pen­der­gast re­turned the pho­tos to his jack­et and drew still clos­er. “Now, tell me ex­act­ly what you re­mem­ber from the time this man ar­rived to the time he left.”

“Well… it was last night, like you said, must have been close to three in the morn­ing. There wasn’t any­thing un­usu­al about it—he pulled up, filled the car him­self, came in to pay.”

“Cash.”

“Right.”

“Did you no­tice any­thing else about him?”

“Not re­al­ly. Had a fun­ny ac­cent, kind of like yours. No of­fense,” Malek added hasti­ly. “In fact, he looked kind of like you.”

“What was he wear­ing?”

A la­bored ef­fort to re­mem­ber. “All I can re­mem­ber is a dark over­coat. Long.” “Did he do any­thing else but pay?”

“Seems to me he wan­dered about the aisles a bit. Didn’t buy any­thing, though.” At this, Pen­der­gast stiff­ened. “I as­sume you have se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras in the back aisles?” “Sure do.”

“I’d like to see the tapes from last night.”

The man hes­itat­ed. “The sys­tem re­cy­cles them on a thir­ty-​hour loop, and it gets erased as—“

“Then please stop the se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem now. I must see the tape.”

The man al­most jumped to com­ply, has­ten­ing in­to a back of­fice.

“Looks like we’ve fi­nal­ly got a lead,” said D’Agos­ta.

The pair of eyes Pen­der­gast turned on him seemed al­most dead. “On the con­trary. Dio­genes hoped we would find this place.”

“How do you know?”

Pen­der­gast didn’t an­swer.

The man came huff­ing out of the back room with a video­tape. Pen­der­gast eject­ed the movie from the VCR and shoved in the se­cu­ri­ty tape. A ceil­ing-​lev­el shot of the tiny store came in­to view, a time and date stamp in the bot­tom left cor­ner. Pen­der­gast punched the rewind but­ton, stopped, re­wound again. With­in a minute, he’d lo­cat­ed the 3 a.m. time stamp for Jan­uary 28. Next, he cued it back an­oth­er half hour to al­low for a mar­gin of er­ror. Then they be­gan watch­ing the tape at ac­cel­er­at­ed speed.

The black-​and-​white pic­ture qual­ity was poor. The aisles of the con­ve­nience store glowed and flick­ered on the screen. Now and then a hud­dled shape raced through on fast-​for­ward, like a pin­ball, bounced around grab­bing things off shelves, then dis­ap­peared again.

Sud­den­ly, Pen­der­gast jabbed the play but­ton, slow­ing it to a nor­mal pace as yet an­oth­er dark fig­ure en­tered the screen. The fig­ure strolled down the aisle, its eyes—dif­fer­ing shades of gray—seek­ing out and fix­ing on the se­cu­ri­ty cam­era.

It was Dio­genes. A smile spread over his face as he ca­su­al­ly reached in­to his pock­et and with­drew a piece of pa­per. He un­fold­ed it and non­cha­lant­ly held it up to the cam­era.

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LAST COM­MU­NI­CA­TION.

MAY OUR NEW LIVES BE­GIN!

VALEAS.

“Four six six?” said D’Agos­ta. “That’s not a le­git emer­gen­cy num­ber…”

Then he stopped. It was not a tele­phone num­ber, he re­al­ized, but an ad­dress. Four six­tysix First Av­enue was the un­der­ground en­trance at Belle­vue that led to the New York City Morgue.

Pen­der­gast rose, eject­ed the tape, and put it in his pock­et.

“You can keep that,” said the at­ten­dant help­ful­ly as they left.

Pen­der­gast slipped be­hind the wheel, start­ed the Cam­ry, but did not move. His face was gray, his eyes half lid­ded.

There was a ter­ri­ble si­lence. D’Agos­ta could think of noth­ing to say. He felt al­most phys­ical­ly ill. This was even worse than at the Dako­ta—worse be­cause, for the last twelve hours, they’d had hope. Slen­der, but hope nev­er­the­less.

“I’ll check the po­lice band,” he said stiffly. It was a point­less ges­ture, just some­thing to keep him­self busy. And even po­lice chat­ter about the APB was prefer­able to the dread­ful si­lence.

Pen­der­gast didn’t re­spond as D’Agos­ta turned on the ra­dio.

A burst of fran­tic, over­lap­ping voic­es poured from the speak­er.

In­stinc­tive­ly, D’Agos­ta glanced out the win­dow. Had they been spot­ted? But the roads around the ser­vice area were de­sert­ed.

He leaned for­ward and changed the fre­quen­cy. More fran­tic voic­es.

“What the hell?” D’Agos­ta punched the but­ton, changed the fre­quen­cy again and again. Al­most half the avail­able chan­nels were tak­en up, and the talk wasn’t about them. Some­thing big, it seemed, was go­ing down in the city. As he lis­tened, try­ing to fig­ure out what it was, he be­came aware that Pen­der­gast was lis­ten­ing, too, sud­den­ly to­tal­ly alert.

The talk on the cur­rent chan­nel was about the Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry, a theft of some kind. It seemed the As­tor Hall of Di­amonds had been hit.

“Go to the com­mand-​and-​con­trol chan­nel,” Pen­der­gast said.

D’Agos­ta di­aled it in.

“Rock­er wants you to sweat the techies,” a voice was say­ing. “This was an in­side job, that much is clear.”

D’Agos­ta lis­tened in dis­be­lief. Rock­er at four in the morn­ing? This must be gi­gan­tic.

“They got ‘em all? In­clud­ing Lu­cifer’s Heart?”

“Yup. And see who knew the specs on the se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem, get a list, move through it fast. Mu­se­um se­cu­ri­ty, too.”

“Got that. Who’s the in­sur­er?”

“Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al.”

“Jeez, they’re go­ing to shit bricks when they learn about this.”

D’Agos­ta, glanc­ing at Pen­der­gast, was shocked at the rapt ex­pres­sion on his face. Strange how, at this mo­ment of ul­ti­mate cri­sis, he could be­come so fix­at­ed on some­thing that had no bear­ing or the prob­lem at hand.

“The mu­se­um’s pres­ident is on his way. And they’ve got­ten the may­or out of bed. You know how he’ll cru­ci­fy any­body who lets him get be­hind the curve on a ma­jor—“

“Some­one knocked off the di­amond hall,” said D’Agos­ta. “I guess that’s why we’ve been tem­porar­ily up­staged.”

Pen­der­gast said noth­ing. D’Agos­ta was tak­en aback by the look on his face.

“Hey, Pen­der­gast,” he said. “You okay?”

Pen­der­gast turned his pale eyes to­ward him. “No,” he whis­pered.

“I don’t get it. What’s this got to do with any­thing? It’s a di­amond heist—“

“Ev­ery­thing.” And then the FBI agent looked away, out in­to the win­ter dark­ness. “All these bru­tal killings, all these mock­ing notes and mes­sages … noth­ing more than a smoke screen. A cru­el, cold­blood­ed, sadis­tic smoke screen.”

He tore away from the curb and head­ed back in­to the neigh­bor­hood they had just passed through.

“Where are we go­ing?”

In­stead of an­swer­ing, Pen­der­gast jammed on the brakes, pulling up in front of a split-​lev­el house. He point­ed to an F150 pick­up parked in the drive­way. For Sale was writ­ten on the wind­shield in soap.

“We need a new ve­hi­cle,” he said. “Get ready to move the ra­dio and lap­top in­to that truck.”

“Buy a car at four a.m.?”

“A stolen car is re­port­ed too quick­ly. We need more time.”

Pen­der­gast got out of the car and strode up the short con­crete walk. He rang the bell, rang it again. Af­ter a minute, the lights on the sec­ond floor came on. A win­dow scraped open, and a voice shout­ed down: “What do you want?”

“The pick­up—it’s op­er­ational?”

“Hell, pal, it’s four in the morn­ing!”

“Will hard cash help get you out of bed?”

With a mut­tered curse, the win­dow shut. A mo­ment lat­er, the porch light came on and a cor­pu­lent man in a bathrobe ap­peared at the door. “It’s three thou­sand. And it works good. Got a full tank of gas, too.”

Pen­der­gast reached in­to his suit, re­moved a book of cash, peeled off thir­ty hun­dreds. “What’s go­ing on?” the man asked a lit­tle bleari­ly.

Pen­der­gast pulled out his badge. “I’m with the FBI.” He nod­ded at D’Agos­ta. “He’s NYPD.” Bal­anc­ing the ra­dio and lap­top un­der one arm, D’Agos­ta re­moved his shield.

“We’re work­ing an un­der­cov­er nar­cotics job. Be a good cit­izen and keep this to your­self, all right?”

“Sure thing.” The man ac­cept­ed the cash.

“The keys?”

The man dis­ap­peared, came back a mo­ment lat­er with an en­ve­lope. “The ti­tle’s in there, too.”

Pen­der­gast took the en­ve­lope. “An of­fi­cer will be by short­ly to take care of our pre­vi­ous ve­hi­cle. But don’t say any­thing about the car or about us, not even to an­oth­er po­lice of­fi­cer. You know how it is with un­der­cov­er cas­es.”

The man nod­ded vig­or­ous­ly. “Sure do. Hell, the on­ly books I read are true crime.”

Pen­der­gast thanked the man and turned away. A minute lat­er, they were in­side the truck, ac­cel­er­at­ing from the curb.

“That should buy us a few hours,” Pen­der­gast said as he raced back in the di­rec­tion of the Mon­tauk High­way.

FIFTY-​FIVE

Dio­genes Pen­der­gast drove slow­ly, with­out hur­ry, through the bleak win­ter town­scapes along the Old Stone High­way: Barnes Hole, East­side, Springs. Ahead, a traf­fic light turned red, and he coast­ed to a stop at the in­ter­sec­tion.

He eased his large head to the left, to the right. A win­try pota­to field stretched to one side, frozen and dust­ed with snow. At its edge stood a dark wood of bare trees, branch­es etched in white. The world was black and white and it had no depth: it was flat, like a night­mare con­fec­tion of Ed­win A. Ab­bott. Fie, fie how fran­ticly I square my talk…

The light moved down, in­di­cat­ing it had turned green, and Dio­genes slow­ly de­pressed the ac­cel­er­ator. The car nosed for­ward and swung right on­to Springs Road as he turned the wheel, let­ting it slide through his hands as the car straight­ened out. He in­creased the pres­sure on the ac­cel­er­ator, eas­ing off as the ve­hi­cle ap­proached the speed lim­it. More gray pota­to fields passed on his right, be­yond which stood sev­er­al rows of gray hous­es, and be­yond that, the Acabonack Marsh­es.

All gray, exquisite gray.

Dio­genes reached to the dash and turned the heater vent sev­er­al clicks to the right, in­creas­ing the flow of warmth in­to the glass, steel, and plas­tic com­part­ment that en­closed his body. He felt nei­ther tri­umph nor vin­di­ca­tion, on­ly a cu­ri­ous kind of empti­ness: the sort that came with the achieve­ment of a great thing, the com­ple­tion of a long-​planned work.

Dio­genes lived in a world of gray. Col­or did not en­ter his world, ex­cept fleet­ing­ly, when he least ex­pect­ed it, com­ing in from the cor­ner of his eye like a Zen koan. Koan. Ko. Koan ko. Ko ko ri­co, ko ko ri­co…

Long ago, his world had at­ten­uat­ed to shades of gray, a monochro­mat­ic uni­verse of shape and shad­ow, where true col­or had van­ished even from his wak­ing dreams. No, not quite. Such a state­ment would be dis­sem­bling, melo­dra­ma. There was a fi­nal repos­ito­ry of col­or in his world, and it was there, in the leather satchel be­side him.

The car moved down the emp­ty road. No one was out.

He could tell, from a shift­ing of the monochro­mat­ic land­scape around him, that night was re­lin­quish­ing its hold on the world. Dawn was not far away. But Dio­genes had lit­tle use for sun­light, just as he had lit­tle use for warmth or love or friend­ship or any of the count­less things that nour­ished the rest of hu­man­ity.

As he drove, he played back, in metic­ulous de­tail, the events of the night be­fore. He went over ev­ery last ac­tion, mo­tion, state­ment, tak­ing plea­sure in sat­is­fy­ing him­self that he had made no er­rors. At the same time, he thought of the days ahead, men­tal­ly tick­ing off the prepa­ra­tions he would have to make, the tasks he’d need to per­form, the great jour­ney he would make—and, aber natür­lich, the jour­ney’s end. He thought of Vi­ola, of his broth­er, of his child­hood, mul­ti­thread­ed mul­ti­plex­ing wak­ing day­dreams that seemed more re­al than the present. Un­like the oth­er bags of meat and blood that made up his species, Dio­genes mused, he could pro­cess sev­er­al dis­parate trains of thought si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in his head.

The Event which had robbed Dio­genes of col­or had al­so stolen his abil­ity to sleep. Full obliv­ion was de­nied him. In­stead, he drift­ed, he lay on his bed in a world of wak­ing dreams: mem­ories of the past, con­fla­gra­tions, con­ver­sa­tions, con­fla­tions, cer­tain an­imals poi­soned and dy­ing with exquisite re­straint, racked bod­ies on splin­tered roods, a hair shirt fash­ioned from nerve gan­glia, a ma­son jar of fresh blood—the dis­con­nect­ed im­ages from his past played on the screen of his mind like a mag­ic-​lantern show. Dio­genes nev­er re­sist­ed them. Re­sis­tance would be fu­tile, and fu­til­ity it­self was, of course, to be re­sist­ed. He let the scenes drift in and out as they would.

All this would change. The great wheel would come around, be­cause he—af­ter all—was about to break a but­ter­fly up­on a wheel. The thing that had preyed up­on his mind would at long last be ex­or­cised. His re­venge on his broth­er was all but com­plete.

As he drove, Dio­genes let his thoughts drift back al­most thir­ty years. At first—af­ter it had hap­pened—he had lost him­self in the in­ner maze of his mind, wan­der­ing as far from re­al­ity and san­ity as it was pos­si­ble to go, while even a small part of him re­mained pro­sa­ic, quo­tid­ian, able to in­ter­act with the out­side world, whose true na­ture now—thanks to the Event—stood re­vealed to him.

But then—slow­ly, very slow­ly—in­san­ity alone lost its pow­er to shel­ter. It was no longer a com­fort, even a bit­ter one. So he came back, but he was like a div­er who had gone too deep, run out of air, and rushed to the sur­face on­ly to be racked by the bends.

That was the worst mo­ment of all.

And yet it was at this very mo­ment, as he bal­anced on the cru­el knife-​edge of re­al­ity, that he com­pre­hend­ed there was a pur­pose wait­ing for him back in the re­al world. A dou­ble pur­pose: a reck­on­ing and a recla­ma­tion. It would take decades of plan­ning. It would be, in his own self-​ref­er­en­tial world, a work of art: the mas­ter­piece of a life­time.

Why then Ile fit you.

And so Dio­genes did re­turn to the world.

He knew now what kind of place it re­al­ly was and what kind of crea­tures in­hab­it­ed it. It was not a love­ly world, no, not a love­ly world at all. It was a world of pain and evil and cru­el­ty, walked on by vile crea­tures of piss and ex­cre­ment and bile. But his new­found pur­pose, the end to­ward which he had bent all his in­tel­lect, made such a world just bear­able. He be­came a chameleon par ex­cel­lence, hid­ing ev­ery­thing, ev­ery­thing, be­hind a fast-​chang­ing skin of dis­guise, pre­var­ica­tion, mis­di­rec­tion, irony, cool de­tach­ment.

At times, when his will threat­ened to crum­ble, he found that cer­tain tem­po­rary pas­times were enough to di­vert him, to haul him up from the deeps. The emo­tion that sus­tained him some might call ha­tred, but for him it was the mead that nour­ished him, that gave him su­per­hu­man pa­tience and a fa­nat­ic’s at­ten­tion to de­tail. He found he could live not mere­ly a dou­ble life or a triple life, but in fact could as­sume the very per­son­al­ities and lives of half a dozen in­vent­ed peo­ple, in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent coun­tries, as the needs of his work of art re­quired.

Some of the per­son­al­ities he had as­sumed years, even decades be­fore, as he laid the com­plex ground­work of his mas­ter plan.

Ahead, an in­ter­sec­tion. Dio­genes slowed, turned right.

Night was re­lin­quish­ing its hold on the world, but Suf­folk Coun­ty still slept. It gave Dio­genes com­fort to know that his broth­er, Aloy­sius, was not one of those sunken in volup­tuous or erot­ic stu­pe­fac­tion. Nor would Aloy­sius sleep well again: ev­er. Just now he would be grow­ing ful­ly con­scious of the di­men­sions of what he, Dio­genes, had done to him.

His plan had the pow­er and func­tion­al per­fec­tion of a well-​oiled bear trap. And now Aloy­sius was caught in its jaws, await­ing the ar­rival of the hunter and the mer­ci­ful bul­let to the brain. On­ly, Dio­genes would show no such mer­cy.

His eyes strayed back to the satchel on the pas­sen­ger seat. He had not opened it since fill­ing it hours be­fore. The tran­scen­den­tal mo­ment, when he looked at—or rather in­to—the di­amonds at leisure had al­most ar­rived. The mo­ment of free­dom, of re­lease, he had so long yearned for.

For on­ly through the in­tense, bril­liant, re­fract­ed light is­sued by a deeply col­ored di­amond could Dio­genes es­cape, if on­ly for a mo­ment, his black-​and-​white prison. On­ly then could he re­cap­ture that faintest and most sought-​af­ter of his mem­ories—the essence of col­or. And of all the col­ors he most longed for, red was his over­rid­ing pas­sion. Red in all its myr­iad man­ifes­ta­tions.

Lu­cifer’s Heart. That was where he would be­gin and where he would end. The al­pha and the omega of col­or.

Then there would be Vi­ola to take care of.

The in­stru­ments had all been cleaned, pol­ished, honed, and stropped to their sharpest edges. Vi­ola would take some time. She was a grand cru wine that mer­it­ed be­ing tak­en up from the cel­lar, brought to room tem­per­ature, un­corked, and al­lowed to breathe— be­fore be­ing en­joyed, one exquisite sip af­ter an­oth­er, un­til noth­ing was left. She had to suf­fer—not for her sake, but for the marks it would leave on her body. And no one would be bet­ter able to in­ter­pret those marks than Aloy­sius. They would in­duce a suf­fer­ing in him equal to, if not ex­ceed­ing, the pain they caused the body’s own­er.

Per­haps he would start with a re-​cre­ation, in the cot­tage’s damp stone base­ment, of the scene de­pict­ed in Ju­dith and Holofernes. That had al­ways been his fa­vorite paint­ing of Car­avag­gio’s. He’d stood in front of it for hours, at the Gal­le­ria Nazionale d’Arte An­ti­ca in Rome, rapt in ad­mi­ra­tion: the love­ly lit­tle fur­row of de­ter­mi­na­tion on Ju­dith’s brow as she did the knife­work; the way she kept ev­ery part of her body, save her bare hands and arms, away from the messy work in progress; the bright strong cords of blood that slashed di­ag­onal­ly across the bed­sheets. Yes, that would make a fine start. Per­haps he and Vi­ola could even study the paint­ing to­geth­er, be­fore he got to work. Ju­dith and Holofernes. With the roles re­versed, of course, and the ad­di­tion of a pewter bleed­ing bowl so that none of the pre­cious nec­tar would be lost…

Dio­genes passed through the emp­ty vil­lage of Ger­ard Park. Gar-​din­ers Bay ap­peared ahead of him, a dull cold sheet of zinc bro­ken by the dark out­lines of dis­tant is­lands. The car eased right on­to Ger­ard Drive, Acabonack Har­bor on one side, the bay on his left. Less than a mile more now. As he drove, he smiled faint­ly.

“Vale, frater,” he mur­mured in Latin. “Vale.”

Vi­ola had pulled the chair up to the barred win­dow, and she watched the first streak of light creep over the black At­lantic—a smudge of dirty chalk—with a sense of sur­re­al de­tach­ment. It was like a night­mare she couldn’t wake from, a dream as re­al and vivid as it was sense­less. What scared her most of all was the re­al­iza­tion of just how much trou­ble and ex­pense Dio­genes had gone to in cre­at­ing this prison cell—riv­et­ed steel walls, floor, and ceil­ing, a steel door with a tum­bler lock from a safe, not to men­tion the un­break­able win­dows, the spe­cial plumb­ing and wiring. It was as se­cure as a cell in the high­est se­cu­ri­ty prison—maybe more so.

Why? Was it re­al­ly pos­si­ble that, with dawn ap­proach­ing, she had mere min­utes to live?

Yet again, she forced this use­less spec­ula­tion from her mind.

She had long since con­clud­ed that es­cape was im­pos­si­ble. A great deal of thought had gone in­to con­struct­ing her prison, and her ev­ery ef­fort to seek a way out had been an­tic­ipat­ed and blocked. He had been gone all night—at least that’s what the ut­ter si­lence seemed to tell her. From time to time, she had banged and screamed on the door, at one point strik­ing a chair against it again and again un­til the chair had come apart in her hands. No one had come.

The smear of chalk took on a faint­ly bloody tinge: a lurid glow over the heav­ing At­lantic. A fe­ro­cious wind dot­ted the dark ocean with dim flecks of white­caps. Wisps of frozen snow—or was it sand?—whipped along the ground.

Sud­den­ly, she sat up, abrupt­ly alert. She had heard the faint muf­fled sound of a door open­ing. She rushed to her own door, pressed an ear against it. The very faintest of sounds came from be­low: a foot­fall, the clos­ing of a door.

He was back.

She felt a sud­den surge of fear and glanced across the room to­ward the win­dow. The limb of the sun was just now climb­ing above the gray At­lantic, and just as quick­ly ris­ing in­to a black bar of storm cloud. He had made it a point to ar­rive just at dawn. In time for the ex­ecu­tion.

Vi­ola curled her lip. If he thought he was go­ing to kill her with­out a strug­gle, he was sore­ly mis­tak­en. She would fight him to the death…

She swal­lowed, re­al­iz­ing how fool­ish her brava­do was, aimed against a man who would sure­ly have a gun and know ex­act­ly how to use it.

She fought against a sud­den, pan­icky hy­per­ven­ti­la­tion. A strange set of con­flict­ing feel­ings rose with­in her: on the one hand, an ur­gent, in­stinc­tive de­sire for sur­vival at what­ev­er the cost; on the oth­er, an in­grained need to die—if death, in fact, was near—with dig­ni­ty, not with scream­ing and strug­gling.

There were more sounds and, with­out think­ing, she im­me­di­ate­ly lay down on the floor to lis­ten at the tiny space be­tween the door and the thresh­old. The sounds were still faint and muf­fled.

She rose and ran in­to the bath­room, tore the toi­let pa­per from its re­cep­ta­cle, un­rav­eled it with a fierce shake of her hand, and pulled the card­board tube free. Then she ran back to the door frame, press­ing one end of the tube to her ear and squeez­ing the oth­er end up against the long crack of the jamb.

Now she could hear much bet­ter: the rus­tle of cloth­ing, the set­ting down of sev­er­al things, the sound of a latch be­ing un­done.

There was a sud­den, sharp in­take of breath. Next, a long, long si­lence. Five min­utes passed.

Then came a strange and ter­ri­ble sound: a low, ag­onized keen­ing, al­most like the warn­ing moan of a cat. It rose and fell in singsong fash­ion be­fore sud­den­ly as­cend­ing in vol­ume to be­come a shriek of pure, undis­tilled, ab­so­lute an­guish. It was in­hu­man, it was the shriek of the liv­ing dead, it was the most hor­ri­fy­ing sound she had ev­er heard—and it came from him.

FIFTY-​SIX

The cab pulled up in front of the Times Build­ing. Smith­back im­pa­tient­ly signed the cred­it card re­ceipt—the fare was $425—pay­ing with the card he’d picked up at his apart­ment. He hand­ed the slip back to the cab­bie, who took it with a frown.

“Where’s the tip?” the driv­er said.

“Are you kid­ding? I could’ve flown to Aru­ba for what I just paid you.”

“Look, pal, I got gas, in­sur­ance, ex­pens­es up the wa­zoo—“

Smith­back slammed the door and ran in­to the build­ing, sprint­ing for the el­eva­tor. He would just touch base with Davies, let his boss know he was back in town, make sure his job wasn’t on the line— and then head straight to the mu­se­um and No­ra. It was quar­ter af­ter nine: she hadn’t been at the apart­ment, and he as­sumed she’d al­ready left for work.

He punched the but­ton for the thir­ty-​third floor and wait­ed while the el­eva­tor rose with mad­den­ing slow­ness. At last, it ar­rived, and he ex­it­ed the car and jogged down the hall, paus­ing out­side Davies’s door just long enough to catch his breath and smooth down the un­ruly cowlick that al­ways seemed to pop up at the worst pos­si­ble time.

He took a deep breath, gave the door a po­lite rap.

“It’s open,” came the voice.

Smith­back stepped for­ward in­to the door­way. Thank God: Har­ri­man wasn’t any­where in sight.

Davies glanced up from his desk. “Bill! They told me you were at St. Luke’s, prac­ti­cal­ly at death’s door.”

“I made a quick re­cov­ery.”

Davies looked him over, his eyes veiled. “Glad to see you look­ing so fat and hap­py.” He paused. “I take it you’ll be pro­vid­ing us with a note from your doc­tor?”

“Of course, of course,” Smith­back stam­mered. He as­sumed Pen­der­gast could fix that, as he seemed able to fix ev­ery­thing else.

“You picked a con­ve­nient time to dis­ap­pear.” Davies’s voice was laced with irony. “I didn’t pick it. It picked me.”

“Have a seat.”

“Well, I was just on my way—“

“Oh, I beg your par­don—I didn’t re­al­ize you had a press­ing en­gage­ment.”

On hear­ing the icy tone in the voice, Smith­back de­cid­ed to sit down. He was dy­ing to see No­ra, but it wouldn’t pay to piss off Davies any more than he al­ready had.

“Bryce Har­ri­man was able to take up the slack dur­ing your re­cent in­dis­po­si­tion, both on the Duchamp killing and that oth­er one up at the mu­se­um, since the po­lice are now say­ing they’re linked—“

Smith­back sat for­ward in the chair. “Ex­cuse me. Did you say a mur­der up at the mu­se­um? What mu­se­um?”

“You re­al­ly have been out of it. The New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry. A cu­ra­tor was mur­dered there three days ago—“

“Who?”

“No­body I’d heard of. Don’t wor­ry about it, you’re long off that sto­ry—Har­ri­man’s tak­en it over.” He snapped up a mani­la en­ve­lope. “Here’s what I’ve got for you, in­stead. It’s a big sto­ry, and I’ll be frank with you, Bill: I feel a cer­tain trep­ida­tion en­trust­ing it to some­one in shaky health. I’d have con­sid­ered pass­ing it on to Har­ri­man, too, on­ly he’s got a lot on his plate as it is and he was al­ready in the field when the news broke twen­ty min­utes ago. There was a big rob­bery at the mu­se­um last night. Seems it’s a busy place these days. You’re the one with con­tacts there, you wrote that book on the place—so it’s your sto­ry, de­spite my feel­ings of con­cern.”

“But who—?”

He shoved the en­ve­lope at Smith­back. “Some­body cleaned out the di­amond hall last night while a big func­tion was un­der way. There’s go­ing to be a press con­fer­ence at ten. Your cre­den­tials are in there.” He glanced at his watch. “That’s half an hour, you bet­ter get mov­ing.”

“About the killing at the mu­se­um,” Smith­back said again. “Who was it?”

“Like I said, no­body im­por­tant. A new hire named Green. Mar­go Green.”

“What?” Smith­back found him­self grip­ping the seat, reel­ing. It was im­pos­si­ble. Im­pos­si­ble.

Davies gazed at Smith­back with alarm. “Are you all right?”

Smith­back rose on shak­ing legs. “Mar­go Green … mur­dered?”

“Do you know her?”

“Yes.” Smith­back bare­ly got the word out.

“Well, bet­ter that you’re not han­dling the sto­ry, then,” said Davies briskly. “Re­port­ing on a sub­ject too close to you, my old ed­itor used to say, is like try­ing to be your own lawyer: you’ve got a fool for a lawyer and a fool for a—hey! Where’re you go­ing?”

FIFTY-​SEV­EN

AS No­ra turned the cor­ner from Colum­bus Av­enue on­to West 77th Street, she im­me­di­ate­ly re­al­ized some­thing big had hap­pened at the mu­se­um. Mu­se­um Drive was packed with po­lice ve­hi­cles, un­marked cars, and scene-​of-​crime vans, these in turn sur­round­ed by tele­vi­sion vans and a seething crowd of re­porters.

She checked her watch—it was quar­ter to ten, usu­al­ly a time when the mu­se­um was still wak­ing up. Her heart quick­ened: had there been an­oth­er killing?

She walked briskly down the ser­vice drive to the em­ploy­ee en­trance. The po­lice had al­ready cleared a path for ar­riv­ing mu­se­um em­ploy­ees and were push­ing back an in­creas­ing­ly un­ruly crowd of rub­ber­neck­ers. Ap­par­ent­ly, what­ev­er hap­pened had al­ready been re­port­ed on the morn­ing news, as the crowds were swelling even as she watched. But be­cause of the open­ing the night be­fore, she’d over­slept and hadn’t had time to lis­ten to the ra­dio.

“Mu­se­um em­ploy­ee?” one cop asked.

She nod­ded, pulling out her badge. “What’s go­ing on?”

“Mu­se­um’s closed. Go over there.”

“But what—?”

The cop was al­ready shout­ing at some­one else, and she found her­self pro­pelled to­ward the se­cu­ri­ty en­trance, which seemed to be mobbed with mu­se­um se­cu­ri­ty. Manet­ti, the se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor, was there, ges­tur­ing fran­ti­cal­ly at a pair of hap­less guards.

“All ar­riv­ing staff to the roped area on the right!” one of the guards shout­ed. “Have your badges ready!”

No­ra saw George Ash­ton in the milling crowd of ar­riv­ing em­ploy­ees and grabbed his arm. “What’s hap­pened?”

He stared at her. “You must be the on­ly one in the city who doesn’t know.”

“I over­slept,” she said testi­ly.

“This way!” a po­lice­man bawled. “Mu­se­um em­ploy­ees this way!”

The vel­vet ropes that had blocked off the gawk­ers and press from the gala the night be­fore were now be­ing put to a sec­ond use, this time to fun­nel mu­se­um staff to a hold­ing area near the se­cu­ri­ty en­trance, where guards were check­ing IDs and calm­ing irate em­ploy­ees.

“Some­one hit the As­tor Hall last night,” said Ash­ton breath­less­ly. “Cleaned it out. Right in the mid­dle of the par­ty.”

“Cleaned it out? Even Lu­cifer’s Heart?”

“Es­pe­cial­ly Lu­cifer’s Heart.”

“How?”

“No­body knows.”

“I thought the As­tor Hall was im­preg­nable.”

“So they said.”

“Move back and stay to the right!” a cop yelled. “We’ll have you in­side in a mo­ment!” Ash­ton gri­maced. “Just what I need the morn­ing af­ter five glass­es of cham­pagne.” More like ten, No­ra thought wry­ly as she re­called Ash­ton’s slurred ram­blings of the pre­vi­ous evening.

Po­lice and mu­se­um guards were check­ing IDs, ques­tion­ing each em­ploy­ee, then mov­ing them to a sec­ond penned area just be­fore the se­cu­ri­ty en­trance.

“Any sus­pects?” No­ra asked.

“None. Ex­cept that they’re con­vinced the bur­glars had in­side help.”

“IDs!” a cop bawled in her ear.

She fished in her purse again and showed her ID. Ash­ton did the same.

“Dr. Kel­ly?” The cop had a clip­board. An­oth­er pulled Ash­ton aside.

“May I ask a few quick ques­tions?”

“Fire away,” No­ra said.

“Were you at the mu­se­um last night?”

“Yes.”

He marked some­thing down.

“What time did you leave?”

“About mid­night.”

“That’s all. Step over there and, as soon as we can, we’ll open the mu­se­um and you can go to work. We’ll be in touch with you lat­er to sched­ule an in­ter­view.”

No­ra was shunt­ed to the sec­ond hold­ing area. She could hear Ash-​ton’s raised voice be­hind her, de­mand­ing to know why he hadn’t been read his rights. The cu­ra­tors and staff wait­ing around her beat their hands in the cold, their breath fill­ing the air. It was a gray day and the tem­per­ature hov­ered just be­low freez­ing. Voic­es were raised in com­plaint all around.

No­ra heard a com­mo­tion from the street and looked. The press had sud­den­ly surged for­ward, cam­eras jug­gling on shoul­ders, boom mikes swing­ing. Then she saw the rea­son: the mu­se­um doors had swung open. The mu­se­um’s di­rec­tor, Fred­er­ick Wat­son Col­lopy, ap­peared, flanked by Rock­er, the po­lice com­mis­sion­er. A pha­lanx of uni­formed po­lice­men stood be­hind them.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, the press erupt­ed in a clam­or of shout­ed ques­tions and waved hands. It was the start, it seemed, of a press con­fer­ence.

At that same mo­ment, she saw a fran­tic move­ment off to one side. She turned to­ward it. It was her hus­band, fight­ing through the crowd, shout­ing fran­ti­cal­ly and try­ing to reach her. “Bill!” She rushed for­ward.

“No­ra!” Smith­back plowed through a milling crowd of hang­ers-​on, sent a beefy mu­se­um se­cu­ri­ty guard sprawl­ing, hopped the vel­vet ropes, and mus­cled his way through the mu­se­um em­ploy­ees. “No­ra!”

“Hey, where’s that guy go­ing?” A po­lice­man strug­gled to in­ter­cept him.

Smith­back cut through the last of the crowd and al­most ran in­to No­ra, en­velop­ing her in a bear hug and lift­ing her bod­ily off the ground.

“No­ra! God, did I miss you!”

They hugged, kissed, hugged again.

“Bill, what hap­pened to you? What’s that bruise on the side of your head?”

“Nev­er mind about that,” Smith­back replied. “I just heard about Mar­go. Was she re­al­ly killed?”

No­ra nod­ded. “I went to her fu­ner­al yes­ter­day.”

“Oh my God. I can’t be­lieve it’s true.” He wiped sav­age­ly at his face, and No­ra saw that his eyes were leak­ing tears. “I can’t be­lieve it.”

“Where were you, Bill? I was so wor­ried!”

“It’s a long sto­ry. I was locked in an in­sane asy­lum.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you about it lat­er. I’ve been wor­ried about you, too. Pen­der­gast thinks there’s a ma­ni­ac killer wan­der­ing around, knock­ing off all his friends.”

“I know. He warned me. But it was right be­fore the open­ing— there was noth­ing I could—“

“This man’s not sup­posed to be here,” a mu­se­um guard in­ter­rupt­ed, step­ping be­tween them. “This is for mu­se­um em­ploy­ees on­ly—“

Smith­back swung around to re­spond, but they were in­ter­rupt­ed by the shriek of feed­back on an im­pro­vised P.A. sys­tem. A mo­ment lat­er, Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er stepped up to the mike and asked for si­lence—and, mirac­ulous­ly, got it.

“I’m with the Times,” said Smith­back, scroung­ing some pa­per out of his pock­et and fum­bling for a pen.

“Here, use mine,” No­ra said, her arm still around his waist.

The crowd was silent as the po­lice com­mis­sion­er be­gan to speak.

“Last night,” Rock­er be­gan, “the As­tor Hall of Di­amonds was bur­glar­ized. At this point, the scene-​of-​crime teams are still on the site, along with some of the best foren­sic ex­perts in the world. Ev­ery­thing that can be done is be­ing done. It’s too ear­ly for leads or sus­pects, but I promise you, as new de­vel­op­ments arise, we will keep the press in­formed. I’m sor­ry I can’t give you more, but it’s still very ear­ly in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I will say this: it was an ex­treme­ly pro­fes­sion­al job, ob­vi­ous­ly planned long in ad­vance, by tech­no­log­ical­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed thieves who ap­pear to have been in­ti­mate­ly fa­mil­iar with the mu­se­um’s se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem, and who used the dis­trac­tion of last night’s open­ing gala to their ad­van­tage. It will take a while to an­alyze and un­der­stand how they pen­etrat­ed the mu­se­um’s se­cu­ri­ty. That’s about all I have to say for the present. Dr. Col­lopy?”

The mu­se­um’s di­rec­tor stepped for­ward, stand­ing straight, try­ing to put the best face on things—and fail­ing. When he spoke, a tremor un­der­lay his words.

“I want to re­it­er­ate what Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er just said: all that can pos­si­bly be done is be­ing done. The truth is, most of the di­amonds stolen are unique and would be in­stant­ly rec­og­niz­able to any gem deal­er in the world. They can­not be fenced in their present form.”

A mur­mur of un­ease went up at the im­pli­ca­tion they might be re­cut.

“My fel­low New York­ers, I know what a great loss this is to the mu­se­um and to the city. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we just don’t know enough yet to be able to say who might have done it, or why, or what their in­ten­tions are.”

“What about Lu­cifer’s Heart?” some­one shout­ed from among the press.

Col­lopy seemed to stag­ger. “We’re do­ing all we can, I promise you.”

“Was Lu­cifer’s Heart stolen?” an­oth­er shout­ed.

“I’d like to turn the floor over to the mu­se­um’s pub­lic af­fairs di­rec­tor, Car­la Roc­co—“

A bar­rage of shout­ed ques­tions fol­lowed and a wom­an stepped for­ward, hold­ing up her hands. “I’ll take the ques­tions when there’s si­lence,” she said.

The clam­or sub­sid­ed and she point­ed. “Ms. Lilien­thal of ABC, your ques­tion?”

“What about Lu­cifer’s Heart? Is it gone?”

“Yes, it was among the di­amonds tak­en.”

A tur­bu­lent mur­mur fol­lowed this un­sur­pris­ing rev­ela­tion. Roc­co held up her hands again. “Please!”

“The mu­se­um claimed their se­cu­ri­ty was the best in the world!” a re­porter shout­ed. “How did the thieves get through?”

“We’re an­alyz­ing it as we speak. Se­cu­ri­ty is mul­ti­lay­ered and re­dun­dant. The hall was un­der con­stant video surveil­lance. The thieves left be­hind a mass of tech­ni­cal equip­ment.”

“What kind of tech­ni­cal equip­ment?”

“It’ll take days, maybe weeks, to an­alyze.”

More shout­ed ques­tions. Roc­co point­ed to an­oth­er re­porter. “Roger?”

“How much is the col­lec­tion in­sured for?”

“One hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars.”

A mur­mur of awe.

“What’s it ac­tu­al­ly worth?” the re­porter named Roger per­sist­ed.

“The mu­se­um nev­er put a val­ue on it. Next ques­tion to Mr. Werth from NBC.” “What’s Lu­cifer’s Heart worth?”

“Again, you can’t put a val­ue on it. But let me please em­pha­size that we ex­pect to re­cov­er the gems, one way or an­oth­er.”

Col­lopy stepped for­ward abrupt­ly. “The mu­se­um’s col­lec­tion con­sists most­ly of ‘fan­cy’ di­amonds—that is, col­ored ones—and most are un­usu­al enough to be rec­og­niz­able from col­or and grade alone. That’s es­pe­cial­ly true of a di­amond like Lu­cifer’s Heart. There’s no oth­er di­amond in the world with its deep cin­na­mon col­or.”

No­ra watched as Smith­back stepped over the vel­vet cord and in­to the group of press, wav­ing his hand.

Roc­co point­ed to him, squint­ed. “Smith­back, from the Times?”

“Isn’t Lu­cifer’s Heart con­sid­ered the finest di­amond in the world?”

“The finest fan­cy di­amond, yes. At least that’s what I’ve been told.”

“So how are you go­ing to ex­plain this to the peo­ple of New York? How are you go­ing to ex­plain the loss of this unique gem­stone?” His voice was sud­den­ly shak­ing with emo­tion. It seemed to No­ra that all the anger Smith­back felt at Mar­go’s death, and at his en­forced sep­ara­tion from her, was be­ing chan­neled in­to his ques­tion. “How could the mu­se­um have al­lowed this to hap­pen!”

“No one al­lowed this to hap­pen,” said Roc­co de­fen­sive­ly. “The se­cu­ri­ty in the As­tor Hall is the most so­phis­ti­cat­ed in the world.”

“Ap­par­ent­ly, not so­phis­ti­cat­ed enough.”

More chaos and shout­ing erupt­ed. Roc­co waved her hands. “Please! Let me speak!”

The roar died to an un­easy rum­ble.

“The mu­se­um deeply re­grets the loss of Lu­cifer’s Heart. We un­der­stand its im­por­tance to the city and, in­deed, to the coun­try. We’re do­ing all we can to re­cov­er it. Please be pa­tient and give the po­lice time to do their work. Ms. Carl­son of the Post?”

“This is for Dr. Col­lopy. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you were hold­ing that di­amond in trust for the peo­ple of New York, to whom it re­al­ly be­longs. How do you, per­son­al­ly, as the head of the mu­se­um, in­tend to bear re­spon­si­bil­ity for this?”

The rum­ble was ris­ing again. But it sud­den­ly died away as Col­lopy held up his hands. “The fact is,” he said, “any se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem de­vised by man can be de­feat­ed by man.”

“That’s a rather fa­tal­is­tic view,” Carl­son con­tin­ued. “In oth­er words, you’re ad­mit­ting the mu­se­um can’t ev­er guar­an­tee the se­cu­ri­ty of its col­lec­tions.”

“We cer­tain­ly do guar­an­tee the se­cu­ri­ty of our col­lec­tions,” Col­lopy thun­dered.

“Next ques­tion!” Roc­co called. But the re­porters had latched on­to some­thing and weren’t go­ing to let go.

“Can you ex­plain what you mean by ‘guar­an­tee’? The great­est di­amond in the world has just been stolen and you tell us its se­cu­ri­ty was guar­an­teed?”

“I can ex­plain.” Col­lopy’s face swelled with anger.

“There’s a bit of cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance float­ing around here!” Smith­back shout­ed.

“I make that state­ment be­cause Lu­cifer’s Heart was not among the di­amonds stolen!” Col­lopy cried.

There was an as­ton­ished si­lence. Roc­co turned and looked at Col­lopy in amaze­ment, as did Rock­er him­self.

“Ex­cuse me, sir,” Roc­co be­gan.

“Si­lence! I’m the on­ly per­son in the mu­se­um privy to this in­for­ma­tion, but un­der the cir­cum­stances I don’t see any point in keep­ing the in­for­ma­tion back any longer. The stone on dis­play was a repli­ca, a re­al di­amond ar­ti­fi­cial­ly col­ored by ra­di­ation treat­ments. The true Lu­cifer’s Heart has al­ways been safe­ly locked in a vault at the mu­se­um’s in­sur­ance com­pa­ny. The gem was too valu­able to put on dis­play—our in­sur­ance com­pa­ny wouldn’t al­low it.”

He raised his head, a glit­ter of tri­umph in his eyes. “The thieves, who­ev­er they are, stole a fake.”

A roar of ques­tions fol­lowed. But Col­lopy sim­ply mopped his brow and re­treat­ed.

“This press con­fer­ence is over!” shout­ed Roc­co, to no ef­fect. “No more ques­tions!”

But it was clear, from the fran­tic hands and the shouts, that it was not over, and that there were many, many more ques­tions to come.

FIFTY-​EIGHT

Hours passed as they drove through one de­sert­ed beach town af­ter an­oth­er. Dawn had swelled in­to a dis­mal day, bit­ter­ly cold, with a knife-​edged wind whip­ping out of a pewter sky. D’Agos­ta was still lis­ten­ing, mood­ily, to the po­lice ra­dio. He was grow­ing in­creas­ing­ly con­cerned: the po­lice chat­ter con­cern­ing them had abrupt­ly dropped off—not just be­cause of the gem heist, al­though that filled most of the chan­nels, but be­cause they’d prob­ably switched to more se­cure chan­nels that couldn’t be mon­itored from their portable po­lice-​band ra­dio.

It was be­com­ing ob­vi­ous to him they had reached the end of the line. Hit­ting more con­ve­nience stores was hope­less—with a full tank of gas, Dio­genes would have no fur­ther rea­son to stop. Their pre­vi­ous score in Yaphank had on­ly con­firmed what Dio­genes want­ed them to know—that he had gone east and that Vi­ola would short­ly be dead. Be­yond that, noth­ing. D’Agos­ta felt sick for Pen­der­gast: it was hope­less, and he knew it.

Still, they sol­diered on, stop­ping at mo­tels, marts, all-​night din­ers, each time ex­pos­ing them­selves to the pos­si­bil­ity of be­ing spot­ted and ar­rest­ed.

What few scraps D’Agos­ta had man­aged to glean from the ra­dio had been dis­heart­en­ing. Bol­stered by a new and strong fed­er­al pres­ence, the po­lice were rapid­ly clos­ing in. New road­blocks had been erect­ed, and lo­cal au­thor­ities were on full alert. In­evitably, they’d learn about the pur­chase of the pick­up truck. Un­less Pen­der­gast had some­thing tru­ly clever up his sleeve, their free-​range hours were num­bered.

The pick­up swerved abrupt­ly and D’Agos­ta clutched the roof han­dle as Pen­der­gast screeched in­to a small park­ing lot, com­ing to a halt in front of a twen­ty-​four-​hour Star­bucks. Be­yond lay a pub­lic park­ing lot and, be­yond that, the gray, rolling At­lantic.

They sat for a mo­ment while the po­lice ra­dio, still tuned to the mu­se­um theft, droned on. Some kind of press con­fer­ence was in ses­sion, be­ing broad­cast over one of the pub­lic chan­nels.

“No way they stopped here,” said D’Agos­ta.

“What I’m af­ter is a wire­less hot spot.” Pen­der­gast opened the lap­top, boot­ed it up. “No doubt there’s one in­side. I’ll use a snif­fer to find an open port, tap in­to the Net that way. I left my pat­tern-​recog­ni­tion soft­ware run­ning at the Dako­ta. Per­haps it has some­thing more to tell us.”

D’Agos­ta watched mo­rose­ly as Pen­der­gast tapped on the key­board. “Would you be so kind as to or­der us some cof­fee, Vin­cent?” he asked with­out look­ing up.

D’Agos­ta got out of the truck and en­tered the Star­bucks. When he re­turned a few min­utes lat­er with a cou­ple of lat­tes, Pen­der­gast had moved in­to the pas­sen­ger seat and was no longer typ­ing.

“Any­thing?”

Pen­der­gast shook his head. Slow­ly, he sat back, closed his eyes.

D’Agos­ta eased him­self in­to the driv­er’s seat with a sigh. As he did so, he no­ticed a po­lice cruis­er turn­ing in­to the park­ing lot. It slowed as it passed them, then halt­ed at the far end of the lot.

“Shit. That cop’s run­ning our plates.”

Pen­der­gast didn’t re­spond. He sat mo­tion­less, eyes closed.

“That’s it. We’re screwed.”

Now the cruis­er eased in­to a three-​point turn at the end of the lot and head­ed back to­ward them.

Pen­der­gast opened his eyes. “I’ll hold the drinks. See what you can do about get­ting him off our tail.”

In­stant­ly, D’Agos­ta slammed the truck in­to drive and peeled out, fish­tail­ing past the cruis­er and on­to the road par­al­lel­ing the board­walk. The cruis­er snapped on its lights and siren, ac­cel­er­at­ing be­hind them.

They tore along the dune road. Mo­ments lat­er, D’Agos­ta heard an­oth­er siren, this one com­ing from some­where ahead.

“The beach,” said Pen­der­gast, gin­ger­ly bal­anc­ing the lat­tes.

“Right.” D’Agos­ta shift­ed in­to 4WD, spun the wheel, and bashed through the rail­ing on­to the board­walk. The truck rum­bled across the un­even wood­en planks, hit the rail­ing on the far side, and was briefly air­borne as it made the two-​foot drop to the sand.

In a mo­ment, they were rac­ing along the beach, just be­yond the surf. D’Agos­ta glanced back to see the squad cars in the sand, still fol­low­ing.

They were go­ing to have to do bet­ter.

He ac­cel­er­at­ed fur­ther, tires spin­ning up jets of damp sand. Ahead, he could see an area of dunes, one of the many pre­serves along the South Shore. He swerved in­to it, broke down an­oth­er wood­en fence, and hit the scrub­by dunes at forty. It was clear­ly a large pre­serve, and he had no idea where he was go­ing, so he an­gled the truck in­to the rough­est-​look­ing sec­tion, where the brush was heav­iest and the dunes high­est, cov­ered with a scat­ter­ing of scrub­by pines. No way the cruis­ers could fol­low them in here.

Sud­den­ly, Pen­der­gast sat up, like the snap­ping of a steel spring.

D’Agos­ta bashed through some more heavy brush, then glanced in­to the rearview mir­ror. Noth­ing. The cruis­ers had been stopped, but D’Agos­ta knew their respite was on­ly tem­po­rary. All the po­lice sta­tions along the South Shore had beach pa­trol bug­gies—he knew, he used to drive one, in an­oth­er life just a few months back. They were still in deep shit and he’d have to find some oth­er way to—

“Stop the truck!” Pen­der­gast said abrupt­ly.

“No way, I’ve got to—“

“Stop!”

Some­thing in the tone caused D’Agos­ta to jam on the brakes. They swerved wild­ly, stop­ping be­neath the shad­ow of an over­hang­ing dune. He killed the lights and the en­gine at the same time. This was crazy. They’d left a set of tracks any id­iot could fol­low.

The ra­dio was still on the press con­fer­ence, and Pen­der­gast was lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly.

“… al­ways been safe­ly locked in a vault at the mu­se­um’s in­sur­ance com­pa­ny. The gem was too valu­able to put on dis­play—our in­sur­ance com­pa­ny wouldn’t al­low it.”

Pen­der­gast turned to D’Agos­ta, a look of as­ton­ish­ment and sud­den, fierce hope light­ing up his face.

“That’s it!”

“What?”

“Dio­genes fi­nal­ly made a mis­take. This is the open­ing we need.” He had his cell phone out.

“I wish to hell I knew what you were talk­ing about.”

“I’m go­ing to make some calls. As of now, you have but one vi­tal task, Vin­cent: get us back to Man­hat­tan.”

The faint sound of a siren came up from be­hind the screen of dunes.

FIFTY-​NINE

Smith­back slow­ly SHUT his cell phone, stunned by the bizarre call he had just re­ceived. He found No­ra look­ing at him cu­ri­ous­ly. They had fi­nal­ly opened the mu­se­um’s staff en­trance and em­ploy­ees were stream­ing past them, rush­ing to gain the warmth of in­doors.

“What is it, Bill?” she asked. “Who was that?”

“Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast. He man­aged to track me down on this loan­er cell phone I picked up at the Times.”

“What’d he want?”

“I’m sor­ry?” He felt dazed.

“I said, what did he want? You look shell-​shocked.”

“I’ve just had a most, um, ex­traor­di­nary pro­pos­al put to me.”

“Pro­pos­al? What are you talk­ing about?”

Smith­back roused him­self and grasped No­ra’s shoul­der. “I’ll tell you about it lat­er. Look, are you go­ing to be okay here? I’m wor­ried about your safe­ty, with Mar­go dead and all these warn­ings of Pen­der­gast’s.”

“The safest place in New York City is in­side that mu­se­um right now. There must be a thou­sand cops in there.”

Smith­back nod­ded slow­ly, think­ing. “True.”

“Lis­ten, I do have to go to work.”

“I’m com­ing in with you. I’ve got to talk to Dr. Col­lopy.”

“Col­lopy? Good luck.”

Smith­back could al­ready see a large, an­gry crowd of re­porters be­ing kept from the mu­se­um by a string of po­lice­men and guards. No one was get­ting in but em­ploy­ees. And Smith­back was well known—all too well known—to the guards.

He felt No­ra put an arm around his shoul­der. “What are you go­ing to do?”

“I’ve got to get in­side.”

No­ra frowned. “Does this have to do with that call of Pen­der­gast’s?”

“It sure does.” He looked in­to her green eyes, his gaze wan­der­ing over her cop­per hair and freck­led nose. “You know what I’d re­al­ly like to do…”

“Don’t tempt me. I have a ton of work to do. To­day’s the pub­lic open­ing of the ex­hi­bi­tion—as­sum­ing we ev­er open again.”

Smith­back gave her a kiss and a hug. He start­ed to break away but found that No­ra wouldn’t re­lease him.

“Bill,” she mur­mured in his ear, “thank God you’re back.”

They held each oth­er a few mo­ments more, then No­ra slow­ly let her arms fall away. She smiled, winked, then turned and walked in­to the mu­se­um.

Smith­back watched her dis­ap­pear­ing form. Then he shoul­dered his way in­to the crowd of em­ploy­ees lined up out­side the door, by­pass­ing the thick­et of re­porters who had been shunt­ed off to one side. All the em­ploy­ees had their IDs out, and the crowd was thick. Po­lice and mu­se­um guards were check­ing ev­ery­body’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion: it was go­ing to be a bitch get­ting in. Smith­back thought a mo­ment, then pulled out his busi­ness card and scrib­bled a short note on the back.

When his turn came to pass through the se­cu­ri­ty bar­ri­er, a guard barred his way. “ID?”

“I’m Smith­back of the Times.”

“You’re in the wrong place, pal. Press is over there.”

“Lis­ten to me. I have a very ur­gent and pri­vate mes­sage for Dr. Col­lopy. It must be de­liv­ered to him im­me­di­ate­ly, or heads will roll. I’m not kid­ding. Yours, too”—Smith­back glanced at the guard’s name-​plate— “Mr. Primus, if you don’t de­liv­er it.”

The guard wa­vered, a look of fear in his eyes. The mu­se­um ad­min­is­tra­tion had not made life easy in re­cent years for those on the bot­tom, fos­ter­ing a cli­mate of fear more than fam­ily. Smith­back had used this fact be­fore, to good ef­fect, and he hoped it would work again.

“What’s it about?” the guard named Primus asked.

“The di­amond theft. I have pri­vate in­for­ma­tion.”

The guard seemed to wa­ver. “I don’t know…”

“I’m not ask­ing you to let me in. I’m ask­ing you to de­liv­er this note di­rect­ly to the di­rec­tor. Not to his sec­re­tary, not to any­one else—just to him. Look, I’m not some schmuck, okay? Here are my cre­den­tials.”

The guard took the press pass, look­ing at it doubt­ful­ly.

Smith­back pressed the mes­sage in­to his hand. “Don’t read it. Put it in an en­ve­lope and de­liv­er it per­son­al­ly. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.”

The guard hes­itat­ed a mo­ment. Then he took the card and re­treat­ed to the se­cu­ri­ty of­fice, reap­pear­ing a few mo­ments lat­er with an en­ve­lope. “I sealed it in here, nev­er looked at it.”

“Good man.” Smith­back scrib­bled on the en­ve­lope: “For Dr. Col­lopy, ex­treme­ly im­por­tant, to be opened im­me­di­ate­ly. From William Smith­back Jr. of the New York Times.”

The guard nod­ded. “I’ll see it’s de­liv­ered.”

Smith­back leaned for­ward. “You don’t un­der­stand. I want you to de­liv­er it per­son­al­ly.” He glanced around. “I don’t trust any of these oth­er bo­zos.”

The guard flushed, nod­ded. “All right.” En­ve­lope in hand, he dis­ap­peared down the hall. Smith­back wait­ed, cell phone in hand. Five min­utes passed. Ten.

Fif­teen.

Smith­back paced in frus­tra­tion. This was not look­ing good.

Then his phone gave a shrill ring. He opened it quick­ly.

“This is Col­lopy,” came the pa­tri­cian voice. “Is this Smith­back?”

“Yes, it is.”

“One of the guards will es­cort you to my of­fice im­me­di­ate­ly.”

A scene of con­trolled chaos greet­ed Smith­back as he ap­proached the grand, carved oak­en doors of the di­rec­tor’s of­fice. Out­side was a con­fab­ula­tion of New York City po­lice, de­tec­tives, and mu­se­um of­fi­cials. The door was shut, but as soon as Smith­back’s es­cort an­nounced him, he was shown in­side.

Col­lopy stood pac­ing be­fore a great row of curved win­dows, hands clasped be­hind his back. Be­yond the win­dows lay the win­try fast­ness of Cen­tral Park. Smith­back rec­og­nized the se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor, Manet­ti, along with sev­er­al oth­er mu­se­um of­fi­cials stand­ing be­fore Col­lopy’s desk.

The mu­se­um di­rec­tor no­ticed him, stopped pac­ing. “Mr. Smith­back?”

“That’s me.”

Col­lopy turned to Manet­ti and the oth­er of­fi­cials. “Five min­utes.”

He watched them leave, then turned to Smith­back. He was grip­ping the card in one hand, his face slight­ly flushed. “Who’s be­hind this out­ra­geous ru­mor, Mr. Smith­back?”

Smith­back swal­lowed. He had to make this sound good. “It’s not ex­act­ly a ru­mor, sir. It came from a con­fi­den­tial source which I can’t re­veal. But I made a few calls, checked it out. It seems there might be some­thing to it.”

“This is in­tol­er­able. I’ve got enough to wor­ry about with­out this. It’s just some crank spec­ula­tion, best ig­nored.”

“I’m not sure that would be wise.”

“Why? You’re not go­ing to pub­lish un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed calum­nies like this in the Times, are you? My as­ser­tion that the di­amond is safe at our in­sur­ance com­pa­ny ought to be enough.”

“It’s true the Times doesn’t pub­lish ru­mors. But as I said, I’ve got a re­li­able source that claims it’s true. I can’t ig­nore that.”

“Bloody hell.”

“Let me pose a ques­tion to you,” Smith­back said, keep­ing his voice the soul of rea­son­able­ness. “When was the last time you per­son­al­ly saw Lu­cifer’s Heart?”

Col­lopy shot him a glance. “It would have been four years ago, when we re­newed the pol­icy.”

“Did a cer­ti­fied gemol­ogist ex­am­ine it at the time?”

“No. Why, it’s an un­mis­tak­able gem­stone…” Col­lopy’s voice trailed off as he re­al­ized the weak­ness of his re­mark.

“How do you know it was the gen­uine ar­ti­cle, Dr. Col­lopy?”

“I made a per­fect­ly rea­son­able as­sump­tion.”

“That’s the crux of it, isn’t it, Dr. Col­lopy? The truth is,” Smith­back con­tin­ued gen­tly, “you don’t know for a fact that Lu­cifer’s Heart is still in the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny vault. Or, if a gem­stone is there, whether it’s the re­al one.”

“This is an ab­surd spin­ning of a con­spir­acy the­ory!” The di­rec­tor set off pac­ing again, hands balled up be­hind his back. “I don’t have time for this!”

“You wouldn’t want to let a sto­ry like this get out of con­trol. You know how these things tend to as­sume a life of their own. And I do have to file my ar­ti­cle by this evening.”

“Your ar­ti­cle? What ar­ti­cle?”

“About the al­le­ga­tions.”

“You pub­lish that and my lawyers will eat you for break­fast!”

“Take on the Times? I don’t think so.” Smith­back spoke mild­ly and wait­ed, giv­ing Col­lopy plen­ty of time to think things out to the in­evitable, pre­or­dained con­clu­sion.

“Damn it!” Col­lopy said, spin­ning on his heel. “I sup­pose we’ll just have to bring it out and have it cer­ti­fied.”

“An in­ter­est­ing sug­ges­tion,” said Smith­back.

Col­lopy paced. “It’ll need to be done pub­licly, but un­der tight se­cu­ri­ty, of course. We can’t just in­vite ev­ery Tom, Dick, and Har­ry in to watch.”

“May I sug­gest that all you re­al­ly need is the Times’? The oth­ers will fol­low our lead. They al­ways do. We’re the pa­per of record.”

An­oth­er turn. “Per­haps you’re right.”

An­oth­er pace across the room, an­oth­er turn. “Here’s what I’m go­ing to do. I’m go­ing to get a gemol­ogist to cer­ti­fy that the stone held by our in­sur­ance com­pa­ny is, in fact, Lu­cifer’s Heart. We’ll do it right there, at Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al In­sur­ance head­quar­ters, un­der the tight­est se­cu­ri­ty. You’ll be the on­ly jour­nal­ist there and, damn it, you’d bet­ter write an ar­ti­cle that will scotch those ru­mors once and for all.”

“If it’s gen­uine.”

“It’ll be gen­uine or the mu­se­um will end up own­ing Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al In­sur­ance, so help me God.”

“What about the gemol­ogist? He’d have to be in­de­pen­dent, for cred­ibil­ity.”

Col­lopy paused. “It’s true we can’t use one of our own cu­ra­tors.”

“And his rep­uta­tion will ob­vi­ous­ly need to be unim­peach­able.”

“I’ll con­tact the Amer­ican Coun­cil of Gemol­ogists. They could send one of their ex­perts.” Col­lopy walked to the desk, picked up the phone, and made sev­er­al calls in rapid suc­ces­sion. Then he turned back to Smith­back.

“It’s all ar­ranged. We’ll meet at the Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al head­quar­ters, 1271 Av­enue of the Amer­ic­as, forty-​sec­ond floor, at one o’clock pre­cise­ly.”

“And the gemol­ogist?”

“A fel­low named George Ka­plan. Said to be one of the best.” He glanced at Smith­back. “Now, if you’ll ex­cuse me, I’ve got a lot to do. See you at one.” He hes­itat­ed. “And thank you for your dis­cre­tion.”

“Thank you, Dr. Col­lopy.”

SIX­TY

D’Agos­ta lis­tened to the sirens com­ing across the dunes. They grew loud­er, re­ced­ed, then grew loud­er again. From his days with the Southamp­ton P.D., he rec­og­nized the tin­ny sound as com­ing from the cheap units mount­ed on the dune pa­trol bug­gies.

They’d sat here in the shad­ow of a sand dune, hid­ing, as­sess­ing the sit­ua­tion, at least five min­utes. If he re­mained on the beach, there was no way their truck was go­ing to es­cape dune bug­gies. And yet if he went back on the street, he’d be nabbed im­me­di­ate­ly, now that they knew his ap­prox­imate lo­ca­tion, ve­hi­cle, and li­cense plate.

They were now near Southamp­ton, D’Agos­ta’s old stomp­ing ground, and he knew the lay of the land, at least in gen­er­al terms. There had to be a way out. He would just have to find it.

He start­ed the truck, popped the emer­gen­cy brake.

“Hold on to your seat,” he said.

Pen­der­gast, who had ap­par­ent­ly fin­ished mak­ing a string of cell phone calls, glanced over. “I am in your hands.”

D’Agos­ta took a deep breath. Then he gunned the en­gine, the pick­up dig­ging out of the hol­low and climb­ing the side of a dune, shoot­ing huge jets of sand be­hind them. They plunged in­to an­oth­er de­pres­sion, wound around sev­er­al dunes, then climbed di­ag­onal­ly up the flank of an es­pe­cial­ly large one that sep­arat­ed them from the main­land. As they topped it, D’Agos­ta got a back­ward glimpse of sev­er­al pa­trol bug­gies scoot­ing along the hard sand a quar­ter mile back, with at least two oth­ers in the dunes them­selves, no doubt fol­low­ing their tracks.

Shit. They were clos­er than he’d ex­pect­ed.

D’Agos­ta jammed the ped­al to the floor as the pick­up topped the dune. For a mo­ment, they were air­borne. Then they land­ed on the far side, bot­tom­ing out in the loose sand, churn­ing and grind­ing their way through a patch of dense brush. The pre­serve end­ed, and the path ahead was blocked by sev­er­al grand Hamp­ton es­tates. As he fought with the wheel, D’Agos­ta quick­ly ar­ranged the lo­cal to­pog­ra­phy in his head. If they could just get past the es­tates, he knew, Scut­tle­hole marsh lay be­yond.

The dunes lev­eled out and he bashed the truck through a slat fence, emerg­ing on­to a nar­row road. On the far side was a high box­wood hedge, sur­round­ing one of the great es­tates. He tore along­side the hedge, and where the road curved up ahead, he saw what he was look­ing for—a scle­rot­ic patch in the fo­liage—and he veered off, aim­ing di­rect­ly for it. The pick­up truck hit it at forty, bashed through the hedge, tear­ing off both mir­rors in the pro­cess, and then they were ac­cel­er­at­ing across a ten-​acre lawn, a huge Geor­gian man­sion on the left, a gaze­bo and cov­ered pool on the right, the way be­yond blocked by an Ital­ian rose gar­den.

He flashed past the pool at speed, ripped through the rose gar­den, nicked the arm off a sculp­ture of some naked wom­an, and crashed through a raised veg­etable bed that lay be­yond. Up ahead, like a green wall, stood an­oth­er un­bro­ken line of hedge.

Pen­der­gast looked back through the rear win­dow of the pick­up truck, a pained ex­pres­sion on his face. “Vin­cent, you’re cut­ting quite a swath,” he said.

“They can add nude stat­ue mo­lesta­tion to my grow­ing list of crimes. For now, though, you’d bet­ter brace your­self.” And he ac­cel­er­at­ed to­ward the hedge.

They hit it with a shud­der­ing crash that near­ly stopped the ve­hi­cle dead. The en­gine coughed and sput­tered, and for a mo­ment D’Agos­ta feared it would die. But they fought their way out the far side of the hedge, still run­ning. Across an­oth­er nar­row road, he could see a split-​rail fence and, be­yond that, the marsh­es sur­round­ing Scut­tle­hole Pond.

For the past cou­ple of weeks it had been cold—very cold. Now D’Agos­ta was go­ing to find out if it had been cold enough.

He tore along the road un­til he found a break in the fence, then point­ed the truck through it and went off-​road again. He was forced to slow down as he wound through the sparse jack­pine for­est that sur­round­ed the marsh. He could still hear the sirens com­ing faint­ly from be­hind. If he had gained ground cut­ting through the es­tate, it was pre­cious lit­tle.

The stunt­ed pines grad­ual­ly gave way to marsh grass and sandy flats. Ahead, he could see the dead stalks of cat­tail and yel­low marsh grass. The pond it­self seemed lost in the gray light.

“Vin­cent?” Pen­der­gast said calm­ly. “You’re aware there’s a body of wa­ter ahead?”

“I know.”

The pick­up ac­cel­er­at­ed over the frozen verge of the marsh, the wheels send­ing shards of crack­ling ice skit­ter­ing away on ei­ther side like a wake. The speedome­ter edged back up to thir­ty, then thir­ty-​five, then forty. For what he was about to do, he was go­ing to need all the speed he could get.

With a fi­nal slap­ping sound, the cat­tails scat­ter­ing in their wake, the pick­up truck was on the ice.

Pen­der­gast gripped the door han­dle, the lat­tes for­got­ten. “Vin­cent—?”

The truck was mov­ing fast across the ice, break­ing it as they went with a ma­chine-​gun chat­ter. D’Agos­ta could see in his rearview mir­ror that the ice was crack­ing and shat­ter­ing be­hind them, some pieces even flung up and skit­ter­ing away, black wa­ter slop­ping up. The sound of frac­tur­ing ice boomed across the lake like the re­ports of can­non.

“The idea is they won’t be able to fol­low us,” said D’Agos­ta through clenched teeth.

Pen­der­gast didn’t an­swer.

The far shore, lined with state­ly homes, steadi­ly ap­proached. The truck felt al­most like it was float­ing now, ris­ing up and down like a power­boat on the con­tin­uous­ly break­ing crust of ice.

D’Agos­ta could feel he was los­ing mo­men­tum. He ap­plied just a lit­tle more gas, be­ing care­ful to ease down slow­ly on the ac­cel­er­ator. The truck roared, wheels spin­ning, the crack­le and snap of ice grow­ing loud­er.

Two hun­dred yards. He gave it more gas, but it just spun the wheels faster.

The amount of pow­er be­ing trans­ferred from the wheels to the slick sur­face was steadi­ly de­creas­ing. The truck jerked, bounced, slowed, and be­gan to slew side­ways as the craque­lure of fail­ing ice spread out from them in all di­rec­tions.

This is no time for half mea­sures. D’Agos­ta jammed the ped­al to the floor once again as he spun the wheel. The en­gine screamed, the truck ac­cel­er­at­ing, but not quite enough to stay ahead of the hor­ri­ble dis­in­te­gra­tion of ice.

One hun­dred yards.

The en­gine was now scream­ing like a tur­bine, the truck still yaw­ing side­ways, mov­ing now on in­er­tia alone.

The far shore was close, but the truck was slow­ing with ev­ery pass­ing sec­ond. Pen­der­gast had scooped up the lap­top and po­lice ra­dio un­der his arm, and seemed to be prepar­ing to open his door.

“Not yet!” D’Agos­ta gave the wheel a sharp check, just enough to straight­en out the truck. The nose, the heav­ier part, was still up, and as long as it stayed that way…

With a hor­ri­ble sink­ing sen­sa­tion, the front of the truck be­gan to set­tle. There was a mo­ment of breath­less sus­pen­sion. And then it nosed down sharply and slammed in­to the for­ward edge of ice, stop­ping the truck cold.

D’Agos­ta flung open the door and launched him­self in­to the freez­ing wa­ter, clutch­ing at the break­ing edge of ice, grip­ping it, haul­ing him­self up on­to a jagged floe. He scram­bled away crab­like on­to sol­id ice as the bed of the pick­up truck swung up­ward ver­ti­cal­ly, the back wheels still spin­ning off wa­tery slush—and then as he watched, the truck plunged straight down with a rush of forced air, slop­ping him with a wave of icy wa­ter, cakes of bro­ken ice danc­ing and churn­ing in its wake.

Af­ter the truck had van­ished, there, on the far side of the gap­ing hole, stood Pen­der­gast, stand­ing on the ice as if he’d mere­ly stepped out of the truck, com­put­er and ra­dio tucked un­der one arm, black coat dry and un­ruf­fled.

D’Agos­ta rose un­steadi­ly to his feet on the groan­ing ice. They were a mere dozen yards from shore. He glanced back but the dune bug­gies had not yet ap­peared on the shore of the pond.

“Let’s go.”

In a mo­ment, they reached the shore and hid them­selves be­hind a raised dock. The bug­gies were just ar­riv­ing, their yel­low head­lights pierc­ing the bit­ter gray air. The sto­ry that met their eyes was ev­ident enough: a long, bro­ken path of heav­ing ice that led most of the way across the lake to a gap­ing hole, lit­tered with bro­ken chunks of ice. A slick of gaso­line was slow­ly ris­ing and spread­ing in rain­bow pat­terns.

Pen­der­gast peered across the lake from be­tween the slats of the dock. “That, Vin­cent, was a most in­ge­nious ma­neu­ver.”

“Thanks,” D’Agos­ta said through chat­ter­ing teeth.

“It will take them a while to de­ter­mine that we’re still alive. Mean­while, shall we see what the neigh­bor­hood has to of­fer in the way of trans­porta­tion?”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded. He had nev­er been so cold in his life. His hair and clothes were freez­ing, and his hands burned with the cold.

They crept up along the hedges of one of the great hous­es—all sum­mer “cot­tages,” cur­rent­ly shut up for the win­ter. The drive­way was emp­ty, and they moved around the side of the house and looked in the garage win­dow.

There sat a vin­tage Jaguar on blocks, the wheels stacked in the gloom of one cor­ner.

“That should do,” Pen­der­gast mur­mured.

“Garage’s alarmed,” D’Agos­ta man­aged to say.

“Nat­ural­ly.” Pen­der­gast glanced around, found a wire tucked be­hind a drain­pipe, fol­lowed it to the garage door, and in a few min­utes had found the alarm plate cou­pling.

“Very crude,” he said, jam­ming a stray nail be­hind the plate and pry­ing it loose, be­ing care­ful not to cut the con­nec­tion. Then he picked the lock on the garage door, raised it a foot, and they slid un­der­neath.

The garage was heat­ed.

“Warm your­self, Vin­cent, while I get to work.”

“How in hell did you avoid go­ing in the wa­ter?” D’Agos­ta said, stand­ing di­rect­ly on top of the heat­ing vent.

“Per­haps my tim­ing was bet­ter.” Tak­ing off his coat and jack­et and rolling up his crisp white sleeves, Pen­der­gast set the four tires in place, jacked up one end of the car, slipped the tire on and bolt­ed it, then fol­lowed the same pro­ce­dure for the oth­er three wheels.

“Feel­ing warmer?” he asked as he worked.

“Sort of.”

“Then if you don’t mind, Vin­cent, open the hood and con­nect the bat­tery.” Pen­der­gast nod­ded to­ward a tool­box that sat in one cor­ner.

D’Agos­ta pulled out a wrench, opened the hood, con­nect­ed the bat­tery, checked the flu­id lev­els, and ex­am­ined the en­gine. “Looks good.”

Pen­der­gast kicked away the fi­nal block and jacked down the last wheel. “Ex­cel­lent.”

“No one to call the cops about a stolen car.”

“We shall see. Al­though the area seems de­sert­ed for the win­ter, there’s al­ways the dan­ger of a nosy neigh­bor. This 1954 Mark VII sa­loon is not an in­con­spic­uous ve­hi­cle. Now for the mo­ment of truth. Please get in and help me start her.”

D’Agos­ta clam­bered in­to the driv­er’s seat and wait­ed for in­struc­tions.

“Foot on the ac­cel­er­ator. Choke out. Gear in neu­tral.”

“Check,” D’Agos­ta said.

“When you hear the en­gine turn, give it a bit of gas.”

D’Agos­ta com­plied. A mo­ment lat­er, the car roared to life.

“Ease off the choke,” Pen­der­gast said. He walked over to the alarm box, glanced around, picked up a long wire, at­tached it to both met­al plates in the alarm, then opened the door. “Take her out.”

D’Agos­ta eased the Jag out. Pen­der­gast shut the garage door and got in­to the rear of the ve­hi­cle.

“Let’s get the heat on in this ba­by,” said D’Agos­ta, fid­dling with the un­fa­mil­iar con­trols as he drove on­to the street.

“You do that. Pull over and let it run for a few min­utes. I am go­ing to lie down, and … ho, what’s this?” He held up a loud sports jack­et check­ered in var­ious shades of light green. “A stroke of luck, Vin­cent! Now you look the part.”

D’Agos­ta drew off his sod­den coat and tossed it on the floor, putting on the sports jack­et in­stead.

“How be­com­ing.”

“Yeah, right.”

At that mo­ment, Pen­der­gast’s cell phone rang. D’Agos­ta watched as the agent plucked it from his pock­et.

“Yes,” Pen­der­gast said. “I un­der­stand. Yes, ex­cel­lent. Thank you.” And he hung up.

“We have three hours to get to Man­hat­tan,” he said, check­ing his watch. “Do you think you can man­age it?”

“You bet.” D’Agos­ta hes­itat­ed. “Now, you want to tell me who that was and what the heck you’ve been up to?”

“That was William Smith­back.”

“The jour­nal­ist?”

“Yes. You see, Vin­cent, at last—at long, long last—we might have been giv­en a break.”

“How do you fig­ure that?”

“Dio­genes was the per­son who robbed the As­tor Hall last night.”

D’Agos­ta turned to stare at him. “Dio­genes? You sure?”

“Un­doubt­ed­ly. He’s al­ways had an ob­ses­sion with di­amonds. All these mur­ders were just a hor­ri­ble dis­trac­tion to keep me busy while he planned his re­al crime: the rob­bing of the di­amond hall. And he chose to take Vi­ola last, to en­sure my max­imal dis­trac­tion dur­ing the rob­bery it­self. Vin­cent, it was a ‘per­fect’ crime, af­ter all, in a spec­tac­ular, pub­lic sense—not one aimed sim­ply at my­self.”

“So what makes this a break for us?”

“What Dio­genes didn’t know—couldn’t know—was that the finest gem of all, no doubt the one he most want­ed, wasn’t on dis­play. He didn’t steal Lu­cifer’s Heart: he stole a fake.”

“So?”

“So I’m go­ing to steal the re­al Lu­cifer’s Heart for him and make a trade. Is the mo­tor warmed up? Let’s get back to New York—there’s no time to waste.”

D’Agos­ta eased the car away from the curb. “I’ve seen you pull a few rab­bits out of your hat, but how in the hell are you go­ing to steal the world’s great­est di­amond on the spur of the mo­ment? You don’t know where it is, you don’t know any­thing about its se­cu­ri­ty.”

“Per­haps. But as it hap­pens, Vin­cent, my plans are al­ready in mo­tion.” And Pen­der­gast pat­ted the pock­et where his cell phone was.

D’Agos­ta kept his eyes on the road. “There’s a prob­lem,” he said in a qui­et voice.

“What’s that?”

“We’re as­sum­ing that Dio­genes still has some­thing to trade.”

There was a brief si­lence be­fore Pen­der­gast spoke. “We can on­ly pray that he does.”

SIX­TY-​ONE

Lau­ra Hay­ward walked briskly up the steps of the Low­er Man­hat­tan Fed­er­al Build­ing, Cap­tain Sin­gle­ton at her heels. Sin­gle­ton was, as usu­al, dressed nat­ti­ly: camel’s-​hair top­coat, Burber­ry scarf, thin black leather gloves. He hadn’t said much on the ride down­town, but that was okay: Hay­ward hadn’t felt much like talk­ing.

It had been bare­ly twen­ty-​four hours since D’Agos­ta walked out of her of­fice and away from her ul­ti­ma­tum, but it might as well have been a year. Hay­ward had al­ways been an ex­cep­tion­al­ly lev­el­head­ed per­son, but as she walked in­to the Fed­er­al Build­ing, she had an al­most over­pow­er­ing sense of un­re­al­ity. Maybe none of this was hap­pen­ing, maybe she wasn’t on her way to an ur­gent FBI brief­ing, maybe Pen­der­gast wasn’t the most want­ed crim­inal in New York and D’Agos­ta his ac­com­plice. Maybe she’d just wake up and it would be Jan­uary 21 again, and her apart­ment would still smell of Vin­nie’s over­cooked lasagna.

At the se­cu­ri­ty check­point, Hay­ward showed her shield, checked her weapon, signed the clip­board. There wasn’t go­ing to be a hap­py end­ing. Be­cause if D’Agos­ta wasn’t Pen­der­gast’s ac­com­plice, he would be Pen­der­gast’s vic­tim.

The con­fer­ence room was large, pan­eled in dark wood. Flags of New York and the Unit­ed States drooped from brass flag­poles on both sides of the en­try­way, and col­or pho­tos of var­ious gov­ern­ment types lined the walls. A huge oval ta­ble dom­inat­ed the room, sur­round­ed with leather chairs. The cof­fee urn and the ta­ble heaped with donuts and crullers, a sta­ple of NYPD de­part­men­tal meet­ings, was ab­sent. In­stead, a pint bot­tle of spring wa­ter had been placed be­fore each chair.

Un­fa­mil­iar men and wom­en in dark suits were stand­ing around in knots, talk­ing qui­et­ly among them­selves. As Hay­ward and Sin­gle­ton en­tered, the groups be­gan mak­ing their way quick­ly to­ward the chairs. Hay­ward chose the near­est seat and Sin­gle­ton sat down be­side her, re­mov­ing his gloves and scarf. There was no place to hang their stuff, and as a re­sult they were the on­ly two peo­ple in the room wear­ing coats.

At that mo­ment, a tall, stocky man walked in­to the con­fer­ence room. Two short­er men fol­lowed on his heels, like obe­di­ent hounds. Each of the two car­ried a brick of red fold­ers un­der his arm. The tall man stopped for a mo­ment, glanc­ing around the ta­ble. Un­like the rest of the faces in the room, pal­lid from the New York win­ter, his was sun­burned. It wasn’t the even, ar­ti­fi­cial tan you got from a sa­lon: this man had spent long hours work­ing some­place sun­ny and hot. His eyes were small, nar­row, and pissed-​off.

He walked to the head of the ta­ble, where three seats had been left emp­ty, and took the mid­dle one. His two re­tain­ers sat to his right and his left.

“Good morn­ing,” the man said in an abra­sive Long Is­land ac­cent at odds with the sun­burn. “I’m Spe­cial Agent in Charge Spencer Cof­fey, and with me are Spe­cial Agents Brooks and Ra­bin­er. With their as­sis­tance, I’ll be lead­ing the search for Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast.”

The man seemed to spit out the fi­nal word, and as he said it, the anger spread from his eyes to his en­tire face.

“The facts as we know them so far are these: Pen­der­gast is a pri­ma­ry sus­pect in four homi­cides, one in New Or­leans, one in D.C., and two here in New York. We have DNA and fiber ev­idence from all four sites, and we’re co­op­er­at­ing with lo­cal au­thor­ities in an ef­fort to gath­er more.”

Sin­gle­ton shot Hay­ward a mean­ing­ful look. Cof­fey’s idea of “co­op­er­ation” had been a pha­lanx of FBI agents swoop­ing down on her of­fice, grilling her men, and tak­ing what­ev­er ev­idence struck their fan­cy. Iron­ic how her own re­quest for the Quan­ti­co pro­file had aroused Cof­fey’s in­ter­est in the first place.

“Clear­ly, we’re deal­ing with a men­tal­ly un­bal­anced in­di­vid­ual— the psych pro­file con­firms it. There is a high prob­abil­ity he is plan­ning ad­di­tion­al homi­cides. He was last spot­ted yes­ter­day af­ter­noon at Kennedy Air­port, where he elud­ed se­cu­ri­ty guards and po­lice of­fi­cers, stole a rental car, and drove away. He aban­doned his own ve­hi­cle at the rental lot—a Rolls-​Royce.”

A low mur­mur went around the room at this, punc­tu­at­ed by sev­er­al scoffs and dark looks. Pen­der­gast must have made more than his share of en­emies dur­ing his tenure with the FBI.

“There have been un­con­firmed sight­ings of Pen­der­gast at sev­er­al con­ve­nience stores and gas sta­tions in Nas­sau and Suf­folk coun­ties, last night and this morn­ing. We’re fol­low­ing up on those now. Pen­der­gast is trav­el­ing with an­oth­er man, be­lieved to be NYPD lieu­tenant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta. And I’ve just had news of a high-​speed chase in the vicin­ity of Southamp­ton. Pre­lim­inary eye­wit­ness ac­counts from the of­fi­cers in­volved would seem to ID Pen­der­gast and D’Agos­ta.”

Hay­ward shift­ed un­com­fort­ably in her chair. Sin­gle­ton stared straight ahead.

“We have teams search­ing Pen­der­gast’s 72nd Street apart­ment and his New Or­leans town house as we speak. Any in­for­ma­tion we dis­cov­er that might shed light on his fu­ture move­ments will be passed down the line to you. We’re set­ting up a com­mand-​and-​con­trol struc­ture that will al­low for quick dis­sem­ina­tion of new in­for­ma­tion. This is go­ing to be a very flu­id sit­ua­tion, and we have to be ready to re­vise our strat­egy ac­cord­ing­ly.”

Cof­fey nod­ded to his re­tain­ers, and they stood up and be­gan walk­ing around the ta­ble, pass­ing out the red fold­ers. Hay­ward no­ticed that nei­ther she nor Sin­gle­ton re­ceived one. She’d as­sumed this was to be a work­ing meet­ing, but it ap­peared that Spe­cial Agent in Charge Cof­fey al­ready had his own ideas about how to han­dle the case and nei­ther need­ed nor want­ed in­put from any­body else.

“You’ll find your ini­tial in­struc­tions and as­sign­ments in these fold­ers. You will be work­ing in teams, and each team will be as­signed six field agents. Our im­me­di­ate pri­or­ity is to de­ter­mine Pen­der­gast’s move­ments over the last twen­ty-​four hours, look for pat­terns, set up check­points, and draw in the net un­til we have him. We don’t know why he’s run­ning around Long Is­land, stop­ping at con­ve­nience stores and gas sta­tions: those we’ve in­ter­viewed in­di­cate he’s been look­ing for some­one. I’ll be ex­pect­ing hourly ver­bal re­ports from each team, made ei­ther to me di­rect­ly or to Spe­cial Agents Brooks and Ra­bin­er.”

Cof­fey stood up heav­ily, sweep­ing the ta­ble with his an­gry gaze. “I’m not go­ing to sug­ar­coat this. Pen­der­gast is one of our own. He knows all the tricks of the trade. Even though it seems we’ve got him pinned down on east­ern Long Is­land, he could still elude us. That’s why we’re throw­ing the en­tire re­sources of the Bu­reau in­to this. We need to nail this bas­tard, and quick­ly. The rep­uta­tion of the Bu­reau’s at stake.”

He sur­veyed the ta­ble again. “Any ques­tions?”

“Yes,” Hay­ward said.

All eyes turned to­ward her. She hadn’t in­tend­ed to speak, but the word had just tum­bled out in­vol­un­tar­ily.

Cof­fey glanced at her, small eyes nar­row­ing to pin­pricks of white. “Cap­tain, ah, Hay­ward, isn’t it?”

She nod­ded.

“Go ahead, please.”

“You haven’t men­tioned the role of the NYPD in the search.”

Cof­fey’s eye­brows shot up. “Role?”

“That’s right. I’ve heard a lot about what the FBI’s go­ing to do, but noth­ing about the co­op­er­ation with the NYPD you men­tioned ear­li­er.”

“Lieu­tenant Hay­ward, our lat­est in­for­ma­tion, if you’ve been lis­ten­ing, has Pen­der­gast in Suf­folk Coun­ty. There’s not a great deal you can do for us out there.”

“True. But we’ve got dozens of de­tec­tives here in Man­hat­tan who are fa­mil­iar with the case, we’ve de­vel­oped vir­tu­al­ly all the ev­idence—“

“Lieu­tenant,” Cof­fey in­ter­rupt­ed, “no one is more grate­ful for the NYPD’s as­sis­tance in fur­ther­ing this in­ves­ti­ga­tion than I am.” But he didn’t look grate­ful—if any­thing, he looked more pissed-​off than be­fore. “At the mo­ment, how­ev­er, the mat­ter is out­side your ju­ris­dic­tion.”

“Our im­me­di­ate ju­ris­dic­tion, yes. But he could al­ways re­turn to the city. And giv­en that Agent Pen­der­gast is want­ed in two mur­ders I’m in charge of in­ves­ti­gat­ing, I want to make sure that, once he’s ap­pre­hend­ed, we’ve got ac­cess for in­ter­ro­ga­tion—“

“Let’s not get ahead of our­selves,” Cof­fey snapped. “The man’s still at large. Any oth­er ques­tions?”

The room was silent.

“Good. There’s just one last thing.” Cof­fey’s voice went down a few notch­es. “I don’t want any­body tak­ing any chances. Pen­der­gast is armed, des­per­ate, and ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous. In the event of a con­fronta­tion, a max­imal armed re­sponse will be ap­pro­pri­ate. In oth­er words, shoot the son of a bitch. Shoot to kill.”

SIX­TY-​TWO

George Ka­plan ex­it­ed his Gramer­cy Park brown­stone, paused for a mo­ment at the top of the steps to check his cash­mere coat, flicked off a speck of dust, pinched his per­fect­ly knot­ted cra­vat, pat­ted his pock­ets, in­haled the crisp Jan­uary air, and de­scend­ed. His was a qui­et, tree-​lined neigh­bor­hood, his brown­stone fac­ing the park it­self, and even in the cold win­ter weath­er there were moth­ers with their chil­dren walk­ing the wind­ing lanes, their cheer­ful voic­es ris­ing among the bare branch­es.

Ka­plan fair­ly tin­gled with an­tic­ipa­tion. The call he had re­ceived was as un­ex­pect­ed as it was wel­come. Most gemol­ogists lived their en­tire lives with­out ev­er hav­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to gaze in­to the depths of a gem­stone one-​mil­lionth as rare or fa­mous as Lu­cifer’s Heart. He had, of course, seen it at the mu­se­um be­hind a thick piece of glass, un­der ex­ecrable light­ing, but un­til now he hadn’t known just why the light­ing was so bad: had it been lit prop­er­ly, at least a few gemol­ogists—him­self in­clud­ed—would have rec­og­nized it as a fake. A very good fake, to be sure: a re­al di­amond, ir­ra­di­at­ed to give it that in­cred­ible cin­na­mon col­or, no doubt en­hanced by col­ored fiber-​op­tic light skill­ful­ly de­liv­ered from be­neath the gem. Ka­plan had seen it all in his forty years as a gemol­ogist, ev­ery rip-​off, cheat, and con game in the busi­ness. He chid­ed him­self for not re­al­iz­ing that a di­amond like Lu­cifer’s Heart couldn’t be put on dis­play. No com­pa­ny would in­sure a stone which was al­ways in full pub­lic view, its lo­ca­tion known to the world.

Lu­cifer’s Heart. And what was it worth? The last red di­amond of any qual­ity that had come up for sale was the Red Drag­on, a five-​carat stone that had gone for six­teen mil­lion dol­lars. And this one was nine times as large, a bet­ter grade and col­or, with­out a doubt the finest fan­cy col­or di­amond in ex­is­tence.

Val­ue? Name your price.

Af­ter re­ceiv­ing the call, Ka­plan had spent a few mo­ments in his li­brary, re­fresh­ing him­self on the his­to­ry of the di­amond. With di­amonds, it was usu­al­ly the case that the less col­or the bet­ter, but that was true on­ly up to a point. When a di­amond had a deep, in­tense col­or, it sud­den­ly leaped in val­ue; it be­came the rarest of the rare— and of all the col­ors a di­amond could pos­sess, red was by far the rarest. He knew that, in all the crude pro­duc­tion from all the De Beers mines, a red di­amond of qual­ity sur­faced on­ly about once ev­ery two years. Lu­cifer’s Heart made the word unique sound hack­neyed. At forty-​five carats, it was huge, a heart-​cut stone with a GIA grade of VVS1 Fan­cy Vivid. No oth­er stone in the world even came close. And then there was the col­or: it wasn’t ru­by red or gar­net-​col­ored, ei­ther of which was ex­ceed­ing­ly rare in its own right. Rather, it was an in­tense­ly rich red­dish or­ange, a col­or so un­usu­al that it de­fied nam­ing. Some called it cin­na­mon, and while Ka­plan thought it more red­dish than true cin­na­mon, he him­self could not find a bet­ter word to de­scribe it. The clos­est anal­ogy he could think of was blood in bright sun­light, but if any­thing, it was even rich­er than blood. No oth­er ob­ject in the wide world pos­sessed its col­or—noth­ing. Its col­or was a sci­en­tif­ic mys­tery. To find out what gave Lu­cifer’s Heart its unique col­or, sci­en­tists would have to de­stroy a piece of the di­amond—and that, of course, would nev­er hap­pen.

The di­amond had a short, bloody his­to­ry. The raw stone, a mon­ster of some 104 carats, had been found by an al­lu­vial dig­ger in the Con­go in the ear­ly 1930s. Not re­al­iz­ing, be­cause of its col­or, that it was even a di­amond, he used it to pay a long-​run­ning bar tab. When the man lat­er learned what it was, he tried to get it back from the bar­man, on­ly to be re­buffed. So one night he broke in­to the bar­man’s home, killed the man, his wife, and their three chil­dren, and then spent the rest of the night try­ing to hide his crime by cut­ting up the corpses and throw­ing them off the back porch to the crocodiles in the Buy­imai Riv­er. He was caught, and dur­ing the gath­er­ing of ev­idence for the mur­der tri­al, part of which in­volved killing and ex­am­in­ing the stom­ach con­tents of a dozen riv­er crocodiles, a po­lice in­spec­tor was killed by an en­raged rep­tile and a sec­ond drowned try­ing to save him.

The gem­stone, still un­cut, made its way through the black mar­ket (and sev­er­al oth­er ru­mored killings) be­fore it resur­faced in Bel­gium as the prop­er­ty of a no­to­ri­ous black mar­ket deal­er. The man bad­ly botched the cleav­ing of the stone, leav­ing a nasty crack in it, and sub­se­quent­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide. The now dam­aged rough stone bounced around the di­amond demi­monde for a while, ul­ti­mate­ly end­ing up in the hands of an Is­raeli di­amond cut­ter named Arens, one of the best in the world. In what was lat­er called the most bril­liant cut­ting ev­er done, Arens was able to pro­duce a heart-​shaped gem from the cracked rock in just such a way as to re­move the flaw with­out frac­tur­ing the stone or los­ing too much ma­te­ri­al. It took Arens eight years to com­plete the cut. The pro­cess had since passed in­to leg­end. He spent three years look­ing at the stone; then an­oth­er three prac­tic­ing the cut­ting and pol­ish­ing on no few­er than two hun­dred plas­tic mod­els of the orig­inal, ex­per­iment­ing in ways to op­ti­mize the size, cut, and de­sign while re­mov­ing the ex­ceed­ing­ly dan­ger­ous flaw. He suc­ceed­ed, in much the same way Michelan­ge­lo was able to sculpt the David out of a bad­ly cracked block of mar­ble oth­er sculp­tors had re­ject­ed as un­work­able.

When Arens was done, he had pro­duced an ex­traor­di­nary, heart-​cut stone along with an­oth­er dozen or so small­er stones, all from the same rough. He named the biggest stone Lu­cifer’s Heart af­ter its grim his­to­ry, com­ment­ing to the press that it was “the very dev­il to cut.”

And then, in an act of ex­traor­di­nary gen­eros­ity, Arens willed the stone to the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry, which he had vis­it­ed as a child and whose Hall of Di­amonds had de­ter­mined what his life’s work would be. He sold the dozen or so much small­er stones cut from the same rough for what was ru­mored to be an as­ton­ish­ing sum, but, strange­ly enough, none of the stones had ev­er resur­faced on the mar­ket. Ka­plan as­sumed they had been made in­to a sin­gle, spec­tac­ular piece of jew­el­ry, which re­mained with the orig­inal own­er, who wished to keep her iden­ti­ty se­cret.

Ka­plan swung around the cor­ner of Gramer­cy Park and walked west, to­ward Park Av­enue, where he had the best shot of catch­ing a cab head­ed up­town. He had half an hour, but you could nev­er pre­dict mid­town traf­fic at lunchtime, and this was one ap­point­ment he did not want to be late to.

As he stopped at the cor­ner of Lex to wait for the light to change, he was star­tled to see a black car roll up be­side him, win­dow down. In­side sat a man in a green sports jack­et.

“Mr. George Ka­plan?”

“Yes?”

The man leaned over, pre­sent­ed the badge of a New York City po­lice lieu­tenant, and opened the door. “Get in, please.”

“I have an im­por­tant ap­point­ment, Of­fi­cer. What’s this all about?”

“I know. Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al In­sur­ance. I’m your es­cort.”

Ka­plan peered close­ly at the badge: Lieu­tenant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta. It was a gen­uine shield—Ka­plan was well versed in such things— and the man be­hind the wheel re­al­ly couldn’t be any­thing oth­er than a cop, de­spite the un­usu­al choice of ap­par­el. Who else would know about his ap­point­ment?

“That’s kind of you.” Ka­plan climbed in, the door shut, the locks shot down, and the car eased away from the curb.

“Se­cu­ri­ty’s go­ing to be high,” said the po­lice­man. Then he nod­ded at a gray plas­tic box on the seat be­tween them. “I’ll have to ask you to sur­ren­der your cell phone, your wal­let with all your iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, any weapons you might have, and all your tools. Put them in that box next to you. I’ll pass them to my col­league, and they’ll all be re­turned to you at the vault af­ter they’ve been thor­ough­ly vet­ted.”

“Is this re­al­ly nec­es­sary?”

“Ab­so­lute­ly. And I’m sure you can un­der­stand why.”

Ka­plan, not very sur­prised un­der the cir­cum­stances, re­moved the re­quest­ed items and placed them in the box. At the next light, at Park Av­enue, a vin­tage Jaguar that had been fol­low­ing them pulled up along­side; the win­dows of both ve­hi­cles went down; and the po­lice­man hand­ed the box through the win­dow. Glanc­ing in­to the oth­er car, Ka­plan saw that the driv­er had care­ful­ly groomed pale blond hair and was wear­ing a nice­ly tai­lored black suit.

“Your col­league drives a most un­usu­al car for a po­lice­man.”

“He’s a most un­usu­al man.”

When the light changed to green, the Jaguar turned right and head­ed for Mid­town, while the po­lice­man driv­ing Ka­plan turned south.

“I beg your par­don, Of­fi­cer, but we should be head­ing north,” Ka­plan said. “Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al In­sur­ance is head­quar­tered at 1271 Av­enue of the Amer­ic­as.”

The car ac­cel­er­at­ed south­ward and the po­lice­man looked over un­smil­ing­ly. “Sor­ry to in­form you, Mr. Ka­plan, but this is one ap­point­ment you won’t be keep­ing.”

SIX­TY-​THREE

They gath­ered in the sit­ting room of Har­ri­son Grainger, CEO of Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al In­sur­ance. The ex­ec­utive suite was perched high in the Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al Tow­er, look­ing north up the great canyon of Av­enue of the Amer­ic­as to its ter­mi­nus, a half dozen blocks north, at the dark rect­an­gle of Cen­tral Park. At one o’clock pre­cise­ly, Grainger him­self emerged from his of­fice, a florid man with cauliflow­er ears and a nar­row head, ex­pan­sive, bald­ing, and cheer­ful.

“Well, are we all here?” He looked around.

Smith­back glanced about. His mouth felt like paste and he was sweat­ing. He won­dered why in the world he had agreed to this in­sane scheme. What had sound­ed like a fab­ulous es­capade ear­li­er that day, a chance at a one-​of-​a-​kind scoop, now ap­peared mad in the harsh light of re­al­ity: Smith­back was about to par­tic­ipate in a very se­ri­ous crime—not to men­tion com­pro­mis­ing all his ethics as a jour­nal­ist.

Grainger looked around, smil­ing. “Sam, you make the in­tro­duc­tions.”

Samuel Beck, the se­cu­ri­ty chief, stepped for­ward with a nod. De­spite his ner­vous­ness, Smith­back couldn’t help notic­ing the man had feet as small as a bal­le­ri­na’s.

“Mr. George Ka­plan,” the se­cu­ri­ty chief be­gan. “Se­nior as­so­ciate of the Amer­ican Coun­cil of Gemol­ogists.”

Ka­plan, a neat man dressed in black, sport­ing a trimmed goa­tee and rim­less glass­es, had the el­egant look of a man of the last cen­tu­ry. He gave a short, sharp bow.

“Fred­er­ick Wat­son Col­lopy, di­rec­tor of the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry.”

Col­lopy shook hands all around. He didn’t look es­pe­cial­ly pleased to be here.

“William Smith­back of the New York Times.”

Smith­back man­aged a round of hand­shakes, his hand as damp as a dishrag.

“Har­ri­son Grainger, chief ex­ec­utive of­fi­cer, Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al In­sur­ance Group Hold­ing.”

This set off an­oth­er se­ries of mur­mured greet­ings.

“Rand Mar­coni, CFO, Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al Group.”

Oh, God, thought Smith­back. Were all these peo­ple com­ing?

“Fos­ter Lord, sec­re­tary, Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al Group.”

More hand­shakes, nods.

“Skip McGuigan, trea­sur­er, Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al Group.”

Yet again, Smith­back plucked weak­ly at his col­lar.

“Ja­son McTeague, se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer, Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al Group.”

It was like an­nounc­ing the no­bil­ity ar­riv­ing at a for­mal ball. A heav­ily armed se­cu­ri­ty guard shift­ed on his feet, nod­ded, didn’t of­fer his hand.

“And I am Samuel Beck, di­rec­tor of se­cu­ri­ty, Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al Group. Suf­fice to say, we’ve all been checked, vet­ted, and cleared.” He gave a quick smile at his own wit­ti­cism, which was re­in­forced by a hearty laugh from Grainger.

“All right, then, let’s pro­ceed,” said the CEO, hold­ing out his hand to­ward the el­eva­tors.

They head­ed deep in­to the bow­els of the build­ing, de­scend­ing first one el­eva­tor, then a sec­ond, then a third, at last wind­ing through long and un­named cin­der-​block cor­ri­dors be­fore ar­riv­ing at the largest, most pol­ished, most gleam­ing vault door Smith­back had ev­er seen. Star­ing at the door, his heart sank still fur­ther.

Beck bus­ied him­self with a key­pad, a se­ries of locks, and a reti­nal scan­ner while they all wait­ed.

At last, Beck turned. “Gen­tle­men, we now have to wait five min­utes for the timed locks to dis­en­gage. This vault,” he con­tin­ued proud­ly, “con­tains all our orig­inal, ex­ecut­ed poli­cies: ev­ery sin­gle one. An in­sur­ance pol­icy is a con­tract, and the on­ly valid copies of our con­tracts are here—rep­re­sent­ing al­most half a tril­lion dol­lars of cov­er­age. It’s pro­tect­ed by the lat­est se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems de­vised by man. This vault is de­signed to with­stand an earth­quake of 9 on the Richter scale, an F-5 tor­na­do, and the det­ona­tion of a hun­dred-​kilo­ton nu­cle­ar bomb.”

Smith­back tried to take notes, but he was still sweat­ing heav­ily, the pen slip­pery in his hands. Think of the sto­ry. Think of the sto­ry.

There was a soft chim­ing sound.

“And that, gen­tle­men, is the sig­nal that the vault’s locks have dis­en­gaged.” Beck pulled a lever and the faint hum­ming of a mo­tor sound­ed, the door slow­ly swing­ing out­ward. It was stag­ger­ing­ly mas­sive, six feet of sol­id stain­less steel.

They moved for­ward, the well-​armed se­cu­ri­ty guard bring­ing up the rear, and passed through two oth­er mas­sive doors be­fore en­ter­ing what was ev­ident­ly the main vault, a huge steel space with met­al cages en­clos­ing draw­er up­on met­al draw­er, ris­ing from floor to ceil­ing.

Now the CEO stepped for­ward, clear­ly rel­ish­ing his role. “The in­ner vault, gen­tle­men. But even here the di­amond is not kept un­pro­tect­ed, where it might tempt one of our trust­ed em­ploy­ees. It is kept in a spe­cial vault-​with­in-​a-​vault, and no few­er than four Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al ex­ec­utives are need­ed to open this vault: my­self, Rand Mar­coni, Skip McGuigan, and Fos­ter Lord.”

The three men, dressed in iden­ti­cal gray suits, bald, and look­ing enough alike as to be mis­tak­en for broth­ers, all smiled at this. Clear­ly, they didn’t get many chances to strut their stuff.

The in­te­ri­or vault stood at the far end of the cham­ber, an­oth­er steel door in the wall. Four key­holes were ar­rayed in a line across its face. Above them, a small light glowed red.

“And now we wait for the out­er vault doors to be locked be­fore we open the in­ner vault.”

Smith­back wait­ed, lis­ten­ing to the se­ries of mo­tor­ized hum­mings, click­ings, and deep rum­bles.

“Now we are locked in. And as long as the in­ner safe is un­locked, the out­er vault doors will re­main locked. Even if one of us want­ed to steal the di­amond, we couldn’t leave with it!” Grainger chuck­led. “Gen­tle­men, take out your keys.”

The men all re­moved small keys from their pock­ets.

“We’ve set up a small ta­ble for Mr. Ka­plan,” said the CEO, in­di­cat­ing an el­egant ta­ble near­by.

Ka­plan eyed it nar­row­ly, purs­ing his lips with tight dis­ap­proval.

“Is ev­ery­thing in or­der?” the CEO asked.

“Bring out the di­amond,” Ka­plan said terse­ly.

Grainger nod­ded. “Gen­tle­men?”

Each of the men in­sert­ed his key in­to one of the four key­holes. Glances were ex­changed; then the keys were turned si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. The small red light turned green and the safe clicked open. In­side was a sim­ple met­al cab­inet with eight draw­ers. Each one was la­beled with a num­ber.

“Draw­er num­ber 2,” said the CEO.

The draw­er was opened; Grainger leaned in and re­moved a small gray met­al box, which he car­ried over to the ta­ble and placed be­fore Ka­plan with rev­er­ence. The gemol­ogist sat down and be­gan fuss­ily lay­ing out a small col­lec­tion of tools and lens­es, ad­just­ing them with pre­ci­sion on the table­top. He took out a rolled pad of plush black vel­vet and laid it out, form­ing a neat square in the mid­dle of the ta­ble. Ev­ery­one watched him work, the peo­ple form­ing a semi­cir­cle around the ta­ble—with the ex­cep­tion of the se­cu­ri­ty guard, who stood slight­ly back, arms crossed.

As a last step, Ka­plan pulled on a pair of sur­gi­cal gloves. “I am ready. Hand me the key.”

“I’m sor­ry, Mr. Ka­plan, but rules re­quire me to open the box,” said the se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor.

Ka­plan waved a hand ir­ri­ta­bly. “So be it. Don’t drop it, sir. Di­amonds may be hard but they shat­ter as eas­ily as glass.”

Beck leaned over the box, in­sert­ed the key, and raised the lid. All eyes were riv­et­ed on the box.

“Don’t touch it with your naked, sweaty hands,” said Ka­plan sharply.

The se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor with­drew. Ka­plan reached in­to the box and plucked out the gem as non­cha­lant­ly as if it were a golf ball, lay­ing it on the vel­vet in front of him. He opened a loupe and leaned over the stone.

Sud­den­ly, he straight­ened up and spoke in a sharp, high, queru­lous voice. “I beg your par­don, but re­al­ly, I can’t work be­ing crowd­ed around like this, es­pe­cial­ly from be­hind. I beg you, please!”

“Of course, of course,” said Grainger. “Let’s all step back and give Mr. Ka­plan some room.”

They shuf­fled back. Once again, Ka­plan bent to ex­am­ine the gem. He picked it up with a four-​pronged hold­er, turned it over. He laid down the loupe.

“Hand me my Chealsea fil­ter,” he said sharply, to no one in par­tic­ular.

“Ah, which is that?” Beck asked.

“The white ob­long ob­ject, over there.”

The se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor picked it up and hand­ed it over. Ka­plan took it, opened it, and ex­am­ined the gem again, mut­ter­ing some­thing un­in­tel­li­gi­ble.

“Is ev­ery­thing to your sat­is­fac­tion, Mr. Ka­plan?” asked Grainger so­lic­itous­ly.

“No,” he said sim­ply.

The ten­sion in the vault went up a notch.

“Do you have enough light?” the CEO asked.

A freez­ing si­lence.

“Hand me the Di­amond­Nite. No, not that. That.”

Beck hand­ed him a strange de­vice with a point­ed end. Ev­er so gen­tly, Ka­plan touched the stone with it. There was a small beep and a green light.

“Hmph. At least we know it’s not moissan­ite,” the gemol­ogist said crisply, hand­ing the de­vice back to Beck, who did not look pleased to be cast in the role of as­sis­tant.

More mut­ter­ings. “The po­lar­iscope, if you please.”

Af­ter a few false starts, Beck hand­ed it to him.

A long look, a snort.

Ka­plan stood up and looked around, eye­ing ev­ery­one in the room. “As far as I can tell, which isn’t much, giv­en the hor­ren­dous light­ing in here, it’s prob­ably a fake. A su­perb fake, but a fake nonethe­less.”

A shocked si­lence. Smith­back stole a glance at Col­lopy. The mu­se­um di­rec­tor’s face had gone death­ly white.

“You’re not sure?” the CEO asked.

“How can I pos­si­bly be sure? How can you ex­pect an ex­pert like me to ex­am­ine a fan­cy col­or di­amond un­der flu­ores­cent light­ing?”

A si­lence. “But shouldn’t you have brought your own light?” ven­tured Grainger.

“My own light?” Ka­plan cried. “Sir, for­give me, but your ig­no­rance is shock­ing. This is a fan­cy col­or di­amond, grad­ed Vivid, and you can­not sim­ply bring in any old light to look at it with. I need re­al light to be sure. Nat­ural light. Noth­ing else will do. No one said any­thing about hav­ing to ex­am­ine the finest di­amond in the world un­der flu­ores­cent light­ing. This is an in­sult to my pro­fes­sion.”

“You should have men­tioned this when we made the ar­range­ments,” said Beck.

“I as­sumed I was deal­ing with a so­phis­ti­cat­ed in­sur­ance com­pa­ny, knowl­edge­able on the sub­ject of gem­stones! I had no idea I would be forced to ex­am­ine a di­amond in a stuffy base­ment vault. Not to men­tion with half a dozen peo­ple breath­ing down my neck as if I’m some kind of zoo mon­key. My re­port will be that it is a pos­si­ble fake, but that fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion will await re­ex­am­ina­tion un­der nat­ural light.” Ka­plan crossed his arms and stared fierce­ly at the CEO.

Smith­back swal­lowed painful­ly. “Well,” he said, tak­ing what he hoped were in­tel­li­gi­ble notes, “I guess that’s it. There’s my sto­ry.”

“What’s your sto­ry?” Col­lopy said, turn­ing on him. “There’s no sto­ry. This is in­con­clu­sive.”

“I should cer­tain­ly say so,” said Grainger, his voice shaky. “Let’s not jump to con­clu­sions.”

Smith­back shrugged. “My orig­inal source tells me that di­amond’s a fake. Now Mr. Ka­plan says it may be a fake.”

“The op­er­ative word here is may,” Grainger said.

“Just a mo­ment!” Col­lopy turned to Ka­plan. “You need nat­ural light to tell for sure?”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

Col­lopy turned to the CEO. “Isn’t there some­place he can view the stone un­der nat­ural light?”

There was a mo­ment of si­lence.

Col­lopy drew him­self up. “Grainger,” he said in a sharp voice, “the safe­keep­ing of this stone was your re­spon­si­bil­ity.”

“We can bring the stone up to the ex­ec­utive board­room,” Grainger said. “On the eighth floor. There’s plen­ty of light up there.”

“Ex­cuse me, Mr. Grainger,” said Beck, “but the pol­icy is quite firm: the di­amond can’t leave the vault.”

“You heard what the man said. He needs bet­ter light.”

“With all due re­spect, sir, I have my in­struc­tions, and not even you can al­ter them.”

The CEO waved his hand. “Non­sense! This is a mat­ter of crit­ical im­por­tance. Sure­ly we can get a waiv­er.”

“On­ly with the writ­ten, no­ta­rized per­mis­sion of the in­sured.”

“Well, then! We’ve got the mu­se­um’s di­rec­tor right here. And Lord’s a no­tary pub­lic, aren’t you, Fos­ter?”

Lord nod­ded.

“Dr. Col­lopy, you’ll give the nec­es­sary writ­ten per­mis­sion?”

“Ab­so­lute­ly. This has got to be re­solved now.” His face was gray, al­most ca­dav­er­ous.

“Fos­ter, draw up the doc­ument.”

“As di­rec­tor of se­cu­ri­ty, I strong­ly rec­om­mend against this,” said Beck qui­et­ly.

“Mr. Beck,” said Grainger, “I ap­pre­ci­ate your con­cern. But I don’t think you ful­ly com­pre­hend the sit­ua­tion. We have a hun­dred-​mil­lion-​dol­lar lim­it on our pol­icy at the mu­se­um, but Lu­cifer’s Heart is cov­ered in a spe­cial rid­er, and one of the con­di­tions of the stone be­ing kept here for safe­keep­ing is that there’s no lim­ita­tion of li­abil­ity. What­ev­er the GIA in­de­pen­dent­ly de­ter­mines the stone’s val­ue to be, we must pay. We’ve got to have an an­swer to the ques­tion of whether this stone is re­al, and we’ve got to have it now.”

“Nev­er­the­less,” said Beck, “for the record, I still op­pose tak­ing the gem out of the vault.”

“Du­ly not­ed. Fos­ter? Draw up the doc­ument and Dr. Col­lopy will sign it.”

The sec­re­tary took a piece of blank pa­per from his suit jack­et, wrote some lines. Col­lopy, Grainger, and McGuigan signed it, then Lord no­ta­rized it with his sig­na­ture.

“Let’s go,” said the CEO.

“I’m call­ing a se­cu­ri­ty es­cort,” said Beck dark­ly. At the same time, Smith­back watched as the se­cu­ri­ty chief slid a gun out of his waist­band, checked it, flicked off the safe­ty, and slid it back.

Ka­plan picked up the stone with the four-​prong.

“I’ll do that, Mr. Ka­plan,” said Beck qui­et­ly. He took the han­dle of the four-​prong and gen­tly laid the stone in its vel­vet box. Then he shut the lid and locked it, pock­et­ing the key and plac­ing the box un­der his arm.

They wait­ed while Ka­plan packed up his sup­plies; then they shut the in­ner door and wait­ed for the out­er one to open. They pro­ceed­ed back through the suc­ces­sion of mas­sive doors, where they were met by a brace of se­cu­ri­ty guards. The guards es­cort­ed them to a wait­ing el­eva­tor bank, and with­in five min­utes Smith­back found him­self be­ing ush­ered in­to a small but ex­treme­ly el­egant board­room, done up in ex­ot­ic wood. Light flood­ed in through a dozen broad win­dows.

Beck sta­tioned the two ex­tra se­cu­ri­ty guards out­side the doors, then shut and locked them.

“Ev­ery­one please stand back,” he said. “Mr. Ka­plan, will this do?”

“Splen­did,” said Ka­plan with a broad smile, his whole mood seem­ing to change. “Where do you want to sit?”

Ka­plan point­ed to a seat in a cor­ner, be­tween two win­dows. “That would be per­fect.” “Set your­self up.”

The jew­el­er bus­ied him­self lay­ing out all his tools again, spread­ing the vel­vet. Then he looked up. “The stone, please?”

Beck laid the box next to him, un­locked it with the key, and raised the lid. The gem­stone lay in­side, nes­tled in its vel­vet.

Ka­plan reached in, plucked it out with the four-​prong, and called for a Gro­bet dou­ble lens. Us­ing this de­vice, he peered at the di­amond, first look­ing at it through one lens, then the oth­er, then both at once. As he held it, light struck the gem­stone, and the walls of the room were sud­den­ly freck­led with dots of in­tense cin­na­mon col­or.

Sev­er­al min­utes passed in ab­so­lute si­lence. Smith­back re­al­ized he was hold­ing his breath. At length, Ka­plan slow­ly laid the di­amond down on the vel­vet, swiveled the Gro­bet lens­es from his eyes, and be­stowed a beam­ing smile on the wait­ing au­di­ence.

“Ah, yes,” he said, “how won­der­ful it is. Nat­ural light makes all the dif­fer­ence in the world. This is it, gen­tle­men. With­out the slight­est doubt, this is Lu­cifer’s Heart.” He placed it back down on the vel­vet pad.

There was a re­lieved ex­ha­la­tion, as if ev­ery­body else in the room had been hold­ing their breaths along with Smith­back.

Ka­plan waved his hand. “Mr. Beck? You may put it away. With the four-​prong, if you please.”

“Thank the Lord,” said the CEO, turn­ing to Col­lopy and grasp­ing his hand.

“Thank the Lord is right,” Col­lopy replied, shak­ing the hand while dab­bing at his fore­head with a hand­ker­chief. “I had a bad mo­ment back there.”

Mean­while, Beck, his face un­read­able but still dark, had reached over with the four-​prong to pick up the gem. At the same time, Ka­plan rose from his chair and bumped in­to him. “I beg your par­don!”

It hap­pened so fast that Smith­back re­al­ized what he’d seen on­ly af­ter the fact. Sud­den­ly, Ka­plan had the gem in one hand and Beck’s gun in the oth­er, point­ed at Beck. He fired it al­most in Beck’s face, just turn­ing the bar­rel enough so the bul­lets went past and buried them­selves in the wall. He fired three times in rapid suc­ces­sion, the in­cred­ibly loud re­ports plung­ing the room in­to ter­ror and con­fu­sion as ev­ery­one dropped to the floor, Beck in­clud­ed.

And then he was gone, out the sup­pos­ed­ly locked door.

Beck was up in a flash. “Get him! Stop him!”

As he picked him­self up from the floor, ears ring­ing, Smith­back could see through the dou­ble doors the two se­cu­ri­ty guards sprawled on the floor scram­bling back to their feet and tak­ing off down the hall, fum­bling with their guns.

“He’s got the gem!” Col­lopy cried, strug­gling to his feet. “He’s got Lu­cifer’s Heart! My God, get him! Do some­thing!”

Beck had his ra­dio out. “Se­cu­ri­ty Com­mand? This is Samuel Beck. Lock down the build­ing! Lock it down! I don’t want any­one go­ing out—any­thing go­ing out—no garbage, no mail, no peo­ple, noth­ing! You hear me? Shut off the el­eva­tors, lock the stair­wells. I want a full se­cu­ri­ty alert and all se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel to search for a George Ka­plan. Get an im­age of his face from the se­cu­ri­ty check­point video cam. No­body leaves the build­ing un­til we’ve got a se­cu­ri­ty cor­don in place. No, to hell with fire reg­ula­tions! That’s a di­rect or­der! And I want an X-​ray ma­chine suit­able for de­tect­ing a swal­lowed or con­cealed gem­stone, along with a ful­ly staffed tech­ni­cal team to man it, at the Sixth Av­enue en­trance, on the dou­ble.”

He turned to the rest of them. “And none of you, none of you, are to leave this room with­out my per­mis­sion.”

Two ex­haust­ing and try­ing hours lat­er, Smith­back found him­self in a line with what seemed like a thou­sand em­ploy­ees of Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al In­sur­ance. The line snaked in­ter­minably around the in­te­ri­or lob­by of the build­ing, coil­ing three times about the el­eva­tor banks. On the far side of the lob­by, he could see em­ploy­ees trundling carts piled with mail and pack­ages, run­ning them all through X-​ray ma­chines of the kind found in air­ports. Ka­plan had not been found—and, pri­vate­ly, Smith­back knew he wouldn’t be.

As Smith­back ap­proached the head of the line, he could hear a hub­bub of voic­es raised in ar­gu­ment, from a large group of peo­ple shunt­ed to one side who had re­fused to al­low them­selves to be X-​rayed. Out­side were fire trucks, their lights flash­ing; po­lice cars; and the in­evitable gag­gle of press. As each per­son in line was thor­ough­ly searched and then put through the X-​ray ma­chine, fi­nal­ly emerg­ing in­to the gray Jan­uary af­ter­noon, there would be scat­tered ap­plause and a burst of cam­era flash­es.

Smith­back tried to con­trol his sweat­ing. As the min­utes crawled by, his ner­vous­ness had on­ly grown worse. For the thou­sandth time, he cursed him­self for agree­ing to this. He had al­ready been searched twice, in­clud­ing a re­volt­ing body-​cav­ity search. At least the oth­ers in the ex­ec­utive board­room had been sub­ject­ed to the same kind of search, Col­lopy in­sist­ing on it for him­self and the rest, in­clud­ing the of­fi­cers of Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al In­sur­ance and even Beck. Mean­while, Col­lopy—al­most be­side him­self with ag­ita­tion—had been do­ing all he could to con­vince Smith­back to keep mum, not to pub­lish any­thing. Oh, God, if they on­ly knew… Why, oh why, had he ev­er agreed to this?

On­ly ten more peo­ple in line ahead of him now. They were putting the peo­ple, one at a time, in­to what looked like a nar­row tele­phone booth, with no few­er than four tech­ni­cians ex­am­in­ing var­ious CRT screens af­fixed to it. Some­one in front of him was lis­ten­ing to a tran­sis­tor ra­dio with ev­ery­one else crowd­ing around—amaz­ing how news got out—and it ap­peared the re­al Ka­plan had been re­leased un­harmed in front of his brown­stone a half hour ago and was now be­ing ques­tioned by the po­lice. No­body yet knew who the fake Ka­plan was.

Just two more peo­ple to go. Smith­back tried to swal­low but found that he couldn’t. His stom­ach churned with fear. This was the worst part. The very worst of all.

And now it was his turn. Two tech­ni­cians stood him on a mat with the usu­al yel­low foot­prints and searched him yet again, just a lit­tle too thor­ough­ly for com­fort. They ex­am­ined his tem­po­rary build­ing pass and his press cre­den­tials. They had him open his mouth and searched it with a tongue de­pres­sor. Then they opened the door of the booth and put him in­side.

“Don’t move. Keep your arms at your side. Look at the tar­get on the wall…” The di­rec­tions rolled out with rapid ef­fi­cien­cy.

There was a short hum. Through the safe­ty glass, Smith­back could see the tech­ni­cians por­ing over the re­sults. Fi­nal­ly, one nod­ded.

A tech­ni­cian on the oth­er side opened the door, placed a firm hand on Smith­back’s arm, and drew him out. “You’re free to go,” he said, point­ing to the build­ing ex­it.

As he ges­tured, the tech­ni­cian brushed briefly against Smith­back’s side.

Smith­back turned and walked the ten feet to the re­volv­ing door— the longest ten feet of his life.

Out­side, he zipped up his coat, ran the gaunt­let of flash­bulbs, ig­nored the shout­ed ques­tions, pushed through the crowd, and walked stiffly up Av­enue of the Amer­ic­as. At 56th Street, he hailed a cab, slid in­to the back. He gave the driv­er the ad­dress of his apart­ment, wait­ed un­til the cab had moved out in­to traf­fic, turned and glanced search­ing­ly out the rear win­dow for a full five min­utes.

On­ly then did he dare set­tle in­to his seat, reach in­to his coat pock­et. There, nes­tled safe­ly in the bot­tom, he could feel the hard, cold out­line of Lu­cifer’s Heart.

SIX­TY-​FOUR

D’Agos­ta and Pen­der­gast sat, with­out speak­ing, in­side the Mark VII on a bleak stretch of Ver­mi­lyea Av­enue in the In­wood sec­tion of Up­per Man­hat­tan. The sun was drop­ping slow­ly through lay­ers of gray, set­ting with a fi­nal slash of blood-​red light, which cast a mo­men­tary glow over the dusky ten­ements and bleak ware­hous­es be­fore it was ex­tin­guished in bit­ter night.

They were lis­ten­ing to 1010 WINS, New York’s all-​news ra­dio sta­tion. The sta­tion re­peat­ed its top sto­ries on a twen­ty-​two-​minute cy­cle, and it had been con­tin­uous­ly broad­cast­ing news of the mu­se­um di­amond heist, the an­nounc­er’s ex­cit­ed voice in con­trast to the somber mood in­side the ve­hi­cle. Just ten min­utes ear­li­er, a new sto­ry had bro­ken, a re­lat­ed but even more spec­tac­ular item: the theft of the re­al Lu­cifer’s Heart from Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al In­sur­ance head­quar­ters. D’Agos­ta had no doubt the po­lice had tried des­per­ate­ly to keep a lid on that one, but there was no way some­thing that ex­plo­sive could be kept un­der wraps.

“…the most brazen di­amond theft in his­to­ry, tak­ing place right un­der the noses of mu­se­um and in­sur­ance com­pa­ny ex­ec­utives, and fol­low­ing hard on the heels of the di­amond heist at the mu­se­um. Sources close to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion say the same thief is sus­pect­ed of both crimes…”

Pen­der­gast was lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly, his face as hard and pale as mar­ble, his body mo­tion­less. His cell phone sat on the seat be­tween them.

“Po­lice are ques­tion­ing George Ka­plan, a well-​known gemol­ogist, who was on his way to iden­ti­fy Lu­cifer’s Heart for Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al In­sur­ance when he was ab­duct­ed near his Man­hat­tan town house. Sources close to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion say that the thief then as­sumed his iden­ti­ty in or­der to gain ac­cess to the di­amond. Po­lice be­lieve he may still be hid­ing in the Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al build­ing, where a mas­sive man­hunt is still un­der way…”

Pen­der­gast leaned over and shut off the ra­dio.

“How do you know Dio­genes will hear the news?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“He’ll hear it. For once, he’s at a loss. He didn’t get the di­amond. He’ll be in agony, on edge—lis­ten­ing, wait­ing, think­ing. And once he learns what’s hap­pened, there will be on­ly one course of ac­tion avail­able to him.”

“You mean, he’ll know it was you who stole it.”

“Ab­so­lute­ly. What oth­er con­clu­sion could he come to?” Pen­der­gast smiled mirth­less­ly. “He’ll know. And with no oth­er way to send me a mes­sage, he’ll call.”

Sodi­um lights had come up, burn­ing pale yel­low along the length of the emp­ty av­enue. The tem­per­ature had dropped in­to sin­gle dig­its and a bru­tal wind swept up from the Hud­son, blow­ing be­fore it a few glit­ter­ing flakes of snow.

The cell phone rang.

Pen­der­gast hes­itat­ed just a sec­ond. Then he turned it over, punch­ing the tiny speak­er on the back in­to life. He said noth­ing.

“Ave, frater” came the voice from the speak­er.

A si­lence. D’Agos­ta glanced at Pen­der­gast. In the re­flect­ed glow of the street­lights, his face was the col­or of al­abaster. His lips moved, but no sound came.

“Is that any way to greet a long-​lost broth­er? With dis­ap­prov­ing si­lence?” “I am here,” Pen­der­gast said in a strained voice.

“You’re there! And how hon­ored I am to be graced with your pres­ence. It al­most makes up for the vile ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing forced to call you. But leave us not bandy ci­vil­ities. I have but one ques­tion: did you steal Lu­cifer’s Heart?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

There was a si­lence at the oth­er end of the phone, then a slow ex­ha­la­tion of breath. “Broth­er, broth­er, broth­er…”

“I am no broth­er of yours.”

“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. We are broth­ers, whether we like it or not. And that re­la­tion­ship de­fines who we are. You know that, don’t you, Aloy­sius?”

“I know that you’re a sick man des­per­ate­ly in need of help.”

“True: I am sick. No one re­cov­ers from the dis­ease of be­ing born. There is no cure to that sick­ness, short of death. But when you get down to it, we’re all sick, you more than most. Yes, we are broth­ers— in sick­ness as well as in evil.”

Again, Pen­der­gast had no re­sponse.

“But here we are, bandy­ing ci­vil­ities again! Shall we get down to busi­ness?”

No an­swer.

“Then I will lead the dis­cus­sion. First, a big, fat bra­vo for pulling off in one af­ter­noon what I took years to plan—and, ul­ti­mate­ly, failed to ac­com­plish.” D’Agos­ta could hear a slow pat­ting of hands over the phone. “I as­sume this is all about mak­ing a lit­tle trade. A cer­tain per­son­age in ex­change for the gem­stone. Why else would you have gone to what was un­doubt­ed­ly a bit of trou­ble?”

“You as­sume cor­rect­ly. But first…” Pen­der­gast’s voice fal­tered.

“You want to know if she’s still alive!”

This time it was Dio­genes who let the si­lence draw out. D’Agos­ta stole a glance at Pen­der­gast. He was mo­tion­less, save for the twitch of a small mus­cle be­low the right eye.

“Yes, she’s still alive—at present.”

“You hurt her in any way and I’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth.”

“Tut-​tut. But while we’re on the sub­ject of wom­en, let’s talk a lit­tle bit about this young thing you’ve kept clois­tered in the man­sion of our late lament­ed an­ces­tor. If in­deed she is ‘young,’ which I’m be­gin­ning to doubt. I find my­self most cu­ri­ous about her. Her in par­tic­ular, in fact. I sense that what one sees on the sur­face is what one sees of an ice­berg: the mer­est frac­tion. There are hid­den facets to her, mir­rors with­in mir­rors. And at a fun­da­men­tal lev­el, I sense that some­thing in her is bro­ken.”

Dur­ing this speech, Pen­der­gast had stiff­ened vis­ibly. “Lis­ten to me, Dio­genes. Keep away from her. You come close to her again, ap­proach her in any way, and I’ll—“

“Do what? Kill me? Then my blood would be on your hands— more than it al­ready is—as well as that of your four dear friends. Be­cause you, frater, are re­spon­si­ble for all this. You know it. You made me what I am.”

“I made you noth­ing.”

“Well said! Well said!” A dry, al­most des­ic­cat­ed laugh came over the tiny speak­er. Lis­ten­ing, D’Agos­ta felt a chill of re­pul­sion.

“Let’s get to it,” Pen­der­gast man­aged to say.

“Get to it? Just when the con­ver­sa­tion was be­com­ing in­ter­est­ing? Don’t you want to talk about how ut­ter­ly and com­plete­ly re­spon­si­ble you are for all this? Ask any fam­ily shrink: they’ll tell you how im­por­tant it is that we talk it out. Frater.”

Sud­den­ly, D’Agos­ta could take it no longer. “Dio­genes! Lis­ten to me, you sick fuck: you want the di­amond? Then you cut with the bull­shit.”

“No di­amond, no Vi­ola.”

“If you hurt Vi­ola, I’ll take a sledge­ham­mer to the di­amond and mail you the dust. If you think I’m kid­ding, keep talk­ing.”

“Emp­ty threats.”

D’Agos­ta brought his fist down on the dash­board, mak­ing a re­sound­ing crash.

“Care­ful! Easy!” The voice was sud­den­ly high and pan­icked.

“So shut the hell up.”

“Stu­pid­ity is an el­emen­tal force, and I re­spect it.”

“You’re still talk­ing.”

“We’ll do this on my terms,” said Dio­genes briskly. “Do you hear me? My terms!”

“With two con­di­tions,” Pen­der­gast said qui­et­ly. “One: the ex­change must take place on the is­land of Man­hat­tan, and with­in six hours. Two: it must be set up in such a way that you can’t re­nege. You tell me your plan and I’ll be the judge. You have one chance to get it right.”

“That sounds like five con­di­tions, not two. But of course, broth­er—of course! I have to say, though, this is a knot­ty lit­tle prob­lem. I’ll call you back in ten min­utes.”

“Make it five.”

“More con­di­tions?” And the phone went dead.

There was a long si­lence. A sheen of mois­ture had ap­peared on Pen­der­gast’s brow. He plucked a silk hand­ker­chief from his suit jack­et, dabbed his fore­head, re­placed it.

“Can we trust him?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“No. Nev­er. But I don’t think he’ll have enough time to ar­range an ef­fec­tive dou­ble cross with­in six hours. And he wants Lu­cifer’s Heart—wants it with a pas­sion you and I can­not com­pre­hend. I think we can trust that pas­sion, if we can trust noth­ing else.”

The phone rang again, and Pen­der­gast pressed the speak­er but­ton.

“Yes?”

“Okay, frater. Time for a pop quiz in ur­ban ge­og­ra­phy. You know of a place called the Iron Clock?”

“The rail­road turntable?”

“Ex­cel­lent! And you know its lo­ca­tion?”

“Yes.”

“Good. We’ll do it there. You’ll no doubt want to bring your trusty side­kick, Vin­nie.”

“I in­tend to.”

“Lis­ten to me care­ful­ly. I’ll meet you there at… six min­utes to mid­night. En­ter through tun­nel VI and step slow­ly out in­to the light. Vin­nie can hang back in the dark and cov­er you, if you wish. Have him bring his weapon of choice. That will keep me hon­est. Feel free to bring your own Les Baer or what­ev­er fash­ion ac­ces­so­ry you’re car­ry­ing these days. There’ll be no gun­play un­less some­thing goes wrong. And noth­ing’s go­ing to go wrong. I want my di­amond, and you want your Vi­ola da Gam­ba. If you know the lay­out of the Iron Clock, you’ll re­al­ize it is the per­fect venue for our, shall we say, trans­ac­tion.”

“I un­der­stand.”

“So. Do I have your ap­proval, broth­er? Sat­is­fied that I can’t cheat you?”

Pen­der­gast was silent for a mo­ment. “Yes.”

“Then a presto.”

And the phone went dead.

“That bas­tard gives me the creeps,” said D’Agos­ta.

Pen­der­gast sat in si­lence for a long time. Then he re­moved the hand­ker­chief again, wiped his fore­head, re­fold­ed the hand­ker­chief.

D’Agos­ta no­ticed Pen­der­gast’s hands were trem­bling slight­ly.

“You all right?” he asked.

Pen­der­gast shook his head. “Let’s get this over with.” But rather than move, he re­mained still, as if in deep thought. Abrupt­ly, he seemed to come to some de­ci­sion. And then he turned and—to D’Agos­ta’s sur­prise—took his hand.

“There’s some­thing I’m go­ing to ask you to do,” Pen­der­gast said. “I warn you in ad­vance: it will go against all your in­stincts as a part­ner and as a friend. But you must be­lieve me when I say it is the on­ly way. There is no oth­er so­lu­tion. Will you do it?”

“De­pends on what it is.”

“Un­ac­cept­able. I want your promise first.”

D’Agos­ta hes­itat­ed.

A look of con­cern set­tled over Pen­der­gast’s face. “Vin­cent, please. It’s ab­so­lute­ly crit­ical that I can re­ly on you in this mo­ment of ex­trem­ity.”

D’Agos­ta sighed. “Okay. I promise.”

Pen­der­gast’s tired frame re­laxed in ob­vi­ous re­lief. “Good. Now, please lis­ten care­ful­ly.”

SIX­TY-​FIVE

Dio­genes Pen­der­gast stared at the cell phone, ly­ing on the pine ta­ble, for a long time. The on­ly in­di­ca­tion of the strong emo­tion run­ning through him was a faint twitch­ing of his left lit­tle fin­ger. A mot­tled patch of gray had ap­peared on his left cheek, and—were he to look in a mir­ror, which he did on­ly when ap­ply­ing a dis­guise—he knew he’d find his ojo sar­co look­ing dead­er than usu­al.

Fi­nal­ly, his gaze strayed from the tele­phone to a small bot­tle topped by a rub­ber mem­brane and, ly­ing next to it, a glass-​and-​steel hy­po­der­mic nee­dle. He picked up the bot­tle, held it up­side down while in­sert­ing the nee­dle, drew out a small quan­ti­ty, thought a mo­ment, drew out more, then capped the nee­dle with a plas­tic pro­tec­tor and placed it in his suit pock­et.

His gaze then went to a deck of tarot cards, sit­ting on the edge of the ta­ble. It was the Al­bano-​Waite deck—the one he pre­ferred. Pick­ing it up, he gave the deck an over­hand shuf­fle, then laid three cards face­down be­fore him in the spread known as the gyp­sy draw.

Putting the rest of the deck to one side, he turned over the first card: the High Priest­ess. In­ter­est­ing.

He moved his hand to the sec­ond card, turned it over. It showed a tall, thin man in a black cloak, turned away, head bowed. At his feet were over­turned gold­en gob­lets, spilling red liq­uid. In the back­ground was a riv­er, and be­yond that, a for­bid­ding-​look­ing cas­tle. The Five of Cups.

At this, Dio­genes drew in his breath sharply.

More slow­ly now, his hand moved to the third and fi­nal card. He hes­itat­ed a mo­ment, then turned it over.

This card was up­side down. It por­trayed a hand above a bar­ren land­scape, thrust­ing out of a dark cloud of smoke. It held a mas­sive sword with a jew­eled hilt. A gold­en crown was im­paled on the end of its blade.

The Ace of Swords. Re­versed.

Dio­genes stared at the card for a mo­ment, then slow­ly ex­haled. He raised it in a shak­ing hand, then with one vi­olent mo­tion tore it in half, then in half again, and scat­tered the pieces.

Now his rest­less gaze moved to the black vel­vet cloth, laid out and rolled up at the edges, on which lay 488 di­amonds, al­most all of them deeply col­ored, scin­til­lat­ing un­der­neath the bright gem light clamped to the ta­ble’s edge.

As he stared at the di­amonds, his ag­ita­tion be­gan to ease.

Re­strain­ing an exquisite ea­ger­ness, his hand roved over the ocean of glit­ter­ing trapped light be­fore pluck­ing one of the largest di­amonds, a vivid blue stone of thir­ty-​three carats, called the Queen of Nar­nia. He held it in his palm, ob­serv­ing the light catch and re­fract with­in its sat­urat­ed deeps, and then with in­fi­nite care raised it to his good eye.

He stared at the world through the frac­tured depths of the stone. It was like kick­ing open a door just a crack and catch­ing a glimpse of a mag­ic world be­yond, a world of col­or and life, a re­al world—so dif­fer­ent from this false, flat world of gray mun­dan­ity.

His breath­ing be­came deep­er and more even, and the trem­bling in his hand sub­sid­ed as his mind loos­ened in its prison and be­gan to ram­ble down long-​for­got­ten al­leys of mem­ory.

Di­amonds. It al­ways start­ed with di­amonds. He was in his moth­er’s arms, di­amonds glit­ter­ing at her throat, dan­gling from her ears, wink­ing from her fin­gers. Her voice was like a di­amond, pure and cool, and she was singing a song to him in French. He was no more than two years old but nev­er­the­less was cry­ing, not from sor­row, but from the aching beau­ty of his moth­er’s voice. In spite of my­self, the in­sid­ious mas­tery of song / be­trays me back, till the heart of me weeps to be­long…

The scene fad­ed.

Now he was wan­der­ing through the great house on Dauphine Street, down long cor­ri­dors and past mys­te­ri­ous rooms, many of them, even then, hav­ing been shut up for ages. But when you opened a door, you would al­ways find some­thing ex­cit­ing, some­thing won­drous and strange: a huge draped bed, dark paint­ings of wom­en in white and men with dead eyes; you would see ex­ot­ic ob­jects brought from far­away places—pan­pipes made of bone, a mon­key’s paw edged in sil­ver, a brass Span­ish stir­rup, a snarling jaguar head, the wrapped foot of an Egyp­tian mum­my.

There was al­ways his moth­er to flee to, with her warmth and her soft voice and her di­amonds that glit­tered as she moved, catch­ing the light in sud­den bursts of rain­bow. The di­amonds were here, they were alive, they nev­er changed, nev­er fad­ed, nev­er died. They would re­main, beau­ti­ful and im­mutable, for all time.

How dif­fer­ent from the fick­le vi­cis­si­tudes of the flesh.

Dio­genes un­der­stood the im­age of Nero watch­ing Rome burn while gaz­ing at the con­fla­gra­tion through a gem­stone. Nero un­der­stood the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of gems. He un­der­stood that to gaze at the world through such a stone was to trans­form both the world and one­self. Light was vi­bra­tion; and there were spe­cial vi­bra­tions from a di­amond that reached the deep­est lev­els of his spir­it. Most peo­ple couldn’t hear them; per­haps no­body else on earth could hear them. But he could. The gem­stones spoke to him, they whis­pered to him, they gave him strength and wis­dom.

To­day the di­amonds, not the cards, would pro­vide div­ina­tion.

Dio­genes con­tin­ued to gaze deeply in­to the blue di­amond. Each gem­stone had a dif­fer­ent voice, and he had picked this stone for its par­tic­ular wis­dom. He wait­ed, mur­mur­ing to the gem­stone, be­seech­ing it to speak.

And af­ter a mo­ment, it did. In re­sponse to his mur­mured ques­tion, a whis­pery an­swer came back like an echo of an echo, half heard in a wak­ing dream.

It was a good an­swer.

Vi­ola Maske­lene lis­tened to the strange mur­mur­ing, al­most like a prayer or a chant, that came from be­low. The sound was so low she could make out noth­ing. This was fol­lowed by an un­nerv­ing half-​hour si­lence. Then, at last, came the sound she’d been dread­ing: the scrape of a chair, the slow, care­ful foot­fall of the man climb­ing the stair­case. All her sens­es went on high alert, her mus­cles trem­bling, ready to act.

A po­lite rap on the door.

She wait­ed.

“Vi­ola? I should like to come in. Please step round the bed to the far side of the room.”

She hes­itat­ed, then did as he re­quest­ed.

He had said he was go­ing to kill her at dawn. But he hadn’t. The sun had set al­ready, night was com­ing on. Some­thing had hap­pened. His plans had changed. Or, more like­ly, had been changed, against his will.

The door opened and she saw Dio­genes stand­ing in it. He looked dif­fer­ent—slight­ly di­sheveled. His face was mot­tled, his cra­vat askew, his gin­ger hair a lit­tle ruf­fled.

“What do you want?” she asked huski­ly.

Still, he gazed at her. “I’m be­gin­ning to see what my broth­er found so fas­ci­nat­ing in you. You are, of course, beau­ti­ful and in­tel­li­gent, as well as spir­it­ed. But there is one qual­ity you pos­sess that tru­ly as­ton­ish­es me. You have no fear.”

She did not dig­ni­fy this with an an­swer.

“You should be afraid.”

“You’re mad.”

“Then I am like God, be­cause if there is a God, He is Him­self mad. I won­der why it is that you have no fear. Are you brave or stupid—or do you mere­ly lack the imag­ina­tion to pic­ture your own death? You see, I can imag­ine it, have imag­ined it, so very clear­ly.

When I look at you, I see a bag filled with blood, bones, vis­cera, and meat, held in by the most frag­ile and vul­ner­able cov­er­ing, so eas­ily punc­tured, so facile­ly ripped or torn. I have to ad­mit, I was look­ing for­ward to it.”

He peered at her close­ly. “Ah! Do I fi­nal­ly de­tect a note of fear?”

“What do you want?” she re­peat­ed.

He raised his hand, open­ing it with a twist and dis­play­ing a daz­zling gem­stone be­tween thumb and fore­fin­ger. The ceil­ing light struck it, cast­ing glit­ter­ing shards about the room.

“Ul­ti­ma Thule.”

“Ex­cuse me?”

“This is a di­amond known as the Ul­ti­ma Thule, named af­ter a line in one of Vir­gil’s Geor­gics. That’s Latin for the ‘Ut­ter­most Thule,’ the land of per­pet­ual ice.”

“I read Latin in school, too,” said Vi­ola sar­cas­ti­cal­ly.

“Then you’ll un­der­stand why this di­amond re­mind­ed me of you.”

With an­oth­er flick of the wrist, he tossed it to her. In­stinc­tive­ly, she caught it.

“A lit­tle go­ing-​away gift.”

Some­thing about the way he said “go­ing away” gave her an ug­ly feel­ing. “I don’t want any gift from you.”

“Oh, but it’s so apt. Twen­ty-​two carats, princess-​cut, rat­ed IF Flaw­less, with a col­or grad­ing of D. Are you fa­mil­iar with the grad­ing of di­amonds?”

“What rot you talk!”

“D is giv­en to a di­amond ut­ter­ly with­out col­or. It is al­so called white. It is con­sid­ered by those with no imag­ina­tion to be a de­sir­able trait. I look at you, Vi­ola, and what do I see? A wealthy, ti­tled, beau­ti­ful, bril­liant, and suc­cess­ful wom­an. You have a splen­did ca­reer as an Egyp­tol­ogist, you have a charm­ing house on the is­land of Capra­ia, you have a grand old fam­ily es­tate in Eng­land. No doubt you con­sid­er you are liv­ing life to the fullest. Not on­ly that, but you’ve had re­la­tion­ships with a va­ri­ety of in­ter­est­ing men, from an Ox­ford pro­fes­sor to a Hol­ly­wood ac­tor to a fa­mous pi­anist—even an Ital­ian soc­cer play­er. How oth­ers must en­vy you!”

Shock burned through Vi­ola at this in­va­sion of her pri­va­cy. “You bloody—“

“And yet, not all is what it seems. None of your re­la­tion­ships have worked out. No doubt you’re telling your­self the fault lies with the men. When will it oc­cur to you, Vi­ola, that the fault lies in your­self? You are just like that di­amond—flaw­less, bril­liant, per­fect, and ut­ter­ly with­out col­or. All your sad at­tempts to ap­pear ex­cit­ing, un­con­ven­tion­al, are just that—sad at­tempts.” He laughed harsh­ly. “As if dig­ging up mum­mies, root­ing in your lit­tle plot of dirt by the Mediter­ranean, could con­fer char­ac­ter! That di­amond, which all the world con­sid­ers so per­fect, is in re­al­ity dead com­mon. Like you. You’re thir­ty-​five years old and you’re unloved and unlov­ing. Why, you’re so des­per­ate for love that you fly halfway around the world in re­sponse to a let­ter from a man you met on­ly once! Ul­ti­ma Thule is yours, Vi­ola. You’ve earned it.”

Vi­ola stag­gered. His words felt like one phys­ical blow af­ter an­oth­er, each one find­ing its mark. This time she had no an­swer.

“That’s right. No mat­ter where you go, you’ll live in Ul­ti­ma Thule, the land of per­pet­ual ice. As some­one once said: Wher­ev­er you go, there you are. There’s no love with­in you, and there’ll be no love for you. Bar­ren­ness is your fate.”

“You and your bit of glass can get knot­ted!” she cried, vi­olent­ly throw­ing the stone back at him.

He deft­ly caught it. “Glass, you say? Do you know what I did yes­ter­day while you were here all alone?”

“My in­ter­est in your life would be un­de­tectable even to the most pow­er­ful mi­cro­scope.”

Dio­genes re­moved a square of newsprint from his pock­et and un­fold­ed it, re­veal­ing the front page of that day’s New York Times.

She stared at it from across the room, squint­ing to make out the head­lines.

“I robbed the As­tor Hall of Di­amonds at the Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry. It is a crime I’ve been plan­ning for many years. I cre­at­ed a new iden­ti­ty to pull it off. And you helped me do it. That’s why I want­ed to give you that stone. But if you don’t want it…” He shrugged, slipped it in­to his pock­et.

“My God.” Vi­ola stared at him. And now, for the first time, she was tru­ly afraid.

“You played an im­por­tant role. The piv­otal role. You see, your dis­ap­pear­ance kept my broth­er rac­ing all over Long Is­land, search­ing fran­ti­cal­ly for you, des­per­ate­ly wor­ried about your safe­ty, while I robbed the mu­se­um and trans­port­ed the gems out here.”

Vi­ola swal­lowed, feel­ing a lump in her throat. The fact she was still alive was noth­ing but a tem­po­rary re­prieve. He wouldn’t tell her all this if he meant to let her live.

He re­al­ly was go­ing to kill her.

“I was giv­ing you that as a lit­tle keep­sake, a me­men­to, since we shall part, nev­er to see each oth­er in this world again.”

“I’m go­ing some­where?” she said, voice qua­ver­ing now de­spite her best ef­forts.

“Oh, yes.”

“Where?”

“You shall find out.”

She could see he had his hand in his jack­et pock­et, fin­ger­ing some­thing. He took a step in­to the room. The door re­mained open be­hind him.

“Come here, Ice Princess.”

She didn’t move.

He took a sec­ond step for­ward, and a third. At that mo­ment, she broke for the door. But some­how he had an­tic­ipat­ed it, whirling and leap­ing to­ward her with the speed of a cat. She felt a shock­ing­ly pow­er­ful arm, tight as a steel ca­ble, whip around her neck; the oth­er hand slipped out of his pock­et now, and in it was the sud­den flash of a nee­dle, and then she felt a burn­ing sting in her up­per thigh; there was the sen­sa­tion of heat and an over­pow­er­ing roar; and then the world abrupt­ly shut down.

SIX­TY-​SIX

“Any idea what this is about?” Sin­gle­ton said as they rode an ex­press el­eva­tor to the rar­efied up­per floors of One Po­lice Plaza.

Lau­ra Hay­ward shook her head. If Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er had asked to see her alone, she might have ex­pect­ed it was more fall­out over her fin­ger­ing Pen­der­gast for the mur­ders. But she and Sin­gle­ton had been asked to meet with the com­mis­sion­er to­geth­er. Be­sides, Rock­er had al­ways been a straight shoot­er. He wasn’t po­lit­ical.

They emerged on the forty-​sixth floor and walked down the plush­ly car­pet­ed cor­ri­dor to the com­mis­sion­er’s cor­ner suite. A uni­formed sec­re­tary in the large out­er of­fice took their names, di­aled her phone, had a brief, hushed con­ver­sa­tion, and waved them through.

Rock­er’s of­fice was ex­pan­sive but not os­ten­ta­tious. In­stead of the shoot­ing awards and grin­ning pho­to ops that cov­ered the of­fice walls of most po­lice brass, these walls sport­ed wa­ter­col­or land­scapes and a cou­ple of diplo­mas. Rock­er was seat­ed be­hind a large but util­itar­ian desk. Three couch­es were ar­rayed in a rough semi­cir­cle around it. Spe­cial Agent in Charge Cof­fey sat in the mid­dle couch, flanked by Agents Brooks and Ra­bin­er.

“Ah, Cap­tain Hay­ward,” Rock­er said, ris­ing. “Cap­tain Sin­gle­ton.

Thanks for com­ing.” There was an un­usu­al, strained qual­ity to his voice she hadn’t heard be­fore, and his jaw was set in a tight line.

Agent Brooks and Agent Ra­bin­er rose as well, leap­ing to their feet as if tick­led by live wires. On­ly Cof­fey re­mained seat­ed. He nod­ded cool­ly at them, small pale eyes in the big sun­burned face mov­ing from Hay­ward to Sin­gle­ton and back to Hay­ward again.

Rock­er waved vague­ly at the so­fas. “Please have a seat.”

Hay­ward seat­ed her­self be­side the win­dow. So at last Cof­fey was deign­ing to bring them in­to his in­ves­ti­ga­tion. They hadn’t heard a word from him or any­body else in the FBI since the meet­ing that morn­ing. In­stead, she’d kept her­self and her de­tec­tives busy ques­tion­ing ad­di­tion­al mu­se­um em­ploy­ees and fur­ther de­vel­op­ing the ev­idence. At least it had helped keep her mind off the man­hunt go­ing on six­ty miles to the east, at what D’Agos­ta was do­ing—com­mit­ting— on Long Is­land. Think­ing about him, about the whole sit­ua­tion, gave her noth­ing but pain. She could nev­er un­der­stand why he’d done it, why he’d made the de­ci­sion he did. She’d giv­en him an ul­ti­ma­tum, and un­der the cir­cum­stances an in­cred­ibly fair one. Do the right thing, come in out of the cold. And not just the right thing as a cop, but as a hu­man be­ing and a friend. She hadn’t ac­tu­al­ly said it, but it had been clear enough: It’s ei­ther me or Pen­der­gast.

D’Agos­ta had made his choice.

Rock­er cleared his throat. “Spe­cial Agent in Charge Cof­fey has asked me to con­vene this meet­ing to dis­cuss the Duchamp and Green mur­ders. I’ve asked Cap­tain Sin­gle­ton to be here as well, since both homi­cides took place in his precinct.”

Hay­ward nod­ded. “I’m glad to hear that, sir. We’ve had pre­cious lit­tle in­for­ma­tion from the Bu­reau about the progress of the man­hunt, and—“

“I’m sor­ry, Cap­tain,” Rock­er in­ter­rupt­ed qui­et­ly. “Spe­cial Agent Cof­fey wish­es to dis­cuss trans­fer of ev­idence on the Duchamp and Green mur­ders.”

This stopped Hay­ward dead in her tracks. “Trans­fer of ev­idence? We’ve made all our ev­idence freely avail­able.”

Cof­fey crossed one trun­klike leg over the oth­er. “We’re as­sum­ing con­trol of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Cap­tain.”

There was a mo­ment of stunned si­lence.

“You don’t have the pow­er to do that,” Hay­ward said.

“This is Cap­tain Hay­ward’s case,” Sin­gle­ton said, turn­ing to Rock­er, his voice qui­et but strong. “She’s been liv­ing it night and day. She’s the one who found the con­nec­tion be­tween the D.C. and New Or­leans homi­cides. She de­vel­oped the ev­idence, she ID’d Pen­der­gast. Be­sides, mur­der isn’t a fed­er­al crime.”

Rock­er sighed. “I’m aware of all that. But—“

“Let me ex­plain,” Cof­fey said with a wave of the hand at Rock­er. “The perp is FBI, one of the vic­tims is FBI, the case cross­es state bound­aries, and the sus­pect’s fled your ju­ris­dic­tion. End of dis­cus­sion.”

“Agent Cof­fey is right,” said Rock­er. “It’s their case. We’ll nat­ural­ly be on hand to as­sist—“

“We don’t have a lot of time to jaw­bone,” said Ra­bin­er. “Let’s get on with the par­tic­ulars of ev­idence trans­fer.”

Hay­ward glanced at Sin­gle­ton. His face was flushed. “If it wasn’t for Cap­tain Hay­ward,” he said, “there wouldn’t be any man­hunt.”

“We’re all just as pleased as punch at Cap­tain Hay­ward’s po­lice work,” said Cof­fey. “But the bot­tom line is, this is no longer an NYPD mat­ter.”

“Just give them what they need, please, Cap­tain,” Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er said, a note of ex­as­per­ation in his voice.

Hay­ward glanced at him and re­al­ized he was pissed as hell at this de­vel­op­ment, but could do noth­ing about it.

She should have seen it com­ing. The fed­er­al boys were go­ing for the gold, and on top of that, this Cof­fey seemed to have a per­son­al an­imos­ity to­ward Pen­der­gast. God help him and D’Agos­ta when the feds fi­nal­ly caught up with them.

Hay­ward knew she ought to feel out­raged at all this. But through the numb­ness, all she could bring her­self to feel was an up­welling of weari­ness. That, and a feel­ing of re­vul­sion so strong that she sim­ply could not bear to spend an­oth­er mo­ment in the same room with Cof­fey. And so, abrupt­ly, she stood up.

“Fine,” she said briskly. “I’ll ini­ti­ate the pa­per­work. You’ll get your ev­idence as soon as the chain-​of-​ev­idence trans­fers are signed. Any­thing else?”

“Cap­tain?” said Rock­er. “I’m very grate­ful to you for your fine work.”

She nod­ded, turned, and left the room.

She walked quick­ly to­ward the el­eva­tor, head low­ered, breath­ing fast. As she did so, her cell phone rang.

She wait­ed, get­ting her breath­ing un­der con­trol. Af­ter a minute or two, the cell phone rang again.

This time she an­swered. “Hay­ward.”

“Lau­ra?” came the voice. “It’s me. Vin­nie.”

De­spite her­self, she felt her heart rise in­to her throat. “Vin­cent, for God’s sake. What the hell are you—?”

“Just lis­ten, please. I have some­thing very im­por­tant to tell you.”

Hay­ward took a deep breath. “I’m lis­ten­ing.”

SIX­TY-​SEV­EN

D’Agos­ta fol­lowed Pen­der­gast in­to Penn Sta­tion, which—dis­grace­ful­ly—con­sist­ed of lit­tle more than an es­ca­la­tor en­trance in the shad­ow of Madi­son Square Gar­den. It was a qui­et evening, a Tues­day of no con­se­quence, and at such a late hour, the area was al­most de­sert­ed, save for a few home­less peo­ple and a man pass­ing out sheets of his po­et­ry. The two rode the es­ca­la­tor down to the wait­ing area, then took an­oth­er that de­scend­ed still far­ther, to the track lev­el.

They were head­ed, D’Agos­ta not­ed with a cer­tain grim­ness, for track 13.

Pen­der­gast had bare­ly spo­ken a word in the last half hour. As the ap­point­ed time drew near­er—as they came clos­er to see­ing Vi­ola and, in­evitably, Dio­genes—the agent had grown more and more tight-​lipped and with­drawn.

The tracks were al­most de­sert­ed, just a few main­te­nance men sweep­ing up trash and two uni­formed cops at a se­cu­ri­ty sta­tion, chat­ting and blow­ing on cups of cof­fee. Pen­der­gast led the way to the far end of the plat­form, where the tracks dis­ap­peared in­to a dark tun­nel.

“Be ready,” Pen­der­gast mur­mured as his pale eyes roved the tracks.

They wait­ed for a mo­ment. The two cops turned and walked in­to the se­cu­ri­ty sta­tion. “Now!” Pen­der­gast said un­der his breath.

They jumped light­ly off the plat­form on­to the tracks and jogged away in­to the dim­ness. D’Agos­ta glanced back at the re­ced­ing plat­form, en­sur­ing no­body had no­ticed.

It was warmer be­low­ground, hov­er­ing just around freez­ing, but it was a much damper cold, and it seemed to cut ef­fort­less­ly through D’Agos­ta’s pur­loined sports jack­et. Af­ter an­oth­er minute of jog­ging, Pen­der­gast stopped, fished in his pock­et, and pulled out a flash­light.

“We have some way to go,” he said, shin­ing the light down the long, dark tun­nel. Sev­er­al pairs of eyes—rat’s eyes—gleamed out of the dark­ness ahead.

The agent set off again at a fast walk, his long legs strid­ing down the mid­dle of the tracks. D’Agos­ta fol­lowed, lis­ten­ing a lit­tle ner­vous­ly for any sound of an ap­proach­ing train. But all he could hear were their hol­low foot­steps, his own breath­ing, and the sound of wa­ter drip­ping from ici­cles in the an­cient brick roof.

“So the Iron Clock is a rail­road turntable?” he asked af­ter a mo­ment. He spoke more to break the strained si­lence than any­thing else.

“Yes. A very old one.”

“I didn’t know there were any turnta­bles un­der Man­hat­tan.”

“It was built to man­age the flow of train traf­fic in and out of the old Penn­syl­va­nia Sta­tion. In fact, it’s the on­ly re­main­ing ar­ti­fact from the orig­inal ar­chi­tec­ture.”

“And you know how to find it?”

“Re­mem­ber the sub­way mur­ders we worked on some years back? I spent quite a bit of time then, study­ing the un­der­ground land­scape of New York City. I still re­call much of the lay­out be­neath Man­hat­tan, at least the more com­mon routes.”

“How do you think Dio­genes knows about it?”

“That is an in­ter­est­ing fact, Vin­cent, and it has not es­caped my at­ten­tion.”

They came to a met­al door, set in­to an al­cove in the tun­nel wall, fas­tened with a rust­cov­ered pad­lock. Pen­der­gast stooped to ex­am­ine the lock, trac­ing the heavy lines of rust with his fin­ger. Then he stepped back, nod­ding to D’Agos­ta to do the same. Pulling his Wil­son Com­bat 1911 from its hol­ster, Pen­der­gast fired it in­to the lock. A deaf­en­ing roar cracked down the tun­nel, and the bro­ken lock fell to the ground in a cloud of rust. He leaned to the side and kicked open the door.

A stone stair­case led down, ex­hal­ing a smell of mold and rot.

“How far down is it?”

“Ac­tu­al­ly, we’re al­ready at the grade of the Iron Clock. This is mere­ly a short­cut.”

The stair­case was slip­pery, and as they de­scend­ed, the air grew warmer still. Af­ter a long de­scent, the steps lev­eled out, broad­en­ing in­to an old brick tun­nel with Goth­ic arch­es. Locked work sheds lined the tun­nel.

D’Agos­ta paused. “Lights ahead. And voic­es.”

“Home­less,” Pen­der­gast replied.

As they con­tin­ued, D’Agos­ta be­gan to smell woodsmoke. Short­ly, they came across a group of ragged men and wom­en sit­ting around a rude­ly built fire, pass­ing around a bot­tle of wine.

“What’s this?” one of them called out. “You fel­lows miss your train?”

The laugh­ter sub­sid­ed as they passed. From the dark­ness be­hind the group came the sud­den cry­ing of a ba­by.

“Jeez,” D’Agos­ta mut­tered. “You hear that?”

Pen­der­gast mere­ly nod­ded.

They came to an­oth­er met­al door, from which some­one had al­ready cut away the lock. Open­ing the door, they climbed back up a long, wet stair­case, dodg­ing streams of wa­ter, and emerged on­to a new set of tracks.

Pen­der­gast paused, check­ing his watch. “Eleven-​thir­ty.”

More rats scur­ried away as they walked word­less­ly down the tun­nel for what seemed miles. No amount of walk­ing seemed to warm D’Agos­ta against the damp chill. At one point, they passed a sid­ing hold­ing sev­er­al wrecked train cars. Lat­er, pass­ing a se­ries of stone al­coves, D’Agos­ta saw an an­cient met­al gear more than eight feet in di­am­eter. Once in a while, he heard the dis­tant rum­ble of trains, but noth­ing seemed to be run­ning on the tracks they were walk­ing on.

At last, Pen­der­gast halt­ed, switched off his flash­light, and nod­ded ahead. Peer­ing in­to the dark­ness, D’Agos­ta saw that the tun­nel end­ed in an arch­way of dim yel­low light.

“That’s the Iron Clock up ahead,” Pen­der­gast said in a low voice.

D’Agos­ta re­moved his Glock 29, slid open the mag­azine, checked it, and slipped it back in­to place.

“You know what to do?”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded.

They moved for­ward slow­ly and silent­ly, Pen­der­gast in front, D’Agos­ta close be­hind. He checked his watch, hold­ing it mere inch­es from his nose: twelve min­utes to mid­night.

“Re­mem­ber,” Pen­der­gast whis­pered. “Cov­er me from here.”

D’Agos­ta flat­tened him­self against the wall. From this van­tage point, he had a good view in­to the enor­mous space ahead. What he saw al­most took his breath away. It was a huge cir­cu­lar vault built of gran­ite blocks streaked with lime­stone and grime, an in­cred­ible Ro­manesque un­der­ground mass­ing. The floor of the vault was spanned by a rail­road turntable: a sin­gle length of track stretch­ing from one wall to an­oth­er, set in­to a vast iron cir­cle. Twelve arched tun­nels, spaced equal­ly apart, en­tered the vault. Each bore a small, grime-​cov­ered light above its mouth, along with a carved Ro­man nu­mer­al, I through XII.

So that’s the Iron Clock, he thought.

His dad had been a rail­road buff, and D’Agos­ta knew some­thing about rail­road turnta­bles. The re­volv­ing carousels were usu­al­ly found at a rail­road’s ter­mi­nus: a sin­gle track led in­to the turntable, and ly­ing be­yond would be a semi­cir­cu­lar round­house with bays for lo­co­mo­tive stor­age. Here, how­ev­er, hard by Penn Sta­tion and with­in one of the world’s bus­iest net­works of rail­road tracks, the turntable clear­ly had a dif­fer­ent pur­pose: it was sim­ply a nexus, a way to al­low trains to go from one se­ries of tracks and tun­nels to an­oth­er.

The sound of drip­ping wa­ter echoed in the vast space, and he could see, far above, ici­cles on the up­per vault­ing. The drops came spin­ning down through a dirty cir­cle of lights to land in black pud­dles be­low.

He won­dered if—out there some­where, in the dark­ness of one of the oth­er eleven rail­road tun­nels—Dio­genes was wait­ing.

Just then he heard a faint rum­ble, fol­lowed by a grow­ing rush of air. Pen­der­gast re­treat­ed back in­to the tun­nel, mo­tion­ing D’Agos­ta to do the same. A mo­ment lat­er, a com­muter train burst out of one of the tun­nel mouths and went thun­der­ing over the turntable, win­dows flash­ing by as it shot through the space, then rock­et­ed back in­to dark­ness. The roar died to a rum­ble, then a mur­mur. And then, with a loud clank­ing noise, the sin­gle sec­tion of track in the cen­ter of the Iron Clock be­gan to ro­tate, halt­ing with a clang as it con­nect­ed two oth­er tun­nels, prepar­ing for the next train.

The tun­nels it now con­nect­ed were tun­nel XII and the tun­nel they them­selves were in: tun­nel VI.

All fell silent again. D’Agos­ta saw the dark shapes of rats—some the size of small dogs—scur­ry­ing along the shad­ows at the far edge of the round­house. Wa­ter dripped steadi­ly. The place smelled of rot and de­cay.

Pen­der­gast stirred, ges­tured to­ward his watch. Six min­utes to mid­night. Time to act. He grasped D’Agos­ta’s hand.

“You know what to do?” he re­peat­ed.

D’Agos­ta nod­ded.

“Thank you, Vin­cent,” he said. “Thank you for ev­ery­thing.”

Then Pen­der­gast turned and stepped out of the tun­nel, in­to the dim light. Two steps. Three.

D’Agos­ta re­mained in the shad­ows, Glock in hand. The great vault of the round­house re­mained emp­ty and silent, the dark tun­nels like so many open mouths, ici­cles gleam­ing like teeth.

Pen­der­gast took an­oth­er step, then stopped.

“Ave, frater!”

The voice boomed out in­to the dank, dark space, echo­ing from all quar­ters, so that it was im­pos­si­ble to tell its source. D’Agos­ta stiff­ened, strain­ing to see in­to the black open­ings of the oth­er tun­nels vis­ible from his own, but he could see no sign of Dio­genes.

“Don’t be shy, broth­er. Let’s have a look at that pret­ty face of yours. Step a lit­tle far­ther in­to the light.”

Pen­der­gast took a few more steps in­to the open area. D’Agos­ta wait­ed, gun in hand, cov­er­ing him.

“Did you bring it?” came the echo­ing voice. The tone was leer­ing, al­most a snarl; yet there was a cu­ri­ous hunger in it.

In re­ply, Pen­der­gast raised one hand, twist­ing his wrist as he did so. The di­amond sud­den­ly ap­peared, dull in the dim light.

D’Agos­ta heard a sharp in­take of breath, like the crack of a whip, come out of the dark­ness.

“Bring me Vi­ola,” Pen­der­gast said.

“Easy, now, broth­er. All in good time. Step on­to the turntable.”

Pen­der­gast stepped over the iron cir­cle and on­to the track bed.

“Now walk for­ward, to the cen­ter of the track. You’ll find an old hole cut in the iron plate. In­side that is a small vel­vet box. Put the stone in there. And do hur­ry—we wouldn’t want an­oth­er pass­ing train to end all this pre­ma­ture­ly.”

Again, D’Agos­ta strained to lo­cate the voice, but it was im­pos­si­ble to know in which tun­nel Dio­genes might be hid­ing. Giv­en the pe­cu­liar acous­tics of the vault­ed space, he could be any­where.

Pen­der­gast walked for­ward guard­ed­ly. Reach­ing the cen­ter of the round­house, he knelt, picked up the vel­vet box, placed the di­amond in­side it, re­placed it by the track.

Then, abrupt­ly, he rose, pulling out his Wil­son Com­bat and aim­ing it at the di­amond. “Bring me Vi­ola,” he re­peat­ed.

“Whoa! Broth­er! This rash­ness is un­like you. We go by the book. Now step back while my man takes a look to make sure it’s re­al.”

“It is re­al.”

“I trust­ed you once, long ago. Re­mem­ber? Look where it got me.” A strange sigh, al­most like a moan, came out of the dark­ness. “For­give me if I don’t trust you again. Mr. Ka­plan? Do your stuff, if you please.”

A ter­ri­fied, di­sheveled man stum­bled out of tun­nel XI in­to the faint light. He blinked, look­ing around in be­wil­der­ment. He was wear­ing a dark suit and black cash­mere coat, mud­died and torn. On his bald head was a head­band loupe, and he held a light in one hand.

D’Agos­ta im­me­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized him as the man they’d ab­duct­ed ear­li­er.

He looked like he’d had an un­usu­al­ly bad day.

Ka­plan took a tot­ter­ing step for­ward, then stopped again. He stared about, un­com­pre­hend­ing. “Who…? What…?”

“The di­amond is in a box at the cen­ter. Go ex­am­ine it. Tell me if it’s Lu­cifer’s Heart.”

The man looked around. “Who’s speak­ing? Where am I?”

“Frater, show Ka­plan the di­amond.”

Ka­plan stum­bled for­ward. Pen­der­gast waved his gun in the di­rec­tion of the box.

The sight of the gun seemed to wake Ka­plan from his stu­por. “I’ll do what you say, but please don’t kill me!” he cried. “I have chil­dren.”

“And you shall see your dim­pled lu­natics again—if you do as I say,” came the dis­em­bod­ied voice of Dio­genes.

The man stum­bled again, re­cov­ered, knelt over the di­amond, and picked it up. He low­ered the loupe over his eye, switched on the small light, and ex­am­ined the stone.

“Well?” came Dio­genes’s voice, high and strained.

“A mo­ment!” the man al­most sobbed. “Give me a mo­ment, please.”

He peered at it, the light blos­som­ing in­side the di­amond, turn­ing it in­to a glow­ing orb of cin­na­mon. “It looks like Lu­cifer’s Heart, all right,” he said, his voice hushed.

” ‘Looks like’ won’t do, Mr. Ka­plan.”

The man con­tin­ued to peer in­to the di­amond, his hands shak­ing. Then he straight­ened. “I’m sure it is,” he said.

“Be sure, now. Your life, and the lives of your fam­ily, de­pend on your ac­cu­rate ap­praisal.”

“I’m sure. There’s no oth­er di­amond like it.”

“The di­amond has one mi­cro­scop­ic flaw. Tell me where it is.”

Ka­plan re­turned to his ex­am­ina­tion. A minute passed, then two.

“There’s a faint in­clu­sion about two mil­lime­ters from the cen­ter of the stone, in the one o’clock di­rec­tion.”

A hiss—per­haps of tri­umph, per­haps some­thing else—came from the dark­ness. “Ka­plan, you may go. Tun­nel VI is your ex­it. Frater, re­main where you are.”

With a grate­ful sob, the man hur­ried to­ward tun­nel VI and the wait­ing D’Agos­ta, stum­bling, half sprawl­ing in his zeal to get away. A mo­ment lat­er, he ar­rived in the dark­ness of the tun­nel mouth, pant­ing heav­ily.

“Thank God,” he sobbed. “Thank God.”

“Get be­hind me,” said D’Agos­ta.

Ka­plan peered at D’Agos­ta, fear re­plac­ing re­lief as he rec­og­nized the face. “Wait a minute. You’re the cop who—“

“Let’s wor­ry about that lat­er,” D’Agos­ta said, push­ing him far­ther in­to the pro­tec­tive dark­ness. “We’ll have you out of here soon.”

“And now, the mo­ment you’ve been wait­ing for.” Dio­genes’s voice echoed around the vault­ed space. “I present you—La­dy Vi­ola Maske­lene!”

As D’Agos­ta peered out, Vi­ola Maske­lene sud­den­ly stepped out of the dark­ness of tun­nel IX. She paused in the light, blink­ing un­cer­tain­ly.

Pen­der­gast took an in­vol­un­tary step for­ward.

“Don’t move, broth­er! Let her come to you.”

She turned and looked at Pen­der­gast, took a step for­ward, not quite steadi­ly.

“Vi­ola!” Pen­der­gast took an­oth­er step for­ward.

There was a sud­den gun­shot, deaf­en­ing in the en­closed space. A puff of dirt sprang up near Pen­der­gast’s out­stretched shoe. In­stant­ly, the agent dropped in­to a crouch, gun in hand, mov­ing its bar­rel from tun­nel mouth to tun­nel mouth.

“Go ahead, broth­er. Re­turn fire. Pity if a stray round takes down your La­dy Eve.”

Pen­der­gast turned. Vi­ola had frozen at the sound of the gun­shot.

“Come to me, Vi­ola,” he said.

She stared at him. “Aloy­sius?” she asked weak­ly.

“I’m right here. Just come to me, slow and steady.”

“But you … you…”

“It’s all right now. You’re safe. Come to me.” He held out his arms.

“What a touch­ing scene!” said Dio­genes. This was fol­lowed by mock­ing, cyn­ical laugh­ter.

She took a shaky step, an­oth­er, an­oth­er—and col­lapsed in Pen­der­gast’s arms.

Pen­der­gast cra­dled her pro­tec­tive­ly, lift­ing her chin with a gen­tle hand and look­ing at her face. “You drugged her!” he said.

“Pooh. Noth­ing more than a few mil­ligrams of Versed to keep her qui­et. Don’t be con­cerned—she’s in­tact.”

D’Agos­ta could now hear Pen­der­gast mur­mur­ing in­to Vi­ola’s ear, but he couldn’t catch the words. She shook her head, pulled away, swayed. He grasped her again, steady­ing her. Then he helped her to­ward the tun­nel open­ing.

“Bra­vo, gen­tle­men, I do be­lieve we’re done!” came Dio­genes’s tri­umphant voice. “Now you may all leave by tun­nel VI. In fact, you must leave by tun­nel VI. I would in­sist up­on it. And you had bet­ter hur­ry—the mid­night Acela will be com­ing down track VI in five min­utes, bound for Wash­ing­ton. It ac­cel­er­ates quick­ly out of the sta­tion and will al­ready be go­ing close to eighty. If you don’t reach the first al­cove, three hun­dred yards down the tracks, you’ll be so much paste on the tun­nel walls. I’ll shoot any strag­glers. So get mov­ing!”

Pen­der­gast helped Vi­ola back in­to the dark­ness, passed her to D’Agos­ta.

“Get her and Ka­plan out of here,” he mur­mured, plac­ing his flash­light in D’Agos­ta’s hand.

“And you?”

“I have un­fin­ished busi­ness.”

This was the an­swer D’Agos­ta had feared. He put out a re­strain­ing hand. “He’ll kill you.”

Pen­der­gast gen­tly shook him­self free.

“You can’t!” D’Agos­ta whis­pered ur­gent­ly. “They’ll be—“

“Did you hear me?” Dio­genes’s voice rang out. “You’ve now got four min­utes!”

“Go!” said Pen­der­gast fierce­ly.

D’Agos­ta shot him a fi­nal glance. Then he wrapped his arm around Vi­ola, turned to­ward Ka­plan, gave him a gen­tle nudge. “Come on, Mr. Ka­plan. Let’s go.”

He switched on the flash­light and, turn­ing away from the Iron Clock, led the way quick­ly down the tracks.

SIX­TY-​EIGHT

Pen­der­gast re­mained in the dark­ness of the tun­nel, gun drawn, wait­ing. All was silent. A minute went by, then two, then three, then four.

Five min­utes passed. No train came.

Six min­utes. Sev­en.

Still Pen­der­gast wait­ed in the dark. He re­al­ized his broth­er, al­ways cau­tious, would not show him­self un­til the train had passed. Slow­ly, he stepped back out in­to the light.

“Aloy­sius! What are you still do­ing here?” The voice was sud­den­ly pan­icked. “I said I’d kill any­one who showed them­selves again!”

“Then do it.”

Once again, a gun fired, kick­ing up grav­el inch­es from his toe.

“Your aim is off.”

A sec­ond round ric­ocheted off the stone arch above Pen­der­gast’s head, spray­ing him with chips.

“You missed again.”

“The train’s com­ing through at any mo­ment,” came the ur­gent voice. “I won’t have to kill you—the train will do it for me.”

Pen­der­gast shook his head. Then he be­gan strolling leisure­ly along the rail­road turntable, head­ing to­ward the cen­ter of the vault.

“Get back!” An­oth­er shot.

“Your aim is poor to­day, Dio­genes.”

He stopped at the cen­ter of the turntable.

“No!” came the voice. “Get away!”

Pen­der­gast reached down and picked up the box, took out the di­amond, weighed it in his palm.

“The train, you fool! Put the di­amond down! It’s safe in that hole!”

“There is no train.”

“Yes, there is. It’s late, that’s all.”

“It’s not com­ing.”

“What are you talk­ing about?”

“The mid­night Acela was can­celed. I called in a bomb threat at the Back Bay sta­tion.”

“You’re bluff­ing! How could you have called in such a threat? You couldn’t have known my plan.”

“No? Why meet us at six min­utes to mid­night, rather than mid­night? And why here? There could be on­ly one rea­son: it had to do with the rail­road timetable. From there it was el­emen­tary.” He slipped the di­amond in­to his pock­et.

“Put that back—it’s mine! You liar! You lied to me!”

“I nev­er lied to you. I mere­ly fol­lowed your in­struc­tions. You, on the oth­er hand, lied to me. Many times. You said you would kill Smith­back. In­stead, you tar­get­ed Mar­go Green.”

“I killed your friends. You know I won’t hes­itate to kill you.”

“And that’s pre­cise­ly what you’re go­ing to have to do. You want to stop me? Then kill me.”

“Bas­tard! Mon sem­blable, mon frère—now, you die!”

Pen­der­gast wait­ed, mo­tion­less. A minute passed, then an­oth­er.

“You see, you can’t kill me,” Pen­der­gast said. “That’s why you did not prop­er­ly aim your shots. You need me alive. You proved that when you res­cued me from Cas­tel Fos­co. You need me, be­cause with­out me—with­out your ha­tred of me—you would have noth­ing left.”

Dio­genes did not re­spond. And yet a new sound had been in­tro­duced to the vault: the sound of run­ning feet, barked com­mands, crack­ling ra­dios.

The sounds were com­ing clos­er.

“What is it?” came Dio­genes’s ur­gent voice.

“The po­lice,” said Pen­der­gast calm­ly.

“You called the po­lice’? You fool, they’ll get you, not me!”

“That’s the whole point. And your gun­shots will bring them here all the faster.”

“What are you talk­ing about? Id­iot, you’re what—us­ing your­self as bait? Sac­ri­fic­ing your­self?”

“Pre­cise­ly. I’m ex­chang­ing my free­dom for the safe­ty of Vi­ola, and for the re­cov­ery of Lu­cifer’s Heart. Self-​sac­ri­fice, Dio­genes: the one end re­sult you could not have pre­dict­ed. Be­cause it’s the one thing you would nev­er, ev­er think to do your­self.”

“You—! Give me my di­amond!”

“Come and get it. You might even have a minute to en­joy it be­fore we’re both cap­tured. Or you can run now, and maybe—just maybe— es­cape.”

“You can’t do this, you’re ut­ter­ly mad!” The dis­em­bod­ied voice fell in an­oth­er chok­ing moan, so pen­etrat­ing and in­hu­man that it sound­ed fer­al. And then it cut off abrupt­ly, leav­ing on­ly an echo.

A mo­ment lat­er, Hay­ward burst out of tun­nel IV, a pha­lanx of cops be­hind her. Sin­gle­ton fol­lowed, speak­ing ex­cit­ed­ly in­to his ra­dio. The of­fi­cers quick­ly sur­round­ed Pen­der­gast, drop­ping to their knees in the three-​point stance, weapons aimed at him.

“Po­lice! Freeze! Raise your hands!”

Slow­ly, Pen­der­gast raised his hands.

Hay­ward came for­ward, step­ping through the ring of blue. “Are you armed, Agent Pen­der­gast?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “And you will find Lu­cifer’s Heart in the left pock­et of my jack­et. Please treat it with great care. Hold it your­self, don’t en­trust it to any­one.”

Hay­ward glanced back, mo­tioned for one of the of­fi­cers to frisk him. An­oth­er agent came up be­hind, grab­bing Pen­der­gast’s hands, pulling them be­hind his back and cuff­ing them.

“I sug­gest we move away from the rail­road track,” Pen­der­gast said. “For the sake of safe­ty.”

“All in good time,” Hay­ward said. She reached cau­tious­ly in­to his jack­et pock­et, with­drew the di­amond, glanced at it, tucked it in­to her own breast pock­et. “Aloy­sius Pen­der­gast, you have the right to re­main silent. Any­thing you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”

But Pen­der­gast was not lis­ten­ing. He was look­ing over Hay­ward’s shoul­der, in­to the dark­ness of tun­nel III. Two small points of light were bare­ly vis­ible there, seem­ing­ly mere re­flec­tions of the faint light of the vault. As he watched, the lights fad­ed out a mo­ment, then re­turned—as eyes would do when blinked. Then they dimmed, turned away, and van­ished, leav­ing on­ly black­ness in their wake.

SIX­TY-​NINE

THE am­bu­lance crew had al­ready tak­en away Ka­plan and Vi­ola. D’Agos­ta re­mained be­hind, cuffed to a chair in the hold­ing area of the NYPD’s Madi­son Square Gar­den sub­sta­tion, guard­ed by six cops. His head was down, eyes on the floor, try­ing to avoid eye con­tact with his for­mer peers and sub­or­di­nates as they stood around, mak­ing forced small talk. It turned out to be easy: ev­ery­body was as­sid­uous­ly avoid­ing look­ing at him. It was as if he no longer ex­ist­ed, as if he’d turned in­to some kind of ver­min that didn’t even mer­it a glance.

He heard a burst of ra­dio talk and saw, through the sub­sta­tion’s glassed-​in par­ti­tion, a large group of cops mov­ing through the tick­et­ing area of Penn Sta­tion. In the mid­dle, still walk­ing tall, was the slen­der, black-​suit­ed fig­ure of Pen­der­gast, hands cuffed be­hind his back, two burly cops on ei­ther side. Pen­der­gast glanced nei­ther to the left nor to the right, and his back was straight, his face un­trou­bled. For the first time in many days, he looked—if it was pos­si­ble, un­der the cir­cum­stances—al­most like his old self. No doubt they were lead­ing him to a wait­ing pad­dy wag­on at the sta­tion’s Eighth Av­enue en­trance. As Pen­der­gast passed, he glanced in D’Agos­ta’s di­rec­tion. Even though the par­ti­tion was made of mir­rored glass, it seemed that Pen­der­gast nev­er­the­less looked di­rect­ly at him, with what seemed to be a quick, grate­ful nod.

D’Agos­ta turned away. His whole world, ev­ery­thing he cared about, had been de­stroyed. Be­cause of Pen­der­gast’s in­sis­tence that he in­form Hay­ward of their where­abouts, his friend was on his way to prison, prob­ably for life. There was on­ly one thing that could make him feel worse, and that would be if Hay­ward her­self made an ap­pear­ance.

As if on cue, there she was: walk­ing with Sin­gle­ton, ap­proach­ing from the far side of the sub­sta­tion.

He dropped his head and wait­ed. He heard foot­steps ap­proach. His face burned.

“Lieu­tenant?”

He looked up. It wasn’t Hay­ward, just Sin­gle­ton. Lau­ra had sim­ply passed him by.

Sin­gle­ton glanced around, ex­changed greet­ings with the cops guard­ing D’Agos­ta. “Un­cuff him, please.”

One of the cops un­cuffed him from the chair.

“I’d like to have a pri­vate word with the lieu­tenant, if you fel­lows don’t mind.”

The cops evac­uat­ed the hold­ing area with vis­ible re­lief. When they were gone, Sin­gle­ton put a hand on his shoul­der. “You’re in deep shit, Vin­nie,” he said, not un­kind­ly.

D’Agos­ta nod­ded.

“Need­less to say, they’ll be con­ven­ing a board of in­quiry, and a pre­lim­inary in­ter­nal af­fairs hear­ing will be held as soon as pos­si­ble, prob­ably the day af­ter to­mor­row. Your fu­ture in law en­force­ment is a big ques­tion mark at this point, but, frankly, that’s the least of your wor­ries. It looks like we’re deal­ing with four felony charges: kid­nap­ping two, grand au­to, reck­less en­dan­ger­ment, ac­ces­so­ry af­ter.”

D’Agos­ta put his head in his hands.

Sin­gle­ton squeezed his shoul­der. “The thing is, Vin­nie, de­spite all this, in the end you came through. You dropped a dime on Pen­der­gast, and we nailed him. A few cars were wrecked, but no­body got hurt. We might even be able to ar­gue that this was the plan all along—you know, you were work­ing un­der­cov­er, set­ting Pen­der­gast up.”

D’Agos­ta didn’t re­spond. The sight of Pen­der­gast be­ing led off in cuffs was still work­ing its way in­to his head. Pen­der­gast, the un­touch­able.

“The point is, I’m go­ing to see what I can do about these charges, maybe knock some of them down to mis­de­meanors be­fore they get writ­ten up and filed, if you know what I mean. No promis­es.”

D’Agos­ta swal­lowed and man­aged to say, “Thanks.”

“There’s a bit of a twist here. The kid­nap vic­tim’s pre­lim­inary state­ment seems to in­di­cate that this Dio­genes Pen­der­gast is alive— and maybe even re­spon­si­ble for the di­amond heist at the mu­se­um. Seems we just missed him down there in the rail­road tun­nels. The fact that Pen­der­gast had Lu­cifer’s Heart in his pock­et is al­so damned puz­zling. This sort of… well, opens up the case. We’re go­ing to have to take a sec­ond look at some of our as­sump­tions.”

D’Agos­ta looked up sharply. “I can ex­plain ev­ery­thing.”

“Save it for the in­ter­ro­ga­tion. Hay­ward al­ready told me about your the­ory that Dio­genes framed his broth­er for those killings. The fact is, we now know that Pen­der­gast im­per­son­at­ed Ka­plan and stole the di­amond. What­ev­er the pre­cise de­tails are, he’s go­ing to do hard time, no ques­tion about it. If I were you—and I’m speak­ing to you now as a friend, not as a su­per­vi­sor—I’d wor­ry about your own skin and quit in­ter­est­ing your­self in his. That FBI bas­tard’s caused you enough trou­ble.”

“Cap­tain, I would ap­pre­ci­ate it if you wouldn’t speak of Agent Pen­der­gast in that way.”

“Loy­al to the end, eh?” Sin­gle­ton shook his head.

The sound of a loud, an­gry voice came echo­ing down the sub­sta­tion. A sol­id mass of fed­er­al agents, led by a tall, glow­er­ing, sun­burned man, came in­to view out­side the hold­ing area. D’Agos­ta stared hard: the man at the front looked fa­mil­iar, very fa­mil­iar. He tried to clear his mind, cut through the fog. Cof­fey. Spe­cial Agent Cof­fey.

Spy­ing Sin­gle­ton, Cof­fey veered in the di­rec­tion of the hold­ing area.

“Cap­tain Sin­gle­ton?” His fleshy face was red even through the tan.

Cap­tain Sin­gle­ton looked up, his ex­pres­sion mild. “Yes, Agent Cof­fey?”

“What the hell’s gone down here? You made the col­lar with­out us?”

“That’s right.”

“You know this is our case.”

Sin­gle­ton wait­ed a minute be­fore re­spond­ing. When he did, his voice was calm and low, al­most as if he were talk­ing to a child. “The in­for­ma­tion came in fast and we had to act on it im­me­di­ate­ly. The perp slipped your Suf­folk Coun­ty drag­net and made his way back in­to the city. We couldn’t wait. I’m sure you’ll un­der­stand, giv­en the cir­cum­stances, why we had to move with­out you.”

“You didn’t con­tact the South­ern Dis­trict of Man­hat­tan Field Of­fice at all. There were agents stand­ing by in the city, ready to move at a mo­ment’s no­tice.”

An­oth­er pause. “That was cer­tain­ly an over­sight, for which I take full re­spon­si­bil­ity. You know how easy it is, in the heat of ac­tion, to ne­glect to dot an i some­where along the way. My apolo­gies.”

Cof­fey stood in front of Sin­gle­ton, breath­ing hard. A few NYPD of­fi­cers snick­ered in the back­ground.

“There was an un­ex­pect­ed bonus in col­lar­ing Pen­der­gast,” Sin­gle­ton added.

“And what the hell was that?”

“He had the di­amond, Lu­cifer’s Heart, in his pock­et.”

Sin­gle­ton took ad­van­tage of Cof­fey’s mo­men­tary speech­less­ness to glance at his men. “We’re done here. Let’s head down­town.”

And, pro­pelling D’Agos­ta gen­tly to his feet, he turned on his heel and walked away.

SEV­EN­TY

Wednes­day dawned bril­liant and dear, the morn­ing sun blaz­ing in through the sin­gle win­dow of the din­ing nook of the small apart­ment on West End Av­enue. No­ra Kel­ly heard the door to the bath­room slam. A few min­utes lat­er, Bill Smith­back emerged in the hall­way, dressed for work, his tie un­knot­ted and his jack­et slung over one shoul­der. The ex­pres­sion on his face was dark.

“Come and have some break­fast,” she said.

His face bright­ened slight­ly as he saw her, and he came over and sat down at the ta­ble.

“What time did you get in last night?”

“Four.” He leaned over and gave her a kiss.

“You look like hell.”

“It isn’t for lack of sleep.”

No­ra pushed the pa­per over to him. “Page one. Con­grat­ula­tions.”

Smith­back glanced at it. His sto­ry of the theft of Lu­cifer’s Heart by an un­known as­sailant was front page, above the fold: the dream of ev­ery jour­nal­ist. It was a stu­pen­dous scoop, and along with the ar­rest of Pen­der­gast, it had pushed Har­ri­man’s sto­ry of the Dan­gler cap­ture to B3 of the Metro Sec­tion—an old wom­an had seen the Dan­gler ex­pos­ing him­self in front of an ATM and, righ­teous­ly in­dig­nant, had whacked him in­to semi­con­scious­ness with her cane. For the first time, No­ra thought, Bill didn’t seem in­ter­est­ed in Har­ri­man’s mis­for­tune.

He pushed the pa­per away. “Not go­ing to work?”

“The mu­se­um’s told us all to stay home for the rest of this week— a kind of forced va­ca­tion. The place is in lock­down mode un­til they find out how the se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem was breached.” She shook her head. “On top of that, Hugo Men­zies seems to have dis­ap­peared. It seems they caught him on a se­cu­ri­ty cam­era not far from the As­tor Hall at the time of the heist. They’re wor­ried he might have stum­bled on the rob­bery and got­ten him­self killed.”

“Maybe he’s the thief.”

“Dio­genes Pen­der­gast is the thief. You of all peo­ple should know that.”

“Maybe Men­zies is Dio­genes.” Bill forced a brit­tle laugh.

“That’s not even fun­ny.”

Smith­back shrugged. “Sor­ry. Poor taste on my part.”

No­ra filled his cof­fee cup, re­filled her own. “There’s one thing I still don’t get from read­ing your sto­ry. How did Pen­der­gast get Lu­cifer’s Heart out of the Af­fil­iat­ed Trans­glob­al build­ing? I mean, they im­me­di­ate­ly sealed the build­ing, they X-​rayed ev­ery­one leav­ing, they did a count of ev­ery sin­gle per­son who had come in and left. And they nev­er found Pen­der­gast. What’d he do, climb down the out­side of the build­ing? How’d he get the gem out?”

Smith­back smoothed down an un­ruly cowlick, which popped back up as soon as his hand was gone. “That’s the best part of the sto­ry—if on­ly I could write it.”

“Why can’t you?”

Smith­back turned to­ward her and smiled a lit­tle grim­ly. “Be­cause I was the one who walked the di­amond out of the build­ing.”

“You?” No­ra stared at him, in­cred­ulous.

Smith­back nod­ded.

“Oh, Bill!”

“No­ra, I had to. It was the on­ly way. And don’t wor­ry—it’ll nev­er be traced back to me. The di­amond is back where it be­longs. It was tru­ly a bril­liant plan.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You sure you want to know? That makes you an ac­ces­so­ry af­ter the fact.”

“I’m your wife, sil­ly. Of course I want to know.”

Smith­back sighed. “Pen­der­gast worked it all out. He knew they’d seal the build­ing and search ev­ery­one on their way out. So he posed as a tech­ni­cian man­ning the X-​ray ma­chine.”

“But if se­cu­ri­ty was as tight as you say, wouldn’t they X-​ray the se­cu­ri­ty tech­ni­cians, too? I mean, when they left the build­ing?”

“Pen­der­gast fig­ured that out, too. Af­ter send­ing me through the X-​ray ma­chine, he point­ed me to­ward the build­ing ex­it. That’s when he slipped the di­amond in­to my pock­et. I walked it right out of the build­ing.”

No­ra could hard­ly be­lieve it. “If you’d been caught, they would have put you away for twen­ty years.”

“Don’t think that wasn’t on my mind.” Smith­back shrugged. “But a life de­pend­ed on it. And I have faith in Pen­der­gast—some­times I feel like I’m the on­ly one left in the world who does.” At this, he rose, walked to the win­dow, and stared out rest­less­ly, hands on his hips. “It’s not over, No­ra,” he mut­tered. “Not by a long shot.”

He turned swift­ly, eyes flash­ing with anger. “It’s a trav­es­ty of jus­tice. An in­no­cent man’s been framed as a hor­ren­dous se­ri­al killer. The re­al killer’s still loose. I’m a jour­nal­ist. It’s my job to re­port the truth. There’s a hell of a lot of truth still miss­ing in this sto­ry. I’m go­ing to find out what it is.”

“Bill—for God’s sake, don’t go af­ter Dio­genes.”

“What about Mar­go? Are we go­ing to let her killer go free? With Pen­der­gast in jail and D’Agos­ta on mod­ified du­ty or worse, there’s no one left who can do it but me.”

“Don’t. Please don’t. This is just an­oth­er one of your im­pul­sive— and stupid—de­ci­sions.”

He turned back to the win­dow. “I con­cede that it’s im­pul­sive. Maybe even stupid. So be it.”

No­ra rose from her chair, feel­ing a surge of anger her­self. “What about us? Our fu­ture? If you go af­ter Dio­genes, he’ll kill you. You’re no match for him!”

Smith­back looked out the win­dow, not an­swer­ing im­me­di­ate­ly. Then he stirred. “Pen­der­gast saved my life,” he said qui­et­ly. He turned again and looked at No­ra. “Yours, too.”

She wheeled away, ex­as­per­at­ed.

He came over and took her in his arms. “I won’t do it… if you tell me not to.”

“And that’s the one thing I’m not go­ing to tell you. It’s your de­ci­sion.”

Smith­back stepped back, knot­ted his tie, drew on his jack­et. “I’d bet­ter get to work.”

He kissed her. “I love you, No­ra.”

She shook her head. “Be very, very care­ful.”

“I will, I promise. Have faith in me.”

And he van­ished out the door.

SEV­EN­TY-​ONE

One day lat­er, and fifty miles to the north, the sun shone dim­ly through the shut­tered win­dow of a small room in the in­ten­sive-​care unit of a pri­vate clin­ic. A sin­gle pa­tient lay un­der a sheet, hooked up to sev­er­al large ma­chines that beeped soft­ly, al­most com­fort­ing­ly. Her eyes were closed.

A nurse came in, checked the ma­chines, jot­ted down some of the vi­tals, and then paused to look at the pa­tient.

“Good morn­ing, There­sa,” she said bright­ly.

The pa­tient’s eyes re­mained closed, and she did not an­swer. They’d re­moved the feed­ing tube, and she was out of im­me­di­ate dan­ger, but she was still one very sick wom­an.

“It’s a beau­ti­ful morn­ing,” the nurse went on, open­ing the shut­ters and al­low­ing a ray of sun to fall across the cov­ers. Out­side the win­dow of the ram­bling Queen Anne man­sion, the Hud­son Riv­er sparkled amidst the win­ter land­scape of Put­nam Coun­ty.

The wom­an’s pale face lay against the pil­low, her short brown hair spread­ing slight­ly across the cot­ton fab­ric.

The nurse con­tin­ued to work, chang­ing the IV bag, smooth­ing the cov­ers. Fi­nal­ly, she leaned over the girl and brushed a strand of hair out of her face.

The girl’s eyes slow­ly opened.

The nurse paused, then took her hand. “Good morn­ing,” she said again, hold­ing the hand light­ly.

The eyes flicked to the left and right. The lips moved, but no sound came.

“Don’t you try to talk just yet,” the nurse said, mov­ing to the in­ter­com. “Ev­ery­thing will be all right. You’ve had a tough time of it, but now ev­ery­thing’s fine.”

She pressed the in­ter­com lever and leaned to­ward it, speak­ing in a low voice.

“The pa­tient in ICU-6 is wak­ing up,” she mur­mured. “Get word to Dr. Winokur.”

She went and sat by the bed, tak­ing the wom­an’s hand again.

“Where…?”

“You’re at the Fever­sham Clin­ic, There­sa dear. A few miles north of Cold Spring. It’s Jan­uary 31, and you’ve been un­con­scious for six days, but we’ve got you on the mend. Ev­ery­thing’s just fine. You’re a strong, healthy wom­an and you’re go­ing to get bet­ter.”

The eyes widened slight­ly. “What… ?” the weak voice man­aged to say.

“What hap­pened? Nev­er you mind about that now. You had a very close call, but it’s all over and done with. You’re safe here.”

The fig­ure in the bed strug­gled to speak, her lips mov­ing.

“Don’t try to talk just yet. Save your strength for the doc­tor.”

“… tried to kill…” The phrase came out dis­con­nect­ed.

“Like I said, nev­er you mind. You con­cen­trate on get­ting bet­ter.”

“…aw­ful…”

The nurse stroked her hand kind­ly. “I’m sure it was, but let’s not dwell on that now. Dr. Winokur will be here at any mo­ment and he might have some ques­tions for you. You should rest, dear.”

“Tired … Tired…”

“Cer­tain­ly, you are. You’re very tired. But you can’t go back to sleep quite yet, There­sa. Stay awake for me and the doc­tor. Just for now. Okay? That’s a good girl.”

“I’m not… There­sa.”

The nurse smiled in­dul­gent­ly, pat­ting her hand. “Don’t wor­ry about a thing. A lit­tle con­fu­sion on awak­en­ing is per­fect­ly nor­mal. While wait­ing for the doc­tor, let’s look out the win­dow. Isn’t it a love­ly day?”

SEV­EN­TY-​TWO

Hay­ward had nev­er be­fore vis­it­ed the leg­endary high-​se­cu­ri­ty lock­up with­in Belle­vue Hos­pi­tal, and she walked to­ward the unit with a ris­ing sense of cu­rios­ity. The long, bright­ly lit hall­ways stank of rub­bing al­co­hol and bleach, and along the way they passed through al­most half a dozen locked doors: Adult Emer­gen­cy Ser­vices, Psy­chi­atric Emer­gen­cy, Psy­chi­atric In­pa­tient, fi­nal­ly end­ing up at the most in­tim­idat­ing door of all: a win­dow­less dou­ble set of dent­ed stain­less steel, flanked by two or­der­lies in white suits and an NYPD po­lice sergeant sit­ting at a desk. The door sport­ed a small, scratched la­bel: Se­cure Area.

Hay­ward flashed her badge. “Cap­tain Lau­ra Hay­ward and guest. We’re ex­pect­ed in D-11.”

“Morn­ing, Cap­tain,” said the sergeant in a leisure­ly tone, who took her shield, jot­ted down some in­for­ma­tion on the sign-​in sheet, and hand­ed it to her to sign.

“My guest will wait here while I vis­it the in­mate first.”

“Sure, sure,” said the sergeant. “Joe will es­cort you.”

The beefi­er of the two or­der­lies nod­ded, un­smil­ing.

The sergeant turned to a near­by phone and made a call. A mo­ment lat­er, there came the sound of heavy au­to­mat­ic locks be­ing re­leased. The or­der­ly named Joe pulled the door open. “D-11, you said?”

“That’s cor­rect.”

“This way, Cap­tain.”

Be­yond lay a nar­row cor­ri­dor, the floors and walls of linoleum. Long rows of doors lined both walls. These were met­al, with tiny ob­ser­va­tion ports set at eye lev­el. A strange, mut­ed cho­rus of voic­es met Hay­ward’s ears: fren­zied curs­ing, cry­ing, a dread­ful half-​hu­man gib­ber­ing, all fil­ter­ing out from be­hind the doors. The smell was dif­fer­ent here; un­der­ly­ing the stench of al­co­hol and clean­ing flu­ids was a faint waft of vom­it, ex­cre­ment, and some­thing else which Hay­ward rec­og­nized from her vis­its to max­imum se­cu­ri­ty pris­ons: the smell of fear.

The door clanged shut be­hind her. A mo­ment lat­er, the au­to­mat­ic locks reen­gaged with a crack like a pis­tol shot.

She fol­lowed the or­der­ly down the long cor­ri­dor, around a cor­ner, and down a sim­ilar cor­ri­dor. There, to­ward the end, she could eas­ily iden­ti­fy the room they were head­ed for: it could on­ly be the one with four men in suits stand­ing guard out­side. Cof­fey had missed out on the ac­tu­al col­lar, but he sure as hell wasn’t go­ing to miss any­thing else.

The agents turned as she ap­proached. Hay­ward rec­og­nized one of them as Cof­fey’s per­son­al flunky, Agent Ra­bin­er. He didn’t seem hap­py to see her.

“Put your weapons in the lock­box, Cap­tain,” he said by way of greet­ing.

Cap­tain Hay­ward re­moved her ser­vice piece and pep­per spray and placed them in the lock­box.

“Looks like we’re keep­ing him,” Ra­bin­er said with an unc­tu­ous smile. “We’ve got him nailed on Deck­er, and it fits the fed­er­al death penal­ty statute to a T. Right now it’s just a ques­tion of get­ting the psych eval­ua­tion over with. By the end of the week, he’ll be in the iso­la­tion unit at Herk­moor. We’re tak­ing this suck­er to tri­al, like, to­mor­row.”

“You’re rather gar­ru­lous this morn­ing, Agent Ra­bin­er,” Hay­ward said.

That shut him up.

“I’d like to see him now. First my­self, then I will bring back a guest.”

“You go­ing in alone or want pro­tec­tion?”

Hay­ward didn’t both­er an­swer­ing. She sim­ply stood back and wait­ed while one of the agents peered through the glass, then un­bolt­ed the door, weapon at the ready.

“Sing out if he gets phys­ical,” Ra­bin­er said.

Cap­tain Hay­ward stepped in­to the gar­ish­ly lit cell.

Pen­der­gast, in an or­ange prison jump­suit, sat qui­et­ly on the nar­row cot. The walls of the cell were thick­ly padded and there were no oth­er fur­nish­ings.

For a mo­ment, Hay­ward said noth­ing. She had grown so used to see­ing him in a well­tai­lored black suit that the out­fit looked in­com­pre­hen­si­bly out of place. His face was pale and drawn, but still com­posed.

“Cap­tain Hay­ward.” He stood and mo­tioned her to­ward the cot. “Please have a seat.”

“That’s all right. I pre­fer to stand.”

“Very well.” Pen­der­gast, too, re­mained stand­ing, as a cour­tesy.

A si­lence set­tled over the small cell. Hay­ward was not one to find her­self at a loss for words, but the fact was, she still didn’t quite know what im­pulse had prompt­ed her to make this vis­it. Af­ter a mo­ment, she cleared her throat.

“What did you do to piss off Spe­cial Agent Cof­fey?” she asked.

Pen­der­gast smiled a lit­tle wan­ly. “Agent Cof­fey has an in­or­di­nate­ly high opin­ion of him­self. It’s a view­point I’ve nev­er quite been able to bring my­self to share. We worked on a case to­geth­er some years ago, which did not end well for him.”

“I ask be­cause we tried to get ju­ris­dic­tion over the case, but I’ve nev­er seen the FBI stomp down so hard on the NYPD. And it wasn’t done in the usu­al se­mi-​cor­dial way.”

“I am not sur­prised.”

“Thing is, there’ve been a cou­ple of bizarre de­vel­op­ments in the case, not yet of­fi­cial, which I want­ed to ask you about.”

“Please do.”

“Turns out Mar­go Green is alive. Some­one pulled a fast one at the hos­pi­tal, ar­rang­ing for her to be mede­vaced up­state un­der a pho­ny name, while sub­sti­tut­ing the corpse of a home­less drug ad­dict about to be sent to pot­ter’s field in her place. The M.E. says it was an hon­est mis­take, the med­ical di­rec­tor claims it was a ‘re­gret­table bu­reau­crat­ic mix-​up.’ Fun­ny that both of them hap­pen to be old ac­quain­tances of yours. Green’s moth­er just about had a heart at­tack when she learned the daugh­ter she had just buried was alive.”

She paused, her eyes nar­rowed, then burst out: “Damn it, Pen­der­gast! Can’t you do any­thing by the book? And how could you put a moth­er through that?”

Pen­der­gast was silent a mo­ment be­fore an­swer­ing. “Be­cause her grief had to be re­al. Dio­genes would have seen through any dis­sem­bling. As cru­el as it was, it was nec­es­sary in or­der to save Mar­go Green’s life—and her life is, ul­ti­mate­ly, more im­por­tant than a moth­er’s tem­po­rary grief. It was this same need for ut­most se­cre­cy that kept me from telling even Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta.”

Hay­ward sighed. “Any­way, I just spoke to Green on the phone. She’s in­cred­ibly weak, had the clos­est of calls, but she was very lu­cid. And what she had to say sur­prised the hell out of me. She’s ab­so­lute­ly in­sis­tent that you weren’t her at­tack­er, and her de­scrip­tion fits the oth­er de­scrip­tion we have of your broth­er quite well. Prob­lem is, it was your blood at the crime scene and on the weapon Green de­fend­ed her­self with, along with fiber, hair, and oth­er phys­ical ev­idence. So we’ve got a ma­jor ev­idence co­nun­drum on our hands.”

“You cer­tain­ly do.”

“Our in­ter­views with Vi­ola Maske­lene cor­rob­orate your sto­ry about Dio­genes, at least what I un­der­stand of it. She’s in­sis­tent it was he who did the kid­nap­ping, not you. She says he ba­si­cal­ly con­fessed to the killings and showed her one of the stolen di­amonds from the As­tor Hall. No proof, of course, just her word, but she helped lead us to the safe house where she was held. We found quite a set­up there, in­clud­ing some pret­ty con­clu­sive ev­idence link­ing Dio­genes to the As­tor Hall theft—ev­idence he clear­ly didn’t in­tend to give up.”

“In­ter­est­ing.”

“We al­most caught some­one in the tun­nels who Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta swears was Dio­genes. The gemol­ogist, Ka­plan, backs this up, as does Maske­lene. Their pre­lim­inary sto­ries are all con­sis­tent, and we know it couldn’t have been you. We’ve asked our British coun­ter­parts to open an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Dio­genes’s death in Eng­land, but that’ll take time. Any­way, the ev­idence does seem to in­di­cate your broth­er may be alive, af­ter all. We have three peo­ple who cer­tain­ly be­lieve it.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “And what do you be­lieve, Cap­tain?”

Hay­ward hes­itat­ed. “That the case mer­its fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Trou­ble is, the FBI are mov­ing full speed ahead bring­ing cap­ital charges on the mur­der of a fed­er­al agent, and it seems they could care less at present about any in­con­sis­ten­cies in the oth­er three. Or rather, two, since the Green killing wasn’t a killing, af­ter all. Which makes my con­tin­ued in­ves­ti­ga­tion of those oth­er homi­cides some­what moot.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “I see your prob­lem.”

Hay­ward peered at him cu­ri­ous­ly. “I was just won­der­ing—do you have any­thing to say about the mat­ter to me?”

“That I have faith in your abil­ities as a po­lice of­fi­cer to find the truth.”

“Noth­ing more?”

“That’s a great deal, Cap­tain.”

She paused. “Help me, Pen­der­gast.”

“The per­son to help you is Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta. He knows all there is to know about the case, and you could do no bet­ter than use his ex­per­tise.”

“You know that’s im­pos­si­ble. Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta’s on mod­ified du­ty. He can’t help any­one at the mo­ment.”

“Noth­ing is im­pos­si­ble. You just need to learn how to bend the rules.”

Hay­ward sighed ir­ri­tat­ed­ly.

“I have a ques­tion for you,” Pen­der­gast said. “Does Agent Cof­fey know about the reap­pear­ance of Mar­go Green?”

“No, but I doubt he’d care much. As I said, they’re one hun­dred per­cent fo­cused on Deck­er.”

“Good. I would ask you to keep that in­for­ma­tion qui­et as long as pos­si­ble. I be­lieve Mar­go Green is safe from Dio­genes, at least in the short term. My broth­er has gone to ground and will be lick­ing his wounds for a while, but when he emerges, he will be more dan­ger­ous than ev­er. I ask that you keep a pro­tec­tive eye over Dr. Green dur­ing the rest of her con­va­les­cence. The same goes for William Smith­back and his wife, No­ra. And your­self. You’re all po­ten­tial tar­gets, I’m afraid.”

Hay­ward gave a shud­der. What had seemed like an in­sane fan­ta­sy just two days ago now was be­gin­ning to look chill­ing­ly re­al.

“I’ll do that,” she said.

“Thank you.”

An­oth­er si­lence set­tled over the cell. Af­ter a mo­ment, Hay­ward roused her­self.

“Well, I’d bet­ter be go­ing. I re­al­ly just came as an es­cort for some­one else who wants to see you.”

“Cap­tain?” Pen­der­gast said. “A fi­nal word.”

She turned to face him again. He stood there, pale in the ar­ti­fi­cial light, his cool gaze rest­ing up­on her.

“Please don’t be too hard on Vin­cent.”

De­spite her­self, Hay­ward looked away quick­ly.

“What he did, he did at my re­quest. The rea­son he told you so lit­tle, the rea­son he moved out—those ac­tions were to keep you safe from my broth­er. In or­der to help me, to pro­tect lives, he made a grave pro­fes­sion­al sac­ri­fice—I hope and pray the sac­ri­fice won’t be a per­son­al one, as well.”

Hay­ward did not re­ply.

“That’s all. Good-​bye, Cap­tain.”

Hay­ward found her voice. “Good-​bye, Agent Pen­der­gast.”

Then, still with­out mak­ing eye con­tact, she turned away once more and rapped on the safe­ty glass of the ob­ser­va­tion port.

Pen­der­gast watched the door close be­hind Hay­ward. He stood mo­tion­less, in the ill-​fit­ting or­ange jump­suit, lis­ten­ing. He heard a few muf­fled voic­es out­side the padded door, and then fo­cused on the light but de­ter­mined stride of Hay­ward as she made for the ward’s ex­it. He heard the se­cu­ri­ty locks dis­en­gage, heard the heavy door boom open. It re­mained so for al­most thir­ty sec­onds be­fore clos­ing and lock­ing again.

Still, Pen­der­gast lis­tened, even more in­tent­ly. Be­cause now an­oth­er, dif­fer­ent set of foot­steps was sound­ing in the cor­ri­dor out­side: slow­er, ten­ta­tive. They were grow­ing clos­er. As he lis­tened, his frame tensed. A mo­ment lat­er, there was a rude bang­ing on his door again.

“Vis­itor!”

Then Vi­ola Maske­lene ap­peared in the door­way.

She had a scratch over one eye, and be­neath her Mediter­ranean tan she seemed pale, but oth­er­wise she ap­peared un­hurt.

Pen­der­gast found he could not move. He sim­ply stood and looked at her.

She stepped for­ward, stopped awk­ward­ly in the mid­dle of the room. The door closed be­hind her.

Still, Pen­der­gast did not move.

Vi­ola’s eyes fell from his face to his prison garb.

“I wish, for your sake, that you’d nev­er met me,” he said al­most cold­ly.

“What about for your sake?”

He looked at her a long time, and then said, more qui­et­ly: “I’ll nev­er re­gret meet­ing you. But as long as you have feel­ings for me— if that is in­deed the case—then you’ll be in grave dan­ger. You must go away and nev­er see or think of me again.”

He paused, then cast his eyes to the floor. “I’m deeply, deeply sor­ry for ev­ery­thing.”

There was a long si­lence.

“Is that it?” Vi­ola fi­nal­ly asked in a low voice. “We’ll nev­er know, nev­er have the chance to find out?”

“Nev­er. Dio­genes is still out there. If he thinks there’s any con­nec­tion re­main­ing be­tween us, any­thing at all, he’ll kill you. You must leave im­me­di­ate­ly, go back to Capra­ia, get on with your life, tell ev­ery­one—in­clud­ing your own heart—how ut­ter­ly in­dif­fer­ent you are to me.”

“And what about you?”

“I’ll know you’re alive. That’s enough.”

She took a fierce step for­ward. “I don’t want to “get on’ with my life. Not any­more.” She hes­itat­ed, then raised her arms and rest­ed her hands on his shoul­ders. “Not af­ter meet­ing you.”

Pen­der­gast re­mained as still as a stat­ue.

“You must leave me be­hind,” he said qui­et­ly. “Dio­genes will be back. And I won’t be able to pro­tect you.”

“He … said ter­ri­ble things to me,” she said, her voice fal­ter­ing. “It’s been thir­ty-​six hours since I walked out of that rail­road tun­nel, and in all those hours I haven’t been able to think of any­thing else. I’ve led a stupid, wast­ed, love­less life. And now you’re telling me to walk away from the on­ly thing that means any­thing to me.”

Pen­der­gast put his arms gen­tly around her waist, looked search­ing­ly in­to her eyes.

“Dio­genes makes it a game to find out a per­son’s deep­est fears. Then he strikes a dead­ly, well-​aimed blow. He’s driv­en peo­ple to sui­cide that way. But his words are hol­low. Don’t let those words stalk you. To know Dio­genes is to walk in dark­ness. You must walk out of that dark­ness, Vi­ola. Back in­to the light. And that al­so means away from me.”

“No,” she mur­mured.

“Go back to your is­land and for­get about me. If not for your own sake, Vi­ola, then for mine.”

They looked in­to each oth­er’s eyes for a mo­ment. Then, in the harsh light of the squalid cell, they kissed.

Af­ter a mo­ment, Pen­der­gast dis­en­gaged him­self and stepped back. His face was un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly flushed; his pale eyes glit­tered.

“Good-​bye, Vi­ola,” he said.

Vi­ola stood as if root­ed to the ground. A minute passed. Then, with in­fi­nite re­luc­tance, she turned and walked slow­ly to the door.

At the door, she hes­itat­ed and, with­out turn­ing, be­gan to speak in a low voice.

“I’ll do as you say. I’ll go back to my is­land. I’ll tell ev­ery­one I could not care less about you. I’ll live my life. And when you’re fi­nal­ly free, you’ll know where to find me.”

She gave a quick rap on the ob­ser­va­tion port, the door opened— and she was gone.

epi­logue

The fire died on the grate, leav­ing a crum­bling stack of coals. The light in the li­brary was dim, and the usu­al cloak of si­lence lay over all: the baize-​cov­ered read­ing ta­bles neat­ly stacked with books, the walls of slum­ber­ing vol­umes, the shad­ed lamps and leather chairs. Out­side, it was a bright win­ter day, the last day of Jan­uary, but with­in 891 River­side it seemed to be per­pet­ual night.

Con­stance sat in one chair, wear­ing a black pet­ti­coat with white lace trim­ming, legs tucked up be­neath her, read­ing an eigh­teenth-​cen­tu­ry trea­tise on the ben­efits of blood­let­ting. D’Agos­ta sat in a wing chair near­by. A can of Bud­weis­er sat on a sil­ver tray on a ta­ble be­side him, un­con­sumed, in a pud­dle of its own con­den­sa­tion.

D’Agos­ta glanced over at Con­stance, at her per­fect pro­file, her straight brown hair. That she was a beau­ti­ful young wom­an, there was no doubt; that she was un­usu­al­ly, even un­can­ni­ly, in­tel­li­gent and well read for some­one her age went with­out say­ing. But there was some­thing strange about her—very, very strange. She’d had no emo­tion­al re­ac­tion at all to the news of Pen­der­gast’s ar­rest and in­car­cer­ation. None.

In D’Agos­ta’s ex­pe­ri­ence, that kind of non­re­ac­tion was of­ten the strongest re­ac­tion of all. It wor­ried him. Pen­der­gast had warned him of Con­stance’s cur­rent fragili­ty and had hint­ed of dark things in her past. D’Agos­ta had long had his own doubts about Con­stance’s sta­bil­ity, and this in­ex­pli­ca­ble lack of re­ac­tion on­ly made him won­der the more. It was part­ly to watch over her, now that Pen­der­gast was gone, that had brought him and his few be­long­ings back to 891 the day be­fore—that and the fact he had no place else to go.

And then there was the prob­lem of Dio­genes. It was true he had been crossed, his plans for Vi­ola and Lu­cifer’s Heart had been thwart­ed, he him­self forced back in­to hid­ing. The NYPD now be­lieved in his ex­is­tence and were pur­su­ing him with a vengeance. The re­cent de­vel­op­ments seemed to have dent­ed, but not com­plete­ly shak­en, their cer­tain­ty that Pen­der­gast was a se­ri­al killer—the prob­lem was still the over­whelm­ing phys­ical ev­idence. The NYPD was at least now cer­tain, how­ev­er, that Dio­genes was be­hind the As­tor Hall theft and had kid­napped Vi­ola. They’d found the safe house and were in the pro­cess of tak­ing it apart. The case was by no means closed.

In a way, Dio­genes’s fail­ure and flight on­ly made him more dan­ger­ous. He re­called Dio­genes’s cu­rios­ity about Con­stance, dur­ing the phone con­ver­sa­tion in the vin­tage Jaguar, and he shiv­ered. The one thing he could count on was that Dio­genes was a metic­ulous plan­ner. His re­sponse—and there would be one, of that D’Agos­ta was sure— would not come for a while. He would have a lit­tle time to pre­pare for it.

Con­stance looked up from her book. “Did you know, Lieu­tenant, that even in­to the ear­ly 1800s, leech­es were of­ten a pre­ferred al­ter­na­tive to the scar­ifi­ca­tor when per­form­ing blood­let­ting?”

D’Agos­ta glanced at her. “Can’t say that I did.”

“The colo­nial doc­tors fre­quent­ly im­port­ed the Eu­ro­pean leech, Hirudinea an­nel­ida, be­cause it was able to take in much more blood than Mac­ro­bet­ta dec­ora.”

“Mac­ro­bet­ta dec­ora?”

“The Amer­ican leech, Lieu­tenant.” And Con­stance re­turned to her book.

Call me Vin­cent, D’Agos­ta thought as he looked re­flec­tive­ly at her.

He wasn’t all that sure how much longer he was go­ing to be a lieu­tenant, any­way.

His mind wan­dered to the pre­vi­ous af­ter­noon, and the hu­mil­iat­ing in­ter­nal af­fairs hear­ing. On the one hand, it had been a huge re­lief: Sin­gle­ton had been good to his word and the whole mis­ad­ven­ture had been chalked up to an un­der­cov­er op­er­ation gone awry, in which D’Agos­ta had dis­played poor judg­ment, made er­rors—one of the board had termed him “maybe the stupi­dest cop on the force” —but in the end they found he had not will­ful­ly com­mit­ted any felonies. The list of mis­de­meanors was ug­ly enough.

Stu­pid­ity was bet­ter than felony, Sin­gle­ton had told him af­ter­ward. There would be more hear­ings, but his fu­ture as an NYPD cop—as any kind of cop—was very much in ques­tion.

Hay­ward, of course, had tes­ti­fied. Her tes­ti­mo­ny had been de­liv­ered in a res­olute­ly neu­tral voice, em­ploy­ing the usu­al po­lice jar­gon, and not once—not once—had she glanced in his di­rec­tion. But in its own way, the tes­ti­mo­ny had been ef­fec­tive in help­ing him es­cape some of the heav­ier charges.

Once again, he dragged the Dio­genes file in­to his lap, feel­ing a sud­den stab of fu­til­ity. Ten days be­fore, he had been in this same room, look­ing at this same file, again with­out Pen­der­gast there to guide him. On­ly now, four peo­ple had been mur­dered, and Pen­der­gast, in­stead of be­ing “dead,” was in Belle­vue, un­der­go­ing some kind of psych eval­ua­tion. D’Agos­ta had learned noth­ing help­ful then— what could he pos­si­bly learn now?

But he had to keep plug­ging. They’d tak­en ev­ery­thing away from him: his ca­reer, his re­la­tion­ship with Hay­ward, his clos­est friend— ev­ery­thing. There was on­ly one thing left for him to do: prove Pen­der­gast’s in­no­cence. And to do that, he need­ed to find Dio­genes.

A faint buzzer sound­ed in the depths of the house. Some­one was at the door.

Con­stance looked up. For the briefest of mo­ments, naked fear— and some­thing else, some­thing in­ef­fa­ble—showed in her face be­fore a veil of blank­ness came down.

D’Agos­ta stood up. “It’s okay. Prob­ably just neigh­bor­hood kids, play­ing around. I’ll check it out.”

He put the file aside, stood up, sur­rep­ti­tious­ly checked his weapon, then be­gan walk­ing to­ward the li­brary door. But even as he did, he saw Proc­tor ap­proach­ing from across the re­cep­tion hall.

“A gen­tle­man here to see you, sir,” Proc­tor said.

“You took the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“Yes, sir, I—“

But just then, a man in a wheelchair came in­to view in the gallery be­hind Proc­tor. D’Agos­ta stared in as­ton­ish­ment as he rec­og­nized Eli Glinn, the head of Ef­fec­tive En­gi­neer­ing So­lu­tions.

The man brushed past both Proc­tor and D’Agos­ta and wheeled him­self to­ward one of the li­brary ta­bles. With a brusque mo­tion of his arm, he shoved aside sev­er­al stacks of books, clear­ing off a space. Then he de­posit­ed a load of pa­pers on the ta­ble: blueprints, plats, build­ing plans, me­chan­ical and elec­tri­cal di­agrams.

Con­stance had risen and was stand­ing, book in hand, look­ing on.

“What are you do­ing here?” D’Agos­ta asked. “How did you find this place?”

“Nev­er mind that,” said the man, turn­ing to D’Agos­ta with a gleam in his good eye. “Last Sun­day, I made a promise.”

He raised his black-​gloved hand, and in it was a slen­der mani­la fold­er. He laid it on the ta­ble.

“And there you have it: a pre­lim­inary psy­cho­log­ical pro­file of Dio­genes Da­gre­pont Bernoul­li Pen­der­gast. Up­dat­ed, I might add, to re­flect these most re­cent events—at least what I could glean of them from the news re­ports and my sources. I’m count­ing on you to tell me more.”

“There’s a lot more.”

Glinn glanced over. “And you must be Con­stance.”

She nod­ded in a way that was al­most a curt­sy.

“I’ll need your help, too.”

“I shall be glad.”

“Why this sud­den in­ter­est?” D’Agos­ta asked. “I had the im­pres­sion—“

“The im­pres­sion that I wasn’t giv­ing it a high pri­or­ity? I wasn’t. At the time, it seemed a rel­ative­ly unim­por­tant prob­lem, a way to earn an easy fee. But then, this hap­pened.” And he tapped the mani­la fold­er. “There may not be a more dan­ger­ous man in the world.”

“I don’t get it.”

A grim smile gath­ered on Glinn’s lips. “You will when you read the pro­file.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded to­ward the ta­ble. “And what are all these oth­er pa­pers?”

“Blueprints and me­chan­ical plans for the max­imum se­cu­ri­ty wing of the Herk­moor Cor­rec­tion­al Fa­cil­ity in up­state New York.”

“Why?”

“I should think the ‘why’ would be ob­vi­ous. My client, Agent Pen­der­gast.” “But Pen­der­gast is in Belle­vue, not Herk­moor.”

“He’ll be in Herk­moor soon enough.”

D’Agos­ta glanced at Glinn in as­ton­ish­ment. “You don’t mean we’re go­ing to … to bust him out?”

“I do.”

Con­stance drew in a sharp breath.

“That’s one of the worst pens in the coun­try. No one’s ev­er es­caped from Herk­moor.”

Glinn con­tin­ued to stare at D’Agos­ta. “I’m aware of that.”

“You think it’s even pos­si­ble?”

“Any­thing’s pos­si­ble. But I must have your help.”

D’Agos­ta looked down at the pa­pers and blueprints thrown across the ta­ble. Ev­ery­thing con­ceiv­able was there—di­agrams and draw­ings of ev­ery tech­ni­cal, struc­tural, elec­tri­cal, and me­chan­ical sys­tem in the build­ing. Then he glanced at Con­stance. She nod­ded al­most im­per­cep­ti­bly.

Fi­nal­ly, he looked back at Glinn’s one glit­ter­ing eye. For the first time in a long while, he felt a fierce, sud­den rush of hope.

“I’m in,” he said. “So help me God, I’m in.”

An­oth­er smile spread across Glinn’s scarred face. He gave the pile of pa­pers a light slap with his gloved hand. “Come on, my friends— we’ve got work to do.”