Pendergast [07] The Book of the Dead

by Preston,Douglas;Child,Lincoln

  Fear, however, was the last thing on his own mind. D’Agosta was about to undergo a formal disciplinary hearing that would decide if he could ever serve in law enforcement again—and all he felt was a weary emptiness. For months, this trial had been hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles—and now, for better or worse, it was almost over.

  Beside him, Thomas Shoulders, his union-appointed lawyer, shifted on the bench. “Anything else you’d like to review one last time?” he asked in his thin, reedy voice. “Your statement, or their likely line of questioning?”

  D’Agosta shook his head. “Nothing more, thanks.”

  “The department advocate will be presenting the case for the NYPD. We might have caught a break there. Kagelman’s tough but fair. He’s old-school. The best approach is to play it straight: no evasions, no bull. Answer the questions with a simple yes or no, don’t elaborate unless asked. Present yourself along the lines we discussed—a good cop caught in a bad situation, doing the best he could to see that justice was served. If we can keep it at that level, I’m guardedly optimistic.”

  Guardedly optimistic. Whether spoken by an airplane pilot, a surgeon, or one’s own lawyer, the words were not exactly encouraging.

  He thought back to that fateful day in the fall, when he had run into Pendergast at the Grove estate, tossing bread to the ducks. It was only six months ago, but what a long strange journey it had been…

  “Holding up?” Shoulders asked.

  D’Agosta glanced at his watch. “I just want the damn thing to be over with. I’m tired of sitting here, waiting for the axe to drop.”

  “You shouldn’t think about it that way, Lieutenant. A disciplinary hearing is just like a trial in any other American court. You’re innocent until proven guilty.”

  D’Agosta sighed, shifted disconsolately. And in so doing, he caught a glimpse of Captain Laura Hayward, walking down the busy corridor.

  She was coming toward them with that measured, purposeful stride of hers, wearing a gray cashmere sweater and a pleated skirt of navy wool. Suddenly the drab corridor seemed charged with life. And yet the last thing he wanted was for her to see him like this: parked on a bench like some truant awaiting a whipping. Maybe she’d walk on, just walk on, like she’d done that day back in the police substation beneath Madison Square Garden.

  But she did not walk on. She stopped before the bench, nodded nonchalantly to him and Shoulders.

  “Hi,” D’Agosta managed. He felt himself blushing with embarrassment and shame and felt furious for doing so.

  “Hey, Vinnie,” she replied in her dusky contralto. “Have a minute?”

  There was a moment of stasis.

  “Sure.” He turned to Shoulders. “Could you spare me for a sec?”

  “Don’t go far—we’re up soon.”

  D’Agosta followed Hayward down to a quieter section of the hallway. She paused, looking at him, one hand unconsciously smoothing down her skirt. Glancing at her shapely legs, D’Agosta felt his heart accelerate further. He searched his mind for something to say, came up with nothing.

  Hayward, too, seemed uncharacteristically at a loss for words. Her face looked clouded, conflicted. She opened her handbag, fumbled in it a moment, closed it, tucked it under her arm. They stood there another moment in silence as police officers, technicians, and court personnel passed by.

  “Are you here to give a statement?” D’Agosta finally asked.

  “No. I gave my deposition over a month ago.”

  “Nothing more to say, then?”

  “No.”

  A peculiar thrill went through D’Agosta as he realized the implications of this. So she’s kept quiet about my role in the Herkmoor breakout, he thought. She hasn’t told anybody.

  “I got a call from an acquaintance in the Justice Department,” she said. “The word’s just come down. As far as the feds are concerned, Special Agent Pendergast has been formally cleared of all charges. Homicide’s officially reopened the case on our end, and it looks as though we’re going to drop all charges against him, too. Based on evidence retrieved from Diogenes Pendergast’s valise, fresh warrants have been issued for Diogenes. Thought you’d want to know.”

  D’Agosta slumped with relief. “Thank God. So he’s completely cleared.”

  “Of criminal charges, yes. But it’s safe to say he hasn’t made any new friends in the Bureau.”

  “Popularity never was Pendergast’s strong suit.”

  Hayward smiled faintly. “He’s been given a six-month leave. Whether requested by him or demanded by the Bureau, I don’t know.”

  D’Agosta shook his head.

  “I thought you might also like to hear about Special Agent Spencer Coffey.”

  “Oh?”

  “In addition to royally screwing up the Pendergast case, he got embroiled in some kind of scandal at Herkmoor. Seems he was busted down to GS-11 and had a notice of censure placed in his jacket. They’ve reassigned him to the North Dakota field office in Black Rock.”

  “He’s gonna need a new pair of long underwear,” D’Agosta said.

  Hayward smiled, and an awkward silence settled over them again.

  The deputy commissioner of trials approached them from the elevator bank, along with the department special prosecutor. They passed by D’Agosta and Hayward, nodding distantly, then turned and proceeded into the courtroom.

  “With Pendergast cleared, you should be, too,” Hayward said.

  D’Agosta looked down at his hands. “It’s a different bureaucracy.”

  “Yes, but when—”

  Abruptly she stopped. D’Agosta looked up to see Glen Singleton walking down the hall, immaculately dressed as usual. Captain Singleton was officially still D’Agosta’s boss and was there, no doubt, to testify. When he saw Hayward, he paused in surprise.

  “Captain Hayward,” he said stiffly. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to watch the proceedings,” she replied.

  Singleton frowned. “A disciplinary hearing is not a spectator sport.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “You’ve already been deposed. Your showing up here in person, without being called to provide fresh information, may imply…” Singleton hesitated.

  D’Agosta flushed at the insinuation. He stole a glance at Hayward and was surprised by what he saw. The cloudiness had left her face, and she suddenly looked calm. It was as if, after struggling for a long time, she had reached some private decision.

  “Yes?” she asked mildly.

  “Might imply a lack of impartiality on your part.”

  “Why, Glen,” Hayward said, “don’t you wish the best for Vinnie, here?”

  Now it was Singleton’s turn to color. “Of course. Of course I do. In fact, that’s why I’m here—to bring to the attention of the prosecutor certain new developments that have recently come to our attention. It’s just that we wouldn’t want any hint of any improper… well, influence.”

  “Too late,” she replied briskly. “I’ve already been influenced.”

  And then—very deliberately—she clasped D’Agosta’s hand in her own.

  Singleton stared at them for a moment. He opened his mouth, closed it again, at a loss for words. Finally he gave D’Agosta a sudden smile and laid a hand on his shoulder. “See you in court, Lieutenant,” he said, giving the word lieutenant special emphasis. Then he turned and was gone.

  “What was that supposed to mean?” D’Agosta asked.

  “If I know Glen, I’d say you’ve got a friend in court.”

  D’Agosta felt his heart accelerate again. Despite the imminent ordeal, he suddenly felt absurdly happy. It was as if a great weight had just been lifted from him: a weight he hadn’t even been fully conscious he was carrying.

  He turned toward her in a rush. “Listen, Laura—”

  “No. You listen.” She wrapped her other hand around his, squeezed it tightly. “It doesn’t matter what happens in that room. Do you understand me, Vinnie? Because wha
tever happens, happens to both of us. We’re in this together.”

  He swallowed. “I love you, Laura Hayward.”

  At that moment, the door of the courtroom opened and the court clerk called his name. Thomas Shoulders rose from the bench, caught D’Agosta’s gaze, nodded.

  Hayward gave D’Agosta’s hand a final squeeze. “Come on, big boy,” she said, smiling. “It’s showtime.”

  81

  Afternoon sun bronzed the hills of the Hudson Valley and turned the wide, slow-moving river into an expanse of brilliant aquamarine. The forests that covered Sugarloaf Mountain and Breakneck Ridge were just leafing out in new bloom, and the entire Highlands wore a feathery mantle of spring.

  Nora Kelly sat in a deck chair on the broad porch of the Feversham Clinic, looking down over Cold Spring, the Hudson River, and the red brick buildings of West Point beyond. Her husband prowled back and forth at the edge of the porch, now and then gazing out over the vista, other times darting glances up at the genteel lines of the private hospital.

  “It makes me nervous, being back here,” he muttered. “You know, Nora, I haven’t been in this place since I was a patient here myself. Oh, God. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you, but when the weather changes, I can sometimes still feel an ache in my back where the Surgeon—”

  “You’ve told me, Bill,” she said with mock weariness. “Many times.”

  The turning of a knob, the soft squeak of hinges, and a door opened onto the porch. A nurse in crisp whites stuck out her head. “You can come in now,” she said. “She’s waiting for you in the west parlor.”

  Nora and Smithback followed the nurse into the building and down a long corridor. “How is she?” Smithback asked the nurse.

  “Much improved, thank goodness. We were all so worried for her—such a dear thing. And she’s getting better every day. Even so, she gets tired easily: you’ll have to restrict your visit to fifteen minutes.”

  “The dear thing,” Smithback whispered in Nora’s ear. She poked him playfully in the ribs.

  The west parlor was a large, semicircular room that reminded Nora of an Adirondack lodge: polished ceiling beams, pine wainscoting, paper-birch furniture. Oils of sylvan landscapes hung on the walls. A merry fire leaped and crackled in the massive stone fireplace.

  And there—propped in a wheelchair in the center of it all—sat Margo Green.

  “Margo,” said Nora, and stopped, almost afraid to speak. Beside her, she heard Smithback draw in his breath sharply.

  The Margo Green who sat before them was a mere shadow of the feisty woman who had been both academic rival and friend to her at the museum. She was frighteningly thin, and her white skin lay like tissue paper over her veins. Her movements were slow and considered, like someone long unfamiliar with the use of their limbs. And yet her brown hair was rich and glossy, and in her eye was the same spark of life Nora well recalled. Diogenes Pendergast had sent her to a dark and dangerous place—had almost ended her life—but she was on her way back now.

  “Hello, you two,” she said in a thin, sleepy voice. “What day is it?”

  “It’s Saturday,” Nora said. “April 12.”

  “Oh, good. I hoped it was still Saturday.” She smiled.

  The nurse came in and bustled around Margo a moment, propping her up more comfortably in the wheelchair. Then she walked around the room, opening curtains and fluffing pillows before leaving them again. Shafts of radiant light streamed into the parlor, falling over Margo’s head and shoulders and gilding her like an angel. Which in a way, Nora thought, she was: having been brought almost to the brink of death by an unusual cocktail of drugs administered to her by Diogenes.

  “We brought you something, Margo,” Smithback said, reaching into his coat and bringing out a manila envelope. “We thought you might get a kick out of it.”

  Margo took it, opened it slowly. “Why, it’s a copy of my first issue of Museology!”

  “Look inside, it’s been signed by every curator of the Anthropology Department.”

  “Even Charlie Prine?” Margo’s eyes twinkled.

  Nora laughed. “Even Prine.”

  They pulled two seats up beside the wheelchair and sat down.

  “The place is just plain dull without you, Margo,” Nora said. “You have to hurry up and get well.”

  “That’s right,” said Smithback, smiling, his irrepressible good humor returning. “The old pile needs someone to shake it up from time to time, raise some fossil dust.”

  Margo laughed quietly. “From what I’ve been reading, the last thing the museum needs right now is more controversy. Is it true four people died in the crush at that Egyptian opening?”

  “Yes,” Nora said. “And another sixty were injured, a dozen of them severely.”

  She exchanged glances with Smithback. The story that had come out in the two weeks since the opening was that a glitch in the system software caused the sound-and-light show to go out of control, in turn triggering a panic. The truth—that it could have been much, much worse—was so far known only to a select few in the museum and in law enforcement circles.

  “Is it true the director was among the injured?” Margo asked.

  Nora nodded. “Collopy suffered a seizure of some kind. He’s under psychiatric observation at New York Hospital, but he’s expected to make a full recovery.”

  This was true—as far as it went—but of course it wasn’t the full story. Collopy, among several others, had fallen victim to Diogenes’s sound-and-light show, driven half psychotic by the laser pulsing and the low-frequency audio waves. The same might have happened to Nora had she not closed her eyes and covered her ears. As it was, she had suffered nightmares for a week. Pendergast and the others had stopped the show before it could run its full course and inflict permanent damage: and as a result, the prognosis was excellent for Collopy and the others—much better than for the unfortunate tech, Lipper.

  Nora shifted in her chair. Someday she would tell Margo everything—but not today. The woman still had a lot of recovery ahead of her.

  “What do you think it means for the museum?” Margo asked. “This tragedy at the opening, coming on the heels of the diamond theft?”

  Nora shook her head. “At first everybody assumed it was the final straw, especially since the mayor’s wife was among the injured. But it turns out that just the opposite has happened. Thanks to all the controversy, the Tomb of Senef is the hottest show in town. Requests for ticket reservations have been pouring in at an unbelievable rate. I even saw somebody hawking I Survived the Curse T-shirts on Broadway this morning.”

  “So they’re going to reopen the tomb?” Margo asked.

  Smithback nodded. “Fast-tracking it, too. Most of the artifacts were spared. They hope to have it up and running within the month.”

  “Our new Egyptologist is recasting the show,” Nora said. “She’s revising the original script, removing some of the cheesier special effects but keeping much of the sound-and-light show intact. She’s a great person, wonderful to work with, funny, unpretentious—we’re lucky to have her.”

  “The news reports mentioned some FBI agent as instrumental in the rescue,” Margo said. “That wouldn’t happen to be Agent Pendergast, by any chance?”

  “How did you guess?” Nora asked.

  “Because Pendergast always manages to get into the thick of things.”

  “You’re telling me,” Smithback said, smile fading. Nora noticed him unconsciously massaging the hand that had been burned by acid.

  The nurse appeared in the doorway. “Margo, I’ll need to take you back to your room in another five minutes.”

  “Okay.” She turned back to them. “I suppose he’s been haunting the museum ever since, asking questions, intimidating bureaucrats, and making a nuisance of himself.”

  “Actually, no,” Nora said. “He disappeared right after the opening. Nobody has seen or heard from him since.”

  “Really? How strange.”

  “Yes, it is,” Nora
said. “It’s very strange indeed.”

  82

  In late May, on the island of Capraia, two people—a man and a woman—sat on a terrace attached to a neat whitewashed house overlooking the Mediterranean. The terrace stood near the edge of a bluff. Below the bluff, surf crawled around pillars of black volcanic rock, wreathed in circling gulls. Beyond lay a blue immensity, stretching as far as the eye could see.

  On the terrace, a table of weather-beaten wood was spread with simple food: a round of coarse bread, a plate of small salamis, a bottle of olive oil and a dish of olives, glasses of white wine. The scent of flowering lemons lay heavy in the air, mingling with the perfume of wild rosemary and sea salt. Along the hillside above the terrace, rows of grapevines were shooting out of coiling tendrils of green. The only sound was the faint cry of gulls and the breeze that rustled through a trellis of purple bougainvillea.

  The two sat, sipping wine and speaking in low voices. The clothes the woman wore—battered canvas pants and an old work shirt—stood in contrast to her finely cut features and the glossy mahogany hair that spilled down her back. The man’s dress was as formal as the woman’s was informal: black suit of Italian cut, crisp white shirt, understated tie.

  Both were watching a third person—a beautiful young woman in a pale yellow dress—who was strolling aimlessly through an olive grove beside the vineyard. From time to time, the young woman stopped to pick a flower, then continued on, twisting the flower in her hands, plucking it to pieces in an absentminded way.

  “I think I understand everything now,” the woman on the terrace was saying, “except there’s one thing you didn’t explain: how in the world did you remove the GPS anklet without setting off the alarm?”

  The man made a dismissive gesture. “Child’s play. The plastic cuff had a wire inside it that completed a circuit. The idea was that, in removing the cuff, you’d need to cut the wire—thus breaking the circuit and triggering an alarm.”