The Book of the Dead
Page 33
“You say the chief physician signed the papers?”
“Yes. He went home at the end of his shift.”
“We’ll get a statement from him tomorrow. No doubt we’ll straighten out this confusion in the morning. Anyway, it’s tangential to the escape attempt. Let’s get on with the debriefing.”
Kidder fell silent, his face troubled.
“All right. The next question is why the yard seemed to have no supervision at the time of the breakout. My time sheets show Fecteau and Doyle were on yard 4 duty at the time of the escape. Fecteau, could you please explain your absence?”
A very nervous guard at the far end of the table cleared his voice. “Yes, sir. Officer Doyle and I had yard duty that day—”
“The nine prisoners were escorted to the yard on schedule?”
“Yes, sir. They arrived at two P.M. sharp.”
“Where were you?”
“At our yard posts, just as required.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, about five minutes later, we got the call from Special Agent Coffey.”
“Coffey called you?” Imhof was truly astonished. This was way out of line. He glanced around: Coffey still hadn’t shown up.
“Tell us about the call, Fecteau.”
“He said he needed us right away. We explained we were on yard duty, but he insisted.”
Imhof felt his anger rising. Coffey had told him nothing about this. “Tell us Agent Coffey’s exact words, please.”
Fecteau hesitated, colored. “Well, sir, he said something like ‘If you’re not here in ninety seconds, I’ll have you transferred to North Dakota.’ Something like that, sir. I tried to explain that we were the only two on yard duty, but he cut me off.”
“He threatened you?”
“Basically, yes.”
“And so you left the yard unattended, without checking with either the chief of security or me?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I thought he must have authorized it with you.”
“Why in hell, Fecteau, would I authorize the removal of the only two guards on yard duty, leaving a gang of prisoners to their own devices?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I assumed it was . . . because of the special prisoner.”
“The special prisoner? What are you talking about?”
“Well . . .” Fecteau had begun to stumble over his words. “The special prisoner who had exercise privileges in yard 4.”
“Yes, but he never made it to yard 4. He remained in his cell.”
“Um, no, sir. We saw him in yard 4.”
Imhof took a deep breath. Things were more screwed up than he had thought. “Fecteau, you’re getting confused. The prisoner remained in his cell all day and was never escorted to yard 4. I checked on it personally during the code—I have the electronic logs right here. The anklet scans show he never left solitary.”
“Well, sir, my best recollection is that the special prisoner was there.” He cast an inquiring glance toward the other guard, Doyle, who looked equally flummoxed.
“Doyle?” Imhof asked sharply.
“Yes, sir?”
“Don’t ‘yes, sir’ me, I want to know: did you see the special prisoner in yard 4 today?”
“Yes, sir. I mean, that’s my recollection, sir.”
A long silence. Imhof screwed his eye around to Rollo, but the man was already murmuring into his radio. It took only moments for the security manager to put it aside and look up again. “According to the electronic monitor, the special prisoner’s still in his cell. Never left it.”
“Better send someone to do a cell check, just to make sure.” Imhof boiled with fury at Coffey. Where the hell was he? This was all his fault.
As if on cue, the door flew open and there was Special Agent Coffey, trailed by Rabiner.
“It’s about time,” said Imhof darkly.
“It certainly is about time,” said Coffey, striding into the room, face red. “I left specific orders for the special prisoner to be put into yard 4, and now I find out it was never done. Imhof, when I give an order, I expect it to be—”
Imhof rose. He’d had it with this asshole, and he wasn’t going to let him bully him, especially in front of his staff. “Agent Coffey,” he said in an icy voice, “we had a serious escape attempt today, as you surely know.”
“That’s no concern of—”
“We are conducting a debriefing related to said escape. You are interrupting. If you will sit down and await your turn to speak, we will continue.”
Coffey remained standing, looking at him, face turning red. “I don’t appreciate being addressed in that tone of voice.”
“Agent Coffey, I am asking you one more time to sit down and allow this debriefing to continue. If you continue to speak out of turn, I will have you removed from the premises.”
A thunderstruck silence ensued. Coffey’s face contorted with fury and he turned to Rabiner. “You know what? I think our presence at this meeting is no longer required.” He swiveled back to Imhof. “You’ll be hearing from me.”
“Your presence certainly is required. I have two guards here who say you gave them orders and threatened them with termination if they didn’t obey—despite the fact that you have absolutely no authority here. As a result, prisoners were left unattended and attempted escape. You, sir, are responsible for the escape attempt. I make this statement for the record.”
Another electric silence. Coffey looked around, the imperious look on his face softening as he began to absorb the seriousness of the accusation. His eyes locked on the tape recorder in the middle of the table, the microphones in front of each seat.
Stiffly Coffey sat down, swallowed. “I’m sure we can straighten out this, ah, misunderstanding, Mr. Imhof. There’s no need to make rash accusations.”
In the ensuing silence, Rollo’s radio chimed—he was receiving the callback about the cell check for the special prisoner. As Imhof watched, the security manager lifted the radio to his ear and listened, his face gradually turning a slack, dead white.
52
Glinn glanced down at Special Agent Pendergast. He lay unmoving on the couch of burgundy-colored leather, arms over his chest, ankles crossed. He had been like that for almost twenty minutes. With his unnaturally pale complexion and gaunt features, the man looked remarkably like a corpse. The only signs of life were the beads of sweat that had sprung out across Pendergast’s forehead and a faint trembling in his hands.
His body jerked once, suddenly, then fell still. The eyes slowly opened—remarkably bloodshot, the pupils like pinpricks in the silvery irises.
Glinn wheeled forward, leaned close. Something had happened. The memory crossing was over.
“You stay. Alone,” Pendergast said in a husky whisper. “Send Lieutenant D’Agosta and Dr. Krasner away.”
Glinn closed the door quietly behind him, turned the lock. “Done.”
“What is to come . . . must take the form of an interrogatory. You will ask questions. I will answer them. There is no other way. I . . .” And here the whisper stopped for a long moment. “I am unable to speak about what I have just witnessed—voluntarily.”
“Understood.”
Pendergast lay silent. After a moment, Glinn spoke again. “You have something to tell me.”
“Yes.”
“About your brother, Diogenes.”
“Yes.”
“The Event.”
A pause. “Yes.”
Glinn glanced at the ceiling, where a tiny camera and high-gain microphone were concealed. Reaching into his pocket, he pressed a small remote control, deactivating them. Some inner sense told him that whatever was to come should remain solely the province of their collective memory.
He inched his wheelchair forward. “You were there.”
“Yes.”
“You and your brother. No others.”
“No others.”
“What was the date?”
Another pause. “The date is not important.”
“It was spring. The bougainvillea was in bloom outside. Beyond that, I don’t know.”
“How old were you?”
“Nine.”
“And your brother must have been seven, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Location?”
“Maison de la Rochenoire, our ancestral home on Dauphine Street, New Orleans.”
“And what were you doing?”
“Exploring.”
“Go on.”
Pendergast was silent. Glinn remembered his words: You will ask questions. I will answer them.
He cleared his throat quietly. “Did you frequently explore the house?”
“It was a large mansion. It had many secrets.”
“How long had it been in the family?”
“It had originally been a monastery, but an ancestor purchased it in the 1750s.”
“And which ancestor was that?”
“Augustus Robespierre Pendergast. He spent decades refashioning it.”
Glinn knew most of this, of course. But it had seemed better to keep Pendergast talking for a bit—and answering the easy questions—before venturing deeper. Now he would penetrate.
“And where were you exploring on this particular day?” he asked.
“The sub-basements.”
“Were they one of the secrets?”
“My parents didn’t know we had found our way into them.”
“But you had discovered a way.”
“Diogenes did.”
“And he shared it with you.”
“No. I—followed him once.”
“That’s when he told you.”
A pause. “I made him tell me.”
The sweat was thicker on Pendergast’s brow now, and Glinn did not press this point. “Describe the sub-basements to me.”
“They were reached through a false wall in the basement.”
“And beyond, a staircase leading down?”
“Yes.”
“What was at the bottom of the staircase?”
Another pause. “A necropolis.”
Glinn paused a moment to master his surprise. “And you were exploring this necropolis?”
“Yes. We were reading inscriptions on the family tombs. That is how . . . how it started.”
“You found something?”
“The entrance to a secret chamber.”
“And what was inside?”
“The magical equipment of my ancestor, Comstock Pendergast.”
Glinn paused again. “Comstock Pendergast, the magician?”
“Yes.”
“So he stored his stage equipment in the sub-basement?”
“No. My family hid it there.”
“Why did they do that?”
“Because much of the equipment was dangerous.”
“But while you were exploring the room, you didn’t know that.”
“No. Not at first.”
“At first?”
“Some of the devices looked strange. Cruel. We were young, we didn’t fully understand . . .” Pendergast hesitated.
“What happened next?” Glinn asked gently.
“In the back, we found a large box.”
“Describe it.”
“Very large—almost the size of a small room itself—but portable. It was garish. Red and gold. The face of a demon was painted on its side. There were words above the face.”
“What did the words say?”
“‘The Doorway to Hell.’”
Pendergast was trembling slightly now, and Glinn let some more time pass before speaking again. “Did the box have an entrance?”
“Yes.”
“And you went inside.”
“Yes. No.”
“You mean, Diogenes went first?”
“Yes.”
“Willingly?”
Another long pause. “No.”
“You goaded him,” Glinn said.
“That, and . . .” Pendergast stopped once more.
“You used force?”
“Yes.”
Glinn now kept utterly still. He did not allow even the slightest squeak of the wheelchair to break the tense atmosphere.
“Why?”
“He had been sarcastic, as usual. I was angry with him. If there was something a little frightening . . . I wanted him to go first.”
“So Diogenes crawled inside. And you followed him.”
“Yes.”
“What did you find?”
Pendergast’s mouth worked, but it was some time before the words emerged. “A ladder. Leading up to a crawl space above.”
“Describe it.”
“Dark. Stifling. Photographs on the walls.”
“Go on.”
“There was a porthole in the rear wall, leading into another room. Diogenes went first.”
Watching Pendergast, Glinn hesitated, then said, “You made him go first?”
“Yes.”
“And you followed.”
“I . . . I was about to.”
“What stopped you?”
Pendergast gave a sudden, spasmodic twitch, but did not answer.
“What stopped you?” Glinn pressed suddenly.
“The show began. Inside the box. Inside, where Diogenes was.”
“A show of Comstock’s devising?”
“Yes.”
“What was its purpose?”
Another twitch. “To frighten someone to death.”
Glinn leaned back slowly in his wheelchair. He had, as part of his research, studied Pendergast’s ancestry, and among his many colorful antecedents Comstock stood out. He had been the agent’s great-grand-uncle, in his youth a famed magician, mesmerist, and creator of illusions. As he grew old, however, he became increasingly bitter and misanthropic. Like so many of his relatives, he ended his days in an asylum.
So this was where Comstock’s madness had led.
“Tell me how it began,” he said.
“I don’t know. The floor tilted or collapsed beneath Diogenes. He fell into a lower chamber.”
“Deeper into the box?”
“Yes, back down to the first level. That was where the . . . show took place.”
“Describe it,” Glinn said.
Suddenly Pendergast moaned—a moan of such anguish, such long-repressed suffering, that Glinn was for a moment left speechless.
“Describe it,” he urged again as soon as he could speak.
“I only had a glimpse, I didn’t really see it. And then . . . they closed around me.”
“They?”
“Mechanisms. Driven by secret springs. One behind me, shutting off escape. Another that locked Diogenes inside the inner chamber.”
Pendergast fell silent again. The pillow beneath his head was now soaked in perspiration.
“But for a moment . . . you saw what Diogenes saw.”
Pendergast lay still. Then—very slowly—he inclined his head. “Only for a moment. But I heard it all. All of it.”
“What was it?”
“A magic-lantern show,” Pendergast whispered. “A phantasmagoria. Operated by voltaic cell. It was . . . Comstock’s specialty.”
Glinn nodded. He knew something of this. Magic-lanterns were devices that passed light through sheets of glass onto which images had been etched. Projected onto a slowly rotating wall with uneven surfaces to reinforce the illusion, and supplemented by sinister music and repetitious voices, it was the nineteenth-century equivalent of the horror movie.
“Well then, what did you see?”
Abruptly the agent leaped from the couch, suddenly full of feverish action. He paced the room, hands clenching and unclenching. Then he turned toward Glinn. “I beg you, do not ask me that.”