Staring at the scene of horror, she realized that she did, in fact, feel a certain grim catharsis through the curtain of pain. She turned away.
“Seen enough?”
She nodded. “We have to get out of here. You’re bleeding — badly.”
“Esteban’s third bullet missed my vest. I believe it has punctured my left lung.” He coughed; flecks of blood came from his mouth.
Using the taper as a light, they slowly, painfully, made their way through the basement, up the stairs, across the shadowy lawn, and to the mansion. There, in the darkened living room, Pendergast helped Nora onto a sofa, then picked up the phone and dialed 911.
And then he collapsed unconscious to the floor, where he lay motionless in a spreading pool of his own blood.
Chapter 85
* * *
With the coming of night, the seventh floor of North Shore University Hospital had grown quiet. The squeaking of wheelchairs and gurneys, the chimes and announcements from the speakers at the nurses’ station, had almost ceased. Yet still there were the sounds that never stopped: the hiss of respirators, the faint snores and murmurs, the bleating and beeping of vital–sign monitors.
D’Agosta heard none of it. He sat where he had remained for the last eighteen hours: beside the lone bed in the private room. His eyes were on the floor, and he alternately clenched and un–clenched his good hand.
Out of the corner of his eye he noticed movement. Nora Kelly stood framed in the doorway. Her head was bandaged, and beneath her hospital gown her ribs were taped and padded. She walked up to the foot of the bed.
“How is he?” she asked.
“Same.” He sighed. “And you?”
“Much better.” She hesitated. “And what about you? How are you doing?”
D’Agosta shook his bowed head.
“Lieutenant, I want to thank you. For your support through it all. For believing me. For everything.”
D’Agosta felt his face burn. “I did nothing.”
“You did everything. Really.” He felt her hand on his shoulder, and then she was gone.
When next he looked up, another two hours had passed. And this time it was Laura Hayward who was standing in the doorway. Seeing him, she came over quickly, kissed him lightly, took the chair beside him.
“You need to eat something,” she said. “You can’t just sit here forever.”
“Not hungry,” he replied.
She bent closer. “Vinnie, I don’t like seeing you like this. When Pendergast called me, told me you’d gone into the basement of the Ville, I…” She paused, took his hand. “I suddenly realized I simply couldn’t face losing you for good. Listen. You just can’t keep blaming yourself.”
“I was too pissed off. If I’d kept my anger under control, he wouldn’t have been shot. That’s the truth and you know it.”
“No, I don’t know it. Who knows what might have happened if things went a different way? It’s the uncertainty of law enforcement — we all live with it. And anyway, you heard the doctors: the crisis has passed. Pendergast lost a lot of blood, but he’s going to pull through.”
There was a faint movement from the bed. Both D’Agosta and Hayward looked over. Agent Pendergast was regarding them through half–closed eyes. He was paler than D’Agosta had ever seen him — as pale as death — and his limbs, always slender, had assumed an almost spectral gauntness.
The FBI agent simply looked back at them for a moment, the heavy–lidded silver eyes unblinking. For a dreadful moment, D’Agosta feared he was dead. But then Pendergast’s lips moved. The two bent closer in order to hear.
“I’m glad to see you both looking well,” he said.
“You, too,” D’Agosta replied, trying to smile. “How are you?”
“I’ve been lying here thinking a great deal, as well as enjoying your solicitude. What happened to your arm, Vincent?”
“Broken ulna. No big deal.”
Pendergast’s eyes fluttered closed. After a moment, they opened once again.
“What was in it?” he asked.
“In what?” D’Agosta said.
“Esteban’s safe.”
“An old will and a deed.”
“Ah,” Pendergast whispered. “The last will and testament of Elijah Esteban?”
D’Agosta started. “How’d you know?”
“I found Elijah Esteban’s tomb in the basement of the Ville. It had been broken into just minutes earlier and looted — no doubt of that very will and deed. A property deed, I expect?”
“Right. To a twenty–acre farm,” said D’Agosta.
A slow nod. “A farm that, I assume, is a farm no longer.”
“You got it. Now twenty acres of prime Manhattan real estate, stretching between Times Square and Madison Avenue, taking in much of the midforties. The will was written in such a way that Esteban would have had clear title as the only heir.”
“Naturally, he wouldn’t have tried to actually take over the land. He would have used the document as the basis of an extremely lucrative lawsuit — ending in a multibillion–dollar settlement, I have no doubt. Worth killing for, Vincent?”
“Maybe for some people.”
Pendergast eased his arms above the covers, arranged them with minute care, his white fingers touching what D’Agosta noticed was unusually fine linen. No doubt Proctor was to thank for that. “Where the Ville is now, there was an earlier religious community — of a very different kind,” he said. “Wren told me its original founder became a gentleman farmer in southern Manhattan after the community failed. That farmer and Elijah Esteban must be one and the same. On his death, he was buried in the basement of the settlement he founded — along, it seems, with the fateful documents: the deed and will.”
“Makes sense,” said D’Agosta. “So how did Alexander Esteban learn about it?”
“After he retired from Hollywood, it seems he acquired a passion for studying his family tree. He employed a researcher to paw through old records for him. It was the researcher who made the discovery — and who was murdered for his pains. His is the second, unidentified body in the tunnel, by the way.”
“We found it,” said Hayward.
“A very handy corpse, too. It was tossed off the bridge into the Harlem River and misidentified as Fearing by our very busy friend, Wayne Heffler, with the help of the so–called sister.”
“So Colin Fearing was alive,” said D’Agosta. “When he killed Smithback, I mean.”
A nod. “Remarkable what one can do with theatrical makeup. Esteban was a film director par excellence.”
“Perhaps we should let Agent Pendergast rest,” Hayward said.
Pendergast waved one hand feebly. “Nonsense, Captain. Talking helps clear my mind.”
“I still don’t get it,” said D’Agosta.
“Straightforward, once you’ve grasped the thread.” Pendergast closed his eyes, folded his pale hands on the coverlet. “Esteban had learned of the existence, and location, of a document that would make him fabulously rich. Unfortunately, it was sealed in a tomb and locked in the basement of what was now the Ville des Zirondelles: a secretive cult deeply suspicious of outsiders. So secretive that only one hundred forty–four could ever be members; only when one died was a new one recruited. Impossible for Esteban to penetrate. So he tried to whip up public sentiment against the Ville, get the city to condemn the property, evict the squatters. That’s why he joined Humans for Other Animals and enlisted Smithback to write stories about it for the Times.”
“I’m seeing it now,” said D’Agosta. “By itself that wasn’t enough. So Esteban escalated — by murdering Smithback and pinning it on the Ville — and cooking up all that voodoo and zombii stuff.”
Pendergast gave the barest nod. “He didn’t get the Vôdou quite right — for example, the tiny coffin in Fearing’s empty crypt — which is why my friend Bertin was so stymied by it. A clue I regrettably missed. Ironic, since what the Ville practiced was not Vôdou anyway, so much as their own stran
ge and bizarre cult, transformed and twisted over decades of insularity.” He paused. “He hired two accomplices. Colin Fearing — and Caitlyn Kidd.”
“Caitlyn Kidd?” D’Agosta repeated in disbelief. “The reporter?”
“Correct. She was part of the plan. Esteban would have made a list of precise qualifications, then gone out to find the people who matched them exactly. I expect it happened something like this: Fearing was an out–of–work actor of disreputable background, badly in need of money. He lived in Smithback’s building and was roughly his weight and height. A perfect choice for Esteban. Caitlyn Kidd was a rather unscrupulous reporter, eager to get ahead.” He glanced over at Hayward. “You don’t look surprised by this.”
Hayward hesitated just a moment before replying. “I requested deep background checks on everyone involved with the case. Kidd’s came back just a few hours ago. She’s got a prison record — quite well hidden, it turns out — for fraud. She ran a confidence scam in which she extorted money from older men.”
D’Agosta looked at her in shock.
Pendergast merely nodded. “The criminal record is how Esteban found her, I imagine. In any case, he would pay her a great deal for her starring role. Esteban wrote a script for this little drama, in which Fearing faked his own death, using the researcher’s corpse as a body. Caitlyn Kidd played the role of the sister who identified him, and the overly busy Dr. Heffler completed the picture. Once everybody thought Fearing was dead, Esteban simply heightened the illusion with makeup — he was a film producer, after all. And he had Fearing — playing himself, only now risen from the dead as a zombii — kill Smithback and attack Nora Kelly.”
D’Agosta shook his head ruefully. “Seems almost obvious now that you point it out.”
“Recall how Fearing looked so deliberately into the security camera when he left Smithback’s apartment building? How he made sure the neighbors got a good look at him? At the time it struck me as odd, but now it makes perfect sense. Having Fearing seen, and identified, was a critical element — perhaps the critical element — of Esteban’s plan.”
There was a longer silence. Pendergast at last opened his eyes. “Then Esteban launched the next act in his screenplay. Caitlyn Kidd approached the grieving Nora, enlisting her into the effort to pin the murder on the Ville. Her first assignment was to get close to Nora, trick her into thinking that going after the Ville was Nora’s own idea. They maintained the pressure on Nora by having Fearing stalk her in the museum and elsewhere. Next, Esteban stole Smithback’s body from the morgue — to give the illusion that he, too, had risen from the dead as a zombii. But he needed Smithback’s body for another, even more critical reason: to make a mask of his face for Fearing’s use. I found traces of latex rubber on Smithback’s face, the remains of the mold. Fearing wore the mask — suitably made up for horrific effect — to murder Kidd before a gathering guaranteed to know Smithback by sight.”
“But why kill Kidd?” D’Agosta asked.
“She had played her role to perfection — she’d outlived her usefulness. Time to give her the hook. Easier to kill her than pay her, and it’s always prudent to get rid of one’s accomplices. A lesson Fearing should have taken to heart. Do you recall how Kidd shouted out Smithback’s name before she was killed? I would surmise Esteban had told her that Fearing, disguised as the dead Smithback, was going to kill someone else at that ceremony. Her role — her last scene — was to cry out Smithback’s name in mock terror — to immediately establish in everyone’s minds who he was, to help drive home the illusion. Only she got more than she bargained for.”
“And then Esteban had Fearing kill Wartek as soon as the man started eviction proceedings against the Ville,” said D’Agosta.
Pendergast nodded.
“And he kidnapped Nora, once again framing the Ville for the crime.”
“Yes. The pressure against the Ville had to be ratcheted up to the breaking point. Esteban wasn’t going to wait for a lengthy eviction proceeding. His pacing was perfect, just like the great director he was. When he released the video of Nora that everyone assumed was shot in the basement of the Ville, the third act was almost upon us. That’s when he knew it was time to strike.”
“So Esteban himself murdered Fearing?” asked Hayward.
“I believe so. Esteban no doubt wanted to remove his second accomplice the same way he’d removed the first. Dumping his body near the Ville had the added advantage of framing them for the murder.”
“One thing I don’t get,” said D’Agosta. “That first march on the Ville — Esteban whipped up the crowd, then defused them again. Why? Why didn’t he simply go in?”
Pendergast didn’t answer for a moment. “I found that puzzling at first. Then I considered that there weren’t enough of them to succeed. It was premature. He had one shot at getting into the Ville and robbing the tomb. He needed a riot — a big one, not a brief disturbance, to get in unseen, seize his prize, and retreat. The first was merely a rehearsal. That’s why Esteban didn’t lead the second, major demonstration. He egged it on and then pretended to bow out. He was down there, Vincent, even while we were. It was only chance that we didn’t cross paths. By the time that creature attacked us, he was already gone.”
Hayward frowned. “What was that creature, anyway?”
“A man. At least, it had once been a man. The ritual transformed it into something else.”
“What ritual?” D’Agosta asked.
“Do you recall those strange implements we saw on the Ville’s altar? The tools with the bone handles and a long, twisting metal point with a tiny blade at one end? They served the same function as an old medical instrument known as a leucotome.”
“A leucotome?” D’Agosta repeated.
“The device used in performing a lobotomy — in this case, a transorbital lobotomy, done by entering the brain from the eye socket. The members of the Ville learned long ago that destroying a specific portion of the brain, in a region called Broca’s area, rendered the unfortunate victim impervious to pain, free of moral or ethical constraints, extremely violent, and yet submissive to its minders. Something less than human but more than animal.”
“And you’re saying the Ville did this to someone intentionally?”
“Absolutely. The victim was chosen by the cult to be a sacrifice for the community, but he was also revered and worshipped for making that sacrifice. It may even have been an honor, vied for by many. That man–thing was, in fact, a central part of their religious ritual: his creation, his nurturing, his training, his feeding, and his release were all part of the ritual cycle. He served to protect the community from a hostile world, and they in turn fed him, kept him, revered him. In some societies, certain individuals are given leave to perform actions that are normally considered wrong. Perhaps the Ville lobotomized the man as a way of protecting his soul, allowing him to murder, to kill, to defend the Ville without incurring the stain of sin on his soul.”
“But how could an operation turn a person into that kind of monster?” Hayward asked.
“The operation isn’t difficult. Many years ago, a physician named Walter Freeman could perform what became known as ice–pick lobotomies in just a few minutes. Stick it in, a quick back–and–forth motion, and the offending part of the brain is destroyed. Along with half the person’s personality, his soul, his sense of self. The Ville just took it a step farther.”
“Those old murders Wren uncovered?” D’Agosta said. “Perhaps they were caused by similar zombiis.”
“Exactly: the creation of a living zombii that, through murder and fear, convinced Isidor Straus not to proceed with clear–cutting Inwood Hill Park. It seems that the Straus groundskeeper himself became a convert to the Ville cult — and then was honored by elevation to sacred status, and became that zombii.”
Hayward shuddered. “How horrible.”
“Indeed. The irony is almost palpable: Esteban had Fearing act like a zombii to convince the public he was a creation of the Ville. Yet the Vil
le was, in a manner of speaking, creating zombiis — though for rather different purposes than Esteban apprehended. By the way, what’s happened to the Ville?”
“It seems they’ll stay where they are, for the time being. They promised no more animal sacrifices.”
“And, let us hope, no more zombiis. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that, in the future, rather than being the malevolent presence we assumed, Bossong becomes something of a rehabilitating influence on the Ville. I sensed a tension between him and the high priest.”
“It was Bossong who killed the zombii,” D’Agosta said. “At the end, when it was at the point of killing us.”
“Indeed? That is reassuring: such a heroic action is not, shall we say, the sort of thing a true believer would do — kill the vessel of one’s own gods.” Pendergast glanced at Hayward. “By the way, Captain, I’ve been meaning to tell you how sorry I was to hear you’d been passed over for the mayor’s task force.”
“Don’t be.” Hayward brushed back her black hair. “I think I’m actually better off for losing the opportunity — the latest word is that task force is going to become just the bureaucratic nightmare everyone swore it would never be. And that reminds me: remember our friend Kline, the software developer? Looks like he’s going to be sorry he strong–armed the commissioner. I just heard the FBI was wiretapping Rocker’s phone in a sting operation and got the whole blackmail conversation on tape. Both are going down — hard. Kline is finished.”
“A pity. Rocker wasn’t a bad man.”
Hayward nodded. “He did it for good motives — the Dyson Fund. A tragedy, in a way. But one side effect is I’m leaving the commissioner’s office, getting my job as homicide captain back.”
A silence settled in the room.
D’Agosta spoke all in a rush. “Listen, Pendergast, I just wanted to apologize for my goddamn stupidity back there — for dragging you into the Ville, for getting you shot, for almost losing Nora. I’ve done some idiotic things, but this took the cake.”
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