Reliquary (Pendergast, Book 2) (Relic)

by Douglas Preston

  “They’ll steal it,” the man said hoarsely.

  “This is a police station,” snapped D’Agosta. “Nobody’s gonna steal any of your shit.”

  “It’s not shit,” the man whined, but he nevertheless handed the greasy bag to Hayward, who hurriedly deposited it outside, returning and closing the door against the stench.

  Suddenly the demeanor of the homeless man changed dramatically. He shambled forward and sat down in one of the visitor’s chairs, crossing his legs, acting for all the world like he owned the place. The smell was stronger now. It reminded D’Agosta, faintly and unsettlingly, of the smell in the railroad tunnel.

  “I hope you’re comfortable,” said D’Agosta, strategically placing the cigar in front of his nose. “You got four minutes left.”

  “Actually, Vincent,” said the homeless man, “I’m about as comfortable as can be expected, given the condition in which you see me.”

  D’Agosta slowly dropped the cigar to the desk, stunned.

  “I’m sorry to see you still smoking.” The homeless man eyed the cigar. “However, I notice that your taste in cigars has improved. Dominican Republic leaf, if I’m not mistaken, with a Connecticut Shade wrapper. If you must smoke, that churchill is a vast improvement over the packing twine you used to indulge in.”

  D’Agosta remained speechless. He knew the voice, he knew the melodious southern accent. He just couldn’t connect it with the stinking, filthy bum sitting across from him.

  “Pendergast?” he breathed.

  The homeless man nodded.

  “What—?”

  “I hope you’ll forgive the histrionic entrance,” said Pendergast. “I wanted to test the effectiveness of my costume.”

  “Oh,” said D’Agosta.

  Hayward stepped forward and glanced at D’Agosta. For the first time she appeared to be at a loss. “Lieutenant—?” she began.

  D’Agosta took a deep breath. “Sergeant, this”—he waved a hand at the bedraggled figure who was now sitting, hands folded in his lap, one leg crossed carefully over the other—“is Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI.”

  Hayward looked at D’Agosta, then at the homeless man. “Bullshit,” she said simply.

  Pendergast laughed delightedly. He placed his elbows on the arms of the chair, tented his hands, rested his chin on his fingertips, and looked at Hayward. “Delighted to meet you, Sergeant. I would offer to shake hands, but … “

  “Don’t bother,” said Hayward, hastily, a lingering look of suspicion on her face.

  Suddenly, D’Agosta stepped over and crushed the visitor’s slender, grubby hands in his. “Christ, Pendergast, it’s good to see you. I wondered what the hell had happened to your skinny ass. I heard you’d refused the directorship of the New York office, but I haven’t seen you since—”

  “Since the Museum murders, as they’ve become known.” Pendergast nodded. “I see they are front-page news again.”

  Sitting down again, D’Agosta scowled and nodded.

  Pendergast glanced up at the map. “Quite a problem you have on your hands, Vincent. A string of vicious murders above and belowground, angst plaguing the city’s elite, and now rumors that Mbwun has returned.”

  “Pendergast, you got no idea.”

  “Pardon my contradicting you, but I have a very good idea. In fact, I came by to see if you would care for some assistance.”

  D’Agosta’s face brightened, then grew guarded. “Officially?” he asked.

  Pendergast smiled. “Semiofficial is the best I can do, I’m afraid. These days, I more or less choose my own TDYs. I’ve spent the past year working on technical projects we can go into some other time. And let’s just say I’ve received sanction to assist the NYPD on this case. Of course, I must maintain what we so delicately call ‘deniability.’ At this point, there is no evidence that a federal crime has been committed.” He waved his hand. “My problem, quite simply, is that I cannot stay away from an interesting case. An annoying habit, but very hard to break.”

  D’Agosta looked at him curiously. “So why haven’t I seen you in almost two years? Seems like New York would offer lots of interesting cases.”

  Pendergast inclined his head. “Not for me,” he replied.

  D’Agosta turned toward Hayward. “This is the first good thing that’s happened to the case since day one,” he said.

  Pendergast glanced from D’Agosta to Hayward and back again, his pale blue eyes in stark contrast to his dirty skin. “You flatter me, Vincent. But let’s get to work. Since my appearance seems to have convinced both of you, I’m hoping to test it out belowground as soon as possible. If you two will bring me up to date, that is.”

  “So you agree that the Wisher murder and the homeless murders are connected?” Hayward asked, still a little suspicious.

  “I agree completely, Sergeant—Hayward, was it?” Pendergast said. Then he straightened noticeably. “That wouldn’t be Laura Hayward, would it?”

  “What of it?” Hayward said, suddenly guarded.

  Pendergast relaxed in his chair again. “Excellent,” he said in a low voice. “Please let me congratulate you on your article in last month’s Journal of Abnormal Sociology. A most revealing look at the hierarchy among the underground homeless.”

  For the first time since D’Agosta had met her, Hayward looked distinctly uncomfortable. Her face flushed, and she looked away, unused to the compliment.

  “Sergeant?” he asked.

  “I’m getting my master’s from NYU,” she said, still looking away. Then she turned back quickly, glaring at D’Agosta, as if challenging him to taunt her. “My thesis is on caste structure in underground society.”

  “That’s great,” D’Agosta said, surprised at her defensiveness, but feeling a little defensive himself. How come she never told me? She think I’m stupid?

  “But why publish in such an obscure journal?” Pendergast continued. “I’d have thought the Law Enforcement Bulletin would be the obvious choice.”

  Hayward gave a low laugh, her poise fully recovered. “Are you kidding?” she said.

  All at once D’Agosta understood. Hard enough to be a pintsized, pretty female rouster in the TA division, which had more than its share of hulking thugs. But to be working on an advanced academic degree on the very people she had to roust … He shook his head, imagining the kind of relentless derision she would have been subjected to in the ranks.

  “Ah yes, I see,” Pendergast said, nodding. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, in any case. But let’s get to business. I’ll need to see the analyses of the crime scenes. The more we can learn about the UnSub, the sooner we’ll find him. Or them. He’s not a rapist, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Perhaps he’s a fetishist. He—or they—certainly does seem to enjoy his souvenirs. We’ll have to check the files on any inactive serial killers or assassin-types. Also, I wonder if you could have Data Processing run cross-correlations on the known data for all victims. You might want to run a second query for all the missing persons, too. We should check for any points of commonality, no matter how subtle.”

  “I’ll get on it,” Hayward said.

  “Excellent.” Pendergast stood and approached the desk. “Now, if I could just see the case files—”

  “Please sit down,” D’Agosta said quickly, his nose wrinkling. “Your disguise is all too convincing, if you get my meaning.”

  “Of course,” Pendergast said airily, sitting down again. “Convincing to a fault. Sergeant Hayward, if you’d be so kind as to pass those over?”

  18

  Margo took a seat in the vast Linnaeus Hall, deep within the original massing of the Museum of Natural History, and looked curiously around. It was an elegant space, originally constructed in 1882. Soaring vaults rose above dark oak paneling. Around the long dome of the hall, an intricate frieze had been carved, displaying Evolution in all its grandeur: from beautifully carved animicules at one end to the great figure of Man at the other.

>   She gazed at the image of Man, dressed in frock coat, top hat, and walking stick. It was a marvelous monument to the early Darwinian view of evolution: the steady upward march from simple to complex, with Man the crowning glory. Margo knew that the modern view was very different. Evolution was proving to be a more random, haphazard affair, full of dead ends and bizarre twists. Dr. Frock—sitting in his wheelchair in the aisle next to her—had made major contributions to this understanding with his theory of fractal evolution. Now, evolutionary biologists no longer considered man the apotheosis of evolution, but merely the dead end of a minor side branch of a generalist, less-evolved subgroup of Mammalia. And, she thought with an inward smile, the word Man itself had gone out of favor—a definite improvement.

  She craned her neck to look back toward the narrow projectionist’s booth high up in the rear wall. The grand old facade had become a very modern lecture hall, retrofitted with concealed mechanical blackboards, retractable movie screens, and the latest in computerized multimedia equipment.

  For the hundredth time that day, she wondered who had leaked the story of the Museum’s involvement. Whoever it was, they obviously didn’t know everything—they hadn’t mentioned the grotesque deformities on the second skeleton—but they knew enough. Her relief at not having to intervene on Smithback’s behalf was tempered by what she now knew about the nature of the teeth marks on the corpses. She was dreading the arrival of the Bitterman corpse, almost afraid of what corroborative evidence it might hold.

  A loud humming sound brought Margo’s eyes forward again. At the front of the hall, the proscenium and wings were retracting as a massive screen descended toward the floor.

  There were exactly seven tense people in the two-thousand-seat hall.

  Beside her, Frock was humming a tune from a Wagner opera, his thick fingers tapping on the battered arms of his wheelchair. His face was expressionless, but Margo knew that inside he was fuming. Protocol held that Brambell, as Chief Medical Examiner, should do the presentation, but Frock was obviously rankled by the arrangement. Several rows nearer the front, Margo could see Lieutenant D’Agosta, sitting with an overweight police captain in a rumpled uniform and two bored-looking Homicide detectives.

  By now the main lights were fully dimmed, and Margo could see only Brambell’s long bony face and bald pate, illuminated from below by the light on the lectern. In one hand he clutched an odd-looking plastic rapier that acted as wireless slide controller and light pointer. He looked positively cadaverous, she thought; Boris Karloff in a lab coat.

  “Let’s get right to the evidence, hey?” Brambell said, his high-pitched, cheerful voice booming from numerous speakers along both sides of the hall. Beside her, Margo could feel Frock stiffen with irritation.

  The huge image of a magnified bone appeared on the screen, bathing the hall and its occupants in a ghostly gray light.

  “Here is a photograph of Pamela Wisher’s third cervical vertebra. Notice the dentition pattern that’s clearly visible.”

  The next slide came up.

  “Here is one of those tooth marks, magnified two hundred times. And here is a cross section reproduction. As you can see, the tooth is clearly mammalian.”

  The next series of slides displayed results of lab tests done on a variety of bones from the two corpses, recording the pressures per square inch needed to make marks of varying depths.

  “We identified twenty-one clear marks, punctures, or scratches made by teeth on the bones of the two victims,” Brambell continued. “There are also some marks that seem to come from a dull instrument: too regular for teeth, but too rough for a well-finished knife. Such as you’d see, perhaps, from a primitive ax or stone knife. These are particularly prevalent on the cervical vertebrae, perhaps indicative of the mode of decapitation. In any case, the pressure required to make the teeth marks”—Brambell indicated the results with his electronic pointer—“varied from 500 to about 900 pounds per square inch. This is considerably less than our initial estimate of 1,200 pounds per square inch.”

  Less than your initial estimate, Margo thought, glancing toward Frock.

  Another photograph came on the screen. “Our detailed study of thin bone sections here, around the marks, shows blood leakage through the interstitial areas of the bone and into the marrow itself. That indicates they were made premortem.” There was a silence.

  “In other words, the marks occurred at the time of death.” Brambell cleared his throat. “Due to the highly advanced state of decomposition, it is impossible to determine a definitive cause of death. But I think we can say with fair certainty that these victims died of massive trauma and blood loss inflicted at the time these teeth marks were made.”

  He turned toward his audience dramatically. “There is, I know, a question on all of your minds. The question. What made these marks? As we know, there has been speculation in the press that the killer might be another Mbwun.”

  He’s enjoying this, Margo thought. She could feel the tension building in the room. D’Agosta, in particular, was on the edge of his seat.

  “We did a thorough analysis of these marks vis-à-vis those made by Mbwun eighteen months ago, which of course this Museum of all places has a great deal of data on. And we have come to two firm conclusions.”

  He took a deep breath and looked around.

  “One, these teeth marks are not consistent with the teeth of Mbwun. They do not match the cross section, the size, or the length.”

  Margo saw D’Agosta’s shoulders relax, almost slump, with relief.

  “Two, the force used to make these marks never exceeded 900 pounds per square inch, which definitely puts it squarely in the canine, or even more squarely, in the human category. Not in the Mbwun category.”

  The slides were flashing by more quickly now, showing various micrographs of teeth marks and bite patterns. “A healthy, habitual gum-cracking male can exert 850 to 900 pounds per square inch of pressure with a hard bite,” Brambell said. “There is nothing inconsistent between these marks and the bite of human eyeteeth. On the other hand, it could have been, say, a pack of feral dogs roaming the tunnels, attacking, killing, and dismembering. In my opinion, however, the patterns we see here are more suggestive of a human than of a dog, or any other hypothesized feral inhabitant of the underground.”

  “There are perhaps more types of underground inhabitants, Dr. Brambell, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  The accent was from the deep south, perhaps Alabama or Louisiana; the laconic voice was soft, with the slightest hint of genteel cynicism. Margo turned to find the familiar lean figure of Special Agent Pendergast reclining in a seat near the top of the hall. She had neither seen nor heard him come in. He caught her glance and nodded, his pale eyes flashing in the dark. “Miss Green,” he said. “Pardon me, it’s Dr. Green now, isn’t it?”

  Margo smiled and nodded in return. She hadn’t seen the FBI agent since the good-bye party in Frock’s Museum office. Then again, that was the last time she had seen a lot of people involved in the Museum Beast murders: Dr. Frock, say, or Greg Kawakita.

  Frock turned around in his wheelchair with an effort, nodded his recognition, then turned back toward the screen.

  Brambell was looking at the new arrival. “You are—?” he began.

  “Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI,” replied D’Agosta. “He’ll be assisting us with this case.”

  “I see,” Brambell said. “Delighted.” He turned briskly back toward the screen. “Let’s move on to the next question: the identification of the unknown body. I have some rather good news on this front. I’m afraid it may come as a surprise to my colleagues”—he nodded at Frock and Margo—“because it just recently came to my own attention.”

  Frock sat forward in his wheelchair, an unreadable expression on his face.

  Margo looked back and forth between the two scientists. Was it possible that Brambell had kept them in the dark on something, intending to garner the credit himself?

  “Ple
ase take a close look at this next slide.” A new image appeared on the screen: the X ray showing the four white triangles that Margo had first noticed.

  “Here we have four small triangles of metal embedded in the lumbar vertebrae of the unknown skeleton. We were all perplexed as to their meaning after Dr. Green here first pointed them out. Then, just last night, I had a stroke of inspiration as to their possible origin. I spent much of today in contact with orthopedic surgeons. If I am correct, we will know the identity of the murdered individual by the end of the week, perhaps sooner.”

  He grinned and gazed about the hall triumphantly, lingering for an insolent moment on Frock.

  “I assume you believe those triangles to be—” Pendergast began.

  “For the time being,” Brambell interrupted pointedly, “I can say no more on the subject.” He waved the remote and a new slide flashed up, showing an extensively decomposed head, eyes missing, teeth exposed in a lipless grin. Margo was as repelled by the sight as she had been when the head was first wheeled into the lab.

  “As you all know, this head was also brought to us yesterday for analysis. It was discovered by Lieutenant D’Agosta while investigating recent murders among the homeless population. Although we won’t be able to give you a full report for several more days, we know that it belongs to an indigent man who was murdered approximately two months ago. Numerous marks can be seen, some from teeth and some apparently from a crude weapon—again especially noticeable around the remaining cervical vertebrae. We’re planning to have his corpse exhumed from Potter’s Field for a more thorough investigation.”

  Oh no, Margo thought.

  He flashed several more slides. “We studied the excoriation of the neck and concluded that, again, the force used was most consistent with a human attacker, certainly not Mbwun.”

  The screen flashed to white, and Brambell placed the pointing remote on a table next to him. As the lights came up, D’Agosta rose from his seat. “That’s a bigger relief than you’ll ever know,” he said. “But let me get this straight. You’re saying that a person made those bite marks?”