Reliquary (Pendergast, Book 2) (Relic)

by Douglas Preston

  Mrs. Muñoz lay in the hospital bed in exactly the same position she’d lain on the crime scene stretcher: arms folded, eyes staring vacantly into the far distance. The room smelled of glycerine soap and rubbing alcohol. Hayward took up a position outside in case Waxie showed up prematurely, while D’Agosta and the doctor took seats on either side of the bed. They sat for a moment, motionless. Then, wordlessly, Wasserman took her hand.

  D’Agosta removed his wallet. Sliding out a picture, he held it in front of the woman’s face.

  “This is my daughter, Isabella,” said D’Agosta. “Two years old. Isn’t she beautiful?”

  He held the photo, patiently, until at last the woman’s eyes flickered toward it. The doctor frowned.

  “Do you have any children?” D’Agosta asked, replacing the photo. Mrs. Muñoz looked at him. There was a long silence.

  “Mrs. Muñoz,” D’Agosta said, “I know you’re in this country illegally.”

  The woman quickly turned away. The doctor shot D’Agosta a warning look.

  “I also know a lot of people have made you promises they haven’t kept. But I’m going to make you a promise that I swear on my daughter’s picture I will keep. If you help me, I’ll see to it that you get your green card.”

  The woman did not respond. D’Agosta took out another picture and held it up. “Mrs. Muñoz?”

  For a long moment, the woman remained motionless. Then her eyes strayed toward the picture. Something relaxed inside D’Agosta.

  “This is Pamela Wisher when she was two years old. The same age as my daughter.”

  Mrs. Muñoz took the picture. “An angel,” she whispered.

  “She was killed by the same people who attacked your subway train.” He spoke gently but rapidly. “Mrs. Muñoz, please help me to find these terrible people. I don’t want them to kill anyone else.”

  A tear trickled down Mrs. Muñoz’s face. Her lips twitched.

  “Ojos …”

  “I’m sorry?” D’Agosta said.

  “Eyes …”

  There was another pause while Mrs. Muñoz’s lips worked silently. “They came, silently … lizard’s eyes, devil’s eyes.” A sob escaped her.

  D’Agosta opened his mouth to speak, but a look from Wasserman restrained him.

  “Eyes…cuchillos de pedernal… faces like the devil …”

  “How so?”

  “Old faces, viejos …”

  She covered her face with her hands and let out a great groaning cry.

  Wasserman stood up, gesturing at D’Agosta. “That’s enough,” he said. “Out.”

  “But what did she—?”

  “Out now,” the doctor said.

  In the corridor, D’Agosta reached for his notebook, quickly spelling out the Spanish phrases as best he could.

  “What’s that?” Hayward asked, peering curiously around his shoulder.

  “Spanish,” said D’Agosta.

  Hayward frowned. “That isn’t like any Spanish I ever saw.”

  D’Agosta looked at her sharply. “Don’t tell me you habla Espanol on top of everything else.”

  Hayward looked at him, one eyebrow raised. “You can’t always roust in English. And just what is that crack supposed to mean?”

  D’Agosta shoved the notebook into her hand. “Just figure out what it says.”

  Hayward began examining it intently, moving her lips. After a few moments, she moved to the nurse’s station and picked up a phone.

  Wasserman came out, closing the door quietly behind him.

  “Lieutenant, that was … well, unorthodox, to say the least. But in the end I think it may prove beneficial. Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” D’Agosta replied. “Just get her on her feet again. There are a lot more questions I’ll need to ask her down the road.”

  Hayward had hung up the phone and was walking back toward them. “This is the best that Jorge and I could do,” she said, handing the notebook back.

  D’Agosta looked at the jottings, frowning. “Knives of flint?”

  Hayward shrugged. “Can’t even be sure it’s what she said. But it’s our best guess.”

  “Thanks,” D’Agosta said, thrusting the notebook into his pocket and walking away quickly. A moment later he stopped, as if recollecting something. “Doctor,” he said, “Captain Waxie will probably be here in the next hour or so.”

  A black look crossed Wasserman’s features.

  “But I assume Mrs. Muñoz is too exhausted to see anybody. Am I right? If the Captain gives you any trouble, refer him to me.”

  For the first time, Wasserman broke into a smile.

  38

  When Margo arrived at the Anthropology conference room around ten that morning, it was obvious that the meeting had already been underway for some time. The small conference table in the center of the lab was littered with coffee cups, napkins, half-eaten croissants, and breakfast wrappings. In addition to Frock, Waxie, and D’Agosta, Margo was surprised to see Chief Horlocker, the heavy braid on his collar and hat looking out of place among all the equipment. Resentment hung in the air like a heavy pall.

  “You expect us to believe that the killers are living in those Astor Tunnels of yours?” Waxie was saying to D’Agosta. At the sound of her entrance, he turned with a frown. “Glad you could make it,” he grumbled.

  Hearing this, Frock looked up, then rolled back to make room for her at the table, a relieved look on his face. “Margo! At last. Perhaps you can clear things up. Lieutenant D’Agosta here has been making some unusual claims about your discovery at Greg’s lab. He tells me you’ve been doing some, ah, additional research in my absence. If I didn’t know you as well as I do, my dear, I’d think that—”

  “Excuse me!” D’Agosta said loudly. In the abrupt silence, he looked around at Horlocker, Waxie, and Frock in turn.

  “I’d like Dr. Green to review her findings,” he said in a quieter tone.

  Margo took a seat at the table, surprised when Horlocker made no response. Something had happened, and, though she couldn’t be sure, it seemed obvious that it had to do with the subway massacre the night before. She considered apologizing for her lateness and explaining that she’d remained at her lab until three that morning, but decided against it. For all she knew, Jen, her lab assistant, was still at work down the hall.

  “Just a minute,” Waxie began. “I was saying that—-”

  Horlocker turned to him. “Waxie, shut up. Dr. Green, I think you’d better tell us exactly what you’ve been doing and what you’ve discovered.”

  Margo took a deep breath. “I don’t know what Lieutenant D’Agosta has told you already,” she began, “so I’ll be brief. You know that the badly deformed skeleton we found belongs to Gregory Kawakita, a former curator here at the Museum. He and I were both graduate assistants. After leaving the Museum, Greg apparently ran a series of clandestine laboratories, the last one being down in the West Side railyards. My examination of the site turned up evidence that, before his death, Greg was manufacturing a genetically engineered version of Liliceae mbwunensis.”

  “And that’s the plant the Museum Beast needed to survive?” Horlocker asked. Margo listened for a sarcastic edge to his voice, but could not detect one.

  “Yes,” she replied. “But I now believe that this plant was more than just a food source for the beast. If I’m right, the plant contains a reovirus that causes morphological change in any creature that ingests it.”

  “Come again?” Waxie said.

  “It causes gross physical alteration. Whittlesey, the leader of the expedition that sent the plants back to the Museum, must have ingested some himself—perhaps unwittingly, or perhaps against his will. We’ll never know the details. But it seems clear now that the Museum Beast was, in fact, Julian Whittlesey.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath from Frock. Nobody else spoke.

  “I know this is difficult to believe,” Margo said. “It certainly wasn’t the conclusion we came to after the beast was de
stroyed. We thought the creature was simply some evolutionary aberration that needed the plants to survive. We assumed that, when its own ecological niche was destroyed, it followed the only remaining plants back to the Museum. They’d been used as packing fibers for the artifacts that were crated up and shipped back to New York. Then later, when the beast couldn’t get the plants, it ate the nearest available substitute: the human hypothalamus, which contains many of the same hormones found in the plant.

  “But I now think we were wrong. The beast was a grossly malformed Whittlesey. I also think Kawakita stumbled on the true answer. He must have found a few specimens of the plant and begun altering them genetically. I guess he believed he’d been able to rid the plant of its negative effects.”

  “Tell them about the drug,” D’Agosta said.

  “Kawakita had been producing the plant in large quantities,” Margo said. “I believe that a rare designer drug—didn’t I hear you call it ‘glaze’?—is derived from it, though I can’t be sure. It probably has potent narcotic or hallucinatory properties in addition to its viral payload. Kawakita must have been selling it to a select group of users, probably to raise money for more research. But he was also testing the effectiveness of his work. Clearly, he ingested the plant himself at some point. That’s what accounts for the bizarre malformations to his skeletal structure.”

  “But if this drug, or plant, or whatever, has such terrible side effects, why would this Kawakita take it himself?” Horlocker asked.

  Margo frowned. “I don’t know,” she said. “He must have continued perfecting new strains. I assume he felt he’d bred out the negative elements of the drug. And he must have seen some beneficial aspect to it. I’m conducting tests on the plants I found in his laboratory. We’ve introduced them into various test animals, including white mice and some protozoans. My lab assistant, Jennifer Lake, is going over the results now.”

  “Why wasn’t I informed—?” Waxie began.

  D’Agosta rounded on him. “When you finally get around to checking your in box and listening to your messages, you’ll find that you were informed of every goddamn step.”

  Horlocker held up his hand. “Enough. Lieutenant, we all know that mistakes have been made. We’ll leave the recriminations for later.”

  D’Agosta sat back. Margo had never seen him so angry. It was almost as if he blamed everyone in the room—himself included—for the subway tragedy.

  “Right now, we’ve got an unbelievably serious situation on our hands,” Horlocker continued. “The mayor’s on my back, screaming for action. And now, with this massacre, the governor’s joined in.” He wiped his brow with a damp handkerchief. “All right. According to Dr. Green here, we’re dealing with a group of drug addicts, supplied by this scientist, Kawakita. Only now, Kawakita is dead. Maybe their supplies have run out, or maybe they’ve gone wild. They’re living deep underground, in these Astor Tunnels D’Agosta was describing, abandoned long ago because of flooding. And they’re going mad with need. When they can’t get the drug, they’re forced to eat the human brain. Just like the Mbwun beast. Hence, all the recent killings.” He looked around, glaring. “Supporting evidence?”

  “The Mbwun plants we found at Kawakita’s lab site,” Margo said.

  “The bulk of the killings parallel the route of the Astor Tunnels,” D’Agosta added. “Pendergast showed that.”

  “Circumstantial.” Waxie snorted.

  “How about testimony of countless homeless, all stating the Devil’s Attic has been colonized?” Margo said.

  “You’d trust a bunch of bums and drug addicts?” Waxie asked.

  “Why the hell would they lie?” Margo demanded. “And who’s in a better position to know the truth than they are?”

  “Very well!” The Chief raised his hand. “In the face of the evidence, we’re forced to agree. No other leads have panned out. And the powers that be in this city want immediate action. Not tomorrow, or the next day, but right now.”

  Frock cleared his throat quietly. It was the first sound he’d made in some time.

  “Professor?” Horlocker said.

  Frock rolled forward slowly. “Forgive my skepticism, but I find this a little too fantastic,” he began. “It all seems too much an extrapolation from the facts. Since I wasn’t involved in the most recent tests, I can’t speak with authority, of course.” He looked at Margo with mild reproof. “But the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”

  “And what pray tell is the simple explanation?” D’Agosta broke in.

  Frock moved his gaze to the Lieutenant. “I beg your pardon,” he said icily.

  Horlocker turned to D’Agosta. “Stow it, Vincent.”

  “Perhaps Kawakita was working with the Mbwun plant. And I see no reason to doubt Margo when she says that our own assumptions of eighteen months ago were a trifle hasty. But where is the evidence of a drug, or of the distribution of a drug?” Frock spread his hands.

  “Jesus, Frock, he had a stream of visitors out at his lab in Long Island City—”

  Frock turned another cool stare at D’Agosta. “I daresay you have visitors at your apartment in Queens”—the distaste in his voice was evident—“but that doesn’t mean you’re a drug peddler. Kawakita’s activities, however professionally reprehensible, do not have any bearing on what I think is probably a gang of youths on a homicidal rampage. Kawakita was a victim like the rest. I fail to see the connection.”

  “Then how do you explain Kawakita’s deformities?”

  “Very well, he was making this drug, and perhaps he was taking it. In deference to Margo, I’ll go even further and say—without any proof, of course—that perhaps this drug does cause certain physical changes in the user. But I have yet to see one iota of evidence that he was distributing it, or that his, ah, clients are responsible for these killings. And the idea that the Mbwun creature was once Julian Whittlesey … come now. It goes directly against evolutionary theory.”

  Your evolutionary theory, Margo thought.

  Horlocker passed a weary hand over his brow and pushed litter and papers away from a map that was lying across the table. “Your objections are noted, Dr. Frock. But it no longer matters exactly who these people are. We know what they do and we have a good idea where they live. All that’s left now is to take action.”

  D’Agosta shook his head. “I think it’s too soon. I know every minute counts, but we’re still in the dark about too many things. I was in the Museum of Natural History, remember. I saw the Mbwun creature. If these drug users have even a trace of that thing’s abilities …” He shrugged. “You saw the slides of Kawakita’s skeleton. I just don’t think we should move until we know what we’re dealing with. Pendergast went down for his own reconnaissance over forty-eight hours ago. I think we should wait until he returns.”

  Frock looked up in surprise, and Horlocker snorted. “Pendergast? I don’t like the man and I never liked his methods. He has no jurisdiction here. And frankly, if he went down there alone, that’s his lookout. He’s probably history by now. We’ve got the firepower to do whatever needs to be done.”

  Waxie nodded vigorously.

  D’Agosta looked dubious. “At the most, I’d propose some kind of containment effort until we get more information from Pendergast. Just give me twenty-four hours, sir.”

  “Containment effort,” Horlocker repeated sarcastically, looking around the room. “You can’t have it both ways, D’Agosta. Didn’t you hear me? The mayor is screaming for action. He doesn’t want containment. We’ve run out of time.” He turned to his assistant. “Get the mayor’s office on the phone. And locate Jack Masters.”

  “Personally,” Frock said, “I’m of the same opinion as D’Agosta. We shouldn’t be precipitous—”

  “The decision’s made, Frock,” Horlocker snapped, returning his attention to the map.

  Frock flushed a deep crimson. Then he spun his wheelchair away from the table and rolled toward the door. “I’m going to take a turn around the Mus
eum,” he said to nobody in particular. “I can see my usefulness here has ended.”

  Margo began to rise, but D’Agosta placed a restraining hand on her arm. She watched the door close with regret. Frock had been a visionary, the one person most instrumental in her own choice of careers. Yet now she could only feel pity for the great scientist who’d grown so set in his ways. How much less painful, she thought, if only he ‘d been allowed to enjoy his retirement in peace.

  39

  Pendergast stood on a small metal catwalk, watching the mass of sewage moving sluggishly four feet below him. It glowed faintly green and surreal in the artificial phosphor of the VisnyTek night-vision goggles. The smell of methane gas was dangerously strong, and every few minutes he reached inside his jacket for a whiff of pure oxygen from a hidden mouthpiece.

  The catwalk was bedecked with rotten strips of paper and other, less identifiable things that had caught in the metal slats during the last rainstorm. With every step, Pendergast’s feet sunk into puffy mounds of rust that coated the metal like fungus. He moved quickly, examining the slimy walls, looking for the thick metal door that signified the final descent to the Astor Tunnels. Every twenty steps, he removed a small canister from a pocket and sprayed two dots on the wall: markers for long-wavelength light. The dots, invisible to the human eye, glowed a ghostly white when the VisnyTeks were in infrared mode. This would help him to find his way back. Especially if—for whatever reason—he was in a hurry.

  Ahead, Pendergast could now make out the faint outlines of the metal door, plated with rivets and heavy with a crust of calcite and oxides. A massive lock hung from its faceplate, frozen by time. Pendergast dug into his jacket, removed a small metal tool, and flicked it on. The high whine of a diamond blade sang down the sewer line, and a stream of sparks flickered into the darkness. In seconds the lock fell onto the catwalk. Pendergast examined the rusted hinges, then positioned the small blade and cut through the three sets of door pins.