Fever Dream p-10

by Douglas Preston;Lincoln Child

  34

  St. Francisville, Louisiana

  PAINSTAKINGLY, MORRIS BLACKLETTER, PHD, FITTED the servo mechanism to the rear wheel assembly. He checked it, checked it again, then plugged the USB cable from the guidance control unit into his laptop and ran a diagnostic. It checked out. He wrote a simple four-line program, downloaded it into the control unit, and gave the execute command. The little robot--a rather ugly confabulation of processors, motors, and sensory inputs, set atop fat rubber wheels--engaged its forward motor, rolled across the floor for exactly five seconds, then stopped abruptly.

  Blackletter felt a flush of triumph all out of proportion with the achievement. Throughout his vacation--staring at English cathedrals, sitting in dimly lit pubs--he'd been anticipating this moment.

  Years ago, Blackletter had read a study explaining how retired people frequently acquired interests diametrically different from the work that had occupied their professional lives. That, he thought ruefully, was certainly the case with him. All those years in the health profession--first at Doctors With Wings, later at a succession of pharmaceutical and medical research labs--he had been obsessed with the human body: how it worked, what made it fail, how to keep it healthy or cure its ills. And now here he was, toying with robots--the antithesis of flesh and blood. When they burned out, you just threw them away and ordered another. No grief, no death.

  How different it was from those years he'd spent in Third World countries, parched and mosquito-bitten, threatened by guerrilla fighters and harassed by corruption, sometimes sick himself--working to contain epidemics. He had saved hundreds, maybe thousands of lives, but so many, many others had died. It hadn't been his fault, of course. But then there was the other thing, the thing he tried never to think about. That, more than anything, was what caused him to flee flesh and blood for the contentment of plastic and silicon...

  Here he was, thinking about it again. He shook his head as if to rid himself of the terrible guilt of it and glanced back at the robot. Slowly, the guilt drained away--what was done was done, and his motives had always been pure. A smile settled over his features. He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

  The robot's audio sensor took note, and it swiveled toward the sound. "Robo want a cracker," it croaked in a metallic disembodied voice.

  Feeling absurdly pleased, Blackletter rose to his feet and walked from his den to the kitchen for one last cup of tea before calling it a night. He suddenly paused, hand on the teapot, listening.

  There it came again: the creak of a board.

  Slowly, Blackletter set the pot back on the counter. Was it the wind? But no: it was a quiet, windless night.

  Somebody in the street, perhaps? The sound was too close, too clear for that.

  Perhaps it was all in his mind. Minds had a tendency to do that, he knew: the absence of real auditory stimuli frequently encouraged the brain to supply its own. He'd been puttering about in his den for hours, and...

  Another creak. This time Blackletter knew for certain: the sound had come from inside the house.

  "Who's that?" he called out. The creaking stopped.

  Was it a burglar? Unlikely. There were far larger, grander houses on the street than his.

  Who, then?

  The creaking resumed, regular, deliberate. And now he could tell where it was coming from: the living room at the front of the house.

  He glanced toward the phone, saw the empty cradle. Damn these cordless phones. Where had he left the handset? Of course--it was in the den, on the table by the laptop.

  He walked quickly back into the room, plucked the telephone from the wooden surface. Then he froze. Somebody was in the hall just beyond. A tall man in a long trench coat stepped forward from the darkness.

  "What are you doing in my house?" he demanded. "What do you want?"

  The intruder did not speak. Instead, he pulled back his coat, revealing the twin barrels of a sawed-off shotgun. The butt-stock was of a heavy black wood, carved in paisley rosettes, and the bluing of the barrels gleamed faintly in the light of the den.

  Blackletter found that he was unable to take his eyes from the weapon. He took a step back. "Wait," he began. "Don't. You're making a mistake... we can talk..."

  The weapon swiveled upward. There was a tremendous boom-boom as both barrels fired almost simultaneously. Blackletter was flung backward, impacting the far wall with a shattering crash, then slumping to the ground. Framed pictures and knickknacks rained down around him from little wooden shelves.

  The front door was already closing.

  The robot, its audio sensors alerted, swiveled toward the motionless form of its builder. "Robo want a cracker," it said, the tinny voice muffled by the blood now coating its miniature speaker. "Robo want a cracker."

  35

  Port Allen, Louisiana

  THE FOLLOWING DAY WAS AS DARK AND RAINY as the previous day had been pleasant. That was just fine with D'Agosta--there would be fewer customers to deal with at the doughnut shop. He had deep misgivings about this whole scheme of Pendergast's.

  Pendergast, behind the wheel of the Rolls, took the Port Allen exit from I-10, the wheels hissing on the wet asphalt. D'Agosta sat beside him, turning the pages of the New Orleans Star-Picayune. "I don't see why we couldn't do this at night," he said.

  "The establishment has a burglar alarm. And the noise would be more apparent."

  "You better do the talking. I have a feeling my Queens accent wouldn't go down well in these parts."

  "An excellent point, Vincent."

  D'Agosta noticed Pendergast glancing once again in the rearview mirror. "We got company?" he asked.

  Pendergast merely smiled in return. Rather than his habitual black suit, he was wearing a plaid work shirt and denims. Instead of resembling an undertaker, he now looked like a gravedigger.

  D'Agosta turned another page, paused at an article headlined Retired Scientist Murdered in Home. "Hey, Pendergast," he said after scanning the opening paragraphs. "Look at this: that guy you wanted to talk to, Morris Blackletter, Helen's old boss, was just found murdered in his house."

  "Murdered? How?"

  "Shotgunned."

  "Do the police suspect a robbery gone wrong?"

  "The article doesn't say."

  "He must have just returned from his vacation. A great pity we didn't get to him earlier--he could have been rather useful."

  "Somebody else got to him first. And I can guess who that somebody was." D'Agosta shook his head. "Maybe we should go back to Florida and sweat Blast."

  Pendergast turned onto Court Street, heading for downtown and the river. "Perhaps. But I find Blast's motive to be obscure."

  "Not at all. Helen might have told Blackletter about Blast threatening her." D'Agosta folded the paper, shoved it between the seat and the center pedestal. "We talk to Blast, and the following night Blackletter is killed. You're the one who doesn't buy coincidences."

  Pendergast looked thoughtful. But instead of replying, he turned off Court Street and nosed the Rolls into a parking lot a block short of their destination. They stepped out into the drizzle, and Pendergast opened the trunk. He passed D'Agosta a yellow construction helmet and a large canvas workbag. He took out another helmet, which he fitted onto his head. Lastly, he pulled out a heavy tool belt--from which dangled an assortment of flashlights, measuring tapes, wire cutters, and other equipment--and buckled it around his waist.

  "Shall we?" he said.

  Pappy's Donette Hole was quiet: two plump girls stood behind the counter while a lone customer ordered a dozen double-chocolate FatOnes. Pendergast waited until the customer paid and left, then stepped forward, construction belt jangling.

  "Manager around?" he said in a demanding voice, his southern accent sinking about five notches in refinement.

  One of the girls wordlessly turned and went into the back. A minute later, she returned with a middle-aged man. His thick forearms were coated in blond hair, and he was sweating despite the cool of the day.

/>   "Yeah?" he said, wiping flour onto an apron already heavy with grease and doughnut batter.

  "You're the manager?"

  "Yeah."

  Pendergast reached into the back pocket of his denims, brought out an ID billfold. "We're from the Buildings Department, Code Enforcement Division. My name's Addison and my partner here is Steele."

  The man scrutinized the ID Pendergast had doctored up the night before, then grunted. "So what do you want?"

  Pendergast put away the billfold and pulled out a few stapled sheets of official-looking paper. "Our office has been conducting an audit of the construction and permits records of buildings in the general vicinity, and we've found several of them--including yours--that have problems. Big problems."

  The man looked at the outstretched sheets, frowning. "What kind of problems?"

  "Irregularities in the permitting process. Structural issues."

  "That can't be," he said. "We get our inspections regular, just like the food and sanitation--"

  "We're not food inspectors," Pendergast interrupted sarcastically. "The records show this structure was built without the proper permits."

  "Hold on, now. We been here a dozen years--"

  "Just why do you think the audit was ordered?" Pendergast said, still waving the sheets of paper in the man's sweaty face. "There've been irregularities. Allegations of corruption."

  "Hey, I'm not the guy you need to talk to about that. The franchise office handles--"

  "You're the guy who's here now." Pendergast leaned forward. "We need to get down into that basement and see just how bad the situation is." Pendergast stuffed the papers back into the pocket of his shirt. "And I mean now."

  "You want to see the basement? Be my guest," the manager said, sweating profusely. "It ain't my fault if there's a problem. I just work here."

  "Very well. Let's get going."

  "Joanie here will take you down while Mary Kate attends to the customers--"

  "Oh, no," Pendergast interrupted again. "Oh, no, no, no. No customers. Not until we're done."

  "No customers?" the man repeated. "I'm trying to run a doughnut shop here."

  Pendergast bent closer now. "This is a dangerous, maybe life-threatening situation. Our analysis shows the building is unsound. You are required to close your doors to the public until we have completed our check of the foundation and the load-bearing members."

  "I don't know," the manager said, his frown deepening. "I'm gonna have to call the main office. We've never closed during business hours before, and my franchise contract states--"

  "You don't know? We aren't going to waste time while you call up every Tom, Dick, and Harry you've a mind to." Pendergast leaned in even closer. "Why, exactly, are you stalling? Do you know what would happen if the floor collapsed under a customer while he was eating a box of--" here Pendergast paused to glance at the menu posted above the counter, "--chocolate-banana double-cream glazed FatOnes?"

  Silently, the man shook his head.

  "You'd be charged. Personally. Criminal negligence. Manslaughter in the second degree. Maybe even... in the first degree."

  The manager took a step backward. He gulped for air, fresh sweat popping on his brow.

  Pendergast let a strained silence build. "Tell you what I'll do," he said with sudden magnanimity. "While you put up the CLOSED sign, Mr. Steele and I will make a quick visual inspection downstairs. If the situation is less grave than we've been led to believe, business can resume while we complete our site report."

  The man's face broke out in unexpected relief. He turned to his employees. "Mary Kate, we're closing up for a few minutes. Joanie, show these men to the basement."

  Pendergast and D'Agosta followed Joanie through the kitchen, past a pantry and restroom, to an unmarked door. Beyond, a steep concrete stairway led down into darkness. The girl switched on the light, revealing a graveyard of old equipment--professional stand mixers and industrial-strength deep-fat fryers, apparently all awaiting repair. The basement itself was clearly very old, with facing walls of undressed stone, roughly mortared. The other two walls were made of brick. These, though apparently even older, were much more carefully fitted together. A number of plastic garbage bins lined the floor by the stairway, and untidy heaps of tarps and plastic sheeting lay, apparently forgotten, in a corner.

  Pendergast turned. "Thank you, Joanie. We'll work alone. Please shut the door on your way out."

  The girl nodded and retreated up the stairs.

  Pendergast walked over to one of the brick walls. "Vincent," he said, resuming his usual voice, "unless I am much mistaken, about twelve feet beyond this lies another wall: that of Arne Torgensson's basement. And in between we should find a section of the old aqueduct, in which, perhaps, the good doctor has hidden something."

  D'Agosta dropped the tool sack on the ground with a thump. "I figure we got two minutes, tops, before that jackass upstairs calls his boss and the shit hits the fan."

  "You employ such colorful expressions," Pendergast murmured, examining the brick wall with his loupe and rapping on it with a ball-peen hammer. "However, I think I can buy us some more time."

  "Oh, yeah? How?"

  "I'm afraid I must inform our managerial friend that the situation is even more dire than we first thought. Not only must the shop be closed to customers--the workers themselves must vacate the premises until we complete our inspection."

  Pendergast's light tread up the stairs receded quickly into silence. D'Agosta waited in the cool, dry darkness. After a moment an irruption of noise sounded from above: a protest, raised voices. Almost as quickly as it started, the noise ceased. Pendergast reappeared on the landing. Carefully closing and locking the door behind him, he descended the stairs and walked over to the bag of tools. Reaching into it, he pulled out a short-handled sledgehammer and handed it to D'Agosta.

  "Vincent," he said with a ghost of a smile, "I yield the floor to you."

  36

  AS D'AGOSTA HEFTED THE SLEDGEHAMMER, PENDERGAST bent close to the ancient wall, rapping first on one stone, then another, all the while listening intently. The light was dim, and D'Agosta had to squint to see. After a few moments, the FBI agent gave a low grunt of satisfaction and straightened up.

  "Here," he said, pointing to a brick near the middle of the wall.

  D'Agosta came over, gave the sledgehammer a practice swing like a batter on deck.

  "I've bought us five minutes," Pendergast said. "Ten at most. By then our managerial friend will undoubtedly be back. And this time he may bring company."

  D'Agosta swung the sledgehammer at the wall. Though he missed the indicated spot by a few bricks, the iron impacted the wall with a blow that shivered its way through his hands and up his arms. A second blow struck truer, and a third. He set down the sledgehammer, wiped his hands on the back of his pants, got a better grip, and returned to work. Another dozen or so heavy blows and Pendergast gestured for him to stop. D'Agosta stepped back, panting.

  The agent glided up, waving aside a pall of cement dust. Playing a flashlight over the wall, he rapped on the bricks again, one after another. "They're coming loose. Keep at it, Vincent."

  D'Agosta stepped forward again and gave the wall another series of solid blows. With the last came a crumbling sound, and one of the bricks shattered. Pendergast darted forward again, cold chisel in one hand and hammer in the other. He felt briefly along the sagging wall, then raised the hammer and applied several carefully placed strikes to the surrounding matrix of mortar and ancient concrete. Several more bricks were jarred loose, and Pendergast pried away others with his hands. Dropping the chisel and hammer, he played his flashlight over the wall. A hole was now visible, roughly the size of a beach ball. Pendergast thrust his head through it, aiming his flashlight this way and that.

  "What do you see?" asked D'Agosta.

  In response, Pendergast stepped away. "A few more, if you please," he said, indicating the sledgehammer.

  This time, D'Agosta aimed his blows al
l around the edges of the ragged hole, concentrating on its upper edge. Bricks, chips, and old plaster rained down. At last, Pendergast once again gave the signal to stop. D'Agosta did so gladly, heaving with the effort.

  From beyond the closed door at the top of the stairwell came a noise. The manager was coming back into the building.

  Pendergast again approached the yawning hole in the wall, and D'Agosta crowded up behind. Through the billows of dust, the beams of their flashlights revealed a shallow space beyond the broken stones. It was a chamber perhaps twelve feet wide and four feet deep. Abruptly D'Agosta stopped breathing. His yellow beam had fallen on a flat wooden crate leaning against the far wall, reinforced on both sides by wooden struts. It was just about the size, D'Agosta thought, you'd expect a painting to be. There was nothing else visible through the pall of dust.

  The doorknob above them rattled. "Hey!" came the voice of the manager. It had regained much of its original aggressive character. "What the heck are you doing down there?"

  Pendergast glanced around rapidly. "Vincent," he said, turning and directing his beam to the pile of tarps and plastic sheets in the far corner. "Hurry."

  Nothing more needed to be said. D'Agosta rushed over to the pile, rummaging through it for a tarp of sufficient size, while Pendergast ducked through the newly made hole in the wall.

  "I'm coming down," the manager said, rattling the door. "Open this door!"

  Pendergast dragged the crate from its hiding place. D'Agosta helped him maneuver it through the hole, and together they wrapped it in the plastic tarp.

  "I've called the franchise office in New Orleans," came the manager's voice. "You can't just come in here and shut down the shop! This is the first time anyone's heard of these so-called inspections you're doing--"

  D'Agosta grabbed one end of the crate, Pendergast the other, and they began ascending the stairs. D'Agosta could hear a key going into the lock. "Make way!" Pendergast bellowed, emerging from the cloud of dust into the dim basement light. The wooden box was in their arms, shrouded by the tarp. "Make way, now!"