Blue Labyrinth

by Douglas Preston

  “What qualifications do you require of these visiting scientists?”

  Sandoval shrugged. “They have to have some sort of institutional affiliation and a cogent plan of research.”

  “No particular credentials?”

  “Nothing specific. A letter of introduction, a formal request on university letterhead, proof of university or medical school affiliation.”

  Pendergast idly adjusted his shirt cuffs. “It’s my understanding that, though he did it infrequently, Marsala did in fact work with a visiting scientist on a project some two months ago.”

  Sandoval nodded.

  “And he mentioned to you that the project was of particular interest to him?”

  “Er, yes.”

  “And what did he say about it?”

  “He sort of hinted the scientist might be able to help him out in some way.”

  “And Marsala worked with this scientist exclusively?”

  “Yes.”

  “In what possible way could the work of an external scientist benefit Mr. Marsala, who was admittedly very skilled at bone articulation but whose main duties were to oversee the maceration vats and the dermestid beetles?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he was planning to give Vic a junior authorship line in the paper he would publish.”

  “Why?”

  “For his help. Being a bone librarian isn’t all cut and dried. Sometimes you get unusual requests that aren’t all that specific, and you have to use your own specialized knowledge.”

  D’Agosta listened to this exchange with increasing mystification. He’d expected Pendergast to immerse himself in the forensic aspects of the case. But as usual, the FBI agent seemed to have gone off on a tangent with no apparent relation to the case at hand.

  “Mr. Sandoval, do you know which specimens this particular scientist asked to examine before he departed?”

  “No.”

  “Can you find out for us?”

  “Of course.”

  “Excellent.” Pendergast gestured toward the door. “In that case: after you, Mr. Sandoval.”

  They moved out of the storage room, through a maze of passageways, to a computer terminal in what looked like the main laboratory: a space full of tables and workstations, with several half-articulated skeletons laid out on trays of green baize.

  D’Agosta and Pendergast leaned over Sandoval as the technician, seated at a terminal, accessed the Museum’s Osteological and Anthropological databases. The lab fell silent save for Sandoval’s tapping of keys. Then there was the whisper of a printer and Sandoval grabbed a piece of paper from it. “It seems Marsala only checked out one specimen for the scientist,” he said. “Here’s the summary.”

  D’Agosta leaned in closer, reading the accession record aloud. “Date of most recent access: April twenty. Hottentot, male, approximately thirty-five years of age. Cape Colony, formerly Griqualand East. Condition: excellent. No disfiguring marks. Cause of death: dysentery, during the Seventh Frontier War. Date: 1889. Procured by N. Hutchins. AR: C-31234-rn.”

  “That is the original record, of course,” Sandoval said. “Hottentot is now considered derogatory. The correct term is Khoikhoi.”

  “This record says the body was sent to the Museum in 1889,” said Pendergast. “If memory serves, however, the Seventh Frontier War ended in the late 1840s.”

  Sandoval hemmed and hawed for a moment. “The body was probably disinterred before being sent to the Museum.”

  There was another silence in the lab.

  “It was common enough practice in the early days,” Sandoval added. “They dug up graves to get a desired specimen. Not anymore, of course.”

  Pendergast pointed to the accession number. “May we see the specimen, please?”

  Sandoval frowned. “Why?”

  “Humor me.”

  Yet another silence.

  Pendergast inclined his head. “I would simply like to familiarize myself with the processes involved in locating and retrieving a specimen.”

  “Very well. Follow me.”

  Scribbling the accession number on a slip of paper, Sandoval led them back out into the central hallway, and then even farther down its length, penetrating deep into the seemingly endless labyrinth of collections. It took a while, searching through old wooden cabinets with brass fixtures and rippled glass doors, to locate the specimen. At last Sandoval stopped before one cabinet in particular. The desired accession number, handwritten in faded copperplate, was affixed to a large tray on one of the upper shelves of the cabinet, tucked into a corner. Sandoval cross-checked the number and slid the tray off the shelf. He carried it back to the examination lab and laid it on a fresh section of green baize. He handed D’Agosta and Pendergast pairs of thin latex gloves. And then, donning a pair of gloves himself, he removed the top from the tray.

  Inside lay a jumble: ribs, vertebrae, countless other bones. An unusual odor wafted up: to D’Agosta it smelled of musk, old roots, and mothballs, with the faintest overlay of decay.

  “These bones are awfully clean for having been buried in the earth for forty years,” he said.

  “It used to be that skeletons received by the Museum were thoroughly cleaned,” Sandoval replied. “They didn’t realize back then that the dirt itself was a valuable part of the specimen and should be preserved.”

  Pendergast glanced into the tray for a minute. Then, reaching in, he carefully removed the skull, minus the jaw. He held it out in front of him—for all the world, D’Agosta thought, like Hamlet standing in the grave of Yorick.

  “Interesting,” he murmured. “Most interesting indeed. Thank you, Mr. Sandoval.” Then he returned the skull to the tray, nodded to the technician that the interview was concluded, and—removing his gloves—led D’Agosta back down the passageway toward the land of the living.

  The Executive Dining Room—or the EDR, as it was commonly known—was located on the second-to-top floor of One Police Plaza. It was where the police commissioner, the deputy commissioner, and other departmental princelings held court during the lunch hour. D’Agosta had been inside only once—for a celebratory luncheon the day he and two dozen others had made lieutenant—and while the room itself looked like a time capsule of cheesy early 1960s interior decor, the views of Lower Manhattan offered by the floor-to-ceiling windows were stunning.

  As he waited in the capacious anteroom outside the EDR, however, D’Agosta wasn’t thinking about the view. He was watching the faces filing out, looking for Glen Singleton. It was the third Wednesday of the month—the day when the chief lunched with all departmental captains—and he knew Singleton would be among them.

  All at once he spied the well-dressed, well-groomed form of Singleton. Quickly, D’Agosta threaded his way through the throng until he reached the captain’s side.

  “Vinnie.” Singleton looked surprised to see him.

  “I heard you wanted to see me,” D’Agosta said.

  “I did. You didn’t have to hunt me down, though. It could’ve waited.”

  D’Agosta had checked with Singleton’s secretary and learned the captain had a full afternoon. “No problem. What’s up?”

  They had been walking in the general direction of the elevator, but now Singleton stopped. “I read your report on the Marsala killing.”

  “Oh?”

  “Fine job, under the circumstances. I’ve decided to put Formosa in charge, and I’m giving you that Seventy-Third Street homicide instead. You know, the jogger who got her throat slashed fighting off a mugger. It looks like a solid case with several eyewitnesses and good forensics. You can handpick your men from the Museum case to transfer over.”

  This was basically what D’Agosta had expected to hear. It was also why he had tracked Singleton down to the Executive Dining Room—he wanted to catch the captain before things went too far. Formosa… he was one of the newest lieutenants on the force, still wet behind the ears.

  “If it’s just the same to you, sir,” he said, “I’d like to stay on the Museu
m case.”

  Singleton frowned. “But your report. It’s not a good case, really. The lack of hard evidence, lack of witnesses…”

  Over Singleton’s shoulder, D’Agosta saw his new bride, Laura Hayward, emerge from the Executive Dining Room, her lovely figure framed through the tall windows by the Woolworth Building. She saw him, smiled instinctively, began to come over, noticed he was talking to Singleton, and satisfied herself with a wink before heading to the elevator bank.

  D’Agosta looked back at Singleton. “I know it’s a heartbreaker, sir. But I’d like just another week with it.”

  Singleton stared at him curiously. “This reassignment isn’t a slap on the wrist, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m giving you a decent, solvable, high-profile case that will help your clearance.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that, Captain. I read about the jogger murder, I know it would be a hell of an assignment.”

  “Then why stay with the Marsala homicide?”

  The day before, he’d been ready—eager—to slough it off onto some other poor sap. “I’m not sure, sir,” he replied slowly. “Not exactly. It’s just that I hate walking away from a case. And sometimes you get a sixth sense, a hunch, that something’s about to break. You probably know the feeling yourself, Captain.”

  It was a hunch, D’Agosta realized, that happened to be named Pendergast.

  Singleton looked at him another moment—a long, appraising moment. Then the ghost of a smile appeared on his face and he nodded. “I do indeed,” he said. “And I’m a great believer in hunches. All right, Vinnie—you can stay on the case. I’ll give the jogger homicide to Clayton.”

  D’Agosta swallowed just a little painfully. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Good luck. Keep me informed.” And with another nod, Singleton turned away.

  As Pendergast entered the cluttered Museum office, Dr. Finisterre Paden quickly ushered him to the chair reserved for visitors.

  “Ah, Agent Pendergast. Please have a seat.” The diffident tone of his phone message two days earlier was gone. Today the man was all smiles. He seemed pleased with himself.

  Pendergast inclined his head. “Dr. Paden. I understand you have some new information for me?”

  “I do. I do, indeed.” The mineralogist rubbed his chubby hands together. “I must confess, Mr. Pendergast—you will keep this between ourselves, I trust?—to feeling a degree, the very slightest degree, of chagrin.” He unlocked a drawer, reached inside, took out a soft cloth, unwrapped it to reveal the stone, then gave it a brief, almost caressing touch.

  “Beautiful. How utterly beautiful.” The mineralogist seemed to recollect himself, and he passed the stone over to Pendergast. “In any case, since the stone was not immediately recognizable to me, or included in the obvious sources, I resorted to researching its chemical signature, refractive index, and other such avenues of attack. The fact is, I… ahem, not to put too fine a point on it… didn’t see the forest for the trees.”

  “I’m not quite sure I follow you, Dr. Paden.”

  “I should have been focusing on the appearance of the stone, rather than its chemical qualities. I told you from the start that your specimen was of a most unusual color, and that its spiderweb matrix is the most valuable of all. But you may recall I also told you that this deep-indigo turquoise is found in only three states. And that is true—save for one exception.”

  He reached over to his color laser printer, plucked a sheet from its bin, and handed it to Pendergast.

  The agent gave it a quick glance. The sheet appeared to contain an item from a jeweler’s catalog, or perhaps an auction listing. There were a few paragraphs of descriptive text, along with a photograph of a precious stone. While it was significantly smaller than the stone found in Alban’s stomach, in all other respects it appeared almost identical.

  “The only azure American turquoise found outside of those three states,” Paden said almost reverently. “And the only azure turquoise with a golden spiderweb matrix that I’ve ever encountered.”

  “Where did it come from?” Pendergast asked in a very low voice.

  “From an obscure mine in California, known as the Golden Spider. It’s a very old mine, played out over a hundred years ago, and it wasn’t in any of the obvious books or catalogs. Even so, the stone is so unusual I feel I should have recognized it. But the mine was small, you see, with a very low output—the estimate is that no more than fifty or sixty pounds of top-grade turquoise was mined from it. It was that obscurity—and the California location—that tripped me up.”

  “Where in California?” Pendergast asked, his voice even quieter.

  “On the edge of the Salton Sea, northeast of Anza-Borrego and south of Joshua Tree National Park. A most unusual location, especially from a mineralogical perspective, because the only—”

  Up until this point, Pendergast had been sitting motionless in the chair. Now, quite suddenly, he was in swift movement, rising and flitting out of the office, black suit jacket flapping, the printout clutched in one hand, a brief murmur of thanks floating back toward the startled curator.

  The Evidence and Property Storage Room of the NYPD’s Twenty-Sixth Precinct was not really a room in the conventional sense at all, but rather a rambling warren of nooks, cubbyholes, and niches, sealed off from the rest of the precinct basement by thick wire mesh. The building was old, and the basement smelled strongly of mold and niter. Lieutenant Peter Angler sometimes felt that, were they to institute a search, they would find behind some wall the bricked-up skeleton that had inspired Poe to write “The Cask of Amontillado.”

  He stood now, waiting, at the large window set into the wire mesh labeled EVIDENCE DEPOSIT. He could hear faint, invisible bangings and scrapings from the spaces beyond. Another minute, and Sergeant Mulvahill emerged from the dimness, a small evidence container held in both hands.

  “This is it, sir,” he said.

  Angler nodded, then walked a few steps down the corridor and entered the Report Writing Room. Closing the door behind him, he waited for Mulvahill to place the container in the pass-through locker set into the common wall. He signed the chit and sent it back through. Then he took the evidence container to the nearest table, sat down with the container before him, removed its top, and looked inside.

  Nothing.

  Actually, nothing was a slight exaggeration. There were some samples of Alban Pendergast’s clothing; a bit of dirt from the heel of one shoe, enclosed in a tiny ziplock bag. There were also several badly mangled rounds that had been pried out of car frames, but these were still being analyzed by ballistics.

  Yet the only real evidence—the piece of turquoise—was not there. Just a small, empty plastic container that had held it… until Pendergast checked it out.

  In his bones, Angler had known the stone would not be there. But he’d hoped against hope Pendergast would have returned it. Staring into the evidence container, he felt a slow burn coming on. Pendergast had promised to return it within twenty-four hours… which had lapsed two days before. Angler had been unable to reach the man; his numerous calls remained unreturned.

  But as upset as he was with Pendergast, Angler was even more upset with himself. The FBI agent had practically pleaded for the turquoise—at the autopsy of his own son, no less—and in a moment of weakness, against his better judgment, Angler had relented. And the result? Pendergast had betrayed his trust.

  What the hell was he doing with the stone?

  A faint blur of black registered in the corner of his vision, and Angler turned to see Pendergast himself—as if conjured into life by his own thoughts—standing in the doorway of the Report Writing Room. Wordlessly, as Angler watched, the FBI agent came forward, reached into his pocket, and handed him the turquoise.

  Angler stared at it closely. It was the same piece—at least, it appeared to be. He opened the plastic container, put the deep blue stone in it, closed it again, and placed it in the evidence box. And then he looked back at Pendergast.

  “
What am I supposed to say about this?” he asked.

  Pendergast returned the stare with a pleasant expression. “I was hoping you might thank me.”

  “Thank you? You kept this forty-eight hours longer than I stipulated. You didn’t return my calls. Agent Pendergast, the chain-of-custody rules are in place for a reason, and this is highly unprofessional.”

  “I’m well aware of the chain-of-custody rules,” Pendergast said. “As are you—and you allowed me to borrow that stone in spite, not because, of them.”

  Angler took a deep breath. He prided himself on not losing his cool, and he’d be damned if this marble-like apparition dressed in black, this Sphinx, was going to goad him into it. “Tell me why you kept it as long as you did.”

  “I was trying to locate its source.”

  “And did you?”

  “The results are not yet conclusive.”

  Not yet conclusive. Answers didn’t come any vaguer than that. Angler paused a moment. Then he decided to try a different tack. “We’re taking a new direction in our hunt for your son’s killer,” he said.

  “Indeed?”

  “We’re going to track, as best we can, Alban’s movements in the days and weeks leading up to the murder.”

  Pendergast listened silently to this. And then, with a faint shrug, he turned to leave.

  Despite himself, Angler found his irritation spilling over. “That’s your reaction? A shrug?”

  “I’m rather in a hurry, Lieutenant. Again, you have my gratitude for indulging me with the turquoise. And now, if you don’t mind, I must be going.”

  Angler wasn’t done with him. He followed him toward the door. “I’d like to know what the hell is going on inside your head. How can you be so damned… uninterested? Don’t you want to know who killed your son?”

  But Pendergast had disappeared around the corner of the Report Writing Room. Angler stared at the empty doorway with narrowed eyes. He could hear Pendergast’s light, rapid footsteps echoing down the stone hallway toward the staircase that led up to the first floor. Finally—once the footsteps had retreated beyond audibility—he turned around, closed the evidence container, knocked on the common wall of the Evidence Storage Room to alert Mulvahill, then placed the container back in the pass-through locker.