Bloodless

by Douglas Preston

  “We appreciate your letting us in,” Pendergast said.

  “You mentioned you had a couple of questions,” Dr. Quincy said. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

  Pendergast gestured as if to say this was fair enough. “You offered medical assistance when we rang the door, I believe. Are you still practicing?”

  The man laughed. “Now, how should I answer that to an officer of the law?”

  “If I weren’t an officer of the law, and I came here with a caddis fly hook stuck in my thumb, what would you do?”

  The man considered this. “Well, seeing as only locals ever come by here, I’d extract the hook, stitch the thumb up if necessary, apply some Betadine, and—since my surgical license expired fifteen years ago—tell the patient to be more careful with his fly fishing.”

  He laughed, and Pendergast gave a slight smile in return. “That’s a shrewd answer, Doctor, and I didn’t hear a word of it. Besides, my interest lies more in your memories than it does in the present.”

  “Is that a fact?” said the old man. “And why would two FBI agents have any interest in my memories?”

  “Because we have a lot of threads, and we’re hoping you could help us braid them together. Now, I do know something of your background—please tell me if I’m mistaken about anything. Fifty years or so ago, you were enrolled at the University of Washington School of Medicine—the only medical school in the state at that time.”

  The man nodded silently.

  “Your family ran the farm here: raspberries, dairy products, apples, and turkeys. Your mother had died while you were in college and, with you as the only child, your father looked after the farm while you went to medical school. Correct so far?”

  “If it’s my biography you’re writing, add a heroic war record and a moon landing while you’re at it,” the old man said. But, Coldmoon noticed, the humor did not dispel the fact that when Pendergast began asking questions, the doctor had become guarded.

  “Heroic isn’t actually too far from the truth,” Pendergast continued. “Because when your father was injured in a farming accident and could no longer do the work, you came home. The farm was heavily mortgaged, and with your medical school bills on top of that, it was impossible for you to continue your studies.”

  Dr. Quincy said nothing.

  “You did all you could. But your father’s injury meant that you had to give up medicine to manage the farm.” Pendergast paused. “Everything still accurate?”

  “You’re telling more than you’re asking,” the doctor said, “and that’s more than a ‘couple of questions’ already. Get to the point.”

  “What I’m curious about, Doctor, is how you went from such dire straits—dropping out of med school, managing the farm alone, trying to keep it all afloat—to finishing your medical degree and residency in orthopedic surgery, hiring someone to help around the farm, paying off the mortgage, and turning this place into a going enterprise for almost forty years, even while maintaining a successful surgical practice in Tacoma.”

  “You’re the biographer,” the doctor said. “I guess you’ll just have to figure it out.”

  “Biographers can’t work without sources. I can give you a few more specifics, if that will help. We’re not interested, precisely, in your good fortune. But we are interested in someone you were acquainted with many years ago. Someone who, like you, appreciated poetry. Someone whose initials are, or should I say were, A.R.”

  The old man abruptly twitched, as if administered a galvanic shock. Coldmoon could only admire how quickly he mastered it.

  “We’re not here to arrest you—or the woman in question. What I propose is a simple exchange of information. I imagine you can guess what I want to know. And I know you must be eager—despite yourself—to hear the information I can offer about A.R. in return.”

  The old man remained silent, but Coldmoon could see the wheels turning in his head.

  “Information,” the doctor finally repeated.

  “Precisely.”

  The doctor went silent again for several moments. Then: “What do you want to know, exactly, about this person?”

  “The more light you can shed, the better.”

  “I’m not going to do that,” Quincy said, his voice low and harsh. “I made a promise, and I won’t go back on it—no matter how many years have passed.”

  This time, it was Pendergast who remained silent.

  Finally, the doctor shifted in his chair. “This person you mention. Is she…still alive?”

  Pendergast bowed his head in assent.

  Coldmoon could see a succession of conflicting emotions cross the doctor’s face before he again mastered himself.

  “And where might she be?”

  At this, Pendergast smiled. “How about that exchange of information?”

  After a long silence, the doctor said: “I made a promise.”

  Pendergast rose. “Well then, I fear we have nothing more to speak about. Agent Coldmoon? Let us go.”

  “Hold on!”

  Pendergast paused and turned. In a softer, kinder voice, he said, “Doctor, I truly appreciate the promise you made. But we’re speaking of events that happened half a century ago. You—and the lady—are, quite frankly, nearing the close of life. If there’s any hope of your ever learning who she is now, or where she is—this is it.”

  The doctor said, “You first.”

  Pendergast gazed at him steadily, then said: “She owns a hotel in Savannah, Georgia. And she has no possession she treasures more than the book you gave her.”

  At this the doctor flushed and passed a trembling hand over his white hair.

  Pendergast quoted, “To me, you’ll always be ‘that great social nomad, who prowls on the confines of a docile, frightened order.’”

  The effect of this was even more profound. The doctor struggled to maintain his composure. “She showed it to you?”

  “Not intentionally.” Then, very gently, Pendergast said, “And now, Doctor, it’s your turn.”

  The doctor removed a cotton handkerchief, mopped his face and tucked it back into his pocket.

  “I found her by the side of the lake. She had had…a terrible fall.”

  “You saved her life?”

  He nodded. “I took her in, fixed her up, nursed her back to health.”

  “What kind of injury?”

  “A compound displaced fracture of the right femur.”

  “The lady still has a limp.”

  “I fixed her up as well as anyone could under the, ah, circumstances.”

  “You were in love with her?”

  Coming out of the blue, this question surprised Coldmoon almost as much as it did the doctor. But it had the desired effect; on the heels of a sustained assault, the old man’s defenses cracked under this unexpected blow. He sank back in his chair with an almost indistinct nod. “We loved each other. Very much.”

  “But she left. Why?”

  He shook his head.

  “Let me help you: She was in trouble, she was an outlaw, she had committed a serious crime. To protect you and herself, she had to leave, establish a new identity. And so she disappeared from your life.”

  He nodded.

  “What was her crime?”

  A long silence ensued. “She’d stolen something.”

  “It must have been quite valuable.”

  “I suppose. But the big crime was not stealing it, but how she stole it.”

  “What was it?”

  “Some sort of computer, or device, in a briefcase. She said it was going to make her fortune.”

  “What did it do?”

  “She never explained, except in veiled hints. Something about time.”

  “Time?”

  “She made an odd comment about the flow of time. That’s all I know.”

  “How did she steal this item?”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s the question I’m not going to answer—the one at the heart of my promise. If I told you, the FBI
would come down on both of us like a ton of bricks. We’d go to prison for sure.”

  Pendergast sighed. “In that case, I have nothing further to ask.” And he signaled to Coldmoon that it was time to leave.

  “Hold on!” the doctor said again as Pendergast prepared to rise. “You haven’t told me her new name.”

  Pendergast looked at him. “And you haven’t told me her old one.”

  The man frowned, sitting up again, pugnacity flaring in his rheumy eyes.

  “Now it’s your turn to go first,” said Pendergast.

  Quincy’s white knuckles gripped his chair. Coldmoon could see him struggling. “Alicia Rime,” he finally said.

  “Her name now is Felicity Winthrop Frost. The hotel she owns in Savannah is called the Chandler House. An excellent establishment. And she is a most formidable woman, if a bit frail—and quite lonely.”

  After a moment, Quincy nodded. “No doubt.”

  Pendergast rose, followed by Coldmoon. He began to turn toward the door. Then he stopped. “One other thing,” he said. “Is it possible she used this mysterious instrument you mentioned to pay off your mortgage and cover your medical school tuition?”

  “I’ve got no idea,” Quincy said. “I’ve said too much already. I think it’s time for you to leave—right now.”

  That was it. Coldmoon followed Pendergast out of the farmhouse, down the steps, and back to the waiting vehicle. And the whole time, Dr. Quincy stood on the steps in his long underwear, silent and motionless, a look of infinite sorrow on his lined face.

  44

  GANNON HEARD A VOICE raised in complaint, as she’d known she would eventually, from the end of the hall where Betts was reviewing the daily rushes. She already had a good idea of what he was going to say, but she’d learned it was better to let him mansplain “his” ideas to her rather than come up with them independently and try to sell them to him.

  “Gannon?” she heard. “Gannon! You around?”

  She headed down the hall and into the editing room. Moller was in the chair next to Betts, a dour presence.

  “Come in,” Betts said, gesturing. “Take a look.”

  She came in and stood behind them. On the computer screen was the last of the footage from the previous day.

  “This is great,” Betts said. “Love your angles. You really nailed it.”

  Gannon couldn’t help but blush. Normally, Betts was stingy with his compliments.

  “Moller, you look good, too. Right? I hope you’re happy.”

  Moller bowed his head in grave affirmation. He never looked happy, but that, Gannon realized, was part of his shtick.

  “But here’s the thing,” Betts went on. “We’ve got all this footage of Moller, the crazy mob scene, the press—all great stuff. But you know what we don’t have?”

  She knew perfectly well, but she said, “No.”

  “We don’t have creepy footage in a lonely cemetery. We need atmospherics. And we need to see Moller all alone, checking out some haunted place. We can’t get that in broad daylight with a big crowd around. You know what I mean?”

  “I agree.”

  “Good. Now look at this, here.” He pressed a button and some of Pavel’s Steadicam footage started rolling on the screen, showing the cops working the crime scene among unkempt tombs.

  He paused the video. “There. You see, behind them, back through all that overgrowth? I was there. You can just barely see it, but there’s more graves. And a mausoleum, with a door partway open. Hard to tell, but it looks like it’s coming off its hinges. Maybe we can get in, film inside.”

  “I see that.”

  “Good. That’s where we need to shoot. We’ll bring some lights with filters, a fog machine, do it up good. See if we can’t register some more evil, I mean real evil, like the vampire himself—if you get my drift.”

  Moller’s dour look deepened. “But that area of overgrown tombs is not where the young man was abducted. It is not where I registered a strong supernatural presence.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I mean, it does matter—but this is a cemetery, for Chrissakes. There’re ghosts all around, right? And we need to get some good B-roll in the abandoned cemetery, after dark. That’s the perfect spot to do it. Gannon here will get the fogger going, generate some mist. With low, raking lighting, it’s going to look super. Right, Gannon?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “What do you say, Gerhard?”

  “I am willing to try. When do you plan to make this excursion?”

  “When? As soon as the sun sets, of course.”

  45

  AS THEY DROVE AWAY from the farm and into the inky maze of mountains, Coldmoon turned to Pendergast. “That was interesting.”

  “What I found most curious was the injury,” said Pendergast.

  “Broken leg? Why is that?”

  “Think about it. What was she doing way out there, in the middle of nowhere, all alone, with a broken leg?”

  “Maybe she fell off a mountain.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not…” Pendergast slowed the car at a fork—again, unmarked—and after a moment chose the left-hand route. “What was your opinion of the fellow?”

  “A lost soul. Eighty-plus years old and the poor guy’s still pining for that woman, never gotten over her. She must’ve been quite the firecracker in her day.”

  They drove on in silence before turning onto Route 141—another backwoods road, but at least one that seemed more traveled. Half an hour later, they merged onto I-84 in the direction of Portland. Coldmoon felt himself relax at the wide expanse of highway ahead, and the dark forbidding mountains beginning to recede in the rearview mirror.

  “So,” Coldmoon said. “I’m still not clear how you found that guy, to be honest, or what it has to do with the murders.”

  “I explained as little as possible back in Savannah, because I wanted you to be a check on any assumptions or hasty conclusions I might have made. I knew that Frost had found her new identity in this region of Washington State—in the cemetery in Puyallup. Given that the book Constance examined appeared to be a parting gift from her lover, it seemed a safe assumption that she’d lived in the area—and that was when I realized Berry Patch was not just some private trysting spot, but a town. Or, given its minuscule population, what is known in Washington State as a ‘populated place.’”

  “I didn’t see any town at all.”

  “A scattering of houses and a post office. Population eighty-five.”

  “Sounds like something out of Li’l Abner,” Coldmoon said.

  “The small population was, for me at least, a blessing: there proved to be only one resident with the initials Z.Q.”

  “So. You think the old guy is going to look her up?”

  “I imagine a titanic struggle is going on in his mind about that very question.”

  “But that doesn’t really answer my basic question: how does this connect to the murders? You didn’t shed much light on that back in Savannah, either.”

  “Consider the following facts: Frost was the person most intimate with Ellerby; they had an altercation two days before he was murdered; she has refused to help the police; there is gossip in the hotel—admittedly absurd—about her being a vampire; she may not be as weak as she seems; the inscription in the book suggests she once committed a crime; and finally, there’s the fact that she assumed a stolen identity. While none of this is dispositive, my intuition tells me she must be connected to the murders in some way.”

  “And are you any closer to figuring that way out?”

  Pendergast said nothing.

  “So where to now? I see we’re not heading back to the airport.”

  “Just one more stop, my friend,” said Pendergast, putting on his turn signal and preparing to exit the freeway. “I promise you, we’ll soon be boarding our flight back to Atlanta, in time for a late dinner at our hotel.”

  They headed for the off-ramp to some little town on the outskirts of Portland called Corbett. “So what are
we doing here?” Coldmoon asked.

  “The postmaster who serviced Berry Patch in the early seventies has been dead for twenty years. His wife helped him until he retired. She then remarried, was widowed a second time, and now lives at the Riverview Retirement Home here.” He paused. “I’m confident that Berry Patch—like other secluded hamlets, Spoon River included—thrives, or at least thrived, on local gossip.”

  The Riverview Retirement Home was set high on a ridge, just off a switchback of Corbett Hill Road. From the outside, the place resembled an elementary school—Coldmoon had an extremely low opinion of “rest homes”—but it had a good view of the Columbia River, and inside it was neat and bright. Each resident, it seemed, had a private room. Faith Matheny, the twice-widowed assistant postmistress, was ninety years old and suffered from DLB—dementia with Lewy bodies—which usually presented (so Pendergast informed him) with slower memory loss than Alzheimer’s. The old woman claimed to remember nothing of interest after the day of her second marriage. But Pendergast was so charming, and so persuasive, that soon he had her telling so many tales of life in Berry Patch that Coldmoon had trouble keeping track of it all.

  The woman did recall Quincy with fondness. He was a fine, handsome young doctor, had a practice in Tacoma but returned most weekends to the farm. He was especially liked because every year, Quincy and his father, who raised turkeys on their farm, would donate birds for and preside over a grand Thanksgiving dinner for all eighty-five residents of Berry Patch, held in the Presbyterian church activities room. Then she frowned. Except that one year, when he didn’t show up. Very odd. People said it was because his father was sick in the hospital.

  And what year was that? Pendergast asked.

  Nineteen seventy-one, she remembered. She was sure, because that was the same year a storm pushed a tree down on the schoolhouse and the Dotsons’ mare drowned in Walupt Creek.