Bloodless

by Douglas Preston

  Another group of people came out, among them that cute DP, everyone toting camera equipment. The muscle-bound bastard who had pushed him in the restaurant loaded it in the back of a second van and slammed the doors. They all piled inside, laughing and talking.

  Wellstone’s curiosity went up a notch. They were going on a shoot. But at this time of night? Why the hurry? Nothing like a new murder had happened…at least, not that he knew of.

  Almost without thinking, he started the car. The vans went off in a screech. A moment later, Wellstone’s car eased away from the curb and began to trail them.

  49

  WELLSTONE FOLLOWED THE TWO vans through the narrow streets of Savannah, negotiating a snarling mass of detours and police barricades caused by some political rally, until at last all three vehicles were moving freely along Skidaway Road. He realized they must be heading to the cemetery, and sure enough, within minutes the vans took the turn onto Bonaventure Road and pulled into the parking lot at the cemetery welcome center. Wellstone drove past the stone gates, then parked on a nearby side street. He grabbed his Canon with its 200mm telephoto lens and walked back to the cemetery entrance. The vans had left the parking lot and were inside the cemetery now, heading slowly down one of the graveled lanes. They disappeared among the oaks, but Wellstone wasn’t concerned: he was certain they were heading to the same place as before—the site of the boy’s abduction.

  It was a pleasant evening in the cemetery, the dying light throwing long shadows over the silent tombs. But Wellstone was in no mood to enjoy the peace. This was his last chance. He was going to bird-dog those bastards, Betts and Moller, until he had proof of fraud.

  The cemetery was large, and it was close to half a mile to where he finally spotted the vans: parked where he expected at the far end of a lane, in the old part of the cemetery. He approached cautiously. As far as he could tell, there were no tourists or other visitors. The place was deserted. Normally it closed at sunset, but it looked like Betts had obtained permission to film past then.

  Moving closer, he saw there was no one in or near the vans. The crime-scene tape had been taken down from the area, and this corner of the cemetery had been restored to its former desuetude and abandonment. So where were they? He located the tomb of the angel with upraised arm, where the abduction had occurred—but there was no one there, either.

  He paused to listen. And now, in the gathering silence, he heard faint voices coming from the overgrown area beyond the angel. He moved closer. Crouching and peering from behind a tomb, he realized the group had penetrated the abandoned section of the cemetery. Keeping out of sight, he worked his way closer until he had a clear view of the crew. They were busily setting up lights and a generator near an old mausoleum, overgrown with vines, door partly open. The generator fired up. And there was Moller, the charlatan: suitcase open, black velvet spread over the ground, laying out his bogus equipment.

  Wellstone settled down behind a large tombstone, camera in hand, and waited with anticipation. Since they thought they were alone, they might feel freer to engage in open fakery. The 200mm f/2 telephoto lens on his Canon R5 would be able to capture almost anything, even in low light. And there was always the chance they might have some other plan in mind that would, even temporarily, leave Moller’s camera exposed. If he had the chance, this time he’d just take the damn thing and run—later he could work out any necessary excuses.

  The golden light disappeared from the upper tree branches and the cemetery filled with twilight. Now they began filming. It was obviously just B-roll at first, establishing shots among the gravestones. Moller was still messing around with his equipment. Betts and the muscleman were pushing on the door of the mausoleum, trying to get it to open farther. He watched as they tapped on the hinges with hammers and tried to force it using a crowbar—a disgraceful violation of the privacy of the dead. Their faint curses echoed through the tombs. But the door refused to be forced.

  Having no success, the two of them went deeper into the abandoned area while the rest of the crew remained behind, shooting B-roll. Rising, camera in hand, Wellstone followed the pair at a cautious distance. He looped around, then drew closer as it became easier to stay hidden in the thick brush. Here the tombs were even older and unkempt, many listing or broken. Looming through the vegetation ahead, he could now see a semiruined mausoleum, incongruously large. As he crept closer, he saw that it was constructed in the Gothic style, surrounded by a wrought iron fence of spikes, gate open. The bronze door that once shut up the mausoleum lay on the ground, leaving a gaping rectangle of darkness in its place. The mausoleum had been neglected even by the standards of this decayed region of the cemetery: its granite construction was cracked, streaked with damp and covered with splotches of lichen. Ivy climbed up its face. High on either side, the mausoleum had windows that, instead of glass, were covered by a grillwork of bronze. Marble urns had once decorated the pediments on either side of the door, but they had fallen and were scattered about the ground in pieces.

  Wellstone watched as Betts and the muscleman ducked through the hanging vines and went inside the mausoleum. For a few minutes, he could see their flashlights flicking around. Then they came out, looking pleased, and began walking back to where the crew was filming. Wellstone followed at a distance.

  The B-roll shooting was apparently finished. He could hear Betts talking enthusiastically about the location they’d just found, giving orders to break everything down and move it to the new site.

  With remarkable efficiency, the crew disassembled and carried everything deeper into the cemetery, Betts leading the way. Reaching the old mausoleum, they fired up the generator and began setting up once again, hanging lights on tripods and shouting back and forth as twilight gave way to purple darkness. The lights snapped on, casting dramatic shadows. The muscleman set up two odd-looking machines on either side of the shooting area, obscured behind tombstones. Wellstone wondered what they were for—until they both began to spew fog. The mist drifted through the air in sheets and ribbons, looking remarkably realistic, and in the raking lights it blossomed like a lamp lit from within, creating an effect both spooky and dramatic.

  Wellstone took pictures of all of this, and a few short snippets of video as well, documenting the transformation of an ordinary, if creepy, abandoned cemetery into something out of a horror film. While this wasn’t yet proof of fraud, it certainly gave a sense of phony manipulation. So far, so good.

  And now the crew started setting up a shot with Moller. The DP issued a stream of orders about the lighting and fog machines, while Betts and Moller went over some scene they were about to shoot, the director showing the fraudster where to stand, where to walk, what to do.

  Now the scene was ready. Moller pulled out the silver dowsing wand. He began prowling the area as the cameras rolled, holding out the wand with shaky arms while the mists swirled about him. The wand seemed to pull him insistently toward the open door of the mausoleum as if possessed. “There is something evil here!” He could hear Moller’s expostulations. “Sehr teuflisch! Evil, evil! In the crypt!”

  Almost trembling with glee, Wellstone got the whole thing on video, making sure to show the lights, the fog machine, Betts’s hand directions, the orders of the DP. Although Moller made a show of remaining independent, it was nevertheless staged—all staged. He then set up his wooden camera and took some photos, no doubt fakes like the previous ones. At this point, Wellstone realized that he might not even need the camera’s SD cards: this footage would be sufficient to expose what a sham the whole thing was. This might be the very story he needed, dropped right in his lap. His excitement and interest mounted when he realized that they were going to do a second take, and a third, shooting the same scene multiple times. If that wasn’t a demonstration of fraud, what could be?

  After the third take, Betts seemed satisfied. Instead of packing up, he ordered the crew around, setting up another shot. This one, it seemed, was going to take place inside the mausoleum. The DP and c
rew moved the lights near the tomb’s outside wall, high up on their tripods, so that they shone through the grillwork windows, illuminating the interior of the crypt.

  Wellstone shifted his position to get a better view. The lighting, coming through the grillwork, cast a patchwork of crazy shadows inside. Very effective. He took more photos and video clips while they set everything up.

  Now the second shoot began. Moller allowed his wand to lead him into the mausoleum. This was accompanied by a lot of jerking and trembling. Pausing inside the door, Moller proclaimed Evil! Evil! in his deep voice, the silver wand jumping in his grasp. They did four takes—but of course, in the hands of a good film editor, it would look seamless and convincing. That didn’t matter: Wellstone had the goods, the smoking gun. He was capturing a record of bogus paranormal sausage being made. This wouldn’t just be a cap to his book, he realized. This footage could expose, on television and in the lecture hall, just how these phonies worked. More than that: it could itself make a fine documentary about paranormal fraud.

  He wondered if Betts would appreciate that irony.

  Now they broke down the set a third time, moving their shoot deeper within the mausoleum. Unspooling power cables from the generator, they brought the lights inside. A fogger was moved up to the door, pumping mist into the yawning cavity. Night had fallen: a black night, the moon hidden behind clouds. A chill wind began to blow. Wellstone wondered how they were all going to fit into the little stone temple. But when the lights inside grew fainter, he realized with surprise that the mausoleum must have a second level, with a passageway going down to a larger space below. This must be why Betts had been so pleased: it was like a ready-made set for his sham production.

  When the entire crew was inside, Wellstone moved swiftly up through the trees, pressing himself against the rear wall of the mausoleum. Obviously, this was where the biggest fraud of all would take place: where Moller and his bogus equipment would film the fake vampire, or whatever other images he’d prepared for this evening’s work.

  Standing on tiptoe at one of the windows, looking in at an awkward angle, he began shooting video of what was going on inside.

  50

  COLDMOON AWOKE FROM A nightmare involving large trees, toboggans, and lumberjacks in plaid work shirts chasing him with axes. A hand was gently shaking his shoulder. He came partially awake—Christ, he was tired—but was pleased to find it had been only a dream. The figure silhouetted in golden light, gently prodding him with soft fingers, was extremely attractive. Perhaps he could dive from one kind of dream into a very different one.

  But the silhouette wouldn’t let him alone, and with a groan and a mumbled curse, Coldmoon became fully conscious. In the gloom, he could see that the sylphlike figure waking him was Constance Greene.

  “Yes?” he croaked.

  “Pendergast needs you,” came the contralto voice. “Both of us.”

  Coldmoon checked his watch. “Now? I just finished two cross-country flights for the guy.”

  “Get dressed, please, and come down to the hotel’s library.”

  Coldmoon sat up, then flopped back down again with another groan.

  “If you’re there in five minutes,” Constance said, “and sufficiently presentable, I’ll get you some pejúta sápa.”

  “The way I like it prepared?”

  “For God’s sake, no.” She turned with a rustle of expensive silk and left his room.

  It was ten minutes later that Coldmoon—now dressed and fully awake—stepped into the library of the Chandler House: a narrow room overlooking Taylor Street. The room held wall-to-wall bookcases, with a few tables and several comfortable reading chairs. In one corner sat Pendergast and Constance. They had pulled a sofa and two armchairs away from the other furniture in a kind of defensive posture. Coldmoon walked over and sat down. As promised, there was a large pitcher of coffee and some cups with saucers. Without speaking, Coldmoon poured himself a cup and sipped suspiciously. He put the cup down on the table between them and sat back.

  Pendergast, so drawn and pale he might have been a candidate for Moller’s monster-diagnosing equipment, sat across from him. “I’m going to tell you both a story,” he said.

  “Oh, goody,” Coldmoon replied sarcastically. He had looked up D. B. Cooper on Wikipedia and been as entertained as Pendergast promised, yet he’d been unable to figure out how that celebrated cold case could be linked to the current killings—although he could see a number of possible links to their trip west.

  “Both of you know different pieces of the story,” Pendergast went on. “Neither of you knows it all. Our trip west answered half of it. The other half belongs to Constance. I tasked her with a most difficult undertaking…and she has followed through.”

  “What was that?” Coldmoon asked.

  “Asking the proprietress of the Chandler House four questions.”

  Four questions? Coldmoon glanced at Constance. She was sitting on the sofa between Pendergast and Coldmoon, utterly still and—apparently—emotionless. Coldmoon knew from personal experience this might be a bad sign, and he discreetly edged his chair away from the couch.

  “I’ll tell the story, as reconstructed with the help of Constance, as efficiently as possible. Time is of the essence.” Pendergast drew in a breath. “A little over fifty years ago, a young woman named Alicia Rime was employed as an airframe designer at the Boeing aerospace complex in Portland, Oregon. She was a brilliant young engineer, and she had been moved from the company’s headquarters in Chicago to the advanced operations facility. This was a secret location, not unlike Lockheed’s ‘Skunk Works,’ where employees worked to develop new technologies. Beginning in 1970, important steps were being taken toward fly-by-wire systems, as well as novel approaches for improving safety. At that time, Rime was the only female engineer at Boeing.

  “Soon, Rime began to learn that the more senior engineers in her department were poaching her work and taking credit for it themselves. Given her lack of seniority, and—alas—the fact that she was a woman, management circled the wagons and turned a blind eye to what was happening. And it wasn’t long before Rime’s excitement turned to disenchantment, then bitterness.

  “At this point, she gravitated toward an older engineer working in advanced operations. He had been a rising star in earlier years, but—as his ideas became perceived as more and more impracticable, even bizarre—his work was disparaged or, worse, dismissed. By the time Rime met him, such treatment had driven him to work alone, not sharing with the others. He was a widower, with no family to speak of. He’d been laughed at one too many times, and now he kept his projects secret, locked in a safe when he went home for the night.

  “Not surprisingly, the old man and Alicia Rime, the two outcasts of the department, forged a friendship. Eventually the older man began to share the secret of his work with her.

  “His idea had been to develop hardware and software that could model human behavior. He took a dazzlingly unconventional approach, using a computer language of his own invention, far more advanced than LISP. His goal was to predict pilot behavior using AI. If a computer could predict, even a minute in advance, what a pilot might do given a set of circumstances, it would be an extremely powerful tool in avoiding pilot error.

  “Alas, his efforts to create predictive AI ended in failure. The world is ruled by chaos, and human behavior is too complex.”

  Pendergast allowed this observation to settle over the small group before he continued.

  “But this scientist was a true genius, and he was not yet ready to admit defeat. After abandoning AI as a tool, he hit upon another idea—an insight based on the Schrödinger’s cat effect and the many-worlds theory of the physicist Hugh Everett, proposed in 1957.”

  “What the hell does a cat have to do with anything?” Coldmoon interrupted.

  “Never mind the cat. The many-worlds theory is a phenomenon of quantum mechanics, which says that all possible worlds are physically realized in countless universes parallel to o
ur own.”

  “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m not surprised. The important thing is that our elderly engineer succeeded in building a device that employed quantum effects to predict the future.”

  Coldmoon shook his head. “I’m going back to bed,” he announced.

  “Don’t be so hasty; I think you’ll find the rest of the story worth your time. That engineer’s machine used quantum mechanics in a very original, very practical way. Most physicists spend their time speculating and theorizing; he actually built something.”

  “That can see into the future,” Coldmoon said. “Of course he did.”

  “Modicae fidei!” Constance said, annoyed. “Be quiet, and maybe you’ll learn something.”

  A short, awkward silence ensued. Chastened, Coldmoon poured himself another cup of coffee and, as requested, kept his thoughts to himself.

  Pendergast tented his fingers. “The many-worlds interpretation states that we live within a multiverse: a place in which all possible outcomes of any action are occurring simultaneously. Schrödinger’s cat is alive in one world and dead in another.”

  “There’s that cat again,” said Coldmoon.

  “Or to be more prosaic: In our own universe, we are here speaking calmly among ourselves. In a different but parallel universe, you got up and did indeed go back to bed. In yet another, the ceiling is rotten and has just fallen down on our heads. And so on, ad infinitum.”