Two Graves p-12

by Douglas Preston

  Leaping over the case, she runs from the dining room. Another shot rings out and she suddenly feels the tug in her side, with a flowering of heat so scorching that the pain of it almost brings her to her knees.

  She half runs, half falls down the narrow staircase to the basement, tears past the heap of books, leaps onto the chair she had placed earlier, wriggles out the opening in the window. She hears the thud of footsteps overhead: the man is on the move again, but the tread slower, heavier, favoring one leg.

  She thrashes through the ailanthus trees to the rickety table pushed up against the eight-foot brick wall, scales it, kicks it away as she leaps over, landing in her friend Maggie’s backyard.

  Here she pauses. All is quiet. Still, she must keep moving. She enters the back patio and then Maggie’s kitchen, closing the door softly behind her and leaving the lights off.

  One AM: Maggie wouldn’t be back from work yet. She examines her side, bleeding profusely, and is relieved to find the round only grazed her skin.

  Quickly she moves through the dark, silent apartment to the front door. Then—carefully, very carefully—she cracks it and peers out. East End Avenue is quiet, a few cars passing by beneath the soft streetlights. She darts out, closes the door behind her, and scurries northward, scanning the avenue for taxis, her side hurting, shoulder aching under the weight of the knapsack. Not a cab in sight.

  And then it happens. Just like all the times before: the screeching of brakes, the slam of a door, the clatter of running feet.

  “Halt!” comes the harsh cry. “Hände hoch!”

  Another man is running toward her, gun in hand.

  With a muffled cry of frustration and despair, she ducks into the closest open doorway: an all-night delicatessen. Even at this late hour it’s full of people, standing at the order counter and helping themselves to the self-serve salad bar. She flies through, knocking down stacks of canned goods, overturning the salad bar and flinging the slippery contents to the ground—anything to slow the man’s advance. The deli erupts in cries of protest. She runs into the back kitchen, charges through an open doorway in the right wall, tears down a short corridor, and bursts into another kitchen, larger and dark: apparently, this second, adjoining building houses a more formal restaurant. She darts into the silent restaurant—past the tables set with white tablecloths, ready for the next day’s diners—unlocks the front door, and finds herself back on East End Avenue, fifty feet from where she started.

  She looks around wildly. Still no cabs. It will be only a matter of minutes, maybe seconds, until the Nazi reemerges. Sweeping the scene, her eye catches something in the greenery of Carl Schurz Park on the far side of the avenue: a brick wall, with a closed gate beside it, and—beyond—the yellow bulk of a large, Federal-style building.

  Gracie Mansion.

  Sprinting across the avenue, she clambers up the crosspieces of the gate and reaches the top of the brick wall. She knows the current mayor doesn’t live here, disdaining the mansion for his own ultra-luxurious apartment—but it will still be well guarded.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she sees the second Nazi emerge from the delicatessen. He catches sight of her, breaks into a run.

  Cursing her slowness, she slides down the far side of the wall and makes for the mansion. It is dark inside, with floodlights bathing the exterior. She runs toward a uniformed cop standing at one corner of the building.

  “Hey, Officer,” she says, trying to control her breathing, shifting her backpack to cover the bloody patch under her arm, “Can you tell me how to get to Times Square?”

  The cop stares at her like she’s a madwoman.

  She positions herself between the mansion and the policeman. “I got lost and I’m trying to find my way back to my hotel. Can you help me?”

  Behind the cop, she sees the second Nazi, peering over the brick wall, staring at them.

  The officer frowns at her. “Miss, do you have any idea where you are?”

  “Umm… Central Park?”

  The officer now looks convinced she’s high on drugs. “This is a restricted area. And you’re trespassing. I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.”

  “Okay, Officer.”

  She walks alongside the cop as he leads the way toward the front of the house. Glancing back, she sees that the Nazi has disappeared. Still, she now has to get away from the cop—she can’t risk having her name entered into the official record. She waits until they are near the mansion’s east front. The cop opens the gate with his key, escorting her toward his squad car. She drifts back, lagging. And then, abruptly, she breaks for the line of trees standing along the edge of the park.

  “Hey!” the cop shouts. “Come back here!”

  But she doesn’t come back. She runs, and runs, through the trees, the deserted streets, the dark avenues, runs until she thinks her heart will explode…

  Corrie awoke with a muffled cry. For a moment she was confused, disoriented, with no recollection of where she was. Then she saw the scuffed walls around her, saw the closed door directly in front of her, smelled the odor of old shit, and her memory came flooding back. She had fallen asleep in a stall in the ladies’ room of Penn Station. She had been dreaming again… that same hideous, awful, extended dream, the dream that was not a dream—because it had happened, exactly that way, two weeks earlier.

  She shook her head, trying to dispel the fog of fear. Two weeks had gone by. Nothing had happened. Surely she was safe.

  She stood up. Her knees protested the movement. Her butt was asleep from sitting on a toilet seat for six hours. At least the bullet graze had healed and her side was no longer sore. Exiting the stall, she washed her face and hands, brushed her teeth and combed her hair with the toiletries she’d purchased in a Duane Reade. She examined herself in the mirror. Two weeks on the street, and a bit of art, had turned her into a filthy, homeless drug addict, for sure.

  It was six PM, and Penn Station was bustling—exactly as she’d hoped. For the last two weeks, she had never moved except as part of a crowd. Her eyes roved everywhere, checking for anyone who might be shadowing her, on the alert in particular for that cruel face with the smoked glasses. She had become a street person, hiding in subway stations and churches, sleeping on park benches and highway underpasses, eating Big Macs retrieved from the Dumpster behind McDonald’s after closing time. It was clear enough that she had stumbled across some kind of powerful, organized Nazi group or conspiracy. That was the only explanation for the safe house, for all the apparatus and paperwork—and for the dogged determination with which the men had chased her. They knew she had stolen papers.

  Maybe she was overly paranoid, but it seemed likely they would go to any lengths to find and kill her.

  She could have gone to the police. But that would have required an explanation of her B&E: a felony that would have ended her career in law enforcement before it even began. And they might not believe her, or the Nazis might have split. Who would believe that Nazis were operating out of a house in twenty-first-century Manhattan?

  She had tried to reach Pendergast several times, with no luck. The mansion on Riverside was shut up tight. As she readjusted the now-familiar weight of the knapsack on her shoulder, she reminded herself how important it was to get in touch with him. The papers were important, she felt sure, although having no German of her own she could not be certain.

  She’d kept discreet watch on her own apartment building several times and seen no signs of suspicious activity. She was confident they hadn’t found out who she was.

  But it wasn’t over. One way or another, she had to get these papers into Pendergast’s hands, tell him about the house. The Dakota apartment would be her next stop.

  She made her way down to the Eighth Avenue subway. The station was packed, and a train was just arriving. She hung back, at the far end of the platform, waiting for the train to disgorge its passengers and take on the hordes. She waited longer still, until the train had left the station and the exiting riders had depar
ted, for the surface or for the commuter trains to Long Island and New Jersey. For a few moments, the station was empty. Glancing around one final time, she sat down on the edge of the platform, lowered herself carefully onto the track bed, and then—walking in the path of the quickly dwindling train—vanished into the darkness of the tunnel.

  3

  LONG AGO, DETECTIVE LIEUTENANT VINCENT D’AGOSTA had learned to be late to any appointment at the M.E. building on East Twenty-Sixth Street. He had found out the hard way that there were distinct disadvantages to being early, most of which involved arriving while an autopsy was still ongoing and thus being compelled to witnesses the final stages, which were inevitably the worst. They’d told him he would eventually get used to it.

  He hadn’t.

  This one, he knew, would be more challenging than most. A young IT consultant down from Boston on a business trip, butchered and dismembered in a New York luxury hotel, security feeds showing a killer who looked like a model, with a victim who was equally attractive. The nature of the crime—which had all the hallmarks of a random killing for pleasure, perhaps involving a libidinous component—guaranteed strong public interest. Even the Times had run a story.

  At a certain level, while he hated to admit it to himself, he was not displeased to be here. The zone captain had assigned the case to him, making him squad commander. It was his crime, his baby.

  He passed through the doors containing the famous phrase, TACEAT COLLOQUIA. EFFUGIAT RISUS. HIC LOCUS EST UBI MORS GAUDET SUCCURRERE VITAE. “Let conversation cease. Let laughter flee. This is the place where death delights to help the living.” And this made him think, with some satisfaction, how well things were going in his own life. His heart injury was just about fully healed, his relationship with Hayward was on track, his ex-wife was out of the picture, he was in regular touch with his son, and his unreliable employment history and disciplinary letters were now firmly in the past. The only unsettled issue was Pendergast and the man’s pursuit of his kidnapped wife. But if anyone could take care of himself, it was the FBI agent.

  His mind returned to the case at hand. It was more than an opportunity; it marked a crossroads in his career, a new beginning. Perhaps even the first step on his path to captain.

  With this in mind he entered the main corridor of the M.E. building, flashed his shield at a nurse by way of greeting, signed in, and headed for Autopsy 113. He gowned up outside, then entered the room—to find that his timing had been perfect.

  The dismembered body lay on a gurney. On a second gurney next to it, arrayed in rows with military precision, were the missing pieces, large and small, that had been cut from the corpse, along with Tupperware containers holding the various organs removed by the pathologist in the course of the autopsy.

  The forensic pathologist was weighing the last one to be removed from the body cavity—the liver—and transferring it to its own container.

  Arrayed around the body were two people from his freshly assembled team: Barber, the precinct-assigned investigator; and the guy from latent prints with the funny name he couldn’t recall. Barber was in fine form, his usual cheerful self, his baby-brown eyes taking in everything. The guy from latents—what the hell was his name?—had the face of a man with big news. It irritated D’Agosta that neither looked the slightest bit queasy. How did they do it?

  He tried to avoid dwelling on the details, keeping his eyes moving, not coming to rest on any particular item. Under the circumstances, he actually felt pretty good: that morning, to the annoyance of his girlfriend, Laura, he had turned down his favorite breakfast—challah bread French toast—along with orange juice and even coffee, satisfying himself with a tall glass of Italian mineral water.

  A murmur of greeting, nods. He didn’t recognize the gowned-up forensic pathologist, who was still reporting data into a headset. It was hard to see much of her, but he could tell she was young and strikingly good looking, with lustrous black hair pulled back—but very tense, brittle.

  “Doctor? I’m Lieutenant D’Agosta, squad commander,” he said to her by way of greeting.

  “Dr. Pizzetti,” she replied. “I’m the new forensic pathology resident.”

  Nice. Italian. A good omen. The “new” part explained her nervousness.

  “When you have a chance, could you fill me in, Dr. Pizzetti?” he asked.

  “Of course.” She began tidying up the corpse, dictating the last of her observations. It lay on the gurney like a loosely assembled human jigsaw puzzle, and she now straightened some of the pieces that had become displaced during the autopsy, returning the corpse to a semblance of human shape. She shifted some organs, fixed lids on a few still-open Tupperware containers. And then her assistant spoke to her in a low voice and handed her a long, evil-looking needle.

  D’Agosta felt himself go rigid. What was this? He hated needles.

  Pizzetti bent over the head. The cranium was already open, the brain removed. Wasn’t it over? What the hell was she doing?

  As he watched, she reached down, opened the corpse’s eye with her thumb, and inserted the needle.

  D’Agosta should have looked away quicker, but he didn’t, and the sight of the needle sliding into that bright blue staring eye tightened his stomach in the most unpleasant way. Usually they took samples of ocular fluid for toxicology tests at the beginning of the autopsy—not at the end.

  D’Agosta pretended to cough into his mask, still looking down and away.

  “We’re almost done, Lieutenant,” said Pizzetti. “We just needed one more tox sample. Didn’t get enough the first time.”

  “Right. Fine. No problem.”

  She ejected the needle into a medical waste bag and handed the syringe, filled with a yellowish orange fluid, to her assistant. Then she stepped back and glanced around the room. She peeled off her fouled gloves, tossed them into the red-bag waste, pulled down her mask, and unhooked her headset. Her assistant handed her a clipboard.

  She was tense. D’Agosta’s heart softened for her: young, a new resident, probably her first high-profile case. Worried about making a mistake. But from what he could see spread out in front of him, she’d done a fine piece of work.

  She began the briefing with the usual litany: height, weight, age, cause of death, distinguishing marks, old scars, health, morbidities, pathologies. Her voice was pleasant although tight. The latents guy was taking notes. D’Agosta preferred to listen and retain by memory; note taking often caused him to miss things.

  “Only one wound contributed to death: the one to the throat,” she said. “No tissue under the fingernails. Prelim tox tests all negative. No sign of struggle.”

  She went on with a meticulous description of the depth, angle, and anatomy of the single stab wound. This was an organized, intelligent killer, D’Agosta thought, as he heard how efficient the fatal wound had been in exsanguinating the body, silencing the victim immediately and causing her to bleed out very quickly, all with one thrust with a razor-sharp, double-bladed knife about four inches long.

  “Death,” she concluded, “occurred within thirty seconds. All the other cuts were made postmortem.”

  A pause.

  “The body was dismembered using a Stryker saw, perhaps one very much like the one beside me.” She pointed to a saw mounted on a rack next to the body. “The Stryker has a wedge-shaped blade that moves back and forth at high speed, driven by compressed air. It is specifically designed to cut through bone but to stop instantly when encountering soft tissue. It is also designed not to cause any spraying of bone or fluids as it cuts. The perpetrator’s use of it appears to be expert. Unusually expert.” She paused again.

  D’Agosta cleared his throat. The bolus in his stomach hadn’t gone away, but at least it wasn’t threatening to erupt. “So the perp might be an M.E. or orthopedic surgeon?” he asked.

  A long silence. “It’s not my place to speculate.”

  “I just want an off-the-cuff opinion, Doctor. Not a scientific conclusion. I won’t hold you to it. How
about it?” He tried to speak gently, so she wouldn’t feel threatened.

  Another hesitation. D’Agosta started to get a clearer idea of why she was so tense: she might be wondering if the murderer was a colleague. “It seems to me the person who did this had professional training.” It came out in a rush.

  “Thank you.”

  “The perpetrator also used surgical tools to cut the flesh down to the bone—the precision is remarkable—retractors to draw away the flesh—we documented the marks—and, as I said, used the Stryker to cut the bone. All the cuts were done very precisely, with no slips, no mistakes, much as a surgeon would in an amputation. Except, of course, the vessels weren’t tied off or cauterized.”

  She cleared her throat. “The body was dismembered symmetrically: one cut three inches below the knee, one three inches above, one two inches above the elbow and another two inches below. And then the ears, nose, lips, chin, and tongue were removed. All with surgical precision.”

  She indicated the body parts, laid out on the second gurney positioned next to the corpse. The ears, nose, lips, and other small bits and pieces had been washed and looked like waxwork fakes, or parts from a clown kit.

  D’Agosta felt the knot in his stomach tighten, a burning rise in his throat. Christ, even that glass of mineral water had been a mistake.

  “And then there was this.” Pizzetti turned and indicated an eight-by-ten print tacked to a corkboard, along with many others taken at the crime scene. D’Agosta had already seen this at the scene, but still he braced himself.