Two Graves p-12

by Douglas Preston

  Felder turned to the next. A boy, sitting in the back of what appeared to be a brewer’s wagon. The street beneath was very uneven, full of rubble and broken stoneware. On the verso, somebody—probably Wintour—had scrawled WORTH & BAXTER STREETS, 1879.

  Several similar paintings followed. They were mostly studies of young men and women, framed by lower-class Manhattan backgrounds. A few showed men at work or children at play. Others were more formal portraits, either head-and-shoulders or full-length poses.

  “Wintour was never able to sell his work,” Goodbody said. “After his death, his family—despairing of disposing with them any other way—offered everything to the society. We couldn’t accept the sketches, studies, and albums—space considerations, you understand—but we took the paintings. He was, after all, a New York artist, if a minor one.”

  Felder was looking at a painting of two boys playing hoops before a storefront whose banner read COOPER’S GLUE. BY THE BARREL. AT HIS PRICES. He wasn’t surprised Wintour had not had more success selling his work: by and large, the paintings were rather mediocre. It wasn’t the settings, he thought, so much as a sort of artistic indifference, a lack of vitality in the faces and the poses.

  He turned to the next sheet—and was utterly transfixed.

  There, staring out at him, was Constance Greene. Or rather, Constance Greene as she would have looked at around six years of age. This time, Wintour had risen to the level of his subject matter. It was similar to the engraving Felder had seen in the newspaper, Guttersnipes at Play, only infinitely more life-like: the turn of the eyebrows, the faintly pouting lips, the drape of the hair, were unmistakable. Only the eyes were different. These eyes were quintessentially child-like: innocent, a little frightened perhaps. Not at all like the eyes that had looked into his own in the reading room at Mount Mercy that very morning.

  “Now, that one is quite nice,” Goodbody said. “Quite nice indeed. A candidate for display, perhaps?”

  Hurriedly, as if waking up from a trance, Felder turned the page. He didn’t want Goodbody to see how powerfully the portrait had affected him—and for some obscure reason he didn’t like the idea of it being put on public display, either.

  He moved rather quickly through the rest, but there were no more of Constance, and there was no lock of hair to be found.

  “Do you know where I might find more of his work, Mr. Goodbody?” he asked. “I’m particularly interested in the albums and sketches you mentioned.”

  “I’m afraid I have no idea. Our records indicate his family lived in Southport, Connecticut. Perhaps you might try there.”

  “I’ll do that.” Felder stood up, wobbling slightly and catching his balance on a shelf support. The portrait had thoroughly shaken him up. “Thank you so much for your time and effort.”

  Goodbody beamed. “The society is always happy to help art historians in their research. Ah: it’s just nine o’clock now. Come—let me escort you back upstairs.”

  17

  THE LIBRARY IN THE RIVERSIDE DRIVE MANSION WAS COLD and dark, the dead ashes of the fireplace heaped with unopened mail. A long table that normally stood in one corner had been dragged into the middle of the room and was now piled with printouts and photographs, some of which had fallen to the floor and been trodden on. An oaken panel at one end of the library stood open, exposing a flat-screen monitor on which an endless loop played, over and over, of a man standing in the lobby of a hotel.

  Pendergast moved restlessly around the room, like a caged animal, pausing sometimes to stare at the monitor, at other times stopping to lean over the disordered papers on the table, shuffling them about, examining one or another and then tossing it back into the heap with an impatient gesture. It was a strange collation of documents, mostly fluorescent photographs of gel electrophoresis plates, covered with shadowy lines and wavering squiggles of DNA molecules, like blurry photographs of the spirits of the dead. He picked up one, then another—held them side by side, his hands trembling—and then let both fall back into the heap.

  Straightening up, he walked across the library to a small wheeled sideboard covered with bottles, poured himself a glass of Amontillado, drank it down in one gulp, filled the glass again, the liquor slopping over the rim, and drank that down as well.

  Once again he began pacing. He wore no jacket—it lay slung across a chair. His tie was pulled down, his shirt rumpled. His pale blond hair was damp, and his face was covered with an unhealthy sheen of sweat.

  The clock on the mantelpiece chimed out midnight.

  Another turn brought him back before the bottle of Amontillado. He poured the glass, raised it to drink, but—after a moment’s hesitation—put it back down, untasted, with such force that it broke the stem, spilling the pale amber liquid.

  He ignored this and resumed pacing, pausing a moment before the fireplace, where he jabbed at the dead ashes with a poker, mixing the freshly strewn letters with the dead coals.

  Next, he stopped in front of the monitor and made a sustained effort to watch. Picking up the remote, he jabbed repeatedly at it with his spidery fingers, paging through the video frame by frame, peering intently at the man in the dark suit entering, standing, and leaving the lobby. He moved closer to the screen, his gaze lingering especially on the face of the man, his bearing, the way he walked, gauging his height and weight. Another impatient jab and a new video came on, this one of the same man—or was it?—striding confidently down the hallway of a different hotel lobby. Pendergast watched the two videos again and again, in slow, fast, and stop motion, zooming in, zooming out, in an endless loop of lobby-corridor-lobby-corridor, before at last tossing the remote onto a chair and moving back to the sideboard.

  He took up another delicate glass with a trembling hand, spilling the sherry as he poured it, and drank it down as well, seeking to dull the edge of withdrawal with the effects of alcohol, even though he knew he was only prolonging the agony.

  Another turn around the room, and then he stopped. A large, muscular figure had appeared in the door, holding a silver tray. His face, in shadow, was entirely unreadable.

  “What is it, Proctor?” Pendergast asked sharply.

  “If there’s nothing else, sir, I’m going to bed.”

  Proctor waited for instructions, but when Pendergast said nothing he vanished a little painfully into the gloom. As soon as he was gone Pendergast resumed his pacing, his obsessive watching and rewatching of the videos, his repeated checking of the documents on the table.

  In midstride, abruptly, he stopped and turned. “Proctor?” he said, not in a loud voice.

  The shape materialized again in the doorway. “Yes?”

  “On second thought, bring around the car, if you please.”

  “May I ask where we’re going?”

  “One Police Plaza.”

  When Vincent D’Agosta was immersed in a particularly complex case, he found the hours from midnight to two to be an ideal time to gather his thoughts, reorder his files, and—most important—set up the corkboard he used as a way to arrange evidence in space and time, to connect the dots of the case. The corkboard covered half a wall, and over the years had become a bit shabby looking, but it was still serviceable. Now it was one in the morning and D’Agosta was standing before it, affixing a stack of index cards, photographs, and Post-it notes to the board with pushpins and connecting pieces of string.

  “Ah, Lieutenant. One o’clock and still hard at work, I see.”

  D’Agosta turned to see Special Agent Conrad Gibbs leaning on the open door frame, a smile on his face. D’Agosta tried to tamp down the bubbling spring of irritation he felt at the interruption. “Good evening, Agent Gibbs.”

  They had established a formal, strictly professional relationship, which suited D’Agosta just fine.

  “May I?” Gibbs gestured himself an invitation to enter.

  D’Agosta couldn’t think of a way to say no. “Sure, come on in.”

  Gibbs strode in, hands behind his back. He nodded at the c
orkboard with his nose. “Now, that’s a blast from the past. We used to do that sort of thing years ago, when I was at Quantico. We’ve switched over to computers. In fact—” Gibbs smiled—“I’ve recently started mapping cases on my trusty iPad.” He tapped his leather briefcase.

  “I prefer the old-fashioned way, I guess,” said D’Agosta.

  Gibbs examined the corkboard. “Nice. Except I can’t read your handwriting all that well.”

  D’Agosta told himself Gibbs was just trying to be friendly. “The good sisters at Holy Cross never could beat good handwriting into me, I’m afraid.”

  “Too bad.” Gibbs didn’t seem to see any humor in this. Then he brightened. “I’m glad I found you here at this late hour. I just came up to drop something off.” He laid his briefcase on top of the mess on D’Agosta’s desk, flipped the latches, opened it, and took out a fat binder. Without a word, but with a face tinged with pride, he proffered it to D’Agosta.

  D’Agosta took it. The cover was emblazoned with the seals of the FBI and Behavioral Science Unit, and read:

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation

  Behavioral Science Unit

  and

  The National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime

  Behavioral Analysis—Unit 2

  THE HOTEL KILLER:

  A PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT

  Profile & Modus Operandi

  Threat Assessment Perspective

  “That was fast,” said D’Agosta, hefting the report. “So you’re calling him ‘the Hotel Killer’?”

  “You know how we are at the FBI,” said Gibbs with a little laugh. “Always got to have a name for everything. The papers have given him a variety of names—we picked the most suitable one.”

  D’Agosta wasn’t sure the hotel industry, or the mayor for that matter, was going to like the nickname, but he said nothing. He was going to get along with the FBI if it was the last thing he did.

  “We’re throwing our full resources at this case,” Gibbs said. “Because, as you’ll see from that assessment, we believe the Hotel Killer is just getting started and that the killings are likely to accelerate. On top of that, we’re dealing with an exceptionally sophisticated and organized perp. This case is big now, but it’s going to be huge if we don’t stop him.”

  “Is this my copy?”

  “It surely is. Happy reading.”

  As Gibbs turned to go, he almost collided with a gaunt, spare figure in black that had strangely materialized in the door frame.

  D’Agosta glanced up. Pendergast.

  He looked like a real, honest-to-God zombie. There was no other way to describe him: the clothes hanging on him like a death shroud, the eyes bleached almost to whiteness, the face hollow and cadaverous.

  “Excuse me,” said Gibbs distractedly, trying to pass. But instead of letting him go, Pendergast moved to block him while extending his hand, a thin but ghastly smile forming on his death-mask features.

  “Supervisory Agent in Charge Gibbs? I am Special Agent Pendergast.”

  Gibbs stopped dead, quickly gathering his wits. He took Pendergast’s hand. “Good to meet you, Agent Pendergast. Um, or have we already met?”

  “No, alas,” said Pendergast. His tone of voice alarmed D’Agosta, it was so unlike him.

  “Well, well,” said Gibbs. “And what brings you here?”

  Pendergast stepped into the office and silently pointed at the fat binder in D’Agosta’s hands.

  At this, Gibbs became confused. “You’re… assigned to the Hotel Killer case? I’m sorry, this is quite a surprise—no one informed me.”

  “No one informed you, Agent Gibbs, because I have not yet been assigned to the case. But I will be. Oh, yes: I most certainly will be.”

  Gibbs’s confusion seemed to deepen, and he seemed to struggle to maintain a professional demeanor at unwelcome news. “I see. And your department and area of expertise are… what, if I may ask?”

  Instead of answering, Pendergast laid a pseudo-friendly hand on Gibbs’s shoulder. “I can see, Agent Gibbs, that you and I are not only going to be colleagues working hand in glove, but we are also going to be good friends.”

  “I look forward to it,” said Gibbs uneasily.

  Pendergast patted Gibbs on the shoulder, and—D’Agosta thought he saw—gave it the slightest of pushes, as if propelling the man toward the door. “We shall see you tomorrow, Agent Gibbs?”

  “Yes,” said Gibbs. He had recovered his equanimity, but he was clearly put out, and his face was darkening. “Yes, we shall. And then I would be glad to exchange credentials with you, hear about your background, and properly liaise our two departments.”

  “We shall liaise until you are surfeited,” said Pendergast, turning his back on Gibbs in a gesture of dismissal. A moment later Gibbs left.

  “What the fuck?” said D’Agosta, his voice low. “You just made a big-time enemy… What’s gotten into you?”

  “What the fuck indeed,” said Pendergast, the foul word sounding unnatural in his mouth. “You asked me to be involved. I am involved.” He plucked the report from D’Agosta’s hands, flipped through it in the most cursory manner, and then casually dropped it into the trash can beside D’Agosta’s desk.

  “What is that charming word you are so fond of employing?” he asked. “Bullshit. Even without reading it, I can tell you that report is pure, unadulterated bullshit, still warm from the cloaca in which it formed.”

  “Um, why do you say that?”

  “Because I know who the killer is. My brother, Diogenes.”

  18

  THE MAN CALLING HIMSELF ALBAN LORIMER SAT BACK ON his haunches and wiped one leather-gloved hand across his forehead. He was breathing heavily—dejointing a body of this size with the relatively small tools at hand was hard work—but he was in good shape and he relished the exertion.

  This one had been the best yet. The hotel—the Royal Cheshire—was glorious indeed, with its sleek, beautifully understated lobby clad in whites and blacks. It had a very intimate feel, which made his job more difficult but at the same time more of a challenge. The hotel’s personality was a little harder to describe than the first two. A member of the peerage, perhaps, the product of a great many generations of breeding and refinement, with money and style but without the least need for vulgar display. This particular fifteenth-floor suite was tasty indeed.

  And the young woman—he’d made sure it was a young woman—had proven most satisfactory. She had struggled valiantly, even after he’d opened her throat with the penknife. In turn, he’d rewarded her efforts by taking particular care this time around, arranging the body parts into a likeness of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, with various organs arranged at the compass points of the circle and the pièce de résistance laid carefully on the forehead. Now he fetched a deep breath, dipped a gloved finger into the fresh blood ponded beneath the body, wrote the brief message across the bare midriff—tickle, tickle!—then wiped the fingertip dry on a clean section of carpeting.

  Alban wondered if he had guessed who was committing these murders. It was, after all, such a delightful irony…

  Suddenly he looked up. Everything was silent—and yet he instantly understood he had only a second or two to act. Quickly, he collected his tools, rolled them up into the leather bundle, stood, darted out of the suite’s bedroom into the living area, then ducked into the bathroom, hiding behind the door.

  A moment later there came the click of the room’s lock disengaging and the creak of the door opening. Alban heard the muffled sound of footsteps on the carpeting.

  “Mandy?” came a masculine voice. “Mandy, honey, are you here?”

  The footsteps receded, moving across the living area toward the bedroom.

  As quietly as possible, Alban tiptoed out of the bathroom, opened the room door, stepped out into the hallway—and then, after a moment’s hesitation, nipped back into the bathroom, hiding behind the door once again.

  “Mandy…? Oh, my God!” A sudden sh
riek came from the bedroom. “No, no, no!” There was a scuffling, thudding sound, as of a body falling to the floor on its knees, followed by gasping and choking.

  “Mandy! Mandy!”

  Alban waited, as the crying from the bedroom dissolved first into hysteria, then cries for help.

  The door to the suite burst open again. “Hotel security!” came a gruff voice. “What’s going on?”

  “My wife! She’s been murdered!”

  More thudding footsteps retreating past the bathroom, followed by a gasp, a sudden burst of talk into the radio, more tiresome cries of horror and disbelief from the bereaved husband.

  Now Alban crept out of the bathroom, scurried silently to the door, opened it, stepped out—paused—then closed the door softly behind him. Walking easily down the hallway to the elevator bank, he pressed the DOWN button. But then, as the floor indicator above the elevator showed it beginning to rise, he stepped away again, moved farther down the hall, opened the stairwell door, and descended two flights before emerging again.

  He looked down the empty hallway with a smile and headed in the direction of the elevator.

  Two minutes later, he was walking out the service entrance of the hotel, hat brim low over his eyes, gloved hands deep in his trench coat pockets. He began sauntering casually down Central Park West, early-morning sun setting the pavement agleam, just as police sirens began sounding in the distance.

  19

  CORRIE SWANSON STOOD ON THE PORCH AT THE SHABBY front door of a sagging duplex at the corner of Fourth Street and Birch in West Cuyahoga, Pennsylvania, a run-down dying suburb of the city of Allentown. There had been no answer to her numerous rings, and as she gazed up and down the street—lined with crappy twenty-year-old pickup trucks before identical duplexes—she realized it was exactly the kind of place she imagined her father calling home. The thought depressed her enormously.

  She pressed the buzzer again, heard it sounding inside the empty house. As she glanced around once more, she saw curtains moving in the attached house, and across the street a neighbor had paused while bringing out the garbage and was staring at the black Lincoln Continental that had brought her.