Текст книги "Blue Labyrinth"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

During this rant, the American’s face had fallen apart, becoming loose, haggard, and gray. Beads of sweat stood at his temples. He’d hesitated once in his tirade to pass a hand across his forehead; another time to wave the hand in front of his nose, as if to brush away some odor. Gabler noticed that the entire café, in fact the entire street, had gone silent, watching this bizarre drama play out. The man was either drunk or on drugs. Now the man moved unsteadily toward the Lamborghini, the officer quickly giving ground before him. The American reached for the door handle – pawed for it, more exactly, with a blind, flailing gesture – and missed. He took another step forward; swayed; steadied himself; swayed again, and then crumpled to the sidewalk. There were cries for help, and some rose from their tables. Gabler, too, jumped to his feet, the chair tumbling away behind him. In his surprise and consternation, he didn’t even realize he had just spilled his half-full glass of Pflümli down one leg of his well-pressed pants.

45

Lieutenant Peter Angler sat behind the desk of his office in the Twenty-Sixth Precinct. All the thick paperwork on the desk had been relegated to its four corners, and the center was bare save for three items: a silver coin, a piece of wood, and a bullet.

There were times in every investigation where he felt that things were about to reach a turning point. At such times, Angler had a little ritual he always went through: he pulled these three relics out of a locked desk drawer and examined them in turn. Each, in its own way, marked a milestone in his life – just as every case he cracked while on the force was its own milestone in miniature – and he enjoyed reflecting on their importance.

First, he picked up the coin. It was an old Roman Imperial denarius, struck in AD 37, with Caligula on its face and Agrippina Sr. on the reverse. Angler had purchased the coin after his thesis on the emperor – with its medical and psychological analysis of the changes wrought on Caligula by his serious illness of that year, and the illness’s role in transforming him from a relatively benevolent ruler to an insane tyrant – won first prize at Brown his senior year. The coin had been very expensive, but somehow he felt he had to own it.

Placing the coin back on the table, he picked up the piece of wood. Originally curled and rough, he had sanded and smoothed it himself until it was barely larger than a pencil, then varnished it so that it glowed brilliantly in the fluorescent light of the office. It had come from the first old-growth redwood that he, in his days as an environmental activist, had saved from the logging companies. He had camped in the upper canopy of the tree for almost three weeks, until the loggers finally gave up and moved elsewhere. As he descended the tree, he’d cut off a small dead branch as a memento of the triumph.

Lastly he reached for the bullet. It was bent and misshapen from the impact with his own left tibia. He never discussed, on the Job or off, the fact that he’d taken a bullet; never wore or displayed the Police Combat Cross he’d earned for extraordinary heroism. Few people who worked with him even knew he’d been shot in the line of duty. It didn’t matter. Angler turned the bullet over in his hands, then replaced it on the desk. He knew, and that was enough.

He put the items carefully back in their drawer, relocked it, then picked up the phone and dialed the number for the departmental secretary. “Have them come in,” he said.

A minute later, the door opened and three men stepped in: Sergeant Slade and two desk sergeants assigned to the Alban murder. “Report, please,” Angler said.

One stepped forward. “Sir, we’ve completed our examination of the TSA records.”

“Go on.”

“As you requested, we went back through all available records for a period of eighteen months, looking for any evidence that the victim might have made trips to the United States other than June fourth of this year. We found such evidence. The victim, using the same false name of Tapanes Landberg, entered the country from Brazil roughly one year previously, on May seventeenth, coming through JFK. Five days later, on May twenty-second, he flew back to Rio.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes, sir. Using Homeland Security documentation, we found that a man using the same name and passport took a flight from LaGuardia to Albany on May eighteenth, returning May twenty-first.”

“A false Brazilian passport,” Angler said. “It would have to be of excellent quality. I wonder where he got it?”

“No doubt such things are easier to obtain in a country like Brazil than they are here,” said Slade.

“No doubt. What else?”

“That’s it, sir. At Albany, the trail went cold. We checked all available avenues through local law enforcement, travel companies, bus terminals, regional airports and airlines, hotels, and car rental companies. There is no further record of Tapanes Landberg until he boarded the plane back to LaGuardia on May twenty-first, and thence to Brazil the following day.”

“Thank you. Excellent work. Dismissed.”

Angler waited until the two had left the office. Then he nodded at Slade and motioned the man toward a chair. From one of the piles of paperwork at the edges of his desk, he took a large stack of oversize index cards. They contained information compiled enthusiastically by Sergeant Slade over the past several days.

“Why would our friend Alban have gone to Albany?” Angler asked.

“No idea,” Slade replied. “But I’d lay odds those two trips are linked.”

“It’s a small town. The airport and central bus terminal would both fit in the Port Authority waiting room. Alban would have a hard time hiding his tracks there.”

“How do you know so much about Albany?”

“I have relatives in Colonie, to the northwest.” Angler turned his attention to the index cards. “You’ve been a busy man. In another life, you could have made a superlative muckraking journalist.”

Slade smiled.

Angler shuffled slowly through the cards. “Pendergast’s tax and property records. I can’t imagine they were easy to obtain.”

“Pendergast is a rather private individual.”

“I see he owns four properties: two in New York, one in New Orleans and another nearby. The one in New Orleans is a parking lot. Odd.”

Slade shrugged.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he owned offshore real estate, as well.”

“Neither would I. I’m afraid that would resist any further digging on my part, though, sir.”

“And it’s beside the point.” Angler put these cards down, glanced at another set. “His record of arrests made and convictions obtained.” He shuffled through them. “Impressive. Very impressive indeed.”

“The statistic that I found most interesting was the number of his perps who died in the process of being apprehended.”

Angler searched for this statistic, found it, raised his eyebrows in surprise. Then he continued his perusal. “I see that Pendergast has almost as many official censures as he has commendations.”

“My friends in the Bureau say he’s controversial. A lone wolf. He’s independently wealthy, takes a salary of one dollar a year just to keep things official. In recent years the upper echelons of the FBI have tended to take a hands-off approach, given his success rate, so long as he doesn’t do anything too egregious. He appears to have at least one powerful, invisible friend high up in the Bureau – maybe more.”

“Hmmm.” More turning of index cards. “A stint in the special forces. What’d he do?”

“Classified. All I learned was that he earned several medals for bravery under fire and completing certain high-value covert actions.”

Angler formed the cards into a pile, then squared them against his desk and put them to one side. “Does all this confuse you, Loomis?”

Slade returned Angler’s look. “Yes.”

“Me, too. What does it all mean?”

“The whole thing stinks… sir.”

“Precisely. You know it, and I know it. And we’ve known it for some time. Hence, all this.” And Angler patted the pile of index cards. “Let’s break it down. The last time Pendergast saw his son alive – by his own admission – was eighteen months ago, in Brazil. A year ago, Alban returned briefly to the U.S. under an alias, traveled to upstate New York, then returned to Brazil. Around three weeks ago, he returned to New York – and this time, was killed for his pains. In his body was found a piece of turquoise. Agent Pendergast claims that piece of turquoise led him to the Salton Fontainebleau, where he was supposedly assaulted by the same man who pretended to be a scientist and who probably killed a technician at the Museum. All of a sudden, after being uncooperative and evasive, Pendergast becomes forthcoming… that is, once he learned we’d found ‘Tapanes Landberg.’ But then, after unloading a bunch of questionable information on us, he clams up again, stops cooperating. For example, neither he nor Lieutenant D’Agosta bothered to tell us that the phony professor killed himself in the Indio jail. We had to find that out for ourselves. And when we sent Sergeant Dawkins out to examine the Fontainebleau, he came back reporting that the inside of the place looked as if it had been unvisited for years and could not have been the scene of some extended fight. You’re exactly right, Loomis – it stinks. It stinks to high heaven. No matter which way I turn, I find myself being confronted by the same conclusion: Pendergast is sending us on one wild goose chase after another. And I can think of only one reason for that – he himself is complicit in his son’s death. And then, there’s this.” Leaning forward, Angler plucked an article in Portuguese from atop one of the piles on his desk. “A report from a Brazilian newspaper, vague and unsourced, that describes a massacre that took place in the jungle, with the involvement of an unnamed gringo described here as a man ‘de rosto pálido.’ ”

“De rosto pálido? What’s that mean?”

“Of pale visage.”

“Holy shit.”

“And all this took place eighteen months ago – just when Pendergast himself was in Brazil.”

Angler put the article down. “This article came to my attention just this morning. It’s the key, Loomis – I feel it. The key to the whole mystery.” He leaned back in his chair and glanced at the ceiling. “There’s one missing piece, I believe. Just one. And when I find that piece… then I’ll have him.”

46

Constance Greene walked down a gleaming corridor on the fifth and top floor of Geneva’s Clinique Privée La Colline, a gowned doctor at her side.

“How would you characterize his condition?” she asked in perfect French.

“It has been very difficult to make a diagnosis, mademoiselle,” the doctor replied. “It is something foreign to our experience. This is a multidisciplinary clinic. Half a dozen specialists have been called in to examine the patient. The results of the consultations and tests are… baffling. And contradictory. Certain members of the staff believe he is suffering from an unknown genetic disorder. Others think that he has been poisoned, or is suffering withdrawal symptoms from some compound or drug – there are unusual trace elements in the blood work, but nothing that corresponds to any known substance in our databases. Still others consider the problem to be at least partly psychological – yet nobody can deny the acute physical manifestations.”

“What medications are you using to treat the condition?”

“We can’t treat the actual condition until we have a diagnosis. We’re controlling the pain with transdermal fentanyl patches. Soma as a muscle relaxer. And a benzodiazepine for its sedative effect.”

“Which benzo?”

“Klonopin.”

“That’s a rather formidable cocktail, Doctor.”

“It is. But until we know what the source is, we can only treat the symptoms – if we didn’t, restraints would have been necessary.”

The doctor opened a door and ushered Constance in. Beyond lay a modern, spotless, and functional room containing a single bed. Numerous monitors and medical devices surrounded the bed, some flashing complicated readouts on LCD screens, others beeping in steady rhythms. At the far end of the room was an unbroken series of windows, tinted blue, that looked out onto the Avenue de Beau-Séjour.

Lying in the bed was Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast. Leads were attached to his temples; an IV was inserted into the curve of one wrist; a blood pressure cuff was fixed to one arm and a blood-oxygen meter clipped to a fingertip. A privacy screen was bunched together on overhead rings at the foot of the bed.

“He has said very little,” the doctor said. “And of that, even less has made sense. If you can get us any information that could be of assistance, we would be grateful.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Constance said with a nod. “I’ll do my best.”

“Mademoiselle.” And with that, the doctor gave the briefest of bows, turned, and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

Constance stood for a moment, glancing at the closed door. Then, smoothing down her dress with a sweep of her hand, she took a seat at the lone chair placed beside the bed. Although nobody had a cooler head than Constance Greene, what she saw nevertheless deeply disturbed her. The FBI agent’s face was a dreadful gray color, and his white-blond hair was disarrayed and darkened with sweat. The chiseled lines of the face were blurred by several days’ growth of beard. Fever seemed to radiate from him. His eyes were shut, but she could see the eyeballs moving beneath the bruised-looking lids. As she watched, his body stiffened, as if in pain; spasmed; then relaxed.

She leaned forward, laid a hand over one clenched fist. “Aloysius,” she said in a low voice. “It’s Constance.”

For a moment, no response. Then the fist relaxed. Pendergast’s head turned on the pillow. He muttered something incomprehensible.

Constance gave the hand a gentle squeeze. “I’m sorry?”

Pendergast opened his mouth to speak, took a deep, shuddering breath. “Lasciala, indegno,” he murmured. “Battiti meco. L’assassino m’ha ferito.”

Constance released her pressure on the hand.

Another spasm shuddered through Pendergast’s frame. “No,” he said in a low, strangled voice. “No, you mustn’t. The Doorway to Hell… stay back… stay away, please… don’t look… the three-lobed burning eye…! ”

His body relaxed and he fell silent for several minutes. Then he stirred again. “It’s wrong, Tristram,” he said, his voice now clearer and more distinct. “He would never change. I fear you were deceived.”

This time, the silence was far longer. A nurse came in, checked Pendergast’s vitals, replaced the transdermal patch for a fresh one, and left. Constance remained in the chair, still as a statue, her hand on Pendergast’s. Finally – at long last – his eyes fluttered open. For a moment, they remained vague, unfocused. Then, blinking, they made a survey of the hospital room. At last, they landed on her.

“Constance,” he said in a whisper.

Her response was to squeeze his hand again.

“I’ve… been having a nightmare. It seems never to end.”

His voice was dry and light, like a faint breeze over dead leaves, and she had to lean in closer to catch the words.

“You were quoting the libretto of Don Giovanni,” she said.

“Yes. I… fancied myself the Commendatore.”

“Dreaming of Mozart doesn’t sound like a nightmare to me.”

“I…” The mouth worked silently for a moment before continuing. “I dislike opera.”

“There was something else,” Constance said. “Something that did sound like a nightmare. You mentioned a Doorway to Hell.”

“Yes. Yes. My nightmares have included memories, as well.”

“And then you mentioned Tristram. Some mistake he had made.”

To this, Pendergast only shook his head.

Constance waited as he slipped back out of consciousness. Ten minutes later, he moved, opened his eyes again.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“In a hospital in Geneva.”

“Geneva.” A pause. “Of course.”

“From what I can gather, you ruined some meter man’s day.”

“I remember. He insisted on giving me a ticket. I was dreadful to him. I fear that I… cannot abide petty bureaucrats.” Another pause. “It is one of my many bad habits.”

When he again fell silent, Constance – confident now that he was lucid – filled him in on recent events, as D’Agosta had informed her: the suicide of his attacker in the Indio jail, the man’s face-altering plastic surgery, the reconstruction of his original appearance, and D’Agosta’s discovery of his real identity. She also passed on D’Agosta’s discovery, from Angler’s case file, that when Alban had entered the country under the name Tapanes Landberg a year before, he’d made a brief trip to upstate New York before returning to Brazil. Pendergast listened to it all with interest. Once or twice, his eyes flashed with the old spark she remembered so well. But when she was finished, he closed his eyes, turned his head away, and drifted back into unconsciousness again.

When next he awoke, it was night. Constance, who had not left his side, waited for him to speak.

“Constance,” he began, his voice as quiet as before. “You must understand that, at times, it is becoming difficult for me to… maintain my hold on reality. It comes and goes, as does the pain. At present, for instance, just to converse with you in a lucid fashion requires all my concentration. So let me tell you what I have to say, as briefly as possible.”

Constance, listening, kept very still.

“I said something unforgivable to you.”

“I’ve forgiven you.”

“You are too generous. From almost the beginning, when I scented the lilies in that strange animal gas chamber at the Salton Sea, I sensed what had happened: that my family’s past had come back to haunt me. In the form of someone bent on vengeance.”

He took a few shallow breaths.

“What my ancestor Hezekiah did was criminal. He created an elixir that was in reality an addictive poison, which killed a great many people and ruined the lives of others. But that was so… so far in the past…” A pause. “I knew what was happening to me – and you’d guessed it as well. But at the time, I simply couldn’t bear your pity. What hope I’d initially held out for reversing the effects quickly faded. I preferred not to even think about it. Hence my appalling remark to you in the music room.”

“Please don’t dwell on it.”

He fell into silence. In the dark room, lit only by the medical instrumentation, Constance was not sure if he was still awake.

“The lilies have begun to suppurate,” he said.

“Oh, Aloysius,” she said.

“There is something worse than the suffering. It’s that I lack answers. This baroque plot at the Salton Sea bears all the hallmarks of something Alban would organize. But who was he working with, and why did they kill him? And… how can I bear this slide into madness?”

Now Constance gripped his hand in both of hers. “There has to be a cure, an antidote. We’ll conquer this together.”

In the dimness, Pendergast shook his head. “No, Constance. There is no cure. You must go away. I’ll fly home. I know private doctors who can keep me as comfortable as possible while the end approaches.”

“No!” said Constance, her voice louder than she had intended. “I’ll never leave you.”

“I do not care to have you see me like… like this.”

She stood up and leaned over him. “I’ve got no choice.”

Pendergast shifted slightly under the covers. “You always have a choice. Please honor my request that you not see me in extremis. Like that man in Indio.”

In a languorous movement, she bent over the prostrate sufferer and kissed his brow. “I’m sorry. But my choice is to fight this to the end. Because—”

“But—”

“Because you are the other half of my heart,” she murmured. She sat down once more, took up his hand, and did not speak again.

47

The uniformed police officer pulled the squad car over to the curb. “We’re here, sir,” he said.

“You’re sure?” Lieutenant D’Agosta said, peering out the passenger window.

“Forty-One Twenty-Seven Colfax Avenue. Did I get the address wrong?”

“No, that’s the one.”

D’Agosta was surprised. He’d expected a trailer park or a grim apartment deep in the projects. But this house in the Miller Beach section of Gary, Indiana, was well tended, and – though it might be small – was freshly painted, and the grounds were neatly pruned. Marquette Park was only a few blocks away.

D’Agosta turned to the Gary cop. “Would you mind going over his record again for me? Just so I’ve got everything in my head.”

“Sure thing.” The cop unzipped a case, pulled out a computer printout. “It’s pretty clean. A couple of traffic tickets, one for doing thirty-eight in a thirty zone, another for passing on the shoulder.”

“Passing on the shoulder?” D’Agosta asked. “They give tickets for that here?”

“Under the last chief, we did. He was a hard-ass.” The cop looked back at the rap sheet. “Only thing of any substance we have on him was being nabbed during a raid on a known mob hangout. But he was clean – no drugs, no weapons – and since he had no other connections or affiliations we knew of, no charges were pressed. Four months later, his wife reported him missing.” The cop returned the rap sheet to the case. “That’s it. Given possible ties to the mob, we figured he’d been killed. He never showed up again, alive or dead, no body, nothing. It was eventually shelved as a cold case.”

D’Agosta nodded. “Let me do the talking, if you don’t mind.”

“Be my guest.”

D’Agosta glanced at his watch: half past six. Then he opened the door to the cruiser and heaved himself out with a grunt.

He followed the uniformed officer up the walkway and waited while the doorbell was pressed. A few moments later, a woman appeared at the door. With long practice, D’Agosta took in the details: five foot six, 140 pounds, brunette hair. She held a plate in one hand and a dishcloth in the other, and she was dressed for work in a pantsuit that was dated but clean and well pressed. When she saw the officer, a look went across her face: an expression of both anxiety and hope.

D’Agosta stepped forward. “Ma’am, are you Carolyn Rudd?”

The woman nodded.

D’Agosta flashed his badge. “I’m Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta of the New York Police Department and this is Officer Hektor Ortillo of the Gary police. I was wondering if we could have a few minutes of your time.”

There was just the slightest hesitation. “Yes,” the woman said. “Yes, of course. Come in.” She opened the door and ushered them into a small living room. The furniture was, again, old and functional, but well kept and impeccably clean. Once again D’Agosta got the clear impression of a household in which money had grown tight, but form and civility still mattered.

Ms. Rudd asked them to sit down. “Would you like some lemonade?” she asked. “Coffee?”

Both men shook their heads.

Now there were noises on the stairs leading to the second floor and two curious faces appeared: a boy, maybe twelve, and a girl a few years younger.

“Howie,” the woman said. “Jennifer. I’m just going to have a little chat with these gentlemen. Could you please go back upstairs and finish your homework? I’ll be up soon.”

The two children looked at the cops, silent and wide-eyed. After a few seconds they crept back upstairs and out of sight.

“If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’ll just put this dish away.” The woman retreated to the kitchen, then returned and took a seat across from D’Agosta and the Gary cop.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

“We’ve come to talk to you about your husband,” D’Agosta said. “Howard Rudd.”

The hope he’d seen in her face a few moments earlier returned, much stronger. “Oh!” she said. “Have you… any new evidence? Is he alive? Where is he?”

The eagerness with which these words tumbled out surprised D’Agosta as much, if not more, than the appearance of the house. Over the last few weeks, he’d developed a distinct portrait of the man who had attacked Agent Pendergast and most likely killed Victor Marsala: a thuggish bastard with no moral code, a venal son of a bitch with few if any redeeming values. When Terry Bonomo and the NYPD facial-detection software identified this man as Howard Rudd, late of Gary, Indiana, D’Agosta had been pretty sure what he’d find when he flew out to speak to the man’s wife. But the hope in her eyes was making him rethink his assumptions. He suddenly felt unsure how to go about this.

“No, we haven’t ‘found’ him. Not exactly. The reason I’m here, Mrs. Rudd, is to learn more about your husband.”

She looked from D’Agosta to Officer Ortillo and back again. “Are they reopening the case? I felt they shuffled it off way too soon. I want to help you. Just tell me what I can do.”

“Well, you can start by telling us what kind of a person he was. As a father and a husband.”

“Is,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“What kind of a person he is. I know the police think he’s dead, but I’m certain he’s alive out there, somewhere. I can feel it. He wouldn’t have left if he didn’t have a good reason. Someday he’ll come back – and he’ll explain what happened, and why.”

D’Agosta’s discomfort increased. The conviction in the woman’s voice was unsettling. “If you could just tell us about him, Mrs. Rudd.”

“What’s there to say?” The woman paused for a moment, reflecting. “He was a good husband, a devoted family man. Hardworking, loyal, a wonderful father. Never went out drinking or gambling, never looked at another woman. His father was a Methodist preacher, and Howard absorbed a lot of his good traits. I’ve never known anyone as dogged as he was. If he started something, he’d see it through, always. Worked his way through the community college washing dishes. He was a Golden Gloves boxer in his younger days. His word was the most important thing to him, save for his family. He sweated to keep that hardware store of his going, sweated night and day, even when the Home Depot opened up on Route 20 and business dried up. It wasn’t his fault he had to borrow money. If only he’d known who…”

The stream of words stopped suddenly, and the woman’s eyes widened slightly.

“Please go on,” D’Agosta said. “If only he’d known what?”

The woman hesitated. Then she sighed, glanced at the staircase to make sure the children were out of earshot, and continued. “If he’d known the character of those men he borrowed from. You see, the bank felt the store to be a bad risk. They wouldn’t give him a loan. Money got tight.” She clutched her hands together and looked at the floor. “He borrowed from bad people.”

Suddenly she looked up again, directly at D’Agosta, imploringly. “But you can’t blame him for that – can you?”

D’Agosta could only shake his head.

“The nights he spent sitting at the kitchen table, looking at the wall, saying nothing… oh, it broke my heart!” The woman wiped away a tear. “And then, one day, he was gone. Just gone. That was over three years ago. And not a word from him since. But there’s a reason for it – I know there is.” A defiant look came over Mrs. Rudd’s face. “I know what the police think. But I don’t believe it. I won’t.”

When D’Agosta spoke, it was gently. “Did you have any indication that he was about to leave? Anything at all?”

The woman shook her head. “No. Nothing but the phone call.”

“What phone call?”

“It was the night before he went away. There was a phone call, pretty late. He took it in the kitchen. He kept his voice low – I don’t think he wanted me to hear him. Afterward, he looked devastated. But he wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t tell me what it was about.”

“And you have no idea what could have happened to him or where he’s been all this time?”

The woman shook her head again.

“How have you been making ends meet since?”

“I got a job in an advertising company. I do page layout and design work for the firm. It’s a decent living.”

“And these people your husband borrowed money from. After he disappeared, were there any threats from them? Any reprisals?”

“None.”

“Would you happen to have a picture of your husband?”

“Of course. Quite a few.” Mrs. Rudd turned, reached toward a small group of framed photographs on a side table, plucked one up, and handed it to D’Agosta. He looked at it. It was a family shot, with parents in the middle, the two children on either side.

Terry Bonomo had nailed it. The man in the photograph was the spitting image of their computer reconstruction, pre-surgery.

As he handed the photograph back, Mrs. Rudd suddenly grasped his wrist. Her grip was surprisingly strong. “Please,” she said. “Help me find my husband. Please.”

D’Agosta couldn’t bear it any longer. “Ma’am, I have bad news for you. Earlier, I told you we hadn’t found your husband. But we do have a body, and I’m afraid it may be him.”

The grip on his wrist tightened.

“But we need a sample of his DNA in order to be sure. Could we borrow a few personal effects of his – a hairbrush, say, or a toothbrush? We’ll return them to you, of course.”

The woman said nothing.

“Mrs. Rudd,” D’Agosta continued, “sometimes not knowing can be a lot worse than knowing – even if knowing proves to be very painful.”

For a long moment, the woman did not move. Then, slowly, she released her grip on D’Agosta’s wrist. Her hand slumped into her own lap. Her eyes went distant for a moment. Then, pulling herself together, she stood up, walked toward the steps, and mounted them without a word.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, in the passenger seat of the police car on the way back to O’Hare, the pocket of his suit jacket containing a hairbrush of Howard Rudd’s, carefully sealed in a ziplock bag, D’Agosta pondered ruefully just how wrong one’s assumptions could be. The last thing he’d expected was that tidy house on Colfax Avenue, or the fiercely loyal and determined widow who lived inside.

Rudd might be a murderer. But he was also, it seemed, at one time a good man who made a bad call and got himself into trouble. D’Agosta had seen it happen before. Sometimes the more you struggled, the deeper into the shit you sank. D’Agosta was forced to reevaluate Rudd. Now he realized that Rudd’s very love of family, and the bind he found himself in – whatever it might have been, exactly – had forced him to do some terrible things, including change his looks and identity. He had little doubt the leverage they had used against him was his little family.

These were some bad motherfuckers.