Текст книги "Blue Labyrinth"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

25

Leaving the prison, Pendergast drove south from Indio. It was late afternoon when he pulled his car off the main road and parked beneath the cruel ridgeline of the Scarrit Hills.

He climbed to the crest and gazed eastward. Between him and the dead shore of the Salton Sea lay the Fontainebleau, its gaudy, ragged lines dwarfed by the bleak expanse. All was still. From horizon to horizon, stretching to infinity, there was not the slightest sign of life. He had only the faint moaning of the wind for company.

Now Pendergast looked northward, toward the gullied track that led to the Golden Spider Mine. The ill-disguised tire tracks he had noted the day before were gone, leaving nothing but an apparently unbroken crust of salt.

He walked down the far side of the foothills and approached the resort, just as he had done the night before. His footprints raised plumes of salt dust as he walked. And yet there was no sign of his tracks from the previous evening – the steps leading up to the veranda, and the veranda itself, appeared to have lain untouched for decades.

He turned away from the Salton Fontainebleau and walked the half mile north to the main entrance of the Golden Spider Mine. Its ancient door was half-buried in a wash of salt. Miniature salt dunes, formed by dust devils, were scattered along the gullied approach. It was as it had appeared from the ridgeline: the salt crust seemed undisturbed.

Pendergast scrutinized the entrance from a variety of angles, walking first here, then there, pausing now and then to stare with an appraising eye. And then he knelt and very carefully examined the crust beneath his feet, taking a tiny whisk from a pocket of his suit jacket and brushing the surface – gently, gently – gradually exposing the lighter-colored salt underneath. And now he saw, finally, the faintest traces of activity, so skillfully erased that there would be no way to deconstruct or glean any information from them. He stared for a long time, marveling at the obvious effort, before rising again.

The wind cried and moaned, stirring his hair and ruffling the lapels of his jacket. For the briefest of moments, the dry air was touched by a pleasing scent of lilies.

Turning away from the mine, Pendergast continued north, walking the two miles to the outskirts of the ghost town of Salton Palms. It looked just as it had the day before: broken streetlights, ruined houses, gaping windows, rusting birdbaths, empty swimming pools. But the cobbled-together shack with the tar-paper roof that had stood at the south edge of town was gone.

Pendergast walked over to where it had been – where, just the day before, he had knocked on the rude door and spoken to Cayute. Now there was nothing but dirt and patches of desiccated grass.

It was as if everything – the resort, the mine – had sat here, unvisited, untouched, for years. As if the old man and his worthless possessions had never existed.

It was as if it had all been a dream.

For a brief moment Pendergast swayed, a trifle unsteadily, as the wind worried and tugged at his ankles. And then he turned southward and began the trek back through the salt, dust, and sand to his rental car.

26

Yes,” said the junior curator. “Sure, I remember him. He was working with Marsala, maybe two months ago. He and Marsala seemed like buddies, which was kind of unusual.”

“That guy on the screen look like him?” asked Bonomo.

“Almost exactly. Except…” The curator stared at the laptop screen. “I think his forehead was a little broader. Around the temples, maybe.”

Bonomo worked his magic with the Identi-CAD program. “Like this?”

“A little broader still,” the curator said, conviction growing in his voice. “And higher.”

More magic. “This?”

“Yes. That’s perfect.”

“Perfect? Really?”

“Really.”

“We aim to please!” Bonomo said with his trademark bray of laughter.

D’Agosta watched this exchange with amusement. They had been making the rounds of the Osteology Department, speaking with everyone who remembered seeing the “scientist” Marsala had assisted. This had allowed Bonomo to tweak the portrait he’d created the day before, making it an even better match. D’Agosta felt optimistic enough to begin a software review of the security video feeds again, with portrait in hand. He was interested in two dates in particular: the day Marsala died, and the day he signed out the specimen for the visitor.

D’Agosta checked the junior curator’s name off his list, and they continued down the hall. Spotting another Osteology worker who’d seen the fake scientist, D’Agosta introduced her to Bonomo, and looked on as the police technician showed her the composite portrait and asked for her feedback. Bonomo had cut quite a swath through the dusty, quiet Museum, talking loudly, cracking jokes, making wiseass remarks and laughing at the top of his lungs. This had given D’Agosta a measure of secret joy, especially when Frisby had popped his head out of his office more than once, glowering. He hadn’t said anything – what could he say? This was police business.

Out of the corner of his eye, D’Agosta caught sight of Margo Green. She was coming down the corridor from the main entrance to Osteology. Their eyes met, and she gestured toward a nearby storeroom.

“What’s up?” D’Agosta said, following her inside and closing the door behind them. “Ready to examine those additional specimens?”

“Already done. Not a Hottentot to be found. The missing long bone didn’t turn up in any nearby trays, either. But I’ve done further analysis of the female skeleton, as promised. I wanted to give you an update.”

“Shoot.”

To D’Agosta, Margo seemed a little breathless. “I’ve been able to confirm most of my initial conclusions about the bones. Further examination, and in particular the ratio of oxygen and carbon isotopes present in the skeleton, indicate a diet and geographic location consistent with a late-nineteenth-century woman, roughly sixty years of age, living in an urban American environment, probably New York or vicinity.”

From the corridor beyond came another bark of laughter from Bonomo that almost shook the walls.

“A little louder,” Margo said, “and your friend out there could channel Jimmy Durante.”

“He’s a bit obnoxious, but he’s the best at what he does. Besides, it’s fun to watch Frisby get his knickers in a twist.”

At the mention of Frisby’s name, Margo’s face darkened.

“How are you managing?” D’Agosta asked. “I mean, being in here like this. I know it’s not easy for you.”

“I’m doing all right.”

“Is Frisby giving you a hard time?”

“I can handle it.”

“Do you want me to have a word with him?”

“Thanks, but it wouldn’t help. There’s nothing to be gained and everything to lose from a confrontation. The Museum can be a real snake’s den. If I keep a low profile, everything should be fine.” She paused. “Look, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Yeah?”

Despite the fact they were alone, Margo lowered her voice. “Do you remember when we had Sandoval check the accession record for that skeleton?”

D’Agosta nodded. He couldn’t imagine where this was leading.

“And when we got to the name of the preparator – Dr. Padgett – Sandoval said: Oh. Him.”

“Go on.”

“At the time, it struck me as strange. So today I asked Sandoval about it. Like many Museum workers, he loves to collect old Museum rumors and gossip. Anyway, he told me that this Padgett – an Osteological curator here many years ago – happened to have a wife who disappeared. There was some sort of scandal. Her body was never found.”

“Disappeared?” D’Agosta asked. “How? What kind of scandal?”

“He didn’t know,” Margo said.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Probably – and it’s creeping the heck out of me.”

27

Lieutenant Peter Angler sat at a scuffed desk, heaped with paper, in the rambling offices of the Transportation Security Administration. Outside the room’s lone window, a steady stream of jets screamed by on JFK’s runway 4L-22R. It was almost as noisy inside: the TSA offices were awash in ringing phones, clacking keyboards, slamming doors, and – not infrequently – voices raised in anger or protest. Directly across the hall, a heavyset man from Cartagena was being subjected – visible past a door that was more than ajar – to a body cavity search.

What was that line of Sophocles from Oedipus Rex? “How awful a knowledge of the truth can be.” Angler looked quickly back at the paperwork strewn across the desk.

With little else to go on, several of his men were checking into the many ways Alban could have entered the country. He had one hard fact: before showing up dead on a doorstep in New York City, Alban’s last reported location had been Brazil. And so Angler had dispatched teams to the local airports, Penn Station, and the Port Authority bus terminal, searching for any evidence on his movements.

Angler reached for a stack of paper. Passenger manifests: lists of people who had entered the country from Brazil over the last several months, via flights into JFK. It was one of many such manifests, and it was an inch thick. Searching for any evidence? They were wallowing in “evidence”—all of it apparently useless, a distraction. His men were examining these same manifests, looking for known criminals that Alban might have associated with, checking for anything remotely out of place or suspicious.

He himself was simply checking – paging through the lists, hour after hour, waiting for something, anything, to catch his attention.

Angler knew he didn’t think like the average cop. He was right-brained: always searching for that intuitive leap, that strange connection, that a more orthodox, logical approach would overlook. It had served him well on more than one occasion. And so he kept turning the pages and reading the names, not even knowing what he was looking for. Because the one thing they did know was that Alban did not enter the country under his own name.

Howard Miller

Diego Cavalcanti

Beatriz Cavalcanti

Roger Taylor

Fritz Zimmermann

Gabriel Azevedo

Pedro Almeida

As he did so, he had the fleeting sense – not for the first time in this case – that somebody had made this journey before him. It was just little things: the slight disorder among papers that had no reason to be disordered, file drawers that looked like they’d recently been pawed through, and a few people who had vague recollections of someone else asking similar questions six months or a year ago.

But who could it have been? Pendergast?

At the thought of Pendergast, Angler felt a familiar irritation. He’d never before met such a character. If the man had been the slightest bit cooperative, maybe all this pawing through paper wouldn’t be necessary.

Angler shook this line of reflection away and returned to the manifests. He was experiencing a touch of indigestion, and he wasn’t going to let thoughts of Pendergast make it worse.

Dener Goulart

Matthias Kahn

Elizabeth Kemper

Robert Kemper

Nathalia Rocha

Tapanes Landberg

Marta Berlitz

Yuri Pais

Suddenly he stopped. One of the names – Tapanes Landberg – stood out.

Why? Other odd names had jumped out at him before… and proven to be nothing. What was it about this one that stirred something in his right brain?

He paused to consider. What had Pendergast said about his son? He’d said so little that all of it had stayed in Angler’s mind. He was eminently capable of managing even the worst trouble. There was something else, too; something that had stood out: He took delight in malicious games; he was an expert at taunting and mortification.

Games. Taunting and mortification. Interesting. What meaning, exactly, was hiding behind the veil of those words? Had Alban been a trickster? Did he like his little jokes?

Taking a pencil, Angler – slowly, lips pursed – began doodling with the name Tapanes Landberg in the top margin of the manifest.

Tapanes Landberg

Tapanes Bergland

Sada Plantenberg

Abrades Plangent

Abrades Plangent. On a whim, Angler removed the letters that made up Alban from this name. He found himself left with:

rdesPagent

Shifting to the bottom margin, he rearranged these letters.

dergaPenst

Pendergast

Angler glanced at the manifest details. The flight had been Air Brazil, Rio de Janeiro to New York.

The person who entered Kennedy Airport from Brazil came in with a name that was an anagram of Alban Pendergast.

For the first time in several days, Peter Angler smiled.

28

The Microforms Reading Room on the first floor of the New York Public Library’s main building was brightly lit, packed with machines for reading microfilm and microfiche, and too warm for comfort. As he took a seat beside Margo, D’Agosta loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. He watched as she loaded a reel of microfilm onto their machine and threaded it through the mechanism and onto the takeup spindle.

“Christ,” D’Agosta said. “You’d think they would have digitized all this by now. So what are we looking at?”

“The New-York Evening Independent. It was quite comprehensive for its time, but verged toward more sensationalist stories than the Times.” She glanced at the microfilm box. “This spool covers the years 1888 to 1892. Where do you suggest we start?”

“The skeleton entered the collection in ’89. Let’s start there.” D’Agosta tugged his tie down a little farther. Damn, it was hot in here. “If this guy got rid of his wife, he wouldn’t wait around to dispose of her body.”

“Right.” Margo nudged the big dial on the front of the microfilm machine into forward. Old newspaper pages scrolled up the screen, first slowly, then more quickly. The machine made a whirring noise. D’Agosta glanced over at Margo. She seemed a different person when outside the Museum – more at ease.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that, while this might be an interesting exercise, in the end it wouldn’t move his own case forward – even if Padgett had killed his wife and stuffed her bones in the collection. He found himself freshly annoyed at Pendergast for the way he’d stopped by the Museum, asked just enough questions to raise D’Agosta’s own hopes for the case – and then disappeared without a word. That had been five days ago. D’Agosta had begun to leave increasingly testy messages for Pendergast, but so far they had borne no fruit.

Margo slowed the machine again as they reached 1889. Page after page passed: stories about New York politics, colorful or lurid foreign events, gossip and crime and all the attendant hustle and bustle of a city still growing at flank speed. And then, in late summer, something of interest appeared:

GENERAL LOCAL NEWS

~~~~~

Elevated Railway Stock Released – Man Arraigned on Suspicion of Wife’s Disappearance – New Opening at the Garrick Theatre – Sugar Ring Collapses – Stinson in jail following libel suit

~~~~~

Special to the New-York Evening Independent.

NEW YORK, AUG. 15.—Consolidated Steel has just announced a tender offer of new stock for the sale of steel to be used for the elevated railway being considered for Third Avenue – The New-York Metropolitan Police have arrested a Dr. Evans Padgett of the New York Museum in connection with the recent disappearance of his wife – The Garrick Theatre will be debuting a new version of Othello, with Julian Halcomb as The Moor, this Friday next – The notorious Sugar Ring has been rumored recently to be on the brink…

“My God,” Margo murmured. “So he did kill his wife.”

“It’s just an arrest,” D’Agosta told her. “Let’s keep going.”

Margo moved through the next several issues. About a week later, another related notice appeared. It had become more important now and was given its own story.

MUSEUM SCIENTIST ACCUSED OF UXORICIDE BODY OF WIFE SOUGHT IN WIDENING SCANDAL.

SUSPECT TALKED ABOUT MURDERING WIFE IN DAYS PRIOR TO HER DISAPPEARANCE – UNCOMMUNICATIVE UNDER EXAMINATION – MUSEUM’S PRESIDENT DENIES INSTITUTION’S INVOLVEMENT

NEW YORK, AUG. 23.—Dr. Evans Padgett was officially arraigned today in connection with the disappearance and presumed murder of his wife, Ophelia Padgett. Mrs. Padgett had been known by friends and neighbors as suffering from a wasting and painful disease, along with increasing signs of mental disturbance. Dr. Padgett first came under suspicion when colleagues at the New York Museum of Natural History, where he is a curator, told police that he had referred on several occasions to his desire to end his wife’s life. Said colleagues reported that Dr. Padgett had claimed a certain patent medicine or nostrum was responsible for his wife’s present condition, and made veiled allusions to “relieving her of her misery.” Since his arrest, Padgett himself has made no statement to either police or to the prosecuting bodies, but rather has maintained a resolute silence. He is presently in custody at The Tombs awaiting trial. When asked for comment, the president of the Museum said only that he would have no words on the distressing events beyond observing that the institution itself obviously had no role in the disappearance.

D’Agosta scoffed. “Even back then, the Museum was more concerned with protecting its reputation than helping solve a crime.” He paused. “Wonder what this patent medicine was. Probably loaded with cocaine or opium.”

“The condition doesn’t sound like your standard drug addiction. Wasting… that was nineteenth-century-speak for terminal. Now, that’s interesting…” She paused.

“What?”

“It’s just that one of the tests I conducted on the skeleton did show some anomalous mineralization. Perhaps Ophelia Padgett was suffering from a bone disorder or other degenerative condition.”

D’Agosta watched as she moved forward through the newspaper’s later issues. There were one or two brief mentions of the upcoming trial; another brief dispatch stating the trial was under way. And then, on November 14, 1889:

* * *

Dr. Evans Padgett, of Gramercy-Lane, who had been accused of murdering his wife, Ophelia, was today acquitted of all charges laid against him by the presiding judge in the King’s Courtroom at 2 Park Row. Although certain eyewitnesses came forth to describe Padgett’s veiled statements about ending his wife’s existence, and circumstantial evidence was presented by the attorney for the State of New York, Dr. Padgett was declared exonerated because no corpus delicti could be found, despite the most diligent search by the Manhattan constabulary forces. Padgett was set free by the bailiff and allowed to leave the Court a free man as of noon on this day.

“No corpus delicti,” D’Agosta said. “Of course there was no body. The old guy had it macerated in the Osteology vats and then stuck the bones into the collection, labeling them Hottentot!”

“The science of forensic anthropology wasn’t very advanced in 1889. Once she was reduced to a skeleton, they’d never have been able to identify her. The perfect crime.”

D’Agosta slumped in his chair. He felt a lot more tired now than when he’d entered the room. “But what the hell does it mean? And why would this phony scientist steal one of her bones?”

Margo shrugged. “It’s a mystery.”

“Great. Instead of solving a week-old murder, we’ve uncovered a century-old one.”

29

Where did we come from? How did our lives begin? How did we end up on this speck of dust called Earth, surrounded by the countless other specks of dust that make up the universe? In order to answer these questions, we have to go back billions of years, to a time before that universe existed. To a time when there was nothing – nothing but darkness…

D’Agosta turned from the gentle curve of the one-way glass and rubbed his bleary eyes. He’d heard the presentation five times already and could probably recite the damn thing by heart.

Stifling a yawn, he looked around the dim confines of the Museum’s video security room. Actually, it wasn’t really the video security room – the actual name of the room was Planetarium Support. It housed the computers, software, and banks of NAS drives and image servers that drove the fulldome video at the heart of the Museum’s planetarium. The room was tucked into a corner of the sixth floor, hard by the upper section of the planetarium’s dome – hence the curved glass in the far wall. As far as D’Agosta could make out, while the Museum had been quite proactive in installing security cameras, it hadn’t occurred to anyone that they might actually need to be viewed at some later date. Hence, the monitors for viewing archival security images had been retrofitted into Planetarium Support, and the technology for playing back those images was borrowed from the planetarium computers – no doubt some bean counter’s idea of economizing resources.

The problem was, during visiting hours the room’s lights had to be dimmed to a point where they were almost completely off – otherwise, the glow would bleed out through the one-way glass in the planetarium’s dome and spoil the illusion for the tourists in their seats below. The video monitors for examining the security footage all faced away from that single window. And it was cramped: D’Agosta and two of his detectives, Jimenez and Conklin, had to sit practically in each other’s laps while working the three available security playback workstations. D’Agosta had been sitting here in the dark for hours now, staring at the grainy little screen, and a nasty headache was beginning to form just behind his eyeballs. But something drove him on: a tickle of fear that, unless the videotapes scored a hit, the case was going to go cold again.

All of a sudden the dark room filled with a brilliant explosion of light: in the planetarium beyond and below the window, the Big Bang had just taken place. D’Agosta should have remembered this – after all, he’d heard the intro start up just the minute before – but once again it took him by surprise and he jumped. He shut his eyes, but it was too late: already, he could see stars dancing crazily behind his shut eyelids.

“Goddamn it!” he heard Conklin say.

Now thunderous music intruded into the cramped space. He sat motionless, eyes closed, until the stars went away and the music decreased slightly in volume. Then he opened his eyes again, blinked, and tried to focus on the screen before him.

“Anything?” he asked.

“No,” said Conklin.

“Nada,” said Jimenez.

He’d known it was a silly question even as he asked it – the moment they saw something, they’d sing out. But he’d asked anyway, in the crazy hope that simply by articulating it he might force something to happen.

The tape he was watching – a view of the main entrance to the Hall of Marine Life, five PM to six PM, Saturday, June 19, the day Marsala had been murdered – came to an end without showing anything of interest. He moused the window closed, rubbed his eyes again, drew a line through the corresponding entry on a clipboard that sat between him and Jimenez, then pulled up the security program’s main menu to select another, as-yet-unwatched video. With a distinct lack of enthusiasm, he chose the next video in the series: Hall of Marine Life, main entrance camera, six PM to seven PM, once again from June 12. He began running through the video stream, first at true speed, then at double speed, then – as the hall became completely empty – at eight times speed.

Nothing.

Crossing out this video entry in turn, he selected, for a change of pace, a camera that covered the southern half of the Great Rotunda, four PM to five PM. With a practiced hand he cued the digital feedback to its beginning, switched the display to full-screen mode, then started the playback at normal speed. A bird’s-eye view of the Rotunda flickered into life, streams of people moving from right to left across the screen. Closing time was drawing near, and they were heading for the exits in droves. He rubbed his eyes and peered closer, determined to concentrate despite the lousy conditions. He could make out the guards at their stations, the docents with their flags-on-a-stick weaving their way through the crowds, the volunteers at the information desk beginning to put away maps and flyers and donation requests for the night.

A thunderous roar from the planetarium beyond the far wall. Shouts and applause arose from the audience: the formation of the earth was taking place, all jets of flame and coronas of color and balls of fire. Deep-bass organ notes vibrated D’Agosta’s chair to a point where he almost fell out of it.

Shit. He shoved himself away from the screen with a brutal push. Enough was enough. Tomorrow morning, he’d go back to Singleton, eat crow, kiss ass, grovel, do whatever he had to do in order to be reassigned to that Upper East Side slasher murder.

Suddenly he froze. And then he scrambled back to the video screen, staring at it intently. He watched for perhaps thirty seconds. Then, fingers almost trembling with eagerness, he clicked the REWIND button, then watched the video play back, eyes just inches from the screen. Then he played it back again. And again.

“Mother of God,” he whispered.

There he was – the fake scientist.

He glanced at the printout of Bonomo’s facial reconstruction – taped to the side of Jimenez’s monitor – and then back to the screen. It was unmistakably him. He was wearing a lightweight trench coat, dark slacks, and slip-on rubber sneakers: the kind that made no noise when you walked. Not exactly standard attire for a scientist. D’Agosta watched as he came through the entrance doors, glanced around – apparently noting the location of the cameras – paid admission, then made his way through the security station and strolled across the Rotunda – against the exiting traffic – before disappearing out of view. D’Agosta played it back yet again, marveling at the man’s coolness, the almost insolent slowness of his walk.

Christ. This is it. He turned in excitement to announce his discovery when he noticed a dark figure standing behind him.

“Pendergast!” he said in surprise.

“Vincent. I understand from Mrs. Trask that you, ah, have been asking after me. Urgently.” Pendergast looked around, his pale eyes taking in the room. “Box seats to the cosmos – how stimulating. What, pray tell, is going on?”

In his exhilaration, D’Agosta forgot his earlier annoyance at the agent.

“We found him!”

“God?”

“No, no – the fake Dr. Waldron! Right here!”

A look of what might have been impatience flitted across Pendergast’s face. “The fake who? I’m lost.”

Jimenez and Conklin crowded around the monitor as D’Agosta explained. “Remember, the last time you were here, you wondered about the visiting scientist Victor Marsala worked with? Well, his credentials were false. And now look: I’ve got eyes on him, entering the Museum at four twenty PM, on the very afternoon of the day Marsala was murdered!”

“How interesting,” said Pendergast, in a bored voice, already edging toward the door. He seemed to have lost all interest in the case.

“We did a facial composite,” said D’Agosta, “and here he is. Compare this guy on screen to the composite.” D’Agosta plucked the composite from the side of Jimenez’s monitor and held it toward him. “It’s a match. Take a look!”

“Delighted to hear the case is proceeding well,” said Pendergast, moving closer to the door. “I’m afraid my attention is now fully occupied on something else, but I’m sure things are in excellent hands—”

He paused as his eye fell on the portrait D’Agosta held out toward him. His voice died away, and he froze. A great stillness took hold while the agent’s features went as pale as death. He reached out, took the sheet, and stared at it, the paper making a rattling sound. Then he sank into an empty chair set against the wall, still clutching the paper and staring at it with great intensity.

“Bonomo did a damn good job,” D’Agosta said. “Now all we have to do is track down the son of a bitch.”

For a moment, Pendergast did not reply. When he did, his voice was low, sepulchral, as if emanating from the grave. “Remarkable indeed,” he said. “But there is no need to track him down.”

This stopped D’Agosta. “What do you mean?”

“I made this gentleman’s acquaintance recently. Quite recently, in fact.” And the hand holding the facial composite dropped very slowly as the sheet of paper slid to the dusty floor.