Текст книги "Two Graves"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 34 страниц)

60

BEYOND THE QUAY LAY A CURVE OF SHORE AND A PEBBLED beach. A quarter mile farther on, the forest began, a dark, spiky, seemingly impenetrable wall. The sky deepened as the sun dipped through the last layer of clouds and winked off in a swirl of light at the horizon.

Pendergast reached into his pack and removed a red light, turning to the imperturbable Egon and speaking in a hushed voice full of suppressed excitement. “My dear fellow, now we are coming to the time of the Queen Beatrice.”

He set off down the beach, Egon following. Some small skiffs had been pulled up on the shingle, their nets draped out to dry. Farther along, the beach gave way to lava rock, and minutes later they arrived at the forest edge. The last of the light was dying against the island fortress, accentuating the brilliant illumination. Another distant cry—bird or human?—drifted over the water.

“Egon, you see that ruin over there?” Pendergast asked, pointing toward the fort. “Why is it all lit up? What’s going on over there?”

Egon stared at him a moment, his eyes returning the reflected glow from the fortress. And he spoke for the first time. “Agricultural research. Animal husbandry.”

“Animal husbandry?” Pendergast shook his head. “Well, it’s none of my business. We’re for the forest.” He delved into his pack and pulled out a flashlight. “Here’s a red light for you. Don’t use a regular flashlight, please—the QB is aversive to light. Follow me, stay close, and make no noise.”

He handed Egon the red light and walked into the forest. The prickly branches of araucaria trees mingled with the thick understory to impede their way, everything still wet from the recent rains. But Pendergast, slender and nimble as a snake, moved with speed through the dark, dripping vegetation, shining his red light here and there, net in one hand, ready to strike.

“Keep up!” he whispered over his shoulder as Egon blundered along.

The ground began to rise. There were no trails in this part of the forest, no sign in fact that any humans ventured beyond the town. It had all the aspect of wilderness. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, it didn’t feel quite right.

“There’s one!” Pendergast suddenly cried out. “Do you see it? Oh, my God! I can’t believe it!” And in a flash he was gone, whipping through the undergrowth, red light flickering, net waving frantically. Egon gave a shout from behind and began to pursue, crashing along.

Ten minutes later—from a heavy tree branch about thirty feet above the ground—Pendergast watched Egon stumble about in the forest, calling Fawcett’s name and shining a powerful flashlight about, his voice strident and panicked.

Pendergast waited half an hour, until his escort had moved his search farther south. Then, as silently and nimbly as a monkey, Pendergast descended from the tree. Placing a special hood on the red light, he moved swiftly northward, following the sloping ascent of land. For an hour he continued his rise until he came out on a narrow rim—the lip of an adjacent crater. Here he turned off the light. The trees had thinned out along the rim, giving him a view down into the broad bottom of the vast crater, illuminated by the light of a crescent moon. It was quite shallow, miles across, encompassing several thousand acres of tightly packed fields and pastures, taking advantage of the rich volcanic soil. This was the breadbasket of Nova Godói, clearly the former location of the old tobacco plantation, the crater forming an almost perfect microclimate for agriculture. At the far end of the crater stood a tight cluster of dead cinder cones, like black cylinders. Nestled up against them were agricultural sheds, greenhouses, barns, and silos. All was quiet among them, not a light to be seen in the velvety darkness.

A faint trail followed the rim, and he walked along it until he came to a second trail switchbacking down into the crater, steep at first, but soon leveling out as it approached the fields. In another moment he had reached the edge of the first field, a great spread of corn, quite still in the pale moonlight. Pendergast entered it and continued on at a swift, silent pace toward the far end of the crater—and the cluster of agricultural buildings.

Past the corn were other fields, bursting with a great variety of produce—tomatoes, beans, squash, wheat, cotton, alfalfa, and timothy, as well as rich pastures for livestock. Swiftly he passed through them all until he came out on the far side, where the buildings were.

He selected the first: a huge, flat-roofed metal warehouse. He found that its door was padlocked. A quick pass of his hand caused the lock to seemingly fall open. He pulled the door ajar and slipped into the interior, fragrant with the scent of machine oil, diesel, and earth. A quick flash of the hooded red light revealed rows of agricultural machinery—farm tractors, cultivators, ploughs, disk harrows, row planters, manure spreaders, harvesters, balers, backhoes, and loaders—all of old vintage but excellently maintained.

He moved through the building and out a door on the far side. To his right rose a barn, in which he could hear the soft lowing of milk cows. To his left stood a row of silos, and straight ahead a grid of greenhouses. It was a remarkable operation, an extraordinarily rich and productive farm, vast in size, impeccably run and maintained. And apparently deserted.

Pendergast scouted the edges of the greenhouses, their glass panes gleaming in the moonlight. Inside could be seen a profusion of flowers—flowers upon flowers. One greenhouse was bursting with exotic roses in every size, color, and shape.

At the far end of the greenhouses stood the dead cinder cones, steep and tall, their flanks covered with sliding volcanic ash. Pendergast skirted the base of the closest, and then stopped: there, built into the bottom of the cone, stood a narrow shed-like building, with no windows, its rear buried in the cinders.

He crept up to the door of the building and pressed his ear to it. At first he could hear nothing, but, over time, he picked up the faintest of sounds: movement, sighing, shuffling, perhaps even a cough.

This door was incongruously strong, of heavy wood banded and riveted with steel. The lock was sophisticated, but nothing that withstood Pendergast’s efforts for more than sixty seconds. The door swung in on oiled hinges, the air exhaling a mephitic, offensive smell. All was dark.

Pendergast advanced, keeping the red light well shielded. The shed now revealed itself as merely an entrance, leading down into something built underneath or perhaps into the cinder cones. Before him was a shallow, broad staircase of well-worn stone. Pendergast paused at the top step, turning the red light off before beginning his descent. He could see a faint light from below—of a reddish hue—and as he proceeded the stench became stronger, the air redolent of unwashed bodies. Reaching the bottom of the staircase, he found himself in a long tunnel. In the darkness he could hear the sounds more clearly now. They were the sounds of shuffling, snoring, mumbling—the sounds of people. Many people.

With infinite care Pendergast crept forward in the darkness, keeping close to the nearest wall. The reddish glow came from two barred windows set in a pair of locked double doors at the far end of the tunnel. Keeping low, Pendergast slipped up to the doors, examined the lock, and listened. There was someone on the far side, someone passing back and forth: a guard. He listened, timing the guard’s slow coming and going. At a safe moment, he rose and looked through the barred window.

A vast room greeted his eyes, illuminated in dull red light from strings of bare hanging bulbs. The room consisted of row upon row of crude wooden bunk beds extending into the gloom, stacked three bunks high, each with a single blanket wrapping up the form of a human being, faces sorrowful in restive sleep, while others moved about like ghosts, some going to or from a latrine along one wall of the room. Still others simply paced back and forth aimlessly, unable to sleep, their hopeless eyes reflecting the red light of the bulbs.

Everything Pendergast had not seen in Nova Godói was here: the deformed, the crippled, the ugly and squat, the weak, the aged—and, particularly, the infirm of mind. But what horrified him most of all was that he recognizedsome of these faces. Only hours before, he had seen some of the same faces in town, belonging to radiant, smiling counterparts—twins. Only these underground doppelgängers carried the strange and disturbing expressions of the mentally ill, the vacant of mind, the despairing and hopeless, their sinewy muscles, brown skin, and rough hands attesting to a lifetime of field labor.

At the far edge of his vision, Pendergast saw the guard turning. He was not of these people, he was one of the others: tall, handsome. His presence seemed unnecessary—these poor souls were in no condition to revolt, escape, or otherwise cause trouble. The look of resignation on their faces was universal and absolute.

Pendergast lowered his gaze from the window and made his way back down the tunnel and up the staircase. A few minutes later, he was breathing deeply—gasping even—the cool, fresh, aboveground air, the grotesque image of human suffering he’d just witnessed burned into his consciousness for all time.

61

THIS TIME, FELDER HAD STOOD IN THE DARKNESS OUTSIDE the library windows for over an hour, in the freezing night, tense and fearful. The house looked dead: no lights, no movement. And above all, no Dukchuk. Finally, reassured, trying to keep his courage up, he opened the window and climbed in.

Leaving the window open in case he needed a quick escape, he stood motionless in the chill room for a long moment, listening. Nothing. Just as he’d hoped.

He had taken every precaution. For the last few nights, he’d kept watch on the library, surveilling it from the safety of the arborvitae. All had been still. The midnight near-encounter with Dukchuk must have been a freakish coincidence, since the man didn’t seem to be in the habit of roaming the house at night. The previous afternoon, Miss Wintour had asked him in again for tea, and neither she nor her terrifying manservant had given the slightest indication that anything was amiss. Nothing was suspected, it seemed.

But Felder knew he couldn’t wait forever. He had to act tonight—any more time and he’d lose his nerve completely. As it was, Constance and Mount Mercy were beginning to seem far, far away.

He moved along the series of bookcases, feeling his way in the dark by touching the rippled surfaces of the doors’ leaded glass. The W’s would be near the end of the collection, putting Alexander Wintour’s portfolio close to the pocket doors that led out into the main hallway. To his relief, those doors were firmly shut.

Felder paused at the second-to-last bookcase, listening, but the house was as silent as before. He pulled the Maglite from his pocket and, shielding it with care, flashed it over the books ahead of him. Trapp. Traven. Tremaine.

Snapping the light off, he moved on to the next and last bookcase. Once again, he hesitated, listening for even the slightest sound. Then he raised the flashlight, aiming it toward the upper shelves. Voltaire, in seven beautifully bound leather volumes—and beside them, a half dozen bundles of what looked like folded parchment, wrapped in crumbling crimson ribbon.

Keeping the flashlight beam on, he let it drift to the next shelf, then the next, and then trailed it laterally across the titles. Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray. P. G. Wodehouse’s My Man Jeeves. Both, apparently, first editions. And between them, three fat portfolios of black leather, plain and scuffed, with no title or markings.

Felder’s heart began beating rather quickly.

Holding the Maglite between his teeth, he opened the glass case and eased the first portfolio from its shelf. It was covered in dust, and looked as if it hadn’t been touched in a hundred years. He opened it carefully, almost afraid to breathe. Inside were dozens of what appeared to be rough sketches and preliminary studies for intended paintings. They were foxed, and faded, and quite similar in style to the ones he had seen in the historical society.

Felder’s heart beat quicker.

He began leafing through the studies, fingers trembling. The first few were unsigned, but the third bore a signature in the lower right corner: WINTOUR, 1881.

He flipped to the back of the portfolio. There—attached to the inside rear edge with a narrow line of paste—was an envelope, brittle and yellowed. Taking the scalpel from his pocket, he cut the envelope free. His fingers felt numb and stupid, and it took him two attempts to open it.

There, nestled inside, was a small lock of dark hair.

For a moment, he just stared, with a strange mixture of emotion: triumph, relief, a little disbelief. So it was true, then—it was all true.

But wait—was it the righthair? There were two other portfolios. Might Wintour have collected hair from other girls? It seemed unlikely—but he had to check.

Sliding the envelope in his pocket, he put the portfolio back on the shelf and pulled down the next one, going through it rapidly. More sketches and watercolors. He felt his breath coming faster in his anxiety to get this done. There was no lock of hair in there. He pushed that back on the shelf and took down the third, flipping through it, in his haste tearing several pages. Again, nothing. He shut the portfolio and shoved it back on the shelf, but in his hurry he wasn’t as careful as before and it made a dull thumpas he over-pushed it into the back of the shelf.

He froze, his heart pounding. In the great cold silence of the house that small sound was like the crash of thunder.

Felder waited.

But there wasn’t even the breath of sound in that frozen house. Slowly, he felt his muscles relax, his breathing slow. Nobody had heard a thing. He was just being paranoid.

He felt the envelope in his pocket; it gave out a dry crackling sound. Only then, as his fright subsided, did the full implications of his discovery sink in. All doubt was gone: Constance really wasa hundred and forty years old. She wasn’t crazy. She’d been telling the truth all along.

Strangely enough, this realization didn’t shock him as much as he thought it would. Somehow, he already knew it was true: from the calm, matter-of-fact manner in which she’d always maintained her story; from the way she had been able to describe, in great detail, the contemporary appearance of 1880s Water Street; and from the essential honesty of her character. The fact was, this was what he wantedto believe, because—

With a crash of sound, the pocket doors of the library sprang open, revealing Dukchuk—dressed in his shapeless batik robe, holding the same cruel weapon Felder had seen before, staring at him with beady black eyes.

With a cry of fright Felder dashed for the window but Dukchuk was faster, leaping across the room and slamming the window shut, moving with a silence that was almost more terrible than a yell, displaying his teeth in a feral grin—and, for the first time, Felder noted they had been sharpened into points. With a scream Felder tried to defend himself but Dukchuk was on him, a tattooed arm whipping around his neck and contracting like a garrote, choking off Felder’s cry.

Struggling madly, he felt a sudden, white-hot explosion of pain as the club violently impacted the side of his head. His knees gave way and Dukchuk flung him down, striking his chest, the terrible blow knocking him to the ground, where he struggled, unable to breathe.

A red mist rose before his eyes and he fought to remain conscious, clutching his chest, until at last he was able to suck in air with a huge gasp. As the mist slowly dissipated and his vision cleared, Felder saw Dukchuk standing over him in the faint light of the hallway, massive tattooed forearms folded, his unnaturally small eyes like coals. Behind him stood the diminutive form of Miss Wintour.

“So!” Miss Wintour said. “You were right, Dukchuk. This man is nothing more than a common thief, here under the pretense of being a lodger!” She glared at Felder. “And to think of your nerve, drinking my tea under my own roof, enjoying my kind hospitality, while plotting to rob a weak, helpless old lady like myself of my meager possessions. Hatefulman!”

“Please,” Felder began. He tried to rise to his knees. His head throbbed, his ribs were undoubtedly broken, and he tasted the metallic combination of blood and fear in his mouth. “Please. I haven’t taken anything. I was just curious, I wanted to have a look around, I’d heard so much…”

He fell silent as Dukchuk raised the club again menacingly. She would call the police; he’d be arrested; he’d go to jail. It was the end of his career. What on earth had he been thinking?

The manservant looked over his shoulder at Miss Wintour, with a querying glance that carried the unmistakable question: What should I do with him?

Felder swallowed painfully. This was it: the call would go to the police, and all the ugliness would begin. He might as well accept it. And start coming up with a good story.

Miss Wintour glared at him a moment longer. Then she turned to Dukchuk.

“Kill him,” she said. “And then you may bury his remains under the floor of the root cellar. With the others.” She turned away and left the library without a backward glance.

62

DR. JOHN FELDER WALKED ACROSS THE MUSTY, FADED carpeting of the old mansion, his movements slow, almost robotic. His head pounded; blood oozed from a cut on his temple, trickling down his neck; and his broken ribs grated on each other with each step. Dukchuk followed behind, occasionally prodding Felder in the small of his back with the club. The only sounds the manservant made were the swish of his tunic and the padding of his big bare feet on the carpet. The old lady had disappeared into the upper regions of the house.

Felder continued down the hallway without really seeing anything. This wasn’t real, this couldn’t be happening. Any minute now and he’d wake up on his uncomfortable little pallet in the carriage house. Or maybe—just maybe—he’d wake up in his own apartment back in New York, and this whole crazy trip to Southport would prove to have been nothing but a wild nightmare…

And then Dukchuk prodded him again with the rounded end of his club, and Felder knew—all too clearly—that although this was a nightmare, it was no dream.

Still he could hardly believe it. Had old lady Wintour really given Dukchuk instructions to kill him? Was she serious or was it just an effort to scare him? This business of burying him in the root cellar with the others—what on earth could thatmean?

He stopped. Ahead—in the faint, sickly electric light—he could make out a dining room, and beyond it what looked like a kitchen, with a door in its far wall leading out into the night—to freedom. But Dukchuk prodded him again, indicating with his club that Felder was to turn down another hallway to his left.

Now, as he resumed walking, Felder began to look around a little. Ancient, flyspecked lithographs lined the walls. Little china statuary sat on side tables here and there. But there was nothing, nothing that could conceivably be used as a weapon. He let his hands brush against his pockets as he walked. He could feel their contents: the screwdriver, the scalpel, the envelope with the lock of hair. The Maglite lay on the floor of the library, where he’d sprawled initially. The huge, nimble, muscular Dukchuk would just laugh at the scalpel and its one-inch blade. The screwdriver was a better bet: could he perhaps jam it into the man’s chest? But the freak was so strong, so muscular—so quick—that he would never succeed. It would just make him mad.

It was hopeless. Worse than hopeless.

Dukchuk rapped on a closed door with his club, then gestured for Felder to open it. Felder turned the handle, his clammy hand sliding wetly over the white marble, pulled the door open. Beyond lay darkness. Dukchuk turned an old-fashioned knob on the wall and an overhead light came on, dangling from a wire. Ahead lay a rude set of stairs, leading down to the basement.

Felder felt his legs go wobbly with fear—fear that had been buried under disorientation, pain, disbelief. This was for real. “No,” he said, cringing back from the stairway. “No. Please. You can’t do this.”

Dukchuk poked him in the back with his club.

“I’ll give you money,” Felder babbled. “I’ve got a hundred and fifty, back in the carriage house. Maybe two hundred. We can go to the cash machine. It’ll be our secret, she won’t even have to know—”

Dukchuk jammed him in the back again, much harder. Felder teetered, catching the railing to keep his balance. Any harder and he’d be sent hurtling headfirst down the stairs.

“You can’t kill someone like this. They know I’m renting the carriage house. The police will come looking, they’ll tear the house apart.” But even as he pleaded, he realized the police would do nothing of the sort. Who would believe a little old lady capable of cold-blooded murder? He’d rented the place under an assumed name, he’d told nobody he was staying here. Even if the cops came, they’d just knock on the door, ask a few polite questions, and go away.

Another hard jab.

He tried to swallow, felt himself gagging with fear instead. He took a step forward, then another, moving painfully down the steps like an old man. Dukchuk followed, keeping back several steps.

Time seemed to slow. Every step down into that basement was like a small agony. Kill him. And then you may bury his remains under the floor of the root cellar.Oh, God—oh, God, he really was about to die. Or was it still a sick, macabre joke, an effort to terrorize him? Somehow, he didn’t think so.

He reached the bottom of the steps and stopped. It was chill and clammy, lit only by the bare bulb at the top of the stairs and a flickering, lambent light that came from a chamber to the left. A narrow hallway led ahead, with other, closed doors leading off from it.

This was it. He waited, bracing himself for the vicious blow to the head; for the blinding pain to explode in his brainpan; for the white light that would quickly fade to black. But instead Dukchuk prodded him ahead with his club.

They passed the open door on the left. Out of the corner of his eye, Felder saw tall, flickering candles; strangely painted linen hangings; small stone figurines arranged on plinths in a semicircle. Dukchuk’s lair.

They were heading directly toward a closed door at the end of the hallway. As he stared at it, Felder’s breathing began to quicken and he heard himself sobbing audibly. “Please,” he murmured. “Please, please, please…”

They stopped at the end of the passage. Dukchuk motioned for him to open the last door. Felder reached for it, his hand trembling, his legs almost unable to hold him up. It took him three tries before he could grasp the handle with sufficient strength to turn it.

The door opened into darkness, the indirect candlelight revealing only faint shapes: apple barrels; boxes half full of rotting turnips and carrots; wooden shelving holding swing-top bale jars, many exploded, their dark and putrid contents sprayed across the undersides of the shelves above and dribbling down in congealed ropes.

The root cellar.

Felder heard his sobbing grow louder. It almost seemed like someone else was crying. Again, Dukchuk prodded him forward. But this time, Felder couldn’t—or wouldn’t—move. Instead, his hand slipped into his pocket, closed instinctively over the small envelope.

“Constance,” he murmured. In this moment of supreme crisis, he realized all of a sudden—although he probably should have known it long before—that he was hopelessly in love with her. Maybe he had known it before—maybe he just hadn’t consciously admitted it to himself. That’s what this was all about. And now it was over. She would never know he’d found her lock of hair—nor would she ever know the price he’d had to pay for it.

Dukchuk prodded him again. And again, Felder remained where he stood, unable to move, on the threshold of the root cellar.

A vicious blow landed on his right shoulder, and Felder cried out, staggering forward. Another blow from the club caught him on the inside of the knee, and he crumpled to the ground, his head colliding with the earthen floor.

This was it.

Suddenly—it had something to do, he was sure, with the revelation of his feelings for Constance—he felt the fear recede. The feeling that replaced it was something like surprise—and anger. Surprise that this was the way he’d go out; that the last earthly sight he would ever see was the uneven, dusty floor; the huge plank-like feet of Dukchuk, turned partly away from him, their toenails black and ragged. And anger at the enormous unfairness of it. He had spent his life doing good, helping sick people, trying to be the best person he could be, earnest and kindhearted… and now was he to die the helpless victim of a crazy murderer?

The hand gripping the envelope felt something else press against it: something cold and straight. The scalpel. His hand released the envelope, closed over the blade. And—quite abruptly—Felder knew what he had to do.

In a single motion he pulled his hand from the pocket and—pinching the scalpel between his thumb and the knuckle of his middle finger, the index finger resting along its upper edge, as he’d been taught in dissection lectures at med school—slashed it with all the force he could muster through the massive Achilles tendon behind Dukchuk’s nearest ankle.

There was a wet, sucking sound as the tendon—cleanly severed, its tension released—shot up like a fat rubber band and disappeared into the calf muscles of Dukchuk’s leg. Instantly the man fell to his knees. His eyes widened, his mouth formed a perfect O, and for the first time the manservant uttered a sound: a deafening, calf-like bawl of pure agony.

Felder staggered to his feet, still grasping the bloody scalpel. Dukchuk howled a second time and clawed at Felder, but the psychiatrist jumped clear, at the same time slashing viciously at Dukchuk’s hand, opening the palm like a ripe melon.

“You want some more, you son of a bitch?” Felder cried, astonished at his own rage. But Dukchuk was overwhelmed by pain, huddling on the floor now, clutching at his ankle, blood gushing from his hand, honking and bawling like a baby. He seemed to have forgotten all about Felder.

With a superhuman surge of strength, Felder swung around, reeled up the staircase, and staggered into the dining room, knocking over a chair in his progress. From somewhere upstairs he heard the old lady call down fretfully: “For heaven’s sake, Dukchuk! Have your fun, but keep the noise down!”

Felder limped as fast as he could through the darkened kitchen. From below he could hear Dukchuk howling mindlessly, but the sounds were muffled now. Making for the rear door, he fumbled open the locks, threw the door wide. Ignoring the pain of his broken ribs and injured leg, he crashed through the overgrowth behind the mansion, reached the carriage house, entered just long enough to retrieve his case and keys, staggered over to his Volvo, got in, fired up the engine, peeled out onto Center Street, and drove away from the nightmare mansion with all the speed he could manage.