Текст книги "Fever Dream"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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"She could have gone anywhere in those three days," Pendergast said.

"What the hell? You're just giving up?" D'Agosta stared at Pendergast. Then he turned, stuck his head out into the hall. "Maurice? Yo! Maurice!" Where was the man when you finally needed him?

For a moment, silence. Then, a faint banging in the far spaces of the mansion. A minute later, feet sounded on the back stairway. Maurice appeared around the bend of the corridor. "I beg your pardon?" he panted as he approached, his eyes wide.

"That trip of Helen's you mentioned last evening. When she left without warning, was gone for two nights?"

"Yes?" Maurice nodded.

"Isn't there anything more about it you can tell us? Gas station receipts, hotel bills?"

Maurice fell into a silent study, then said: "Nothing, sir."

"She didn't say anything at all after her return? Not a word?"

Maurice shook his head. "I'm sorry, sir."

Pendergast sat, utterly motionless, in his chair. A silent pall settled over the parlor.

"Come to think of it, there is one thing," Maurice said. "Although I don't think you'll find it of use."

D'Agosta pounced. "What was it?"

"Well..." The old servant hesitated. D'Agosta wanted to grab him by the lapels and shake him.

"It's just that... I recollect now that she called me, sir. That first morning, from the road."

Pendergast slowly rose. "Go on, Maurice," he said quietly.

"It was getting on toward nine. I was having coffee in the morning room. The phone rang, and it was Mrs. Pendergast on the line. She'd left her AAA card in her office. She'd had a flat tire and needed the member number." Maurice glanced at Pendergast. "You recall she never could do anything with cars, sir."

"That's it?"

Maurice nodded. "I got the card and read her the number. She thanked me."

"Nothing else?" D'Agosta pressed. "Any background noise? Conversation, maybe?"

"It was so long ago, sir." Maurice thought hard. "I believe there were traffic noises. Perhaps a honk. She must have been calling from an outdoor phone booth."

For a moment, nobody spoke. D'Agosta felt hugely deflated.

"What about her voice?" Pendergast asked. "Did she sound tense or nervous?"

"No, sir. In fact, now I do recollect–she said it was lucky, her getting the flat where she did."

"Lucky?" Pendergast repeated. "Why?"

"Because she could have an egg cream while she waited."

There was a moment of stasis. And then Pendergast exploded into action. Ducking past D'Agosta and Maurice, he ran to the landing without a word and went tearing down the stairs.

D'Agosta followed. The central hallway was empty, but he could hear sounds from the library. Stepping into the room, he saw the agent feverishly searching the shelves, throwing books to the floor with abandon. He seized a volume, strode to a nearby table, cleared the surface with a violent sweep of his arm, and flipped through the pages. D'Agosta noticed the book was a Louisiana road atlas. A ruler and pencil appeared in Pendergast's hand and he hunched over the atlas, taking measurements and marking them with a pencil.

"There it is,"he whispered under his breath, stabbing a finger at the page. And without another word he raced out of the library.

D'Agosta followed the agent through the dining room, the kitchen, the larder, the butler's pantry, and the back kitchen, to the rear door of the plantation house. Pendergast took the back steps two at a time and charged through an expansive garden to a white-painted stable converted to a garage with half a dozen bays. He threw open the doors and disappeared into darkness.

D'Agosta followed. The vast, dim space smelled faintly of hay and motor oil. As his eyes adjusted, he made out three tarp-covered objects that could only be automobiles. Pendergast strode over to one and yanked off the tarp. Beneath lay a two-seat red convertible, low-slung and villainous. It gleamed in the indirect light of the converted barn.

"Wow." D'Agosta gave a whistle. "A vintage Porsche. What a beauty."

"A 1954 Porsche 550 Spyder. It was Helen's." Pendergast leapt in nimbly, felt under the mat for the key. As D'Agosta opened the door and got into the passenger seat, Pendergast found the key, fitted it to the ignition, turned. The engine came to life with an ear-shattering roar.

"Bless you, Maurice," Pendergast said over the growl. "You've kept it in top shape."

He let the car warm up for a few seconds, then eased it out of the barn. Once they were clear of the doors, he stomped on the accelerator. The vehicle shot forward, scattering a storm of gravel that peppered the outbuilding like so much buckshot. D'Agosta felt himself pressed into the seat like an astronaut on liftoff. As the car swept out of the driveway, D'Agosta could see Maurice's black-dressed form on the steps, watching them go.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

Pendergast looked at him. The despair was gone, replaced by a hard glitter in his eye, faint but noticeable: the gleam of the hunt. "Thanks to you, Vincent, we've located the haystack," he replied. "Now let's see if we can find the needle."

23

THE SPORTS CAR BOOMED ALONG THE SLEEPY byways of rural Louisiana. Mangrove swamps, bayous, stately plantations, and marshes passed in a blur. Now and then they slowed briefly to traverse a village, the loud, beastly engine eliciting curious stares. Pendergast had not bothered to put up the convertible's top, and D'Agosta felt increasingly windblown, his bald spot chapping in the blast of air. The car rode low to the ground, making him feel exposed and vulnerable. He wondered why Pendergast had taken this car instead of the far more comfortable Rolls.

"Mind telling me where we're going?" he yelled over the shriek of the wind.

"Picayune, Mississippi."

"Why there?"

"Because that's where Helen telephoned Maurice."

"You knowthat?"

"Within ninety-five percent certainty."

"How?"

Pendergast downshifted, negotiating a sharp bend in the road. "Helen was having an egg cream while she waited for the auto club."

"Yeah. So?"

"So: egg creams are a Yankee weakness I was never able to cure her of. You seldom find them outside of New York and parts of New England."

"Go on."

"There are–or were–only three places within driving distance of New Orleans that served egg creams. Helen sought them all out; she was always driving to one or another. Occasionally I went along. In any case, using the map just now, I inferred–based on the day of the week, the time of day, and Helen's proclivity for driving too fast–Picayune to be the obvious choice of the three."

D'Agosta nodded. It seemed simple, once explained. "So what's with the ninety-five percent?"

"It's just possible that she stopped earlier that morning, for some other reason. Or wasstopped–she attracted speeding tickets by the bushel."

Picayune, Mississippi, was a neat town of low frame houses just over the Louisiana border. A sign at the town line proclaimed it a PRECIOUS COIN IN THE PURSE OF THE SOUTH, and another displayed pictures of the floats from the previous year's Krewe of Roses Parade. D'Agosta looked around curiously as they passed down the quiet, leafy streets. Pendergast slowed as they rumbled into the commercial district.

"Things have changed a bit," he said, glancing left and right. "That Internet cafe is of course new. So is that Creole restaurant. That little place offering crawfish po'boys, however, is familiar."

"You used to come here with Helen?"

"Not with Helen. I passed through the town several times in later years. There's an FBI training camp a few miles from here. Ah–this must be it."

Pendergast turned a corner onto a quiet street and pulled over to the curb. The street was residential except for the closest structure, a one-story cinder-block building set well back from the road and surrounded by a parking lot of cracked and heaving blacktop. A leaning sign on the building front advertised Jake's Yankee Chowhouse, but it was faded and peeling and the restaurant had obviously been closed for years. The windows in the rear section had muslin curtains, however, and a satellite dish was fixed to the cement wall: clearly the building served as residence as well.

"Let's see if we can't do this the easy way," Pendergast murmured. He pursed his lips, examining the street a moment longer. Then he began revving the Porsche with long jabs of his right foot. The big engine roared to life, louder and louder with each depression of the accelerator, leaves blowing out from beneath the car, until the vehicle's frame vibrated as violently as a passenger jet.

"My God!" D'Agosta yelled over the noise. "Do you want to wake the dead?"

The FBI agent kept it up another fifteen seconds, until at least a dozen heads were poking out of windows and doors up and down the street. "No," he replied, easing off at last and letting the engine rumble back into an idle. "I believe the living will suffice." He made a quick survey of the faces now staring at them. "Too young," he said of one, shaking his head, "and that one, poor fellow, is clearly too stupid... Ah: now thatone is a possibility. Come on, Vincent." Getting out of the car, he strolled down the street to the third house on the left, where a man of about sixty wearing a yellowing T-shirt stood on the front steps, staring at them with a frown. He clutched a television remote in one meaty paw, a beer in the other.

D'Agosta suddenly understood why Pendergast had taken his wife's Porsche for this particular road trip.

"Excuse me, sir," Pendergast said as he approached the house. "I wonder if you'd mind telling me if, by chance, you recognize the vehicle we–"

"Blow it out your ass," the man said, turning and going back inside his house, slamming the door.

D'Agosta hoisted up his pants and licked his lips. "Want me to go drag the fat fuck back out?"

Pendergast shook his head. "No need, Vincent." He turned back, regarding the restaurant. An old, heavyset woman in a flimsy housedress had come out of the kitchen and stood on the porch, flanked by a brace of plastic pink flamingos. She had a magazine in one hand and a cigarillo in the other, and she peered at them through old-fashioned teardrop glasses. "We may have flushed out just the partridge I was after."

They walked back to the old parking lot and the kitchen door of Jake's. The woman watched their approach with complete taciturnity, with no visible change of expression.

"Good afternoon, ma'am," Pendergast said with a slight bow.

"Afternoon yourself," she replied.

"Do you, by chance, own this fine establishment?"

"I might," she said, taking a deep drag on the cigarillo. D'Agosta noticed it had a white plastic holder.

Pendergast waved at the Spyder. "And is there any chance you recognize this vehicle?"

She looked away from them, peering at the car through her grimy glasses. Then she looked back. "I might," she repeated.

There was a silence. D'Agosta heard a window slam shut, and a door.

"Why, how remiss of me," Pendergast said suddenly. "Taking up your valuable time like this uncompensated." As if by magic, a twenty-dollar bill appeared in his hand. He held it out to the woman. To D'Agosta's surprise, she plucked it from his fingers and stuffed it down her withered but still ample cleavage.

"I saw that car three times," the woman said. "My son was crazy about them foreign sporty jobs. He worked the soda fountain. He passed away in a car crash on the outskirts of town a few years back. Anyhow, the first time it showed up he just about went nuts. Made everybody drop whatever they were doing and take a look."

"Do you remember the driver?"

"A young woman. Pretty thing, too."

"You don't recall what she ordered, do you?" Pendergast asked.

"I'm not likely to forget that. An egg cream. She said she'd come all the way from N'Orleans. Imagine, all that way for an egg cream."

There was another, briefer silence.

"You mentioned three times," Pendergast said. "What about the last time?"

The woman took another drag on the cigarillo, paused a moment to search her memory. "She showed up on foot that time. Had a flat tire."

"I commend you on your excellent memory, ma'am."

"Like I said, you don't forget a car–or a lady–like that any time soon. My Henry gave her the egg cream for free. She drove on back and let him get behind the wheel–wouldn't let him drive it, though. Said she was in a hurry."

"Ah. So she was going somewhere?"

"Said she'd been going in circles, couldn't find the turnoff for Caledonia."

"Caledonia? I'm not familiar with that town."

"It ain't a town–I'm talking about the Caledonia National Forest. Blame road wasn't marked then and it ain't marked now."

If Pendergast was growing excited, he didn't show it. To D'Agosta, the FBI agent's gestures–as he lit another cigarillo for the old woman–seemed almost languid.

"Is that where she was headed?" he asked, placing the lighter back into his pocket. "The national forest?"

The woman plucked the fresh cigarillo from her mouth, looked at it, masticated her gums a few times, then inserted the holder back between her lips as if she were driving home a screw. "Nope."

"May I ask where?"

The woman made a show of trying to remember. "Let me see now... That was a long time ago..." The excellent memory seemed to grow vague.

Another twenty appeared; once again, it was quickly shoved down into the same crevasse. "Sunflower," she said immediately.

"Sunflower?" Pendergast repeated.

The woman nodded. "Sunflower, Louisiana. Not two miles over the state line. Take the Bogalusa turnoff, just before the swamp." And she pointed the direction.

"I'm most obliged to you." Pendergast turned to D'Agosta. "Vincent, let us not waste any time."

As they strode back to the car, the woman yelled out, "When you pass the old mine shaft, take a right!"

24

Sunflower, Louisiana

KNOW WHAT YOU'D LIKE, SUGAR?" THE WAITRESS asked.

D'Agosta let the menu drop to the table. "The catfish."

"Fried, oven-fried, baked, or broiled?"

"Broiled, I guess."

"Excellent choice." She made a notation on her pad, turned. "And you, sir?"

"Pine bark stew, please," said Pendergast. "Without the hush puppies."

"Right you are." She made another note, then turned away with a flourish, bouncing off on sensible white shoes.

D'Agosta watched as she wiggled toward the kitchen. Then he sighed, took a sip of his beer. It had been a long, wearisome afternoon. Sunflower, Louisiana, was a town of about three thousand people, surrounded on one side by liveoak forest, on the other by the vast cypress swamp known as Black Brake. It had proven utterly unremarkable: small shabby houses with picket fences, scuffed boardwalks in need of repair, redbone hounds dozing on front porches. It was a hardworking, hard-bitten, down-at-the-heels hamlet forgotten by the outside world.

They had registered at the town's only hotel, then split up and gone their separate ways, each trying to uncover why Helen Pendergast would have made a three-day pilgrimage to such a remote spot.

Their recent run of luck seemed to sputter out on the threshold of Sunflower. D'Agosta had spent five fruitless hours looking into blank faces and walking into dead ends. There were no art dealers, museums, private collections, or historical societies. Nobody remembered seeing Helen Pendergast–the photo he'd shown around triggered only blank looks. Not even the car produced a glimmer of recall. John James Audubon, their research showed, had never been anywhere near this region of Louisiana.

When D'Agosta finally met up with Pendergast in the hotel's small restaurant for dinner, he felt almost as dejected as the FBI agent had looked that morning. As if to match his mood, the sunny skies had boiled up into dark thunderheads that threatened a storm.

"Zilch," he said in answer to Pendergast's query, and described his discouraging morning. "Maybe that old lady remembered wrong. Or was just bullshitting us for another twenty. What about you?"

The food arrived, and the waitress laid their plates before them with a cheery "Here we are!" Pendergast eyed his in silence, dipping some stew out with his spoon to examine it more closely.

"Can I get you another beer?" she asked D'Agosta, beaming.

"Why not?"

"Club soda?" she asked Pendergast.

"No thank you, this will be sufficient."

The waitress bounced off again.

D'Agosta turned back. "Well? Any luck?"

"One moment." Pendergast plucked out his cell phone, dialed. "Maurice? We'll be spending the night here in Sunflower. That's right. Good night." He put away the phone. "My experience, I fear, was as discouraging as yours." However, his alleged disappointment was belied by a glimmer in his eye and a wry smile teasing the corners of his lips.

"How come I don't believe you?" D'Agosta finally asked.

"Watch, if you please, as I perform a little experiment on our waitress."

The waitress came back with a Bud and a fresh napkin. As she placed them before D'Agosta, Pendergast spoke in his most honeyed voice, laying the accent on thick. "My dear, I wonder if I might ask you a question."

She turned to him with a perky smile. "Ask away, hon."

Pendergast made a show of pulling a small notebook from his jacket pocket. "I'm a reporter up from New Orleans, and I'm doing research on a family that used to live here." He opened the notebook, looked up at the waitress expectantly.

"Sure, which family?"

"Doane."

If Pendergast had announced a holdup, the reaction couldn't have been more dramatic. The woman's face immediately shut down, blank and expressionless, her eyes hooded. The perkiness vanished instantly.

"Don't know anything about that," she mumbled. "Can't help you." She turned and walked away, pushing through the door to the kitchen.

Pendergast slipped the notebook back into his jacket and turned to D'Agosta. "What do you think of my experiment?"

"How the hell did you know she'd react like that? She's obviously hiding something."

"That, my dear Vincent, is precisely the point." Pendergast took another sip of club soda. "I didn't single her out. Everyone in town reacts the same way. Haven't you noticed, during your inquiries this afternoon, a certain degree of hesitancy and suspicion?"

D'Agosta paused to consider. It was true that nobody had been particularly helpful, but he'd simply ascribed it to small-town truculence, local folk suspicious of some Yankee coming in and asking a lot of questions.

"As I made my own inquiries," Pendergast went on, "I ran into an increasingly suspicious level of obfuscation and denial. And then, when I pressed one elderly gentleman for information, he heatedly informed me that despite what I might have heard otherwise, the stories about the Doanes were nothing but hogwash. Naturally I began to ask about the Doane family. And that's when I started getting the reaction you just saw."

"And so?"

"I repaired to the local newspaper office and asked to see the back issues, dating from around the time of Helen's visit. They were unwilling to help, and it took this–" Pendergast pulled out his shield. "–to change their minds. I found that in the years surrounding Helen's visit, several pages had been carefully cut out of certain newspapers. I made a note of what the issues were, then made my way back down the road to the library at Kemp, the last town before Sunflower. Their copies of the newspapers had all the missing pages. And that's where I got the story."

"What story?" D'Agosta asked.

"The strange story of the Doane family. Mr. Doane was a novelist of independent means, and he brought his extended family to Sunflower to get away from it all, to write the great American novel far from the distractions of civilization. They bought one of the town's biggest and best houses, built by a small-time lumber baron in the years before the local mill shut down. Doane had two children. One of them, the son, won the highest honors ever awarded by the Sunflower High School, a clever fellow by all accounts. The daughter was a gifted poet whose works were occasionally published in the local papers. I read a few and they are, in fact, exceedingly well done. Mrs. Doane had grown into a noted landscape painter. The town became very proud of their talented, adopted family, and they were frequently in the papers, accepting awards, raising funds for one or another local charity, ribbon cutting, that sort of thing."

"Landscape painter," D'Agosta repeated. "How about birds?"

"Not that I could find out. Nor did they appear to have any particular interest in Audubon or natural history art. Then, a few months after Helen's visit, the steady stream of approving stories began to cease."

"Maybe the family got tired of the attention."

"I think not. There was one more article about the Doane family–one final article," he went on. "Half a year after that. It stated that William, the Doane son, had been captured by the police after an extended manhunt through the national forest, and that he was now in solitary confinement in the county jail, charged with two ax murders."

"The star student?" D'Agosta asked incredulously.

Pendergast nodded. "After reading this, I began asking around Kemp about the Doane family. The townspeople there felt none of the restraint I noticed here. I heard a veritable outpouring of rumor and innuendo. Homicidal maniacs that only came out at night. Madness and violence. Stalking and menace. It became difficult to sift fact from fiction, town gossip from reality. The only thing that I feel reasonably sure of is that all are now dead, each having died in a uniquely unpleasant way."

"All of them?"

"The mother was a suicide. The son died on death row while awaiting execution for the ax murders I spoke of. The daughter died in an insane asylum after refusing to sleep for two weeks. The last to die was the father, shot by the town sheriff of Sunflower."

"What happened?"

"He apparently took to wandering into town, accosting young women, threatening the townsfolk. There were reports of vandalism, destruction, babies gone missing. The people I spoke to hinted it might have been less of a killing and more of an execution–with the tacit approval of the Sunflower town fathers. The sheriff and his deputies shotgunned Mr. Doane in his house as he allegedly resisted arrest. There was no investigation."

"Jesus," D'Agosta replied. "That would explain the waitress's reaction. As well as all the hostility around here."

"Precisely."

"What the hell do you think happened to them? Something in the water?"

"I have no idea. But I will tell you this: I'm convinced they were the object of Helen's visit."

"That's a pretty big leap."

Pendergast nodded. "Consider this: they are the onlyunique element in an otherwise unremarkable town. There's nothing else here of interest. Somehow, they're the link we're searching for."

The waitress hustled up to their table, took away their plates, and went off, even as D'Agosta began to order coffee. "I wonder what it takes to get a cup of java around here," D'Agosta said, trying to attract her attention.

"Somehow, Vincent, I doubt you'll be getting your 'java' or anything more in this establishment."

D'Agosta sighed. "So who lives in the house now?"

"Nobody. It was abandoned and shut up since the shooting of Mr. Doane."

"We're going there," D'Agosta said, more as a statement than a question.

"Exactly."

"When?"

Pendergast raised his finger for the waitress. "As soon as we can get the check from our reticent but nevertheless most eloquent waitress."

25

THE WAITRESS DID NOT ARRIVE WITH THE check. Instead, it was the manager of the hotel. He placed the check on the table and then, without even a show of apology, informed them they would not be able to stay the night after all.

"What do you mean?" D'Agosta said. "We booked the room; you took our credit card numbers."

"There's a large party coming in," the man replied. "They had prior reservations the front desk overlooked–and as you can see, this is a small hotel."

"Too bad for them," D'Agosta said. "We're already here."

"You haven't unpacked yet," the manager replied. "In fact, I'm told your luggage isn't even in your rooms yet. I've already torn up your credit card voucher. I'm sorry."

But he didn't sound sorry, and D'Agosta was about to rake the man over the coals when Pendergast laid a hand on his arm. "Very well," Pendergast said, reaching into his wallet and paying the dinner bill in cash. "Good evening, then."

The manager walked away, and D'Agosta turned to Pendergast. "You're gonna let that prick walk all over us? It's obvious he's kicking us out because of the questions you're asking–and the ancient history we're stirring up."

In response, Pendergast nodded out the window. Glancing through it, D'Agosta saw the hotel manager now crossing the street. As D'Agosta watched, the man walked past several store buildings, shuttered for the night, and then vanished into the sheriff's office.

"What the hell kind of town isthis?" D'Agosta said. "Next thing you know, it'll be villagers with pitchforks."

"Our interest doesn't lie with the town," Pendergast said. "There's no point in complicating things. I suggest that we leave at once–before the local sheriff finds an excuse to run us out."

They exited the restaurant and made their way to the back parking lot of the hotel. The storm that had been threatening was fast approaching: the wind raked the treetops, and thunder could be heard rumbling in the distance. Pendergast put up the Porsche's top as D'Agosta climbed in. Pendergast slipped in himself, turned on the engine, nosed the car into a back alley, then made his way through town via back streets, avoiding main thoroughfares.

The Doane house was located about two miles past town, up an unpaved drive that had once been well tended but was now little more than a rutted track. He drove cautiously, careful not to bottom out the Spyder in the hard-packed dirt. Dense stands of trees crowded in on both sides of the road, their skeletal branches lacing the night sky above their heads. D'Agosta, flung around in his seat until his teeth rattled, decided that even the Zambian Land Rover would have been preferable in these conditions.

Pendergast rounded a final bend and the house itself came into view in the headlights, the sky roiling with clouds above. D'Agosta stared at it in surprise. He had expected a large, elegant structure, as ornate as the rest of the town was plain. What he saw was large, all right, but it was hardly elegant. In fact, it looked more like a fort left over from the days of the Louisiana Purchase. Built out of huge, rough-edged beams, it sported tall towers at either end and a long, squat central facade with innumerable small windows. Atop this facade was the bizarre anachronism of a widow's walk, surrounded by spiked iron railings. It stood alone on a small rise of land. Beyond to the east lay forest, dense and dark, leading to the vast Black Brake swamp. As D'Agosta stared at the structure, a tongue of lightning struck the woods behind, briefly silhouetting it in spectral yellow light.

"Looks like somebody tried to cross a castle with a log cabin," he said.

"The original owner was a timber baron, after all." Pendergast nodded at the widow's walk. "No doubt he used that to survey his domain. I read that he personally owned sixty thousand acres of land–including much of the cypress forests in the Black Brake–before the government acquired it for the national forest and a wilderness area."

He pulled up to the house and stopped. The agent glanced briefly in the rearview mirror before maneuvering the car around to the back and killing the engine.

"Expecting company?" D'Agosta asked.

"No point in attracting attention."

Now the rain started: fat drops that drummed against the windshield and the fabric top. Pendergast got out, and D'Agosta quickly followed suit. They trotted over to the shelter of a rear porch. D'Agosta glanced up a little uneasily at the rambling structure. It was exactly the kind of eccentric residence that might attract a novelist. Every tiny window was carefully shuttered, and the door itself was secured with a padlock and chain. A riot of vegetation had grown up around the house, softening the rough lines of its foundation, while moss and lichens draped some of the beams.

Pendergast took a final look around, then turned his attention to the padlock. He held it by the hasp, turning it this way and that, and then passed his other hand, holding a small tool, over the cylinder housing. A quick fiddle and it snapped open with a loud creak. Pendergast removed the chain and let it drop to the ground. The door itself was also locked; Pendergast bent over it and swiftly defeated the mechanism with the same tool. Then he rose again and turned the knob, pushing the door open with a squeal of protesting hinges. Pulling a flashlight from his jacket, he stepped inside. D'Agosta had long ago learned, when working with Pendergast, to never get caught without two things: a gun and a flashlight. Now he pulled out his own light and followed Pendergast into the house.

They found themselves in a large, old-fashioned kitchen. In the center stood a wooden breakfast table, and an oven, refrigerator, and washing machine were arranged in a porcelain row along the far wall. Beyond that, any resemblance to a normal family kitchen ended. The cabinets were thrown open, and crockery and glassware, almost all of it broken, streamed out from the shelves and onto the countertops and floor. Remains of foodstuffs–grains, rice, beans–lay scattered here and there, desiccated, scattered by rats, and fringed with ancient mold. The chairs were overturned and splintered, and the walls were punctuated with holes made by a sledgehammer or–perhaps–a fist. Plaster had fallen from the ceiling in chunks, making miniature explosions of white powder here and there on the floor, in which vermin tracks and droppings could be clearly seen. D'Agosta played his beam around the room, taking in the whirlwind of destruction. His light stopped in one corner, where a large, long-dried accumulation of what seemed to be blood lay on the floor; on the wall above, at chest height, were several ragged holes made by blasts from a heavy-gauge shotgun with similar sprays of dried blood and offal.