55
As the morning sun gilded the cream-colored walls and soaring terra-cotta spandrels of the Dakota, a curious processional played itself out before the building’s 72nd Street entrance. Two valets emerged from between the black wrought-iron gates, each holding three suitcases. They were followed by a woman in a white nurse’s uniform, who stepped out from the gloom of the courtyard tunnel and took up a position beside the doorman’s pillbox. Next came Proctor, who walked to the Rolls-Royce waiting at the curb, opened the rear door, and stood beside it expectantly. After a long moment, another figure emerged from the gate: a rather small figure, reclining in a wheelchair being pushed by a second nurse. Despite the warmth of the Indian summer day, the figure was so heavily wrapped in blankets, muffs, and scarves that its features and indeed its very sex were hard to discern. The face was obscured by a large and floppy white hat. A mother-of-pearl cigarette holder jutted out from beneath a pair of dark glasses.
The nurse wheeled the invalid up to the waiting Proctor. As she did so, Pendergast emerged from the entranceway and ambled over to the Rolls, hands in pockets.
“I can’t persuade you to stay a little longer, maître?” he asked.
The person in the wheelchair sneezed explosively. “I wouldn’t stay here a minute longer even if Saint Christopher himself asked me!” came the petulant response.
“Let me help you in, Mr. Bertin,” said Proctor.
“One minute.” A pale hand, holding a bottle of nasal spray, emerged from beneath the blanket. The bottle was applied to one quivering nostril, squeezed, then tucked away again beneath the blanket. The dark glasses were removed and slipped into the BOAC flight bag that never seemed to leave the little man’s side. “You may proceed. Doucement, pour l’amour du ciel—doucement!”
With some effort Proctor and the nurse managed to shift Bertin from the wheelchair and—under a stream of imprecations—slide him into the rear of the vehicle. Pendergast came forward and leaned into the window.
“Are you feeling any better?” he asked.
“No, and I won’t until I have returned to the back bayou—if then.” Bertin peered out from between his wraps, clutching his huge cudgel-cane, his black eyes glistening like beads. “And you need to have a care, Aloysius—the death conjuring of that hungan is strong: old and strong.”
“Indeed.”
“How do you feel?”
“Not bad.”
“You see!” Bertin declared with something like triumph. The hand reappeared again, rummaged in the battered bag, produced a tiny sealed envelope. “Dissolve this in six ounces of sarsaparilla and add a little flaxseed oil. Twice a day.”
Pendergast pocketed the envelope. “Thank you, maître. I’m sorry to have caused you such trouble.”
For a moment, the glittering black eyes softened. “Pah! It was good to see you after so many years. Next time we meet, however, it will be in New Orleans—I will not return to this place of darkness again!” He shuddered. “I wish you best of luck. This Loa of the Ville—it is truly evil. Evil.”
“Is there anything more you should tell me before you leave?”
“No. Yes!” The little man coughed, sneezed again. “I almost forgot amid all my sufferings. That tiny coffin you showed me—the one in the evidence room—it is strange.”
“The one from Colin Fearing’s crypt? The one you, ah, damaged?”
Bertin nodded. “It took me some time to realize it. But the arrangement of skulls and bones on the lid…” He shook his head. “The ratio is unusual, self-conflicting. It should follow the True Pattern: two to five. A subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless. It doesn’t match the rest.” He gave a disdainful flick of his fingers. “It is crude, strange.”
“I analyzed the grayish powder that was inside of it. It appears to be simple wood ash.”
Another disdainful flick. “You see? It does not match the other Obeah of Charrière and the Ville. Those are infinitely worse. Why this one item doesn’t match the pattern is a mystery.”
“Thank you, maître.” And Pendergast straightened up, a thoughtful look settling onto his face.
“Not at all. And now adieu, my dear Aloysius—adieu! Remember: dissolve in six ounces of sarsaparilla, twice a day.” Bertin tapped the roof of the car with the head of his cane. “You may drive on, my good sir! And don’t spare the horses, I beg you!”
56
The Multimedia Services Unit at One Police Plaza reminded D’Agosta of a submarine’s control room: hot, overstuffed with electronics, ripe with the smell of humanity. At least twenty people were packed into the low-ceilinged space, hunched over terminals and workstations. Somebody was eating an early lunch, and the pungent smell of curry hung in the air.
He paused and looked around. The biggest group was concentrated in the rear, where John Loader, chief forensic tech, had his cubicle. D’Agosta began making his way toward it, his feeling of frustration mounting when he saw that Chislett was already here. The deputy chief turned, saw D’Agosta, turned back.
Loader was sitting at his digital workstation, a hulking CPU beneath the desk and dual thirty-inch flat-screen monitors atop it. Despite D’Agosta’s pressuring, the forensic technician had insisted he’d need at least two hours to process and prep the video. So far he’d had ninety minutes.
“Give me an update,” D’Agosta said as he drew near.
Loader pushed away from the workstation. “It’s an MPEG-four file that was e-mailed to the network’s news department.”
“And the trace?”
Loader shook his head. “Whoever did it used a remailing service out of Kazakhstan.”
“Okay, what about the video, then?”
The technician pointed at the matching screens. “It’s in the forensic video analyzer.”
“This is what took ninety minutes?”
Loader frowned. “I’ve striped in a time code, field-aligned and frame-averaged the entire clip, removed noise and brightened each frame, and applied digital image stabilization.”
“Did you remember to put a cherry on top?”
“Lieutenant, cleaning up the file not only smooths and sharpens the image, but it also reduces distractions and can highlight evidence that would otherwise go unnoticed.”
D’Agosta felt like pointing out that there was a human life at stake here and every minute counted, but decided against it. “Fair enough. Let’s see it.”
Loader pulled the jog shuttle closer—a round black device the size of a hockey puck—and the video flickered into life on the left-hand monitor. It was less grainy and muddy than when he’d seen it on the news. There was a rattle, then a feeble light stabbed into the darkness: and there was Nora. She stared at the camera; her face, illuminated by the light source, looked like a white ghost floating in darkness. Behind her, D’Agosta could just barely make out patches of straw on a cement floor, rough mortared stones forming the walls.
“Help me,” Nora said.
The camera shook; lost focus; gained focus again.
“What do you want?” Nora asked.
No answer, no sound. And then something like a muffled scratch or creak. The light swiveled away, the darkness returned, and the clip ended.
“So you can’t trace it,” D’Agosta said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Is there anything else about the file that you can tell me? Anything at all?”
“It wasn’t multiplexed.”
“Which means?”
“It wasn’t from a CCTV. The source was most likely a standard consumer digital camcorder, probably an older handheld model given the degree of image shake.”
“And there was no communication in the e-mail? No ransom demand, no message of any kind?”
Loader shook his head.
“Play it again, please.”
As it played, D’Agosta looked around at what little was visible of the room, searching for something, anything, that might help identify it.
“Can you zoom in on that wall?” he asked.
> With the jog shuttle, Loader scrubbed back a second or two into the clip; highlighted a section of the wall close to Nora; then magnified it.
“It’s too grainy,” D’Agosta said.
“Let me apply the unsharp mask tool. That should clear it up.” A few clicks of a mouse and the wall sharpened significantly—flat stones stacked and cemented into place.
“Basement,” said D’Agosta. “An old one.”
“Unfortunately,” said Chislett, speaking for the first time, “there’s nothing identifiable about it.”
“What about the geology of the rocks?”
“Impossible to identify their specific mineral composition,” said Loader. “Could be shale, could be basalt…”
“Run it again.”
Silently, they watched the playback. D’Agosta could feel his anger filling the room. He wondered why he was even bothering to control it anymore: the bastards had kidnapped Nora.
“That sound in the background,” he said. “What is it?”
Loader pushed the jog shuttle to one side. “We’ve been working on that. I’ll bring up the audio enhancement software.”
Now a window popped up on the second screen, a thin, wide window containing an audio waveform: a rough, squiggly band that looked like a sine curve on steroids.
“A little silence, please!” Loader called out. The room quieted, and Loader clicked a play button at the bottom of the window.
The squiggly curve began striping across the window like a spool of tape running through a recorder. D’Agosta could hear the muffled movements of the person apparently carrying the camera through the darkness, the little click as the camera light went on, a grating sound, as if the camera was resting on something—or the lens was being slid through bars or a hole. Nora spoke once, then again. And then there was the sound. A creak? A scratch? It was too low, there was too much background hiss, to make it out.
“Can you enhance it?” he asked. “Isolate it?”
“Let me add some parametric EQ to the signal path.” More windows popped open, complex-looking graphs were dragged onto the audio waveform. Loader played the sound file again. It was clearer but still muddy.
“I’ll apply a brick wall filter. High-pass, to block out that lowend hum.” More clicks, more adjustments of the mouse, then Loader played the waveform once more.
“That’s an animal sound,” said D’Agosta. “The sound of an animal getting its throat cut.”
“I’m afraid I don’t hear it,” said Chislett.
“Oh no?” D’Agosta turned to Loader. “What about you?”
The forensic tech scratched his cheek a little nervously. “Hard to say.” He opened another window. “According to this spectrum analyzer, there’s a mix of very high frequencies, some higher than the human ear can hear. I’d guess it’s the creaking of a rusty door hinge.”
“Bullshit!”
“With all due respect—” Loader began.
“With all due respect, that’s the scream of an animal. The basement is old, crude. Let me tell you something: this tape came from the Ville. We need to raid the place. Now.” He turned and stared aggressively at Chislett. “Right, Chief?”
“Lieutenant,” Chislett intoned, his voice the very embodiment of calm and reason, “you’re obfuscating the situation rather than clarifying it. There’s no evidence—none—on that tape indicating its source. That sound could be any of myriad things.”
Obfuscating rather than clarifying. Myriad things. How like the pretentious Chislett to turn a simple meeting into a spelling bee. D’Agosta tried to keep himself under control. “Chief, you’re aware there’s going to be a demonstration tonight against the Ville.”
“They’ve got a parade permit, it’s all quite legit. We’ll have plenty of men this time, we’ll keep things orderly.”
“Yeah? There’s no way to be sure of that. If the demonstration gets unruly, it might freak out the Ville—and cause them to kill Nora. We’ve got to raid them now, today, before the demonstration. Use the element of surprise, go in fast and hard and grab her.”
“Lieutenant, haven’t you been listening? Where’s the evidence? No judge will authorize a raid based on that one sound—even if it is an animal. You know that. Especially,” he sniffed, “after your heavy-handed search of Kline’s offices.”
D’Agosta straightened up. He finally felt the dam breaking, his anger and frustration pouring out. He didn’t care. “Look at all of you,” he said loudly, “sitting around here, fiddling with your equipment.”
Everyone paused in their work to turn and look.
“While you’re playing with your toys, a woman’s been kidnapped, two journalists and a housing official murdered. What we need is a massive, multiple SWAT team raid on those scumbags up there.”
“Lieutenant,” said Chislett, “it would behoove you to get your emotions under control. We’re well aware of the stakes and we’re doing all we can.”
“No, I won’t, and no, you aren’t.” D’Agosta turned and stalked out of the room.
57
Pendergast sat in an overstuffed leather armchair in the salon of his Dakota apartment, one leg thrown over the other, chin resting on tented fingers. In a matching armchair across an expanse of Turkish rug sat Wren, his bird-like figure almost swallowed up in the burgundy-colored leather. Between them stood a table on which sat a pot of A-Li-Shan Jin Xuan tea, a basket of brioche, a tub of butter, and crocks of marmalade and gooseberry jam.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit, in daylight no less?” Pendergast asked. “It would take something rather momentous to entice you out of your den at such an hour.”
Wren gave a sharp nod. “True, I am no fan of the daytime. But I’ve discovered something I thought you ought to know.”
“Fortunately it is rarely daytime in my apartment.” Pendergast poured two cups of tea, placed one before his guest, raised the other to his lips.
Wren glanced at his cup but did not touch it. “I keep meaning to ask. How is the fetching Constance?”
“I’ve been getting regular reports from Tibet. Everything is proceeding on schedule—or as much as such things can run on schedule. I hope to travel there in the not-too-distant future.” Pendergast took another sip. “You said you’ve discovered something. By all means, proceed.”
“In my research into the history of the Ville and its occupants—and its predecessors—I naturally have made use of a large number of period accounts, newspaper reports, surveys, manuscripts, incunabula, and other documents. And the more that I have done so, the more I’ve noticed a curious pattern.”
“And what might that be?”
Wren sat forward. “That I am not the first person to have made this particular journey.”
Pendergast put down his cup. “Indeed?”
“Everybody who examines rare or historic documents is issued an identification number by the library. I began to notice that the same ID number was appearing in the accessions database for the documents I was withdrawing for examination. At first I thought it was just a coincidence. But after this happened a number of times, I went to the database and looked up that ID. Sure enough: every document of the Ville, its inhabitants, its history, the history of its prior occupants—with particular emphasis, it seems, on the founders—had also been examined by this other researcher. He was quite diligent—in fact, he had thought to examine a few papers it had not occurred to me to search.” Wren chuckled, shook his head ruefully.
“And who is this mysterious researcher?”
“That’s just the thing—his or her file has been wiped clean from the library’s records. It was as if he didn’t want anybody to know he’d been there. All that was left were the traces, so to speak, of his passing. I know he was a professional researcher—that’s indicated by the prefix of his identification number. And I’m convinced this was a job for hire, not something of particular interest to him. It was done too quickly and in too orderly a fashion, over too short a perio
d of time, to have been a hobby or a personal study.”
“I see.” Pendergast took a sip. “And when did this take place?”
“He began examining library materials about eight months ago. The withdrawals continued, on a more or less weekly basis. And then the trail ended rather abruptly about two months ago.”
Pendergast looked at him. “He completed his research?”
“Yes.” Wren hesitated. “There is, of course, one other possibility.”
“Indeed. And what is that?”
“He was searching for something—something very particular. And the abrupt halt to his work meant that he’d found it.”
After his guest had left, Pendergast rose from the chair, exited the salon, and walked down the apartment’s central corridor until he came to a small and rather old-fashioned laboratory. He removed his black suit coat and hung it on a hook behind the door. The room was dominated by a soapstone lab table on which stood chemical apparatuses and a Bunsen burner. Old oaken cabinets lined the walls, glass bottles competing for space with tattered journals and well-worn reference books.
He slipped a key out of his pocket and unlocked one of the cabinets. From it, he removed various supplies: a pair of latex gloves, a polished walnut instrument case, a rack of glass test tubes with labels and stoppers, and a brass magnifying glass. He arranged everything on the soapstone table. Striding across the room, he snapped on the gloves and unlocked a second cabinet. A moment later a skull came to light, cradled in his hands—the skull that he and D’Agosta had recovered from the riverbank burial. Dirt still clung to the jaws and eye sockets. He gently placed the skull on the table and opened the case to reveal a set of nineteenth-century dental tools with ivory handles. With great care he cleaned the skull, removing bits of dirt, some of which he placed in various test tubes, affixing numbered labels. Samples of whitish powder clinging to the inside of the jaws and teeth also went into test tubes, along with fragments of skin, hair, and adipocere.
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