Crimson Shore

by Douglas Preston

  He nodded, waited for her to open the door, and then—glancing quickly up and down the street—slipped out.

  From behind the gauze curtains, concealed from view, Carole watched him stride down Main Street. Motionless, she let five minutes pass, then ten. And then she, too, exited the shop, closed the door behind her, and began making her way in the direction of the lighthouse.

  33

  Constance’s first indication that Pendergast had returned from his memory crossing was the movement of his limbs on the shingle beach. Then his eyes opened. Despite the length of time he had lain motionless, more still than any sleeper, those eyes retained the bright glitter of the most intense concentration.

  “What time is it, Constance?” he asked.

  “Half past four.”

  He got up, brushed the traces of sand from his coat, and picked up the satchel and metal detector. He spent a moment looking around, as if getting his bearings. And then, motioning her to follow him, he began walking inland from the shingle beach, northwestward, tangential to the line of the Skullcrusher Rocks that lay to their right. He moved with quick, purposeful strides. She noticed that he no longer bothered checking the map or GPS.

  Together, they continued to a spot where the beach ended at a rise of land covered with grass and the occasional scrub pine. They climbed to the top, where Pendergast paused to look around. Beyond lay a field of dunes, anchored with grass and low bushes, forming a series of broad, sandy hollows, perhaps fifty feet across. In a moment he descended into the closest hollow. At its bottom, he set down the satchel.

  “What are we doing here?” Constance asked.

  “If someone on the shore wanted to bury something, this would be the place to do it.” Reaching into the satchel, he pulled out a slender, telescoped rod of flexible steel, which he opened to its full, six-foot extent. He began probing the sand at the bottom of the hollow, sinking the steel rod down at various points as he moved in a steady pattern from one side of the depression to the other. After a few minutes, something stopped the probe. Pendergast knelt and probed in a tighter pattern, sinking the steel tip into the sand in half a dozen locations. Then, rising once again, he took from the satchel a small, collapsible shovel.

  “I assume, with all this activity, that your memory crossing was successful,” she said dryly.

  “We shall know in a moment.”

  Sinking the shovel into the spot of his most recent probe, he began to dig, placing the sand carefully to one side as he did so. He continued digging, making a hole approximately five feet in diameter, to a uniform depth of two feet. Once this circular pit was complete, he began to dig deeper. The sand was damp and loose, making for easy digging. A few moments later, the blade of the shovel hit something with a dull clang.

  Quickly, Pendergast put the shovel aside and knelt within the hole. Using his fingers, he swept away the sand, exposing some rusted pieces of metal.

  “Iron hull fasteners,” he explained.

  “From the Pembroke Castle?”

  “I’m afraid so.” He glanced around. “The site seems obvious in retrospect, doesn’t it?”

  “How did those fasteners get back here in the dunes? Did the sea wash them in?”

  “No. The wreckage of the ship was deliberately carried back here and buried. At least, all that washed in. The turn of the tide would have eventually taken what didn’t wash up here out to sea.”

  He dug some more, pulling pieces of iron from the sand, shaking them clean, and placing them to one side. The shovel revealed more pieces of metal, which he also placed aside, some still attached to rotting pieces of wood that had once been hull planking. And then, as the shovel bit deeper into the moist sand, it hit something else: something that made a very different, hollow sound.

  Pendergast knelt again. Constance joined him. Together, they carefully brushed away the sand from the point of impact. Slowly, a skull was revealed: small, pale brown. One temple was caved in.

  “Good God,” Constance murmured.

  “Not more than a year old,” Pendergast said. His tone was cold, remote.

  Together, they continued sweeping away the sand with the flats of their palms. More small bones were revealed: ribs, hips, long bones. Crowded alongside, additional skulls came to light: some small, some adult. All showed signs of blunt trauma.

  “We must leave everything in place,” Pendergast said. “This is a crime scene.”

  Constance nodded. Now the bones became so numerous that they formed an almost solid layer embedded in the damp sand. Evidently the people had been killed and buried first, with the ship’s wreckage dumped on top. Pendergast took out a small whisk from the bag and swept the sand away, exposing additional bones. The little ones had evidently been piled helter-skelter on top of one another, seemingly tossed in heaps, while the adults were laid in parallel.

  Finally it was too much. Constance stood up and, without a word to Pendergast, walked out and climbed to the top of the hollow, where, breathing deeply, she looked eastward over the cold, unfeeling, alien ocean.

  34

  Sergeant Gavin tried to tell himself this was just another murder scene—like that of the historian, McCool, and Dana Dunwoody. And yet at the same time it was so very different. There were the usual pitiless floodlights turning night to day; the purring generators; the police-tape perimeter; the SOC people and the CSI people and the forensics experts and the photographers. Here was the SOCO, Malaga, from Lawrence, a giant of a man, moving about with deliberate grace. The atmosphere was quite unlike what Gavin had observed at the previous murder scenes—everyone went about their business slowly, almost haltingly, without the usual urgency of a murder that needed to be solved. And there was something else—a team of serious-looking men and women, up from Harvard’s Department of Anthropology, who had gridded off the entire site with a crosshatch of staked lines of string, stretched taut, so that the hollow resembled nothing so much as a giant bingo board. They were led by a Dr. Fosswright, a small, neat, dour-looking gentleman with short white hair and a carefully trimmed beard. The forensics people were shuttling back and forth to consult with him, almost as if he were in charge of the scene. Perhaps, in some ways, he was: it was his people who were undertaking the excavation of the site—with little brooms, dental tools, and small paintbrushes—and taking notes on laptops and tablets and shooting innumerable photographs.

  Off to one side stood Chief Mourdock, hammy arms hanging by his sides, doing absolutely nothing. Sergeant Gavin shot a private glance at him. The chief looked dazed, like a deer in the headlights. It was remarkable, the change that had come over him. A week ago, he’d been swaggering around, full of himself, acting like the big-city-cop-in-a-small-town. Now he looked pale, unsure, even unnerved; his comfortable little fiefdom, his rapidly approaching retirement, had all been thrown into a state of uncertainty.

  And now Gavin saw the architect of that change approaching—Special Agent Pendergast. He had been off to one side, talking to the lone reporter who’d appeared on scene—a young woman from the Boston Globe. It surprised Gavin that the tabloid Herald wasn’t also covering the story. But then again, it was more archaeology than a sensational contemporary murder story. The story would probably appear on some inside page of the Globe, perhaps be picked up by the New York Times and the Washington Post and then soon be forgotten, except for historians…and the locals.

  Gavin found it curious that Pendergast would be talking so freely to a reporter. He was usually as close-lipped as an oyster. If it had been anybody else, Gavin might have thought he was staking out bragging rights. But that wasn’t Pendergast’s style. Gavin wondered what he was up to.

  He had to admit that he, personally, felt stunned by this discovery. It was almost impossible to believe that members of his own community, the community of his father and his grandfather and his ancestors going back a dozen generations, had cold-bloodedly lured a ship onto the rocks and—finding it full of women and children instead of gold—had butchered them and
buried them in a mass grave. It was equally shocking to think that some of his Exmouth contemporaries, descendants of that murderous mob, had passed down that dreadful knowledge—and had then used it to perpetrate the break-in at Percival Lake’s house. But Pendergast’s logic, which he’d laid out in a briefing for Gavin and the chief earlier that evening, was unavoidable. And the proof lay before him: in ever-deepening holes between the grids of string, in the evidence bags full of bones and crumbling, pathetic possessions. What really got to him was when the diggers had uncovered a beautiful, painted porcelain doll found mingled with the heap of small children.

  One thing Gavin was absolutely sure of: none of his own antecedents had participated in this atrocity.

  He felt a strange mixture of emotions—shock, repulsion, worry, anger…and embarrassment. This was not the way he wanted outsiders to think of Exmouth. The very last thing he wanted was more attention focused on the town. By now, all of Exmouth probably knew the story of the mass murder. His fellow townsfolk would surely feel, as he did, horror for the stain it cast on their village and its history. There would be gossip about whose ancestors were responsible. The whole town would be convulsed with suspicion, scandal, and shame. Ugly and even dangerous times were ahead.

  Pendergast approached Gavin. “I am sorry, Sergeant. I can imagine how mortifying this is.”

  Gavin nodded. “How did you…?” he began, then stopped. It was a question he’d been asking himself ever since Pendergast briefed him on the atrocity—but even now he could not quite bring himself to ask for more information.

  “How did I make this discovery? Suffice it to say, McCool did the historical legwork.” He waved one hand at the ant farm of activity going on in the hollow before them. “The key fact is this: one or more present-day descendants of those killers of yore know of the massacre. They also knew about the tortured and walled-up captain. Among those individuals we will find our modern-day killer. The only step remaining now is to identify him…or her.”

  As Pendergast spoke, Malaga, the head of the SOC team, came up. He fixed the FBI agent with his usual frowning expression. “Well, Agent Pendergast, thanks to you we’ve really got our hands full.”

  “So it would seem.”

  Malaga ran a hand over his shaved head. “There’s one thing I’m curious about. When I got here, two dozen skeletons had been exposed from the grave site. Once you realized it was a crime scene, why did you continue to uncover the remains?”

  “I needed to confirm my theory—that not just murder, but mass murder, had occurred here. But if it’s a crime scene you want, it would appear there are many additional souls yet to be recovered. Poor Dr. Fosswright looks a bit overwhelmed and might welcome the assistance of you and your men.” And with this he nodded at Malaga and Gavin in turn, pulled his coat more tightly around his shoulders, turned, and began making his way through the dune fields back toward the lights of town.

  35

  The Essex County Coroner’s Office, Northern Division, was situated in a separate two-story wing of the Newburyport Medical Center. As Agent Pendergast entered the inner office, the M.E., Henry Kornhill, stood up from behind his desk. He was some sixty years old, tall, round about the middle, with sandy tufts of hair above each ear. He was wearing a white lab coat that—judging by its crispness and the early hour—had not yet seen duty that day.

  “Dr. Kornhill,” said Pendergast. “Thank you for seeing me.”

  “Of course.” The coroner indicated a chair on the far side of his desk and Pendergast took a seat. “I understand you’re here about Dana Dunwoody.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you wish to see the body?”

  “That won’t be necessary; evidence photos will suffice. I would, however, like to hear your thoughts about the cause of death.”

  The M.E. frowned. “That was logged in my official report.”

  “Indeed. But I’m not interested in your official opinion. I’m interested, informally, in anything you might have—in your long experience—found interesting or unusual about the condition of the body, or concerning the cause of death.”

  “Informally,” Kornhill repeated. “We scientists don’t normally indulge in speculation, but in fact there were some aspects of this homicide that intrigued me.”

  Pendergast waited as Kornhill opened a folder that lay on his desk, perused it, and took a moment to form his thoughts. “I found it to be, for want of a better term, a messy killing. Judging by the bruising to the knuckles and forearms, Dunwoody tried to defend himself.” A pause. “And if I had to guess, I’d say the victim knew his attacker.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because all the wounds were anterior. Dunwoody was facing his killer. The first blow seems to have been to his right cheek, above the zygomatic arch. A fight took place. Death was caused by blunt force trauma, partially collapsing the frontal bone and the parietal bone along the coronal suture.”

  “And the stab wounds?”

  “Same thing. There were a total of seven, once again all to the anterior. The, ah, carvings were to the posterior.”

  “They weren’t the cause of death?”

  “Although a few of the stab wounds may have been antemortem, based on hemorrhaging, the great majority were done postmortem. And the carvings were all done postmortem. And all of them were too shallow to have caused dramatic exsanguination. The cuts were feeble, almost tentative. This was not an overkill situation.”

  “Let’s turn for a moment, if we could, to the other recent murder—that of the historian, Morris McCool.”

  Kornhill reached across his desk, pulled a second folder closer. “Very well.”

  “His cause of death was quite different—a long, heavy blade that pierced the body laterally, from one side to the other.”

  “Correct.”

  “Would you say that, in your opinion, McCool also knew his killer?”

  The coroner paused a moment, as if wondering whether this was a trick question. “No.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because the nature of the fatal wound would lead me to believe—again, speaking informally—that he was ambushed.”

  “I see.” Pendergast leaned back in his chair, tented his fingers. “I find it interesting, Doctor, that these two killings have so many points of both commonality and divergence.”

  Kornhill rubbed his forehead. “How so?”

  “One murder was premeditated: an ambush. The other was spontaneous, not preplanned: arising from an argument. One killing was done decisively with a heavy knife. On the other, the stab wounds were more hesitant. And yet in both cases certain markings were carved into the skin.”

  Kornhill continued rubbing. “That’s correct.”

  “With McCool, the carvings were perimortem. In the case of Dunwoody, the carvings were postmortem. Interesting, don’t you think?”

  “The transition from perimortem to postmortem is not a bright line, but I would not disagree with your conclusion. Really, Mr. Pendergast, it’s not my place to speculate on why these murders were committed.”

  “Ah, but it is mine, Doctor.” Pendergast paused. “You have autopsy photographs of the markings inflicted on both McCool and Dunwoody?”

  Kornhill nodded.

  “May I trouble you to lay them on the desk for comparison?”

  The M.E. rose, opened a filing cabinet set against the rear wall of the office, pulled out some additional files, and then laid a series of photos on the desk, facing Pendergast.

  The special agent examined them with interest. “From an, ah, artistic standpoint, it would appear these symbols were carved by the same person—don’t you agree?”

  Kornhill shuddered. “I suppose so.”

  “And would you also agree that the same weapon was used?”

  “That’s a strong possibility. It was an unusual weapon in both cases, a blade wide, jagged, irregular, but very sharp.”

  “So far, we once again have commonality. But I would ask you to i
ndulge me, Doctor—please take a close look at the precise nature of the cuts.”

  The M.E. glanced at Pendergast a moment. Then he turned the photographs around, one after the other, and examined each one closely in turn. At last he raised his eyes in mute inquiry.

  “Do they appear to be similar?” Pendergast asked.

  “No.”

  “Could you describe the difference, please?”

  “It’s a question of contour. In the case of McCool, the cuts are irregular, even dog-eared in places. But the markings, ah, carved into Dunwoody have a much more regular contour. They are also of a shallower nature.”

  “One last question, Doctor, and I’ll leave you to your work. If you had to speculate—once again, I ask informally—what would account for the difference between the way McCool’s body was carved, and the way Dunwoody’s was?”

  Once again, the M.E. paused to consider. “The cuts on McCool were deeper, more violent. Those on Dunwoody, on the other hand, seem almost…hesitant.”

  “I believed you used the terms ‘feeble,’ ‘tentative.’”

  “I did.”

  “Excellent. Thank you. You’ve confirmed my own suspicions.” Pendergast stood up, extending his hand.

  Kornhill rose as well, shook the hand. “I’m confused. All the similarities, all the differences… What are you implying? That these two were killed by different murderers?”

  “Quite the opposite: same murderer, different motives. And what is most significant—a different relationship between victim and killer. Good day.” And with this, Pendergast turned and left the office.

  36

  The Chart Room restaurant was dimly lit as always, but Gavin quickly spied Agent Pendergast at the far end of the bar. The guy’s funereal style of dress and the paleness of his face made him easy to spot.

  Pendergast noticed him, nodded slightly, and Gavin approached the bar.