Two Graves

by Douglas Preston

  After a hesitation, she took him in her arms. He stiffened but did not protest.

  “Oh, Aloysius,” she whispered. “Won’t you let me help?”

  When he still did not respond, she said, “Listen to me. It’s fine to grieve. It’s good to grieve. But this—shutting yourself up here, refusing to speak to anyone, refusing to see anyone… it’s no way to handle this.” She held him tighter. “And you must deal with it—for Helen’s sake. For my sake. I know it will take time. That’s why I’m here. To help you through your grief. Together we can—”

  “No,” Pendergast murmured.

  Surprised, she waited.

  “There will be no handling it,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “Of course there will. I know it seems utterly hopeless right now. But given time, you’ll see that—”

  He sighed with something like impatience, some of his self-possession returning. “I see that it is necessary to enlighten you. Will you come with me?”

  She looked at him for a moment. She felt a flicker of hope, even relief. This was a flash of the old Pendergast, taking charge.

  He rose from the sofa and led the way to an almost invisible door set into one of the rose walls. Opening it, he started down a long, dim hallway, stopping at last at a paneled door that was standing ajar. Pushing it wide, he stepped in.

  Viola followed, glancing around curiously. She had been in Pendergast’s Dakota apartment before, of course, but never in this room. It was a revelation. The floor was covered in antique wood planking, very wide and beautifully varnished. The walls were clad in historic textured wallpaper of an exceedingly subtle design. The ceiling was painted as a blue trompe l’oeil sky in the style of Andrea Mantegna. There was a single display case, containing numerous strange things: a piece of lava, twisted and dark; an exotic lily of some kind, pressed within a sealed case of clear plastic; a stalactite, its end roughly broken off; what appeared to be a piece from a wheelchair; several mangled bullets; an antique case of surgical instruments; various other items. It was an eccentric and even bizarre collection, whose meaning was perhaps clear only to Pendergast himself.

  This must be Pendergast’s private study.

  But what most caught her eye was the Louis XV desk that occupied the middle of the room. It was made of rosewood, with gilt edging and fantastically complex inlays. Its surface was empty save for three items: a small glass medical container with a rubber top; a hypodermic syringe; and a silver dish that held a small white pyramid of some fine powdery substance.

  Pendergast took a seat behind the desk. There was only one other chair in the room: an ornate fauteuil pushed up against the far wall. Viola placed it before the desk and sat down as well.

  For a moment, they sat in silence. Then, with a wave of his hand, Pendergast indicated the items on the desk.

  “What are those, Aloysius?” Viola asked, fear rising in her heart.

  “Phenylcholine para-methylbenzene,” he said, pointing at the white powder. “First synthesized by my great-great-grandfather in 1868. One of the many odd potions he developed. After initial private, ah, trials, it remains to this day a family secret. It is said to confer upon the user a state of complete and utter euphoria, offering total negation of care and sorrow, along with, supposedly, a unique intellectual epiphany, for a period of twenty to thirty minutes—before inducing irreversibly fatal, and painful, renal failure. I have always been curious to experience its initial effects, yet until now never have—for self-evident reasons.”

  Speaking about the objects on the desk seemed to rouse a degree of energy in Pendergast. His bruised-looking eyes shifted to the small medication bottle. “Hence, this.” He picked it up and showed it to her, the colorless liquid within shifting slightly. “A mixture of sodium thiopental and potassium chloride, among other compounds. It will induce unconsciousness, then stop the heart—well before the unpleasant side effects of the para-methylbenzene manifest themselves. While still providing enough time to give me a modicum of peace and, perhaps, even diversion before the end.”

  Viola looked from Pendergast, to the objects on the desk, then back to Pendergast. As the implications of what he was saying became clear, a feeling of dread and horror swept over her.

  “Aloysius, no,” she whispered. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am deadly serious.”

  “But…” She fell silent as her throat closed up involuntarily. This can’t be happening, it just can’t be happening… “But this isn’t you. You have to fight this. You can’t take the… the coward’s way out. I won’t let you.”

  At this, Pendergast put his hands on the desk, rose slowly to his feet. He walked to the door, held it open for her. After a certain hesitation she rose and followed him as he turned and walked back down the corridor, through the hidden doorway, and into the reception room. It was as if she were in a bad dream: She wanted to stop him, she wanted to sweep those hateful things off the table and dash them to the ground. And yet she could not. So deep was her shock that she felt herself powerless to do anything. It’s a matter of life and death—her own words now returned, torturing her with their irony.

  Pendergast said nothing more until they had reached the door leading to the elevator. Then, at last, he spoke again. “I thank you for your concern,” he said, his voice strangely faint and hollow, as if coming to her from a great distance. “And for the time and effort you have taken on my behalf. But now I must ask you to return to Rome.”

  “Aloysius—” she began, but he raised a hand for silence.

  “Good-bye, Viola. You would do well to forget me.”

  Viola realized she was crying. “You can’t do this,” she said, her voice trembling. “You simply can’t. It’s too selfish. Aren’t you forgetting something? There are people, many people, who care about you. Who love you. Don’t—please don’t—do this to them. To us.” She hesitated and added, in an angrier tone: “To me.”

  As she spoke, something seemed to flicker in Pendergast’s eyes—a faint spark, like the glow of an ember encased in ice—before vanishing again. It came and went so quickly she could not be certain she’d seen it at all. Maybe it was a trick of the tears that filled her own eyes.

  He took her hand, gave it an almost imperceptible pressure. Then, without another word, he opened the front door.

  Viola looked at him. “I won’t let you do this.”

  He looked at her briefly, even kindly. “Surely you know me well enough to realize that nothing you or anyone can do will change my mind. And now it is time for you to go. It would be highly distressing to both of us if I were forced to have you shown out.”

  She continued to look at him, pleadingly, for another minute. But his gaze had gone far away once again. At last she turned away, her entire body shaking. Sixty seconds later, she was once more walking across the interior courtyard, legs like rubber, without the faintest idea of where she was headed, the tears coursing freely down her cheeks.

  Pendergast stood in the reception room for a long time. Then—very slowly—he made his way back to his private study; seated himself behind the desk; and—as he had been doing for numberless hours—once again began to contemplate the three items arrayed before him.

  11

  AFTER LEAVING SINGLETON, D’AGOSTA HEADED STRAIGHT downtown. Fucking Heffler. He was going to wipe the floor with that son of a bitch. He was going to cut the man’s balls off and hang them on a Christmas tree. He remembered the time he had visited Heffler with Pendergast, and how Pendergast had ripped him a new one. That had been fun. He, D’Agosta, was—he decided—going to “do a Pendergast” on Heffler.

  With these pleasant thoughts in mind, he pulled up at the forensic DNA unit on William Street, an annex to New York Downtown Hospital. He glanced at his watch: eight AM. He had checked with the duty officer and learned Heffler had been in the office since three. That was a good sign, although D’Agosta wasn’t quite sure what it meant.

  He heaved himself out of the u
nmarked car, slammed the door, and strode through the glass entranceway of the William Street building. He passed by the receptionist, holding out his badge. “Lieutenant D’Agosta,” he said loudly, without slowing down. “I’m here to see Dr. Heffler.”

  “Lieutenant, the sign-in sheet—?”

  But D’Agosta continued on to the elevator, punching the button for the top floor, where Heffler had installed himself in a cushy, oak-paneled corner office. Stepping out of the elevator once again, he found there was no secretary in the outer office—too early. D’Agosta breezed through and flung open the door to the inner office.

  And there was Heffler.

  “Ah, Lieutenant—” the director began, rising abruptly.

  D’Agosta hesitated a moment. This was not the Heffler whom D’Agosta was familiar with: the glossy, supercilious prick in a thousand-dollar suit. This Heffler was rumpled, tired, and had the look of a man who had recently been called on the carpet.

  He launched into his rehearsed speech anyway. “Dr. Heffler, we’ve been waiting over sixty hours—”

  “Yes, yes!” Heffler said. “And I’ve got the results. They just came in. We’ve been working on it since three this morning.”

  A silence. Heffler’s manicured fingernails eagerly tapped a file on his desk. “It’s all right here. And please allow me to apologize for the delay. We’ve been understaffed—these budget cuts—you know how it is.” He flashed D’Agosta a look that hovered somewhere between sarcasm and a simper.

  Hearing all this, D’Agosta felt the wind go right out of his sails. Someone had already gotten to Heffler. Was it Singleton? He paused, took a breath, and tried to shift down. “You have the results on both homicides?”

  “Absolutely. Please, Lieutenant, sit down. I’ll go over them with you.”

  Grudgingly, D’Agosta took the proffered chair.

  “I’ll just summarize, but please feel free to interrupt if you have questions.” Heffler opened the file. “The DNA sampling was excellent, the team did a great job. We have solid DNA profiles from hair, latents, and of course the earlobe. All match to a very high degree of certainty. We can confirm that the earlobe did indeed belong to the perpetrator.”

  A page turned. “For the second homicide, we also have solid DNA profiles from hair, latents, and the fingertip. Again, all three match each other and the DNA profiles from the first homicide. The finger and earlobe came from the same individual—the killer.”

  “How certain are the results?”

  “Very certain. These were excellent profiles with abundant, uncontaminated material. The possibility of this being coincidence is less than one in a billion.” Heffler was already starting to recover some of his own self-assurance.

  D’Agosta nodded. This was nothing new, really, but it was good to have confirmation. “Did you run it against the DNA databases?”

  “We did. Against every database we have access to. No hits. That isn’t surprising, of course, since the vast majority of people don’t have their DNA in any database.”

  Heffler closed the report. “This is your copy, Lieutenant. I’ve transmitted the master file electronically to the chief of homicide, the homicide analysis unit, and the central investigation and resource division. Is there anyone else who should get it?”

  “Not that I can think of.” D’Agosta rose, picked up the file. “Dr. Heffler, when Captain Singleton called you, did he mention we also wanted mtDNA analysis?”

  “Well, no, because Captain Singleton didn’t call me.”

  D’Agosta looked Heffler in the face. Somebody had definitely kicked this son of a bitch in the ass, and he wanted to know who. “Someone must have called you.”

  “The commissioner.”

  “The commissioner? You mean Tagliabue? When?”

  A hesitation. “At two o’clock this morning.”

  “Oh, yeah? What did he say?”

  “He informed me this is a very important case and that even the slightest problem might be, ah, career ending.”

  A beat.

  And now Heffler smirked. “So good luck, Lieutenant. You have the results you wanted. You’ve got quite a killer on your hands—let’s hope you don’t have a… problem.”

  The smile indicated he very much hoped the opposite.

  12

  AT FIRST GLANCE, THE LIBRARY AT MOUNT MERCY HOSPITAL for the Criminally Insane looked like the typical reading room of any gentlemen’s club: dark, polished wood; baroque fixtures; discreet lighting. Closer examination, however, revealed certain unique differences. The wing chairs and wooden refectory tables were immovable, having been screwed to the floor. No sharp objects or heavy, blunt implements were to be seen. The magazines being browsed by the inmates all had their staples removed. And at the room’s single entrance stood a muscular man wearing an orderly’s uniform.

  Dr. John Felder sat at a small round table in a far corner of the library. He was fidgeting with his hands, clearly nervous.

  There was movement at the entrance, and he glanced over quickly. Constance Greene stood in the doorway, accompanied by a guard. She looked around, saw him, and came over. She was dressed modestly, in a white pleated skirt and a blouse of the palest lavender. In one hand she held a letter; in the other, an airmail envelope.

  “Dr. Felder,” she said in her courtly voice as she sat down across from him. She placed the letter inside the envelope and turned it facedown on the table, but not before Felder noticed that the letter seemed to contain only one word. It was in a strange script, Sanskrit or Marathi or something similar.

  He looked from the letter to Constance. “Thank you for seeing me,” he replied.

  “I did not expect you to return so soon.”

  “Neither did I. I beg your pardon. It’s because…” He stopped, glanced around to make sure they were not being overheard. Despite being reassured, he lowered his voice. “Constance, I’m finding it very difficult to get on with things, knowing that… that you don’t trust me.”

  “I don’t understand why that should vex you. I’m simply an ex-patient—no doubt one of many.”

  “I’d like to find some way I could make it up to you.” Felder was unused to talking about his feelings, especially to a patient, and he felt himself flush with both embarrassment and shame. “I don’t expect to treat you in the future—I respect your wishes in that regard. It’s just that I wish… well, that I could somehow compensate for what happened… for what I did. Make it right. So you could trust me again.”

  These last words tumbled out in a rush. Constance looked at him, her violet eyes cool and appraising. “Why is this important to you, Doctor?”

  “I…” He realized he didn’t really know why. Or hadn’t examined his feelings closely enough to see.

  For a long moment, the table was silent. Then Constance spoke. “Some time ago, you told me you believed I was, in fact, born on Water Street in the 1870s.”

  “I did say that once, yes.”

  “Do you still believe it?”

  “It… it seems so bizarre, so difficult to comprehend. And yet I have found nothing to contradict you. In fact, I’ve found independent evidence to support what you say. Also, I know you’re not a liar. And when I examine the clinical issues—really look at them—I wonder if you suffer from any psychotic condition at all. You may be emotionally troubled, true, and I’m sure there’s some past trauma that continues to haunt you. But I just don’t believe you’re delusional. And I increasingly doubt if you even threw your child off that ship. Your note to Pendergast seemed to indicate the baby was still alive. I feel like there’s something going on here, some ruse or perhaps larger plan, which has yet to be uncovered.”

  Constance went still.

  When she said nothing, he continued. “All circumstantial evidence, of course—but highly persuasive. And then, there’s this.” He extracted his wallet, opened it, and pulled out a small piece of paper. He unfolded it and passed it to Constance. It was a photocopy of an old newspaper engraving, depicting a
n urban scene of dirty-faced children playing stickball on a tenement street. Standing to one side was another child, thin and frightened, broom in her hand. She was an almost photographic likeness of a young Constance Greene.

  “It’s from the New-York Inquirer, 1879,” Felder said. “It’s titled Guttersnipes at Play.”

  Constance stared at the engraving for a long time. Then she brushed it gently, almost lovingly, with her fingertips before folding it again and handing it back to Felder. “You keep this in your wallet, Doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I, ah, consult it from time to time. Trying to unravel the mystery, I suppose.”

  Constance continued to regard him. It might have been Felder’s imagination, but he thought that the look in her eyes softened. After another moment, she began to speak.

  “Back when that engraving was made,” she said, “newspaper illustrations were done by artists in the field. They would make pen-and-ink drawings, pencil sketches, charcoal—whatever—of things they felt colorful or newsworthy. They would submit their artwork to the newspaper, where professional engravers would reproduce it in a form that could be printed.”

  She nodded again at the folded paper, still clasped in Felder’s hand. “I recall when that drawing was made. The artist was illustrating a series of articles on the tenement districts of New York. He did that sketch and then, I suppose taken by my appearance, he asked to paint my portrait. My parents were already dead, so he asked my older sister. She agreed. When the work was finished, he gave her his preliminary pencil sketches for the portrait by way of payment.”

  “Where are those studies?” Felder asked eagerly.

  “Long gone. But in gratitude, my sister gave him a lock of my hair in return. Gifts of such locks were very common then. I recall the artist putting the snippet of hair into a small envelope and pasting it to the inside of his portfolio cover.”

  She paused. “The name of the artist was Alexander Wintour. If you could find his portfolio, perhaps the lock might still be inside. It’s a long shot, I admit. But if you did, and the portfolio hadn’t been disturbed, a simple DNA test would prove what I say: that I am almost a century and a half old.”