Two Graves

by Douglas Preston

  “Sir?”

  “Let me be frank. Based on his report, Agent Gibbs seems to believe Pendergast is withholding information. That he isn’t sharing everything he knows.” Singleton paused. “The fact is, Gibbs is deeply suspicious about Pendergast’s actions regarding this latest murder. And I don’t blame him. From what I’ve seen in this document, there’s not even a hint of standard law enforcement protocols being followed here. And there seems to be a lot of unexplained, ah, activity going on.”

  D’Agosta couldn’t meet Singleton’s disappointed gaze. He looked down at his shoes.

  “I know that you and Pendergast have a history. That you’re friends. But this is one of the biggest serial murder cases in years. You are the squad commander. This is yours to lose. So think a minute before you answer. Is there anything else I should know?”

  D’Agosta remained silent.

  “Look, Lieutenant. You went down in flames once before, almost destroyed your career, thanks to Pendergast. I don’t want to see that happen again. It’s obvious Gibbs is bound and determined to crucify Pendergast. He doesn’t care who gets caught up in the collateral damage.”

  Still D’Agosta said nothing. He found himself recalling all the times he’d stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Pendergast: against that terrible creature in the natural history museum; against the Wrinklers, deep beneath the streets of Manhattan; against Count Fosco and that bastard Bullard in Italy; and, more recently, against Judson Esterhazy and the mysterious Bund. And yet, at the same time, he could not deny his own doubts over Pendergast’s recent behavior and motives, even his concern for the man’s sanity. And he couldn’t help but recall Laura Hayward’s words: It’s your duty to turn over all evidence, all information, even the crazy stuff. This isn’t about friendship. This is about catching a dangerous killer who’s likely to kill again. You have to do the right thing.

  He took a deep breath, looked up. And then, as if from far away, he heard himself say: “Pendergast believes his son is the murderer.”

  Singleton’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

  “I know it sounds crazy. But Pendergast told me that he thinks his own son is responsible for these killings.”

  “And… you believe this?”

  “I don’t know what to believe. Pendergast’s wife just died under terrible circumstances. The man’s come as near to cracking up as anyone I’ve ever seen.”

  Singleton shook his head. “Lieutenant, when I asked you for information about this case, I wanted real information.” He sat back. “I mean, this sounds ridiculous. I didn’t even know Agent Pendergast had a son.”

  “Neither did I, sir.”

  “There’s nothing else you want to tell me?”

  “There is nothing else I can tell you. It’s like I said—everything else is in my report.”

  Singleton looked at him. “So Pendergast withheld information. And you’ve known about this for how long?”

  D’Agosta winced inwardly. “Long enough.”

  Singleton sat back in his chair. For a moment, neither man spoke.

  “Very well, Lieutenant,” Singleton said at last. “I’ll have to think about how best to address that.”

  Miserably, D’Agosta nodded his understanding.

  “Before you go, let me give you one last piece of advice. A minute ago, I told you not to get involved in this. Not to take sides. And that’s good advice. But the time may come—and, based on what you’ve just told me, it may come sooner than I expected—that all of us will be forced to take a side. If that happens, you will come down on the side of Gibbs and the BSU. Not on the side of Pendergast. Frankly, I don’t like the man, I don’t like his methods—and this business about his son makes me think he’s finally gone off the deep end. Is that clear, Lieutenant?”

  “Extremely clear, sir.”

  “Good.” Singleton looked down and turned the report over on his desk, signaling that the meeting was at an end.

  41

  PROCTOR MOVED QUIETLY THROUGH THE LIBRARY, HIS eyes scanning the books. He was not a bookish person, and almost all the titles were unknown to him. Many were also written in foreign languages. He had no idea how to “educate” anyone, let alone a strange, weak boy the likes of Tristram. But an assignment was an assignment, and Proctor knew his duty. He had to admit the boy was easy to care for. His needs were modest, and he was grateful for every kindness, every meal, no matter how simple. At first—based on his broken speech and strange ways—Proctor assumed he was mentally defective, but that had clearly been a misjudgment; the boy was catching on very fast.

  His eye stopped at a title he recognized: Rogue Male, by Geoffrey Household. A good book. A very good book.

  Proctor placed his finger on the spine, slipped the book out, then paused to listen. The housekeeper had the night off. The mansion was silent.

  … Or was it?

  With an easy motion, he tucked the book under his arm and turned, his eye taking in the dim library. It was cold—Proctor did not bother with a fire when Pendergast wasn’t around—and most of the lights were off. It was nine o’clock in the evening, and a bitter winter night had settled in, the wind sweeping off the Hudson.

  Proctor continued to listen. His ears could now pick up the sounds of the house, the deep, muffled moan of the wind, the faint ticks and creaks of the old mansion; the scent was as usual, beeswax polish, leather, and wood. And yet he thought he’d heard something. Something quiet, almost below audibility. Something from above.

  Still moving casually, Proctor strolled to the far end of the library and slid open a small oak panel, exposing a computer security pad and LCD. It was green down the line, the alarms all set, doors and windows secure, motion sensors quiescent.

  With the punch of a button, Proctor temporarily deactivated the motion sensors. Then he strolled out of the library into the reception hall, through a marble archway, and into the so-called cabinet—several rooms that had been arranged by Pendergast into a small museum, its displays taken from the seemingly endless collections of Pendergast’s great-grand-uncle, Enoch Leng. In the center of the first room stood a small but vicious-looking fossilized dinosaur, all teeth and claws, surrounded by case after case of bizarre and otherworldly specimens, from skulls to diamonds, meteorites to stuffed birds.

  He moved easily, smoothly, but inside he felt anything but easy. Proctor had an internal radar, honed by years in the special forces, and at the moment that radar was going off. Why, he did not know—there was not one thing he could put his finger on. Everything seemed secure. It was instinct.

  Proctor never ignored his instincts.

  He climbed the stairs to the second floor. Skirting the moth-eaten, stuffed chimpanzee with no lips, he scanned the doors up and down the hall. All closed. His eyes rested momentarily on the painting of a deer being torn apart by wolves, then moved on.

  All was well.

  Returning to the first floor, he went back to the library, reactivated the motion sensors, picked up Rogue Male, sat down in a chair strategically positioned toward a mirror on a far wall that allowed him a view out of the library and across the entire reception area.

  He opened the book and pretended to read.

  As he did so, he maintained his senses on highest alert—especially his sense of smell. Proctor had a supernaturally keen sense of smell, almost as good as a deer’s. It was not something most humans anticipated, and it had saved his life more than once.

  Half an hour passed without one thing to arouse his suspicions. He realized it must have been a false alarm. But—never one to make assumptions—he closed the book, yawned, and walked over to the secret bookcase entrance to the elevator that descended into the basement. He rode the elevator down and walked along the narrow basement corridor of undressed stone, the walls covered with niter, damp, and lime.

  He turned a corner, pressed himself noiselessly into a recess, and waited.

  Nothing.

  Slowly, he inhaled, his nose testing the currents of air. But th
ere was no human smell in it, no strange eddies or unexpected warmth; nothing but the chill damp.

  Now Proctor began to feel a little foolish. His isolation, his unaccustomed role as protector and tutor, had put him on edge. Nobody could be following him. The bookcase entrance had closed behind him and had clearly not been reopened. The elevator he had taken remained in the basement; no one had called it back to the first floor. Even if someone were on the first floor, they could not possibly have followed him into the basement.

  Gradually, under these thoughts, the feeling of alarm began to subside. It was safe to descend to the sub-basement.

  Stepping down the corridor to the small stone room, he pressed on the Pendergastian crest. The hidden door opened. He stepped through and waited until it snugged back shut again. Then he descended the long curving staircase and began making his way through the many strange rooms that made up the sub-basement, full of glass bottles, rotting tapestries, dried insects, medicines, and other bizarre collections of Enoch Leng. He hurried to the heavy, iron-banded door that opened into Tristram’s quarters.

  The boy was waiting for him patiently. Patience was one of his great virtues. He could sit still, unmoving, with nothing to do, for many hours. It was a quality Proctor admired.

  “I brought you a book,” Proctor said.

  “Thank you!” The boy rose and took it with eagerness, looking at it, turning it over. “What’s it about?”

  Proctor suddenly had a twinge of doubt. Was this really the right book for someone whose brother was a serial killer? That hadn’t occurred to him before. He cleared his throat. “It’s about a man who stalks and tries to kill a dictator. He’s caught and escapes.” He paused. His description didn’t make it seem very interesting. “I’ll read you the first chapter.”

  “Please!” Tristram sat down on the bed, waiting.

  “Stop me if there are any words you don’t understand. And when I’m done, we’ll talk about the chapter. You’ll have questions—be sure to ask them.” Proctor settled into a chair, opened the book, cleared his throat, and started to read.

  “I cannot blame them. After all, one doesn’t need a telescopic sight to shoot boar or bear…”

  Suddenly, Proctor felt something behind him: a presence. He spun and leapt up, clapping his hand on his weapon, but the figure vanished back into the darkness of the corridor even before his hand had touched the gun. But the image of the face he’d seen was engraved on his mind. It was the face of Tristram—only keener and more blade-like.

  Alban.

  42

  SUPERVISORY SPECIAL AGENT PETER S. JOYCE’S OFFICE WAS one of the more cluttered in the big building at 26 Federal Plaza. The shelves were filled with books about American history, the criminal justice system, and nautical lore; the walls were decorated with photos of his weather-beaten thirty-two-foot sloop, the Burden of Proof. Joyce’s desk, however, was completely bare, like the deck of a ship cleared for an approaching gale. The office’s lone window looked out into the Lower Manhattan night—Joyce was a confirmed night owl, and he always saved his most serious work of the day for the last.

  There was a soft knock at the door.

  “Enter,” Joyce said.

  The door opened and Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast came in. He shut the door quietly behind him, then stepped forward and slipped into the single chair placed before Joyce’s desk.

  Joyce felt a twinge of annoyance that the man had seated himself before being asked, but he covered it up. He had more important things to say.

  “Agent Pendergast,” Joyce began. “In the three years since I was transferred to the New York field office, I’ve tolerated your, shall we say, unconventional behavior as an agent—often against the advice of others. I’ve run interference for you on more than one occasion, backed up your methods when others have wanted to call you on the carpet. I’ve done this for a variety of reasons. I’m not a stickler for protocol. I’m no lover of the FBI’s fondness for bureaucracy. I’m more interested in results—and you’ve rarely disappointed in that regard. You may be unconventional, but you’re damn effective. Your military experience is highly impressive—at least from what I’ve seen of the nonclassified reports in your folder. And there is an extremely complimentary appraisal in your folder, written by the late Michael Decker, one of the most decorated and honored agents in recent memory. I’ve frequently thought back to that appraisal when complaints of your behavior have crossed my desk.”

  He sat forward, put his arms on the desk, and tented his fingers. “But now, Agent Pendergast, you’ve done something that I can’t ignore, and that I can’t tolerate. You have stepped way, way over the line.”

  “Are you referring to Agent Gibbs’s formal complaint?” Pendergast asked.

  If Joyce was surprised by this, he didn’t show it. “Only in part.” He hesitated. “I’m no friend of Agent Gibbs or the BSU. His assertions about your freelancing, your failure to coordinate, deviating from standard procedure, not being a team player, don’t really concern me.” He made a dismissive motion. “But his other charges are more serious. Your involving yourself in this case without waiting for official authorization, for example. You of all people should know that Gibbs is only on the case because the New York City police specifically asked for help from the BSU. You’re not affiliated with Behavioral Sciences—your business with this case is obscure, and your efforts to have yourself assigned to it have seriously ruffled some feathers around here. Yet even that, I might have been able to overlook—but I can’t overlook your most egregious infraction.”

  “Which is?” Pendergast repeated.

  “Withholding information of critical relevance to the case.”

  “And may I ask what that information is?”

  “That the Hotel Killer is your own son.”

  Pendergast went rigid.

  “Gibbs suspected you were withholding information, Agent Pendergast. The NYPD confirmed it. When they first heard you suspected your son to be the killer, early this afternoon, they did not take it seriously. They thought you were… well, non compos mentis. But of course they were duty-bound to follow up. Comparison of the Hotel Killer’s DNA with yours—which we have on file, as you know—has verified it.” Joyce sighed. “This information—information of absolutely crucial importance—you withheld from the investigation. There can be no possible justification. It not only looks bad, it is bad. This goes far beyond conflict of interest. It verges on a criminal charge of aiding and abetting.”

  Pendergast did not reply. He looked back at Joyce, an unreadable expression on his face.

  “Agent Pendergast, I have no idea how your son got involved in this, or why, or how you learned of it, or what you were planning to do about it. You’re clearly in an intolerable personal position, and for that you have my deepest sympathy. But let me be frank with you: your actions in this matter have been unethical at best and illegal at worst.”

  Joyce let this hang in the air a long moment before continuing.

  “As you know, when it comes to disciplinary action, we have a fixed bureaucracy in place. As a first-line supervisor, I can’t even give you a slap on the wrist. So I sent a report to the Office of the Special Agent in Charge–New York Division, detailing your offenses and recommending immediate termination.”

  Another pause.

  “The SAC’s office dropped it right back in my lap. They wouldn’t touch it. So this morning I resubmitted the report, this time to the Office of Professional Responsibility.”

  Joyce sighed. He gave Pendergast a sidelong stare, as if trying to evaluate a Japanese puzzle box. “Ordinarily, the OPR boys would have been all over you like stink on shit. There would be interrogations, they’d be calling witnesses, a decision would be made, a punishment would come down. And you’d be put through the wringer while the process ground on. Instead, what happens? Within an hour, I get a response: ‘Thirty days off the street.’ ”

  Joyce shook his head. “That’s it. Instead of five to ten in Le
avenworth, you get thirty days off the street: a month without pay. And since your annual FBI salary is—what, a dollar-a-year honorarium?—I doubt that’s going to sting very much.” He raised a speculative eyebrow. “I don’t know who your guardian angel is, Special Agent Pendergast, but I’ll tell you this: you’re one charmed son of a bitch.”

  The room fell into silence. At last, Joyce shifted in his chair. “Is there anything you’d like to add?”

  Pendergast shook his head almost imperceptibly. “I would say you’ve articulated the situation admirably, Supervisory Special Agent Joyce.”

  “In that case—take your thirty days. And stay far, far away from this case.” Turning away from Pendergast, Joyce plucked Cruising Boats Within Your Budget from a shelf behind him, placed it on his desk, and began to read.

  43

  PROCTOR WHEELED BACK TO TRISTRAM, WHO WAS SITTING on his bed, white-faced. “Stay here,�� he said. “I’ll lock you in. You’ll be safe in this room.” He stepped out, locked the door securely, and then raced down the stone corridor, flattening himself against the wall just before the hallway opened on to the nearest sub-basement room.

  He took out his .45, racked a round into the chamber, flicked on the laser sights. Then he took a moment to clear his head, get a feel for the tactical situation. He pushed away all surprise, all pain from his bruised ribs, all speculation about how the youth could have gotten in—and focused on the problem at hand.

  The killer meant to lure him out into the sub-basement proper. Alban wanted him to follow. Just as clearly, that was the course of action he must take. There was no other. He could not allow the young man—now inside the security of the house—any freedom of action. He had to track him down. Alban meant to ambush him—he was sure of that. So he had to be unpredictable. He had to develop a strategy.

  And he had to understand why Alban hadn’t killed him outright, when he’d clearly had the chance.