Blue Labyrinth

by Douglas Preston

  And then once again, almost despite himself, his gaze drifted back to the empty doorway.

  The attractive thirtyish woman with the glossy, shoulder-length brown hair separated herself from the crowd milling around the Museum’s Great Rotunda, trotted up the broad central stairway to the second floor, then walked down the echoing marble corridor toward a door flanked by painted images of Anasazi petroglyphs, tastefully illuminated. She paused, took a deep breath, then stepped through the doorway. Beyond, a maître d’ standing behind a small wooden podium looked up expectantly.

  “I have a lunch reservation for two,” the woman said. “Name of Green. Margo Green.”

  The man consulted his screen. “Ah yes, Dr. Green. Welcome back. Your party’s already here.”

  Margo followed the man as he threaded a path between linen-covered tables. She glanced around. The room, she knew, had a curious history. Originally, it had been the Anasazi Burial Hall, full of dozens of Native American mummies, still in their original flexed positions, along with countless blankets, pots, and arrowheads, snagged from Arizona’s Mummy Cave and other prehistoric graveyards in the late nineteenth century. Over time the hall became controversial, and in the early 1970s a large group of Navajos journeyed to New York to picket the Museum, protesting what they considered tomb desecration. The hall was quietly closed and the mummies removed. And so it had remained for decades until just two years before, when some forward-thinking staffer realized the space was perfect for an upscale restaurant catering to donors, Museum members, and curators with important guests. It was named Chaco, and it retained the charming old murals that had decorated the original hall, painted to resemble the inside of a kiva of an ancient Anasazi pueblo, sans the mummified remains. One ersatz adobe partition that had made up the far wall had been removed, however, revealing huge windows overlooking Museum Drive, now aglow in brilliant sunlight.

  Margo glanced toward the windows gratefully.

  Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta was rising from a table directly before her. He looked almost the same as when she’d last seen him—a little thinner, fitter, even less hair. The way his present image kept faithful to her memory touched her with a strange mixture of gratitude and melancholy.

  “Margo,” he said, giving her a handshake that turned into a slightly awkward embrace. “Great to see you.”

  “Likewise.”

  “You’re looking wonderful. I’m really glad you could make it on short notice.”

  They sat down. D’Agosta had called her out of the blue just the day before, asking if they could meet somewhere in the Museum. She’d suggested Chaco.

  D’Agosta looked around. “The place sure has changed since you and I first met. How many years ago was that, anyway?”

  “The time of the Museum killings?” Margo thought a moment. “Eleven years. No, twelve.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  A waiter brought them menus, the covers emblazoned with a silhouette of Kokopelli. D’Agosta ordered an iced tea, and she did likewise. “So. What have you been up to all this time?”

  “I’m now working at a nonprofit medical foundation on the East Side. The Pearson Institute.”

  “Oh yeah? Doing what?”

  “I’m their ethnopharmacologist. I evaluate indigenous botanical remedies, looking for potential drugs.”

  “Sounds fascinating.”

  “It is.”

  “Still teaching?”

  “I got burned out on that. There’s a potential here to help thousands, instead of one classroom.”

  D’Agosta picked up the menu again, perused it. “Found any wonder drugs?”

  “The biggest thing I’ve worked on so far is a compound in the bark of the ceiba tree that might help with epilepsy and Parkinson’s. The Maya use it for treating dementia in old people. Problem is, it takes forever to develop a new drug.”

  The waiter returned, and they gave their orders. D’Agosta looked back at her. “On the phone, you mentioned you visit the Museum regularly.”

  “Two or three times a month, at least.”

  “Why is that?”

  “The sad fact is that the natural habitats of these botanicals I study are being logged, burned, or plowed under at a terrifying rate. God knows how many potential cures for cancer have already gone extinct. The Museum has the finest ethnobotanical collection in the world. Of course, they didn’t have me in mind when they assembled it—they were simply gathering up local medicines and magical remedies from tribes around the world. But it’s perfectly geared to my research. There are plants in the Museum’s collections that simply can’t be found in nature anymore.” She stopped, reminding herself that not everyone shared her passion for the work.

  D’Agosta folded his hands together. “Well, as it happens, your being a regular here works out perfectly for me.”

  “How so?”

  He leaned forward slightly. “You heard about the recent homicide here, right?”

  “You mean Vic Marsala? I used to work with him when I was a graduate student in the Anthro Department. I was one of the few people he actually got along with.” Margo shook her head. “I can’t believe anyone would kill him.”

  “Well, I’m in charge of the investigation. And I need your help.”

  Margo didn’t reply.

  “It seems Marsala was working with a visiting scientist not long before his death. Marsala helped this scientist locate and examine a specimen in the anthropology collections—the skeleton of a Hottentot male. Agent Pendergast’s been helping me with the case, and he seemed to be interested in the skeleton.”

  “Go on,” Margo said.

  D’Agosta hesitated. “It’s just that… well… Pendergast vanished. Left town night before last, leaving no word where he can be reached. You know how he is. On top of that, we discovered just yesterday that the credentials of the visiting scientist working with Marsala were fake.”

  “Fake?”

  “Yeah. False accreditation. Claimed to be Dr. Jonathan Waldron, a physical anthropologist with a university outside Philly, but the real Waldron knows nothing about it. I interviewed him myself. He’s never even been to the Museum.”

  “How do you know he isn’t the killer, and is just claiming to know nothing about it?”

  “I showed his photograph to the Anthropology staff. Totally different person. He’s a foot shorter and twenty years older.”

  “Bizarre.”

  “Yeah. Why would somebody pretend to be somebody else just to look at a skeleton?”

  “You think this phony scientist killed Marsala?”

  “I don’t think anything yet. But it’s a damned good lead, first one I’ve got. So…” He hesitated. “I was wondering if you’d be willing to have a look at the skeleton yourself.”

  “Me?” Margo asked. “Why?”

  “You’re an anthropologist.”

  “Yes, but my specialty is ethnopharmacology. I haven’t done any physical anthropology since graduate school.”

  “I’ll bet you can still run circles around most of the anthropologists here. Besides, I can trust you. You’re here, you know the Museum—but you’re not on staff.”

  “My research keeps me pretty busy.”

  “Just a look. On the side. I’d really appreciate your opinion.”

  “I really can’t see what an old Hottentot skeleton would have to do with a murder.”

  “I don’t know, either. But it’s my only lead so far. Look, Margo, do this for me. You knew Marsala. Please help me solve his murder.”

  Margo sighed. “If you put it that way, how can I say no?”

  “Thank you.” D’Agosta smiled. “Oh, and lunch is on me.”

  Clad in faded jeans, a denim shirt with studded buttons, and old cowboy boots, Agent A. X. L. Pendergast surveyed the Salton Sea from the thick cover of ripgut grass at the fringes of the Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge. Brown pelicans could be seen hovering over the dark waters, wheeling and crying. It was half past ten in the morning, and the te
mperature stood at a comfortable 109 degrees.

  The Salton Sea was not a sea at all, but rather an inland lake. It had been created by accident at the turn of the twentieth century, when an ill-conceived network of irrigation canals was destroyed by heavy rains, sending the water of the Colorado River flooding into the Salton Sink, submerging the town of Salton and eventually creating a lake covering almost four hundred square miles. For a time the region was fertile, and a series of resorts and vacation towns sprang up along the shores. But as the waters receded and grew increasingly salty, the towns were left high and dry, the vacationers stopped coming, and the resorts went bankrupt. Now the area—with its barren desert hills and salt-encrusted shores, fringed by wrecked trailer parks and abandoned 1950s resorts—looked like the world after nuclear armageddon. It was a land that had been depopulated, skeletonized, burned to white, a brutal landscape where nothing lived—save thousands upon thousands of birds.

  Pendergast found it most appealing.

  He put up his powerful binoculars and walked back out to his car—a 1998 pearl-colored Cadillac DeVille. He drove back to Route 86 and began making his way up the Imperial Valley, following the western edge of the sea. Along the way, he stopped at roadside stands and sad-looking “antiques” shops, where he spent time examining the merchandise, asking about collectibles and dead pawn Indian jewelry, passing out his card, and occasionally buying something.

  Around noon, he pointed the Caddy down an unmarked back road, drove a couple of miles, and parked at the foot of the Scarrit Hills, a series of naked ridges and peaks stripped to the bone by erosion and devoid of life. Plucking the binoculars from the passenger seat, he exited the car and trekked up the nearest rise, slowing as he approached the summit. Ducking behind a large rock, he fitted the binoculars to his eyes and slowly peered over the crest.

  To the east, the foothills ran down to the desert floor and, perhaps a mile away, the bleak shores of the Salton Sea itself. Wind devils crawled across the salt flats, whipping up cyclones of dust.

  Below him, halfway between the hills and the shore, a bizarre structure rose from the desert floor, weather-beaten and dilapidated. It was a vast, sprawling mélange of concrete and wood, once painted in garish colors but now bleached almost white, studded with gables, minarets, and pagodas, like some fantastical cross between a Chinese temple and an Asbury Park amusement parlor. This was the former Salton Fontainebleau. Sixty years before, it had been the most lavish resort on the Salton Sea, known as “Las Vegas South,” frequented by movie stars and mobsters. An Elvis film had been shot on its beaches and capacious verandas. The Rat Pack had sung in its lounges, and people like Frank Costello and Moe Dalitz had cut deals in its back rooms. But then the waters of the sea had receded from the resort’s elegant piers, the increasing salinity had killed the fish, which washed up in stinking, rotting piles, and the resort had been abandoned to the sun, winds, and migrating birds.

  From his place of concealment, Pendergast examined the old resort with minute attention. The weather had scoured the paint from the boards, and most of the windows were mere black openings. In a few spots, the vast roof had collapsed, leaving yawning holes. Here and there, elaborate balconies listed to one side, weakened by years of desuetude. There was no sign of recent activity. The Fontainebleau was untouched, undisturbed, isolated, not even worth the attention of teenage gangs or graffiti artists.

  Now Pendergast aimed his binoculars half a mile to the north, beyond the resort. Here, an ancient, gullied track led to a dark opening in the hillside, its ragged maw barred by an ancient wooden door. This was the entrance to the Golden Spider Mine—the site from which the piece of turquoise found in Alban’s digestive system had been extracted. Pendergast surveyed the entrance, and the approach to it, with extreme care. Unlike the Fontainebleau, the old turquoise mine had evidently been the site of recent activity. He could see fresh tire tracks going up the old road, and in front of the mine the crust had been disturbed, broken, exposing a lighter shade of salt. An effort had been made to erase both the tracks and prints, but ghost images of them were nevertheless evident from the vantage point of the hilltop.

  This was no accident, no coincidence. Alban had been killed and the turquoise planted in his body for one reason: to lure Pendergast to this godforsaken place. The reason why was deeply mysterious.

  Pendergast had allowed himself to be lured. But he would not allow himself to be surprised.

  He continued to examine the mine entrance for a long time. Then, finally, he pointed the binoculars still farther to the north, scanning the surrounding landscape. Some two miles beyond the Fontainebleau, atop a small rise of land, were the gridded streets, broken streetlights, and abandoned houses of what had once been a town. Pendergast scrutinized it carefully. Then he spent another hour scouring the landscape both north and south, looking for anything else that might indicate recent activity.

  Nothing.

  He retreated down the hill to his car, got in, and drove in the direction of the abandoned development. As he approached, a large, weather-beaten sign, barely readable, welcomed him to the town of Salton Palms. The ghostly illustration below appeared to show a bikini-clad woman on water skis, waving and smiling.

  Reaching the outskirts of the decrepit neighborhood, Pendergast parked and strolled into Salton Palms in a desultory fashion, his cowboy boots making a hollow sound on the cracked asphalt streets, kicking up plumes of snow-like dust. Salton Palms had once been a hamlet of modest second homes. Now the homes were in ruins—wind-scoured, doors missing, burned, others collapsed. A ruined marina, tilted at a crazy angle, sat, beached and rotting, hundreds of yards from the current shoreline. A lone tumbleweed was affixed into the crust of salt, festooned with salt crystals like some gigantic snowflake.

  Pendergast wandered slowly through the disarray, glancing around at the rusty swing sets in the grassless backyards, the ancient barbecue grills and cracked kiddie pools. An old toy pedal car from the ’50s lay on its side in the middle of the street. In the shade of a breezeway lay the skeleton of a dog, salt-encrusted, its collar still attached. The only sound was the faint moaning of the wind.

  On the southern outskirts of Salton Palms, away from the other structures, stood an improvised shack with a tar-paper roof—dingy, rimed with salt, cobbled together from pieces of abandoned houses. An ancient but operable pickup truck, more rust than metal, stood beside it. Pendergast stared at the shack for a long, appraising moment. Then, with an easy, loping stride, he began to approach it.

  Other than the pickup truck, there was no evident sign of life. The shack seemed to be without electricity or running water. Pendergast glanced around again, then rapped on the piece of corrugated metal that served as a rude door. When there was no reply, he rapped again.

  There was the faintest sound of movement within. “Go ’way!” a hoarse voice rang out.

  “Pardon me,” Pendergast said through the door, the accent of the Old South replaced by a mild Texas twang, “but I wonder if I might have just a minute of your time?”

  When this produced no discernible result, Pendergast plucked a business card from one of the breast pockets of his shirt. It read:

  William W. Feathers

  Dealer in Collectibles, Dead Pawn,

  Western Artifacts, and Cowboy High Style

  eBay reselling my specialty

  He slid it beneath the piece of corrugated metal. For a moment, it remained in place. Then it quickly disappeared. And then the hoarse voice spoke again. “What you want?”

  “I was hoping you might have a few things for sale.”

  “Don’t got nothin’ right now.”

  “People always say that. They never know what they have until I show them. I pay top dollar. Ever watch Antiques Roadshow?”

  No response.

  “Surely you’ve rustled up some interesting things around here, combed this old town for collectibles. Maybe I can buy some off you. ’Course, if you aren’t interested, I’ll just have a
look around some of these old houses myself. Having come all this way, I mean.”

  Still nothing for perhaps a minute. And then the door creaked open and a grizzled, bearded face appeared, hovering like a ghostly balloon in the darkness of the interior, creased with suspicion.

  Immediately, Pendergast took the opportunity to put his foot inside the door with a jolly greeting, pumping the man’s hand enthusiastically as he pushed his way in, with a show of bluff good-fellowship, showering the man with thanks and not giving him an opportunity to get in a single word.

  The inside of the shack was rank and stifling. Pendergast looked around quickly. A rumpled pallet lay in one corner. Beneath the lone window sat a cookstove, atop which was a cast-iron skillet. Two sawn-off sections of tree trunk substituted for chairs. Everything was a whirlwind of disorder: clothes, blankets, bric-a-brac, empty tin cans, ancient road maps, driftwood, broken tools, and innumerable other items lay scattered around the tiny abode.

  Something glinted faintly amid the ruin. Breaking off his handshaking, Pendergast bent down to seize it with a cry of delight. “You see what I mean—just look at this! Why, heck, what’s this doing on the ground? This should be in a display case!”

  It was a piece of a squash blossom necklace, dented and scratched, of cheap pot silver, missing its precious stone. But Pendergast cradled it as reverently as if it were a stone tablet from God. “I can get sixty bucks for this on eBay, no sweat!” he crowed. “I handle the entire transaction, take the photo, do the write-up, deal with the mailing and the collection, everything. All I ask is a small commission. I make you a payment to get the ball rolling, and then, if I make more on eBay, I keep ten percent. Did I say sixty? Let’s make that seventy.” And without further ado, he pulled out a roll of money.