Bloodless

by Douglas Preston

  “Mr. Butts,” he said in his honeyed voice, “whether or not you realize it, you’ve just hit on the crux of the matter. ‘“What is truth?” said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.’ If I knew exactly which truth you were searching for, I would do my best to help. But it seems that—forgive my bluntness—no answer I provide you with is satisfactory. In fact, every statement I make, every truth I impart, is simply met with another question. I appeal to my fellow agent, and the members of your own gathering, in this. Despite my best intentions in speaking with you, I find myself auribus teneo lupum, as Terence wrote in his imperishable and inimitable Phormio. Have you read Phormio? No? Well, I fear that is all too frequently the case today. Nevertheless, despite your lack of culture—particularly sad in a man who calls himself a journalist—as a servant of the public I’m still willing to stand on these steps, hic manebimus optime, until I’ve made it clear to you that I—”

  At this point, Gannon saw the lights in the office behind the two agents go on, and a woman in a uniform come forward and unlock the front door. She glanced at her watch: nine o’clock.

  Instantly, the man named Pendergast turned and—with a bound as quick as a fox—leapt up to the now-unlocked door and slipped inside. The other FBI agent followed.

  Betts wheeled toward the cameras. “Cut! Cut!” he yelled. “I don’t want any of that shit on tape!” He looked at Gannon. “Move, damn it, we need to get in there and talk to that medical examiner. Now!”

  He jogged forward, climbing the stairs Pendergast had stood on just moments before, grasped the door, and tried to yank it open. But Agent Pendergast had turned and now held the door shut as if with a rod of iron.

  “I’ve enjoyed the persiflage, Mr. Butts,” he said through the glass, a thin smile on his lips. “But I’m afraid I have an appointment with the M.E. in”—he glanced at his watch—“sixty seconds. And members of the press—however broad the interpretation—are not invited.” Then he gestured to the woman in uniform, who smartly relocked the door.

  Beyond the glass of the door, Gannon could see the three figures receding into the office. There was a strange, almost electric moment of silence among the assembly surrounding the steps. And then Betts, outraged and outmaneuvered, began to curse until his voice filled the plaza, echoing off the buildings and pegging the sound engineer’s VU meters fully in the red.

  14

  HERE THEY ARE, SIRS,” said the M.E., McDuffie, leading Pendergast and Coldmoon into the lab and sweeping his arm toward the two naked cadavers, brightly illuminated on gurneys in the center of the room. In their exsanguinated state, they were both so bizarrely white that they looked like alien creatures or wax manikins. Coldmoon tried to hang back a little—this was the part of the job he disliked the most. But Pendergast moved in with all the eagerness of a hungry man at a free banquet. The guy never ceased to surprise. Coldmoon had thought he’d gone crazy, talking willingly, even eagerly, to that camera crew…until he realized he’d just been stalling for time until he could ensure that he got to the M.E. before they did. Or perhaps he was just amusing himself at their expense.

  Hands clasped behind his back, Pendergast peered down at the first cadaver, leaning in so close that he almost looked like he was going to kiss it. He walked around it with additional intense scrutiny. Then he did the same thing with the second. McDuffie watched, as did his gowned assistant. At least, Coldmoon thought, the autopsies had been completed and the Y incisions sewn back up. They looked frightful, of course, but it could have been worse. Much worse.

  Pendergast straightened up. “Agent Coldmoon, do you find it interesting that one victim is so much more damaged than the other?”

  Now Coldmoon was forced to take closer notice of the bodies. One was in decent shape, under the circumstances, but the other—the one that had been found in the river—was bloated and torn up, with half a dozen stab or puncture wounds, cuts, scratches, a piece of his scalp ripped off, the right index finger missing.

  “Strange,” he murmured.

  “Not strange at all,” said Pendergast.

  Coldmoon looked at him. “What do you mean?” God, not another lecture.

  “This is the classic pattern. With the first victim, the killer is finding his way. He is exploring: seeking his center, so to speak. And because it is all so new, he is nervous and tentative. By the second victim, he is surer of himself, and so the killing is done with greater confidence and less, shall we say, untidiness.”

  “You think we have a serial killer in the making?” Coldmoon asked.

  “Not with certainty, no.”

  “Then who is it?”

  “Perhaps someone simply doing his job—and getting better at it.”

  Pendergast wheeled a digital magnifying scope over to the first victim and focused on one of the puncture wounds. He fiddled with the dials, took a few screenshots. He moved it to another area of lacerations, then another. Again he looked up.

  “Agent Coldmoon, would you care to take a look?”

  “I was just waiting for a turn.” Coldmoon came over and glanced into the eyepiece. It showed an odd, pucker-like wound, washed clean by the river. There were other similar wounds, some bigger than others, and several had ripped the flesh. All had been dissected during the course of the autopsy, then stapled back up.

  “Dr. McDuffie,” said Pendergast, turning abruptly to the M.E., who jumped at the sudden movement. “Tell us what you found in your dissection of these wounds, if you please.”

  “Yes, of course. As you can see, we did a transect of each wound to map it and take samples for further lab work. What you see with the initial victim are a number of stab wounds made with a trocar-like implement. Some are deep, others shallow. I can give you a map of them if you’d care to see it. The wounds are clustered on the inside anterior upper portion of the thigh. My assumption—really, the only one that makes sense under the circumstances—is that the killer was probing for the femoral artery, but in a rather haphazard way. The final stab wound intersected the artery, and that is how the blood was drained.”

  “How much blood?”

  “All of it. Literally every drop. The heart would have stopped pumping after about three to four liters had been removed. But the final one to two liters are gone as well, which indicates there was active suction through the hollow part of the trocar—a significant amount of suction.”

  “Like an embalmer?” Coldmoon asked.

  “I’m glad you asked about that. Embalming sometimes uses the femoral vein—not the artery—but the blood is pushed out most frequently by pumping fluid into the aorta. They call it perfusing the body. And then embalming fluid pushes out the water the same way. This, on the other hand, required active suction.”

  “Could it be the work of someone with embalming experience?” Coldmoon asked.

  “That thought crossed my mind. The same equipment might be modified to suck out the blood instead of pushing in fluids—in this case, by means of a trocar, not an incision and catheter.”

  “And the other wounds?” Pendergast asked.

  “They’re indicative of a struggle. Those deep lacerations look like they were done with a crude object, possibly a broken knife. The scalp injury is harder to categorize. It looks like something hard and thin was scraped across it with great force, peeling it up almost like you might pare an apple.”

  Coldmoon swallowed with some difficulty. He’d had slices of apple on his oatmeal at breakfast.

  “Finally, note the missing index finger of the right hand. It was crudely severed from the body—I would say bitten off. As you probably know, it was recently recovered in the square in front of the hotel where he worked.”

  Pendergast nodded. “May I see it?”

  “I’m sorry, it was sent off to the DNA lab. Dried saliva was found on it.”

  “Saliva?” Pendergast repeated. “Excellent. When will the results come in?”

  “Forty-eight hours.”

  Another nod.

 
When it gets back, I’ll give you the finger, Coldmoon thought to himself, still fighting the queasiness.

  “I’d like to show you something else,” McDuffie said. He nodded to the assistant, who came forward. Together, they gently flipped the body over.

  “Note—in addition to the cracked ribs—these deep bruises, symmetrical on both sides of the spine, which contused and tore the paraspinal muscles, particularly the rhomboid major. Most unusual.”

  Pendergast examined the marks closely with the magnifying scope. Coldmoon waved off an invitation to look himself.

  Next, the M.E. launched into a long list of other medical details noted during the autopsy, including the contents of the stomach, the small amounts of alcohol and THC present in the tissues, and so forth. Much of the rest Coldmoon couldn’t follow, but none of it seemed particularly important.

  “Let us move to the second victim,” said Pendergast.

  This body, which Coldmoon had already seen in the courtyard behind the Owens-Thomas House, was much fresher looking. He hadn’t been floating in a warm river for half a day—thank God.

  “Note,” said McDuffie, “that there’s only one puncture wound. This time, the killer went straight to the femoral artery. Again, the blood was totally drained. We recovered what looks like more saliva, or mucus, around the puncture wound—or perhaps some sort of organic lubricating agent. Again, we’re running DNA and chemical tests on it.”

  Pendergast spent a long time examining this puncture wound.

  “Note there is some bruising and scraping,” McDuffie said, “but nothing like the first victim. This one seems to have been killed much more efficiently—at least, judging by the few signs of a struggle.” He nodded to his assistant.

  This body was flipped over as well. Right away, Coldmoon noted the same symmetrical bruises, equidistant from the spine.

  “It looks like the body—both bodies—were gripped in some sort of vise or clamp. With such force, in fact, that the muscles underneath were contused and several ribs cracked.”

  Pendergast examined the bruises with the magnifying scope, moving it this way and that. Silence filled the lab. At last he straightened up and looked at the M.E. with a glittering eye. “That is one of the most curious things I’ve ever seen on a cadaver.”

  “We’re baffled, too. Both bodies, as you know, were moved. The first was moved from the square to the river, over a distance of more than three miles as the crow flies.”

  “Would you say the injuries indicate more than one person was involved in the murder?”

  “I would most definitely say so. In both the killing and the transporting. At least two, probably three or maybe more. The second victim,” McDuffie went on, “was also moved, even though at this point we can only speculate about the site of the actual homicide. It almost looks like these marks were made by some sort of machine—an earthmover, forklift, or construction vehicle of some type—that picked up the bodies and carried them. Baffling.”

  Pendergast was silent a moment before speaking again. “I think, Dr. McDuffie, that we should keep this mutual bafflement to ourselves. Perhaps you’ve noticed the boisterous crowd of journalists and camerapeople outside?”

  “I have.”

  “The less information they are given, the better. I mention this because you will no doubt be cornered by them, as I was.”

  McDuffie nodded, eyes widening at the thought of an unpleasant confrontation. “They won’t hear anything from me. I’ll let the commander do the talking.”

  “Most excellent.” And as Pendergast’s eyes returned to the corpses, Coldmoon saw that they were filled with a particularly intense and silvery gleam.

  15

  MCDUFFIE HAD POINTED THEM to an alternate exit, which deposited them in a quiet back alley. Coldmoon took a deep breath of the humid air, glad to be free of the antiseptic stink of the lab.

  “Are you, perchance, a churchgoing man?” Pendergast asked.

  “Not in your sense of the word.”

  “But perhaps you’ll make an exception in this case? I’d appreciate your company.”

  Coldmoon sighed. “Speaking of ‘case,’ what does going to church have to do with anything—unless you’re trying to reform me?”

  “Reform? That would be impossible. Perhaps you noticed the tattoo on the wrist of our good Dr. Cobb?”

  “Yes. It looked like a combat patch. I never figured that old guy as a veteran.”

  “It’s no combat patch. It was the coat of arms of an ancient and noble family. Specifically, the Báthory family of the Transylvania region of Hungary.”

  “Transylvania? As in Dracula?”

  Pendergast nodded. “Three horizontal teeth in a stylized pattern. The full coat of arms would be surrounded by a dragon biting its own tail.”

  Coldmoon could see Pendergast was enjoying prolonging this discussion as fully as possible.

  “It was awarded to a fourteenth-century warrior named Vitus, who killed a swamp-dwelling dragon that had been threatening the kingdom of Ecsed.”

  “Bully for him. I hear those swamp-dwelling dragons are the worst.”

  “One of his descendants, who lived around 1600, was Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed. She has the distinction of being in the Guinness World Records.”

  “What for?”

  “She was the world’s most prolific female serial killer. They claim she murdered upwards of six hundred fifty women, many of them virgins, so she could bathe in their blood to retain her beauty. She was known as the Blood Countess.”

  “Good God.”

  “So, in the pleasantly cool living room of the Owens-Thomas House, I asked myself: what is the staid historian Dr. Cobb doing with a tattoo like that?”

  “A Báthory descendant, perhaps?”

  “No. As I told you, right after we left, he practically ran to the dowager Culpepper’s house. He was obviously concerned about our visit and wanted to confer with her. I followed him there, and after he’d departed, I paid her a brief call myself.”

  “On what pretext?”

  “As a Jehovah’s Witness. Before I was insolently ejected from the house, I accomplished my goal: I noted the same tattoo on Mrs. Culpepper’s wrist.”

  “Really? Sounds like a cult.”

  “Exactly.”

  Coldmoon paused. “A cult that might need blood for their rites—if they planned to follow in Báthory’s footsteps. A lot of blood.”

  “Excellent.”

  “And you think this old church she purchased is where the shit goes down?”

  “That is my hope.”

  “Hope?” Coldmoon had to laugh. “Really? You hope?”

  “My dear Coldmoon, I do indeed hope to solve the case, thus sparing future victims.”

  “Fair enough. When do we pay them a visit?”

  “Tonight, at midnight. We will surprise them. In the meantime, I will apply for a warrant and arrange a raid, because we want to catch them red-handed—no pun intended.”

  “How do you know they’re going to be doing their thing tonight?”

  “Because tomorrow is the anniversary of Elizabeth Báthory’s gruesome death in a castle cell. Surely such an occasion will be marked by rites—perhaps even bloody ones.”

  16

  CONSTANCE GREENE SAT IN the Suwanee Room of the Chandler House, sipping bao zhong tea and gazing out at the attractive little park across West Gordon Street. The hotel’s tearoom was long and narrow, one wall consisting almost entirely of old, rippled-glass windows looking over Chatham Square.

  Constance was finding Savannah quite to her taste, especially after spending time in Florida: a place that was too modern, too much a clash of tropical paradise with frantic metropolis. Recent murders or not, Savannah was a genteel town that embraced its past—not the awful history of slavery and oppression, but a simpler time, of the Trollope-reading, take-a-turn-in-the-park sort, when each tree was planted with a thought for how it would improve the landscape a hundred years hence. Rather than r
ushing to tear things down during the architectural vandalism period of the 1950s and ’60s, Savannah had preserved its link with the past, which in a personal way spoke to Constance and her own peculiar connection to distant times.

  The Chandler House served breakfast from eight to ten each morning. Constance had arrived at quarter to ten and requested the table in the far corner of the room. Here, with her back to the wall, she could discreetly watch the other guests as well as the activity on the street and square. Amusingly, a couple of the clientele—tourists, obviously—had stopped her to ask for directions. They must have assumed she was a local, or perhaps even a hotel employee in period dress.

  She had ordered a poached egg with remoulade and watercress, along with the bao zhong. There were two waitresses on duty, one young and one middle-aged, and—as there were now few customers—they were standing in the back. As ten o’clock neared, Constance pushed the half-eaten egg away and ordered a scone with clotted cream and blackcurrant jam. By twenty past there was only Constance, absorbed in a crossword puzzle, scone untouched, and the two waitresses nearby, relaxing and gossiping now that their shift was almost done.

  Constance, gazing out the window at the passing traffic, listened intently to their conversation. The waitresses were talking in low tones, but not so low that she could not catch what they said. She casually recorded the relevant employee names and details in the squares of her crossword with an antique gold pencil. After a quarter of an hour, Constance contrived to knock the dish of clotted cream off her table.

  “I’m so sorry!” she said as the waitresses rushed over to clean up the mess. While the women dabbed at the floor and tablecloth with fresh napkins, Constance rose, and in so doing jostled the rest of the spilled cream off the table—onto the black skirt of one waitress and the sleeve of the other. Constance renewed her apologies and insisted on helping clean up.