Fever Dream

by Douglas Preston

  “And Helen was interested in it?”

  “Every Audubon scholar is interested in it. It was the beginning of that period of his life that culminated in The Birds of America, by far the greatest work of natural history ever published. The Black Frame was—so people who saw it said—his first work of true genius.”

  “I see.” Pendergast fell silent, his face sinking into thoughtfulness. Then he suddenly started and examined his watch. “Well! How good it was to see you, Mr. Tipton.” He grasped the man’s hand in his own, and Tipton was disconcerted to find it even colder than when he had entered, as if the man were a cooling corpse.

  Tipton followed Pendergast to the door. As Pendergast opened it, he finally screwed up the courage to ask a question of his own. “By any chance, Mr. Pendergast, do you still have the family’s double elephant folio?”

  Pendergast turned. “I do.”

  “Ah! If I may be so bold to suggest, and I hope you will forgive my directness, that if for any reason you wish to find a good home for it, one where it would be well taken care of and enjoyed by the public, naturally we would be most honored…” He let his voice trail off hopefully.

  “I shall keep it in mind. A good evening to you, Mr. Tipton.”

  Tipton was relieved he did not extend his hand a second time.

  The door closed and Tipton turned the lock and barred it, then stood for a long time at the door, thinking. Wife eaten by a lion, parents burned to death by a mob… What a strange family. And clearly the passage of years had not made this one any more normal.

  17

  THE DOWNTOWN CAMPUS OF TULANE UNIVERSITY Health Sciences Center, on Tulane Street, was housed in a nondescript gray skyscraper that would not have looked out of place in New York’s financial district. Pendergast exited the elevator at the thirty-first floor, made his way to the Women’s Health Division, and—after a few inquiries—found himself before the door of Miriam Kendall.

  He gave a discreet knock. “Come in,” came a strong, clear voice.

  Pendergast opened the door. The small office beyond clearly belonged to a professor. Two metal bookcases were stuffed full of textbooks and journals. Stacks of examination bluebooks were arranged on the desktop. Sitting on the far side of the desk was a woman of perhaps sixty years of age. She rose as Pendergast entered.

  “Dr. Pendergast,” she said, accepting the proffered hand with a certain reserve.

  “Call me Aloysius,” he replied. “Thanks for seeing me.”

  “Not at all. Please take a seat.”

  She sat back behind her desk and looked him over with a detached—almost clinical—manner. “You haven’t aged a day.”

  The same could not be said of Miriam Kendall. Haloed in yellow morning light from the tall, narrow windows, she nevertheless looked a great deal older than she had during the time she shared an office with Helen Esterhazy Pendergast. Yet her manner was just as Pendergast remembered it: crisp, cool, professional.

  “Looks can be deceiving,” Pendergast replied. “However. I thank you. How long have you been at Tulane?”

  “Nine years now.” She laid her hands on the desk, tented her fingers. “I have to say, Aloysius, I’m surprised you didn’t take your inquiries directly to Helen’s old boss, Morris Blackletter.”

  Pendergast nodded. “I did, actually. He’s retired now—as you probably know, after Doctors With Wings he went on to consulting positions with various pharmaceutical companies—but at present he’s on vacation in England, not due back for several days.”

  She nodded. “And what about Doctors With Wings?”

  “I was there this morning. The place was a madhouse, everybody mobilizing for Azerbaijan.”

  Kendall nodded. “Ah, yes. The earthquake. Many feared dead, I understand.”

  “There wasn’t a face there over thirty—and nobody who took a minute to speak with me had the least recollection of my wife.”

  Kendall nodded again. “It’s a job for the young. That’s one of the reasons I left DWW to teach women’s health issues.” The desk phone rang. Kendall ignored it. “In any case,” she said briskly, “I’m more than happy to share my memories of Helen with you, Aloysius—though I find myself curious as to why you should approach me now, after all these years.”

  “Most understandable. The fact is, I’m planning to write a memoir of my wife. A sort of celebration of her life, brief as it was. Doctors With Wings was Helen’s first and only job after she obtained her MS in pharmaceutical biology.”

  “I thought she was an epidemiologist.”

  “That was her subspecialty.” Pendergast paused. “I’ve realized just how little I knew of her work with DWW—a fault that’s entirely my own, and something I am trying to remedy now.”

  Hearing this, the hard lines of Kendall’s face softened a little. “I’m glad to hear you say that. Helen was a remarkable woman.”

  “So if you’d be kind enough to reminisce a little about her time at Doctors With Wings? And please—don’t sugarcoat anything. My wife was not without imperfection—I’d prefer the unvarnished truth.”

  Kendall looked at him a minute. Then her eyes traveled to some indeterminate spot behind him and grew distant, as if looking into the past. “You know about DWW—we worked on sanitation, clean water, and nutrition programs in the Third World. Empowering people to better their own health and living conditions. But when there was a disaster—like the earthquake in Azerbaijan—we mobilized teams of doctors and health workers and flew them into the target areas.”

  “That much I know.”

  “Helen…” She hesitated.

  “Go on,” Pendergast murmured.

  “Helen was very effective, right from the beginning. But I often had the feeling she loved the adventure of it even more than the healing. As if she put in the months of office work just for the chance to be dropped into the epicenter of some disaster.”

  Pendergast nodded.

  “I recall…” She stopped again. “Aren’t you going to take notes?”

  “I have an excellent memory, Ms. Kendall. Pray continue.”

  “I remember when a group of us were surrounded by a machete-wielding mob in Rwanda. There must have been at least fifty of them, half drunk. Helen suddenly produced a two-shot derringer and disarmed the whole lot. Told them to chuck their weapons in a pile and get lost. And they did!” She shook her head. “Did she ever tell you about that?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “She knew how to use that derringer, too. She learned to shoot in Africa, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “I always thought it a little strange.”

  “What?”

  “Shooting, I mean. A strange hobby for a biologist. But then, everyone has their own way of relieving the stress. And when you’re in the field, the pressure can be unbearable: the death, cruelty, savagery.” She shook her head at some private memory.

  “I’d hoped to see her personnel file at DWW—to no avail.”

  “You saw the place. As you might imagine, they aren’t big on paperwork—especially paperwork more than a decade old. Besides, Helen’s file would be slimmer than most.”

  “Why is that?”

  “She was only part-time, of course.”

  “Not… her full-time job?”

  “Well, ‘part-time’ isn’t exactly correct. I mean, most of the time she did put in a full forty hours—or, when in the field, a great deal more—but she was often gone from the office, sometimes days at a time. I had always assumed she had a second job, or maybe some kind of private project she was working on, but you just said this was her only job.” Kendall shrugged.

  “She had no other job.” Pendergast fell silent a moment. “Any other recollections of a personal nature?”

  Kendall hesitated. “She always struck me as a very private person. I didn’t even know she had a brother until he showed up at the office one day. Very handsome fellow he was, too. He’s also in the medical field, I recollect.”

&n
bsp; Pendergast nodded. “Judson.”

  “Yes, that was his name. I imagine medicine ran in the family.”

  “It did. Helen’s father was a doctor,” Pendergast said.

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Did she ever talk to you about Audubon?”

  “The painter? No, she never did. But it’s funny you should mention him.”

  “Why, exactly?”

  “Because in a way it reminds me of the one and only time I ever caught her at a loss for words.”

  Pendergast leaned forward slightly in the chair. “Please tell me about it.”

  “We were in Sumatra. There had been a tsunami, and the devastation was extensive.”

  Pendergast nodded. “I recall that trip. We’d been married just a few months at the time.”

  “It was utter chaos; we were all being worked to the bone. One night I came back to the tent I shared with Helen and another aid worker. Helen was there, alone, in a camp chair. She was dozing, with a book open in her lap, showing a picture of a bird. I didn’t want to wake her, so I gently removed the book. She woke up with a start and snatched it from me and shut it. She was very flustered. Then she seemed to recover, tried to laugh it off, saying I’d startled her.”

  “What sort of bird?”

  “A small bird, quite colorful. It had an unusual name…” She stopped, trying to recall. “Part of it was the name of a state.”

  Pendergast thought a moment. “Virginia Rail?”

  “No, I’d have remembered that.”

  “California Towhee?”

  “No. It was green and yellow.”

  There was a lengthy silence. “Carolina Parakeet?” Pendergast finally asked.

  “That’s it! I knew it was strange. I recall saying at the time I didn’t know there were any parrot species in America. But she brushed off the question and that was it.”

  “I see. Thank you, Ms. Kendall.” Pendergast sat quite still, and then he rose and extended his hand. “Thank you for your help.”

  “I should like to see a copy of the memoir. I was very fond of Helen.”

  Pendergast gave a little bow. “And so you shall, as soon as it is published.” He turned and left, riding the elevator down to the street in silence, his thoughts far, far away.

  18

  PENDERGAST SAID GOOD NIGHT TO MAURICE and, taking the remains of a bottle of Romanée-Conti 1964 he had opened at dinner, walked down the echoing central hall of Penumbra Plantation to the library. A storm had swept north from the Gulf of Mexico and the wind moaned about the house, worrying the shutters and thrashing the bare limbs of the surrounding trees. Rain beat on the windows, and heavy, swollen clouds obscured the full moon.

  He approached the glass-fronted bookcase housing the family’s most valuable books: a second printing of the Shakespeare First Folio; the two-volume 1755 edition of Johnson’s Dictionary; a sixteenth-century copy of Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, in the original Limbourg illumination. The four volumes of Audubon’s double elephant folio edition of The Birds of America were accorded their own private drawer at the bottom of the case.

  Donning a pair of white cotton gloves, he removed the four giant books and laid them side by side on the refectory table in the center of the library. Each one was more than three feet by four feet. Turning to the first, he opened it with exquisite care to the first print: Wild Turkey, Male. The dazzling image, as fresh as the day it was struck, was so life-like it seemed as if it could step off the page. This set, one of only two hundred, had been subscribed directly from Audubon by Pendergast’s own ancestor, whose ornate bookplate and signature inscription still graced the endpapers. The most valuable book ever produced in the New World, it was worth close to ten million dollars.

  Slowly, he turned the pages: the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, the Prothonotary Warbler, the Purple Finch… one after another, he looked at them with a keen eye, plate after plate, until he arrived at Plate 26: the Carolina Parakeet.

  Reaching into his coat pocket, he removed a sheet of notes he had scribbled.

  Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis)

  Only parrot species native to the Eastern US. Declared extinct 1939.

  Last wild specimen killed in Florida in 1904; last captive bird, “Incas,” died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918.

  Forests cut; killed for feathers to make ladies’ hats, killed by farmers who thought them pests, taken in large numbers as pets.

  Prime reason for extinction: Flocking behavior. When individual birds were shot and fell to the ground, the flock, instead of fleeing, alighted on the ground and gathered about the dead and wounded as if to help, resulting in the extermination of the entire flock.

  Folding up the sheet and putting it away again, Pendergast poured himself a glass of Burgundy. As he drank it off, he seemed barely to taste the remarkable vintage.

  He now knew—to his great mortification—that his initial meeting with Helen had been no accident. And yet he could hardly believe it. Surely, his family’s connection to John James Audubon wasn’t the reason she had married him? He knew she had loved him—and yet it was becoming increasingly clear that his wife led a double life. It was a bitter irony: Helen had been the one person in the world he had been able to trust, to open up to—and all the while she had been keeping a secret from him. As he poured another glass of wine he reflected that, because of that very trust, he’d never suspected her secret, which would have been obvious to him in any other friend.

  He knew all this. And yet it was nothing compared with the remaining questions that almost shouted out at him:

  What was behind Helen’s apparent fascination with Audubon—and why had she been so careful to conceal her interest in the artist from him?

  What was the relation between Helen’s interest in Audubon’s famous engravings and an obscure breed of parrot, extinct now for almost a century?

  Where was Audubon’s first mature work, the mysterious Black Frame, and why was Helen searching for it?

  And most perplexing, and most important: why had this interest of Helen’s ultimately caused her death? Because, while he was sure of little else, Pendergast was certain—beyond doubt—that somewhere, hiding behind this curtain of questions and suppositions, lurked not only the motive for her death, but the murderers themselves.

  Putting aside the glass, he rose from the armchair and strode over to a telephone on a nearby table. He picked it up, dialed a number.

  It was answered on the second ring. “D’Agosta.”

  “Hello, Vincent.”

  “Pendergast. How you doing?”

  “Where are you at present?”

  “At the Copley Plaza hotel, resting my dogs. Do you have any idea how many men named Adam attended MIT while your wife was there?”

  “No.”

  “Thirty-one. I’ve managed to track down sixteen. None of them says he knew her. Five others are out of the country. Two more are dead. The other eight are unaccounted for: lost alumni, the university says.”

  “Let us put friend Adam on the back burner for the time being.”

  “Fine by me. So, where to next? New Orleans? New York, maybe? I’d really like to spend a little time with—”

  “North of Baton Rouge. Oakley Plantation.”

  “Where?”

  “You will be going to Oakley Plantation House, just outside St. Francisville.”

  A long pause. “So what am I going to be doing there?” D’Agosta asked in a dubious voice.

  “Examining a brace of stuffed parrots.”

  Another, even longer pause. “And you?”

  “I’ll be at the Bayou Grand Hotel. Tracking down a missing painting.”

  19

  Bayou Goula, Louisiana

  PENDERGAST SAT IN THE PALM-LINED COURTYARD in front of the elegant hotel, one black-clad leg draped over the other, arms crossed, motionless as the alabaster statues that framed the gracious space. The previous night’s storm had passed, ushering in a warm and sunny day full of
the false promise of spring. Before him lay a wide driveway of white gravel. A small army of valets and caddies were busy ferrying expensive cars and gleaming golf carts here and there. Beyond the driveway was a swimming pool, sparkling azure in the late-morning light, empty of swimmers but surrounded by sunbathers drinking bloody Marys. Beyond the pool lay an expansive golf course, immaculate fairways and raked bunkers, over which strolled men in pastel-colored blazers and women in golf whites. Beyond passed the broad brown swath of the Mississippi River.

  There was a movement at his side. “Mr. Pendergast?”

  Pendergast looked up to see a short, rotund man in his late fifties, wearing a dark suit, the jacket buttoned, and a deep red tie bearing only the subtlest of designs. His bald pate gleamed so strikingly in the sun it might have been gilded, and identical commas of white hair were combed back above both ears. Two small blue eyes were set deep in a florid face. Below them, the prim mouth was fixed in a business-like smile.

  Pendergast rose. “Good morning.”

  “I’m Portby Chausson, general manager of the Bayou Grand Hotel.”

  Pendergast shook the proffered hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  Chausson gestured toward the hotel with a pink hand. “Delighted. My office is this way.”

  He led the way through the courtyard into an echoing lobby, draped in cream-colored marble. Pendergast followed the manager past well-fed businessmen with sleek women on their arms to a plain door just beyond the front desk. Chausson opened it to reveal an opulent office in the French Baroque style. He ushered Pendergast into a chair before the ornate desk.