Verses for the Dead

by Douglas Preston

  “Business has slacked off a bit, too,” the woman said. “Flights to Europe are so cheap these days.”

  If Pendergast was disappointed by the meager showing, it was not obvious. “I understand,” he said with the ghost of a smile. “If it’s all right with you, then, may we start with your records?”

  The Youngs exchanged glances. “Be our guest,” Mr. Young said. “Unfortunately, the registration ledgers and books were lost in a fire a few years ago. We’ve very little left but old computer files.” He tapped a pile of printouts.

  Pendergast raised his eyebrows. “What sort of fire?”

  “Grease fire that started in the kitchen. We quickly got it under control, but the old files were stored in a shed next to the kitchen vents and burned down.”

  “And you?” Pendergast turned to the police officer.

  He held out the folder. “Here’s the case file. Interviews, photographs, and the rest.”

  Over the next half hour, Pendergast and Coldmoon looked through the hotel’s records, such as they were, for the two-month period surrounding Elise Baxter’s suicide. Pendergast used his phone camera to document every page. The Youngs waited nearby, answering questions when necessary. Their faces had expressions of curiosity mixed with a kind of embarrassment. Sergeant Waintree watched from a distance, arms folded, offering nothing. He seemed to Coldmoon a typical Mainer, insular by nature, independent, taciturn. On top of that, he was suspicious and a little defensive—as well he should be, given how thin the police file looked. Coldmoon knew that suicides often got scant attention, but even by that metric it seemed the bare minimum had been done here, even for a small, understaffed department.

  Pendergast began asking questions of the owners themselves. Both remembered the night Elise Baxter died, but only vaguely, and only because of the suicide. The Sun and Shore real estate agents had gathered for a dinner party in the lodge’s small banquet room, at the tail end of the season. To the best of the Youngs’ recollection, they’d had an excellent time. Neither remembered anything out of the ordinary—no arguments, no voices raised except in laughter. Nobody seemed to get intoxicated. Neither remembered seeing Elise Baxter; but then, there was no reason for them to have noticed.

  Carol Young, on the other hand, had a very clear recollection of the following morning. She had been the maid who discovered the body, hanging from the shower curtain rod in her bathroom. The woman was clearly dead, eyes open, tongue protruding. Carol uttered a shriek, then fainted. The shriek alerted nearby guests. Horace Young had sense enough—after seeing that Elise Baxter was deceased—to close the door and leave everything alone until police arrived.

  At this point in the conversation, Sergeant Waintree took over. The first responders were a patrol cop—now retired and living in Arizona—and an ambulance driver, who’d died in a car wreck just a few months back. Next came a small Crime Scene Unit, who took down the body, performed an initial forensic evaluation, took samples and photographs—now in Coldmoon’s possession—and then handed the body off to the coroner. The coroner was still around, no longer practicing but living down the coast in a town called Bristol.

  “Were you on the force at the time?” Coldmoon asked Waintree as he opened the police folder.

  The cop nodded. “Ayuh.”

  “Part of the investigation?”

  “Wasn’t that much to investigate. Went through all the details, though.”

  “Such as?” Pendergast asked, looking at the folder as Coldmoon paged through it.

  “Nobody heard or saw anything out of the ordinary. Some of the guests in the surrounding rooms, and the staff on duty that evening, were interviewed. So were a few of the co-workers of the deceased.”

  “Where are the transcriptions of the interviews?” Pendergast asked.

  “These were just informal interviews, no reason to suspect anyone of anything. There are summaries in there.”

  Pendergast pulled out a sheet of paper with two sentences on it. “Such as this?”

  “Yep.”

  Pendergast dropped the paper back into the folder. “Any security cameras or video feeds?”

  “This is Maine, Agent Pendergast,” Mr. Young said, as if that explained everything.

  “Were there reports of any strangers in town? Anything that seemed unusual or out of place?”

  “There are always strangers—tourists—in town that time of year,” replied Waintree. “Right up to the last leaf falling. But no complaints, fights, incident reports during the week she hanged herself.”

  “What about the scene of death itself? Any evidence of an unusual or suspicious nature?”

  Both the manager and the policeman shook their heads.

  “And no suicide note?” Coldmoon said.

  “None,” said Waintree.

  “What about the coroner’s report?”

  “It’s there.”

  “You mean, this three-page photocopy of typed notes?” said Coldmoon. “There aren’t even any X-rays.”

  “It’s like I told you on the phone yesterday,” the sergeant said. “There’s not a lot to learn from the file. You could have gotten it sent to Miami and stayed a lot warmer,” he added in a stolid voice.

  Coldmoon and Pendergast glanced at the brief coroner’s report. “The usual ligature marks associated with a suspension hanging,” Coldmoon read aloud. “Death was caused by asphyxiation.”

  “She hanged herself from the curtain rod,” Pendergast said. “In my experience, curtain rods—especially in hotels—are not the sturdiest of platforms. Frequently, they are attached by suction cups.”

  “Not in the lodge, they’re not,” said Young. “Ours are fixed with mounting brackets. Three screws apiece, right into the studs.” He smiled proudly.

  Pendergast took another glance around the lobby. “Well, then. Perhaps we should take a look at the room.”

  Young nodded. “You’re in luck. That’s one spot we’re not renovating this winter.”

  The place where Elise Baxter took her life looked like countless other motel rooms Coldmoon had seen. Dense carpeting, iron-hard and patterned in a design intended to hide stains. A double set of heavy curtains to ensure the morning sun wouldn’t disturb late sleepers. A duvet cover that probably hadn’t been washed since the start of the last season. Coldmoon had read somewhere the dirtiest thing in a motel room was the TV remote, sometimes covered with E. coli or even contagious, antibiotic-resistant MRSA. He looked around. There it was, lying on the table beside some flyers advertising local attractions.

  The bathroom was small, with a porcelain tub and yellow floor tiles. The curtain rod—fixed securely, as Young had said, to mounting brackets—hung a few inches below the upper molding. Coldmoon eyed the distance from the floor to the faintly mildewed ceiling, guessed it was the standard eight feet. More than enough headroom to get the job done.

  Pendergast turned to him. “May I see the photographs, please?”

  Coldmoon opened the folder again and together they looked through the glossy, well-thumbed prints. At least the photographer had done a thorough job, getting all the right angles as well as a full sequence of the body. Elise Baxter hung from the shower rail by a knotted bedsheet. The woman was wearing a terry-cloth dressing gown that had come loose at the top, exposing one breast. She was much less attractive than she had been in the portrait in her parents’ living room: the dried, protruding tongue; staring eyes; and mottled petechiae spreading up from her neck like overripe blueberries—all indications of asphyxiation—were textbook in a suicide like this.

  Pendergast pointed to a close-up of the dead woman’s legs. Despite the settling of blood in her lower extremities, Coldmoon could make out a sheen on her toes and ankles, as well as on the porcelain lip of the tub.

  “She, um, soaped her feet,” Young said.

  “So she couldn’t change her mind?” Coldmoon asked.

  “It is not uncommon,” said Pendergast.

  Young shook his head.

  Pendergast
looked around the room. “Mr. Young, the tiles here are different from the photographs. And the curtain rod appears to be of relatively recent vintage.”

  “Yes,” the man replied. “I mean, we had to change everything. And not just the bathroom: new bed, wallpaper, carpet—the whole nine yards.” He paused. “Hotel workers are even more superstitious than hotel guests.”

  “Very good,” Pendergast said, not looking as if it was good at all. He replaced the glossy photographs into the manila folder. “We’re going to look around the room for a bit, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” the Youngs said in unison.

  “And Sergeant Waintree, we can go over the other aspects of the suicide back at the station once we’ve finished here.”

  The cop’s expression became, if anything, more stolid. “I’m sorry, Agent Pendergast, but that won’t be possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well…” Waintree hesitated a moment. “Chief Pelletier told me to convey his apologies, but we’re awfully busy at the moment.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes, sir. See, we’ve had a real epidemic of opioid-related crimes and overdoses swamping our office. That, and the usual domestic stuff we always get around now, when the winter gets long. The case files you already have contain everything relevant, and I’m the only eyewitness to the suicide still on the force. There’s no point in going into the station.”

  Pendergast’s face had grown opaque during this recitation. When Waintree finished, Pendergast let a lengthy silence build. Just as he was about to reply, Coldmoon—acting on some internal warning he didn’t quite understand—jumped in. “Speaking of that,” he said to the Youngs, “which rooms have you put aside for us?”

  The couple exchanged glances. “Oh my,” said Carol Young. “But there’s none available. We’re closed.”

  “No rooms? I thought the entire lodge is empty.”

  “Sure it is,” said her husband. “Like everyplace around here. Population drops like a stone once the leaf-peepers are gone. Perfect time for renovations.”

  “I thought you said this part of the hotel wasn’t being renovated.”

  “This room isn’t being renovated. Like I told you, it already was. All the other rooms…” Young gave a helpless shrug.

  Coldmoon absorbed this. “Can you recommend anywhere in town?”

  “Town’s boarded up tight, I’m afraid. All the skiers are over around Big Squaw. Won’t find a place within an hour’s drive that’s open this time of year.”

  “No room at the inn,” Pendergast murmured as he exited the bathroom.

  “There’s the Lowly Mackerel,” Sergeant Waintree offered.

  “That’s right!” Young said. “They do keep a few rooms open year-round, don’t they? I’ve always wondered why.”

  “It’s just this side of Millinocket,” Waintree said. He turned and headed for the door, then stopped. “As regards dinner, you might want to stop at the SaveMart on your way to the motel.”

  “No restaurants open, either?” Coldmoon said. But Waintree had already followed the owners into the hall and out of sight.

  “I’m not surprised there’s a local opioid problem,” Pendergast murmured. Then, rubbing his hands together, he undertook the most meticulous examination of the room Coldmoon could ever recall seeing: using a magnifying glass to inspect the edges of the carpet from one end of the bedroom to another; disassembling both the phone and the radio and examining their interiors; applying a tiny, fine-bristled comb to the mounting brackets of the bathroom shower rod. Now and then, small plastic envelopes would appear as if by magic from the innumerable pockets of his parka; he would pluck up an item from the scene with a pair of jeweler’s tweezers, then replace the envelope and continue.

  Coldmoon watched with mounting amazement for a while before he spoke. “The owner said the room was redecorated. And Elise Baxter committed suicide here over eleven years ago. Hundreds of guests have used this room since then.”

  As he spoke, Pendergast had produced a small multi-tool from the parka and was unscrewing a heating register at the base of the wall. “Very true,” he said. “Nevertheless—” he probed the ductwork he’d just exposed with a light, took up the tweezers again, and removed something stuck to a metal burr— “Elise Baxter was in this room. And it was here that she took her life.”

  “What exactly do you hope to find? Hoping she’ll speak to you from the Wanagi Tacanku?”

  “That’s one possibility.” Pendergast stood up and brushed himself off. “Agent Coldmoon, as I’m sure you’ve noted, the files we received were virtually useless. Without the hotel registers indicating who else stayed here the night of the suicide, we have precious little to go on. That is why I am anxious to glean what I can, if anything, from this room. No doubt you’d prefer to occupy your time in some other way. Shall we meet in the lobby?”

  He shrugged. “Sure.” And without further ceremony he left the room.

  Coldmoon was long accustomed to waiting: in BIA offices and tribal courts; on the Quantico parade grounds; in unmarked cars. He’d grown to like it. Besides, he’d been up most of the previous night and felt rather weary. Finding the lobby empty, he pulled the drop cloth from one of the sofas—despite the preparations, no workmen were on site—picked up a couple of magazines from a nearby table, and settled in to read.

  Sometime later, he woke. The wall clock read ten to three. The lobby was as empty as when he’d first returned to it; there had been no sign of either Horace or Carol Young. He paused to listen. The lodge was still as a tomb. What the hell was Pendergast doing?

  He replaced the magazines on the table, stood up, and began walking down the carpeted corridor, toward what had been Elise Baxter’s room. The door, which he’d left open, was shut and locked. Stepping up to it, he paused to listen. There was no sound from beyond.

  The rooms in the lodge did not use magnetic passcards but old-fashioned keys. Making no noise, Coldmoon crouched to peer through the open keyhole.

  At first, he saw nothing. Then he noticed Pendergast. The man was lying on the bed, still wrapped in the parka, hands folded across his chest. The photos Sergeant Waintree had brought were arranged on the bed around him, almost like offerings encircling an idol. Something was in one of his hands: a gold chain, attached to a medallion whose details Coldmoon could not make out.

  For a moment, Coldmoon wondered if the senior agent of the investigation had suffered a heart attack or stroke. But then he saw that Pendergast’s chest was rising and falling in a faint but regular rhythm. He must be asleep, though even that seemed unlikely—not even sleepers lay that still.

  Coldmoon watched through the keyhole for another moment. Then, rising, he turned and went back in the direction of the lobby.

  10

  JENNY ROSEN FOLLOWED her friends Beth and Megan around the corner of Seventh Street and onto Ocean Drive. Then she stopped. Stretching ahead of her, suddenly, was an endless Babylon. Encountering the boulevard was like mainlining a shot of adrenaline directly into the central cortex: an overwhelming and seemingly impenetrable wall of competing backbeats, billows of perfume mixed with the smell of grilled fish, car exhaust, and mojo-marinated meat, with the occasional whiff of weed. And the lights: candy-cane strings of white that wound up every palm trunk; garish neon signs in the windows of tattoo parlors and beachwear shops; and—blazing from every marquee and sign that ran ahead for at least a dozen blocks—a confusion of floodlamps and strobes and multicolored lasers, swinging about and vying madly for her attention.

  “Come on,” Beth shouted over the calls and laughter of the crowd surging along the sidewalk. “It’s just up here.”

  Jenny and Megan walked after Beth as she made her way—pushed her way, actually—through the throng. Most were young, Jenny’s age or a few years older, vaping and screaming at the top of their lungs to each other over the cacophony, half of them drunk and the other half high. Jenny had wandered through her share of trendy neighborhoods
—the Lower East Side, the Mission, LA’s Venice and Silver Lake—but she’d never before experienced such a motley assortment of hipsters, punks, cybergoths, gang-bangers, surfers, losers, stoners, posers, and countless other subspecies, all mingled together into one volatile soup.

  Jenny and Megan hurried past a hookah lounge, a narrow service alley, then a brilliantly lit store selling trendy sunglasses, trying their best to keep up with Beth. As usual, she had taken charge, acting the control freak. Just because Beth’s home was in nearby Georgia, and she’d spent “like, forever” in Miami two years ago—actually, just one night—she’d assumed the mantle of veteran clubber, taking her two friends under her wing and promising to show them a memorable night out.

  Now the two of them caught up to Beth, who had stopped, hands on her hips, and was looking at one of the few shopfronts that was closed, its metal shutters down. “…The fuck?” she said. “This is the place I was telling you about. I can’t believe it’s closed. Maybe they just moved to a bigger space.” And she took out her phone and started tapping the screen, rocking obliviously this way and that as people shoved past her.

  Jenny plucked at the neck of the top she was wearing. Late March, but already Miami was unbelievably humid, and this crush of hot, sticky bodies only made it worse. If she’d had her way, they would have gone to a place like LIV—still one of the top megaclubs in the country, let alone Miami Beach—but Beth was tight with money and didn’t want to have to spend for table service. Besides (and this was the clincher), LIV hadn’t been Beth’s idea. Her idea—just like it had been her idea to book the trashy, funky-smelling Airbnb condo miles from anywhere—had been to walk a dozen blocks down Washington, fake-remembering several awesome bars along the way, all of which turned out to be expensive or lame or both. Nevertheless, they’d dutifully had a drink in each: tequila sunrises for Megan, some fruity cocktail for Beth. Jenny, who wasn’t much of a drinker, had ordered vodka-crans at each stop.