Verses for the Dead

by Douglas Preston

  They were early. Other agents arrived—most from the Miami office—with nods and murmurs and took their places. After everyone was accounted for and the clock crept past three minutes to the hour, the door opened and Assistant Director in Charge Walter Pickett strode in, followed by a curious, shuffling man in horn-rimmed glasses and a baggy suit, more like a librarian than an FBI agent. Pickett went directly to the head of the table, dropped a stack of folders and, not bothering to sit, said: “Greetings, ladies and gentlemen.”

  The man was, as usual, impeccably dressed and groomed, the very picture of an FBI agent. He radiated confidence, coolness, and enough self-assurance to fill a room.

  “I’d like to introduce you to Dr. Milton Mars, specialist in charge of Behavioral Analysis Unit Four. He will shortly present a psychological profile of the perpetrator. But first, I want to run through what we have on the latest killing.”

  With admirable efficiency he briefed them on the murder of Jennifer Rosen. Based on the forensic analysis, it appeared to be a homicide of opportunity, quickly and expertly accomplished, with almost nothing in terms of real evidence left behind. He then moved on to the receiver of the heart.

  “Agatha Brodeur Flayley was found hanging from a bridge in Ithaca, New York, on a visit to Cornell University, where she was applying for a job. It seems the interview did not go especially well; all evidence pointed to suicide, and it was ruled such by the local coroner’s office. We have his report to this effect. She was unmarried, and her body was interred in the Flayley vault here in Miami, under the provisions of a long-established family trust. We’re still assembling background on her.” He paused. “Miami Homicide has, naturally, been looking for any links between the new murder victims and the prior suicides. We have found none. I think we can proceed under the assumption that the killer may be selecting suicide victims, but at random, with no other connection, historical or otherwise.”

  A low chorus of agreement; several nods. Coldmoon, too, couldn’t imagine how the decade-old suicides could be related to the recent murders. He glanced at Pendergast, but saw nothing save the usual masklike expression.

  “And now, Dr. Mars?”

  The man in the horn-rims stood up and gave a friendly nod around the room. “You are all no doubt familiar with ViCAP, the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. It houses the Behavioral Analysis Unit’s main database.” The man’s nasal voice was curiously strong even in the large room.

  “Human behavior falls into patterns. No behavior is truly unique. The ViCAP database covers all known serial killers: MO, victim data, crime scene descriptions, laboratory reports, criminal history records, statements, psychological analyses—in short, everything associated with every crime. By plugging the facts we know about a given serial killer into the database, we can often extrapolate the facts we don’t know. We’ve done this with Brokenhearts—who, admittedly, is one death short of technically being labeled a serial killer—and I will now present you with the results. Please feel free to interrupt me with questions.”

  There was a rustling, notebooks coming out and tablets being woken up. This was where the rubber met the road.

  “Our psychological analysis indicates that, despite surface impressions to the contrary, Brokenhearts is a highly organized killer. He selects the place, not the victims. He waits in that place, having mapped out his actions in detail beforehand. To frustrate video-camera identification, he chooses areas where many people are coming and going. When a victim arrives at the location, he completes the pre-choreographed crime with notable boldness. He is confident enough to kill in high-traffic areas, and to travel some distance to the site where he intends to place the heart.

  “The killing is done swiftly, with two different bladed instruments. The throat is cut; the breastbone is split; and the heart is severed from the arteries—all with a notable lack of tentativeness. This implies a practiced action.

  “This type of killer is of what we call the ritualistic type. The motivation usually involves a religious fixation, often with the Devil, Satan, God, or Jesus. The killer is likely schizophrenic, hearing voices that he interprets to be from a good or evil divinity, urging specific action. The killer has grandiose visions of his place in the world, and thus feels compelled to perform certain actions. He is almost invariably physically fit and, in this case, very likely under the age of twenty-five. He is male. Contrary to popular belief, he is in control of his actions. He is not compelled to kill; he does it voluntarily, and could stop if he found reason to do so.”

  The man pushed his glasses up his nose. “The murderer uses the same implements for each killing, which he guards carefully when not in use. While the victims are female, there is no evidence the killing was done for libidinous purposes.”

  There was a short silence at this bit of information.

  “There are other characteristics we can infer. He lives alone. He owns a car. He has no girlfriends or sexual partners. He most likely has no criminal record. He appears more or less normal to his neighbors. Significantly, killers of this type almost invariably suffered severe childhood abuse—sexual, psychological, and/or physical—at the hands of a close relative, usually a father. Maternal abandonment is also a strong background characteristic. Sometimes, the killer comes from an unusually severe religious or cultish family background involving forced, ritual-like actions that must be performed with great precision—otherwise, punishment will result. The killings then reprise these early experiences.”

  “And such killers often thrive on attention,” Pickett added, “so let’s not give him any. It’s bad enough that gossip about his leaving the hearts on suicide graves is starting to leak out—we’re not sure, but we think we have the City of Miami caretaker to thank for that. So let’s keep a lid on other details: the content of his notes, his name, everything.”

  “I agree.” Dr. Mars paused and looked around owlishly. “So. Any questions?”

  Pendergast spoke: “Is it common for a murderer such as this to regularly employ two weapons?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not. Our killer first sneaks up from behind and cuts the throat—rather expertly, too, ensuring a quick death from exsanguination—then removes the heart, the possession of which seems to be his primary object.”

  “That fits the profile,” Dr. Mars said.

  “Would you care to speculate on why the killer doesn’t simply chop out his victim’s heart? Why waste time cutting her throat?”

  There was a pause. “To silence his victim, perhaps,” Dr. Mars said at last.

  “There are other ways to ensure that without resorting to the extra work, and risk, involved in using two weapons. Might it not be that the killer—who, as I think we agree, is more interested in obtaining the heart itself than in committing a murder—is trying to cause the victim as little suffering as possible?”

  “That…that would not fit the standard profile.”

  “But you would agree it is possible?”

  Dr. Mars frowned. “Yes. Now, if there’s nothing else—”

  “Just one other question,” Pendergast interrupted smoothly. “Earlier, ADC Pickett mentioned the killer’s self-ascribed moniker: Mister Brokenhearts. This seems to imply a connection to the novel by Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts, or perhaps to the agony columns of newspapers. Have you explored that connection?”

  “Er, I’m not familiar with the novel.”

  “You would be wise to acquaint yourself with it. It’s a novel about alienation from the modern world…and murder. The Miss Lonelyhearts character in the novel—who, by the way, is a man—is plagued by a suffering he’s all too aware of, but cannot seem to ameliorate.”

  “That novel isn’t in our database,” said the man.

  Pendergast evidently did not like this answer, and he fixed Mars with a glittering stare. “There are many things in heaven and earth that are not in your database, Dr. Mars.”

  “I doubt our killer is much of a reader,” said Picket
t, with irritation.

  “On the contrary, he quoted T. S. Eliot in his first note and paraphrased the Bard in his second.”

  “All right, all right, the BAU will look into that angle. Are there any other questions or comments?”

  The discussion went on for a while. Coldmoon kept quiet. He hated meetings like this, where people spoke not to exchange information but to impress their superiors or hear themselves talk.

  At last Pickett rose. “If there’s nothing else—?” he said, finality in his voice.

  “One small matter,” said Pendergast, raising a white finger.

  Coldmoon felt a spike of adrenaline. There was something he was starting to recognize in Pendergast’s smooth tones—an occasional, secret undercurrent of pugnaciousness.

  “Yes?”

  “I request authorization to exhume the Flayley corpse.”

  “We already discussed this in relation to Baxter,” said Pickett. “What purpose could it possibly serve? It was an open-and-shut suicide that took place eleven years ago…and as many states away.”

  “And yet, I should still like an autopsy.”

  “Might I remind you the body was already subjected to an autopsy—as is common with suicides?”

  “I’m aware of that. I just saw the coroner’s report on Ms. Flayley. And it was as vague and unhelpful as the autopsy on Elise Baxter.”

  Pickett sighed. “What, exactly, do you hope to find?”

  “I’m not certain. That’s precisely why I want to look. The remains are easily accessible. And this time, there appears to be no family in a position to object.”

  Pickett looked at Coldmoon, and for an uncomfortable moment the agent thought he might ask his opinion. But that would obviously be improper, and Pickett finally said: “Very well, Agent Pendergast—if you feel that strongly about it, and as you are the agent of record in the case, I’ll put through the authorization.”

  “I am much obliged,” said Pendergast. “And I would be even further obliged if it could be done at the earliest opportunity.”

  16

  P​ICKETT WAS AS good as his word. “At the earliest opportunity,” to Coldmoon’s amusement, turned out to be in the middle of that very night. Coldmoon was pretty sure Pickett had arranged things that way to make it as inconvenient as possible. But if Pendergast was annoyed, he did not show it. In fact, just the opposite: he appeared pleased, if you could call a man as sphinx-like as Pendergast “pleased.” On the other hand, the cemetery staff were deeply put out, and as they gathered at the mausoleum Coldmoon could feel a chill that had little to do with the night air.

  “A lovely evening,” said Pendergast. “What an impressive array of stars. This is not the first time I’ve noticed that the empyrean seems closer here than it does in New York.”

  This rapture-in-miniature surprised Coldmoon. The sky had cleared and, despite the moon and the city that surrounded them, a vast river of midnight stars did in fact arch overhead. Even as Coldmoon glanced at them, a shooting star flashed across the darkness. When he was a boy, his grandmother had explained that at birth a person received the life-breath from Wakan Tanka, which at death flew back to the spirit world in a flash of light. Perhaps this wichahpi streaking across the heavens was Jennifer Rosen, her breath of life returning to the eternal.

  The cemetery director himself was on hand to supervise, a roly-poly man with dimpled cheeks and pursed lips framed by jowls. His name Coldmoon hadn’t quite caught, but it sounded something like Fatterhead. A machine for transporting coffins had been driven to the door of the mausoleum, but because of the granite steps it couldn’t enter. A total of four laborers with canvas slings would extract the coffin from the niche, carry it out, and slide it onto the transport cart. An ambulance waited in the lane to take the remains to the morgue in the medical examiner’s building. The vehicle’s headlights threw long shadows among the burial niches.

  “All right,” said Fatterhead, “let’s get going.”

  The workmen crowded into the mausoleum, arranging themselves around the dark slot, while Coldmoon and Pendergast stood outside. The pendulum heart had been removed. The brass handle of the coffin, visible on the end, was not used; instead, they employed a long pole to arrange one of the canvas straps around the end of the coffin. The men gave a gentle heave, and the coffin slid partway out. A second canvas strap was slung beneath it, the coffin edged out another few feet, another strap added, and so on until only the far end of the coffin remained in the niche.

  “Looks like these guys have done this before,” murmured Coldmoon.

  As the far end of the coffin slid out, all four laborers, two on each side, strained under the weight, muscles popping beneath their T-shirts. Now that it was fully in view, Coldmoon could see that the coffin, despite being relatively new, was nevertheless a wreck—the leaking roof had evidently dripped on it continuously and the wood had expanded, popping off the hinges and brass fittings and causing significant rot along the rear side.

  In a practiced motion, the four men swung the coffin around. After a pause, all took a step at once, and then another, slow-marching the coffin toward the door as if participating in a funeral cortege.

  As the coffin passed through the door, the workers prepared to descend the stone steps to ground level. When the lead men took the first step, there was a sound like paper being crumpled, and a vertical crack suddenly appeared in the coffin’s rotten section. It began to sag in the middle.

  “Easy now!” the director shouted. “Hold on!”

  The men halted, faces covered with sweat. But ominously, with a crumbling sound, the crack continued to work its way along the bottom and up around the other side.

  “Quickly! Another sling around the middle!” the man cried as more workmen came rushing up. But it was too late: the two halves of the coffin separated down the center, and then something inside began peeping out through the widening gap—the midsection of a corpse.

  “Close up the gap!” Fatterhead screamed.

  But the two halves of the coffin appeared to have taken on lives of their own. They now swung open sideways, like a candy bar broken in half—and the body, itself cracking into two pieces, slid out in a cloud of rotten silk and decayed clothing, landing on the damp ground with a hollow sound. The corpse, pickled from a decade of water leaks, belonged to a woman with a mass of brown hair, wearing what might have been a black dress and pearls.

  Coldmoon was deeply shocked. He had been raised to have the utmost respect for the dead.

  “Son of a bitch!” Fatterhead shouted as everyone else stared in horrified fascination.

  Silence. Then the director recovered himself and spoke more calmly. “Please get the body shroud and transfer the remains of the deceased into it.”

  The workmen took the body bag that had been lying on the cart, laid it out parallel to the corpse, and together, hands under the remains, shifted the two pieces into the bag, zipped it up, and placed it on the coffin transport.

  “What about the coffin?” asked one of the workers.

  “We’ll get that on the next trip,” said Fatterhead. He turned to Pendergast. “I am so sorry, sir. This is the very first time…exceptional circumstances…” He wrung his hands, words failing him.

  “I wouldn’t worry,” said Pendergast, laying a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I doubt if either half of Ms. Flayley will bear you any grudge.”

  17

  DR. CHARLOTTE FAUCHET did not like to work with rubberneckers around, be they cops or feds. The green ones often made involuntary noises, breathed loudly, or even vomited. Worse, the experienced ones tried to show off their nonchalance with jokes and asinine comments.

  She waited, arms crossed, by the gurney, with the subject still zipped in a body transport bag. The chief FBI agent entered first. He was a typical fed, crisp blue suit peeking from under his scrubs, salt-and-pepper hair trimmed short, square jaw, broad shoulders. He was followed by a strikingly pale man in a black suit who looked uncommonly like many o
f the undertakers she dealt with—except no undertaker she’d ever met had quite such piercing silver-blue eyes. Clearly these two were big fish, indicative of the case’s high profile. Important or not, they’d get no privileges in her morgue. Nor would there be chummy introductions or shaking of hands, which, at any rate, was forbidden in the autopsy chamber.

  This duo was followed by a younger man, with longish black hair parted in the middle, whose ethnicity she was uncertain of. They all looked gratifyingly uncomfortable in their scrubs, and she gave them an unfriendly stare as they lined up. “Gentlemen,” she said as soon as they’d introduced themselves, “the rules are simple.” She looked at them in turn. “Rule number one: no talking or questions unless absolutely necessary. Rule number two: silence. That means no whispering or rustling. Rule number three: no sucking on menthol drops. If you start to feel sick, please leave immediately.”

  Nodded acquiescence.

  “I will be speaking out loud during the procedure. Please understand that I am not talking to you; I am talking to the videorecorder.”

  More nods. They seemed agreeably cooperative—at least, so far.

  “Thank you. Now I will begin.”

  She turned to the body, lying on a trolley next to the gurney. It was an unusual shape. Her supervisor, Chief Forensic Pathologist Dent Moberly, had warned her the remains were in poor condition and would be challenging to work with. So much the better. Fauchet, an assistant M.E. only five years out of medical school, had ambitions of running her own department in a great city—preferably New York. It was the difficult, the celebrated cases that would get her where she wanted to go. She was glad that, for once, Dr. Moberly had not insisted on seizing the spotlight.

  She began by reading off the information on the medical card—the subject’s name, personal data, date and recorded cause of death. Then she unzipped the body bag and nodded to the diener waiting in the background. The morgue assistant came forward and expertly transferred the remains from the bag to the gurney.