Cold Vengeance

CHAPTER 20

CORRIE SWANSON HAD PUT OUT A ROUTINE Google alert for “Aloysius Pendergast.” At two AM, as she fired up her laptop and collected her e-mail, she saw she’d gotten a rare hit. It was an obscure document, a transcript of an inquest held in a place called Cairn Barrow, Scotland. The inquest was dated some weeks before, but it had just been posted online today.

As she read the dry, legalistic language, a sense of complete disbelief took hold. Without commentary or analysis or even a conclusion, the transcript was nothing more than a record of the testimony of various witnesses relating to a shooting incident on some Highland moor. A terrible, utterly unbelievable incident.

She read through it again, and again, and yet again, each time feeling an increase in the sense of unreality. Clearly, this strange tale was only the tip of some iceberg, with the real story submerged beneath the surface. None of it made sense. She felt her emotions morphing — from disbelief, to unreality, to desperate anxiety. Pendergast, shot dead in a hunting accident? Impossible.

Hands trembling slightly, she fished out her notebook and looked up a telephone number, hesitated, then swore softly to herself and dialed the number. It was D’Agosta’s home number and he wouldn’t be happy getting a call at this hour, but screw it, the cop had never called her back, never followed through on his promise to look into it.

She swore out loud again, this time louder, as her fingers misdialed and she had to start over.

It rang about five times and then a female voice answered. “Hello?”

“I want to talk to Vincent D’Agosta.” She could hear the tremor in her own voice.

A silence. “Who is this?”

Corrie took a deep breath. If she didn’t want to get hung up on, she’d better cool her jets. “This is Corrie Swanson. I’d like to speak to Lieutenant D’Agosta.”

“The lieutenant isn’t here,” came the chilly response. “Perhaps I could take a message?”

“Tell him to call me. Corrie Swanson. He has my number.”

“And this is in reference to—?”

She took a deep breath. Getting mad at D’Agosta’s wife or girlfriend or whoever wouldn’t help. “Agent Pendergast. I’m trying to find out about Pendergast,” she said, and added, “I worked with him on a case.”

“Agent Pendergast is dead. I’m sorry.”

Just hearing it seemed to strike her dumb. She swallowed, tried to find her voice. “How?”

“A shooting accident in Scotland.”

There it was. Confirmation. She tried to think of something more to say, but her mind was blank. Why hadn’t D’Agosta called her? But there was no point in talking further with this person. “Look, have the lieutenant call me. ASAP.”

“I’ll pass on the message,” was the cool response.

The phone went dead.

She slumped in her chair, staring at the computer screen. This was crazy. What was she going to do? She felt suddenly bereft, as if she had lost her father. And there was no one to talk to, no one to grieve with. Her own father was a hundred miles away, in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She felt suddenly, desperately alone.

Staring at the computer screen, she clicked on the link to the website about Pendergast she had been lovingly maintaining:

www.agentpendergast.com

Working quickly, almost automatically, she created a frame with a thick black border and began to write within it.

I’ve just learned that Agent P. — Special Agent A. X. L. Pendergast — has passed away in a bizarre and tragic accident. This is awful. I can hardly believe it to be true. I can’t believe the world can keep spinning without him on it.

It happened during a hunting trip to Scotland…

But even as she wrote the eulogy, fighting back tears, the surreal aspects of the story began to reassert themselves in her mind. And in the end, as she finished and posted it, she wondered if she even believed what she had just written.