The Obsidian Chamber

50

Pendergast stood in one corner of the two-bedroom apartment, still as a marble statue, watching the FBI’s extensive crime scene team at work. They were wrapping up: photographic equipment was being put away; fingerprint kits were being closed and samples of lifting tape carefully archived; laptops were being shut down; evidence lockers, practically empty, were being stowed for removal.

As he stood there, his cell phone rang. He slipped it out, examined the number. It was blocked, of course.

“Yes?” he said into the phone.

“Secret Agent Man!” came the voice of Mime. “I’m calling with the promised update.”

“Go ahead.”

“Sorry it took so long, but your man Proctor has grown increasingly difficult to track. Especially once he reached Africa.”

“Africa?”

“That’s right. And off the beaten track, too. It took my entire gang, so to speak, to compile what he did. Okay, here’s the skinny. I’ll keep it short because I imagine you’re busy, and I never like to spend more time on the phone — even this phone — than necessary. We managed to track him from Gander, to Mauritania, to Hosea Kutako Airport in Namibia. Whew, and what a job it was. But from there, the trail went cold.”

“You have no idea where he went from the airport?”

“My best guess, based on local police chatter, is that he, um, visited a car dealership across the street from the airport and then headed east, maybe into Botswana. But that’s it. Everything I’ve tried, every dirty trick and secret back door, has come up empty. We’re not exactly dealing with the digital future in places like these.”

“I understand. But there’s no sign that he’s dead?”

“No. A body would be something that would rise to the surface — digitally, that is. He’s alive — but way the hell and gone somewhere.”

“Thank you, Mime.”

“Anything I can do to help my favorite fed. Now, how about the matter of my fee? That disguising cellular duplexer would really, really come in handy.”

“I’m getting one appropriated for you. Naturally, you would only use it in a manner to assist law enforcement.”

“Naturally!” There was a wheeze of laughter.

“Thank you, Mime.” And Pendergast slipped the phone back into his suit pocket.

He watched the crime scene team finish up for a few more minutes. Then he walked across the living room — as clean and bare as the other rooms — to the nearest window. The Hamilton Heights apartment was in one of the neighborhood’s newest buildings, a twenty-story structure on Broadway and 139th that dwarfed the brownstones and row houses that made up most of the surrounding streets.

The window looked west, toward Riverside Drive and the Hudson. A barge loaded with cargo slowly made its way upriver, bound for Albany.

There was a sound behind him and he turned to see Arensky, the FBI agent in charge of the forensic team. The man was standing there deferentially, waiting to speak with him.

“Yes?” Pendergast asked.

“Sir, we’ve completed work. If it’s all right with you, we’ll go back downtown and begin logging the data.”

“Is there much?”

Arensky shook his head. “Just the occasional print.”

Pendergast nodded.

As Arensky turned and began gathering the teams together, the front door opened and Longstreet appeared, his tall figure filling the door frame. Seeing him, Arensky walked over quickly and they began conversing in low tones, Arensky gesturing this way and that, calling over various team members in turn, evidently to give Longstreet their reports.

Pendergast watched for a moment. Then he returned his eyes to the window. Gazing over the tops of the low buildings that stretched westward toward the river, he could make out — past the long lines of brownstones — the tall gables and crenellations of his own Riverside Drive mansion. Even without binoculars, he was able to make it out quite clearly: the front door, servants’ entrance, service ports — even the shuttered windows of the library.

This apartment had obviously been chosen because it afforded an excellent spot from which to observe the activity at 891 Riverside.

Now he stooped to take a close look at the windowsill. Two sets of three holes each, at regular intervals, had been drilled into the wood of the sill, forming two triangles about six inches apart. Anchors, no doubt, for a telescope mount. The heavy weight of a sixty- or eighty-power, light-enhancing spotting telescope such as Diogenes would have used would make such anchoring advisable — providing extra stability for his study of that most private of domiciles.

As he straightened up, Longstreet came forward. In answer to Pendergast’s unasked question, he nodded. “Agent Arensky’s filled me in,” he said. “It’s more or less what we expected to find. The apartment was leased for a one-year term by a Mr. Kramer, about three months ago.”

“No doubt one of Diogenes’s throwaway identities. And was much seen of this Mr. Kramer?”

“We’ve interviewed the neighbors and the doormen. The next-door neighbor, a woman in her late seventies with very little to do, was particularly helpful. We’ve got a police artist in to make the facial reconstruction — not that it will do us much good. Mr. Kramer was seen with some regularity at the beginning of his tenancy, frequently in the company of a young woman.”

“Flavia.”

Longstreet nodded. “Several people identified her from the mug shots we provided. Diogenes, on the other hand, was not. He was here, though.” Longstreet swept the room with a hand. “Even doing simple field matches with the forensic laptop, we’ve found prints from both of them all over the apartment.”

“I see.”

“There was a period when neither of them was seen. That, no doubt, corresponds to the Exmouth period. And then, around four weeks ago, ‘Mr. Kramer’ returned — this time without Flavia. He began to keep odd hours: leaving late at night, returning home around dawn. He was seen, off and on, by various doormen and the elderly neighbor… until about a week ago. And then, suddenly, he vanished — taking all his possessions with him.” Longstreet frowned. “And this time, Flavia seems to have been more careful. There are no scraps of evidence to suggest where they, or more importantly he, might have gone.”

There was a pause. “I’m afraid that’s about the same story we’ve been getting down at Special Operations,” Longstreet continued. “There have been no recent hits on TSA monitors, bank or credit card audits, or anything else. Cross-correlation of the security screen network has produced nothing. My teams in the field, and I’ve employed many, have turned up nothing. The trail’s gone cold.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, old friend. I know that finding that sales receipt, tracking him down to this bolt-hole, must have raised your hopes. I know it raised mine. But now, it’s as if Diogenes has just vanished into thin air.”

“I see,” Pendergast said in a flat voice.

“I want to get him as much as you do,” Longstreet said. “Believe me, this is going to remain my top priority. Although I’m afraid we’re going to have to turn down the heat on our search for Diogenes temporarily. We’re forced to take some men off the job and retask them to that crazy doctor-slasher murder in Florida. It won’t be for long, though — I promise you that.”

“Doctor-slasher murder?” Pendergast asked, turning away from the window.

“Yes. This doctor — apparently a doctor, anyway, I don’t recall his name — just walked into a Miami hospital and killed an elderly woman. On death’s door already, if you can believe it — dying of congestive heart failure. Slashed her up most impressively, Jack the Ripper would have approved. When another doctor walked in and, it seems, surprised him at his game, the lunatic killed him and slashed him to ribbons, as well. And then he just disappeared.” Longstreet shook his head. “Craziest thing. All over the national press, which makes it a priority for us, as well.”

Pendergast stood still for a moment. Then he looked back at Longstreet with a curious expression on his face. “Tell me more about this double murder.”

Longstreet seemed surprised. “Why? It’s just a distraction. We’re obviously dealing with some sociopath — he’ll be picked up soon and we can get back to the business at hand.”

“The double murder,” Pendergast repeated. “Humor me, old friend, if you please.”