Verses for the Dead

24

Standing in the vast, cool space, Coldmoon couldn’t help but experience a strong feeling of déjà vu. Understandable: it was just recently they’d been inside a moldy mausoleum, and now they were visiting another home for the dead. They called this one a “columbarium.” He hadn’t known what the word meant until Pendergast explained that it was a building where the jars holding a person’s ashes were placed in niches for eternal rest. It was much nicer than the Flayley mausoleum: there was a rotunda with a dome, all gold leaf and white marble, and the niches were fronted with glass. You could see the jars inside, along with small statues and porcelain or engraved silver plaques on which were written the names and dates of the deceased. Nevertheless, it seemed cruel and barbaric to Coldmoon. What was the point of keeping your ancestor’s ashes around, after the disrespect of burning the body and, thus, impeding their journey to the spirit world?

His eye strayed past the police tape to the niche that was now a crime scene. It contained a jar of pure white marble. But it was white no more; a single streak of blood had issued from underneath the lid and run down the jar’s side, along the glass base of the niche, and from there sent a few small drops to the white marble floor.

“It appears,” Pendergast murmured, gazing at the scene, “that a portion of ashes were taken from the jar.” He indicated a gray pile on the floor, marked with a crime scene flag. “This made room for the heart to fit inside. The note was laid in the niche, propped up between that porcelain figurine of Saint Francis and the deceased’s name.” He turned to Coldmoon. “Do you see anything odd?”

“The whole thing is odd.”

Pendergast looked at him as he might a backward student. “I, on the contrary, find a virtually perfect reprise of the previous modus operandi. What is odd, or at least telling, is the consistency of Brokenhearts’s tableaux.”

“You think this was staged?”

“Exactly. Not for our benefit; but for private reasons. Brokenhearts is not a man of drama. He lives inside his own mind and cares little for us or the investigation. Ah: here comes the note.”

Sandoval was still at the Indian Creek site where Pendergast — along with others — had discovered the latest body. Nevertheless, CSU had wasted no time once the location of the heart was reported. Now a CS investigator plucked the note from its resting place and brought it over. Coldmoon photographed it with his cell phone, while Pendergast read aloud:

Pendergast nodded and the investigator took the note away. Coldmoon could see a light in Pendergast’s face, a suppressed glow of excitement.

“What do you think?” Coldmoon ventured to ask.

“The note is most revealing.”

“I’m all ears.”

“First, we have another literary quotation, this time from Doctor Faustus. The original reads: ‘The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike.’ I assume you’re as familiar with Christopher Marlowe as you are with Eliot and Shakespeare?”

“Sorry, I didn’t go to Oxford,” Coldmoon said, annoyed despite himself.

“My sympathies. The play is about a man of learning who, in pursuit of greater knowledge, sells his soul to the devil. The clock striking is an allusion to Mephistopheles coming to fetch Faustus and drag him down into hell.”

“And the significance?”

“Hell is the ultimate atonement.”

Coldmoon waited for further explanation, but it wasn’t forthcoming. Typical of Pendergast: he stated that the note was revelatory, but would only dance around the perimeter of why. He decided to offer up an observation of his own. “The P.S. seems to be addressed to us, you realize. That’s a change.”

“Indeed. Although I don’t think he’s stirring the pot — I believe he’s trying to explain.”

Coldmoon almost said Explain what? but decided he didn’t want to give Pendergast another opportunity to be coy.

They watched in silence as CSU continued to comb the scene. Coldmoon could hear, in the distance, the low roar of the media that had gathered at the edge of the columbarium grounds, beyond the police cordon. This third murder had burst the dam; the Brokenhearts story had gone national and everyone was out there, clamoring for information: CNN, Dateline NBC, the whole shebang.

“I wonder how that reporter, Smithback, got the Brokenhearts name,” he said. “Wasn’t that information privileged?”

Instead of answering, Pendergast approached the niche. “Mary S. Adler,” he said, reading the name engraved on the plaque. “April fourteenth, 1980, to July seventh, 2006. We already know she died in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, of suicide by strangulation. And that the date of her suicide is four months before Baxter’s and eight months before Flayley’s.”

“I don’t see how the records are going to tell us anything. Brokenhearts has obviously selected these people because they’re suicides. All we’ll find out from them is what we already know. What I’d ask instead is: why is the killer apparently selecting suicides that occurred within a certain narrow time frame?”

Pendergast turned to him, a not unkindly look in his eye. “Agent Coldmoon, that question is indeed highly germane, and does need to be asked. Yet I sense our killer is operating on a higher plane of logic.”

“What does that mean?”

“Recall my allusion to the Doctor Faustus quote. I sense our killer feels personally responsible for these deaths, which by the way may — or may not — be suicides.”

Coldmoon repressed an urge to roll his eyes. “If they’re not suicides, what are they? According to the profile our guy was, like, fourteen years old at most when those deaths occurred.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Then what possible link could he have?”

“I’m not necessarily saying he’s physically linked. But the question you just raised about the time line is, in fact, a mystery at the very heart of this case. Our man has been killing with alarming regularity and rapidity. We need to exhume Elise Baxter.”

Oh no. Not again. “Pickett’s going to have a fit if you ask him to do that a second time.”

“We have higher loyalties than a man’s ill temper, do we not, Agent Coldmoon?”

“You really want to piss him off like that?”

“What choice do we have? The only other option is to wait for Mary Adler’s autopsy records. And I would guess they will be about as helpful as the previous ones — which is, not at all. Once the police conclude suicide, that’s all the medical examiner can see.”

Pendergast waited until they got back to their temporary office at Miami FBI before he made the call. Coldmoon could hear only one side of the conversation, but it was short and contained no surprises. Pendergast lowered his phone.

“Pickett has refused — again.”

“So much for that idea.”

“Quite the contrary. I’m the agent in charge, and as such I have the authority to exhume Baxter — despite Pickett, and despite the parents’ wishes.”

“Are you serious? That’s direct insubordination.”

To Coldmoon’s vast surprise, Pendergast smiled. “You shall learn, if you haven’t already, that in life insubordination is not only necessary but even, at times, exhilarating.”

Later that evening, while alone in his hotel room, Coldmoon got the message he’d been both expecting and dreading: Call me now.

He made the call, sweeping empty Twinkie wrappers off the bed, and found Pickett in a state of irritation. “Coldmoon? I’ve been waiting to hear from you ever since my conversation with Pendergast.”

Fact was, Coldmoon had been intending, all afternoon, to make just such a call. He knew he had to inform Pickett about Pendergast’s intentions. And he had every reason to do it. Pendergast’s idea was just another harebrained scheme that would yield nothing and end in disaster. He remembered Pickett’s warning: You’re a promising agent. You’ve already come far, against some damned long odds. I admire your ambition. But you have more to lose here than anyone.

“Sir, I—” Coldmoon began.

“No need to explain.” Pickett’s tone softened. “Look, I know you’re in a tough position. I get it: loyalty to your partner and all that. But that last time we talked, you told me that a storm was coming — and now I think I can guess what it is. Did you get the autopsy records from North Carolina on that latest suicide? What’s her name — Mary Adler?”

“Not yet. It seems they’re having trouble locating them. Something about a mix-up while everything was being digitized.”

“So he’s going for the Baxter exhumation, despite my orders. Isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“I knew it. Okay. Now, don’t try to talk him out of it. Understand?”

Coldmoon didn’t answer.

“Look. It’s all on him — nothing’s going to blow back on you as junior partner. With this clear insubordination, I can transfer the guy out of my hair, send him to some nice, quiet midwestern backwater — and you’ll be senior partner in the case. So just go along with his plan — all right?”

Coldmoon swallowed. “All right.”