Verses for the Dead

37

Coldmoon looked morosely out the louvered window of what he’d started calling Pendergast’s safe house on the outskirts of Little Havana. Traffic was moving sluggishly through the soupy air, and as he watched, Axel’s taxi pulled away from the curb and joined the flow, headed off on yet another mysterious errand. It was not quite eleven in the morning, and already the sun was flaring off the car windows and bare metal shopfronts, filling the air with a blinding heat and light.

Growing up in South Dakota, Coldmoon had loved the hot, dry summers. But Miami was a different beast entirely. Here it was, just turning April, and already every day seemed hotter than the last. It was so damn humid that your body, in a futile effort to cool down, would get drenched with sweat that wouldn’t evaporate. And the sun didn’t come at you gently, like it did in the northern latitudes, but hammered straight down on you mercilessly, like a white-hot frying pan over the head.

He turned from the window. Pendergast was sitting at the table, holding a gold chain of some sort, to which was affixed a medallion of what appeared to be a saint. Coldmoon had noticed it in the agent’s hands when he’d been lying on Elise Baxter’s bed in that Maine lodge. Pendergast never said where he got it, or why he carried it, but he seemed to bring it out and contemplate it at the strangest times — like now.

He heard the closing of the front door, and a moment later, Dr. Fauchet appeared in the doorway with another armload of files. She was dressed in a crisp yellow dress, and she nodded a greeting to Coldmoon and then bestowed a radiant smile on Pendergast. How the hell did these Floridians manage to get through a morning, let alone an entire day, without wilting?

Grove came into view in the doorway behind her and the two stepped into the shadowy room. “Morning,” Grove said to Coldmoon and slapped his briefcase on the table, taking a seat.

Coldmoon noticed the commander’s tone was a trifle formal, not quite his usual avuncular self. Perhaps he was still stewing about the way Pendergast had hijacked last night’s television interview — even though afterward Pendergast had explained his rationale to Grove, with Pickett listening in on speakerphone. To Coldmoon, his partner’s arguments made sense. Given Brokenhearts’s psychological profile and his outreach to Smithback, Pendergast believed he could be influenced by a direct appeal. And maybe it had actually worked: there hadn’t been any killings since Carpenter — at least, not yet. Coldmoon’s gut feeling was that what Grove really minded was being kept in the dark. After all, he was the ranking local officer and he’d been unfailingly helpful in putting the resources of the Miami PD to work on their behalf. It had been a little unsporting of Pendergast to spring that sudden public appeal on him without warning.

Nevertheless, the commander walked over and greeted Pendergast cordially, shaking his hand. “I got your message,” he said, taking a seat at the table. “I understand you have some more work for us.”

“I’m afraid so. But first, I have something I would like to show you — to get your thoughts.”

Nice damage control, Coldmoon thought.

Pendergast glanced over at the medical examiner. “Dr. Fauchet. I didn’t expect to see you, but I must say it’s a pleasure.”

“I caught a ride with Commander Grove,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not in the least — in fact, it’s fortuitous. Though I fear I might be keeping you from your work.”

“I’m on vacation.”

Pendergast raised his eyebrows. “Indeed?”

“Yes. Not that I’m going anywhere special,” she added quickly.

Coldmoon listened to this exchange. Fauchet — the clipped, efficient young medical examiner — using a vacation day to check on the progress of a criminal case? She seemed oddly self-conscious. If he didn’t know better, he’d have guessed the woman had a crush on someone. Maybe himself? He glanced over and saw her gazing at Pendergast. Nope, wasn’t him.

“I’d value your thoughts as well,” he told Fauchet, to her evident pleasure and confusion.

He rose to his feet and strolled over to the rear wall, where the two large corkboards now held three-by-five cards, blue string, and photographs. The one on the left contained the index cards for each of the three recent homicides, arranged chronologically in a column. The other corkboard held one card for each of the suicide/homicides Brokenhearts had visited, along with photos of the victims, brief biographies, and photocopies of his notes to them. A series of parallel blue lines linked each recent Miami killing to the card representing the grave to which it corresponded. Below the three right-hand cards were two others, one for Laurie Winters and another for Jasmine Oriol.

Pendergast glanced about the table. “There comes a moment when every investigation reaches a tipping point. Thanks to your efforts—” he nodded at Fauchet and Grove — “I believe we’ve reached that point.”

This rather dramatic announcement caused the tension in the dead air of the room to ratchet up.

He moved toward the corkboards, pulling a gold pen from his pocket as he did so.

“Let us start with the three current homicides: Felice Montera, Jenny Rosen, and Louisa May Abernathy, aka Misty Carpenter.” As he spoke, he touched his pen to each of the index cards. “They are linked to three eleven-year-old suicides: Elise Baxter, Agatha Flayley, and Mary Adler.” More touchings of the pen. “I have always believed that these homicides dressed up as suicides are crucial to understanding the new murders.”

“But how?” Commander Grove asked. “I mean, they’re all over the map.”

“But are they?” Pendergast said. “The main investigative thrust has been naturally focused on the recent murders in Miami Beach — in order to find and stop the killer. The older killings have been evidence, used to flesh out the impetus that’s driving the current-day killer. Why put this heart on this grave? What connection does, say, Felice Montera have to Elise Baxter, or Jenny Rosen to Agatha Flayley?”

Pendergast looked around the table. “And therein lies a logical flaw. The investigation has focused on the relation between the new killings and the old — when in fact there is no relationship. Instead, we should concern ourselves with the internal relation that exists among the eleven-year-old murders themselves.”

He walked past the corkboards to the maps, stopping at a large one of Greater Miami, on which all the relevant locations had been marked. He turned to Fauchet. “What does this map resemble, Dr. Fauchet? Besides the obvious, I mean.”

She paused before answering. “A... well, a pincushion.”

“Precisely! It’s busy with pushpins. Different locations and different colors: red for the new murder sites, green for their domiciles, blue for the graveyards, yellow for the residences of the old murder/suicides. Not to mention orange for Winters and Oriol, who thankfully have not been paired with contemporary murders.” He waved at the map. “Does anyone see any pattern? Any relevance? Any clue to what agenda Mister Brokenhearts — whom we know to be an intelligent, organized killer — might have been pursuing?”

Silence all around.

“Understandably not. Because I believe the pattern lies elsewhere — with those who were murdered eleven years ago.” He pointed at the right-hand corkboard. “Baxter, Flayley, Adler, Winters, and Oriol.”

Fauchet frowned. “But they seem even more random. As Commander Grove said, they’re literally all over the map.”

“They seem random because we’ve been operating on a false assumption. We’ve been preoccupied with their connection to Mister Brokenhearts, and whether those decade-old deaths were suicides or homicides. Nobody stopped to examine one basic point of evidence: the dates those women died.”

Now Pendergast moved to another, even larger map: of the eastern seaboard of the United States. He grabbed a handful of black pushpins from a nearby tray. “Let’s examine them, not in the order the hearts were left on their graves, but in the order that they were killed.” He began fixing the pins into position. “Jasmine Oriol, who died eleven years and ten months ago just south of Savannah, Georgia. Mary Adler, who died eleven years and eight months ago in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Laurie Winters, eleven years and six months ago, just north of DC in Bethesda, Maryland. And Elise Baxter, who died in Katahdin, Maine — almost exactly eleven years and four months ago.” He stepped aside.

“My God,” Grove said, staring at the map, mouth agape. “It’s a trail. The killer left a goddamned trail!”

“Right to the Canadian border,” said Coldmoon, wondering when Pendergast had figured this out. “With each murder exactly two months apart.”

“There’s something else interesting about these murders,” Pendergast said. He placed his finger beside the southernmost pushpin — Oriol — then slid it slowly up to the northernmost: Baxter.

“All the deaths took place along I-95,” said Coldmoon.

Pendergast nodded. “Not only that, but they’re roughly equidistant from each other.” He paused. “So what do we have? Killings done in the same way: strangulation fashioned to look like suicide. Killings separated from each other by equivalent degrees of space and time. Killings that follow an obvious route: mile for mile, from one end to the other, Interstate 95 is the most heavily traveled road in America.”

He turned toward the group at the table. “I submit to you that, when viewed in such a manner, this series of crimes is almost painful in its regularity. This killer — or killers — was following a careful plan. A deliberate plan. It’s almost as if he wanted law enforcement to notice the pattern.”

“But you’ve forgotten one,” Coldmoon said.

Something almost like a smile flitted across Pendergast’s face. “Not forgotten, Agent Coldmoon — just withheld for the moment.” He picked up one more pushpin, pressed it into the map. “Agatha Flayley, the last of the suicide/murders: killed in Ithaca, New York, just eleven years ago. Two hundred miles from I-95. And with a different MO.” And with this he, too, took a seat at the table.

There was silence for a moment.

“I don’t understand,” Grove said. “You just laid out a flawless pattern — and then, with this Flayley killing, turned it on its head.”

“I’d phrase it differently, Commander. It’s quite possible Agent Coldmoon has the perfect Lakota aphorism for this situation, but I hope he’ll permit me to quote a Latin one instead: exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis. The exception that proves the rule. This last of the old murders is different from the others — but it’s that very difference I find most telling.” He clasped his hands on the table and leaned forward. “Consider: It takes place out of sequence — four months after Baxter’s death. All the other strangulations were two months apart. The MO is different. Even though Flayley was strangled, it was done with less force — so much less that she was still alive when she was thrown from the bridge. That, too, is different. The others were all hanged in bedrooms or bathrooms, but Flayley was thrown off a bridge, in a public place.”

He paused, and then said: “In the other killings, greater force was brought to bear on the right horn of the hyoid bone, suggesting a right-handed individual. In the Flayley case, the left wing of the hyoid was slightly fractured.” He paused. “A slightly weaker, left-handed individual, perhaps?” Now Pendergast let his chin rest lightly on his tented fingers as he looked from Coldmoon, to Grove, to Fauchet, almost impishly. When his gaze met Fauchet’s, he winked.

“A partner!” Fauchet and Coldmoon said simultaneously.

“Indeed,” Pendergast said. “Although I think the word apprentice might be more apt.”

“That handwriting guy, Ianetti, said the person who wrote the notes was left-handed,” Coldmoon added.

“Yes... yes, he did.” Grove, who’d seemed lost in thought during this exchange, suddenly straightened up. “Same with the throat slashings. It all fits.”

“It might explain not only why this killing was different — but why it was the last of its kind.”

“How do you figure that?” Coldmoon asked. Fascinating or not, he was a little annoyed at this Yoda-like line of questioning. Why hadn’t Pendergast shared these revelations with him earlier?

“Up until Ithaca, the murders had been growing increasingly efficient. The killer was gaining experience, perfecting his technique. But Flayley was different: her strangling was botched, a kind of homicidus interruptus, and the act of throwing her off a bridge — with the potential for witnesses — hints almost of desperation. And it suggests other things as well: youthful impulsiveness, drama, the desire to impress.”

“So this apprentice had been an onlooker, so to speak,” Grove said. “And Flayley was a chance for him to ‘make his bones.’ But not having the experience or stomach for the job, he made a hash of it.”

Pendergast raised his chin from his fingertips. “The mixed metaphor notwithstanding, that seems likely. But there are still other points of interest about this particular killing.”

“It’s nowhere near I-95,” Fauchet said.

“Correct. In other words, we have a second killer — a squeamish apprentice — who takes his first killing in a new direction and almost botches it. Still, there’s a similarity: he also does his one and only killing near a major traffic artery.”

Coldmoon looked once more at the map. “I-81.”

Pendergast nodded.

“So they were swinging back south again?” Fauchet asked.

“It seems so. And now that we know the route the killers took, let us traverse it one more time — in reverse.”

Coldmoon turned back to the map, and — suddenly — saw where Pendergast was going with all this; how everything fell neatly into place. “Florida,” he said in a low voice. “They must have started in Florida.”

“I’m sorry,” Fauchet said. “I don’t get it. We haven’t found a killing with this MO in Florida.”

“My dear Dr. Fauchet, that’s because we haven’t looked in Florida. Commander Grove was asked to search for possible suicide-killings outside Florida. Perhaps the first homicide — victim zero, if you will — happened right here in Miami, two months before the one in Savannah. The distance fits. And if the time fits as well, it would have happened twelve years ago almost to the day.”

Coldmoon was thinking fast. “The killer — killers — headed north from Florida,” he said. “Following a precise schedule. They looped around after reaching Maine, killed again in Ithaca — then the killings stopped. Why?”

“An excellent question. Why do you think?” Pendergast asked.

“Well, a few possibilities. One: they were caught and imprisoned on some other charge. Two: one or both were killed or incapacitated. Or three: the apprentice refused to continue.” He paused.

“Refused to continue,” Pendergast murmured. “Was he, perhaps, horrified at what he’d done — or been forced to do? Could he escape his guilt? Did he, perhaps, grow up to become—”

“Brokenhearts!” Coldmoon snapped his fingers. “Brokenhearts was the apprentice.” Then another idea occurred to him — a horrifying one. “If that Mars profile of the killer is correct, and he can’t be more than twenty-five, then he must’ve been little more than a kid when he was forced to take this road trip. Maybe the killing stopped because... because the apprentice killed his master.”

There was a silence.

“But we’re still left with the question of motive,” Pendergast said. “What precipitated the original killing spree? I believe the answer lies right here in Miami — that is, if we can identify victim zero; the one that started them all.” He turned to Grove. “I am hoping you, Commander, will deploy your teams to find that first murder for us. In that homicide lie the answers we seek — what started this murderous journey and who were the two killers? That will lead us to Brokenhearts.”

“I’m on it,” Grove said. “We’ll put the entire division on this one. I promise you an answer in twenty-four hours or less. Dr. Fauchet? If we get any potential hits, I may need your help with the forensics.”

“Call anytime. As I said, I’m taking some vacation days but I’m always on call.”

Even as she spoke, Grove was rising from his chair and walking halfway to the door. For a gracefully aging man, he could move with remarkable speed. And with one quick glance at Pendergast, Fauchet disappeared out the door after Grove.

Once the echo of their footsteps died away, relative silence settled over the loft. Then Coldmoon looked at Pendergast. “You figured all this out... and didn’t tell me?”

“I wasn’t sure. In fact, I’m still not. It is a lovely theory, I admit, but it’s still just that: a theory. We need to find that first killing in Miami.”

“I’ll bet you’ve been suspecting something like this for a while. How long — as far back as Ithaca?”

“Agent Coldmoon, these realizations don’t switch on like a lightbulb. That’s for mystery novels. Rather, they develop slowly, beneath the surface — like a subcutaneous abscess.”

“Nice metaphor.” Coldmoon heaved a sigh and shook his head in bemusement. Then he reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out his thermos. “Atanikili,” he said.

The agent bowed slightly. “Philámayaye.”

Coldmoon raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You’ve been boning up.”

“It seemed a good idea, under the circumstances.”

“Never hurts to learn new things.”

“True.”

“Or try new things.”

There was a pause while Pendergast peered at the thermos. “Perhaps.”

Coldmoon pried off the top, unscrewed the inner lid, and poured a generous measure of tarry black liquid into the red cup. A smell like burnt rubber — one he loved more than almost anything else — filled the room. He held the cup out to Pendergast. “Coffee, partner?”

Another, longer pause. Then Pendergast accepted the cup; took a small, tentative sip. “The floral bouquet of poison sumac blooms first on the palate,” he announced. “Followed by notes of diesel oil and a long finish of battery acid.” And he handed the cup back.

“Exactly the way I like it,” said Coldmoon, closing his eyes contentedly and downing the lukewarm beverage in a single gulp.