Bloodless

18

The church was a twenty-minute walk across town. Even though it was late, the streets were packed with tourists and drunk college students, bars overflowing, restaurants lit up, squares teeming with people. The church lay just outside the old pre — Civil War city limits, edging into an impoverished neighborhood of far less cheer. It was a nondescript brown brick building streaked with damp, missing some of its slate shingles. The small parking lot was full, and Coldmoon noticed the cars in it were expensive — Maseratis, BMWs, Audis. The first-floor windows had all been boarded up. Pendergast had a no-knock warrant, but Coldmoon suspected he was not going to employ the usual direct method of just busting down the front door.

They went around the corner from Bee Street — busy even at midnight — and examined the building from the rear. There was a small sacristy in the back, along with a modest rectory, its windows boarded up as well. Hopping a low iron railing, Pendergast darted up to the rectory’s back door. Coldmoon followed. It was fitted with a gleaming new lock that looked out of place against the weathered oak. Pendergast reached into his suit and pulled out a set of lock picks nestled within a pouch of folded leather. A moment’s fiddling released the lock.

Pendergast pressed his ear to the door for a long time and then slowly eased it open. The hinges, Coldmoon noted, were well oiled.

They slipped into a dark entryway. When Pendergast shut the door, the darkness turned to pitch black. Pendergast snapped on a small penlight and shined it around. The entryway gave onto a small, shabby parlor to the left and a dining room to the right. Straight ahead was a door leading in the direction of the church. Pendergast stepped up, placed his ear to that door as well, then gestured for Coldmoon to do the same.

When Coldmoon did, he could hear, through the door, the throbbing of voices — a monophonic, ritualistic chanting, slowly rising and falling.

They retreated from the door. “A cappella,” Coldmoon murmured. “Nice.”

“There are usually two doors from a rectory to a church,” Pendergast whispered in return. “One for the public entrance of the minister, and one for the private entrance. Let us seek the private one.”

They went into the dining room, then through it to a small kitchen. The flashlight’s pencil beam illuminated a plastic jeroboam sitting on a counter, full of some unknown liquid. Pendergast swiped a glass from a shelf, held it under the container’s spigot, and turned it.

A thick red stream came out.

“Holy shit,” said Coldmoon, taking an involuntary step backward.

Pendergast slipped out a test tube, swabbed blood out of the glass, placed the swab in the tube, then stoppered it and returned it to his suit coat. He moved to a door at the far end of the room. Coldmoon watched as he tested the handle: unlocked.

He cracked it open ever so slightly, and the sound of chanting grew louder. A reddish light filtered through the crack. Pendergast stood there for a moment, then motioned for Coldmoon to take a look.

Beyond lay the sacristy, and beyond that the apse of the church. Where the altar would normally have been there was now a stage, and on the stage was a group of about half a dozen naked people moving in a slow circle, hands above their heads, chanting — and drenched in blood. Most were old and overweight, the men bald, the women with peroxided hair — on their heads, at least. In the middle of the circle was a pentagram with bizarre symbols chalked on its arms. Roaming about the stage was a woman, also naked and covered in blood. A macabre-looking necklace, from which dangled demonic-looking faces stamped in gold, hung from her neck. She held a brush and a copper pot, and periodically she dipped the brush into the pot, then splattered it over the dancers like a basting mop. It appeared to Coldmoon that the pot was full of blood.

Beyond the stage, in the dim crimson light, was a small audience of similar age. As the chanting grew in intensity, the audience members, too, began to shed their clothes, then gather in groups of two and three, fondling and caressing each other as they watched the ritual.

Pendergast retreated from the door and Coldmoon followed.

“Are those Satanic rites?” Coldmoon asked. He felt sick.

“Something of the sort,” said Pendergast in a disgusted voice. In the reflected reddish glow, he looked disappointed, if not downright crestfallen.

“Isn’t that what you were expecting?” Coldmoon asked. “Looks like the orgy’s starting up any minute.”

“I fear I may have miscalculated.” Pendergast paused. “These people are... amateurs.”

“Amateurs? Looks pretty damn serious to me.”

At this point, the chanting abruptly slackened. Pendergast hurried to the door, glanced through the crack, then turned to Coldmoon. “Quick, over here. She’s coming.”

Pendergast and Coldmoon slipped into a dark closet, then half closed the door. A moment later, the woman with the pot came in, fiddled briefly with the spigot — having some difficulty in the dark — then left the way she had come. Obviously, she had refilled the pot with blood.

A sudden loud pounding sounded on the front door of the church, followed by a voice amplified through a megaphone: “FBI, executing a search warrant! Open up! This is the FBI!”

“Right on time,” said Pendergast grimly.

A second later came the boom of a ram, then another, mingled with the screams and surprised cries of the participants and their audience. The main doors flew open, splintering on their hinges, and agents poured in.

“FBI!” yelled the man with the megaphone, whose voice Coldmoon recognized as Agent Carracci’s. “Everyone on the ground! On the fucking ground! Do it now! Show your hands!”

At this, Pendergast opened the door wide and strode out through the sacristy, Coldmoon following. The naked group was hastily obeying, getting down on the floor amid slicks of blood. Coldmoon watched as the agents fanned out, weapons drawn, making sure everyone was unarmed and cooperating.

“Clear!” somebody yelled.

It did not take long for the agents to complete their search. Pendergast directed them into the kitchen, where they hefted the jug of blood and confiscated it, along with other things — masks, costumes, hoods, chalices, dildos, statuettes, and additional flotsam ridiculous or uncouth. Pendergast watched, lips pursed with dissatisfaction.

No one was arrested. When the search was concluded, the FBI allowed everyone back on their feet, and — as the would-be Dionysians stood in a line, shamed, their fleshy bodies illuminated by numerous flashlights — took down names one at a time. For a bunch of Satanists, Coldmoon thought, the audience was surprisingly docile, some blubbering with fear, others pleading with the agents not to make their names public. Among the group was Dr. Cobb, who, alone among the rest, took it upon himself to argue that this was a bona fide religious service, that their religious freedom had been trampled upon, and that he would be calling his lawyer first thing in the morning. His complaints were studiously ignored. Coldmoon reflected that he’d preferred the first meeting with Cobb, when the museum director had been fully clothed.

And then Carracci said tersely: “All right. Get the fuck out of here.” In a mad rush of swaying breasts and bobbing privates, the group broke apart, ran to various corners of the church, grabbed their clothes, then headed for their cars and exited the parking lot, tires screeching. After briefly conferring with Carracci, Pendergast went out the back with Coldmoon.

“Too bad we can’t hold them,” said Coldmoon.

“It would be a waste of time.”

“What are you talking about? You don’t think the case is solved?”

“I think anything but,” said Pendergast. His face looked drawn. “I fear I have made a serious miscalculation.”

“Miscalculation? You saw the tattoos; you made the connection; you found the church. It looks to me like pretty fast footwork, not miscalculation.”

“All too fast. I did not follow my own advice; I started thinking too early.”

Coldmoon thought this was ridiculous. “Come on. You saw all that blood.”

“I’d wager a great deal that it’s animal blood. But more to the point: when I saw that lot full of expensive cars, and those ridiculous rites, I understood the psychological dynamic was wrong. These are dilletantes, playing at Satanism. They are guilty of animal cruelty, perhaps, but not murder. The killer or killers we are seeking are far more insidious than these... these pathetic dabblers in the occult.”

Coldmoon shook his head. The case had gone from being open, to closed, to open again, so fast he felt almost dizzy.

“Let this be a lesson to you, my friend, on the dangers of drawing conclusions too early,” Pendergast told him. “As H. L. Mencken once said, ‘There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.’ This was that neat, plausible, and wrong solution.”

“If you say so. What now?”

“We must look elsewhere for answers. Specifically, Ellerby.”