Blue Labyrinth

62

D’Agosta stood up from his desk and stretched. His back ached from hours of sitting in the hard wooden chair, and his right ear throbbed from having a phone receiver pressed against it.

He’d spent hours, it seemed, on the phone with the DA’s office, trying to get a subpoena to have John Barbeaux brought in for questioning. But the DA’s office wouldn’t see it his way and said he hadn’t met probable cause — especially for a guy like Barbeaux, who would immediately lawyer up and make their lives hell.

The chain of reasoning seemed obvious to D’Agosta: Barbeaux had hired Howard Rudd to pose as the fake Dr. Jonathan Waldron, who had in turn used Victor Marsala in order to get access to the skeleton of the long-dead Mrs. Padgett. Barbeaux needed a bone from that skeleton in order to reverse-engineer the components of Hezekiah Pendergast’s elixir, thus allowing him to resynthesize that elixir and use it on Pendergast. D’Agosta had no doubt that, once Alban was placed on Pendergast’s doorstep and the plot was in motion, Rudd killed Marsala as a way of tying up loose ends — he’d no doubt lured the tech to a remote corner of the Museum, under pretext of payment or some such thing. It seemed equally clear that Barbeaux had then used Rudd as bait to lure Pendergast into the animal handling room at the Salton Fontainebleau — and been gassed with the elixir for his trouble. All in seeking revenge for Hezekiah’s poisoning of Barbeaux’s great-grandparents and the death of his son.

Although he couldn’t be sure, D’Agosta was fairly confident that Barbeaux had hired Rudd three years ago, paid off his gambling debts, given him a new face and a new identity, and kept him on as an anonymous enforcer he could use for any number of nefarious jobs — keeping him loyal by threatening his family with harm. It made complete sense.

The DA had dismissed all this with barely concealed contempt, calling it a conspiracy theory of supposition, speculation, and fantasy, and entirely unsupported by hard medical data.

D’Agosta had then spent a good part of the early evening phoning various botanical experts and pharmaceutical specialists, looking for that medical data. But he quickly understood that there would have to be tests, analyses, blind studies, and so on and so forth, before any conclusions could be drawn.

There had to be a way to dig up enough evidence to at least get Barbeaux’s ass in his office long enough for Margo and Constance to do their thing.

Probable cause. Son of a bitch. There must be a piece of evidence out there, somewhere, that he’d overlooked, which would suggest Barbeaux was crooked. Frustrated, he got up from his desk. It was nine o’clock; he needed some fresh air; a walk to clear his head. Shrugging into his jacket, D’Agosta strode to the door, snapped off the lights, then began to make his way down the corridor. After a few steps, he paused. Maybe Pendergast would have some ideas on how to squeeze Barbeaux. But no — the agent would be too weak for that conversation. Pendergast’s condition filled him with anger and a sick feeling of impotence.

As he exited his office, he paused. The Marsala files were next door: what he really should do is go through them again in case he’d overlooked something. He stepped into the vacant room he was using for overflow storage.

Turning on the lights, D’Agosta began to survey the stacks of folders piled on the conference table and against the walls. He’d take everything related to Howard Rudd. Maybe Barbeaux had a connection to Gary, Indiana, that he could—

At that moment D’Agosta went quite still. His roving eye had stopped at the room’s lone garbage can. It contained only one thing: a crumpled-up licorice toffee wrapper.

Slade’s ubiquitous toffee. What the hell had he been doing in here?

D’Agosta took a breath, then another. It was only a candy wrapper, and yes, Slade did have access and authority to be in there, looking at these files. D’Agosta wasn’t sure why, but all of a sudden his cop instincts were going off. He looked around again, more carefully this time. Boxes and filing cabinets were stacked against the walls. The files were where he remembered leaving them. Slade should have checked with him, that was true, but maybe Angler didn’t want D’Agosta to know. After all, the guy was obviously not too keen on Pendergast, and D’Agosta was known to be a friend of the agent.

As he moved to grab the Rudd files, his eye spied a dusting of white plaster on the rug, a spot near the wall that was shared with his own office. D’Agosta approached the wall and moved the boxes away from it. There was a small hole drilled in the wall, just above the baseboard.

He knelt and peered more closely, let his finger drift over the hole. It was about half a millimeter in diameter. He probed it with an unbent paper clip and found it didn’t go all the way through.

His gaze went back to the dusting of white plaster. This hole had been made recently.

A candy wrapper, a recently drilled hole… such things weren’t necessarily connected. But then he recalled how Slade had misfiled the tip on Barbeaux from the Albany police.

Had it really come from Angler’s desk — or had Slade even shown it to Angler before misfiling it?

Albany. That was another thing. Hadn’t Slade said Angler was away, visiting relatives upstate?

He trotted back to his office and, without bothering to turn on the lights, typed his password into the computer and accessed the homicide department’s personnel records. Locating Peter Angler’s file, D’Agosta searched the extensive next-of-kin records all NYPD officers were required to maintain. There it was: his sister, Marjorie Angler, 2007 Rowan Street, Colonie, New York.

He grabbed his phone, dialed the number on his computer screen. It rang three times before it was answered.

“Hello?” came a woman’s voice.

“Is this Marjorie Angler? My name is Vincent D’Agosta. I’m a lieutenant with the NYPD. Is Lieutenant Angler there?”

“No. He’s not staying with me.”

“When did you last speak with him?”

“Let me see — four, five days ago, I think.”

“May I ask what you talked about?”

“He said he was coming upstate. Some investigation he was working on. He said he was rushed for time, but that he hoped to stop by to see me on the way back to New York City. But he never did — I imagine he was too busy, as usual.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“Yes. Adirondack. Is there a problem of some sort?”

“Not that I know of. Listen, Ms. Angler, you’ve been very helpful. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome—” the voice began again, but D’Agosta was already hanging up.

He was breathing faster now. Adirondack. Home of Red Mountain Industries.

Several days before, Angler had been on his way to Adirondack. Why hadn’t he returned to the city? He seemed to have disappeared. Why had Slade lied about his whereabouts? Or was Slade merely mistaken? And the hole: it was exactly the kind of hole you would use to plant a miniature microphone.

Had Slade embedded a wire microphone in the wall of his office? If so, he’d listened in on D’Agosta’s phone calls. And he’d no doubt also listened in on his conversation with Margo and Constance.

The hole was empty. The mike was gone. That meant the eavesdropper believed he had all the information he needed.

It seemed too incredible to be true: Slade was dirty. And who was he working for? Only one answer: Barbeaux.

Now D’Agosta’s vague concern about Barbeaux somehow threatening or intercepting Margo and Constance became suddenly much more specific. Barbeaux would know all that Slade knew, and that was just about everything. Specifically, he would know Margo and Constance were headed to the Museum to steal plant specimens.

D’Agosta grabbed for the phone again, then hesitated, thinking furiously. This was a tricky situation. Accusing a fellow cop of being dirty — he damn well better be right.

Was he? Was Slade dirty? Christ, all he had was a candy wrapper and a misfiled document. Not exactly a lot of evidence for destroying a man’s career.

The fact was, he couldn’t call in the cavalry. They would think he was crazy — he had less on Slade than what the DA had already rejected on Barbeaux. There was nothing else for it — he’d have to go after Margo and Constance in the Museum by himself. He might be right, and he might be wrong — but he had no choice but to act, and act quickly, because if he was right, the consequences were too terrifying to even consider.

He darted out of the office and made for the elevator as quickly as he could.