Cemetery Dance

Chapter 36

D'Agosta could see a gray dawn creeping through the curtained windows of the Gotham Press Club. He was exhausted, and his head pounded with every beat of his heart. The scene — of — crime unit had finished up their work and gone; the hair and fiber guys had come and gone; the photographer had come and gone; the M.E. had collected the corpse; all the witnesses had been questioned or scheduled for questioning; and now D'Agosta found himself alone at the sealed crime scene.

He could hear the traffic on 53rd Street, the early delivery vans, the crack — of — dawn garbage pickups, the day — shift taxi drivers beginning their rounds with the usual wake — up ritual of horn blaring and cursing.

D'Agosta remained standing quietly in the corner of the room. It was very elegant and old New York; the walls covered with dark oak paneling, a fireplace with carved mantelpieces, a marble floor tiled in black and white, a crystal chandelier above and tall mullioned windows with gold — embroidered drapes. The room smelled of old smoke, stale hors d'oeuvres, and spilled wine. Quite a lot of food and broken glass was strewn about the floor from the panic at the time of the murder. But there was nothing more for D'Agosta to see, no lack of witnesses or evidence. The killer had committed murder in front of more than two hundred people — not one lily — livered journalist had tried to stop him — and then escaped out the back kitchen, through several sets of doors left unlocked by the catering group whose van was parked in a lane behind the building.

Had the killer known that? Yes. All the witnesses reported that the killer had moved surely — not swiftly, but deliberately — straight for one of the room's rear service doors, down a hall, through the kitchen, and out. He knew the layout of the place, knew the doors were unlocked, knew the gates blocking the back lane would be open, knew that it led to 54th Street and the anonymity of the crowd. Or a waiting car. Because this had all the appearance of being a well — planned crime.

D'Agosta rubbed his nose, trying to breathe slowly, to reduce the pounding in his temples. He could hardly think. Those bastards at the Ville were going to realize they had made a serious mistake in assaulting a police officer. They were involved in this, one way or another, he felt sure. Smithback had written about them and paid dearly for it; now the same fate had befallen Caitlyn Kidd.

Why was he still here? There was nothing new he could extract from the crime scene, nothing that hadn't already been examined, recorded, photographed, picked over, tested, sniffed, eyeballed, and noted for the record. He was utterly exhausted. And yet he couldn't bring himself to leave.

Smithback.

That, he knew, was the reason he couldn't leave.

The witnesses all swore it was Smithback. Even Nora, whom he had interviewed — sedated but lucid enough — at her apartment. Nora had seen the killer from across the room, so she was less reliable — but there were others who had seen the killer up close and swore it was him. The victim herself had shouted out his name as he approached her. And yet a few days earlier, D'Agosta had seen with his very own eyes Smithback's dead body on a gurney, his chest opened, his organs removed and tagged, the top of his skull sawed open.

Smithback's body gone… How could some jackass just walk into the morgue and steal a body? Maybe it wasn't so surprising — Nora had charged right in and nobody stopped her. There was only one night receiver, and people in that position seemed to have a history of sleeping on the job. But Nora had been chased, and ultimately caught, by security. And charging into a morgue was a lot different than leaving with a body.

Unless the body left on its own…

What the hell was he thinking? A dozen theories were swimming in his head. He'd been certain the Ville was involved somehow. But of course he couldn't dismiss that software developer, Kline, who had threatened Smithback so openly. As he'd told Rocker, certain pieces of his African sculpture had been identified by museum specialists as voodoo artifacts with particularly dark significance. Although that brought up the question of why Kline would want to kill Caitlyn Kidd. Had Kidd written about him, too? Or did something about her remind him of the journalist who had once destroyed his budding career? That was worth looking into.

And then, there was that other theory that Pendergast, despite all his dissembling, seemed to take seriously: that Smithback, like Fearing, had been raised from the dead.

"Son of a bitch," he muttered out loud, turning and walking out of the reception hall into the foyer. The cop guarding the front door signed him out, and he stepped into a chill, gray October dawn.

He glanced at his watch. Six forty — five. He was due to meet Pendergast downtown at nine. Leaving his squad car parked on Fifth, he walked down 53rd to Madison, stepped into a coffee shop, eased himself into a chair.

By the time the waitress arrived, he was already asleep.