Cemetery Dance

Chapter 78

Pendergast moved through the tunnel, keeping close to the left — hand wall, the narrow beam of the penlight carefully shielded. As he came around a bend in the tunnel, he spied something in the dim glow — a long, whitish object lying on the tunnel floor.

He approached. It was a heavy plastic bag, zippered on one side, smeared with mud, dirt, and grass, as if it had been dragged. Printed on the side were the words morgue of the city of new york and a number.

He knelt and reached out, grasping the zipper. Slowly he drew it back, keeping the sound as low as possible. An overpowering stench of formalin, alcohol, and decomposition assaulted his nostrils. Inch by inch, the corpse within was exposed. He pulled the zipper back until the bag was half open, grasped the edges of the plastic and spread them apart, exposing the face.

William Smithback, Jr.

For a long time, Pendergast stared. Then, with an almost reverent care, he fully opened the zipper, exposing the entire body. It was at the worst stage of decomposition. Smithback's cadaver had been autopsied and then, the day before it disappeared, reassembled for turning over to the family: the organs replaced, the Y — incision sewn up, the cranium reattached with the scalp pulled back over it and sutured closed, the face repaired, everything stuffed and packed and padded. It was a crude job — delicate work wasn't a pathologist's forte — but it was a package a good mortician could, at least, work with.

Only, the body hadn't gone to the funeral home. It had been stolen. And now it was here.

Suddenly, Pendergast peered more closely. Reaching into the pocket of his suit coat, he extracted a pair of tweezers and used them to pluck away a few bits of white latex rubber that were clinging to the corpse's face: one from a nostril, another from an earlobe. He examined them closely with the penlight, then placed them thoughtfully in his pocket.

He slowly played the light about — and saw, fifty feet away, another decaying corpse, neatened up and dressed for burial in a black suit. An unknown person, but tall and lanky, the same approximate height and build as Smithback and Fearing.

Looking at the two corpses, the final details of Esteban's plot crystallized in his mind. It was most elegant. Only one question now remained: what was in the document Esteban looted from the tomb? It would have to be something truly extraordinary, something of immense value, for a man to go to such risk. Cautiously and silently he closed the zipper. Pendergast was stunned, not only by the complexity of Esteban's plan, but by its audacity. Only a man of the rarest parts, of patience, strategic vision, and personal mettle, could have pulled it off. And pull it off he had; if Pendergast had not accidentally come across the looted tomb in the basement of the Ville, and combined that detail with the sanguineous wrappings of a crown roast of lamb found in the garbage, the man would have gotten away with it.

In the noisome dark, Pendergast thought intently. In his mad dash to get here as quickly as possible, to save Nora, he had neglected to consider in detail how he would deal with Esteban. He now realized he had underestimated the man — this was a formidable adversary. The distance by car from Inwood to Glen Cove was such that he had surely returned home by now. Such a man would know that Pendergast was here as well. Such a man would have a plan and would be waiting for him. He had to confound the man's expectations. He had to strike from — quite literally — an unexpected direction.

Carefully, noiselessly, he retreated down the passage the way he had come.

Esteban waited in the tunnel, standing beside the lever, listening intently. The FBI agent was damn quiet, but in these silent, underground spaces, even the smallest sounds traveled forever. Listening intently, he could reconstruct what was happening. First, the faint sound of a zipper; then the rustle of plastic; several minutes of silence — and the zipper again. Then he spied the faintest glow of light in the tunnel: Pendergast's flashlight. Still he waited.

It was amusing, really, the FBI agent finding the two bodies. What a shock that must be. He wondered just how much the man had figured out; with both corpses in front of him probably a great deal — this Pendergast fellow was clearly intelligent. Perhaps he knew everything but the crucial point: the nature of the document he had taken from his ancestor's tomb.

The important thing was that Pendergast was operating on a hunch, without proof — and that was why he was here alone, without backup or a SWAT team.

At the thought of the document, Esteban felt a sudden panic thread his spine. He didn't have it. Where had he left it? Inside his unlocked car, sitting in the driveway. That damn alarm coming in over his BlackBerry had distracted him just as he'd arrived home. What if it was stolen? What if Pendergast found it? But these were foolish thoughts: the gate into the estate was shut and locked, and Pendergast was down here, in the tunnel. He would retrieve the document at his earliest opportunity, but right now he had urgent business to attend to.

The silence from the tunnel was now absolute. Hardly breathing, he listened and waited.

And waited. The faint, indirect glow of the light remained steady, unmoving. As the minutes crawled by, Esteban began to realize something was awry.

"Mr. Esteban?" came the pleasant voice out of the darkness behind him. "Would you be so kind as to remain absolutely still, while slowly releasing your grip on the weapon and allowing it to fall to the ground? Let me warn you that the slightest movement, even an ill — timed twitch of an eyelash, will result in your immediate death."