Cold Vengeance

CHAPTER 36

New Orleans, Louisiana

PETER BEAUFORT’S CONSULTATION ROOM LOOKED more like a wealthy professor’s study than a doctor’s office. The bookcases were filled with leather-bound folio volumes. Beautiful landscapes in oils decorated the walls. Every piece of furniture was antique, lovingly polished and maintained: there was no hint of steel or chrome anywhere, let alone linoleum. There were no eye charts, no anatomical engravings, no treatises on medicine, no articulated skeletons hanging from hooks. Dr. Beaufort himself wore a tastefully tailored suit, sans lab coat and dangling stethoscope. In dress, manner, and appearance he avoided all suggestion of the medical man.

Pendergast eased himself into the visitor’s chair. In his youth he had spent many hours here, peppering the doctor with questions of anatomy and physiology, discussing the mysteries of diagnosis and treatment.

“Beaufort,” he said, “thank you for seeing me so early.”

The M.E. smiled. “You called me Beaufort as a youth,” he replied. “Do you think perhaps you’re old enough now to address me as Peter?”

Pendergast inclined his head. The doctor’s tone was light, almost courtly. And yet Pendergast knew him well enough to see the man was ill at ease.

A manila folder lay closed on the desktop. Beaufort opened it, put on a pair of eyeglasses, examined the pages within. “Aloysius…” His voice faltered, and he cleared his throat.

“There is no need for tact in this matter,” Pendergast said.

“I see.” Beaufort hesitated. “I’ll be blunt, then. The evidence is incontrovertible. The body in that grave was that of Helen Pendergast.”

When Pendergast did not speak, Beaufort went on. “We have matches on multiple levels. For starters, the DNA on the brush matched the DNA of the remains.”

“How closely?”

“Beyond any shadow of mathematical doubt. I ordered half a dozen tests on each of four samples from the hairbrush and the remains. But it isn’t just the DNA. The dental X-rays matched, as well, showing just the single small cavity in number two — the upper right second molar. Your wife still had beautiful teeth, despite the passage of time…”

“Fingerprints?”

Beaufort cleared his throat again. “With the heat and humidity in this part of the country… well, I was able to recover only a few partial prints, but what I did recover also matches.” Beaufort turned a page. “My forensic analysis shows the corpse was definitely partially consumed by a lion. In addition to the, ah, perimortem physical evidence — teeth marks and so forth on the bones—Leo pantera DNA was found. Lion.”

“You said the fingerprints were only partials. That isn’t adequate.”

“Aloysius, the DNA evidence is conclusive. The body was that of your wife.”

“That cannot be, since Helen is still alive.”

A long silence ensued. Beaufort spread his hands in a gesture of futility. “If you don’t mind me saying so, this is very unlike you. The science tells us otherwise, and you of all people respect the science.”

“The science is wrong.” Pendergast put a hand on the arm of the chair, prepared to rise. But then he caught the look on Beaufort’s face and paused. It was obvious from the M.E.’s expression that he had more to say.

“Leaving aside that question,” Beaufort said, “there’s something else you should know. It may be nothing.” He tried to make light of it but Pendergast sensed otherwise. “Are you familiar with the science of mitochondrial DNA?”

“In general terms, as a forensic tool.”

Beaufort removed his eyeglasses, polished them, put them back on his nose. He seemed oddly embarrassed. “Forgive me if I repeat what you already know, then. Mitochondrial DNA is completely separate from a person’s regular DNA. It’s a bit of genetic material residing in the mitochondria of every cell in the body, and it is inherited unchanged from generation to generation, through the female line. That means all the descendants — male and female — of a particular woman will have identical mitochondrial DNA, which we call mtDNA. This kind of DNA is extremely useful in forensic work, and separate databases are kept of it.”

“What of it?”

“As part of the battery of tests I performed on your wife’s remains, I ran both the DNA and mtDNA through a consortium of some thirty-five linked medical databases. In addition to confirming Helen’s DNA, there was a hit in one of the… more unusual databases. Regarding her mtDNA.”

Pendergast waited.

Beaufort’s embarrassment seemed to deepen. “It was in a database maintained by the DTG.”

“The DTG?”

“Doctors’ Trial Group.”

“The Nazi-hunting organization?”

Beaufort nodded. “Correct. Founded to pursue justice against the Nazi doctors of the Third Reich who aided and abetted the Holocaust. It grew out of the so-called Doctors’ Trials at Nuremberg after the war. A lot of doctors escaped Germany after the war and went to South America, and the DTG has been hunting them ever since. Theirs is a scientifically impeccable database of genetic information on those doctors.”

When Pendergast spoke again, his voice was very quiet. “What kind of a hit did you find — exactly?”

The M.E. took another sheet from the file. “With a Dr. Wolfgang Faust. Born in Ravensbrück, Germany, in 1908.”

“And what, exactly, does this mean?”

Beaufort took a deep breath. “Faust was an SS doctor at Dachau in the last years of World War II. He disappeared after the war. In 1985, the Doctors’ Trial Group finally tracked him down. But it was too late to bring him to justice — he’d already died of natural causes in 1978. The DTG found his grave and exhumed his remains to test them. That is how Faust’s mtDNA became part of the DTG database.”

“Dachau,” Pendergast breathed. He fixed Beaufort with his gaze. “And what was the relation between this doctor and Helen?”

“Only that they are both descended from the same female ancestor. It could be one generation back, or a hundred.”

“Do you have any more information about this doctor?”

“As you might expect, the DTG is a rather secretive organization connected, so they say, to Mossad. Except for the public database, their files are sealed. The record on Faust is thin and I haven’t followed up with any research.”

“The implications?”

“Only genealogical research can determine the relationship between Helen and Dr. Faust. Such genealogical research would have to explore your wife’s ancestry in the female line — mother, maternal grandmother, maternal great-grandmother, and so forth. And the same for Faust. All this means is that this Nazi doctor and your wife shared a direct female ancestor. It could be some woman who lived in the Middle Ages, for all we know.”

Pendergast hesitated for a moment. “Would my wife have known of Faust?”

“Only she could have told you that.”

“In that case,” Pendergast said, almost to himself, “I shall have to ask her when I see her.”

There was a long silence. And then Beaufort spoke. “Helen is dead. This… quixotic belief of yours concerns me.”

Pendergast rose, his face betraying nothing. “Thank you, Beaufort, you’ve been most helpful.”

“Please consider what I just said. Think about your family history…” Beaufort’s voice trailed off.

Pendergast managed a cold smile. “Your further assistance is unnecessary. I wish you good day.”