Dance Of Death

FORTY-FIVE

D'Agosta paused at the door of Hayward's office, feeling almost afraid to knock. The painful memory of their first encounter in her office came into his mind unbidden, and he forced it away with great effort, rapping more loudly than he intended.

"Come in." The very sound of her voice caused his heart to pause. He grasped the handle, pushed open the door.

The office looked very different. Gone were the various piles of paper, the pleasant, controlled untidiness. Now it was severe in its organization-and it was clear Hayward was working, living, and breathing a single case.

And there she was, standing behind her desk, her short, slim figure in a neat gray suit with captain's bars on the shoulder, looking directly at him. The look was so intense D'Agosta found himself almost pushed back by it.

"Have a seat." The voice was coldly neutral.

"Listen, Laura, before we begin, I just want to say-"

"Lieutenant," came the crisp response. "You've been summoned here on police business, and anything you might have to say of a personal nature is inappropriate."

D'Agosta looked at her. This was unfair. "Laura, please…"

Her face softened, but only for a moment, and she spoke in a low vice. "Vincent, don't do this to me or to yourself. Especially not now. I have something very, very difficult to show you."

This stopped D'Agosta.

"Please take a seat."

"I'll stand."

Brief silence while she stared at him. Then she spoke again. "Pendergast is alive."

D'Agosta felt himself go cold. He hadn't known why she'd summoned him, hadn't even dared to guess-but this was the last thing he'd expected. "How did you find out?" he blurted.

Her face tightened with anger. "So you did know."

Another tense silence. Then she reached down and picked up a piece of paper, drew it in front of her. D'Agosta could see it was a list of handwritten notes. What was this about? He had never seen Laura so wound up.

"On January 19, Professor Torrance Hamilton was poisoned in front of a lecture hall of two hundred students in his class at Louisiana State University and died about an hour later. The only useful evidence uncovered from the crime scene, some black fibers found in his office, is analyzed in this report." She dropped a slim folder on her desk.

D'Agosta glanced at it but did not pick it up.

"The report states that the fibers were from a very costly cashmere-merino blended-wool fabric made for only a few years in the 1950s in a factory outside Prato, Italy. The only place it was sold in America- the only place-was a small shop on Rue Lespinard in New Orleans. A shop patronized by the Pendergast family."

D'Agosta felt a sudden hope. Was it possible, after all, that she believed him? That she'd checked into Diogenes? "Laura, I-"

"Lieutenant, let me finish. My forensic team searched Pendergast's apartment in the Dakota-at least the rooms we could get into- and took fiber samples. In addition, we found two dozen identical black suits in a closet. The suits and the fibers all came from the same source: those bolts of cashmere-merino wool, dyed black. This is a virtually unique fiber. There can be no mistake."

D'Agosta felt a very strange sensation crawl up his spine. He suddenly had a premonition of where this might be going.

"On January 22, Charles Duchamp was hung from his apartment building on 65th and Broadway. Again, the crime scene was unusually clean. However, our forensic team did recover a few more of the same black fibers that were found at the Torrance homicide. In addition, the rope used to hang Duchamp was woven of a rare type of gray silk. We ultimately learned it is a special type of rope used in Buddhist religious ceremonies in Bhutan. The monks tie these silk ropes into incredibly complex knots for meditative and contemplative purposes. These are unique knots, found nowhere else in the world."

She paused, laid down a photograph of the rope that hung Duchamp, showing the knot, smeared with blood. "That particular knot is known as Ran t'ankha durdag, 'the tangled path to hell.' It has come to my attention that Special Agent Pendergast spent time in Bhutan studying with the very monks who make these knots."

"There's a simple answer-"

"Vincent, if you interrupt me one more time, I'll have you muzzled."

D'Agosta fell silent.

"The next day, on January 23, FBI Special Agent Michael Decker was murdered in his house in Washington, D.C., stabbed through the mouth with an antique Civil War bayonet. This crime scene was equally clean. The forensic team recovered fibers from the same bolt of cashmere-merino wool found at the Hamilton poisoning." She laid another report before D'Agosta.

"At around two o'clock in the morning of January 26, Margo Green was fatally stabbed in the New York Museum of Natural History. I've gone over the museum's personnel lists, and she was the last person to enter the exhibition hall. But she also checked out of the hall-the murderer must have used her card to leave. This crime scene wasn't nearly as clean as the others. Green was a formidable opponent, and she put up a struggle. She defended herself with a box cutter and wounded her assailant. Blood not belonging to the victim was recovered from the scene, both on the box cutter-which had been imperfectly wiped clean-and from a single spot on the floor." She paused. "The DNA tests came back late last night."

She picked up a piece of paper and, with a snap, dropped it, too, in front of D'Agosta. "Those are the results."

D'Agosta couldn't bring himself to look. He knew the answer already.

"That's right. Special Agent Pendergast."

D'Agosta knew better than to say anything.

"Which brings me to motive. All these people had something in common-they were close acquaintances of Pendergast. Hamilton was Pendergast's language tutor in high school. Duchamp was Pendergast's closest-and perhaps only-childhood friend. Michael Decker was Pendergast's mentor at the FBI. He's one of the main reasons Pendergast has even survived in the FBI, after all the trouble his unorthodox methods got him into. And finally-as you well know-Margo Green was a close friend of Pendergast's from two cases dating back several years, the museum murders and the subway killings.

"All this evidence, all these tests, have been checked and rechecked. There can be no mistake. Special Agent Pendergast is a psychopathic killer."

D'Agosta had gone cold. He realized now why Diogenes had saved Pendergast the way he did, why he'd helped nurse him back to life after what had happened in the Castel Fosco. It wasn't enough just to murder his brother's friends. No-he would also frame him for the crimes.

"And now this," Hayward said. She showed him another report. It was bound in plastic, and the title was visible:

Psychological Profile

Hamilton/Duchamp/Decker/Green Killer

Behavioral Science Unit

Federal Bureau of Investigation, Quantico

"I didn't tell them that I suspected one of their own. I just told them we thought the crimes might be connected and asked them to draw up a profile. Because of the Decker killing, I got it back in twenty-four. Go ahead and read it if you want, but here's the short version. The killer is a highly educated male with at least four years of postgraduate education. He's an expert chemist. He's thoroughly familiar with forensic and police procedure and he probably once worked, or still works, in law enforcement. He has a broad knowledge across a range of subjects in science, literature, math, history, music, and art-in short, he is a Renaissance man. His I.Q. lies in the 180 to 200 range. His age is probably between thirty and fifty. He is well traveled and probably multilingual. He is likely ex-military. He is a person of considerable financial means. He is very adept at disguises."

She looked D'Agosta in the eye. "This remind you of anyone, Vincent?"

D'Agosta didn't reply.

"Those are the outward details. Now comes the psych analysis." She paused, finding the place in the report. "The killer is a self-controlled and controlling person. He's extremely well organized, neat, and places a high premium on logic. He represses any outward show of emotion and rarely, if ever, confides in anyone. He has few, if any, real friends and has difficulty forming relationships with the opposite sex. This individual probably suffered a difficult childhood, with a cold, controlling mother and a distant or absent father. His family relationships were not close. There will probably be a history of mental illness or crime in the family. As a young boy, he suffered a crippling emotional trauma involving a close family member- mother, father, or sibling-that he has spent the rest of his life compensating for. He is deeply suspicious of authority, considers himself intellectually and morally superior to others-"

"What a load of psychobabble!" D'Agosta exploded. "It's all twisted up. This isn't the way he is at all!"

He stopped abruptly. Hayward was looking at him with raised eyebrows.

"So you do recognize this person."

"Of course I recognize him! But this is a twisting of who he really is. Pendergast didn't murder those people. He was framed. The evidence, the blood, was planted. His brother, Diogenes, is the killer."

Another long silence. "Go on," she said, her tone neutral.

"After Pendergast's ordeal in Italy, when we all thought he was dead, Diogenes took him to a clinic to recover. He was sick, drugged. It must have allowed Diogenes plenty of opportunity to harvest all the forensic evidence he needed to frame Pendergast-hair, fibers, blood. It's Diogenes. Don't you see? He's hated Pendergast all his life, he's been planning this for years. He sent Pendergast a taunting letter saying he was going to commit the perfect crime and naming the date-today."

"You're not going to lay this crazy theory on me again, Vincent-"

"It's my turn to talk. Diogenes wanted to commit a crime even more horrible than killing his brother. He wanted to kill everyone his brother loves but leave his brother alive. Now it seems he's also framing his brother for those same crimes-"

D'Agosta stopped. She was looking at him with an expression of pity bordering almost on pain.

"Vinnie, you remember how you told me to look into Diogenes? Well, I did. I had a hell of a time tracing him, but here's what I found." She opened a folder, took out yet another document, and slid it in front of him. It was stamped and embossed and notarized.

"What is it?"

"A death certificate. Of Diogenes Dagrepont Bernoulli Pendergast. He was killed twenty years ago in a car accident in the U.K."

"A forgery. I saw a letter from him. I know he's alive."

"What makes you think Pendergast didn't write the letter?"

D'Agosta stared at her. "Because I saw Diogenes. With my own eyes."

"Is that so? Where?"

"Outside Fosco's castle. When we were being chased. He had eyes of two different colors, just like Cornelia Pendergast told us."

"And how do you know it was Diogenes?"

D'Agosta hesitated. "Pendergast told me."

"Did you speak to him?"

"No. But I saw a picture of him as a child, just recently. It was the same face."

A long silence followed. Hayward reached down and picked up the forensic profile again. "There's something else in here. Read it." She pushed a piece of paper over to him.

The target subject may manifest symptoms of a rare form of multiple personality disorder, a variant of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, in which the subject acts out two separate, diametrically opposite roles: that of killer and of investigator. In this unusual condition, the killer may also be a law enforcement officer assigned to the case or an investigator connected to the case. In another variant of this pathology, the killer is a private citizen who initiates his own investigation into the killings, often making apparently brilliant discoveries of evidence that law enforcement has overlooked. In both variants, the killer personality leaves minute clues for the investigator personality to discover, such discoveries often made apparently through extraordinary powers of observation and/or deduction. The killer personality and investigator personality are not aware of each other's existence on a conscious level, although much cooperation is noted on the subconscious, pathological level.

"Bullshit. Munchausen by proxy is about somebody wanting attention. Pendergast goes out of his way to avoid the limelight. This doesn't describe Pendergast. You know the guy, you've worked with him. What does your gut tell you?"

"You don't want to know what my gut tells me." Her dark eyes were scrutinizing him. "Vinnie, you know why I'm sharing this information with you?"

"Why?"

"For one thing, because I think you're in terrible danger. Pendergast is a crazy son of a bitch and he's going to kill you next. I know he will."

"He won't kill me because he isn't the killer."

"The Pendergast you know isn't even aware he's the killer. He believes in this Diogenes. He genuinely thinks his brother is still alive and that you two are going to find him. It's all part of the pathology mentioned here." She slapped the report. "There's the other personality of his… Diogenes. Who exists within the same body. That personality you haven't met yet. But you will… when he kills you."

D'Agosta couldn't even find the words to respond.

"I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't have told you all this." Her voice hardened. "You don't have a right to know any of this after how royally you've screwed up. I went out on a ten-mile limb for you, got you a great position on the force-and you betrayed my trust, you rejected my…" She paused, breathing hard, recovering her composure.

Now D'Agosta felt a flash of real anger. "I betrayed you? Listen, Laura: I tried to talk with you about this. I tried to explain. But you pushed me away, saying I was obsessing over someone's death. How do you think that felt? Or how do you think I feel now, listening to you say how naive I am, how gullible, trusting Pendergast like this? You've seen my casework in the past, you know what I'm capable of. Why do you think I'm so wrong now?"

The question hung in the air.

"This isn't the time or place for that discussion," Hayward replied after a moment. Her tone had grown quiet and businesslike. "And we're straying from the point."

"And what, exactly, is the point?"

"I want you to bring Pendergast in."

D'Agosta stood rooted in place, thunderstruck. He should have seen it coming.

"Bring him in. Save yourself. Save your career. If he's innocent, let him have his day in court."

"But the evidence against him is overwhelming-"

"That's right. It's damning as hell. And you didn't even see the half of it. But that's the way our system works: bring him in and let him face a jury of his peers."

"Bring him in? How?"

"I've got it all worked out. You're the only man he trusts."

"You're asking me to betray him?"

"Betray? My God, Vinnie, the man's a serial killer. Four innocent people are dead. And there's another thing you seem to be overlooking. Your actions to date-keeping Pendergast's existence secret, lying to me, lying to Captain Singleton-border on obstruction of justice. Now that you know Pendergast is a fugitive-that's right, a warrant for his arrest has already been sworn out-any further actions on your part to protect him will amount to criminal obstruction and accessory after the fact. You're already in deep shit, and this is the only way you're going to get out of it. You bring him in, or you go to jail. It's that simple."

For a long moment, D'Agosta said nothing. When he spoke, his voice sounded dead, wooden, even in his own ears. "Give me a day to think it over."

"A day?" She looked at him incredulously. "You've got ten minutes."