"We have about a hundred birds from Audubon's original collection," she said, walking briskly down the central corridor. "Unfortunately, Audubon was not much of a taxidermist. The specimens have been stabilized, of course. Here we are."

They stopped before a large, gray metal cabinet that looked almost like a safe. Marchant spun the center dial and turned the lever handle. With a sigh of air, the great door opened, revealing inner wooden cabinets with labels, stuck into brass label-holders, screwed to every drawer. A stench of mothballs washed over D'Agosta. Grasping one drawer, Marchant drew it out to display three rows of stuffed birds, yellowed tags around each claw, white cotton-wool poking out of their eyes.

"Those tags are Audubon's originals," said Marchant. "I'll handle the birds myself--please don't touch them without my permission. Now!" She smiled. "Which ones would you like to see?"

D'Agosta consulted his notebook. He had copied down some bird names from a website that listed all of Audubon's original specimens and their locations. Now he trotted them out. "I'd like to start with the Louisiana Water Thrush."

"Excellent!" The drawer slid in and another was pulled out. "Do you want to examine it on the table or in the drawer?"

"Drawer is fine." D'Agosta pushed a loupe into his eye and studied the bird closely with many grunts and mutterings. It was a ragged-looking thing, the feathers askew or missing, stuffing coming out. D'Agosta made what he hoped was a show of concentration, pausing to jot unintelligible notes.

He straightened. "Thank you. The American Goldfinch is the next on my list."

"Coming right up."

He made another show of examining the bird, squinting at it through the loupe, taking notes, talking to himself.

"I hope you're finding what you're looking for," said Marchant, with a leading tone in her voice.

"Oh, yes. Thank you." This was already getting tiresome, and the smell of mothballs was making him sick.

"Now--" He pretended to consult his notebook. "--I'll look at the Carolina Parrot."

A sudden silence. D'Agosta was surprised to see Marchant's face reddening slightly. "I'm sorry, we don't have that specimen."

He felt an additional wash of annoyance: they didn't even have the specimen he'd come for. "But it's in all the reference books as being here," he said, more crossly than he intended. "In fact, it says you have two of them."

"We don't have them anymore."

"Where are they?" he said, with open exasperation.

There was a long silence. "I'm afraid they disappeared."

"Disappeared? Lost?"

"No, not lost. Stolen. Many years ago, when I was just an assistant. All that remain are a few feathers."

Suddenly D'Agosta was interested. His cop radar went off big-time. He knew, right away, that this wasn't going to be a wild goose chase after all. "Was there an investigation?"

"Yes, but it was perfunctory. It's hard to get the police excited about two stolen birds, even if they are extinct."

"Do you have a copy of the old report?"

"We keep very good files here."

"I'd like to see it."

He found the woman looking at him curiously. "Excuse me, Dr. D'Agosta--but why? The birds have been gone for more than a dozen years."

D'Agosta thought fast. This changed the game. He made a quick decision, dipped into his pocket, and brought out his shield.

"Oh, my." She looked at him, her eyes widening. "You're a policeman. Not an ornithologist."

D'Agosta put it away. "That's right, I'm a lieutenant detective with NYPD homicide. Now be a dear and go get that file."

She nodded, hesitated. "What's it about?"

D'Agosta looked at her and noted a thrill in her eyes, a certain suppressed excitement. "Murder, of course," he said with a smile.

She nodded again, rose. A few minutes later she returned with a slender manila folder. D'Agosta opened it to find the most cursory of police reports, a single scribbled paragraph that told him nothing except that a routine check of the collection revealed the birds were missing. No sign of break-in, nothing else taken, no evidence collected at the scene, no fingerprints dusted, and no suspects named. The only useful thing was the time frame of the crime: it had to have occurred between September 1 and October 1, as the collection was inventoried once a month.

"Do you have logs of all the researchers who used the collections?"

"Yes. But we always check the collection after they leave, to make sure they haven't nicked something."

"Then we can narrow down the time frame even further. Bring me the logs, please."

"Right away." The woman bustled off, the eager clomping of her shoes echoing in the attic space as she descended the stairs.

Within a few minutes she returned, carrying a large buckram volume that she dropped on a central table with a thump. Turning the pages while D'Agosta watched, she finally arrived at the month in question. D'Agosta scanned the page. Three researchers had used the collection that month, the last one on September 22. The name was written in a generous, looping hand:

Matilda V. Jones

18 Agassiz Drive

Cooperstown, NY 27490

A fake name and address if ever there was one, thought D'Agosta. Agassiz Drive my ass. And New York State zip codes all began with a 1.

"Tell me," he asked, "do the researchers have to show you some kind of institutional affiliation, ID, or anything?"

"No, we trust them. Perhaps we shouldn't. But of course we supervise them closely. I just can't imagine how a researcher would manage to steal birds under our very noses!"

I can see a million ways, thought D'Agosta, but he didn't say anything out loud. The attic door was locked with an old-fashioned key, and the bird cabinet itself was a cheap model, with noisy tumblers that an experienced safecracker could defeat. Although, he mused, even that would hardly be necessary--he recalled seeing Marchant plucking a ring of keys off the wall of the reception hall as they set off upstairs. The door to the plantation house was unlocked--he had breezed right in. Anyone could wait until the curator on duty left the front desk on a bathroom break, pluck the keys off the nail, and go straight to the birds. Even worse, he'd been left alone with the unlocked bird cabinet himself when Marchant went to get the register. If the birds had any value they'd all be gone by now, he thought ruefully.

D'Agosta pointed to the name. "Did you meet this researcher?"

"As I said, I was just the assistant then. Mr. Hotchkiss was the curator, and he would have supervised the researcher."

"Where's he now?"

"He passed away a few years ago."

D'Agosta turned his attention back to the page. If Matilda V. Jones was indeed the thief--and he was fairly sure she was--then she was not a particularly sophisticated crook. Aside from the alias, the handwriting in her log entry did not have the appearance of having been disguised. He guessed the actual theft had taken place on or around September 23, the day after she had been shown the exact location of the birds by pretending to be a researcher. She probably stayed at a local inn for convenience. That could be confirmed by checking a hotel register.

"When ornithologists come here for research, where do they usually stay?"

"We recommend the Houma House, over in St. Francisville. It's the only decent place."

D'Agosta nodded.

"Well?" said Marchant. "Any clues?"

"Can you photocopy that page for me?"

"Oh, yes," she said, hefting and carting off the heavy volume, once again leaving D'Agosta alone. As soon as she was gone, he flicked open his cell phone and dialed.

"Pendergast," came the voice.

"Hello, it's Vinnie. Quick one: you ever heard the name Matilda V. Jones?"

There was a sudden silence, and then Pendergast's voice came back as chilly as an Arctic gust. "Where did you get that name, Vincent?"

"Too complicated to explain now. You know it?"

"Yes. It was the name of my wife's pet cat. A Russian Blue."

D'Agosta felt a shock. "Your wife's handwriting... was it large and loopy?"

"Yes. Now would you care to tell me what this is about?"

"Audubon's two stuffed Carolina Parakeets stored up at Oakley? Except for a few feathers, they're gone. And guess what: your wife stole them."

After a moment, a chillier response came: "I see."

D'Agosta heard the clomp of feet on the attic stairs. "Gotta go." He shut the cell phone just as Marchant rounded the corner with the photocopies.

"Well, Lieutenant," she said, laying them down. "Are you going to solve the crime for us?" She bestowed a vivid smile on him. D'Agosta noticed she had taken the occasion to re-rouge and touch up her lipstick. This was probably a lot more exciting, he thought, than back-to-back episodes of Murder, She Wrote.

D'Agosta shoved the papers in his briefcase and got up to leave. "No, I'm afraid the trail is too cold. Way too cold. But thanks for your help anyway."


21



Penumbra Plantation

YOU'RE SURE OF THIS, VINCENT? ABSOLUTELY sure?"

D'Agosta nodded. "I checked the local hotel, the Houma House. After examining the birds at Oakley Plantation--under the name of her cat--your wife spent the night there. She used her real name this time: they probably required identification, especially if she paid cash. No reason for her to spend a night unless she planned to return the next day, slip inside, and nab the birds." He passed a sheet of paper to Pendergast. "Here's the register from Oakley Plantation."

Pendergast examined it briefly. "That's my wife's handwriting." He put it aside, his face like a mask. "And you're sure of the date of the theft?"

"September twenty-third, give or take a few days."

"That puts it roughly six months after Helen and I were married."

An awkward silence descended on the second-floor parlor. D'Agosta glanced away from Pendergast, looking uncomfortably around at the zebra rug and the mounted heads, his eye finally coming to rest on the large wooden gun case with its display of powerful, beautifully engraved rifles. He wondered which one had been Helen's.

Maurice leaned into the parlor. "More tea, gentlemen?"

D'Agosta shook his head. He found Maurice disconcerting; the old servant hovered about like a mother.

"Thank you, Maurice, we're fine for the moment," said Pendergast.

"Very good, sir."

"What have you come up with?" D'Agosta asked.

For a moment, Pendergast did not respond. Then, very slowly, he interlaced his fingers, placed his hands in his lap. "I visited the Bayou Grand Hotel, formerly the site of the Meuse St. Claire sanatorium, where Audubon painted the Black Frame. My wife had been there, asking about the painting. This was, perhaps, a few months after she first met me. Another man--an art collector or dealer, apparently of dubious repute--had also made inquiries about the painting, a year or so before Helen."

"So others were curious about the Black Frame."

"Very curious, it would seem. I also managed to find a few odd papers of interest in the basement of the sanatorium. Discussing the course of Audubon's illness, his treatment, that sort of thing." Pendergast reached for a leather portfolio, opened it, and pulled out an ancient sheet of paper enclosed in plastic, stained and yellow, missing its lower half to rot. "Here's a report on Audubon written by Dr. Arne Torgensson, his attending physician at the sanatorium. I'll read the relevant part." The patient is much improved, both in the strength of his limbs and in his mental state. He is now ambulatory and has been amusing the other patients with stories of his adventures along the Frontier. Last week he sent out for paints, a stretcher and canvas, and began painting. And what a painting it is! The vigor of the brush strokes, the unusual palette, is quite remarkable. It depicts a most unusual...

Pendergast returned the sheet to the portfolio. "As you can see, the critical section is missing: a description of the painting. No one knows the subject."

D'Agosta took a sip of the tea, wishing it was a Bud. "Seems like a no-brainer to me. The painting was of the Carolina Parakeet."

"Your reasoning, Vincent?"

"That's why she stole the birds from Oakley Plantation. To trace--or, more likely, identify--the painting."

"The logic is faulty. Why steal the birds? Simply observing a specimen would be sufficient."

"Not if you're in competition, it wouldn't," D'Agosta said. "Others wanted the painting, too. In a high-stakes game, any edge you can give yourself--or deny others--you're gonna grab. In fact, that just might point to who mur--" But here he stopped abruptly, unwilling to voice this new speculation aloud.

Pendergast's penetrating glance showed he had divined his meaning. "With this painting, we just might have something that so far has escaped us." And here his voice dropped to almost a whisper. "Motive."

The room went quiet.

At last, Pendergast stirred. "Let us not get ahead of ourselves." He opened the portfolio again, withdrew another tattered scrap of paper. "I also recovered this, part of what is apparently Audubon's discharge report. Again, it is a mere fragment." ... was discharged from care on the fourteenth day of November, 1821. On his departure he gave a painting, only just completed, to Dr. Torgensson, director of Meuse St. Claire, in gratitude for nursing him back to health. A small group of doctors and patients attended the discharge and many farewells were...

Pendergast dropped the fragment back into the portfolio and closed it with an air of finality.

"Any idea where the painting is now?" D'Agosta asked.

"The doctor retired to Port Royal, which will be my next stop." He paused. "There is one other item of at least tangential interest. Do you recall Helen's brother, Judson, mentioning that Helen once took a trip to New Madrid, Missouri?"

"Yes."

"New Madrid was the site of a very powerful earthquake in 1812, greater than eight point zero on the Richter scale--so powerful that it created a series of new lakes and changed the course of the Mississippi River. Approximately half the town was destroyed. There is one other salient fact."

"And that is--?"

"John James Audubon was in New Madrid at the time of the earthquake."

D'Agosta sat back in his chair. "Meaning?"

Pendergast spread his hands. "Coincidence? Perhaps."

"I've been trying to find out more about Audubon," said D'Agosta, "but to tell the truth I was never a good student. What do you know about him?"

"Now, a great deal. Let me give you a precis." Pendergast paused, composing his thoughts. "Audubon was the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and his mistress. Born in Haiti, he was raised in France by his stepmother and sent to America at the age of eighteen to escape conscription in Napoleon's army. He lived near Philadelphia, where he took an interest in studying and drawing birds and married a local girl, Lucy Bakewell. They moved to the Kentucky frontier where he set up a store, but he spent most of his time collecting, dissecting, stuffing, and mounting birds. He drew and painted them as a hobby, but his early work was weak and tentative, and his sketches--many of which survive--were as lifeless as the dead birds he was drawing.

"Audubon proved to be an indifferent businessman, and in 1820, when his shop went bankrupt, he moved his family to a shabby Creole cottage on Dauphine Street, New Orleans, where they lived in penury."

"Dauphine Street," murmured D'Agosta. "So that's how he got to know your family?"

"Yes. He was a charming fellow, dashing, handsome, a superb shot and expert swordsman. He and my great-great-grandfather Boethius became friends and often went shooting together. In early 1821, Audubon fell gravely ill--so ill he had to be taken by horse-drawn cart, comatose, to Meuse St. Claire. There he had a long convalescence. As you already know, during his recovery he painted the work called the Black Frame, subject unknown.

"When he recovered, still flat broke, Audubon suddenly conceived the idea to depict America's entire avifauna in life size--every bird species in the country--compiled into a grand work of natural history. While Lucy supported the family as a tutor, Audubon traipsed off with his gun and a box of artist's colors and paper. He hired an assistant and floated down the Mississippi. He painted hundreds of birds, creating brilliantly vibrant portraits of them in their native settings--something that had never been done before."

Pendergast took a sip of tea, then continued. "In 1826, he went to England, where he found a printer to make copper-plate engravings from his watercolors. Then he crisscrossed America and Europe, finding subscribers for the book that would ultimately become The Birds of America. The last print was struck in 1838, by which time Audubon had achieved great fame. A few years later, he began work on another highly ambitious project, The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. But his mind began to fail, and the book had to be completed by his sons. The poor man suffered a hideous mental decline and spent his last years in raving madness, dying at sixty-five in New York City."

D'Agosta gave a low whistle. "Interesting story."

"Indeed."

"And nobody has any idea what became of the Black Frame?"

Pendergast shook his head. "It's the Holy Grail of Audubon researchers, it seems. I'll visit Arne Torgensson's house tomorrow. It's an easy drive, a few miles west of Port Allen. I hope to pick up the trail of the painting from there."

"But based on the dates you've mentioned, you believe--" D'Agosta stopped, searching for the most tactful way to phrase the question. "You believe your wife's interest in Audubon and the Black Frame... started before she met you?"

Pendergast did not reply.

"If I'm going to help you," D'Agosta said, "you can't clam up every time I broach an awkward subject."

Pendergast sighed. "You are quite right. It does seem that Helen was fascinated--perhaps obsessed--by Audubon from early in life. This desire to learn more about Audubon, to be closer to his work, led--in part--to our meeting. It seems she was particularly interested in finding the Black Frame."

"Why keep her interest a secret from you?"

"I believe--" he paused, his voice hoarse, "--she did not wish me to know that our relationship was not founded on a happy accident, but rather a meeting that she had intentionally--perhaps even cynically--engineered." Pendergast's face was so dark, D'Agosta was almost sorry he'd asked the question.

"If she was racing someone else to find the Black Frame," D'Agosta said, "she might have felt herself in danger. In the weeks before her death, did her behavior change? Was she nervous, agitated?"

Pendergast answered slowly. "Yes. I always assumed it was some work-related complication, getting ready for the safari." He shook his head.

"Did she do anything out of the ordinary?"

"I wasn't around Penumbra much those last few weeks."

Over his shoulder, D'Agosta heard the clearing of a throat. Maurice again.

"I just wanted to inform you that I'm turning in for the night," the retainer said. "Will there be anything else?"

"Just one thing, Maurice," Pendergast said. "In the weeks leading up to my final trip with Helen, I was away a good deal of the time."

"In New York," Maurice said, nodding. "Making preparations for the safari."

"Did my wife say, or do, anything out of the ordinary while I was away? Get any mail or telephone calls that upset her, for example?"

The old manservant thought. "Not that I can remember, sir. Though she did seem rather agitated, especially after that trip."

"Trip?" Pendergast asked. "What trip?"

"One morning, her car woke me up as it headed down the drive--you recall how loud it was, sir. No note, no warning, nothing. It was around seven o'clock on a Sunday morning, I recall. Two nights later she came back. Not a word about where she'd been. But I recollect she wasn't herself. Upset about something, but wouldn't say a word about it."

"I see," Pendergast said, exchanging glances with D'Agosta. "Thank you, Maurice."

"Not at all, sir. Good night." And the old factotum turned and vanished down the hall on silent feet.


22



D'AGOSTA EXITED I-10 ONTO THE BELLE CHASSE Highway, barreling along the nearly empty road. It was another warm February day, and he had the windows down and the radio set to a classic rock-and-roll station. He felt better than he had in days. As the car sang along the highway, he guzzled a Krispy Kreme coffee and snugged the cup back into the holder. The two pumpkin spice doughnuts had really hit the spot, calories be damned. Nothing could dampen his spirits.

The evening before he'd spent an hour talking to Laura Hayward. That started the upswing. Then he'd enjoyed a long, dreamless sleep. He woke up to find Pendergast already gone and Maurice waiting for him with a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and grits. Next, he'd driven into town, where he'd scored big with the Sixth District of the New Orleans Police Department. At first, on learning of his connection to the Pendergast family, they'd been suspicious, but when they found he was a regular guy, their attitude changed. He was given free use of their computer facilities, where it took less than ninety minutes to track down the dealer long interested in the Black Frame: John W. Blast, current residence Sarasota, Florida. He was an unsavory character indeed. Five arrests over the past ten years: suspicion of blackmail; suspicion of forgery; possession of stolen property; possession of prohibited wildlife products; assault and battery. Either he had money or good lawyers, or both, because he'd beaten the rap every time. D'Agosta had printed out the details, stuffed them into his jacket pocket, and--hungry again despite breakfast--hit the local Krispy Kreme before heading back to Penumbra.

Pendergast, he knew, would be eager to hear about this.

As he pulled up the drive of the old plantation, he saw that Pendergast had beaten him home: the Rolls-Royce sat in the shade of the cypress trees. Parking beside it, D'Agosta crunched his way across the gravel, then climbed the steps to the covered porch. He stepped into the entry hall, closing the front door behind him.

"Pendergast?" he called.

No reply.

He walked down the hallway, peering into the various public rooms. They were all dark and empty.

"Pendergast?" he called once more.

Perhaps he's gone out for a stroll, D'Agosta thought. Nice enough day for it.

He went briskly up the stairs, turned sharply at the landing, then stopped abruptly. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a familiar silhouette sitting silently in the parlor. It was Pendergast, occupying the same chair he'd sat in the previous night. The parlor lights were off, and the FBI agent was in darkness.

"Pendergast?" D'Agosta said. "I thought you were out, and--"

He stopped when he saw the agent's face. It carried an expression of blankness that gave him pause. He took the adjoining seat, his good mood snuffed out. "What's going on?" he asked.

Then Pendergast took a slow breath. "I went to Torgensson's house, Vincent. There's no painting."

"No painting?"

"The house is now a funeral home. The interior was gutted--right down to the structural studs and beams--to make way for the new business. There's nothing. Nothing." Pendergast's lips tightened. "The trail simply ends."

"Well, what about the doctor? He must have moved someplace else; we can pick up the trail there."

Another pause, longer than before. "Dr. Arne Torgensson died in 1852. Destitute, driven mad by syphilis. But not before he'd sold off the contents of his house, piecemeal, to innumerable unknown buyers."

"If he sold the painting, there should be a record of it."

Pendergast fixed him with a baleful stare. "There are no records. He might have traded the painting to pay for coal. He might have torn it to shreds in his insanity. It might have outlived him and perished in the renovations. I've hit a brick wall."

And so he'd given up, D'Agosta thought. Come home, to sit in the dark parlor. In all the years he'd known Pendergast, he'd never seen the agent so low. And yet the facts didn't warrant this sort of despair.

"Helen was tracking the painting, too," D'Agosta said, rather more sharply than he intended. "You've been searching for it--what, a couple of days? She didn't give up for years."

Pendergast did not respond.

"All right, let's take another approach. Instead of tracking the painting, we'll track your wife. This last trip she took, where she was gone for two or three days? Maybe it had something to do with the Black Frame."

"Even if you're right," Pendergast said. "That trip is a dozen years in the past."

"We can always try," D'Agosta said. "And then we can pay a visit to Mr. John W. Blast, retired art dealer, of Sarasota."

The faintest spark of interest flickered in Pendergast's eyes.

D'Agosta patted his jacket pocket. "That's right. He's the other guy who was chasing for the Black Frame. You're wrong when you say we've hit a wall."

"She could have gone anywhere in those three days," Pendergast said.

"What the hell? You're just giving up?" D'Agosta stared at Pendergast. Then he turned, stuck his head out into the hall. "Maurice? Yo! Maurice!" Where was the man when you finally needed him?

For a moment, silence. Then, a faint banging in the far spaces of the mansion. A minute later, feet sounded on the back stairway. Maurice appeared around the bend of the corridor. "I beg your pardon?" he panted as he approached, his eyes wide.

"That trip of Helen's you mentioned last evening. When she left without warning, was gone for two nights?"

"Yes?" Maurice nodded.

"Isn't there anything more about it you can tell us? Gas station receipts, hotel bills?"

Maurice fell into a silent study, then said: "Nothing, sir."

"She didn't say anything at all after her return? Not a word?"

Maurice shook his head. "I'm sorry, sir."

Pendergast sat, utterly motionless, in his chair. A silent pall settled over the parlor.

"Come to think of it, there is one thing," Maurice said. "Although I don't think you'll find it of use."

D'Agosta pounced. "What was it?"

"Well..." The old servant hesitated. D'Agosta wanted to grab him by the lapels and shake him.

"It's just that... I recollect now that she called me, sir. That first morning, from the road."

Pendergast slowly rose. "Go on, Maurice," he said quietly.

"It was getting on toward nine. I was having coffee in the morning room. The phone rang, and it was Mrs. Pendergast on the line. She'd left her AAA card in her office. She'd had a flat tire and needed the member number." Maurice glanced at Pendergast. "You recall she never could do anything with cars, sir."

"That's it?"

Maurice nodded. "I got the card and read her the number. She thanked me."

"Nothing else?" D'Agosta pressed. "Any background noise? Conversation, maybe?"

"It was so long ago, sir." Maurice thought hard. "I believe there were traffic noises. Perhaps a honk. She must have been calling from an outdoor phone booth."

For a moment, nobody spoke. D'Agosta felt hugely deflated.

"What about her voice?" Pendergast asked. "Did she sound tense or nervous?"

"No, sir. In fact, now I do recollect--she said it was lucky, her getting the flat where she did."

"Lucky?" Pendergast repeated. "Why?"

"Because she could have an egg cream while she waited."

There was a moment of stasis. And then Pendergast exploded into action. Ducking past D'Agosta and Maurice, he ran to the landing without a word and went tearing down the stairs.

D'Agosta followed. The central hallway was empty, but he could hear sounds from the library. Stepping into the room, he saw the agent feverishly searching the shelves, throwing books to the floor with abandon. He seized a volume, strode to a nearby table, cleared the surface with a violent sweep of his arm, and flipped through the pages. D'Agosta noticed the book was a Louisiana road atlas. A ruler and pencil appeared in Pendergast's hand and he hunched over the atlas, taking measurements and marking them with a pencil.

"There it is," he whispered under his breath, stabbing a finger at the page. And without another word he raced out of the library.

D'Agosta followed the agent through the dining room, the kitchen, the larder, the butler's pantry, and the back kitchen, to the rear door of the plantation house. Pendergast took the back steps two at a time and charged through an expansive garden to a white-painted stable converted to a garage with half a dozen bays. He threw open the doors and disappeared into darkness.

D'Agosta followed. The vast, dim space smelled faintly of hay and motor oil. As his eyes adjusted, he made out three tarp-covered objects that could only be automobiles. Pendergast strode over to one and yanked off the tarp. Beneath lay a two-seat red convertible, low-slung and villainous. It gleamed in the indirect light of the converted barn.

"Wow." D'Agosta gave a whistle. "A vintage Porsche. What a beauty."

"A 1954 Porsche 550 Spyder. It was Helen's." Pendergast leapt in nimbly, felt under the mat for the key. As D'Agosta opened the door and got into the passenger seat, Pendergast found the key, fitted it to the ignition, turned. The engine came to life with an ear-shattering roar.

"Bless you, Maurice," Pendergast said over the growl. "You've kept it in top shape."

He let the car warm up for a few seconds, then eased it out of the barn. Once they were clear of the doors, he stomped on the accelerator. The vehicle shot forward, scattering a storm of gravel that peppered the outbuilding like so much buckshot. D'Agosta felt himself pressed into the seat like an astronaut on liftoff. As the car swept out of the driveway, D'Agosta could see Maurice's black-dressed form on the steps, watching them go.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

Pendergast looked at him. The despair was gone, replaced by a hard glitter in his eye, faint but noticeable: the gleam of the hunt. "Thanks to you, Vincent, we've located the haystack," he replied. "Now let's see if we can find the needle."


23



THE SPORTS CAR BOOMED ALONG THE SLEEPY byways of rural Louisiana. Mangrove swamps, bayous, stately plantations, and marshes passed in a blur. Now and then they slowed briefly to traverse a village, the loud, beastly engine eliciting curious stares. Pendergast had not bothered to put up the convertible's top, and D'Agosta felt increasingly windblown, his bald spot chapping in the blast of air. The car rode low to the ground, making him feel exposed and vulnerable. He wondered why Pendergast had taken this car instead of the far more comfortable Rolls.

"Mind telling me where we're going?" he yelled over the shriek of the wind.

"Picayune, Mississippi."

"Why there?"

"Because that's where Helen telephoned Maurice."

"You know that?"

"Within ninety-five percent certainty."

"How?"

Pendergast downshifted, negotiating a sharp bend in the road. "Helen was having an egg cream while she waited for the auto club."

"Yeah. So?"

"So: egg creams are a Yankee weakness I was never able to cure her of. You seldom find them outside of New York and parts of New England."

"Go on."

"There are--or were--only three places within driving distance of New Orleans that served egg creams. Helen sought them all out; she was always driving to one or another. Occasionally I went along. In any case, using the map just now, I inferred--based on the day of the week, the time of day, and Helen's proclivity for driving too fast--Picayune to be the obvious choice of the three."

D'Agosta nodded. It seemed simple, once explained. "So what's with the ninety-five percent?"

"It's just possible that she stopped earlier that morning, for some other reason. Or was stopped--she attracted speeding tickets by the bushel."

Picayune, Mississippi, was a neat town of low frame houses just over the Louisiana border. A sign at the town line proclaimed it a PRECIOUS COIN IN THE PURSE OF THE SOUTH, and another displayed pictures of the floats from the previous year's Krewe of Roses Parade. D'Agosta looked around curiously as they passed down the quiet, leafy streets. Pendergast slowed as they rumbled into the commercial district.

"Things have changed a bit," he said, glancing left and right. "That Internet cafe is of course new. So is that Creole restaurant. That little place offering crawfish po'boys, however, is familiar."

"You used to come here with Helen?"

"Not with Helen. I passed through the town several times in later years. There's an FBI training camp a few miles from here. Ah--this must be it."

Pendergast turned a corner onto a quiet street and pulled over to the curb. The street was residential except for the closest structure, a one-story cinder-block building set well back from the road and surrounded by a parking lot of cracked and heaving blacktop. A leaning sign on the building front advertised Jake's Yankee Chowhouse, but it was faded and peeling and the restaurant had obviously been closed for years. The windows in the rear section had muslin curtains, however, and a satellite dish was fixed to the cement wall: clearly the building served as residence as well.

"Let's see if we can't do this the easy way," Pendergast murmured. He pursed his lips, examining the street a moment longer. Then he began revving the Porsche with long jabs of his right foot. The big engine roared to life, louder and louder with each depression of the accelerator, leaves blowing out from beneath the car, until the vehicle's frame vibrated as violently as a passenger jet.

"My God!" D'Agosta yelled over the noise. "Do you want to wake the dead?"

The FBI agent kept it up another fifteen seconds, until at least a dozen heads were poking out of windows and doors up and down the street. "No," he replied, easing off at last and letting the engine rumble back into an idle. "I believe the living will suffice." He made a quick survey of the faces now staring at them. "Too young," he said of one, shaking his head, "and that one, poor fellow, is clearly too stupid... Ah: now that one is a possibility. Come on, Vincent." Getting out of the car, he strolled down the street to the third house on the left, where a man of about sixty wearing a yellowing T-shirt stood on the front steps, staring at them with a frown. He clutched a television remote in one meaty paw, a beer in the other.

D'Agosta suddenly understood why Pendergast had taken his wife's Porsche for this particular road trip.

"Excuse me, sir," Pendergast said as he approached the house. "I wonder if you'd mind telling me if, by chance, you recognize the vehicle we--"

"Blow it out your ass," the man said, turning and going back inside his house, slamming the door.

D'Agosta hoisted up his pants and licked his lips. "Want me to go drag the fat fuck back out?"

Pendergast shook his head. "No need, Vincent." He turned back, regarding the restaurant. An old, heavyset woman in a flimsy housedress had come out of the kitchen and stood on the porch, flanked by a brace of plastic pink flamingos. She had a magazine in one hand and a cigarillo in the other, and she peered at them through old-fashioned teardrop glasses. "We may have flushed out just the partridge I was after."

They walked back to the old parking lot and the kitchen door of Jake's. The woman watched their approach with complete taciturnity, with no visible change of expression.

"Good afternoon, ma'am," Pendergast said with a slight bow.

"Afternoon yourself," she replied.

"Do you, by chance, own this fine establishment?"

"I might," she said, taking a deep drag on the cigarillo. D'Agosta noticed it had a white plastic holder.

Pendergast waved at the Spyder. "And is there any chance you recognize this vehicle?"

She looked away from them, peering at the car through her grimy glasses. Then she looked back. "I might," she repeated.

There was a silence. D'Agosta heard a window slam shut, and a door.

"Why, how remiss of me," Pendergast said suddenly. "Taking up your valuable time like this uncompensated." As if by magic, a twenty-dollar bill appeared in his hand. He held it out to the woman. To D'Agosta's surprise, she plucked it from his fingers and stuffed it down her withered but still ample cleavage.

"I saw that car three times," the woman said. "My son was crazy about them foreign sporty jobs. He worked the soda fountain. He passed away in a car crash on the outskirts of town a few years back. Anyhow, the first time it showed up he just about went nuts. Made everybody drop whatever they were doing and take a look."

"Do you remember the driver?"

"A young woman. Pretty thing, too."

"You don't recall what she ordered, do you?" Pendergast asked.

"I'm not likely to forget that. An egg cream. She said she'd come all the way from N'Orleans. Imagine, all that way for an egg cream."

There was another, briefer silence.

"You mentioned three times," Pendergast said. "What about the last time?"

The woman took another drag on the cigarillo, paused a moment to search her memory. "She showed up on foot that time. Had a flat tire."

"I commend you on your excellent memory, ma'am."

"Like I said, you don't forget a car--or a lady--like that any time soon. My Henry gave her the egg cream for free. She drove on back and let him get behind the wheel--wouldn't let him drive it, though. Said she was in a hurry."

"Ah. So she was going somewhere?"

"Said she'd been going in circles, couldn't find the turnoff for Caledonia."

"Caledonia? I'm not familiar with that town."

"It ain't a town--I'm talking about the Caledonia National Forest. Blame road wasn't marked then and it ain't marked now."

If Pendergast was growing excited, he didn't show it. To D'Agosta, the FBI agent's gestures--as he lit another cigarillo for the old woman--seemed almost languid.

"Is that where she was headed?" he asked, placing the lighter back into his pocket. "The national forest?"

The woman plucked the fresh cigarillo from her mouth, looked at it, masticated her gums a few times, then inserted the holder back between her lips as if she were driving home a screw. "Nope."

"May I ask where?"

The woman made a show of trying to remember. "Let me see now... That was a long time ago..." The excellent memory seemed to grow vague.

Another twenty appeared; once again, it was quickly shoved down into the same crevasse. "Sunflower," she said immediately.

"Sunflower?" Pendergast repeated.

The woman nodded. "Sunflower, Louisiana. Not two miles over the state line. Take the Bogalusa turnoff, just before the swamp." And she pointed the direction.

"I'm most obliged to you." Pendergast turned to D'Agosta. "Vincent, let us not waste any time."

As they strode back to the car, the woman yelled out, "When you pass the old mine shaft, take a right!"


24



Sunflower, Louisiana

KNOW WHAT YOU'D LIKE, SUGAR?" THE WAITRESS asked.

D'Agosta let the menu drop to the table. "The catfish."

"Fried, oven-fried, baked, or broiled?"

"Broiled, I guess."

"Excellent choice." She made a notation on her pad, turned. "And you, sir?"

"Pine bark stew, please," said Pendergast. "Without the hush puppies."

"Right you are." She made another note, then turned away with a flourish, bouncing off on sensible white shoes.

D'Agosta watched as she wiggled toward the kitchen. Then he sighed, took a sip of his beer. It had been a long, wearisome afternoon. Sunflower, Louisiana, was a town of about three thousand people, surrounded on one side by liveoak forest, on the other by the vast cypress swamp known as Black Brake. It had proven utterly unremarkable: small shabby houses with picket fences, scuffed boardwalks in need of repair, redbone hounds dozing on front porches. It was a hardworking, hard-bitten, down-at-the-heels hamlet forgotten by the outside world.

They had registered at the town's only hotel, then split up and gone their separate ways, each trying to uncover why Helen Pendergast would have made a three-day pilgrimage to such a remote spot.

Their recent run of luck seemed to sputter out on the threshold of Sunflower. D'Agosta had spent five fruitless hours looking into blank faces and walking into dead ends. There were no art dealers, museums, private collections, or historical societies. Nobody remembered seeing Helen Pendergast--the photo he'd shown around triggered only blank looks. Not even the car produced a glimmer of recall. John James Audubon, their research showed, had never been anywhere near this region of Louisiana.

When D'Agosta finally met up with Pendergast in the hotel's small restaurant for dinner, he felt almost as dejected as the FBI agent had looked that morning. As if to match his mood, the sunny skies had boiled up into dark thunderheads that threatened a storm.

"Zilch," he said in answer to Pendergast's query, and described his discouraging morning. "Maybe that old lady remembered wrong. Or was just bullshitting us for another twenty. What about you?"

The food arrived, and the waitress laid their plates before them with a cheery "Here we are!" Pendergast eyed his in silence, dipping some stew out with his spoon to examine it more closely.

"Can I get you another beer?" she asked D'Agosta, beaming.

"Why not?"

"Club soda?" she asked Pendergast.

"No thank you, this will be sufficient."

The waitress bounced off again.

D'Agosta turned back. "Well? Any luck?"

"One moment." Pendergast plucked out his cell phone, dialed. "Maurice? We'll be spending the night here in Sunflower. That's right. Good night." He put away the phone. "My experience, I fear, was as discouraging as yours." However, his alleged disappointment was belied by a glimmer in his eye and a wry smile teasing the corners of his lips.

"How come I don't believe you?" D'Agosta finally asked.

"Watch, if you please, as I perform a little experiment on our waitress."

The waitress came back with a Bud and a fresh napkin. As she placed them before D'Agosta, Pendergast spoke in his most honeyed voice, laying the accent on thick. "My dear, I wonder if I might ask you a question."

She turned to him with a perky smile. "Ask away, hon."

Pendergast made a show of pulling a small notebook from his jacket pocket. "I'm a reporter up from New Orleans, and I'm doing research on a family that used to live here." He opened the notebook, looked up at the waitress expectantly.

"Sure, which family?"

"Doane."

If Pendergast had announced a holdup, the reaction couldn't have been more dramatic. The woman's face immediately shut down, blank and expressionless, her eyes hooded. The perkiness vanished instantly.

"Don't know anything about that," she mumbled. "Can't help you." She turned and walked away, pushing through the door to the kitchen.

Pendergast slipped the notebook back into his jacket and turned to D'Agosta. "What do you think of my experiment?"

"How the hell did you know she'd react like that? She's obviously hiding something."

"That, my dear Vincent, is precisely the point." Pendergast took another sip of club soda. "I didn't single her out. Everyone in town reacts the same way. Haven't you noticed, during your inquiries this afternoon, a certain degree of hesitancy and suspicion?"

D'Agosta paused to consider. It was true that nobody had been particularly helpful, but he'd simply ascribed it to small-town truculence, local folk suspicious of some Yankee coming in and asking a lot of questions.

"As I made my own inquiries," Pendergast went on, "I ran into an increasingly suspicious level of obfuscation and denial. And then, when I pressed one elderly gentleman for information, he heatedly informed me that despite what I might have heard otherwise, the stories about the Doanes were nothing but hogwash. Naturally I began to ask about the Doane family. And that's when I started getting the reaction you just saw."

"And so?"

"I repaired to the local newspaper office and asked to see the back issues, dating from around the time of Helen's visit. They were unwilling to help, and it took this--" Pendergast pulled out his shield. "--to change their minds. I found that in the years surrounding Helen's visit, several pages had been carefully cut out of certain newspapers. I made a note of what the issues were, then made my way back down the road to the library at Kemp, the last town before Sunflower. Their copies of the newspapers had all the missing pages. And that's where I got the story."

"What story?" D'Agosta asked.

"The strange story of the Doane family. Mr. Doane was a novelist of independent means, and he brought his extended family to Sunflower to get away from it all, to write the great American novel far from the distractions of civilization. They bought one of the town's biggest and best houses, built by a small-time lumber baron in the years before the local mill shut down. Doane had two children. One of them, the son, won the highest honors ever awarded by the Sunflower High School, a clever fellow by all accounts. The daughter was a gifted poet whose works were occasionally published in the local papers. I read a few and they are, in fact, exceedingly well done. Mrs. Doane had grown into a noted landscape painter. The town became very proud of their talented, adopted family, and they were frequently in the papers, accepting awards, raising funds for one or another local charity, ribbon cutting, that sort of thing."

"Landscape painter," D'Agosta repeated. "How about birds?"

"Not that I could find out. Nor did they appear to have any particular interest in Audubon or natural history art. Then, a few months after Helen's visit, the steady stream of approving stories began to cease."

"Maybe the family got tired of the attention."

"I think not. There was one more article about the Doane family--one final article," he went on. "Half a year after that. It stated that William, the Doane son, had been captured by the police after an extended manhunt through the national forest, and that he was now in solitary confinement in the county jail, charged with two ax murders."

"The star student?" D'Agosta asked incredulously.

Pendergast nodded. "After reading this, I began asking around Kemp about the Doane family. The townspeople there felt none of the restraint I noticed here. I heard a veritable outpouring of rumor and innuendo. Homicidal maniacs that only came out at night. Madness and violence. Stalking and menace. It became difficult to sift fact from fiction, town gossip from reality. The only thing that I feel reasonably sure of is that all are now dead, each having died in a uniquely unpleasant way."

"All of them?"

"The mother was a suicide. The son died on death row while awaiting execution for the ax murders I spoke of. The daughter died in an insane asylum after refusing to sleep for two weeks. The last to die was the father, shot by the town sheriff of Sunflower."

"What happened?"

"He apparently took to wandering into town, accosting young women, threatening the townsfolk. There were reports of vandalism, destruction, babies gone missing. The people I spoke to hinted it might have been less of a killing and more of an execution--with the tacit approval of the Sunflower town fathers. The sheriff and his deputies shotgunned Mr. Doane in his house as he allegedly resisted arrest. There was no investigation."

"Jesus," D'Agosta replied. "That would explain the waitress's reaction. As well as all the hostility around here."

"Precisely."

"What the hell do you think happened to them? Something in the water?"

"I have no idea. But I will tell you this: I'm convinced they were the object of Helen's visit."

"That's a pretty big leap."

Pendergast nodded. "Consider this: they are the only unique element in an otherwise unremarkable town. There's nothing else here of interest. Somehow, they're the link we're searching for."

The waitress hustled up to their table, took away their plates, and went off, even as D'Agosta began to order coffee. "I wonder what it takes to get a cup of java around here," D'Agosta said, trying to attract her attention.

"Somehow, Vincent, I doubt you'll be getting your 'java' or anything more in this establishment."

D'Agosta sighed. "So who lives in the house now?"

"Nobody. It was abandoned and shut up since the shooting of Mr. Doane."

"We're going there," D'Agosta said, more as a statement than a question.

"Exactly."

"When?"

Pendergast raised his finger for the waitress. "As soon as we can get the check from our reticent but nevertheless most eloquent waitress."


25



THE WAITRESS DID NOT ARRIVE WITH THE check. Instead, it was the manager of the hotel. He placed the check on the table and then, without even a show of apology, informed them they would not be able to stay the night after all.

"What do you mean?" D'Agosta said. "We booked the room; you took our credit card numbers."

"There's a large party coming in," the man replied. "They had prior reservations the front desk overlooked--and as you can see, this is a small hotel."

"Too bad for them," D'Agosta said. "We're already here."

"You haven't unpacked yet," the manager replied. "In fact, I'm told your luggage isn't even in your rooms yet. I've already torn up your credit card voucher. I'm sorry."

But he didn't sound sorry, and D'Agosta was about to rake the man over the coals when Pendergast laid a hand on his arm. "Very well," Pendergast said, reaching into his wallet and paying the dinner bill in cash. "Good evening, then."

The manager walked away, and D'Agosta turned to Pendergast. "You're gonna let that prick walk all over us? It's obvious he's kicking us out because of the questions you're asking--and the ancient history we're stirring up."

In response, Pendergast nodded out the window. Glancing through it, D'Agosta saw the hotel manager now crossing the street. As D'Agosta watched, the man walked past several store buildings, shuttered for the night, and then vanished into the sheriff's office.

"What the hell kind of town is this?" D'Agosta said. "Next thing you know, it'll be villagers with pitchforks."

"Our interest doesn't lie with the town," Pendergast said. "There's no point in complicating things. I suggest that we leave at once--before the local sheriff finds an excuse to run us out."

They exited the restaurant and made their way to the back parking lot of the hotel. The storm that had been threatening was fast approaching: the wind raked the treetops, and thunder could be heard rumbling in the distance. Pendergast put up the Porsche's top as D'Agosta climbed in. Pendergast slipped in himself, turned on the engine, nosed the car into a back alley, then made his way through town via back streets, avoiding main thoroughfares.

The Doane house was located about two miles past town, up an unpaved drive that had once been well tended but was now little more than a rutted track. He drove cautiously, careful not to bottom out the Spyder in the hard-packed dirt. Dense stands of trees crowded in on both sides of the road, their skeletal branches lacing the night sky above their heads. D'Agosta, flung around in his seat until his teeth rattled, decided that even the Zambian Land Rover would have been preferable in these conditions.

Pendergast rounded a final bend and the house itself came into view in the headlights, the sky roiling with clouds above. D'Agosta stared at it in surprise. He had expected a large, elegant structure, as ornate as the rest of the town was plain. What he saw was large, all right, but it was hardly elegant. In fact, it looked more like a fort left over from the days of the Louisiana Purchase. Built out of huge, rough-edged beams, it sported tall towers at either end and a long, squat central facade with innumerable small windows. Atop this facade was the bizarre anachronism of a widow's walk, surrounded by spiked iron railings. It stood alone on a small rise of land. Beyond to the east lay forest, dense and dark, leading to the vast Black Brake swamp. As D'Agosta stared at the structure, a tongue of lightning struck the woods behind, briefly silhouetting it in spectral yellow light.

"Looks like somebody tried to cross a castle with a log cabin," he said.

"The original owner was a timber baron, after all." Pendergast nodded at the widow's walk. "No doubt he used that to survey his domain. I read that he personally owned sixty thousand acres of land--including much of the cypress forests in the Black Brake--before the government acquired it for the national forest and a wilderness area."

He pulled up to the house and stopped. The agent glanced briefly in the rearview mirror before maneuvering the car around to the back and killing the engine.

"Expecting company?" D'Agosta asked.

"No point in attracting attention."

Now the rain started: fat drops that drummed against the windshield and the fabric top. Pendergast got out, and D'Agosta quickly followed suit. They trotted over to the shelter of a rear porch. D'Agosta glanced up a little uneasily at the rambling structure. It was exactly the kind of eccentric residence that might attract a novelist. Every tiny window was carefully shuttered, and the door itself was secured with a padlock and chain. A riot of vegetation had grown up around the house, softening the rough lines of its foundation, while moss and lichens draped some of the beams.

Pendergast took a final look around, then turned his attention to the padlock. He held it by the hasp, turning it this way and that, and then passed his other hand, holding a small tool, over the cylinder housing. A quick fiddle and it snapped open with a loud creak. Pendergast removed the chain and let it drop to the ground. The door itself was also locked; Pendergast bent over it and swiftly defeated the mechanism with the same tool. Then he rose again and turned the knob, pushing the door open with a squeal of protesting hinges. Pulling a flashlight from his jacket, he stepped inside. D'Agosta had long ago learned, when working with Pendergast, to never get caught without two things: a gun and a flashlight. Now he pulled out his own light and followed Pendergast into the house.

They found themselves in a large, old-fashioned kitchen. In the center stood a wooden breakfast table, and an oven, refrigerator, and washing machine were arranged in a porcelain row along the far wall. Beyond that, any resemblance to a normal family kitchen ended. The cabinets were thrown open, and crockery and glassware, almost all of it broken, streamed out from the shelves and onto the countertops and floor. Remains of foodstuffs--grains, rice, beans--lay scattered here and there, desiccated, scattered by rats, and fringed with ancient mold. The chairs were overturned and splintered, and the walls were punctuated with holes made by a sledgehammer or--perhaps--a fist. Plaster had fallen from the ceiling in chunks, making miniature explosions of white powder here and there on the floor, in which vermin tracks and droppings could be clearly seen. D'Agosta played his beam around the room, taking in the whirlwind of destruction. His light stopped in one corner, where a large, long-dried accumulation of what seemed to be blood lay on the floor; on the wall above, at chest height, were several ragged holes made by blasts from a heavy-gauge shotgun with similar sprays of dried blood and offal.

"I'd guess this is where our Mr. Doane met his end," D'Agosta said, "courtesy of the local sheriff. Looks like one hell of a struggle took place."

"It would indeed appear to be the site of the shooting," Pendergast murmured in reply. "However, there was no struggle. This damage occurred before the time of death."

"What the hell happened, then?"

Pendergast glanced around the mess a moment longer before replying. "A descent into madness." He shone his light toward a door in the far wall. "Come on, Vincent--let us continue."

They walked slowly through the first floor, searching the dining room, parlor, pantry, living room, bathrooms, and other spaces of indeterminate use. Everywhere they found the same chaos: overturned furniture, broken glassware, books ripped into dozens of pieces and scattered mindlessly over the floor. The fireplace in the den held hundreds of small bones. Examining them carefully, Pendergast announced that they were squirrel remains, which--based on their relative positions--had been stuffed up the chimney, staying there until decay and putrefaction caused them to fall back down onto the firedogs. In another room they found a dark, greasy mattress, surrounded by the detritus of countless ancient meals: empty tins of Spam and sardines, candy bar wrappers, crushed beer cans. One corner of the room appeared to have been used as an open latrine, with no attempt at sanitation or concealment. There were no paintings on any of the walls of the rooms, black-framed or otherwise. In fact, the only decorative works the walls displayed were endless frantic doodles in purple Magic Marker: a storm of squiggles and manic jagged lines that was disquieting to look at.

"Jesus," D'Agosta said. "What could Helen possibly have wanted here?"

"It is exceedingly curious," Pendergast replied, "especially considering that at the time of her visit, the Doane family was the pride of Sunflower. This decline into criminal madness happened much later."

Thunder rumbled ominously outside, accompanied by flashes of livid lightning through the shuttered windows. They descended into the basement, which, though less cluttered, showed signs of the same blizzard of lunatic destruction so evident on the first floor. After a thorough and fruitless search, they climbed to the second floor. Here the whirlwind of ruin was somewhat abated, although there were plenty of troubling signs. In what was clearly the son's bedroom, one wall was almost completely covered in awards for academic excellence and distinguished community service--based on their dates, taking place over a year or two around the time of Helen Pendergast's visit. The facing wall, however, was equally crowded with the desiccated heads of animals--pigs, dogs, rats--all hammered into the wood in the roughest manner possible, with no effort made to clean or even exsanguinate them: dried blood ran down in heavy streams from each mummified trophy onto those hammered in place below.

The daughter's room was even more creepy for showing a complete lack of personality: the only feature of note was a row of similarly bound red volumes in a bookshelf that was otherwise empty, save for an anthology of poetry.

They gradually walked through the empty rooms, D'Agosta trying to make sense of the senselessness of it.

At the very end of the hall, they came to a locked door.

Pendergast slid out his lockpicking tools, jimmied the lock, and attempted to open the door. It wouldn't budge.

"There's a first," said D'Agosta.

"If you will observe the upper doorjambs, my dear fellow, you'll see that the door, in addition to being locked, has been screwed shut." His hand fell from the knob. "We'll return to this. Let's take a look at the attic first."

The attics of the old house were a warren of tiny rooms packed under the eaves, full of moldy furniture and old luggage. They made a thorough inspection of the boxes and trunks, raising furious choking clouds of dust in the process, but found nothing more interesting than some musty old clothes, piles of newspapers sorted and stacked and tied with twine. Pendergast rummaged through an old toolbox and removed a screwdriver, slipping it into his pocket.

"Let's check the two towers," he said, brushing dust from his black suit with evident distaste. "Then we'll tackle the sealed room."

The towers were drafty columns of winding stairs and storage niches full of spiders, rat droppings, and piles of yellowing old books. Each tower staircase dead-ended into a tiny lookout room, with windows like the arrow slits of a castle, looking down over the lightning-troubled forest. D'Agosta found himself growing impatient. The house seemed to have little to offer them other than madness and riddles. Why had Helen Pendergast come here--if she'd come here at all?

Finding nothing of interest in the towers, they returned to the main house and the sealed door. As D'Agosta held the light, Pendergast drew out two long screws. He turned the knob, pushed the door open, and stepped inside. D'Agosta followed--and almost staggered backward in surprise.

It was like stepping into a Faberge egg. It was not a large room, but it seemed to D'Agosta jewel-like--filled with treasures that glowed with internal brilliance. The windows had been boarded over and nailed with canvas, leaving the interior almost hermetically preserved, every surface so lovingly polished that even a decade of abandonment could not dull the luster. Paintings covered every square inch of wall space, and the interior was crowded with gorgeous handmade furniture and sculptures, the floor spread with dazzling rugs, sparkling jewelry laid out on pieces of black velvet.

In the middle of the room stood a single divan, covered in richly tanned leather that had been tooled into an astonishing cascade of abstract floral designs. The ebb and flow of the hand-worked lines were so cunningly wrought, so hypnotically beautiful, that D'Agosta could scarcely take his eyes from them. And yet other objects in the room cried out for his attention. At one end, several fantastical sculptures of elongated heads, carved in an exotic wood, stood beside an array of exquisite jewelry in gold, gems, and lustrous black pearls.

D'Agosta walked through the room in an astonished silence, hardly able to focus his attention on any one thing before some fresh marvel drew it away. On one table stood a collection of small, handmade books in elegant leather bindings with gold tooling. D'Agosta picked one up and thumbed through it, finding it full of poems handwritten in a beautiful script, signed and dated by Karen Doane. The loom-woven rugs formed several layers on the floor, and they displayed geometric designs so colorful and striking that they dazzled the eye. He flashed the light around the walls, marveling at the oil paintings, landscapes lustrous with life, of the forest glades around the house, old cemeteries, vivid still lifes, and ever-more-fantastical landscapes and dreamscapes. D'Agosta approached the closest one and squinted, playing the light over it--observing that it was signed M. DOANE along the bottom margin.

Pendergast came up beside him, a silent presence. "Melissa Doane," he murmured. "The novelist's wife. It would appear that these paintings are hers."

"All of them?" D'Agosta played the beam over the other walls of the little room. There was no painting in a black frame, no painting, in fact, not signed M. DOANE.

"I'm afraid it's not here."

Slowly, D'Agosta let his flashlight drop to his side. He realized he was breathing fast, and that his heart was racing. It was bizarre--beyond bizarre. "What the hell is this place? And how has it stayed like this without being robbed?"

"The town protects its secrets well." Pendergast's silvery eyes darted about, taking everything in, an expression of intense concentration on his face. Slowly, once again, he paced the room, finally stopping at the table of handmade books. He quickly sorted through them, flipping the pages and putting them back. He left the room, and D'Agosta followed him down the hall as he entered the daughter's room. D'Agosta caught up as he was examining the shelf of identical red-bound volumes. His spidery hand reached out and plucked the last one down. He riffled through the pages; every one was blank. Pendergast put it back and drew out the penultimate volume. This one was full of nothing but horizontal lines, made apparently with a ruler, so densely drawn that each page was almost black with them.

Pendergast selected the next book, flipped through it, finding more dense lines and some crude, stick-like, childish sketches in the beginning. The next volume contained disjointed entries in a ragged hand that climbed up and down across the pages.

Pendergast began to read out loud, at random, prose written in poetic stanzas.I cannotSleep I must notSleep. They come, they whisperThings. They show meThings. I can't tune itOut, I can't tune itOut. If I sleep again I willDie... Sleep = DeathDream = DeathDeath = I can't tune itOut

Pendergast flipped a few pages. The ravings continued until they seemed to dissolve into disjointed words and illegible scratchings. More thoughtfully, he put the book back and drew out another, much earlier in the set, opening it in the middle. D'Agosta saw lines of strong and even writing, evidently that of a girl, with doodles of flowers and funny faces in the margins and i's that were dotted with cheerful circles.

Pendergast read off the date.

D'Agosta did a quick mental calculation. "That would be about six months before Helen's visit," he said.

"Yes. When the Doanes were still new to Sunflower." Pendergast paged through the entries, scanning them swiftly, pausing at one point to read out loud: Mattie Lee razzed me again about Jimmy. He may be cute but I can't stand the goth clothes and that thrash metal he's into. He slicks his hair back and smokes, holding the cigarette up close to the burning ash. He thinks it makes him look cool. I think it makes him look like a nerd trying to look cool. Even worse: it makes him look like a dweeb who looks like a nerd who's trying to be cool.

"Typical high-school girl," said D'Agosta, frowning.

"Perhaps a bit more incisive than most." The agent continued flipping forward through the volume. He stopped abruptly at an entry made some three months later. "Ah!" he exclaimed, sudden interest in his voice, and began to read. When I got home from school I saw Mom and Dad in the kitchen hovering over something on the counter. Guess what it was? A parrot! It was gray and fat, with a stumpy red tail and a big fat metal band around its leg with a number but no name. It was tame and would perch right on your arm. It kept cocking its head at me and peering into my eyes, like it was checking me out. Dad looked it up in the encyclopedia and said it was an African Grey. He said it had to be somebody's pet, it was too tame for anything else. It just showed up around noon, sitting in the peach tree next to the back door, making noise to announce its presence. I begged Dad to let us keep it. He said we could until he found the real owner. He says we have to run an ad. I told him to run it in the Timbuctoo Times and he thought that was pretty funny. I hope he never finds the real owner. We made a little nest for it in an old box. Dad is going to the pet store in Slidell tomorrow to get him a real cage. While he was hopping around the counter he found one of Mom's muffins, gave a squawk, and started gorging on it, so I named him Muffin.

"A parrot," D'Agosta muttered. "Now, what are the chances of that?"

Pendergast began flipping pages, more slowly now, until he reached the end of the book. He took down the next volume and began methodically examining the dates of the entries--until he came to one. D'Agosta heard a small intake of breath.

"Vincent, here is the entry she wrote on February ninth--the day Helen paid them a visit."The worst day of my life!!! After lunch a lady came and knocked on our front door. She was driving a red sports car and was all dressed up with fashionable leather gloves. She said she'd heard we had a parrot and wanted to know if she could see it. Dad showed Muffin to her (still inside her cage) and she asked how we got it. She asked a lot of questions about the bird, when we got it, where it came from, if it was tame, if it let us handle it, who played with it the most. Stuff like that. She spent all sorts of time looking at it and asking questions. The woman wanted to see the band up close but my father asked her first if she was the bird's owner. She said yes and wanted the parrot back. My dad was suspicious. He asked if she could name the number on the parrot's bracelet. She couldn't. And she wasn't able to show us any kind of proof that she owned it, either, but told us a story that she was a scientist and it had escaped from her lab. Dad looked like he didn't believe a word of it and said firmly that when she brought back some proof he'd be glad to give up the bird, but until then Muffin would stay with us. The lady didn't seem too surprised and then she looked at me with a sad expression on her face. "Is Muffin your pet?" I said yes. She seemed to think for a while. Then she asked if Dad could recommend a good hotel in town. He said there was only one, and that he'd get her the number. He walked back into the kitchen for the phone book. No sooner had he gone than the woman grabbed Muffin's cage, stuffed it into a black garbage bag she took from her purse, ran out the door, threw the bag in her car, and took off down the driveway! Muffin was screeching loudly the whole time. I ran outside screaming and Dad came running out and we got in the car and chased her, but she was gone. Dad called the sheriff but he didn't seem all that interested in finding a stolen bird, especially since it might have been her bird to begin with. Muffin was gone, just like that. I went up to my room and I just couldn't stop crying.

Pendergast closed the diary and slipped it into his jacket pocket. As he did so, a flash of lightning illuminated the black trees beyond the window and a rumble of thunder shook the house.

"Unbelievable," said D'Agosta. "Helen stole the parrot. Just like she stole those stuffed parrots of Audubon's. What in the world was she thinking?"

Pendergast said nothing.

"Did you ever see the parrot? Did she bring it back to Penumbra?"

Pendergast shook his head wordlessly.

"What about this scientific lab she talked about?"

"She had no lab, Vincent. She was employed by Doctors With Wings."

"Do you have any idea what the hell she was doing?"

"For the first time in my life I am completely and utterly at a loss."

The lightning flickered again, illuminating an expression on Pendergast's face of pure shock and incomprehension.


26



New York City

CAPTAIN LAURA HAYWARD, NYPD HOMICIDE, liked to keep the door of her office open to signal she hadn't forgotten her roots as a lowly TA cop patrolling the subways. She had risen far and fast in the department, and while she knew she was good and deserved the promotions, she was also uncomfortably aware that being a woman hadn't hurt at all, especially after the sex discrimination scandals of the previous decade.

But on this particular morning, when she arrived at six, she reluctantly shut the door even though no one else was in. The investigation into a string of Russian mafia drug killings on Coney Island had been dragging its ass around the department, generating huge amounts of paperwork and meetings. It had finally reached the point where someone--her--needed to sit down with the files and go through them all so at least one person could get on top of the case and move it forward.

Toward noon, her brain almost fried from the senseless brutality of it all, she rose from her desk and decided to get some air by taking a stroll in the small park next to One Police Plaza. She opened her door and exited the outer office, running into a gaggle of cops hanging out in the hall.

They greeted her with a little more effusion than usual, with several sidelong, embarrassed glances.

Hayward returned the greetings and then paused. "All right, what is it?"

A telling silence.

"I've never seen a worse bunch of fakers," she said lightly. "Honestly, if you sat down to a game of Texas Hold 'Em, you'd all lose."

The joke fell flat, and after a moment's hesitation, a sergeant spoke up. "Captain, it's sort of about that, ah, FBI agent. Pendergast."

Hayward froze. Her disdain for Pendergast was well known in the department, as was her relationship with his sometime partner D'Agosta. Pendergast always managed to drag Vincent into deep shit, and she had a growing premonition that the present excursion to Louisiana would end as disastrously as the earlier ones. In fact, maybe it just had... As these thoughts flashed through her mind, Hayward tried to control her features, keep them neutral. "What about Special Agent Pendergast?" she asked coolly.

"It isn't Pendergast exactly," said the sergeant. "It's a relative of his. Woman named Constance Greene. She's down in central booking, gave Pendergast as her next-of-kin. Apparently she's his niece or something."

Another awkward silence.

"And?" Hayward prompted.

"She's been abroad. She booked passage on the Queen Mary Two from Southampton to New York, boarded with her baby."

"Baby?"

"Right. A couple months old at most. Born abroad. Anyway, after the ship docked she was held at passport control because the baby was missing. INS radioed NYPD and we've taken her into custody. They're booking her for homicide."

"Homicide?"

"That's right. Seems she threw her baby off the ship somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean."


27



Gulf of Mexico

THE DELTA 767 SEEMED ALMOST TO HOVER AT thirty-four thousand feet, the sky serene and cloudless, the sea an unbroken expanse of blue far below, sparkling in the afternoon light.

"May I get you another beer, sir?" the stewardess asked, bending over D'Agosta solicitously.

"Sure," he replied.

The stewardess turned to D'Agosta's seatmate. "And you, sir? Is everything all right?"

"No," Pendergast said. He gestured dismissively toward the small dish of smoked salmon that sat on his seat-back tray. "I find this to be room temperature. Would you mind bringing me a chilled serving, please?"

"Not at all." The woman whisked the plate away with a professional gesture.

D'Agosta waited until she returned, then settled back in the wide, comfortable seat, stretching out his legs. The only times he'd flown first-class were traveling with Pendergast, but it was something he could get used to.

A chime sounded over the PA system, and the captain announced that the plane would be landing at Sarasota Bradenton International Airport in twenty minutes.

D'Agosta took a sip of his beer. Sunflower, Louisiana, was already eighteen hours and hundreds of miles behind them, but the strange Doane house--with that single, jewel-like room of wonders surrounded by a storm of decay and furious ruin--had never been far from his mind. Pendergast, however, had seemed disinclined to discuss it, remaining thoughtful and silent.

D'Agosta tried once again. "I got a theory."

The agent glanced toward him.

"I think the Doane family is a red herring."

"Indeed?" Pendergast took a tentative bite of the salmon.

"Think about it. They went nuts many months after Helen's visit. How could the visit have anything to do with what happened later? Or a parrot?"

"Perhaps you're right," said Pendergast, vaguely. "What puzzles me is this sudden flowering of creative brilliance before... the end. For all of them."

"It's a well-known fact that madness runs in families--" D'Agosta thought better of concluding this observation. "Anyway, it's always the gifted ones that go crazy."

" 'We poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.' " Pendergast turned toward D'Agosta. "So you think their creativity led to madness?"

"It sure as hell happened to the Doane daughter."

"I see. And Helen's theft of the parrot had nothing to do with what happened to the family later, is that your hypothesis?"

"More or less. What do you think?" D'Agosta hoped to smoke out Pendergast's opinion.

"I think that coincidences do not please me, Vincent."

D'Agosta hesitated. "Look, another thing I've been wondering... was, or I mean did, Helen--sometimes act weird, or... odd?"

Pendergast's expression seemed to tighten. "I'm not sure I know what you mean."

"It's just these..." D'Agosta hesitated again. "These sudden trips to strange destinations. The secrets. This stealing of birds, first two dead ones from a museum, then a live one from a family. Is it possible Helen was under some kind of strain, maybe--or was, you know, suffering from some nervous condition? Because back in Rockland I heard rumors that her family was not exactly normal..."

He fell silent when the ambient temperature around their seats seemed to fall about ten degrees.

Pendergast's expression did not alter, but when he spoke there was a distant, formal edge to his voice. "Helen Esterhazy may have been unusual. But she was also one of the most rational, the most sane people I ever encountered."

"I'm sure she was. I wasn't implying--"

"And she was also the least likely to crack under pressure."

"Right," D'Agosta said hastily. Bringing this up was a bad idea.

"I think our time would be better spent discussing the subject at hand," Pendergast said, forcing the conversation onto a new track. "There are a few things you ought to know about him." He plucked a thin envelope from his jacket pocket, pulled out a sheet of paper. "John Woodhouse Blast. Age fifty-eight. Born in Florence, South Carolina. Current residence Forty-one Twelve Beach Road, Siesta Key. He's had several occupations: art dealer, gallery owner, import/export--and he was also an engraver and printer." He put back the sheet of paper. "His engravings were of a rather specialized kind."

"What kind is that?"

"The kind that features portraits of dead presidents."

"He was a counterfeiter?"

"The Secret Service investigated him. Nothing was ever proven. He was also investigated for smuggling elephant ivory and rhinoceros horn--both illegal since the 1989 Endangered Species Convention. Again, nothing was proven."

"This guy is slipperier than an eel."

"He is clearly resourceful, determined--and dangerous." Pendergast paused a moment. "There is one other relevant aspect... his name: John Woodhouse Blast."

"Yeah?"

"He's the direct descendant of John James Audubon through his son, John Woodhouse Audubon."

"No shit."

"John Woodhouse was an artist in his own right. He completed Audubon's final work, Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, painting nearly half the plates himself after his father's sudden decline."

D'Agosta whistled. "So Blast probably feels the Black Frame is his birthright."

"That was my assumption. It would appear he spent much of his adult life searching for it, although in recent years he apparently gave up."

"So what's he doing now?"

"I've been unable to find out. He's keeping his present dealings close to his vest." Pendergast glanced out the window. "We shall have to be careful, Vincent. Very careful."


28



Sarasota, Florida

SIESTA KEY WAS A REVELATION TO D'AGOSTA: narrow, palm-lined avenues; emerald lawns leading down to jewel-like azure inlets; sinuous canals on which pleasure boats bobbed lazily. The beach itself was wide, its sand white and fine as sugar, and it stretched north and south into mist and haze. On one side rolled creamy ocean; on the other sat a procession of condos and luxury hotels, punctuated by swimming pools and haciendas and restaurants. It was sunset. As he watched, the sunbathers and sand-castle builders and beachcombers all seemed to pause, as if at some invisible signal, to look west. Beach chairs were reoriented; video cameras were held up. D'Agosta followed the general gaze. The sun was sinking into the Gulf of Mexico, a semicircle of orange fire. He had never before seen a sunset unimpeded by cityscapes or New Jersey, and it surprised him: one minute the sun was there, falling, measurably falling behind the endless flat line of the horizon... and then it was gone, strewing pink bands of afterglow in its wake. He licked his lips, tasted the faint sea air. It wasn't much of a stretch to imagine himself and Laura moving to a place like this once he'd put in his twenty.

Blast's condo was on the top floor of a luxury high-rise overlooking the beach. They took the elevator up, and Pendergast rang the bell. There was a long delay, then a faint scratching sound as the peephole cover was swiveled aside. Another, briefer delay, followed by the unlocking and opening of the door. A man stood on the far side, short, slightly built, with a full head of brilliantined black hair combed straight back. "Yes?"

Pendergast offered his shield and D'Agosta did the same. "Mr. Blast?" Pendergast inquired.

The man looked from one shield to the other, then at Pendergast. There was no fear or anxiety in his eyes, D'Agosta noted--only mild curiosity.

"May we come in?"

The man considered this a moment. Then he opened the door wider.

They passed through a front hall into a living room that was opulently if gaudily decorated. Heavy gold curtains framed a picture window looking out over the ocean. Thick white shag carpeting covered the floor. A faint smell of incense hung in the air. Two Pomeranians, one white and one black, glared at them from a nearby ottoman.

D'Agosta turned his attention back to Blast. The man looked nothing like his ancestor Audubon. He was small and fussy, with a pencil mustache and--given the climate--a remarkable lack of tan. Yet his movements were quick and lithe, betraying none of the languid decadence of the surrounding decor.

"Would you care to sit down?" he said, motioning them toward a brace of massive armchairs upholstered in crimson velvet. He spoke with the faintest of southern drawls.

Pendergast took a seat, and D'Agosta did the same. Blast sank into a white leather sofa across from them. "I assume you're not here about my rental property on Shell Road?"

"Quite correct," Pendergast replied.

"Then how can I help you?"

Pendergast let the question hang in the air for a moment before answering. "We're here about the Black Frame."

Blast's surprise manifested itself only in a faint widening of the eyes. After a moment he smiled, displaying brilliant little white teeth. It was not a particularly friendly smile. The man reminded D'Agosta of a mink, sleek and ready to bite. "Are you offering to sell?"

Pendergast shook his head. "No. We wish to examine it."

"Always preferable to know one's competition," said Blast.

Pendergast threw one leg over the other. "Odd you should mention competition. Because that's another reason we're here."

Blast cocked his head to one side quizzically.

"Helen Esterhazy Pendergast." The FBI agent slowly enunciated each word.

This time Blast remained absolutely still. He looked from Pendergast to D'Agosta, then back. "I'm sorry, as long as we're on the subject of names: may I have yours, please?"

"Special Agent Pendergast," he said. "And this is my associate, Lieutenant D'Agosta."

"Helen Esterhazy Pendergast," Blast repeated. "A relative of yours?"

"She was my wife," said Pendergast coldly.

The little man spread his hands. "Never heard the name in my life. Desolee. Now, if that's all...?" He stood.

Pendergast rose abruptly as well. D'Agosta stiffened, but instead of physically confronting Blast, as he feared, the agent clasped his hands behind his back, walked over to the picture window, and gazed out of it. Then he turned and roamed about the room, examining the various paintings, one after the other, as if he were in a museum gallery. Blast remained where he was, motionless, only his eyes moving as they followed the agent. Pendergast moved into the front hall, paused a moment in front of a closet door. His hand suddenly dipped into his black suit, removed something, touched the closet door; and then quite suddenly he threw it open.

Blast started for him. "What the devil--?" he cried angrily.

Pendergast reached into the closet, shoved aside several items, and pulled out a long fur coat from the back; it bore the familiar yellow-and-black stripes of a tiger.

"How dare you invade my privacy!" Blast said, still advancing.

Pendergast shook out the coat, gazing up and down. "Fit for a princess," he said, turning to Blast with a smile. "Absolutely genuine." He reached in the closet again, pushing aside more coats while Blast stood there, red with anger. "Ocelot, margay... quite a gallery of endangered species. And they are new, certainly more recent than the CITES ban of 1989, not to mention the '72 ESA."

He returned the furs to the closet, closed the door. "The US Fish and Wildlife law enforcement office would no doubt take an interest in your collection. Shall we call them?"

Blast's response surprised D'Agosta. Instead of protesting further, he visibly relaxed. Baring his teeth in another smile, he looked Pendergast up and down with something like appreciation. "Please," he said with a gesture. "I see we have more to talk about. Sit down."

Pendergast returned to his seat and Blast resumed his own.

"If I am able to help you... what about the fate of my little collection?" Blast nodded toward the closet.

"It depends on how well the conversation goes."

Blast exhaled: a long, slow hissing sound.

"Allow me to repeat the name," said Pendergast. "Helen Esterhazy Pendergast."

"Yes, yes, I remember your wife well." He folded his manicured hands. "Please forgive my earlier dissembling. Long experience has taught me to be reticent."

"Proceed," Pendergast replied coldly.

Blast shrugged. "Your wife and I were competitors. I wasted the better part of twenty years looking for the Black Frame. I heard she was sniffing around, asking questions about it, too. I wasn't pleased, to say the least. As you are no doubt aware, I am Audubon's great-great-great-grandson. The painting was mine--by birthright. No one should have the right to profit from it--except me.

"Audubon painted the Black Frame at the sanatorium but did not take it with him. The most likely scenario, I postulated, was that he gave it to one of the three doctors who treated him. One of them disappeared completely. Another moved back to Berlin--if he'd had the painting, it was either destroyed by war or irretrievably lost. I focused my search on the third doctor, Torgensson--more out of hope than anything else." He spread his hands. "It was through this connection I ran into your wife. I met her only once."

"Where and when?"

"Fifteen years ago, maybe. No, not quite fifteen. At Torgensson's old estate on the outskirts of Port Allen."

"And what happened, exactly, at this meeting?" Pendergast's voice was taut.

"I told her exactly what I just told you: that the painting was mine by birthright, and I expressed my desire that she drop her search."

"And what did Helen say?" Pendergast's voice was even icier.

Blast took a deep breath. "That's the funny thing."

Pendergast waited. The air seemed to freeze.

"Remember what you said earlier about the Black Frame? 'We wish to examine it,' you said. That's exactly what she said. She told me she didn't want to own the painting. She didn't want to profit from it. She just wanted to examine it. As far as she was concerned, she said, the painting could be mine. I was delighted to hear it and we shook hands. We parted friends, you might say." Another thin smile.

"What was her exact wording?"

"She said to me, 'I understand you've been looking for this a long time. Please understand, I don't want to own it, I just want to examine it. I want to confirm something. If I find it I'll turn it over to you--but in return you have to promise that if you find it first, you'll give me free rein to study it.' I was delighted with the arrangement."

"Bullshit!" D'Agosta said, rising from his chair. He could contain himself no longer. "Helen spent years searching for the painting--just to look at it? No way. You're lying."

"So help me, it's the truth," Blast said. And he smiled his ferret-like smile.

"What happened next?" Pendergast asked.

"That was it. We went our separate ways. That was my one and only encounter with her. I never saw her again. And that is the God's truth."

"Never?" Pendergast asked.

"Never. And that's all I know."

"You know a great deal more," said Pendergast, suddenly smiling. "But before you speak further, Mr. Blast, let me offer you something that you apparently don't know--as a sign of trust."

First a stick, now a carrot, D'Agosta thought. He wondered where Pendergast was going with this.

"I have proof that Audubon gave the painting to Torgensson," said Pendergast.

Blast leaned forward, his face suddenly interested. "Proof, you say?"

"Yes."

A long silence ensued. Blast sat back. "Well then, now I'm more convinced than ever that the painting is gone. Destroyed when his last residence burned down."

"You mean, his estate outside Port Allen?" Pendergast asked. "I wasn't aware there was a fire."

Blast gave him a long look. "There's a lot you don't know, Mr. Pendergast. Port Allen was not Dr. Torgensson's final residence."

Pendergast was unable to conceal a look of surprise. "Indeed?"

"In the final years of his life, Torgensson fell into considerable financial embarrassment. He was being hounded by creditors: banks, local merchants, even the town for back taxes. Ultimately he was evicted from his Port Allen house. He moved into a shotgun shack by the river."

"How do you know all this?" D'Agosta demanded.

In response, Blast stood up and walked out of the room. D'Agosta heard a door open, the rustling of drawers. A minute later he returned with a folder in one hand. He handed it to Pendergast. "Torgensson's credit records. Take a look at the letter on top."

Pendergast pulled a yellowed sheet of ledger paper, roughly torn along one edge, from the folder. It was a letter scrawled on Pinkerton Agency letterhead. He began to read. " 'He has it. The fellow has it. But we find ourselves unable to locate it. We've searched the shanty from basement to eaves. It's as empty as the Port Allen house. There's nothing left of value, and certainly no painting of Audubon's.' "

Pendergast replaced the sheet, glanced through other documents, then closed the folder. "And you, ah, purloined this report so as to frustrate your competition, I presume."

"No point in helping one's enemies." Blast retrieved the folder, placed it on the sofa beside him. "But in the end it was all moot."

"And why is that?" Pendergast asked.

"Because a few months after he moved into the tenement, it was hit by lightning and burned down to its foundations--with Torgensson inside. If he hid the Black Frame elsewhere, the location is long forgotten. If he had it in the house somewhere, it burned up with everything else." Blast shrugged. "And that's when I finally gave up the search. No, Mr. Pendergast, I'm afraid the Black Frame no longer exists. I know: I wasted twenty years of my life proving it."

* * *

"I don't believe a word of it," D'Agosta said as they rode the elevator to the lobby. "He's just trying to make us believe Helen didn't want the painting to erase his motive for doing her harm. He's covering his ass, he doesn't want us to suspect him of her murder--it's as simple as that."

Pendergast didn't reply.

"The guy's obviously smart, you'd think he could come up with something a little less lame," D'Agosta went on. "They both wanted the painting and Helen was getting too close. Blast didn't want anybody else taking his rightful inheritance. Open and shut. And then there's the big-game connection, the ivory and fur smuggling. He's got contacts in Africa, he could have used them to set up the murder."

The elevator doors opened, and they walked through the lobby into the sea-moist night. Waves were sighing onto the sand, and lights twinkled from a million windows, turning the dark beach to the color of reflected fire. Mariachi music echoed faintly from a nearby restaurant.

"How did you know about that stuff?" D'Agosta asked as they walked toward the road.

Pendergast seemed to rouse himself. "I'm sorry?"

"The stuff in the closet? The furs?"

"By the scent."

"Scent?"

"As anyone who has owned one will confirm, big-cat furs have a faint scent, not unpleasant, a sort of perfumed musk, quite unmistakable. I know it well: my brother and I as children used to hide in our mother's fur closet. I knew the fellow smuggled ivory and rhino horn; it wasn't a big leap to think he was also trading in illegal furs."

"I see."

"Come on, Vincent--Caramino's is only two blocks from here. The best stone crab claws on the Gulf Coast, I'm told: excellent when washed down with icy vodka. And I feel rather in need of a drink."


29



New York City

WHEN CAPTAIN HAYWARD ENTERED THE shabby waiting area outside the interrogation rooms in the basement of One Police Plaza, the two witnesses she had called in leapt to their feet.

The homicide sergeant also rose, and Hayward frowned. "Okay, everyone sit down and relax. I'm not the president." She realized that all the gold on her shoulders probably was a bit intimidating, especially for someone who worked on a ship, but this was too much and it made her uncomfortable. "Sorry to call you out like this on a Sunday. Sergeant, I'll take one at a time, no particular order."

She passed into the interrogation room--one of the nicer ones, designed for questioning cooperative witnesses, not grilling uncooperative suspects. It had a coffee table, a desk, and a couple of chairs. The AV man was already there and he nodded, giving her a thumbs-up.

"Thanks," said Hayward. "Much appreciated, especially on such short notice." Her New Year's resolution had been to control her irritable temper with those below her on the totem pole. Those above still got the unvarnished treatment: Kick up, kiss down, that was her new motto.

She leaned her head out the door. "Send the first one in, please."

The sergeant brought in the first witness, who was still in uniform. She indicated a seat.

"I know you've already been questioned, but I hope you won't mind another round. I'll try to keep it short. Coffee, tea?"

"No thank you, Captain," the ship's officer said.

"You're the vessel's security director, is that correct?"

"Correct."

The security director was a harmless elderly gentleman with a shock of white hair and a pleasing British accent who looked like a retired police inspector from some small town in England. And that's probably, she thought, exactly what he is.

"So, what happened?" she asked. She always liked starting with general questions.

"Well, Captain, this first came to my attention shortly after sail-away. I had a report that one of the passengers, Constance Greene, was acting strangely."

"How so?"

"She'd brought on board her child, a baby of three months. This in itself was unusual--I can't recall a single case of a passenger ever bringing a baby quite that young aboard ship. Especially a single mother. I received a report that just after she boarded, a friendly passenger wanted to see her baby--and maybe got too close--and that Ms. Greene apparently threatened the passenger."

"What did you do?"

"I interviewed Ms. Greene in her cabin and concluded that she was nothing more than an overprotective mother--you know how some can be--and no real threat was intended. The passenger who complained was, I thought, a bit of a prying old busybody."

"How did she seem? Ms. Greene, I mean."

"Calm, collected, rather formal."

"And the baby?"

"There in the room with her, in a crib supplied by housekeeping. Asleep during my brief visit."

"And then?"

"Ms. Greene shut herself up in her cabin for three or four days. After that, she was seen about the ship for the rest of the voyage. There were no other incidents that I'm aware of--that is, until she couldn't produce her baby at passport control. The baby, you see, had been added to her passport, as is customary when a citizen gives birth abroad."

"Did she seem sane to you?"

"Quite sane, at least on my one interaction with her. And unusually poised for a young lady of her age."

The next witness was a purser who confirmed what the security director had said: that the passenger boarded with her baby, that she was fiercely protective of him, and that she had disappeared into her cabin for several days. Then, toward the middle of the crossing, she was seen taking meals in the restaurants and touring the ship without the baby. People assumed she had a nanny or was using the ship's babysitting service. She kept to herself, spoke to nobody, rebuffed all friendly gestures. "I thought," said the purser, "that she was one of these extremely rich eccentrics, you know, the kind who have so much money they can act as they please and there's no one to say otherwise. And..." He hesitated.

"Go on."

"Toward the end of the voyage, I began to think she was maybe just a little bit... mad."

Hayward paused at the door to the small holding cell. She had never met Constance Greene but had heard plenty from Vinnie. He had always spoken of her as if she were older, but when the door swung open Hayward was astonished to see a young woman of no more than twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, her dark hair cut in a stylish if old-fashioned bob, sitting primly on the fold-down bunk, still formally dressed from the ship.

"May I come in?"

Constance Greene looked at her. Hayward prided herself on being able to read a person's eyes, but these were unfathomable.

"Please do."

Hayward took a seat on the lone chair in the room. Could this woman really have thrown her own child into the Atlantic? "I'm Captain Hayward."

"Delighted to make your acquaintance, Captain."

Under the circumstances, the antique graciousness of the greeting gave Hayward the creeps. "I'm a friend of Lieutenant D'Agosta, whom you know, and I have also worked on occasion with your, ah, uncle, Special Agent Pendergast."

"Not uncle. Aloysius is my legal guardian. We're not related." She corrected Hayward primly, punctiliously.

"I see. Do you have any family?"

"No," came the quick, sharp reply. "They are long dead and gone."

"I'm sorry. First, I wonder if you could help me out with a detail here--we're having a little trouble locating your legal records. Do you happen to know your Social Security number?"

"I don't have a Social Security number."

"Where were you born?"

"Here in New York City. On Water Street."

"The name of the hospital?"

"I was born at home."

"I see." Hayward decided to give up this particular line; their legal department would eventually straighten it out, and, if the truth be admitted, she was just avoiding the difficult questions to come.

"Constance, I'm in the homicide division, but this isn't my case. I'm just here on a fact-finding mission. You're under no obligation to answer any of my questions and this is not official. Do you understand?"

"I understand perfectly, thank you."

Once again Hayward was struck by the old-fashioned cadence of her speech; something about the way she held herself; something in those eyes, so old and wise, that seemed out of place in such a young body.

She took a deep breath. "Did you really throw your baby into the ocean?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because he was evil. Like his father."

"And the father is...?"

"Dead."

"What was his name?"

Silence fell in the room. The cool violet eyes never wavered from her own, and Hayward understood, better than from anything Greene might have said, that she would never, ever answer the question.

"Why did you come back? You were abroad--why come home now?"

"Because Aloysius will need my help."

"Help? What sort of help?"

Constance remained motionless. "He is unprepared to face the betrayal that awaits him."


30



Savannah, Georgia

JUDSON ESTERHAZY STOOD AMID THE ANTIQUES and overstuffed furniture of his den, looking out one of the tall windows facing Whitfield Square, now deserted. A chill rain dripped from the palmettos and central cupola, collecting in puddles on the brick pavements of Habersham Street. To D'Agosta, standing beside him, Helen's brother seemed different on this visit. The easygoing, courtly manner had vanished. The handsome face appeared troubled, tense, its features drawn.

"And she never mentioned her interest in parrots, the Carolina Parakeet in particular?"

Esterhazy shook his head. "Never."

"And the Black Frame? You never heard her mention it, even in passing?"

Another shake of the head. "This is all new to me. I'm as much at a loss to explain it as you are."

"I know how painful this must be."

Esterhazy turned from the window. His jaw worked in what to D'Agosta seemed barely controlled rage. "Not nearly as painful as learning of this fellow Blast. You say he has a record?"

"Of arrests. No convictions."

"That doesn't mean he's innocent," Esterhazy said.

"Quite the opposite," said D'Agosta.

Esterhazy glanced his way. "And not just things like blackmail and forgery. You mentioned assault and battery."

D'Agosta nodded.

"And he was after this--this Black Frame, too?"

"As bad as anybody ever wanted anything," said D'Agosta.

Esterhazy's hands clenched; he turned back to the window.

"Judson," Pendergast said, "remember what I told you--"

"You lost a wife," Esterhazy said over his shoulder, "I lost a little sister. You never quite get over it but at least you can come to terms with it. But now, to learn this..." He drew in a long breath. "And not only that, but this criminal might have been involved in some way--"

"We don't know that for a fact," Pendergast said.

"But you can be damn sure we're going to find out," said D'Agosta.

Esterhazy did not respond. He merely continued looking out the window, his jaw working slowly, his gaze far away.


31



Sarasota, Florida

THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY MILES TO THE south, another man was staring out another window.

John Woodhouse Blast looked down at the beachcombers and sunbathers ten stories below; at the long white lines of surf curling in toward the shore; at the beach that stretched almost to infinity. He turned away and walked across the living room, pausing briefly before a gilt mirror. The drawn face that stared back at him reflected the agitation of a sleepless night.

He'd been careful, so very careful. How could this be happening to him now? That pale death's-head of an avenging angel, appearing on his doorstep so unexpectedly... He had always played a conservative game, never taking risks. And it had worked, until now...

The stillness of the room was broken by the ring of a telephone. Blast jumped at the sudden sound. He strode over to it, plucked the handset from the cradle. From the ottoman, the two Pomeranians watched his every move.

"It's Victor. What's up?"

"Christ, Victor, it's about time you called back. Where the hell have you been?"

"Out," a rough, gravelly voice replied. "Is there a problem?"

"You bet there's a problem. A monstrous big fucking problem. An FBI agent came sniffing around last night."

"Anybody we know?"

"Name of Pendergast. Had an NYPD cop with him, too."

"What did they want?"

"What do you think they wanted? He knows too much, Victor--way too much. We're going to have to take care of this, and right away."

"You mean..." The gravelly voice hesitated.

"That's right. It's time to roll everything up."

"Everything?"

"Everything. You know what to do, Victor. See that it gets done. See that it gets done right away." Blast slammed down the phone and stared out the window at the endless blue horizon.


32



THE DIRT TRACK WOUND THROUGH THE PINEY forest and came out in a big meadow at the edge of a mangrove swamp. The shooter parked the Range Rover in the meadow and removed the gun case, portfolio, and backpack from the rear. He carried them to a small hillock in the center of the field, setting them down in the matted grass. He took a paper target from the portfolio and walked down the field to the swamp, counting his strides. The noonday sun pierced through the cypress trees, casting flecks of light across the green-brown water.

Selecting a smooth, broad trunk, the shooter pinned a target to the wood, tacking it down with an upholstery hammer. It was a warmish day for winter, in the low sixties, the smell of water and rotting wood drifting in from the swamp, a flock of noisy crows croaking and screeching in the branches. The nearest house was ten miles away. There wasn't a breath of wind.

He walked back up to where he had left his gear, counting his steps again, satisfied that the target was about a hundred yards away.

He opened the hard Pelican case and removed the rifle from it: a Remington 40-XS tactical. At fifteen pounds, it was a heavy son of a bitch, but the trade-off was a better-than-0.75 MOA accuracy. The shooter hadn't fired the weapon in quite some time, but it was now cleaned and oiled and ready to go.

He knelt, laying it over his knee, and flipped down the bipod, adjusting and locking it in place. Then he lay down in the matted grass, set the rifle in front of him, moving it around until it was stable and solid. He closed one eye and peered through the Leupold scope at the target affixed to the tree. So far, so good. Reaching into his back pocket, he removed a box of .308 Winchester rounds and placed it in the grass to his right. Plucking out a round, he pushed it into the chamber, then another, until the four-round internal magazine was full. He closed the bolt and looked again through the scope.

He aimed at the target, breathing slowly, letting his heart rate subside. The faint trembling and movement of the weapon, as evident from the motion of the target in the crosshairs, subsided as he allowed his entire body to relax. He placed his finger on the trigger and tightened slightly, let his breath run out, counted the heartbeats, and then squeezed between them. A crack, a small kick. He ejected the shell, resumed breathing, relaxed again, and gave the trigger another slow squeeze. Another crack and kick, the sound rolling away quickly over the swampy flatlands. Two more shots finished the magazine. He rose to his feet, gathered the four shells, put them in his pocket, and walked down to inspect the target.

It was a fairly tight grouping, the rounds close enough to have cut an irregular hole to the left and slightly below the center of the target. Removing a plastic ruler from his pocket, he measured the offset, turned and walked back across the meadow, moving slowly to keep his exertion down. He lay down again, gathered the rifle into his hands, and adjusted the elevation and windage knobs on the scope to take his measurements into account.

Once again, with great deliberation, he fired four rounds at the target. This time the grouping lay dead center, all four rounds more or less placed in the same hole. Satisfied, he pulled the target off the tree trunk, balled it up, and stuffed it in his pocket.

He walked back to the center of the field and resumed firing position. It was now time for a little fun. When he first began firing, the flock of crows had risen in noisy flight and settled about three hundred yards away at the far edge of the field. Now he could see them on the ground under a tall yellow pine, strutting about in the needle duff and picking out seeds from a scattering of cones.

Peering through the scope, the man selected a crow and followed it in the crosshairs as it pecked and jabbed at a cone, shaking it with its beak. His forefinger tightened on the curved steel; the shot rang out; and the bird disappeared in a spray of black feathers, splattering the nearby tree trunk with bits of red flesh. The rest of the flock rose in an uproar, bursting into the blue and winging away across the treetops.

The man looked about for another target, this time aiming the scope down toward the swamp. Slowly, he swept the edge of the swamp until he found it: a massive bullfrog about 150 yards off, resting on a lily pad in a little patch of sun. Once again he aimed, relaxed, and fired; a pink cloud flew up, mingled with green water and bits of lily pad, arcing through the sunlight and gracefully falling back into the water. His third round clipped the head off a water moccasin, thrashing through the water in a frightened effort to get away.

One more round. He needed something really challenging. He cast about, looking around the swamp with a bare eye, but the shooting had disturbed the wildlife and there was nothing to be seen. He would have to wait.

He went back to the Range Rover and removed a soft-canvas shotgun case from the rear, unzipped it, and took out a CZ Bobwhite side-by-side 12-gauge with a custom-carved stock. It was the cheapest shotgun he owned, but it was still an excellent weapon and he hated what he was now about to do. He rummaged around in the Rover, removing a portable vise and a hacksaw with a brand-new blade.

He laid the shotgun over his knees and stroked the barrels, rubbed them down with a little gun oil, and laid a paper tape measure alongside. Marking off a spot with a nail, he put the hacksaw to it and went to work.

It was a long, tedious, exhausting business. When he was finished, he filed the burr off the end with a rattail, gave it a quick bevel, brushed it with steel wool, and then oiled it again. He broke the action and carefully cleaned out loose filings, then dunked in two shotgun shells. He strolled down to the swamp with the gun and the sawed-off barrels, flung the barrels as far out into the water as he could, braced the gun at his waist, and pulled the front trigger.

The blast was deafening and it kicked like a mule. Crude, vile--and devastatingly effective. The second barrel discharged perfectly as well. He broke the action again, put the shells in his pocket, wiped it clean, and reloaded. It worked smoothly a second time around. He was pained, but satisfied.

Back at the car, he slid the shotgun back in its case, put the case away, and removed a sandwich and thermos from his pack. He ate slowly, savoring the truffled fois gras sandwich while sipping a cup of hot tea with milk and sugar from the thermos. He made an effort to enjoy the fresh air and sun and not think about the problem at hand. As he was finishing, a female red-tailed hawk rose up from the swamp, no doubt from a nest, and began tracing lazy circles above the treetops. He estimated her distance at about two hundred fifty yards.

Now this, finally, was a challenge worthy of his skill.

He once more assumed a shooting position with the sniper rifle, aiming at the bird, but the scope's field of view was too narrow and he couldn't keep her in it. He would have to use his iron sights instead. He now peered at the hawk using those fixed sights, trying to follow her as she moved. Still no go: the rifle was too heavy and the bird too fast. She was tracing an ellipsis, and the way to hit her, he decided, was to pre-aim for a point on that ellipsis, wait until the hawk circled around toward it, and time the shot.

A moment later the hawk tumbled from the sky, a few feathers drifting along after her, carried off on the wind.

The shooter folded away the bipod, picked up and re-counted all the shells, put the gun back in its case, packed away his lunch and thermos, and hefted his pack. He gave the area one last look-over, but the only sign of his presence was a patch of matted grass.

He turned back toward the Range Rover with a deep feeling of satisfaction. Now, at least for a while, he could give free vent to his feelings, allow them to flow through his body, spiking his adrenaline, preparing him for the killing to come.


33



Port Allen, Louisiana

D'AGOSTA STOOD OUTSIDE THE VISITOR'S CENTER in brilliant afternoon sunlight, looking down Court Street toward the river. Besides the center itself--a fine old brick building, spotlessly renovated and updated--everything seemed brand new: the shops, the civic buildings, the scattering of homes along the riverbank. It was hard to believe that, somewhere in the immediate vicinity, John James Audubon's doctor had lived and died nearly 150 years before.

"Originally, this was known as St. Michel," Pendergast said at his side. "Port Allen was first laid out in 1809, but within fifty years more than half of it had been eaten away by the Mississippi. Shall we walk down to the riverfront promenade?"

He set off at a brisk pace, and D'Agosta followed in his wake, trying to keep up. He was exhausted and wondered how Pendergast maintained his energy after a week of nonstop traveling by car and plane, charging from one place to the next, rolling into bed at midnight and waking at dawn. Port Allen felt like one place too many.

First they had gone to see Dr. Torgensson's penultimate dwelling: an attractive old brick residence west of town, now a funeral home. They had rushed to the town hall where Pendergast had charmed a secretary, who allowed him to paw through some old plans and books. And now they were here, on the banks of the Mississippi itself, where Blast claimed Dr. Torgensson had spent his final unpleasant months in a shotgun shack, ruined, in a syphilitic and alcoholic stupor.

The riverfront promenade was broad and grand, and the view from the levee was spectacular: Baton Rouge spread out across the far bank, barges and tugs working their way up the wide flow of chocolate-colored water.

"That's the Port Allen Lock," Pendergast said, waving his hand toward a large break in the levee, ending in two huge yellow gates. "Largest free-floating structure of its kind. It connects the river to the Intracoastal Waterway."

They walked a few blocks along the promenade. D'Agosta felt himself reviving under the influence of the fresh breeze coming off the river. They stopped at an information booth, where Pendergast scanned the advertisements and notice boards. "How tragic--we've missed the Lagniappe Dulcimer Fete," he said.

D'Agosta shot a private glance toward Pendergast. Given how hard he'd taken the shock of his wife's murder, the agent had taken the news about Constance Greene--which Hayward had given them yesterday--with remarkably little emotion. No matter how long D'Agosta knew Pendergast, it seemed he never really knew him. The man obviously cared for Constance--and yet he seemed almost indifferent to the fact that she was now in custody, charged with infanticide.

Pendergast strolled back out of the booth and walked across the greensward toward the river itself, pausing at the remains of a ruined sluice gate, now half underwater. "In the early nineteenth century, the business district would have been two or three blocks out there," he said, pointing into the roiling mass of water. "Now it belongs to the river."

He led the way back across the promenade and Commerce Avenue, made a left on Court Street and a right on Atchafalaya. "By the time Dr. Torgensson was forced to move into his final dwelling," he said, "St. Michel had become West Baton Rouge. At the time, this neighborhood was a seedy, working-class community between the railroad depot and the ferry landing."

He turned down another street; consulted the map again; walked a little farther and halted. "I do believe," he drawled, "that we have arrived."

They had arrived at a small commercial mini-mall. Three buildings sat side by side: a McDonald's; a mobile phone store; and a squat, garishly colored structure named Pappy's Donette Hole--a crusty local chain D'Agosta had seen elsewhere. Two cars were parked in front of Pappy's, and the McDonald's drive-through was doing a brisk business.

"This is it?" he exclaimed.

Pendergast nodded, pointing at the cell phone store. "That is the precise location of Torgensson's shotgun shack."

D'Agosta looked at each of the buildings in turn. His spirits, which had begun to rise during the brief walk, fell again. "It's like Blast said," he muttered. "Totally hopeless."

Pendergast put his hands in his pockets and strolled up to the mini-mall. He ducked into each of the buildings in turn. D'Agosta, who could not summon the energy to follow, merely stood in the adjoining parking lot and watched. Within five minutes the agent had returned. Saying nothing, he did a slow scan of the horizon, turning almost imperceptibly, until he had carefully scrutinized everything within a three-hundred-sixty-degree radius. Then he did it again, this time stopping about halfway through his scan.

"Take a look at that building, Vincent," he said.

D'Agosta followed the gesture with his eyes toward the visitor's center they had passed at the beginning of their loop.

"What about it?" D'Agosta asked.

"That was clearly once a water-pumping station. The Gothic Revival style indicates it probably dates back to the original town of St. Michel." He paused. "Yes," he murmured after a moment. "I'm sure it does."

D'Agosta waited.

Pendergast turned and pointed in the opposite direction. From this vantage point they had an unobstructed view down to the promenade, the ruined sluice gate, and the wide Mississippi beyond.

"How curious," Pendergast said. "This little mini-mall falls on a direct line between that old pumping station and the sluice gate at the river."

Pendergast broke into a swift walk toward the river again. D'Agosta swung in behind.

Stopping almost at the water's edge, Pendergast bent forward to examine the sluice gate. D'Agosta could see it led to a large stone pipe that was sealed with cement and partially backfilled.

Pendergast straightened up. "Just as I thought. There was an old aqueduct here."

"Yeah? So what's it mean?"

"That aqueduct was no doubt abandoned and sealed up when the eastern half of St. Michel crumbled into the river. Remarkable!"

D'Agosta did not share his friend's enthusiasm for historical detail.

"Surely you see it now, Vincent? Torgensson's shack must have been built after this aqueduct was sealed up."

D'Agosta shrugged. For the life of him, he didn't see where Pendergast was going.

"In this part of the world it was common--for buildings constructed over the line of an old water pipe or aqueduct, anyway--to cut into an old aqueduct and use it as a basement. It saved a great deal of labor when basements were dug by hand."

"You think the pipe is still down there--?"

"Exactly. When the shack was built in 1855, they probably used a section of the capped and abandoned tunnel--now quite dry, of course--as the basement. Those old aqueducts were square, not round, and made of mortared stone. The builders merely had to shore up the foundations, construct two brick walls on the sides perpendicular to the existing aqueduct walls, and--voila! Instant basement."

"And you think that's where we'll find the Black Frame?" D'Agosta asked a little breathlessly. "In Torgensson's basement?"

"No. Not in the basement. Remember the creditor's note Blast showed us? 'We've searched the shack from basement to eaves. It has proven empty, nothing left of value, certainly no painting.' "

"If it's not in the basement, then what's all the excitement about?" Pendergast's coyness could be so maddening sometimes.

"Think: a series of row houses, situated in a line above a preexisting tunnel, each with a basement fashioned from a segment of that tunnel. But, Vincent--think also of the spaces between the houses. Remember, the basements would be roughly the size of the houses above them."

"So... so you're saying there would be old spaces between the basements."

"Precisely. Sections of the old aqueduct between each basement, bricked off and unused. And that's where Torgensson might have hidden the Black Frame."

"Why hide it so well?"

"We can assume that if the painting was so precious to the doctor that he could not part with it even in the greatest penury, then it would be precious enough that he would not want to ever be far from it. And yet he had to hide it well from his creditors."

"But the house was struck by lightning. It burned to the ground."

"True. But if our logic is correct, the painting would likely have been safe in its niche, secure in the aqueduct tunnel between his basement and the next."

"So all we have to do is get into the basement of the wireless store."

Pendergast put a restraining hand on his arm. "Alas, that wireless store has no basement. I checked when I went inside. The basement of the structure that predated it must have been filled in after the fire."

Once again, D'Agosta felt a huge deflation. "Then what the hell are we going to do? We can't just get a bulldozer, raze the store, and dig a new basement."

"No. But we just might be able to make our way into the tunnel space from one of the adjacent basements, which I confirmed still exist. The question is: which one to try first?" Once again, that gleam that had been so often absent in recent days returned to Pendergast's eyes: the gleam of the hunt. "I'm in the mood for doughnuts," he said. "How about you?"


34



St. Francisville, Louisiana

PAINSTAKINGLY, MORRIS BLACKLETTER, PHD, FITTED the servo mechanism to the rear wheel assembly. He checked it, checked it again, then plugged the USB cable from the guidance control unit into his laptop and ran a diagnostic. It checked out. He wrote a simple four-line program, downloaded it into the control unit, and gave the execute command. The little robot--a rather ugly confabulation of processors, motors, and sensory inputs, set atop fat rubber wheels--engaged its forward motor, rolled across the floor for exactly five seconds, then stopped abruptly.

Blackletter felt a flush of triumph all out of proportion with the achievement. Throughout his vacation--staring at English cathedrals, sitting in dimly lit pubs--he'd been anticipating this moment.

Years ago, Blackletter had read a study explaining how retired people frequently acquired interests diametrically different from the work that had occupied their professional lives. That, he thought ruefully, was certainly the case with him. All those years in the health profession--first at Doctors With Wings, later at a succession of pharmaceutical and medical research labs--he had been obsessed with the human body: how it worked, what made it fail, how to keep it healthy or cure its ills. And now here he was, toying with robots--the antithesis of flesh and blood. When they burned out, you just threw them away and ordered another. No grief, no death.

How different it was from those years he'd spent in Third World countries, parched and mosquito-bitten, threatened by guerrilla fighters and harassed by corruption, sometimes sick himself--working to contain epidemics. He had saved hundreds, maybe thousands of lives, but so many, many others had died. It hadn't been his fault, of course. But then there was the other thing, the thing he tried never to think about. That, more than anything, was what caused him to flee flesh and blood for the contentment of plastic and silicon...

Here he was, thinking about it again. He shook his head as if to rid himself of the terrible guilt of it and glanced back at the robot. Slowly, the guilt drained away--what was done was done, and his motives had always been pure. A smile settled over his features. He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

The robot's audio sensor took note, and it swiveled toward the sound. "Robo want a cracker," it croaked in a metallic disembodied voice.

Feeling absurdly pleased, Blackletter rose to his feet and walked from his den to the kitchen for one last cup of tea before calling it a night. He suddenly paused, hand on the teapot, listening.

There it came again: the creak of a board.

Slowly, Blackletter set the pot back on the counter. Was it the wind? But no: it was a quiet, windless night.

Somebody in the street, perhaps? The sound was too close, too clear for that.

Perhaps it was all in his mind. Minds had a tendency to do that, he knew: the absence of real auditory stimuli frequently encouraged the brain to supply its own. He'd been puttering about in his den for hours, and...

Another creak. This time Blackletter knew for certain: the sound had come from inside the house.

"Who's that?" he called out. The creaking stopped.

Was it a burglar? Unlikely. There were far larger, grander houses on the street than his.

Who, then?

The creaking resumed, regular, deliberate. And now he could tell where it was coming from: the living room at the front of the house.

He glanced toward the phone, saw the empty cradle. Damn these cordless phones. Where had he left the handset? Of course--it was in the den, on the table by the laptop.

He walked quickly back into the room, plucked the telephone from the wooden surface. Then he froze. Somebody was in the hall just beyond. A tall man in a long trench coat stepped forward from the darkness.

"What are you doing in my house?" he demanded. "What do you want?"

The intruder did not speak. Instead, he pulled back his coat, revealing the twin barrels of a sawed-off shotgun. The butt-stock was of a heavy black wood, carved in paisley rosettes, and the bluing of the barrels gleamed faintly in the light of the den.

Blackletter found that he was unable to take his eyes from the weapon. He took a step back. "Wait," he began. "Don't. You're making a mistake... we can talk..."

The weapon swiveled upward. There was a tremendous boom-boom as both barrels fired almost simultaneously. Blackletter was flung backward, impacting the far wall with a shattering crash, then slumping to the ground. Framed pictures and knickknacks rained down around him from little wooden shelves.

The front door was already closing.

The robot, its audio sensors alerted, swiveled toward the motionless form of its builder. "Robo want a cracker," it said, the tinny voice muffled by the blood now coating its miniature speaker. "Robo want a cracker."


35



Port Allen, Louisiana

THE FOLLOWING DAY WAS AS DARK AND RAINY as the previous day had been pleasant. That was just fine with D'Agosta--there would be fewer customers to deal with at the doughnut shop. He had deep misgivings about this whole scheme of Pendergast's.

Pendergast, behind the wheel of the Rolls, took the Port Allen exit from I-10, the wheels hissing on the wet asphalt. D'Agosta sat beside him, turning the pages of the New Orleans Star-Picayune. "I don't see why we couldn't do this at night," he said.

"The establishment has a burglar alarm. And the noise would be more apparent."

"You better do the talking. I have a feeling my Queens accent wouldn't go down well in these parts."

"An excellent point, Vincent."

D'Agosta noticed Pendergast glancing once again in the rearview mirror. "We got company?" he asked.

Pendergast merely smiled in return. Rather than his habitual black suit, he was wearing a plaid work shirt and denims. Instead of resembling an undertaker, he now looked like a gravedigger.

D'Agosta turned another page, paused at an article headlined Retired Scientist Murdered in Home. "Hey, Pendergast," he said after scanning the opening paragraphs. "Look at this: that guy you wanted to talk to, Morris Blackletter, Helen's old boss, was just found murdered in his house."

"Murdered? How?"

"Shotgunned."

"Do the police suspect a robbery gone wrong?"

"The article doesn't say."

"He must have just returned from his vacation. A great pity we didn't get to him earlier--he could have been rather useful."

"Somebody else got to him first. And I can guess who that somebody was." D'Agosta shook his head. "Maybe we should go back to Florida and sweat Blast."

Pendergast turned onto Court Street, heading for downtown and the river. "Perhaps. But I find Blast's motive to be obscure."

"Not at all. Helen might have told Blackletter about Blast threatening her." D'Agosta folded the paper, shoved it between the seat and the center pedestal. "We talk to Blast, and the following night Blackletter is killed. You're the one who doesn't buy coincidences."

Pendergast looked thoughtful. But instead of replying, he turned off Court Street and nosed the Rolls into a parking lot a block short of their destination. They stepped out into the drizzle, and Pendergast opened the trunk. He passed D'Agosta a yellow construction helmet and a large canvas workbag. He took out another helmet, which he fitted onto his head. Lastly, he pulled out a heavy tool belt--from which dangled an assortment of flashlights, measuring tapes, wire cutters, and other equipment--and buckled it around his waist.

"Shall we?" he said.

Pappy's Donette Hole was quiet: two plump girls stood behind the counter while a lone customer ordered a dozen double-chocolate FatOnes. Pendergast waited until the customer paid and left, then stepped forward, construction belt jangling.

"Manager around?" he said in a demanding voice, his southern accent sinking about five notches in refinement.

One of the girls wordlessly turned and went into the back. A minute later, she returned with a middle-aged man. His thick forearms were coated in blond hair, and he was sweating despite the cool of the day.

"Yeah?" he said, wiping flour onto an apron already heavy with grease and doughnut batter.

"You're the manager?"

"Yeah."

Pendergast reached into the back pocket of his denims, brought out an ID billfold. "We're from the Buildings Department, Code Enforcement Division. My name's Addison and my partner here is Steele."

The man scrutinized the ID Pendergast had doctored up the night before, then grunted. "So what do you want?"

Pendergast put away the billfold and pulled out a few stapled sheets of official-looking paper. "Our office has been conducting an audit of the construction and permits records of buildings in the general vicinity, and we've found several of them--including yours--that have problems. Big problems."

The man looked at the outstretched sheets, frowning. "What kind of problems?"

"Irregularities in the permitting process. Structural issues."

"That can't be," he said. "We get our inspections regular, just like the food and sanitation--"

"We're not food inspectors," Pendergast interrupted sarcastically. "The records show this structure was built without the proper permits."

"Hold on, now. We been here a dozen years--"

"Just why do you think the audit was ordered?" Pendergast said, still waving the sheets of paper in the man's sweaty face. "There've been irregularities. Allegations of corruption."

"Hey, I'm not the guy you need to talk to about that. The franchise office handles--"

"You're the guy who's here now." Pendergast leaned forward. "We need to get down into that basement and see just how bad the situation is." Pendergast stuffed the papers back into the pocket of his shirt. "And I mean now."

"You want to see the basement? Be my guest," the manager said, sweating profusely. "It ain't my fault if there's a problem. I just work here."

"Very well. Let's get going."

"Joanie here will take you down while Mary Kate attends to the customers--"

"Oh, no," Pendergast interrupted again. "Oh, no, no, no. No customers. Not until we're done."

"No customers?" the man repeated. "I'm trying to run a doughnut shop here."

Pendergast bent closer now. "This is a dangerous, maybe life-threatening situation. Our analysis shows the building is unsound. You are required to close your doors to the public until we have completed our check of the foundation and the load-bearing members."

"I don't know," the manager said, his frown deepening. "I'm gonna have to call the main office. We've never closed during business hours before, and my franchise contract states--"

"You don't know? We aren't going to waste time while you call up every Tom, Dick, and Harry you've a mind to." Pendergast leaned in even closer. "Why, exactly, are you stalling? Do you know what would happen if the floor collapsed under a customer while he was eating a box of--" here Pendergast paused to glance at the menu posted above the counter, "--chocolate-banana double-cream glazed FatOnes?"

Silently, the man shook his head.

"You'd be charged. Personally. Criminal negligence. Manslaughter in the second degree. Maybe even... in the first degree."

The manager took a step backward. He gulped for air, fresh sweat popping on his brow.

Pendergast let a strained silence build. "Tell you what I'll do," he said with sudden magnanimity. "While you put up the CLOSED sign, Mr. Steele and I will make a quick visual inspection downstairs. If the situation is less grave than we've been led to believe, business can resume while we complete our site report."

The man's face broke out in unexpected relief. He turned to his employees. "Mary Kate, we're closing up for a few minutes. Joanie, show these men to the basement."

Pendergast and D'Agosta followed Joanie through the kitchen, past a pantry and restroom, to an unmarked door. Beyond, a steep concrete stairway led down into darkness. The girl switched on the light, revealing a graveyard of old equipment--professional stand mixers and industrial-strength deep-fat fryers, apparently all awaiting repair. The basement itself was clearly very old, with facing walls of undressed stone, roughly mortared. The other two walls were made of brick. These, though apparently even older, were much more carefully fitted together. A number of plastic garbage bins lined the floor by the stairway, and untidy heaps of tarps and plastic sheeting lay, apparently forgotten, in a corner.

Pendergast turned. "Thank you, Joanie. We'll work alone. Please shut the door on your way out."

The girl nodded and retreated up the stairs.

Pendergast walked over to one of the brick walls. "Vincent," he said, resuming his usual voice, "unless I am much mistaken, about twelve feet beyond this lies another wall: that of Arne Torgensson's basement. And in between we should find a section of the old aqueduct, in which, perhaps, the good doctor has hidden something."

D'Agosta dropped the tool sack on the ground with a thump. "I figure we got two minutes, tops, before that jackass upstairs calls his boss and the shit hits the fan."

"You employ such colorful expressions," Pendergast murmured, examining the brick wall with his loupe and rapping on it with a ball-peen hammer. "However, I think I can buy us some more time."

"Oh, yeah? How?"

"I'm afraid I must inform our managerial friend that the situation is even more dire than we first thought. Not only must the shop be closed to customers--the workers themselves must vacate the premises until we complete our inspection."

Pendergast's light tread up the stairs receded quickly into silence. D'Agosta waited in the cool, dry darkness. After a moment an irruption of noise sounded from above: a protest, raised voices. Almost as quickly as it started, the noise ceased. Pendergast reappeared on the landing. Carefully closing and locking the door behind him, he descended the stairs and walked over to the bag of tools. Reaching into it, he pulled out a short-handled sledgehammer and handed it to D'Agosta.

"Vincent," he said with a ghost of a smile, "I yield the floor to you."


36



AS D'AGOSTA HEFTED THE SLEDGEHAMMER, PENDERGAST bent close to the ancient wall, rapping first on one stone, then another, all the while listening intently. The light was dim, and D'Agosta had to squint to see. After a few moments, the FBI agent gave a low grunt of satisfaction and straightened up.

"Here," he said, pointing to a brick near the middle of the wall.

D'Agosta came over, gave the sledgehammer a practice swing like a batter on deck.

"I've bought us five minutes," Pendergast said. "Ten at most. By then our managerial friend will undoubtedly be back. And this time he may bring company."

D'Agosta swung the sledgehammer at the wall. Though he missed the indicated spot by a few bricks, the iron impacted the wall with a blow that shivered its way through his hands and up his arms. A second blow struck truer, and a third. He set down the sledgehammer, wiped his hands on the back of his pants, got a better grip, and returned to work. Another dozen or so heavy blows and Pendergast gestured for him to stop. D'Agosta stepped back, panting.

The agent glided up, waving aside a pall of cement dust. Playing a flashlight over the wall, he rapped on the bricks again, one after another. "They're coming loose. Keep at it, Vincent."

D'Agosta stepped forward again and gave the wall another series of solid blows. With the last came a crumbling sound, and one of the bricks shattered. Pendergast darted forward again, cold chisel in one hand and hammer in the other. He felt briefly along the sagging wall, then raised the hammer and applied several carefully placed strikes to the surrounding matrix of mortar and ancient concrete. Several more bricks were jarred loose, and Pendergast pried away others with his hands. Dropping the chisel and hammer, he played his flashlight over the wall. A hole was now visible, roughly the size of a beach ball. Pendergast thrust his head through it, aiming his flashlight this way and that.

"What do you see?" asked D'Agosta.

In response, Pendergast stepped away. "A few more, if you please," he said, indicating the sledgehammer.

This time, D'Agosta aimed his blows all around the edges of the ragged hole, concentrating on its upper edge. Bricks, chips, and old plaster rained down. At last, Pendergast once again gave the signal to stop. D'Agosta did so gladly, heaving with the effort.

From beyond the closed door at the top of the stairwell came a noise. The manager was coming back into the building.

Pendergast again approached the yawning hole in the wall, and D'Agosta crowded up behind. Through the billows of dust, the beams of their flashlights revealed a shallow space beyond the broken stones. It was a chamber perhaps twelve feet wide and four feet deep. Abruptly D'Agosta stopped breathing. His yellow beam had fallen on a flat wooden crate leaning against the far wall, reinforced on both sides by wooden struts. It was just about the size, D'Agosta thought, you'd expect a painting to be. There was nothing else visible through the pall of dust.

The doorknob above them rattled. "Hey!" came the voice of the manager. It had regained much of its original aggressive character. "What the heck are you doing down there?"

Pendergast glanced around rapidly. "Vincent," he said, turning and directing his beam to the pile of tarps and plastic sheets in the far corner. "Hurry."

Nothing more needed to be said. D'Agosta rushed over to the pile, rummaging through it for a tarp of sufficient size, while Pendergast ducked through the newly made hole in the wall.

"I'm coming down," the manager said, rattling the door. "Open this door!"

Pendergast dragged the crate from its hiding place. D'Agosta helped him maneuver it through the hole, and together they wrapped it in the plastic tarp.

"I've called the franchise office in New Orleans," came the manager's voice. "You can't just come in here and shut down the shop! This is the first time anyone's heard of these so-called inspections you're doing--"

D'Agosta grabbed one end of the crate, Pendergast the other, and they began ascending the stairs. D'Agosta could hear a key going into the lock. "Make way!" Pendergast bellowed, emerging from the cloud of dust into the dim basement light. The wooden box was in their arms, shrouded by the tarp. "Make way, now!"

The door flung open and the red-faced manager stood blocking the door. "Just what the hell have you got there?" he demanded.

"Evidence in a possible criminal case." They gained the landing. "Things are looking even worse for you than before, Mr...." Pendergast peered at the manager's name tag. "Mr. Bona."

"Me? I've only been manager here for six months, I was transferred from--"

"You are the party of record. If there has been criminal activity here--and I am increasingly confident there has been--your name will be on the affidavit. Now, are you going to step aside or do I have to add impeding an active investigation to the list of potential charges?"

There was a brief moment of stasis. Then Bona stepped unwillingly to one side. Pendergast brushed past, cradling the tarp-covered crate, and D'Agosta followed quickly behind.

"We must hurry," Pendergast said under his breath as they charged out the door. Already, the manager was making his way down into the basement, punching a number into a cell phone as he went.

They ran down the street to the Rolls. Pendergast opened the trunk, and they put the crate inside, wrapped in its protective tarp. The hard hats followed, along with D'Agosta's workbag. They slammed the trunk and climbed hurriedly into the front seat, Pendergast not even bothering to remove his tool belt.

As Pendergast started the car, D'Agosta saw the manager emerging from the doughnut shop. The cell phone was still clamped in one hand. "Hey!" they heard him yelling from a block away. "Hey, you! Stop!"

Pendergast put the car in gear and jammed on the accelerator. The Rolls shrieked through a U-turn and tore down the road in the direction of Court Street and the freeway.

He glanced over at D'Agosta. "Well done, my dear Vincent." And this time, his smile wasn't ghostly--it was genuine.


37



THEY TURNED ONTO ALEXANDER DRIVE, THEN took the on-ramp to I-10 and the Horace Wilkinson Bridge. D'Agosta sank back gratefully in his seat. The broad Mississippi rolled by beneath them, sullen-looking below the leaden sky.

"You think that's it?" D'Agosta asked. "The Black Frame?"

"Absolutely."

From the bridge, they crossed into Baton Rouge proper. It was midafternoon, and the traffic was moderate. Curtains of rain beat against the windshield and drummed on the vehicle roof. One after another the southbound cars fell smoothly behind them. They passed the I-12 interchange as D'Agosta stirred restlessly. He didn't want to get his hopes up. But maybe--just maybe--this meant he'd be seeing Laura Hayward sooner rather than later. He hadn't realized just how difficult this forced separation would be. Speaking to her every night helped, of course, but it was no substitute for...

"Vincent," Pendergast said. "Take a look in the rearview mirror, if you please."

D'Agosta complied. At first, he saw nothing unusual in the procession of cars behind them. But then, when Pendergast changed lanes, he saw another car--four, maybe five back--do the same. It was a late-model sedan, dark blue or black; it was hard to tell in the rain.

Pendergast accelerated slightly, passed a few cars, then returned to his original lane. A minute or two later, the dark sedan did the same.

"I see him," D'Agosta muttered.

They continued for several minutes. The car stayed with them, hanging back, careful not to be too obvious.

"You think that's the manager?" D'Agosta asked. "Bona?"

Pendergast shook his head. "That fellow behind us has been tailing us since this morning."

"What are we going to do?"

"I'm going to wait until we reach the outskirts of the city. Then, we shall see. Local roads might prove useful."

They passed the Mall of Louisiana, several parks and country clubs. The cityscape gave way to suburban sprawl, and then ultimately to patches of rural lowlands. D'Agosta drew out his Glock, racked a round into the chamber.

"Save that for a last resort," Pendergast said. "We can't risk damage to the painting."

What about damage to us? D'Agosta thought. He glanced in the rearview mirror, but it was impossible to see into the dark sedan. They were passing the Sorrento exit, the traffic thinning still further.

"Are we going to box him in?" D'Agosta said. "Force his hand?"

"My preference is to lose him," Pendergast said. "You'd be surprised what a vintage Rolls is capable of."

"Yeah, right--"

Pendergast floored the accelerator and turned the wheel sharply right. The Rolls shot forward, remarkably responsive for such a large vehicle, then sliced across two lanes of traffic and careered down the exit ramp without reducing speed.

D'Agosta lurched heavily into the passenger door. Glancing into the mirror again, he saw that their tail had followed suit and, cutting before a box truck, was now shooting down the ramp after them.

Reaching the bottom of the ramp, Pendergast blew past the stop sign and onto Route 22, tires squealing as the rear of the vehicle fish-tailed through a one-hundred-twenty-degree arc. Expertly turning into the spin, Pendergast maneuvered into the proper lane and then stamped on the gas again. They tore down the state road, blowing past a painter's van, a Buick, and a crawfish transport truck. Angry horns sounded behind them.

D'Agosta glanced over his shoulder. The sedan was pacing them, abandoning any effort at concealment.

"He's still coming," he said.

Pendergast nodded.

Accelerating further, they sped through a small commercial area--three blocks of farm implement stores and hardware shops, moving past in a blur. Up ahead, a set of lights marked the intersection of Route 22 with the Airline Highway. Several vehicles were moving across it now, brake lights rippling in a serried stream. They shot over a railroad track, the Rolls briefly airborne at the rise, and neared the crossing. As they did so, the light turned yellow, then red.

"Christ," murmured D'Agosta, taking a tight grip on the handle of the passenger door.

Flashing his lights and leaning on the horn, Pendergast found a lane between the cars ahead and the oncoming traffic. A fresh volley of honks sounded as they hurtled through the rain-slick crossing, barely missing an eighteen-wheeler that was nosing into the intersection. Pendergast had not taken his foot from the accelerator, and the needle was now trembling past one hundred.

"Maybe we should just stop and confront the guy," said D'Agosta. "Ask him who he's working for."

"How dull. And we know who he's working for."

They whipped past one car, then another and another, the vehicles merely blurs of stationary color on the road. Now the traffic was all behind them and the road ahead was empty. Houses, commercial buildings, and the occasional sad-looking feed or supply store fell away as they entered the swamplands. A stand of crape trees, bleak sentinels under the gunmetal sky, whisked past in an instant. The windshield wipers beat their regular cadence against the glass. D'Agosta allowed his grip on the door handle to relax somewhat.

He glanced over his shoulder again. All clear.

No--no, it wasn't. From among the vague outlines of vehicles behind them, a single shape resolved itself. It was the dark sedan, far behind but coming up fast.

"Shit," D'Agosta said. "He got through that intersection. Tenacious bastard."

"We have what he wants," Pendergast said. "Another reason we mustn't let him catch up to us."

The road narrowed as they plunged deeper into the marshy lowlands. D'Agosta kept his gaze rearward while they negotiated a long, screaming turn. As the sedan dropped out of sight behind the curve and tall marsh grass, he felt the car decelerate.

"Now's our chance to--" he began.

All of a sudden the Rolls swerved violently to one side. Tumbled almost into the back of the car, D'Agosta fought to reseat himself. They had veered off the road onto a narrow dirt track that snaked into thick swamp. A dirty, dented sign read DESMIRAIL WILDLIFE AREA--SERVICE VEHICLES ONLY.

The car bucked fiercely from side to side as they tore down the muddy track. One moment D'Agosta felt himself thrown against the door; the next he was lifted bodily out of his seat, prevented from concussing himself against the roof only by the shoulder strap. Another minute of this, he thought grimly, and we'll break both axles. He ventured another look in the rearview mirror, but the path was too sinuous to see more than a hundred yards behind them.

Ahead, the service path narrowed and forked. A much narrower and rougher footpath diverged from it and ran straight ahead alongside a bayou, a chain of steel links stretched across it, marked by the sign WARNING: NO VEHICLES PAST THIS POINT.

Instead of slowing for the turn, Pendergast goosed the accelerator.

"Hey, whoa!" D'Agosta cried as they headed straight for the footpath. "Jesus--!"

They broke through the chain with a sound like a rifle shot. A profusion of egrets, vultures, and wood ducks rose from the surrounding yellowtop fields and bald cypresses, honking and shrieking in protest. The big car lurched left, then right, again and again, blurring D'Agosta's vision and making his teeth rattle in his skull. They plunged into a stand of umbrella grass, the big stems parting before them with a strange whack, whack.

D'Agosta had been in some hair-raising car chases in his day, but nothing like this. The swamp grass had grown so thick and tall they could see only a few car lengths ahead of them. Yet instead of reducing speed, Pendergast reached over and--still without decelerating--switched on the headlights.

D'Agosta hung on for dear life, afraid to tear his eyes from the view ahead even for a second. "Pendergast, slow down!" he yelled. "We've lost him! For chrissakes, slow--"

And then, quite suddenly, they were out of the grass. The car went over a rise of earth and they sailed, quite literally, into an open area on some high ground cut out of the deep swamp, a few gray outbuildings and fenced areas surrounded by pools. Only now, with the increased visibility and landmarks for orientation, did D'Agosta realize just how fast they'd been going. A large weather-beaten billboard to one side read:

GATORVILLE U.S.A.

100% farm-raised organic gators

Gator wrasslin, guided tours

Tannery on site--skins 8 feet & up, low low prices!

Gator meat by the pound

* CLOSED FOR THE SEASON *

The Rolls impacted the ground, bottoming out with a jarring force and hurtling forward; Pendergast suddenly braked, the car skidding across the dirt yard. D'Agosta's eyes swiveled from the sign to a rickety wooden building directly ahead, roofed in corrugated tin, its barn-like doors open. A sign in one window read PROCESSING PLANT. He realized there was no way they could stop in time.

The Rolls slewed into the barn; a violent deceleration and semi-crash followed that smacked D'Agosta back against the leather seats; and then they were at rest. A huge cloud of dust rolled over them. As his vision slowly cleared, he saw the Rolls had ploughed into a stack of oversize plastic meat containers, tearing a dozen of them wide open. Three brined, skinned alligator corpses were splayed across the hood and windshield, pale pink with long streaks of whitish fat.

There was a moment of peculiar stasis. Pendergast gazed out of the windshield--covered with rain, bits of swamp grass, Spanish moss, and reptile ordure--and then looked over at D'Agosta. "That reminds me," he said as the engine hissed and ticked. "One of these evenings we really must ask Maurice to make his alligator etouffee. His people come from the Atchafalaya Basin, you understand, and he has a wonderful recipe handed down in the family."


38



Sarasota, Florida

THE SKY BEGAN TO CLEAR WITH THE COMING of evening, and soon glimmers of moonlight lay coquettishly upon the Gulf of Mexico, hiding between the restless rolls of incoming waves. Clouds, still swollen with rain, passed by quickly overhead. Combers of surf fell ceaselessly upon the beach, falling back in long, withdrawing roars.

John Woodhouse Blast heeded none of it. He paced back and forth, restlessly, stopping now and then to check his watch.

Ten thirty already. What was the holdup? It should have been a simple job: get in, take care of business, get out. The earlier call had implied things were on track, even ahead of schedule--more, in fact, than he'd dared to expect. But that had been six hours ago. And now, with his hopes raised, the wait seemed even more excruciating.

He walked over to the wet bar, pawed down a crystal tumbler from its shelf, threw in a handful of ice cubes, and poured several fingers of scotch over them. He took a big gulp; exhaled; took a smaller, more measured sip. Then he walked over to his white leather sofa, put the glass onto an abalone coaster, prepared to sit down.

The sudden ringing of the phone broke the listening silence, and he started violently. He wheeled toward the sound, almost knocking over the drink in his eagerness, and grabbed the handset.

"Well?" he said, his voice high and breathless in his own ears. "Is it done?"

There was nothing but silence on the other end.

"Hello? You got shit in your ears, pal? I said, is it done?"

More silence. And then the line went dead.

Blast stared at the phone. Just what the hell was this? A hardball play for more money? Well, he knew how to play that game. Any wise guy trying to bend his ass over a barrel was going to wish he'd never been born.

He sat down on the sofa and took another drink. The greedy son of a bitch was waiting at the other end of the line, of course he was, just waiting for him to call back and offer more. Hell would freeze over first. Blast knew what jobs like these cost--and what's more, he knew how to hire other muscle, more experienced muscle, if certain sticky wheels needed regreasing...

The doorbell rang.

Blast allowed a smile to form on his face. He glanced at his watch again: two minutes. Only two minutes had passed since the phone call. So the son of a bitch wanted to talk. Thought he was a real wise guy. He took another sip of his drink, settled back into the couch.

The doorbell rang again.

Blast put the drink slowly back on the coaster. It was the son of a bitch's turn to sweat now. Maybe he could even get the price down a little. It had happened before.

The doorbell rang a third time. And now Blast pulled himself up, drew a finger across his narrow mustache, strode to the door, threw it open.

He stepped back quickly in surprise. Standing in the doorway was not the slimy son of a bitch he'd expected, but a tall man with dark eyes and movie-star looks. He wore a long black trench coat, its belt tied loosely around his waist. Blast realized he had made a serious mistake in opening the door. But before he could slam it shut, the man had stepped in and shut it himself.

"Mr. Blast?" he said.

"Who the hell are you?" Blast replied.

Instead of answering, the man stepped forward again. The movement was so sudden, so decisive, that Blast found himself forced to take another step backward. Whimpering, the Pomeranians ran for the safety of the bedroom.

The tall man looked him up and down, his eyes glittering with some strong emotion--anxiety? Rage?

Blast swallowed. He hadn't the faintest idea what this man wanted, but some inner sense of self-preservation, some sixth sense he'd gained operating for years on the narrowest edge of lawfulness, told him he was in danger.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"My name is Esterhazy," the man replied. "Does the name ring a bell?"

The name did ring a bell. A loud bell. That man Pendergast had mentioned it. Helen Esterhazy Pendergast.

"Never heard of it."

With a sudden movement, the man named Esterhazy jerked the belt of his trench coat free. The coat fell aside, revealing a sawed-off shotgun.

Blast fell back. Time slowed as adrenaline kicked in. He noticed, with a kind of horrifying clarity, that the butt-stock was black wood, ornately carved.

"Now, wait," he said. "Look, whatever it is, we can work it out. I'm a reasonable man. Tell me what you want."

"My sister. What did you do to her?"

"Nothing. Nothing. We just talked."

"Talked." The man smiled. "What did you talk about?"

"Nothing. Nothing important. Did that fellow Pendergast send you? I already told him all I know."

"And what do you know?"

"All she wanted to do was look at the painting. The Black Frame, I mean. She had a theory, she said."

"A theory?"

"I can't remember. Really, I can't. It was so long ago. Please believe me."

"No, I want to hear about the theory."

"I'd tell you if I could remember."

"Are you sure you don't recall anything more?"

"That's all I can remember. I swear, that's all."

"Thank you." With an ear-shattering roar, one of the barrels vomited smoke and flame. Blast felt himself physically lifted from the ground and thrown back, hitting the floor with a violent crash. A numbness crept across his chest, remarkable in the lack of pain, and for a moment he had a crazy hope the charge had missed... And then he looked down at his ruined chest.

As if from far away, he saw the man--now a little shadowy and indistinct--approach and stand over him. The snout-like shape of the shotgun barrels detached themselves from the form and hovered over his head. Blast tried to protest, but there was now another warmth, oddly comforting, filling his throat and he couldn't vocalize...

And then came another terrible confusion of flame and noise that this time brought oblivion.


39



New York City

IT WAS SEVEN FIFTEEN IN THE MORNING, BUT already the Fifteenth homicide division was hard at work, logging in the several potential murders and manslaughters of the night before and assembling in breakout areas to discuss the progress of open cases. Captain Laura Hayward sat behind her desk, finishing an unusually comprehensive monthly report for the commissioner. The poor fellow was new on the job--having been hired up from Texas--and Hayward knew he would appreciate a bit of bureaucratic hand-holding.

She finished the report, saved it, then took a sip of her coffee. It was barely tepid: she had already been in the office more than an hour. As she put down the cup, her cell phone rang. It was her personal phone, not her official one, and only four people knew the number: her mother, her sister, her family lawyer--and Vincent D'Agosta.

She pulled the phone from her jacket pocket and looked at it. A stickler for protocol, she normally wouldn't answer it during working hours. This time, however, she closed the door to her office and flipped the phone open.

"Hello?" she spoke into it.

"Laura," came D'Agosta's voice. "It's me."

"Vinnie. Is everything okay? I was a little concerned when you didn't call last night."

"Everything's okay, and I'm sorry about that. It's just that things got a little... hectic."

She sat back down behind her desk. "Tell me about it."

There was a pause. "Well, we found the Black Frame."

"The painting you've been looking for?"

"Yes. At least, I think we did."

He didn't sound very excited about it. If anything, he sounded irritated. "How'd you find it?"

"It was hidden behind the basement wall of a doughnut shop, if you can believe it."

"So how did you get it?"

Another pause. "We, ah, broke in."

"Broke in?"

"Yeah."

Warning bells began to ring. "What'd you do, sneak in after hours?"

"No. We did it yesterday afternoon."

"Go on."

"Pendergast planned it. We went in pretending to be building code inspectors, and Pendergast--"

"I've changed my mind. I don't want to hear anything more about that. Skip to after you got the painting."

"Well, that's why I couldn't call like I normally do. As we left Baton Rouge, we noticed we were being followed. We had quite a chase through the swamps and bayous of--"

"Whoa, Vinnie! Stop a moment. Please." This was exactly what she'd been afraid of. "I thought you promised me you'd take care of yourself, not get sucked into Pendergast's extracurricular crap."

"I know that, Laura. I haven't forgotten it." Another pause. "Once I knew we were close to the painting, really close, I felt like I'd do almost anything--if it helped solve the mystery, to get back to you."

She sighed, shook her head. "What happened next?"

"We shook the tail. It was midnight before we finally returned to Penumbra. We carried the wooden box we'd retrieved into the library and set it on a table. Pendergast was unbelievably fussy about it. Instead of opening the damn crate with a crowbar, we had to use these tiny tools that would have made a jeweler cross-eyed. It took hours. The painting must have been exposed to damp at some point, because its back was stuck to the wood, and that took even longer to tease loose."

"But it was the Black Frame?"

"It was in a black frame, all right. But the canvas was covered with mold and so dirty you couldn't make anything out. Pendergast got some swabs and brushes and a bunch of solvents and cleaning agents and began to remove the dirt--wouldn't let me touch it. After maybe fifteen minutes he got a small section of the painting clean, and then..."

"What?"

"The guy just suddenly went rigid. Before I knew it, he bundled me out of the library and locked the door."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. I was standing there in the hallway. Never even got a glimpse of the painting."

"I keep telling you, the guy's not all there."

"I admit, he has his ways. This was about three in the morning so I thought, the hell with it, and crashed. Next thing I knew, it was morning. He's still in there, working away."

Hayward felt herself doing a slow burn. "Typical Pendergast. Vinnie, he's not your pal."

She heard D'Agosta sigh. "I've been reminding myself that it's his wife's death we're investigating here, that this all must be a huge shock to him... And he is my friend, even if he shows it in weird ways." He paused. "Anything new on Constance Greene?"

"She's under lock and key in the Bellevue Hospital prison ward. I interviewed her. She still maintains she threw her baby overboard."

"Did she say why?"

"Yes. She said it was evil. Just like its father."

"Jesus. I knew she was crazy, but not that crazy."

"How did Pendergast take the news?"

"Hard to tell--like everything with Pendergast. On the surface, it barely seemed to affect him."

There was a brief silence. Hayward wondered if she should try to pressure him to come home, but she realized she didn't want to add to his burdens.

"There's something else," D'Agosta said.

"What's that?"

"Remember the guy I told you about--Blackletter? Helen Pendergast's old boss at Doctors With Wings?"

"What about him?"

"He was murdered in his house the night before last. Two 12-gauge shells, point blank, blew his guts right through him."

"Good Lord."

"And that's not all. John Blast, the slimy guy we talked to in Sarasota? The other one interested in the Black Frame? I'd assumed he was the one tailing us. But I just heard it on the news--he was shot, too, just yesterday, not long after we snagged the painting. And guess what: once again, two 12-gauge rounds."

"Any idea what's going on?"

"When I heard about Blackletter being shot, I figured Blast was behind it. But now Blast's dead, too."

"You can thank Pendergast for that. Where he goes, trouble follows."

"Hold on a sec." There was a silence of perhaps twenty seconds before D'Agosta's voice returned. "That's Pendergast. He just knocked on my door. He says the painting is clean, and he wants my opinion. I love you, Laura. I'll call tonight."

And he was gone.


40



Penumbra Plantation

WHEN D'AGOSTA OPENED THE DOOR, PENDERGAST was standing outside in the plushly carpeted corridor, hands behind his back. He was still dressed in the plaid work shirt and denim trousers of their foray to Port Allen.

"I'm very sorry, Vincent," he said. "Please forgive what must seem to you like the very height of rudeness and inconsideration on my part."

D'Agosta did not reply.

"Perhaps things will become clearer when you see the painting. If you don't mind--?" And he gestured toward the stairway.

D'Agosta stepped out and followed the agent down the hall toward the stairs. "Blast is dead," he said. "Shot with the same sort of weapon that killed Blackletter."

Pendergast paused in midstep. "Shot, you say?" Then he resumed walking--a little more slowly.

The library door stood open, yellow light from within spilling out into the front hall. Silently, Pendergast led the way down the stairs and through the arched doorway. The painting stood in the center of the room, on an easel. It was covered with a heavy velvet shroud.

"Stand over there, in front of the painting," said Pendergast. "I need your candid reaction."

D'Agosta stood directly before it.

Pendergast stepped to one side, took hold of the shroud, and lifted it from the painting.

D'Agosta stared, flabbergasted. The painting was not of a Carolina Parakeet, or even of a bird or nature subject. Instead, it depicted a middle-aged woman, nude, gaunt, lying on a hospital bed. A shaft of cool light slanted in from a tiny window high up in the wall behind her. Her legs were crossed at the ankles, and her hands were folded over her breasts, almost in the attitude of a corpse. The outlines of her ribs protruded through skin the color of parchment, and she was clearly ill and, perhaps, not entirely sane. And yet there was something repugnantly inviting about her. A small deal table holding a water pitcher and some dressings sat beside the bed. Her black hair spread across a pillow of coarse linen. The painted plaster walls; the slack, dry flesh; the weave of the bed linens; even the motes in the dusty air were meticulously observed, rendered with pitiless clarity and confidence--spare, stark, and elegiac. Although D'Agosta was no expert, the painting struck him with an enormous visceral impact.

"Vincent?" Pendergast asked him quietly.

D'Agosta reached out, let the fingertips of one hand slide along the painting's black frame. "I don't know what to think," he said.

"Indeed." Pendergast hesitated. "When I began to clean the painting, that is the first thing that came to light." And he pointed at the woman's eyes, staring out of the plane of the painting toward the viewer. "After seeing that, I realized all our assumptions were wrong. I needed time, alone, to clean the rest of it. I didn't want you to see it exposed bit by bit: I wanted you to see the entire painting, all at once. I needed a fresh, immediate opinion. That is why I excluded you so abruptly. Once again, my apologies."

"It's amazing. But... are you sure it's even by Audubon?"

Pendergast pointed to one corner, where D'Agosta could just see a dim signature. Then he pointed silently to another, dark corner of the painted room--where a mouse was crouching, as if waiting. "The signature is genuine, but more to the point, nobody but Audubon could have painted that mouse. And I'm certain it was painted from life--at the sanatorium. It's too beautifully observed to be anything but real."

D'Agosta nodded slowly. "I thought for sure it was going to be a Carolina Parrot. What does a naked woman have to do with anything?"

Pendergast merely opened his white hands in a gesture of mystery, and D'Agosta could see the frustration in his eyes. Turning away from the easel, the agent said, "Glance over these, Vincent, if you please." A refectory table nearby was spread with a variety of prints, lithographs, and watercolors. On the left side were arranged various sketches of animals, birds, insects, still lifes, quick portraits of people. Lying on top was a watercolor of a mouse.

A gap separated the drawings laid out on the right side. They were a different matter entirely. These consisted almost entirely of birds, so life-like and detailed they seemed ready to strut off the paper, but there were also some mammals and woodland scenes.

"Do you note a difference?"

"Sure. The stuff on the left sucks. On the right--well, it's just beautiful."

"I took these from my great-great-grandfather's portfolios," Pendergast said. "These"--he gestured to the rude sketches on the left--"were given to my ancestor by Audubon when he was staying at the Dauphine Street cottage in 1821, just before he got sick. That is how Audubon painted before he entered the Meuse St. Claire sanatorium." He turned to the work that lay to the right. "And this is how he painted later in life. After he left the sanatorium. Do you see the conundrum?"

D'Agosta was still stunned by the image within the black frame. "He improved," he said. "That's what artists do. Why's that a conundrum?"

Pendergast shook his head. "Improved? No, Vincent, this is a transformation. Nobody improves that much. These early sketches are poor. They are workman-like, literal, awkward. There is nothing there, Vincent, nothing to indicate the slightest spark of artistic talent."

D'Agosta had to agree. "What happened?"

Pendergast raked the artwork with his pale eyes, then slowly walked back to an armchair he'd placed before the easel and sat down before the Black Frame. "This woman was clearly a patient at the sanatorium. Perhaps Dr. Torgensson grew enamored of her. Perhaps they had a relationship of some kind. That would explain why he clung to the painting so anxiously, even when sunk into deepest poverty. But that still doesn't explain why Helen would be so desperately interested in it."

D'Agosta glanced back at the woman, reclining--in an attitude almost of resignation--on the plain infirmary bed. "Do you suppose she might have been an ancestor of Helen's?" he asked. "An Esterhazy?"

"I thought of that," Pendergast replied. "But then, why her obsessive search?"

"Her family left Maine under a cloud," D'Agosta said. "Maybe there was some blemish in their family history this painting could help clear up."

"Yes, but what?" Pendergast gestured at the figure. "I would think such a controversial image would tarnish, rather than polish, the family name. At least we can now speculate why the subject of the painting was never mentioned in print--it is so very disturbing and provocative."

There was a brief silence.

"Why would Blast have wanted it so badly?" D'Agosta wondered aloud. "I mean, it's just a painting. Why search for so many years?"

"That, at any rate, is easily answered. He was an Audubon, he considered it his birthright. For him it became an idee fixe--in time, the chase became its own reward. I expect he would have been as astonished as we are at the subject." Pendergast tented his fingers, pressed them against his forehead.

Still, D'Agosta stared at the painting. There was something, a thought that wouldn't quite rise into consciousness. The painting was trying to tell him something. He stared at it.

Then, all of a sudden, he realized what it was.

"This painting," he said. "Look at it. It's like those watercolors on the table. The ones he did later in life."

Pendergast did not look up. "I'm afraid I don't follow you."

"You said it yourself. The mouse in the painting--it's clearly an Audubon mouse."

"Yes, very similar to the ones he painted in Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America."

"Okay. Now look at that mouse on that pile of early drawings."

Slowly, Pendergast raised his head. He looked at the painting and then the drawings. He glanced toward D'Agosta. "Your point, Vincent?"

D'Agosta gestured toward the refectory table. "That early mouse. I'd never have thought Audubon drew it. Same for all that early stuff, those still lifes and sketches. I'd never have thought those were by Audubon."

"That's precisely what I said earlier. Therein lies the conundrum."

"But I'm not so sure it's a problem."

Pendergast looked at him, curiosity kindling in his eyes. "Go on."

"Well, we have those early, mediocre sketches. And then we have this woman. What happened in between?"

The glimmer in Pendergast's eyes grew brighter. "The illness happened."

D'Agosta nodded. "Right. The illness changed him. What other answer is there?"

"Brilliant, my dear Vincent!" Pendergast smacked the arms of his chair and leapt to his feet, pacing about the room. "The brush with death, the sudden encounter with his own mortality, somehow changed him. It filled him with creative energy, it was the transformative moment of his artistic career."

"We'd always assumed Helen was interested in the subject of the painting," D'Agosta said.

"Precisely. But remember what Blast said? Helen didn't want to own the painting. She only wanted to study it. She wanted to confirm when Audubon's artistic transformation took place." Pendergast fell silent and his pacing slowed and finally halted. He seemed stuck in a kind of stasis, his eyes turned within.

"Well," said D'Agosta. "Mystery solved."

The silvery eyes turned on him. "No."

"What do you mean?"

"Why would Helen hide all this from me?"

D'Agosta shrugged. "Maybe she was embarrassed by the way you met and the little white lie she told about it."

"One little white lie? I don't believe that. She kept this hidden for a far more significant reason than that." Pendergast sank back into the plush chair and stared at the painting again. "Cover it up."

D'Agosta draped the cloth over it. He was beginning to get worried. Pendergast did not look completely sane himself.

Pendergast's eyes closed. The silence in the library grew, along with the ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner. D'Agosta took a seat himself; sometimes it was best to let Pendergast be Pendergast.

The eyes slowly opened.

"We've been looking at this problem in entirely the wrong way from the very beginning."

"And how is that?"

"We've assumed Helen was interested in Audubon, the artist."

"Well? What else?"

"She was interested in Audubon, the patient."

"Patient?"

A slow nod. "That was Helen's passion. Medical research."

"Then why search for the painting?"

"Because he painted it right after his recovery. She wanted to confirm a theory she had."

"And what theory is that?"

"My dear Vincent, do we know what illness Audubon actually suffered from?"

"No."

"Correct. But that illness is the key to everything! It was the illness itself she wanted to know about. What it did to Audubon. Because it seems to have transformed a thoroughly mediocre artist into a genius. She knew something had changed him--that's why she went to New Madrid, where he'd experienced the earthquake: she was searching, far and wide, to understand that agent of change. And when she hit upon his illness, she knew her search was complete. She wanted to see the painting only to confirm her theory: that Audubon's illness did something to his mind. It had neurological effects. Marvelous neurological effects!"

"Whoa, you're losing me here."

Pendergast sprang to his feet. "And that is why she hid it from me. Because it was potentially an extremely valuable, proprietary pharmacological discovery. It had nothing to do with our personal relationship." With a sudden, impulsive movement he grasped D'Agosta by both arms. "And I would still be stumbling around in the dark, my dear Vincent--if not for your stroke of genius."

"Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say--"

Releasing his hold, Pendergast turned away and strode quickly toward the library door. "Come on--there's no time to lose."

"Where are we going?" D'Agosta asked, hurrying to follow, his mind still in a whirl of confusion, trying to piece together Pendergast's chain of logic.

"To confirm your suspicions--and to learn, once and for all, what it all must mean."


41



THE SHOOTER SHIFTED POSITION IN THE DAPPLED shade, took a swig of water from the camouflaged canteen. He dabbed the sweatband around his wrist against each temple in turn. His movements were slow, methodical, completely hidden in the labyrinth of brush.

It wasn't really necessary to be so careful. There was no way the target would ever see him. However, years of hunting the other kind of prey--the four-legged variety, sometimes timid, sometimes preternaturally alert--had taught him to use exquisite caution.

It was a perfect blind, a large deadfall of oak, Spanish moss thrown across its face like spindrift, leaving only a few tiny chinks, through one of which he had poked the barrel of his Remington 40-XS tactical rifle. It was perfect because it was, in fact, natural: one of the results of Katrina still visible everywhere in the surrounding forests and swamps. You saw so many that you stopped noticing them.

That's what the shooter was counting on.

The barrel of his weapon protruded no more than an inch beyond the blind. He was in full shade, the barrel itself was sheathed in a special black nonreflective polymer, and his target would emerge into the glare of the morning sun. The gun would never be spotted even when fired: the flash hider on the muzzle would ensure that.

His vehicle, a rented Nissan four-by-four pickup with a covered bed, had been backed up to the blind; he was using the bed as a shooting platform, lying inside it with the tailgate down. The nose pointed down an old logging trail running east. Even if someone saw him and gave chase, it would be the work of thirty seconds to slide from the truck bed into the cab, start the engine, and accelerate down the trail. The highway, and safety, were just two miles away.

He wasn't sure how long he would have to wait--it could be ten minutes, it could be ten hours--but that didn't matter. He was motivated. Motivated, in fact, like he'd never been in his life. No, that wasn't quite true: there had been one other time.

The morning was hazy and dew-heavy, and in the darkness of the blind the air felt sluggish and dead. So much the better. He dabbed at his temples again. Insects droned sleepily, and he could hear the fretful squeaking and chattering of voles. They must have a nest nearby: it seemed the damn things were everywhere in the lowland swamps these days, ravenous as lab rabbits and almost as tame.

He took another swig of water, did another check of the 40-XS. The bipod was securely placed and locked. He eased the bolt open; made sure the .308 Winchester was seated well; snicked the bolt home again. Like most dedicated marksmen, he preferred the stability and accuracy of a bolt-action weapon; he had three extra rounds in the internal magazine, just in case, but the point of a Sniper Weapon System was to make the first shot count and he didn't plan on having to use them.

Most important was the Leupold Mark 4 long-range M1 scope. He looked through it now, targeting the dot reticule first on the front door of the plantation house, then the graveled path, then the Rolls-Royce itself.

Seven hundred, maybe seven hundred fifty yards. One shot, one kill.

As he stared at the big vehicle, he felt his heart accelerate slightly. He went over the plan once again in his mind. He'd wait until the target was behind the wheel, the engine started. The automobile would roll forward along the semicircular drive, pausing a moment before turning onto the main carriage road. That's where he would take the shot.

He lay absolutely still, willing his heart to slow once again. He could not allow himself to grow excited, or for that matter allow any emotion--impatience, anger, fear--to distract him. Utter calm was the answer. It had served him well before, in the veldt and the long grass, in circumstances more dangerous than these. He kept his eye glued to the scope, his finger resting lightly on the trigger guard. Once again, he reminded himself this was an assignment. That was the best way to look at it. Get this last job out of the way and he'd be done--and this time, once and for all...

As if to reward his self-discipline, the front door of the plantation house opened and a man stepped out. He caught his breath. It was not his target, it was the other, the cop. Slowly--so slowly it seemed not to move--his finger drifted from the trigger guard to the trigger itself, its pull weight feather-light. The stocky man paused on the wide porch, looking around a little guardedly. The shooter did not flinch: he knew his cover was perfect. Now his target emerged from the gloom of the house, and together the two walked along the porch and down the steps to the gravel drive. The shooter followed them with the scope, the bead of his reticule centered on the target's skull. He willed himself not to shoot prematurely: he had a good plan, he should stick with it. The two were moving quickly, in a hurry to get somewhere. Stick with the plan.

Through the crosshairs of the scope, he watched as they approached the car, opened its doors, got in. The target seated himself behind the wheel, as expected; started the engine; turned to say a few words to his companion; then eased the car out into the drive. The shooter watched intently, letting his breath run out, willing his heart to slow still further. He would take the shot between its beats.

The Rolls took the gentle curve of the gravel drive at about fifteen miles per hour, then slowed as it approached the intersection with the carriage road. This is it, the shooter thought. All the preparation, discipline, and past experience fused together into this single moment of consummation. The target was in position. Ever so slightly, he applied pressure to the trigger: not squeezing it, but caressing it, more, a little more...

That was when--with a squeak of surprise followed by a violent scrabbling--a gray-brown vole darted over the knuckles of his trigger hand. At the same time, a large ragged shadow, black against black, seemed to flit quickly over his blind.

The Remington went off with a bang, kicking slightly in his grasp. With a curse he brushed the scampering vole away and peered quickly through the scope, working the bolt as he did so. He could see the hole in the windshield, about six inches above and to the left of where he'd planned it. The Rolls was moving ahead fast now, escaping, the tires spinning as it sheared through the turn, gravel flying up behind in a storm of white, and being careful not to panic the shooter led it with his scope, waited for the heartbeat, once again applied pressure to the trigger.

... But even as he did so he saw furious activity inside the vehicle: the stocky man was darting forward, lunging for the wheel, filling the windshield with his bulk. At the same moment the rifle fired again. The Rolls slewed to a stop at a strange angle, cutting across the carriage path. A triangular corona of blood now covered the inside of the windshield, obscuring the view within.

Whom had he hit?

Even as he stared he saw a puff of smoke from the vehicle, followed by the crack of a gunshot. A millisecond later, a bullet snipped through the brush not three feet from where he was hidden. A second shot, and this one struck the Nissan with a clang of metal.

Instantly, the shooter kicked backward, tumbling from the truck bed and into the cab. As another bullet whined past, he started the engine and threw the rifle onto the passenger seat, where it fell atop another weapon: a shotgun, its double barrels sawn off short, sporting an ornately carved stock of black wood. With a grinding of gears and a screech of tires, he took off down the old logging path, trailing Spanish moss and dust.

He took one turn, then another, accelerating past sixty despite the washboard condition of the track. The weapons slid toward him and he pushed them back, throwing a red blanket over them. Another turn, another screech of tires, and he could see the state highway ahead of him. Only now, with safety clearly in sight, did he allow the frustration and disappointment to burst from him.

"Damn it!" Judson Esterhazy cried, slamming his fist against the dashboard again and again. "Goddamn it to hell!"


42



New York City

DR. JOHN FELDER WALKED DOWN THE LONG, cool corridor in the secure ward at Bellevue, flanked by an escorting guard. Small, slender, and elegant, Felder was acutely aware of how much he stuck out in the general squalor and controlled chaos of the ward. This was his second interview with the patient. In the first he had covered all the usual bases, asked all the obligatory questions, taken all the proper notes. He had done enough to satisfy his legal responsibilities as a court-appointed psychiatrist and render an opinion. He had, in fact, reached a firm conclusion: the woman was incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong, and therefore not liable for her actions.

But he was still deeply unsatisfied. He had been involved in many unusual cases. He had seen things that very few doctors had seen; he had examined extraordinary presentations of criminal pathology. But he had never before seen anything quite like this. For perhaps the first time in his professional career, he felt he had not touched on the core mystery of this patient's psyche--not in the least.

Normally, that would make little difference in a bureaucracy such as this. Technically, his work was done. But still he had withheld his conclusion pending further evaluation, giving him the opportunity for another interview. And this time, he decided, he wanted to have a conversation. Just a normal conversation between two people--nothing more, nothing less.

He turned a corner, continued making his way down the endless corridors. The noises, the cries, the smells and sounds of the secure ward barely penetrated his consciousness as he mulled over the mysteries of the case. There was, first, the question of the young woman's identity. Despite a diligent search, court administrators had been unable to find a birth certificate, Social Security number, or any other documentary evidence of her existence beyond a few genteel and intentionally vague records from the Feversham Institute in Putnam County. The British passport found in her possession was real enough, but it had been obtained through an exceedingly clever fraud perpetrated on a minor British consular official in Boston. It was as if she had appeared on the earth fully formed, like Athena sprung from the forehead of Zeus.

As his footsteps echoed down the long corridors, Felder tried not to think too much about what he would ask. Where formal questioning had not penetrated her opacity, spontaneous conversation might.

He turned a last corner, arrived at the meeting room. A guard on duty unlocked the gray metal door with a porthole window and ushered him into a small, spare, but not entirely unpleasant room with several chairs, a coffee table, some magazines, a lamp, and a one-way mirror covering a wall. The patient was already seated, next to a police officer. They both rose when he entered.

"Good afternoon, Constance," said Felder crisply. "Officer, you may remove her handcuffs, please."

"I'll need the release, Doctor."

Felder seated himself, opened his briefcase, removed the release, and handed it to the officer. The man looked it over, grunted his assent, then rose and removed the prisoner's handcuffs, hooking them to his belt.

"I'll be outside if you need me. Just press the button."

"Thank you."

The cop left and Felder turned his attention to the patient, Constance Greene. She stood primly before him, hands clasped in front, wearing a plain prison jumpsuit. He was struck again by her poise and striking looks.

"Constance, how are you? Please sit down."

She seated herself. "I'm very well, Doctor. How are you?"

"Fine." He smiled, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other. "I'm glad we've had a chance for another chat. There were just a few things I wanted to talk with you about. Nothing for the record, really. Is it all right if we speak for a few minutes?"

"Certainly."

"Very good. I hope I don't seem too curious. Perhaps you could call it a liability of my profession. I can't seem to turn it off--even when my work is done. You say you were born on Water Street?"

She nodded.

"At home?"

Another nod.

He consulted his notes. "Sister named Mary Greene. Brother named Joseph. Mother Chastity, father Horace. Am I right so far?"

"Quite."

Quite. Her diction was so... odd. "When were you born?"

"I don't recall."

"Well, of course you wouldn't recall, but surely you know the date of your birth?"

"I'm afraid I don't."

"It must have been, what, the late '80s?"

A ghost of a smile moved briefly across her face, passing almost before Felder realized it was there. "I believe it would have been more in the early '70s."

"But you say you're only twenty-three years old."

"More or less. As I mentioned before, I'm not sure of my exact age."

He cleared his throat lightly. "Constance, do you know that there's no record of your family residing at Water Street?"

"Perhaps your research hasn't been thorough enough."

He leaned forward. "Is there a reason why you're concealing the truth from me? Please remember: I'm only here to help you."

A silence. He looked into those violet eyes, that young, beautiful face so perfectly framed by auburn hair, with the unmistakable look he remembered from their first meeting: haughtiness, serene superiority, perhaps even disdain. She had all the air of... what? A queen? No, that wasn't quite it. Felder had seen nothing like it before.

He laid his notes aside, trying to assume an air of ease and informality. "How did you happen to become Mr. Pendergast's ward?"

"When my parents and sister died, I was orphaned and homeless. Mr. Pendergast's house at Eight Ninety-one Riverside Drive was..." A pause. "Was then owned by a man named Leng. Eventually it... became vacant. I lived there."

"Why there, in particular?"

"It was large, comfortable, and had many places to hide. And it had a good library. When Mr. Pendergast inherited the house, he discovered me there and became my legal guardian."

Pendergast. His name had been in the papers, briefly, in regard to Constance's crime. The man had refused all comment. "Why did he become your guardian?"

Загрузка...