Two Graves

+ Thirty Hours

MIDNIGHT. PENDERGAST SAT IN HIS ROLLS-ROYCE OUTSIDE the house of Dr. Allerton, engine idling.

He had been fortunate: the particular type of granite outcropped in only one area that also contained a gravel pit. This pit was owned by the Reliance Sand and Gravel Company, located just outside Ramapo, New York. They ran a large gravel-crushing operation that supplied an area covering a significant portion of Rockland County. Using his laptop to visit the Reliance website, Pendergast had been able to map the approximate geographic range of Reliance’s customer base, which he duly marked on an atlas of Rockland County.

Next he turned to Allerton’s analysis of the mud. It was largely composed of an unusual type of clay, identified as a weathered micaceous halloysite, fortunately not common to the region, although—according to the geologist—somewhat more so in Quebec and northern Vermont. Allerton had given Pendergast a map of its geographic distribution, copied from an online journal.

Pendergast compared this with the distribution region he had marked for the gravel. They intersected in only one area, somewhat less than a square mile in extent, north and east of Ramapo.

Now Pendergast opened Google Earth on his laptop and located the coordinates of that square mile of overlap. Zooming in to the program’s maximum resolution, he examined the terrain. Much of it was heavily wooded, situated along the border of Harriman State Park. A suburban neighborhood took up another section, but it was a recent development and all the roads and driveways appeared neatly paved. There were some dirt roads and houses scattered elsewhere, as well as a few farms, but they showed no areas that looked graveled. Finally he spied a structure that looked promising: a large, isolated warehouse. The place had a long driveway; a small adjacent parking area that showed up in a mottled pale hue that looked very much like gravel spread over muddy ground.

Shutting off the laptop, Pendergast stowed the computer and pulled away from the curb with a screech of rubber, heading for the New Jersey Turnpike.

Ninety minutes later, he parked the Rolls off to the side of the road, half a mile past the Rockland County Solid Waste facility, on a wooded stretch just short of the warehouse. Through the denuded trees, pale in the moonlight, he could make out the building, a single light burning before its heavy corrugated-metal door. For half an hour, he kept the structure under surveillance. Nobody came or went; it appeared deserted.

Taking a penlight from the backseat, but keeping it switched off, he slipped out of the car and approached the building through the trees, moving silently. He circled it cautiously. The lone window was painted black.

Turning the flashlight on, Pendergast knelt, wincing with pain. He took the gravel sample from his pocket and, using the light, compared it with the gravel that lined the driveway. The match was perfect. He reached down and fingered a small sample of mud under the gravel, spreading it between his thumb and forefinger. Perfect as well.

Flitting across the open area around the warehouse, Pendergast pressed himself against the corrugated wall, then made his way around to the front, keeping low. Externally it was decrepit, defunct, without signage of any kind. And yet, for such a shabby building, the padlock on the lone door was expensive and new.

Pendergast hefted the padlock in one hand, let his other hand drift over it in an almost caressing gesture. It did not spring open at once, yielding only after manipulation with a tiny screwdriver and a bump key. He pulled it free of the hasp, then—weapon at the ready—opened the door just enough to peer through. Darkness and silence. He slid the door open a little farther, slipped inside, and closed it behind him.

For perhaps five minutes, he made no movement except to pan his flashlight around, examining the floor, walls, and ceiling. The warehouse was almost completely bare, with a concrete pad floor, metal walls, empty shelves along the surrounding walls. It seemed to offer no more information than the burned-out taxi had.

He made a slow circuit of the interior, pausing now and then to examine something that caught his attention; pluck a bit of something up here; take a photograph there; fill sample bags with almost invisible evidence. Despite the apparent emptiness of the warehouse, under his probing eye a story began to emerge, still little more than a ghostly palimpsest.

An hour later, Pendergast returned to the closed door of the warehouse. Kneeling, he spread out a dozen small sealed plastic envelopes, each containing a fragment of evidence: metal filings; a piece of glass; oil from a stain on the concrete, a bit of dried paint, a broken chip of plastic. His eye roved over each in turn, allowing a mental picture to form.

The warehouse had once been used as a vehicular pool. Judging by the age and condition of the oil spots on the floor, at one time it had seen fairly heavy use. More recently, however, only two vehicles had been stored. One—judging by the faint tread marks on the concrete floor, a Goodyear brand size 215/75-16—belonged to the Ford Escape that had been used as the getaway taxi. Spatters of yellow on one wall, as well as a reverse-image tracing of spray paint on a fragment of wood tossed into a far corner, indicated also that this was the spot where the Escape had been converted into a counterfeit New York City taxi—down to the paint job and fake medallion.

The other recent vehicle was harder to identify. Its tire print was broader than that of the Escape, and most probably a Michelin. It might well belong to a powerful European luxury sedan, such as an Audi A8 or a BMW 750. The faintest of paint scrapings could be seen against the inside of the warehouse door where this vehicle had recently come in contact; Pendergast carefully transferred them to another evidence bag with a set of tweezers. It was automotive paint, metallic, and of an unusual color: deep maroon.

And then, as he examined the paint, his eye noted—in the narrow channel of the sliding door—a tiny freshwater pearl.

His heart almost stopped.

After a moment, recovering, he picked it up with tweezers and stared at it. In his mind’s eye, he could visualize—roughly twenty-four hours before—the taxi returning here. It would have contained four people: the driver, two men dressed in jogging suits, and an unwilling companion—Helen. Here she was transferred to the maroon foreign car. As they prepared to leave, there was a struggle; she tried to escape, forcing open the door of the car—that accounted for the scratch of paint—and in the process of subduing her, Helen’s abductors snapped her necklace, scattering small pearls all over the passenger compartment and, no doubt, the floor of the warehouse. There would have been oaths, perhaps a punishment, and a hurried scuffle to pick up the explosion of pearls lying across the concrete.

Pendergast glanced at the tiny, lustrous bead held between the tips of the tweezers. This was the one they missed.

With Helen safely secured in the second car, the vehicles would have gone their separate ways, the counterfeit taxi to its fiery end in New Jersey, the maroon vehicle to…?

Pendergast remained, still kneeling, deep in thought, for another ten minutes. Then, rising stiffly, he exited the warehouse, padlocked it behind him, and walked noiselessly back to the waiting Rolls.