Verses for the Dead

18

They made their way down the icy East Avenue sidewalk, passing grim-looking administrative buildings, heading toward the Thurston Avenue bridge. Although upstate New York was not as cold as Maine had been a few days before, there were still plow-mountains of snow at the street intersections and in the corners of parking lots. Pendergast was again clad in his Snow Mantra coat, while Coldmoon was wearing his old down jacket, unzipped. He readjusted the satchel hanging off his right shoulder. Even for a chilly day in late March, the streets seemed quiet — apparently, it was spring break. Coldmoon had been through this town once or twice, several years back, and except for the Starbucks on the approaching street corner the place looked unchanged: gray and dejected, waiting for spring.

They reached the intersection and stopped briefly beside a flagman for a crew fixing a water main break. Coldmoon took advantage of this pause to reach into his satchel, pull out a battered thermos decorated in red-and-black plaid, remove the cover that also served as a cup, and pour some of his camp coffee into it. One of the nice things about being a fed was not having to deal with TSA bullshit — they could show their creds at the airport security station, board with the pilots and flight attendants, and bring whatever they felt like in their carry-ons.

As the delicious aroma of the burnt coffee wafted up, Coldmoon’s two companions turned toward him: Marv Solomon, a Cornell University security officer, in surprise, and Pendergast in displeased recognition. Coldmoon ignored them as he placidly sipped the tepid coffee; he had long since grown accustomed to such reactions.

It looked like they’d be delayed at the intersection another minute or so. “One moment, please,” Pendergast said. Then he disappeared into the nearby Starbucks. He came out shortly holding a cardboard cup with a white plastic lid, which he handed to Coldmoon.

Coldmoon took it in his free hand and examined it, turning the cup around.

“Espresso doppio,” Pendergast told him. “Two shots of pure French roast, freshly ground. Not quite Caffe Reggio, but more than adequate for a civilized brew.” There was the faintest emphasis on the word civilized.

Now Coldmoon had his hands full. He took another sip from his thermos lid.

“Try the other,” urged Pendergast, kindly.

He tasted — gingerly — the drink Pendergast had given him. He’d never had a Starbucks coffee before — it was too damn expensive. He quickly took another gulp of camp coffee, rinsing the taste from his mouth. Then he poured the espresso into a nearby snow pile and dropped the empty cup into a waste can.

“Too civilized,” he said.

The flagman waved them past and they continued down the hill. Now, directly ahead, lay the bridge. It was not especially impressive — just a pair of green steel arches rising gently toward the sky, the two-lane road between them passing over Fall Creek Gorge and disappearing into the snowy landscape beyond. Coldmoon could hear a faint rushing sound, almost like wind.

“There she is,” Solomon, the security officer, said, waving toward the bridge as proudly as if he’d built it himself.

They paused again and Coldmoon glanced at the man. He found it interesting that Pendergast had requested this Cornell security officer instead of a local cop to act as guide. Perhaps he’d been unimpressed by their reception in Katahdin. Or perhaps it was the fact that Solomon had been with the university two dozen years and had seen three bridge suicides firsthand. In any case, they’d already retrieved the case files from the Ithaca PD. They were now crammed into his satchel with the thermos, ready for examination on the flight home.

He glanced at his watch. Twelve thirty. If they wanted to catch the plane home that evening, they’d better scramble. Even with the earliest Miami-to-Syracuse flight, it had still taken them almost four hours to get here. In addition, Coldmoon had requested they make an hour’s detour on the way back to the airport so he could take care of some personal business, and that further limited their time.

“Let’s take a look,” he said.

They crossed the street, Solomon leading, and went another hundred yards to the pedestrian walkway that spanned the eastern flank of the bridge. The Fall Creek Gorge fell steeply away beneath their feet, its prominences and stratifications fanged by long, menacing icicles. The base of the gorge lay far below, covered with flat boulders punctuated here and there by menhirs sculpted by water. Upstream, the falls were half-frozen, but gray-black cataracts of water, spurting defiantly from its middle passage, turned the rushing sound he’d noticed earlier into a roar. From this distance, it was clear the bridge supports were flanked by decorative iron fencing in the same green and, beyond that, sturdy netting, elaborately rigged, to catch any falling bodies.

“Happened right there,” Solomon said, hitching up his pants and pointing just ahead. “I was doing perimeter tours that night and happened to be very near when the call came in. Got here within two minutes, before even the cops. Didn’t touch anything, of course. It was too late. I knew there was nothing I could do to save her.”

Pendergast pulled a thin folder, which he’d appropriated from the stack of Ithaca PD case files, out of his parka. “Two students found her, I understand. Were they still there when you arrived?”

Solomon nodded. “Yep. Both sitting down. Stunned. Guess I can’t blame them.” He paused. “It was a warm evening for March. Real pleasant. Coming on a new moon, too.”

“You’ve got a good memory,” said Coldmoon.

“I’m not likely to forget that night. Not the way she died.” And Solomon cast them a significant look. “This bridge is pretty famous for the so-called Cornell gorge suicides. Before they put up that netting, more than two dozen people — many of them students — jumped into the gorge. Flayley’s the only person that I know of who hanged herself instead of jumping.”

“What else do you remember?” Pendergast asked.

“She used yellow polypropylene rope. You know, the kind they rig boats and things with. Real strong for its weight. Tied one end around the railing, here—” He pointed. “Of course, the netting wasn’t in place at the time. They put that in a few years later.”

Pendergast opened the folder and paged through it for a moment. “A very common brand of rope, I see. Available in most states.” He glanced up at Solomon. “Was she dead by the time you arrived?”

The man hesitated. “Well, that’s hard to say.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was... well, I saw her limbs twitch for a couple of seconds. Legs, mostly. Don’t think she was still alive, it was just... ” He fell silent again for a moment. “The ones that called it in, they said she was struggling when they first got there. They were too freaked out to do anything. Hadn’t made the rope long enough to break her own neck, I guess.” He licked his lips. “Poor woman. What a way to go.”

“Nobody saw her approach the bridge or jump off?”

“No, sir. Like I said, it was a dark night. Quiet. Little traffic that late.”

“How late?”

“Ten past midnight.”

Pendergast went back to the folder. Coldmoon wondered why he was asking these questions; most, if not all, of the answers would be in the case files. It was almost as if the man had to absorb something from eyewitnesses, or the scene itself — as if he were waiting for the very landscape to murmur its secrets to him.

“And it was determined that Ms. Flayley knew none of the university students or any Ithaca residents,” Pendergast said without looking up.

“She knew nobody. Was just in town for one night. Had an interview at Cornell in the afternoon.”

A so-so interview, too, Coldmoon knew; an expression of interest, but not a definite job offer. That’s what Pickett had said, and the HR department at Cornell backed him up. Agatha Flayley, thirty-one at the time of her suicide. Parents long deceased, no siblings or significant others. Place of residence: Miami. Place of employment: Outpatient Consulting, Mercy Miami Hospital. Interested in a position as patient advocate at Cornell Health. Who the hell moves voluntarily from Miami to upstate New York? Felice Montera, the first woman to have her heart rudely chopped out, had been in the health field, too, he remembered — a nurse at Mount Sinai. Connection?

As Coldmoon mused, Pendergast had walked down the bridge alone, hands in his pockets. At the far end, he abruptly stopped and looked around. Again, Coldmoon was struck with the odd notion that the man was waiting for something. He mentally shrugged it off: whatever it was, it wasn’t any more peculiar than lying motionless on a hotel bed in Maine for a couple of hours. The agent’s eccentric behavior, the “Pendergast mystique” Pickett had warned him of, was something Coldmoon felt impervious to.

Solomon, the security officer, was saying something. Coldmoon tuned in; realized he was talking about snow in the forecast; tuned it out again. Now Pendergast was coming back. Just before he reached them, he faced the bridge once more. For a split second, he seemed to freeze, and Coldmoon was certain he heard the agent draw in a sharp breath. But then he turned back, his expression as inscrutable as ever, and the moment — whatever it was — had passed.

Pendergast nodded to the security officer. “Thank you, Mr. Solomon,” he said, slipping the file back into his parka. “I don’t think we need to take up any more of your time.”

On the way back to the Syracuse airport, Coldmoon — as he’d requested — made a detour for personal reasons. His destination was the federal penitentiary at Jamesville, New York. He kept the visit brief — about half an hour — and the deviation from their planned route took no more than an hour. They made their flight to Miami with time to spare. After the cramped and noisy flight up that morning, Pendergast insisted on upgrading them both to first class for the flight back, at his own expense. Coldmoon was too tired to object.

Coldmoon had never flown first class except once as a sky marshal, and after an initial period of uneasiness began to enjoy the legroom, the attentive service, the free dinner. He especially liked the flight attendant who had refilled his Dewar’s on the rocks twice and asked for nothing but a thank-you in return.

He glanced over at Pendergast, who was paging listlessly through another of the evidence folders. The man had said little during the drive back, beyond fielding a call from Sandoval to inform them there were too many Miami cemeteries to surveil effectively. But the man had been unfailingly polite. Sipping his third scotch, Coldmoon felt a certain uncharacteristic generosity of spirit settle over him. Pendergast hadn’t made a fuss about his unexplained stop at the pen; hadn’t even asked him about it. He’d gone out of his way to make a friendly gesture by bringing him an espresso. Dumping it in the snow, on reflection, had been rather mean of him.

“You never asked why I wanted to stop at Jamesville,” Coldmoon said.

Pendergast looked over. “Conjugal visit?”

“No. It has to do with why I became an FBI agent.”

Pendergast closed the folder.

“I grew up on a reservation in South Dakota. When I was eleven, my father was murdered in a bar fight. My mother and I were almost certain who did it. But the killer was in tight with the tribal police. There was no investigation. We had nobody to appeal to — local and state police have no jurisdiction on the rez. The feds did, but they couldn’t be bothered. To them, it was just a fight between two drunken Indians. So the case was shelved. I was lost for a while, went to college, and then after a lackluster start it suddenly clicked. I worked my ass off to get that degree, graduate at the top of my class, and earn a spot at Quantico. Once I left the Academy, I made sure I got rotated into the satellite field office in Aberdeen. I investigated my father’s murder and found all the evidence needed to convict the killer. That was my first case.”

There was a brief silence. Coldmoon took a sip of his Dewar’s.

“So you became an FBI agent out of a desire for revenge.”

“No. I became an agent to help ensure that kind of injustice doesn’t happen again.”

“I see.” Pendergast paused. “And the perp is currently housed in Jamesville?”

“I like to visit him when I’m in the area.”

“Naturally. A reunion of sorts.” Pendergast nodded. “Which of the council fires is yours, by the way?”

“What?”

“The seven council fires of the Lakota.”

“Oh. Teton. Oglala.”

“And yet your eyes are pale green.”

“My mother was Italian.”

“Indeed? I’ve spent a great deal of time in Italy. What was her family name?”

“It doesn’t matter.” While Coldmoon loved his mother, he couldn’t help but feel she’d tainted his otherwise unadulterated Sioux bloodline. He’d taken her last name for his own middle one, but never told anybody what it was — he’d even kept it to a mere initial on his FBI application.

“Forgive me for prying. In any case, I hope your, ah, visit was a success.” And with that Pendergast went back to his reading.

Coldmoon regarded the agent with private amusement. It seemed the grim justice of the situation appealed to him.

At least they agreed about something.