Douglas Child - Fever Dream

"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."