Douglas Child - Fever Dream

"Oh, Vinnie ," she sobbed.

D'Agosta's own eyes filled. And then he slowly closed them.

Pendergast put a steadying arm around her, and for a moment she turned her face to the fabric of his shirt, yielding to the emotion, letting sobs rack her frame. Only now--when she saw Vinnie alive--did she realize just how close she had come to losing him.

"I'm afraid you'll need to leave now," the surgeon said in a low voice.

She straightened up, dried her eyes, and took a long, shuddering, cleansing breath.

"He's not out of the woods yet. As it is, his heart has been severely damaged by the trauma. He's going to need an aortic valve replacement at the earliest opportunity."

Hayward nodded. She detached herself from Pendergast's arm, took one more look down at D'Agosta, then turned away.

"Laura," she heard him croak.

She glanced back. He was still lying there on the bed, eyes closed. Had it been her imagination?

Then he moved faintly and his eyes fluttered open again. His jaw worked but no sound came.

She stepped forward and bent over the bed.

"Make my work here count," he said in a voice that was barely a whisper.

47

Penumbra Plantation

AFIRE HAD BEEN KINDLED IN THE GREAT fireplace of the library, and Hayward watched the old manservant, Maurice, serving after-dinner coffee. He threaded his way between the furniture, an ancient figure with a curiously blank expression on his lined face. She noticed that he had been careful not to stare at the bruise on Pendergast's jaw. Perhaps, Hayward mused, over the years the old fellow had grown used to seeing his employer a little dinged up.

The mansion and grounds were exactly as she pictured they would be: ancient oaks draped with Spanish moss, white columned portico, faded antebellum furnishings. There was even an old family ghost, the ancient manservant had assured her, who haunted the nearby swamps--another predictable cliche. The only surprise, in fact, was Penumbra's general state of external disrepair. This was a little odd--Pendergast, she assumed, had plenty of money. She put these musings aside, telling herself she was completely uninterested in Pendergast and his family.

Before leaving the hospital the night before, Pendergast had asked her--in some detail--about her visit with Constance Greene. Following that, he offered her lodging at Penumbra. Hayward had refused, opting instead to stay at a hotel near the medical center. But another visit to D'Agosta the following morning had served to underline what the surgeon told her: his recovery would be slow and long. She could take time off from the job--that wasn't a problem, she'd accrued too much vacation time as it was--but the idea of cooling her heels in a depressing hotel room for days on end was unendurable. Especially because, at Pendergast's insistence, Vinnie was going to be moved to a secure location just as soon as medically possible, and--for the sake of security--she would be forbidden to visit. That morning, in a brief interlude of consciousness, Vinnie had once again implored her to pick up the case where he'd left off--to help see it through to the bitter end.

And so, when Pendergast sent his car round to pick her up after lunch, she'd checked out of the hotel and accepted his invitation to stay at Penumbra. She hadn't agreed to help, but she'd decided to hear the details. Some of it she knew already from Vinnie's phone calls. It had sounded like a typical Pendergast investigation, all hunches and blind alleys and conflicting evidence, strung together by highly questionable police work.

But back at Penumbra, as Pendergast had explained the case--starting at dinner, and then continuing over coffee--Hayward realized that the bizarre story had an internal logic. Pendergast explained his late wife's obsession with Audubon; how they had traced her interest in the Carolina Parakeet, the Black Frame, the lost parrot, and the strange fate of the Doane family. He read her passages from the Doane girl's diary: a chilling descent into madness. He described their encounter with Blast, another seeker of the Black Frame, himself recently murdered--as had been Helen Pendergast's former employer at Doctors With Wings, Morris Blackletter. And finally, he explained the series of deductions and discoveries that led to the unearthing of the Black Frame itself.

When Pendergast at last fell silent, Hayward leaned back in her chair, sipping her coffee, running over the bizarre information in her mind, looking for threads, logical connections, and finding precious little. A great deal more work would be necessary to fill in the blanks.

She glanced over at the painting known as the Black Frame. It was lit indirectly by the firelight, but she could nevertheless make out details: the woman on the bed, the stark room, the cold white nakedness of her body. Disturbing, to put it mildly.

She looked back at Pendergast, now attired in his signature black suit. "So you believe your wife was interested in Audubon's illness. An illness that somehow transformed him into a creative genius."

"Through some unknown neurological effect, yes. To someone with her interests, this would have been a very valuable pharmacological discovery."

"And all she wanted with the painting was confirmation for this theory."

Pendergast nodded. "That painting is the link between Audubon's early, indifferent work and his later brilliance. It's proof of the transition he underwent. But that doesn't quite get to the central mystery in this case: the birds."

Hayward frowned. "The birds?"

"The Carolina Parakeets. The Doane parrot."

Hayward herself had been puzzling over the connection to Audubon's illness, to no avail. "And?"

Pendergast sipped his coffee. "I believe we're dealing with a strain of avian flu."

"Avian flu? You mean, bird flu?"

"That, I believe, is the disease that laid Audubon low, that nearly killed him, and that was responsible for his creative flowering. His symptoms--high fever, headache, delirium, cough--are all consistent with flu. A flu he no doubt caught dissecting a Carolina Parakeet."

"Slow down. How do you know all this?"

In reply, Pendergast reached for a worn, leather-bound book. "This is the diary of my great-great-grandfather Boethius Pendergast. He befriended Audubon during the painter's younger days." Opening the journal to a page marked with a silken strand, he found the passage he was looking for and began to read aloud: Aug. 21st. J. J. A. spent the evening with us again. He had amused himself throughout the afternoon in the dissection of two Carolina Parakeets--a curiously colored but otherwise unremarkable species. He then stuffed and mounted them on bits of cypress wood. We dined well and afterward took a turn around the park. He took leave of us around half past ten. Next week he plans to make a journey upriver, where he professes to have business prospects.

Pendergast closed the journal. "Audubon never made that journey upriver. Because within a week he developed the symptoms that would eventually land him in the Meuse St. Claire sanatorium."

Hayward nodded at the journal. "You think your wife saw that passage?"

"I'm sure of it. Why else would she have stolen those specimens of Carolina Parakeet--the very ones Audubon dissected? She wanted to test them for avian flu." He paused. "And do more than simply test them. She hoped to extract from them a live sample of virus. Vincent told me all that remained of the parrots my wife stole were a few feathers. I'll head over to Oakley Plantation in the morning, retrieve those remaining feathers--carefully--and have them tested to confirm my suspicions."