Lincoln Child - Cemetery Dance

"Anybody here?" the guard called out, clearly reluctant to advance into that forest of whale skeletons. The feeble beam of a light played about the dimly lit room.

"Last call, I'm locking the door."

Nora didn't care. As a curator, she had the security code to the front door.

"All right, you asked for it." A shuffling, the lights went out, and then the slamming of a door.

Slowly, Nora got her breathing under control. She dropped to her knees and peered forward in the dim light trickling in from the small window set into the door.

Was he, like her, still in the room? Was he waiting, ready to ambush? What did he want — to finish the job he'd failed to finish in the apartment?

Dropping to her hands and knees, she crawled under the now — still plastic, moving slowly, as quietly as possible, heading for the front door. Every few minutes, she stopped to peer around and listen. But there were no sounds, no shadows — just the great hanging whale bones in their shrouds.

As she reached the middle of the skeletons, she paused in her journey. She could see the faint glimmer of a scattering of broken glass. The rest of her makeshift weapon, broken to pieces. In the gloom, she made out a faint dark streak along the glistening edge of one large shard. So she had struck Fearing with the glass — and cut him. That was blood… his blood.

She drew in a breath, then another, trying to think as clearly as possible. Then, with shaking fingers, she withdrew one of the spare reaction tubes she'd shoved into her pocket. Carefully breaking the sterile seal, she picked up the glass, dipped it into the liquid, and resealed the tube. Pendergast had already given her DNA samples from Fearing's mother, and mother — son mitochondrial DNA were always identical. Now she could test his DNA and compare it directly with the unknown DNA recovered from the crime scene.

She slipped the tube back in her pocket and made her way — quietly and carefully — to the door. It responded to the code and opened. She closed and locked it quickly behind her, then walked on shaky legs down the corridor and back to the PCR lab. There was no sign of Fearing. Entering the code into the keypad, she slipped into the lab, shut the door behind her, and turned off the overhead light. She'd finish her work by the glow of the instrumentation.

The thermal cycler was halfway done with its pass. Her heart still thumping, Nora racked the tube with her attacker's blood next to the others, ready for the next run.

By tomorrow night, she would know for sure whether or not it was really Fearing who had killed her husband — and tried to kill her twice.

D'Agosta entered the waiting room for the morgue annex, careful to breathe through his mouth. Pendergast followed, taking in the room with a quick glance, then slipping cat — like into one of the ugly plastic chairs that lined the wall, flanking a table heaped with dog — eared magazines. The agent picked up the one with the lightest wear, flipped through the pages, then began to read.

D'Agosta made a circuit of the room, then another. The New York City morgue was a place full of horrible memories for him, and he knew he was about to undergo an experience that would lodge another in his head — perhaps the worst one of all. Pendergast's preternatural coolness irritated him. How could he remain so nonchalant? He glanced over and saw the agent was reading Mademoiselle with evident interest.

"What are you reading that for?" D'Agosta asked irritably.

"There is an instructive article on bad first dates. It reminds me of a case I once had: a particularly untoward first date that ended in murder — suicide." Pendergast shook his head at the memory and continued reading.

D'Agosta hugged himself, then took yet another turn around the room.

"Vincent, do sit down. Use your time constructively."

"I hate this place. I hate the smell of it. I hate the look of it."

"I quite sympathize. The intimations of mortality here are — shall we say — hard to ignore? Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. "

The pages rustled as Pendergast read on. A few dreadful minutes passed before the door to the morgue finally opened. One of the pathologists, Beckstein, stood there. Thank God, thought D'Agosta: they had pulled Beckstein for the autopsy. He was one of the best and — surprise — an almost normal human being.

Beckstein peeled off his gloves and mask, dropped them in a bin. "Lieutenant. Agent Pendergast." He nodded his greetings, not offering his hand. Shaking hands just wasn't done in the morgue. "I'm at your disposal."

"Dr. Beckstein," said D'Agosta, taking the lead, "thanks for taking the time to see us."

"My pleasure."

"Give us a rundown, light on the jargon, please."

"Certainly. Would you like to observe the cadaver? The prosector is still working on it. It sometimes helps to see—"

"No thank you," said D'Agosta decisively.

He felt Pendergast's gaze on him.

Screw it, he thought determinedly.

"As you wish. The cadaver showed fourteen full or partial knife wounds, pre — mortem, some to the hands and arms, several in the lower back, and a final one, also with a posterior entry, that passed through the heart. I would be glad to provide you with a diagram—"

"Not necessary. Any postmortem wounds?"

"None. Death was almost immediate after the final, fatal blow to the heart. The knife entered horizontally, between the second and third posterior rib, at a downward angle of eighty degrees from the vertical, penetrating the left atrium, the pulmonary artery, and splitting the conus arteriosus at the top of the right ventricle, causing massive exsanguination."

"I get the picture."

"Right." "Would you say that the killer did what he had to do to kill the victim, and no more?"

"That statement is consistent with the facts, yes."

"The weapon?"

"A blade ten inches long, two inches in width, very stiff, probably a high — quality kitchen knife or a scuba knife."

D'Agosta nodded. "Anything else?"

"Blood toxicology showed a blood alcohol level within legal limits. No drugs or other foreign substances. The contents of the stomach—"

"I don't need to know that."

Beckstein hesitated, and D'Agosta saw something in his eyes. Uncertainty, unease.

"Yeah?" he urged. "Something else?"

"Yes. I haven't written the report yet, but there was one thing, quite strange, that was missed by the forensic team."

"Go on."

The pathologist hesitated again. "I'd like to show it to you. We haven't moved it — yet."

D'Agosta swallowed. "What was it?"

"Please, just let me show it to you. I can't… well, I can't very well describe it."

"Of course," said Pendergast, stepping forward. "Vincent, if you'd prefer to wait here—"

D'Agosta felt his jaw set. "I'm coming."

They followed the technician through the set of double stainless — steel doors into the green light of a large tiled room. They donned masks, gloves, and scrubs from nearby bins, then continued on, passing into one of the autopsy suites.

Immediately D'Agosta saw the prosector hunched over the cadaver, the whine of the Stryker saw in his hands like an angry mosquito. A diener lounged nearby, eating a bagel with lox. A second dissecting table was covered with various tagged organs. D'Agosta swallowed again, harder.

"Hey," the diener said to Beckstein. "You're just in time. We were about to run the gut."

A hard stare from Beckstein silenced the man. "Sorry. Didn't know you had guests." He smirked, rubbery lips crunching down on his breakfast. The room smelled of formalin, fish, and feces.

Beckstein turned to the prosector. "John, I'd like to show Lieutenant D'Agosta and Special Agent Pendergast the, ah, item we found."