Douglas Preston - Cold Vengeance

As she read the dry, legalistic language, a sense of complete disbelief took hold. Without commentary or analysis or even a conclusion, the transcript was nothing more than a record of the testimony of various witnesses relating to a shooting incident on some Highland moor. A terrible, utterly unbelievable incident.

She read through it again, and again, and yet again, each time feeling an increase in the sense of unreality. Clearly, this strange tale was only the tip of some iceberg, with the real story submerged beneath the surface. None of it made sense. She felt her emotions morphing — from disbelief, to unreality, to desperate anxiety. Pendergast, shot dead in a hunting accident? Impossible.

Hands trembling slightly, she fished out her notebook and looked up a telephone number, hesitated, then swore softly to herself and dialed the number. It was D’Agosta’s home number and he wouldn’t be happy getting a call at this hour, but screw it, the cop had never called her back, never followed through on his promise to look into it.

She swore out loud again, this time louder, as her fingers misdialed and she had to start over.

It rang about five times and then a female voice answered. “Hello?”

“I want to talk to Vincent D’Agosta.” She could hear the tremor in her own voice.

A silence. “Who is this?”

Corrie took a deep breath. If she didn’t want to get hung up on, she’d better cool her jets. “This is Corrie Swanson. I’d like to speak to Lieutenant D’Agosta.”

“The lieutenant isn’t here,” came the chilly response. “Perhaps I could take a message?”

“Tell him to call me. Corrie Swanson. He has my number.”

“And this is in reference to—?”

She took a deep breath. Getting mad at D’Agosta’s wife or girlfriend or whoever wouldn’t help. “Agent Pendergast. I’m trying to find out about Pendergast,” she said, and added, “I worked with him on a case.”

“Agent Pendergast is dead. I’m sorry.”

Just hearing it seemed to strike her dumb. She swallowed, tried to find her voice. “How?”

“A shooting accident in Scotland.”

There it was. Confirmation. She tried to think of something more to say, but her mind was blank. Why hadn’t D’Agosta called her? But there was no point in talking further with this person. “Look, have the lieutenant call me. ASAP.”

“I’ll pass on the message,” was the cool response.

The phone went dead.

She slumped in her chair, staring at the computer screen. This was crazy. What was she going to do? She felt suddenly bereft, as if she had lost her father. And there was no one to talk to, no one to grieve with. Her own father was a hundred miles away, in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She felt suddenly, desperately alone.

Staring at the computer screen, she clicked on the link to the website about Pendergast she had been lovingly maintaining:

www.agentpendergast.com

Working quickly, almost automatically, she created a frame with a thick black border and began to write within it.

I’ve just learned that Agent P. — Special Agent A. X. L. Pendergast — has passed away in a bizarre and tragic accident. This is awful. I can hardly believe it to be true. I can’t believe the world can keep spinning without him on it.

It happened during a hunting trip to Scotland…

But even as she wrote the eulogy, fighting back tears, the surreal aspects of the story began to reassert themselves in her mind. And in the end, as she finished and posted it, she wondered if she even believed what she had just written.

The Foulmire

JUDSON ESTERHAZY PAUSED TO CATCH HIS BREATH. It was an uncharacteristically sunny morning, and the boggy moorlands that surrounded him on all sides shone in rich browns and greens. In the distance, he could see the dark line of the Inish Marshes. And between the hillocks ahead of him, a few hundred yards away, stood the small stone cottage known as Glims Holm.

Esterhazy had heard tell of it but had initially dismissed it as being too many miles from the site of the shooting and far too primitive for Pendergast to have received the kind of medical attention he would have needed. But then he’d learned D’Agosta had been in Inverkirkton, asking around for Pendergast, and from there he’d discovered that Glims Holm was the last place D’Agosta had visited before returning to America, disappointed.

But was he truly disappointed? The more he thought about it, the more it began to seem — perversely — the kind of place Pendergast would have chosen to recuperate.

And then — accidentally, in the course of background research into the official records of the Shire of Sutherland — Esterhazy had learned the nugget that convinced him: the strange old woman who lived in the stone cottage in front of him was Dr. Roscommon’s aunt. This was a fact that Roscommon — all too clearly a man of habitual restraint — had kept concealed from the good folk of Inverkirkton.

Positioning himself behind a thicket of gorse, Esterhazy took out his binoculars and observed the cottage. He could see the old woman through the downstairs window, laboring over a stove and moving about. After a while she removed something from the stove, and he watched as she walked past the window and out of sight. For a moment she was gone… and then he saw her figure pass by the second-story window, carrying what looked like a mug. He could just barely see her figure inside the attic space, leaning over what seemed to be a sickly person in a bed, helping him sit up and giving him the mug to drink.

Esterhazy’s heart quickened. Digging his walking stick into the soft ground, he made a circuit of the cottage, ending up on the far side. There was a small back door, of rough wood, that connected to a small kitchen garden; a shed; and a stone sheep pen. There were no windows on the back side of the house.

He glanced around carefully. Nobody was to be seen; the infinitude of moor and mire on all sides was devoid of life. He pulled the small handgun from his pocket, ensured there was a round in the chamber. With great care, he approached the cottage from its blind side.

Soon he was crouched by the back door. With a single finger he made a small scratching noise on the wood and waited.

Sure enough, the sharp-eared old crone heard it; he listened to her footsteps and unintelligible imprecations as she approached. A bolt shot back and the door opened. The woman looked out.

A muttered oath.

With one swift, economical movement Esterhazy rose, clamped his hand over her mouth, and dragged her one-armed from the doorway. He gave her a solid tap on the back of the head with the butt of the gun, then laid her unconscious body on the turf. A moment later he had noiselessly slipped into the cottage. The ground floor was a single large room; he looked around quickly, taking in the enameled stove, the worn chairs, the antlers on the walls, the steep staircase rising to the loft overhead. A loud, stertorous breathing could be heard coming from above. It continued undisturbed.

He moved around the small room with infinite care, placing each foot with fanatical caution, checking the commode, the single closet, satisfying himself that nobody was in hiding. Then, keeping tight hold of the gun, he moved over to the staircase. It was built of thick pegged planks, which might or might not creak.

He waited at the bottom of the stairs, listening. The breathing continued, somewhat labored, and once he heard the man upstairs shift in his bed and grunt with what sounded like discomfort. Esterhazy waited, letting a full five minutes pass. All seemed normal.

He raised a leg and placed one foot on the lower stair, began to put pressure on it, bit by bit, until his full weight was applied. No creak of wood. He placed his next foot on the higher tread, performing the same excruciating operation, and again there was no creak. With maddening slowness he ascended the staircase in this fashion, consuming minutes of time, until he was almost at the top. The foot of a primitive bed was visible five feet away. He raised himself ever so slowly and peered over the top into the bed. A figure lay in it: back to him, covered, sleeping, his breathing labored but regular. He was a gaunt old man in a heavy nightdress, with white hair almost as wild and rumpled as the crone’s. Or so it appeared.