Линкольн Чайлд - City of Endless Night

D’Agosta wasn’t all that thrilled to be back at the Cantucci crime scene in what was practically the middle of the night, even if it was to meet Pendergast, who had finally agreed to examine the place. Sergeant Curry let him in the front door, and a moment later D’Agosta saw Pendergast’s huge vintage Rolls glide up to the curb, Proctor at the wheel. The special agent got out.

Pendergast glided past Curry. “Good evening, my dear Vincent.”

They started down the hall. “See all these cameras?” D’Agosta asked. “The perp hacked into the security system, bypassed all the alarms.”

“I should like to see the report.”

“I’ve got a complete set for you,” D’Agosta said. “Forensics, hair and fiber, latents, you name it. Sergeant Curry will give them to you on the way out.”

“Excellent.”

“Ingress was through the front door,” D’Agosta continued. “The hacked security system let him in. The perp moved extensively through the house. Here’s the way it played out, as best we understand it. It seems that while the killer was in the entryway, Cantucci wakes up. We think Cantucci goes to the CCTV and sees the guy downstairs. He puts on his bathrobe and gets his gun, a Beretta 9mm. He thinks the guy is coming up on the elevator, so he fires a bunch of rounds through the door when the elevator arrives — but the killer faked him out, sent the elevator up empty. So now Cantucci, probably checking the CCTV again, goes down to the third floor, where the guy is messing around with a safe holding his Stradivarius violin. And that’s where Cantucci is ambushed, killed by three arrows fired in quick succession, all three going through the heart. And then the perp decapitates him — practically as the heart stops beating, if the M.E. is to be believed.”

“Must have been a rather sanguinary process.”

D’Agosta wasn’t sure what Pendergast meant by that and let it go. “The perp then goes to the attic, where the safe holding the security system is located, opens it using the hacked code, takes out the hard drives, and leaves. Egress again out the front door. According to our expert, only an employee, or ex-employee, of the company that installed the security system could have pulled this off. It’s all in the report.”

“Very good. Let us proceed, then. One floor at a time, every room on each floor, please, even those in which nothing occurred.”

D’Agosta led Pendergast through the kitchen, then the downstairs sitting room, opening all the closet doors at his request. They climbed the stairs to the second floor, toured that, and then the third. This was where most of the action had taken place. There were two rooms in the back of the narrow town house, and one large sitting room in front.

“The killing occurred at the doorway to the music room,” said D’Agosta, indicating the wall where the arrows had struck. There was a broad, thick shower of blood descending from three splintered marks in the paneled wall, and a huge pool of dried blood in the carpet below. Here Pendergast paused, kneeling. Using a penlight, he probed about, once in a while slipping a small test tube out of his suit pocket, plucking something up with tweezers, putting it in, and stoppering the tube. He then examined the rug and the arrow marks with a loupe fixed to one eye. D’Agosta didn’t bother to remind him that the CSU team had already fine-combed everything; he had seen Pendergast turn up fresh clues in even the most thoroughly scrubbed crime scene.

Once he had finished going over the immediate area of the murder, Pendergast continued on in silence, making a slow and painstaking exploration of the music room, the safe, and the two other rooms on that floor of the town house. Next, they proceeded to the upper floors, then climbed into the attic. Again, Pendergast got down on his hands and knees among the dust in front of and inside the security safe, plucking and storing evidence in test tubes.

He half rose beneath the low ceiling. “Curious,” he murmured, “very curious indeed.”

D’Agosta had no idea what he found curious but he knew if he asked, he wouldn’t get an answer. “As I said, it had to be someone who worked for Sharps and Gund. The perp knew exactly how the system worked. I mean exactly .”

“An excellent line of inquiry to follow up. Ah — regarding the other murder, do you have any further revelations about the daughter?”

“Yeah. We managed to get copies of some sealed files from the Beverly Hills PD. She killed a boy while driving under the influence about eighteen months back — hit and run. Ozmian got her off with some mighty fine lawyering. The boy’s family took it pretty hard — threats were made.”

“Another obvious line for follow-up.”

“Of course. The boy’s mother committed suicide, the father supposedly moved back east. We’re trying to figure out just where he is so we can talk to him.”

“You consider him a suspect?”

“He’s got a strong motive.”

“When did he come east?”

“About six months ago. We’re keeping it all under the radar, for obvious reasons, until we locate him.”

They descended once again to the first floor, where Pendergast turned to Curry and the small group of police who stood with him. “I’ll have a look at those files now, if you please.”

Curry pulled an accordion folder out of his briefcase and handed it to Pendergast. The agent promptly sat down in a chair, opened it, and began leafing through it, pulling out files, eyeballing them, putting them back in rapid succession.

D’Agosta glanced covertly at his watch. Ten minutes after twelve. “Um,” he said, “that’s a pretty big file. Maybe you’d like to take it home with you? It’s all yours.”

Pendergast looked up, his silvery eyes glittering with annoyance. “I wish to make sure I’ve overlooked nothing before I leave the premises.”

“Right, right.”

He fell into silence as Pendergast continued shuffling through the papers. Everyone waited with increasing impatience as the minutes ticked by.

Suddenly Pendergast looked up: “Where’s Mr. Cantucci’s cell phone?”

“It says right there in the report that they didn’t find it. Calls roll over to voice mail. The phone is turned off. We don’t know where the hell it is.”

“It should have been on his bedside table, where the charger was.”

“He probably left it somewhere.”

“You searched his office?”

“Yes.”

“Our Mr. Cantucci has survived two grand jury hearings and he’s been subjected to over a dozen search warrants — not to mention countless death threats. He would not let his cell phone out of his sight. Ever.”

“Okay. So what’re you getting at?”

“The killer took his phone. Before he was murdered.”

“How do you figure that?”

“The killer came upstairs, took his cell phone from his bedside table while Cantucci was sleeping, then went back downstairs to the first floor.”

“That’s crazy. If he did that, why the hell didn’t he just kill Cantucci right there, in bed?”

“A most excellent question.”

“Maybe he took the cell phone off Cantucci after he killed him.”

“Impossible. Mr. Cantucci would have called nine-one-one on the cell phone when he realized there was an intruder in the house. The conclusion is inescapable that he did not have his phone when he woke and pursued the intruder.”

D’Agosta shook his head.

“And there’s a second unaddressed mystery here, Vincent.”

“Which is?”

“Why did the killer go to great lengths to disable the alarm system, yet fail to shut down the CCTV system?”

“That one’s easy,” said D’Agosta. “He used the system to locate his victim — to see where Cantucci was in the house.”