Линкольн Чайлд - City of Endless Night

“You’re referring to the behavioral profile.”

“Yes. Or, more precisely, the lack of one.” At the request of the NYPD, Longstreet had submitted the Decapitator case to the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit in Quantico and asked for a psychological profile. Serial killers, no matter how bizarre, fell into types, and the BSU had developed a database of every known type in the world. When a new killer appeared on the scene, the BSU was able to slot him into one of the existing patterns in order to create a psychological profile — his motivations, methods, patterns, work habits, even such things as his socioeconomic background and whether or not he had a car. This time, however, the BSU had been unable to profile the Decapitator; the killer fit no previously known pattern. Instead of a profile, Longstreet had gotten back a long, defensive report that boiled down to one fact: for this killer, the Quantico databases were useless.

Longstreet sighed. “You’re our serial-killer expert,” he said. “What do you make of this one? Is he as unique as the BSU claims?”

Pendergast inclined his head. “I’m still struggling to understand. To be honest, I’m not sure we’re dealing with a serial killer at all.”

“How can that be? He’s killed fourteen people! Or thirteen, if you don’t count the first.”

Pendergast shook his head. “All serial killers have at base a pathological or psychotic motivation. In this case, maybe the motivation is... relatively normal .”

“Normal? Killing and decapitating half a dozen people? Have you lost your mind?” Longstreet almost laughed out loud. This was classic Pendergast, never failing to astonish, taking delight in confounding everyone around him with some outrageous statement.

“Take Adeyemi. I’m quite sure she has no skeletons in her closet, no sordid history. Nor was she exceptionally rich.”

“Then the current theory about the Decapitator’s motivation is worthless.”

“Or perhaps...” Pendergast paused as their dinners were served.

“Perhaps what?” Longstreet asked as he tucked into his calves’ brains.

Pendergast waved a hand. “Many theories come to mind. Perhaps Adeyemi, or one of the other victims, was the real target all along, and the other murders are nothing more than a smokescreen.”

Longstreet tasted his dish and was disappointed: the pale pink calves’ brains were overdone. Laying his silverware on the plate with a clatter, he summoned the waiter and sent the dish back for another. He turned to Pendergast again. “Do you really think that’s likely?”

“Not likely. In fact, barely possible.” Pendergast paused a moment before continuing. “I’ve never encountered a case so resistant to analysis. Obviously, the heads are missing and the primary victims were surrounded by heavy security. Those are the only commonalities we have so far. That’s not nearly enough to build a case on. It leaves open a wide variety of possible motivations.”

“So what now?” Although he’d never admit it to the man, Longstreet enjoyed watching Pendergast’s mind at work.

“We must go back to the beginning, to the first murder, and work our way forward from there. It’s the key to everything that’s happened since, for the very reason that it enjoys the debut position. It is also the most curious of the killings — and we must understand the anomalies before we can understand the patterns in what followed. Why, for example, did somebody take the head twenty-four hours after the girl was murdered? Nobody seems troubled by this anymore, except for me.”

“You really think it’s important?”

“I think it’s vital. In fact, earlier today I dropped in on Anton Ozmian to get more information. Unfortunately, my usual bag of tricks didn’t get me past his retinue of toadies, lawyers, lickspittles, bodyguards, lackeys, and other impedimenta. It was with some embarrassment I was forced to withdraw.”

Longstreet suppressed a smile. He would have loved to have witnessed Pendergast obstructed like that; it happened so rarely. “Why do I feel this is leading up to a request?”

“I need the power of your title, H. I need the full weight of the FBI behind me in order to beard the lion in his den.”

“I see.” Longstreet let a pregnant silence build. “Aloysius, you know that you’re still on my shit list, right? You maneuvered me into dishonoring an oath that I swore to with my life.”

“I’m acutely aware of that.”

“Good. I’ll do what I can to get you inside the door, then — but after that, it’s your show. I’ll come along, but only as an observer.”

“Thank you. That will be entirely acceptable.”

Their waiter returned with a fresh, steaming plate of calves’ brains. He slipped the plate before Longstreet, then took a step back, looking on tremulously, waiting for his patron’s opinion. The executive associate director cut a slice off one edge with a stroke of his knife, speared it with his fork, raised the jiggling mass to his mouth.

“Perfection,” he pronounced, chewing with half-closed eyes.

At this, the waiter bowed with mingled pleasure and relief, then turned and disappeared into the gaslit gloom.

Bryce Harriman stepped out onto the front porch of the small, neat-looking Colonial on a residential street of Dedham, Massachusetts, then turned back to shake the hand of the owner — a physically feeble but clearheaded man of about eighty, with a thin cap of white hair plastered to his head with brilliantine.

“Thank you very much for your time and your candor, Mr. Sanderton,” Harriman said. “And you’re sure about the affidavit?”

“If you think it’s necessary. It was a damned awful thing — I was sorry I had to witness it.”

“I’ll see that a notary brings you a copy for signing by dinnertime, along with an overnight pouch to send it back to me.”

With another thanks, and another warm handshake, Harriman went down the steps and walked toward the Uber that idled at the curb. It was already late afternoon on New Year’s Eve, and with holiday traffic it would be a bitch getting back to New York and his Upper East Side apartment. But Harriman didn’t care about that. In fact, at the moment he didn’t care much about anything except the triumph he was about to unleash.

Harriman subscribed to the old maxim that, if one were to write to any six upstanding pillars of the community with the message All is discovered — flee at once , every last one of them would head for the hills. Dirt was what was needed here; and — save for his late journalistic nemesis Bill Smithback — nobody was better at digging up dirt than Bryce Harriman.

His big break had occurred just after breakfast, as he was online perusing old newspapers from the Boston suburbs in which Ozmian had grown up. And, in the Dedham Townsman , he’d found what he was looking for. Nearly thirty years ago, Ozmian had been arrested for destruction of property at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church on Bryant Street. That was all there was, a single item buried in an old newspaper — but it was all Harriman needed. A call to Massachusetts revealed that Ozmian had been quickly released and the misdemeanor charge dropped, but that didn’t deter him. By eleven, he was on the shuttle to Boston. By two, he had been to Our Lady of Mercy and obtained a list of people, with addresses, who had been church members at the time of the incident. And it had taken knocks on only three doors before he found someone — Giles Sanderton — who not only recalled the event but had been an eyewitness.

And the story he had to tell was a doozy.

As the cab made its way to Logan Airport, Harriman reclined in the backseat, going over his notes. Sanderton had been at the noon mass some three decades back — being celebrated by a Father Anselm, one of the church’s more venerable priests — when in the middle of the homily the church door opened and a teenage Anton Ozmian appeared. Without a word he walked to the front of the church, knocked over the altar table, plucked up a crucifix, swung it like a baseball bat at Father Anselm, knocked him to the floor, and then proceeded to beat the living shit out of him. Leaving the priest bleeding and unconscious at the base of the pulpit, Ozmian had dropped the bloody crucifix onto his prostrate form and, turning, strode out of the church as calmly as he had come in. There had been no sign of anger in his face — just cool deliberation. It had been months before Father Anselm could talk or walk normally again, and shortly afterward he moved into a home for retired priests, and died not long thereafter.