Линкольн Чайлд - City of Endless Night

The typewritten note it contained was not long.

Dear A. Pendergast:

This is the Decapitator writing you. The endgame has arrived. On the USB stick you will find a short video starring Lt. D’Agosta and Associate Director Longstreet. They are my captives. Quite frankly, they are the bait: to bring you to me for a special evening. I am in Building 44 of the abandoned King’s Park Psychiatric Center on the North Shore of Long Island. Come to me alone. Do not send in the cavalry. Do not bring Proctor or anyone else. Tell no one. If you do not arrive by 9:05 PM, which if my message has been delivered properly should be in approximately fifty-five minutes, you’ll never see either of your friends alive again.

While you don’t yet know who I am, you certainly know a great deal about my talent. Since you are an intelligent man yourself, you will parse out the situation you now find yourself in and realize there is only one thing to do. Naturally you will view the video, ponder the situation, and consider various courses of action; but in the end you will understand you have no choice but to come here, now, alone. So don’t dawdle. The clock is ticking.

One other requirement: bring your Les Baer 1911 .45 and an extra eight-round magazine, both fully loaded, and make sure there is an extra round in the chamber, for a total of seventeen rounds in all. This is vitally important.

Sincerely,

Pendergast read the letter through twice. He took the USB stick and inserted it into the port on his laptop. There was only one file on it. He clicked it.

A video sprang to life: D’Agosta and Longstreet, tied, gagged, and immobilized, each with a single hand free. They were staring at the camera, sweat beading on their brows, holding between them with their free hands that morning’s New York Times . The video had no sound. The background appeared to be a derelict, warehouse-like room. The two men were beaten, bruised, and bloodied — D’Agosta worse than Longstreet. The video lasted only ten seconds and it played again, and again, in an endless loop.

Pendergast viewed the video a few more times and read the note again before putting both back in the envelope and sliding it into his suitcoat pocket. For three minutes he remained very still in the library, his face bathed in flickering firelight, before rising to his feet.

The Decapitator was right: he simply had no choice but to comply.

Pendergast had only a vague knowledge of King’s Park, a gigantic decaying psychiatric hospital complex on Long Island not far from the city. A quick Internet search filled in the details: it had been abandoned decades ago, leaving numerous crumbling buildings scattered over expansive grounds sealed up behind chain-link fences; it was infamous for the electroshock treatments it so liberally administered to hopeless cases, before the advent of effective psychiatric drugs. The campus was situated in Sussex County between Oyster Bay and Stony Brook.

He printed out a map of the psychiatric center, folded it into his coat pocket, removed a spare .45 magazine from a drawer, checked to see it was full of rounds and slipped it into his other pocket, then removed his Les Baer to confirm it was fully loaded. He racked a round into the chamber, removed the magazine to insert a fresh round, and pocketed the gun.

As he was putting on his vicuña overcoat in the front hall, Proctor approached silently, like a cat. “May I be of assistance, sir?”

Pendergast glanced at him. Mrs. Trask must have told him of the letter. There was an eagerness in Proctor’s face that was both unusual and disturbing. The man, of course, always knew or guessed a great deal more than he let on.

“No, thank you, Proctor.”

“No need for a driver?”

“I have a yen to take a night drive by myself.” He held out his hands for the keys.

For a moment, Proctor stood immobile, his face a mask. Pendergast was well aware Proctor knew he was lying, but there was no time to prevaricate in a more satisfactory fashion.

Reaching into a pocket, Proctor wordlessly handed Pendergast the keys to the Rolls-Royce.

“Thank you.” And with a nod, Pendergast slipped past him and headed toward the garage, buttoning his overcoat as he went.

Just forty-eight minutes later, he turned off Route 25A onto Old Dock Road, which ran through the main campus of King’s Park Psychiatric Center. It was now almost nine, and a bitter night had fallen. He guided the big car down the deserted road, dark shapes of buildings, shuttered and forlorn, passing by on both sides.

He slowed, made a U-turn, pulled the Silver Wraith up and over the curb, turned off the headlights, then drove the vehicle over the frozen ground, pulling it in behind a stand of trees where it would not be visible from the road. There he stopped and consulted the map. Across the road stood a cluster of buildings his map identified as GROUP 4, or THE QUAD, which had once housed the geriatric insane. To his right, two hundred yards behind the chain-link fence surrounding the campus, rose a vast, ten-story structure shown on the map as BUILDING 93, its gables and towers rising up against the night sky. The massive façade was bathed in ghostly moonlight and punctuated with empty, inky windows, which stared over the frozen campus like some monstrous, many-eyed beast. As Pendergast contemplated it, he felt a whisper, a shiver, of the memories it retained of the patients who had been shuttered inside, gibbering, weeping, beyond despair, subjected to experimental drug testing, lobotomies, electroshock treatments, and perhaps worse. A bloated moon, veiled by scudding clouds, was rising above its battlements.

Hidden within the building’s immense shadow, Pendergast knew from the map, lay the much smaller two-story structure known as Building 44. This was where he would find the Decapitator.

Exiting the vehicle and quietly closing its door, he made sure the street was empty before approaching the fence. A set of wire clippers appeared in one gloved hand, and it was the work of two minutes to cut a flap in the cheap chain-link fence large enough to permit entry without catching and tearing his overcoat, of which he was very fond. Slipping through, he walked silently over the hard ground, his breath flaring in the moonlight, past Building 29 — a power plant constructed in the early 1960s, now rusting and deserted like everything else. Beyond, he picked up an abandoned railroad spur line and followed it to where it ended at the loading dock of Building 44.

Pendergast’s research indicated Building 44 had been a warehouse for the storage of food for the psychiatric center. The small structure was sealed, its windows covered with plywood and tin, its doors locked and chained. Not a glimmer of light could be seen through the cracks.

He glanced around once again, then lightly sprang up onto the building’s loading bay at the end of a railroad trestle. Grasping a handle, he lifted the door slowly, keeping to a minimum the inevitable complaint of rusted metal, until it was just high enough to allow him to slip underneath. He waited, listening. But there was no sound from within.

He found himself in a large loading area, empty of everything except a stack of wooden packing crates piled in one corner, covered in cobwebs. Ahead, across the wide floor of cracked concrete, a door stood open in the far wall. The faintest illumination could be seen beyond. It looked like a trap — which Pendergast had known from the beginning was precisely what it was.

A trap intended for him; but traps sometimes worked both ways.

Pausing, he glanced at his watch. It was nine oh two — three minutes left until the time limit expired.

Silently, he crossed the expanse of the loading area and approached the door. Placing the fingertips of one hand on it, he slowly opened it wider. Beyond lay a narrow corridor, punctuated on both sides by open doors. From one of the right-hand doors, almost closed, leaked the light that faintly illuminated the hallway. Absolute silence reigned.