Линкольн Чайлд: City of Endless Night

Pendergast raised a hand to silence him. “My dear Vincent. Harriman’s story seemed to fit the facts, it was an attractive theory as far as it went, and you weren’t the only one taken in. A lesson for all of us: things are not always as they seem.”

“That’s for sure.” D’Agosta glanced at the grisly row of trophy heads. “Not in a million years would I have guessed this.”

“And that’s why our Behavioral Science Unit wasn’t able to profile the man. Because he wasn’t, psychologically speaking, a serial killer. He was truly sui generis .”

“Sweet generous... Him? What the—?”

“Just an old Latin phrase. It means ‘of its own kind; in a class by itself.’”

“I gotta get out of here.”

Pendergast looked at the blank plaque with his name on it. “ Sic transit gloria mundi ,” he murmured again in Latin. And then he turned away and quickly stepped out of the little chamber of horrors.

They returned to the vast living room of Ozmian’s apartment with its sprawling views. D’Agosta went to the window, breathing deeply. “Some things I wish I could unsee.”

“To be a witness to evil is to be human.”

Pendergast joined him at the window, and they gazed out for a moment in silence. The wintry landscape of New York was suffused with the pale-yellow glow of the dying afternoon.

“In a strange way, that jackass Harriman was right about the one percenters ruining this city,” said D’Agosta. “It’s also kind of funny that the killer turned out to be a one percenter himself. Just another super-rich, entitled bastard, getting his jollies at the expense of everyone else. I mean, look at this place! It makes me want to puke: these arrogant assholes in their penthouses, lording it around town in their stretch limos, with their chauffeurs and butlers...” His voice suddenly trailed off and he felt his face go red. “Sorry. You know I didn’t mean you.”

For the first time he could recall, he heard Pendergast laugh. “Vincent, it isn’t the content of one’s bank account that’s important, it’s the content of one’s character, to paraphrase a wise man. The divide between the wealthy and everyone else is a false dichotomy — and one that obscures the real problem: there are many wicked people in the world, rich and poor. That is the real divide — between those who strive to do good, and those who strive only for themselves. Money magnifies the harm the wealthy can do, of course, allowing them to parade their vulgarity and malfeasance in full view of the rest of us.”

“So what’s the answer?”

“To paraphrase another wise man, ‘The rich will always be with us.’ There is no answer, except to make sure we wealthy are not allowed to use our money as a tool of oppression and subversion of democracy.”

D’Agosta was surprised at this uncharacteristic bit of philosophizing. “Yeah, but this town, New York, it’s changing. Now only the rich can afford Manhattan. Brooklyn and even Queens are going the same way. Where are working people like me going to live in ten, twenty years?”

“There’s always New Jersey.”

D’Agosta choked. “You were making a joke, right?”

“I’m afraid the trophy room of horrors has provoked in me an inappropriate levity.”

D’Agosta understood immediately. It was like those M.E.’s, with a murder victim opened up on the gurney, who cracked jokes about spaghetti and meatballs. Somehow, the horror of what they’d just witnessed needed to be exorcised by unrelated banter.

“Getting back to the case,” Pendergast said hastily, “I must admit to you I feel personally distressed and even chastened.”

“How’s that?”

“Ozmian completely took me in. Until he tried to foist Hightower as a suspect on us, I hadn’t the slightest inkling that he was a possible suspect. That will trouble me for a very, very long time.”

The setting sun gilded the flanks of India’s Outer Himalayan mountains, casting long shadows over the foothills and stony valleys. Near the base of the Dhauladhar range of Himachal Pradesh, some fifty miles north of Dharamsala, all was silent save for a distant boom of Tibetan long horns calling the monks to prayer.

A path rose up from the cedar forests, winding its serpentine way against forbidding rock cliffs as it began the long climb toward the summit of Hanuman ji Ka Tiba, or “White Mountain,” at 18,500 feet, the tallest peak in the range. After about two miles, an almost invisible track separated from the main path and — heading away from the peak — hugged the cliff face, chiseled into the rock, as it made several narrow, heart-stopping turns until at last it reached a rocky promontory. Here, a large monastery — built out of the living rock and barely discernible against the mountainside that surrounded it — had stood for many hundreds of years, the carven decorations of its sloping ramparts and pinnacled roofs almost completely worn away by time and weather.

In a small courtyard high up in the monastery, surrounded on three sides by a colonnade that looked down upon the valley below, sat Constance Greene. She was motionless, watching a boy of four play at her feet. He was arranging a set of prayer beads into a pattern of remarkable complexity for a child of his age.

Now the horns issued a second mournful blast, and a figure appeared in the darkened doorway: a man in his early sixties, clad in the scarlet-and-saffron-colored robes of a Buddhist monk. He looked at Constance, smiled, and nodded.

“It is time,” the man said in an English inflected with a Tibetan lilt.

“I know.” She opened her arms and the boy rose and turned to embrace her. She kissed his head, then each cheek in turn. And then she released him and allowed the monk named Tsering to lead him by the hand across the courtyard and into the fastness of the monastery.

Leaning back against one of the columns, she gazed out over the vast, mountainous vista. Below, she could hear a commotion: voices, the whinny of a horse. Apparently a visitor had arrived at the monastery. Constance paid little attention. She looked listlessly out at the woods far below, at the dramatic flanks of the White Mountain as it rose beside her. The smell of sandalwood wafted up, along with the familiar sounds of chanting. As she gazed out over the vast expanse, she was aware — as so often these days — of a vague sense of dissatisfaction, a need unfulfilled, a task undone. Her restlessness puzzled her: she was with her son, in a beautiful and quiet place of meditative retreat and contemplation; what more could she want? And yet the restlessness only seemed to grow.

“Lead me into all misfortune.” She murmured the ancient Buddhist prayer quietly to herself. “Only by that path can I transform the negative into the positive.”

Now voices sounded in the dark passage within, and she turned toward them. A moment later a tall man dressed in dusty, old-fashioned traveling clothes emerged into the courtyard.

Constance sprang to her feet in astonishment. “Aloysius!”

“Constance,” he said. He walked toward her quickly, then stopped just as suddenly, seemingly unsure. After an awkward moment, he motioned for them both to sit upon the stone battlements. They sat side by side, and she simply stared at him, too surprised by his abrupt and unexpected appearance to speak.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Well, thank you.”

“And your son?”

At this she brightened. “He’s learning fast, so happy and full of gentleness and compassion, such a beautiful boy. He goes out and feeds the wild animals and birds, who come down from the hills to meet him, quite unafraid. The monks say he’s everything they hoped for and more.”