Douglas Preston - The Book of the Dead

Imhof drew in a breath. Coffey noticed, with satisfaction, that the man’s nostrils flared briefly.

“Stick him in there, Imhof,” Coffey said quietly. “Stick him in there, but keep an eye on the situation. Extract him if things get out of hand. But don’t extract him too soon, if you get my meaning.”

“If something does happen, there could be fallout. I’ll need you to back me up.”

“You can count on me, Imhof. I’m behind you, in all the way.” And with that, Coffey turned, nodded to the still-grinning Rabiner, and left the office.

Captain of Homicide Laura Hayward sat at her desk, gazing at the storm of paperwork in front of her. She hated disorder; she hated mess; she hated unsquared papers and shabby piles. And yet it seemed no matter how much she sorted and squared and organized, it ended up this way: the desk a physical manifestation of the disorder and frustration within her own mind. By rights, she should be typing up a report on the murder of DeMeo. Yet she felt paralyzed. It was damned hard to work on open cases when you felt you’d royally screwed up on a previous one; that maybe an innocent-or mostly innocent-man was in prison, unjustly charged with a crime that carried a potential death sentence…

She made another enormous effort to impose order on her mind. She had always organized her thoughts in lists: she was forever making lists nested within lists within lists. And she was finding it difficult to move forward with her other cases while the Pendergast case remained unresolved in her mind.

She sighed, focused, and began again.

One: a possibly innocent man was in prison, charged with a capital crime.

Two: his brother, long thought dead, had resurfaced, kidnapped a woman with apparently no connection to anything, stolen the world’s most valuable diamond collection… and then destroyed it. Why?

Three-

A knock on the door interrupted her.

Hayward had asked her secretary to make sure she was not disturbed, and she struggled with a momentary anger that shocked her with its intensity. She brought herself back under control and said coldly, “Come in.”

The door opened slowly, tentatively-and there stood Vincent D’Agosta.

There was a brief moment of frozen stasis.

“Laura,” D’Agosta began. Then he fell silent.

She maintained an utter coolness even as she felt the color mounting in her face. For a moment, she could think of nothing to say except “Please sit down.”

She watched him enter the office and take a seat, crushing with ruthless efficiency the emotions that welled up inside her. He was surprisingly trim and reasonably well dressed in a suit and a twenty-dollar sidewalk tie, his thinning hair combed back.

The moment of awkward silence lengthened.

“So… How’s everything?” D’Agosta asked.

“Fine. You?”

“My disciplinary trial is scheduled for early April.”

“Good.”

“Good? If they find me guilty, there goes my career, pension, benefits-everything.”

“I meant, it will be good to have it over with,” she said tersely. Is that what he’d come here to do-complain? She waited for him to get to the point.

“Look, Laura: first, I just want to tell you something.”

“Which is?”

She could see him struggling. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry. I know I hurt you, I know you think I treated you like dirt… I wish I knew how to make it up.”

Hayward waited.

“At the time, I thought, I really thought, I was doing the right thing. Trying to protect you, keep you safe from Diogenes. I thought that by moving out I could keep the heat off you. I just didn’t figure on how it would look to you… I was winging it. Things were happening fast and I didn’t have time to work everything out. But I’ve had plenty of time to think about it since. I know that I looked like a cold bastard, walking out on you with no explanation. It must have seemed like I didn’t trust you. But that wasn’t it at all.”

He hesitated, chewing his lip as if working up to something. “Listen,” he began again. “I really want us to get back together. I still care about you. I know we can work this out…”

His voice trailed off miserably. Hayward waited him out.

“Anyway, I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“Consider it said.”

Another excruciating silence.

“Is there anything else?” Hayward asked.

D’Agosta shifted uncomfortably. Slats of sunlight came in through the blinds, striping his suit.

“Well, I heard…”

“What did you hear?”

“That you were still looking into the Pendergast case.”

“Really?” she said coolly.

“Yeah. From a guy I know, works for Singleton.” He shifted again. “When I heard that, it gave me hope. Hope that maybe I could still help you. There are things that I didn’t tell you before, things that I felt sure you wouldn’t believe. But if you’re really still on the case, after all that’s happened… well, I thought maybe you should hear some of these things. To, you know, give you as much ammunition as possible.”

Hayward kept her face neutral, not willing to give him anything but a thunderous silence. He was looking older, a little drawn, but his clothes were new and his shirt was well ironed. She wondered, briefly and searingly, who was taking care of him. Finally she said, “The case is settled.”

“Officially, yeah. But this friend said that you were-”

“I don’t know what you heard, and I don’t give a damn. You should know better than to listen to departmental gossip from so-called friends.”

“But, Laura-”

“Refer to me as Captain Hayward, please.”

Another silence.

“Look, this whole thing-the killings, the diamond theft, the kidnapping-was all orchestrated by Diogenes. All of it. It was his master plan. He played everyone like a violin. He murdered those people, then framed Pendergast for it. He stole the diamonds, kidnapped Viola Maskelene-”

“You’ve told me all this before.”

“Yes, but here’s something you don’t know, something I never told you-”

Hayward felt a rush of anger that almost overwhelmed her icy control. “Lieutenant D’Agosta, I don’t appreciate hearing that you’ve continued to withhold information from me.”

“I didn’t mean it that-”

“I know exactly what you meant.”

“Listen, damn it. The reason Viola Maskelene was kidnapped is that she and Pendergast-well, they’re in love.”

“Oh, please.”

“I was there when they met on the island of Capraia last year. He interviewed her as part of the investigation into Bullard and the lost Stradivarius. When they met, I could see this connection between them. Diogenes somehow learned of it.”

“They’ve been seeing each other?”

“Not exactly. But Diogenes lured her here using Pendergast’s name.”

“Funny she never mentioned that during her debriefing.”

“She was trying to protect Pendergast and herself. If it got out that they had a thing for each other-”

“From one brief meeting on an island.”

D’Agosta nodded. “That’s right.”

“Agent Pendergast and Lady Maskelene. In love.”

“I can’t speak one hundred percent about the strength of Pendergast’s feelings. But as for Maskelene-yeah, I’m convinced.”

“And how did Diogenes discover this touching bit of sentiment?”

“There’s only one possibility: while Diogenes was nursing Pendergast back to health in Italy, after rescuing him from Count Fosco’s castle. Pendergast was delirious, he probably said something. So, you see? Diogenes kidnapped Viola to ensure that Pendergast was maximally distracted at precisely the moment he undertook the diamond heist.”