Lincoln Child - Dance Of Death

"Target of what?"

"I can't tell you that. What I can tell you is that you must take steps to protect yourself. You should be afraid."

"Agent Pendergast, I am afraid. Your call scared me half to death. But you can't expect me to drop everything. As I told you, I've got an opening I've got to prepare for tonight."

A sharp, exasperated exhalation. "He's killing everyone around me. He will kill you, too. And then you'll miss not only your opening but the rest of your life."

The voice, far from the honeyed drawl she remembered, was tense and urgent.

"I have to take the risk. I'll be in the museum the rest of the day, under high security in the exhibit. And then I'll be at the opening tonight, surrounded by thousands."

"High security did not stop him before."

"Who is this him?"

"As I've said, to tell you more would only put you at greater risk. Oh, Nora, what must I do to protect you?"

She faltered, shocked at the near despair in his voice. "I'm sorry. Look, it's just not in my nature to run and hide. I've worked too long for this opening. People are counting on me. Okay? Tomorrow- let's take this up again tomorrow. Just not today."

"So be it." The anonymous figure turned away-strange how little he looked like the Pendergast Nora remembered-melted into the dark dusters of people walking toward their cars, and was gone.

D'Agosta paused at the door of Hayward's office, feeling almost afraid to knock. The painful memory of their first encounter in her office came into his mind unbidden, and he forced it away with great effort, rapping more loudly than he intended.

"Come in." The very sound of her voice caused his heart to pause. He grasped the handle, pushed open the door.

The office looked very different. Gone were the various piles of paper, the pleasant, controlled untidiness. Now it was severe in its organization-and it was clear Hayward was working, living, and breathing a single case.

And there she was, standing behind her desk, her short, slim figure in a neat gray suit with captain's bars on the shoulder, looking directly at him. The look was so intense D'Agosta found himself almost pushed back by it.

"Have a seat." The voice was coldly neutral.

"Listen, Laura, before we begin, I just want to say-"

"Lieutenant," came the crisp response. "You've been summoned here on police business, and anything you might have to say of a personal nature is inappropriate."

D'Agosta looked at her. This was unfair. "Laura, please…"

Her face softened, but only for a moment, and she spoke in a low vice. "Vincent, don't do this to me or to yourself. Especially not now. I have something very, very difficult to show you."

This stopped D'Agosta.

"Please take a seat."

"I'll stand."

Brief silence while she stared at him. Then she spoke again. "Pendergast is alive."

D'Agosta felt himself go cold. He hadn't known why she'd summoned him, hadn't even dared to guess-but this was the last thing he'd expected. "How did you find out?" he blurted.

Her face tightened with anger. "So you did know."

Another tense silence. Then she reached down and picked up a piece of paper, drew it in front of her. D'Agosta could see it was a list of handwritten notes. What was this about? He had never seen Laura so wound up.

"On January 19, Professor Torrance Hamilton was poisoned in front of a lecture hall of two hundred students in his class at Louisiana State University and died about an hour later. The only useful evidence uncovered from the crime scene, some black fibers found in his office, is analyzed in this report." She dropped a slim folder on her desk.

D'Agosta glanced at it but did not pick it up.

"The report states that the fibers were from a very costly cashmere-merino blended-wool fabric made for only a few years in the 1950s in a factory outside Prato, Italy. The only place it was sold in America- the only place-was a small shop on Rue Lespinard in New Orleans. A shop patronized by the Pendergast family."

D'Agosta felt a sudden hope. Was it possible, after all, that she believed him? That she'd checked into Diogenes? "Laura, I-"

"Lieutenant, let me finish. My forensic team searched Pendergast's apartment in the Dakota-at least the rooms we could get into- and took fiber samples. In addition, we found two dozen identical black suits in a closet. The suits and the fibers all came from the same source: those bolts of cashmere-merino wool, dyed black. This is a virtually unique fiber. There can be no mistake."

D'Agosta felt a very strange sensation crawl up his spine. He suddenly had a premonition of where this might be going.

"On January 22, Charles Duchamp was hung from his apartment building on 65th and Broadway. Again, the crime scene was unusually clean. However, our forensic team did recover a few more of the same black fibers that were found at the Torrance homicide. In addition, the rope used to hang Duchamp was woven of a rare type of gray silk. We ultimately learned it is a special type of rope used in Buddhist religious ceremonies in Bhutan. The monks tie these silk ropes into incredibly complex knots for meditative and contemplative purposes. These are unique knots, found nowhere else in the world."

She paused, laid down a photograph of the rope that hung Duchamp, showing the knot, smeared with blood. "That particular knot is known as Ran t'ankha durdag, 'the tangled path to hell.' It has come to my attention that Special Agent Pendergast spent time in Bhutan studying with the very monks who make these knots."

"There's a simple answer-"

"Vincent, if you interrupt me one more time, I'll have you muzzled."

D'Agosta fell silent.

"The next day, on January 23, FBI Special Agent Michael Decker was murdered in his house in Washington, D.C., stabbed through the mouth with an antique Civil War bayonet. This crime scene was equally clean. The forensic team recovered fibers from the same bolt of cashmere-merino wool found at the Hamilton poisoning." She laid another report before D'Agosta.

"At around two o'clock in the morning of January 26, Margo Green was fatally stabbed in the New York Museum of Natural History. I've gone over the museum's personnel lists, and she was the last person to enter the exhibition hall. But she also checked out of the hall-the murderer must have used her card to leave. This crime scene wasn't nearly as clean as the others. Green was a formidable opponent, and she put up a struggle. She defended herself with a box cutter and wounded her assailant. Blood not belonging to the victim was recovered from the scene, both on the box cutter-which had been imperfectly wiped clean-and from a single spot on the floor." She paused. "The DNA tests came back late last night."

She picked up a piece of paper and, with a snap, dropped it, too, in front of D'Agosta. "Those are the results."

D'Agosta couldn't bring himself to look. He knew the answer already.

"That's right. Special Agent Pendergast."

D'Agosta knew better than to say anything.

"Which brings me to motive. All these people had something in common-they were close acquaintances of Pendergast. Hamilton was Pendergast's language tutor in high school. Duchamp was Pendergast's closest-and perhaps only-childhood friend. Michael Decker was Pendergast's mentor at the FBI. He's one of the main reasons Pendergast has even survived in the FBI, after all the trouble his unorthodox methods got him into. And finally-as you well know-Margo Green was a close friend of Pendergast's from two cases dating back several years, the museum murders and the subway killings.

"All this evidence, all these tests, have been checked and rechecked. There can be no mistake. Special Agent Pendergast is a psychopathic killer."