Линкольн Чайлд - Verses for the Dead

On the expansive balcony of his presidential suite in the Fontainebleau’s Versailles Tower, Pendergast gingerly took a sip of the tea his waiter had brought him, then nodded his approval. True first-flush Darjeeling, harvested from one of the high-altitude plantations in West Bengal: the grassy notes of its delicate, aromatic bouquet were unmistakable. He watched as the waiter left; took another sip; then replaced the cup beside the teapot, sat back on the padded lounge chair, and closed his eyes.

The chair was flanked by two piles of case folders, each held in place from stray ocean breezes by makeshift paperweights: his Les Baer 1911 on one, and his backup weapon, a Glock 27 Gen4, atop the other. He had read through the folders with minute care; they had nothing further to offer him.

Slowly, he wove the various strands of the recent murders and distant suicides together in his mind: those that fit and, more interestingly, the one that did not. As he did so, the sounds and sensations of the South Florida night gradually receded: the faint smell of the ocean; the murmur of conversations from the bars and alfresco restaurants far below; the delightfully warm, humid atmosphere that mirrored his own skin temperature so exactly.

Now he set the mental weaving aside. He knew what he must do next. The key was to accomplish it while breaking the least amount of crockery in the process.

“ If it were done, when ’tis done ,” he murmured to himself, “ then ’twere well it were done quickly .” And with that he opened his eyes, sat up, and picked up his cup of tea.

As he did so, his keen ears picked up a sound, faint yet discernible — an abrupt, gargling shriek, not at all like the laughter from below, instantly cut off.

Pendergast froze, cup halfway to his lips. He waited, but the sound was not repeated. With the bulk of the hotel curving around him, it was impossible to tell precisely where it had come from. Nevertheless, Pendergast raised the cup to his lips — took a sip, this time regretfully, knowing the tea would be tepid or worse by the time he returned — then replaced the cup, stood, swept up both firearms, and exited.

Standing in the vast, cool space, Coldmoon couldn’t help but experience a strong feeling of déjà vu. Understandable: it was just recently they’d been inside a moldy mausoleum, and now they were visiting another home for the dead. They called this one a “columbarium.” He hadn’t known what the word meant until Pendergast explained that it was a building where the jars holding a person’s ashes were placed in niches for eternal rest. It was much nicer than the Flayley mausoleum: there was a rotunda with a dome, all gold leaf and white marble, and the niches were fronted with glass. You could see the jars inside, along with small statues and porcelain or engraved silver plaques on which were written the names and dates of the deceased. Nevertheless, it seemed cruel and barbaric to Coldmoon. What was the point of keeping your ancestor’s ashes around, after the disrespect of burning the body and, thus, impeding their journey to the spirit world?

His eye strayed past the police tape to the niche that was now a crime scene. It contained a jar of pure white marble. But it was white no more; a single streak of blood had issued from underneath the lid and run down the jar’s side, along the glass base of the niche, and from there sent a few small drops to the white marble floor.

“It appears,” Pendergast murmured, gazing at the scene, “that a portion of ashes were taken from the jar.” He indicated a gray pile on the floor, marked with a crime scene flag. “This made room for the heart to fit inside. The note was laid in the niche, propped up between that porcelain figurine of Saint Francis and the deceased’s name.” He turned to Coldmoon. “Do you see anything odd?”

“The whole thing is odd.”

Pendergast looked at him as he might a backward student. “I, on the contrary, find a virtually perfect reprise of the previous modus operandi . What is odd, or at least telling, is the consistency of Brokenhearts’s tableaux.”

“You think this was staged?”

“Exactly. Not for our benefit; but for private reasons. Brokenhearts is not a man of drama. He lives inside his own mind and cares little for us or the investigation. Ah: here comes the note.”

Sandoval was still at the Indian Creek site where Pendergast — along with others — had discovered the latest body. Nevertheless, CSU had wasted no time once the location of the heart was reported. Now a CS investigator plucked the note from its resting place and brought it over. Coldmoon photographed it with his cell phone, while Pendergast read aloud:

My dearest Mary,

The angels weep for you, and I weep with them. Please accept this gift with my most profound regrets.

With much affection,

P.S. The stars move still, time runs, and Mister Brokenhearts will atone again.

Pendergast nodded and the investigator took the note away. Coldmoon could see a light in Pendergast’s face, a suppressed glow of excitement.

“What do you think?” Coldmoon ventured to ask.

“The note is most revealing.”

“I’m all ears.”

“First, we have another literary quotation, this time from Doctor Faustus . The original reads: ‘The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike.’ I assume you’re as familiar with Christopher Marlowe as you are with Eliot and Shakespeare?”

“Sorry, I didn’t go to Oxford,” Coldmoon said, annoyed despite himself.

“My sympathies. The play is about a man of learning who, in pursuit of greater knowledge, sells his soul to the devil. The clock striking is an allusion to Mephistopheles coming to fetch Faustus and drag him down into hell.”

“And the significance?”

“Hell is the ultimate atonement.”

Coldmoon waited for further explanation, but it wasn’t forthcoming. Typical of Pendergast: he stated that the note was revelatory, but would only dance around the perimeter of why. He decided to offer up an observation of his own. “The P.S. seems to be addressed to us, you realize. That’s a change.”

“Indeed. Although I don’t think he’s stirring the pot — I believe he’s trying to explain.”

Coldmoon almost said Explain what? but decided he didn’t want to give Pendergast another opportunity to be coy.

They watched in silence as CSU continued to comb the scene. Coldmoon could hear, in the distance, the low roar of the media that had gathered at the edge of the columbarium grounds, beyond the police cordon. This third murder had burst the dam; the Brokenhearts story had gone national and everyone was out there, clamoring for information: CNN, Dateline NBC , the whole shebang.

“I wonder how that reporter, Smithback, got the Brokenhearts name,” he said. “Wasn’t that information privileged?”

Instead of answering, Pendergast approached the niche. “Mary S. Adler,” he said, reading the name engraved on the plaque. “April fourteenth, 1980, to July seventh, 2006. We already know she died in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, of suicide by strangulation. And that the date of her suicide is four months before Baxter’s and eight months before Flayley’s.”

“I don’t see how the records are going to tell us anything. Brokenhearts has obviously selected these people because they’re suicides. All we’ll find out from them is what we already know. What I’d ask instead is: why is the killer apparently selecting suicides that occurred within a certain narrow time frame?”

Pendergast turned to him, a not unkindly look in his eye. “Agent Coldmoon, that question is indeed highly germane, and does need to be asked. Yet I sense our killer is operating on a higher plane of logic.”