Линкольн Чайлд - Verses for the Dead

“Okay,” Coldmoon said. “But that was twelve years ago. You think Vance’s still there — or even alive?”

“He was as of two years ago. We shall find out soon enough.”

“Yeah. But did you ever see the movie Deliverance ?”

“No.”

“Well, all I can say is, if I start hearing any banjos, I’m turning the hell around.”

Behind them, the car was sending up a corkscrew of white dust. As the road deteriorated, Coldmoon slowed. The wild vegetation gave way to vast, tall grass, so high it felt like they were traveling in a green ditch. After another mile, a dark cypress forest loomed up. It seemed to go on forever, growing darker and darker until they found themselves in a gloomy swamp, the elevated dirt road running among the massive trunks of cypress trees and a thick, brushy understory. The greasy gleam of alligators could be seen again, here and there, in the rare patches of sun.

“Another mile and a half to Paradise Landing,” said Coldmoon, checking his phone. The two bars had dropped to one. After a few more minutes, sunlight could be seen through the cover of trees; then the road made a turn and ran alongside a broad canal. The forest opened up, exposing a burnt-green landscape with several sagging docks extending into the water, a shuttered convenience store, and a couple of rusted gas pumps under a metal awning. Beyond the docks, Coldmoon could see parallel lanes of a once-paved boulevard, with streetlights and rows of half-built homes looming up: concrete shells abandoned before completion. At the close end of the boulevard lay a few kayaks of faded fiberglass, flung together and of questionable seaworthiness. A peeling sign read, WELCOME TO PARADISE LANDING.

Coldmoon brought the Shelby to a stop and they stepped out. He looked warily for alligators, but if any were around they’d submerged themselves in the canal. A pair of egrets took off from the dock posts.

“Looks like one of those failed Florida developments you read about.” Coldmoon glanced again at his phone. “We’re still three miles from Canepatch. But the road seems to end here.”

Pendergast said nothing, just gazed ahead at the brown waterway with distant eyes.

“After you, kemosabe.”

Pendergast, still without answering, walked down to the dock. Coldmoon followed. A small aluminum airboat, not nearly as old as its surroundings, was tied up to one of the moorings.

“Evidently, someone still uses this place,” Pendergast said. He leaned over and examined the boat. “And the keys are in the ignition. How convenient.”

“You’re going to steal it,” Coldmoon said.

“We have the right to requisition it,” Pendergast said. “But that won’t be necessary.” He nodded at a crooked wooden sign, on which had been painted:

“Awfully trusting out here,” Coldmoon said.

“I doubt anyone would come all this way just to hijack such a specialized form of watercraft.”

Coldmoon shouted out a greeting — once, twice — but there was no reply except for the buzz of insects.

Pendergast reached into his black suit — Coldmoon had long since stopped wondering how the man could stand wearing it in all the heat and humidity — slipped out a money clip, removed a hundred-dollar bill, and speared it to a rusty nail sticking out of the sign. He gestured toward the boat. “Be my guest.”

Fauchet, having already seen the file on Jasmine Oriol, knew it was much sketchier than Laurie Winters’s. Oriol had been found in a motel outside Savannah, Georgia. The case had been handled not by a medical examiner, but by an elected county coroner without an MD, who in turn farmed out the autopsy to an intern at the local hospital. This might very well have been his first real autopsy, and it was a piece of work. The forensic photographs were amateurish and underexposed. The report that accompanied them was almost useless. No photographs of the hyoid bone were sharp enough to show anything useful. The toxicology report indicated that, as with Winters, there were no drugs or alcohol in her system — and that was about it. Shaking her head, Fauchet gathered up the photos and returned them to the file along with the coroner’s report. Short of an exhumation, she’d have to take the report of the broken hyoid wings on faith. But again, it was the nonmedical aspects of the crime that now intrigued her — especially the possibility of the investigating cop having, as in the case of Laurie Winters, made a record of license plates.

She flipped open the police reports. Jasmine Oriol had been on her way from Miami to visit her fiancé in New York City, where he was in medical school. This was the first night of her cross-country trip. Florida was a long-ass state, and maybe Jasmine had gotten a late start — in any case, she hadn’t made it far.

Much to Fauchet’s disappointment, the investigating officer had not copied the motel register, or listed the other guests and their license plate numbers. At least there was an interview with the motel manager, a man named Wheaton, who had been eager to help to the point of volubility: the transcribed interview ran to four single-spaced pages.

Fauchet began reading. Oriol, the manager said, had arrived around six o’clock, asked for a restaurant recommendation, then gone to a diner across the street. Wheaton saw her returning around seven thirty. She stopped in again at the front desk at eight and asked for a hair dryer to use the next morning. The manager didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary — she seemed cheerful and had talked in passing about her fiancé.

The next morning, he was surprised when she slept in: he thought she’d be eager to be on her way. But he didn’t bother her until noon, when he finally sent the maid around. He heard screams, came running, and saw the woman hanging from the ceiling fan, having kicked over a chair underneath her. From this point, the manager went on and on, bemoaning the tragedy and its effect on business, saying that nothing like this had ever happened before, why would she ask for a hair dryer before killing herself, this was a respectable place, and so forth almost interminably until the interviewing officer gently but skillfully ended the interview.

But it was a good question: why ask for a hair dryer to use the next morning and then go hang yourself? Spontaneous suicides, Fauchet knew from medical school, almost always involved drugs or alcohol. But her toxicology report was clean.

There was a file of the maid’s interview, just half a sheet. She read through it and found it a hysterical, babbling mess.

Fauchet sat back, lips pursed. If only the police officer had thought to copy the motel register listing the car makes and license plates, she would know whether the same Mercury Tracer with the Florida plates had been at that motel. She wondered if the motel still existed; a quick Google check indicated it was gone.

She went back through the folders for the other three murders, which still sat on a corner of her desk: Baxter, Flayley, Adler. In no case was there a police officer as thorough as in Bethesda; there were no lists of car models or license plates. Then again, why should there be? All three murders were thought to be suicides.

But she still had the Florida plate number from the motel where Winters was killed. Okay, now it was time to call Pendergast. He could run that plate in ten seconds.

She dialed his number and was immediately directed to voice mail. She tried Coldmoon and the same thing happened. She then dialed the Miami FBI number and, after a lot of being bounced around, learned that the precise location of Agents Pendergast and Coldmoon was unknown, but it was believed they were out in the field.