Линкольн Чайлд - Bloodless

Pendergast was silent a moment before speaking again. “I think, Dr. McDuffie, that we should keep this mutual bafflement to ourselves. Perhaps you’ve noticed the boisterous crowd of journalists and camerapeople outside?”

“I have.”

“The less information they are given, the better. I mention this because you will no doubt be cornered by them, as I was.”

McDuffie nodded, eyes widening at the thought of an unpleasant confrontation. “They won’t hear anything from me. I’ll let the commander do the talking.”

“Most excellent.” And as Pendergast’s eyes returned to the corpses, Coldmoon saw that they were filled with a particularly intense and silvery gleam.

McDuffie had pointed them to an alternate exit, which deposited them in a quiet back alley. Coldmoon took a deep breath of the humid air, glad to be free of the antiseptic stink of the lab.

“Are you, perchance, a churchgoing man?” Pendergast asked.

“Not in your sense of the word.”

“But perhaps you’ll make an exception in this case? I’d appreciate your company.”

Coldmoon sighed. “Speaking of ‘case,’ what does going to church have to do with anything — unless you’re trying to reform me?”

“Reform? That would be impossible. Perhaps you noticed the tattoo on the wrist of our good Dr. Cobb?”

“Yes. It looked like a combat patch. I never figured that old guy as a veteran.”

“It’s no combat patch. It was the coat of arms of an ancient and noble family. Specifically, the Báthory family of the Transylvania region of Hungary.”

“Transylvania? As in Dracula?”

Pendergast nodded. “Three horizontal teeth in a stylized pattern. The full coat of arms would be surrounded by a dragon biting its own tail.”

Coldmoon could see Pendergast was enjoying prolonging this discussion as fully as possible.

“It was awarded to a fourteenth-century warrior named Vitus, who killed a swamp-dwelling dragon that had been threatening the kingdom of Ecsed.”

“Bully for him. I hear those swamp-dwelling dragons are the worst.”

“One of his descendants, who lived around 1600, was Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed. She has the distinction of being in the Guinness World Records .”

“What for?”

“She was the world’s most prolific female serial killer. They claim she murdered upwards of six hundred fifty women, many of them virgins, so she could bathe in their blood to retain her beauty. She was known as the Blood Countess.”

“Good God.”

“So, in the pleasantly cool living room of the Owens-Thomas House, I asked myself: what is the staid historian Dr. Cobb doing with a tattoo like that?”

“A Báthory descendant, perhaps?”

“No. As I told you, right after we left, he practically ran to the dowager Culpepper’s house. He was obviously concerned about our visit and wanted to confer with her. I followed him there, and after he’d departed, I paid her a brief call myself.”

“On what pretext?”

“As a Jehovah’s Witness. Before I was insolently ejected from the house, I accomplished my goal: I noted the same tattoo on Mrs. Culpepper’s wrist.”

“Really? Sounds like a cult.”

“Exactly.”

Coldmoon paused. “A cult that might need blood for their rites — if they planned to follow in Báthory’s footsteps. A lot of blood.”

“Excellent.”

“And you think this old church she purchased is where the shit goes down?”

“That is my hope.”

“Hope?” Coldmoon had to laugh. “Really? You hope ?”

“My dear Coldmoon, I do indeed hope to solve the case, thus sparing future victims.”

“Fair enough. When do we pay them a visit?”

“Tonight, at midnight. We will surprise them. In the meantime, I will apply for a warrant and arrange a raid, because we want to catch them red-handed — no pun intended.”

“How do you know they’re going to be doing their thing tonight?”

“Because tomorrow is the anniversary of Elizabeth Báthory’s gruesome death in a castle cell. Surely such an occasion will be marked by rites — perhaps even bloody ones.”

Constance Greene sat in the Suwanee Room of the Chandler House, sipping bao zhong tea and gazing out at the attractive little park across West Gordon Street. The hotel’s tearoom was long and narrow, one wall consisting almost entirely of old, rippled-glass windows looking over Chatham Square.

Constance was finding Savannah quite to her taste, especially after spending time in Florida: a place that was too modern, too much a clash of tropical paradise with frantic metropolis. Recent murders or not, Savannah was a genteel town that embraced its past — not the awful history of slavery and oppression, but a simpler time, of the Trollope-reading, take-a-turn-in-the-park sort, when each tree was planted with a thought for how it would improve the landscape a hundred years hence. Rather than rushing to tear things down during the architectural vandalism period of the 1950s and ’60s, Savannah had preserved its link with the past, which in a personal way spoke to Constance and her own peculiar connection to distant times.

The Chandler House served breakfast from eight to ten each morning. Constance had arrived at quarter to ten and requested the table in the far corner of the room. Here, with her back to the wall, she could discreetly watch the other guests as well as the activity on the street and square. Amusingly, a couple of the clientele — tourists, obviously — had stopped her to ask for directions. They must have assumed she was a local, or perhaps even a hotel employee in period dress.

She had ordered a poached egg with remoulade and watercress, along with the bao zhong. There were two waitresses on duty, one young and one middle-aged, and — as there were now few customers — they were standing in the back. As ten o’clock neared, Constance pushed the half-eaten egg away and ordered a scone with clotted cream and blackcurrant jam. By twenty past there was only Constance, absorbed in a crossword puzzle, scone untouched, and the two waitresses nearby, relaxing and gossiping now that their shift was almost done.

Constance, gazing out the window at the passing traffic, listened intently to their conversation. The waitresses were talking in low tones, but not so low that she could not catch what they said. She casually recorded the relevant employee names and details in the squares of her crossword with an antique gold pencil. After a quarter of an hour, Constance contrived to knock the dish of clotted cream off her table.

“I’m so sorry!” she said as the waitresses rushed over to clean up the mess. While the women dabbed at the floor and tablecloth with fresh napkins, Constance rose, and in so doing jostled the rest of the spilled cream off the table — onto the black skirt of one waitress and the sleeve of the other. Constance renewed her apologies and insisted on helping clean up.

“Sit down here, across from me, and let me get you some fresh napkins,” she said.

“Oh, ma’am,” the middle-aged woman replied as she wiped the back of her hand across her starched serving apron, “we couldn’t do any such thing.”

“Nonsense,” said Constance, practically steering them into the other chairs at her table. “I wouldn’t think of leaving until I’ve made this right.”

Both women sat down protesting, but with decreasing sincerity as Constance — moving with far less clumsiness than a moment before — brought over a large number of cloth napkins and a pitcher full of ice water.

“You just use all the napkins you need, now,” Constance said, doing her best to parrot the speech patterns she’d heard other patrons use.