Линкольн Чайлд - Bloodless

“I found her by the side of the lake. She had had... a terrible fall.”

“You saved her life?”

He nodded. “I took her in, fixed her up, nursed her back to health.”

“What kind of injury?”

“A compound displaced fracture of the right femur.”

“The lady still has a limp.”

“I fixed her up as well as anyone could under the, ah, circumstances.”

“You were in love with her?”

Coming out of the blue, this question surprised Coldmoon almost as much as it did the doctor. But it had the desired effect; on the heels of a sustained assault, the old man’s defenses cracked under this unexpected blow. He sank back in his chair with an almost indistinct nod. “We loved each other. Very much.”

“But she left. Why?”

He shook his head.

“Let me help you: She was in trouble, she was an outlaw, she had committed a serious crime. To protect you and herself, she had to leave, establish a new identity. And so she disappeared from your life.”

He nodded.

“What was her crime?”

A long silence ensued. “She’d stolen something.”

“It must have been quite valuable.”

“I suppose. But the big crime was not stealing it, but how she stole it.”

“What was it?”

“Some sort of computer, or device, in a briefcase. She said it was going to make her fortune.”

“What did it do?”

“She never explained, except in veiled hints. Something about time.”

“Time?”

“She made an odd comment about the flow of time. That’s all I know.”

“How did she steal this item?”

“I’m sorry, but that’s the question I’m not going to answer — the one at the heart of my promise. If I told you, the FBI would come down on both of us like a ton of bricks. We’d go to prison for sure.”

Pendergast sighed. “In that case, I have nothing further to ask.” And he signaled to Coldmoon that it was time to leave.

“Hold on!” the doctor said again as Pendergast prepared to rise. “You haven’t told me her new name.”

Pendergast looked at him. “And you haven’t told me her old one.”

The man frowned, sitting up again, pugnacity flaring in his rheumy eyes.

“Now it’s your turn to go first,” said Pendergast.

Quincy’s white knuckles gripped his chair. Coldmoon could see him struggling. “Alicia Rime,” he finally said.

“Her name now is Felicity Winthrop Frost. The hotel she owns in Savannah is called the Chandler House. An excellent establishment. And she is a most formidable woman, if a bit frail — and quite lonely.”

After a moment, Quincy nodded. “No doubt.”

Pendergast rose, followed by Coldmoon. He began to turn toward the door. Then he stopped. “One other thing,” he said. “Is it possible she used this mysterious instrument you mentioned to pay off your mortgage and cover your medical school tuition?”

“I’ve got no idea,” Quincy said. “I’ve said too much already. I think it’s time for you to leave — right now.”

That was it. Coldmoon followed Pendergast out of the farmhouse, down the steps, and back to the waiting vehicle. And the whole time, Dr. Quincy stood on the steps in his long underwear, silent and motionless, a look of infinite sorrow on his lined face.

Gannon heard a voice raised in complaint, as she’d known she would eventually, from the end of the hall where Betts was reviewing the daily rushes. She already had a good idea of what he was going to say, but she’d learned it was better to let him mansplain “his” ideas to her rather than come up with them independently and try to sell them to him.

“Gannon?” she heard. “ Gannon! You around?”

She headed down the hall and into the editing room. Moller was in the chair next to Betts, a dour presence.

“Come in,” Betts said, gesturing. “Take a look.”

She came in and stood behind them. On the computer screen was the last of the footage from the previous day.

“This is great,” Betts said. “Love your angles. You really nailed it.”

Gannon couldn’t help but blush. Normally, Betts was stingy with his compliments.

“Moller, you look good, too. Right? I hope you’re happy.”

Moller bowed his head in grave affirmation. He never looked happy, but that, Gannon realized, was part of his shtick.

“But here’s the thing,” Betts went on. “We’ve got all this footage of Moller, the crazy mob scene, the press — all great stuff. But you know what we don’t have?”

She knew perfectly well, but she said, “No.”

“We don’t have creepy footage in a lonely cemetery. We need atmospherics. And we need to see Moller all alone, checking out some haunted place. We can’t get that in broad daylight with a big crowd around. You know what I mean?”

“I agree.”

“Good. Now look at this, here.” He pressed a button and some of Pavel’s Steadicam footage started rolling on the screen, showing the cops working the crime scene among unkempt tombs.

He paused the video. “There. You see, behind them, back through all that overgrowth? I was there. You can just barely see it, but there’s more graves. And a mausoleum, with a door partway open. Hard to tell, but it looks like it’s coming off its hinges. Maybe we can get in, film inside.”

“I see that.”

“Good. That’s where we need to shoot. We’ll bring some lights with filters, a fog machine, do it up good. See if we can’t register some more evil, I mean real evil, like the vampire himself — if you get my drift.”

Moller’s dour look deepened. “But that area of overgrown tombs is not where the young man was abducted. It is not where I registered a strong supernatural presence.”

“That doesn’t matter. I mean, it does matter — but this is a cemetery, for Chrissakes. There’re ghosts all around, right? And we need to get some good B-roll in the abandoned cemetery, after dark. That’s the perfect spot to do it. Gannon here will get the fogger going, generate some mist. With low, raking lighting, it’s going to look super. Right, Gannon?”

“Absolutely.”

“What do you say, Gerhard?”

“I am willing to try. When do you plan to make this excursion?”

“When? As soon as the sun sets, of course.”

As they drove away from the farm and into the inky maze of mountains, Coldmoon turned to Pendergast. “That was interesting.”

“What I found most curious was the injury,” said Pendergast.

“Broken leg? Why is that?”

“Think about it. What was she doing way out there, in the middle of nowhere, all alone, with a broken leg?”

“Maybe she fell off a mountain.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not...” Pendergast slowed the car at a fork — again, unmarked — and after a moment chose the left-hand route. “What was your opinion of the fellow?”

“A lost soul. Eighty-plus years old and the poor guy’s still pining for that woman, never gotten over her. She must’ve been quite the firecracker in her day.”

They drove on in silence before turning onto Route 141 — another backwoods road, but at least one that seemed more traveled. Half an hour later, they merged onto I-84 in the direction of Portland. Coldmoon felt himself relax at the wide expanse of highway ahead, and the dark forbidding mountains beginning to recede in the rearview mirror.

“So,” Coldmoon said. “I’m still not clear how you found that guy, to be honest, or what it has to do with the murders.”

“I explained as little as possible back in Savannah, because I wanted you to be a check on any assumptions or hasty conclusions I might have made. I knew that Frost had found her new identity in this region of Washington State — in the cemetery in Puyallup. Given that the book Constance examined appeared to be a parting gift from her lover, it seemed a safe assumption that she’d lived in the area — and that was when I realized Berry Patch was not just some private trysting spot, but a town. Or, given its minuscule population, what is known in Washington State as a ‘populated place.’”