Douglas Preston - Two Graves

His son . Pendergast was finding this fact to be a most disruptive influence on his deductive processes.

He paced quickly back and forth along the length of the table, glancing at first one document, then another. Finally, with an exasperated shake of his head, he strode over to an audio player, set flush into one wall, and pressed the PLAY button. Immediately the low, sonorous strains of the Ricercar a 6 from Bach’s Musical Offering began to emerge from hidden speakers.

This was the only piece that was ever heard in this room. Pendergast did not play it for its beauty—but for the way the complex, intensely mathematical composition settled and sharpened his mind.

As the music continued, his pacing grew slower, his study of the documents strewn across the tabletop more ordered and nuanced.

His son, Alban, had committed these murders. Tristram said that Alban loved killing. But why journey all the way to New York from Brazil to commit them? Why leave the body parts of his own brother at the murder sites? Why scrawl bloody messages on the corpses—messages that could only be meant for Pendergast himself?

BETATEST. Beta test. There was clearly a method, a governing purpose, behind these killings. And Pendergast himself was meant to discover it. Or, perhaps, to try to discover it. Nothing else made sense.

With Bach’s delicate, fantastically intricate counterpoint weaving softly in the background, Pendergast looked at the data afresh, forming a logical counterpoint of his own, mentally comparing times, dates, addresses, room numbers, external temperatures, ages of victims—anything that might point to a method, or a sequence, or a pattern. This process continued for ten, then twenty minutes. And then—abruptly—Pendergast stiffened.

Bending over the table, he rearranged several pieces of paper, examined them again. Then, plucking a pen from his pocket, he wrote a series of numbers across the bottom of one of the sheets, double-checking it against the documentation.

There was no mistake.

He glanced at his watch. Moving like lightning, he darted down the hall to his study, plucked a tablet computer from the desk, and typed in a query. He examined the response—cursed softly but eloquently in Latin under his breath—and then picked up a telephone and dialed.

“D’Agosta here,” came the response.

“Vincent? Where are you?”

“Pendergast?”

“I repeat: where are you?”

“Heading down Broadway, just passing Fifty-Seventh. I was going to—”

“Turn around and come to the Dakota as quickly as you can. I’ll be waiting at the corner. Hurry—there’s not a moment to lose.”

“What’s up?” D’Agosta asked.

“We’ll talk in the car. I just hope we’re not too late.”

36

D’AGOSTA DROVE LIKE HELL DOWN PARK AVENUE through the evening traffic, emergency lights flashing, once in a while goosing his siren at the sons of bitches who wouldn’t pull over. Pendergast’s phone call out of the blue, the almost manic urgency in the agent’s voice, had unnerved him. He wasn’t sure if Pendergast was cracking up or actually on to something, but he’d spent enough time around the man to realize he ignored Pendergast’s requests at his own peril.

Now, as they tore southward toward the Murray Hill Hotel, D’Agosta looked sideways to examine Pendergast. The transformation the special agent had undergone since his wife’s death covered the spectrum—from apathy, to a drug-induced stupor, and now this: a diamond-hard glitter in the man’s eyes, his entire being bursting with coiled-spring tension and fanatical energy.

“You say another murder’s about to be committed?” D’Agosta began. “Can you fill me in here? How do you know—?”

“Vincent, we have very little time, and what I have to say is going to seem strange to you, if not mad.”

“Try me.”

The briefest of pauses. “I have a son whom I never knew existed. His name is Alban. He’s the killer—not Diogenes, as I had previously suspected. Of this there is no doubt whatsoever.”

“Whoa, now, just wait a minute, Jesus—”

A short gesture from Pendergast silenced D’Agosta. “These killings are directed specifically at me. The precise motive is as yet unclear.”

“I find it hard to—”

“There is no time for detailed explanations. Suffice to say that the addresses of the hotels, and the times of the killings, follow a pattern, a sequence. The next term in this sequence is twenty-one. And there’s only one Manhattan hotel with twenty-one in its address—the Murray Hill, at Twenty-One Park Avenue. I’ve already checked.”

“This is—”

“And have you noticed the times of the killings? It’s another pattern, a simpler one. The first was at seven thirty in the morning. The next at nine PM. The third one, once again at seven thirty AM. He’s alternating times. And it’s almost nine now.”

They tore through the Helmsley Building tunnel and around the viaduct, wheels squealing. “I don’t buy it,” D’Agosta said as he struggled to straighten the car. “An unknown son, this pattern of yours… it’s frigging nuts.”

Pendergast made a visible effort to control himself. “I know how strange it must seem. But at least for the time being, I must insist on your full and complete suspension of disbelief.”

“Disbelief? That’s an understatement. It’s totally crazy.”

“You’ll find out soon enough. We are here.”

D’Agosta angled the unmarked car and came to a screeching halt in front of the hotel. Unlike the three previous luxury hotels, this one was old and faintly seedy, its brown-brick façade streaked with soot. Leaving the car parked in the loading zone, D’Agosta got out but Pendergast was already ahead of him, flying into the lobby, his FBI badge out. “Security office!” he cried.

The concierge came stumbling out all in a panic, and in response to Pendergast’s barked instructions led them past the lobby desk into a small inner office with a wall of CCTV screens. A security officer on duty leapt to his feet as they burst in.

“FBI,” said Pendergast, waving the shield. “How many lobby tapes do you have online?”

“Um, one,” the officer said, totally flummoxed.

“Back it up half an hour. Now .”

“Yes, um, yes, sir, of course.” The poor guard lumbered about as fast as he could. Fortunately, D’Agosta noticed, it was a recent and modestly advanced system, and the man seemed competent. Within a minute the feed was playing in accelerated motion. D’Agosta watched the monitor, his skepticism growing. This was ridiculous: the Hotel Killer would never pick a dump like this to work in. It didn’t match the M.O. He shot a covert glance at Pendergast: the wife’s death had clearly touched him even more than was obvious.

“Speed it up,” Pendergast said.

The man complied. They watched as figures flitted across the lobby with rigid intensity.

“ Stop! That’s him.”

The security video stopped, then proceeded in real time. It showed a nondescript man walking casually into the lobby, pausing, adjusting his tie, then moving toward the elevators. D’Agosta felt his gut contract. The way the man moved, looked—it was him.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

“Switch to the elevator cam,” Pendergast said.

They followed the man’s progress to the fifth floor, where he got out, walked down the hall, and waited. Then, just as a woman came around the corner, he started up again, following her down the hall, until they passed out of view of the camera. The running time stamp indicated this had taken place just three minutes before.