Blue Labyrinth (20 page)

D
’Agosta entered the Museum’s video security room at exactly quarter to two in the afternoon. Jimenez had asked to see him, and D’Agosta hoped the meeting wouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes: he’d timed it so he arrived between planetarium shows, and he wasn’t sure he could take yet another eighty-decibel tour of the cosmos.

Jimenez and Conklin were sitting at a small table, tapping on laptops. D’Agosta walked over to them, navigating through the racks of equipment in semi-darkness.

“What’s up?” he asked.

Jimenez straightened up. “We’re done.”

“Yeah?”

“We’ve run through all the security tapes covering the Museum’s entrance from June twelfth, the day of Marsala’s murder, back to April sixth. That’s a week before any eyewitnesses recall seeing the murderer in the Museum, but we went the extra week, just to be safe.” He gestured toward his laptop. “We have the sighting of him that you found initially, entering the Museum late on the afternoon of June twelfth. We have tapes of him entering and exiting the Museum on April twentieth, and another entrance and exit set on April fourteenth.”

D’Agosta nodded. The April 20 date matched with the date the
Padgett skeleton had been most recently accessed. And no doubt April 14 was the date that the murderer, under the guise of a visiting scientist, first met with Marsala to arrange for the examination. June 12 was the day of the murder.

He sank into a chair beside them. “Good job,” he said. And he meant it. It was a boring slog, peering at video after grainy video, feeling your eyes slowly going dry and bleary, to the sound of the Big Bang. They’d found two prior dates on which the murderer had visited the Museum and his entrance on the day of the murder. But they still hadn’t found him leaving the Museum
after
the murder.

A part of him wondered why he’d even bothered having his men complete this exercise. The suspected murderer was dead—a suicide. It wasn’t like they were gathering evidence in preparation for a trial. It was the old-fashioned cop in him, he supposed: dotting every
i
and crossing every
t
.

Suicide
. The image of the killer, there at the Indio Holding Facility, had stayed with him. The way he’d rambled on about the stink of rotting flowers, his agitation and incoherence. Not to mention the way he’d jumped so homicidally at Pendergast. Those weren’t easy things to forget. And Christ almighty, killing yourself by biting off your own toe and choking on it? A man would really have to want to check out to do something like that. It didn’t seem consistent with the ersatz Professor Waldron, a man who’d clearly been calm and intelligent and rational enough to fool Victor Marsala and other Museum staff into believing he was a scientist.

D’Agosta sighed. Whatever had happened to the man since Marsala’s murder, one fact remained: on June 12, the day of the murder, he’d definitely been in his right mind. He’d been clever enough to lure Marsala into an out-of-the-way location, kill him quickly and efficiently, and disguise the murder as a piece-of-shit robbery gone bad. And most of all, he’d somehow managed to get out of the Museum afterward without being seen by any of the cameras.

Maybe it didn’t matter, but how the hell had he done that?

Mentally, D’Agosta reviewed his tour of the murder scene with Whittaker, the security guard. It had been in the Gastropod Alcove,
at the far end of the Hall of Marine Life, near a basement exit and not far from the South American gold hall…

Suddenly D’Agosta sat up in the chair.

Of course
.

He couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been. He stood up, pacing back and forth, then wheeled toward Jimenez.

“Marsala was murdered on a Saturday night. What time does the Museum open on Sundays?”

Jimenez rooted through some papers on the desk, found a folded guide to the Museum. “Eleven o’clock.”

D’Agosta moved over to one of the security playback workstations and sat down. Beyond and below, the three o’clock planetarium show was starting up, but he paid it no attention. He moused through a series of menus on the workstation screen, consulted a long list of files, then selected the one he was interested in: the video feed of the Great Rotunda, southern perspective, eleven
AM
to noon, Sunday, June 13.

The familiar bird’s-eye view swam into life on the screen. As Jimenez and Conklin came up behind him, D’Agosta began playing the video stream at normal speed, then—once his eyes had accustomed themselves to the blurry images—at double speed, then four times speed. As the hour progressed at an accelerated pace before them, the streams of people entering the Museum and passing through the security stations thickened and swelled, moving left to right across the little screen.

There
. A lone figure, heading right to left, in the opposite direction, like a swimmer fighting the tide. D’Agosta paused the security feed, noted the timestamp: eleven thirty-four
AM
. Half an hour before D’Agosta had entered the Museum to open the case. He zoomed in on the figure, then began running the video again, once more at normal speed. There could be no mistake: the face, the clothing, the insolently slow walk—it was the murderer.

“Damn,” Conklin murmured over D’Agosta’s shoulder.

“There was an exit leading to the basement, just beyond the Gastropod Alcove,” D’Agosta explained. “That basement is a maze of
levels and tunnels and storage areas. Video coverage would be spotty, at best. He hid there overnight, waited for the Museum to open the next morning, and then just blended in with the crowd on his way out.”

He sat back from the workstation. So they’d tied off this particular loose end, at least. The murderer’s ingress and egress of the Museum were now documented.

D’Agosta’s cell phone began to ring. He plucked it from his pocket and glanced at it. It was a number he didn’t know, Southern California area code. He pressed the
ANSWER
button.

“Lieutenant D’Agosta,” he said.

“Lieutenant?” came the voice from the other end of the country. “My name’s Dr. Samuels. I’m the pathologist with the Department of Corrections here at Indio. We’ve been doing the autopsy on the recent John Doe suicide, and we’ve come across something of interest. Officer Spandau thought I ought to give you a call.”

“Go on,” he said.

Normally, D’Agosta prided himself on his professionalism as a police officer. He didn’t lose his temper; he kept his weapon holstered; he didn’t use profanity with civilians. But as the coroner continued, D’Agosta forgot this last personal maxim.

“Son of a fucking
bitch
,” he muttered, phone still pressed to his ear.

T
he Toyota Hilux turned a corner and came to a screeching stop. The guard sitting in the rear seat opened the door and got out—semi-automatic rifle now pointed toward the ground—and gestured for Pendergast to get out as well.

Pendergast eased himself out of the pickup. The guard nodded at the building directly before them. It had, like those around it, once been a narrow three-story building, but now it was little more than a burned-out hulk, roofless, its upper story caved in, heavy streamers of black soot soiling the stucco above the empty windowsills. The charred remains of the front door were studded with several ragged holes, as if would-be rescuers had tried to punch their way in with battering rams.

“
Obrigado
,” Pendergast said. The guard nodded, got back into the pickup, and the vehicle moved away.

Pendergast stood in the narrow alley for a moment, watching the vehicle recede into the distance. Then he scanned the surrounding buildings. They resembled the other sections of the Cidade dos Anjos he had seen—haphazardly constructed, wedged tightly together, painted in gaudy colors, rooflines rising and falling crazily with the topography of the mountainside. A few people glanced curiously out of windows at him.

He turned back to the house. While there was no street sign—there were no street signs anywhere in the
favela
—the ghostly remains of the number 31 could be seen painted over the ruined door. Pendergast pushed the door open—a lock lay on the tiled floor just inside, rusted and covered with soot—stepped slowly in, then closed the door behind him as best he could.

The interior was stifling and, even now, smelled strongly of charred wood and melted plastic. He looked around, giving his eyes time to adjust to the dimness, trying to ignore the pain that washed over him in slow waves. There was a tiny packet of painkillers in a hidden pocket of his jacket—something those who had frisked him had missed—and for a moment he considered chewing and swallowing several, but then rejected the idea. It would not do for what lay ahead.

For now, the pain would have to stay.

He navigated the first floor. The layout of the narrow house resembled the shotgun shacks of the Mississippi Delta. There was a living room, with a table burned to a heap of scorched sticks, a burnt sofa popping open with black springs. A polyester rug had melted into the concrete floor. Beyond lay a small kitchen, with a two-burner enamel stove, a scratched and dented cast-iron sink, some drawers and shelving, all open. The floor was covered with broken crockery, glassware, and cheap, half-melted cutlery. Smoke and fire had left strange, menacing patterns over the walls and ceiling.

Pendergast stood in the doorway of the kitchen. He tried to imagine his son, Alban, entering the house and striding into this room; greeting his wife; engaging in small talk; laughing, discussing their unborn child and plans for the future.

The image refused to form in his head. It was inconceivable. After a moment or two he abandoned the attempt.

There was so much that made no sense. A pity his mind was not clearer. He recalled the details of Fábio’s story. Alban hiding out in a
favela
, killing some loner and stealing his identity—that he could well believe. Alban, sneaking back into the States, setting in motion some plan of revenge against his father—he could readily believe that, as
well. Alban staging a coup and taking over the
favela
for his own evil purposes. Most believable of all.

You have Alban to thank for this…

But Alban, loving father and family man? Alban, secretly married to the Angel of the
Favelas
? This he could not see. Nor could he see Alban as benevolent slum leader, ridding it of tyranny and ushering in an age of peace and prosperity. Surely Alban had deceived Fábio as he had deceived everyone else.

And there was the other thing Fábio had said—that before he had gone to America for the second time, Alban had planned to stop off in Switzerland.

Recalling this, Pendergast felt a chill despite the oppressive heat of the ruined house. There was only one reason he could think for Alban to go to Switzerland. But how could he possibly know that his brother, Tristram, was at a boarding school there, under an assumed name? Immediately Pendergast knew the answer: it would be a simple matter for a man of Alban’s gifts to discover Tristram’s whereabouts.

… And yet Tristram
was
safe. Pendergast knew this for a fact, because, in the wake of Alban’s death, he had made additional arrangements to ensure Tristram’s security.

What had been going through Alban’s mind? What had been his plan? The answers—if there were any answers to be had—might lie in these very ruins.

Pendergast made his way back to the front of the house and the concrete staircase. It was badly charred, missing its railing. He ascended it carefully, one hand trailing against the wall, the blackened treads squeaking ominously under his feet.

The second floor was in far worse shape than the first. The acrid stench was stronger here. In places, the third floor had collapsed into the second during the conflagration, causing a dangerous welter of carbonized furniture and charred, splintered beams. In several spots, the roof yawned open, revealing skeletal beams and the blue Brazilian sky above. Slowly picking his way through the rubble, Pendergast determined that the floor had once held three rooms: an office or study of some kind; a bathroom; and a small bedroom that—based on
the once-pleasant wallpaper and the ribs of a crib it contained—had been intended as a nursery. Despite the scorched walls and cracked and hanging ceiling, this room had fared better than the others.

The bedroom of Danika—of Danika and Alban—must have been on the third floor. Nothing remained of it. Pendergast stood in the half-light of the nursery, musing. This room would have to do.

He waited there, motionless, for five minutes, then ten. And then—grimacing in pain—he slowly lay down on the floor, ignoring the layer of ash, coal, and dirt that covered the tiles. He folded his hands across his chest and let his eyes flit across the walls and ceilings for a moment before closing them and going utterly still.

Pendergast was one of a tiny handful of practitioners of an esoteric mental discipline known as Chongg Ran, and one of only two masters of it outside of Tibet. With years of training, extensive study, near-fanatical intellectual rigor, and a familiarity with other cerebral exercises such as those in Giordano Bruno’s
Ars Memoriae
, and the
Nine Levels of Consciousness
described in the rare seventeenth-century chapbook by Alexandre Carêem, Pendergast had developed the ability to place himself in a state of pure concentration. From this state—utterly removed from the physical world—he could merge in his mind thousands of separate facts, observations, suppositions, and hypotheses. Through this unification and synthesis, he was able to re-create scenes from the past and put himself among places and people that had vanished long ago. The exercise often led to startling insights unobtainable any other way.

The problem at present was the intellectual rigor, the need to clear his mind of distraction, before proceeding. In his current state, this would be exceedingly difficult.

First, he had to isolate and compartmentalize his pain while simultaneously keeping his mind as clear as possible. Shutting everything out, he began with a problem in mathematics: integrating
e
^−(
x
2
)
,
e
raised to the power of minus
x
squared.

The pain remained.

He moved on to tensor calculus, working out two problems in vector analysis simultaneously in his head.

Still the pain remained.

Another approach was necessary. Breathing shallowly, keeping his eyes gently but completely closed, careful to keep his mind from acknowledging the pain that coursed through his limbs, Pendergast allowed a tiny, perfect orchid to form in his imagination. For a minute it floated there, rotating slowly in perfect blackness. He then allowed the orchid to languorously fall into its component parts: petals, dorsal sepal, lateral sepal, ovary, post-anterior lobe.

He focused his attention on a single part: the labellum. Willing the rest of the flower to vanish into the blackness, he let the labellum grow and grow until it filled the entire field of his mental vision. And still it grew, expanding with geometric regularity, until he could see past the enzymes and strands of DNA and electron shells into its very atomic structure—and still deeper, to the particles at the subatomic level. For a long moment, he looked on with detachment as the deepest and most profound elements of the orchid’s structure moved in their strange and unfathomable courses. And then—with a great effort of will—he stilled the entire atomic engine of the flower, forcing all the countless billions of particles to hang suspended, motionless, in the black vacuum of his imagination.

When he finally let the labellum vanish from his mind, the pain was gone.

Now, still within his mind, he left the would-be nursery, descended the stairs, passed through the closed front door, and found himself on the street. It was night, perhaps six months, perhaps nine months earlier.

Suddenly the house from which he had just exited exploded in flame. As he watched—disembodied, unable to act, powerless to do anything but observe—accelerants quickly carried the flames through the third floor of the residence. Down a back alley, he saw two dark figures racing away.

Almost immediately the crackle of flames became mingled with the sounds of a woman’s screams. A crowd had gathered, shouting, crying hysterically. Several men tried to force open the locked front door with improvised battering rams. It took them at least a minute,
and by the time they succeeded the screams had stopped and the third floor of the house was already collapsing into a fiery labyrinth of beams and glowing ceiling tiles. Nevertheless, several of the men—Pendergast recognized Fábio among them—ran into the building, quickly forming a bucket brigade.

Pendergast watched the frantic activity, a spectral composite of intellect and memory. Within half an hour the fire was out—but the damage had been done. He now saw a new figure come running up the Rio Paranoá. It was a figure he recognized: his son, Alban. But it was an Alban that Pendergast had never seen before. Instead of the usual haughty, scornful, bored visage, this Alban was frantic with worry. He looked as if he had run a long way. Gasping with breath, he pushed through the crowds, forcing his way toward the door of number 31.

He was met in the doorway by his lieutenant, Fábio. His face was a mess of soot and sweat. Alban tried to push his way past but Fábio barred the doorway, shaking his head violently, pleading with Alban in a low, fast voice not to attempt to enter.

At last, Alban staggered back. He placed one hand on the plaster façade for support. To Pendergast, watching from his mind’s eye, it seemed as if Alban’s world was about to fall asunder. He tore at his hair; he struck the smoke-blackened wall, emitting a half moan, half wail of despair. It was an expression of grief as profound as any Pendergast had ever seen—and never would have expected from Alban.

And then—quite suddenly—Alban changed. He grew calm, almost preternaturally so. He glanced up at the ruined house, still smoking, its ruined upper floors dropping glowing embers. He turned to Fábio, asked him pointed questions in a low, urgent tone. Fábio listened, nodded. And then the two turned and melted away down a side alley.

For a moment the scene playing out in Pendergast’s head vanished. When it became visible again, the location had changed. He was now outside the compound at the very summit of the Ciudad dos Anjos: the gated, fenced complex from which he had come not an
hour before. Now, however, it looked more like an armed camp than a residence. There were two guards patrolling the fence; dogs with handlers wearing heavy leather gloves moved back and forth across the courtyard beyond. The windows of the upper story of the central building were brilliantly lighted; talk and harsh laughter floated down from them. From his vantage point in the shadows across the street, Pendergast saw the silhouette of a large, heavyset man move briefly before one of the windows. O Punho—The Fist.

Pendergast glanced over his shoulder, down at the
favela
that sprawled over the flanks of the mountainside. A faint glow rose out of a crabbed warren of streets about half a mile below: Alban’s house was still smoldering.

And now there came a new sound: the low throb of an engine. Pendergast saw a battered jeep, its headlights out, approach, then pull over to the side of the road about a quarter mile away. A single figure got out of the driver’s seat: Alban.

Pendergast squinted through the darkness of his mind’s eye for a clearer look. Alban had a large pack slung over his shoulder, and a weapon in each hand. He shrank against the façade of the nearest house, and then—making sure he wasn’t spotted—moved rapidly up the darkened street to the gated entrance to the compound.

And then something surprising happened. Just as he reached it, Alban stopped, turned, and looked directly at Pendergast.