Cemetery Dance (44 page)

"Officer Wegman, the protesters are beginning to disperse," said Chislett primly. "Clearly, my tactics are having the intended effect. I want you and your men to shunt the protesters back toward the baseball diamond and the street, to effect an orderly dispersal."

"But, sir, we're all the way across the park at the moment, where you told us to —"

"Just do as you're told, Officer." And Chislett shut off the man's protests with the flick of the transmit button. Weak as water, the whole lot of them. Had ever a commander in the history of organized aggression ever been burdened with such monumental ineptitude?

He lowered the radio with a disheartened sigh and watched as the crowd of people streaming out of the Ville became a river, then a flood.

Cemetery Dance

Chapter 78

Pendergast moved through the tunnel, keeping close to the left–hand wall, the narrow beam of the penlight carefully shielded. As he came around a bend in the tunnel, he spied something in the dim glow — a long, whitish object lying on the tunnel floor.

He approached. It was a heavy plastic bag, zippered on one side, smeared with mud, dirt, and grass, as if it had been dragged. Printed on the side were the words morgue of the city of new york and a number.

He knelt and reached out, grasping the zipper. Slowly he drew it back, keeping the sound as low as possible. An overpowering stench of formalin, alcohol, and decomposition assaulted his nostrils. Inch by inch, the corpse within was exposed. He pulled the zipper back until the bag was half open, grasped the edges of the plastic and spread them apart, exposing the face.

William Smithback, Jr.

For a long time, Pendergast stared. Then, with an almost reverent care, he fully opened the zipper, exposing the entire body. It was at the worst stage of decomposition. Smithback's cadaver had been autopsied and then, the day before it disappeared, reassembled for turning over to the family: the organs replaced, the Y–incision sewn up, the cranium reattached with the scalp pulled back over it and sutured closed, the face repaired, everything stuffed and packed and padded. It was a crude job — delicate work wasn't a pathologist's forte — but it was a package a good mortician could, at least, work with.

Only, the body hadn't gone to the funeral home. It had been stolen. And now it was here.

Suddenly, Pendergast peered more closely. Reaching into the pocket of his suit coat, he extracted a pair of tweezers and used them to pluck away a few bits of white latex rubber that were clinging to the corpse's face: one from a nostril, another from an earlobe. He examined them closely with the penlight, then placed them thoughtfully in his pocket.

He slowly played the light about — and saw, fifty feet away, another decaying corpse, neatened up and dressed for burial in a black suit. An unknown person, but tall and lanky, the same approximate height and build as Smithback and Fearing.

Looking at the two corpses, the final details of Esteban's plot crystallized in his mind. It was most elegant. Only one question now remained: what was in the document Esteban looted from the tomb? It would have to be something truly extraordinary, something of immense value, for a man to go to such risk. Cautiously and silently he closed the zipper. Pendergast was stunned, not only by the complexity of Esteban's plan, but by its audacity. Only a man of the rarest parts, of patience, strategic vision, and personal mettle, could have pulled it off. And pull it off he had; if Pendergast had not accidentally come across the looted tomb in the basement of the Ville, and combined that detail with the sanguineous wrappings of a crown roast of lamb found in the garbage, the man would have gotten away with it.

In the noisome dark, Pendergast thought intently. In his mad dash to get here as quickly as possible, to save Nora, he had neglected to consider in detail how he would deal with Esteban. He now realized he had underestimated the man — this was a formidable adversary. The distance by car from Inwood to Glen Cove was such that he had surely returned home by now. Such a man would know that Pendergast was here as well. Such a man would have a plan and would be waiting for him. He had to confound the man's expectations. He had to strike from — quite literally — an unexpected direction.

Carefully, noiselessly, he retreated down the passage the way he had come.

*        *        *

Esteban waited in the tunnel, standing beside the lever, listening intently. The FBI agent was damn quiet, but in these silent, underground spaces, even the smallest sounds traveled forever. Listening intently, he could reconstruct what was happening. First, the faint sound of a zipper; then the rustle of plastic; several minutes of silence — and the zipper again. Then he spied the faintest glow of light in the tunnel: Pendergast's flashlight. Still he waited.

It was amusing, really, the FBI agent finding the two bodies. What a shock that must be. He wondered just how much the man had figured out; with both corpses in front of him probably a great deal — this Pendergast fellow was clearly intelligent. Perhaps he knew everything but the crucial point: the nature of the document he had taken from his ancestor's tomb.

The important thing was that Pendergast was operating on a hunch, without proof — and that was why he was here alone, without backup or a SWAT team.

At the thought of the document, Esteban felt a sudden panic thread his spine. He didn't have it. Where had he left it? Inside his unlocked car, sitting in the driveway. That damn alarm coming in over his BlackBerry had distracted him just as he'd arrived home. What if it was stolen? What if Pendergast found it? But these were foolish thoughts: the gate into the estate was shut and locked, and Pendergast was down here, in the tunnel. He would retrieve the document at his earliest opportunity, but right now he had urgent business to attend to.

The silence from the tunnel was now absolute. Hardly breathing, he listened and waited.

And waited. The faint, indirect glow of the light remained steady, unmoving. As the minutes crawled by, Esteban began to realize something was awry.

"Mr. Esteban?" came the pleasant voice out of the darkness behind him. "Would you be so kind as to remain absolutely still, while slowly releasing your grip on the weapon and allowing it to fall to the ground? Let me warn you that the slightest movement, even an ill–timed twitch of an eyelash, will result in your immediate death."

Cemetery Dance

Chapter 79

Esteban released the gun. It fell to the ground with a thud. "Now if you will slowly raise your hands and take two steps back, then lean against the wall."

Esteban took the two required steps and did as he was told. Pendergast reached down, picked up the Browning, and slipped it into his jacket pocket, then searched through Esteban's pockets and removed his flashlight. He stepped back and switched it on.

"Listen —" Esteban began.

"No talking, please, except to answer my questions. Now you will lead me to Nora Kelly. Nod if you understand."

Esteban nodded. All was not lost … It was always possible to be too intelligent. He moved slowly backward, in the direction of the house.

"She's not that way," said Pendergast. "I've already explored those areas. You've used up your only chit — next time you try to pull something off, I'll conclude you are unhelpful, kill you without further ado, and find Ms. Kelly myself. Nod if you understand."

Esteban nodded.

"She's in the basement of the barn?"

Esteban shook his head.

"Where is she? You may speak."

"She's in a room hidden in the tunnel, under the plaster. Not far from Smithback's body."

"There was no fresh plaster in the tunnel."

"The door is under a section of old wired–up plaster I can move and replace at will."

Pendergast seemed to ponder this. Then he waved his gun. "You first. Remember what will happen if you are unhelpful."

Once again, Esteban began walking back down the tunnel toward Smithback, keeping to the right wall. Pendergast followed about ten feet behind. Esteban stepped over a tiny penlight — clearly the agent's — lying on the floor of the tunnel. As he passed the lever, he pretended to stagger and fall, striking it on his way down.

The shot rang out but it was high, ruffling Esteban's hair. A grinding crash burst from the ceiling of the tunnel as the lever of his mechanism released a fake landslide. It wasn't a real cave–in, of course, but rather one consisting of Styrofoam boulders, pre–broken and stained plywood timbers, and sand and gravel mixed with painted popcorn filler. It wasn't as deadly as a true landslide, but it nevertheless dropped fast and furiously. Pendergast leapt aside, but as quick as he was, he wasn't able to escape the ton of material that had been unleashed directly on top of him. With a long, rumbling roar of timbers and popcorn and Styrofoam, he was knocked down and buried. Esteban scrambled forward, just escaping the leading edge of the avalanche himself.

All was pitch–dark — the lights had been buried with the agent. Esteban could hear the last bits and pieces of gravel rain down. Then he laughed out loud. This was the avalanche that had appeared to bury the pursuing prison guards in the climactic scene of Breakout Sing Sing, as the hero leapt from the tunnel mouth to safety. And here he had re–created it — for real!

Pendergast evidently was not a moviegoer. If he were, he might have recognized the tunnel and guessed what was coming. Too bad for him.

Esteban waded into the phony landslide, kicking the filler away, looking for Pendergast. After five minutes of forcing aside rubble, he spied the gleam of his flashlight, still lit, and next to it the agent's body, bloody and dust–covered, stunned by the sudden cascade. The Browning he had taken lay beside him. The agent's own gun was in his hand, cell phone lying nearby. He had been hit hard by the debris and might even be dead, but Esteban had to be sure. He first grabbed both of the guns. Next, he brought his foot down on the cell phone, smashing it. Then he raised the Browning, checked the magazine, aimed it at Pendergast's breastbone, and fired two rounds point–blank into the detective, a double tap to the heart, followed by a third to make sure, the body jumping with each impact, dust billowing upward from his chest and shoulders.

A spreading stain of blood appeared on the ground underneath.

Esteban stood there, amid the dust, and allowed himself a small smile. Pity that this little scene would never make the silver screen. Now it was time for the final act in his private epic: kill the girl and get rid of the bodies.

All four of them.

Cemetery Dance

Chapter 80

Laura Hayward made her way cautiously through the shadowy vaults deep beneath the alleys and cloisters of the Ville. The screams and cries overhead, which seemed to have reached a crescendo, had abruptly receded: either the confrontation had spilled out into Inwood Hill Park or she had descended too deep into the earth to hear it. The basement passages of the Ville spread across many levels and sported numerous architectural styles, from crude hand–carved grottoes to elaborate stone–lined vaults with groined ceilings. It was as if successive waves of occupants, with a variety of needs and levels of sophistication, had each extended the underground spaces for their own purposes.

A quick glance at her watch showed that she had been exploring the basements for fifteen minutes now — fifteen minutes of dead ends and circuitous windings each more confusing and macabre than the last. Just how far could this subterranean maze extend? And where was Vincent? More than once she had considered calling out his name, but each time some sixth sense had cautioned her against it. Her radio proved useless.

Now she paused at a crossroads from which four short passages led away to banded iron doors. She chose one passage at random, traversed it, stopped at the door to listen, then opened it and stepped through. Beyond lay a dirty and foul–smelling tunnel, the floor spongy with mold, the ceiling woven with cobwebs. A constant drip, drip, drip of condensate fell from the slimy stonework overhead. Greasy drops pattered Hayward's hair and shoulders as she walked, and she flicked them away in disgust.

After about twenty yards, the passage split in two directions. Hayward went right, in what she believed to be the direction of the central church. The air was slightly less noisome here, the walls constructed of primitively dressed stone. She peered closely at the stonework, examining it with her flashlight. This was clearly not the wall in the video of Nora Kelly.

Suddenly, she straightened up. Was that a cry?

She stood motionless in the dark, listening intently. But whatever she had heard — if indeed she'd heard anything at all — did not sound again.

She moved forward. The stone passage ended in a massive, vaulted archway. Ducking underneath, she found herself in a crudely constructed mausoleum, supported by rotting timbers, a set of a dozen burial niches carved into the clay walls, each one with a rotting coffin. Charms and fetishes were everywhere: bags of leather and sequins; grotesque dolls with leering, oversize heads; maddeningly complex designs of spirals and crosshatches, painted onto boards and stretched hides. It was a subterranean temple to the dead leaders of the Ville, it seemed — or, perhaps, the undead. The coffins themselves were strange, banded with iron and padlocked, as if to keep the dead inside, some with massive spikes driven through them and into the clay below. Hayward shuddered, recalling some of the more colorful stories of her old cohorts on the New Orleans PD.

… Now it came again, and this time there was no question: a female voice, sobbing quietly — and coming out of the darkness directly ahead.

Nora Kelly? She moved forward as silently as she could through the voodoo–laden chamber, gun ready, keeping her flashlight shielded. The voice was muffled but it sounded close, perhaps only two or three chambers away. The niche–filled room ended in a passage that forked again; the sounds were coming from the left, and Hayward headed toward them. If it was Nora, she would probably be guarded — the Ville would have sent somebody down at the first sign of trouble.