Blue Labyrinth (37 page)

I
’m back,” came the strangely old-fashioned voice from behind Barbeaux.

He whipped around, gazing with astonishment. The petite form of Constance Greene stood there. Somehow, she had managed to approach without making any sound.

Barbeaux gazed at her with astonishment. Her black chemise was torn, her body and face filthy, smeared with mud and bleeding from a dozen cuts. Her hair was caked with dirt, twigs, and leaves. She seemed more feral than human. And yet the voice, the eyes, were cold, unreadable. She was unarmed, empty-handed.

She swayed slightly on her feet, looked at Pendergast—lying motionless at Barbeaux’s feet—then returned her gaze to him.

“He’s dead,” Barbeaux told her.

She did not react. If there was any normal emotion going on in this crazy woman, Barbeaux could not see it, and this unnerved him.

“I want the name of the plant,” he said, leveling his gun at her.

Nothing. No recognition that he’d spoken.

“I’ll kill you if you don’t give it to me. I’ll kill you in the most horrific way imaginable. Tell me the name of the plant.”

Now she spoke. “You’ve begun to smell lilies, haven’t you?”

She’s guessed
. “How—?”

“It’s obvious. Why else did you want me alive? And why else
would you want the plant, now, when
he
is dead?” She gestured at Pendergast’s body.

With self-discipline born of long practice, Barbeaux pulled himself together. “And my men?”

“I killed them all.”

Even though, from the radio chatter, he’d surmised that things had gone very badly, Barbeaux could scarcely believe his ears. His eyes roamed over the insane creature that stood before him. “How in the world—?” he began again.

She did not answer the question. “We need to come to an arrangement. You want—
need
—the plant. And I want to collect my guardian’s body for a decent burial.”

Barbeaux gazed at her for a moment. The young woman waited, head slightly cocked. She swayed on her feet again. She looked like she might collapse at any minute.

“All right,” he said, gesturing with the gun. “We’ll go to the Aquatic House together. When I’m satisfied you’ve told me the truth, I’ll let you go.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure I can make it on my own. Hold my arm, please.”

“No tricks. You lead the way.” He prodded her with the gun. She was smart, but not smart enough. As soon as he’d secured the plant, she would die.

She stumbled over Pendergast’s body, then walked along the wing into the Bonsai Museum. There she fell to the ground and was unable to get up without Barbeaux’s assistance. They entered the Aquatic House.

“Tell me the name of the plant,” Barbeaux demanded.

“
Phragmipedium
. Andean Fire. The active compound is in the underwater rhizome.”

“Show me.”

Using the railing to support herself, Constance circled the large, central pool, stumbling.

“Hurry up.”

At the far end of the main pool were a series of descending,
smaller pools. A sign at one of them identified it as containing the aquatic plant called Andean Fire.

She gestured, swaying. “There.”

Barbeaux peered into the dark water. “There’s nothing in the pool,” he said.

Constance sank to her knees. “The plant is dormant this time of year.” Her voice was slow, thick. “The root’s in the mud underwater.”

He waved his gun. “Get up.”

She tried to rise. “I can’t move.”

With a curse, Barbeaux pulled off his jacket, knelt at the pool, and stuck his shirtsleeved arm into the water.

“Don’t forget your promise,” Constance murmured.

Ignoring this, Barbeaux began rummaging around in the muck at the bottom. In a few seconds he withdrew the arm with a grunt of surprise. Something was odd. No—something was wrong. The cotton material of his shirt was starting to come apart, dissolving and running off his arm in pieces with faint palls of smoke.

The sound of police sirens, shrill and anxious, began rising in the distance.

Barbeaux rose, staggered back with a roar of fury, pulled his gun out with his left hand, raised it—but Constance Greene had disappeared into the riot of growth.

Now pain took hold, excruciating pain, rippling up his arm and into his head, and then Barbeaux felt a jolt in his brain like electricity, followed by another, even worse. He staggered back and forth, swinging his smoking arm around, seeing the skin blacken and curl away to expose the flesh beneath. He began firing the gun crazily into the jungle, his vision fogging, his lungs choking, the shocks in his head and the muscle spasms in his body coming faster and faster until a spasm knocked him to his knees and then threw him down to the ground.

“There’s no point in struggling,” Constance said. She had reappeared from somewhere, and—out of the corner of his eye—Barbeaux saw her pick up his gun and toss it into the bushes. “Triflic acid, which I have introduced into this secondary pool, is not only highly corrosive, but it’s extremely poisonous as well. Once it eats its way through
your skin, it starts to affect you systemically. A neurotoxin—you will die convulsing with pain.”

She turned and darted away again.

In a paroxysm of rage, Barbeaux managed to rise and stagger in pursuit, but could only make it to the far wing of the Palm House before collapsing again. He tried to rise once more, but found he had lost all control of his muscles.

The sounds of sirens had grown much louder, and in the distance, through his fog of pain, Barbeaux could hear the sounds of shouting, running feet. Constance rushed in the direction of the commotion. Barbeaux hardly noticed. His brain was on fire, screaming even while his twitching mouth could no longer utter a word. His body began to shudder and jump, his stomach muscles clenching so hard he thought they would tear asunder, and he tried to scream but the only sound that emerged was a gasp of air.

Now there was a commotion nearby, and he made out individual words. “… Paddles!” “… Charged!” “… I’ve got a pulse!” “… Hang some D5W!” “… Get him to the ambulance!”

Hours, or maybe it was just moments, later a police officer and an EMS worker were leaning over him, shocked expressions on their faces. Barbeaux felt himself being lifted onto a stretcher. And then Constance Greene was among them, staring down at him. Through the fog of pain and the racking convulsions, Barbeaux tried to tell her she had lied; that she had welshed on their deal. Not even a gasp escaped his lips.

But she understood anyway. She bent forward and spoke softly, so that only he could hear. “It’s true,” she said. “I reneged. Just as you would have.”

The workers prepared to lift the stretcher, and she spoke more quickly. “One last thing. Your fatal mistake was believing you had—and please forgive the crudeness of today’s vernacular—a bigger pair of balls.”

And as the unendurable pain overwhelmed him and his vision failed, Barbeaux saw Constance rise, turn, and then race away as Pendergast’s stretcher headed toward the ambulance.

W
ithin about five minutes, the scene at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden had gone from merely crazy to totally insane. Paramedics, cops, firemen, and EMS workers were everywhere, securing the site, yelling into radios, shouting in surprise and disgust at each fresh and horrifying discovery.

As he jogged toward the central pavilion, a bizarre figure came rushing toward D’Agosta—a woman dressed only in a torn chemise, filthy, her hair full of twig ends and bits of flowers.

“Over here!” the figure cried. With a start, D’Agosta recognized Constance Greene. Automatically, he began to remove his jacket to cover her, but she ran past him to a group of paramedics. “This way!” she cried to them, leading them off in the direction of a huge Victorian structure of metal and glass.

Margo and D’Agosta followed, through a side door and into a long hall, apparently set up for a wedding reception but looking as if it had been raided by a biker gang: tables overturned, glassware shattered, chairs knocked over. At the far end, on the parquet dance floor, lay two bodies. Constance led the paramedics to one of them. When he saw it was Pendergast, D’Agosta staggered, grabbed the back of a chair. He turned on the paramedics and screamed, “Work this one first!”

“Oh no,” Margo sobbed, her hand over her mouth. “No.”

The paramedics surrounded Pendergast and began a quick ABC assessment: airway, breathing, circulation.

“Paddles!” one of them barked over his shoulder. An EMS worker with defib equipment came up as Pendergast’s shirt was ripped away.

“Charged!” the EMS worker cried. The paddles were applied; the body jerked; the paddles reapplied.

“Again!” ordered the paramedic.

Another jolt; another galvanic jerk.

“I’ve got a pulse!” the paramedic said.

Only now, as Pendergast was placed on a stretcher, did D’Agosta turn his attention to the second supine figure. The body was twitching violently, eyes staring, mouth working soundlessly. It was a man in shirtsleeves, well into middle age, with a solid build. D’Agosta recognized him from pictures on Red Mountain’s website as John Barbeaux. One of his arms was blistering and smoking, with bone exposed, as if burned in a fire, the shirt eaten away almost to the shoulder. Several newly arriving paramedics bent over him and began working.

As D’Agosta watched, Constance approached the twitching form of Barbeaux, nudged one of the paramedics aside, and bent in close. He could see her lips move in some whispered message to him. Then she straightened up and turned to the paramedics. “He’s all yours.”

“You need an assessment, too,” said another paramedic, approaching her.

“Don’t touch me.” She backed up and turned away, disappearing into the dark bowels of the greenhouse complex. The paramedics watched her go, then returned their attention to Barbeaux.

“What the hell happened to her?” D’Agosta asked Margo.

“I have no idea. There are… a lot of dead people here.”

D’Agosta shook his head. It would all be sorted out later. He turned his attention to Pendergast. The paramedics were now raising his stretcher, one holding an IV bottle up, and they headed toward the ambulances. D’Agosta and Margo followed.

As they were jogging along, Constance reappeared. She had a large pink lily in her hand, dripping wet.

“I’ll take your jacket now,” she said to D’Agosta.

D’Agosta draped his jacket over her shoulders. “Are you all right?”

“No.” She turned to Margo. “Did you get it?”

In response, Margo pressed the handbag slung over one shoulder.

A brace of ambulances were parked at the closest corner of visitors’ parking, lightbars turning. As they hurried toward them, Constance stopped to retrieve a small satchel, hidden in some bushes. The paramedics opened the rear of the nearest ambulance and rolled in Pendergast’s stretcher, climbing in after it. D’Agosta started to get in, followed by Margo and Constance.

The emergency workers looked at the two women. “I’m sorry,” one began, “but you’re going to have to take separate transportation—”

D’Agosta silenced the man with a flash of his badge.

With a shrug, the paramedic shut the doors; the siren started up. Constance handed Margo the satchel and the lily plant.

“What is this stuff?” one EMT said angrily. “It’s not sterile. You can’t bring that in here!”

“Move aside,” Margo said sharply.

D’Agosta put a hand on the man’s shoulder and pointed at Pendergast. “You two focus on the patient. I’ll be responsible for the rest.”

The EMT frowned, saying nothing.

D’Agosta watched as Margo went to work. She pulled open the ambulance storage compartment in the rear of the vehicle, slid out a shelf, opened Constance’s satchel, and began pulling out various things—old bottles filled with liquid, ampoules, envelopes of powder, a jar of emolument. She laid them all out in order. To these, Margo added the lily that Constance had handed her, and then some dried plant specimens from her own handbag, picking them out from among pieces of broken glass. Next to all this she smoothed out a wrinkled piece of paper, grabbing abruptly for a handhold as the ambulance pulled out onto Washington Avenue, its siren shrieking.

“What are you doing?” D’Agosta asked.

“I’m preparing the antidote,” Margo replied.

“Shouldn’t you do this in a lab or something—?”

“Does it look to you like we have the time?”

“How is the patient?” Constance asked the paramedic.

The paramedic glanced at D’Agosta, then at her. “Not good. B/P low, pulse thready.” He pulled open a plastic tray at one side of Pendergast’s stretcher. “I’m going to start a lidocaine drip.”

As the ambulance careered onto Eastern Parkway, D’Agosta watched Margo grab a bag of saline from a nearby drawer, pluck a tracheotomy scalpel from another drawer, and pull away its protective silver covering. She slashed open the saline bag, poured some into an empty plastic beaker, and dropped the leaking bag on the floor.

“Hey,” said the paramedic. “What the hell are you doing—?” Again, he was silenced by a warning gesture from D’Agosta.

The ambulance shrieked its way past Prospect Park, then through Grand Army Plaza. Steadying herself against the movements of the vehicle, Margo took a small glass jar from among the contents of Constance’s satchel, warmed it briefly in her hands, then removed its stopper and poured out a measure into the plastic beaker. Immediately the ambulance filled with a sweetish, chemical smell.

“What’s that?” D’Agosta asked, waving away the odor.

“Chloroform.” Margo re-stoppered the jar. Taking the scalpel, she chopped up the lily Constance had retrieved from the Aquatic House, mashed it, and added the pulp, along with the dried, crushed pieces of plant from her own handbag, into the liquid. She stoppered the beaker and shook it.

“What’s going on?” D’Agosta asked.

“The chloroform acts as a solvent. It’s used in pharmacology to extract compounds from plant material. Then I have to boil most of it off, as it’s poisonous if injected.”

“Just a moment,” Constance said. “If you boil it, you’ll make the same mistake Hezekiah did.”

“No, no,” Margo replied. “Chloroform boils at a far lower temperature than water—around a hundred forty degrees. It won’t denature the proteins or the compounds.”

“What compounds are you extracting?” D’Agosta asked.

“I have no idea.”

“You don’t
know
?”

Margo rounded on him. “
Nobody
knows what the active ingredients in these botanicals are. I’m winging it.”

“Jesus,” D’Agosta said.

The ambulance turned onto Eighth Avenue, approaching New York Methodist Hospital. As it did, Margo consulted her sheet of paper, added more liquid, broke an ampoule, mixed in two kinds of powder from their glassine envelopes.

“Lieutenant,” she said over her shoulder. “When we get to the hospital, I’m going to need some things right away. Ice water. A piece of cloth for straining. A test tube. Half a dozen coffee filters. And a pocket lighter. Okay?”

“Here’s the lighter,” said D’Agosta, reaching into his pocket. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

The ambulance came to a halt before the hospital’s emergency entrance, the siren cutting off. The paramedics threw open the rear doors and slid the stretcher out to the waiting ER staff. D’Agosta glanced down at Pendergast, covered in a thin blanket. The agent was pale and motionless as a corpse. Constance got out next and followed the stretcher inside, her attire and dirty appearance eliciting strange looks from the hospital staff. Next, D’Agosta hopped down and made his way quickly toward the entrance. As he did so, he looked over his shoulder. He could see Margo in the rear bay of the ambulance, brilliantly illuminated by the emergency lights, still working with single-minded purpose.