Two Graves (36 page)

He opened the book and pretended to read.

As he did so, he maintained his senses on highest alert—especially his sense of smell. Proctor had a supernaturally keen sense of smell, almost as good as a deer’s. It was not something most humans anticipated, and it had saved his life more than once.

Half an hour passed without one thing to arouse his suspicions. He realized it must have been a false alarm. But—never one to make assumptions—he closed the book, yawned, and walked over to the secret bookcase entrance to the elevator that descended into the basement. He rode the elevator down and walked along the narrow basement corridor of undressed stone, the walls covered with niter, damp, and lime.

He turned a corner, pressed himself noiselessly into a recess, and waited.

Nothing.

Slowly, he inhaled, his nose testing the currents of air. But there was no human smell in it, no strange eddies or unexpected warmth; nothing but the chill damp.

Now Proctor began to feel a little foolish. His isolation, his unaccustomed role as protector and tutor, had put him on edge. Nobody could be following him. The bookcase entrance had closed behind him and had clearly not been reopened. The elevator he had taken remained in the basement; no one had called it back to the first floor. Even if someone were on the first floor, they could not possibly have followed him into the basement.

Gradually, under these thoughts, the feeling of alarm began to subside. It was safe to descend to the sub-basement.

Stepping down the corridor to the small stone room, he pressed on the Pendergastian crest. The hidden door opened. He stepped through and waited until it snugged back shut again. Then he descended the long curving staircase and began making his way through the many strange rooms that made up the sub-basement, full of glass bottles, rotting tapestries, dried insects, medicines, and other bizarre collections of Enoch Leng. He hurried to the heavy, iron-banded door that opened into Tristram’s quarters.

The boy was waiting for him patiently. Patience was one of his great virtues. He could sit still, unmoving, with nothing to do, for many hours. It was a quality Proctor admired.

“I brought you a book,” Proctor said.

“Thank you!” The boy rose and took it with eagerness, looking at it, turning it over. “What’s it about?”

Proctor suddenly had a twinge of doubt. Was this really the right book for someone whose brother was a serial killer? That hadn’t occurred to him before. He cleared his throat. “It’s about a man who stalks and tries to kill a dictator. He’s caught and escapes.” He paused. His description didn’t make it seem very interesting. “I’ll read you the first chapter.”

“Please!” Tristram sat down on the bed, waiting.

“Stop me if there are any words you don’t understand. And when I’m done, we’ll talk about the chapter. You’ll have questions—be sure to ask them.” Proctor settled into a chair, opened the book, cleared his throat, and started to read.

Suddenly, Proctor felt something behind him: a presence. He spun and leapt up, clapping his hand on his weapon, but the figure vanished back into the darkness of the corridor even before his hand had touched the gun. But the image of the face he’d seen was engraved on his mind. It was the face of Tristram—only keener and more blade-like.

Alban.

S
UPERVISORY SPECIAL AGENT PETER S. JOYCE’S OFFICE WAS
one of the more cluttered in the big building at 26 Federal Plaza. The shelves were filled with books about American history, the criminal justice system, and nautical lore; the walls were decorated with photos of his weather-beaten thirty-two-foot sloop, the
Burden of Proof
. Joyce’s desk, however, was completely bare, like the deck of a ship cleared for an approaching gale. The office’s lone window looked out into the Lower Manhattan night—Joyce was a confirmed night owl, and he always saved his most serious work of the day for the last.

There was a soft knock at the door.

“Enter,” Joyce said.

The door opened and Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast came in. He shut the door quietly behind him, then stepped forward and slipped into the single chair placed before Joyce’s desk.

Joyce felt a twinge of annoyance that the man had seated himself before being asked, but he covered it up. He had more important things to say.

“Agent Pendergast,” Joyce began. “In the three years since I was transferred to the New York field office, I’ve tolerated your, shall we say,
unconventional
behavior as an agent—often against the advice of others. I’ve run interference for you on more than one occasion, backed up your methods when others have wanted to call you on the carpet. I’ve done this for a variety of reasons. I’m not a stickler for protocol. I’m no lover of the FBI’s fondness for bureaucracy. I’m more interested in results—and you’ve rarely disappointed in that regard. You may be unconventional, but you’re damn effective. Your military
experience is highly impressive—at least from what I’ve seen of the nonclassified reports in your folder. And there is an extremely complimentary appraisal in your folder, written by the late Michael Decker, one of the most decorated and honored agents in recent memory. I’ve frequently thought back to that appraisal when complaints of your behavior have crossed my desk.”

He sat forward, put his arms on the desk, and tented his fingers. “But now, Agent Pendergast, you’ve done something that I can’t ignore, and that I can’t tolerate. You have stepped way,
way
over the line.”

“Are you referring to Agent Gibbs’s formal complaint?” Pendergast asked.

If Joyce was surprised by this, he didn’t show it. “Only in part.” He hesitated. “I’m no friend of Agent Gibbs or the BSU. His assertions about your freelancing, your failure to coordinate, deviating from standard procedure, not being a team player, don’t really concern me.” He made a dismissive motion. “But his other charges are more serious. Your involving yourself in this case without waiting for official authorization, for example. You of all people should know that Gibbs is only on the case because the New York City police specifically asked for help from the BSU. You’re not affiliated with Behavioral Sciences—your business with this case is obscure, and your efforts to have yourself assigned to it have seriously ruffled some feathers around here. Yet even that, I might have been able to overlook—but I can’t overlook your most egregious infraction.”

“Which is?” Pendergast repeated.

“Withholding information of critical relevance to the case.”

“And may I ask what that information is?”

“That the Hotel Killer is your own son.”

Pendergast went rigid.

“Gibbs suspected you were withholding information, Agent Pendergast. The NYPD confirmed it. When they first heard you suspected your son to be the killer, early this afternoon, they did not take it seriously. They thought you were… well, non compos mentis. But of course they were duty-bound to follow up. Comparison of the Hotel Killer’s DNA with yours—which we have on file,
as you know—has verified it.” Joyce sighed. “This information—information of absolutely
crucial
importance—you withheld from the investigation. There can be no possible justification. It not only looks bad, it
is
bad. This goes far beyond conflict of interest. It verges on a criminal charge of aiding and abetting.”

Pendergast did not reply. He looked back at Joyce, an unreadable expression on his face.

“Agent Pendergast, I have no idea how your son got involved in this, or why, or how you learned of it, or what you were planning to do about it. You’re clearly in an intolerable personal position, and for that you have my deepest sympathy. But let me be frank with you: your actions in this matter have been unethical at best and illegal at worst.”

Joyce let this hang in the air a long moment before continuing.

“As you know, when it comes to disciplinary action, we have a fixed bureaucracy in place. As a first-line supervisor, I can’t even give you a slap on the wrist. So I sent a report to the Office of the Special Agent in Charge–New York Division, detailing your offenses and recommending immediate termination.”

Another pause.

“The SAC’s office dropped it right back in my lap. They wouldn’t touch it. So this morning I resubmitted the report, this time to the Office of Professional Responsibility.”

Joyce sighed. He gave Pendergast a sidelong stare, as if trying to evaluate a Japanese puzzle box. “Ordinarily, the OPR boys would have been all over you like stink on shit. There would be interrogations, they’d be calling witnesses, a decision would be made, a punishment would come down. And you’d be put through the wringer while the process ground on. Instead, what happens? Within an hour, I get a response: ‘Thirty days off the street.’ ”

Joyce shook his head. “That’s it. Instead of five to ten in Leavenworth, you get thirty days off the street: a month without pay. And since your annual FBI salary is—what, a dollar-a-year honorarium?—I doubt that’s going to sting very much.” He raised a speculative eyebrow. “I don’t know who your guardian angel is, Special Agent Pendergast, but I’ll tell you this: you’re one charmed son of a bitch.”

The room fell into silence. At last, Joyce shifted in his chair. “Is there anything you’d like to add?”

Pendergast shook his head almost imperceptibly. “I would say you’ve articulated the situation admirably, Supervisory Special Agent Joyce.”

“In that case—take your thirty days. And stay far,
far
away from this case.” Turning away from Pendergast, Joyce plucked
Cruising Boats Within Your Budget
from a shelf behind him, placed it on his desk, and began to read.

P
ROCTOR WHEELED BACK TO TRISTRAM, WHO WAS SITTING
on his bed, white-faced. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll lock you in. You’ll be safe in this room.” He stepped out, locked the door securely, and then raced down the stone corridor, flattening himself against the wall just before the hallway opened on to the nearest sub-basement room.

He took out his .45, racked a round into the chamber, flicked on the laser sights. Then he took a moment to clear his head, get a feel for the tactical situation. He pushed away all surprise, all pain from his bruised ribs, all speculation about how the youth could have gotten in—and focused on the problem at hand.

The killer meant to lure him out into the sub-basement proper. Alban wanted him to follow. Just as clearly, that was the course of action he must take. There was no other. He could not allow the young man—now inside the security of the house—any freedom of action. He had to track him down. Alban meant to ambush him—he was sure of that. So he had to be unpredictable. He had to develop a strategy.

And he had to understand why Alban hadn’t killed him outright, when he’d clearly had the chance.

All these thoughts occurred in a split second.

Eyeing the ground, Proctor looked for traces of Alban’s passing, but was unable to tease out the youth’s marks from the welter of fresh footprints in the dust. He took a deep breath and, after a moment, spun around the corner and covered the room with his weapon. A single, naked lightbulb, hanging from a wire that ran the length of the sub-basement, illuminated the room, casting deep shadows.
Cases along the walls displayed a motley collection of stuffed reptiles.

The room appeared to be empty.

With a quick movement he darted across the floor and took cover behind an old case that lay on its side, rusting halberds spilling out. From that vantage point he scoured the room as best he could. He did not need to hurry. The killer wasn’t trying to escape—the killer was stalking him just as surely as he was stalking the killer.

After ascertaining that the room was empty, Proctor darted to the far end and flattened himself against the archway that led into the next chamber, back in the direction of the staircase leading upward. This was filled with shelving, not just along the wall but also running across the middle, loaded with glass bottles in different colors, filled with strange and bizarre objects, dried insects, lizards, seeds, liquids and powders. There were many places to hide among those complicated rows of shelves, many places in which to set up an ambush.