away from me.'
'No,' she murmured.
'Go back to your island and forget about me. If not for your own sake, Viola, then for mine.'
They looked into each other's eyes for a moment. Then, in the harsh light of the squalid cell, they kissed.
After a moment, Pendergast disengaged himself and stepped back. His face was uncharacteristically flushed; his pale eyes glittered.
'Good-bye, Viola,' he said.
Viola stood as if rooted to the ground. A minute passed. Then, with infinite reluctance, she turned and walked slowly to the door.
At the door, she hesitated and, without turning, began to speak in a low voice.
'I'll do as you say. I'll go back to my island. I'll tell everyone I could not care less about you. I'll live my life. And when you're finally free, you'll know where to find me.'
She gave a quick rap on the observation port, the door opened- and she was gone.
epilogue
The fire died on the grate, leaving a crumbling stack of coals. The light in the library was dim, and the usual cloak of silence lay over all: the baize-covered reading tables neatly stacked with books, the walls of slumbering volumes, the shaded lamps and leather chairs. Outside, it was a bright winter day, the last day of January, but within 891 Riverside it seemed to be perpetual night.
Constance sat in one chair, wearing a black petticoat with white lace trimming, legs tucked up beneath her, reading an eighteenth-century treatise on the benefits of bloodletting. D'Agosta sat in a wing chair nearby. A can of Budweiser sat on a silver tray on a table beside him, unconsumed, in a puddle of its own condensation.
D'Agosta glanced over at Constance, at her perfect profile, her straight brown hair. That she was a beautiful young woman, there was no doubt; that she was unusually, even uncannily, intelligent and well read for someone her age went without saying. But there was something strange about her-very, very strange. She'd had no emotional reaction at all to the news of Pendergast's arrest and incarceration. None.
In D'Agosta's experience, that kind of nonreaction was often the strongest reaction of all. It worried him. Pendergast had warned him of Constance's current fragility and had hinted of dark things in her past. D'Agosta had long had his own doubts about Constance's stability, and this inexplicable lack of reaction only made him wonder the more. It was partly to watch over her, now that Pendergast was gone, that had brought him and his few belongings back to 891 the day before-that and the fact he had no place else to go.
And then there was the problem of Diogenes. It was true he had been crossed, his plans for Viola and Lucifer's Heart had been thwarted, he himself forced back into hiding. The NYPD now believed in his existence and were pursuing him with a vengeance. The recent developments seemed to have dented, but not completely shaken, their certainty that Pendergast was a serial killer-the problem was still the overwhelming physical evidence. The NYPD was at least now certain, however, that Diogenes was behind the Astor Hall theft and had kidnapped Viola. They'd found the safe house and were in the process of taking it apart. The case was by no means closed.
In a way, Diogenes's failure and flight only made him more dangerous. He recalled Diogenes's curiosity about Constance, during the phone conversation in the vintage Jaguar, and he shivered. The one thing he could count on was that Diogenes was a meticulous planner. His response-and there would be one, of that D'Agosta was sure- would not come for a while. He would have a little time to prepare for it.
Constance looked up from her book. 'Did you know, Lieutenant, that even into the early 1800s, leeches were often a preferred alternative to the scarificator when performing bloodletting?'
D'Agosta glanced at her. 'Can't say that I did.'
'The colonial doctors frequently imported the European leech,
'The American leech, Lieutenant.' And Constance returned to her book.
He wasn't all that sure how much longer he was going to be a lieutenant, anyway.
His mind wandered to the previous afternoon, and the humiliating internal affairs hearing. On the one hand, it had been a huge relief: Singleton had been good to his word and the whole misadventure had been chalked up to an undercover operation gone awry, in which D'Agosta had displayed poor judgment, made errors-one of the board had termed him 'maybe the stupidest cop on the force' -but in the end they found he had not willfully committed any felonies. The list of misdemeanors was ugly enough.
Stupidity was better than felony, Singleton had told him afterward. There would be more hearings, but his future as an NYPD cop-as
Hayward, of course, had testified. Her testimony had been delivered in a resolutely neutral voice, employing the usual police jargon, and not once-
Once again, he dragged the Diogenes file into his lap, feeling a sudden stab of futility. Ten days before, he had been in this same room, looking at this same file, again without Pendergast there to guide him. Only now, four people had been murdered, and Pendergast, instead of being 'dead,' was in Bellevue, undergoing some kind of psych evaluation. D'Agosta had learned nothing helpful then- what could he possibly learn now?
But he had to keep plugging. They'd taken everything away from him: his career, his relationship with Hayward, his closest friend- everything. There was only one thing left for him to do: prove Pendergast's innocence. And to do that, he needed to find Diogenes.
A faint buzzer sounded in the depths of the house. Someone was at the door.
Constance looked up. For the briefest of moments, naked fear- and something else, something ineffable- showed in her face before a veil of blankness came down.
D'Agosta stood up. 'It's okay. Probably just neighborhood kids, playing around. I'll check it out.'
He put the file aside, stood up, surreptitiously checked his weapon, then began walking toward the library door. But even as he did, he saw Proctor approaching from across the reception hall.
'A gentleman here to see you, sir,' Proctor said.
'You took the necessary precautions?' D'Agosta asked.
'Yes, sir, I-'
But just then, a man in a wheelchair came into view in the gallery behind Proctor. D'Agosta stared in astonishment as he recognized Eli Glinn, the head of Effective Engineering Solutions.
The man brushed past both Proctor and D'Agosta and wheeled himself toward one of the library tables. With a brusque motion of his arm, he shoved aside several stacks of books, clearing off a space. Then he deposited a load of papers on the table: blueprints, plats, building plans, mechanical and electrical diagrams.
Constance had risen and was standing, book in hand, looking on.
'What are you doing here?' D'Agosta asked. 'How did you find this place?'
'Never mind that,' said the man, turning to D'Agosta with a gleam in his good eye. 'Last Sunday, I made a promise.'
He raised his black-gloved hand, and in it was a slender manila folder. He laid it on the table.
'And there you have it: a preliminary psychological profile of Diogenes Dagrepont Bernoulli Pendergast. Updated, I might add, to reflect these most recent events-at least what I could glean of them from the news reports and my sources. I'm counting on you to tell me more.'
'There's a lot more.'
Glinn glanced over. 'And you must be Constance.'
She nodded in a way that was almost a curtsy.
'I'll need your help, too.'
'I shall be glad.'
'Why this sudden interest?' D'Agosta asked. 'I had the impression-'
'The impression that I wasn't giving it a high priority? I wasn't. At the time, it seemed a relatively unimportant problem, a way to earn an easy fee. But then,
'I don't get it.'
