Still Life With Crows

this office, at which point I will call security.”

He paused, waited the ten seconds, then pressed the intercom to his secretary. “Kathy, get a security detail up here to show Mr. Pendergast out ASAP.” Boot resumed his work, typing a memo to his VP for finance. But he couldn’t help but notice that the son of a bitch was still sitting, one finger tapping the arm of the chair, looking around in that same breezy way as if he were in a doctor’s waiting room. Insolent bastard.

The intercom buzzed. “Security is here, Mr. Boot.”

Before Boot could respond, the man rose with an elegant swiftness and glided toward the drafting table. Boot stared at him, retort dying in his throat as he noticed the expression on the agent’s pale face.

Pendergast leaned over and murmured a number into his ear:

“2300576700.”

For a moment Boot was confused, but the number rang familiar, and as it dawned on him just what it was he felt his scalp begin to tingle. A knock came at the door and then three security guards entered. They paused, hands on their weapons. “Mr. Boot, is this the man?”

Boot looked at them, his mind blank with panic.

Pendergast smiled and waved dismissively at them. “Mr. Boot won’t be needing your help, gentlemen. He wishes to apologize for the inconvenience.”

They looked at Boot. After a pause the CEO nodded stiffly. “Right. Won’t be needing you.”

“If you would be so kind as to lock the door on your way out,” said Pendergast, “and please tell the secretary to hold all calls and visitors for the next ten minutes. We need a little privacy here.”

Again the guards looked toward Boot for confirmation.

“Yes,” said Boot. “We need a little privacy here.”

The men retreated, the lock turned, and the office fell silent. Pendergast turned to the chief executive officer of ABX and said cheerily, “And now, my dear Mr. Boot, shall we return to our discussion of the crown jewels?”

Pendergast strolled out to his Rolls-Royce, the long mailing tube under one arm. He unlocked the door, placed the tube on the passenger seat, and slid into the hot interior. Starting the engine, he let the compartment cool off while he slipped the survey out of the tube and gave it a quick overview, just to make sure it was what he needed.

It was all that and more. This tied everything together: the Mounds, the legend of the Ghost Warriors, the massacre of the Forty-Fives—and the inexplicable movements of the serial killer. It even explained Medicine Creek’s excellent water, which had proven to be the connection he had needed. As he’d hoped, it was all here on the oil exploration survey, printed in crisp blue and white.

First things first. He picked up the phone, pressed the scrambler option, punched in a number with the area code of Cleveland, Ohio. The ring was answered immediately, but it was several seconds before a voice of exceeding thinness spoke.

“And?”

“I thank you, Mime. The Cayman Islands number did the trick. I expect the target to experience more than a few sleepless nights.”

“Happy to be of assistance.” There was a click.

Pendergast replaced the receiver and examined the map again, looking more closely at the complex subterranean labyrinths it exposed.

“Excellent,” he murmured.

The memory crossing hadnot failed. Instead, as the map confirmed, it had succeeded beyond his highest expectations. He had merely failed to interpret it properly. He rolled up the survey and inserted it back into the tube, capping it with a deft tap.

Now he knew exactly where the Ghost Warriors had come from—and where they had gone.

Forty-Five

 

In New York City, it was a warm, brilliant late afternoon. But in the strangely perfumed vaults that lay deep underneath the mansion at Riverside Drive, it was always midnight.

The man named Wren walked through the basement chambers, thin and spectral as a wraith. The yellow light of his miner’s helmet pierced the velvety gloom, illuminating a wooden display case here, a tall metal filing cabinet there. From all corners came the faint sheen of copper and bronze, the dull winking of leaded glass.

For the first time in many days, he did not carry the clipboard beneath his arm. It sat beside his laptop, half a dozen vaults back, ready to be taken upstairs. Because Wren, after eight weeks of exhausting, fascinating work, had at last completed the cataloguing of the cabinet of curiosities that Pendergast had charged him with.

It had proved a remarkable collection indeed, even more remarkable than Pendergast had intimated it would be. It was full of wildly diverse objects, the finest of everything: gemstones, fossils, precious metals, butterflies, botanicals, poisons, extinct animals, coins, weapons, meteorites. Every room, every new drawer and shelf, had revealed fresh discoveries, some wondrous, others deeply unsettling. It was, without question, the greatest cabinet of curiosities ever assembled.

What a shame, then, that the chances of the public ever setting eyes upon it were vanishingly small. At least, not in this century. He felt a pang of jealousy that it should belong to Pendergast, all of it, and nothing for him.

Wren walked slowly through the dim chambers, one following upon the next, looking this way and that, making sure that all was in order, that he had overlooked nothing, left nothing behind.

Now, at last, he reached his final destination. He stopped, the beam of his light falling over a forest of glass: beakers, retorts, titration setups, and test tubes, all returning his light from long dark rectangles of a dozen laboratory tables. His beam stopped at last on a door set into the far wall of the lab. Beyond lay the final chambers,