money doing extreme snowboarding stunts for videos and also collected money from endorsements. The expedition to Dhaulagiri had been a well-organized and financed attempt to scale the unclimbed west face of the mountain, one of the last epic climbs left in the world, a staggering twelve-thousand-foot sheer face of rotten rock and ice swept by avalanches, high winds, and temperature swings from day to night of fifty to sixty degrees. Thirty-two climbers had already died in the attempt, and Ambrose’s group would add five more fatalities to the list. They hadn’t even made it halfway up.
That Ambrose had survived was extraordinary. That he had made it to the monastery was nothing short of miraculous.
And then, everything he had done since the monastery had been out of character—beginning with the theft. Jordan Ambrose didn’t need money, and up to this point had shown little interest in it. He wasn’t a collector. He had no interest in Buddhism or any kind of spiritual seeking. He had been an honest and highly intelligent man. He had always been focused—one might say obsessed—with climbing.
Why had he stolen the Agozyen? Why had he carted it all over Europe, not looking to sell it, but trying to arrange for some kind of partnership? What was the purpose of this “partnership” he sought? Why had he refused to show it to anyone? And why had he made no effort to contact the families of the five dead climbers—who were all close friends of his—something utterly at variance with the climbing ethic?
Everything Jordan Ambrose had done since the monastery had been completely out of character. And this concerned Pendergast deeply.
He stepped past the foyer, took a dogleg, and entered the darkened room. The rusty-iron smell of blood hit him immediately and he could see, in the harsh light of the motorway that filtered through the curtains, a body splayed on the floor.
Pendergast felt a swell of dismay and annoyance. The simple resolution he had hoped for was not to be.
Keeping his raincoat tight about him and his hat on his head, he reached out and turned on a light with a gloved hand.
It was Jordan Ambrose.
Pendergast’s dismay increased when he saw the condition of the body. It lay on its back, arms thrown wide, mouth open, blue eyes staring at the ceiling. A small bullet hole in the center of the forehead, with powder burns and tattooing, indicated the man had been executed at point-blank range with a .22. There was no exit wound: the .22 had rattled around inside the skull, no doubt killing Ambrose instantly. But it appeared the murderer had not been content merely to kill—he had indulged himself in an utterly gratuitous orgy of knife play with the victim’s corpse, cutting, stabbing, and slicing. It did not bespeak a normal mind, or even an average killer.
Pendergast quickly searched the room and determined the Agozyen was gone.
He went back to the body. The clothes had been badly cut up in the brutal postmortem knife work, but several partially turned-out pockets indicated the killer had searched the body before going into a bloody frenzy. Careful to touch the corpse as little as possible, Pendergast slipped the man’s wallet out of his back pocket and looked through it. It was full of cash—Ambrose had not been robbed of his money. Rather, Pendergast guessed, the man had been searched to make sure he had not written anything down about the fateful appointment.
He slipped the wallet into his game bag. Then he stood back and examined the room again, taking in everything. He noted the bloodstains, the marks in the carpet and on the bed, splashed across the suitcase.
Ambrose was well dressed, in a suit and tie, as if expecting a visitor of some importance. The room was neat, the bed carefully made, the toiletries arranged in the bathroom. A new bottle of scotch and two nearly full glasses stood on a table. Pendergast examined the sweating on the sides of the glasses, dipped in a finger and tasted the liquor, estimating the amount of ice that had been present and had subsequently melted. Based on the dilution of the whisky and the temperature of the glasses, he estimated that the drinks had been poured four or five hours before. The glasses had been wiped clean—no fingerprints.
Once again he was struck by the bizarre dichotomy of the killer’s actions. He placed his bag on the bed, extracted some test tubes and tweezers, knelt, and took samples of blood, fibers, and hair. He did the same in the bathroom, on the off-chance the visitor had used it. But the visitor appeared to have been careful, and a cheap, perfunctorily cleaned hotel room was one of the worst places to conduct forensic evidence gathering. Nevertheless, he did a thorough job, dusting the doorknobs and other surfaces for prints—even underneath the Formica table— only to find that every surface had been meticulously wiped clean. A damp spot in the corner near the door indicated an individual had placed an umbrella there, which had dripped water, and then retrieved it.
The rain had started at nine and stopped by eleven.
Pendergast knelt again at the body, slipped his hand inside the suit, and felt the temperature of the skin. Based on body temperature, the evidence of the drinks, and the timing of the rain shower, death had taken place around ten o’clock.
Carefully, Pendergast rolled the body over. The carpet underneath was marked by cuts where the knife had gone clear through the body into the floor. Taking his own knife, he cut out a square of carpet, peeled it up, and examined the marks in the plywood subfloor, probing into them with the tip of his knife. They were remarkably deep.
Pendergast retreated to the door, then gave the room a final look over. There was nothing more to see. The general outlines of what had happened were now plain: the killer had arrived for an appointment around ten; he’d placed his wet umbrella in the corner and his wet raincoat over a chair; Ambrose had poured out two scotches from a bottle he had purchased for the occasion; the man had taken out a .22 Magnum, pressed it to Ambrose’s head, and fired a bullet into his brain. Next, he had searched the body and the room; then savagely and senselessly stabbed and cut up the corpse—and then, still apparently calm, had wiped down the room, taken the Agozyen, and left.
Behavior well outside the bell curve of most murderers.
The hotel wouldn’t discover the corpse until checkout time or later. Pendergast had plenty of time to get far away.
He turned off the light, exited the room, and took the elevator to the lobby. He went to the desk and gave the bell a pair of sharp rings. After a long wait, the clerk came slouching out of the back, his hair mashed even further.
“Problem?” he asked.
“I’m a friend of Jordan Ambrose, registered in room 714.”
The clerk scratched his skinny ribs through his shirt. “So?”
“He had a visitor about ten this evening. Do you recall him?”
“I’m not likely to forget
,” said the clerk. “Man came in around ten, said he had an appointment with the gentleman in 714.”
“What did he look like?”
“Had a bloody patch over one eye, along with some bandages. Wore a cap and raincoat, it was tiddling down outside. Didn’t get a closer look and
