Cemetery Dance

'Hello? Yeah. Hey.'

Roybal listened sourly to the conversation. He had already left home, had his own crib. Martinelli still lived with his mother.

'No, I'm at the library annex. Kenny and I are studying for the trig test… I'll be careful… There're no muggers in here… Yo, Mom, it's only eleven o'clock!'

He snapped the phone shut. 'Gotta go home.'

'It's, like, not even midnight. Uncool, man.'

Martinelli rose and Roybal followed. His legs were already getting stiff from their stupid run. Martinelli started back through the trees, walking fast, his gangly legs barely visible in the dark. He soon stopped.

'I don't remember this fallen tree,' he said.

'How could you remember anything? You were shagging ass.' Roybal wheezed again.

'I'd have remembered jumping it or something.'

'Keep going.' Roybal prodded him in the back.

They came to another fallen tree. Martinelli stopped again. 'Now I know we didn't come this way.'

'Just keep going.' But Martinelli didn't move. 'What's that smell? Dude, did you just blast the butt trumpet?'

Roybal sniffed loudly. He looked around, but it was too dark to see the ground well.

'I'll lead.' He stepped over the log and his foot sank into something firm yet yielding. 'What the hell?' He withdrew his foot and bent down to look.

'Fuck!' he screamed, stumbling backward. 'A body! Holy shit! I just stepped on a body!'

Now they both looked down. A bar of moonlight illuminated a face — pale, ruined, bloody, sightless eyes staring glassily.

Martinelli coughed. 'Oh, my God!'

'Call nine — one — one!'

Martinelli, staggering back, fumbled his cell phone out, stabbed at it maniacally.

'I can't believe it, it's a body!'

'Hello? Hell—' Martinelli suddenly bent double and vomited all over the phone.

'Oh fuck, man—'

Martinelli continued puking, the cell phone dropping to the ground now, slick with vomit.

'Get back on the phone!'

More puking.

Roybal took another step back. Incredibly, he could hear a voice coming from the cell phone. 'Who is this?' the tiny voice demanded. 'Is that you, Rocky? Rocky! Are you all right?'

Still more puking. Roybal's eyes turned once more to the body, lying on its side, twisted, one arm thrown up, pale and ragged in the moonlight. This was messed up. Then he turned and ran through the trees: away, away, away, away…

Chapter 52

It was four o'clock in the morning when D'Agosta and Pendergast arrived at the waiting room of the morgue annex. Dr. Beckstein was already waiting for them, looking strangely chipper. Or maybe, D'Agosta thought, he was just used to hanging around a morgue in the dead of night. D'Agosta felt like hell; he wanted nothing more than to go home and crawl into bed.

And yet that was the very last thing he could do. Things were happening almost faster than he could process them. Of all the recent events, by far the worst — to him, anyway — was the kidnapping of Nora Kelly, not a clue to her whereabouts, the officer assigned to protect her drugged with spiked coffee and his body locked in Nora's bathroom. Once again, he'd failed her.

And now, this.

'Well, well, gentlemen,' Beckstein said, snapping on a pair of gloves. 'The mystery deepens. Please, help yourselves.' And he nodded toward a nearby bin.

D'Agosta tied on scrubs, donned a mask and surgical cap, and slipped on a pair of gloves. The feeling of dread increased as he tried to ready himself for the fresh ordeal he was about to endure. He had a hard time viewing morgue stiffs under the best of circumstances. Something about the mix of dead cold flesh, the clinical lights, and the gleam of steel made his stomach churn. How was he going to handle this one — when descriptions of the man while still ambulatory were enough to bring up anyone's lunch? He glanced over at Pendergast, now swathed in green and white, looking more like a morgue customer than a visitor. He was right at home.

'Doctor, before we go in' — D'Agosta tried to keep his voice casual—'I have a few questions.'

'Of course,' said Beckstein, pausing.

'The body was found in Inwood Hill Park, right? Not far from the Ville?'

Beckstein nodded. 'Two teenage boys made the discovery.'

'And you're certain about the ID on the victim? That the corpse is Colin Fearing?'

'Reasonably certain. The doorman of Fearing's building gave us a positive identification, and I consider him a credible witness. Two tenants who knew Fearing well also identified the body. It displays the correct tattoo and birthmark. Just to be sure, we've ordered DNA tests, but I'd stake my career on this being Colin Fearing.'

'So the first corpse — the suicide, the bridge jumper? The one Dr. Heffler identified as Fearing? How'd that happen?'

Beckstein cleared his throat. 'It would seem Dr. Heffler made a mistake — an understandable mistake, under the circumstances,' he added hastily. 'I certainly would have accepted the identification of a sister as definitive.'

'Intriguing,' murmured Pendergast.

'What?' asked D'Agosta.

'It makes one wonder what body Dr. Heffler did, in fact, autopsy.'

'Yeah.'

'The misidentification,' said Beckstein, 'is not so uncommon. I've seen it several times. When you combine grief and shock of the loved ones with the inevitable changes that death brings to the body — especially immersion in water or decomposition in the hot sun…'

'Right, right,' said D'Agosta hastily. 'Except external evidence points to this being a deliberate fraud. And on top of that, Dr. Heffler was slovenly in establishing the sister's identity, too.'

'Mistakes happen,' said Beckstein lamely. 'I have found that arrogance, of which Dr. Heffler suffers no paucity,' intoned Pendergast, 'is the fertilizing manure for the vineyard of error.'

D'Agosta was still parsing this last sentence when Beckstein gestured for them to follow him into the autopsy room. Inside, the body of Fearing lay on a gurney under a harsh light, and D'Agosta was hugely relieved to find that a white plastic sheet covered it.

'I haven't started working on it yet,' said Beckstein. 'We're waiting for the arrival of a pathologist and diener. My apologies for the delay.'

'Think nothing of it,' said D'Agosta a little hastily. 'We're grateful for the rush job. The body was only brought in around midnight, right?'

'That's correct. I've done the preliminaries and there are some — ah — curious things about the cadaver.' Beckstein fingered the corner of the sheet. 'May I?'

Curious.

D'Agosta could just imagine what those things might be. 'Well—'

'Delighted!' said Pendergast.

D'Agosta steeled himself, breathing through his mouth and relaxing the focus of his eyes. This was going to be hideous: a blackened, puffy corpse, flesh separating from the bones, fat melting, fluids draining… God, how he hated corpses!

There was a brisk ripple of plastic as Beckstein flicked off the sheet. 'There,' he said.