Pendergast began flipping pages, more slowly now, until he reached the end of the book. He took down the next volume and began methodically examining the dates of the entries--until he came to one. D'Agosta heard a small intake of breath.
'Vincent, here is the entry she wrote on February ninth--the day Helen paid them a visit.'The worst day of my life!!! After lunch a lady came and knocked on our front door. She was driving a red sports car and was all dressed up with fashionable leather gloves. She said she'd heard we had a parrot and wanted to know if she could see it. Dad showed Muffin to her (still inside her cage) and she asked how we got it. She asked a lot of questions about the bird, when we got it, where it came from, if it was tame, if it let us handle it, who played with it the most. Stuff like that. She spent all sorts of time looking at it and asking questions. The woman wanted to see the band up close but my father asked her first if she was the bird's owner. She said yes and wanted the parrot back. My dad was suspicious. He asked if she could name the number on the parrot's bracelet. She couldn't. And she wasn't able to show us any kind of proof that she owned it, either, but told us a story that she was a scientist and it had escaped from her lab. Dad looked like he didn't believe a word of it and said firmly that when she brought back some proof he'd be glad to give up the bird, but until then Muffin would stay with us. The lady didn't seem too surprised and then she looked at me with a sad expression on her face. 'Is Muffin your pet?' I said yes. She seemed to think for a while. Then she asked if Dad could recommend a good hotel in town. He said there was only one, and that he'd get her the number. He walked back into the kitchen for the phone book. No sooner had he gone than the woman grabbed Muffin's cage, stuffed it into a black garbage bag she took from her purse, ran out the door, threw the bag in her car, and took off down the driveway! Muffin was screeching loudly the whole time. I ran outside screaming and Dad came running out and we got in the car and chased her, but she was gone. Dad called the sheriff but he didn't seem all that interested in finding a stolen bird, especially since it might have been her bird to begin with. Muffin was gone, just like that. I went up to my room and I just couldn't stop crying.
Pendergast closed the diary and slipped it into his jacket pocket. As he did so, a flash of lightning illuminated the black trees beyond the window and a rumble of thunder shook the house.
'Unbelievable,' said D'Agosta. 'Helen stole the parrot. Just like she stole those stuffed parrots of Audubon's. What in the world was she thinking?'
Pendergast said nothing.
'Did you ever see the parrot? Did she bring it back to Penumbra?'
Pendergast shook his head wordlessly.
'What about this scientific lab she talked about?'
'She had no lab, Vincent. She was employed by Doctors With Wings.'
'Do you have
'For the first time in my life I am completely and utterly at a loss.'
The lightning flickered again, illuminating an expression on Pendergast's face of pure shock and incomprehension.
26
CAPTAIN LAURA HAYWARD, NYPD HOMICIDE, liked to keep the door of her office open to signal she hadn't forgotten her roots as a lowly TA cop patrolling the subways. She had risen far and fast in the department, and while she knew she was good and deserved the promotions, she was also uncomfortably aware that being a woman hadn't hurt at all, especially after the sex discrimination scandals of the previous decade.
But on this particular morning, when she arrived at six, she reluctantly shut the door even though no one else was in. The investigation into a string of Russian mafia drug killings on Coney Island had been dragging its ass around the department, generating huge amounts of paperwork and meetings. It had finally reached the point where someone--her--needed to sit down with the files and go through them all so at least one person could get on top of the case and move it forward.
Toward noon, her brain almost fried from the senseless brutality of it all, she rose from her desk and decided to get some air by taking a stroll in the small park next to One Police Plaza. She opened her door and exited the outer office, running into a gaggle of cops hanging out in the hall.
They greeted her with a little more effusion than usual, with several sidelong, embarrassed glances.
Hayward returned the greetings and then paused. 'All right, what is it?'
A telling silence.
'I've never seen a worse bunch of fakers,' she said lightly. 'Honestly, if you sat down to a game of Texas Hold 'Em, you'd all lose.'
The joke fell flat, and after a moment's hesitation, a sergeant spoke up. 'Captain, it's sort of about that, ah, FBI agent. Pendergast.'
Hayward froze. Her disdain for Pendergast was well known in the department, as was her relationship with his sometime partner D'Agosta. Pendergast always managed to drag Vincent into deep shit, and she had a growing premonition that the present excursion to Louisiana would end as disastrously as the earlier ones. In fact, maybe it just had... As these thoughts flashed through her mind, Hayward tried to control her features, keep them neutral. 'What about Special Agent Pendergast?' she asked coolly.
'It isn't Pendergast exactly,' said the sergeant. 'It's a relative of his. Woman named Constance Greene. She's down in central booking, gave Pendergast as her next-of-kin. Apparently she's his niece or something.'
Another awkward silence.
'And?' Hayward prompted.
'She's been abroad. She booked passage on the
'Baby?'
'Right. A couple months old at most. Born abroad. Anyway, after the ship docked she was held at passport control because the baby was missing. INS radioed NYPD and we've taken her into custody. They're booking her for homicide.'
