White Fire

“Nor were the other remains — at least the ones I’ve looked at.” She took a deep breath. “They were murdered. By a gang of serial killers, it seems. Murdered and…” She couldn’t quite say it.

“Murdered and…?”

“Eaten.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Corrie shook her head.

“And nobody knows this?”

“Only Pendergast.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

Corrie paused. “Well, I’d like to stay here and solve the crime.”

Bowdree whistled. “Good God. Any idea of who? Or why?”

“Not yet.”

A long silence ensued. “You need any help?”

“No. Well, maybe. I’ve got a whole lot of old newspapers to comb through — I guess I could use a hand with that. But I need to do all the forensic analysis on my own. It’s my first real thesis and…well, I want it to be my own work. Pendergast thinks I’m crazy and wants me to finish up and go back to New York with what I’ve got, but I’m not ready for that yet.”

Bowdree gave a big smile. “I get it totally. You’re just like me. I like doing things on my own.”

Corrie sipped her drink. “Any luck finding a place to stay?”

“Nada. I’ve never seen such a gold-plated town.”

“Why don’t you stay with me? I’m house-sitting an empty mansion on Ravens Ravine Road, just me and a stray dog, and to be honest the place is creeping me out. I’d love to have someone keep me company.” Especially ex-military. She’d been thinking about those footprints all afternoon, thinking how much better she’d feel with a roommate. “All you’ll have to do is avoid a few security cameras — the nonresident owner is a bit of a busybody. But I’d love to have you.”

“Are you serious? Really?” Bowdree’s smile widened. “That would be fantastic! Thank you so much.”

Corrie drained her drink and stood up. “If you’re ready, you can follow me up there now.”

“I was born ready.” And with that, Bowdree grabbed her gear and followed Corrie out into the freezing night.

29

At five minutes to four in the morning, London time, Roger Kleefisch stepped into the large sitting room of his town house on Marylebone High Street and surveyed the dim surroundings with satisfaction. Everything was in its precise position: the velvet-lined easy chairs on each side of the fireplace; the bearskin hearth rug on the floor; the long row of reference works on the polished mantelpiece, a letter jammed into the wood directly below them by a jackknife; the scientific charts on the wall; the bench of chemicals heavily scarred with acid; the letters V.R. tattooed into the far wall with bullet holes — simulated bullet holes, of course. There was even a worn violin sitting in a corner — Kleefisch had been trying to learn how to play, but of course even discordant scrapings would have been sufficient. As he looked around, a smile formed on his face. Perfect — as close as he could possibly make it to the descriptions in the stories themselves. The only thing he’d left out had been the solution of cocaine hydrochloride and hypodermic needle.

He pressed a button beside the door, and the lights came up — gas, of course, specially installed at great expense. He walked thoughtfully over to a large mahogany bookcase and peered through the glass doors. Everything within was devoted to a single subject—the subject. The top three shelves were taken up with various copies of The Canon — of course he wasn’t able to purchase the very first editions, even on his barrister’s salary, but he nevertheless had some extremely choice copies, especially the 1917 George Bell edition of His Last Bow, with dust wrapper intact, and the 1894 George Newnes printing of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, the spine still quite bright, with just the smallest amount of wear and foxing. The lower shelves of the bookcase were taken up by various volumes of scholarship and back issues of the Baker Street Journal. This last was a periodical issued by the Baker Street Irregulars, a group devoted to the study and perpetuation of Sherlockiana. Kleefisch had himself published several articles in the Journal, one of which — an exceedingly detailed work devoted to Holmes’s study of poisons — had prompted the Irregulars to offer him a membership in the organization and present him with an “Irregular Shilling.” One did not apply for membership in the Irregulars; one had to be asked. And becoming an Investiture was, without doubt, the proudest achievement of Kleefisch’s life.

Opening the cabinet doors, he hunted around the lower shelves for a periodical he wanted to re-read, located it, closed the doors again, then walked over to the closest armchair and sat down with a sigh of contentment. The gaslights threw a warm, mellow light over everything. Even this town house, in the Lisson Grove section, had been chosen for its proximity to Baker Street. If it had not been for the infrequent sound of traffic from beyond the bow window, Kleefisch could almost have imagined himself back in 1880s London.

The phone rang, an antique “Coffin” dating to 1879, of wood and hard rubber with a receiver shaped like an oversize drawer handle. The smile fading from his face, he glanced at his watch and picked up the receiver. “Hallo.”

“Roger Kleefisch?” The voice was American — southern, Kleefisch noticed — coming in from a long distance, it seemed. He vaguely recognized it.

“Speaking.”

“This is Pendergast. Aloysius Pendergast.”

“Pendergast.” Kleefisch repeated the name, as if tasting it.

“Do you remember me?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” He had known Pendergast at Oxford, when he had been studying law and Pendergast had been reading philosophy at the Graduate Centre of Balliol College. Pendergast had been a rather strange fellow — reserved and exceedingly private — and yet a kind of intellectual bond had formed between them that Kleefisch still remembered with fondness. Pendergast, he recalled, had seemed to be nursing some private sorrow, but Kleefisch’s tactful attempts to draw him out on the subject had met with no success.

“I apologize for the lateness of the call. But I remembered your keeping, shall we say, unusual hours and hoped that the habit had not deserted you.”

Kleefisch laughed. “True, I rarely go to bed before five in the morning. When I’m not in court, I prefer to sleep while the rabble are out and about. To what do I owe this call?”

“I understand you are a member of the Baker Street Irregulars.”

“I have that honor, yes.”

“In that case, perhaps you can assist me.”

Kleefisch settled back in the chair. “Why? Are you working on some academic project regarding Sherlock Holmes?”

“No. I am a special agent with the FBI, and I’m investigating a series of murders.”

There was a brief silence while Kleefisch digested this. “In that case, I can’t imagine what possible service I could be to you.”

“Let me summarize as briefly as I can. An arsonist has burned down a house and its inhabitants at the ski resort of Roaring Fork, Colorado. Do you know of Roaring Fork?”

Naturally, Kleefisch had heard of Roaring Fork.

“In the late nineteenth century, Roaring Fork was a mining community. Interestingly, it is one of the places where Oscar Wilde stopped on his lecture tour of America. While he was there, he was told a rather colorful tale by one of the miners. The tale centered on a man-eating grizzly bear.”

“Please continue,” Kleefisch said, wondering just where this strange story was going.

“Wilde told this story, in turn, to Conan Doyle during their 1889 dinner at the Langham Hotel. It seemed to have had a powerful effect on Conan Doyle — powerful, unpleasant, and lasting.”