Two Graves

she wanted to sweep those hateful things off the table and dash them to the ground. And yet she could not. So deep was her shock that she felt herself powerless to do anything. It’s a matter of life and death—her own words now returned, torturing her with their irony.

Pendergast said nothing more until they had reached the door leading to the elevator. Then, at last, he spoke again. “I thank you for your concern,” he said, his voice strangely faint and hollow, as if coming to her from a great distance. “And for the time and effort you have taken on my behalf. But now I must ask you to return to Rome.”

“Aloysius—” she began, but he raised a hand for silence.

“Good-bye, Viola. You would do well to forget me.”

Viola realized she was crying. “You can’t do this,” she said, her voice trembling. “You simply can’t. It’s too selfish. Aren’t you forgetting something? There are people, many people, who care about you. Who love you. Don’t—please don’t—do this to them. To us.” She hesitated and added, in an angrier tone: “To me.”

As she spoke, something seemed to flicker in Pendergast’s eyes—a faint spark, like the glow of an ember encased in ice—before vanishing again. It came and went so quickly she could not be certain she’d seen it at all. Maybe it was a trick of the tears that filled her own eyes.

He took her hand, gave it an almost imperceptible pressure. Then, without another word, he opened the front door.

Viola looked at him. “I won’t let you do this.”

He looked at her briefly, even kindly. “Surely you know me well enough to realize that nothing you or anyone can do will change my mind. And now it is time for you to go. It would be highly distressing to both of us if I were forced to have you shown out.”

She continued to look at him, pleadingly, for another minute. But his gaze had gone far away once again. At last she turned away, her entire body shaking. Sixty seconds later, she was once more walking across the interior courtyard, legs like rubber, without the faintest idea of where she was headed, the tears coursing freely down her cheeks.

Pendergast stood in the reception room for a long time. Then—very slowly—he made his way back to his private study; seated himself behind the desk; and—as he had been doing for numberless hours—once again began to contemplate the three items arrayed before him.

11

AFTER LEAVING SINGLETON, D’AGOSTA HEADED STRAIGHT downtown. Fucking Heffler. He was going to wipe the floor with that son of a bitch. He was going to cut the man’s balls off and hang them on a Christmas tree. He remembered the time he had visited Heffler with Pendergast, and how Pendergast had ripped him a new one. That had been fun. He, D’Agosta, was—he decided—going to “do a Pendergast” on Heffler.

With these pleasant thoughts in mind, he pulled up at the forensic DNA unit on William Street, an annex to New York Downtown Hospital. He glanced at his watch: eight AM. He had checked with the duty officer and learned Heffler had been in the office since three. That was a good sign, although D’Agosta wasn’t quite sure what it meant.

He heaved himself out of the unmarked car, slammed the door, and strode through the glass entranceway of the William Street building. He passed by the receptionist, holding out his badge. “Lieutenant D’Agosta,” he said loudly, without slowing down. “I’m here to see Dr. Heffler.”

“Lieutenant, the sign-in sheet—?”

But D’Agosta continued on to the elevator, punching the button for the top floor, where Heffler had installed himself in a cushy, oak-paneled corner office. Stepping out of the elevator once again, he found there was no secretary in the outer office—too early. D’Agosta breezed through and flung open the door to the inner office.

And there was Heffler.

“Ah, Lieutenant—” the director began, rising abruptly.

D’Agosta hesitated a moment. This was not the Heffler whom D’Agosta was familiar with: the glossy, supercilious prick in a thousand-dollar suit. This Heffler was rumpled, tired, and had the look of a man who had recently been called on the carpet.

He launched into his rehearsed speech anyway. “Dr. Heffler, we’ve been waiting over sixty hours—”

“Yes, yes!” Heffler said. “And I’ve got the results. They just came in. We’ve been working on it since three this morning.”

A silence. Heffler’s manicured fingernails eagerly tapped a file on his desk. “It’s all right here. And please allow me to apologize for the delay. We’ve been understaffed—these budget cuts—you know how it is.” He flashed D’Agosta a look that hovered somewhere between sarcasm and a simper.

Hearing all this, D’Agosta felt the wind go right out of his sails. Someone had already gotten to Heffler. Was it Singleton? He paused, took a breath, and tried to shift down. “You have the results on both homicides?”

“Absolutely. Please, Lieutenant, sit down. I’ll go over them with you.”

Grudgingly, D’Agosta took the proffered chair.

“I’ll just summarize, but please feel free to interrupt if you have questions.” Heffler opened the file. “The DNA sampling was excellent, the team did a great job. We have solid DNA profiles from hair, latents, and of course the earlobe. All match to a very high degree of certainty. We can confirm that the earlobe did indeed belong to the perpetrator.”

A page turned. “For the second homicide, we also have solid DNA profiles from hair, latents, and the fingertip. Again, all three match each other and the DNA profiles from the first homicide. The finger and earlobe came from the same individual—the killer.”

“How certain are the results?”

“Very certain. These were excellent profiles with abundant, uncontaminated material. The possibility of this being coincidence is less than one in a billion.” Heffler was already starting to recover some of his own self- assurance.

D’Agosta nodded. This was nothing new, really, but it was good to have confirmation. “Did you run it against the DNA databases?”

“We did. Against every database we have access to. No hits. That isn’t surprising, of course, since the vast majority of people don’t have their DNA in any database.”

Heffler closed the report. “This is your copy, Lieutenant. I’ve transmitted the master file electronically to the chief of homicide, the homicide analysis unit, and the central investigation and resource division. Is there anyone else who should get it?”

“Not that I can think of.” D’Agosta rose, picked up the file. “Dr. Heffler, when Captain Singleton called you, did he mention we also wanted mtDNA analysis?”

“Well, no, because Captain Singleton didn’t call me.”

D’Agosta looked Heffler in the face. Somebody had definitely kicked this son of a bitch in the ass, and he wanted to know who. “Someone must have called you.”

“The commissioner.”

“The commissioner? You mean Tagliabue? When?”

A hesitation. “At two o’clock this morning.”

“Oh, yeah? What did he say?”

“He informed me this is a very important case and that even the slightest problem might be, ah, career ending.”

A beat.

And now Heffler smirked. “So good luck, Lieutenant. You have the results you wanted. You’ve got quite a