Two Graves

“Do you remember that trip you made to Brazil? It was about a year before we were married, and you were away a long time—almost five months. At the time, you told me you were on a mission for Doctors With Wings. But that was a lie—wasn’t it? The truth was that… that you went to Brazil in order to secretly bear a child. Our child.”

The words hung in the air. Helen returned his gaze, a stricken look on her face.

“I think I even know when the child was conceived. It was on that first moonrise we shared—two weeks after we met. Wasn’t it? And now… now you’ve left me to come to terms with the fact that I have not only a son I do not know, a son I’ve never met—but a son who is also a serial killer.”

Helen dropped her eyes once again.

“I’ve also seen documents that indicate your family—and, in fact, yourself and your brother, Judson—were involved in eugenics experiments that date back to the Nazi regime. Brazil; John James Audubon; Mengele and Wolfgang Faust; Longitude Pharmaceuticals; the Covenant, Der Bund—it’s a long, ugly story that I’m only beginning to piece together. Judson explained a piece of it to me once, not long before he died. He said: What I’ve become was what I was born to be. It’s what I was born into— and it’s something beyond my control. If you only knew the horror that Helen and I have been subjected to, you’d understand.”

He paused, swallowed.

“But the truth is that I don’t understand. Why did you hide so much from me, Helen? Your pregnancy, our child, your family’s past, the horrors Judson spoke of—why didn’t you let me help you? Why did you keep our child apart from me all these years—and in so doing perhaps allow him to become… what he has now become? As you surely knew, those tendencies are a dark strain in my family going back generations. The truth is, you never, ever mentioned him until your own dying words to me: He’s coming.”

Helen refused to look at him. She was clenching and unclenching the hands that lay in her lap.

“I’d like to believe you weren’t complicit—or, at least, merely tangentially complicit—in your sister’s death. I’d also like to believe Emma Grolier, as she was known, was already dead, mercifully euthanized, when you learned of the plan. I certainly hope that was the case. It would certainly have made the whole arrangement easier to swallow for you.

“But why did she have to die for you in the first place? I have been thinking about that for a long time now, and I believe I understand what happened. After learning about the Doane family tragedy, and the cruel way they were used, you must have threatened Charles Slade and Longitude—and by extension Der Bund—with exposure over the Audubon drug. So the decision was made, in turn, to kill you in order to keep you silent. Correct?”

Now Helen’s hands were trembling.

“Judson, your own brother, was tasked with the job. But he couldn’t do it—and the very assignment was, no doubt, what made him secretly break with the Covenant. Instead he devised a way, an elaborate way, to keep you alive. He knew that your damaged twin sister had a terminal illness—I’ve just today been able to glean that much of her medical history from the public record. So he arranged for that hunting accident with the Red Lion—planning to substitute your twin sister’s body for yourself. He told his minders about the blank cartridges in your gun; told them you’d be taking lead on the hunt. Der Bund was satisfied by that. He’d found a lion that would drag you away without harming you, but would also maul your sister’s body on command. And Judson kept the plan from you until the night before—didn’t he? That’s why you seemed out of sorts that final evening in Africa—he was there near the camp, along with the lion’s handlers and Emma’s recently deceased corpse. He called you out and explained the whole scheme. Only it didn’t go quite as expected; the lion didn’t exactly stick to the plan, and you lost a hand as it dragged you away. Good thing your sister’s body was, right afterward, sufficiently devoured as to allow Judson to leave your own hand—and the ring—behind as even more evidence proving your death. My word—the presence of mind he must have had.”

Pendergast shook his head bitterly. “What a fiendishly complex arrangement—but it had to be complex, to keep from arousing my suspicions. If what happened had not seemed absolutely, utterly an act of nature, I would not have rested until learning the truth—just as I am not resting now.”

A moment of terrible silence.

“But again—why didn’t you simply come to me, that night in the hunting camp? Why didn’t you let me help you? Why, why did you shut me out?”

He paused. “And there’s something else—something I have to know. Do you love me, Helen? Did you ever love me? I always felt in my heart that you did. But now, learning all this—now I can’t be certain. I’d like to believe you first met me simply for access to the Audubon records, but that you then, unexpectedly, fell in love with me. I’d like to believe that your pregnancy was a mistake. But am I wrong in so thinking? Was our marriage just a contrivance? Was I an unwitting pawn in some grand design I don’t yet understand the full extent of? Helen, please tell me. It is… it is a kind of agony for me, not knowing.”

Helen remained stock-still. A single tear welled up in one eye, then trickled down her cheek. It was an answer of a kind.

Pendergast looked at her, waiting, for a long time. Then, with a barely perceptible sigh, he closed his eyes. When he next opened them, the room was once again occupied only by himself.

And then faintly, from somewhere in the front of the apartment, he heard a deeply muffled scream.

28

JUMPING TO HIS FEET, PENDERGAST EXITED THE READING room and sprinted down the hall toward the reception area, following the sound of the scream. As he approached, he could hear a growing commotion, several loud voices mingling with Miss Ishimura’s unintelligible, high-pitched expostulations—and the sound of someone groaning and babbling.

He swept through the flush door into the reception room and was greeted by an extraordinary sight. A doorman and the head of Dakota security—a man named Franklin—were holding up between them a skinny young man, hardly more than a boy, dressed in jeans and a torn work shirt. His hair was matted, his entire body was covered with soot, and he smelled. One ear was wrapped in a bloody bandage, and there were grimy bandages on a hand and a foot. The boy was clearly half out of his mind, hardly able to stand, his eyes rolling in his head, murmuring incoherently.

Pendergast turned to the head security officer. “What the devil?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Pendergast, but the boy, he’s been hurt, he’s in trouble.”

“I can see that. But why have you brought him here?”

The security officer looked confused. “I’m sorry?”

“Mr. Franklin, why have you brought this boy here, to my apartment, of all places? He needs to go to a hospital.”

“I know that, sir, but since he’s your son—”

“My son?” Pendergast stared at the bedraggled boy in total amazement.

The head of security stopped, then restarted, all in a panic. “I just assumed, given what he said…” He again hesitated: “I hope I haven’t done anything wrong, bringing him up here.”

Pendergast continued to stare. All mental functions had ceased and he was overwhelmed by a feeling of unreality, as if the world had suddenly become flat, cartoonish. As he took in the boy’s features—the hair, light blond beneath its mantle of soot; the silvery blue eyes; the narrow, patrician face—his sense of paralyzing astonishment only deepened. He could not move, speak, or think. And yet everyone in the room was waiting for him to say something, to act, to confirm or reject.

A groan from the boy filled the empty silence.

This seemed to jolt Franklin. “Forgive me, Mr. Pendergast, but we’ll take care of it if you’d prefer, call the