Brimstone

Gray light, softened by the misting rain, penetrated the coffin and illuminated the corpse

It lay, hands folded on its chest, upon a bed of rotting fabric, stuffing coming up, with a huge stain of congealed liquid, dark as old coffee, covering the bottom. The body had collapsed from rot and had a deflated appearance, as if all the air had escaped along with life, leaving nothing but a skin lying over bones. Various bony protuberances stuck through the rotting black suit: knees, elbows, pelvis. The hands were brown and slimy, shedding their nails, the finger bones poking through the rotting ends. The eyes were sunken holes, the lips lopsided and drawn back in a kind of snarl. Beckma

The cop bent down, sca

Gross is right, D'Agosta thought as he looked at Pendergast. Despite the appalling decay, one thing was immediately clear: this corpse had not suffered the ghastly, violent fate that met Grove and Cutforth.

"Take him to the morgue," Pendergast murmured.

The cop looked at him.

"I want a complete autopsy," Pendergast said. "I want to know how this man really died."

{ 41 }

Bryce Harriman entered the office of Rupert Ritts, managing editor of the Post , to find the mean, rodent like editor standing behind his enormous desk, a rare smile splitting his bladelike face.

"Bryce, my man! Take a seat!"

Ritts never talked quietly: his voice was high, and it cut right through a person. You might think he was deaf, except that his ferret like ears seemed to pick up the faintest whisper from the farthest corner, especially when it concerned him. More than one editor had been fired for whispering Ritts's nickname from two hundred yards across a busy newsroom. It was an obvious nickname, just the substitution of one vowel for another, but it really got Ritts going. Harriman figured it was because he'd probably been called that as a child on the playground every day and never forgot it. Harriman disliked Ritts, as he disliked almost everything about the New York Post . It was embarrassing, physically embarrassing, to be working here.

He adjusted his tie as he tried to make himself comfortable in the hard wooden chair Ritts tortured his reporters with. The editor came around and seated himself on the edge of the desk, lighting up a Lucky Strike. He no doubt thought of himself as a tough guy of the old school: hard-drinking, tough-talking, cigarette-hanging-off-the-lip kind of guy. The fact that smoking on the job was now illegal seemed to make him enjoy it all the more. Harriman suspected he also kept a cheap bottle of whiskey and a shot glass in a desk drawer. Black polyester pants, scuffed brown shoes, blue socks, Flatbush accent. Ritts was everything that Harriman's family had trained him all his life, sent him to private school, given him an Ivy League education, never to be.

And here he was. Harriman's boss.

"This Menck story is fabulous, Harriman. Fucking fabulous."

"Thank you, sir."

"It was a real stroke of genius, Harriman, finding this guy the day before he left for the Virgin Islands."

"Galápagos."

"Whatever. I have to tell you, when I first read your piece, I had my doubts. It struck me as a lot of New Age bullshit. But it really hit a chord with our readers. Newsstand circ's up eight percent."

"That's great." Here at the Post, it was all about circulation. In the newsroom of the Times , where he used to work, "circulation" had been a dirty word.

"Great? It's fucking fabulous. That's what reporting is all about. Readers. I wish some of these other jokers around here would realize that."

The piercing voice was cutting a wide swath across the newsroom beyond. Harriman squirmed uncomfortably in the wooden seat.

"Just when the devil-killings story was flagging, you find this guy Menck. I have to hand it to you. Every other paper in town was sitting around with their thumbs up their asses, waiting for the next killing, but you-you went out and made the news."

"Thank you, sir."

Ritts sucked in a few quarts of smoke and dropped the cigarette on the floor of his office, grinding it in with his toe, where about twenty others lay, all nicely flattened. He exhaled with a noisy, emphysemic whistle. He lit another, looked up at Harriman, eyed him up and down.

Harriman shifted again in his chair. Was there something wrong with the way he was dressed? Of course not: it was one of those things he'd been schooled in from day one. He knew just when to break out the madras, when to put away the seersucker, knew the acceptable shade of cordovan for tasseled loafers. And anyway, Ritts was the last person who could criticize anyone else's taste in clothes.

"The National Enquirer 's picked up the story, USA Today ,Regis, Good Day New York. I like the feel of this, Harriman. You've done well. In fact, well enough to make you a special correspondent at the crime desk."

Harriman was astonished. He hadn't expected this. He tried to control his facial muscles: he didn't want to be seen gri

"Any reporter that pushes the circ up eight percent in a week is go

"Thank you again."

The managing editor seemed to be observing Harriman with ill-concealed amusement, looking him up and down again, eyes lingering on his tie, his striped shirt, his shoes. "Listen, Harriman, as I said, your story touched a chord. Thanks to you, a bunch of New Agers and doomsday freaks have started congregating in the park in front of Cutforth's building."

Harriman nodded.

"It's nothing much. Yet. They're gathering spontaneously, lighting candles, chanting. Flying Nun kind of shit. What we need is follow-up. First, a story about these guys, a serious story, a respectful story. A story that'll let all the other freaks know there's a daily gathering they're missing out on. If we handle this right, we could build up quite a crowd up there. We could stimulate some TV coverage. Who knows, there might even be demonstrations. See what I'm getting at? Like I said: here at the Post , we don't sit around waiting for news to happen, we go out and make it happen."

"Yes, Mr. Ritts."

Ritts lit up again. "Can I give you some friendly advice? Just between you and me."

"Sure."

"Lose the repp ties and the pe

"What if there isn't a leader?"

"Then make one. Set him up on a pedestal, pin a damn medal on him. I smell something big here. And you know what? In thirty years, I've never called a bad one."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Ritts." Harriman tried to keep the contempt out of his voice. He would do what Ritts wanted, but he would do it in his own way.

Ritts sucked deep on his cigarette, tobacco hissing and spitting. Then he tossed the butt onto the floor and ground it out again with his foot. He coughed and smiled, displaying a rack of uneven teeth as yellowed as the stem of a corncob pipe.