Cemetery Dance

There was a brief silence. "Not Phipps Gormly?" Pendergast said.

"The same. And would you care to guess the park commissioner involved in clearing the necessary variances?"

"Cornelius Sprague." Pendergast sat in his chair, leaning forward, hands clasped. "If those plans to clear the park had gone through, would the Ville have been affected?"

Wren nodded. "It stood directly in the path. It would have undoubtedly been torn down."

D'Agosta looked from Pendergast to Wren and back again. "Are you saying the Ville murdered those people to discourage the family from going ahead with their landscaping plans?"

"Murdered — or arranged for them to be murdered. The police were never able to establish a co

"Anything else?"

Wren shuffled through his papers. "The articles talk about a 'devilish cult' at the Ville. The members are celibate, and they keep their numbers steady by recruitment or press — ganging street people and the less fortunate."

"Curioser and curioser," murmured Pendergast. He turned to D'Agosta. " 'Mindless apparition'… Not so very different from what attacked you, eh, Vincent?"

D'Agosta scowled.

The elegant white hands unclasped and reclasped as Pendergast sank into deep thought. Somewhere, in the bowels of the great mansion, came the old — fashioned ringing of a phone.

Pendergast roused himself. "It would be useful to get one's hands on the remains of one of those victims."

D'Agosta grunted. "Gormly and Sprague are probably buried in family plots. You'll never get a warrant."

"Ah. But the fourth victim, the Straus family groundskeeper — the supposed suicide — it's just possible he'll yield up his secrets more easily. And if so, we shall be in luck. Because of all the bodies,his is the one of greatest interest to us."

"Why is that?"

Pendergast smiled faintly. "Why, my dear Vincent, why do you think?"

D'Agosta frowned in exasperation. "Damn it, Pendergast, my head hurts. I'm not in the mood to play Sherlock Holmes!"

A pained look briefly appeared on the agent's face. "Very well," he said after a moment. "Here are the salient points. Unlike the others, the body was not disemboweled. It was covered in blood, the clothes in rags. It was a possible suicide. And it wasthe last to be found. After its discovery, the killings ceased. And I might point out that he had disappeared several months before the murders began — where was he? Living at the Ville, perhaps." He sat back in his chair.

D'Agosta felt gingerly at the bump on his skull. "What are you saying?"

"The groundskeeper wasn't a victim — he was the perpetrator." Despite himself, D'Agosta felt a tingle of excitement. "Go on."

"At great estates such as the one in question, it was common practice for the servants and workers to have their own family plot, where the deceased were interred. If such a plot exists at the old Straus summer house, we might find the groundskeeper's remains there."

"But you're only going on an account in a newspaper. There's no co

"We can always freelance."

"Please don't tell me you intend to dig him up at night."

A faint affirmative incline of the head.

"Don't you ever do anything by the book?"

"Only infrequently, I'm afraid. A very bad habit, but one that I find hard to break."

Proctor appeared in the doorway. "Sir?" he said, his deep voice studiously neutral. "I heard from one of our contacts downtown. There have been developments."

"Share them with us, if you please."

"There was a killing at the Gotham Press Club; a reporter named Caitlyn Kidd. The perpetrator vanished, but many witnesses are swearing the killer was William Smithback."

"Smithback!" said Pendergast, rising suddenly.

Proctor nodded.

"When"

"Ninety minutes ago. In addition, Smithback's body is missing from the morgue. His wife went looking for it there, caused a scene when it was gone. Apparently, some, ah, voodoo ephemera was left in its place." Proctor paused, his large hands folded in front of his suit coat.

D'Agosta was seized with horror and dread. All this had come down — and he was without beeper or cell phone.

"I see," murmured Pendergast, his face suddenly as sallow as a corpse's. "What a dreadful turn of events." He added in almost a whisper, to nobody in particular: "Perhaps the time has come to call in the help of Monsieur Bertin."

Chapter 36

D'Agosta could see a gray dawn creeping through the curtained windows of the Gotham Press Club. He was exhausted, and his head pounded with every beat of his heart. The scene — of — crime unit had finished up their work and gone; the hair and fiber guys had come and gone; the photographer had come and gone; the M.E. had collected the corpse; all the witnesses had been questioned or scheduled for questioning; and now D'Agosta found himself alone at the sealed crime scene.

He could hear the traffic on 53rd Street, the early delivery vans, the crack — of — dawn garbage pickups, the day — shift taxi drivers begi

D'Agosta remained standing quietly in the corner of the room. It was very elegant and old New York; the walls covered with dark oak paneling, a fireplace with carved mantelpieces, a marble floor tiled in black and white, a crystal chandelier above and tall mullioned windows with gold — embroidered drapes. The room smelled of old smoke, stale hors d'oeuvres, and spilled wine. Quite a lot of food and broken glass was strewn about the floor from the panic at the time of the murder. But there was nothing more for D'Agosta to see, no lack of witnesses or evidence. The killer had committed murder in front of more than two hundred people — not one lily — livered journalist had tried to stop him — and then escaped out the back kitchen, through several sets of doors left unlocked by the catering group whose van was parked in a lane behind the building.

Had the killer known that? Yes. All the witnesses reported that the killer had moved surely — not swiftly, but deliberately — straight for one of the room's rear service doors, down a hall, through the kitchen, and out. He knew the layout of the place, knew the doors were unlocked, knew the gates blocking the back lane would be open, knew that it led to 54th Street and the anonymity of the crowd. Or a waiting car. Because this had all the appearance of being a well — pla

D'Agosta rubbed his nose, trying to breathe slowly, to reduce the pounding in his temples. He could hardly think. Those bastards at the Ville were going to realize they had made a serious mistake in assaulting a police officer. They were involved in this, one way or another, he felt sure. Smithback had written about them and paid dearly for it; now the same fate had befallen Caitlyn Kidd.

Why was he still here? There was nothing new he could extract from the crime scene, nothing that hadn't already been examined, recorded, photographed, picked over, tested, sniffed, eyeballed, and noted for the record. He was utterly exhausted. And yet he couldn't bring himself to leave.

Smithback.

That, he knew, was the reason he couldn't leave.

The witnesses all swore it was Smithback. Even Nora, whom he had interviewed — sedated but lucid enough — at her apartment. Nora had seen the killer from across the room, so she was less reliable — but there were others who had seen the killer up close and swore it was him. The victim herself had shouted out his name as he approached her. And yet a few days earlier, D'Agosta had seen with his very own eyes Smithback's dead body on a gurney, his chest opened, his organs removed and tagged, the top of his skull sawed open.