Blue Labyrinth

As he listened, D’Agosta felt even worse for asking her help — he felt like a complete fool. “What you’re going through is normal.”

“It’s worse. I can’t stand dark places. Or the dark at all. I keep the lights in my apartment burning all night. You should see my electric bill.” She gave a sour laugh. “I’m a mess. I think I’ve got a new syndrome: museumophobia.”

“Listen,” D’Agosta interrupted, taking her hand. “Maybe we should forget about this damn skeleton. I’ll find somebody else who can—”

“No way. I may be psycho, but I’m not a coward. I’ll do this. Just don’t ask me to go down there.” She pointed down the hall, deeper into the collections, where Sandoval had retreated. “And don’t ever ask me—” she tried to keep her voice light, but a quaver of fear underscored it—“to go into the basement.”

“Thank you,” said D’Agosta.

At that moment footsteps sounded in the hallway. Sandoval reappeared, the familiar-looking collection tray held in both hands. He carefully laid it on the table between them.

“I’ll be at my desk,” he said. “Let me know when you’re finished.”

He left, closing the door behind him. D’Agosta watched as Margo pulled the gloves tighter onto her hands, then took a folded sheet of cotton from a nearby drawer, smoothed it out on the table’s surface, and began plucking bones from the tray and placing them on the cloth. A procession of bones emerged: ribs, vertebrae, arm and leg bones, skull, jaws, and many small bones he couldn’t identify. He remembered how Margo had bounced back from the trauma of the Museum murders, how she’d begun working out, gotten a handgun license, learned how to use a weapon. She seemed so together. But he’d seen the same thing happen to cops, and he hoped to hell this wasn’t making things worse…

He forgot his train of thought as he looked at Margo. She was sitting beside him, having suddenly gone still, a pelvis held in both gloved hands. The look on her face had changed. The distant, preoccupied expression was gone, replaced by puzzlement.

“What is it?” he asked.

Instead of answering, she turned the pelvis around in her hands, peering close. Then she carefully laid it on the cotton, picked up the lower jaw, and examined it intently, viewing it from one angle and another. At last she put it down and glanced over at D’Agosta.

“A Hottentot male, age thirty-five?”

“Yeah.”

Margo licked her lips. “Interesting. I’ll need to come back when I have more time, but I can tell you one thing already: this skeleton is about as much a Hottentot male as I am.”

20

The sun had been burning in the noonday sky when Pendergast drove away from Salton Palms in his pearl-colored Cadillac. When he returned again, it was after midnight.

He stopped three miles short of the ghost town. Turning off the headlights, he drove well off the road and hid the car behind a stand of stunted Joshua trees. He shut off the motor and sat motionless in the driver’s seat, considering the situation.

Most aspects remained shrouded in mystery. However, he now knew two particulars. Alban’s death had been an elaborate device to lure him to this place — the Golden Spider Mine. And the mine itself had been carefully prepared for him. Pendergast had no doubt that the mine entrance, even now, was under close observation. They were waiting for him.

Pendergast retrieved two rolled-up pieces of paper, which he smoothed open on his lap. One was the map of the Golden Spider Mine he had purchased from Cayute. The other contained old construction blueprints of the Salton Fontainebleau.

Pulling a hooded flashlight from the glove compartment, he first turned his attention to the map of the mine. It was a relatively small mine, with a central passage that appeared to slope downward at a shallow angle, heading southwestward away from the lake. About half a dozen smaller passages angled off from the central one, some straight, others crooked, following the veins of turquoise. Some ended in deep shafts. Pendergast had already committed all this to memory.

He moved the beam of his flashlight to the far edge of the map. At the back end of the mine, a corkscrew passage led off from the main works, narrowing as it went, finally terminating half a mile away in a steep, almost vertical climb: an air shaft, perhaps, or more likely a back entrance that had gone unused. Its lines were faded and worn, as if even the cartographer had forgotten about it by the time the map was complete.

Now Pendergast overlaid the diagram of the mine with the blueprints of the old hotel. He looked back and forth between one and the other, trying to set in his mind the relative positions of the Golden Spider and the Salton Fontainebleau. The blueprints were arranged by floor, and clearly showed the guest suites, capacious lobby, dining rooms, kitchen, casino, spas, ballrooms — and a curious circular construction between the cocktail lounge and the rear promenade labeled ANM. GRDN.

Animal garden, Cayute had said. Built it up out of a natural hole in the ground beneath the hotel. Had real live lions and black panthers and Siberian tigers down there.

Once again, Pendergast compared the blueprints with the map with extreme care. The resort’s animal garden was situated precisely over the back entrance to the Golden Spider Mine.

Pendergast turned off the flashlight and sat back. It made perfect sense: what better place to construct a subterranean animal garden than in a forgotten, disused section of a long-abandoned mine?

His mysterious hosts had busily prepared the mine for his arrival and taken pains to conceal their tracks. The mine was, without doubt, a trap — but a trap with a back door.

While the cooling engine ticked quietly, Pendergast considered how to proceed. Under cover of darkness, he would reco

Of course, he had to admit to the possibility that there might be something he had overlooked; some unknown complication that would force him to revise his plans. But he had been very careful in his surveillance and his preparations, and this strategy seemed to offer the greatest chance of success by far.

He spent another fifteen minutes poring over the hotel blueprints, committing every last hallway and closet and staircase to memory. The animal garden itself was in the basement, its beasts kept at a safe distance from the spectators above. It was accessible through a small suite of rooms comprising a grooming area and several handling and veterinary rooms. Pendergast would have to pass through these rooms to access the garden itself — and thereby reach the back entrance to the mine.

Taking his Les Baer .45 from the glove compartment, Pendergast checked it and snugged it into his waistband. Blueprints in hand, he exited the car, quietly closed the door, and waited in the darkness, all his senses on alert. The half-moon was partially obscured by wispy clouds, providing just enough light for his preternaturally sharpened senses to see by. Gone were the jeans, denim shirt, and cowboy boots: he now wore black pants, black rubber-soled shoes, and a black turtleneck under a black utility vest.

All was utterly still. He waited another moment, carefully sca