Blue Labyrinth

“Jesus H. Christopher,” said Bonomo. “Sounds painful.”

“Any idea how long ago these procedures might have been done?” Margo asked.

Lu turned back to the X-rays. “It’s hard to tell. “The maxilla is fully healed — you can see the callus, here. The titanium plates haven’t been removed, but then again, that’s common. I would say at least a few years ago, maybe more.”

“I count four procedures,” D’Agosta said. “And you say these would have been enough to change the man’s looks completely?”

“Just the LeFort osteotomy would have done the job.”

“And based on the photographic, CAT scan, and X-ray evidence here, can you reverse-engineer these changes? Show us what the guy looked like before all this work?”

Lu nodded. “I can try. The fractures in the medulla, and the size of the incisions in the mucosa, are clear enough. We can work backward from there.”

“Great. Please work with Terry Bonomo here and see if we can’t get an image of this guy’s original face.” D’Agosta turned to the ID expert. “Think you can do this?”

“Hell, yeah,” Bonomo said. “If the doc here can give me specifics, it’s a cinch to modify the facial biometrics. I’ve already got wireframe and three-D composites of the perp’s head loaded into the software; now I just need to take my standard operating procedure and run it backward, so to speak.”

While Margo looked on, Dr. Lu took a seat beside Bonomo and together — hunched over the laptop — they began refiguring the face of the killer, essentially undoing the work some anonymous plastic surgeon had done years ago. Now and then Lu returned to the autopsy photographs, or the X-ray and CAT scan images, as they painstakingly adjusted various parameters in the cheeks, chin, nose, and jaw.

“Don’t forget the dirty-blond hair,” D’Agosta said.

Twenty minutes later, Bonomo hit a key on the laptop with a dramatic flourish. “Let’s give it a moment to render the image.”

Margo heard the laptop give a chirrup about thirty seconds later.

Bonomo swiveled the laptop toward Dr. Lu, who examined it a moment, then nodded. And then Bonomo turned the laptop all the way around so Margo and D’Agosta could see it.

“My God,” D’Agosta murmured.

Margo was shocked. The plastic surgeon was right — the image looked like a completely different man.

“I want you to model that from several angles,” D’Agosta told Bonomo. “Then download the rendered images into the departmental database. We’ll run the facial-recognition software against it, see if the face is anywhere out there.” He turned to Lu. “Doctor, thanks so much for your time.”

“My pleasure.”

“Margo, I’ll be back.” And without another word, he stood up and walked out of the forensic suite.

In less than twenty minutes, D’Agosta was back. His face was slightly flushed, and he was out of breath.

“Goddamn,” he told her. “We’ve got a hit. Just like that.”

43

Pendergast pulled into the visitors’ parking lot of the Sanatorium de Piz Julier and killed the engine. The lot was, as he expected, empty: the convalescence spa was remote, tiny, and selective. In fact, at the moment it had only one patient in residence.

He got out of the car — a twelve-cylinder Lamborghini Gallardo Aventador — and walked slowly to the far end of the lot. Beyond and far below, the green skirts of the Alps stretched down to the Swiss resort town of St. Moritz, from this distance almost too perfect and beautiful to be real. To its south reared the Piz Bernina, the tallest mountain of the eastern Alps. Sheep were grazing peacefully on its lower flanks, tiny dots of white.

He turned back and headed toward the sanatorium, a red-and-white confection with gingerbread molding and brimming flower boxes beneath the windows. While he was still rather weak and unsteady on his feet, the most severe symptoms of the pain and mental confusion he had experienced in Brazil had eased, at least temporarily. He’d even scrapped his plans to hire a driver and rented a car instead. He knew the Lamborghini was flashy and not at all his style, but he told himself the speed and technical handling the mountain roads required would help clear his mind.

Pendergast stopped at the front door and rang the bell. An unobtrusive security camera set above the door swiveled in his direction. Then a buzzer sounded, the door sprang open, and he entered. Beyond lay a small lobby and nurse’s station. A woman in a white uniform with a small cap on her head sat behind it.

“Ja?” the woman said, looking up at him expectantly.

Pendergast reached into his pocket, gave her his card. She reached into a drawer, took out a folder, glanced at a photograph that lay within, then back at Pendergast.

“Ah yes,” the woman said, replacing the folder and switching to accented English. “Herr Pendergast. We have been expecting you. Just one minute, please.”

She picked up the phone that sat on her desk and made a brief call. A minute later, a door in the wall behind her buzzed open and two more nurses appeared. One of them gestured for Pendergast to approach. Passing through the interior door, he followed the two women down a cool hallway, punctuated by windows through which streamed brilliant morning sunlight. With its taffeta curtains and colorful Alpine photos, the place appeared bright and cheerful. And yet the bars on the windows were of reinforced steel, and weapons could be seen bulging beneath the crisp white uniforms of the two nurses.

Near the end of the hall, they stopped before a closed door. The nurses unlocked it. Then they opened the door, stepped back, and gestured for Pendergast to enter.

Beyond lay a large and airy room, its windows — also open, also barred — giving out on a beautiful view of the lake far below. There was a bed, a writing table, a bookshelf full of books in English and German, a wing chair, and a private bath.

At the table, silhouetted in a beam of sunlight, sat a young man of seventeen. He was studiously — even laboriously — copying something from a book into a journal. The sun gilded his light-blond hair. His gray-blue eyes moved from the book to the journal and back again, so intent on his work he remained unaware anyone had entered. Silently, Pendergast took in the patrician features, the lean physique.

His sense of weariness increased.

The youth looked up from his work. For a brief moment, his face was a mask of incomprehension. Then he broke into a smile. “Father!” he cried, leaping from the chair. “What a surprise!”

Pendergast allowed himself to return his son’s embrace. This was followed by an awkward silence.

“When can I get out of this place?” Tristram finally asked. “I hate it here.” He spoke in an oddly formal, schoolboy English, with a German accent softened by a touch of Portuguese.

“Not for a while, I’m afraid, Tristram.”

The youth frowned and played with a ring on the middle finger of his left hand — a gold ring set with a beautiful star sapphire.

“Are you being treated well here?”

“Well enough. The food’s excellent. I go on hikes every day. But they hover over me all the time. I have no friends and it is boring. I liked the École Mère-Église better. Can I go back there, Father?”

“In a little while.” Pendergast paused. “Once I have taken care of certain things.”

“What things?”

“Nothing you need be concerned about. Listen, Tristram, I need to ask you something. Has anything unusual happened to you since we last met?”

“Unusual?” Tristram echoed.

“Out of the ordinary. Letters you’ve received, perhaps? Telephone calls? Unexpected visits?”

At this, a blank look came over Tristram. He hesitated for a moment. Then, silently, he shook his head.

“No.”

Pendergast looked at him closely. “You’re lying.”

Tristram said nothing, his eyes fixed on the ground.