Hayward waited. After a moment, he went on.
“The thing is, deep down, I was already sure. We’d searched the castle. And then there was that look Fosco gave me, that awful look. If you’d seen it . . .” He shook his head. “Close to midnight, I drifted back to the castle. Went in the same way we’d come out. I took the time to figure out how the microwave device worked. And then I . . . used it. One last time.”
“You brought Fosco to justice. Avenged your partner. I’d have done the same thing.”
“Would you?” D’Agosta asked quietly.
Hayward nodded.
D’Agosta shifted restlessly. “There’s not much more to tell. I spent this morning back in Florence, checking hospitals, morgues, police reports. More to keep busy than for anything else. And then I boarded the plane.”
“What did you do with that weapon?”
“Disassembled it, smashed the pieces, and deposited them in half a dozen garbage cans around Florence.”
She nodded. “And what are your plans now?”
D’Agosta shrugged. He hadn’t given this any thought. “I don’t know. Go back to Southampton, I guess. Face the music.”
A small smile crept over her face. “Didn’t you hear what I said? It’s the chief who’s facing the music. He got back from vacation and was so eager to hog the limelight that now it’s all coming back to roost. Braskie’s running against him in the next election, odds-on favorite to win.”
“Even worse for me.”
She changed lanes. “There’s something else you should know. They’ve suspended the NYPD hiring freeze. That means you can work the city again. Get your old job back.”
D’Agosta shook his head. “No way. I’ve been away too long. I’m old goods.”
“It hasn’t been that long. They’re rehiring by seniority. And with your experience in Southampton, and as FBI liaison . . .” She paused to negotiate the ramp onto the Long Island Expressway. “Of course, it couldn’t be in my division. But they’ve got openings in several of the downtown precincts.”
D’Agosta sat a moment, letting this penetrate. Then he looked at her sharply. “Wait a minute. My old job back, openings downtown. You didn’t have anything to do with this, did you? Have a talk with Rocker, or something like that?”
“Me? You know the kind of cop I am. By the book. Miss Straight Arrow.” But her smile seemed to deepen briefly.
Up ahead, the maw of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel loomed, gridworks of tile illuminated by fluorescent tubes. Hayward merged smoothly into the E-ZPass toll lane.
From the passenger seat, D’Agosta watched her: the beautiful lines of her face, the curve of her nose, the little furrow of concentration as she negotiated the evening traffic. It was wonderful just to see her again, to be here by her side. And yet he could not escape the sense of desolation that enveloped him. It was like a hollowness he carried around, a vacuum that could not be filled.
“You’re right,” he said as they entered the tunnel. “It doesn’t matter if that violin’s the most precious ever made. It wasn’t worth Pendergast dying. Nothing was worth that.”
Hayward kept her eyes on the road. “You don’t know he’s dead.”
D’Agosta didn’t answer. He’d told himself this already: once, twice, a thousand times. When everything had been stacked against them—when there seemed no way they could possibly survive—Pendergast had always saved them. At times, it had seemed almost miraculous. And yet, this time, Pendergast had not reappeared. This time, it felt different.
Then there was that other feeling, the one that made him almost physically ill. It was the image of Pendergast, there in the clearing, surrounded by dogs. Everyone—the hunters, the handlers, the beaters—closing in. Only one of us can get through. There’s no other way.
D’Agosta felt his throat close up. “You’re right. I have no proof. Except maybe this.” He reached into his pocket, drew out Pendergast’s platinum chain and pendant: a lidless eye over a phoenix, rising from fiery ash, now pitted and partly melted. The chain he’d retrieved from Fosco’s burning, smoking corpse. He stared at it a moment. He balled the hand into a fist, pressed a knuckle against his teeth. He felt a ridiculous impulse to burst into tears.
The worst of it was, D’Agosta knew he was the one who should have been left on that hill. He wished, more than anything else, that he had been left on that hill.
“Anyway, he would have contacted me by now. Or you. Or somebody.” He paused. “I don’t know how I’m going to tell Constance.”
“Who?”
“Constance Greene. His ward.”
They drove through the rest of the tunnel in silence, finally emerging into the Manhattan night. Then he felt Hayward take his hand.
“Let me off anywhere,” he said, sick at heart. “Penn Station’s fine. I’ll take the LIRR out to Southampton.”