“McNitt to Ops. Come in, TDN.”
“Ten-four. Where the hell are you?”
“I’m at the rear entrance. Beauregard ain’t here. I can’t raise him or anything.”
“Lemme try.” He punched the transmitter. “TDN calling Beauregard. Fred, come in. TDN calling Beauregard ... Hey, McNitt, I think he got pissed off and went home. His shift just ended. How did you get up there, anyway?”
“I went the way you said, but when I got to the front end of the exhibition it was locked, so I had to go around. Didn’t have my keys. Got a little lost.”
“Stay tight, all right? His relief should arrive any minute. Effinger, it says here. Radio me when he arrives and then come on back.”
“Here comes Effinger now. You gonna report Beauregard?” McNitt asked.
“You kidding? I’m no damn baby-sitter.”
= 23 =
D’Agosta looked over at Pendergast, reclining in the shabby backseat of the Buick. Jesus, he thought, a guy like Pendergast ought to pull at least a late model Town Car. Instead, they gave him a four-year-old Buick and a driver who could barely speak English.
Pendergast’s eyes were half closed.
“Turn on Eighty-sixth and take the Central Park transverse,” shouted D’Agosta.
The driver swerved across two lanes of Central Park West and roared into the transverse.
“Take Fifth to Sixty-fifth and go across,” said D’Agosta. “Then go one block north on Third and take a right at Sixty-sixth.”
“Fifty-nine faster,” said the driver, in a thick Middle Eastern accent.
“Not in the evening rush hour,” called D’Agosta. Christ, they couldn’t even find a driver who knew his way around the city.
As the car swerved and rattled down the avenue, the driver flew on past Sixty-fifth Street.
“What the hell are you doing?” said D’Agosta. “You just missed Sixty-fifth.”
“Apology,” said the driver, turning down Sixty-first into a massive traffic jam.
“I can’t believe this,” D’Agosta said to Pendergast. “You ought to have this joker fired.”
Pendergast smiled, his eyes still half closed. “He was, shall we say, a gift of the New York office. But the delay will give us a chance to talk.” He settled back into the torn seat.
Pendergast had spent the last half of the afternoon at Jolley’s autopsy. D’Agosta had declined the invitation.
“This lab found several kinds of DNA in our sample,” Pendergast continued. “One was human, the other, from a gecko.”
D’Agosta looked at him. “Gecko? What’s a gecko?” he asked.
“A kind of lizard. Harmless enough. They like to sit on walls and bask in the sun. When I was a child, we rented a villa overlooking the Mediterranean one summer, and the walls were covered with them. At any rate, the results were so surprising to the lab technician that he thought it was a joke.”
He opened his briefcase. “Here’s the autopsy report on Jolley. There’s nothing much new, I’m afraid. Same MO, body horrifically mauled, thalamoid region of the brain removed. The coroner’s office has estimated that to create such deep lacerations in a single stroke, the required force would exceed—” he consulted a typewritten sheet “—twice what a strong human male can achieve. Needless to say, it’s an estimation.”
Pendergast turned some pages. “Also, they’ve now run salivase enzyme tests on brain sections from the older boy and from Jolley.”
“And—?”
“Both brains tested positive for the presence of saliva.”
“Jesus. You mean the killer’s eating the fucking brain?”
“Not only eating, Lieutenant, but slobbering over the food as well. Clearly, he, she, or it has no manners. You have the SOC report? May I see it?”
D’Agosta handed it over. “You won’t find any surprises there. The blood on the painting was Jolley’s. They found traces of blood leading past the Secure Area and down into a stairwell to the subbasement. But last night’s rain flushed all traces out of there, of course.”
Pendergast scanned the document. “And here’s the report on the door to the vault. Someone did quite a lot of pounding and banging, possibly with a blunt instrument. There were also three-pronged scratches consistent with those found on the victims. Once again, the force used was considerable.”
Pendergast handed over the files. “It sounds as if we’ll need to devote more attention to the subbasement. Basically, Vincent, this DNA business is our best chance for now. If we can trace the origin of that claw fragment, we’ll have our first solid lead. That’s why I’ve asked for this meeting.”
The car pulled up in front of a warren of ivy-covered redbrick buildings overlooking the East River. A guard ushered them into a side entrance.