As the witnesses stepped back to give them room, the Saint-Savin workers lifted the coffin out of the grave and placed it on the ground beside the shell. Jennings came forward, pulling on latex gloves. Kneeling at the head of the coffin, he bent forward to inspect the nameplate.
“Helen Esterhazy Pendergast,” he read through the mask. “Let the record show the name on the casket conforms with the name on the exhumation license.”
Now the shell was opened. Beaufort saw that its interior consisted of a tarred zinc liner, covered with a plastic membrane and sealed with isopon. All standard. At a nod from Jennings — who had backed quickly away — the cemetery workers once again lifted Helen Pendergast’s coffin by the webbing, carried it to the open shell, and placed it inside. Pendergast watched as if frozen, his face pale, his eyes hooded. He had not moved a muscle, save to blink, since the exhumation process started.
With the coffin safely inside the shell, the lid was closed and fastened. The cemetery manager came forward with a small brass nameplate. As the workers removed the disposable protective clothing and washed their hands with disinfectant, he hammered the nameplate into the surface of the shell.
Beaufort stirred. It was almost time for his own work to begin. The workers lifted the shell by its railings and he led them to the rear of the mobile forensic lab, parked on the gravel nearby. It sat in the shade of the magnolias, generator rumbling quietly. His assistant opened the rear doors and helped the cemetery workers lift the shell up and slide it inside.
Beaufort waited until the doors were shut again, then he followed the workers back to the screened-off plot. The group was still assembled, and would remain there until the procedure was complete. Some of the workers began filling in the old grave, while others, with the help of the backhoe, began opening a fresh one beside it: when his work on the remains was complete, they would be re-interred in the new grave. Beaufort knew that moving her body — even so slight a distance as this — was the only way Pendergast had been able to get the exhumation approved. And even then he wondered what pressure had been brought to bear on the nervous, sweating Jennings.
At last Pendergast stirred, glancing his way. The anticipation, the tense watchfulness, had deepened in his pale features.
Beaufort came up to him and spoke in a low voice. “We’re ready. Now, exactly what tests would you like done?”
The FBI agent looked at him. “DNA, hair samples, fingerprints if possible, dental X-rays. Everything.”
Beaufort tried to think of the most tactful way to say it. “It would help if I knew what the purpose of all this was.”
A long moment passed before Pendergast replied. “The body in the coffin is not that of my wife.”
Beaufort absorbed this. “What leads you to believe there’s been a… a mistake?”
“Just perform the tests, if you please,” said Pendergast quietly. His white hand emerged from under his suit; in it was a hairbrush in a ziplock bag. “You’ll need a sample of her DNA.”
Beaufort took the bag, wondering at a man who would keep his wife’s hairbrush untouched for more than ten years after her death. He cleared his throat. “And if the body is hers?”
When there was no reply to this question, Beaufort asked another. “Would you, ah, care to be present when we open the coffin?”
The agent’s haunted eyes seemed to freeze Beaufort. “It’s a matter of indifference to me.”
He turned back to the grave and said no more.
CHAPTER 33
New York City
THE FOOD LINE AT THE BOWERY STREET MISSION snaked slowly past the front row of refectory-style tables toward the steam trays.
“Shit,” said the man directly ahead. “Not chicken and dumplings again.”
Distractedly, Esterhazy picked up a tray, helped himself to corn bread, shuffled forward in the line.
He had been staying below the radar. Way below. He’d taken a bus down from Boston and stopped using credit cards and withdrawing cash from ATMs. He went by the name on the false passport and bought a new cell phone under that assumed name. His lodgings were a cheap SRO on Second Street that preferred dealing in cash. Whenever possible he was subsisting on handouts such as this. He had a goodly supply of cash left over from his trip to Scotland, so for the time being money wasn’t a concern, but he would need to make it last. Pendergast’s resources were frighteningly exhaustive — he wasn’t about to take any chances. Besides, he knew they would always give him more.
“Goddamn green Jell-O,” the man in front of him continued to complain. He was perhaps forty years old, sported a wispy goatee, and wore a faded lumberjack shirt. His grimy, pale face was seamed with every manner of vice, self-gratification, and corruption. “Why can’t we ever get red Jell-O?”
The banality of evil, thought Esterhazy as he slid an entrée onto his plastic tray without even looking at it. This was no way to live. He had to stop running and get back on the offensive. Pendergast had to die. He’d tried to kill Pendergast twice. Third time’s the charm, as the saying went.
Everyone has a weak spot. Find his and attack it.
Carrying the tray, he walked over to a nearby table and sat down at the only empty place, next to the goateed man. He lifted his fork, picked absently at the food, put the fork down again.
Now that he thought about it, Esterhazy realized how little he really knew about Pendergast. The man had been married to his sister. And yet, though they’d been on friendly terms, he’d always remained distant, cool, a cipher. He had failed to kill Pendergast partly because he hadn’t really understood him. He needed to learn more about the man: his movements, his likes, his dislikes, his attachments. What made him tick, what he cared about.
We’ll take good care of you. Just as we always have.
Esterhazy could hardly swallow his food with that phrase echoing in his mind. He put down his fork and turned to the goateed vagrant sitting next to him. He stared at the man until he stopped eating and looked up.
“Got a problem?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” Esterhazy bestowed a friendly smile on the man. “May I ask you a question?”
“What about?” The man was instantly suspicious.
“Someone’s pursuing me,” said Esterhazy. “Threatening my life. I can’t shake him.”
“Kill the mother,” said the man, resuming slurping up his Jell-O.
“That’s just it. I can’t get near enough to kill him. What would you do?”
The man’s deep-set eyes glittered with malice, and he put down his spoon. This was a problem he understood. “You get to someone close to him. Someone weak. Helpless. A bitch.”
“A bitch,” Esterhazy repeated.
“Not just any bitch, his bitch. You get to a man through his bitch.”
“That makes sense.”
“No shit it makes sense. I had a beef with this dealer, man, wanted to bust a cap in his ass, but he always had his crew around him. Well, he had this little sister, real juicy…”
The story went on for a long time. But Esterhazy wasn’t listening. He had fallen into pensive thought.
His bitch…
CHAPTER 34
Savannah, Georgia
THE ELEGANT TOWN HOUSE DOZED IN THE FRAGRANT cool of a fall evening. Outside, in Habersham Street, and beyond in Whitfield Square, passersby chatted animatedly and tourists snapped pictures of the park’s gingerbread cupola and the historic brick structures surrounding it. But within the town house, all was still.
Until, with a faint rustle of metal against metal, the lock turned and the back door was teased open.
Special Agent Pendergast slipped into the kitchen, barely a shadow in the fading light. He closed and locked the door behind him, then turned and leaned against it, listening. The house was vacant, but he paused in the silence anyway. The air smelled stale and the blinds were all drawn. This was a building that had not been entered in some time.