City of Endless Night Page 28

  But in the end it had gone green, and the timer had stopped, which meant Pendergast had finally killed the son of a bitch, taken the remote, and switched it off.

  Five minutes later, he heard the door to Building 44 open and in walked Pendergast. D’Agosta was alarmed by his appearance: covered with dust, clothing ripped and shredded, with two deep scratches on his face on which the blood had mingled with dirt, leaving a crust. He was limping.

  The agent came up to him and removed the cue-ball gag. D’Agosta took a few gasps of air. “You cut that one pretty damn close!” he said. “God, you look like you just emerged from the trenches.”

  “My dear Vincent, so sorry to have given you a turn.” He began unbuckling the other restraints. “I’m afraid our friend put up an admirable struggle. I must tell you, frankly, I’ve never come up against a more capable adversary.”

  “I knew you’d smoke his ass in the end.”

  Pendergast unstrapped his arms and D’Agosta raised them, rubbing the flow of blood back into them. Gingerly, Pendergast unstrapped the vest with the packets of explosives and eased it off, laying it with infinite care on a nearby table.

  “Tell me how you exterminated the scumbag.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve developed an unfortunate reputation at the Bureau as an agent whose perps end up dead,” Pendergast said, now unstrapping D’Agosta’s ankles. “So this time I performed a live capture.”

  “He’s alive? Jesus, how’d you pull that off?”

  “It was a matter of choosing what game to play. We started with chess, in which he nearly checkmated me; switched to craps, but I had a bad roll of the dice. And so we ended up playing a mind game, one that my opponent lost rather dramatically.”

  “A mind game?”

  “You see, Vincent, he actually caught me and put a gun to my head. And then released me, like a cat releases a mouse.”

  “Really? Wow. That’s crazy.”

  “That was the insight I needed. He had already admitted this ‘hunt’ was more than just that: it was an exorcism of his experience here. When he spared my life, I knew that Ozmian was exorcising a far bigger demon than even he himself was aware of. Something terrible had happened to him here, far worse than sessions with a psychiatrist, drugs, and restraints.”

  D’Agosta, as usual, was uncertain as to where Pendergast was going, or even what he was talking about.

  “So how’d you get him?”

  “If I may be allowed self-congratulation, I’m rather proud of my final stratagem, which was to expend all the rounds in my weapon, thus fostering a false sense of security in my opponent, encouraging him to rush headlong into my final setup.”

  “So where is he?”

  “In the basement of Building Ninety-Three, in a room he once knew very well. A room where the doctors made him into the man he is today.”

  D’Agosta’s feet were finally freed and he stood up. He was freezing. Ozmian had tossed his clothes on a chair, and now he went to retrieve them. “Made him into the man he is today? What does that mean?”

  “When he was twelve, our man was the guinea pig in a course of brutal and experimental electroconvulsive shock treatments here. The treatments wiped out his short-term memory, as is usual with those treatments. But memories, even the most deeply buried, are never quite extinguished, and I managed to nudge his back—to spectacular effect.”

  “Shock treatments?” D’Agosta pulled on his coat.

  “Yes. As you may recall, he claimed not to have received them at King’s Park. When he released me, I knew differently. I knew he’d gotten them but didn’t remember. I found in the basement archives an investigator’s file outlining the experimental treatments—and in it was the actual script, every word written out, of how the doctors would calm the poor boy down and persuade him to sit in a forbidding-looking shock chair. It turns out Ozmian got a particularly robust course of treatment. The normal dosage is four hundred fifty volts at zero point nine amp for half a second. Our fellow got the same voltage, but at triple the amperage for no less than ten seconds. In addition, the electrodes fired in sequence from front to back and side to side of the cranium. He was immediately sent into extreme convulsions during the process and for many minutes after it ceased. I would speculate the treatments did considerable damage to the right supramarginal gyrus.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The part of the brain that is responsible for empathy and compassion. That brain damage might perhaps explain how a man could murder and decapitate his own daughter, as well as take pleasure in the hunting and killing of human beings. And now, Vincent, there is your radio: please call for backup from your people, and I will do the same with the Bureau. We have the brutal murder of a decorated federal agent to report, as well as the perpetrator under restraint, who has, unfortunately, now descended fully into madness and will need to be handled with great care.”

  He turned and gathered his own clothes and equipment, which had been piled in a corner. Pausing, D’Agosta watched as Pendergast gazed at Longstreet’s remains, making a slow, sorrowful gesture, almost a bow. He then turned back to D’Agosta. “My dear friend, I almost failed you.”

  “No way, Pendergast. Ditch the modesty. I knew that bastard didn’t stand a chance against you.”

  Pendergast turned away, to hide from D’Agosta the expression on his face.

  65

  BRYCE HARRIMAN THREADED his way through the vast, busy newsroom of the Post and stopped at the far end, before Petowski’s door. This was the second unscheduled meeting to which he’d been summoned in as many weeks. It was not only unusual—it was unheard of. And when he’d gotten the message—summons, actually—all the relief he’d felt at being suddenly, unexpectedly released from jail had evaporated.

  This couldn’t be good.

  He took a deep breath, knocked.

  “Come,” came the voice of Petowski.

  This time, Petowski was the only person in the room. He was sitting behind the desk, swinging his chair from side to side and fiddling with a pencil. He glanced up at Harriman for a minute, then glanced back down at the pencil. He didn’t offer the reporter a chair.

  “Did you read about the news conference the NYPD gave this morning?” he asked, still swinging back and forth.

  “Yes.”

  “The killer—the Decapitator, as you branded him—turned out to be the father of the first victim. Anton Ozmian.”

  Harriman swallowed again, more painfully. “So I understand.”

  “You understand. I’m so glad that you do…finally.” Petowski looked back up, fixing Harriman with his stare. “Anton Ozmian. Would you call him a religious fanatic?”

  “No.”

  “Would you say that he was killing as a way of, quote, ‘preaching to the city’?”

  Harriman cringed inwardly as he heard his own words being flung back at him. “No, I would not.”

  “Ozmian.” Petowski snapped the pencil in two and threw the pieces into a garbage can with disgust. “So much for your theory.”

  “Mr. Petowski, I—” Harriman began, but the editor held up a single finger for silence.

  “It turns out Ozmian wasn’t trying to send a message to New York. He wasn’t singling out corrupt, depraved people as a kind of warning to the masses. He wasn’t making a statement to our divided nation that the ninety-nine percent wouldn’t take anymore from the one percenters. In fact, he was one of them!” Petowski snorted. “And now we all here at the Post look like damned fools, thanks to you.”

  “But the police also—”

  A choppy gesture silenced him. Petowski scowled for a moment. Then he went on. “Okay. I’m listening. Now’s your chance to explain away the pieces you wrote.” He stopped swiveling, sat back in his chair, and folded one arm over the other.

  Harriman thought frantically, but nothing came to mind. He’d already been over it, again and again, since he’d first heard the news. But there had simply been too many shocks thrown at him recently—getting
arrested; being absolved and released; learning that the Decapitator theory was wrong—leaving his brain a dazed blank.

  “I don’t have any excuse, Mr. Petowski,” he said at last. “I came up with a theory that appeared to fit all the facts, which the police also embraced. But I was wrong.”

  “A theory that caused an outlandish disturbance in Central Park, for which the cops are also blaming us.”

  Harriman hung his head.

  After another silence, Petowski fetched a deep sigh. “Well, that’s an honest answer, anyway,” he said. He sat up briskly. “All right, Harriman. Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to put that imaginative brain of yours to work, and you’re going to recast your theory so that it fits Ozmian—and what he was actually doing.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “It’s called spin. You’re going to massage, pummel, and knead the facts. You’re going to push your original theory in a new direction, speculate on some of Ozmian’s motives that the cops might not have spoken of at today’s presser, add some stuff about that riot in Central Park, and roll it all into a piece of reportage that will make it look like we had our finger on the pulse all along. We’re still the City of Endless Night, with the boot of the billionaire class still on the neck of our town. Okay? And Ozmian’s the very embodiment of the greed, entitlement, selfishness, and contempt the billionaire class has for the working people of this city, just like we’ve been writing all along. That’s the spin. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Harriman said.

  He began to turn away, but Petowski wasn’t quite finished. “Oh, and Harriman?”

  The reporter glanced back. “Yes, Mr. Petowski?”

  “That hundred-dollar-a-week raise I mentioned? I’m rescinding it. Retroactively.”

  As Harriman made his way back through the newsroom, not a single eye rose to meet his. Everyone was studiously at work, hunched over notebooks or computer screens. But just as he reached the door, he heard somebody intone, in a quiet, singsong voice: “Ye one percenters, mend your ways before it’s too late…”

  66

  D’AGOSTA QUIETLY FOLLOWED Pendergast around Anton Ozmian’s home in the Time Warner Center. Like the man’s vast office in Lower Manhattan, the huge eight-bedroom condo was practically in the clouds. Only the view was different: instead of New York Harbor, outside and below these windows lay the toy trees, lawns, and winding boulevards of Central Park. It was as if the man scorned the banality of a life lived at sea level.

  The CSU team had come and gone long ago—there was precious little evidence of Grace Ozmian’s shooting to be documented—and now there was just a small knot of NYPD techs on hand, snapping pictures here and there, taking notes, and chatting in low whispers. Pendergast had not spoken to them. He’d arrived with a long roll of architect’s blueprints under his arm, along with a small electronic unit—a laser measuring tool. He had laid out the plans on a black granite table in the expansive living room—the industrial style of the condo was similar to that of the DigiFlood offices—and studied them in great detail, every now and then straightening up to peer around at the surrounding room. At one point he rose and measured the room’s dimensions with the laser tool, moved through several adjacent rooms taking measurements, and then came back.

  “Curious,” he said at last.

  “What is?” D’Agosta asked.

  But Pendergast had turned away from the table and walked over to a long wall covered with polished mahogany bookcases, punctuated here and there by objets d’art mounted on plinths. He walked along the bookcases slowly, then stepped back a moment, like a dilettante studying a painting in a museum. D’Agosta watched, wondering what he was up to.

  Two days ago, when Pendergast had reappeared mere minutes before he was to be blown sky-high, D’Agosta had felt mostly a huge rush of relief that he wasn’t, after all, going to die in a most humiliating and ignominious way. Since then, he’d had plenty of time to think, and his feelings had become a lot more complicated.

  “Hey, listen, Pendergast—” he began.

  “One moment, Vincent.” Pendergast lifted a small Roman bust from its stand, then replaced it. He continued down the row of bookcases, pushing here, prodding there. After a few moments, he paused. One book in particular seemed to get his attention. He reached for it, slid it out, and peered into the empty slot left by its absence. He snaked a hand into the space, felt around, and appeared to press something. There was a loud snick of a lock and then the entire section of bookshelf rolled forward, disengaging itself from the wall.

  “Remind you of a certain library we both know, Vincent?” Pendergast murmured as he swung the shelf away on well-oiled hinges.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “Certain inconsistencies in the blueprints for this condo made me suspicious that it might contain a hidden space. My measurements proved it. And this book—” he held up a tattered copy of J. H. Patterson’s Man-Eaters of Tsavo—“seemed too appropriate to be overlooked. As for what I’ve found—don’t you think there is still a large piece missing from this puzzle?”

  “Um, no, not really.”

  “No? What about the heads?”

  “The police think—” D’Agosta paused. “Oh, Jesus. Not here.”

  “Oh, yes—here.” Pulling a flashlight from his pocket and snapping it on, Pendergast stepped into the dark space revealed by the swinging bookcase. D’Agosta followed, suppressing a sense of dread.

  A small alcove led to a mahogany door. Pendergast opened it to reveal a tiny, odd-shaped room, about six feet wide by fifteen feet long, paneled in wood with a Persian runner. As Pendergast’s flashlight beam licked over the room, D’Agosta’s gaze was immediately transfixed by a bizarre sight: the right-hand wall held a series of plaques, and mounted on each plaque was a human head, beautifully preserved, glass eyes gleaming, the skin a fresh, natural color, the hair carefully combed and coiffed, the faces waxwork-like in their strange stillness of perfection—and, most grotesque of all, each head had been given a faint smile. There was an odor of formalin in the air.

  Beneath each plaque, a small brass plate had been screwed into the wall, engraved with a name. Revolted, yet fascinated despite himself, D’Agosta followed the FBI agent down the grisly corridor space. GRACE OZMIAN read the plate under the first head: a bleach-blond girl with a remarkably pretty face, red lipstick, and green eyes; MARC CANTUCCI read the plaque beneath the second head: an older, graying, heavyset man with brown eyes and a queer, wry little smile. And so it went, the procession of mounted heads leading to the rear of the secret room, until the two arrived at a single, empty plaque. There was a brass plate already in place below it. ALOYSIUS PENDERGAST read the legend engraved on it.

  At the very end of the room stood a leather wing chair with a small accent table beside it on which sat a cut-glass decanter and a brandy snifter. Next to the table was a standing lamp of Tiffany glass. Pendergast reached over and pulled the cord. The room was suddenly illuminated in soft light, the six mounted heads throwing ghoulish shadows across the ceiling.

  “Ozmian’s trophy room,” Pendergast murmured as he slipped his flashlight back into his pocket.

  D’Agosta swallowed. “Crazy son of a bitch.” He couldn’t tear his eyes from the empty plaque at the end of the row—the one that had been intended for Pendergast.

  “Crazy, yes, but a man with extraordinary criminal skills—in breaching security, hiding in plain sight, disappearing almost without a trace. Take, for example, the very expensive silicone mask he must have used to impersonate Roland McMurphy. Combine those skills with extreme intelligence, a perfect absence of compassion and empathy, and a high degree of ambition, and you get a psychopath of the highest order.”

  “But here’s one thing I don’t understand,” D’Agosta said. “How did he get into Cantucci’s place? I mean, the town house was a fortress, and that security specialist Marvin and everyone else said only an employee of Sharps and Gund could have gotten past all
the alarms and countermeasures.”

  “Not so formidable for a computer genius like Ozmian, with a stable of prize hackers—not just extremely well paid, but some being blackmailed by Ozmian for their previous hactivist crimes—at his beck and call, in one of the most sophisticated and powerful dot-com companies in the world, with access to all the latest digital tools. Look what he and his people did to frame that reporter, Harriman. A diabolical piece of work. Having a brain trust like that on hand would make getting inside Cantucci’s residence not so difficult.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense.”

  Pendergast turned to leave.

  “Um, Pendergast?”

  The agent turned. “Yes, Vincent?”

  “I think I owe you an apology.”

  Pendergast arched his eyebrows in query.

  “I was stupid, I was desperate for answers, I had everyone from the mayor on down climbing up my ass…I bought that damned reporter’s theory hook, line, and sinker. And then I mouthed off at you when you tried to warn me the theory was bogus—”

  Pendergast raised a hand to silence him. “My dear Vincent. Harriman’s story seemed to fit the facts, it was an attractive theory as far as it went, and you weren’t the only one taken in. A lesson for all of us: things are not always as they seem.”

  “That’s for sure.” D’Agosta glanced at the grisly row of trophy heads. “Not in a million years would I have guessed this.”

  “And that’s why our Behavioral Science Unit wasn’t able to profile the man. Because he wasn’t, psychologically speaking, a serial killer. He was truly sui generis.”