Brimstone (Pendergast #5)(156)
Pendergast nodded. “The countess Cornelia.”
“Countess Cornelia Zangari de’ Bandi di Cesena. Most dramatic. How, I wondered, could a similarly devilish effect be duplicated? Then I thought of microwaves.”
“Microwaves?” D’Agosta repeated.
The count smiled patronizingly at him. “Yes, Sergeant. Just like your own microwave oven. They seemed perfect for my needs. Microwaves heat from the inside out. They can be focused, just like light, to—say—burn a body while leaving the rest of the environment intact. Microwaves heat water far more selectively than dry materials, fats, or oils, so they would burn a wet body before heating the rugs or furnishings. And they have an ionizing and heating effect on metals with a certain number of valence electrons.”
Fosco ran a hand over his device, then laid it on the table next to him. “As you know, Mr. Pendergast, I’m a tinkerer. I love a challenge. It’s quite simple to build a microwave transmitter that would deliver the necessary wattage. The problem was the power supply. But I. G. Farben, a German company which my family was connected with during the War, makes a marvelous combination of capacitor and battery capable of delivering the requisite charge.”
D’Agosta glanced at the microwave device. It looked almost silly, like a cheap prop to an old science fiction movie.
“It would never work as a weapon of war: the top theoretical range is less than twenty feet, and it takes time to do its work. But it suited my purposes perfectly. I had quite a time working out the kinks. Many pumpkins were sacrificed, Sergeant D’Agosta. At last, I tested it on that old pedophile in Pistoia—the one whose tomb you examined. There was a bit of a meltdown—the human body takes a lot more heating than a pumpkin. I rebuilt the device with improvements and used it more successfully on the terrorized Grove. It wasn’t quite enough to set the man on fire, but it did the job. Then I arranged the scene to my satisfaction, packed up, and left, locking everything and turning the alarm back on. With Cutforth it was even simpler. As I said, my man Pinketts had rented the apartment next door and was undertaking ‘renovations.’ He made a marvelous elderly English gentleman, poor man, all bent over and muffled up against the chill.”
“That explains why they couldn’t identify a suspect from the security video cams,” D’Agosta said.
“Pinketts used to be in the theater, which frequently comes in handy for my purposes. In any case, the weapon works beautifully through walls made of drywall and wooden studs. Microwaves, my dear Pendergast, have the marvelous property of penetrating drywall like light through glass, as long as there is no moisture or metal. There could of course be no metal nails in the wall between the two apartments, because metal absorbs microwaves and would heat up and cause a fire. So Pinketts opened our side of the wall, removed the nails, and replaced them with wooden dowels. When it was all over, he put our side of the wall back up. The whole operation was disguised as part of the remodeling job. Pinketts himself did the honors on Cutforth while I was at the opera with you. What better alibi than to contrive to spend the evening of the murder with the detective himself!” Fosco heaved in silent mirth.
“And the smell of sulfur?”
“Sulfur burned with phosphorus in a censer, injected through the wall at cracks around the molding.”
“How did you burn the images into the wall?”
“The hoofprint in Grove’s house was done directly, focusing the microwave. The image in Cutforth’s apartment had to be done indirectly—Pinketts couldn’t get into the apartment—by focusing the device against a mask. That was a little trickier, but it worked. Burned the image right through the wall. Brilliant, don’t you think?”
“You’re sick,” said D’Agosta.
“I am a tinkerer. I like nothing more than solving tricky little problems.” He grinned horribly and picked up the device. “Now please stand back. I need to adjust the range of the beam. It wouldn’t do to scorch us as well as the pumpkin.”
Fosco raised the ungainly thing, slid its leather strap over his shoulder, aimed it at the pumpkin, adjusted some knobs. Then he pressed a rudimentary kind of trigger. D’Agosta stared in horrified fascination. There was a humming noise in the capacitor—that was all.
“Right now the device is working up from its lowest setting. If that pumpkin were our victim, he would begin to experience a most awful crawling sensation in his guts and over his skin about now.”
The pumpkin remained unaffected. Fosco turned a knob, and the humming went up a notch.
“Now our victim is screaming. The crawling sensation has gotten unbearable. I imagine it’s like a stomach full of wasps, stinging endlessly. His skin, too, would start to dry and blister. The rising heat within his muscles would soon cause the neurons to begin firing, jerking his limbs spasmodically, causing him to fall down and go into convulsions. His internal temperature is soaring. Within a few more seconds he’ll be thrashing on the ground, biting off or swallowing his tongue.”
Another tick of the dial. Now a small blister appeared on the skin of the pumpkin. It seemed to soften, sag a bit. A soft pop, and the pumpkin split open from top to bottom, issuing a spurt of steam.
“Now our victim is unconscious, seconds from death.”
There was a muffled boiling sound inside the pumpkin, and the fissure widened. With a sudden wet noise, a jet of orange slime forced itself from the split, oozing over the floor in steaming rivulets.