Crimson Shore (Agent Pendergast, #15)(36)

The badge vanished back into Pendergast’s pocket. “Why were you following me?”

“I heard a scream, and then I see some crazy mother covered in mud, creeping through my woods, and all this two days after somebody’s been murdered and cut up not five miles from here—you’re damn right I’m going to follow that man and ask him his business.”

Pendergast nodded, tucking away the Les Baer. “My apologies for scattering your flowers. Atropa belladonna, I see. Deadly nightshade. Are you intending, like the wife of Claudius, to poison someone with it?”

“I’ve no idea who Claudius is, or his damn wife for that matter. I supply an herbal pharmacologist with it—for tinctures, decoctions, powders. It’s still compounded for gastrointestinal disorders, in case you didn’t know. These woods are full of it.”

“You are a botanist, then?”

“I’m a guy trying to make a living. Can I get up now?”

“Please. With my apologies.”

The man stood up, brushing leaves and twigs off himself. He was at least six and a half feet tall, lean, with a keen face, dark brown skin, blade-like nose, and incongruous green eyes. Pendergast could see from the way he carried himself that he had once been in the military.

The man held out his hand. “Paul Silas.”

They shook.

“I need to find a telephone,” said Pendergast.

“I got one at my place. Truck’s just down the road, if you want a ride.”

“If you please.”

Pendergast followed him through the woods until they reached the narrow road, the truck parked on the shoulder. Pendergast was displeased to be refused entry into the plush, leather-bound cab interior; instead, Silas asked him to ride in the pickup bed, like a dog. A few minutes later the pickup truck pulled into a dirt drive leading to a small log cabin in the woods, not far from the edge of the marsh about a half mile outside Dill Town.

The man led the way inside, turned on the lights. “Phone’s over there.”

Pendergast picked it up, dialed 911, gave a brief report to the dispatcher, and in a moment had been connected to Sergeant Gavin. He relayed the information to Gavin at length, then hung up. He glanced at his watch: almost three AM.

“They won’t be able to get far in those marshes now,” said Silas. “At half tide those currents run ten, twelve knots.”

“They’ll begin searching at high tide, with motor skiffs.”

“Makes sense. Are you going to join in the search?”

“I will. If I might trouble you for a ride into Exmouth?”

“No problem. But first, since we’ve got some time, you’d better dry out a bit.” Silas opened a woodstove and chucked in two pieces of wood. As Pendergast moved to settle himself down, Silas turned. “Um, if you don’t mind, not the sofa. The wooden rocking chair is plenty comfy.”

Pendergast sat in the rocking chair.

“You look like you might need a shot of bourbon.”

A hesitation. “What kind, pray tell?”

Silas laughed. “Discriminating, are we? Pappy Van Winkle twenty-year-old. I don’t allow rotgut on the premises.”

Pendergast inclined his head. “That will suffice.”

Silas disappeared into the kitchen and came back out with a bottle of bourbon and two glasses. He plunked them on the coffee table, filled one, then the other.

“I am much obliged to you, Mr. Silas,” said Pendergast, taking up the glass.

Silas took a delicate sip. “So you were out there investigating the murder of that historian?”

“I was indeed.”

“That scream back there was enough to make the devil himself fall to his knees, rosary in hand.”

Pendergast removed his map and spread it out on a nearby table. “I would like you to indicate, if you please, where you were when you heard the scream, and from what direction you think it came.”

Silas pulled the map toward him and hunched over it, his brow creased. “I was right here, in these woods, and the scream came from this direction.” He drew his finger along the map.

Pendergast made some notations. Silas’s finger lay over a section of the cone he’d previously drawn on the map. “This will help in the search for the body.” He rolled up the map. “Have you heard any rumors of someone living in the marshes?”

“Not specifically. But if I were trying to escape the law, that’s where I’d go.”

Pendergast took a sip of the bourbon. “Mr. Silas, you mentioned your family had been here two hundred years. You must know a great deal of local history.”

“Well, I’ve never much cared for genealogy and so forth. Back in the day, Dill Town was the so-called Negro end of town, mostly whaling families. But it wasn’t just African American. There was a lot of South Seas blood—Tahitian, Polynesian, Maori. I’m almost half Maori myself. The Maori were the greatest harpooners who ever lived. And then some of these sea captains had South Seas wives and families, you know, brought on board during the long voyages. They’d drop them off in Dill Town before heading into Boston to their white families. When they went back out to sea, they’d just pick them back up.” He shook his head.

“And so you are a descendant, then, of the original inhabitants of Dill Town?”