City of Endless Night (Pendergast #17)(18)
He found it a great relief he could now read the journal with a degree of detachment.
He put the journal carefully back beside the comb and the cameo: the simple, spare walls and floor of this chashitsu seemed for the time their best home, and perhaps he would return to contemplate them, and their owner, again in the not-too-distant future. But now there were other matters to deal with.
He left the teahouse, walked down the path, exited the garden, and made his way—with a brisk, firm step—down a long series of passages toward the front door of the apartment. As he did so, he slipped his cell phone out of his suit jacket and speed-dialed a number.
“Vincent?” he said. “Meet me at the Cantucci town house, if you please. I’m ready for that walk-through you spoke of.”
And then, replacing the phone, he shrugged into a vicu?a overcoat and left the apartment.
11
D’AGOSTA WASN’T ALL that thrilled to be back at the Cantucci crime scene in what was practically the middle of the night, even if it was to meet Pendergast, who had finally agreed to examine the place. Sergeant Curry let him in the front door, and a moment later D’Agosta saw Pendergast’s huge vintage Rolls glide up to the curb, Proctor at the wheel. The special agent got out.
Pendergast glided past Curry. “Good evening, my dear Vincent.”
They started down the hall. “See all these cameras?” D’Agosta asked. “The perp hacked into the security system, bypassed all the alarms.”
“I should like to see the report.”
“I’ve got a complete set for you,” D’Agosta said. “Forensics, hair and fiber, latents, you name it. Sergeant Curry will give them to you on the way out.”
“Excellent.”
“Ingress was through the front door,” D’Agosta continued. “The hacked security system let him in. The perp moved extensively through the house. Here’s the way it played out, as best we understand it. It seems that while the killer was in the entryway, Cantucci wakes up. We think Cantucci goes to the CCTV and sees the guy downstairs. He puts on his bathrobe and gets his gun, a Beretta 9mm. He thinks the guy is coming up on the elevator, so he fires a bunch of rounds through the door when the elevator arrives—but the killer faked him out, sent the elevator up empty. So now Cantucci, probably checking the CCTV again, goes down to the third floor, where the guy is messing around with a safe holding his Stradivarius violin. And that’s where Cantucci is ambushed, killed by three arrows fired in quick succession, all three going through the heart. And then the perp decapitates him—practically as the heart stops beating, if the M.E. is to be believed.”
“Must have been a rather sanguinary process.”
D’Agosta wasn’t sure what Pendergast meant by that and let it go. “The perp then goes to the attic, where the safe holding the security system is located, opens it using the hacked code, takes out the hard drives, and leaves. Egress again out the front door. According to our expert, only an employee, or ex-employee, of the company that installed the security system could have pulled this off. It’s all in the report.”
“Very good. Let us proceed, then. One floor at a time, every room on each floor, please, even those in which nothing occurred.”
D’Agosta led Pendergast through the kitchen, then the downstairs sitting room, opening all the closet doors at his request. They climbed the stairs to the second floor, toured that, and then the third. This was where most of the action had taken place. There were two rooms in the back of the narrow town house, and one large sitting room in front.
“The killing occurred at the doorway to the music room,” said D’Agosta, indicating the wall where the arrows had struck. There was a broad, thick shower of blood descending from three splintered marks in the paneled wall, and a huge pool of dried blood in the carpet below. Here Pendergast paused, kneeling. Using a penlight, he probed about, once in a while slipping a small test tube out of his suit pocket, plucking something up with tweezers, putting it in, and stoppering the tube. He then examined the rug and the arrow marks with a loupe fixed to one eye. D’Agosta didn’t bother to remind him that the CSU team had already fine-combed everything; he had seen Pendergast turn up fresh clues in even the most thoroughly scrubbed crime scene.
Once he had finished going over the immediate area of the murder, Pendergast continued on in silence, making a slow and painstaking exploration of the music room, the safe, and the two other rooms on that floor of the town house. Next, they proceeded to the upper floors, then climbed into the attic. Again, Pendergast got down on his hands and knees among the dust in front of and inside the security safe, plucking and storing evidence in test tubes.
He half rose beneath the low ceiling. “Curious,” he murmured, “very curious indeed.”
D’Agosta had no idea what he found curious but he knew if he asked, he wouldn’t get an answer. “As I said, it had to be someone who worked for Sharps and Gund. The perp knew exactly how the system worked. I mean exactly.”
“An excellent line of inquiry to follow up. Ah—regarding the other murder, do you have any further revelations about the daughter?”
“Yeah. We managed to get copies of some sealed files from the Beverly Hills PD. She killed a boy while driving under the influence about eighteen months back—hit and run. Ozmian got her off with some mighty fine lawyering. The boy’s family took it pretty hard—threats were made.”