City of Endless Night (Pendergast #17)(19)

“Another obvious line for follow-up.”

“Of course. The boy’s mother committed suicide, the father supposedly moved back east. We’re trying to figure out just where he is so we can talk to him.”

“You consider him a suspect?”

“He’s got a strong motive.”

“When did he come east?”

“About six months ago. We’re keeping it all under the radar, for obvious reasons, until we locate him.”

They descended once again to the first floor, where Pendergast turned to Curry and the small group of police who stood with him. “I’ll have a look at those files now, if you please.”

Curry pulled an accordion folder out of his briefcase and handed it to Pendergast. The agent promptly sat down in a chair, opened it, and began leafing through it, pulling out files, eyeballing them, putting them back in rapid succession.

D’Agosta glanced covertly at his watch. Ten minutes after twelve. “Um,” he said, “that’s a pretty big file. Maybe you’d like to take it home with you? It’s all yours.”

Pendergast looked up, his silvery eyes glittering with annoyance. “I wish to make sure I’ve overlooked nothing before I leave the premises.”

“Right, right.”

He fell into silence as Pendergast continued shuffling through the papers. Everyone waited with increasing impatience as the minutes ticked by.

Suddenly Pendergast looked up: “Where’s Mr. Cantucci’s cell phone?”

“It says right there in the report that they didn’t find it. Calls roll over to voice mail. The phone is turned off. We don’t know where the hell it is.”

“It should have been on his bedside table, where the charger was.”

“He probably left it somewhere.”

“You searched his office?”

“Yes.”

“Our Mr. Cantucci has survived two grand jury hearings and he’s been subjected to over a dozen search warrants—not to mention countless death threats. He would not let his cell phone out of his sight. Ever.”

“Okay. So what’re you getting at?”

“The killer took his phone. Before he was murdered.”

“How do you figure that?”

“The killer came upstairs, took his cell phone from his bedside table while Cantucci was sleeping, then went back downstairs to the first floor.”

“That’s crazy. If he did that, why the hell didn’t he just kill Cantucci right there, in bed?”

“A most excellent question.”

“Maybe he took the cell phone off Cantucci after he killed him.”

“Impossible. Mr. Cantucci would have called nine-one-one on the cell phone when he realized there was an intruder in the house. The conclusion is inescapable that he did not have his phone when he woke and pursued the intruder.”

D’Agosta shook his head.

“And there’s a second unaddressed mystery here, Vincent.”

“Which is?”

“Why did the killer go to great lengths to disable the alarm system, yet fail to shut down the CCTV system?”

“That one’s easy,” said D’Agosta. “He used the system to locate his victim—to see where Cantucci was in the house.”

“But having retrieved the phone, he already knew where his victim was: in bed, sleeping.”

That assumed Pendergast was right in his crazy assertion that the killer took the cell phone and then went back downstairs without killing Cantucci immediately. “Sorry—don’t buy it.”

“Consider what our Mr. Cantucci did when he woke up. He did not call nine-one-one—because he couldn’t find his phone. He realized the alarm system had been deactivated, but the CCTV was still operating. He immediately retrieved his gun and used the CCTV system to locate the intruder. He found him—and saw that he was armed with a hunting bow. Our Mr. Cantucci, on the other hand, had a handgun with a fifteen-round magazine, and he was an expert in its use. Your own files indicate he was a champion small-arms competitor. He assumed his gun and his skills far outmatched the intruder’s hunting bow. That encouraged him to stalk the intruder, and I would submit to you that this is exactly what the intruder wanted. It was a setup. The victim was then surprised and killed.”

“How can you know all this?”

“My dear Vincent, there’s no other way it could have occurred! This entire scenario was expertly choreographed by an individual who remained calm, methodical, and unrushed throughout. This was not a professional hit man. This was someone far more sophisticated.”

D’Agosta shrugged. If Pendergast wanted to go off on a tangent, that was his prerogative—it wouldn’t be the first time. “So let me ask you again: if you’re right about the cell phone, then why not just kill the guy in bed?”

“Because his goal wasn’t merely to kill.”

“So what was it?”

“That, my dear Vincent, is the very question we must answer.”





12

ANTON OZMIAN TOOK his breakfast at 6 AM in his office—a pot of organic pu-erh tea, the scrambled egg whites from two free-range Indian Runner ducks, and a one-ounce piece of bitter 100 percent cacao chocolate. This breakfast had not varied in ten years. Ozmian had to make many difficult business decisions in the course of a day, and to compensate he organized the rest of his life to be as decision-free as possible—starting with breakfast.