City of Endless Night (Pendergast #17)(47)

“I’ve still got a lot of analysis to do.”

“Prelim?”

“Well, seems both the victims were beheaded standing up.”

“How do you know?”

“The blood on the ceiling. That’s sixteen feet. It shot straight up, arterial jetting. In order for it to reach that height, their heart rate and blood pressure must’ve been sky-high.”

“What would cause that? The high blood pressure, I mean.”

“I’d say these two knew what was coming, at least during the last few moments. They were made to stand up and knew they were about to be decapitated, and that produced an extremity of terror that would have resulted in spikes in both blood pressure and heart rate. Again, that’s my first impression only.”

D’Agosta tried to wrap his head around it. “Chopped off with what?”

Martinelli nodded. “Right over there.”

D’Agosta turned and there it was: a medieval weapon of some kind, lying on the floor, its blade completely covered in blood.

“It’s called a bearded ax. Viking. Replica, of course. Razor-sharp.”

D’Agosta glanced at Pendergast, but he was even more opaque than usual inside the Tyvek suit.

“Why didn’t they scream? Nobody heard anything.”

“We’re pretty sure a secondary weapon was involved. Probably a firearm. Used in a threatening way to keep them quiet. On top of that, those doors are extremely thick, and the entire suite is heavily soundproofed.”

D’Agosta shook his head. It was the craziest thing, killing the twin CEOs of a major company right in their own offices at the busiest time of day, with cameras running and a thousand people around. He looked again at Pendergast. In contrast to his usual poking and prying about with tweezers and test tubes, this time he was silent, and as calm as if he were out for a stroll in the park. “So, Pendergast, you got any questions? Anything you want to look at? Evidence?”

“Not at present, thank you.”

“I’m just the blood spatter guy,” Martinelli said, “but it would seem to me the killer’s sending some kind of message. The Post is saying that—”

D’Agosta cut him off with a gesture. “I know what the Post is saying.”

“Right, sorry.”

Pendergast now spoke at last. “Mr. Martinelli, wouldn’t the perpetrator be covered in blood after decapitating two standing people?”

“You’d think so. But the handle is unusually long on that ax, and if he stood at some distance, decapitated each of them with one clean swipe, and if he were agile enough to jump aside to avoid the jetting arterial blood as the bodies fell, he might just get away without being splattered.”

“Would you say he was proficient in the use of that ax?”

“If you look at it that way, yes. It’s not easy to decapitate someone with a single blow, especially if they’re standing up. And to do it without getting covered in blood—yeah, I would say that takes serious practice.”

D’Agosta shuddered.

“Thank you, that is all,” said Pendergast.

*

They met up with the SEC guy in the security office in the basement. On their way down, passing through the lobby, they had seen a crowd in front of the building. At first D’Agosta thought it was the usual unruly press, and it was that, of course, but more. The waving signs and muffled chanting indicated it was some sort of demonstration against the one percent. Damn New Yorkers, any excuse to protest.

“Chat over there?” he said, indicating a seating area in the waiting room. The NYPD techies were downloading and preparing the last of the security footage.

“As good as any.”

The three of them took their seats, the SEC guy, Pendergast, and D’Agosta.

“So, Agent Meldrum,” D’Agosta said. “Brief us on the SEC investigation.”

“Of course.” Meldrum handed over a card. “I’ll have copies of our files sent over to you.”

“Thank you.”

“The Burches are, or rather were, a married couple—twenty-two years. Back during the financial crisis they set up an investment scheme that took advantage of people with distressed mortgages. It collapsed in 2012 and they were arrested.”

“And they didn’t go to jail?”

Meldrum engaged in a mirthless stretching of the lips. “Jail? I’m sorry, Lieutenant, where have you been these past ten years? I can’t tell you how many cases I’ve worked on where, instead of prosecuting, we negotiated a settlement and levied a fine. These two swindlers got slapped on the wrist and quickly opened a new rip-off shop—LFX Financial.”

“Which does what?”

“Targets the spouses of soldiers and retired vets. Two basic swindling schemes. You got a soldier overseas. The spouse—usually a wife—is stateside, having a tough time economically. So you get the wife to take out a balloon mortgage on the house. Small initial payments, then the rate resets to what they can’t afford. LFX takes the house, flips it, rakes in the bucks.”

“Legal?”

“Mostly. Except there are special rules about foreclosing on a soldier on active duty that they didn’t follow. That’s where I come in.”

“And the second scheme?”