City of Endless Night (Pendergast #17)(9)

“What?” he asked.

“You should be prepared to identify your daughter by bodily markings—dermatological peculiarities, tattoos, surgical scars. Or by means other than her body. Her clothing and possessions, for example.”

Ozmian blinked. “I don’t understand.”

“Your daughter was found decapitated. We…have not yet recovered the head.”

Ozmian stared at Pendergast for a long moment. Then his eyes swiveled over, seeking out D’Agosta.

“Why?” he whispered.

“That is a question we would like very much to answer,” said Pendergast.

Ozmian remained sunken in the chair. Finally he said: “Give the address of the morgue to my assistant on the way out and the location where you wish to question me. I’ll be there at two PM.”

“Very well,” said Pendergast.

“Now leave me.”





5

MARC CANTUCCI JERKED awake just as the airplane in his dream was about to plunge into the ocean. He lay there in the dark, his racing heart slowing as the familiar and comfortable surroundings of his bedroom took shape around him. He was damn tired of this same dream, in which he was in a jet hijacked by terrorists. They had invaded the cockpit and locked the door, and moments later the plane violently nosed down and went into a sickening plunge under full power toward the distant stormy sea, while out of his window he watched the black water rushing closer and closer, knowing the end was inevitable.

He lay in bed, wondering if he should turn on the light and read for a bit, or try to go back to sleep. What time was it? The room was very dark and the steel shutters on the windows were down, making it impossible to get a sense of the hour. He reached for his cell phone, which he kept on his bedside table. Where the hell was it? He couldn’t have forgotten to leave it there; his habits were as regular as a clock. But maybe he had, because it sure as hell wasn’t at hand.

Now too irritated to sleep, he sat up and turned on the bedside light, looking around for the phone. He threw off the covers, got out of bed, examined the floor around the table where it might have fallen, and finally went over to the wooden valet rack where he had hung his pants and jacket. A quick check showed it wasn’t there, either. This was becoming more than annoying.

He didn’t keep a bedside clock, but the alarm system had an LCD clock on it, so he went over and slid open the panel. And now he had a most unpleasant surprise: the panel was dark, the LCD screen blank, the alarm-activated light off. And yet the power in the house was on and the CCTV system, beside the alarm panel, was still working. Very strange.

For the first time, Cantucci felt a twinge of fear. The alarm system was the latest and best money could buy; it not only was hardwired into the house but had its own power supply and no less than two backups in case of power failures or technical problems, along with landline, cellular, and satphone connections to the off-site alarm company.

But here it was—not working.

Cantucci, the former New Jersey AG who had brought down the Otranto crime family before turning mob lawyer himself for the rival Bonifacci family, and who had received more blood-oaths of vengeance than he could count, was naturally concerned about his security.

The CCTV screen was working just fine, doing its usual thing, automatically cycling through all the cameras in the building. There were twenty-five of them, five for each floor of the brownstone in which he lived in, by himself, on East Sixty-Sixth Street. He had a bodyguard who stayed in the house with him during the day, but the man left when the steel shutters automatically descended at seven every evening, turning the house into an impregnable mini-fortress.

As he watched the cameras cycle through each floor, he suddenly saw something bizarre. Punching a key to stop the cycling, he looked at the image with horror. The camera in question covered the main front hallway of the house—and it revealed an intruder. It was a man, dressed in a black leotard, with a black mask over his face. He was carrying a compound bow with four feathered arrows racked in it. A fifth arrow was fitted into the bow and he carried it ahead of him, as if ready to shoot. The bastard looked as if he thought he was Batman and Robin Hood rolled into one.

This was just fucking crazy. How did the guy get past the steel shutters? And how did he get in without setting off the alarm?

Cantucci punched the instant-alarm panic button, but of course it didn’t work. And his cell phone was gone—a coincidence? He reached for a nearby landline phone and put the receiver to his ear. Dead.

As the man moved out of the camera’s field of view, Cantucci quickly punched in the next camera. At least the CCTV was working.

Now that he thought of it, he wondered why the man hadn’t disabled that, as well.

The figure was heading for the elevator. As Cantucci watched, the figure paused before it, then reached out a black-gloved hand and pushed a button. Cantucci heard the mechanism hum as the elevator descended from its position on the fifth floor, where his bedroom was, to the first.

Cantucci immediately mastered his fright. Six attempts had been made on his life; all had failed. This one was the craziest yet, and it would fail, too. The electricity was still on; he could freeze the elevator with the push of a button, leaving the man trapped—but no. No.

Moving fast, Cantucci whipped on a bathrobe, opened his bedside drawer, and took out a Beretta M9 and an extra fifteen-round magazine, which he dropped into the pocket of the robe. The gun already had a full magazine with a round in the chamber—he kept it that way—but he checked anyway. All good.