Bloodless (Aloysius Pendergast #20)(52)
Delaplane arrived first, leading the phalanx of specialists carrying their equipment.
“The area over there,” Pendergast said, “is where the incident occurred. To be safe, you should cordon off that half acre of ground between those two paths.”
Delaplane called for police tape to be strung around the indicated spot while the CSI team suited up and got to work. Sheldrake came over, nodded to Pendergast and Coldmoon. “Mind if I borrow your witness?”
“Be our guest.”
Sheldrake and Delaplane went off with the unhappy Manning, recorder in hand. Coldmoon turned to Pendergast. “What do you think?”
“I shall ponder the mystery while I take a walk. If you could remain here in case of any untoward events, I should be grateful.”
Coldmoon was used to this—the same thing had happened in a Miami cemetery. “Sure thing.”
Pendergast went off, hands behind his back, almost as if he were setting out on his daily constitutional. Not long after he vanished, Coldmoon heard a fresh commotion. Turning toward it, he saw a film crew arriving, with cameras and sound gear. It was that man Betts.
The group approached the police cordon, and Coldmoon watched as Betts argued with some cops who stopped him. Betts was with the other guy Coldmoon remembered from their encounter in the county plaza: the tall, serious one. What was his name? The man had a suitcase with him and was already opening it, laying out a piece of black velvet and removing all kinds of weird contraptions. In the distance, more press were arriving.
It appeared word had gotten out, big time.
Coldmoon walked over to see what he could do to help the cops deal with the press.
The supernatural guy—now he remembered his name, Moller—had taken a silver dowsing stick out of a velvet bag. He began circling the police cordon with it, both film-crew cameras trained on him. “I sense,” he was saying in a deep voice, “I sense…a strong supernatural turbulence.” The silver stick was trembling, jerking, almost as if under a power of its own. “Very strong.”
What a load of ?heslí, thought Coldmoon, although despite himself he had to admit it was a fairly impressive act. The cops along the cordon were certainly engrossed, although it was hard to tell whether they bought it or not.
“Something evil happened here,” Moller said, his voice climbing a notch as the silver contraption pointed toward the center of the roped-off area. “Happened very recently. The turbulence is fierce!”
“Stay behind the line, sir,” warned one of the cops.
The silver wand trembled and jerked. The man’s body was starting to twitch. The cameras closed in.
“It is here!” He moved toward the police tape and was again gently blocked by the cops.
“The evil! The evil!” he whispered fiercely.
Other press were arriving, but the show being put on by Moller was so absorbing that they had stopped to watch. Some were even taking notes and photographs of him, as if he, and not the scene of the crime, were the news.
Suddenly the silver wand flew out of Moller’s hands, as if yanked by an invisible string. It was a cute move, because to Coldmoon it really did look as if something invisible had pulled it away, instead of him throwing it through some sleight of hand. Moller, as if released from an unpleasant trance, halted, took a deep breath, seemed to slump, and then recovered, wiping his brow with a silk handkerchief. Retrieving the dowsing stick, he then retreated to his suitcase and removed a large box camera, which he set up on a tripod. He then took out a strange piece of smoked glass—upon closer look it appeared to be a slab of crystal, cut and polished—that he raised in front of his face and gazed through, peering here and there across the area being searched by the CSI squad.
“The evil, become visible,” he muttered. He began to tremble. One of the camera operators followed his movement, shooting close over his shoulder.
Coldmoon noticed that Betts had disappeared. He looked around and saw him deep in the vegetation, having used the diversion to slip inside the police cordon. He was with the second camera operator, filming something else.
“Hey!” Coldmoon cried, pointing and striding in Betts’s direction. “Get out of there! Back behind the tape!”
Several cops turned and began jogging over as Betts and the cameraperson scurried off into the undergrowth, ducking back under the police line.
Coldmoon walked over to where they had been filming but didn’t see anything of note beyond another old mausoleum with a broken door. The abandoned part of the cemetery continued into the overgrowth, the tombstones split and lying on their sides, the pathways so poorly tended as to have disappeared.
He returned to find Pendergast approaching at a brisk walk from an unexpected direction.
“Find anything?” Coldmoon asked as he came up.
“Nothing.”
“Too bad.”
“On the contrary,” Pendergast said as he adjusted his cuffs. “It was most edifying.”
36
FROM BEHIND HER MONITOR, it looked to Gannon like half the Savannah PD had been called out to keep the crowds behind the police cordon. The loud, zoo-like atmosphere contrasted with the stateliness of the old cemetery, with its ranks of mossy tombs speckled in sunlight, slumbering beneath giant oaks. Behind the tape, the police were still working diligently, the CSI team searching the area meticulously. Despite the activity, Gannon noticed that the weird FBI agent and his sidekick had disappeared, along with that officious police commander.