“Where was the FBI these past four days? This was your fault—your fault!” His voice, starting out in a whisper, crescendoed by the end into a roar, spittle flecking his lips.
Pendergast interrupted him very quietly. “Mr. Ozmian, she was probably already dead when you reported her missing. But I can assure you that everything was done to find her. Everything.”
“Oh, you bungling dickheads always say that, you lying sons of—” His voice choked up, and it was almost as if he’d swallowed too large a piece of food; he coughed and spluttered, face turning purple. With a roar of fury he took a step forward, seized a heavy sculpture from a nearby glass table, raised it, and slammed it onto the floor. Swaying, he shambled to a whiteboard and knocked it aside, kicked over a lamp, and grabbed some kind of award made of ceramic from his own desk and heaved it down on the glass table; both shattered with a terrific crash, sending up a spray of glass splinters and clay chips that fell back like rain onto the granite floor.
At this, their escort in the dark-gray suit came running in. “What’s going on?” he asked wildly, stunned to see the ruin strewn across the office and his boss so unmanned. He looked frantically at Ozmian, then at Pendergast and D’Agosta.
His entrance seemed to trigger something in Ozmian and he halted his rampage, standing in the middle of the room, breathing hard. His forehead had been nicked by a piece of flying glass, and a dot of blood oozed from the wound.
“Mr. Ozmian—?”
Ozmian turned to the man and spoke, his voice hoarse but calm. “Get out. Lock the door. Find Isabel. Nobody comes in but her.”
“Yes, sir.” He almost ran out.
Ozmian suddenly burst into tears, racked by hysterical sobs. D’Agosta, after hesitating, finally stepped forward and grasped his arm, again helping him to sit down in the chair, where he crumpled up, hugging himself and rocking back and forth, sobbing and gasping.
A minute or two later, he began to pull out of it. He jerked a handkerchief from his pocket, carefully wiped his face, and collected himself for a long moment, sitting in silence.
In a flat voice, he spoke. “Tell me everything.”
D’Agosta cleared his throat and took over. He explained how two kids had found the body in the garage, hidden in leaves, and how the homicide division jumped on it. He had put on a full CSU team, headed by the best in the business, and he described how more than forty detectives were now working the case. The entire homicide division was giving this its highest priority, with the full cooperation of the FBI. He laid it on as thick as he dared as the man listened, face bowed.
“Do you have any theories about who did it?” he asked when D’Agosta was done.
“Not yet, but we will. We’re going to find the person who did this; you have my word.” He faltered, wondering how he was going to tell him about the decapitation. He couldn’t quite seem to work in that detail, but before this meeting was over he knew that he had to; the newspapers would be full of it. And, most awful of all, the man would be asked to identify a headless body — the body of his daughter. They knew it was her from the fingerprints, but the physical ID process was still the law, even if, in this case, it seemed unnecessary and cruel.
“After you identify the body,” D’Agosta went on, “if you feel able, we would like to interview you — the sooner the better. We’ll need to learn about her acquaintances that you know of, names and contact info; we’ll want to hear about any difficulties in her life, or in your business or personal life — anything that might possibly connect to the killing. As unpleasant as all these questions will be, I’m sure you understand why we have to ask them. The more we know, the sooner we’ll catch the person or persons responsible. Naturally you may have an attorney present if you wish, but it’s not necessary.”
Ozmian hesitated. “Now?”
“We’d prefer to interview you up at Police Plaza, if you don’t mind. After you’ve…made the identification. Perhaps later this afternoon, if you feel capable?”
“Look, I…I’m ready to help. Murdered…Oh, God help me…”
“There’s one other thing,” said Pendergast in a low voice that instantly caused Ozmian to pause. The tycoon raised his face from his hands and looked at Pendergast, fear in his eyes.
“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.