Proctor never ignored his instincts.
He climbed the stairs to the second floor. Skirting the moth-eaten, stuffed chimpanzee with no lips, he scanned the doors up and down the hall. All closed. His eyes rested momentarily on the painting of a deer being torn apart by wolves, then moved on.
All was well.
Returning to the first floor, he went back to the library, reactivated the motion sensors, picked up Rogue Male, sat down in a chair strategically positioned toward a mirror on a far wall that allowed him a view out of the library and across the entire reception area.
He opened the book and pretended to read.
As he did so, he maintained his senses on highest alert—especially his sense of smell. Proctor had a supernaturally keen sense of smell, almost as good as a deer’s. It was not something most humans anticipated, and it had saved his life more than once.
Half an hour passed without one thing to arouse his suspicions. He realized it must have been a false alarm. But—never one to make assumptions—he closed the book, yawned, and walked over to the secret bookcase entrance to the elevator that descended into the basement. He rode the elevator down and walked along the narrow basement corridor of undressed stone, the walls covered with niter, damp, and lime.
He turned a corner, pressed himself noiselessly into a recess, and waited.
Nothing.
Slowly, he inhaled, his nose testing the currents of air. But there was no human smell in it, no strange eddies or unexpected warmth; nothing but the chill damp.
Now Proctor began to feel a little foolish. His isolation, his unaccustomed role as protector and tutor, had put him on edge. Nobody could be following him. The bookcase entrance had closed behind him and had clearly not been reopened. The elevator he had taken remained in the basement; no one had called it back to the first floor. Even if someone were on the first floor, they could not possibly have followed him into the basement.
Gradually, under these thoughts, the feeling of alarm began to subside. It was safe to descend to the sub-basement.
Stepping down the corridor to the small stone room, he pressed on the Pendergastian crest. The hidden door opened. He stepped through and waited until it snugged back shut again. Then he descended the long curving staircase and began making his way through the many strange rooms that made up the sub-basement, full of glass bottles, rotting tapestries, dried insects, medicines, and other bizarre collections of Enoch Leng. He hurried to the heavy, iron-banded door that opened into Tristram’s quarters.
The boy was waiting for him patiently. Patience was one of his great virtues. He could sit still, unmoving, with nothing to do, for many hours. It was a quality Proctor admired.
“I brought you a book,” Proctor said.
“Thank you!” The boy rose and took it with eagerness, looking at it, turning it over. “What’s it about?”
Proctor suddenly had a twinge of doubt. Was this really the right book for someone whose brother was a serial killer? That hadn’t occurred to him before. He cleared his throat. “It’s about a man who stalks and tries to kill a dictator. He’s caught and escapes.” He paused. His description didn’t make it seem very interesting. “I’ll read you the first chapter.”
“Please!” Tristram sat down on the bed, waiting.
“Stop me if there are any words you don’t understand. And when I’m done, we’ll talk about the chapter. You’ll have questions—be sure to ask them.” Proctor settled into a chair, opened the book, cleared his throat, and started to read.
“I cannot blame them. After all, one doesn’t need a telescopic sight to shoot boar or bear…”
Suddenly, Proctor felt something behind him: a presence. He spun and leapt up, clapping his hand on his weapon, but the figure vanished back into the darkness of the corridor even before his hand had touched the gun. But the image of the face he’d seen was engraved on his mind. It was the face of Tristram—only keener and more blade-like.
Alban.
42
SUPERVISORY SPECIAL AGENT PETER S. JOYCE’S OFFICE WAS one of the more cluttered in the big building at 26 Federal Plaza. The shelves were filled with books about American history, the criminal justice system, and nautical lore; the walls were decorated with photos of his weather-beaten thirty-two-foot sloop, the Burden of Proof. Joyce’s desk, however, was completely bare, like the deck of a ship cleared for an approaching gale. The office’s lone window looked out into the Lower Manhattan night—Joyce was a confirmed night owl, and he always saved his most serious work of the day for the last.
There was a soft knock at the door.
“Enter,” Joyce said.
The door opened and Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast came in. He shut the door quietly behind him, then stepped forward and slipped into the single chair placed before Joyce’s desk.
Joyce felt a twinge of annoyance that the man had seated himself before being asked, but he covered it up. He had more important things to say.
“Agent Pendergast,” Joyce began. “In the three years since I was transferred to the New York field office, I’ve tolerated your, shall we say, unconventional behavior as an agent—often against the advice of others. I’ve run interference for you on more than one occasion, backed up your methods when others have wanted to call you on the carpet. I’ve done this for a variety of reasons. I’m not a stickler for protocol. I’m no lover of the FBI’s fondness for bureaucracy. I’m more interested in results—and you’ve rarely disappointed in that regard. You may be unconventional, but you’re damn effective. Your military experience is highly impressive—at least from what I’ve seen of the nonclassified reports in your folder. And there is an extremely complimentary appraisal in your folder, written by the late Michael Decker, one of the most decorated and honored agents in recent memory. I’ve frequently thought back to that appraisal when complaints of your behavior have crossed my desk.”
He sat forward, put his arms on the desk, and tented his fingers. “But now, Agent Pendergast, you’ve done something that I can’t ignore, and that I can’t tolerate. You have stepped way, way over the line.”
“Are you referring to Agent Gibbs’s formal complaint?” Pendergast asked.
If Joyce was surprised by this, he didn’t show it. “Only in part.” He hesitated. “I’m no friend of Agent Gibbs or the BSU. His assertions about your freelancing, your failure to coordinate, deviating from standard procedure, not being a team player, don’t really concern me.” He made a dismissive motion. “But his other charges are more serious. Your involving yourself in this case without waiting for official authorization, for example. You of all people should know that Gibbs is only on the case because the New York City police specifically asked for help from the BSU. You’re not affiliated with Behavioral Sciences—your business with this case is obscure, and your efforts to have yourself assigned to it have seriously ruffled some feathers around here. Yet even that, I might have been able to overlook—but I can’t overlook your most egregious infraction.”
“Which is?” Pendergast repeated.
“Withholding information of critical relevance to the case.”
“And may I ask what that information is?”
“That the Hotel Killer is your own son.”
Pendergast went rigid.