*

Sitting once again in the back of the Rolls, D’Agosta watched as Proctor drove into a public parking area adjacent to the beach about half a mile south of the victim’s house. The man got out, released a precise amount of air from the tires, then got back in, gunning the engine and shooting down a sandy lane that provided vehicle access to the beach. Soon the Rolls was flying north along the strand, the booming Atlantic on their right, the mansions of the rich on their left. In a moment D’Agosta could see Pendergast’s slender figure standing on the end of a rocky breakwater. As Proctor slewed to a stop, Pendergast came back along the breakwater, strode up the beach, and slid into the backseat.

“He came and went by small craft, which he hid next to that breakwater,” Pendergast said, pointing. Then he pulled open his own folding desk, which held a slim MacBook, which he opened and used to call up Google Earth. “The assassin, leaving the scene of the crime, was extremely vulnerable and exposed out on the water, even at night. He would have disposed of his boat at the earliest opportunity. And it all would have been planned ahead of time.”

He peered at the Google Earth image, moving it around their current location. “Vincent, look—there’s an inlet right here, just six miles away, leading into Sagaponack Pond. And just inside the inlet is a marshland with a public parking area immediately adjacent.” He leaned toward the front seat. “Proctor, please drive there posthaste. Sagaponack Pond. Don’t bother with the road—take the beach.”

“Yes, sir.”

D’Agosta gripped his seat as the Rolls accelerated, performed a slewing U-turn in a fountain of sand, and then roared down the beach at high speed, just within the high-tide area where the sand was harder. As they picked up speed, rocking from side to side, the car was buffeted by wind and sea spray from the ocean and occasionally plowed through a skimming of water from a retreating wave, throwing up a curtain of spray. They passed an elderly couple walking hand in hand, who stared at them slack-jawed as the 1959 Silver Wraith boomed past at close to sixty miles an hour.

In less than ten minutes they had arrived at the inlet, where the beach stopped and another breakwater led out into the gray and foaming Atlantic. Proctor brought the Rolls to a shuddering halt, fishtailing in another great spray of sand. Before it had even come to rest, Pendergast was out the door and striding up the beach, D’Agosta once again running to keep up. He was astonished at Pendergast’s energy after the previous days of apathy and apparent sloth. It seemed this set of murders had finally hooked him.

They hopped over a beach fence, crossed an area of scrubby dunes, and soon a sheet of slate-colored water came into view, surrounded by a broad marshland. Pendergast plunged into the marsh grass, his handmade John Lobb shoes sinking into the mucky ground. With little enthusiasm D’Agosta followed, feeling the icy mud and water invade his own Bostonians. A few times Pendergast paused to look around, his nose in the air almost like a bloodhound’s, before moving ahead in a different direction, following soggy and almost invisible animal pathways.

Suddenly they reached the edge of the marsh—and there, not twenty feet along the verge, just emerging from the brown water, was the prow of a sunken skiff.

Pendergast glanced back, his silver eyes glittering. “And now, my dear Vincent, I think we have found our first actual piece of evidence left by the killer.”

D’Agosta edged over and looked at the boat. “I’ll say.”

“No, Vincent.” Pendergast was pointing at something on the ground. “This: a clear foot impression from the killer.”

“Not the boat?”

Pendergast waved his hand impatiently. “I have no doubt it was stolen and has been thoroughly scrubbed of evidence.” He crouched in the marsh grass. “But this! A size thirteen shoe, at least.”

17

THE CONFERENCE ROOM at One Police Plaza was a big blond space on the third floor. D’Agosta had arrived early with Singleton, the deputy commissioner for public information, Mayor DeLillo, and a row of uniformed officers, so that when the press arrived they would see an impressive, solid wall of blue and gold, backed by suits and the mayor himself. The idea was to create a reassuring visual for the evening news. In his years at the NYPD, D’Agosta had seen the department move from inept, ad hoc responses to the press to this: professional, well staged, and quick to react to the latest events.

He wished he felt the same confidence in himself. The fact was that, with the rise of bloggers and digital bloviators, there was far more media now in a typical press conference, and they were less well behaved. Most of them were outright pricks, truth be told, especially among the social media crowd, and these were the people whose questions D’Agosta had to answer—with a self-assurance he didn’t feel.

As the press crowded in, the television cameras rising in the back like black insects, NBC and ABC and CNN and the rest of the alphabet soup, the print press along the front, and the digital jackasses just about everywhere, it looked like this was going to be a doozy. He was glad Singleton was leading off the briefing, but even so, D’Agosta began to sweat when he thought of his turn at the podium.

Minor arguments broke out as everyone jockeyed for the best seats. The room had been warm before the crowd arrived and it was fast heating up. In the wintertime, a crazy New York City regulation forbade them from turning on the A/C despite the fact that the ventilation in the room was abysmal.

As the sweep of the second hand on the big wall clock moved toward the hour, the mayor stepped to the podium. The television lights were on and the photographers crowded forward, elbowing each other and muttering expletives, the fluttering sound of their shutters like countless locust wings.

Mayor DeLillo gripped the sides of the podium with his big bony hands and gave the room a sweeping look of competence, resolve, and gravitas. He was a large man in every way—tall, broad, with a head of thick white hair, enormous hands, a jowly face, and large eyes glittering under bushy brows.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the press and the people of the great city of New York,” he boomed out in his legendary deep voice. “It is the policy of our police department to keep the community informed on matters of public interest. That is why we are here today. I can assure you that the entire resources of the city have been put in service of this investigation. And now Captain Singleton will speak to you about the particulars of the case.”

He yielded the podium. There was no shaking of hands; this was all serious business.

Singleton took his place at the podium, waiting for the sound level to drop toward a rustling silence.

“At two fourteen this morning,” he began, “East Hampton police responded to multiple alarms at a residence on Further Lane. They arrived to find seven bodies on the grounds and in the house of a large estate. These were the victims of a multiple homicide—six security guards and the owner of the estate, a Russian national by the name of Viktor Bogachyov. In addition, Mr. Bogachyov was found decapitated, the head gone.”

This occasioned a flurry of activity in the audience. Singleton plowed ahead. “The East Hampton police requested the assistance of the NYPD in determining whether this homicide was connected to the recent killing and decapitation of Mr. Marc Cantucci on the Upper East Side…”

Singleton droned on about the case in general terms, consulting a binder of notes that D’Agosta had put together for him. In contrast with the mayor, Singleton spoke in a monotonous, police-jargony deadpan voice—a just-the-facts-ma’am sort of tone—turning each page with a deliberate movement. He spoke for about ten minutes, outlining the bare facts of the three killings, starting with the latest and working back to the girl. As he reeled off information that almost everyone already knew, D’Agosta could feel the impatience of the crowd begin to rise. He knew his turn would be next.