“Where did all the leaves come from?” Pendergast asked, without much interest.

“We think the body was hidden in the bed of a pickup truck under a big pile of leaves, tied down beneath a tarp. The tarp was left in a corner, leaves and body dumped against the back wall. We’re working on interviewing the neighbors, trying to determine if anyone saw a truck or car in here. No luck so far. There’s a lot of traffic in this area, day and night.”

D’Agosta introduced Special Agent Pendergast to his detectives and Caruso, none of whom made much effort to hide their displeasure at the arrival of the FBI. Pendergast’s appearance didn’t help any, looking like he’d just returned from an Antarctic expedition.

“Okay, clear,” said Caruso, not even looking at Pendergast.

D’Agosta followed Pendergast into the garage as he strolled over to the body. The leaves had been swept away and the body lay on its back, a very prominent exit wound between the collarbones, caused no doubt by an expanding, high-powered round. The heart was obliterated; death instantaneous. Even after years of investigating murders, D’Agosta was not so hardened as to find this comforting—little comfort of any kind could be found in the death of so young a person.

He stepped back to let Pendergast do his thing, but he was surprised to see the agent not going through his usual rigmarole, with the test tubes and tweezers and loupes appearing out of nowhere and interminable fussing around. Instead, Pendergast merely walked around the body, almost listlessly, examining it from different angles, cocking his long pale head. Two times around the body, then three. By the fourth round, he didn’t even try to conceal a look of boredom.

He came back up to D’Agosta.

“Anything?” D’Agosta asked.

“Vincent, this is truly punishment. Save for the beheading itself, I don’t see anything that would mark this homicide as in the slightest degree interesting.”

They stood side by side, gazing at the corpse. And then D’Agosta heard a slight intake of breath. Pendergast suddenly knelt; the loupe finally made an appearance; and he bent over to examine the concrete floor about two feet from the corpse.

“What is it?”

The special agent didn’t answer, scrutinizing the dirty patch of cement as studiously as if it were the Mona Lisa’s smile. Now he moved to the corpse itself and took out a pair of tweezers. Bending over the severed neck, his face less than an inch from the wound, he maneuvered his tweezers under the loupe, dug them into the neck—D’Agosta almost had to turn away—and stretched out what looked like a rubber band but was obviously a large vein. He snipped off a short piece and dropped it in a test tube, dug around some more, pulled out another vein, snipped and stored it, as well. And then he spent another several minutes examining the massive wound, the tweezers and test tubes in almost constant employment.

Finally he straightened up. The bored, distant look had faded somewhat.

“What?”

“Vincent, it appears we have an authentic problem on our hands.”

“Which is?”

“The head was severed from the body right here.” He pointed downward. “You see that tiny nick in the floor?”

“There are a lot of nicks in the floor.”

“Yes, but that one has a small fragment of tissue in it. Our killer took great pains in severing the head without leaving any sign, but it is difficult work and he slipped at one point and made that tiny nick.”

“So where’s the blood? I mean, if the head was cut off here, there’d be at least some blood.”

“Ah! There was no blood because the head was cut off many, many hours or perhaps even days after the victim was shot. She had already bled out elsewhere. Look at that wound!”

“After? How long after?”

“Judging from the retraction of those veins in the neck, I should say at least twenty-four hours.”

“You mean the killer came back and cut off the head twenty-four hours later?”

“Possibly. Or else we are dealing with two individuals—who may or may not be connected.”

“Two perps? What do you mean?”

“The first individual, who killed and dumped her; and the second…who found her and took her head.”

3

LIEUTENANT D’AGOSTA PAUSED at the front door of the mansion at 891 Riverside Drive. Unlike the buildings surrounding it, which were gaily hung with Christmas lights, the Pendergast mansion, although in fine shape given its age, was dark and seemingly abandoned. A weak winter sun struggled through a thin cloud cover, casting a watery morning light over the Hudson River, beyond the screen of trees along the West Side Highway. It was a cold, depressing winter’s day.

With a deep breath he walked under the porte cochere, stepped up to the front door, and knocked. The door was opened with surprising speed by Proctor, Pendergast’s mysterious chauffeur and general factotum. D’Agosta was a bit taken aback by how thin Proctor seemed to have grown since the last time he’d seen him: normally he was a robust, even massive, presence. But his face was as expressionless as usual, and his dress—a Lacoste shirt and dark slacks—characteristically casual for a man supposedly in service.

“Hello, ah, Mr. Proctor—” D’Agosta never knew quite how to address the man. “I’m here to see Agent Pendergast?”

“He’s in the library; follow me.”

But he wasn’t in the library. The agent appeared, suddenly, in the refectory, dressed in his usual immaculate black suit. “Vincent, welcome.” He extended a hand and they shook. “Throw your coat on that chair.” Proctor, for all that he answered the door, never offered to take a coat. D’Agosta always had the feeling that he was a lot more than a servant and chauffeur, but exactly what he did, and what his relationship was to Pendergast, he could never figure out.

Vincent took off his coat and was about to drape it over his arm when, to his surprise, Proctor whisked it away. As they walked through the refectory and into the reception hall, his eye couldn’t help but fall on the vacant marble pedestal, where once a vase had stood.

“Yes, I owe you an explanation,” Pendergast said, gesturing to the pedestal. “I’m very sorry Constance gave you a blow to the head with that Ming vase.”

“Me, too,” said D’Agosta.

“You have my apologies for not providing a reason sooner. She did it to save your life.”

“Right. Okay.” The story still made no sense. Like so much connected with that crazy series of events. He glanced around. “Where is she?”

A severe look gathered on Pendergast’s face. “Away.” His icy tone discouraged any further questions.

There was an awkward silence, and then Pendergast softened and extended an arm. “Come into the library and tell me what you’ve learned.”

D’Agosta followed him across the reception hall and into a warm and beautifully appointed room, with a fire on the grate, dark-green walls, oak wainscoting, and endless shelves of old books. Pendergast indicated a wing chair on one side of the fire and took the opposite one himself. “Can I offer you a drink? I’m having green tea.”

“Um, a coffee would be great, if you have any. Regular, two sugars.”

Proctor, who had been hovering in the entrance to the library, now disappeared. Pendergast leaned back in his chair. “I understand you’ve identified the body.”

D’Agosta shifted. “Yes.”

“And?”

“Well, to my surprise we got a fingerprint match. Popped up almost right away, I presume because she’d been digitally printed when she applied for the Global Entry system—you know, the TSA’s Trusted Traveler Program? Her name’s Grace Ozmian, twenty-three years old, daughter of Anton Ozmian, the tech billionaire.”

“The name is familiar.”

“He invented part of the technology used in streaming music and video over the Internet. Founded a company called DigiFlood. Hardscrabble childhood, but he rose fast. Now he’s rich as hell. Anytime streaming software is loaded on a device, his company gets a piece of it.”

“And you say this was his daughter.”

“Right. He’s second-generation Lebanese, went to MIT on a merit scholarship. Grace was born in Boston, mother died in a plane crash when she was five. She was raised on the Upper East Side, went to private schools, bad grades, never had a job, and sort of lived a jet-setting lifestyle with her father’s money. Went to Ibiza a few years ago, then Mallorca, but about a year ago came back to New York to live with her father in the Time Warner Center. He’s got an eight-bedroom apartment there—two apartments joined together, actually. Her father reported her missing four days ago. He’s been raising holy hell with the NYPD and probably doing the same with the FBI. The guy’s got connections up the wazoo and he’s been calling in all his chips, trying to find his daughter.”