“Or perhaps…” Pendergast paused as their dinners were served.

“Perhaps what?” Longstreet asked as he tucked into his calves’ brains.

Pendergast waved a hand. “Many theories come to mind. Perhaps Adeyemi, or one of the other victims, was the real target all along, and the other murders are nothing more than a smokescreen.”

Longstreet tasted his dish and was disappointed: the pale pink calves’ brains were overdone. Laying his silverware on the plate with a clatter, he summoned the waiter and sent the dish back for another. He turned to Pendergast again. “Do you really think that’s likely?”

“Not likely. In fact, barely possible.” Pendergast paused a moment before continuing. “I’ve never encountered a case so resistant to analysis. Obviously, the heads are missing and the primary victims were surrounded by heavy security. Those are the only commonalities we have so far. That’s not nearly enough to build a case on. It leaves open a wide variety of possible motivations.”

“So what now?” Although he’d never admit it to the man, Longstreet enjoyed watching Pendergast’s mind at work.

“We must go back to the beginning, to the first murder, and work our way forward from there. It’s the key to everything that’s happened since, for the very reason that it enjoys the debut position. It is also the most curious of the killings—and we must understand the anomalies before we can understand the patterns in what followed. Why, for example, did somebody take the head twenty-four hours after the girl was murdered? Nobody seems troubled by this anymore, except for me.”

“You really think it’s important?”

“I think it’s vital. In fact, earlier today I dropped in on Anton Ozmian to get more information. Unfortunately, my usual bag of tricks didn’t get me past his retinue of toadies, lawyers, lickspittles, bodyguards, lackeys, and other impedimenta. It was with some embarrassment I was forced to withdraw.”

Longstreet suppressed a smile. He would have loved to have witnessed Pendergast obstructed like that; it happened so rarely. “Why do I feel this is leading up to a request?”

“I need the power of your title, H. I need the full weight of the FBI behind me in order to beard the lion in his den.”

“I see.” Longstreet let a pregnant silence build. “Aloysius, you know that you’re still on my shit list, right? You maneuvered me into dishonoring an oath that I swore to with my life.”

“I’m acutely aware of that.”

“Good. I’ll do what I can to get you inside the door, then—but after that, it’s your show. I’ll come along, but only as an observer.”

“Thank you. That will be entirely acceptable.”

Their waiter returned with a fresh, steaming plate of calves’ brains. He slipped the plate before Longstreet, then took a step back, looking on tremulously, waiting for his patron’s opinion. The executive associate director cut a slice off one edge with a stroke of his knife, speared it with his fork, raised the jiggling mass to his mouth.

“Perfection,” he pronounced, chewing with half-closed eyes.

At this, the waiter bowed with mingled pleasure and relief, then turned and disappeared into the gaslit gloom.

41

BRYCE HARRIMAN STEPPED out onto the front porch of the small, neat-looking Colonial on a residential street of Dedham, Massachusetts, then turned back to shake the hand of the owner—a physically feeble but clearheaded man of about eighty, with a thin cap of white hair plastered to his head with brilliantine.

“Thank you very much for your time and your candor, Mr. Sanderton,” Harriman said. “And you’re sure about the affidavit?”

“If you think it’s necessary. It was a damned awful thing—I was sorry I had to witness it.”

“I’ll see that a notary brings you a copy for signing by dinnertime, along with an overnight pouch to send it back to me.”

With another thanks, and another warm handshake, Harriman went down the steps and walked toward the Uber that idled at the curb. It was already late afternoon on New Year’s Eve, and with holiday traffic it would be a bitch getting back to New York and his Upper East Side apartment. But Harriman didn’t care about that. In fact, at the moment he didn’t care much about anything except the triumph he was about to unleash.

Harriman subscribed to the old maxim that, if one were to write to any six upstanding pillars of the community with the message All is discovered—flee at once, every last one of them would head for the hills. Dirt was what was needed here; and—save for his late journalistic nemesis Bill Smithback—nobody was better at digging up dirt than Bryce Harriman.

His big break had occurred just after breakfast, as he was online perusing old newspapers from the Boston suburbs in which Ozmian had grown up. And, in the Dedham Townsman, he’d found what he was looking for. Nearly thirty years ago, Ozmian had been arrested for destruction of property at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church on Bryant Street. That was all there was, a single item buried in an old newspaper—but it was all Harriman needed. A call to Massachusetts revealed that Ozmian had been quickly released and the misdemeanor charge dropped, but that didn’t deter him. By eleven, he was on the shuttle to Boston. By two, he had been to Our Lady of Mercy and obtained a list of people, with addresses, who had been church members at the time of the incident. And it had taken knocks on only three doors before he found someone—Giles Sanderton—who not only recalled the event but had been an eyewitness.

And the story he had to tell was a doozy.

As the cab made its way to Logan Airport, Harriman reclined in the backseat, going over his notes. Sanderton had been at the noon mass some three decades back—being celebrated by a Father Anselm, one of the church’s more venerable priests—when in the middle of the homily the church door opened and a teenage Anton Ozmian appeared. Without a word he walked to the front of the church, knocked over the altar table, plucked up a crucifix, swung it like a baseball bat at Father Anselm, knocked him to the floor, and then proceeded to beat the living shit out of him. Leaving the priest bleeding and unconscious at the base of the pulpit, Ozmian had dropped the bloody crucifix onto his prostrate form and, turning, strode out of the church as calmly as he had come in. There had been no sign of anger in his face—just cool deliberation. It had been months before Father Anselm could talk or walk normally again, and shortly afterward he moved into a home for retired priests, and died not long thereafter.

Harriman rubbed his hands together with ill-concealed glee. It had all come together so fast it was almost like magic. At breakfast, he’d had nothing—and now, by midafternoon, he had proof of a story about Ozmian that was so ugly and brutal—beating a priest almost to death with a crucifix!—that it would be what he needed to force his will on Ozmian. While the man claimed to be indifferent to the world’s opinion, this horrific revelation would almost certainly provoke the board to relieve him of his position. DigiFlood had initially been backed by several top venture capital firms and hedge funds, not to mention a sizable investment from Microsoft. These companies had reputations to protect, and they held more than 50 percent of DigiFlood’s stock; yes, Harriman was sure Ozmian would be pushed out if his revelations were published.

It was odd there had been no assault-and-battery charges, until Harriman discovered that a sizable sum of money had been “donated” by Ozmian’s family to the local parish. That was the final piece of the puzzle.

It was perfect. Better than perfect. First, it gave him something to write about besides Adeyemi, whose enduring saintliness was proving most inconvenient. Second, this was a story that Ozmian could not afford to ignore. As the cab pulled into the airport, Harriman found himself confronted by just one question. Should he publish the story first and neutralize Ozmian that way? Or should he first take it to Ozmian and threaten to publish it, in order to force him to cancel his own blackmail scheme?

As he mulled this over, he recalled Ozmian’s sneering words, and they still smarted as much as when he’d first heard them. It’s really quite simple. All you have to do is agree to our two conditions—neither of which is onerous. If you do, everyone stays happy—and out of prison. That settled it: he would take the story to Ozmian in person and threaten to ruin him with it. That would be poetic justice. In fact, he couldn’t wait to see Ozmian’s face when he dangled the piece under his nose.

Harriman found himself pleased afresh with how brilliantly he had found the means to take on this captain of industry—and beaten him at his own game.