Pendergast [07] The Book of the Dead(116)

“I don’t know. Hours, a day perhaps.”

“And you awakened from this living nightmare under the impression Diogenes had become sick. And that accounted for his long absence.”

“Yes.”

“You had no idea of the truth.”

“No, none.”

“And yet Diogenes never realized that you had repressed the memory.”

Abruptly Pendergast stopped in his pacing. “No. I suppose he didn’t.”

“As a result, you never apologized to your brother, tried to make it up to him. You never even mentioned it, because you had utterly blocked out all memory of the Event.”

Pendergast looked away.

“But to Diogenes, your silence meant something else entirely. A stubborn refusal to admit your mistake, to ask forgiveness. And that would explain…”

Glinn fell silent. Slowly he pushed his wheelchair back. He did not know everything—that would await the computer analysis—but he knew enough to see it now, clearly, in its broadest brushstrokes. Almost from birth, Diogenes had been a strange, dark, and brilliant creature, as had many Pendergasts before him. He might have swung either way, if the Event had not occurred. But the person who emerged from the Doorway to Hell—ravaged emotionally as well as physically—had turned into something else entirely. Yes, it all made sense: the gruesome images of crime, of murder, that Pendergast had endured… Diogenes’s hatred of the brother who refused to speak of the ordeal he had caused… Pendergast’s own unnatural attraction to pathological crimes… Both brothers now made sense. And Glinn now knew why Pendergast had repressed the memory so utterly. It was not simply because it was so awful. No—it was because the guilt was so overwhelming it threatened his very sanity.

Remotely, Glinn became aware that Pendergast was looking at him. The agent was standing as stiff as a statue, his skin like gray marble.

“Mr. Glinn,” he said.

Glinn raised his eyebrows in silent query.

“There is nothing more I can or will say.”

“Understood.”

“I will now require five minutes alone, please. Without interruptions of any kind. And then we can… proceed.”

After a moment, Glinn nodded. Then he turned the wheelchair around, opened the door, and exited the studio without another word.





53





With sirens shrieking, Hayward was able to get down to Greenwich Village in twenty minutes. On the way, she had tried the few other contact numbers she had for D’Agosta—none connected. She had tried to find a listing for Effective Engineering Solutions or Eli Glinn, without success. Even the NYPD telephone and Manhattan business databases didn’t have a number, although EES was registered as a legitimate business, as required by law.

She knew the company existed, and she knew its address on Little West 12th Street. Beyond that, nothing.

Sirens still blaring, she pulled off the West Side Highway onto West Street, and from there turned into a narrow lane, crowded on both sides by dingy brick buildings. She shut off her sirens and crawled along, glancing at the building numbers. Little West 12th, once the center of the meatpacking district, was a single block in length. The EES building had no number, but she deduced it must be the correct one by the numbers on either side. It was not exactly what she imagined: perhaps a dozen stories tall, with the faded name of some long-defunct meatpacking company on the side—except it betrayed itself by tiers of expensive new windows on the upper floors and a pair of metal doors at the loading dock that looked suspiciously high-tech. She double-parked in front, blocking the narrow street, and went up to the entrance.

A smaller door sat beside the loading dock, an intercom with a buzzer its only adornment. She pressed the intercom and waited, her heart racing with frustration and impatience.

Almost immediately a female voice answered. “Yes?”

She flashed her badge, not sure where the camera was but certain there was one. “Captain Laura Hayward, NYPD Homicide. I demand immediate access to these premises.”

“Do you have a warrant?” came the pleasant answer.

“No. I’m here to see Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta. I’ve got to see him immediately—it’s a matter of life and death.”

“We don’t have a Vincent D’Agosta on staff here,” came the female voice, still maintaining a tone of bureaucratic pleasantness.

Hayward took a breath. “I want you to carry a message to Eli Glinn. If this door isn’t opened within thirty seconds, here’s what’ll happen: the NYPD will stake out the entrance, we’ll photograph everyone coming in or out, and we’ll get a search warrant looking for a meth lab and bust a lot of glass. You understand me? The countdown just began.”