Chapter 42
THEY HEADED BACK DOWNTOWN in silence, which suited Chambers just fine.
He snuck a look at his watch—just a few minutes before two.
It was the afternoon of Pendergast’s third day of investigation, per their agreement.
It had been a grueling morning—two research libraries canvassed, a registrar wheedled out of information, and a useless interview with Telligren—but now the clock was ticking down.
Chambers glanced sidelong at Pendergast. The man, although looking crisp and cool as ever, seemed to be in deep thought—or maybe it was just a deep funk.
Privately, Chambers thought that, since this last meeting had been a total bust, his partner might finally be mulling over the recent events and concluding they’d proved pointless.
Now at least they could get back to the real work at hand—and not a moment too soon.
The Rolls pulled up at Chambers’s usual breakfast hangout, as before; he got into his Impala, and—before Pendergast could suggest some way to waste the afternoon—left a trail of rubber on his way back to the field office.
Twenty minutes later, he was at his desk, suit coat on the rack, cup of coffee steaming in front of him, when Pendergast glided in.
He too sat down, remained silent for a few more minutes, then finally spoke.
“I confess to being very dissatisfied.”
Not an unusual way to feel after seventy-two hours of fruitless digging. But despite everything, Chambers felt almost magnanimous and decided not to rub it in.
“Why’s that?” he asked.
“I am convinced that an elaborate scheme of deception, including the counterfeiting of files and removal of documents, has taken place.”
Chambers raised his eyebrows. “Really?” was all he allowed himself.
Pendergast, perhaps hearing a faint trace of gloating, looked over at him for a minute. “I see you think this entire line of inquiry profitless.”
“You said it—not me.”
“This scheme of erasure has been done with great care—in most respects. This was not a hasty or spontaneous effort. There was plenty of time to see it done, and done well. I’m convinced Telligren and Magnus are not what they seem.”
Alarms rang in Chambers’s head. This didn’t sound like a partner ready to concede his failure and turn the reins back to him.
The man was impossible. He was like a terrier unable to let go of a bone.
His mood changed from magnanimous to mulish.
“Now look, Pendergast. I don’t know what’s going on in that strange mind of yours, but it’s obvious to me everything we’ve done over the past few days—interviewing nannies, teachers, professors, and librarians, and getting Wickman’s damn transcript—has been a dead end. ”
“Ah, the transcript,” Pendergast said. “That was what I was referring to when I said this cover-up has been extremely thorough in most respects.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
Pendergast took the white envelope and placed it on his desk. “This transcript has as much in common with a serious graduate student’s work as a ‘pig-picking’ has with luncheon at Galatoire’s. Courses in grant writing? Art history? Industrial hygiene? These are fake, my dear Chambers.”
There it was again, that my dear Chambers bullshit.
He took a deep breath. “Pendergast, you’ve been gripping a wild goose by the neck for too long.
Look, I get it. I’ve done it myself. The more you look into something that you can’t quite nail down, the easier it is to think, Just one more interview, one more bit of research, and it’ll all become clear.
Take it from me—that’s not how it works.
Now your three days are up, as agreed upon.
Okay? So, please—learn a few tricks from this old dog and let me do the case my way. ”
“The rogues we’re searching for were right in front of us… and practically laughing at our impotence.”
Chambers sighed angrily. “What… who are you talking about?”
“Magnus, for one. Did you notice that, shortly after we mentioned Wickman’s residence had burned down, he offered us cigars?”
“So?”
“We found fine ash from an expensive cigar in that surgical bay.”
“Don’t tell me you know it was the same brand?”
A hesitation. “I can’t say.”
“Christ, Pendergast!”
“I believe the man was taunting us.”
Chambers was about to unload a piece of his mind when a shadow crossed his peripheral vision. He looked over to see Estevez’s secretary leaning in at the open door. “Agent Chambers?”
“Yeah?”
“SOC Estevez would like a word with you and Agent Pendergast. Immediately.”
Roughly three minutes later, they were in the chief’s office.
Estevez was standing behind his desk, pacing, not offering either of them a chair.
Chambers waited a few minutes, watching his boss go back and forth, back and forth.
He’d never seen the man as restless as this.
He didn’t know what it portended—except it couldn’t be good.
Abruptly, Estevez stopped and wheeled toward Pendergast. “What the hell have you been doing for the last three days?”
“Sir,” Chambers broke in, “we—”
“I’m not speaking to you. I’d like to hear your junior agent explain this clusterfuck.”
“Sir,” Pendergast began, “we have not spoken with the press.”
“That wasn’t my question. What have you been doing? Where’s my debriefing? Christ, as far as I can tell you’ve never even been in the office since I last saw you at the site of the fire.”
Pendergast said nothing.
“Pendergast? Could you grace us with your answer to my question?”
“We’ve been attempting to solve the case, sir.”
“How?”
“By taking a deep look into Wickman’s past, trying to ascertain his motives, his state of mind, what made him—”
“Agent Pendergast!” Estevez said, bringing him up short. “The man is dead. Dead. The fucking case is the other corpse face down in the mud. Remember him? Have you ID’d him?”
Amen to that, Chambers couldn’t help but think.
“No, sir.”
Estevez turned toward Chambers. “Chambers—you’re the one who fell down on the job here.”
“Sir?” Chambers said.
“You’re the senior agent here. It’s your job to teach new jacks, no matter how arrogant or insolent, to toe the line and learn from your own example.
I knew I was taking a chance when I assigned Pendergast to you—and from where I’m standing, it looks like you’ve failed to control your junior partner. Utterly.”
Chambers could only move his jaw. No sound came out. I knew I was taking a chance when I assigned Pendergast to you…
“What were my last words to you?” Estevez continued.
“You’re coming back into the office now.
I even agreed to let you continue the case, because what you said at the time made a modicum of sense.
You’d solved a case—solved, past tense—everyone had missed.
You’d exposed a new killer and wanted to finish the case.
What, exactly, did ‘finishing’ the case entail? ”
As Estevez yelled at him in drill-sergeant fashion, Chambers felt a strange boiling deep in his gut.
He knew his face was aflame. “It meant identifying other homicides Wickman might have perpetrated. It meant looking into who killed Wickman. It meant IDing the other victim and following up on that homicide.”
“Spoken like the Chambers I used to know!” Estevez yelled. “So what happened to you the last three days? Your balls drop off or something?”
Even in his shock and dismay, Chambers sensed that despite everything he’d done, Estevez still thought he looked like a broke-dick.
“That was how I intended to prosecute the case, sir,” he said. His chest felt tight, and it was hard to find the air to speak. “But my junior partner advocated a completely different approach: looking into Wickman’s past, attempting to find—”
“So you let your junior partner’s infantile theories take precedence. You allowed yourself to be led by the nose. Jesus! I’ve got to believe—”
“Sir!” Chambers couldn’t help but interrupt. “I am now fully aware that Agent Pendergast’s assumptions about the origins of Wickman’s mental illness have not been borne out. Nothing in his past is relevant to the current case.”
Estevez turned to Pendergast. “What do you have to say to that?”
“I have nothing to add, sir.”
This—spoken in a mild tone—further drove Chambers crazy.
Estevez looked back at him. “What now, senior partner?”
“Sir, we should be investigating who killed Wickman. We need to examine the crime scene not just for clues to the fire, but to the one who set the fire and killed two people. We should even be dragging the swamp for this motherfucker. We need to learn more about the other dead man—because those two homicides are the case, as I see it.”
“Correction, Agent Chambers—you needed to be doing this shit three days ago. Now: are you going to get your ass all over this, pronto?”
“Eagerly, sir.”
Once again, Estevez turned to Pendergast. “And you’re a real piece of work.
I have to hand it to you: I’ve never seen a greenhorn climb on top of his senior partner like that.
Hope you enjoyed the view while it lasted.
Because if you don’t listen to Agent Chambers here, you’re going to find yourself in a world of shit—Decker or no Decker.
Now, both of you—get the fuck out of my office.
And I want daily reports of your progress. Daily.”
As they walked away from Estevez’s office, Chambers felt lightheaded.
He’d blown off some of his steam. He may have been reamed out, but he’d also ratted out his partner.
Not that he didn’t deserve it—but it just wasn’t done, and deserving had nothing to do with anything. He felt overcome with remorse.
Pendergast stopped abruptly. He adjusted his tie, glanced at his pocket watch.
“There is a black-tie party that I need to attend tonight,” he said. “Until tomorrow.” And he gave a small bow.
As Chambers stopped dead in his tracks in disbelief, Pendergast continued down the hall, eventually disappearing in the direction of the elevator bank.
“Motherf—” Chambers muttered. Just when he thought he’d heard it all.
He took another deep, shuddering breath, feeling his chest loosen as he made a decision—or, rather, as Pendergast made it for him.
He didn’t know if Pendergast was an ungrateful junior partner touched in the head, or if he was just touched—but he did know one thing: he was done covering for the guy.