Chapter 51 #2
“There was a PSI laboratory at Tulane, run by Telligren, that surgically and electrically experimented with volunteers in an attempt to enhance their ESP abilities. Wickman was a graduate student in the department; so was Magnus. They both volunteered to undergo a procedure—what kind, exactly, remains to be seen. But it turned Wickman into a serial killer. Magnus… no doubt he was affected as well, although in precisely what way I don’t yet know, though I think it gave him a certain degree of extrasensory abilities.
Such abilities may well have been the aim of those experiments.
But what I am sure of is this: Magnus killed Telligren to silence him.
Just as the two of them killed Wickman to silence him.
I was going to break Telligren—and Magnus knew it.
Behind the rather fey facade, he’s a fiendish and deviously clever man.
Now, given this, we need to get Magnus downtown if we’re going to make him talk.
He’s always had everything his way—it’s vital we pull him out of his cocoon.
We need a judge and prosecutor who’ll cooperate, and then we can hold him for seventy-two hours without formal charges.
That would give us time to use measures I might suggest to sweat him—”
Chambers had finally had enough. “What have you been smoking?” he said angrily.
“This is all the most ridiculous speculation. Magnus is a pillar of the community. He’ll probably be Tulane’s next president…
if he doesn’t win a Nobel Prize first. How are you going to get a judge to sign a warrant? Where’s your evidence?”
Pendergast pointed to the crossword puzzle. “This was found on Telligren’s bed after his death. Note that it’s been filled out in block letters—and completed, save for one clue.”
Chambers glanced at the puzzle without interest. The edges were torn, not neatly cut. He wondered when Pendergast had found the opportunity to covertly snatch it during evidence collection. One more transgression of the rules.
“The incomplete clue may be the easiest of the entire puzzle. It calls for a four-letter word meaning ‘maneater.’ Can you guess the answer?”
Chambers stared. Another bat-shit crazy theory was coming down the road.
“It’s lion, of course. Yet those squares are the only ones in the puzzle remaining unfilled. And now: look at the clue.”
Chambers looked. Whoever had filled in the rest of the puzzle, almost certainly Telligren, had deliberately crossed out the first three letters of Maneater, leaving a different word: eater.
“It’s a message to me, specifically,” said Pendergast.
Chambers said nothing.
“My wife was killed by a lion in Africa—killed and eaten. That is why man is crossed out.”
Holy Mother of God. To think Pendergast had kept this to himself the whole time, even after commiserating with him over his own wife’s death. “I’m sorry,” he said automatically, even as he thought that the death didn’t excuse Pendergast’s wild accusations.
“Thank you. Right before that expedition, Mike Decker—whom I’d worked with closely in the military—asked if I’d like to join the FBI. I’d made up my mind to turn him down. But after my wife’s death, I… changed my mind.”
Chambers did not know what to say.
Pendergast spoke again. “You ask for evidence?” He stabbed the puzzle with an index finger. “A provocative, taunting message—obviously directed at me.”
Another silence followed—much longer. Chambers wondered: could it possibly be true?
No. Of course not. It was too crazy, too much of a stretch.
He took a deep breath and tried to sound reasonable.
“Look, Pendergast, there’s no way you’re going to get a judge around here to sign a warrant to bring Magnus in for an interrogation.
The best you can hope for is a voluntary interview. ”
“All right. I shall ask for one.”
Chambers was surprised. Not that it mattered: he knew Magnus would never consent to the interview, and that would put an end to this crazy line of investigation.
Their main courses arrived—smelling heavenly—but Chambers just pushed the food around his plate.
He had been truly sorry to hear about the loss of Pendergast’s wife.
And the crossword was undeniably strange.
But as his mind went over the events of the past few days, of Pendergast’s theories and ideas, and now this paranoia that he was being taunted by a killer, he felt a growing sadness.
Crossword puzzle clues were the kind of thing you’d read about in an Agatha Christie novel.
Stuff like that didn’t happen in real life.
Pendergast was going down another rabbit hole, and Chambers was not going to follow him. Not anymore.
It was then, quite suddenly, that Chambers made up his mind: whatever information Pendergast did or didn’t get from Magnus—if he could even get an interview—Estevez would need to have a new mentor ready and waiting for this junior agent when he got back to the office.
He was done with Pendergast.