“What about you, Chief?”
“I’ve no idea, so let’s go with the cult.”
Now the commander raised his head. “Are we ready? Assistant Chief Dunleavy, Fort Myers PD?”
Chief Caspar’s stand-in rose, a black woman in her fifties. “We were wondering if these feet may have come from some medical experimentation, maybe drifted up from Central America. I say that because those shoes look similar to the kind nurses wear in hospitals. But that’s sheer speculation.”
“Thank you. Chief Perelman?”
“With the same caveat — that this is speculation — we wondered if it might be from a doomsday cult. One whose initiation required the removal of a limb, by a priest or whatever.”
“Thank you. Special Agent Pendergast?”
A long silence. All eyes were turned to the figure standing at the rear of the room. He slowly uncrossed his arms and said, simply, “I would rather not speculate.”
“No one’s going to hold it against you. That’s what I want — speculation.”
“And that, Commander, is what I do not want.”
This fell into a leaden silence and the commander rolled his eyes. “You’re entitled to your opinion. And now, I’ll direct the question to myself.”
Perelman saw this was where the commander had been going all along.
“I want to draw your attention to the crudity of the amputations,” Baugh began. “To the institutional sameness of the shoes. To the fact that all washed up essentially at once, which means they were released into the ocean at the same time.” He paused. “Think about it: What nearby country would be capable of such a barbarous act? What country has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world? What country is ninety miles off our shores?”
This was followed by a long silence.
“Cuba.”
He let that sink in and went on. “They have more than one coastal prison, and some, like the Combinado del Este, are among the most brutal in the world, where political prisoners are jailed, tortured — and executed.” He leaned forward. “While we don’t have any direct evidence yet, I would propose the most likely conclusion is that, one way or another, this load of feet came from Cuba as the product of torture.”
Perelman had to admit this was not a bad hypothesis. But Baugh’s certainty made him uneasy. He’d been a cop too long to put any stock in a theory without supporting evidence.
Baugh left the podium and walked over to a nearby table covered with charts and maritime volumes, manned by a rather unprepossessing-looking Coast Guard lieutenant. A murmur of conversation rose in the room and Baugh held up his hands. “So let’s talk broad assignments. The Coast Guard will be in charge of all seagoing investigations and operations.” He grasped the top chart and held it up. “Our first priority will be to do a drift analysis, retracing currents, waves, and wind forces to see if we can’t pinpoint where those feet originated in Cuba. We’ll liaise with Homeland Security to get classified satellite imagery of all sites of interest.” He cleared his throat. “Sanibel PD will be in charge of maintaining the security and integrity of the immediate crime scene, patrolling the beach, and picking up any stray shoes. The District Twenty-One Medical Examiner’s Office will continue to process and run laboratory tests on the remains and associated evidence. Fort Myers PD will gather witness statements, manage the press, and run overall law enforcement efforts from the task force’s back office. And the Federal Bureau of Investigation—” he paused to peer at Pendergast — “will be asked to scour the NCAVC databases for any similar crimes, as well as to analyze the shoes and track them back to their source of manufacture.”
At this, Perelman noted that Pendergast raised his index finger in a querying fashion.
“Yes?”
“Commander Baugh, may I ask the dates of those charts?”
“Dates? You mean, when they were created?”
“Precisely.”
“I fail to see why that’s relevant. These are the most accurate charts available. All the merchant mariners and Coast Guard captains use them. The tides and currents simply don’t change much over the years.”
“Yes, but the dates, please?”
“As a sector commander in the Coast Guard, I have over ten thousand command hours on these waters as the captain or master of a vessel. I use these charts every day with complete confidence.” Baugh smiled. “Agent Pendergast, have you had any seafaring experience?”
“I believe I am what you might term a landlubber. Nevertheless, I would very much like to know the dates of those charts.”
With an irritated gesture, Baugh turned to the lieutenant at the table. “Darby?”
The man examined the lower corner of the top map. “Nineteen sixty-one,” he said in a reedy voice. He shuffled to the next. “Nineteen sixty-five.” Another shuffle. “Nineteen fifty-nine.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Baugh looked back at Pendergast. “Satisfied?”
The expression on Pendergast’s face betrayed anything but satisfaction.
“Agent Pendergast, you’ve already confessed your lack of knowledge of the sea. So may I suggest you focus on the NCAVC databases and the manufacturer of those shoes — and leave the oceanographic science to us? Or perhaps there is something unclear about your assignment?”
“Nothing.”
“Thank you. Okay, people, let’s get this done.”
As the meeting broke up, Perelman looked around for Pendergast, but the man seemed to have vanished. Baugh had come down on him a little hard, and Perelman sensed Pendergast was a man who could be pushed only so far before something happened — something perhaps quite ugly.
8
Ironically, after searching around for Pendergast without success as the meeting broke up, Perelman found the FBI agent in the parking lot — leaning up against the chief’s unmarked Explorer.
“Looking for me?” Perelman asked as he approached.
“Indeed I am,” Pendergast said. “I wondered if we might have a chat.”
“Sure. Care to grab some lunch?”
“Not especially. I was thinking that perhaps we could take a stroll along Turner Beach.”
At first, Perelman thought this was a joke. But Pendergast’s smile was at present too faint to support even the driest pretense at humor. Upon leaving the station, the man had donned an expensive pair of Persol sunglasses and a wide-brimmed Panama hat. Now he looked even less like a law enforcement agent and more like... well, a member of the polo club, maybe, or perhaps even a stylish drug lord.
In his job, Perelman had grown used to eccentricities of all kinds. Besides, he felt rather curious — he wasn’t sure why — to see what Pendergast would do next. His beach patrol officers were already “maintaining the security and integrity of the immediate crime scene,” as Baugh had directed, leaving him temporarily free to examine the case from a broader perspective. Towne and Morris could bum one of half a dozen other rides back onto the islands. So he merely shrugged. “Sure. Would you like to ride with me?”
“If you don’t mind.”
So Pendergast presently had no transportation, either. Perelman shrugged this off as well and they got into the police SUV. He started the engine, made his way to McGregor Boulevard, then turned south toward the Sanibel causeway.
“Do you mind the open windows?” Perelman asked. The temperature was hovering around ninety, with 100 percent humidity, but Perelman disliked air conditioning.
“I prefer it, thank you.”
They drove in silence for five or ten minutes. Pendergast, who was gazing out at the palm-lined street, seemed in no hurry to talk. Finally, Perelman asked: “How did you know this was my car?”