Margo stood up again, brushing soot from her knees. Greg Kawakita had somehow gotten his hands on this plant and had been growing it in these massive aquaria.
But why?
Asudden, horrible thought struck her. As quickly as it had come, she brushed it aside. Surely, there was no second Mbwun creature that Greg had been feeding.
Or was there?
“Lieutenant?” she asked. “Do you know what this is?”
He came over. “Not a clue,” he replied.
“ Liliceae mbwunensis. The Mbwun plant.”
“You’re shitting me, right?”
Margo shook her head slowly. “I wish I were.”
They stood, unmoving, as the sun sank below the Palisades, gilding the distant buildings across the river in a halo of oblique light. She looked again at the plant in her hand, preparing to place it in her carryall, and noticed something that she had missed before.
At the end of the root base, she could make out a small graft scar along the xylem, a long double-V in the dim light. A graft scar like that, she knew, meant one of only two things. A common hybrid experiment.
Or a very sophisticated genetic engineering experiment.
= 30 =
HAYWARD PUSHED THE door open brusquely, her cheeks still full of lunch.
“Captain Waxie just called,” she said, swallowing the tuna fish. “Wants you down in the IU right away. They got him.”
D’Agosta looked up from placing the final pins in a missing-persons map that replaced the one taken by Waxie. “Got who?”
“ Him.The copycat killer, of course.” She raised her eyebrows.
“No shit.” D’Agosta was at the door in a second, pulling his suit jacket off the hanger and shrugging into it.
“Caught him in the Ramble,” Hayward said as they walked through the office pool toward the elevator bank. “Somebody on stakeout heard a commotion, went to check it out. The guy had just knifed a vagrant and was preparing to cut off his head.”
“How’d they know that?”
Hayward shrugged. “Ask Captain Waxie.”
“And the knife?”
“Homemade job. Real rough. Just what they were looking for.” She didn’t sound convinced.
The elevator doors opened to reveal Pendergast. Seeing D’Agosta and Hayward about to step in, he raised his eyebrows quizzically.
“The killer’s in the IU,” D’Agosta said. “Waxie wants me down there.”
“Indeed?” The FBI agent stepped back and pressed the button for the second floor. “Well, let’s head down there by all means. I’m curious to see exactly what kind of fish angler Waxie has landed.”
The Interrogation Unit of One Police Plaza was a grim series of gray-colored rooms with cinder-block walls and heavy metal doors. The cop on desk duty buzzed them through, directing them to the observation area of room nine. Inside, Waxie was lounging in a chair, looking through the one-way glass into the interrogation cell. He glanced up when he heard them enter, frowned when he saw Pendergast, grunted at D’Agosta, and ignored Hayward.
“Is he talking?” D’Agosta said.
Waxie grunted again. “Oh, yeah. Talking is all he’s doing. But so far we’ve only heard a load of shit. Calls himself Jeffrey; won’t give anything else. We’ll get the real story out of him soon, though. Meanwhile, thought you might like to ask him a few questions.” In his triumph, Waxie was generous, brimming with smug self-confidence.
Looking through the glass, D’Agosta could see an unkempt, wild-eyed man. The rapid, silent movements of the suspect’s mouth were in almost humorous contrast with his stiff, unmoving body.
“This is the guy?” D’Agosta said in disbelief.
“That’s him.”
D’Agosta kept looking through the glass. “Looks kind of small to have done so much damage.”
Waxie’s mouth set in a defensive frown. “Maybe he got sand kicked in his face one too many times.”
D’Agosta leaned forward and pressed the mike button. Instantly, a torrent of curses spewed from the speaker above the one-way window. D’Agosta listened for a moment, then snapped the mike button off.
“What about the murder weapon?” he asked.
Waxie shrugged. “It’s a handmade thing, a piece of steel sunk into a wooden shank. The handle’s been wrapped in cloth, gauze, something like that. Too bloody to tell; we’ll have to wait until forensics gets done with it.”
“Steel,” Pendergast said.
“Steel,” Waxie replied.
“Not stone.”
“I said, it was steel. Take a look for yourself.”
“We will,” D’Agosta said, stepping away from the window. “But for now, let’s see what this guy has to say.” He headed for the door, Pendergast gliding behind him like a silent spirit.
Number nine looked like countless interrogation rooms in countless police stations across the country. A scarred wooden table sat in the middle of the stark space. On the far side of the table, the prisoner sat in a straight-backed chair, arms cuffed behind his back. A single detective sat in one of several chairs on the table’s near side, enduring the verbal abuse with complete disinterest as he manned the tape recorder. Police officers, armed and in uniform, faced each other from across the room. Two huge black-and-white blowups hung on the side walls. One showed the torn and broken body of Nicholas Bitterman, lying on the men’s room floor inside Belvedere Castle. The other was the now-famous Postphoto of Pamela Wisher. A video camera was fixed in one corner of the ceiling, dispassionately recording the proceedings.
D’Agosta took a seat at the table, inhaling the familiar blend of sweat, damp socks, and fear. Waxie followed him in, settling his bulk carefully into an adjoining chair. Hayward stood next to the closest uniformed officer. Pendergast closed the door, then leaned against it, the crisp black arms of his suit folded casually, one over the other.
The prisoner had stopped shouting when the door opened. Now he glared at the new arrivals through a greasy lock of hair. His eyes lighted on Hayward, lingered for a moment, then moved on.
“What the hell you looking at?” he said at last to D’Agosta.
“Don’t know,” D’Agosta replied. “You want to tell me about it?”
“Piss off.”
D’Agosta sighed. “You understand your rights?”
The prisoner grinned, exposing small, filthy teeth. “That fat mother next to you read them to me. I don’t need no lawyer to hold my hand.”
“You watch your mouth,” Waxie snapped, flushing an angry crimson.
“No, fat boy, you watch yours. Andyour fat ass.” He cackled with laughter. Hayward didn’t bother to suppress a smirk.
D’Agosta wondered if this was how they had been carrying on before he got there. “So what happened in the park?” he asked.
“You want a list? For firstly, he was in my sleeping spot. For secondly, he hissed at me, like a snake out of Egypt. For thirdly, he lacked the blessings of God. For fourthly, he—”
Waxie waved his hand. “We get the picture. Tell us about the others.”
Jeffrey said nothing.
“Come on,” Waxie pushed. “Who else?”
“Plenty,” came the reply at last. “Nobody disses me and gets away with it.” He leaned forward. “Better watch out, fat boy, case I carve a piece of blubber off you.”