“Clear!” somebody yelled.
It did not take long for the agents to complete their search. Pendergast directed them into the kitchen, where they hefted the jug of blood and confiscated it, along with other things—masks, costumes, hoods, chalices, dildos, statuettes, and additional flotsam ridiculous or uncouth. Pendergast watched, lips pursed with dissatisfaction.
No one was arrested. When the search was concluded, the FBI allowed everyone back on their feet, and—as the would-be Dionysians stood in a line, shamed, their fleshy bodies illuminated by numerous flashlights—took down names one at a time. For a bunch of Satanists, Coldmoon thought, the audience was surprisingly docile, some blubbering with fear, others pleading with the agents not to make their names public. Among the group was Dr. Cobb, who, alone among the rest, took it upon himself to argue that this was a bona fide religious service, that their religious freedom had been trampled upon, and that he would be calling his lawyer first thing in the morning. His complaints were studiously ignored. Coldmoon reflected that he’d preferred the first meeting with Cobb, when the museum director had been fully clothed.
And then Carracci said tersely: “All right. Get the fuck out of here.” In a mad rush of swaying breasts and bobbing privates, the group broke apart, ran to various corners of the church, grabbed their clothes, then headed for their cars and exited the parking lot, tires screeching. After briefly conferring with Carracci, Pendergast went out the back with Coldmoon.
“Too bad we can’t hold them,” said Coldmoon.
“It would be a waste of time.”
“What are you talking about? You don’t think the case is solved?”
“I think anything but,” said Pendergast. His face looked drawn. “I fear I have made a serious miscalculation.”
“Miscalculation? You saw the tattoos; you made the connection; you found the church. It looks to me like pretty fast footwork, not miscalculation.”
“All too fast. I did not follow my own advice; I started thinking too early.”
Coldmoon thought this was ridiculous. “Come on. You saw all that blood.”
“I’d wager a great deal that it’s animal blood. But more to the point: when I saw that lot full of expensive cars, and those ridiculous rites, I understood the psychological dynamic was wrong. These are dilletantes, playing at Satanism. They are guilty of animal cruelty, perhaps, but not murder. The killer or killers we are seeking are far more insidious than these…these pathetic dabblers in the occult.”
Coldmoon shook his head. The case had gone from being open, to closed, to open again, so fast he felt almost dizzy.
“Let this be a lesson to you, my friend, on the dangers of drawing conclusions too early,” Pendergast told him. “As H. L. Mencken once said, ‘There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.’ This was that neat, plausible, and wrong solution.”
“If you say so. What now?”
“We must look elsewhere for answers. Specifically, Ellerby.”
19
PENDERGAST DESCENDED THE WORN steps, pausing at the bottom to look around. He felt deeply chagrined at the previous evening’s raid and his central role in it, but for the time being he put such thoughts aside.
The basement of the Chandler House had a distinctive smell—the smell of time, for want of a better word—that he found most interesting: wet stone, dust, and the distant odor of saltpeter, no doubt from the days when the building had functioned as a munitions factory, with a whiff of burnt rubber. Here they had processed gunpowder, lead, and brass into .54-caliber ringtail bullets for the Sharps rifles favored by Confederate cavalry. How stimulating, he thought, to have the past and the present mingling here in one’s senses, like a fugue.
He also noted an additional odor: the crushed-walnut scent unique to the toxin prestrycurarine. He paused. It would seem the hotel was troubled with rat infestations. It would also seem they used a backward exterminator, because that particular rodenticide had been deemed ineffective years ago; rats, lacking the physical capacity to vomit, were by nature highly suspicious of unfamiliar odors. No matter; rats in a basement were not his concern.
The entire space exuded a feeling of desuetude and abandonment. He could see bare lightbulbs hanging from cords, stretching out into the distance, leaving gloom on either side. Even from his position at the foot of the steps, he noticed that the basement was formed out of a layering of building cycles, the stone floor rising or falling to match the periods of additional excavation. In the darker corners, away from the lights, rooms were faintly visible: pantries, a disused kitchen, what looked like a scullery. One section far to the rear was roped off with yellow tape and an official-looking sign that read STRUCTURALLY UNSOUND.