Carefully, quietly, he used the pliers to pull out every other shim between the lowest two courses of bricks. Then, moving up a course, he pulled out alternating shims once again, even more carefully this time, making sure not to remove two shims from the same vertical section of brick face. Finally, he stepped back to survey his work. No sign of settling or movement. More quickly now, he removed alternating shims from the upper courses until he’d reached the sixth.
By his calculations, he had, over his nights of cautious toil, removed all but the final eighth inch of mortar from between the bricks. What remained deep within the courses—what would look, from inside the basement, like a normal brick wall—was, in reality, just an illusion of solidity. Only the night before, he’d removed the mortar from between the last few bricks, stealing away with it in the predawn hours and mixing it with beach sand, as usual, so it would not be noticed. Now that he’d removed the shims from between the damp-proofing bricks, all that remained was to knock out the remaining skin of mortar.
Using a tool he’d designed himself—a thin shaft of iron about two feet long with an angled rectangle of steel, sharpened on all sides, welded to its end—he pushed his way into the spaces between the bricks and, when he encountered resistance, gently prodded the last thin crust of mortar out through the crack formed on the far side. A faint sound echoed back through the opening—bits of old mortar falling to the basement floor—but it was barely louder than sand streaming through an hourglass. Now he moved the instrument along the lowest course of unsecured bricks, steadily pushing out the thin section of mortar at the other end as he went. It would be making a mess on the basement floor, of course, but the mortar was dry and he could deal with that later.
Once he’d finished with the first course, he used a prybar to pull the bricks away from the low foundation row beneath them. Carefully, silently, he stacked the bricks to one side of the unfinished stairway.
The second course went faster, and the third faster still. He put each brick aside until at last all the courses had been removed and six piles of bricks lay around him, outside the foundation, hidden—as he was—beneath the rain diffuser. Quickly, just in case the brickwork above the newly made opening began to sag, he removed a pair of portable steel load bars from his canvas bag, set them securely on bricks at either side of the base, then ratcheted them quietly up until they supported the upper edge of the hole.
The warm air of the basement, smelling of dust and old paper, washed over him. It was as if the house were slowly exhaling.
For a minute he crouched, motionless. At long last—after so many nights of secretive labor, unexpected delays, endless surveillance—his work was complete.
Almost complete. The most important part, the part he’d worked so hard for, lay ahead.
As he crouched, he listened. The house had remained completely still, oblivious to his labors. Now he exchanged the tools he’d been using for others: the ice pick; the rubber mallet; piano wire; a long, clear piece of tube. He pulled a 9-millimeter handgun out of the pack and stuffed it into his belt. He turned off his penlight, and the basement was plunged into almost complete darkness. He removed a Fenix 850 nm infrared flashlight. Lastly, he placed a third-generation white phosphor night-vision monocular on his head and adjusted the straps. And then, taking a deep breath, he switched on the flashlight, picked up his tools, and ducked inside.
He stepped carefully over the ragged line of mortar debris, then rose to his full height and looked around—slowly, slowly. It was now dark outside and the cellar was, of course, unlit. As he took in the features of the basement, he involuntarily expelled a deep, husky breath. There they were, repainted but unmistakable: the workbench; the storage alcove; the boiler…and the stairs leading up to the inhabited part of the house.
He realized that his heartbeat had accelerated during this penetration of the basement, and he waited another moment, allowing it to slow. As it did so, he looked around again—this time, with a single purpose. A tall, wide column, wavering slightly in the greenish shadows of the monocular, stood like a sentinel before him. Taking a firm grip on his tools, he took a step forward.
…And it was then that he felt a sylphlike limb slide up from behind his right shoulder, with a movement that was so smooth, so unexpected, he wondered briefly if he was dreaming. But there was nothing dreamlike about the way the arm suddenly tightened, viselike, beneath his jaw, or how a second arm darted in with snakelike rapidity, a short and terribly sharp blade in its hand, gleaming in his IR goggles for just an instant before pricking its point in the soft tissue above his Adam’s apple.
Just when he was most confused and terrified, uncertain what was real and what was nightmare, the voice came: unmistakably feminine, but deep and strange, with an undertone of feral yet somehow courtly menace.
“Good evening, Mr. Wilkinson. Before you react in any way, allow me to offer you a choice. If you drop the gun, and then follow it with your flashlight and that ridiculous helmet, I will take my knife from your neck. If you resist, I will sever the four extrinsic muscles of your tongue, in preparation for piercing your carotid artery. It’s your choice, but in your situation I would recommend the former option. You will find it much easier to explain all of this to me with your hyoglossus intact.”
47
CONSTANCE CAME LIGHTLY up the basement steps, then quietly but firmly shut and locked the heavy door behind her. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was dim, the lights off. This was as Constance had left it hours before, setting the trap—but now the gloomy emptiness made her fretful. A part of her had hoped Pendergast would have returned—she felt not so different from a cat, eager to display the prize evidence of her hunting skills to her owner.
She walked over to the sink, ran the water, took the soap from its porcelain dish, and washed her hands and forearms with great care. She took the stiletto from her hidden pocket, slid it open, and gingerly washed its razor-sharp blade with equal attention. Then, drying hands and weapon alike, she took off the black mourning cloak she’d worn during her long vigils in the basement, folded it with a few expert strokes, and laid it carefully over the back of a chair. Beneath she wore an Arc’teryx covert sweater of thin gray fleece with matching leggings: not her usual choice of apparel, but the combination allowed for quick, unrestricted movement while providing excellent concealment—and the basement had been damp and surprisingly chilly.
She paused to listen for a moment. The only sounds were the rain, the police radio—random bursts of low squawking—and the muffled cries emerging from the basement. Giving those as little attention as she’d given the radio, she stepped into the butler’s pantry, filled a small cut-glass tumbler with ice, poured in a generous splash of Lillet, quartered a key lime, and dropped a segment into the glass, then wiped her hands on the nearby bar towel. She moved back into the kitchen and pushed the door open onto the back porch. She was curious to see the point of ingress the man had used and wondered how she’d managed to miss it earlier. But first, she would relax for a few moments, in the calming dark.
The cool, humid breeze coming off the gulf and the sound of the rain on the porch roof were as welcoming as they were relaxing. The beach was empty, and the large houses to her right were dark and asleep. The police scanner sat on a round table of white-painted wicker, and she moved down to a rocking chair at the far end of the porch so as to be away from it.