Crimson Shore

He flashed his light into the rude cell and saw it ran about a hundred feet back, ending in a wall, with a sleeping area of filthy straw, an overflowing hole for necessities, and a broken table. A steel collar, studded with sharp points, was fastened to a leash of metal links. It was hanging on one of the bare stone walls. Kneeling, he observed the traces of the occupant in the damp, sandy floor — a welter of human bare feet, matching the prints he had been tracking from Exmouth. This was where the killer had been locked up — for a very long time.

He straightened and, shining his penlight, glanced at the padlock that once held the door, now lying open on the ground. What had initially been a cursory inspection suddenly became riveted attention. He picked up the lock and gave it a minute inspection, at one point removing his portable loupe and examining the mechanism. It was an almost new Abloy shrouded steel padlock with a top-loading cylinder, invulnerable to bumping. A most serious lock indeed, and one that would have challenged even Pendergast himself. Yet he could see that it had been interfered with in a subtle, clever, and devious way, so as to make it appear locked when it wasn’t.

Something about the particular method of interference seemed chillingly familiar.

After completing his inspection, he stepped inside the prison and walked to the far end of the cul-de-sac, stepping over filth, old chicken carcasses, pieces of rotting hide, and broken marrow bones. Greasy cockroaches scurried away from the beam of his light. Against the far wall, manacles, cuffs, and chains lay sprawled on the ground, open. These also were advanced, high-tech devices, of recent manufacture. Each manacle and cuff had its own small lock; Pendergast once again examined each lock in turn, his pale features becoming like marble.

The jailers had gone to great care and expense to keep the prisoner absolutely secure. But on their last approach to this jail, they would not have known the locks on the cuffs and manacles had been tampered with — that the creature would be able to free itself and attack them.

No doubt those jailers were the two bodies he had come across in an earlier passage.

As he examined the final lock, his normally steady hand began to tremble, and he dropped the chain. His knees gave way and he sank to the ground in disbelief.

A sound reached his ears. After a long moment, he shook off his paralysis and rose to his feet. Constance was still somewhere in this complex of tunnels — and now, it seemed she was in far greater danger than he had realized.

Forcing his mind back to the issue at hand, he leapt up and raced through the dank corridors, again following the main path, heedless now of the noise that he made. After several twists and turns he arrived at a wide passage leading to a large, ponderously decorated, pentagonal room, lit by candles and dominated by an altar. He stopped, peering around with his silvery eyes. A ropy tangle of flesh and bone lay on the altar. It was so distorted it took Pendergast a moment to realize the tangle had once been human. A muscle was still twitching: a neurological artifact. The man was very recently dead. But where was the killer who had just completed this work of death and dismemberment?