Fever Dream - Douglas Preston [41]
Slowly, he turned the pages: the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, the Prothonotary Warbler, the Purple Finch… one after another, he looked at them with a keen eye, plate after plate, until he arrived at Plate 26: the Carolina Parakeet.
Reaching into his coat pocket, he removed a sheet of notes he had scribbled.
Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis)
Only parrot species native to the Eastern US. Declared extinct 1939.
Last wild specimen killed in Florida in 1904; last captive bird, “Incas,” died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918.
Forests cut; killed for feathers to make ladies’ hats, killed by farmers who thought them pests, taken in large numbers as pets.
Prime reason for extinction: Flocking behavior. When individual birds were shot and fell to the ground, the flock, instead of fleeing, alighted on the ground and gathered about the dead and wounded as if to help, resulting in the extermination of the entire flock.
Folding up the sheet and putting it away again, Pendergast poured himself a glass of Burgundy. As he drank it off, he seemed barely to taste the remarkable vintage.
He now knew—to his great mortification—that his initial meeting with Helen had been no accident. And yet he could hardly believe it. Surely, his family’s connection to John James Audubon wasn’t the reason she had married him? He knew she had loved him—and yet it was becoming increasingly clear that his wife led a double life. It was a bitter irony: Helen had been the one person in the world he had been able to trust, to open up to—and all the while she had been keeping a secret from him. As he poured another glass of wine he reflected that, because of that very trust, he’d never suspected her secret, which would have been obvious to him in any other friend.
He knew all this. And yet it was nothing compared with the remaining questions that almost shouted out at him:
What was behind Helen’s apparent fascination with Audubon—and why had she been so careful to conceal her interest in the artist from him?
What was the relation between Helen’s interest in Audubon’s famous engravings and an obscure breed of parrot, extinct now for almost a century?
Where was Audubon’s first mature work, the mysterious Black Frame, and why was Helen searching for it?
And most perplexing, and most important: why had this interest of Helen’s ultimately caused her death? Because, while he was sure of little else, Pendergast was certain—beyond doubt—that somewhere, hiding behind this curtain of questions and suppositions, lurked not only the motive for her death, but the murderers themselves.
Putting aside the glass, he rose from the armchair and strode over to a telephone on a nearby table. He picked it up, dialed a number.
It was answered on the second ring. “D’Agosta.”
“Hello, Vincent.”
“Pendergast. How you doing?”
“Where are you at present?”
“At the Copley Plaza hotel, resting my dogs. Do you have any idea how many men named Adam attended MIT while your wife was there?”
“No.”
“Thirty-one. I’ve managed to track down sixteen. None of them says he knew her. Five others are out of the country. Two more are dead. The other eight are unaccounted for: lost alumni, the university says.”
“Let us put friend Adam on the back burner for the time being.”
“Fine by me. So, where to next? New Orleans? New York, maybe? I’d really like to spend a little time with—”
“North of Baton Rouge. Oakley Plantation.”
“Where?”
“You will be going to Oakley Plantation House, just outside St.