The Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child

tangles of colored string, CDs, yellowing telex sheets, labels, envelopes. The outward disarray, she mused, was a perfect mirror of her inner state of mind.
    Her beautiful layout of evidence against Special Agent Pendergast, with all its accusatory paraphernalia of colored strings, photos, and labels, was no more. It had fit together so well. The evidence had been subtle but clean, convincing, utterly consistent. An out-of-the-way spot of blood, some microscopic fibers, a few strands of hair, a knot tied in a certain way, the chain of ownership of a murder weapon. The DNA tests didn’t lie, the forensics didn’t lie, the autopsies didn’t lie. They all pointed to Pendergast. The case against him was that good.
    Maybe too good. And that, in a nutshell, was the problem.
    A tentative knock came at the door and she turned to see the figure of Glen Singleton, local precinct captain, hovering outside. He was in his late forties; tall, with the sleek, efficient movements of a swimmer, a long face, and an aquiline profile. He wore a charcoal suit that was far too expensive and well cut for an NYPD captain, and every other week he dropped $120 at the barbershop in the lobby of the Carlyle to have his salt-and-pepper hair trimmed to perfection. But these were signs of personal fastidiousness, not a cop on the take. And despite the sartorial affectations, he was a damned good cop, one of the most decorated on active duty in the force.
    “Laura, may I?” He smiled, displaying an expensive row of perfect teeth.
    “Sure, why not?”
    “We missed you at the departmental dinner last night. Did you have a conflict?”
    “A conflict? No, nothing like that.”
    “Really? Then I can’t understand why you’d pass up a chance to eat, drink, and be merry.”
    “I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t really in the mood to be merry.”
    There was an awkward silence while Singleton looked around for an empty chair.
    “Sorry about the mess. I was just doing…” Her voice trailed off.
    “What?”
    Hayward shrugged.
    “That’s what I was afraid of.” Singleton hesitated briefly, seemed to come to some decision, then shut the door behind him and stepped forward.
    “This isn’t like you, Laura,” he said in a low voice.
    So it’s going to be like that , thought Hayward.
    “I’m your friend, and I’m not going to beat around the bush,” he went on. “I have a pretty good idea what you were ‘just doing,’ and you’re asking for trouble by doing it.”
    Hayward waited.
    “You developed the case in textbook fashion. You handled it perfectly. So why are you beating yourself up about it now?”
    She gazed steadily at Singleton for a moment, trying to control the surge of anger that she knew was directed more at herself than him.
    “Why? Because the wrong man’s in jail. Agent Pendergast didn’t murder Torrance Hamilton, he didn’t murder Charles Duchamp, and he didn’t murder Michael Decker. His brother, Diogenes, is the real murderer.”
    Singleton sighed. “Look. It’s clear that Diogenes stole the museum’s diamonds and kidnapped Viola Maskelene. There are statements from Lieutenant D’Agosta, that gemologist, Kaplan, and Maskelene herself to that effect. But that doesn’t make him a murderer. You have absolutely no proof of that. On the other hand, you’ve done a great job proving Agent Pendergast did commit those murders. Let it go.”
    “I did the job I was supposed to do, and that’s the problem. I was set up. Pendergast was framed.”
    Singleton frowned. “I’ve seen plenty of frame jobs in my career, but for this to work, it would have to have been impossibly sophisticated.”
    “D’Agosta told me all along that Diogenes Pendergast was framing his brother. Diogenes collected all the physical evidence he needed during Pendergast’s convalescence in Italy—blood, hair, fibers, everything. D’Agosta insisted Diogenes was alive; that he was the kidnapper of Viola Maskelene; that he was behind the diamond