Blue Labyrinth by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child Page A

years before, it had been the most lavish resort on the Salton Sea, known as “Las Vegas South,” frequented by movie stars and mobsters. An Elvis film had been shot on its beaches and capacious verandas. The Rat Pack had sung in its lounges, and people like Frank Costello and Moe Dalitz had cut deals in its back rooms. But then the waters of the sea had receded from the resort’s elegant piers, the increasing salinity had killed the fish, which washed up in stinking, rotting piles, and the resort had been abandoned to the sun, winds, and migrating birds.
    From his place of concealment, Pendergast examined the old resort with minute attention. The weather had scoured the paintfrom the boards, and most of the windows were mere black openings. In a few spots, the vast roof had collapsed, leaving yawning holes. Here and there, elaborate balconies listed to one side, weakened by years of desuetude. There was no sign of recent activity. The Fontainebleau was untouched, undisturbed, isolated, not even worth the attention of teenage gangs or graffiti artists.
    Now Pendergast aimed his binoculars half a mile to the north, beyond the resort. Here, an ancient, gullied track led to a dark opening in the hillside, its ragged maw barred by an ancient wooden door. This was the entrance to the Golden Spider Mine—the site from which the piece of turquoise found in Alban’s digestive system had been extracted. Pendergast surveyed the entrance, and the approach to it, with extreme care. Unlike the Fontainebleau, the old turquoise mine had evidently been the site of recent activity. He could see fresh tire tracks going up the old road, and in front of the mine the crust had been disturbed, broken, exposing a lighter shade of salt. An effort had been made to erase both the tracks and prints, but ghost images of them were nevertheless evident from the vantage point of the hilltop.
    This was no accident, no coincidence. Alban had been killed and the turquoise planted in his body for one reason: to lure Pendergast to this godforsaken place. The reason why was deeply mysterious.
    Pendergast had allowed himself to be lured. But he would not allow himself to be surprised.
    He continued to examine the mine entrance for a long time. Then, finally, he pointed the binoculars still farther to the north, scanning the surrounding landscape. Some two miles beyond the Fontainebleau, atop a small rise of land, were the gridded streets, broken streetlights, and abandoned houses of what had once been a town. Pendergast scrutinized it carefully. Then he spent another hour scouring the landscape both north and south, looking for anything else that might indicate recent activity.
    Nothing.
    He retreated down the hill to his car, got in, and drove in the direction of the abandoned development. As he approached, a large,weather-beaten sign, barely readable, welcomed him to the town of Salton Palms. The ghostly illustration below appeared to show a bikini-clad woman on water skis, waving and smiling.
    Reaching the outskirts of the decrepit neighborhood, Pendergast parked and strolled into Salton Palms in a desultory fashion, his cowboy boots making a hollow sound on the cracked asphalt streets, kicking up plumes of snow-like dust. Salton Palms had once been a hamlet of modest second homes. Now the homes were in ruins—wind-scoured, doors missing, burned, others collapsed. A ruined marina, tilted at a crazy angle, sat, beached and rotting, hundreds of yards from the current shoreline. A lone tumbleweed was affixed into the crust of salt, festooned with salt crystals like some gigantic snowflake.
    Pendergast wandered slowly through the disarray, glancing around at the rusty swing sets in the grassless backyards, the ancient barbecue grills and cracked kiddie pools. An old toy pedal car from the ’50s lay on its side in the middle of the street. In the shade of a breezeway lay the skeleton of a dog, salt-encrusted, its collar still attached. The only sound was the