An elderly woman out for a walk with her dog, visits her husband’s grave in a Miami Beach cemetery. The dog discovers something that causes the woman to pass out: most likely, some piece from a human corpse. Turns out, it was a heart.
Agent Aloysius Pendergast has a new boss, Assistant Director in Charge (ADC) Walter Pickett. And he assigns Pendergast a partner: Special Agent Coldmoon (apparently a Lakota name). Pickett tells Pendergast that Coldmoon will play second fiddle to Pendergast, to keep him honest and to observe. However, there is a hidden agenda, as Pickett says to Coldmoon, “Any questions about what your real assignment is regarding Pendergast?” And he says no.
Pickett assigns Pendergast the case. A human heart was left on the grave of Elise Baxter. She had strangled herself to death 11 years previously, in Katahdin, Maine. But her family is from Miami Beach. A note is left at the scene:
Dear Elise, I am so sorry for what happened to you. The thought of how you must have suffered has haunted me for years. I hope you will accept this gift with my sincere condolences. So let us go then, you and I—others are awaiting gifts as well.
And it was signed, Mr. Brokenhearts.
Pendergast takes a charter flight to Miami Beach the night before his scheduled FBI ticketed flight, and checks into the Fontainebleau. He examines the site of the murder where the body was hidden beneath some shrubbery about 10 miles south of the grave where the heart was deposited. Pendergast then visits the parents of the Baxter woman. Elise had been a promising young real estate agent, and the trip to the conference in Maine was a reward for good sales. The murdered woman whose heart was cut out was Felice Montera, a nurse at Mount Sinai Medical Center.
Pendergast gathers some of Elise’s acquaintances to go over the details of her suicide. They all say they didn’t see any signs of an impending suicide. Pendergast and Coldmoon call Picket, and Coldmoon agrees with Pendergast that they need to travel to Maine to investigate Ms. Baxter’s apparent suicide. Pickett gives them the go-ahead.
Before they go, Coldmoon visits Ms. Montera’s parents and family. She had an ex-boyfriend, Lance Corvin, and Coldmoon travels across Alligator Alley to Cape Coral, on the west side of Florida, to meet with Lance, who’s a bouncer at a bar.
In Maine, Pendergast and Coldmoon visit the Lodge at Katahdin, the site of the suicide. He interviews the only remaining people that were working there at the time of the death.
They don’t discover anything new, and Pendergast receives a call from Pickett informing him of another murder in Miami. They head back and discover another young woman killed, with her heart cut out. The heart is placed in a mausoleum above another apparent suicide victim from 2007. Pendergast manages to convince his boss to exhume the body and do an autopsy. Again, the results are consistent with suicide.
The woman who committed suicide did so in Ithaca NY, at one of the bridges on the Cornell campus. Pendergast and Coldmoon head there to see if they can find any clues. Pendergast promised Pickett that they’d be there less than 24 hours, so as to be back in Miami in case of another murder. In Ithaca, as Pendergast is examining the bridge where the death took place, he seems to realize something.
There is a third killing: Misty Carpenter, a companion to elderly men, is killed and her heart placed in a columbarium, which is a building where people’s ashes reside. The heart is placed into the container of the ashes of Mary Adler, another apparent suicide. She died in July 2007, in North Carolina.
Pendergast exhumes the remains of Elise Baxter. Here, the pathologist, Dr. Fauchet finds evidence of murder. Then, she goes back to the body of Agatha Flayley, and also spots signs that she missed during her original autopsy of the remains.
Roger Smithback, brother of the late William Smithback, is investigating the Mr. Brokenhearts murders. Meanwhile, Coldmoon has had to inform on Pendergast’s movements. However, he feels bad about going behind the back of his partner. Picket is ready to remove Pendergast and Coldmoon from the case, but then Dr. Fauchet finds evidence of murder, and he then tells Pendergast to continue.
Smithback discovers that 2 of the murder victims went to the same psychiatrist: Dr. Bronner who lives in Key Largo. Smithback confronts the doctor, and is chased off his property, having to climb over his fence. Smithback discovers that the doctor has a criminal record, and anger management issues. Smithback then receives his own letter from Mister Brokenhearts.
Dear Roger, You, perhaps, understand. Their deaths cry out for justice. Hers most of all. Until she is at rest, I cannot rest. She was my reason for life, and why I must survive. Do you understand? I must atone. If you cannot help me do so, I will have to continue on my own—and this will not end well.
Yours truly,
Mister Brokenhearts
Pendergast is working with the local Miami PD liaison, Commander Grove. He and Coldmoon go to investigate a John Vance, living out far in the swamps. Meanwhile, Dr. Fauchet has identified Vance and his son as credible suspects in the earlier murders. John Vance was killed in a car accident right before the old murders (disguised as suicides) stopped. She believes the son, Ronald, is Mr. Brokenhearts and heads over to the address that is supposedly his.
In the swamps, nearing Vance’s ramshackle shack, Pendergast and Coldmoon stumble into a sinkhole. As they are crawling their way back to the surface, Coldmoon is shot. A gun battle ensues, wherein Pendergast gets cornered up a tree, trying to avoid a bunch of alligators, while the gunman is shooting at him. The gunman, it turns out, is Commander Grove.
Grove killed Vance’s wife, making it look like a suicide. Vance was returning from a tour he was serving in the Gulf during the war, and Grove had been having an affair with his wife. Vance tried to tell the police that his wife was murdered, but, with the help of Grove, they wouldn’t change their theory of her death from suicide to homicide.
As Grove is about to deliver the coup de grace to Pendergast , he gets a hatchet, Archy, to the back of the skull. Already dead, he stumbles off his boat and into the swamp, where his body is eaten by alligators. Mr. Brokenhearts—Ronald Vance—threw the ax and killed the man that killed his mother.
John Vance had led his son Ronald on a homicidal journey that spanned the East Coast 11 years previous to the current murders. Smithback is trying to write the story, but doesn’t have all of the facts, as the police have closed ranks and nobody is letting Mr. Brokenhearts talk. However, Pendergast , being a good friend of Smithback’s late brother, feels that he should help Smithback, or, "if I didn’t help you with this story, his shade might disturb my peace." He fills in the blanks for the reporter.
Ronald committed the three recent murders in Miami, as well as being involved in the old murder/suicides. John Vance started killing women in other parts of the country, exactly the way his wife was killed. A murderous road trip, with his kid riding along. He was planning to eventually confess what he’d done and humiliate the Miami PD by exposing their incompetence.
John had probably told his son that he should commit a murder himself—the woman in Ithaca, but he bungled the job because he didn’t want to be a killer. He felt so guilty that he most likely caused the fatal car crash that killed his father and badly injured himself. He was hospitalized and institutionalized until he reached adulthood. He was tortured by what he’d done. Hence the need to atone. From the letter to Smithback that he published: Their deaths cry out for justice. Hers most of all. She was my reason for life. I must atone.
Grove, coasting to retirement as a police liaison, wasn’t concerned about a bunch of new murders. Until he realized the new killings were linked to the old ones—which, because they imitated his killing of Lydia Vance, might in turn lead to her…and from there to him. So he lured Pendergast and Coldmoon out to the swamp, hoping to kill them, and then he would’ve killed or arrested Ronald and gotten credit for the collar.
