There was, of course, no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time.
– GEORGE ORWELL, 1984
Amelia Sachs arrived early.
But Lincoln Rhyme had been awake earlier, unable to sleep soundly because of the plans unfolding presently, both here and in England. He’d had dreams about his cousin Arthur and his uncle Henry.
Sachs joined him in the exercise room, where Thom was getting Rhyme back into the TDX wheelchair after he’d done five miles on the Electrologic stationary bicycle, part of his regular exercise scheme to improve his condition and to keep his muscles toned for the day when they might once again begin to replace the mechanical systems that now ran his life. Sachs took over, while the aide went downstairs to fix breakfast. It was a hallmark of their relationship that Rhyme had long ago lost any qualms about her helping him with his morning routine, which many people would find unpleasant.
Sachs had spent the night at her place in Brooklyn, so now he updated her on the 522 situation. But she was distracted, he could see. When he asked why, she exhaled slowly and told him, “It’s Pam.” And she explained that Pam’s boyfriend had turned out to be her former teacher. And a married one, at that.
“No…” Rhyme winced. “I’m sorry. The poor kid.” His initial reaction was to threaten this Stuart into getting the hell out of the picture. “You’ve got a shield, Sachs. Flash it. He’ll head for the hills. Or I’ll give him a call if you want.”
Sachs, however, didn’t think that was the right way to handle the matter. “I’m afraid if I’m too pushy or I report him, I’ll lose her. If I don’t do anything, she’s in for a lot of grief. God, what if she wants to have his baby?” She dug a nail into her thumb. Stopped herself. “It’d be different if I’d been her mother all along. I’d know how to handle it.”
“Would you?” Rhyme asked.
She considered this, then conceded with a smile, “Okay, maybe not…This parent stuff. Kids ought to come with an owner’s manual.”
In the bedroom, they had breakfast, which Sachs fed to Rhyme. Like the parlor and the lab downstairs, the bedroom was far homier than it had been when Sachs first saw it, years ago. Back then the place had been stark, the only decorations art posters, tacked up backward and used as impromptu whiteboards for the first case they’d worked on together. Now those posters had been turned around and others added: of paintings that Rhyme enjoyed-impressionistic landscapes and moody urban scenes by artists like George Inness and Edward Hopper. Then she sat back, next to his wheelchair, and took his right hand, the one in which he’d recently regained some control and touch. He could feel her fingertips, though the sensation was odd, a step or two removed from the pressure he’d sense on his neck or face where the nerves worked normally. It was as if her hand were water trickling onto his skin. He willed his fingers to close on hers. And felt the pressure of her response. Silence. But he sensed, through her posture, that she wanted to talk about Pam, and he said nothing, waiting for her to continue. He watched the peregrine falcons on the ledge, aware, taut, the female larger. The pair were muscular bundles of readiness. Falcons hunt by day, and there were fledglings to feed.
“Rhyme?”
“What?” he asked.
“You still haven’t called him, have you?”
“Who?”
“Your cousin.”
Ah, not Pam’s situation. That she’d been thinking of Arthur Rhyme had never occurred to him. “No. I haven’t.”
“You know something else? I didn’t even know you had a cousin.”
“Never mentioned him?”
“No. You talked about your uncle Henry and aunt Paula. But not Arthur. Why not?”
“We work too hard. No time for chitchat.” He smiled. She didn’t.
Should he tell her? Rhyme debated. His first reaction was not to. Because the explanation reeked of self-pity. And that was poison to Lincoln Rhyme. Still, she deserved to know something. That’s what happens in love. In the shaded portions where the two spheres of different lives meet, certain fundamentals-moods, loves, fears, angers-can’t be hidden. That’s the contract.
And so he told her now.
About Adrianna and Arthur, about the bitterly cold day of the science fair and the lies later, the embarrassing forensic examination of the Corvette and even the potential engagement present-a chunk of atomic-age concrete. Sachs nodded and Rhyme laughed to himself. Because he knew she’d be thinking: What was the big deal? A bit of teenage love, a little duplicity, a little heartbreak. Pretty small caliber in the arsenal of personal offenses. How did something so pedestrian ruin such a deep friendship?
You two were like brothers…
“But didn’t Judy say you and Blaine used to visit them years later? That sounds like everything got patched up.”
“Oh, yep. We did. I mean, it was only a high school crush. Adrianna was pretty…a tall redhead, as a matter of fact.”
Sachs laughed.
“But hardly worth destroying a friendship over.”
“So there’s more to the story, isn’t there?”
Rhyme said nothing at first. Then: “Not long before my accident, I went to Boston.” He sipped some coffee through a straw. “I was speaking at an international conference on forensic science. I’d finished the presentation and was in the bar afterward. A woman came up to me. She was a retired professor from M.I.T. She’d been struck by my last name, and said that she’d had a student from the Midwest in her class years ago. His name was Arthur Rhyme. Was he any relation?
“My cousin, I told her. She went on to tell me what an interesting thing Arthur had done. He’d submitted a scientific paper with his application in lieu of an essay. It was brilliant, she said. Original, well researched, rigorous-oh, if you want to compliment scientists, Sachs, say that their research is ‘rigorous.’” He fell silent briefly. “Anyway, she encouraged him to flesh it out and publish it in a journal. But Arthur never pursued it. She hadn’t stayed in touch with him and wondered if he’d done any research in the area since.
“I was curious. I asked her what the subject was. She actually remembered the title. ‘The Biologic Effects of Certain Nanoparticulate Materials’…Oh, and by the way, Sachs, I wrote it.”
“You?”
“It was a paper I’d written for a science fair project. Came in second in the state. It was some pretty original work, I will admit.”
“Arthur stole it?”
“Yep.” Even now, after all these years, the anger rippled within him. “But it gets worse.”
“Go on.”
“After the conference I couldn’t get what she’d told me out of my head. I contacted M.I.T.’s admissions. They kept all the applications on microfiche. They sent me a copy of mine. Something was wrong. My application was what I’d sent them, my signature. But everything sent by the school, from the counselor’s office, had been altered. Art got a hold of my high school transcript and changed it. He gave me B’s instead of the A’s I really had. He’d forged new letters of recommendation, which were lukewarm. He made them sound like form letters. They were probably the ones he’d gotten from his teachers. My uncle Henry’s recommendation wasn’t included in my packet.”
“He took it out?”
“And he’d replaced my essay with some generic Why-I-want-to-go-to-M.I.T. crap. He even added some very choice typos.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She squeezed his hand harder. “And Adrianna worked in the counselor’s office, right? So she helped him.”
“No. I thought so at first but I tracked her down and called her.” He gave a cool laugh. “We talked about life, our marriages, her kids, careers. Then the past. She always wondered why I’d cut things off the way I did. I said I thought she’d decided to go out with Arthur.”
That had surprised her and she’d explained that, no, she was only doing Art a favor-helping him with his college application. He’d come to her office a half dozen times simply to talk about schools, look at some samples of essays, letters of recommendation. He said his own college counselor was terrible and he was desperate to get into a good school. He asked her not to say anything to anyone, especially me; he was embarrassed that he needed the help, so they’d snuck off together a few times. She still felt guilty that Art had made her lie about it.
“And when she went to the bathroom or off to copy something he raided your file.”
“That’s right.”
Why, Arthur never hurt a single soul in his life. He isn’t capable of it…
Wrong, Judy.
“Are you absolutely sure?” Sachs asked.
“Yep. Because right after I hung up with her, I called Arthur.”
Rhyme could hear the conversation almost verbatim.
“Why, Arthur? Tell me why.” No greeting other than this.
A pause. Arthur’s breathing.
And even though years had passed since the transgression his cousin knew immediately what he was referring to. No interest in how Rhyme had found out. No interest in denying or feigning ignorance or innocence.
His response: to go on the offensive. He’d blustered angrily, “All right, you want to know the answer, Lincoln? I’ll tell you. The prize at Christmas.”
Mystified, Rhyme had asked, “The prize?”
“That my father gave you in the contest at the Christmas Eve party when we were seniors.”
“The concrete? From the Stagg Field stadium?” Rhyme had frowned in confusion. “What do you mean?” There had to be more to it than winning a souvenir of significance to only a handful of people in the world.
“I deserved it!” His cousin had raged, acting as if he were the victim. “Father named me after the man in charge of the atomic project. I knew he’d kept the memento. I knew he was going to give it to me when I graduated from high school or college. It was going to be my graduation present! I’d wanted it for years!”
Rhyme had been at a loss for words. There they were, grown men, talking like children about a stolen comic book or piece of candy.
“He gave away the one thing that was important to me. And he gave it to you.” His voice was breaking. Was he crying?
“Arthur, I just answered some questions. It was a game.”
“A game?…What kind of fucking game was that? It was Christmas Eve! We should’ve been singing carols or watching It’s a Wonderful Life. But, no, no, Father had to turn everything into a fucking classroom. It was embarrassing! It was boring. But nobody had the balls to say anything to the great professor.”
“Jesus, Art, it wasn’t my fault! It was just a prize I won. I didn’t steal anything from you.”
A cruel laugh. “No? Well, Lincoln, it ever occur to you that maybe you did?”
“What?”
“Think about it! Maybe…my father.” He’d paused, breathing deeply.
“What the hell’re you talking about?”
“You stole him! Did you ever wonder why I never tried out for varsity track? Because you had the lock on that! And academically? You were his other son, not me. You sat in on his classes at U of C. You helped him with his research.”
“This’s crazy… He asked you to come to class too. I know he did.”
“Once was enough for me. He picked me apart until I wanted to cry.”
“He cross-examined everybody, Art. That’s why he was so brilliant. He made you think, he pushed you until you got the right answer.”
“But some of us could never get the right answer. I was good. But I wasn’t great. And the son of Henry Rhyme was supposed to be great. It didn’t matter, though, because he had you. Robert went to Europe, Marie moved to California. And even then he didn’t want me. He wanted you!”
The other son…
“I didn’t ask for the role. I didn’t sabotage you.”
“Didn’t you? Ah, Mr. Innocent. You didn’t play the game? You just accidentally drove up to our house on weekends, even when I wasn’t there? You didn’t invite him to come to your track meets? Sure, you did. Answer me: Which of them would you really want for a father, mine or yours? Did your father ever fawn over you? Ever whistle for you from the stands? Give you that raised eyebrow of approval?”
“That’s all bullshit,” Rhyme had snapped. “You’ve got some issue with your father and what do you do? You sabotage me. I could’ve gotten into M.I.T. But you ruined that! And my whole life changed. If it weren’t for you, everything would’ve been different.”
“Well, I can say the same about you, Lincoln. I can say the same…” A harsh laugh. “Did you even try with your father? What do you think he felt, having a son like you, who was a hundred times smarter than he was? Going off all the time because he’d rather hang out with his uncle. Did you even give Teddy a chance?”
At that, Rhyme had slammed the phone into the cradle. It was the last time they talked. Several months later he was paralyzed at the crime scene.
Everything would’ve been different…
After he’d explained this to Sachs she said, “That’s why he never came to see you after you were hurt.”
He nodded. “Back then, after the accident, all I could do was lie in bed and think that if Art hadn’t changed the application I would have gotten into M.I.T. and maybe done graduate work at Boston University or joined the BPD or come to New York earlier or later. In any case I probably wouldn’t’ve been at the subway crime scene and…” His voice dissolved to silence.
“The butterfly effect,” she said. “A small thing in the past makes a big difference in the future.”
Rhyme nodded. And he knew that Sachs could take in this information with sympathy and understanding and make no judgments about the broader implications-which he would choose: walking and leading a normal life, or being a crip and perhaps a far better criminalist because of it…and, of course, being her partner.
This was the type of woman Amelia Sachs was.
He gave a faint smile. “The funny thing is, Sachs…”
“There was something to what he said?”
“My own father never seemed to notice me at all. He certainly never challenged me the way my uncle did. I did feel like Uncle Henry’s other son. And I liked it.” He’d come to realize that maybe, subconsciously, he had been pursuing boisterous, full-of-life Henry Rhyme. He was pelted with a dozen fast memories of the times he’d been embarrassed by his father’s shyness.
“But it’s no excuse for what he did,” she said.
“No, it’s not.”
“Still,” she began.
“You’re going to say that it happened a long time ago, let bygones be bygones, water over dams and under bridges?”
“Something like that,” she offered with a smile. “Judy said he asked about you. He’s reaching out. Forgive him.”
You two were like brothers…
Rhyme glanced over the still topography of his immobile body. Then back to Sachs. He said softly, “I’m going to prove he’s innocent. I’ll get him out of jail. I’ll give him his life back.”
“That’s not the same, Rhyme.”
“Maybe not. But it’s the best I can do.”
Sachs began to speak, perhaps to make her case again, but the subject of Arthur Rhyme and his betrayal vanished as the phone buzzed and on the computer screen came Lon Sellitto’s number.
“Command, answer phone… Lon. Where are we?”
“Hey, Linc. Just wanted to let you know our computer expert’s on his way.”
The guy was familiar, the doorman thought-the man who nodded pleasantly as he left the Water Street Hotel.
He nodded back.
The guy was on his cell phone and he paused near the door, as people eased around him. He was talking, the doorman deduced, to his wife. Then the tone changed. “Patty, sweetheart…” A daughter. After a brief conversation about a soccer game he was back on with the wife, sounding more adult, but still adoring.
He fell into a certain category, the doorman knew. Been married fifteen years. Faithful, looked forward to getting home-with a bag of tacky, heartfelt presents. He wasn’t like some guests: the businessman who’d arrive wearing his wedding ring and leave for dinner with finger naked. Or the tipsy businesswoman being escorted into the elevator by a hunky coworker (they never shed their rings; they didn’t need to).
The things a doorman knows. I could write a book.
But the question nagged: Why was this guy so familiar?
And then he was saying to the wife, with a laugh, “You saw me? It made the news there? Mom did too?”
Saw him. A TV celebrity?
Wait, wait. Almost there…
Ah, got it. Last night, watching the news on TV. Sure-this guy was a professor or doctor of some kind. Sloane…or Soames. A computer expert from some fancy school. The one that Ron Scott, the assistant mayor or whatever, was talking about. The prof was helping the police with that rape and murder on Sunday and some other crime.
Then the professor’s face went still and he said, “Sure, honey, don’t worry. I’ll be fine.” He disconnected and looked around.
“Hey, sir,” the doorman said. “Saw you on TV.”
The professor smiled shyly. “Did you?” He seemed embarrassed by the attention. “Say, can you tell me how to get to One Police Plaza?”
“Right up there. About five blocks. By City Hall. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks.”
“Good luck.” The doorman was watching a limo approach, pleased that he’d had a brush with a semi-celebrity. Something to tell his own wife about.
Then he felt a thunk on his back, almost painful, as another man hurried out the door of the hotel and pushed past him. The guy didn’t look back and said nothing by way of apology.
Prick, thought the doorman, watching the man, who was moving fast, head down, in the same direction as the professor. The doorman didn’t say anything, though. However rude they were, you just put up with it. They could be guests or friends of guests or they could be guests next week. Or even executives from the home office, testing you.
Just put up and shut up. That was the rule.
The TV professor and the rude asshole faded from the doorman’s thoughts as a limo stopped and he stepped forward to open the door. He got a nice view of soft cleavage as the guest climbed out; it was better than a tip, which he knew, absolutely knew, she wasn’t going to give him anyway.
I could write a book.
Death is simple.
I’ve never understood why people complicate it. Movies, for instance. I’m not a fan of thrillers but I’ve seen my share. Sometimes I’ll take a sixteen out on a date, to stave off boredom, to keep up appearances or because I’m going to kill her later, and we’ll sit in a movie theater and it’s easier than dinner; you don’t have to talk so much. And I watch the film and think, What on earth is going on up there on the screen, setting up these contrived ways to kill?
Why use wires and electronics and elaborate weapons and plots when you can walk up to someone and beat them to death with a hammer in thirty seconds?
Simple. Efficient.
And make no mistake, the police are smart (and, how’s this for irony, a lot of them have SSD and innerCircle helping them out). The more complicated the scheme, the more chance of leaving behind something they can use to track you down, the more chance for witnesses.
And my plans today for this sixteen I’m following through the streets of lower Manhattan are simplicity itself.
The failure at the cemetery yesterday is behind me now and I’m exhilarated. I’m on a mission and, as part of it, I’ll be adding to one of my collections.
As I follow my target I dodge sixteens right and left. Why, look at them all… My pulse is picking up. My head is throbbing at the thought that these sixteens are themselves collections-of their past. More information than we can comprehend. DNA is, after all, nothing more than a database of our bodies and genetic history, stretching back millennia. If you could plug that into hard drives, how much data could you extract? Makes innerCircle look like a Commodore 64.
Breathtaking…
But back to the task at hand. I maneuver around a young sixteen, smell her perfume, which she dabbed on this morning in her Staten Island or Brooklyn apartment in a sad attempt to exude competence and came off as cheaply seductive. I move closer to my target, feeling the comfort of the pistol against my skin. Knowledge may be one kind of power, but there are others that are nearly as effective.
“Hey, Professor, we’ve got some activity.”
“Uh-huh,” Roland Bell replied, his voice spilling from the speakers in the surveillance van, where sat Lon Sellitto, Ron Pulaski and several tactical officers.
Bell, an NYPD detective who worked with Rhyme and Sellitto occasionally, was on his way from the Water Street Hotel to One Police Plaza. He’d traded his typical jeans, work shirt and sports coat for a rumpled suit, since he was playing the role of the fictional professor Carlton Soames.
Or, as he’d put it in his North Carolina drawl, “A stinkball on a hook and line.”
Bell now whispered into a lapel microphone as invisible as the tiny speaker in his ear, “How close?”
“He’s behind you about fifty feet.”
“Uhm.”
Bell was at the core of Lincoln Rhyme’s Expert Plan, which was based on his increasing understanding of 522. “He’s not taking our computer trap but he’s dying for information. I know it. We need a different sort of trap. Hold a press conference and lure him out into the open. Have them announce that we’ve hired an expert and get somebody undercover up onstage.”
“You’re assuming he watches TV.”
“Oh, he’ll be checking the media to see how we’re handling the case, especially after the incident at the cemetery.”
Sellitto and Rhyme had contacted somebody not connected with the 522 case-Roland Bell was always game, if he wasn’t on another assignment. Rhyme had then called a friend at Carnegie Mellon University, where he’d lectured several times. He told him about 522’s crimes, and the authorities at the school, which was renowned for its work in high-technology security, agreed to help. Their webmaster added Carlton Soames, Ph.D., to the school’s Web site.
Rodney Szarnek faked a résumé for Soames and sent it out to dozens of science Web sites, then cobbled together a credible site for Soames himself. Sellitto got a room for the professor at the Water Street Hotel, held the press conference and waited to see if 522 would take the bait in this trap.
Which apparently he had.
Bell had left the Water Street Hotel not long before and paused, carrying on a credible but fake phone call and standing in the open long enough to make sure he caught 522’s attention. Surveillance showed that a man had quickly left the hotel just after Bell and was now following him.
“You recognize him from SSD? He one of the suspects on our list?” Sellitto asked Pulaski, sitting beside him, staring at the monitor. Four plainclothes officers were a block or so from Bell; two wore hidden video cameras.
On the crowded streets, though, it was hard to get a clear view of the killer’s face. “Could be one of the service techs. Or, weird, it almost looks like Andrew Sterling himself. Or, no, maybe it’s that he kind of walks like him. I’m not sure. Sorry.”
Sweating heavily in the hot van, Sellitto wiped his face, then leaned forward and said into the mike, “Okay, Professor, Five Twenty-Two’s moving up. Maybe forty feet behind you. He’s in a dark suit, dark tie. He’s carrying a briefcase. His gait profile suggests that he’s armed.” Most cops who’ve worked the street for a few years can recognize the difference in posture and walking patterns when a suspect is carrying a weapon.
“Gotcha,” commented the laconic officer, who carried two pistols himself and was ambidextrously talented with them.
“Man,” Sellitto muttered, “I hope this works. Okay, Roland, go ahead with the right turn.”
“Uhm.”
Rhyme and Sellitto didn’t believe that 522 would shoot the professor on the street. What would killing him accomplish? Rhyme speculated that the killer’s intent was to abduct Soames, to learn what the police knew, then murder him later or perhaps threaten him and his family to have Soames sabotage the investigation. So the script called for Roland Bell to take a detour out of public view, where 522 would make his move and they’d nail him. Sellitto had found a construction site that would work well. It featured a long sidewalk, cordoned off to the public, that was a shortcut to One Police Plaza. Bell would ignore the Closed sign and head down the sidewalk, where he’d be lost to sight after thirty or forty feet. A team was hiding at the far end to move in when 522 approached.
The detective made the turn, stepping around the barrier tape and heading up the dusty sidewalk, while the rattle and slam of jackhammers and pile drivers filled the interior of the van from Bell’s sensitive mike.
“We’ve got you on visual, Roland,” Sellitto said as one of the officers beside him hit a switch and another camera took up surveillance. “You watching, Linc?”
“No, Lon, Dancing with the Celebrities is on. Jane Fonda and Mickey Rooney are up next.”
“It’s Dancing with the Stars, Linc.”
Rhyme’s voice clattered into the van. “Is Five Twenty-Two going to make the turn? Or is he going to balk?…Come on, come on…”
Sellitto moved the mouse and double-clicked. Another image, on a split screen, popped up, from a Search and Surveillance team’s video camera. It depicted a different angle: Bell’s back moving down the sidewalk, away from the camera. The detective was glancing with curiosity at the construction site, as any normal passerby would. A moment later, 522 appeared behind him, keeping his distance, looking around too, though obviously with no interest in the workers; he was scanning for witnesses or the police.
Then he hesitated, looked around once more. And started to close the distance.
“Okay, everybody, heads up,” Sellitto called. “He’s moving up on you, Roland. We’re going to lose you on visual in about five seconds so keep an eye out. You copy?”
“Yep,” said the easy-going officer. As if answering a bartender who’d asked if he wanted a glass with his bottle of Budweiser.
Roland Bell wasn’t quite as calm as he sounded.
The widower father of two children, a nice house in the burbs and a sweetheart down in the Tarheel State he was getting pretty close to proposing to…All those domestic things tended to add up on the negative side when you were asked to be a sitting duck on an undercover set.
Still, Bell couldn’t help but do his duty-particularly when it came to a perp like this 522, a rapist and killer, a species of criminal that Bell had a particular dislike for. And, truth be told, he didn’t mind the rush from ops like this one.
“We all find our levels,” his daddy had often said, and once the boy realized that the man wasn’t talking about misplaced tools he embraced that philosophy as a cornerstone of his life.
His jacket was unbuttoned and his hand poised to draw, aim and let fly with his favorite pistol, an example of Italy’s finest firepower. He was glad Lon Sellitto had stopped his banter. He needed to hear this fellow’s approach, and the slam slam slam of the pile driver was plenty loud. Still, concentrating hard, he heard a scrape of shoes on the sidewalk behind him.
Make it thirty feet.
Bell knew the takedown team was in front of him, though he couldn’t see them, or they him, because of a sharp curve in the sidewalk. The plan was for them to take 522 as soon as the backdrop was safe and no bystanders were in danger. This portion of the sidewalk was still partly visible from a nearby street and the construction site and they’d been gambling that the killer wouldn’t attack until Bell was closer to the tactical officers. But he seemed to be moving in more quickly than they’d planned on.
Bell hoped, though, that the man would hold off for a few minutes; a firefight here could endanger a number of passersby and construction workers.
But the logistics of the takedown vanished from his mind as he heard two things simultaneously: the sound of 522’s footsteps breaking into a run toward him and, much more alarming, the cheerful Spanish chatter of two women, one pushing a baby carriage, as they emerged from the back of the building right next to Bell. The tac officers had sealed off the sidewalk but apparently nobody’d thought to notify the superintendents of the buildings whose rear doors faced it.
Bell glanced back and saw the women walk right in between him and 522, who was staring at the detective and running forward. In his hand was a gun.
“We’ve got trouble! Civvies between us. Suspect’s armed! Repeat, he’s got a weapon. Move in!”
Bell started for his Beretta but one of the women, seeing 522, screamed and jumped back, slamming into Bell, knocking him to his knees. His gun dropped to the sidewalk. The killer blinked in shock and froze, undoubtedly wondering why a college professor was armed, but he recovered fast and aimed at Bell, who was going for his second gun.
“No!” the killer shouted. “Don’t try it!”
The officer could do nothing but lift his hands. He heard Sellitto say, “First team’ll be there in thirty seconds, Roland.”
The killer said nothing, just snarled for the women to flee, which they did, and then he stepped forward, gun on Bell’s chest.
Thirty seconds, the detective thought, breathing hard.
It might as well have been a lifetime.
Walking from the parking garage to One Police Plaza, Captain Joseph Malloy was irritated that he hadn’t heard anything about the set involving Detective Roland Bell. He knew Sellitto and Rhyme were desperate to find this perp and he’d reluctantly agreed to the phony press conference but it really was over the line, and he wondered what the fallout would be if it didn’t work.
Hell, there’d be fallout if it did work. One of the top rules in city government: Don’t fuck with the press. Especially in New York.
He was just reaching into his pocket for his cell phone when he felt something touch his back. Insistent and purposeful. A pistol.
No, no…
His heart galloped.
Then came the voice, calm. “Do not turn around, Captain. If you turn around, you’ll see my face and that means you’ll die. You understand?” He sounded educated, surprising Malloy for some reason.
“Wait.”
“Do you understand?”
“Yes. Don’t-”
“At the next corner you’re going to turn to the right into that alley and keep going.”
“But-”
“I don’t have a silencer on the gun. But the muzzle is close enough to your body that nobody will know where the sound came from and I’ll be gone before you hit the ground. And the bullet will go through you and with these crowds I’m sure it will hit somebody else. You don’t want that.”
“Who are you?”
“You know who I am.”
Joseph Malloy had made a lifelong career in law enforcement, and after his wife was killed by a drug-crazed burglar the profession became more than a career; it was an obsession. Maybe he was brass, an administrator now, but he still had the instincts he’d honed on the streets of Midtown South precinct years ago. He understood instantly. “Five Twenty-Two.”
“What?”
Calm. Stay calm. If you’re calm you’re in control. “You’re the man who killed that woman on Sunday and the groundskeeper in the cemetery last night.”
“What do you mean, ‘Five Twenty-Two’?”
“What the department’s calling you internally. An unknown subject, UNSUB, number Five Twenty-Two.” Give him some facts. Make him relax too. Carry on a conversation.
The killer gave a brief laugh. “A number? That’s interesting. Now, turn to the right.”
Well, if he wanted you dead, you’d be dead. He just needs to know something, or he’s kidnapping you for leverage. Relax. He’s obviously not going to kill you-he doesn’t want you to see his face. Okay, Lon Sellitto said they were calling him the man who knew everything? Well, get some information about him that you can use.
Maybe you can talk your way out.
Maybe you can lower his guard and get close enough to kill him with your bare hands.
Joe Malloy was perfectly capable of this, both mentally and physically.
After a brief walk 522 ordered him to stop in the alley. He put a stocking cap over Malloy’s head and pulled it down over his eyes. Good. A huge relief. As long as I don’t see him, I’ll live. Then his hands were taped and he was frisked. A firm hand on his shoulder, he was led forward and eased into a car trunk.
A drive in the stifling heat, the uncomfortable space, legs tucked up. A compact car. Okay, noted. No burning oil. And good suspension. Noted. No smell of leather. Noted. Malloy tried to keep track of the directions they turned but that was impossible. He paid attention to the sounds: traffic noises, a jackhammer. Nothing unique there. And seagulls and a boat horn. Well, how’s that going to help pinpoint where you are? Manhattan is an island. Get something useful!…Wait-the car has a noisy power-steering belt. That’s helpful. Tuck it away.
Twenty minutes later they came to a stop. He heard the rumble of a garage door closing, a big one, squeaky joints or wheels. Malloy gave a brief cry as the trunk popped, startling him. Musty but cool air embraced him. He gasped hard, sucking oxygen into his lungs through the damp wool of the cap.
“Out we go.”
“There are some things I’d like to talk to you about. I’m a captain-”
“I know who you are.”
“I have a lot of power in the department.” Malloy was pleased. His voice was steady. He was sounding reasonable. “We can work something out.”
“Come on over here.” Five Twenty-Two helped him over the smooth floor.
Then he was seated.
“I’m sure you have grievances. But I can help you. Tell me why you’re doing this, committing these crimes.”
Silence. What would happen next? Would he have a chance to fight physically? Malloy wondered. Or would he have to continue to work his way into the man’s mind? By now he’d be missed. Sellitto and Rhyme might have figured out what happened.
Then he heard a noise.
What was it?
Several clicks, followed by a tinny electronic voice. The killer was testing a tape recorder, it seemed.
Then another: the clink of metal against metal, like tools being gathered up.
And finally the disturbing screech of metal on concrete as the killer scooted his chair so close to Malloy’s that their knees touched.
A bounty hunter.
They’d caught a goddamn bounty hunter.
Well, as the man corrected, a “bond recovery specialist.”
“How the fuck did that happen?” was Lincoln Rhyme’s question.
“We’re checking,” Lon Sellitto said, standing dusty and hot beside the construction site where the man who’d been following Roland Bell sat in cuffs.
He wasn’t exactly under arrest. In fact, he hadn’t done anything wrong at all; he was licensed to carry a pistol and was merely trying to effect a citizen’s arrest of a man he believed to be a wanted criminal. But Sellitto was pissed off and ordered him cuffed.
Roland Bell himself was on the phone, trying to find out if 522 had been spotted elsewhere in the area. But so far no one on the takedown teams had seen anyone fitting the scant profile of the killer. “Might as well be in Timbuktu,” Bell drawled to Sellitto and folded up his phone.
“Look-” began the bounty hunter from his curb perch.
“Shut up,” the heavy detective barked for the third or fourth time. He returned to his conversation with Rhyme. “He follows Roland, moves in and looks like he’s going to take him out. But seems he’s just serving a warrant. He thought Roland was somebody named William Franklin. They look alike, Franklin and Roland. Lives in Brooklyn and missed a trial date on an assault with a deadly, and firearm possession. The bond company’s been after him for six months.”
“Five Twenty-Two set it all up, you know. He found this Franklin in the system and sent the bondsman after him to keep us distracted.”
“I know, Linc.”
“Anybody see anything helpful? Somebody staking us out?”
“Nope. Roland just checked with all the teams.”
Silence. Then Rhyme asked, “How did he know it was a trap?”
Though that wasn’t the most important issue. There was really only one question they wanted the answer to and that was “What the hell is he really up to?”
Do They think I’m stupid?
Did They think I wouldn’t be suspicious?
They know about knowledge service providers at this point. About predicting how sixteens will act, based on past behavior and the behavior of others. This concept has been a part of my life for a long, long time. It should be part of everyone’s. How will your next-door neighbor react if you do X? How will he react if you do Y? How will a woman behave when you’re accompanying her to a car while you’re laughing? When you’re silent and fishing in your pocket for something?
I’ve studied Their transactions from the moment They became interested in me. I sorted them, analyzed Them. They’ve been brilliant at times-for instance, that trap of theirs: letting SSD employees and customers know about the investigation and waiting for me to peek at NYPD files on the Myra 9834 case. I almost did, came within an ENTER keystroke of searching but just had a feeling something was wrong. I know now I was right.
And the press conference? Ah, that transaction smelled off from the beginning. Hardly fit predictable and established patterns of behavior. I mean, for the police and the city to meet journalists at that time of night? And the particular assemblage up on the podium certainly didn’t ring true.
Of course, maybe it was legit-even the best fuzzy logic and predictive behavior algorithms get it wrong occasionally. But it was in my interest to check further. I couldn’t, even casually, talk to any of Them directly.
So instead, I did what I do best.
I looked into the closets, gazed through my secret window at the silent data. I learned more about the folks up there on the podium during the press conference: the deputy mayor, Ron Scott, and Captain Joseph Malloy-the man supervising the investigation against me.
And the third person, the professor. Carlton Soames, Ph.D.
Except…Well, he wasn’t.
He was a cop decoy.
A search engine request did turn up hits for Professor Soames on the Carnegie Mellon Web site, and on his own site as well. His C.V. was also tucked away conveniently into various other sites.
But it took me only a few seconds to open up the coding of those documents and examine the metadata. Everything about the phony prof had been written and uploaded yesterday.
Do They think I’m stupid?
If I’d had time I could have learned exactly who the cop was. I could have gone to the TV network’s Web site archive, found the press conference, frozen an image of the man’s face and done a biometric scan. I’d compare that image to DMV records in the area and police and FBI personnel photos to come up with the man’s real identity.
But that would have been a lot of work, and unnecessary. I didn’t care who he was. All I needed was to distract the police and give myself time to locate Captain Malloy, the one who would be a veritable database of information about the operation.
I easily found an outstanding warrant for a man bearing a rough resemblance to the cop playing Carlton Soames-a white male in his thirties. Simple matter then to call the bail bondsman, claiming to be an acquaintance of the fugitive and reporting that I’d spotted him at the Water Street Hotel. I described what he was wearing and hung up fast.
Meanwhile I waited at the parking garage near Police Plaza where Captain Malloy parks his low-end Lexus (its oil change and wheel rotation long overdue, the dealer’s data report) every morning between 7:48 and 9:02 A.M.
I engaged the enemy at exactly 8:35.
There followed the abduction, the drive to the warehouse on the West Side, and the judicious use of forged metal to execute a memory dump from the admirably courageous database. I’m feeling the inexplicable, more-than-sexual satisfaction of knowing I’ve completed a collection: the identities of all the sixteens who are after me, some of the people tethered to Them and how They’re running the case.
Some information was particularly revealing. (The name Rhyme, for instance. That’s the key as to why I’m in this fix, I now understand.)
My soldiers will soon be on their way, marching into Poland, marching into the Rhineland…
And, as I’d hoped, I got something for that collection of mine, one of my favorites, by the way. I should wait until I’m back in my Closet but I can’t resist. I fish for the tape recorder and I hit REWIND then PLAY.
A happy coincidence: I find the exact spot where Captain Malloy’s screams hit a crescendo. It chills even me.
He awoke from an uneasy sleep filled with bumpy nightmares. His throat hurt from the garrote, inside and out, though the stinging was worse in his mouth-from the dryness.
Arthur Rhyme glanced around at the dingy, windowless hospital room. Well, a cell in an infirmary inside the Tombs. No different from his own cell or that terrible common room where he’d almost been murdered.
A male nurse or orderly came into the room, examined an empty bed and wrote something down.
“Excuse me,” Arthur rasped. “Can I see a doctor?”
The man looked his way-a large African American. Arthur felt a surge of panic, thinking this was Antwon Johnson, who’d stolen a uniform and snuck in here to finish what he’d started…
But, no, it was somebody else. Still, the eyes were just as cold and they spent no more time regarding Arthur Rhyme than they would glancing at a spill on the floor. He left without a word.
A half hour passed, Arthur dipping into and out of waking.
Then the door opened again and he glanced up, startled, as another patient was brought in. He’d had appendicitis, Arthur deduced. The operation was over and he was recovering. An orderly got him into bed. He handed the man a glass. “Don’ drink it. Rinse ’n’ spit.”
The man drank.
“No, I’m tellin’ you-”
He threw up.
“Fuck.” The orderly tossed a handful of paper towels at him and left.
Arthur’s fellow patient fell asleep, clutching the towels.
It was then that Arthur looked out the window in the door. Two men stood outside, one Latino, one black. The latter squinted, staring directly at him, then whispered something to the other, who briefly looked too.
Something about their posture and expressions told Arthur their interest wasn’t mere curiosity-seeing the con who’d been saved by Mick, the tweaker.
No, they were memorizing his face. Why?
Did they want to kill him too?
Another surge of panic. Was it only a matter of time until they were successful?
He closed his eyes but then decided he shouldn’t sleep. He didn’t dare. They’d move on him when he was asleep, they’d move on him if he closed his eyes, they’d move on him if he didn’t pay complete attention to everything, everyone, every minute.
And now his agony was complete. Judy had said that Lincoln might have found something that could prove his innocence. She didn’t know what, and so Arthur had no way to judge if his cousin was simply being optimistic, or if he’d discovered some concrete proof that he’d been wrongly arrested. He was furious at this ambiguous hope. Before he’d talked to Judy, Arthur Rhyme had resigned himself to a living hell and an impending death.
I’m doin’ you a favor, man. Fuck, you’d do yourself in a month or two anyway… Now jus’ stop fightin’ it…
But now, realizing that freedom might be attainable, resignation blossomed into panic. He saw in front of him some hope that could be taken away.
His heart began its manic thudding again.
He grabbed the call button. Pushed it once. Then again.
No response. A moment later another pair of eyes appeared in the window. But they weren’t a doctor’s. Was it one of the cons he’d seen before? He couldn’t tell. The man was looking directly at him.
Struggling to control the fear that trickled down his spine like electricity, he pressed the call button again, then held it down.
Still no response.
The eyes in the window blinked once, then vanished.
“Metadata.”
On speakerphone Rodney Szarnek, in the NYPD computer lab, was explaining to Lincoln Rhyme how 522 most likely had learned that the “expert” was in fact an undercover cop.
Sachs, standing nearby, with her arms crossed and fingers picking at her sleeve, reminded him of what she’d learned from Calvin Geddes of Privacy Now. “That’s data about data. Embedded in documents.”
“Right,” Szarnek confirmed, hearing her comment. “He probably saw that we’d created the C.V. last night.”
“Shit,” Rhyme murmured. Well, you can’t think of everything. Then: But you have to when you’re up against the man who knows everything. And now the plan, which potentially could have netted him, had been wasted. The second time they’d failed.
And worse, they’d tipped their hand. Just like they’d learned about his suicide ploy, he’d learned how they operated and had a defense against future tactics.
Knowledge is power…
Szarnek added, “I had somebody at Carnegie Mellon trace the addresses of everyone who was in their site this morning. A half dozen hits originated in the city but they were from public terminals, no trace of the users. Two were from proxies in Europe, and I know the servers. They won’t cooperate.”
Naturally.
“Now we’ve got some information from the empty-space files Ron got from SSD. It’s taking some time. They were…” He apparently decided to avoid the technical explanation and said, “…pretty scrambled. But we’ve got fragments coming together. Looks like somebody did assemble dossiers and download them. We’ve got a nym-that’s a screen name or code name. ‘Runnerboy.’ That’s all so far.”
“Any idea who? An employee, customer, hacker?”
“Nope. I called a friend in the Bureau and checked their database for known nyms and e-mail addresses. They found about eight hundred Runnerboys. None in the metro area, though. We’ll know more later.”
Rhyme had Thom write the name Runnerboy on the list of suspects. “We’ll check with SSD. See if that’s a name anybody recognizes.”
“And the customer files on the CD?”
“I’ve got somebody going through it manually. The code I wrote only got us so far. There’re too many variables-different consumer products, Metro fare cards, E-ZPasses. Most of the companies downloaded certain information from the victims but statistically nobody’s jumping out as a suspect yet.”
“All right.”
He disconnected.
“We tried, Rhyme,” Sachs said.
Tried… He offered a lifted eyebrow, a gesture that meant absolutely nothing.
The phone buzzed and “Sellitto” popped up on caller ID.
“Command, answer… Lon, any-”
“Linc.”
Something was wrong. The tone, through the speakerphone, was hollow, the voice shaky.
“Another vic?”
Sellitto cleared his throat. “He got one of us.”
Alarmed, glancing at Sachs, who was involuntarily leaning forward toward the phone, her arms unfolding. “Who? Tell us.”
“Joe Malloy.”
“No,” whispered Sachs.
Rhyme’s eyes closed and his head eased into the wheelchair’s headrest. “Sure, of course. That was the setup, Lon. He had it all planned.” His voice lowered. “How bad was it?”
“What do you mean?” asked Sachs.
In a soft voice, Rhyme said, “He didn’t just kill Malloy, did he?”
Sellitto’s quivering voice was wrenching. “No, Linc, he didn’t.”
“Tell me!” Sachs said bluntly. “What are you talking about?”
Rhyme looked at her eyes, wide with the horror that they both felt. “He set up the whole thing because he wanted information. He tortured Joe to get it.”
“Oh, God.”
“Right, Lon?”
The big detective sighed. He coughed. “Yeah, got to say it was pretty bad. He used some tools. And from the amount of blood Joe held out for a long time. The prick finished him off with a gunshot.”
Sachs’s face was red with anger. She kneaded the grip of her Glock. Through clenched jaws she asked, “Did Joe have kids?”
Rhyme recalled that the captain’s wife had been killed a few years ago.
Sellitto answered, “A daughter in California. I made the call already.”
“You okay about it?” Sachs asked.
“Naw, I’m not.” His voice cracked again. Rhyme didn’t think he’d ever heard the detective sound so upset.
In his mind he could hear Joe Malloy’s voice when he was responding to Rhyme’s “forgetting” to share about the 522 case. The captain had looked beyond pettiness and backed them up, even after the criminalist and Sellitto hadn’t been honest with him.
Policing came before ego.
And 522 had tortured and killed him simply because he needed information. Goddamn information…
But then, from somewhere, Rhyme summoned the stone that resided within him. The detachment that, as some people had said, meant he had a damaged soul, but that he believed allowed him to better do his job. He said firmly, “Okay, you know what this means, don’t you?”
“What?” Sachs asked.
“He’s declaring war.”
“War?” It was Sellitto who asked this question.
“On us. He’s not going underground. He’s not running. He’s telling us to go fuck ourselves. He’s fighting back. And he thinks he can get away with it. Killing brass? Oh, yeah. He’s drawn the battle line. And he knows all about us now.”
“Maybe Joe didn’t tell him,” Sachs said.
“No, he told. He did everything he could to hold out but in the end he told.” Rhyme didn’t even want to picture what the captain had been through as he’d tried to keep silent. “It wasn’t his fault… But we’re all at risk now.”
“I’ve gotta go talk to the brass,” Sellitto said. “They want to know what went wrong. They weren’t happy about the plan in the first place.”
“I’m sure they weren’t. Where did it happen?”
“A warehouse. Chelsea.”
“Warehouse…perfect for a hoarder. Was he connected to it? Work there? Remember his comfortable shoes? Or did he just find out about it from going through the data? I want to know all of the above.”
“I’ll have it checked out,” Cooper said. “Sellitto gave him the details.”
“And we’ll get the scene searched.” Rhyme glanced at Sachs, who nodded.
After the detective disconnected, Rhyme asked, “Where’s Pulaski?”
“On his way back from the Roland Bell set.”
“Let’s call SSD, find out where all our suspects were at the time Malloy was killed. Some of them must have been in the office. I want to know who wasn’t. And I want to know about this Runnerboy. Think Sterling’ll help?”
“Oh, definitely,” Sachs said, reminding him how cooperative Sterling had been throughout the investigation. She hit the speakerphone button and placed the call.
An assistant answered and Sachs identified herself.
“Hello, Detective Sachs. This is Jeremy. How can I help you?”
“I need to talk to Mr. Sterling.”
“I’m afraid he’s not available.”
“It’s very important. There’s been another killing. A police officer.”
“Yes, I heard that on the news. I’m very sorry. Hold on a moment. Martin just walked in.”
They heard a muffled conversation and then another voice came through the speaker. “Detective Sachs. It’s Martin. I’m sorry to hear, another killing. But Mr. Sterling’s off-site.”
“It’s really important we talk to him.”
The calm assistant said, “I’ll relay the urgency.”
“What about Mark Whitcomb or Tom O’Day?”
“Hold for a moment, please.”
After a lengthy pause the young man’s voice said, “I’m afraid Mark is out of the office too. And Tom is in a meeting. I’ve left messages. I have another call, Detective Sachs. I should go. And I am truly sorry about your captain.”
“‘You that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more to my meditations, than you might suppose.’”
Sitting on a bench, overlooking the East River, Pam Willoughby felt a thud in her chest and her palms began to sweat.
She looked behind her at Stuart Everett, lit brilliantly by the sun over New Jersey. A blue shirt, jeans, a sports coat, the leather bag over his shoulder. His boyish face, a flop of brown hair, narrow lips about to break into a grin that often never arrived.
“Hi,” she said, sounding cheerful. She was angry with herself, wanted to sound harsh.
“Hey.” He glanced north, toward the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. “Fulton Street.”
“The poem? I know. It’s ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.’”
From Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman’s masterpiece. After Stuart Everett had mentioned in class that it was his favorite anthology of poems, she’d bought an expensive edition. Thinking that somehow it made them more connected.
“I didn’t assign that for class. You knew it anyway?”
Pam said nothing.
“Can I sit down?”
She nodded.
They sat in silence. She smelled his cologne. Wondered if his wife had bought it for him.
“Your friend talked to you, I’m sure.”
“Yeah.”
“I liked her. When she first called, okay, I thought she was going to arrest me.”
Pam’s frown softened into a smile.
Stuart continued, “She wasn’t happy about the situation. But that was good. She was looking out for you.”
“Amelia’s the best.”
“I couldn’t believe she was a cop.”
And a cop who ran a check on my boyfriend. Being in the dark wasn’t so bad, Pam reflected; having too much information sucked big-time.
He took her hand. Her impulse to pull it away vanished. “Look, let’s get this whole thing out in the open.”
She kept her eyes focused on the distance; looking into his brown eyes, under droopy lids, would be a way bad idea. She watched the river and the harbor beyond. Ferries still ran but most of the traffic was either private boats or cargo ships. She often sat near the river here and watched them. Forced to live underground, deep in the Midwest woods, with her crazy mother and a bunch of right-wing fanatics, Pam had developed a fascination with rivers and oceans. They were open and free and constantly in motion. That thought soothed her.
“I wasn’t honest, I know. But my relationship with my wife isn’t what it seems. I don’t sleep with her anymore. Haven’t for a long time.”
Was that the first thing a man said at a time like this? Pam wondered. She hadn’t even considered the sex, just the married.
He continued, “I didn’t want to fall in love with you. I thought we’d be friends. But you turned out to be different from everybody else. You lit up something in me. You’re beautiful, obviously. But you’re, well, you’re like Whitman. Unconventional. Lyrical. A poet in your own way.”
“You’ve got kids,” Pam couldn’t stop herself from saying.
A hesitation. “I do. But you’d like them. John’s eight. Chiara’s in middle school. She’s eleven. They’re wonderful kids. That’s why Mary and I are together, the only reason.”
Her name’s Mary. Was wondering.
He squeezed her hand. “Pam, I can’t let you go.”
She was leaning into him, feeling the comfort of his arm against hers, smelling the dry, pleasing scent, not caring who’d bought the aftershave. She thought: He was probably going to tell me sooner or later.
“I was going to tell you in a week or so. I swear. I was working up my courage.” She felt his hand trembling. “I see my children’s faces. I think, I can’t break up the family. And then you come along. The most incredible person I’ve ever met… I’ve been lonely for a long, long time.”
“But what about holidays?” she asked. “I wanted to do something on Thanksgiving or Christmas with you.”
“I can probably get away for one of them. At least part of the day. We just need to plan ahead of time.” Stuart lowered his head. “Here’s the thing. I can’t live without you. If you can be patient, we’ll make it work.”
She thought back to the one night they’d spent together. A secret night that nobody knew about. At Amelia Sachs’s town house, when she was staying at Lincoln Rhyme’s and Pam, and Stuart, had the place to themselves. It was magical. She wished every night of her life could be like that one.
She gripped his hand harder yet.
He whispered, “I can’t lose you.”
He inched closer on the bench. She found comfort in every square inch of contact. She actually had written a poem about him, describing their attraction as gravitational: one of the fundamental forces in the universe.
Pam rested her head against his shoulder.
“I promise I’ll never hide anything from you again. But please…I have to keep seeing you.”
She thought of the wonderful times they’d had, times that would seem insignificant to anyone else, silly.
Nothing like it.
The comfort was like warm water on a wound, washing away the pain.
When they’d been on the run, Pam and her mother had lived with and around petty men who would strike them “for their own good,” who didn’t share a word with their wives or children except when correcting or silencing them.
Stuart wasn’t even in the same universe with those monsters.
He whispered, “Just give me a little while. It’ll work out. I promise. We’ll see each other like we have been… Hey, here’s an idea. I know you want to travel. There’s a poetry conference in Montreal next month. I could fly you there, get you a room. You could attend the sessions. And we’d have the evenings free.”
“Oh, I love you.” She leaned toward his face. “I understand why you didn’t tell me, really.”
He gripped her hard, kissed her neck. “Pam, I’m so-”
Which is when she eased back and clutched her book bag to her chest like a shield. “But no, Stuart.”
“What?”
Pam believed her heart was beating faster than it ever had. “When you get divorced call me up and let’s see. But until then, no. I can’t see you anymore.”
She’d said what she thought Amelia Sachs would say at a time like this. But could she behave the same and not cry? Amelia wouldn’t. No way.
She slapped a smile onto her face, struggling to control the pain as the loneliness and panic killed the comfort instantly. The warmth froze to icy shards.
“But, Pam, you’re everything to me.”
“But what are you to me, Stuart? You can’t be everything. And I’m not willing to take less than that.” Keep your voice steady, she told herself. “If you get a divorce I’ll be with you… Will you?”
Now the seductive eyes lowered. “Yes.” A whisper.
“Now?”
“I can’t just now. It’s complicated.”
“No, Stuart. It’s really, really simple.” She rose. “If I don’t see you again, have a nice life.” She began walking away quickly, heading for Amelia’s town house, which was nearby.
Okay, maybe Amelia wouldn’t cry. But Pam could no longer hold the tears back. She walked straight down the sidewalk, eyes streaming, and-afraid she’d weaken-not daring to look back, not daring to think about what she’d done.
Though she did have one thought about the encounter, which she supposed someday she’d consider pretty funny: What a sucky parting line that was. Wish I’d come up with something better.
Mel Cooper was frowning.
“The warehouse? Where Joe was killed? Some publisher rents it to store paper there for recycling, though it hasn’t been used actively for months. But what’s strange is that the ownership’s not clear.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ve run all the corporate documents. It’s leased to a chain of three companies and owned by a Delaware corporation-and that’s owned by a couple of New York corporations. The ultimate ownership seems to be in Malaysia.”
But 522 had known about it and that it was safe to torture a victim there. How? Because he’s the man who knows everything.
The phone in the lab trilled and Rhyme glanced at caller ID. We’ve had such bad news in the 522 case, please let this be good. “Inspector Longhurst.”
“Detective Rhyme, just to update you. It’s looking rather productive here.” Her voice betrayed a rare excitement. She explained that d’Estourne, the team’s French security service agent, had sped to Birmingham and contacted some Algerians in a Muslim community in West Bromwich, outside the city. He’d learned that an American had commissioned a passport and transit papers to North Africa, traveling on to Singapore. He’d given them a large down payment and they promised the documents would be ready tomorrow evening. As soon as he picked them up he was heading for London to finish the job.
“Good,” Rhyme said, chuckling. “That means Logan’s already there, don’t you think? In London.”
“Quite certain of it,” Longhurst agreed. “Trying the shot tomorrow when our double meets the MI5 people at the shooting zone.”
“Exactly.”
So Richard Logan had ordered the papers, and paid a large price for them, to keep the team focused on Birmingham, while he hurried to London to complete his mission to kill the Reverend Goodlight.
“What do Danny Krueger’s people say?”
“That a boat will be waiting on the south coast to spirit him away to France.”
Spirit him away. Rhyme loved it. Cops don’t talk that way over here.
He thought again about the safe house near Manchester. And the break-in at Goodlight’s NGO in London. Was there anything Rhyme might’ve seen if he had walked the grid at either of those locales via the high-definition video? Some tiny clue that they’d missed that might give them a clearer idea of exactly where and when the killer was going to strike? If so, the evidence was gone now. He’d just have to hope they’d made the right deductions.
“What do you have in place?”
“Ten officers around the shooting zone. All plainclothed or in camouflage.” She added that Danny Krueger, along with the French security man and another tactical team, were making themselves “subtly visible” in Birmingham. Longhurst had also added an extra protection detail where the reverend was actually hiding; they had no evidence that the killer had learned the location but she didn’t want to take any chances.
“We’ll know something soon, Detective.”
Just as they disconnected, his computer dinged.
“mr Rhyme?”
The words appeared on the screen in front of him. A small window had opened. It was a webcam view of Amelia Sachs’s living room. He could see Pam at the keyboard, instant messaging him.
He spoke to her through his voice-recognition system. “Hello Pam owe are you dew in?”
Goddamn computer. Maybe he should have their digital guru, Rodney Szarnek, install a new system.
But she deduced the message just fine.
“Good,” she typed. “How R U?”
“I am good.”
“Amelia there?”
“No. She is how on a case.”
“:-(Bummer. Want 2 talk 2 her. Called but not picking up.”
“Any thing eye can dew-”
Damn. He sighed and tried again. “Anything we can do here?”
“No thx.” A pause and he saw her glance at her cell phone. She looked back at the computer. Typed, “Rachel calling. Back in minute.”
She left the webcam on but turned away, speaking into her mobile. She lugged a massive book bag onto her lap and dug through it, opened a text and found some notes inside. She read them aloud, it seemed.
Rhyme was about to turn to the whiteboards when he glanced at the webcam window.
Something had changed.
He frowned and maneuvered his chair closer, alarmed.
Someone else seemed to be in Sachs’s town house. Could it be? It was hard to tell for certain but as he squinted he saw that, yes, a man was there, hiding in a dark hallway, only twenty feet or so from Pam.
Rhyme squinted, moving his head as far forward as he could. An intruder, his face hidden by a hat. And he was holding something. Was it a gun? A knife?
“Thom!”
The aide wasn’t within earshot. Of course, he was taking the trash out.
“Command, dial Sachs, home.”
Thank God the ECU did exactly as instructed.
He could see Pam glance at the phone beside the computer. But she ignored the ringing; the house wasn’t hers-she’d let voice mail take a message. She continued speaking into her mobile.
The man leaned out of the hallway, his face, obscured by the brim of his hat, aimed directly at her.
“Command, instant message!”
The box popped up on the screen.
“Command, type: ‘Pam exclamation point.’ Command, send.”
“Pamex lamentation point.”
Fuck!
“Command, type, ‘Pam danger leave now.’ Command, send.”
This message went through pretty much unchanged.
Pam, read it, please! Rhyme begged silently. Look at the screen!
But the girl was lost in her conversation. Her face was no longer so carefree. The discussion had turned serious.
Rhyme called 911, and the operator assured him that a police car would be at the town house in five minutes. But the intruder was only seconds away from Pam, who was completely unaware of him.
Rhyme knew it was 522, of course. He’d tortured Malloy to get information about all of them. Amelia Sachs was the first on the list to die. Only it wouldn’t be Sachs. It would be this innocent girl.
His heart was pounding, a sensation registering as a fierce, throbbing headache. He tried the phone again. Four rings. “Hi, this is Amelia. Please leave your message at the tone.”
He tried again. “Command, type, ‘Pam call me period. Lincoln period.’”
And what would he tell her to do if he got through? Sachs had weapons in the place but he didn’t know where she kept them. Pam was an athletic girl, and the intruder didn’t seem much larger than she was. But he’d have a weapon. And, given where he was, he could get a garrote around her neck or a knife into her back before she was even aware of his presence.
And it would happen before his eyes.
Then at last she was swiveling toward the computer. She’d see the message.
Good, keep turning.
Rhyme saw a shadow on the floor across the room. Was the killer moving in closer?
Still talking on her phone, Pam moved toward the computer but she was looking at the keyboard, not the screen.
Look up! Rhyme urged silently.
Please! Read the goddamn message!
But like all kids today, Pam didn’t need to look at the screen to make sure she’d typed correctly. With her cell held tight between cheek and shoulder, she glanced fast at the keyboard as she stabbed the letters with quick strokes.
“gotta go. bye mr Rhyme. C U:-)”
The screen went black.
Amelia Sachs was uncomfortable in the crime-scene Tyvek jumpsuit, with surgeon’s hat and booties. Claustrophobic, nauseous from inhaling the bitter scent of damp paper and blood and sweat in the warehouse.
She hadn’t known Captain Joseph Malloy well. But he was, as Lon Sellitto had announced, “one of ours.” And she was appalled at what 522 had done to him, to extract the information he wanted. She was nearly finished running the scene and carried the evidence-collection bags outside, infinitely grateful for the air here, even though it reeked of diesel fumes.
She kept hearing the voice of her father. As a young girl she’d glanced into her parents’ bedroom and found him in his dress patrolman’s uniform, wiping tears. This had shaken her; she’d never seen him cry. He’d gestured her inside. Hermann Sachs always played straight with his daughter and he’d sat her down on a bedside chair and explained that a friend of his, a fellow officer, had been shot and killed while stopping a robbery.
“Amie, in this business, everybody’s family. You probably spend more time with the guys you work with than you do with your own wife and kids. Every time somebody in blue dies, you die a little bit too. Doesn’t matter, patrol or brass, they’re all family and it’s the same pain when you lose somebody.”
And she now felt the pain he’d been speaking of. Felt it very deeply.
“I’m finished,” she said to the crime-scene crew, who were standing beside their rapid response van. She’d searched the scene alone but the officers from Queens had videotaped and photographed it and walked the grid at the secondary scenes-the likely entrance and exit routes.
Nodding to the tour doctor and her associates from the M.E.’s office, Sachs said, “Okay, you can get him to the morgue.”
The men, in their thick green gloves and jumpsuits, walked inside. Assembling the evidence in the milk crates for transport to Rhyme’s lab, Sachs paused.
Someone was watching her.
She’d heard a tink of metal on metal or concrete or glass from up a deserted alleyway. A fast look, and she believed she saw a figure hiding near a deserted factory’s loading dock, which had collapsed years ago.
Search carefully, but watch your back…
She remembered the scene at the cemetery, the killer, wearing the swiped police hat, watching her. Felt the same uneasiness she had there. She left the evidence bags and walked down the alley, hand on her pistol. She saw no one.
Paranoia.
“Detective?” one of the techs called.
She kept going. Was there a face behind that filthy window?
“Detective,” he persisted.
“I’ll be right there.” A little irritation in her voice.
The crime-scene tech said, “Sorry, it’s a call. From Detective Rhyme.”
She always shut her phone off when she got to a scene to avoid distractions.
“Tell him I’ll call him right back.”
“Detective, he says it’s about somebody named Pam. There’s been an incident at your town house. You’re needed right away.”
Amelia Sachs ran inside fast, oblivious to the pain in her knees.
Past the police at the door, not even nodding to them. “Where?”
One officer pointed toward the living room.
Sachs hurried into the room…and found Pam on the couch. The girl looked up, her face pale.
The policewoman sat beside her. “You’re all right?”
“I’m fine. A little freaked out is all.”
“Nothing hurt? I can hug you?”
Pam laughed and Sachs flung her arms around the girl. “What happened?”
“Somebody broke in. He was here while I was. Mr. Rhyme could see him behind me on the webcam. He kept calling and on the, like, fifth ring or something, I picked up and he told me to start screaming and get out.”
“And you did?”
“Not really. I kind of ran into the kitchen and got a knife. I was pretty pissed. He took off.”
Sachs glanced at a detective from the local Brooklyn precinct, a squat African-American man, who said in a deep baritone, “He was gone when we got here. Neighbors didn’t see anything.”
So it had been her imagination at the warehouse crime scene where Joe Malloy was killed. Or maybe some kid or wino curious about what the cops were doing. After killing Malloy, 522 had come to her place-to look for files or evidence or to finish the job he’d started: kill her.
Sachs walked through the town house with the detective and Pam. The desk had been ransacked but nothing seemed to be missing.
“I thought maybe it was Stuart.” Pam took a breath. “I kind of broke up with him.”
“You did?”
A nod.
“Good for you… But it wasn’t him?”
“No. The guy here was wearing different clothes and wasn’t built like Stuart. And, yeah, he’s a son of a bitch but he’s not going to break into somebody else’s town house.”
“You get a look at him?”
“Naw. He turned and ran before I could see him real clearly.” She’d noticed only his outfit.
The detective explained that Pam had described the burglar as a male, white or light-skinned black or Latino, medium build, wearing blue jeans and a dark blue plaid sports jacket. He’d called Rhyme too, after he’d learned of the webcam, but the criminalist hadn’t seen anything more than a vague form in the hallway.
They found the window through which he’d broken in. Sachs had an alarm system but Pam had shut it off when she’d arrived.
She looked around the place. The anger and dismay she’d felt at Malloy’s horrible death faded, replaced by the same uneasiness, and vulnerability, that she’d been aware of at the cemetery, at the warehouse where Malloy had died, at SSD…in fact, everywhere since they’d started the pursuit of 522. Like at the scene near DeLeon’s house: Was he watching her now?
She saw motion outside the window, a flash of light… Was it from the blowing leaves in front of nearby windows reflecting the pale sunlight?
Or was it 522?
“Amelia?” Pam asked in a soft voice, looking around uneasily herself. “Everything okay?”
This brought Sachs back to reality. Get to work. And fast. The killer had been here-and not that long ago. Goddamnit, find out something useful. “Sure, honey. It’s fine.”
A patrol officer from the precinct asked, “Detective, you want somebody from Crime Scene to look it over?”
“That’s okay,” she said with a glance to Pam and a tight smile. “I’ll handle it.”
Sachs got her portable crime-scene kit from the trunk of her car, and she and Pam searched together.
Well, Sachs did the searching but Pam, standing clear of the perimeter, described exactly where the killer had been. Though her voice was unsteady, the girl was coolly efficient.
I kind of ran into the kitchen and got a knife.
Since Pam was here, Sachs asked a patrol officer to stand guard in the garden-where the killer had escaped. This didn’t allay her concern completely, though, not with 522’s uncanny ability to spy on his victims, to learn all about them, to get close. She wanted to search the scene and get Pam away as soon as she could.
With the teenager directing her, Sachs searched the places he’d stepped. But she found no evidence in the town house. The killer had either used gloves when he’d broken in or hadn’t touched any receptive surfaces, and the adhesive rollers revealed no signs of foreign trace.
“Where did he go outside?” Sachs asked.
“I’ll show you.” Pam glanced at Sachs’s face, which was apparently revealing her reluctance to expose the girl to more danger. “It’d be better than me just telling you.”
Sachs nodded and they walked into the garden. She looked around carefully. She asked the patrol officer, “See anything?”
“Nope. But I’ve gotta say, when you think somebody’s watching you, you see somebody watching you.”
“I hear that.”
He jerked a thumb toward a row of dark windows across the alley, then toward some thick azaleas and boxwood bushes. “I checked them out. Nothing. But I’ll keep on it.”
“Thanks.”
Pam directed Sachs to the path 522 had taken to escape and Sachs began walking the grid.
“Amelia?”
“What?”
“I was kind of a shit, you know. What I said to you yesterday. I felt, like, all desperate or something. Panicked…I guess what I’m saying is, I’m sorry.”
“You were the picture of restraint.”
“I didn’t feel very restrained.”
“Love makes us weird, honey.”
Pam laughed.
“We’ll talk about it later. Maybe tonight, depending on how the case goes. We’ll get dinner.”
“Okay, sure.”
Sachs continued her examination, struggling to put aside her uneasiness, the sense that 522 was still here. But despite her effort the search wasn’t very fruitful. The ground was mostly gravel and she found no footprints, except one near the gate through which he’d escaped from her yard into the alley. The only mark was the toe of a shoe-he’d been sprinting-and useless forensically. She found no fresh tire treadmarks.
But, returning to her yard, she saw a flash of white in the ivy and periwinkle covering the ground-exactly in the position where it would have landed after falling from 522’s pocket as he’d vaulted the locked gate.
“You found something?”
“Maybe.” With tweezers, Sachs picked up a small piece of paper. Returning to the town house, she set up a portable examining table and processed the rectangle. She sprayed ninhydrin on it, then, after donning goggles, hit it with an alternative light source. She was disappointed that no prints were revealed.
“Is it helpful?” Pam asked.
“Could be. It’s not going to point to his front door. But then evidence usually doesn’t. If it did,” she added, smiling, “they wouldn’t need people like Lincoln and me, right? I’m going to go check it out.”
Sachs got her toolbox, took out the drill and screwed shut the broken window. She locked up, setting the alarm.
She had called Rhyme briefly earlier to tell him Pam was all right but she now wanted to let him know about the possible lead. She pulled out her cell phone but, before she called, she paused on the curb and looked around.
“What’s the matter, Amelia?”
She put the phone back in its holster. “My car.” The Camaro was gone. Sachs felt a surge of alarm. Her gaze swiveled up and down the street, her hand strayed to the Glock. Was 522 here? Had he stolen the car?
The patrol officer was just leaving the backyard and she asked if he’d seen anybody.
“That car, that old one? It was yours?”
“Yeah, I think the perp might’ve boosted it.”
“Sorry, Detective, I think it got towed. I woulda said something if I’d known it was yours.”
Towed? Maybe she’d forgotten to put the NYPD placard on the dash.
She and Pam walked up the street to the girl’s beat-up Honda Civic and drove to the local precinct. The desk sergeant there, whom she knew, had heard about the break-in. “Hi, Amelia. The boys canvassed the hood real careful. Nobody saw the perp.”
“Listen, Vinnie, my wheels’re gone. They were by the hydrant across the street from my place.”
“Pool car?”
“No.”
“Not your old Chevy?”
“Yep.”
“Aw, no. That’s lousy.”
“Somebody said it got towed. I don’t know if I had the official-business sign on the dash.”
“Still, they ought to’ve run the plate, seen who it was registered to. Shit, that sucks. Sorry, miss.”
Pam smiled to show her immunity to words that she’d just uttered herself occasionally.
Sachs gave the sergeant the plate number and he made some calls, checked the computer. “Naw, it wasn’t Parking Violations. Hold on a second.” He made some other calls.
Son of a bitch. She couldn’t afford to be without her wheels. She wanted desperately to check out the lead she’d found at her town house.
But her frustration became concern when she noticed the frown on Vinnie’s face. “You sure?…Okay. Where’d it go to?…Yeah? Well, gimme a call back as soon as you know.” He hung up.
“What?”
“The Camaro, you have it financed?”
“Financed? No.”
“This is weird. A repo team got it.”
“Somebody repossessed it?”
“According to them, you missed six months’ payments.”
“Vinnie, it’s a ’sixty-nine. My dad bought it for cash in the seventies. It’s never had a lien on it. Who was the lender supposed to be?”
“My guy didn’t know. He’s going to check it out and call back. He’ll find out where they took it.”
“Goddamn last thing I need. You have wheels here?”
“Sorry, nope.”
She thanked him and walked outside, Pam beside her. “If there’s one scratch on her, heads’re going to roll,” she muttered. Could 522 have been behind the towing? It wouldn’t have surprised her, though how he’d arrange it she couldn’t imagine.
Another stab of uneasiness at how close he’d gotten to her, how much information about her he could access.
The man who knows everything…
She asked Pam, “Can I borrow your Civic?”
“Sure. Only, can you drop me at Rachel’s? We’re going to do our homework together.”
“Tell you what, honey, how ’bout if I have one of the guys from the precinct run you into the city?”
“Sure. How come?”
“This guy knows way too much about me already. Think it’s best just to keep a little distance.” She and the girl walked back into the precinct house to arrange for the ride. Outside once again, Sachs looked up and down the sidewalk. No sign of anyone watching her.
She glanced up fast at motion in a window across the street. She thought immediately of the SSD logo-the window in the watchtower. The person who’d glanced out was an elderly woman but that didn’t stop the chill from trickling down Sachs’s spine yet again. She walked quickly to Pam’s car and fired it up.
With a snap of systems shutting down, deprived of their lifeblood, the town house went dark.
“What the hell is going on?” Rhyme shouted.
“The electricity’s out,” Thom announced.
“That part I figured,” the criminalist snapped. “What I’d like to know is why.”
“We weren’t running the GC,” Mel Cooper said defensively. He looked out the window, as if checking to see if the rest of the neighborhood grid had gone down too, but since it was not yet dusk there were no ConEd references to tell the story.
“We can’t afford to be offline now. Goddamnit. Get it taken care of!”
Rhyme, Sellitto, Pulaski and Cooper remained in the silent, dim room, while Thom walked into the hall and, on his cell phone, made a call. He was soon talking with somebody at the electric company. “Impossible. I pay the bills online. Every month. Never missed one. I have receipts… Well, they’re in the computer and I can’t go online because there’s no electricity, now can I?…Canceled checks, yes, but once again, how can I fax them to you if there’s no electricity?…I don’t know where there’s a Kinko’s, no.”
“It’s him, you know,” Rhyme said to the others.
“Five Twenty-Two? He got your power shut off?”
“Yep. He found out about me and where I live. Malloy must’ve told him this is our command post.”
The silence was eerie. The first thing Rhyme thought of was how completely vulnerable he was. The devices that he relied on were useless now and he had no way to communicate, no way to lock or unlock the doors or use the ESU. If the blackout continued and Thom couldn’t recharge his wheelchair’s battery he’d be immobilized completely.
He couldn’t remember that last time he’d felt so vulnerable. Even having others around didn’t allay the concern; 522 was a threat to anybody, anywhere.
He was also wondering: Is the blackout a diversion, or the prelude to an attack?
“Keep an eye out, everybody,” he announced. “He could be moving in on us.”
Pulaski glanced out the window. Cooper too.
Sellitto pulled out his cell phone and called someone downtown. He explained the situation. He rolled his eyes-Sellitto was never one for stoic faces-then ended the conversation with: “Well, I don’t care. Whatever it takes. This asshole’s a killer. And we can’t do a thing to find him without any fucking electricity… Thanks.”
“Thom, any luck?”
“No,” came the aide’s abrupt reply.
“Shit.” Rhyme then reflected on something. “Lon, call Roland Bell. I think we need protection. Five Twenty-Two went after Pam, he went after Amelia.” The criminalist nodded at a dark monitor. “He knows about us. I want officers on Amelia’s mother’s place. Pam’s foster home. Pulaski’s house, Mel’s mother’s place. Your house too, Lon.”
“You think it’s that much of a risk?” the big detective asked. Then shook his head. “What the hell am I saying? Sure, it is.” He got the information-addresses and phone numbers-then called Bell and had him arrange for officers. After hanging up he said, “It’ll take a few hours but he’ll get it done.”
A loud knock on the door shattered the silence. Still clutching the phone, Thom started for it.
“Wait!” Rhyme shouted.
The aide paused.
“Pulaski, go with him.” Rhyme nodded at the pistol on his hip.
“Sure.”
They walked into the hallway. Then Rhyme heard a muted conversation and a moment later two men in suits, with trim hair and unsmiling faces, walked into the town house, looking around curiously-first at Rhyme’s body, then at the rest of the lab, surprised either at the amount of scientific equipment or the absence of lights, or both, most likely.
“We’re looking for a Lieutenant Sellitto. We were told he’d be here.”
“That’s me. Who’re you?”
Shields were displayed and ranks and names given-they were two NYPD detective sergeants. And they were with Internal Affairs.
“Lieutenant,” the older of the two said, “we’re here to take possession of your shield and weapon. I have to tell you that the results were confirmed.”
“I’m sorry. What’re you talking about?”
“You’re officially suspended. You’re not being arrested at this time. But we recommend you talk to an attorney-either your own or one from the PBA.”
“The hell is going on?”
The younger officer frowned. “The drug test.”
“What?”
“You don’t have to deny anything to us. We just do the fieldwork, pick up shields and weapons and inform suspects of their suspension.”
“What fucking test?”
The older looked at the younger. This apparently had never happened before.
Naturally it hadn’t, since whatever was going on had been ginned up by 522, Rhyme understood.
“Detective, really, you don’t have to act-”
“Do I fucking look like I’m acting?”
“Well, according to the suspension order, you took a drug test last week. The results just came in, showing significant levels of narcotics in your system. Heroin, cocaine and psychedelics.”
“I took the drug test, like everybody in my department. It can’t show up positive because I don’t do any fucking drugs. I have never done any fucking drugs. And…Oh, shit,” the big man spat out, grimacing. He jabbed a finger at the SSD brochure. “They’ve got drug-screening and background-check companies. He got into the system somehow and screwed up my file. The results were faked.”
“That would be very difficult to accomplish.”
“Well, it got accomplished.”
“And you or your attorney can bring up that defense at the hearing. Again, we really just need your shield and your weapon. And here’s the paperwork on that. Now, I hope there’s not going to be a problem. You don’t want to add to your difficulties, do you?”
“Shit.” The big, rumpled man handed over his gun-an old-style revolver-and the shield. “Gimme the fucking paperwork.” Sellitto snatched it out of the hand of the younger one, as the older wrote out a receipt and handed it to him, as well. He then unloaded the gun and placed it and the bullets in a thick envelope.
“Thank you, Detective. Have a good day.”
After they were gone, Sellitto flipped open his phone and called the head of IA. The man was out and he left a message. Then he called his own office. The assistant he shared with several other detectives in Major Cases had apparently heard the news.
“I know it’s bullshit. They what?…Oh, great. I’ll call you when I find out what’s going on.” He snapped the phone closed so hard Rhyme wondered if he’d broken it. He raised an eyebrow. “They just confiscated everything in my desk.”
Pulaski asked, “How the hell do you fight somebody like this?”
It was then that Rodney Szarnek called on Sellitto’s mobile. He set it to speakerphone. “What’s wrong with the landline there?”
“The prick got the electricity shut off. We’re working on it. What’s up?”
“The list of SSD customers, from the CD. We found something. One customer downloaded pages of data about all victims and fall guys the day before each killing.”
“Who is it?”
“His name’s Robert Carpenter.”
Rhyme said, “Okay. Good. What’s his story?”
“All I have is what’s on the spreadsheet. He’s got his own company in Midtown. Associated Warehousing.”
Warehousing? Rhyme was thinking of the place where Joe Malloy was murdered. Was there a connection?
“Have an address?”
The tech specialist recited it.
After disconnecting, Rhyme noted Pulaski was frowning. The young officer said, “I think we saw him at SSD.”
“Who?”
“Carpenter. When we were there yesterday. A big, bald guy. He was in a meeting with Sterling. He didn’t seem happy.”
“Happy? What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. Just an impression.”
“Not helpful.” Rhyme said, “Mel, check this Carpenter out.”
Cooper called downtown on his mobile. He spoke for a few minutes, moving closer to the window for the light, then jotted notes. He disconnected. “You don’t seem to like the word ‘interesting,’ Lincoln, but it is. I’ve got the NCIC and department database results. Robert Carpenter. Lives on the Upper East Side. Single. And, get this, he’s got a record. Some credit card fraud and bad-check busts. Did six months in Waterbury. And he was arrested in a corporate extortion scheme. Those charges were dropped but he went nuts when they came to pick him up, tried to swing at the agent. They dropped those charges when he agreed to go into ED counseling.”
“Emotionally disturbed?” Rhyme nodded. “And his company’s in the warehousing business. Just the line of work for a hoarder… Okay, Pulaski, find out where this Carpenter was when Amelia’s town house got broken into.”
“Yes, sir.” Pulaski was lifting his phone from its holster when the unit trilled. He glanced at caller ID. He answered. “Hi, hon-What?…Hey, Jenny, calm down…”
Oh, no…Lincoln Rhyme knew that 522 had attacked on yet another front.
“What? Where are you?…Take it easy, it’s just a mistake.” The rookie’s voice was shaking. “It’ll all get taken care of… Give me the address… Okay, I’ll be right there.”
He snapped shut the phone, closed his eyes momentarily. “I have to go.”
“What’s wrong?” Rhyme asked.
“Jenny’s been arrested. By the INS.”
“Immigration?”
“She got put on a watch list at Homeland Security. They’re saying she’s illegal and a security threat.”
“Isn’t she-?”
“Our great-grandparents were citizens,” Pulaski snapped. “Jesus.” The young officer was wild-eyed. “Brad’s at Jenny’s mom’s but she has the baby with her now. They’re transporting her to detention-and they may take the baby. If they do that…Oh, man.” Pure despair filled his face. “I have to go.” His eyes told Rhyme that nothing would stop him being with his wife.
“Okay. Go. Good luck.”
The young man sprinted out the door.
Rhyme closed his eyes briefly. “He’s picking us off like a sniper.” He grimaced. “At least Sachs’ll be here any minute. She can check out Carpenter.”
Just then another pounding shook the door.
Alarmed, his eyes jerked open. What now?
But this, at least, wasn’t another disruption by 522.
Two crime-scene officers from the main facility in Queens walked inside, carrying a large milk crate, which Sachs had handed off to them before she’d raced to her town house. This would be the evidence from the scene of Malloy’s death.
“Hi, Detective. You know your doorbell’s not working.” One looked around. “And your lights’re off.”
“We’re pretty aware of that,” Rhyme said coolly.
“Anyway, here you go.”
After the officers had left, Mel Cooper put the box on an examination table and extracted the evidence and Sachs’s digital camera, which would contain images of the scene.
“Now, that’s helpful,” Rhyme growled sarcastically, pointing his chin at the silent computer and its black screen. “Maybe we can hold the memory chip up to the sunlight.”
He glanced at the evidence itself-a shoeprint, some leaves, duct tape and envelopes of trace. They had to examine it as soon as possible; since this wasn’t planted evidence it might provide the final clue as to where 522 was. But without their equipment to analyze it and check the databases, the bags were nothing more than paperweights.
“Thom,” Rhyme called, “the power?”
“I’m still on hold,” the aide shouted from the dark hallway.
He knew this was probably a bad idea. But he was out of control.
And it took a lot for Ron Pulaski to be out of control.
Yet he was furious. This was beyond anything he’d ever felt. When he’d signed up for the blue he’d expected to be beat up and threatened from time to time. But he’d never thought that his career would put Jenny at risk, much less his children.
So despite being straitlaced and by the book-Sergeant Friday-he was taking the matter into his own hands. Going behind the backs of Lincoln Rhyme and Detective Sellitto and even his mentor, Amelia Sachs. They wouldn’t be happy at what he was going to do but Ron Pulaski was desperate.
And so on the way to the INS detention center in Queens, he’d made a call to Mark Whitcomb.
“Hey, Ron,” the man had said, “what’s going on?…You sound upset. You’re out of breath.”
“I’ve got a problem, Mark. Please. I need some help. My wife’s being accused of being an illegal alien. They say her passport’s forged and she’s a security threat. It’s crazy.”
“But she’s a citizen, isn’t she?”
“Her family’s been here for generations. Mark, we think this killer we’ve been after got into your system. He’s had one detective fail a drug test…and now he’s had Jenny arrested. He could do that?”
“He must’ve swapped her file with somebody who’s on a watch list and then called it in… Look, I know some people at INS. I can talk to them. Where are you?”
“On my way to the detention center in Queens.”
“I’ll meet you outside in twenty minutes.”
“Oh, thanks, man. I don’t know what to do.”
“Don’t worry, Ron. We’ll get it worked out.”
Now, waiting for Whitcomb, Ron Pulaski was pacing in front of INS detention, beside a temporary sign indicating that the service was now operated by the Department of Homeland Security. Pulaski thought back to all the TV news reports he and Jenny had seen about illegal immigrants, how terrified they’d looked.
What was happening to his wife at the moment? Would she be stuck for days or weeks in some kind of bureaucratic purgatory? Pulaski wanted to scream.
Calm down. Handle it smart. Amelia Sachs always told him that.
Handle it smart.
Finally, thank you, Lord, Pulaski saw Mark Whitcomb walking quickly toward him, the expression one of urgent concern. He wasn’t sure exactly what the man could do to help but he hoped that the Compliance Department, with its connections to the government, could pull strings with Homeland Security and get his wife and child released, at least until the matter was officially resolved.
Whitcomb, breathless, came up to him. “Have you found out anything else?”
“I called about ten minutes ago. They’re inside now. I didn’t say anything. I wanted to wait for you.”
“You okay?”
“No. I’m pretty frantic here, Mark. Thanks for this.”
“Sure,” the Compliance officer said earnestly. “It’ll be okay, Ron. Don’t worry. I think I can do something.” Then he looked up into Pulaski’s eyes; the SSD Compliance officer was just slightly taller than Andrew Sterling. “Only…it’s pretty important for you to get Jenny out of there, right?”
“Oh, yeah, Mark. This’s just a nightmare.”
“Okay. Come this way.” He led Pulaski around the corner of the building, then into an alley. “I’ve got a favor to ask, Ron,” Whitcomb whispered.
“Whatever I can do.”
“Really?” The man’s voice was uncharacteristically soft, calm. And his eyes had a sharpness that Pulaski hadn’t seen before. As if he’d dropped an act and was now being himself. “You know, sometimes, Ron, we have to do things that we don’t think are right. But in the end it’s for the best.”
“What do you mean?”
“To help your wife out you might have to do something you might think isn’t so good.”
The officer said nothing, his thoughts whirling. Where was this going?
“Ron, I need you to make this case go away.”
“Case?”
“The murder investigation.”
“Go away? I don’t get it.”
“Stop the case.” Whitcomb looked around and whispered, “Sabotage it. Destroy the evidence. Give them some false leads. Point them anywhere but at SSD.”
“I don’t understand, Mark. Are you joking?”
“No, Ron. I’m real serious. This case’s got to stop and you can do it.”
“I can’t.”
“Oh, yes, you can. If you want Jenny out of there.” A nod toward the detention center.
No, no…this was 522. Whitcomb was the killer! He’d used the passcodes of his boss, Sam Brockton, to get access to innerCircle.
Instinctively Pulaski started for his gun.
But Whitcomb drew first, a black pistol appearing in his hand. “No, Ron. That’s not going to get us anywhere.” Whitcomb reached into the holster and pulled Pulaski’s Glock out by the grip, slipped it into his waistband.
How could he have misjudged this so badly? Was it the head injury? Or was he just stupid? Whitcomb’s friendship had been feigned, which hurt as much as it shocked. Bringing him the coffee, defending him to Cassel and Gillespie, suggesting they get together socially, helping with the time sheets…it was all a tactic to get close to the cop and use him.
“It’s all a goddamn lie, isn’t it, Mark? You didn’t grow up in Queens at all, did you? And you don’t have a brother who’s a cop?”
“No to both.” Whitcomb’s face was dark. “I tried to reason with you, Ron. But you wouldn’t work with me. Goddamnit! You could have. Now look what you’ve made me do.”
The killer pushed Pulaski farther into the alley.
Amelia Sachs was in the city, cruising through traffic, frustrated at the noisy, tepid response of the Japanese engine.
It sounded like an ice maker. And had just about as much horsepower.
She’d called Rhyme twice but both times the line went right to voice mail. This rarely happened; Lincoln Rhyme obviously wasn’t away from home very much. And something odd was going on at the Big Building: Lon Sellitto’s phone was out of order. And neither he nor Ron Pulaski was answering his mobile.
Was 522 behind this too?
All the more reason to move fast in following up on the lead she’d discovered at her town house. It was a solid one, she believed. Maybe it was the final clue, the one missing piece of the puzzle they needed to bring this case to its conclusion.
Now she saw her destination, not far away. Mindful of what had happened to the Camaro, and not wanting to jeopardize Pam’s car too-if 522 had been behind the repossession, as she suspected-Sachs cruised around the block until she found the rarest of all phenomena in Manhattan: a legal, unoccupied parking space.
How ’bout that?
Maybe it was a good sign.
“Why are you doing this?” Ron Pulaski whispered to Mark Whitcomb as they stood in a deserted Queens alleyway.
But the killer ignored him. “Listen to me.”
“We were friends, I thought.”
“Well, everybody thinks a lot of things that turn out not to be true. That’s life.” Whitcomb cleared his throat. He seemed edgy, uncomfortable. Pulaski remembered Sachs saying that the killer was feeling the pressure of their pursuit, which made him careless. It also made him more dangerous.
Pulaski was breathing hard.
Whitcomb looked around again, fast, then back at the young officer. He kept the gun steady and it was clear he knew how to use it. “Are you fucking listening to me?”
“Goddamnit. I’m listening.”
“I don’t want this investigation to go any further. It’s time for it to stop.”
“Stop? I’m in Patrol. How can I stop anything?”
“I was telling you: Sabotage it. Lose some evidence. Send people in the wrong direction.”
“I won’t do that,” the young officer muttered defiantly.
Whitcomb shook his head, looking almost disgusted. “Yes, you will. You can make this easy or hard, Ron.”
“What about my wife? Can you get her out of there?”
“I can do anything I want.”
The man who knows everything…
The young officer closed his eyes, grinding his teeth together the way he’d done as a kid. He looked at the building where Jenny was being held.
Jenny, the woman who looked just like Myra Weinburg.
Ron Pulaski now resigned himself to what he had to do. It was terrible, it was foolish, but he had no choice. He was cornered.
His head down, he muttered, “Okay.”
“You’ll do it?”