The Broken Window

Chapter Two

The trail had led from Scottsdale to San Antonio to a rest area in Delaware off Interstate 95, filled with truckers and restless families, then finally to the improbable destination of London.

And the prey who’d taken this route? A professional killer Lincoln Rhyme had been pursuing for some time, a man he’d been able to stop from committing a terrible crime, but who’d managed to escape from the police with only minutes to spare, “waltzing,” as Rhyme had put it bitterly, “out of the city like a goddamn tourist who had to be back at work Monday morning.”

The trail had dried up like dust and the police and FBI could learn nothing about where he was hiding or what he might be planning next. But a few weeks earlier Rhyme had heard from contacts in Arizona that this very man was the likely suspect in the murder of a U.S. Army soldier in Scottsdale. Leads suggested he’d headed east-to Texas, then Delaware.

The name of the perp, which might have been real or a cover, was Richard Logan. It was likely that he came from the western portion of the United States or Canada. Intense searches turned up a number of Richard Logans, but none fit the profile of the killer.

Then in a burst of happenstance (Lincoln Rhyme would never use the word “luck”), he’d learned from Interpol, the European criminal-information clearinghouse, that a professional killer from America had been hired for a job in England. He’d killed someone in Arizona to gain access to some military identification and information, met with associates in Texas and been given a down payment on his fee at some truck stop on the East Coast. He had flown to Heathrow and was now somewhere in the U.K., the exact location unknown.

The subject of Richard Logan’s “well-funded plot which originated at high levels”-Rhyme could only smile when he read the polished Interpol description-was a Protestant minister from Africa, who’d run a refugee camp and stumbled on a massive scam in which AIDS drugs were stolen and sold and the money used to purchase arms. The minister was relocated by security forces to London, having survived three attempts on his life in Nigeria and Liberia and even one in a transit lounge at Malpensa airport in Milan, where the Polizia di Stato, armed with stubby machine guns, scrutinize much and miss very little.

The Reverend Samuel G. Goodlight (a better name for a man of the cloth Rhyme couldn’t imagine) was now in a safe house in London, under the watchful eye of officers from Scotland Yard, the home of the Metropolitan Police Service, and was presently helping British and foreign intelligence connect the dots of the drugs-for-arms plan.

Via encrypted satellite calls and e-mails flying around several continents, Rhyme and an Inspector Longhurst of the Metropolitan Police had set up a trap to catch the perp. Worthy of the precise plots that Logan himself crafted, the plan involved look-alikes and the vital assistance of a larger-than-life former arms broker from South Africa who came with a network of curried informants. Danny Krueger had made hundreds of thousands selling weapons as efficiently and dispassionately as other businessmen sell air conditioners and cough syrup. But a trip to Darfur last year had shaken him badly, seeing the carnage his toys caused. He’d given up the arms trade cold and had resettled in England. Others on the task force included officers from MI5, as well as personnel from the London office of the FBI and an agent from France’s version of the CIA: La Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure.

They hadn’t known even the region of Britain in which Logan was in hiding, planning his hit, but the boisterous Danny Krueger had heard that the killer would be making his move in the next few days. The South African still had many contacts in the international underground and had put out hints about a “secret” location where the meetings between Goodlight and the authorities would take place. The building had an exposed courtyard that was a perfect shooting zone for the killer to assassinate the minister.

It was also an ideal place to spot and take down Logan. Surveillance was in place and armed police, MI5 and FBI agents were on twenty-four-hour alert.

Rhyme was now sitting in his red battery-powered wheelchair on the first floor of his Central Park West town house-no longer the quaint Victorian parlor it had once been, but a well-equipped forensic laboratory, larger than many labs in medium-size towns. He found himself doing what he’d done frequently over the past several days: staring at the phone, whose number-two speed-dial button would call a line in England.

“The phone’s working, right?” Rhyme asked.

“Is there any reason for it not to be?” Thom, his caregiver, asked this in a measured tone, which Rhyme heard as a belabored sigh.

“I don’t know. Circuits overload. Phone lines get hit by lightning. All kinds of things can go wrong.”

“Then maybe you should try it. Just to make sure.”

“Command,” Rhyme said, getting the attention of the voice-recognition system hooked to his ECU-the computerized environmental control unit that substituted in many ways for his physical functioning. Lincoln Rhyme was a quadriplegic; he had only limited movement below the place where his neck was broken in a crime-scene accident years before-the fourth cervical vertebra, near the base of the skull. He now ordered, “Dial directory assistance.”

The dial tone filled the speakers, followed by beep beep beep. This irritated Rhyme more than a nonperforming phone would have. Why hadn’t Inspector Longhurst called? “Command,” he snapped. “Disconnect.”

“Seems to be fine.” Thom placed a coffee mug in the cup holder of Rhyme’s wheelchair and the criminalist sipped the strong brew through a straw. He looked at a bottle of Glenmorangie eighteen-year-old single-malt whisky on a shelf-it was nearby but, of course, always just out of Rhyme’s reach.

“It’s morning,” Thom said.

“Obviously it’s morning. I can see it’s morning. I don’t want any…It’s just…” He’d been waiting for a reason to ride the young man on the issue. “I seem to recall being cut off rather early last night. Two tumblers. Virtually nothing.”

“It was three.”

“If you were to add up the contents, the cubic centimeters, I’m speaking of, it was the same as two small ones.” Pettiness, like liquor, could be intoxicating in its own right.

“Well, no scotch in the morning.”

“It helps me think more clearly.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“It does. And more creatively.”

“Doesn’t do that either.”

Thom was wearing a perfectly ironed shirt, tie and slacks. His clothes were less wrinkled than they used to be. Much of the job of a quadriplegic’s caregiver is physical. But Rhyme’s new chair, an Invacare TDX, for “total driving experience,” could fold out into a virtual bed, and had made Thom’s job much easier. The chair could even climb low stairs and speed along as fast as a middle-aged jogger.

“I’m saying I want some scotch. There. I’ve articulated my desire. How’s that?”

“No.”

Rhyme scoffed and stared at the phone again. “If he gets away…” His voice faded. “Well, aren’t you going to do what everybody does?”

“What do you mean, Lincoln?” The slim young man had been working with Rhyme for years. He’d been fired on occasion and had quit too. But here he still was. A testament to the perseverance, or perverseness, of both principals.

“I say, ‘If he gets away,’ and you say, ‘Oh, but he won’t. Don’t worry.’ And I’m supposed to be reassured. People do that, you know: They give reassurance when they have no idea what they’re talking about.”

“But I didn’t say that. Are we having an argument about something I didn’t say but could have? Isn’t that like a wife being mad at her husband because she saw a pretty woman on the street and thought he would have stared at her if he’d been there?”

“I don’t know what it’s like,” Rhyme said absently, his mind mostly on the plan in Britain to capture Logan. Were there holes in it? How was security? Could he trust the informants not to leak information the killer might pick up on?

The phone rang and a caller-ID box opened on the flat-screen monitor near Rhyme. He was disappointed to see the number wasn’t a London exchange but closer to home-in the Big Building, cop-speak for One Police Plaza in downtown Manhattan.

“Command, answer phone.” Click. Then: “What?”

From five miles away a voice muttered, “Bad mood?”

“No word from England yet.”

“What’re you, on call or something?” Detective Lon Sellitto asked.

“Logan’s disappeared. He could make a move at any time.”

“Like having a baby,” Sellitto said.

“If you say so. What do you need? I don’t want to keep the line tied up.”

“All that fancy equipment and you don’t have call waiting?”

“Lon.”

“Okay. Something you oughta know about. There was a burglary-murder a week ago Thursday. Vic was a woman lived in the Village. Alice Sanderson. Perp stabbed her to death and stole some painting. We got the doer.”

Why was he calling about this? A mundane crime and the perp in custody. “Evidence problem?”

“Nope.”

“So I’d be interested why?”

“The supervising detective just got a call a half hour ago?”

“The chase, Lon. The chase.” Rhyme was staring at the whiteboard that detailed the plan to catch the killer in England. The scheme was elaborate.

And fragile.

Sellitto brought him out of his reflection. “Look, I’m sorry, Linc, but I gotta tell you, the perp’s your cousin, Arthur Rhyme. It’s murder one. He’s looking at twenty-five years, and the D.A. says it’s an airtight case.”

Chapter Three

“It’s been quite a while.”

Judy Rhyme sat in the lab. Hands together, face ashen, she fiercely avoided looking at anything except the criminalist’s eyes.

Two responses to his physical condition infuriated Rhyme: when visitors struggled agonizingly to pretend his disability didn’t exist, and when they considered it a reason to be his best friend, joking and slinging around tough talk as if they’d been through the war together. Judy fell into the first category, measuring her words carefully before she set them delicately in front of Rhyme. Still, she was family, of sorts, and he remained patient as he tried to keep from glancing at the telephone.

“A long time,” the criminalist agreed.

Thom was picking up the social details to which Rhyme was forever oblivious. He’d offered Judy coffee, which now sat untouched, a prop, on the table in front of her. Rhyme had glanced at the whisky once more, a longing peek that Thom had no trouble ignoring.

The attractive, dark-haired woman seemed in better shape, solid and more athletic, than the last time he’d seen her-about two years before his accident. Judy risked a look at the criminalist’s face. “I’m sorry we never got here. Really. I wanted to.”

Meaning not a social visit before he was injured but a sympathy call after. Survivors of catastrophes can read what is unsaid in conversations as clearly as the words themselves.

“You got the flowers?”

Back then, after the accident, Rhyme had been dazed-medication, physical trauma, and the psychological wrestling match with the inconceivable: the fact that he would never walk again. He didn’t remember any flowers from them but he was sure the family had sent them. A lot of people had. Flowers are easy, visits are hard. “Yes. Thanks.”

Silence. An involuntary, lightning-fast glance at his legs. People think if you can’t walk there’s something wrong with your legs. No, they’re fine. The problem was telling them what to do.

“You’re looking good,” she said.

Rhyme didn’t know whether he did or not. Never really considered it.

“And you’re divorced, I heard.”

“That’s right.”

“I’m sorry.”

Why? he wondered. But that was a cynical thought and he gave a nod, acknowledging her sympathy.

“What’s Blaine up to?”

“She’s out on Long Island. Remarried. We don’t stay in touch much. Without kids, that usually happens.”

“I enjoyed that time in Boston, when you two came up for the long weekend.” A smile that wasn’t really a smile. Painted on, a mask.

“It was nice, yes.”

A weekend in New England. Shopping, a drive south to Cape Cod, a picnic by the water. Rhyme remembered thinking how lovely the place was. Seeing the green rocks by the shore, he’d had a brainstorm and decided to start a collection of algae from around the New York City area for the NYPD crime lab database. He’d spent a week driving around the metro area, taking samples.

And, on the trip to see Arthur and Judy, he and Blaine hadn’t fought once. Even the drive home, with a stop at a Connecticut inn, was nice. He remembered making love on the back deck of their room, the smell of honeysuckle overwhelming.

That visit was the last contact with his cousin in person. They’d had one other brief conversation but only via the phone. Then came the accident, and silence.

“Arthur kind of fell off the face of the earth.” She laughed, an embarrassed sound. “You know we moved to New Jersey?”

“Really?”

“He was teaching at Princeton. But he got laid off.”

“What happened?”

“He was an assistant and a research fellow. They decided not to offer him a full professor’s contract. Art says politics was behind it. You know how that is in colleges.”

Henry Rhyme, Art’s father, was a renowned professor of physics at the University of Chicago; academia was an esteemed pursuit in that branch of the Rhyme family. In high school Arthur and Lincoln would debate the virtues of university research and teaching versus a private-sector job. “In academia, you can make a serious contribution to society,” Art had said as the boys shared two somewhat illegal beers, and managed to keep a straight face when Lincoln supplied the requisite follow-up line: “That, and the teaching assistants can be pretty hot.”

Rhyme wasn’t surprised that Art had gone for a university job.

“He could’ve continued to be an assistant but he quit. He was pretty angry. Assumed he’d get another job right away, but that didn’t happen. He was out of work for a while. Ended up at a private company. A medical-equipment manufacturer.” Another automatic glance-this time at the elaborate wheelchair. She blushed as if she’d committed a Don Imus. “It wasn’t his dream job and he hasn’t been real happy. I’m sure he wanted to come see you. But probably he was ashamed he hadn’t done so well. I mean, with you being a celebrity and all.”

Finally, a sip of coffee. “You both had so much in common. You two were like brothers. I remember Boston, all the stories you told. We were up half the night, laughing. Things I never knew about him. And my father-in-law, Henry-when he was alive he’d talk about you all the time.”

“Did he? We wrote quite a bit. In fact, I had a letter from him a few days before he died.”

Rhyme had dozens of indelible memories of his uncle, but one particular image stood out. The tall, balding, ruddy-faced man is rearing back, braying a laugh, embarrassing every one of the dozen or so family members at the Christmas Eve dinner table-embarrassing all, that is, except Henry Rhyme himself, his patient wife and young Lincoln, who is laughing right along. Rhyme liked his uncle very much and would often go to visit Art and the family, who lived about thirty miles away, on the shores of Lake Michigan in Evanston, Illinois.

Now, though, Rhyme was in no mood for nostalgia and was relieved when he heard the door open and the sound of seven firm footsteps, from threshold to carpet, the stride telling Rhyme who it was. A moment later a tall, slim redhead wearing jeans and a black T-shirt under a burgundy blouse entered the lab. The shirt was loose and the stern angle of a black Glock pistol was visible high on her hip.

As Amelia Sachs smiled and kissed Rhyme on the mouth, the criminalist was aware, in his periphery, of Judy’s body language response. The message was clear and Rhyme wondered what had dismayed her: that she’d made the slip of not asking if he was seeing someone, or that she’d assumed a crip couldn’t have a romantic partner-at least not one as disarmingly attractive as Sachs, who’d been a model before going to the police academy.

He introduced them. Sachs listened with concern to the story of Arthur Rhyme’s arrest, and asked how Judy was coping with the situation. Then: “Do you have children?”

Rhyme realized that while he’d been noting Judy’s faux pas, he’d committed one himself, neglecting to ask about their son, whose name he’d forgotten. And, it turned out, the family had grown. In addition to Arthur Junior, who was in high school, there were two others. “A nine-year-old, Henry. And a daughter, Meadow. She’s six.”

“Meadow?” Sachs asked in surprise, for reasons Rhyme couldn’t deduce.

Judy gave an embarrassed laugh. “And we live in Jersey. But it’s got nothing to do with the TV show. She was born before I’d ever seen it.”

TV show?

Judy broke the brief silence. “I’m sure you’re wondering why I called that officer to get your number. But first I have to tell you Art doesn’t know I’m here.”

“No?”

“In fact, to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have thought of it on my own. I’ve been so upset, not getting any sleep, not thinking straight. But I was talking to Art a few days ago in the detention center and he said, ‘I know what you’re thinking, but don’t call Lincoln. It’s a case of mistaken identity or something. We’ll get it straightened out. Promise me you won’t.’ He didn’t want to burden you… You know how Art is. Just so kind, always thinking of everybody else.”

Rhyme nodded.

“But the more I got to thinking about it, the more sense it made. I wouldn’t ask you to pull strings or do anything that wasn’t right, but I thought maybe you could just make a call or two. Tell me what you thought.”

Rhyme could imagine how that would go over at the Big Building. As a forensic consultant for the NYPD, his job was getting to the truth, wherever that journey led, but the brass definitely preferred him to help convict, not exonerate, defendants.

“I went through some of your clippings-”

“Clippings?”

“Art keeps family scrapbooks. He has clippings about your cases from the newspapers. Dozens. You’ve done some amazing things.”

Rhyme said, “Oh, I’m just a civil servant.”

Finally Judy delivered some unvarnished emotion: a smile, as she looked into his eyes. “Art said he never believed your modesty for a minute.”

“Is that right?”

“But only because you never believed it either.”

Sachs chuckled.

Rhyme snorted a laugh that he thought would pass for sincere. Then he grew serious. “I don’t know how much I can do. But tell me what happened.”

“It was a week ago Thursday, the twelfth. Art always takes off early every Thursday. He goes for a long run in a state park on the way home. He loves to run.”

Rhyme recalled dozens of times when the two boys, born within months of each other, would race along sidewalks or through the green-yellow fields near their Midwestern homes, grasshoppers fleeing, gnats sticking to their sweaty skin when they stopped for breath. Art always seemed to be in better shape but Lincoln had made his school’s varsity track team; his cousin hadn’t been interested in trying out.

Rhyme pushed aside the memories and concentrated on what Judy was saying.

“He left work about three-thirty and went for his run, then came home about seven, seven-thirty. He didn’t seem any different, wasn’t acting odd. He took a shower. We had dinner. But the next day the police came to the house, two from New York and a New Jersey trooper. They asked him questions and looked through the car. They found some blood, I don’t know…” Her voice conveyed traces of the shock she would have felt on that difficult morning. “They searched the house and took away some things. And then they came back and arrested him. For murder.” She had trouble saying the word.

“What was he supposed to have done exactly?” Sachs asked.

“They claimed he killed a woman and stole a rare painting from her.” She scoffed bitterly. “Stole a painting? What on earth for? And murder? Why, Arthur never hurt a single soul in his life. He isn’t capable of it.”

“The blood that was found? Have they run a DNA test?”

“Well, yes, they did. And it seemed to match the victim. But those tests can be wrong, can’t they?”

“Sometimes,” Rhyme said, thinking, Very, very rarely.

“Or the real killer could have planted the blood.”

“This painting,” Sachs asked, “did Arthur have any particular interest in it?”

Judy played with thick black and white plastic bracelets on her left wrist. “The thing is, yes, he used to own one by the same artist. He liked it. But he had to sell it when he lost his job.”

“Where was the painting found?”

“It wasn’t.”

“But how did they know it was taken?”

“Somebody, a witness, said they saw a man carrying it from the woman’s apartment to the car around the time she was killed. Oh, it’s all just a terrible mix-up. Coincidences…That’s what it has to be, just a weird series of coincidences.” Her voice cracked.

“Did he know her?”

“At first Art said he didn’t but then, well, he thought they might’ve met. At an art gallery he goes to sometimes. But he said he never talked to her that he can remember.” Her eyes now took in the whiteboard containing the schematic of the plan to capture Logan in England.

Rhyme was remembering other times he and Arthur had spent together.

Race you to that tree… No, you wimp…the maple way over there. Touch the trunk! On three. One…two…go!

You didn’t say three!

“There’s more, isn’t there, Judy? Tell us.” Sachs had seen something in the woman’s eyes, Rhyme supposed.

“I’m just upset. For the kids too. It’s a nightmare for them. The neighbors’re treating us like terrorists.”

“I’m sorry to push but it’s important for us to know all the facts. Please.”

The blush had returned and she was gripping her knees. Rhyme and Sachs had a friend who worked as an agent for the California Bureau of Investigation, Kathryn Dance. She was a kinesics, or body language, expert. Rhyme considered such skills secondary to forensic science but he’d come to respect Dance and had learned something about her specialty. He now could see easily that Judy Rhyme was a fountain of stress.

“Go on,” Sachs encouraged.

“It’s just that the police found some other evidence-well, it wasn’t really evidence. Not like clues. But…it made them think maybe Art and the woman were seeing each other.”

Sachs asked, “What’s your opinion of that?”

“I don’t think he was.”

Rhyme noted the softened verb. Not as adamant a denial as with the murder and theft. She desperately wanted the answer to be no, though she’d probably come to the same conclusion Rhyme just had: that the woman’s being his lover worked in Arthur’s favor. You were more likely to rob a stranger than someone you were sleeping with. Still, as a wife and mother, Judy was crying out for one particular answer.

Then she glanced up, less cautious now about looking at Rhyme, the contraption he sat in and the other devices that defined his life. “Whatever else was going on, he did not kill that woman. He couldn’t have. I know it in my soul… Is there anything you can do?”

Rhyme and Sachs shared a look. He said, “I’m sorry, Judy, we’re in the midst of a big case right now. We’re real close to catching a very dangerous killer. I can’t drop that.”

“I wouldn’t want you to. But, just something. I don’t know what else to do.” Her lip was trembling.

He said, “We’ll make some calls, find out what we can. I can’t give you information you couldn’t otherwise get through your lawyer but I’ll tell you honestly what I think about the D.A.’s chance of success.”

“Oh, thank you, Lincoln.”

“Who’s his lawyer?”

She gave them the name and phone number. A high-profile, and -priced, criminal defense attorney Rhyme knew. But he’d be a man with a lot on his plate and more experience with financial than violent crimes.

Sachs asked about the prosecutor.

“Bernhard Grossman. I can get you his number.”

“That’s all right,” Sachs said. “I have it. I’ve worked with him before. He’s reasonable. I assume he offered your husband a plea bargain?”

“He did, and our lawyer wanted to take it. But Art refused. He keeps saying this is just a mistake, it’ll all get straightened out. But that doesn’t always happen, does it? Even if people are innocent they go to jail sometimes, don’t they?”

They do, yes, Rhyme thought, then said, “We’ll make a few phone calls.”

She rose. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that we let things slide. Inexcusable.” Surprising him, Judy Rhyme strode directly to the wheelchair and bent down, brushing her cheek against his. Rhyme smelled nervous sweat and two distinct scents, perhaps deodorant and hair spray. No perfume. She didn’t seem the perfume type. “Thank you, Lincoln.” She walked to the door and paused. To them both she said, “Whatever else you find, about that woman and Arthur, it’s all right. All I care about is that he doesn’t go to jail.”

“I’ll do what I can. We’ll give you a call if we find something concrete.”

Sachs saw her out.

When she returned Rhyme said, “Let’s check with the lawyers first.”

“I’m sorry, Rhyme.” He frowned, and she added, “I just mean, it’s got to be hard on you.”

“How’s that?”

“Thinking a close relative got busted for murder.”

Rhyme shrugged, one of the few gestures he could manage. “Ted Bundy was somebody’s son. Maybe a cousin too.”

“But still.” Sachs lifted the receiver. Eventually she tracked down the defense lawyer, got his answering service and left a message. Rhyme wondered which hole of which golf course he was on at that moment.

She then got in touch with the assistant district attorney, Grossman, who wasn’t enjoying the day of rest but was in his office downtown. He’d never connected the last name of the perp to the criminalist. “Hey, I’m sorry, Lincoln,” he said sincerely. “But I have to say, it’s a good case. I’m not blowing smoke. I’d tell you if there were gaps. But there aren’t. A jury’s going to nail him. If you can talk him into a plea, you’d be doing him a huge favor. I could probably go down to twelve solid.”

Twelve years, with no parole. It would kill Arthur, Rhyme reflected.

“Appreciate that,” Sachs said.

The A.D.A. added that he had a complicated trial starting tomorrow so he couldn’t spend any more time talking to them now. He’d call later in the week, if they liked.

He did, however, give them the name of the lead detective in the case, Bobby LaGrange.

“I know him,” she said, dialing him at home too. She got his voice mail but when she tried his cell he answered immediately.

“LaGrange.”

The hiss of wind and the sound of slapping water explained what the detective was up to on this clear-sky, warm day.

Sachs identified herself.

“Oh, sure. Howya doin’, Amelia? I’m waiting for a call from a snitch. We’ve got something going down in Red Hook anytime now.”

So, not on his fishing boat.

“I may have to hang up fast.”

“Understood. You’re on speaker.”

“Detective, this is Lincoln Rhyme.”

A hesitation. “Oh. Yeah.” A call from Lincoln Rhyme got people’s full attention pretty fast.

Rhyme explained about his cousin.

“Wait…‘Rhyme.’ You know, I thought it was a funny name. I mean, unusual. But I never put it together. And he never said anything about you. Not in any of the interviews. Your cousin. Man, I’m sorry.”

“Detective, I don’t want to interfere with the case. But I said I’d call and find out what the story is. It’s gone to the A.D.A., I know. Just talked to him.”

“I gotta say the collar was righteous. I’ve run homicides for five years and short of somebody from Patrol witnessing a gang clip, this was the cleanest wrap I’ve seen.”

“What’s the story? Art’s wife only gave me the bones.”

In the stiff voice that cops fall into when recounting details of a crime-stripped of emotion: “Your cousin left work early. He went to the apartment of a woman named Alice Sanderson, down in the Village. She’d gotten off work early too. We aren’t sure how long he was there but sometime around six she was knifed to death and a painting was stolen.”

“Rare, I understand?”

“Yeah. But not like Van Gogh.”

“Who was the artist?”

“Somebody named Prescott. Oh, and we found some direct-mail things, flyers, you know, that a couple of galleries’d sent your cousin about Prescott. That didn’t look so good.”

“Tell me more about May twelfth,” Rhyme said.

“At about six a witness heard screams and a few minutes later saw a man carrying a painting out to a light blue Mercedes parked on the street. It left the scene fast. The wit only got the first three letters on the tag-couldn’t tell the state but we ran everything in the metro area. Narrowed the list down and interviewed the owners. One was your cousin. My partner and me went out to Jersey to talk to him, had a trooper with us, for protocol, you know. We saw what looked like blood on the back door and in the backseat. A bloody washcloth was under the seat. It matched a set of linens in the vic’s apartment.”

“And DNA was positive?”

“Her blood, yeah.”

“The witness identified him in a lineup?”

“Naw, was anonymous. Called from a pay phone and wouldn’t give their name. Didn’t want to get involved. But we didn’t need any wits. Crime Scene had a field day. They lifted a shoeprint from the vic’s entryway-same kind of shoe your cousin wore-and got some good trace.”

“Class evidence?”

“Yeah, class. Traces of shave cream, snack food chips, lawn fertilizer from his garage. Exactly matched what was at the vic’s apartment.”

No, it didn’t match, Rhyme reflected. Evidence falls into several categories. “Individuating” evidence is unique to a single source, like DNA and fingerprints. “Class” evidence shares certain characteristics with similar materials but they don’t necessarily come from the same source. Carpet fibers, for instance. A DNA test of blood at a crime scene can definitely “match” the criminal’s blood. But a comparison of carpet fiber at a scene can only be “associated with” fibers found in the suspect’s house, allowing the jury to infer he was at the scene.

“What was your take on whether or not he knew her?” Sachs asked.

“He claimed he didn’t, but we found two notes she’d written. One at her office and one at home. One was ‘Art-drinks.’ The other just said ‘Arthur.’ Nothing else. Oh, and we found his name in her phonebook.”

“His number?” Rhyme was frowning.

“No. Prepaid mobile. No record.”

“So you figure they were more than friends?”

“Crossed our minds. Why else only give her a prepaid number and not his home or office?” He gave a laugh. “Apparently she didn’t care. You’d be surprised what people accept without asking questions.”

Not that surprised, Rhyme thought.

“And the phone?”

“Toast. Never found it.”

“And you think he killed her because she was pressuring him to leave the wife?”

“That’s what the prosecutor’ll argue. Something like that.”

Rhyme compared what he knew of his cousin, whom he hadn’t seen in more than a decade, against this information; he could neither confirm nor deny the allegation.

Sachs asked, “Anybody else have a motive?”

“Nope. Family and friends said she dated some, but real casual. No terrible breakups. I was even wondering if the wife did it-Judy-but she was accounted for at the time.”

“Did Arthur have any alibi?”

“None. Claims he went for a run but nobody could confirm seeing him. Clinton State Park. Big place. Pretty deserted.”

“I’m curious,” Sachs said, “what his demeanor was during interrogation?”

LaGrange laughed. “Funny you bring that up-the weirdest part of the whole case. He looked like he was dazed. Just blown away by seeing us there. I’ve collared a lot of people in my day, some of ’em pros. Connected guys, I mean. And he was, hands down, the best at playing the innocent-me game. Great actor. You remember that about him, Detective Rhyme?”

The criminalist didn’t reply. “What happened to the painting?”

A pause. “That’s the other thing. Never recovered. Wasn’t in his house or garage, but the crime-scene folks found dirt in the backseat of the car and his garage. It matched the dirt in the state park where he went jogging every night near his house. We figured he buried it somewhere.”

“One question, Detective,” Rhyme said.

A pause at the other end of the line, during which a voice spoke indecipherable words and the wind howled again. “Go on.”

“Can I see the file?”

“The file?” Not really a question. Just stalling to consider. “It’s a solid case. We ran it by the book.”

Sachs said, “We don’t doubt that for a minute. The thing is, though, we understand he’s rejected a plea.”

“Oh. You want to talk him into one? Yeah, I get it. That’s the best thing for him. Well, all I have is copies, the A.D.A.’s got everything else and the evidence. But I can get you the reports. A day or two okay?”

Rhyme shook his head. Sachs said to the detective, “If you could talk to Records and okay it I’ll go down there and pick up the file myself.”

The wind filled the speakers again, then stopped abruptly. LaGrange must have moved into shelter.

“Yeah, okay, I’ll give ’em a call now.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. Good luck.”

After they’d disconnected, Rhyme gave a brief smile. “That was a nice touch. The plea bargain thing.”

“You gotta know your audience,” Sachs said and slung her purse over her shoulder, heading out of the door.

Chapter Four

Sachs returned from her trip to Police Plaza a lot faster than if she’d taken public transportation-or paid attention to stoplights. Rhyme knew that she’d slapped a flashing light on the dash of her car, a 1969 Camaro SS, which she’d had painted fiery red a few years ago to match Rhyme’s preferred shade for his wheelchairs. Like a teenager, she still looked for any excuse to fire up the massive engine and sear rubber off the tires.

“Copied everything,” she said, carrying a thick folder into the room. She winced as she set it on an examining table.

“You okay?”

Amelia Sachs suffered from arthritis, she had all her life, and popped glucosamine, chondroitin and Advil or Naprosyn like jelly beans but she rarely acknowledged the condition, fearful that the brass might stick her behind a desk on a medical if they found out. Even when she and Rhyme were alone she downplayed the pain. But today she admitted, “Some twinges’re worse than others.”

“Want to sit?”

A shake of the head.

“So. What’ve we got?”

“Report, evidence inventory and copies of the photos. No videos. They’re with the D.A.”

“Let’s get everything on the board. I want to see the primary crime scene and Arthur’s house.”

She walked to a whiteboard-one of the dozens in the lab-and transcribed information as Rhyme watched.

ALICE SANDERSON HOMICIDE

ALICE SANDERSON APARTMENT:

· Traces of Edge Advanced Gel shave cream, with aloe

· Crumbs determined to be Pringles, fat free, barbecue flavor

· Chicago Cutlery knife (MW)

· TruGro fertilizer

· Shoeprint of Alton EZ-Walk, size 10 1/2

· Fleck of latex glove

· References to “Art” and a prepaid mobile number in phonebook, now no longer active. Untraceable (Possible affair?)

· Two notes: “Art-drinks” (office) and “Arthur” (home)

· Wit saw light blue Mercedes, partial tag NLP

ARTHUR RHYME’S CAR:

· 2004 light blue Mercedes sedan, C Class, New Jersey license NLP 745, registered to Arthur Rhyme

· Blood on door, rear floor (DNA match to victim’s)

· Bloody washcloth, matching set found in victim’s apartment (DNA match to victim’s)

· Dirt with composition similar to dirt in Clinton State Park

ARTHUR RHYME’S HOUSE:

· Edge Advanced Gel with aloe, shave cream, associated with that from primary crime scene

· Pringles barbecue-flavored chips, fat free

· TruGro fertilizer (garage)

· Spade containing dirt similar to dirt in Clinton State Park (garage)

· Chicago Cutlery knives, same type as the MW

· Alton EZ-Walk shoes, size 10 1/2, tread similar to that at primary crime scene

· Direct-mail flyers from Wilcox Gallery, Boston, and Anderson-Billings Fine Arts, Carmel, about shows of Harvey Prescott paintings

· Box of Safe-Hand latex gloves, rubber composition similar to that of fleck found at primary crime scene (garage)

“Man, it’s pretty incriminating, Rhyme,” Sachs said, standing back, hand on her hips.

“And using a prepaid cell? And references to ‘Art.’ But no address where he lives or works. That would suggest an affair… Any other details?”

“No. Other than the pictures.”

“Tape them up,” he instructed while scanning the chart, regretting that he hadn’t searched the scene himself-vicariously, that was, with Amelia Sachs, as they often did, via a microphone/headset or a high-definition video camera she wore. It seemed like a competent CS job, but not stellar. No photos of the nonscene rooms. And the knife…He saw the picture of the bloody weapon, beneath the bed. An officer was lifting a flap of dust ruffle to get a good shot. Was it invisible with the cloth down (which meant the perp might logically have missed it in the frenzy of the moment) or was it visible, suggesting it had been left intentionally as planted evidence?

He studied the picture of packing material on the floor, apparently what the Prescott painting had been wrapped in.

“Something’s wrong,” he whispered.

Sachs, standing at the whiteboard, glanced his way.

“The painting,” Rhyme continued.

“What about it?”

“LaGrange suggested two motives. One, Arthur stole the Prescott as a cover because he wanted to kill Alice to get her out of his life.”

“Right.”

“But,” Rhyme went on, “to make a homicide seem incidental to a burglary, a smart perp wouldn’t steal the one thing in the apartment that could be connected to him. Remember, Art had owned a Prescott. And he had direct-mail flyers about them.”

“Sure, Rhyme, that doesn’t make any sense.”

“And say he really did want the painting and couldn’t afford it. Well, it’s a hell of a lot safer and easier to break in and cart it off during the day when the owner’s at work, rather than murder them for it.” His cousin’s demeanor too, though not high in Rhyme’s arsenal when he assessed guilt or innocence, nagged. “Maybe he wasn’t playing innocent. Maybe he was innocent… Pretty incriminating, you said? No. Too incriminating.”

He thought to himself: Let’s just postulate that he didn’t do it. If not, then the consequences were significant. Because this wasn’t simply a case of mistaken identity; the evidence matched too closely-including a conclusive connection between her blood and his car. No, if Art was innocent, then someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to set him up.

“I’m thinking he was framed.”

“Why?”

“Motive?” he muttered. “We don’t care at this point. The relevant question now is how. We answer that, it can point us to who. We might get why along the way, but that’s not our priority. So we start with a premise that someone else, Mr. X, murdered Alice Sanderson and stole the painting, then framed Arthur. Now, Sachs, how could he have done it?”

A wince-her arthritis again-and she sat. She thought for several moments, then said, “Mr. X followed Arthur and followed Alice. He saw they had an interest in art, put them together at the gallery and found their identities.”

“Mr. X knows she owns a Prescott. He wants one but can’t afford it.”

“Right.” Sachs nodded at the evidence chart. “Then he breaks into Arthur’s house, sees that he owns Pringles, Edge shave cream, TruGro fertilizer, and Chicago Cutlery knives. He steals some to plant. He knows what shoes Arthur wears, so he can leave the footprint, and he gets some of the dirt from the state park on Arthur’s shovel…

“Now, let’s think about May twelfth. Somehow Mr. X knows that Art always leaves work early on Thursdays and goes running in a deserted park-so he doesn’t have an alibi. He goes to the vic’s apartment, kills her, steals the painting and calls from a pay phone to report the screams and seeing a man take the painting to a car that looks a lot like Arthur’s, with a partial tag number. Then he heads out to Arthur’s house in New Jersey and leaves the traces of blood, the dirt, the washcloth, the shovel.”

The phone rang. The caller was Arthur’s defense lawyer. The man sounded harried as he reiterated everything that the assistant district attorney had explained. He offered nothing that might help them and, in fact, tried several times to talk them into pressuring Arthur to take a plea. “They’ll nail him up,” the man said. “Do him a favor. I’ll get him fifteen years.”

“That’ll destroy him,” Rhyme said.

“It won’t destroy him as much as a life sentence.”

Rhyme said a chilly good-bye and hung up. He stared again at the evidence board.

Then something else occurred to him.

“What is it, Rhyme?” Sachs had noticed that his eyes were rising to the ceiling.

“Think maybe he’s done this before?”

“How do you mean?”

“Assuming the goal-the motive-was to steal the painting, well, it’s not exactly a onetime score. Not like a Renoir you fence for ten million and disappear forever. The whole thing smells like an enterprise. The perp’s hit on a smart way to get away with a crime. And he’s going to keep at it until somebody stops him.”

“Yeah, good point. So we should look for thefts of other paintings.”

“No. Why should he steal just paintings? It could be anything. But there’s one common element.”

Sachs frowned then provided the answer. “Homicide.”

“Exactly. Since the perp frames somebody else, he has to murder the victims-because they could identify him. Call somebody at Homicide. At home if you need to. We’re looking for the same scenario: an underlying crime, maybe a theft, the vic murdered and strong circumstantial evidence.”

“And maybe a DNA link that might’ve been planted.”

“Good,” he said, excited at the thought they might be on to something here. “And if he’s sticking to his formula, there’ll be an anonymous witness who gave nine-one-one some specific identifying information.”

She walked to a desk in the corner of the lab, sat and placed the call.

Rhyme leaned his head back in his wheelchair and observed his partner on the phone. He noticed dried blood in her thumbnail. A mark was just visible above her ear, half hidden by her straight red hair. Sachs did this frequently, scratching her scalp, teasing her nails, damaging herself in small ways-both a habit and an indicator of the stress that drove her.

She was nodding, and her eyes took on a focused gaze, as she wrote. His own heart-though he couldn’t feel it directly-had speeded up. She’d learned something significant. Her pen dried up. She tossed it onto the floor and whipped out another as quickly as she drew her pistol in combat shooting competitions.

After ten minutes she hung up.

“Hey, Rhyme, get this.” She sat next to him, in a wicker chair. “I talked to Flintlock.”

“Ah, good choice.”

Joseph Flintick, his nickname intentionally or otherwise a reference to the old-time gun, had been a homicide detective when Rhyme was a rookie. The testy old guy was familiar with nearly every murder that had been committed in New York City-and many nearby-during his lengthy tenure. At an age when he should have been visiting his grandchildren, Flintlock was working Sundays. Rhyme wasn’t surprised.

“I laid it all out for him and he came back with two cases that might fit our profile right off the top of his head. One was a theft of rare coins, worth about fifty G. The other a rape.”

“Rape?” This added a deeper, and much more disturbing, element to the case.

“Yep. In both of them an anonymous witness called to report the crime and gave some information that was instrumental in ID’ing the perp-like the wit calling about your cousin’s car.”

“Both male callers, of course.”

“Right. And the city offered a reward but neither of them came forward.”

“What about the evidence?”

“Flintlock didn’t remember it too clearly. But he did say that the trace and circumstantial connections were right on. Just what happened to your cousin-five or six types of associated class evidence at the scene and in the perps’ houses. And in both cases the victims’ blood was found on a rag or article of clothing in the suspects’ residence.”

“And I’ll bet there weren’t any fluid matches in the rape case.” Most rapists are convicted because they leave behind traces of the Three S’s-semen, saliva or sweat.

“Nope. None.”

“And the anonymous callers-did they leave partial license plate numbers?”

She glanced at her notes. “Yeah, how did you know?”

“Because our perp needed to buy some time. If he left the whole tag number, the cops’d head right to the fall guy’s house and he wouldn’t have time to plant the evidence there.” The killer had thought out everything. “And the suspects denied everything?”

“Yep. Totally. Rolled the dice with the jury and lost.”

“No, no, no, this’s all too coincidental,” Rhyme muttered. “I want to see-”

“I asked somebody to pull the files from the disposed cases archives.”

He laughed. One step ahead of him, as often. He recalled when they’d first met, years ago, Sachs a disillusioned patrol officer ready to give up her career in policing, Rhyme ready to give up more than that. How far they’d both come since then.

Rhyme spoke into his stalk mike. “Command, call Sellitto.” He was excited now. He could feel that unique buzz-the thrill of a budding hunt. Answer the damn phone, he thought angrily, and for once he wasn’t thinking about England.

“Hey, Linc.” Sellitto’s Brooklyn-inflected voice filled the room. “What’s-”

“Listen. There’s a problem.”

“I’m kinda busy here.” Rhyme’s former partner, Lieutenant Detective Lon Sellitto, hadn’t been in the best of moods himself lately. A big task force case he’d worked on had just tanked. Vladimir Dienko, the thug of a Russian mob boss from Brighton Beach, had been indicted last year for racketeering and murder. Rhyme had assisted with some of the forensics. To everyone’s shock the case against Dienko and three of his associates had been dismissed, just last Friday, after witnesses had stonewalled or vanished. Sellitto and agents from the Bureau had been working all weekend, trying to track down new witnesses and informants.

“I’ll make it fast.” He explained what he and Sachs had found about his cousin and the rape and coin-theft cases.

“Two other cases? Friggin’ weird. What’s your cousin say?”

“Haven’t talked to him yet. But he denies everything. I want to have this looked into.”

“‘Looked into.’ The fuck’s that mean?”

“I don’t think Arthur did it.”

“He’s your cousin. Of course you don’t think he did it. But whatta you have concrete?”

“Nothing yet. That’s why I want your help. I need some people.”

“I’m up to my ass in the Dienko situation in Brighton Beach. Which, I gotta say, you’d be helping on except, no, you’re too busy sipping fucking tea with the Brits.”

“This could be big, Lon. Two other cases that stink of planted evidence? I’ll bet there are more. I know how much you love your clichés, Lon. Doesn’t ‘getting away with murder’ move you?”

“You can throw all the clauses you want at me, Linc, I’m busy.”

“That’s a phrase, Lon. A clause has a subject and predicate.”

“What-fucking-ever. I’m trying to salvage the Russian Connection. Nobody at City Hall or the Federal Building’s happy about what happened.”

“And they have my deepest sympathies. Get reassigned.”

“It’s homicide. I’m Major Cases.”

The Major Cases Division of the NYPD didn’t investigate murders, but Sellitto’s excuse brought a cynical laugh to Rhyme’s lips. “You work homicides when you want to work them. When the hell have department protocols meant anything to you?”

“Tell you what I’ll do,” the detective mumbled. “There’s a captain working today. Downtown. Joe Malloy. Know him?”

“No.”

“I do,” said Sachs. “He’s solid.”

“Hey, Amelia. You surviving the cold front today?”

Sachs laughed. Rhyme snarled, “Funny, Lon. Who the hell’s this guy?”

“Smart. No compromises. And no sense of humor. You’ll appreciate that.”

“Lots of comedians round here today,” Rhyme muttered.

“He’s good. And a crusader. His wife was killed in a B and E five, six years ago.”

Sachs winced. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, and he gives the job a hundred fifty percent. Word is he’s headed for a corner office upstairs some day. Or maybe even next door.”

Meaning City Hall.

Sellitto continued, “Give him a call and see if he can get a few people released for you.”

“I want you released.”

“Not gonna happen, Linc. I’m running a fucking stakeout. It’s a nightmare. But keep me posted and-”

“Gotta go, Lon…Command, disconnect phone.”

“You hung up on him,” Sachs pointed out.

Rhyme grunted and placed a call to Malloy. He’d be furious if he got voice mail.

But the man answered on the second ring. Another senior cop working on Sunday. Well, Rhyme had done so pretty often too and had the divorce to show for it.

“Malloy here.”

Rhyme identified himself.

A brief hesitation. Then: “Well, Lincoln…I don’t believe we’ve ever met. But I know about you, of course.”

“I’m here with one of your detectives, Amelia Sachs. We’re on speaker, Joe.”

“Detective Sachs, afternoon,” said the stiff voice. “What can I do for you two?” Rhyme explained about the case and how he believed Arthur was being set up.

“Your cousin? I’m sorry to hear that.” But he didn’t sound particularly sorry. Malloy would be worried that Rhyme wanted him to intervene and get the charges reduced. Uh-oh, appearance of impropriety at the most innocent. Or, at the worst, an internal-affairs investigation and the media. Weighed against that, of course, was the bad form of not helping out a man who provided invaluable service to the NYPD. And one who was a gimp. Political correctness thrives in city government.

But Rhyme’s request, of course, was more complicated. He added, “I think there’s a good chance that this same perp committed other crimes.” He gave the details of the coin theft and the rape.

So not one but three individuals had been wrongly arrested by Malloy’s NYPD. Which meant that three crimes had in fact gone unsolved and the real perp was still at large. This portended a major public-relations nightmare.

“Well, it’s pretty odd. Irregular, you know. I understand your loyalty to your cousin-”

“I have a loyalty to the truth, Joe,” Rhyme said, not caring if he sounded pompous.

“Well…”

“I just need a couple of officers assigned to us. To look over the evidence in these cases again. Maybe do some legwork.”

“Oh, I see… Well, sorry, Lincoln. We just don’t have the resources. Not for something like this. But I’ll bring it up tomorrow with the deputy commissioner.”

“Actually, think we could call him now?”

Another hesitation. “No. He’s got something going on today.”

Brunch. Barbecue. A Sunday-matinee performance of Young Frankenstein or Spamalot.

“I’ll raise the issue tomorrow at the briefing. It’s a curious situation. But you won’t do anything until you hear from me. Or someone.”

“Of course not.”

They disconnected. Rhyme and Sachs were both silent for a few long seconds.

A curious situation…

Rhyme gazed at the whiteboard-on which sat the corpse of an investigation shot dead just as it had lurched to life.

Snapping the quiet, Sachs asked, “Wonder what Ron’s up to.”

“Let’s find out, why don’t we?” He gave her a genuine-and rare-smile.

She pulled out her phone, hit a speed dial number, then SPEAKER.

A youthful voice crackled, “Yes, ma’am, Detective.”

Sachs had been after young patrolman Ron Pulaski to call her Amelia for years but usually he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

“You’re on speaker, Pulaski,” Rhyme warned.

“Yes, sir.”

And the “sir” bothered Rhyme, but he had no inclination to correct the young man now.

“How are you?” Pulaski asked.

“Does it matter?” Rhyme responded. “What’re you doing? Right now. And is it important?”

“Right now?”

“I think I just asked that.”

“Washing dishes. Jenny and I just had Sunday brunch with my brother and his wife. We went to the farmers’ market with the kids. It’s a blast. Do you and Detective Sachs ever get to-?”

“You’re at home then. And not doing anything.”

“Well. The dishes.”

“Leave ’em. Get over here.” Rhyme, a civilian, had no authority to order anybody in the NYPD, even traffic cops, to do anything.

But Sachs was a detective third-class; while she couldn’t order him to help them, she could formally request a shift in assignment. “We need you, Ron. And we might need you tomorrow too.”

Ron Pulaski worked regularly with Rhyme, Sachs and Sellitto. Rhyme had been amused to learn that his assignments for the quasi-celeb forensic detective elevated the status of the young officer within the department. He was sure that the supervisor would agree to hand over Pulaski for a few days-as long as he didn’t call Malloy or anyone else downtown and learn that the case wasn’t a case at all.

Pulaski gave Sachs the name of the commander at the precinct house. Then asked, “Oh, sir? Is Lieutenant Sellitto working on this one? Should I call and coordinate with him?”

“No,” blurted both Rhyme and Sachs.

A brief silence followed, then Pulaski said uncertainly, “Well, then, I guess I’ll be there as soon as I can. Just, can I dry the glasses first? Jenny hates water spots.”

Chapter Five

Sundays are the best.

Because most Sundays I’m free to do what I love.

I collect things.

Everything you can imagine. If it appeals to me and I can get it into my backpack, or into my trunk, I’ll collect it. I’m not a pack rat like some people might say. Those rodents leave something in place of what they’ve taken. Once I find something, it’s mine. I never let go. Ever.

Sunday’s my favorite day. Because it’s the day of rest for the masses, the sixteens who call this amazing city home. Men, women, children, lawyers, artists, cyclists, cooks, thieves, wives and lovers (I collect DVDs too), politicians, joggers and curators…It’s amazing the number of things that sixteens do for enjoyment.

They roam like happy antelope through the city and the parks of New Jersey and Long Island and upstate New York.

And I’m free to hunt them.

Which is what I’m up to right now, having deflected all the other boring distractions of Sunday: brunch, movies and even an invitation to go play golf. Oh, and worship-always popular with the antelope, provided, of course, that a visit to church is followed by the aforementioned brunch or nine holes of smack-the-ball.

Hunting…

Right now I’m thinking of my most recent transaction, the memory tucked away in my mental collection-the transaction with young Alice Sanderson, 3895-0967-7524-3630, who was looking fine, very fine. Until the knife, of course.

Alice 3895 in that nice pink dress, accentuating her breasts, flirting at the hip (I also think of her as 38-26-36, but that’s a joke on my part). Pretty enough, perfume the scent of Asian flowers.

My plans for her had only partly to do with the Harvey Prescott painting that she was lucky enough to snatch off the market (or unlucky, as it turned out for her). Once I was sure she’d received the delivery, out would come the duct tape and I’d spend the next few hours with her in the bedroom. But she’d ruined it all. Just as I was coming up behind her she turned and gave that nightmare scream. I had no choice but to slice her neck like tomato skin, grab my beautiful Prescott and sneak out-through the window, so to speak.

No, I can’t stop thinking about pretty-enough Alice 3895, in a skimpy pink dress, her skin floral-scented like a tea house. So, bottom line, I need a woman.

Strolling along these sidewalks, glancing at the sixteens through my sunglasses. They, on the other hand, don’t really see me. As I intend; I groom myself to be invisible and there’s no place like Manhattan to be invisible.

I turn corners, slip along an alleyway, make a purchase-cash, of course-then plunge into a deserted area of the city, formerly industrial, becoming residential and commercial, near SoHo. Quiet here. That’s good. I want it peaceful for my transaction with Myra Weinburg, 9834-4452-6740-3418, a sixteen I’ve had my eye on for a while.

Myra 9834, I know you very well. The data have told me everything. (Ah, that debate again: data…plural or singular? Data has told or data have told? Merriam-Webster’s assures us either is correct. By myself, I tend to be purist: data plural. But in public I try hard to treat the word as singular, like most of society, and hope I don’t slip up. Language is a river; it goes where it will and if you swim against that current you get noticed. And that, of course, is the last thing in the world I want.)

Now, the data on Myra 9834: She lives on Waverly Place, Greenwich Village, in a building the owner wants to sell as co-op units via an eviction plan. (I know this, though the poor tenants don’t yet, and judging from incomes and credit histories, most of them are totally screwed.)

The beautiful, exotic, dark-haired Myra 9834 is a graduate of NYU and has worked in New York for several years at an advertising agency. Her mother’s still alive, but her father’s dead. Hit and run, the John Doe warrant still outstanding after all these years. Police don’t pull out the stops for crimes like that.

At the moment Myra 9834 is between boyfriends, and friendships must be problematic because her recent thirty-second birthday was marked with a single order of moo shu pork from Hunan Dynasty on West Fourth (not a bad choice) and a Caymus Conundrum white ($28 from overpriced Village Wines). A subsequent trip to Long Island on Saturday, coinciding with local travel by other family members and acquaintances and a large bill, with copious Brunello, at a Garden City restaurant of which Newsday speaks highly, made up for the solitary evening, I imagine.

Myra 9834 sleeps in a Victoria’s Secret T, a fact I deduce because she owns five of them in a size too big to wear out in public. She wakes early to the thought of an Entenmann’s danish pastry (never low-fat, I’m proud of her for that) and home-brewed Starbucks; she rarely goes to the coffee shops. Which is a shame, since I do like to observe in person the antelope I’ve had my eye on, and Starbucks is among the best places on the veldt to do so. Around eight-twenty she leaves her apartment and heads for work in Midtown-Maple, Reed & Summers advertising, where she’s a junior account executive.

Onward and upward. I continue on my way this Sunday, wearing a nondescript baseball cap (they account for 87.3 percent of all men’s headgear in the metro area). And, as always, eyes down. If you think a satellite can’t record your smiling face from thirty miles up in space, think again; somewhere in a dozen servers around the world there are hundreds of pictures of you taken from on high, and let’s hope all you were doing when they snapped the shutter was squinting away the sun while you glanced up at the Goodyear blimp or a cloud shaped like a lamb.

My passion for collecting includes not only these daily facts but the minds of the sixteens I’m interested in, and Myra 9834 is no exception. She goes for drinks with friends after work with some frequency and I’ve noticed that she picks up the tab often, too often, in my opinion. Clearly she’s buying their love-right, Dr. Phil? Possibly had acne during the adolescence terrible; she still sees a dermatologist once in a while, though the bills are low, as if she’s just debating dermabrasion (completely unnecessary from what I’ve seen) or checking to make sure the zits aren’t returning like ninjas in the night.

Then, after the three rounds of Cosmopolitans with the gals, or a visit to a fit-and-start health club, it’s home to phone calls, the ubiquitous computer and basic, not premium, cable. (I enjoy tracking her viewing habits; her show selections suggest extreme loyalty; she changed networks when Seinfeld did, and she blew off two dates to spend the night with Jack Bauer.)

Bedtime follows, and she sometimes enjoys a bit of distraction (buying double-A batteries in bulk tells the tale, her digital camera and iPod being rechargeable).

Of course, those are the data on her weekday life. But today’s a glorious Sunday, and Sundays are different. This is when Myra 9834 climbs aboard her beloved, and very expensive, bicycle, and heads out to cruise the streets of her city.

The routes vary. Central Park might figure, as does Riverside Park and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. But whatever the path, Myra 9834 makes one particular stop without fail toward the end of her journey: Hudson’s Gourmet Deli on Broadway. And then, food and shower beckoning, she takes the fastest bike route home-which, owing to the madness of downtown traffic, is right past the very spot where I’m standing at the moment.

I’m in front of a courtyard leading to a ground-floor loft, owned by Maury and Stella Griszinski (imagine-buying ten years ago for $278,000). The Griszinskis aren’t home, though, because they’re enjoying a springtime cruise in Scandinavia. They’ve stopped the mail and have hired no plant waterers or pet sitters. And there’s no alarm system.

No sign of her yet. Hm. Has something intervened? I might be wrong.

But I rarely am.

Five agonizing minutes pass. I pull images of the Harvey Prescott painting out of my mental collection. I enjoy them for a time and tuck them back. I glance around and I resist a salivating urge to go through the fat trash bin here to see what treasures it might hold.

Stay in the shadows… Stay off the grid. Especially at times like this. And avoid the windows at all costs. You’d be amazed at the lure of voyeurism and how many people are watching you from the other side of the glass, which, to you, is only a reflection or glare.

Where is she? Where?

If I don’t get my transaction soon-

And then, ah, I feel the slam within me as I see her: Myra 9834.

Moving slowly, low gear, beautiful legs pumping away. A $1,020 bike. More than my first car cost.

Ah, the bicycle outfit is tight. My breath is fast. I need her so badly.

A glance up and down the street. Empty, except for the approaching woman, who’s now getting close, thirty feet away. Cell phone off but flipped open and up to my ear, Food Emporium bag dangling. I glance at her once. Stepping to the curb, as I carry on an animated and entirely fictitious conversation. I pause to let her pass. Frowning, looking up. Then smiling. “Myra?”

She slows. Biking outfit so tight. Control it, control it. Act casual.

Nobody in the empty windows facing the street. No traffic.

“Myra Weinburg?”

The squeal of bike brakes. “Hi.” The greeting and attempted flash of recognition are due solely to the fact that people would rather do almost anything than be embarrassed.

I’m totally in the role of the mature businessman as I walk toward her, telling my invisible friend I’ll call back and close the phone.

She replies, “I’m sorry.” A smiling frown. “You’re…?”

“Mike. I’m the AE from Ogilvy? I think we met at…yeah, that’s it. The National Foods shoot at David’s. We were in the second studio. I came by and met you and-what’s his name? Richie. You guys had a better caterer than we did.”

Now a hearty smile. “Oh, sure.” She remembers David and National Foods and Richie and the photo studio’s caterer. But she can’t remember me because I was never there. And nobody named Mike was there either but she won’t focus on that because it happens to be the name of her dead father.

“Good seeing you,” I say, giving her my best how’s-this-for-a-coincidence grin. “You live around here?”

“Village. You?”

A nod to the Griszinskis. “There.”

“Wow, a loft. Sweet.”

I ask about her job, she asks about mine. Then I wince. “Better get inside. I just ran out for lemons.” Holding up the citrus prop. “Got some people over.” My voice fades as a brilliant idea comes to mind. “Hey, I don’t know if you have plans but we’re having a late brunch. You want to join us?”

“Oh, thanks, but I’m a mess.”

“Please…we were out all day on a Walk for the Cure, my partner and me.” Nice touch, I think. And wholly improvised. “We’re sweatier than you, believe me. This is way casual. It’ll be fun. There’s a senior AE from Thompson there. And a couple guys from Burston. Cute but straight.” I shrug mournfully. “And we’ve got a surprise actor too. I won’t tell you who.”

“Well…”

“Oh, come on. You look like you need a Cosmo… At the photo shoot, didn’t we both decide that was our favorite drink?”

Chapter Six

The Tombs.

Okay, it wasn’t the Tombs any longer, the original one from the 1800s. That building was long gone, but everybody still used the name when describing this place: the Manhattan Detention Center, downtown, in which Arthur Rhyme was now sitting, his heart doing the same despairing thud, thud, thud it had regularly since he was arrested.

But whether the place was called the Tombs, the MDC or the Bernard Kerik Center (as it had been temporarily until the former police chief and corrections head went down in flames) to Arthur the place was simply hell.

Absolute hell.

He was in an orange jumpsuit like everyone else but there the similarity with his fellow cons ended. The five-foot-eleven man, 190 pounds, with corporate-clipped brown hair was as different as could be from the other souls awaiting trial here. No, he wasn’t big and inked (he’d learned that meant tattooed) or shaved or stupid or black or Latino. The sort of criminal Arthur would resemble-businessmen charged with white-collar crimes-didn’t reside in the Tombs until trial; they were out on bond. Whatever sins they’d committed, the infractions didn’t warrant the two-million-dollar bail set for Arthur.

So the Tombs had been his home since May 13-the longest and most wrenchingly difficult period of his life.

And bewildering.

Arthur might have met the woman he was supposed to have killed, but he couldn’t even recall her. Yes, he’d been to that gallery in SoHo, where apparently she’d browsed too, though he couldn’t remember talking to her. And, yes, he loved the work of Harvey Prescott and had been sick at heart when he’d had to sell his canvas after losing his job. But stealing one? Killing someone? Were they fucking mad? Do I look like a killer?

It was a hopeless mystery to him, like Fermat’s theorem, the mathematical proof that, even after learning the explanation, he still didn’t get. Her blood in his car? He was being framed, of course. Even thinking the police might have done it themselves.

After ten days in the Tombs, O.J.’s defense seems a bit less Twilight Zone.

Why, why, why? Who was behind this? He thought of the angry letters he’d written when Princeton passed him over. Some were stupid and petty and threatening. Well, there were plenty of unstable people in the academic field. Maybe they wanted revenge for the stink he’d made. And then that student in his class who’d come on to him. He’d told her, no, he didn’t want to have an affair. She’d gone ballistic.

Fatal Attraction…

The police had checked her out and decided she wasn’t behind the killing but how hard had they worked to verify her alibi?

He looked around the large common area now, the dozens of nearby cons-the inside word for prisoners. At first he’d been regarded as a curiosity. His stock seemed to rise when they’d learned he’d been arrested for murder but then it fell at the news that the victim hadn’t tried to steal his drugs or cheat on him-two acceptable reasons for killing a woman.

Then when it was clear he was just one of those white guys who’d fucked up, life got ugly.

Jostling, challenges, taking his milk carton-just like in middle school. The sex thing wasn’t what people thought. Not here. These were all new arrestees and everybody could keep their dicks in their jumpsuits for a time. But he’d been assured by a number of his new “friends” that his virginity wouldn’t last long once he got to one of the long hauls, like Attica, especially if he earned a quarter-pounder-twenty-five to life.

He’d been punched in the face four times, tripped twice and pinned to the floor by psycho Aquilla Sanchez, who dripped sweat into his face as he screamed in Spanglish until some bored hacks (that is, guards) pulled him off.

Arthur had peed his pants twice and puked a dozen times. He was a worm, scum, not worth fucking.

Until later.

And the way his heart kept thudding, he expected it to pop apart at any moment. As had happened to Henry Rhyme, his father, though the famed professor had died not in an ignoble place like the Tombs, of course, but on an appropriately stately collegiate sidewalk in Hyde Park, Illinois.

How had this happened? A witness and evidence…It made no sense.

“Take the plea, Mr. Rhyme,” the assistant district attorney had said. “I’d recommend it.”

His attorney had too. “I know the ins and outs, Art. It’s like I’m reading a fucking GPS map. I can tell you exactly where this is going-and it’s not the needle. Albany can’t write a death penalty law to save its life. Sorry, bad joke. But you’re still looking at twenty-five years. I can get you fifteen. Go for it.”

“But I didn’t do it.”

“Uh-huh. That doesn’t really mean a whole lot to anybody, Arthur.”

“But I didn’t!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, I’m not taking a plea. The jury’ll understand. They’ll see me. They’ll know I’m not a killer.”

Silence. Then: “Fine.” Though it wasn’t fine. Clearly he was pissed off, despite the six hundred plus an hour he was racking up-and where the hell was that kind of money going to come from? He-

Then suddenly Arthur looked up to see two cons studying him, Latinos. They were regarding him now with no expression whatsoever on their faces. Not friendly, not challenging, not tough. They seemed curious.

As they approached him, he debated whether to get up or to stay put.

Stay.

But look down.

He looked down. One of the men stood in front of him, putting his scuffed running shoes right in Arthur’s line of vision.

The other went around to the back.

He was going to die. Arthur Rhyme knew it. Just do it fast and get it fucking over with.

“Yo,” the man behind him said in a high voice.

Arthur looked up at the second, in front. He had bloodshot eyes and a large earring, bad teeth. Arthur couldn’t speak.

“Yo,” came the voice again.

Arthur swallowed. Didn’t want to but couldn’t help himself.

“We talking to you, me an’ my friend. You no be civil. Why you a prick?”

“Sorry. I just…Hello.”

“Yo. Whatchu do for work, man?” High Voice asked his back.

“I’m…” His mind froze. What should I say? “I’m a scientist.”

Earring Man: “Fuck. Scientist? Whatchu do, like, make rockets?”

They both laughed.

“No, medical equipment.”

“Like that shit, you know, they say ‘clear,’ and electrocute you? Like, ER?”

“No, it’s complicated.”

Earring Man frowned.

“I didn’t mean that,” Arthur said quickly. “It’s not that you couldn’t understand it. It’s just hard to explain. Quality-control systems for dialysis. And-”

High Voice: “Make good money, huh? Hear you had a nice suit when you got prossed.”

“I got…?” Oh, processed. “I don’t know. I got it at Nordstrom.”

“Nordstrom. The fuck is Nordstrom?”

“A store.”

As Arthur looked back down at Earring Man’s feet the con continued, “I saying, good money? How much you make?”

“I-”

“You going to say you don’t know?”

“I-” Yes, he was.

“How much you make?”

“I don’t…I’d guess about six figures.”

“Fuck.”

Arthur didn’t know if this meant the amount was a lot or a little to them.

Then High Voice laughed. “You got a family?”

“I’m not telling you anything about them.” This was defiant.

“You got a family?”

Arthur Rhyme was looking away, at the wall nearby, where a nail protruded from mortar between cinder blocks, meant to hold a sign, he assumed, that had been taken down or stolen years ago. “Leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to you.” He tried to make his voice forceful. But he sounded like a girl approached by a nerd at a dance.

“We trying to make civil conversation, man.”

He actually said that? Civil conversation?

Then he thought, Hell, maybe they are just trying to be pleasant. Maybe they could’ve been friends, watched his back for him. Christ knew he needed all the friends he could get. Could he salvage this? “I’m sorry. It’s just, this’s a really weird thing for me. I’ve never been in any trouble before. I’m just-”

“What you wife do? She a scientist too? She a smart girl?”

“I…” The intended words evaporated.

“She got big titties?”

“You fuck her in the ass?”

“Listen up, Science Fuck, here’s how it gonna work. You smart wife, she goin’ to get some money from the bank. Ten thousand. And she gonna take a drive up to my cousin in the Bronx. An’-”

The tenor voice faded.

A black prisoner, six-two, massive with muscle and fat, his jumpsuit sleeves rolled up, approached the trio. He was gazing at the two Latinos and squinting mean.

“Yo, Chihuahuas. Get the fuck outa here.”

Arthur Rhyme was frozen. He couldn’t have moved if someone had started shooting at him, which wouldn’t have surprised him, even here in the realm of the magnetometers.

“Fuck you, nigger,” Earring Man said.

“Piece of shit.” From High Voice, drawing a laugh from the black guy, who put an arm around Earring Man and led him away, whispering something to him. The Latino’s eyes glazed and he nodded to his buddy, who joined him. The two walked to the far corner of the area, feigning indignity. If Arthur weren’t so frightened he would have thought this was amusing-faced-down bullies from his children’s school.

The black man stretched and Arthur heard a joint pop. His heart was thudding even harder. A half-formed prayer crossed his mind: for the coronary to take him away now, right now.

“Thanks.”

The black guy said, “Fuck you. Them two, they pricks. They gotta know the way it is. You unnerstand what I’m saying?”

No, no clue. But Arthur Rhyme said, “Still. My name’s Art.”

“I know the fuck yo’ name. Ever’body know ever’thing round here. ’Cept you. You don’ know shit.”

But one thing Arthur Rhyme knew, and knew it with certainty: He was dead. And so he said, “Okay, then tell me who the fuck you are, asshole.”

The huge face turned toward him. Smelling sweat and smoky breath, Arthur thought of his family, his children first and then Judy. His parents, mother first, then father. Then, surprisingly, he thought of his cousin, Lincoln. Recalling a footrace through a hot Illinois field one summer when they were teenagers.

Race you to that oak tree. See it, that one over there. On three. You ready? One…two…three…go!

But the man just turned away and stalked across the hall to another black prisoner. They tapped fists together and Arthur Rhyme was forgotten.

He sat watching their camaraderie, feeling more and more forlorn. Then he closed his eyes and lowered his head. Arthur Rhyme was a scientist. He believed that life advanced via the process of natural selection; divine justice played no role.

But now, sunk in a depression as relentless as winter tides, he couldn’t help wondering if some system of retribution, as real and invisible as gravity, existed and was now at work, punishing him for the bad he’d done in his life. Oh, he’d done much good. Raised children, taught them open-minded values and tolerance, been a good companion to his wife, helped her through a cancer incident, contributed to the great body of science that enriched the world.

Yet there was bad too. There always is.

Sitting here in his stinking orange jumpsuit, he struggled to believe that by the right thoughts and vows-and faith in the system he dutifully supported every election day-he could work his way back to the other side of the scale of justice and be reunited with his family and life.

That with the right spirit and intention he could outrun fate through the same breathless effort with which he’d beaten Lincoln in that hot, dusty field, charging all out toward the oak tree.

That maybe he could be saved. It might-

“Move.”

He jumped at the word, though the speaker’s voice was soft. Another prisoner, white, shaggy hair, full of tats but light on teeth and twitchy as the drugs leached from his system, had come up behind him. He stared at the bench where Arthur sat, though he could have picked anywhere. His eyes were just plain mean.

And Arthur’s momentary hope-in some measurable and scientific system of moral justice-vanished. One word from this small but damaged and dangerous man killed it.

Move…

Struggling to hold back tears, Arthur Rhyme moved.

Chapter Seven

The phone rang and Lincoln Rhyme was irritated by the distraction. He was thinking about their Mr. X and the mechanics of planting the evidence, if in fact that was what had happened, and wanted no distractions.

But then reality struck; he saw the 44 in the caller ID, the country code that included England. “Command, answer phone,” he ordered instantly.

Click.

“Yes, Inspector Longhurst?” He’d given up on first names. Relations with Scotland Yard required a certain propriety.

“Detective Rhyme, hello,” she said. “We have some movement here.”

“Go on,” Rhyme said.

“Danny Krueger heard from one of his former gun-runners. It seems that the reason Richard Logan left London was to collect something in Manchester. We aren’t sure what, but we do know that Manchester’s got more than its share of black-market weapons dealers.”

“Any idea where he is exactly?”

“Danny’s still trying to find out. It would be lovely if we could take him there, rather than wait till London.”

“Is Danny being subtle?” Rhyme remembered from the videoconference a big, tanned, loud South African with a belly and a gold pinkie ring that both jutted outward alarmingly. Rhyme had had a case involving Darfur, and he and Krueger had spent some time talking about the country’s tragic conflict.

“Oh, he knows what he’s doing. He’s subtle when he needs to be. Fierce as a hound when the situation calls for it. He’ll get the details if there’s any way. We’re working with our counterparts in Manchester to get an assault team ready. We’ll call you back when we know something more.”

He thanked her and they disconnected.

“We’ll get him, Rhyme,” Sachs said, not simply for his benefit. She too had an interest in finding Logan; Sachs herself had nearly died in one of his plots.

Sachs took a call. She listened and said she’d be there in ten minutes. “The files in those other cases Flintlock mentioned? They’re ready. I’ll go get them… Oh, and Pam might stop by.”

“What’s she up to?”

“Studying with a friend in Manhattan-a boyfriend.”

“Good for her. Who?”

“Some kid from school. Can’t wait to meet him. He’s all she talks about. She sure deserves somebody decent in her life. But I just don’t want her getting too close too fast. I’ll feel better when I’ve met him and given him the third degree in person.”

Rhyme nodded as Sachs left, but his mind was elsewhere. He was staring at the whiteboard containing the information on the Alice Sanderson case as he ordered the phone to make another call.

“Hello?” a soft male voice answered as a waltz played in the background. Loud.

“Mel. Is that you?”

“Lincoln?”

“What’s that goddamn music? Where are you?”

“New England Ballroom Competition,” answered Mel Cooper.

Rhyme sighed. Washing dishes, theater matinees, ballroom dancing. He hated Sundays. “Well, I need you. I’ve got a case. It’s unique.”

“They’re all unique with you, Lincoln.”

“This one’s more unique than others, if you’ll forgive the grammatical misdemeanor. Can you come in? You mentioned New England. Don’t tell me you’re in Boston or Maine.”

“Midtown. And I guess I’m free-Gretta and I were just eliminated. Rosie Talbot and Bryan Marshall are going to win. It’s all the scandal.” He said this with some significance. “How soon?”

“Now.”

Cooper chuckled. “How long will you need me?”

“Maybe a while.”

“As in six o’clock tonight? Or as in Wednesday?”

“Better call your supervisor and tell him you’re being reassigned. I hope it won’t be longer than Wednesday.”

“I’ll have to give him a name. Who’s running the investigation? Lon?”

“Let me put it this way: Be a little vague.”

“Well, Lincoln, you do remember being a cop, don’t you? ‘Vague’ doesn’t fly. ‘Very specific’ does.”

“There isn’t exactly a lead detective.”

“You’re on your own?” His voice was uncertain.

“Not exactly. There’s Amelia, there’s Ron.”

“That’s all?”

“You.”

“I see. Who’s the perp?”

“Actually, the perps’re already in jail. Two are convicted, one’s awaiting trial.”

“And you have your doubts that we got the right parties.”

“Something like that.”

A detective with the NYPD Crime Scene Unit, Mel Cooper specialized in lab work and he was one of the most brilliant officers on the force, as well as one of the most savvy. “Oh. So you want me to help you find out how my bosses screwed up and arrested the wrong people, then talk them into opening three new and expensive investigations against the real perps, who, by the way, probably won’t be real tickled either when they learn that they’re not getting off scot-free after all. This is sort of a lose-lose-lose situation, isn’t it, Lincoln?”

“Apologize to your girlfriend for me, Mel. Be here soon.”

Sachs was halfway to her crimson Camaro SS when she heard, “Hey, Amelia!”

She turned to see a pretty teenage girl, with long chestnut hair, streaked with red, and a few tasteful piercings in both ears. She was lugging two canvas bags. Her face, dusted with delicate freckles, was radiant with happiness. “You’re leaving?” she asked Sachs.

“Big case. I’m going downtown. Want a ride?”

“Sure. I’ll get the train at City Hall.” Pam climbed into the car.

“How was studying?”

“You know.”

“So where’s your friend?” Sachs was looking around.

“You just missed him.”

Stuart Everett was a student at the Manhattan high school Pam was attending. She’d been going out with him for several months. They’d met in class and immediately discovered a mutual love of books and music. They were in the school’s Poetry Club, which reassured Sachs; at least he wasn’t a biker or a knuckle-dragging jock.

Pam tossed one of her bags, containing schoolbooks, into the backseat and opened the other one. A fuzzy-headed dog looked out.

“Hey, Jackson,” Sachs said, petting his head.

The tiny Havanese grabbed the Milk-Bone the detective offered from an add-on cup holder, whose sole purpose was as a reservoir of dog treats; Sachs’s acceleration and cornering habits weren’t conducive to keeping liquids contained.

“Stuart couldn’t walk you here? What kind of gentleman is that?”

“He’s got this soccer game. He’s way into sports. Are most guys like that?”

Pulling into traffic, Sachs gave a wry laugh. “Yup.”

It seemed an odd question from a girl this age, most of whom would know all about boys and sports. But Pam Willoughby wasn’t like most girls. When she was very young her father died on a U.N. peacekeeping mission and her unstable mother had flung herself into the political and religious right-wing underground, growing more and more militant. She was now serving a life sentence for murder (she was responsible for the U.N. bombing some years ago in which six people died). Amelia Sachs and Pam had met back then, when the detective had saved the girl from a serial kidnapper. She then disappeared but, by sheer coincidence, Sachs had rescued her again, not long ago.

Liberated from her sociopath family, Pam had been placed with a foster family in Brooklyn-though not before Sachs had checked out the couple like a Secret Service agent planning a presidential visit. Pam enjoyed life with the family. But she and Sachs continued to hang out together and were close. With Pam’s foster mother often fully occupied with taking care of five younger children, Sachs took on the role of older sister.

This worked for them both. Sachs had always wanted children. But complications existed. She’d planned on a family with her first serious live-in boyfriend, though he, a fellow cop, proved to be about the worst choice in the world (extortion, assault and eventually prison, for a start). After him she’d been alone until she’d met Lincoln Rhyme and had been with him ever since. Rhyme didn’t quite get children, but he was a good man, fair and smart, and could separate his stony professionalism from his home life; a lot of men couldn’t.

But starting a family would be difficult at this point in their lives; they had to contend with the dangers and demands of policing and the restless energy they both felt-and the uncertainty about Rhyme’s future health. They also had a certain physical barrier to be overcome, though the problem, they’d learned, was Sachs’s, not Rhyme’s (he was perfectly capable of fathering a family).

So, for now, the relationship with Pam was enough. Sachs enjoyed her role and took it seriously; the girl was lowering her reticence to trust adults. And Rhyme genuinely enjoyed her company. Presently he was helping her outline a book about her experiences in the right-wing underground to be called Captivity. Thom had told her that she had a chance of getting on Oprah.

Speeding around a taxi, Sachs now said, “You never answered. How was studying?”

“Great.”

“You set for that test on Thursday?”

“Got it down. No problem.”

Sachs gave a laugh. “You didn’t even crack a book today, did you?”

“Amelia, come on. It was such a neat day! The weather’s been sucky all week. We had to get outside.”

Sachs’s instinct was to remind her of the importance of getting good scores on her finals. Pam was smart, with a high IQ and a voracious appetite for books, but after her bizarre schooling she’d find it tough to get into a good college. The girl, though, looked so happy that Sachs relented. “So what’d you do?”

“Just walked. All the way up to Harlem, around the reservoir. Oh, and there was this concert by the boathouse, just a cover band, you know, but they totally nailed Coldplay…” Pam thought back. “Mostly, like, Stuart and I just talked. About nothing. That’s the best, you ask me.”

Amelia Sachs couldn’t disagree. “Is he cute?”

“Oh, yeah. Way cute.”

“Have a picture?”

“Amelia! That’d be so uncool.”

“After this case is over, how ’bout we have dinner, the three of us?”

“Yeah? You really want to meet him?”

“Any boy going out with you better know that you’ve got somebody watching your back. Somebody who carries a gun and handcuffs. Okay, hold on to the dog; I’m in the mood to drive.”

Sachs downshifted hard, pumped the gas and left two exclamation points of rubber on the dull black asphalt.

Chapter Eight

Since Amelia Sachs had begun spending occasional nights and weekends here at Rhyme’s, certain changes had occurred around the Victorian town house. When he’d lived here alone, after the accident and before Sachs, the place had been more or less neat-depending on whether or not he’d been firing aides and housekeepers-but “homey” wasn’t a word that described it. Nothing personal had graced the walls-none of the certificates, degrees, commendations and medals he’d received during his celebrated tenure as head of the NYPD crime-scene operation. Nor any pictures of his parents, Teddy and Anne, or his uncle Henry’s family.

Sachs hadn’t approved. “It’s important,” she lectured, “your past, your family. You’re purging your history, Rhyme.”

He’d never seen her apartment-the place wasn’t disabled accessible-but he knew that the rooms were chockablock with evidence of her history. He’d seen many of the pictures, of course: Amelia Sachs as a pretty young girl (with freckles that had long since vanished) who didn’t smile a lot; as a high school student with mechanics tools in hand; as a college-age daughter flanked on holidays by a grinning cop father and a stern mother; as a magazine and advertising model, her eyes offering the chic frigidity that was au courant (but which Rhyme knew was contempt for the way models were considered mere coat hangers).

Hundreds of other pix too, shot mostly by her father, the man with a quick-draw Kodak.

Sachs had studied Rhyme’s bare walls and had gone where the aides-even Thom-did not: the boxes in the basement, scores of cartons containing evidence of Rhyme’s prior life, his life in the Before, artifacts hidden away and as unmentioned as first wife to second. Many of these certificates and diplomas and family pictures now filled the walls and mantelpiece.

Including the one he was presently studying-of himself as a lean teenager, in a track uniform, taken after he’d just competed in a varsity meet. It depicted him with unruly hair and a prominent Tom Cruise nose, bending forward with his hands on his knees, having just finished what was probably a mile run. Rhyme was never a sprinter; he liked the lyricism, the elegance of the longer distances. He considered running “a process.” Sometimes he would not stop running even after crossing the finish line.

His family would have been in the stands. Both father and uncle resided in suburbs of Chicago, though some distance apart. Lincoln’s home was to the west, in the flat, balding sprawl that was then still partly farmland, a target of both thoughtless developers and frightening tornados. Henry Rhyme and his family were somewhat immune to both, being on the lakefront in Evanston.

Henry commuted twice a week to teach his advanced physics courses at the University of Chicago, a long, two-train trek through the city’s many social divides. His wife, Paula, taught at Northwestern. The couple had three children, Robert, Marie and Arthur, all named after scientists, Oppenheimer and Curie being the most famous. Art was named after Arthur Compton, who in 1942 ran the famed Metallurgic Lab at the University of Chicago, the cover for the project to create the world’s first controlled nuclear chain reaction. All the children had attended good schools. Robert, Northwestern Medical. Marie, UC-Berkeley. Arthur went to M.I.T.

Robert had died years earlier in an industrial accident in Europe. Marie was working in China on environmental issues. As for the Rhyme parents, only one remained of the four: Aunt Paula now lived in an assisted-care facility, amid vivid, coherent memories of sixty years ago, while experiencing the present in bewildering fragments.

Rhyme now continued to stare at the picture of himself. He was unable to look away, recalling the track meet… In his college classes Professor Henry Rhyme signified approval with a subtle, raised eyebrow. But on the playing field, he was always leaping to his feet in the bleachers, whistling and bellowing for Lincoln to push, push, push, you can do it! Encouraging him over the finish line first (he often was).

Following the meet, Rhyme supposed he’d gone off with Arthur. The boys spent as much time together as they could, filling the sibling gap. Robert and Marie were considerably older than Arthur, and Lincoln was an only child.

So Lincoln and Art adopted each other. Most weekends and every summer the surrogate brothers would go off on their adventures, often in Arthur’s Corvette (Uncle Henry, even as a professor, made several times what Rhyme’s father did; Teddy was a scientist too, though he was more comfortable out of the spotlight). The boys’ outings were typical teenage venture-girls, ball games, movies, arguing, eating burgers and pizza, sneaking beer and explaining the world. And more girls.

Now, sitting in the new TDX wheelchair, Rhyme wondered where exactly he and Arthur had gone after the meet.

Arthur, his surrogate brother…

Who never came to see him after his spine was cracked like a piece of defective wood.

Why, Arthur? Tell me why…

But these memories were derailed by the ringing doorbell in his town house. Thom veered toward the hallway and a moment later, a slightly built, balding man wearing a tuxedo strode into the room. Mel Cooper shoved his thick glasses up on his thin nose and nodded to Rhyme. “Afternoon.”

“Formal?” Rhyme asked, glancing at the tux.

“The dance competition. If we’d been finalists, you know I wouldn’t have come.” He took off jacket and bow tie, then rolled up the sleeves of the frilly shirt. “So what do we have, this unique case you were telling me about?”

Rhyme filled him in.

“I’m sorry about your cousin, Lincoln. I don’t think you ever mentioned him.”

“What do you think of the M.O.?”

“If it’s true it’s brilliant.” Cooper gazed at the evidence chart of the Alice Sanderson homicide.

“Thoughts?” Rhyme asked.

“Well, half the evidence at your cousin’s was in the car or the garage. A lot easier to plant it there than in the house.”

“Exactly what I was thinking.”

The doorbell rang again. A moment later Rhyme heard his aide’s footsteps returning solo. Rhyme was wondering if someone had delivered a package. But then his mind jumped: Sunday. A visitor could be in street clothes and running shoes, which would make no sound on the entryway floor.

Of course.

Young Ron Pulaski turned the corner and nodded shyly. He wasn’t a rookie any longer, having been a uniformed patrolman for several years. But he looked like a rookie and so, to Rhyme, that’s what he was. And probably would always be.

The shoes were indeed quiet Nikes but he was wearing a very loud Hawaiian shirt over blue jeans. His blond hair was stylishly spiked and a scar prominently marked his forehead-a remnant from a nearly fatal attack during his first case with Rhyme and Sachs. The assault was so vicious that he’d suffered a brain injury and nearly quit the force. The young man had decided to fight his way through rehab and stay on the NYPD, inspired largely by Rhyme (a fact he shared only with Sachs, of course, not the criminalist himself; she relayed the news).

He blinked at Cooper’s tux and then nodded hello to both men.

“Your dishes spotless, Pulaski? Your flowers watered? Your leftovers tucked away in freezer bags?”

“I left right away, sir.”

The men were going over the case when they heard Sachs’s voice from the doorway. “A costume party.” She was looking at Cooper’s tuxedo and Pulaski’s brash shirt. To the lab man she said, “You’re looking pretty smart. That’s the word for somebody in a tux, right? ‘Smart’?”

“Sadly, ‘semifinalist’ is the only thing that comes to my mind.”

“Is Gretta taking it well?”

His beautiful Scandinavian girlfriend was, he reported, “hanging out with her friends and drowning her sorrows with Aquavit. Her homeland’s beverage. But, if you ask me, it’s undrinkable.”

“How’s your mom?”

Cooper lived with his mother, a feisty lady who was a long-term Queensean.

“She’s doing well. Out for brunch at the Boat House.”

Sachs also asked about Pulaski’s wife and two young children. Then added, “Thanks for coming in on Sunday.” To Rhyme: “You did tell him how much we appreciate it, didn’t you?”

“I’m sure I did,” he muttered. “Now, if we could get to work… So what’ve you got?” He eyed the large brown folder she carried.

“Evidence inventory and photos from the coin theft and rape.”

“Where’s the actual P.E.?”

“Archived in the evidence warehouse on Long Island.”

“Well, let’s take a look.”

As she had with his cousin’s file, Sachs picked up a marker and began writing on another whiteboard.

HOMICIDE/THEFT-MARCH 27

March 27

Crime: Homicide, theft of six boxes of rare coins

COD: Blood loss, shock, due to multiple stab wounds

Location: Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

Victim: Howard Schwartz

Suspect: Randall Pemberton

EVIDENCE LOG FROM VICTIM’S HOUSE:

· Grease

· Flecks of dried hair spray

· Polyester fibers

· Wool fibers

· Shoeprint of size 9 1/2 Bass walker

Witness reported man in tan-colored vest fleeing to black Honda Accord

EVIDENCE INVENTORY FROM SUSPECT’S HOUSE AND CAR:

· Grease on umbrella on patio, matching what was found at victim’s house

· Pair of 9 1/2 Bass walkers

· Clairol hair spray, matching fleck found at scene

· Knife/Trace embedded in handle:

· Dust matching nothing at either crime scene or suspect’s house

· Flecks of old cardboard

· Knife/Trace on blade:

· Victim’s blood. Positive match

· Suspect owned 2004 black Honda Accord

· One coin identified as coming from the collection of victim

· A Culberton Outdoor Company vest, tan. Polyester fiber found at the scene matches

· A wool blanket in the car. The wool fiber at the scene matches

Note: Prior to trial, investigators canvassed major coin dealers in metro area or on the Internet. No one attempted to fence the particular stolen coins.

“So if our perp stole the coins he’s kept them. And ‘dust matching nothing at either crime scene.’…That means it probably came from the perp’s house. But what the hell kind of dust is it? Didn’t they analyze it?” Rhyme shook his head. “Okay, I want to see the pictures. Where are they?”

“I’m getting them. Hold on.”

Sachs found some tape and mounted printouts on a third whiteboard. Rhyme maneuvered closer and squinted up at the dozens of photos of the crime scenes. The coin collector’s living space was tidy, the perp’s less so. The kitchen, where the coin and knife had been found, under the sink, was cluttered, the table covered with dirty dishes and food cartons. On the table was a pile of mail, most of it apparently junk.

“Next one,” he announced. “Let’s go.” He tried to keep his voice from tipping into impatience.

HOMICIDE/RAPE-APRIL 18

April 18

Crime: Homicide, rape

COD: Strangulation

Location: Brooklyn

Victim: Rita Moscone

Suspect: Joseph Knightly

EVIDENCE FROM VICTIM’S APARTMENT:

· Traces of Colgate-Palmolive Softsoap hand soap

· Condom lubricant

· Rope fibers

· Dust adhering to duct tape, matching no samplars in apartment

· Duct tape, American Adhesive brand

· Fleck of latex

· Wool/polyester fibers, black

· Tobacco on victim (see note below)

EVIDENCE FROM SUSPECT’S HOUSE:

· Durex condoms containing lubricant identical to that found on victim

· Coil of rope, fibers matching those found at crime scene

· Two-foot length of same rope, victim’s blood on it, along with two-inch strand of BASF B35 nylon 6, most likely source a doll’s hair

· Colgate-Palmolive Softsoap

· Duct tape, American Adhesive brand

· Latex gloves, matching the fleck found at the scene

· Men’s socks, wool-polyester blend, matching fiber found at scene. Another identical pair in the garage, containing traces of victim’s blood

· Tobacco from Tareyton cigarettes (see note below)

“The supposed perp saved his socks with blood on them and took them home with him? Bullshit. Planted evidence.” Rhyme read through the material again. “What’s the ‘note below’?”

Sachs found it: a few paragraphs to the prosecutor from the lead detective about possible problems with this case. She showed it to Rhyme.

Stan:

A couple potential glitches the defense might try to bring up:

– Possible contamination issue: Similar tobacco flakes found at crime scene and perp’s home, but neither the victim or the suspect smoked. Arresting officers and crime scene staff questioned, but assured lead detective that they were not the source.

– Found no DNA linking material, other than victim’s blood.

– Suspect has an alibi, eyewitness who placed him outside his own house-about four miles away, at around the time of the crime. Alibi witness is a homeless man who suspect gives money to occasionally.

“Had an alibi,” Sachs pointed out. “Who the jury didn’t believe. Obviously.”

“What do you think, Mel?” Rhyme asked.

“I’m sticking to my story. It all lines up too conveniently.”

Pulaski nodded. “The hair spray, the soap, the fibers, the lubricant…everything.”

Cooper continued, “They’re obvious choices for planted evidence. And look at the DNA-it’s not the suspect’s at the crime scene; it’s the victim’s at the suspect’s home. That’s a lot easier to plant.”

Rhyme continued to examine the charts, scanning slowly.

Sachs added, “But not all of the evidence matches. The old cardboard and the dust-those aren’t related to either scene.”

Rhyme said, “And the tobacco. Neither the vic nor the fall guy smoked. That means those might be from the real perp.”

Pulaski asked, “What about the doll’s hair? Does that mean he has kids?”

Rhyme ordered, “Tape up those pictures. Let’s take a look.”

Like the other scenes, the victim’s apartment and the perp’s house and garage had been well documented by the Crime Scene Unit. Rhyme scanned the photos. “No dolls. No toys at all. Maybe the real killer has children or some contact with toys. And he smokes or has some access to cigarettes or tobacco. Good. Oh, we’re on to something here.

“Let’s do a profile chart. We’ve been calling him ‘Mr. X.’ But we need something else for our perp… What’s today’s date?”

“May twenty-second,” Pulaski said.

“Okay. Unknown subject Five Twenty-Two. Sachs, if you would…” He nodded toward a whiteboard. “Let’s start the profile.”

UNSUB 522 PROFILE

· Male

· Possibly smokes or lives/works with someone who does, or near source of tobacco

· Has children or lives/works near them or near source of toys

· Interest in art, coins?

NONPLANTED EVIDENCE

· Dust

· Old cardboard

· Hair from doll, BASF B35 nylon 6

· Tobacco from Tareyton cigarettes

Well, it was a start, he reflected, if a pretty lame one.

“Should we call Lon and Malloy?” Sachs asked.

Rhyme scoffed. “And tell them what?” He nodded at the chart. “I think our little clandestine operation’d get closed down pretty fast.”

“You mean, this isn’t official?” Pulaski asked.

“Welcome to the underground,” Sachs said.

The young officer digested this information.

“That’s why we’re in disguise,” Cooper added, pointing at the black satin strip on his tuxedo trousers. He might have winked but Rhyme couldn’t tell through his dense glasses. “What’re our next steps?”

“Sachs, call Crime Scene in Queens. We can’t get our hands on the evidence in my cousin’s case. With the trial coming up, all the P.E.’ll be in custody at the prosecutor’s office. But see if anybody at the warehouse can send us the evidence from these earlier crimes-the rape and the coin theft. I want the dust, cardboard and rope. And, Pulaski, you go down to the Big Building. I want you to look through the files of every murder in the past six months.”

“Every murder?”

“The mayor’s cleaned up the city, didn’t you hear? Be thankful we’re not in Detroit or Washington. Flintlock thought of these two cases. I’ll bet there are others. Look for an underlying crime, maybe theft, maybe rape, ending in homicide. Clear class evidence and an anonymous call right after the crime. Oh, and a suspect who swears he’s innocent.”

“Okay, sir.”

“And us?” Mel Cooper asked.

“We wait,” Rhyme muttered, as if the word were an obscenity.

Chapter Nine

A wonderful transaction.

I’m satisfied now. Walking down the street, happy, content. Flipping through the images I’ve just slipped into my collection. Images of Myra 9834. The visual ones are stored in my memory. The digital tape recorder has the others.

Walking down the street, watching sixteens around me.

I see them streaming down sidewalks. In cars, buses, taxis, trucks.

I see them through windows, oblivious to me as I study them.

Sixteens…Ah, I’m not the only one who refers to human beings like this, of course. Not at all. It’s a common shorthand in the industry. But I’m probably the only one who prefers to think of people as sixteens, who feels comforted by the thought.

A sixteen-digit number is far more precise and efficient than a name. Names make me edgy. I don’t like that. It’s not good for me, not good for anybody, when I’m edgy. Names…ah, terrible. For instance, the surnames Jones and Brown each account for roughly.6 percent of the population of the United States. Moore is.3 percent, and as for everyone’s favorite, Smith-a whopping 1 percent. Nearly 3,000,000 of them in the country. (And given names, if you’re interested: John? Nope. It comes in number two-3.2 percent. James is the winner at 3.3 percent.)

So think of the implications: I hear someone say, “James Smith.” Well, which James Smith does he mean when there are hundreds of thousands? And those are just the living ones. Tally up all the James Smiths in history.

Oh, my God.

Drives me crazy just to think about.

Edgy…

And the consequences of mistakes can be serious. Say, it’s 1938 Berlin. Is Herr Wilhelm Frankel the Jewish Wilhelm Frankel or the gentile one? Made a big difference and, whatever else you feel about them, those brown-shirted boys were absolute geniuses at tracking identities (and they used computers to do it!).

Names lead to mistakes. Mistakes are noise. Noise is contamination. Contamination must be eliminated.

There could be dozens of Alice Sandersons, but only one Alice 3895, who sacrificed her life that I might own an American Family painting by dear Mr. Prescott.

Myra Weinburgs? Ah, not many, surely. But more than one. Yet only Myra 9834 sacrificed herself so that I might be satisfied.

I’ll bet there are plenty of DeLeon Williams, but only 6832-5794-8891-0923 is going to jail forever for raping and killing her so that I might remain free to do it all over again.

I’m en route to his house at the moment (technically his girlfriend’s, I’ve learned), carrying enough evidence to make sure the poor man is convicted of the rape/murder in about one hour of deliberation.

DeLeon 6832…

I’ve already called 911, a transaction in which I reported an old beige Dodge-his model of car-speeding away from the scene, a man inside, a black man. “I could see his hands! They were all bloody! Oh, get somebody there now! The screaming was terrible.”

What a perfect suspect you’ll be, DeLeon 6832. About half of the perpetrators commit rape under the influence of alcohol or drugs (he drinks beer in moderation now, but was in AA several years ago). The majority of rape victims know their assailant (DeLeon 6832 had once done some carpentry for the grocery store where the late Myra 9834 regularly shopped so it was logical to assume that they knew each other, though they probably didn’t).

Most rapists are thirty or under (the exact age of DeLeon 6832, as it turns out). Unlike drug dealers and users, they don’t have many prior arrests except for domestic abuse-and my boy has a conviction for assaulting a girlfriend; how perfect is that? Most rapists are from the lower social classes and economically disadvantaged (he’s been out of work for months).

And now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, please note that two days prior to the rape the defendant bought a box of Trojan-Enz condoms, just like the two found near the victim’s body. (As for the two actually used-my own-they’re long gone, of course. That DNA stuff is very dangerous, especially now that New York is collecting samples from all felonies, not just rapes. And in Britain you’ll soon get swabbed when you get a citation because your dog messes the sidewalk or you make a dicey U-turn.)

There’s another fact that the police might take into account if they do their homework. DeLeon 6832 was a combat vet who’d served in Iraq, and there was some question about what happened to his.45-caliber sidearm when he left the service. He had none to turn in. It had been “lost” in combat.

But curiously he bought.45-caliber ammunition a few years ago.

If the police learn this, which they easily can, they might conclude that their suspect is armed. And digging a bit deeper, they’ll find that he was treated at a Veterans Administration hospital-for post-traumatic stress syndrome.

An unstable, armed suspect?

What police officer wouldn’t be inclined to shoot first?

Let’s hope. I’m not always completely confident about the sixteens I pick. You never know about unexpected alibis. Or idiotic juries. Maybe DeLeon 6832’ll end today in a body bag. Why not? Don’t I deserve a little good luck in compensation for the edginess God gave me? It’s not always an easy life, you know.

It should take about a half hour or so on foot to get to his house here in Brooklyn. Still warmly satisfied from my transaction with Myra 9834, I’m enjoying the walk. The backpack rides heavy on my spine. Not only does it contain the evidence to plant and the shoe that left DeLeon 6832’s telltale footprint, but it’s filled with some treasures I’ve found prowling the streets today. In my pocket is, sadly, only a small trophy from Myra 9834, a portion of her fingernail. I’d like something more personal but deaths in Manhattan are a big deal, and missing parts draw a lot of attention.

I pick up my pace a bit, enjoying the triplet beat of the backpack. Enjoying the clear spring Sunday and the memories of my transaction with Myra 9834.

Enjoying the complete comfort of knowing that, though I am probably the most dangerous person in the city of New York, I am also invulnerable, virtually invisible to all the sixteens who would do me harm.

The light caught his attention.

A flash from the street.

Red.

Another flash. Blue.

The phone sagged in DeLeon Williams’s hand. He was calling a friend, trying to find the man he used to work for, the man who skipped town after his carpentry business went under and left only debt behind, including more than $4,000 owed to his most dependable employee, DeLeon Williams.

“Leon,” the guy on the other end of the line was saying, “I myself don’t know where the prick is. He left me holding-”

“Call you back.”

Click.

The big man’s palms were sweating as he glanced through the curtain that he and Janeece had just put up Saturday (Williams feeling bad, bad, bad that she’d had to pay for them-oh, he hated being unemployed). He noticed that the flashes were from the grille lights of two unmarked police cars. A couple of detectives climbed out, unbuttoning their coats, and not because the spring day was so warm. The cars sped off to block the intersections.

They looked around cautiously, then-destroying the last hope that this was some strange coincidence-walked to Williams’s beige Dodge, noted the tag, glanced inside. One spoke into his radio.

Williams’s lids lowered in despair as a disgusted sigh eased from his lungs.

She was at it again.

She…

Last year Williams had been involved with a woman who was not only sexy but smart and kind. Or so it had seemed at first. Not long after they started going out seriously, though, she’d turned into a raging witch. Moody, jealous, vindictive. Unstable…He was with her about four months and they were the worst of his life. And he’d spent much of that time protecting her own children from their mother.

His good deeds, in fact, had landed him in jail. One evening Leticia had swung a fist at her daughter for not scrubbing a pot clean enough. Williams instinctively grabbed the woman’s arm, while the sobbing girl fled. He’d calmed her mother down and the matter seemed settled. But several hours later he had been sitting on the porch debating how he could get the children away from her, perhaps back to their father, when the police arrived and he was arrested.

Leticia had pressed assault charges, displaying the arm bruised by his restraint. Williams was appalled. He explained what had happened but the officers had no choice but to arrest him. The case went to trial, but Williams wouldn’t let the daughter take the stand in his defense, though the girl wanted to. He was found guilty of misdemeanor assault, the sentence community service.

But during the trial he’d testified to Leticia’s cruelty. The prosecutor believed him and gave the woman’s name to the Department of Social Services. A social worker showed up at her house to investigate the welfare of the children and they were removed and placed in the custody of their father.

Leticia began harassing Williams. It had persisted for a long time but then she’d disappeared, months ago, and Williams was just thinking recently that he was safe…

But now this. He knew she was behind it.

Jesus, our Lord, how much can a man put up with?

He looked again. No! The detectives had their guns out!

A wave of horror zipped through him. Had she actually hurt one of her kids and claimed that he’d done it? He wouldn’t be surprised.

Williams’s hands shook and he cried big tears, which streamed down his broad face. He felt the same panic that had slammed him in the desert war when he’d turned to his buddy just in time to see the grinning Alabaman turned into a red mass of nothing, thanks to an Iraqi’s rocket-propelled grenade. Until that moment Williams had been more or less fine. Been shot at, spattered with sand from bullets, passed out from the heat. But seeing Jason turn into a thing had affected him fundamentally. The post-traumatic stress syndrome he’d wrestled with since was now kicking into high gear.

Utter, helpless fear.

“No, no, no, no.” Gasping, struggling to breathe. He’d stopped taking his meds months ago, believing he was better.

Now, watching the detectives fan out around the house, DeLeon Williams thought blindly: Get the hell out, run!

He had to distance himself. To show that Janeece had no connection to him, to save her and her son-two people he truly loved-he’d vanish. The man slipped the chain on the front door, the deadbolt too, and ran upstairs for a bag, tossed into it whatever he thought of. Nothing made sense: shave cream but no razors, underwear but no shirts, shoes but no socks.

And he took one other thing from the closet.

His military pistol, a Colt.45. The weapon was unloaded-he wouldn’t think of shooting anyone-but he could use it to bluff his way past the police, or hijack a car if he had to.

All he could think was: Run! Go!

Williams took a last look at the picture of Janeece and him together, with her son, on a trip to Six Flags. He started to cry again, then wiped his eyes, slung the bag over his shoulder and, kneading the grip of the heavy pistol, started down the stairs.

Chapter Ten

“The forward sniper’s in position?”

Bo Haumann, former drill sergeant and now head of the city’s Emergency Service Unit-NYPD’s SWAT team-gestured at a building that provided a perfect shooting location, covering the tiny backyard of the detached house where DeLeon Williams was living.

“Yes, sir,” an officer standing nearby said. “And Johnny’s got the back covered.”

“Good.”

A graying man, crew cut and tough as leather, Haumann ordered the two ESU takedown teams into position. “And stay out of sight.”

Haumann had been in his own backyard not far from here, coaxing last year’s charcoal to ignite, when a call came in about a rape/murder and a solid lead to the suspect. He turned over the incendiary mission to his son, donned his gear and sped out, thanking the good Lord that he hadn’t popped that first beer. Haumann would drive after he’d had a couple of brews, but he never fired a weapon within eight hours of imbibing.

And there was now a chance, on this fine Sunday, that they would see some gunplay.

His radio crackled and through the headset earpiece he heard, “S and S One to Base, K.” A Search and Surveillance team was across the street, along with the second sniper.

“Base. Go ahead, K.”

“Getting some thermals. Somebody could be inside. No audible.”

Could be, Haumann thought, irritated. He’d seen the budget for the equipment. It ought to be able to say for sure if somebody was inside-if not report their goddamn shoe size and whether they’d flossed that morning.

“Check again.”

After what seemed like forever, he heard, “S and S One. Okay, we’ve got only one person inside. And a visual through a window. It’s definitely DeLeon Williams, from the DMV pic you passed out, K.”

“Good. Out.”

Haumann called the two tactical teams, which were moving into position around the house now, remaining nearly invisible. “Now, we didn’t have much time for a briefing. But listen up. This perp is a rapist and a killer. We want him alive but he’s too dangerous to let get away. If he makes any hostile gesture, you’re green-lighted.”

“B leader. Roger that. Be advised, we’re in position. Alley and streets to the north are covered and back door, K.”

“A leader to Base. Roger the green light. We’re in position on front door, and covering all streets to the south and east.”

“Snipers,” Haumann radioed. “You copy the green light?”

“Roger.” They added that they were locked and loaded. (The phrase was a pet peeve of Haumann’s, since it was unique to the old M-1 army rifle, with which you had to lock the bolt back and load a clip of bullets through the top; you didn’t have to lock a modern rifle to load it. But now wasn’t the time for lectures.)

Haumann unsnapped the thong on his Glock and slipped into the alley behind the house, where he was joined by yet more officers, whose plans on this idyllic spring Sunday, like his, had changed so fast and dramatically.

At that moment a voice clattered into his earpiece, “S and S Two to Base. I think we’ve got something.”

On his knees DeLeon Williams carefully looked through a crack in the door-an actual crack in the wood that he’d been meaning to fix-and could see that the officers were no longer there.

No, he corrected himself, they’re no longer visible. Big difference. He saw a glint of metal or glass in the bushes. Maybe from one of those weird elves or deer lawn ornaments the neighbor collected.

Or it might be a cop with a gun.

Lugging the bag, he crawled to the back of the house. Another peek. This time, risking a look through the window, struggling hard to control the panic.

The backyard and the alley beyond were empty.

But once again he corrected: seemed to be empty.

He felt another shiver of PTSD panic and an urge to race out the door, pull the gun and charge down the alley, threatening anybody he saw, screaming for them to stand back.

Impulsively, his mind whirling, he reached for the knob.

No…

Be smart.

He sat back, head against the wall, working to slow his breathing.

After a moment he calmed and decided to try something else. In the basement was a window that led into the tiny side yard. Across eight feet of anemic grass a similar window opened into his neighbor’s basement. The Wongs were away for the weekend-he was watering their plants for them-and Williams figured he could sneak inside, then upstairs and through their back door. If he was lucky the police wouldn’t be covering the side yard. Then he’d take the alley up to the main street and jog to the subway.

The plan wasn’t great but it gave him more of a chance than just waiting here. Tears again. And panic.

Stop it, soldier. Come on.

He rose and staggered down the stairs into the basement.

Just get the hell out. The cops’d be at the front door at any minute, kicking it in.

He unlatched the window and climbed up and out. Starting to crawl toward the Wongs’ basement window, he glanced to his right. He froze.

Oh, Jesus Lord…

Police, a male and a female detective, holding guns in their right hands, were crouching in the narrow side yard. They weren’t looking his way, but staring out, toward the back door and the alley.

The panic again slammed hard. He’d pull out the Colt and threaten them. Make them sit down, cuff themselves and throw away their radios. He hated to do it; that would be a real crime. But he didn’t have any choice. They were obviously convinced he’d done something terrible. Yes, he’d get their guns and flee. Maybe they had an unmarked car nearby. He’d take their keys.

Was somebody covering them, somebody he couldn’t see? A sniper maybe?

Well, he’d just have to take that chance.

He quietly set the bag down and began to reach for the gun.

Which was when the woman detective turned his way. Williams gasped. I’m dead, he thought.

Janeece, I love you…

But the woman glanced at a piece of paper and then squinted as she looked him over. “DeLeon Williams?”

His voice gurgled. “I-” He nodded, shoulders falling. He could only stare at her pretty face, her red hair in a ponytail, her cold eyes.

She held up the badge that was hanging around her neck. “We’re police officers. How’d you get out of your house?” Then she noted the window and nodded. “Mr. Williams, we’re in the middle of an operation here. Could you go back inside? You’ll be safer there.”

“I-” Panic was shattering his voice. “I-”

“Now,” she said insistently. “We’ll be with you as soon as everything’s resolved. Be quiet. Don’t try to leave again. Please.”

“Sure. I…Sure.”

He left the bag and started to ease through the window.

She said into her radio, “This’s Sachs. I’d expand the perimeter, Bo. He’s going to be real cautious.”

What the hell was going on? Williams didn’t waste time speculating. He awkwardly climbed back into the basement and walked upstairs. Once there he headed straight into the bathroom. He lifted the lid off the back of the toilet and dropped the gun in. He walked to the window, going to peek out once more. But then paused and ran back to the toilet just in time to be painfully sick.

A curious thing to say, given this fine day-and given what I’ve been up to with Myra 9834-but I miss being in the office.

First, I enjoy working, always have. And I enjoy the atmosphere, the camaraderie with the sixteens around you, almost like a family.

Then there’s the feeling of being productive. Being involved in fast-paced New York business. (“Cutting edge” one hears, and that’s something I do hate, the corporate-speak-a phrase that is itself corporate-speak. No, the great leaders-FDR, Truman, Caesar, Hitler-didn’t need to wrap themselves in the cloak of simple-minded rhetoric.)

Most important, of course, is how my job helps me with my hobby. No, it’s more than that. It’s vital.

My particular situation is good, very good. I can usually get away when I want to. With some juggling of commitments I can find time during the week to pursue my passion. And given who I am in public-my professional face, you could say-it would be very unlikely for someone to suspect that I’m a very different person at heart. To put it mildly.

I’m often at work on weekends too, and that’s one of my favorite times-if, of course, I’m not engaging in a transaction with a beautiful girl like Myra 9834 or acquiring a painting or comic books or coins or a rare piece of china. Even when there are few other sixteens present at the office, on a holiday, Saturday or Sunday, the halls hum with the white noise of wheels moving society slowly forward-into a bold new world.

Ah, here’s an antiques store. I pause to look into the window. There are some pictures and souvenir plates, cups and posters that appeal to me. Sadly I won’t be able to return here to shop because it’s too close to DeLeon 6832’s house. The odds of anyone making a connection between me and the “rapist” are quite minimal, but…why take chances? (I only shop in stores or scavenge. eBay is fun to look at, but buying something online? You’d have to be mad.) For the time being cash is still good. But soon it’ll be tagged, like everything else. RFIDs in the bills. It’s already done in some countries. The bank will know which $20 bill was dispensed to you from which ATM or bank. And they’ll know you spent it on coke or a bra for your mistress or as a down payment to a hit man. We should go back to gold, I sometimes think.

Off. The. Grid.

Ah, poor DeLeon 6832. I know his face, from the driver’s license picture, a benign gaze at the civil-servant camera. I can imagine his expression when the police knock on his door and display the warrant for his arrest on rape and murder charges. I can see too the horrified look he’ll give to his girlfriend, Janeece 9810, and her ten-year-old son if they’re home when it happens. Wonder if he’s a crier.

I’m three blocks away. And-

Ah, wait…Here’s something unusual.

Two new Crown Victorias parked on this tree-filled side street. Statistically it’s unlikely that this sort of car, in such pristine shape, would be seen in this neighborhood. Two identical cars are particularly unlikely, and factor in that they’re parked in tandem, with no flecks of leaves or pollen, unlike the others. They’ve arrived recently.

And, yes, a casual look inside, normal passerby curiosity, reveals that they’re police cars.

Not predicted procedure for a domestic dispute or break-in. Yes, statistically those infractions occur pretty frequently in this part of Brooklyn, but rarely, the data show, at this time of day-before the six-packs appear. And you’d probably never see hidden unmarkeds, only blue-and-white squad cars in full view. Let’s think. They’re three blocks away from DeLeon 6832… Have to consider this. It wouldn’t be inconceivable for their commander to tell the officers, “He’s a rapist. He’s dangerous. We’re going to go in in ten minutes. Park the car three blocks away and get back here. Pronto.”

I casually glance down the closest alley. Okay, getting worse. Parked there in the shade is an NYPD ESU truck. Emergency Service. They often back up police arrests of people like DeLeon 6832. But how did they get here so soon? I dialed 911 only a half hour ago. (That’s always a risk but if you call too long after a transaction, the cops might wonder why you were only now reporting screams or that you’d seen a suspicious man earlier.)

Now, there are two explanations for the police’s presence. The most logical is that after my anonymous call they did a database search of every beige Dodge over five years old in the city (1,357 of them as of yesterday) and that somehow they lucked out with this one. They’re convinced, even without the evidence I was going to plant in his garage, that DeLeon 6832 is the rapist and murderer of Myra 9834 and they’re arresting him right now, or lying in wait for him to return.

The other explanation is far more troubling. The police have decided that he’s being set up. And they’re lying in wait for me.

I’m sweating now. This is not good this is not good not good…

But don’t panic. Your treasures are safe, your Closet is safe. Relax.

Still, whatever’s happened I have to find out. If the police presence here is just a perverse coincidence, having nothing to do with DeLeon 6832 or with me, then I’ll plant the evidence and get the hell back to my Closet.

But if they’ve found out about me they could find out about the others. Randall 6794 and Rita 2907 and Arthur 3480…

Cap down a little more over the eyes-the sunglasses pushed high on my nose-I change course completely, circling well around the house, moving through alleys and gardens and backyards. Keeping the three-block perimeter, which they helpfully established as my safety zone by parking the Crown Vic beacons there.

This takes me in a semicircle to a grassy embankment leading up to the highway. Climbing up it, I’m able to see the tiny backyards and porches of the houses on DeLeon 6832’s block. I begin to count dwellings to find his.

But I don’t need to. I see clearly a police officer on the roof of a two-story house behind the alley from his place. He has a rifle. A sniper! There’s another, with a pair of binoculars too. And several more, in suits or street clothes, crouching in bushes right next to the structure.

Then two cops are pointing in my direction. I see that yet another officer was on the top of the house across the street. He’s pointing my way too. And since I’m not six feet three, 230 pounds, with skin dark as ebony, they aren’t waiting for DeLeon 6832. They’ve been waiting for me.

My hands are beginning to shake. Imagine if I’d blundered right into the middle of that, with the evidence in my backpack.

A dozen other officers are running to their cars or jogging fast in my direction. Running like wolves. I turn and scrabble up the embankment, breathing hard, panicked. I’m not even to the top when I hear the first of the sirens.

No, no!

My treasures, my Closet…

The highway, four lanes total, is crowded, which is good because the sixteens have to drive slowly. I can dodge pretty well, even with my head down; I’m sure nobody gets a good look at my face. Then I vault the barrier and stumble down the other embankment. My collecting, and other activities, keep me in good shape and soon I’m sprinting fast toward the closest subway station. I pause only once, to pull on cotton gloves and rip from my backpack the plastic bag containing the evidence I was going to plant, then shove it into a trash can. I can’t be caught with it. I can’t. A half block closer to the subway, I dodge into an alley behind a restaurant. I turn my reversible jacket inside out, swap hats and emerge again, my backpack now stuffed into a shopping bag.

Finally, I’m at the subway station, and-thank you-I can feel the musty tunnel breath preceding a train as it approaches. Then the thunder of the bulky car, the squeal of metal on metal.

But before I get to the turnstile I pause. The shock is now gone, but it’s been replaced by the edgy. I understand I can’t leave just yet.

The significance of the problem crashes down on me. They might not know my identity but they’ve figured out what I was doing.

Which means they want to take something away from me. My treasures, my Closet…everything.

And that, of course, is unacceptable.

Making sure I stay clear of the CCTV camera, I casually walk back up the stairs, digging in my bag, as I leave the subway station.

“Where?” Rhyme’s voice filled Amelia Sachs’s earphone. “Where the hell is he?”

“He spotted us, took off.”

“You’re sure it was him?”

“Pretty sure. Surveillance saw somebody a few blocks away. Looks like he spotted some of the detectives’ cars and changed his route. We saw him watching us, and he ran. We’ve got teams after him.”

She was in DeLeon Williams’s front yard with Pulaski, Bo Haumann and a half dozen other ESU officers. Some Crime Scene Unit techs and uniformed patrolmen were searching the escape route for evidence and canvassing for witnesses.

“Any sign he has a car?”

“Don’t know. He was on foot when we saw him.”

“Christ. Well, let me know when you find something.”

“I’ll-”

Click.

She grimaced at Pulaski, who was holding his Handi Talkie up to his ear, listening to the pursuit. Haumann was monitoring it too. The progress, from what she could hear, didn’t seem fruitful. Nobody on the highway had seen him or was willing to admit it, if they had. Sachs turned to the house and saw a very concerned, and very confused, DeLeon Williams looking out through a curtained window.

Saving the man from being yet another fall guy of 522 had involved both happenstance and good police work.

And they had Ron Pulaski to thank for it. The young officer in the brash Hawaiian shirt had done what Rhyme had requested: immediately gone to One Police Plaza and started looking for other cases that matched 522’s modus operandi. He found none but as he was talking to a Homicide detective the unit got a report from Central about an anonymous phone call. A man had heard screams from a loft near SoHo and seen a black man fleeing in an old beige Dodge. A patrolman had responded and found that a young woman, Myra Weinburg, had been raped and murdered.

Pulaski was struck by the anonymous call, echoing the earlier cases, and immediately called Rhyme. The criminalist figured that if 522 was in fact behind the crime he was probably sticking to his plan: he would plant evidence blaming a fall guy and they needed to find which of the more than 1,300 older beige Dodges was the one 522 might pick. Sure, maybe the man wasn’t 522 but even if not, they had the chance to collar a rapist and killer.

At Rhyme’s instruction, Mel Cooper cross-matched Department of Motor Vehicle records with criminal records and came up with seven African-American men who had convictions for crimes more serious than traffic violations. One, though, was the most likely: an assault charge against a woman. DeLeon Williams was a perfect choice as a fall guy.

Happenstance and police work.

To authorize a tactical takedown, a lieutenant or higher was required. Captain Joe Malloy still had no clue about the clandestine 522 operation, so Rhyme called Sellitto, who grumbled but agreed to call Bo Haumann and authorize an ESU op.

Amelia Sachs had joined Pulaski and the team at Williams’s house, where they’d learned from Search and Surveillance that only Williams was inside, not 522. There, they deployed to take the killer when he arrived to plant the evidence. The plan was tricky, improvised on the fly-and obviously hadn’t worked, though they’d saved an innocent man from being arrested for rape and murder and perhaps had discovered some good evidence to lead to the perp.

“Anything?” she asked Haumann, who’d been conferring with some of his officers.

“Nope.”

Then his radio clattered again and Sachs heard the loud transmission. “Unit One, we’re on the other side of the highway. Looks like he’s rabbited clean. He must’ve made it to the subway.”

“Shit,” she muttered.

Haumann grimaced but said nothing.

The officer continued, “But we’ve followed the route he probably took. It’s possible he ditched some evidence in a trash can on the way.”

“That’s something,” she said. “Where?” She jotted the address the officer recited. “Tell them to secure the area. I’ll be there in ten.” Sachs then walked up the steps and knocked on the door. DeLeon Williams answered, and she said, “Sorry I haven’t had a chance to explain. A man we were trying to catch was headed to your house.”

“Mine?”

“We think so. But he got away.” She explained about Myra Weinburg.

“Oh, no-she’s dead?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I’m sorry, real sorry.”

“Did you know her?”

“No, never heard of her.”

“We think the perp might’ve been trying to blame you for the crime.”

“Me? Why?”

“We have no idea. After we investigate a little more we may want to interview you.”

“Sure thing.” He gave her his home and mobile numbers. Then frowned. “Can I ask? You seem pretty certain I didn’t do it. How’d you know I was innocent?”

“Your car and garage. Officers searched them and didn’t find any evidence from the murder scene. The killer, we’re pretty sure, was going to plant some things there to implicate you. Of course, if we’d gotten here after he’d done that, you’d’ve had a problem.”

Sachs added, “Oh, one more thing, Mr. Williams?”

“What’s that, Detective?”

“Just some trivia you might be interested in. Do you know owning an unregistered handgun in New York City is a very serious crime?”

“I think I heard that somewhere.”

“And some more trivia is that there’s an amnesty program at your local precinct. No questions asked if you turn in a weapon…Okay, you take care. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.”

“I’ll try.”

Chapter Eleven

I’m watching the policewoman as she searches the trash can where I dumped the evidence. I was dismayed at first but then I realized I shouldn’t have been. If They were smart enough to figure out about me, They’re smart enough to find the trash.

I doubt They got a good look at me but I’m being very careful. Of course, I’m not at the scene itself; I’m in a restaurant across the street, forcing down a hamburger and sipping water. The police have this outfit called the “Anti-crime” detail, which has always struck me as absurd. As if other details are pro-crime. Anti-crime officers wear street clothes and they circulate at crime scenes to find witnesses and, occasionally, even the perps, who have returned. Most criminals do so because they’re stupid or behave irrationally. But I’m here for two specific reasons. First, because I’ve realized I have a problem. I can’t live with it so I need a solution. And you can’t solve a problem without knowledge. I’ve already learned a few things.

For instance, I know some of the people who are after me. Like this redheaded policewoman in a white plastic jumpsuit concentrating on the crime scene the way I concentrate on my data.

I see her step out of the area, surrounded by yellow tape, with several bags. She sets these in gray plastic boxes and strips off the white suit. Despite the lingering horror from the disaster of this afternoon, I feel that twinge inside as I see her tight jeans, the satisfaction from my transaction with Myra 9834 earlier today wearing off.

As the police head back to their cars she makes a phone call.

I pay the bill and walk nonchalantly out the door, acting like any other patron on this fine late-afternoon Sunday.

Off. The. Grid.

Oh, the second reason I’m here?

Very simple. To protect my treasures, to protect my life, which means doing whatever’s necessary to make Them go away.

“What’d Five Twenty-Two leave in that trash can?” Rhyme was speaking into the hands-free phone.

“There’s not much. We’re sure it’s his stuff, though. Bloody paper towel and some wet blood in plastic bags-so he could leave some in Williams’ car or garage. I’ve already sent a sample to the lab for a preliminary DNA match. Computer printout of the vic’s picture. Roll of duct tape-Home Depot house brand. And a running shoe. It looked new.”

“Just one?”

“Yep. The right.”

“Maybe he stole it from Williams’ place to leave a print at the scene. Anybody get a look at him?”

“A sniper and two guys from the S and S team. But he wasn’t very close. Probably white or light-skinned ethnic, medium build. Tan cap and sunglasses, backpack. No age, no hair color.”

“That’s it?”

“Yep.”

“Well, get the evidence here stat. Then I want you to walk the grid at the Weinburg rape scene. They’re preserving it till you get there.”

“I’ve got another lead, Rhyme.”

“You do? What’s that?”

“We found a Post-it note stuck to the bottom of the plastic bag with the evidence in it. Five Twenty-Two wanted to ditch the bag; I’m not sure he wanted to pitch out the note.”

“What is it?”

“A room number of a residence hotel, Upper East Side, Manhattan. I want to check it out.”

“You think it’s Five Twenty-Two’s?”

“No, I called the front desk and they say the tenant’s been in the room all day. Somebody named Robert Jorgensen.”

“Well, we need the rape scene searched, Sachs.”

“Send Ron. He can handle it.”

“I’d rather you ran it.”

“I really think we need to see if there’s any connection between this Jorgensen and Five Twenty-Two. And fast.”

He couldn’t dispute her point. Besides, both of them had ridden Pulaski hard in teaching him how to walk the grid-Rhyme’s coined expression for searching a crime scene, a reference to looking over the area according to the grid pattern, the most comprehensive way of discovering evidence.

Rhyme, feeling both like a boss and a parent, knew that the kid would have to run his first homicide scene solo sooner or later. “All right,” he grumbled. “Let’s hope this Post-it lead pays off.” He couldn’t help adding, “And isn’t a complete waste of time.”

She laughed. “Don’t we always hope that, Rhyme?”

“And tell Pulaski not to screw up.”

They disconnected and Rhyme told Cooper the evidence was on its way.

Staring at the evidence charts, he muttered, “He got away.”

He ordered Thom to put the sparse description of 522 on the whiteboard.

Probably white or light-skinned…

How helpful is that?

Amelia Sachs was in the front seat of her parked Camaro, the door open. Late-afternoon spring air was wafting into the car, which smelled of old leather and oil. She was jotting notes for her crime-scene report. She always did this as soon as possible after searching a scene. It was amazing what one could forget in a short period of time. Colors changed, left became right, doors and windows moved from one wall to another or vanished altogether.

She paused, distracted once again by the odd facts of the case. How had the killer managed to come so close to blaming an innocent man for an appalling rape and murder? She’d never run into a perp like this; planting evidence to mislead the police wasn’t unusual but this guy was a genius at pointing them in the wrong direction.

The street where she’d parked was two blocks away from the trash-can crime scene, shadowed and deserted.

Motion caught her eye. Thinking of 522, she felt a throb of uneasiness. She glanced up and in the rearview mirror saw somebody walking her way. She squinted, studying him carefully, though the man seemed harmless: a clean-cut businessman. He was carrying a take-out bag in one hand and talking on his cell phone, a smile on his face. A typical resident out to get Chinese or Mexican for dinner.

Sachs returned to her notes.

Finally she was finished and tucked them into her briefcase. But then something struck her as strange. The man on the sidewalk should have passed the Camaro by now. But he hadn’t. Had he gone into one of the buildings? She turned to the sidewalk where he’d been.

No!

She was staring at the take-out bag, sitting on the sidewalk to the left and behind the car. It was just a prop!

Her hand went for her Glock. But before she could draw, the right side door was ripped open and she was staring into the face of the killer, eyes narrowed, lifting a pistol toward her face.

The doorbell rang and a moment later Rhyme heard yet another distinctive footfall. Heavy ones.

“In here, Lon.”

Detective Lon Sellitto nodded a greeting. His stocky figure was encased in blue jeans and a dark purple Izod shirt, and he was wearing running shoes, which surprised Rhyme. The criminalist rarely saw him in casual clothes. He was also struck by the fact that, while Sellitto didn’t seem to own a suit that wasn’t fiercely wrinkled, this outfit looked hot off the ironing board. The only disfigurements were a few stretch marks in the cloth where his belly jutted past his waistband, and the bulge in the back where his off-duty pistol was not efficiently hidden.

“He rabbited, I heard.”

Rhyme spat out, “Gone completely.”

The floor creaked under the big man’s weight as he ambled to the evidence charts and looked them over. “That’s what you’re calling him? Five Twenty-Two?”

“May twenty-second. What happened with the Russian case?”

Sellitto didn’t answer. “Mr. Five Twenty-Two leave anything behind?”

“We’re about to find out. He ditched a bag of evidence he was going to plant. It’s on its way.”

“That was courteous.”

“Iced tea, coffee?”

“Yeah,” the detective muttered to Thom. “Thanks. Coffee. You have skim milk?”

“Two percent.”

“Good. And any of those cookies from last time? The chocolate chip ones?”

“Just oatmeal.”

“Those’re good too.”

“Mel?” Thom asked. “You want something?”

“If I eat or drink near an examining table, I get yelled at.”

Rhyme snapped, “It’s hardly my fault if defense lawyers have this thing about excluding contaminated evidence. I didn’t make the rules.”

Sellitto observed, “See your mood hasn’t improved. What’s going on in London?”

“Now that’s a subject I don’t want to talk about.”

“Well, just to improve your spirits we got another problem.”

“Malloy?”

“Yep. He heard Amelia was running a scene and I okayed an ESU action. He got all happy thinking it was the Dienko case, then all sad when he found out it wasn’t. He asked if it was connected with you. I’ll take a fist on the chin for you, Linc, but not a bullet. I dimed you out… Oh, thanks.” Nodding as Thom brought him the refreshments. The aide set a similar offering on a table not far from Cooper, who pulled on latex gloves and started on a cookie.

“Some scotch, if you please,” Rhyme said quickly.

“No.” Thom was gone.

Scowling, Rhyme said, “I figured Malloy’d bust us as soon as ESU was involved. But we need brass on our side now that it’s a hot case. What do we do?”

“Better think of something fast ’cause he wants us to call. Like a half hour ago.” He sipped more coffee and, with some reluctance, set down the remaining quarter of his cookie with the apparent resolve not to finish it.

“Well, I need the brass on board. We’ve got to have people out there looking for this guy.”

“Then let’s call. You ready?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Sellitto dialed a number. Hit SPEAKER.

“Lower the volume,” Rhyme said. “I suspect this could be loud.”

“Malloy here.” Rhyme could hear the sounds of the wind, voices and the clink of dishes or glassware. Maybe he was at an outdoor café.

“Captain, you’re on speaker with Lincoln Rhyme and me.”

“Okay, what the hell is going on? You could’ve told me that the ESU operation was what Lincoln called me about earlier. Did you know I deferred the decision about any operation till tomorrow?”

“No, he didn’t,” Rhyme said.

The detective blurted, “Yeah, but I knew enough to figure it out.”

“I’m touched you’re both taking the heat for each other but the question is why didn’t you tell me?”

Sellitto said, “’Cause we had a good chance to collar a rapist-murderer. I decided we couldn’t afford any delays.”

“I’m not a child, Lieutenant. You make your case to me and I’ll make the judgment. That’s how it’s supposed to work.”

“Sorry, Captain. It seemed like the right decision at the time.”

Silence. Then: “But he got away.”

“Yes, he did,” Rhyme said.

“How?”

“We got a team together as fast as we could but the cover wasn’t the best. The UNSUB was closer than we thought. He saw an unmarked or one of the team, I guess. He took off. But he ditched some evidence that could be helpful.”

“Which is on its way to the lab in Queens? Or to you?”

Rhyme glanced at Sellitto. People rise in rank in institutions like the NYPD based on experience, drive and quick minds. Malloy was a good half-step ahead of them.

“I’ve asked for it to come here, Joe,” Rhyme said.

No silence this time. The sound from the speaker was a resigned sigh. “Lincoln, you understand the problem, don’t you?”

Conflict of interest, Rhyme thought.

“There’s a clear conflict of interest with you as an advisor to the department and trying to exonerate your cousin. And beyond that, the implication is that there’s been a wrongful arrest.”

“But that’s exactly what happened. And two wrongful convictions.” Rhyme reminded Malloy about the rape and coin-theft cases that Flintlock had told them about. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if this’s happened other times too… You know Locard’s Principle, Joe?”

“That was in your book, the one from the academy, right?”

The French criminalist Edmond Locard stated that whenever a crime occurs there’s always a transfer of evidence between the perpetrator and the crime scene or the victim. He was referring specifically to dust but the rule applies to many substances and types of evidence. The connection may be difficult to find but it exists.

“Locard’s Principle guides what we do, Joe. But here’s a perp who’s using it as a weapon. It’s his M.O. He kills and gets away because somebody else is convicted of the crime. He knows exactly when to strike, what kind of evidence to plant and when to plant it. The crime-scene teams, the detectives, the lab people, the prosecutors and judges…he’s used everybody, made them accomplices. This has nothing to do with my cousin, Joe. This has to do with stopping a very dangerous man.”

A sighless silence now.

“Okay, I’ll sanction it.”

Sellitto was lifting an eyebrow.

“With caveats. You keep me informed of every development in the case. I mean everything.”

“Sure.”

“And, Lon, you try not being straight with me again and I’ll transfer you to Budgets. Understand me?”

“Yeah, Captain. Absolutely.”

“And since you’re at Lincoln’s, Lon, I assume you want a reassignment from the Vladimir Dienko case.”

“Petey Jimenez’s up to speed. He’s done more of the legwork than I have and he’s set up the stings personally.”

“And Dellray’s running the snitches, right? And the federal jurisdiction?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay, you’re off it. Temporarily. Open a file on this UNSUB-I mean, send out a memo about the file you’ve already started on the sly. And listen to me: I’m not raising any issues of innocent people being convicted wrongly. Not raising it with anybody. And you’re not going to either. That issue is not on the table. The only crime you’re running is a single rape-murder that occurred this afternoon. Period. As part of his M.O. this UNSUB might have tried to shift the blame to somebody else but that’s all you can say and only if the subject comes up. Don’t raise the issue yourself and, for God’s sake, don’t say anything to the press.”

“I don’t talk to the press,” Rhyme said. Who did, if they could avoid it? “But we’ll need to look into the other cases to get an idea of how he operates.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t,” the captain said, firm but not strident. “Keep me posted.” He hung up.

“Well, we got ourselves a case,” Sellitto said, surrendering to the abandoned quarter of a cookie and washing it down with the coffee.

Standing on the curb with three other men in street clothes, Amelia Sachs was talking to the compact man who’d ripped open the door of her Camaro and leveled his weapon at her. He’d turned out not to be 522 but a federal agent who worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“We’re still trying to put it together,” he said, and glanced at his boss, an assistant special agent in charge of the Brooklyn DEA office.

The ASAC said, “We’ll know more in a few minutes.”

Not long before, at gunpoint in the car, Sachs had lifted her hands slowly and identified herself as a police officer. The agent had taken her weapon and had checked her ID twice. He’d returned the gun, shaking his head. “I don’t get it,” he said. He apologized but his face didn’t seem to suggest he was sorry. Mostly the expression said that, well, he just didn’t get it.

A moment later his boss and two other agents had arrived.

Now the ASAC got a call and listened for a few minutes. He then snapped his mobile shut and explained what seemed to have happened. Not long before somebody had made an anonymous call from a pay phone reporting that an armed woman fitting Sachs’s description had just shot somebody in what seemed to be a drug dispute.

“We’ve got an operation going on here at the moment,” he said. “Looking into some dealer and supplier assassinations.” He nodded toward his agent, the one who’d tried to arrest Sachs. “Anthony lives a block away. The operations director sent him here to assess the sit while he scrambled the troops.”

Anthony added, “I thought you were leaving so I grabbed some old take-out bags and moved in. Man…” Now the import of what he’d nearly done was sinking in. He was now ashen and Sachs reflected that Glocks have a very light trigger pull. She wondered just how close she’d come to being shot.

“What were you doing here?” the ASAC asked.

“We had a homicide-rape.” She didn’t explain about 522’s setting up innocent people to take the fall. “I’m guessing our perp spotted me and made a call to slow up pursuit.”

Or get me killed in a friendly fire incident.

The federal agent shook his head, frowning.

“What?” Sachs asked.

“Just thinking this guy is pretty sharp. If he called NYPD-which most people would’ve-they’d know about your operation and who you were. So he called us instead. All we’d know was that you were a shooter and we’d approach with caution, ready to take you out if you pulled a weapon.” A frown. “That’s smart.”

“Pretty fucking scary too,” Anthony said, his face still white.

The agents left and she made a call.

When Rhyme answered she told him about the incident.

The criminalist digested this, then he said, “He called the Feds?”

“Yep.”

“It’s almost as if he knew they were in the middle of a drug op. And that the agent who tried to collar you lived nearby.”

“He couldn’t know that,” she countered.

“Maybe not. But he sure as hell knew one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“He knew exactly where you were. Which means he was watching. Be careful, Sachs.”

Rhyme was explaining to Sellitto how the perp had set up Sachs in Brooklyn.

“He did that?”

“Looks like it.”

The men were discussing how he might’ve gotten the information-and coming to no helpful conclusions-when the phone trilled. Rhyme glanced at caller ID and answered quickly. “Inspector.”

Longhurst’s voice filled the speaker. “Detective Rhyme, how are you?”

“Good.”

“Excellent. Just wanted to let you know: We’ve found Logan’s safe house. It wasn’t in Manchester after all. It was in Oldham, nearby. East of the city.” She then explained that Danny Krueger had learned from some of his people that a man believed to be Richard Logan had inquired about purchasing some parts for guns. “Not guns themselves, mind. But if you have the parts to repair guns, presumably you could also make one.”

“Rifles?”

“Yes. Large caliber.”

“Any identity?”

“No, though they thought Logan was U.S. military. Apparently he promised he could get them some discount ammunition in bulk in the future. He seemed to have official army documents about inventories and specifications.”

“So, the shooting zone in London’s in play.”

“It would seem. Now, about the safe house: We have contacts in the Hindi community in Oldham. They’re quite impeccable. They heard about an American who’s rented an old house on the outskirts of town. We managed to track it down. We haven’t searched yet. Our team could have done it but we thought it best to talk to you first.”

Longhurst continued, “Now, Detective, my sense is that he doesn’t know we found out about the safe house. And I suspect there may be some rather helpful evidence inside it. I’ve rung up some fellows at MI5 and borrowed a bit of an expensive toy from them. It’s a high-definition video camera. We’d like to have one of our officers wear it and have you guide him through the scene, tell us what you think. We should have the equipment on site in forty minutes or so.”

To do a proper search of the safe house, including the exits and entrances, the drawers, the toilets, closets, mattresses…it would consume the better part of the night.

Why was this happening now? He was convinced that 522 was a real threat. In fact, given the time line-with the earlier cases, his cousin’s and the murder today-the crimes seemed to be accelerating. And he was particularly troubled by the latest event: 522’s turning on them, and nearly getting Sachs shot.

Yes, no?

After a moment of agonizing debate, he said, “Inspector, I’m sorry to say, something’s come up here. We’ve had a series of homicides. I need to focus on them.”

“I see.” Unflappable British reserve.

“I’ll have to hand over the case to your command.”

“Of course, Detective. I understand.”

“You’re free to make any and all decisions.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence. We’ll get it sorted out and I’ll keep you informed. I better ring off now.”

“Good luck.”

“And to you.”

This was hard for Lincoln Rhyme, stepping away from a hunt, especially when the quarry was this particular perp.

But the decision had been made. Five Twenty-Two was now his only prey.

“Mel, get on the phone and find out where the hell that evidence from Brooklyn is.”

Chapter Twelve

Okay, this is a surprise.

The Upper East Side address and the fact that Robert Jorgensen was an orthopedic surgeon had led Amelia Sachs to expect that the Henderson House Residence, the address on the Post-it note, would be a lot nicer than this.

But it was a disgusting dive, a transients’ hotel inhabited by druggies and drunks. The flyblown lobby, filled with mismatched and moldy furniture, stank of garlic, cheap disinfectant, useless air freshener and sour human odor. Most homeless shelters were more pleasant.

Standing in the grimy doorway, she paused and turned. Still uneasy about 522’s surveillance and the ease with which he’d set up the federal officers in Brooklyn, she looked carefully around the street. Nobody seemed to be paying much attention to her, but then the killer would have been nearby at DeLeon Williams’s house too and she’d missed him completely. She studied an abandoned building across the street. Was somebody gazing at her from one of the grime-covered windows?

Or there! On the second floor was a large broken window and she was sure she saw motion in the darkness. Was it a face? Or light from a hole in the roof?

Sachs stepped closer and examined the building carefully. But she found no one and decided her eyes had played tricks on her. She turned back to the hotel and, breathing shallowly, stepped inside. At the front desk she flashed her badge to the hopelessly overweight clerk. He didn’t seem the least bit surprised, or troubled, that a cop was here. She was directed toward the elevator. It opened to a foul stench. Okay, the stairs.

Wincing from the strain on her arthritic joints, she pushed through the door on the sixth floor and found room 672. She knocked, then stepped aside. “Police. Mr. Jorgensen? Please open the door.” She didn’t know what connection this man might have to the killer so her hand hovered near the grip of her Glock, a fine weapon, as dependable as the sun.

No answer but she believed she heard the sound of the metal cover of the peephole.

“Police,” she repeated.

“Put your ID under the door.”

She did.

A pause, then several chains were undone. And a deadbolt. The door opened a short way but was stopped by a security bar. The gap was bigger than that left by a chain but not large enough for someone to get through.

The head of a middle-aged man appeared. His hair was long and unwashed, his face marred with an unruly beard. The eyes were twitchy.

“You’re Robert Jorgensen?”

He peered at her face, then at her ID again, turning the card over and holding it up to the light, though the laminated rectangle was opaque. He handed it back and unhooked the security bar. The door swung open. He examined the hall behind her, then gestured her in. Sachs entered cautiously, hand still near her weapon. She checked the room and closets. The place was otherwise unoccupied and he was unarmed. “You’re Robert Jorgensen?” she repeated.

He nodded.

She then looked over the sad room more carefully. It contained a bed, desk and chair, armchair and ratty couch. The dark gray carpet was stained. A single pole lamp cast dim yellow light, and the shades were drawn. He was living, it seemed, out of four large suitcases and a gym bag. He had no kitchen but a portion of the living room contained a miniature fridge and two microwaves. A coffeepot too. His diet was largely soup and ramen noodles. A hundred manila file folders were carefully lined up against the wall.

His clothes were from a different time in his life, a better time. They seemed expensive but were threadbare and stained. The heels of the rich-looking shoes were worn down. Guessing: He lost his medical practice due to a drug or drinking problem.

At the moment he was occupied by an odd task: dissecting a large hardcover textbook. A chipped magnifying glass on a gooseneck stand was clamped to the desk and he’d been slicing out pages and cutting them into strips.

Maybe mental illness had led to his downfall.

“You’re here about the letters. It’s about time.”

“Letters?”

He studied her suspiciously. “You’re not?”

“I don’t know about any letters.”

“I sent them to Washington. But you do talk, don’t you? All you law enforcers. You public-safety people. Sure you do. You have to, everybody talks. Criminal databases and all that…”

“I really don’t know what you mean.”

He seemed to believe her. “Well, then-” His eyes went wide, looking down at her hip. “Wait, is your cell phone on?”

“Well, yes.”

“Jesus Christ in heaven! What’s wrong with you?”

“I-”

“Why don’t you run down the street naked and tell every stranger you see your address? Take the battery out. Not just shut it off. The battery!”

“I’m not doing that.”

“Take it out. Or you can get the hell out right now. The PDA too. And pager.”

This seemed to be a deal breaker. But she said firmly, “I’m not dumping my memory. I’ll do the phone and the pager.”

“Okay,” he grumbled and leaned forward as she slipped the batteries out of the two devices and shut off the PDA.

Then she asked for his ID. He debated and dug out a driver’s license. The address was Greenwich, Connecticut, one of the ritziest towns in the metro area. “I’m not here about any letters, Mr. Jorgensen. I just have some questions. I won’t take much of your time.”

He gestured her toward the gamy couch and sat down on a wobbly chair at the desk. As if he couldn’t help himself he turned to the book and with a razor knife cut a piece off the spine. He handled the knife expertly, fast and sure. Sachs was glad the desk was between them and her gun unobstructed.

“Mr. Jorgensen, I’m here about a crime that was committed this morning.”

“Ah, sure, of course.” Lips pursing, he glanced at Sachs again and his expression was clear: resignation and disgust. “And what was I supposed to have done this time?”

This time?

“The crime was a rape and murder. But we know you weren’t involved. You were here.”

A cruel grin. “Ah, keeping track of me. Sure.” Then a grimace. “Goddamnit.” This was in response to something he found, or didn’t find, in the bit of book spine he was dissecting. He tossed it into the trash. Sachs noticed half-open garbage bags containing remnants of clothes, books, newspapers and small boxes that had also been cut apart. Then she glanced into the larger microwave and saw that it contained a book.

Germ phobic, she supposed.

He noticed her gaze. “Microwaving’s the best way to destroy them.”

“Bacteria? Viruses?”

He laughed at the question as if she were joking. He nodded at the volume in front of him. “But sometimes they’re really hard to find. You have to, though. You need to see what the enemy looks like.” Now a nod at the microwave. “And pretty soon they’ll start making ones that you can’t even nuke. Ah, you better believe it.”

They…them…Sachs had been a beat cop in the Patrol Division for some years-a portable, they were called in cop slang. She’d worked Times Square back when it was, well, Times Square, before the place became Disneyland North. Patrolwoman Sachs had had lots of experience with the homeless and emotionally disturbed. She recognized signs of paranoid personality, maybe even schizophrenia.

“Do you know a DeLeon Williams?”

“No.”

She offered the names of the other victims and fall guys, including Rhyme’s cousin.

“No, never heard of any of them.” He seemed to be answering truthfully. The book took all his attention for a long thirty seconds. He removed a page and held it up, grimacing again. He pitched it out.

“Mr. Jorgensen, this room number was found on a note near the crime scene today.”

The hand with the knife froze. He looked at her with scary, burning eyes. Breathlessly he asked, “Where? Where the hell did you find it?”

“In a trash bin in Brooklyn. It was stuck to some evidence. It’s possible this killer discarded it.”

In a ghastly whisper he asked, “You have a name? What does he look like? Tell me!” He half rose and his face grew bright red. His lips trembled.

“Take it easy, Mr. Jorgensen. Calm down. We’re not positive he’s the one who left the note.”

“Oh, he’s the one. You bet he is. That motherfucker!” He leaned forward. “You have a name?”

“No.”

“Tell me, goddamnit! Do something for me for a change. Not to me!”

She said firmly, “If I can help you, I will. But you have to stay calm. Who are you talking about?”

He dropped the knife and sat back, shoulders slumped. A bitter smile spread across his face. “Who? Who? Why, God, of course.”

“God?”

“And I’m Job. You know Job? The innocent man God tormented. All the trials he inflicted? That’s nothing compared to what I’ve been through… Oh, it’s him. He found out where I am now and wrote it down on that note of yours. I thought I’d escaped. But he’s got me again.”

Sachs thought she saw tears. She asked, “What’s this all about? Please, tell me.”

Jorgensen rubbed his face. “Okay…A few years ago I was a practicing doctor, lived in Connecticut. Had a wife and two wonderful children. Money in the bank, retirement plan, vacation house. A comfortable life. I was happy. But then a strange thing happened. No big deal, not at first. I applied for a new credit card-to get miles in my frequent-flier program. I was making three hundred thousand a year. I’d never missed a credit card or mortgage payment in my life. But I was rejected. Some mistake, I thought. But the company said that I was a credit risk since I’d moved three times in the past six months. Only I hadn’t moved at all. Somebody had gotten my name, Social Security number and credit information and rented apartments as me. Then he defaulted on the rent. But not before he’d bought nearly a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise and had it delivered to those addresses.”

“Identity theft?”

“Oh, the mother lode of identity theft. God opened credit cards in my name, ran up huge bills, had the statements sent to different addresses. Never paid them, of course. As soon as I’d get one straightened out he’d do something else. And he kept getting all this information on me. God knew everything! My mother’s maiden name, her birthday, my first dog’s name, my first car-all the things companies want to know for passwords. He got my phone numbers-and my calling card number. He ran up a ten-thousand-dollar phone bill. How? He’d call time and temperature in Moscow or Singapore or Sydney and leave the phone off the hook for hours.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because he’s God. And I’m Job… The son of a bitch bought a house in my name! A whole house! And then defaulted on it. I only found out when a lawyer working for a collection agency tracked me down at my clinic in New York and asked about making payment arrangements for the three hundred and seventy thousand dollars I owed. God also ran up a quarter million in online gambling debts.

“He made bogus insurance claims in my name and my malpractice carrier dropped me. I couldn’t work at my clinic without insurance, and nobody would insure me. We had to sell the house and, of course, every penny went to the debt quote I had run up-which was by then about two million dollars.”

“Two million?”

Jorgensen closed his eyes briefly. “And then things got worse. My wife was hanging in there throughout all of this. It was hard but she was with me…until God had presents-expensive ones-sent in my name to some former nurses at the clinic, bought with my credit card, and that included invitations and suggestive comments. One of the women left a message at home thanking me and saying she’d love to go away for the weekend. My daughter got it. She was crying uncontrollably when she told my wife. I think she believed I was innocent. But she still left me four months ago and moved in with her sister in Colorado.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Oh, well, thank you very much. But I’m not through yet. Oh, no. Just after my wife left, the arrests started. It seems guns purchased with a credit card and fake driver’s license in my name were used in armed robberies in East New York, New Haven and Yonkers. One clerk was seriously wounded. The New York Bureau of Investigation arrested me. They finally let me go but I’ve still got an arrest on my record. That’ll be there forever. Along with the time the Drug Enforcement Agency arrested me because a check of mine was traced to the purchase of illegally imported prescription drugs.

“Oh, and I was actually in prison for a while-well, not me: somebody that God sold fake credit cards to and a driver’s license in my name. Of course, the prisoner was somebody altogether different. Who knows what his real name is? But as far as the world is concerned, government records show that Robert Samuel Jorgensen, Social Security number nine two three, six seven, four one eight two, formerly of Greenwich, Connecticut, was a prisoner. It’s on my record too. For-ever.”

“You must’ve followed up, called the police.”

He scoffed. “Oh, please. You’re a cop. You know where something like this falls in the priority of police work? Just above jaywalking.”

“Did you learn anything that might help us? Anything about him? Age, race, education, location?”

“No, nothing. Everywhere I looked there was only one person: me. He took me away from myself… Oh, they say there are safeguards, there are protections. Bullshit. Yes, if you lose a credit card, maybe you’re protected to a point. But if somebody wants to destroy your life, there’s nothing you can do about it. People believe what computers tell us. If they say you owe money, you owe money. If it says you’re a bad insurance risk, you’re a bad risk. The report says you have no credit, then you have no credit, even if you’re a multimillionaire. We believe the data; we don’t care about the truth.

“Ah, want to see what my most recent job was?” He jumped up and opened his closet, displaying a fast food franchise uniform. Jorgensen returned to his desk and set to work on the book again, muttering, “I’ll find you, you fucker.” He glanced up. “And do you want to know the worst part of all?”

She nodded.

“God never lived in the apartments he rented in my name. He never took delivery of the illegal drugs. Or got any of the merchandise he had shipped. The police recovered everything. And he never lived in the beautiful house he bought. Get it? His only point was to torment me. He’s God, I’m Job.”

Sachs noticed a picture on his desk. It was of Jorgensen and a blond woman about his age, their arms around a teenage girl and young boy. The house in the background was very nice. She wondered why 522 would go to all the trouble to destroy a man’s life, if in fact their perp was behind this. Was he testing out techniques to use to get close to victims and to implicate fall guys? Was Robert Jorgensen a guinea pig?

Or was 522 a cruel sociopath? What he’d done to Jorgensen might be called a nonsexual rape.

“I think you should find another place to live, Mr. Jorgensen.”

A resigned smile. “I know. It’s safer that way. Always be harder to find.”

Sachs thought to herself of an expression her father had used. She thought it described her own life view pretty well. “When you move they can’t getcha…”

He nodded at the book. “You know how he found me here? This, I’ve got a feeling. Everything started to go bad just after I bought it. I keep thinking it’s got the answer. I nuked it but that didn’t work-obviously. There’s got to be an answer inside. There’s got to be!”

“What are you looking for exactly?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No.”

“Well, tracking devices, of course. They put them in books. And clothes. Pretty soon they’ll be in almost everything.”

So not germs.

“Microwaves destroy tracking devices?” she asked, playing along.

“Most of them. You can break the antennae too but they’re so small nowadays. Almost microscopic.” Jorgensen fell silent and she realized he was staring at her intently as he considered something. He announced. “You take it.”

“What?”

“The book.” His eyes were dancing madly around the room. “It’s got the answer in it, the answer to everything that’s happened to me… Please! You’re the first one who hasn’t rolled their eyes when I told them my story, the only one who hasn’t looked at me like I’m mad.” He sat forward. “You want to get him as much as I do. You have all sorts of equipment, I’ll bet. Scanning microscopes, sensors…You can find it! And it’ll lead you to him. Yes!” He thrust it toward her.

“Well, I don’t know what we’re looking for.”

He nodded sympathetically. “Oh, you don’t have to tell me. That’s the problem. They change things all the time. They’re always one step ahead of us. But please…”

They…

She took the book, debating about slipping it into a plastic evidence bag and attaching a chain-of-custody card. She wondered how loud the ridicule would be in Rhyme’s town house. Probably better just to carry it.

He leaned forward and pressed her hand hard. “Thank you.” He was crying again.

“So you’ll move?” she asked.

He said he would and gave her the name of another transient hotel, one down on the Lower East Side. “Don’t write it down. Don’t tell anybody. Don’t mention me on the phone. They’re listening all the time, you know.”

“Call me if anything else comes to mind about…God.” She gave him her card.

He memorized the information on it, then tore the cardboard up. He stepped into the bathroom, flushed half down the toilet. He noticed her curiosity. “I’ll flush the other half later. Flushing something all at once is as stupid as leaving bills in your mailbox with the red flag up. People are such fools.”

He walked her to the door, leaned close. The stink of unwashed clothing hit her. His red-rimmed eyes gazed fiercely at her. “Officer, listen to me. I know you have that big gun on your hip. But that won’t do any good against somebody like him. You have to get close before you can shoot him. But he doesn’t have to get close at all. He can sit in a dark room somewhere, sip a glass of wine and bring your life down in pieces.” Jorgensen nodded at the book in her hand. “And now that you’ve got that, you’re infected too.”

Chapter Thirteen

I’ve been checking the news-there are so many efficient ways to get information nowadays-and I’ve heard nothing about any redheaded police officers gunned down by fellow law enforcers in Brooklyn.

But at the least They’re afraid.

They’d be edgy now.

Good. Why should I be the only one?

As I walk I reflect: How did this happen? How could it possibly have happened?

This isn’t good, this isn’t good this this…

They seemed to know exactly what I was doing, who my victim was.

And that I was on the way to DeLeon 6832’s house at just that moment.

How?

Running through the data, permutating them, analyzing them. No, I can’t understand how They did it.

Not yet. Have to think some more.

I don’t have enough information. How can I draw conclusions if I don’t have the data? How?

Ah, slow down, slow down, I tell myself. When sixteens walk quickly they shed data, revealing all sorts of information, at least to those who are smart, who can make good deductions.

Up and down the gray, urban streets, Sunday no longer beautiful. An ugly day, ruined. The sunlight’s harsh and tainted. The city’s cold, its edges ragged. The sixteens are mocking and snide and pompous.

I hate them all!

But keep your head down, pretend to enjoy the day.

And, most of all, think. Be analytical. How would a computer, confronted with a problem, analyze the data?

Think. Now, how could They have found out?

One block, two blocks, three blocks, four…

No answers. Only the conclusion: They’re good. And another question: Who exactly are They? I suppose-

I’m struck with a terrible thought. Please, no…I stop and dig through my backpack. No, no, no, it’s gone! The Post-it, stuck to the evidence bag, and I forgot to pull it off before I threw everything out. The address of my favorite sixteen: 3694-8938-5330-2498, my pet-known to the world as Dr. Robert Jorgensen. I’d just found where he’d fled to, trying to hide, and jotted it on a Post-it. I’m furious I didn’t memorize it and throw away the note.

I hate myself, hate everything. How could I be so careless?

I want to cry, to scream.

My Robert 3694! For two years he’s been my guinea pig, my human experiment. Public records, identity theft, credit cards…

But, most of all, ruining him was a huge high. Orgasmic, indescribable. Like coke or heroin. Taking a perfectly normal, happy family man, a good, caring doctor, and destroying him.

Well, I can’t take any chances. I have to assume someone will find the note and call him. He’ll flee…and I’ll have to let him go.

Something else has been taken away from me today. I can’t describe how I feel when that happens. It’s pain like fire, it’s fear like blind panic, it’s falling and knowing you’ll collide with the blurring earth at any moment but not…quite…yet.

I blunder through the herds of antelope, these sixteens roaming on their day of rest. My happiness is destroyed, my comfort gone. Whereas just hours ago I looked at everyone with benign curiosity or lust, but now I simply want to storm up to someone and slice his pale flesh, thin as tomato skin, with one of my eighty-nine straight razors.

Maybe my Krusius Brothers model from the late 1800s. It has an extra-long blade, a fine stag’s horn handle and is the pride of my collection.

“Evidence, Mel. Let’s look it over.”

Rhyme was referring to what had been collected in the trash can near DeLeon Williams’s house.

“Friction ridges?”

The first items Cooper examined for fingerprints were the plastic bags-the one holding the evidence 522 had presumably intended to plant and the bags inside, containing some still-wet blood and a bloody paper towel. But there were no prints on the plastic-a disappointment, since it preserves them so well. (Often they’re visible, not latent, and can be observed without any special chemicals or lighting.) Cooper did find indications that the UNSUB had touched the bags with cotton gloves-the sort experienced criminals prefer to latex gloves, which retain the perp’s prints inside the fingers very efficiently.

Using various sprays and alternative light sources, Mel Cooper examined the rest of the items and found no prints on these either.

Rhyme realized that this case, like the others he suspected 522 was behind, was different from most in that it presented two categories of evidence. First, false evidence that the killer intended to plant to implicate DeLeon Williams; he’d undoubtedly made sure that none of this would lead back to himself personally. Second, real evidence that he’d left accidentally and that could very well lead to his home-such as the tobacco and the doll’s hair.

The bloody paper towel and wet blood were in the first category, intended to be left. Similarly the duct tape, meant to be slipped into Williams’s garage or car, would undoubtedly match strips used to gag or bind Myra Weinburg. But it would have been kept carefully protected from 522’s dwelling so it didn’t pick up any trace.

The size-13 Sure-Track running shoe probably wasn’t going to be stashed at Williams’s house but it was still “planted” evidence in the sense that 522 had undoubtedly used it to leave a print of a shoe similar to one of Williams’s. Mel Cooper tested the shoe anyway and found some trace: beer on the tread. According to the database of fermented beverage ingredients, created for the NYPD by Rhyme years ago, it was most likely Miller brand. That could be in either category-planted or real. They’d have to see what Pulaski recovered from the Myra Weinburg crime scene to know for sure.

The bag also contained a computer printout of Myra’s photo, probably included to suggest Williams had been stalking her online; it was therefore meant to be planted as well. Still, Rhyme had Cooper check it carefully but a ninhydrin test revealed no fingerprints. Microscopic and chemical analyses revealed generic, untraceable paper, printed with Hewlett-Packard laser toner, also untraceable beyond the brand name.

But they did make a discovery that might prove helpful. Rhyme and Cooper found something embedded in the paper: traces of Stachybotrys Chartarum mold. This was the infamous “sick building” mold. Since the amounts found in the paper were so small, it was unlikely that 522 meant it to be planted. More likely it came from the killer’s residence or place of work. The presence of this mold, which was found indoors almost exclusively, meant that at least part of his home or workplace would be dark and humid. Mold can’t grow in a dry location.

The Post-it note, also probably not intended to be planted, was a 3M brand, not the cheaper generic but still impossible to source. Cooper had found no trace in the note other than a few more spores of the mold, which at least told them that the Post-it’s source probably was 522. The ink was from a disposable pen sold in countless stores around the country.

And that was it for the evidence, though as Cooper was jotting the results, a tech from the outside lab Rhyme used for expedited medical analysis called and reported that the preliminary test confirmed the blood found in the bags was that of Myra Weinburg.

Sellitto took a phone call, had a brief conversation then hung up. “Zip…The DEA traced the call about Amelia to a pay phone. Nobody saw the caller. And nobody on the expressway saw anyone running. The canvass at the two closest subway stations didn’t turn up anything suspicious around the time he got away.”

“Well, he’s not going to do anything suspicious, now, is he? What did the canvassers think? An escaping murderer would jump a turnstile or strip his clothes off and change into a superhero outfit?”

“Just telling you what they said, Linc.”

Grimacing, he asked Thom to write the results of the search up on the whiteboard.

STREET NEAR DELEON WILLIAMS’S HOUSE

· Three plastic bags, ZipLoc freezer style, one-gallon

· One right size-13 Sure-Track running shoe, dried beer in tread (probably Miller brand), no wear marks. No other discernible trace. Bought to leave imprint at scene of crime?

· Paper towel with blood in plastic bag. Preliminary test confirms it’s the victim’s

· 2 ccs blood in plastic bag. Preliminary test confirms it’s the victim’s

· Post-it with address of the Henderson House Residence, Room 672, occupied by Robert Jorgensen. Note and pen untraceable. Paper untraceable. Evidence of Stachybotrys Chartarum mold in paper

· Picture of victim, apparently computer printout, color. Hewlett-Packard printer ink. Otherwise untraceable. Paper untraceable. Evidence of Stachybotrys Chartarum mold in paper

· Duct tape, Home Depot house brand, not traceable to particular location.

· No friction-ridge prints

The doorbell rang and Ron Pulaski walked briskly into the room, carrying two milk crates containing plastic bags, evidence from the scene where Myra Weinburg had been killed.

Rhyme noted immediately that his expression had changed. His face was still. Pulaski often cringed or seemed perplexed or occasionally looked proud-he even blushed-but now his eyes seemed hollow, not at all like the determined gaze of earlier. He glanced at Rhyme with a nod, walked sullenly to the examination tables, handed off the evidence to Cooper and gave him the chain-of-custody cards, which the tech signed.

The rookie stepped back, looking over the whiteboard chart Thom had created. Hands in his jeans pockets, Hawaiian shirt untucked, he wasn’t seeing a single word.

“You all right, Pulaski?”

“Sure.”

“You don’t look all right,” Sellitto said.

“Naw, it’s nothing.”

But that wasn’t true. Something about running his first solo homicide scene had upset him.

Finally he said, “She was just lying there, faceup, staring at the ceiling. It’s like she was alive and looking for something. Frowning, kind of curious. I guess I expected her to be covered up.”

“Yeah, well, you know we don’t do that,” Sellitto muttered.

Pulaski looked out the window. “The thing is…okay, it’s crazy. It’s just she looked a little like Jenny.” His wife. “Kind of weird.”

Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs were similar in many ways when it came to their work. They felt you needed to summon empathy in searching crime scenes, which allowed you to feel what the perp, and the victim, experienced. This helped to better understand the scene and find evidence you otherwise might not.

Those who had this skill, as harrowing as its consequences might be, were masters at walking the grid.

But Rhyme and Sachs differed in one important aspect. Sachs believed it was important never to become numb to the horror of crime. You needed to feel it every time you went to a scene, and afterward. If you didn’t, she said, your heart grew hard, you moved closer to the darkness within the people you pursued. Rhyme, on the other hand, felt you should be as dispassionate as possible. Only by coldly putting aside the tragedy could you be the best police officer you could-and more efficiently stop future tragedies from occurring. (“It’s not a human being anymore,” he’d lectured his new recruits. “It’s a source of evidence. And a damn good one.”)

Pulaski had the potential to be more like Rhyme, the criminalist believed, but at this early stage of his career he fell into Amelia Sachs’s camp. Rhyme felt for the young man now but they had a case to solve. At home tonight Pulaski could hold his wife close and silently mourn the death of the woman she resembled.

He asked gruffly, “You with us, Pulaski?”

“Yes, sir. I’m fine.”

Not exactly, but Rhyme had made his point. “You processed the body?”

A nod. “I was there with the M.E.’s tour doctor. We did it together. I made sure he wore rubber bands on his booties.”

To avoid confusion when it came to footprints Rhyme had a policy of his crime scene searchers’ putting rubber bands around their feet, even when they were in the hooded plastic jumpsuits worn to prevent contamination from their own hair, skin cells and other trace.

“Good.” Rhyme then glanced eagerly at the milk crates. “Let’s get going. We ruined one plan of his. Maybe he’s mad about it and is out targeting somebody else. Maybe he’s buying a ticket to Mexico. Either way, I want to move fast.”

The young cop flipped open his notebook. “I-”

“Thom, come on in here. Thom, where the hell are you?”

“Oh, sure, Lincoln,” said the aide with a cheerful smile, walking into the room. “Always happy to drop everything in the face of such polite requests.”

“We need you again-another chart.”

“Do you?”

“Please.”

“You don’t mean it.”

“Thom.”

“All right.”

“‘Myra Weinburg Crime Scene.’”

The aide wrote the heading and stood ready with the marker, as Rhyme asked, “Now, Pulaski, I understand it wasn’t her apartment?”

“That’s right, sir. A couple owned it. They’re on vacation, on a cruise ship. I managed to get through to them. They’d never heard of Myra Weinburg. Man, you should’ve heard them; they were way upset. They didn’t have any idea who it might’ve been. And to get in he broke the lock.”

“So he knew it was empty and that there was no alarm,” Cooper said. “Interesting.”

“Whatta you think?” Sellitto was shaking his head. “He just picked it for location?”

“It was real deserted around there,” Pulaski put in.

“And what was she doing, do you think?”

“I found her bike outside-she had a Kryptonite key in her pocket and it fit.”

“Biking. Could be that he’d checked out her route and knew she’d be by there at a certain time. And somehow he knew the couple were going to be away so he wouldn’t have any disturbances… Okay, rookie, run through what you found. Thom, if you would be so kind as to write this down.”

“You’re trying too hard.”

“Ha. Cause of death?” Rhyme asked Pulaski.

“I told the doctor to have the medical examiner expedite the autopsy results.”

Sellitto laughed gruffly. “And what’d he say to that?”

“Something like ‘Yeah, right.’ And a couple other things too.”

“You need a bit more starch in your collar before you can make requests like that. But I appreciate the effort. What was the preliminary?”

He looked over his notes. “Suffered several blows to the head. To subdue her, the M.E. thought.” The young officer paused, perhaps recalling his own, similar injury a few years ago. He continued, “Cause of death was strangulation. There were petechiae in the eyes and inside the eyelids-pinpoint hemorrhages-”

“I know what they are, rookie.”

“Oh, sure. Right. And venous distention in the scalp and face. This is the probable murder weapon.” He held up a bag containing a length of rope about four feet long.

“Mel?”

Cooper took the rope and carefully opened it over a large sheet of clean newsprint, dusting to dislodge trace. He then examined what he’d found and took a few samples of the fibers.

“What?” Rhyme asked impatiently.

“Checking.”

The rookie took refuge in his notes again. “As far as the rape, it was vaginal and anal. Postmortem, the tour doctor thought.”

“Posing of the body?”

“No…but one thing I noticed, Detective,” Pulaski said. “All her fingernails were long, except one. It was cut really short.”

“Blood?”

“Yes. It was cut right down to the quick.” He hesitated. “Probably premortem.”

So 522’s a bit of a sadist, Rhyme reflected. “He likes pain.”

“Check the other crime-scene photos, from the earlier rape.”

The young officer hurried off to find the pictures. He shuffled through them and found one, squinting. “Look at this, Detective. Yeah, he cut off a fingernail there too. The same finger.”

“Our boy likes trophies. That’s good to know.”

Pulaski nodded enthusiastically. “And think about it-the wedding ring finger. Probably something about his past. Maybe his wife left him, maybe he was neglected by his mother or a mother figure-”

“Good point, Pulaski. Reminds me-we forgot something else.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Did you check your horoscope this morning before we started the investigation?”

“My…?”

“Oh, and who got the tea-leaf-reading assignment? I forget.”

Sellitto was chuckling. Pulaski was blushing.

Rhyme snapped, “Psychological profiling isn’t helpful. What’s helpful about the nail is knowing that Five Twenty-Two now has in his possession a DNA connection to the crime. Not to mention that if we can decide what kind of implement he used to remove the trophy, we might be able to trace the purchase and find him. Evidence, rookie. Not psychobabble.”

“Sure, Detective. Got it.”

“‘Lincoln’ is fine.”

“Okay. Sure.”

“The rope, Mel?”

Cooper was scrolling through the fiber database. “Generic hemp. Available in thousands of retail outlets around the country.” He ran a chemical analysis. “No trace.”

Crap.

“What else, Pulaski?” Sellitto asked.

He went through the list. Fishing line, binding her hands, and cutting through the skin, which resulted in the bleeding. Duct tape covered her mouth. The tape was Home Depot brand, of course, torn off the roll 522 had ditched; the ragged ends matched perfectly. Two unopened condoms were discovered near the body, the young officer explained, holding up the bag. They were Trojan-Enz brand.

“And here are the swabs.”

Mel Cooper took the plastic evidence bags and checked the vaginal and rectal swabs. The M.E.’s office would give a more detailed report but it was clear that among the substances were traces of a spermicidal lubricant similar to that used with the condoms. There was no semen anywhere at the scene.

Another swab, from the floor, where Pulaski found the treadmark of a running shoe, revealed beer. It proved to be Miller brand. The electrostatic image of the tread was, naturally, a size-13 Sure-Track right shoe-the same that 522 had ditched in the trash can. “And the owners of the loft had no beer, right? You did search the kitchen and pantry?”

“Right, yes, sir. And I didn’t find any.”

Lon Sellitto was nodding. “Bet you ten bucks that Miller is DeLeon’s brew of choice.”

“I won’t take you up on that one, Lon. What else was there?”

Pulaski held up a plastic bag containing a brown fleck that he’d found just above the victim’s ear. Analysis revealed it to be tobacco. “What’s the story with that, Mel?”

The tech’s examination revealed that it was a fine-cut piece, the sort used in cigarettes, but it was not the same as the Tareyton sampler in the database. Lincoln Rhyme was one of the few nonsmokers in the country who decried the bans on smoking; tobacco and ash were wonderful forensic links between criminal and crime scene. Cooper couldn’t tell the brand. He decided, though, that because the tobacco was so desiccated it was probably old.

“Did Myra smoke? Or the people in the loft?”

“I didn’t see any evidence of it. And I did what you’re always telling us. I smelled the scene when I got there. No smell of smoking.”

“Good.” Rhyme was pleased with the search so far. “What’s the friction-ridge situation?”

“Checked fingerprint samples of the homeowners-from the medicine cabinet and things in the bedside table.”

“So you weren’t fudging. You really did read my book.” Rhyme had devoted a number of paragraphs in his forensic text to the importance of collecting control prints at crime scenes and where to best find them.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m so pleased. Did I make any royalties?”

“I borrowed my brother’s.” Pulaski’s twin was a cop down at the Sixth Precinct in Greenwich Village.

“Let’s hope he paid for it.”

Most of the prints found in the loft were the couples’-which they determined from the samples. The others were probably from visitors but it wasn’t impossible that 522 had been careless. Cooper scanned all of them into the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. The results would be available soon.

“Okay, tell me, Pulaski, what was your impression of the scene?”

The question seemed to throw him. “Impression?”

“Those are the trees.” Rhyme lowered his eyes toward the evidence bags. “What did you think of the forest?”

The young officer thought. “Well, I did have a thought. It’s stupid, though.”

“You know I’ll be the first one to say if you’ve come up with a stupid theory, rookie.”

“It’s just, when I first got there my impression was that the struggle seemed off.”

“How do you mean?”

“See, her bike was chained to a lamppost outside the loft. Like she’d parked it, not thinking anything was wrong.”

“So he didn’t just grab her on the street.”

“Right. And to get into the loft you went through a gate and then down a long corridor to the front door. It was real narrow and it was packed with things the couple stored outside-jars and cans, sports things, some stuff to be recycled, tools for their garden. But nothing was disturbed.” He tapped another photo. “But look inside-that’s where the struggle began. The table and the vases. Right by the front door.” His voice went soft again. “Looks like she fought real hard.”

Rhyme nodded. “All right. So Five Twenty-Two lures her to the loft, smooth-talking her. She locks up the bike, walks down the corridor and they go into the loft. She stops in the entryway, sees he’s lying and tries to get out.”

He considered this. “So he must’ve known enough about Myra to put her at ease, and make her feel that she could trust him… Sure, think about it: He’s got all this information-about who people are, what people buy, when they’re on vacation, whether they have alarms, where they’re going to be… Not bad, rookie. Now we know something concrete about him.”

Pulaski struggled to keep a smile off his face.

Cooper’s computer dinged. He read the screen. “No hits on the prints. Zero.”

Rhyme shrugged, not surprised. “I’m interested in this idea-that he knows so much. Somebody give DeLeon Williams a call. Was Five Twenty-Two right about all the evidence?”

Sellitto’s brief conversation revealed that, yes, Williams wore size-13 Sure-Track shoes, he regularly bought Trojan-Enz brand condoms, he had forty-pound fishing line, he drank Miller beer and he’d recently been to Home Depot for duct tape and hemp rope to use as a tie-down.

Looking at the evidence chart of the earlier rape, Rhyme noted that the condoms used by 522 in that crime were Durex. The killer had used those because Joseph Knightly bought that brand.

On the speakerphone he asked Williams, “Is one of your shoes missing?”

“No.”

Sellitto said, “So he bought a pair. Same type, same size as you’ve got. How’d he know that? Have you seen anybody on your property recently, maybe in your garage, going through your car or trash? Or have you had a break-in recently?”

“No, we sure haven’t. I’m out of work and here most days taking care of the house. I’d know. And it’s not the best neighborhood in the world; we’ve got an alarm. We always put it on.”

Rhyme thanked him and they disconnected.

He stretched his head back and gazed at the chart, as he dictated to Thom what to write.

MYRA WEINBURG CRIME SCENE

· COD: Strangulation. Awaiting final M.E. report

· No mutilation or arranging of body but ring fingernail, left hand, was cut short. Possible trophy. Premortem most likely

· Condom lubricant, from Trojan-Enz

· Unopened condoms (2), Trojan-Enz

· No used condoms, or body fluids

· Traces of Miller beer on floor (source other than crime scene)

· Fishing line, 40-pound monofilament, generic brand

· Four-foot length of brown hemp rope (MW)

· Duct tape on mouth

· Tobacco flake, old, from unidentified brand

· Footprint, Sure-Track man’s running shoe, size 13

· No fingerprints

Rhyme asked, “Our boy called nine-one-one, right? To report the Dodge?”

“Yeah,” Sellitto confirmed.

“Find out about the call. What he said, what his voice sounded like.”

The detective added, “The earlier cases too-your cousin’s and the coin theft and earlier rape.”

“Good, sure. I didn’t think about that.”

Sellitto got in touch with central dispatch. Nine-one-one calls are recorded and kept for varying periods of time. He requested the information. Ten minutes later he received a callback. The 911 reports from Arthur’s case and today’s murder were still in the system, the dispatch supervisor reported, and had been sent to Cooper’s e-mail address as.wav files. The earlier cases had been sent to archives on CD. It could take days to find them but an assistant had sent in a request for them.

When the audio files arrived, Cooper opened and played them. They were of a male voice telling the police to hurry to an address where he’d heard screaming. He described the get-away vehicles. The voices sounded identical.

“Voice print?” Cooper asked. “If we get a suspect, we can compare it.”

Voice prints were more highly regarded in the forensic world than lie detectors, and were admissible in some courts, depending on the judge. But Rhyme shook his head. “Listen to it. He’s talking through a box. Can’t you tell?”

A “box” is a device that disguises a caller’s voice. It doesn’t produce a weird, Darth Vader sound; the timbre is normal, if a little hollow. Many directory assistance and customer service operations use them to make employees’ voices uniform.

It was then that the door opened and Amelia Sachs strode into the parlor, carrying a large object under her arm. Rhyme couldn’t tell what it was. She nodded, then gazed at the evidence chart, saying to Pulaski, “Looks like a good job.”

“Thanks.”

Rhyme noted that what she held was a book. It seemed half disassembled. “What the hell is that?”

“A present from our doctor friend, Robert Jorgensen.”

“What is it? Evidence?”

“Hard to say. It was really an odd experience, talking to him.”

“Whatta you mean by odd, Amelia?” Sellitto asked.

“Think Batboy, Elvis and aliens behind the Kennedy assassination. That sort of odd.”

Pulaski exhaled a fast laugh, drawing a withering look from Lincoln Rhyme.

Chapter Fourteen

She told a story of a troubled man whose identity had been stolen and his life ruined. A man who described his nemesis as God, and himself as Job.

Clearly he was unhinged; “odd” didn’t go far enough. Yet if even partly true, his story was moving and hard to listen to. A life completely in tatters, and the crime pointless.

But then Sachs caught Rhyme’s complete attention when she said, “Jorgensen claims the man behind it’s been keeping track of him ever since he bought this book two years ago. He seems to know everything he’s doing.”

“Knows everything,” Rhyme repeated, looking at the evidence charts. “Just what we were talking about a few minutes ago. Getting all the information he needs on the victims and the fall guys.” He filled her in on what they’d learned.

She handed the book to Mel Cooper and told him Jorgensen believed it held a tracking device.

“Tracking device?” Rhyme scoffed. “He’s been watching too many Oliver Stone movies… All right, search it if you want. But let’s not neglect the real leads.”

Sachs’s calls to the police in the various jurisdictions where Jorgensen had been victimized weren’t productive. Yes, there’d been identity theft, no question. “But,” one cop in Florida asked, “you know how much of this goes on? We find a fake residence and raid it but by the time we get there it’s empty. They’ve taken all the merch they’d charged to the vic’s account and headed off to Texas or Montana.”

Most of them had heard of Jorgensen (“He sure writes a lot of letters”) and were sympathetic. But none had any specific leads to an individual or gang who might have been behind the crimes and they couldn’t devote nearly enough time to the cases as they would have liked. “We could have another hundred people on staff and still not be able to make any headway.”

After she’d hung up, Sachs explained that since 522 knew Jorgensen’s address, she’d told the residence hotel clerk to let her know immediately if anyone called or came around asking about him. If the clerk agreed, Sachs would neglect to bring up the residence hotel with the city’s building inspection office.

“Nicely done,” Rhyme said. “You knew there were violations?”

“Not until he agreed at, oh, about the speed of light.” Sachs walked to the evidence that Pulaski had gotten from the loft near SoHo, looking it over.

“Any thoughts, Amelia?” Sellitto asked.

She stood, staring at the boards, one fingernail taking on another as she tried to make sense out of the disparate collection of clues.

“Where’d he get this?” She picked up the bag containing the printout of Myra Weinburg’s face-looking sweet and amused, her eyes on the camera that had snapped her picture. “We should find out.”

Good point. Rhyme hadn’t considered the source of the picture, merely that 522 had downloaded it from a Web site somewhere. He’d been more interested in the paper as a source of clues.

In the photo Myra Weinburg was standing beside a flowering tree, gazing back at the camera, a smile on her face. She was holding a pink drink in a martini glass.

Rhyme noticed Pulaski gazing at the picture too, his eyes troubled again.

The thing is…she looked a little like Jenny.

Rhyme noted distinctive borders and what appeared to be the strokes of some letters to the right, disappearing out of frame. “He’d’ve got it online. To make it look like DeLeon Williams was checking her out.”

Sellitto said, “Maybe we could trace him through the site he downloaded it from. How can we tell where he got it?”

“Google her name,” Rhyme suggested.

Cooper tried this and found a dozen hits, several referring to a different Myra Weinburg. The ones that related to the victim were all professional organizations. But none of the photos of her was similar to the one that 522 had printed out.

Sachs said, “Got an idea. Let me call my computer expert.”

“Who, that guy at Computer Crimes?” Sellitto asked.

“No, somebody even better than him.”

She picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Pammy, hi. Where are you?…Good. I’ve got an assignment. Go online for a Web chat. We’ll do audio by phone.”

Sachs turned to Cooper. “Can you boot up your webcam, Mel?”

The tech typed and a moment later his monitor filled with an image of Pam’s room at her foster parents’ house in Brooklyn. The face of the pretty teenager appeared as she sat down. The image was slightly distorted by the wide-angle lens.

“Hi, Pam.”

“Hi, Mr. Cooper” came the lilting voice through the speakerphone.

“I’ll take over,” Sachs said and replaced Cooper at the keyboard. “Honey, we’ve found a picture and we think it came from the Internet. Could you take a look and tell us if you know where?”

“Sure.”

Sachs held up the sheet to the webcam.

“It’s kind of glary. Can you take it out of the plastic?”

The detective pulled on latex gloves and carefully slipped the sheet out, held it up again.

“That’s better. Sure, it’s from OurWorld.”

“What’s that?”

“You know, a social-networking site. Like Facebook and MySpace. It’s the hot new one. Everybody’s on it.”

“You know about those, Rhyme?” Sachs asked.

He gave a nod. Curiously, he’d been thinking about this recently. He’d read an article in The New York Times about networking sites and virtual existence worlds like Second Life. He’d been surprised to learn that people were spending less time in the outside world and more in the virtual-from avatars to these social-networking sites to telecommuting. Apparently teenagers today spent less time out of doors than in any other period in U.S. history. Ironically, thanks to an exercise regimen that was improving his physical condition and his changing attitudes, Rhyme himself was becoming less virtual and was venturing out more. The dividing line between abled and disabled was blurring.

Sachs now asked Pam, “You can tell for sure it’s from that site?”

“Yeah. They’ve got that special border. If you look close it’s not just a line; it’s little globes, like the earth, over and over again.”

Rhyme squinted. Yes, the border was just as she’d described it. He thought back, recalling OurWorld from the article. “Hello, Pam…there are a lot of members, aren’t there?”

“Oh, hi, Mr. Rhyme. Yeah. Like, thirty or forty million people. Whose realm is that one?”

“Realm?” Sachs asked.

“That’s what they call your page. Your ‘realm.’ Who is she?”

“I’m afraid she was killed today,” Sachs said evenly. “That’s the case I told you about earlier.”

Rhyme wouldn’t have mentioned the murder to a teenager. But this was Sachs’s call; she’d know what to share and what not to.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Pam was sympathetic but not shocked or dismayed by the hard truth.

Rhyme asked, “Pam, can anybody log on and get into your realm?”

“Well, you’re supposed to join. But if you don’t want to post anything or host your own realm you can crack in just to look around.”

“So you’d say that the man who printed this out knows computers.”

“Yeah, he’d have to, I guess. Only he didn’t print it out.”

“What?”

“You can’t print or download anything. Even with the print screen command. There’s a filter on the system-to prevent stalkers, you know. And you can’t crack it. It’s like what protects copyrighted books online.”

“Then how did he get the picture?” Rhyme asked.

Pam laughed. “Oh, he probably did what we all do at school if we want a shot of a cute guy or some weird Goth chick. We just take a picture of the screen with a digital camera. Everybody does that.”

“Sure,” Rhyme said, shaking his head. “Never occurred to me.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Rhyme,” the girl said. “A lot of times people miss the obvious answer.”

Sachs glanced at Rhyme, who smiled at the girl’s reassurance. “Okay, Pam. Thanks. I’ll see you later.”

“‘Bye!”

“Let’s fill in the portrait of our friend.”

Sachs picked up the marker and stepped to the whiteboard.

UNSUB 522 PROFILE

· Male

· Possibly smokes or lives/works with someone who does, or near source of tobacco

· Has children or lives/works near them or near source of toys

· Interest in art, coins?

· Probably white or light-skinned ethnic

· Medium build

· Strong-able to strangle victims

· Access to voice-disguise equipment

· Possibly computer literate; knows OurWorld. Other social-networking sites?

· Takes trophies from victims. Sadist?

· Portion of residence/workplace dark and moist

NONPLANTED EVIDENCE

· Dust

· Old cardboard

· Hair from doll, BASF B35 nylon 6

· Tobacco from Tareyton cigarettes

· Old tobacco, not Tareyton, but brand unknown

· Evidence of Stachybotrys Chartarum mold

Rhyme was looking over the details when he heard Mel Cooper laugh. “Well, well, well.”

“What?”

“This is interesting.”

“Be specific. I don’t need interesting. I need facts.”

“It’s still interesting.” The lab man had been shining a bright light on the slit-open spine of Robert Jorgensen’s book. “You were thinking the doctor was crazy, talking about tracking devices? Well, guess what? Oliver Stone may have a movie here-there is something implanted in it. In the spine tape.”

“Really?” Sachs said, shaking her head. “I thought he was nuts.”

“Let me see,” Rhyme said, his curiosity piqued and skepticism on temporary hold.

Cooper moved a small high-definition camera closer to the examining table and hit the book with an infrared light. It revealed underneath the tape a tiny rectangle of crisscrossed lines.

“Take it out,” Rhyme said.

Carefully Cooper slit the spine tape and removed what appeared to be an inch-long piece of plasticized paper printed with what looked like computer circuit lines. Also, a series of numbers and the manufacturer’s name, DMS, Inc.

Sellitto asked, “The fuck is it? Really a tracking device?”

“I don’t see how. There’s no battery or power source that I can find,” Cooper said.

“Mel, look up the company.”

A fast business search revealed it was Data Management Systems, based outside Boston. He read a description of the outfit, one division of which manufactured these little devices-known as RFID tags, for radio frequency identification.

“I’ve heard about those,” Pulaski said. “It was on CNN.”

“Oh, the definitive source for forensic knowledge,” Rhyme said cynically.

“No, that’s CSI,” Sellitto said, drawing another aborted laugh from Ron Pulaski.

Sachs asked, “What does it do?”

“This is interesting.”

“Again, interesting.”

“Essentially it’s a programmable chip that can be read by a radio scanner. They don’t need a battery; the antenna picks up the radio waves and that gives them enough juice to work.”

Sachs said, “Jorgensen was talking about breaking off antennas to disable them. He also said you could destroy some of them in a microwave. But that one”-she gestured-“he couldn’t nuke. Or so he said.”

Cooper continued, “They’re used for inventory control by manufacturers and retailers. In the next few years nearly every product sold in the U.S. will have its own RFID tag. Some major retailers already require them before they’ll stock a product line.”

Sachs laughed. “That’s just what Jorgensen was telling me. Maybe he wasn’t as National Enquirer as I thought.”

“Every product?” Rhyme asked.

“Yep. So stores know where the stuff in inventory is, how much stock they have, what’s selling faster than other things, when to restock the shelves, when to reorder. They’re also used for baggage handling by airlines so they know where your luggage is without having to visually scan the bar code. And they’re used in credit cards, driver’s licenses, employee IDs. They’re called ‘smart cards’ then.”

“Jorgensen wanted to see my department ID. He looked it over real carefully. Maybe that’s what he was interested in.”

“They’re all over the place,” Cooper continued. “In those discount cards you use in grocery stores, in frequent-flier cards, in tollbooth smart pass transponders.”

Sachs nodded at the evidence boards. “Think about it, Rhyme. Jorgensen was talking about this man he called God knowing all about his life. Enough to steal his identity, to buy things in his name, take out loans, get credit cards, find out where he was.”

Rhyme felt the excitement of moving forward in the hunt. “And Five Twenty-Two knows enough about his victims to get close to them, get inside their defenses. He knows enough about the fall guys to plant evidence that’s identical to what they have at home.”

“And,” Sellitto added, “he knows exactly where they were at the time of the crime. So they won’t have an alibi.”

Sachs looked over the tiny tag. “Jorgensen said his life started to fall apart around the time he got that book.”

“Where’d he buy it? Any receipts or price stickers, Mel?”

“Nope. If there were he cut them out.”

“Call Jorgensen back. Let’s get him in here.”

Sachs pulled out her phone and called the transient hotel where she’d just met with him. She was frowning. “Already?” she asked the clerk.

Doesn’t bode well, Rhyme reflected.

“He’s moved out,” she said after hanging up. “But I know where he’s going.” She found a slip of paper, placed another call. Though after a brief conversation she hung up, sighing. Jorgensen wasn’t at that hotel either, she said; he hadn’t even called to make a reservation.

“Do you have a cell number?”

“He doesn’t have a phone. He doesn’t trust them. But he knows my number. If we’re lucky he’ll call.” Sachs walked closer to the tiny device. “Mel. Cut the wire off. The antenna.”

“What?”

“Jorgensen said now that we’ve got the book, we’re infected too. Cut it off.”

Cooper shrugged and glanced at Rhyme, who thought the idea was absurd. Still, Amelia Sachs didn’t spook easily. “Sure, go ahead. Just make a notation on the chain-of-custody card. ‘Evidence rendered safe.’”

A phrase usually reserved for bombs and handguns.

Rhyme then lost interest in the RFID. He looked up. “All right. Until we hear from him, let’s speculate… Come on, folks. Be ballsy. I need some thoughts here! We’ve got a perp who can get his hands on all this goddamn information about people. How? He knows everything the fall guys bought. Fishing line, kitchen knives, shave cream, fertilizer, condoms, duct tape, rope, beer. There’ve been four victims and four fall guys-at least. He can’t follow everybody around, he doesn’t break into their houses.”

“Maybe he’s a clerk at one of those big discount stores,” Cooper suggested.

“But DeLeon bought some of the evidence at Home Depot-you can’t buy condoms and snack food there.”

“Maybe Five Twenty-Two works for a credit card company?” Pulaski suggested. “He can see what people buy that way.”

“Not bad, rookie, but some of the time the vics must’ve paid cash.”

It was Thom, surprisingly, who provided one answer. He fished out his keys. “I heard Mel mention the discount cards earlier.” He displayed several small plastic cards on his key chain. One for A &P, one for Food Emporium. “I swipe the card and get a discount. Even if I pay cash the store still knows what I bought.”

“Good,” Rhyme said. “But where do we go from there? We’re still looking at dozens of different sources the victims and fall guys shopped at.”

“Ah.”

Rhyme looked at Sachs, who was staring at the evidence board with a faint smile on her face. “I think I’ve got it.”

“What?” Rhyme asked, expecting the clever application of a forensic principle.

“Shoes,” she said simply. “The answer’s shoes.”

Chapter Fifteen

“It’s not just about knowing generally what people buy,” Sachs explained. “It’s knowing the specifics about all the vics and the fall guys. Look at three of the crimes. Your cousin’s case, the Myra Weinburg case and the coin theft. Five Twenty-Two not only knew the kind of shoe the fall guys wore. He knew the sizes.”

Rhyme said, “Good. Let’s find out where DeLeon Williams and Arthur buy their footwear.”

A fast call to Judy Rhyme and one to Williams revealed that the shoes were bought mail order-one through a catalog, one through a Web site, but both directly from the companies.

“All right,” Rhyme said, “pick one, give them a call and find out how the shoe business works. Flip a coin.”

Sure-Track won. And it took only four phone calls to reach somebody connected with the company, the president and CEO, no less.

Water was sounding in the background, splashing, children laughing, as the man asked uncertainly, “A crime?”

“Nothing to do with you directly,” Rhyme reassured him. “One of your products is evidence.”

“But not like that guy who tried to blow up the airplane with a bomb in his shoe?” He stopped talking, as if even bringing this up was a breach of national security.

Rhyme explained the situation-the killer’s getting personal information about the victims, including specifics about Sure-Track shoes, as well as his cousin’s Altons and the other fall guy’s Bass walkers. “Do you sell through retail locations?”

“No. Only online.”

“Do you share information with your competitors? Information about customers?”

A hesitation.

“Hello?” Rhyme asked the silence.

“Oh, we can’t share information. That would be an antitrust violation.”

“Well, how could somebody have gotten access to information about customers of Sure-Track shoes?”

“That’s a complicated situation.”

Rhyme grimaced.

Sachs said, “Sir, the man we’re after is a killer and rapist. Do you have any thoughts about how he could’ve learned about your customers?”

“Not really.”

Lon Sellitto barked, “Then we’ll get a fucking warrant and take your records apart line by line.”

Not the subtle way Rhyme would have handled it but the sledge-hammer approach worked just fine. The man blurted, “Wait, wait, wait. I might have an idea.”

“Which is?” Sellitto snapped.

“Maybe he…okay, if he had information from different companies maybe he got it from a data miner.”

“What’s that?” Rhyme asked.

This pause was one of surprise, it seemed. “You never heard of them?”

Rhyme rolled his eyes. “No. What are they?”

“What it sounds like. Information service companies-they dig through data about consumers, their purchases and houses and cars, credit histories, everything about them. They analyze it and sell it. You know, to help companies spot market trends, find new customers, target direct-mail pieces and plan advertising. Things like that.”

Everything about them…

Rhyme thought: Maybe we’re on to something here. “Do they get information from RFID chips?”

“Sure they do. That’s one of the big sources for data.”

“What data miner does your company use?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Several of them.” His voice was reticent.

“We really need to know,” Sachs said, playing good cop to Sellitto’s bad. “We don’t want anybody else to get hurt. This man is very dangerous.”

A sigh floated over the man’s debate. “Well, I suppose SSD is the main one. They’re pretty big. But if you’re thinking that somebody from there was involved in a crime, impossible. They’re the greatest guys in the world. And there’s security, there’s-”

“Where are they based?” Sachs asked.

Another hesitation. Come on, damnit, Rhyme thought.

“In New York City.”

Five Twenty-Two’s playground. The criminalist caught Sachs’s eye. He smiled. This was looking promising.

“Any others in the area?”

“No. Axciom, Experian and Choicepoint, the other big ones, aren’t around here. But, believe me, nobody from SSD could be involved. I swear.”

“What does SSD stand for?” Rhyme asked.

“Strategic Systems Datacorp.”

“Do you have a contact there?”

“Not anybody in particular exactly.” He said this fast. Too fast.

“You don’t?”

“Well, there are sales reps we deal with. I can’t recall their names at the moment. I could check it and find out.”

“Who runs the company?”

Another pause. “That would be Andrew Sterling. He’s the founder and CEO. Look, I guarantee nobody there would do anything illegal. Impossible.”

Then Rhyme realized something: The man was scared. Not of the police. Of SSD itself. “What are you worried about?”

“It’s just…” In a confessional tone he said, “We couldn’t function without them. We’re really…partnered with them.”

Though, from his tone, the spurious verb seemed to mean “desperately dependent on.”

“We’ll be discreet,” Sachs said.

“Thank you. Really. Thank you.” The relief was obvious.

Sachs politely thanked him for his cooperation, drawing an eye roll from Sellitto.

Rhyme disconnected. “Data mining? Anybody heard of it?”

Thom said, “I don’t know SSD but I’ve heard of data miners. It’s the business of the twenty-first century.”

Rhyme glanced at the evidence chart. “So if Five Twenty-Two works for SSD or is one of their customers he could find out everything he’d need about who bought shave cream, rope, condoms, fishing line-all the evidence he could plant.” Then another idea struck him. “The head of the shoe company said that they sell the data for mailing lists. Arthur had gotten some direct mail about that Prescott painting, remember? Five Twenty-Two could have found out about it from their mailing lists. Maybe Alice Sanderson was on a list too.”

“And look-the crime-scene photos.” Sachs walked to the whiteboards and pointed to several pictures from the coin-theft scene. Direct-mail pieces sat prominently on the tables and floor.

Pulaski said, “And, sir? Detective Cooper mentioned E-ZPass. If this SSD mines their data, then the killer might’ve been able to find out exactly when your cousin was in the city and when he headed home.”

“Jesus,” Sellitto muttered. “If it’s true, this guy’s stumbled on one hell of an M.O.”

“Check out this data mining, Mel. Google it. I want to know for sure if SSD is the only one in the area.”

A few keystrokes later: “Hmm. I got over twenty million hits for ‘data mining.’”

“Twenty million?”

Over the next hour, the team watched as Cooper narrowed the list of the top data miners in the country-about a half dozen. He downloaded hundreds of pages of information from their sites and other details. Comparing the various data miners’ client lists with the products used as evidence in the 522 case, it appeared that SSD was the most likely single source of all the information and was, in fact, the only one based in or near New York.

“If you want,” Cooper said, “I can download their sales brochure.”

“Oh, we want, Mel. Let’s see it.”

Sachs sat next to Rhyme and they looked over the screen as the SSD Web site appeared, topped by the company’s logo: a watchtower with a window, from which radiated lines of illumination.

“Knowledge is Power”…The most valuable commodity in the 21^st Century is information, and SSD is the number-one leader in using knowledge to handcraft your strategies, to redefine your goals and to help you structure solutions to meet the myriad challenges you’ll be facing in today’s world. With more than 4,000 clients in the U.S. and abroad, SSD sets the industry standard as the pre-eminent Knowledge Service Provider on earth.

THE DATABASE

innerCircle^® is the largest private database in the world, with key information on 280 million Americans and 130 million citizens of other countries. innerCircle^® resides on our proprietary Massively Parallel Computer Array Network (MPCAN^®), the most powerful commercial computer system ever assembled.

innerCircle^® presently holds more than 500 petabytes of information-that equals trillions of pages of data-and we anticipate that soon the system will grow to an exabyte of data, an amount so vast that it would take only five exabytes to store the transcript of every word spoken by every human being in history!

We have troves of personal and public information: telephone numbers, addresses, vehicle registration, licensing information, buying histories and preferences, travel profiles, government records and vital statistics, credit and income histories and much, much more. We get these data into your hands at the speed of light, in a form that’s easily accessible and instantly usable, uniquely tailored to your specific needs.

innerCircle^® grows at the rate of hundreds of thousands of entries a day.

THE TOOLS

· Watchtower DBM^®, the most comprehensive database management system in the world. Your partner in strategic planning, Watchtower^® helps you target your goals, extracts the most meaningful data from innerCircle^® and delivers a winning strategy directly to your desk, 24/7, via our lightning-fast and super-secure servers. Watchtower^® meets and exceeds the standards that SQL set years ago.

· Xpectation^® predictive behavior software, based on the latest artificial intelligence and modeling technology. Manufacturers, service providers, wholesalers and retailers…want to know where your market is going and what your customers will want in the future? Then this is the product for you. And, law enforcers, take note: With Xpectation^® you can predict where and when crimes will occur, and most important, who is likely to commit them.

· FORT^® (Finding Obscure Relationships Tool), a unique and revolutionary product which analyzes millions of seemingly unrelated facts to determine connections human beings couldn’t possibly discover on their own. Whether you’re a commercial company wishing to know more about the marketplace (or about your competitors) or a law enforcement organization faced with a difficult criminal case, FORT^® will give you the edge!

· ConsumerChoice^® monitoring software and equipment allows you to determine consumers’ accurate responses to advertising, marketing programs and new or proposed products. Forget subjective focus group opinions. Now, through biometric monitoring, you can gather and analyze individuals’ true feelings about your potential plans-often without their awareness that they’re being observed!

· Hub Overvue^® information consolidation software. This easy-to-use product allows you to control every database within your organization-and, in appropriate circumstances, within other companies’ operations as well.

· SafeGard^®, security and identity verification software and services. Whether your concerns are terrorist threats, corporate kidnapping, industrial espionage or employee or customer theft, SafeGard^® assures that your facilities will remain secure, letting you concentrate on your core business. This division includes the world’s leading background verification, security and substance-screening companies, used by corporate and government clients throughout the world. The SafeGard^® Division of SSD is also home to the industry leader in biometric hardware and software, Bio-Chek^®.

· NanoCure^® medical research software and services. Welcome to the world of microbiologic intelligent systems for the diagnosis and treatment of illness. Working with M.D.’s, our nanotechnologists are crafting solutions to the common health problems facing today’s populace. From monitoring genetic issues to developing injectible tags to help in detecting and curing persistent, deadly illnesses, our NanoCure^® Division is working to create a healthy society.

· On-Trial^® civil litigation support systems and services. From products liability to anti-trust cases, On-Trial^® streamlines document handling and deposition and evidence control.

· PublicSure^® law enforcement support software. This is THE system for the consolidation and management of criminal and allied public records stored in international, federal, state and local databases. Through PublicSure^® search results can be downloaded to offices, patrol car computers, PDA’s or cell phones within seconds of the request, helping investigators bring cases to speedy conclusions and enhancing the preparedness and security of officers in the field.

· EduServe^®, scholastic support software and services. Managing what children learn is vital in a successful society. EduServe^® helps school boards and teachers in facilities from K to 12 most efficiently utilize their resources and offer services that guarantee the best education per tax dollar spent.

Rhyme laughed in disbelief. “If Five Twenty-Two can get his hands on all this information…well, he’s the man who knows everything.”

Mel Cooper said, “Okay, listen to this. I was looking at the companies that SSD owns. Guess one of them.”

Rhyme replied, “I’ll go with whatever the hell their initials were-DMS. The maker of that RFID tag in the book, right?”

“Yep. You got it.”

No one said anything for some moments. Rhyme noticed everyone in the room was looking at the glowing window logo of SSD on the computer screen.

“So,” Sellitto muttered, eyes on the chart. “Where do we go from here?”

“Surveillance?” suggested Pulaski.

“That makes sense,” Sellitto said. “I’ll give S and S a call, set up some teams.”

Rhyme gave a cynical glance. “Surveillance at a company with, what? A thousand employees?” He shook his head, then asked, “You know Occam’s razor, Lon?”

“Who the fuck is Occam? A barber?”

“A philosopher. The razor’s a metaphor-cutting away unnecessary explanations for a phenomenon. His theory was that when you have multiple possibilities the simplest is almost always the correct one.”

“So what’s your simple theory, Rhyme?”

Staring at the brochure, the criminalist answered Sachs, “I think you and Pulaski should go pay a visit to SSD tomorrow morning.”

“And do what?”

He gave a shrug. “Ask if anybody who works there is the killer.”

Chapter Sixteen

Ah, home at last.

I close the door.

And lock out the world.

I breathe deeply and, setting my backpack on the couch, go into the spotless kitchen and drink some pure water. No stimulants for me at the moment.

That edgy thing again.

The town house is a nice one. Prewar, huge (it would have to be when you live the way I do, given my collections). Not easy to find the perfect place. It took me some time. But here I am, largely unnoticed. It’s obscenely easy to be virtually anonymous in New York. What a marvelous city! Here, the default mode of existence is life off the grid. Here, you have to fight to be noticed. Many sixteens do that, of course. But then, the world’s always had more than its share of fools.

Still, listen, you need to keep up appearances. The front rooms of my town house are simple and tastefully decorated (thank you, Scandinavia). I don’t socialize here much but you need a façade to seem normal. You have to function in the real world. If you don’t, sixteens begin to wonder if there’s something going on, if you’re someone other than you seem.

And it’s a short step from that to someone coming round, poking into your Closet and taking everything away from you. Everything you’ve worked so hard for.

Everything.

And that’s the worst of the worst.

So you make sure your Closet is secret. You make sure your treasures are hidden behind curtained or blocked windows, while you maintain your other life in full view, the sunlit side of the moon. To stay off the grid it’s best to have a second living space. You do what I’ve done: keep this Danish modern patina of normalcy clean and ordered, even if it grates on your nerves like steel on slate to be there.

You have a normal house. Because that’s what everybody has.

And you maintain a pleasant connection with associates and friends. Because that’s what everyone does.

And you date occasionally and entice her to spend the night and you go through the motions.

Because that too is what everyone does. No matter that she doesn’t get you as hard as when you’ve smooth talked your way into a girl’s bedroom, smiling, aren’t we soul mates, look at everything we have in common, with a tape recorder and a knife in your jacket pocket.

Now, I pull the shades in the bay windows and head to the back of the living room.

“Wow, this is like a really neat place… It looks bigger from the outside.”

“Yeah, funny how that happens.”

“Hey, you’ve got a door in your living room. What’s through there?”

“Oh, that. Just storage. A closet. Nothing to see. Want some wine?”

Well, what’s through there, Debby Sandra Susan Brenda, is where I’m headed right now. My real home. My Closet, I call it. It’s like a keep-that last defensible spot of a medieval castle-the sanctuary in the center. When all else failed, the king and his family would retreat to the keep.

I enter mine through that magic doorway. It actually is a closet, a walk-in, and inside you’ll see hanging clothes and shoe boxes. But push them aside and you’ll find a second door. It opens on to the rest of the house, which is far, far bigger than the façade’s horrifying blond Swedish minimalism.

My Closet…

I enter it now and lock the doors behind me and turn on the light.

Trying to relax. But after today, after the disaster, I’m having trouble shaking the edgy.

This isn’t good this isn’t good this…

I drop into my desk chair and boot up the computer as I stare at the Prescott painting in front of me, courtesy of Alice 3895. What a touch he had! The eyes of the family members are fascinating. Prescott managed to give each one a different gaze. It’s clear they’re all related; the expressions are similar in that way. Yet they’re also different, as if each is imagining a different aspect of life as a family: happy, troubled, angry, mystified, controlling, controlled.

It’s what a family is all about.

I suppose.

I open the backpack and take out the treasures I’ve acquired today. A tin canister, a pencil set, an old cheese grater. Why would somebody throw these away? I also unload some practical items I’ll use in the next few weeks: some preapproved credit mailings that people carelessly discarded, credit card vouchers, phone bills… Fools, I was saying.

There’s another item for my collection, of course, but I’ll get to the tape recorder later. It’s not as great a find as it could be, since Myra 9834’s throaty screams while I detached the fingernail had to be muted by duct tape (I was worried about passersby). Still, everything in a collection can’t be a crown jewel; you need the mundane to make the special soar.

I then wander through my Closet, depositing the treasures in the appropriate places.

It looks bigger from the outside…

As of today, I have 7,403 newspapers, 3,234 magazines (National Geographics being the cornerstone, of course), 4,235 matchbooks…and, for-going the numbers: coat hangers, kitchen utensils, lunch boxes, soda pop bottles, empty cereal boxes, scissors, shaving gear, shoe horns and trees, buttons, cuff links boxes, combs, wristwatches, clothes, tools useful and tools long outmoded. Phonograph records in colors, records in black. Bottles, toys, jam jars, candles and holders, candy dishes, weapons. It goes on and on and on.

The Closet consists of, what else? Sixteen galleries, like a museum’s, ranging from those holding cheerful toys (though that Howdy Doody is pretty damn scary) to rooms of some things that I treasure but most people would find, oh, unpleasant. Hair and nail clippings and some shriveled mementoes from various transactions. Like this afternoon’s. I deposit Myra 9834’s fingernail in a prominent spot. And while this would normally give me enough pleasure to make me hard again, now the moment is dark and spoiled.

I hate Them so much…

With quivering hands I close the cigar box, taking no pleasure from my treasures at the moment.

Hate hate hate…

Back at the computer, I’m reflecting: Maybe there’s no threat. Maybe it’s just an odd set of coincidences that led Them to DeLeon 6832’s house.

But I can’t take any chances.

The problem: The risk that my treasures will be taken from me, which is consuming me now.

The solution: To do what I started in Brooklyn. To fight back. To eliminate any threats.

What most sixteens, including my pursuers, don’t understand and what puts Them at a pathetic disadvantage is this: I believe in the immutable truth that there is absolutely nothing morally wrong with taking a life. Because I know that there is eternal existence completely independent of these bags of skin and organ we cart around temporarily. I have proof: Just look at the trove of data about your life, built up from the moment you’re born. It’s all permanent, stored in a thousand places, copied, backed up, invisible and indestructible. After the body goes, as all bodies must, the data survive forever.

And if that’s not the definition of an immortal soul, I don’t know what is.

Chapter Seventeen

The bedroom was quiet.

Rhyme had sent Thom home to spend Sunday night with Peter Hoddins, the caregiver’s longtime partner. Rhyme gave the aide a lot of crap. He couldn’t help that and sometimes he felt bad about it. But he tried to compensate and when Amelia Sachs was staying with him, as tonight, he shooed Thom off. The young man needed more of a life outside the town house here, taking care of a feisty old crip.

Rhyme heard tinkering in the bathroom. The sounds of a woman getting ready for bed. Clinks of glass and snaps of plastic lids, aerosol hisses, water running, fragrances escaping on humid bathroom air.

He liked moments like these. They reminded him of his life in the Before.

Which in turn brought to mind the pictures downstairs in the laboratory. Beside the one of Lincoln in his tracksuit was another, in black and white. It showed two men wearing suits on their lanky frames, in their twenties, standing side by side. Their arms hung straight, as if they were wondering whether to embrace.

Rhyme’s father and uncle.

He thought often of Uncle Henry. His father not so much. This had been true throughout his life. Oh, there was nothing objectionable about Teddy Rhyme. The younger of the two siblings was simply retiring, often shy. He loved his nine-to-five job crunching numbers in various labs, loved to read, which he did every evening while lounging in a thick, well-worn armchair, while his wife, Anne, sewed or watched TV. Teddy favored history, especially the American Civil War, an interest that, Rhyme supposed, was the source of his own given name.

The boy and his father coexisted pleasantly, though Rhyme recalled many awkward silences present when father and son were alone. What troubles also engages. What challenges you makes you feel alive. And Teddy never troubled or challenged.

Uncle Henry did, though. In spades.

You couldn’t be in the same room with him for more than a few minutes without his attention turning to you like a searchlight. Then came the jokes, the trivia, recent family news. And always the questions-some asked because he was genuinely curious to learn. Most, though, asked as a call to debate with you. Oh, how Henry Rhyme loved intellectual jousting. You might cringe, you might blush, you might grow furious. But you’d also burn with pride at one of the rare compliments he offered because you knew you’d earned it. No false praise or unwarranted encouragement ever slipped from Uncle Henry’s lips.

“You’re close. Think harder! You’ve got it in you. Einstein had done all his important work when he was just a little older than you.”

If you got it right, you were blessed with a raised eyebrow of approval, tantamount to winning the Westinghouse Science Fair prize. But all too often your arguments were fallacious, your premises straw, your criticisms emotional, your facts skewed… At issue, though, wasn’t his victory over you; his only goal was arriving at the truth and making sure you understood the route. Once he’d diced your argument to fine chop, and made sure you saw why, the matter was over.

So you understand where you went wrong? You calculated the temperature with an incorrect set of assumptions. Exactly! Now, let’s make some calls-get some people together and go see the White Sox on Saturday. I need a ballpark hot dog and we sure as hell won’t be able to buy one at Comiskey Park in October.

Lincoln had enjoyed the intellectual sparring, often driving all the way to Hyde Park to sit in on his uncle’s seminars or informal discussion groups at the university; in fact, he had gone more frequently than Arthur, who was usually busy with other activities.

If his uncle were still alive, he’d undoubtedly stroll into Rhyme’s room now without a glance at his motionless body, point at the gas chromatograph and blurt, “Why are you still running that piece of crap?” Then settling down across from the evidence whiteboards, he’d start questioning Rhyme about his handling of the 522 case.

Yes, but is it logical for this individual to behave in this manner? State your givens once more for me.

He thought back to the night he’d recalled earlier: the Christmas Eve of his senior year in high school, at his uncle’s house in Evanston. Present were Henry and Paula and their children, Robert, Arthur and Marie; Teddy and Anne with Lincoln; some aunts and uncles, other cousins. A neighbor or two.

Lincoln and Arthur had spent much of the evening playing pool downstairs and talking about plans for the next fall and college. Lincoln’s heart was set on M.I.T. Arthur, too, planned to go there. They were both confident of admission and that night were debating rooming together in a dorm or finding an off-campus apartment (male camaraderie versus a babe lair).

The family then assembled at the massive table in his uncle’s dining room, Lake Michigan churning nearby, the wind hissing through bare, gray branches in the backyard. Henry presided over the table the way he presided over his class, in charge and aware, a faint smile below quick eyes taking in all the conversations around him. He’d tell jokes and anecdotes and ask about his guests’ lives. He was interested, curious-and sometimes manipulative. “So, Marie, now that we’re all here, tell us about that fellowship at Georgetown. I think we agreed it’d be excellent for you. And Jerry can come visit on weekends in that fancy new car of his. By the way, when’s the deadline for the application? Coming up, I seem to recall.”

And his wispy-haired daughter avoided his eyes and said what with Christmas and final exams, she hadn’t quite finished the paperwork. But she would. Definitely.

Henry’s mission, of course, was to get his daughter to commit in front of witnesses, no matter that she’d be separated from her fiancé for another six months.

Rhyme had always believed that his uncle would have made an excellent trial lawyer or politician.

After the remnants of the turkey and mincemeat pie were cleared away and the Grand Marnier, coffee and tea had appeared, Henry ushered everyone into the living room, dominated by a massive tree, busy fireplace flames and a stern painting of Lincoln’s grandfather-a triple doctorate and a professor at Harvard.

It was time for the competition.

Henry would throw out a science question and the first to answer it would win a point. The top three players would receive prizes picked by Henry and meticulously wrapped by Paula.

Tensions were palpable-they always were when Henry was in charge-and people competed seriously. Lincoln’s father could be counted on to nail more than a few chemistry questions. If the topic involved numbers his mother, a part-time math teacher, answered some before Henry had even finished asking. The front runners throughout the contest, though, were the cousins-Robert, Marie, Lincoln and Arthur-and Marie’s fiancé.

Toward the end, nearly 8 P.M., the contestants were literally on the edge of their chairs. The rankings changed with every question. Palms were sweaty. With only minutes remaining on timekeeper Paula’s clock, Lincoln answered three questions in a row and nosed ahead for the first-place win. Marie was second, Arthur third.

Amid the clapping, Lincoln took a theatrical bow and accepted the top prize from his uncle. He still remembered his surprise as he unwrapped the dark green paper: a clear plastic box containing a one-inch cube of concrete. It wasn’t a joke prize, though. What Lincoln held was a piece of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, where the first atomic chain reaction had occurred, under the direction of his cousin’s namesake, Arthur Compton, and Enrico Fermi. Henry had apparently acquired one of the pieces when the stadium was torn down in the 1950s. Lincoln had been very touched by the historic prize and suddenly glad he’d played seriously. He still had the rock somewhere, tucked away in a cardboard box in the basement.

But Lincoln had no time to admire his award.

Because that night he had a late date with Adrianna.

Like his family, unexpectedly thrust into his thoughts today, the beautiful, red-haired gymnast had figured in his memories too.

Adrianna Waleska-pronounced with a soft V, echoing her second-generation Gdansk roots-worked in the college counselor’s office in Lincoln’s high school. Early in his senior year, delivering some applications to her, he’d spotted Stranger in a Strange Land on her desk, the Heinlein novel well-thumbed. They’d spent the next hour discussing the book, agreeing often, arguing some, with the result that Lincoln realized he’d missed his chemistry class. No matter. Priorities were priorities.

She was tall, lean, had invisible braces and an appealing figure under her fuzzy sweaters and flared jeans. Her smile ranged from ebullient to seductive. They were soon dating, the first foray into serious romance for both of them. They’d attend each other’s sports meets, go to the Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute, the jazz clubs in Old Town and, occasionally, visit the backseat of her Chevy Monza, which was hardly any backseat at all and therefore just the ticket. Adrianna lived a short run from his house, by Lincoln’s track-and-field standards, but that would never do-can’t show up sweaty-so he’d borrow the family car when he could and head over to see her.

They’d spend hours talking. As with Uncle Henry, he and Adie engaged.

Obstacles existed, yes. He was leaving next year for college in Boston; she, for San Diego to study biology and work in the zoo. But those were mere complications and Lincoln Rhyme, then as now, would not accept complications as excuses.

Afterward-after the accident, and after he and Blaine divorced-Rhyme often wondered what would have happened if he and Adrianna had stayed together and pursued what they’d started. That Christmas Eve night, in fact, he’d come very close to proposing. He’d considered offering her not a ring but, as he’d cleverly rehearsed, “a different kind of rock”-his uncle’s prize from the science trivia contest.

But he’d balked, thanks to the weather. As they’d sat, clutching each other on a bench, the snow had begun to tumble suicidally from the silent Midwest sky and in minutes their hair and coats were covered with a damp white blanket. She’d just made it back to her house and Lincoln to his before the roads were blocked. He lay in bed that night, the plastic box containing the concrete beside him, and practiced a proposal speech.

Which was never delivered. Events intruded in their lives, sending them on different paths, seemingly minute events, though small in the way of invisible atoms tricked to fission in a chilly sports stadium, changing the world forever.

Everything would’ve been different….

Rhyme now caught a glimpse of Sachs brushing her long red hair. He watched her for some moments, glad she’d be staying tonight-more pleased than usual. Rhyme and Sachs weren’t inseparable. They were staunchly independent people, preferring often to spend time apart. But tonight he wanted her here. Enjoying the presence of her body next to his, the sensation-in those few places he was able to feel-all the more intense for its rarity.

His love for her was one of the motivators for his exercise regimen, working on a computerized treadmill and Electrologic bike. If medical science crept past that finishing line-allowing him to walk again-his muscles were going to be ready. He was also considering a new operation that might improve his condition until that day arrived. Experimental, and controversial, it was known as peripheral nerve rerouting, a technique that had been talked about-and occasionally tried-for years without many positive results. But recently foreign doctors had been performing the operation with some success, despite the reservation of the American medical community. The procedure involved surgically connecting nerves above the site of the injury to nerves below it. A detour around a washed-out bridge, in effect.

The successes were mostly in bodies less severely damaged than Rhyme’s but the results were remarkable: return of bladder control, movement of limbs, even walking. The latter would not be the result in Rhyme’s case but discussions with a Japanese doctor who’d pioneered the procedure and with a colleague at an Ivy League university teaching hospital gave some hope of improvement. Possibly sensation and movement in his arms, hands and bladder.

Sex too.

Paralyzed men, even quads, are perfectly capable of having sex. If the stimulus is mental-seeing a man or woman who appeals to us-then, no, the message doesn’t make it past the site of the damaged spinal cord. But the body is a brilliant mechanism and there’s a magic loop of nerve that operates on its own, below the injury. A little local stimulus, and even the most severely disabled men can often make love.

The bathroom light clicked out and he watched her silhouette join him and climb into what she’d announced long ago was the most comfortable bed in the world.

“I-” he began, and his voice was immediately muffled by her mouth as she kissed him hard.

“What did you say?” she whispered, moving her lips along his chin, then to his neck.

He’d forgotten. “I forgot.”

He gripped her ear with his lips and was then aware of the blankets being pulled down. This took some effort on her part; Thom made up the bed like a soldier afraid of his drill sergeant. But soon he could see that the blankets were bunched up at the foot. Sachs’s T-shirt had joined them.

She kissed him again. He kissed her back hard.

Which is when her phone rang.

“Uh-uh,” she whispered. “I didn’t hear that.” After four rings, blessed voice mail took over. But a moment later it rang again.

“Could be your mother,” Rhyme pointed out.

Rose Sachs had been undergoing some treatments for a cardiac problem. The prognosis was good but she’d had some recent setbacks.

Sachs grunted and flipped it open, bathing both of their bodies in a blue light. Looking at caller ID, she said, “Pam. I better take it.”

“Of course.”

“Hey, there. What’s up?”

As the one-sided conversation continued, Rhyme deduced that something was wrong.

“Okay…Sure…But I’m at Lincoln’s. You want to come over here?” She glanced at Rhyme, who was nodding agreement. “Okay, honey. We’ll be awake, sure.” She snapped the phone shut.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t say. She just said Dan and Enid had two emergency placements tonight. So all the older kids had to room together. She had to get out. And she doesn’t want to be at my place alone.”

“It’s fine with me. You know that.”

Sachs lay back down and her mouth explored energetically. She whispered, “I did the math. She’s got to pack a bag, get her car out of the garage…it’ll take her a good forty-five minutes to be here. We’ve got a little time.”

She leaned forward and kissed him again.

Just as the doorbell rang jarringly and the intercom clattered, “Mr. Rhyme? Amelia? Hi, it’s Pam. Can you buzz me in?”

Rhyme laughed. “Or she might’ve called from the front steps.”

They sat in one of the upstairs bedrooms, Pam and Sachs.

The room was the girl’s for whenever she wished to stay. A stuffed animal or two sat neglected on the shelf (when your mother and stepfather are running from the FBI, toys don’t figure much in your childhood) but she had several hundred books and CDs. Thanks to Thom there always were plenty of clean sweats and T-shirts and socks. A Sirius satellite radio set and a disk player. Her running shoes too; Pam loved to speed along the 1.6-mile path surrounding the Central Park reservoir. She ran from love of running and she ran from hungry need.

The girl now sat on the bed, carefully painting gold polish on her toenails, cotton balls separating the canvases. Her mother had forbidden this, as well as makeup (“out of respect for Christ,” however that was supposed to work), and once sprung from the far-right underground she took up small, comforting additions to her persona, like this, some ruddy hair tint and the three ear piercings. Sachs was relieved she didn’t go overboard; if anybody had a reason to slingshot herself into the weird, it was Pamela Willoughby.

Sachs was lounging in a chair, feet up, her own toenails bare. A breeze carried into the small room the complicated mix of spring scents from Central Park: mulch, earth, dew-damp foliage, vehicle exhaust. She sipped her hot chocolate. “Ouch. Blow on it first.”

Pam whistled into her cup and tasted it. “It’s good. Yeah, hot.” She returned to her nails. In contrast to her visage earlier in the day, the girl’s face was troubled.

“You know what those are called?” Sachs was pointing.

“Feet? Toes?”

“No, the bottoms?”

“Sure. The bottoms of feet and the bottoms of toes.” They laughed.

“Plantars. And they have prints too, just like fingerprints. Lincoln convicted somebody once because the perp kicked somebody unconscious with his bare foot. But he missed once and whacked the door. Left a print on it.”

“That’s cool. He should write another book.”

“I’m after him to,” Sachs said. “So what’s up?”

“Stuart.”

“Go on.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t’ve come. It’s stupid.”

“Come on. I’m a cop, remember. I’ll sweat it out of you.”

“Just, Emily called and it was weird her calling on Sunday, like, she never does, and I’m thinking, okay, something’s going on. And it’s like she really doesn’t want to say anything but then she does. And she said she saw Stuart today with somebody else. This girl from school. After the soccer game. Only he told me he was going right home.”

“Well, what are the facts? Were they just talking? Nothing wrong with that.”

“She said she wasn’t sure but it, you know, kind of looked like he was hugging her. And then when he saw somebody looking at him, he kind of walked away real fast with her. Like he was trying to hide.” The toenail project came to a stop, halfway done. “I really, really like him. It’d suck if he didn’t want to see me anymore.”

Sachs and Pam had been to a counselor together-and, with Pam’s agreement, Sachs had spoken to the woman alone. Pam would be undergoing a lengthy period of post-traumatic stress, not only from her lengthy captivity with a sociopath parent but from a particular episode in which her stepfather had nearly sacrificed her life while trying to murder police officers. Incidents like this one with Stuart Everett, small to most people, were amplified in the girl’s mind and could have devastating effects. Sachs had been told not to add to her fears but not to downplay them either. To look at each one carefully and try to analyze it.

“Have you guys talked about seeing other people?”

“He said…well, a month ago he said he wasn’t. I’m not either. I told him that.”

“Any other intelligence?” Sachs asked.

“Intelligence?”

“I mean, have any of your other friends said anything?”

“No.”

“Do you know any of his friends?”

“Kind of. But not like I could ask them anything about it. That’d be way uncool.”

Sachs smiled. “So spies aren’t going to work. Well, what you should do is just ask him. Point-blank.”

“You think?”

“I think.”

“What if he says he is seeing her?”

“Then you should be thankful he’s honest with you. That’s a good sign. And then you convince him to dump the bimbo.” They laughed. “What you do is say that you just want to date one person.” The start-up mother in Sachs added quickly, “We’re not talking about getting married, not moving in. Just dating.”

Pam nodded quickly. “Oh, absolutely.”

Relieved, Sachs continued, “And he’s the one you want to see. But you expect the same thing from him. You have something important, you relate to each other, you can talk, you’ve got a connection and you don’t see that very much.”

“Like you and Mr. Rhyme.”

“Yeah, like that. But if he doesn’t want it, then okay.”

“No, it’s not.” Pam frowned.

“No, I’m just telling you what you say. But then tell him you’re going to be dating other people too. He can’t have it both ways.”

“I guess. But what if he says fine?” Her face was dark at the thought.

A laugh. Sachs shook her head. “Yep, it’s a bummer when they call your bluff. But I don’t think he will.”

“All right. I’m going to see him tomorrow after class. I’ll talk to him.”

“Call me. Let me know.” Sachs rose, lifted away the polish and capped it. “Get some sleep. It’s late.”

“But my nails. I’m not finished.”

“Don’t wear open-toed.”

“Amelia?”

She paused at the doorway.

“Are you and Mr. Rhyme going to get married?”

Sachs smiled and closed the door.