The Broken Window

Chapter Eighteen

They’re pretty big…

Amelia Sachs sat in Strategic Systems Datacorp’s sky-high lobby and reflected that the shoe company president’s description of SSD’s data mining operation was, well, pretty understated.

The Midtown building was thirty stories high, a gray spiky monolith, the sides smooth granite flashing with mica. The windows were narrow slits, which was surprising given the stunning views of the city from this location and elevation. She was familiar with the building, dubbed the Gray Rock, but had never known who owned it.

She and Ron Pulaski-no longer in play clothes but wearing a navy suit and navy uniform, respectively-sat facing a massive wall on which were printed the locations of the SSD offices around the world, among them London, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, Singapore, Beijing, Dubai, Sydney and Tokyo.

Pretty big…

Above the list of satellite offices was the company logo: the window in the watchtower.

Her gut twisted slightly as she recalled the windows in the abandoned building across the street from Robert Jorgensen’s residence hotel. She recalled Lincoln Rhyme’s words about the incident with the federal agent in Brooklyn.

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

Looking around the lobby, she saw a half dozen businesspeople waiting here, many of them uneasy, it seemed, and she recalled the shoe company president and his concern about losing SSD’s services. She then saw, almost en masse, their heads swivel, looking past the receptionist. They were watching a short man, youthful, enter the lobby and walk directly toward Sachs and Pulaski over the black-and-white rugs. His posture was perfect and his stride long. The sandy-haired man nodded and smiled, offering a fast greeting-by name-to nearly everybody here.

A presidential candidate. That was Sachs’s first impression.

But he didn’t stop until he came to the officers. “Good morning. I’m Andrew Sterling.”

“Detective Sachs. This is Officer Pulaski.”

Sterling was shorter than Sachs by several inches but he seemed quite fit and had broad shoulders. His immaculate white shirt featured a starched collar and cuffs. His arms seemed muscular; the jacket was tight-fitting. No jewelry. Crinkles radiated from the corners of his green eyes when that easy smile crossed his face.

“Let’s go to my office.”

The head of such a big company…yet he’d come to them, rather than having an underling escort them to his throne room.

Sterling walked easily down the wide, quiet halls. He greeted every employee, sometimes asking questions about their weekends. They ate up his smiles at reports of an enjoyable weekend and his frowns at word of ill relatives or canceled games. There were dozens of them, and he made a personal comment to each.

“Hello, Tony,” he said to a janitor, who was emptying the contents of shredded documents into a large plastic bag. “Did you see the game?”

“No, Andrew, I missed it. Had too much to do.”

“Maybe we should start three-day weekends,” Sterling joked.

“I’d vote for that, Andrew.”

And they continued down the hall.

Sachs didn’t think she knew as many in the NYPD as Sterling said hello to in their five-minute walk.

The decor of the company was minimal: some small, tasteful photographs and sketches-none in color-overwhelmed by the spotless white walls. The furniture, also black or white, was simple-expensive Ikea. It was a statement of some kind, she guessed, but she found it bleak.

As they walked, she ran through what she’d learned last night, after saying good night to Pam. The man’s bio, patched together from the Web, was sparse. He was an intensely reclusive man-a Howard Hughes, not a Bill Gates. His early life was a mystery. She’d found no references at all to his childhood, or his parents. A few sketchy pieces in the press had put him on the radar at age seventeen, when he’d had his first jobs, mostly in sales, working door-to-door and telemarketing, moving up to bigger, more expensive products. Finally computers. For a kid with “7/8 of a bachelor’s degree from a night school,” Sterling told the press, he found himself a successful salesman. He’d gone back to college, finishing the last one-eighth of the degree and completing a master’s in computer science and engineering in short order. The stories were all very Horatio Alger and included only details that boosted his savvy and status as a businessman.

Then, in his twenties, had come the “great awakening,” he said, sounding like a Chinese communist dictator. Sterling was selling a lot of computers but not enough to satisfy him. Why wasn’t he more successful? He wasn’t lazy. He wasn’t stupid.

Then he realized the problem: He was inefficient.

And so were a lot of other salesmen.

So Sterling learned computer programming and spent weeks of eighteen-hour days, in a dark room, writing software. He hocked everything and started a company, one based on a concept that was either foolish or brilliant: Its most valuable asset wouldn’t be owned by his company but by millions of other people, much of it free for the taking-information about themselves. Sterling began compiling a database that included potential customers in a number of service and manufacturing markets, the demographics of the area in which they were located, their income, marital status, the good or bad news about their financial and legal and tax situations, and as much other information-personal and professional-as he could buy, steal or otherwise find. “If there’s a fact out there, I want it,” he was quoted as saying.

The software he wrote, the early version of the Watchtower database management system, was revolutionary at the time, an exponential leap over the famed SQL-pronounced “sequel,” Sachs had learned-program. In minutes Watchtower would decide which customers would be worthwhile to call on and how to seduce them, and which weren’t worth the effort (but whose names might be sold to other companies for their own pitches).

The company grew like a monster in a science fiction film. Sterling changed the name to SSD, moved it to Manhattan and began to collect smaller companies in the information business to add to his empire. Though unpopular with privacy rights organizations, there’d never been a hint of a scandal at SSD, à la Enron. Employees had to earn their salaries-no one received obscenely high Wall Street bonuses-but if the company profited, so did they. SSD offered tuition and home-purchasing assistance, internships for children, and parents were given a year of maternity or paternity leave. The company was known for the familial way it treated its workers and Sterling encouraged hiring spouses, parents and children. Every month he sponsored motivational and team-building retreats.

The CEO was secretive about his personal life, though Sachs learned that he didn’t smoke or drink and that no one had ever heard him utter an obscenity. He lived modestly, took a surprisingly small salary and kept his wealth in SSD stock. He shunned the New York social scene. No fast cars, no private jets. Despite his respect for the family unit among SSD employees, Sterling was twice divorced and unmarried at the moment. There were conflicting reports about children he’d fathered in his youth. He had several residences but he kept their whereabouts out of the public record. Perhaps because he knew the power of data, Andrew Sterling appreciated its dangers too.

Sterling, Sachs and Pulaski now came to the end of a long corridor and entered an exterior office, where two assistants had their desks, both of which were filled with perfectly ordered stacks of papers, file folders, printouts. Only one assistant was in at the moment, a young man, handsome, in a conservative suit. His nameplate read Martin Coyle. His area was the most ordered-even the many books behind him were arranged in descending order of size, Sachs was amused to see.

“Andrew.” He nodded a greeting to his boss, ignoring the officers as soon as he noted that they hadn’t been introduced. “Your phone messages are on your computer.”

“Thank you.” Sterling glanced at the other desk. “Jeremy’s going to look over the restaurant for the press junket?”

“He did that this morning. He’s running some papers over to the law firm. About that other matter.”

Sachs marveled that Sterling had two personal assistants-apparently one for the inside work, the other handling out-of-the-office matters. At the NYPD detectives shared, if they had help at all.

They continued on to Sterling’s own office, which wasn’t much bigger than any other she’d seen in the company. And its walls were free of decoration. Despite the SSD logo of the voyeuristic window in the watchtower, Andrew Sterling’s were curtained, cutting off what would be a magnificent view of the city. A ripple of claustrophobia coursed through her.

Sterling sat in a simple wooden chair, not a leather swivel throne. He gestured them into similar ones, though padded. Behind him were low shelves filled with books but, curiously, they were stacked with spines facing up, not outward. Visitors to his office couldn’t see his choice of reading matter without walking past the man and looking down or pulling out a volume.

The CEO nodded at a pitcher and a half dozen inverted glasses. “That’s water. But if you’d like some coffee or tea, I can have some fetched.”

Fetched? She didn’t think she’d ever heard anyone actually use the word.

“No, thank you.”

Pulaski shook his head.

“Excuse me. Just one moment.” Sterling picked up his phone, dialed. “Andy? You called.”

Sachs deduced from the tone that it was someone close to him, though it was clearly a business call about a problem of some sort. Yet Sterling spoke emotionlessly. “Ah. Well, you’ll have to, I think. We need those numbers. You know, they’re not sitting on their hands. They’ll make a move any day now… Good.”

He hung up and noticed Sachs watching him closely. “My son works for the company.” A nod at a photo on his desk, showing Sterling with a handsome, thin young man who resembled the CEO. Both were wearing SSD T-shirts at some employee outing, maybe one of the inspirational retreats. They were next to each other but there was no physical contact between them. Neither was smiling.

So one question about his personal life had been answered.

“Now,” he said, turning his green eyes on Sachs, “what’s this all about? You mentioned some crime.”

Sachs explained, “There’ve been several murders in the past few months in the city. We think that someone might’ve used information in your computers to get close to the victims, kill them and then used that and other information to frame innocent people for the crimes.”

The man who knows everything…

“Information?” His concern seemed genuine. He was perplexed too, though. “I’m not sure how that could happen but tell me more.”

“Well, the killer knew exactly what personal products the victims used and he planted traces of them as evidence at an innocent person’s residence to connect them to the killing.” From time to time the eyebrows above Sterling’s emerald irises narrowed. He seemed genuinely troubled as she gave him the details about the theft of the painting and coins and the two sexual assaults.

“That’s terrible…” Troubled by the news, he glanced away from her. “Rapes?”

Sachs nodded grimly and then explained how SSD seemed to be the only company in the area that had access to all the information the killer had used.

He rubbed his face, nodding slowly.

“I can see why you’re concerned… But wouldn’t it be easier for this killer just to follow the people he victimized and find out what they bought? Or even hack into their computers, break into their mailboxes, their homes, jot down their license plate numbers from the street?”

“But see, that’s the problem: He could. But he’d have to do all of those things to get the information he needed. There’ve been four crimes at a minimum-we think there could probably be more-and that means up-to-date information on the four victims and four men he’s setting up. The most efficient way to get that information would be to go through a data miner.”

Sterling gave a smile, a delicate wince.

Sachs frowned and cocked her head.

He said, “Nothing wrong with that term, ‘data miner.’ The press has latched on to it and you see it everywhere.”

Twenty million search-engine hits…

“But I prefer to call SSD a knowledge service provider-a KSP. Like an Internet service provider.”

Sachs had a strange sensation; he seemed almost hurt by what she’d said. She wanted to tell him she wouldn’t do it again.

Sterling smoothed a stack of papers on his organized desktop. At first she thought they were blank but then she noticed they were all turned facedown. “Well, believe me, if anyone at SSD is involved, I want to find out as much as you do. This could look very bad for us-knowledge service providers haven’t been doing very well in the press or in Congress lately.”

“First of all,” Sachs said, “the killer would have bought most of the items with cash, we’re pretty sure.”

Sterling nodded. “He wouldn’t want to leave any trace of himself.”

“Right. But the shoes he bought mail order or online. Would you have a list of people who bought these shoes in these sizes in the New York area?” She handed him a list of the Altons, the Bass and the Sure-Tracks. “The same man would have bought all of them.”

“What time period?”

“Three months.”

Sterling made a phone call. He had a brief conversation and no more than sixty seconds later he was looking at his computer screen. He swiveled it so Sachs could see, though she wasn’t sure what she was looking at-strings of product information and codes.

The CEO shook his head. “Roughly eight hundred Altons sold, twelve hundred Bass, two hundred Sure-Tracks. But no one person bought all three. Or even two pairs.”

Rhyme had suspected that the killer, if he used information from SSD, would cover his tracks but they’d hoped this lead would pay off. Staring at the numbers, she wondered if the killer had used the identity-theft techniques he’d perfected on Robert Jorgensen to order the shoes.

“Sorry.”

She nodded.

Sterling uncapped a battered silver pen and pulled a notepad toward him. In precise script he wrote several notes Sachs couldn’t read, stared at it, nodded to himself. “You’re thinking, I’d imagine, that the problem is an intruder, an employee, one of our customers or a hacker, right?”

Ron Pulaski glanced at Sachs and said, “Exactly.”

“All right. Let’s get to the bottom of it.” He checked his Seiko watch. “I want some other people in here. It may take a few minutes. We have our Spirit Circles every Monday around this time.”

“Spirit Circles?” Pulaski asked.

“Inspirational team meetings by the group leaders. They should be finished soon. We start at eight on the dot. But some go a little longer than others. Depending on the leader.” He said, “Command, intercom, Martin.”

Sachs laughed to herself. He was using the same sort of voice-recognition system that Lincoln Rhyme had.

“Yes, Andrew?” The voice came from a tiny box on the desk.

“I want Tom-security Tom-and Sam. Are they in Spirit Circles?”

“No, Andrew, but Sam’s probably going to be in Washington all week. He won’t be back till Friday. Mark, his assistant’s in.”

“Him, then.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Command, intercom, disconnect.” To Sachs he said, “Should just be a moment.”

She imagined that when Andrew Sterling summoned you, you materialized pretty quickly. He jotted a few more notes. As he did, she glanced at the company logo on the wall. When he was through writing she said, “I’m curious about that. The tower and the window. What’s the significance of it?”

“On one level it just means observing data. But there’s a second meaning.” He smiled, pleased to be explaining this. “Do you know the concept of the broken window in social philosophy?”

“No.”

“I learned about it years ago and never forgot it. The thrust is that in order to improve society you should concentrate on the small things. If you control those-or fix them-then the bigger changes will follow. Take housing projects with a high-crime problem. You can sink millions into increased police patrols and security cameras but if the projects still look dilapidated and dangerous, they’ll stay dilapidated and dangerous. Instead of millions of dollars, put thousands into fixing the windows, painting, cleaning the halls. It may seem cosmetic but people will notice. They’ll take pride in where they live. They’ll start to report people who are threats and who don’t look after their property.

“As I’m sure you know, that was the thrust of crime prevention in New York in the nineties. And it worked.”

“Andrew?” came Martin’s voice from the intercom. “Tom and Mark are here.”

Sterling ordered, “Send them in.” He set the paper he’d been jotting notes on directly in front of him. He gave Sachs a grim smile. “Let’s see if anybody’s been peeking through our window.”

Chapter Nineteen

The doorbell rang and Thom ushered in a man in his early thirties, disheveled brown hair, jeans, a Weird Al Yankovic T-shirt under a shabby brown sports coat.

You couldn’t be in the forensics game nowadays without being computer literate but both Rhyme and Cooper recognized their limitations. When it was clear that there were digital implications of the 522 case, Sellitto had requested some help from the NYPD Computer Crimes Unit, an elite group of thirty-two detectives and support staff.

Rodney Szarnek strode into the room, glanced at the nearest monitor and said, “Hey,” as if he were speaking to the hardware. Similarly when he glanced toward Rhyme he expressed no interest in his physical condition whatsoever, only in the wireless environmental control unit attached to the armrest. He seemed impressed.

“Your day off?” Sellitto asked, glancing at the slim young man’s outfit, his voice making it clear he didn’t approve. Rhyme knew the detective was old school; police officers should dress appropriately.

“Day off?” Szarnek replied, missing the dig. “No. Why would I have a day off?”

“Just wondering.”

“Heh. So, now, what’s the story?”

“We need a trap.”

Lincoln Rhyme’s theory about strolling into SSD and just plain asking about a killer wasn’t as naive as it seemed. When he’d seen on the company Web site that SSD’s PublicSure division supported police departments, his hunch was that NYPD was a customer. If that was the case, then the killer might have access to the department files. A fast call revealed that, yes, the department was a client. PublicSure software and SSD consultants provided data management services for the city, including consolidation of case information, reports and records. If a patrolman on the street needed a warrant check, or a detective new to a homicide needed the case’s history, PublicSure helped get the information to his desk or squad-car computer or even his PDA or cell phone, in minutes.

By sending Sachs and Pulaski to the company and asking who might have accessed the data files about the victims and fall guys, 522 could learn they were on to him and try to get into the NYPD system through PublicSure to look at the reports. If he did, they might be able to trace who had accessed the files.

Rhyme explained the situation to Szarnek, who nodded knowingly-as if he set up traps like this every day. He was taken aback, though, when he learned what company the killer might have a connection to. “SSD? The biggest data miner in the world. They got the scoop on all of God’s children.”

“Is that a problem?”

His carefree geek image faltered and he answered softly, “I hope not.”

And he set to work with their trap, explaining what he was doing. He stripped from the files any details about the case they didn’t want 522 to know and manually transferred those sensitive files to a computer that had no Internet access. He then put an alarmed visual traceroute program in front of the “Myra Weinburg Sexual Assault/Homicide” file on the NYPD server. And added subfiles to tempt the killer, like “Suspects’ whereabouts,” “Forensic analysis” and “Witnesses,” all of which contained only general notes about crime-scene procedures. If anyone accessed it, either hacking in or through authorized channels, a notice of the person’s ISP and physical location would be instantly sent to Szarnek. They could tell immediately if the one checking out the file was a cop with a legitimate inquiry or was somebody on the outside. If so, Szarnek would notify Rhyme or Sellitto, who’d have the ESU team head to the location immediately. Szarnek also included a large amount of material and background, such as public information on SSD, all of it encrypted, to make sure that the killer spent plenty of time in the system deciphering the data and giving them a better chance to find him.

“How long will it take?”

“Fifteen, twenty minutes.”

“Good. And when you’ve got that finished, I also want to see if somebody could have hacked in from the outside.”

“Cracked SSD?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Heh. They’ll have firewalls on their firewalls on their firewalls.”

“Still, we need to know.”

“But if one of their people is the killer, I assume you don’t want me to call the company up and coordinate with them?”

“Right.”

Szarnek’s face clouded. “I’ll just try to break in, I guess.”

“You can do that legally?”

“Yes and no. I’ll only test the ’walls. It’s not a crime if I don’t actually get into their system and bring it crashing down in a really embarrassing media event that lands us all in jail.” He added ominously, “Or worse.”

“Okay, but I want the trap first. ASAP.” Rhyme glanced at the clock. Sachs and Pulaski were already spreading the word about the case down at the Gray Rock.

Szarnek pulled a heavy portable computer out of his satchel and set it on a table nearby. “Any chance I could get a…Oh, thanks.”

Thom was bringing around a coffeepot and cups.

“Just what I was going to ask for. Extra sugar, no milk. You can’t take the geek out of the geek, even when he’s a cop. Never got in the habit of this thing called sleep.” He dumped in sugar, swirled it and drank half while Thom stood there. The aide refilled the cup. “Thanks. Now, what’ve we got here?” He was looking over the workstation where Cooper was perched. “Ouch.”

“Ouch?”

“You’re running on a cable modem with one point five MBPs? You know they make computer screens in color now, and there’s this thing called the Internet.”

“Funny,” Rhyme muttered.

“Talk to me when the case is over. We’ll do some rewiring and LAN readjustment. Set you up with FE.”

Weird Al, FE, LAN…

Szarnek pulled on tinted glasses, plugged his computer into ports on Rhyme’s computer and began pounding on the keys. Rhyme noticed certain letters were worn off and the touchpad was seriously sweat-stained. The keyboard seemed to be dusted with crumbs.

The look Sellitto shot Rhyme said, It takes all kinds.

The first of the two men who joined them in Andrew Sterling’s office was slender, middle-aged, with an unrevealing face. He resembled a retired cop. The other, younger and cautious, was pure corporate junior exec. He looked like the blond brother on that sitcom, Frazier.

Regarding the first, Sachs was near the mark; he hadn’t been blue but was a former FBI agent and was now head of SSD’s security, Tom O’Day. The other was Mark Whitcomb, the assistant head of the company’s Compliance Department.

Sterling explained, “Tom and his security boys make sure people on the outside don’t do anything bad to us. Mark’s department makes sure we don’t do anything bad to the general public. We navigate a minefield. I’m sure that the research you did on SSD showed you we’re subject to hundreds of state and federal laws on privacy-the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act about misuse of personal information and pretexting, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the Drivers Privacy Protection Act. A lot of state laws too. The Compliance Department makes sure we know what the rules are and stay within the lines.”

Good, she thought. These two would be perfect to spread the word about the 522 investigation and encourage the killer to sniff out the trap on the NYPD server.

Doodling on a yellow pad, Mark Whitcomb said, “We want to make sure that when Michael Moore makes a movie about data purveyors we’re not center stage.”

“Don’t even joke,” Sterling said, laughing, though with genuine concern evident in his face. Then he asked Sachs, “Can I share with them what you told me?”

“Sure, please.”

Sterling gave a succinct and clear account. He’d retained everything she’d told him, even down to the specific brands of the clues.

Whitcomb frowned as he listened. O’Day took it all in, unsmiling and silent. Sachs was convinced that FBI reserve was not learned behavior but originated in the womb.

Sterling said firmly, “So. That’s the problem we’re facing. If there is any way SSD is involved I want to know about it, and I want solutions. We’ve identified four possible sources of the risk. Hackers, intruders, employees and clients. Your thoughts?”

O’Day, the former agent, said to Sachs, “Well, let’s deal with hackers first. We have the best firewalls in the business. Better than Microsoft and Sun. We use ICS out of Boston for Internet security. I can tell you we’re a duck in an arcade game-every hacker in the world would like to crack us. And nobody’s been able to do it since we moved to New York five years ago. We’ve had a few people get into our administrative servers for ten, fifteen minutes. But not a single breach of innerCircle, and that’s what your UNSUB would have to get into to find the information he needed for these crimes. And he couldn’t get in through a single breach; he’d have to hit at least three or four separate servers.”

Sterling added, “As for an outside intruder, that’d be impossible too. We have the same physical perimeter protections used by the National Security Agency. We have fifteen full-time security guards and twenty part-time. Besides, no visitor could get near the innerCircle servers. We log everybody and don’t let anyone roam freely, even customers.”

Sachs and Pulaski had been escorted to the sky lobby by one of those guards-a humorless young man whose vigilance wasn’t diminished one bit by the fact they were police.

O’Day added, “We had one incident about three years ago. But nothing since.” He glanced at Sterling. “The reporter.”

The CEO nodded. “Some hotshot journalist from one of the metro papers. He was doing an article on identity theft and decided we were the devil incarnate. Axciom and Choicepoint had the good sense not to let him into their headquarters. I believe in free press, so I talked to him… He went to the restroom and claimed he got lost. He came back here, cheerful as could be. But something didn’t seem right. Our security people went through his briefcase and found a camera. On it were pictures of trade-secret-protected business plans and even pass codes.”

O’Day said, “The reporter not only lost his job but was prosecuted under criminal trespass statutes. He served six months in state prison. And, as far as I know, he hasn’t had a steady job as a journalist since.”

Sterling lowered his head slightly and said to Sachs, “We take security very, very seriously.”

A young man appeared in the doorway. At first she thought it was Martin, the assistant, but she realized that was only because of the similarity in build and the black suit. “Andrew, I’m sorry to interrupt.”

“Ah, Jeremy.”

So this was the second assistant. He looked at Pulaski’s uniform, then at Sachs. Then, as with Martin, when he realized he wasn’t being introduced he ignored everyone in the room except his boss.

“Carpenter,” Sterling said. “I need to see him today.”

“Yes, Andrew.”

After he was gone, Sachs asked, “Employees? Is there anyone you’ve had disciplinary problems with?”

Sterling said, “We run extensive background checks on our people. I won’t allow hiring anybody who’s had any convictions other than traffic violations. And background checks are one of our specialties. But even if an employee wanted to get into innerCircle it would be impossible for him to steal any data. Mark, tell her about the pens.”

“Sure, Andrew.” To Sachs he said, “We have concrete firewalls.”

“I’m not a technical person,” Sachs said.

Whitcomb laughed. “No, no, it’s very low-tech. Literally concrete. As in walls and floors. We divide up the data when we receive them and store them in physically separate places. You’ll understand better if I tell you how SSD operates. We start with the premise that data is our main asset. If somebody was to duplicate innerCircle we’d be out of business in a week. So number one-‘protect our asset,’ as we say here. Now, where does all this data come from? From thousands of sources: credit card companies, banks, government-records offices, retail stores, online operations, court clerks, DMV departments, hospitals, insurance companies. We consider each event that creates data a quote transaction, which could be a call to an eight hundred number, registering a car, a health insurance claim, filing a lawsuit, a birth, wedding, purchase, merchandise return, a complaint… In your business, a transaction could be a rape, a burglary, a murder-any crime. Also, the opening of a case file, selecting a juror, a trial, a conviction.”

Whitcomb continued, “Any time data about a transaction comes to SSD it goes first to the Intake Center, where it’s evaluated. For security we have a data masking policy-separating the person’s name and replacing it with a code.”

“Social Security number?”

A flicker of emotion crossed Sterling’s face. “Ah, no. Those were created solely for government retirement accounts. Ages ago. It was a fluke that they became identification. Inaccurate, easy to steal or buy. Dangerous-like keeping a loaded gun unlocked around the house. Our code is a sixteen-digit number. Ninety-eight percent of adult Americans have SSD codes. Now, every child whose birth is registered-anywhere in North America-automatically gets a code.”

“Why sixteen digits?” Pulaski asked.

“Gives us room for expansion,” Sterling said. “We never have to worry about running out of numbers. We can assign nearly one quintillion codes. The earth will run out of living space before SSD runs out of numbers. The codes make our system much more secure and it’s far faster to process data than using a name or Social. Also, using a code neutralizes the human element and takes the prejudice out of the equation. Psychologically we have opinions about Adolf or Britney or Shaquilla or Diego before we even meet them, simply because of their name. A number eliminates that bias. And improves efficiency. Please, go on, Mark.”

“Sure, Andrew. Once the name is swapped for the code, the Intake Center evaluates the transaction, decides where it belongs and sends it to one or more of three separate areas-our data pens. Pen A is where we store personal lifestyle data. Pen B is financial. That includes salary history, banking, credit reports, insurance. Pen C is public and government filings and records.”

“Then the data’s cleansed.” Sterling took over once again. “The impurities are weeded out and it’s made uniform. For instance, on some forms your sex is given as ‘F.’ In others, it’s ‘Female.’ Sometimes it’s a one or a zero. You have to be consistent.

“We also remove the noise-that’s impure data. It could be erroneous, could have too many details, could have too few details. Noise is contamination, and contamination has to be eliminated.” He said this firmly-another dash of emotion. “Then the cleansed data sits in one of our pens until a client needs a fortune-teller.”

“How do you mean?” asked Pulaski.

Sterling explained, “In the nineteen seventies, computer database software gave companies an analysis of past performance. In the nineties the data showed how they were doing at any given moment. More helpful. Now we can predict what consumers are going to do and guide our clients to take advantage of that.”

Sachs said, “Then you’re not just predicting the future. You’re trying to change it.”

“Exactly. But what other reason is there to go to a fortune-teller?”

His eyes were calm, almost amused. Yet Sachs felt uneasy, thinking back to the run-in with the federal agent yesterday in Brooklyn. It was as if 522 had done just what he was describing: predicted a shootout between them.

Sterling gestured to Whitcomb, who continued, “Okay, so data, which contain no names but only numbers, go into these three separate pens on different floors in different security zones. An employee in the public records pen can’t access the data in the lifestyle pen or the financial pen. And nobody in any of the data pens can access the information in the Intake Center, and link the name and address to the sixteen-digit code.”

Sterling said, “That’s what Tom meant when he said that a hacker would have to breach all of the data pens independently.”

O’Day added, “And we monitor twenty-four/seven. We’d know instantly if someone unauthorized tried to physically enter a pen. They’d be fired on the spot and probably arrested. Besides, you can’t download anything from the computers in the pens-there are no ports-and even if you managed to break into a server and hardwire a device, you couldn’t get it out. Everybody’s searched-every employee, senior executive, security guard, fire warden, janitor. Even Andrew. We have metal and dense-material detectors at every entrance and exit to the data pens and Intake-even the fire doors.”

Whitcomb took up the narrative. “And a magnetic field generator that you have to walk through. It erases all digital data on any medium you’re carrying-iPod, phone or hard drive. No, nobody gets out of those rooms with a kilobyte of information on them.”

Sachs said, “So stealing the data from these pens-either by hackers outside or intruders or employees inside-would be almost impossible.”

Sterling was nodding. “Data are our only asset. We guard them religiously.”

“What about the other scenario-somebody who works for a client?”

“Like Tom was saying, the way this man operates he’d have to have access to the innerCircle dossiers of each of the victims and the men arrested for the crimes.”

“Right.”

Sterling lifted his hands, like a professor. “But customers don’t have access to dossiers. They wouldn’t want them anyway. innerCircle contains raw data and wouldn’t do them any good. What they want is our analysis of the data. Customers log on to Watchtower-that’s our proprietary database management system-and other programs like Xpectation or FORT. The programs themselves search through innerCircle, find the relevant data and put them into usable form. If you want to think of the mining analogy, Watchtower sifts through tons of dirt and rock and finds gold nuggets.”

She said in response, “But if a client bought a number of mailing lists, say, they could come up with enough data about one of our victims to commit the crimes, couldn’t they?” She nodded at the evidence list she’d shown Sterling earlier. “For instance, our perp could get lists of everyone who bought that kind of shave cream and condoms and duct tape and running shoes and so on.”

Sterling lifted an eyebrow. “Hm. It would be a huge amount of work but it’s theoretically possible… All right. I’ll get a list of all our customers who’ve bought any data that included your victims’ names-in the past, say, three months? No, maybe six.”

“That should do it.” She dug through her briefcase-considerably less organized than Sterling’s desktop-and handed him a list of the victims and fall guys.

“Our client agreement gives us the right to share information about them. There won’t be a problem legally but it will take a few hours to put together.”

“Thanks. Now, one final question about employees… Even if they’re not allowed in the pens, could they download a dossier in their office?”

He was nodding, impressed by her question, it seemed, even though it suggested an SSD worker might be the killer. “Most employees can’t-again, we have to protect our data. But a few of us have what’s called ‘all-access permission.’”

Whitcomb gave a smile. “Well, but look who that is, Andrew.”

“If there’s a problem here, we need to explore all possible solutions.”

Whitcomb said to Sachs and Pulaski, “The thing is, the all-access employees are senior people here. They’ve been with the company for years. We’re like a family. We have parties together, we have our inspirational retreats-”

Sterling held up a hand, cutting him off, and said, “We have to follow up on it, Mark. I want this rooted out, whatever it takes. I want answers.”

“Who has all-access rights?” Sachs asked.

Sterling shrugged. “I’m authorized. Our head of Sales, the head of Technical Operations. Our Human Resources director could put together a dossier, I suppose, though I’m sure he never has. And Mark’s boss, our Compliance Department director.” He gave her the names.

Sachs glanced at Whitcomb, who shook his head. “I don’t have access.”

O’Day didn’t either.

“Your assistants?” Sachs asked Sterling, referring to Jeremy and Martin.

“No…Now, as for the repair folks-the techies-the line people couldn’t assemble a dossier but we have two service managers who could. One on the day shift, one at night.” He gave her their names too.

Sachs looked over the list. “There’s one easy way to tell whether or not they’re innocent.”

“How?”

“We know where the killer was on Sunday afternoon. If they have alibis, they’ll be off the hook. Let me interview them. Right now, if we can.”

“Good,” Sterling said and gave an approving look at her suggestion: a simple “solution” to one of his “problems.” Then she realized something: Every time he’d looked at her this morning his gaze had met her eyes. Unlike many, if not most, men Sachs met, Sterling hadn’t once glanced over her body, hadn’t offered a bit of flirt. She wondered what the bedroom story was. She asked, “Could I see the security in the data pens for myself?”

“Sure. Just leave your pager, phone and PDA outside. And any thumb-drives. If you don’t, all the data will be erased. And you’ll be searched when you leave.”

“Okay.”

Sterling nodded to O’Day, who stepped into the hall and returned with the stern security guard who’d walked Sachs and Pulaski here from the massive lobby downstairs.

Sterling printed out a pass for her, signed it and handed it to the guard, who led her out into the halls.

Sachs was pleased that Sterling hadn’t resisted her request. She had an ulterior motive for seeing the pens for herself. Not only could she make yet more people aware of the investigation-in the hope they’d go for the bait-but she could question the guard about the security measures, to verify what O’Day, Sterling and Whitcomb had told her.

But the man remained virtually silent, like a child told by his parents not to speak to strangers.

Through doorways, up corridors, down a staircase, up another one. She was soon completely disoriented. Her muscles shivered. The spaces were increasingly confined, narrow and dim. Her claustrophobia began to kick in; while the windows were small throughout the Gray Rock, here-approaching the data pens-they were nonexistent. She took a deep breath. It didn’t help.

She glanced at his name badge. “Say, John?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“What’s the story with the windows? They’re either small-or there aren’t any.”

“Andrew’s concerned that people might try to photograph information from outside, like passcodes. Or business plans.”

“Really? Could somebody do that?”

“I don’t know. We’re told to check sometimes-scan nearby observation decks, windows of buildings facing the company. Nobody’s ever seen something suspicious. But Andrew wants us to keep doing it.”

The data pens were eerie places, all color-coded. Personal lifestyle was blue, financial red, governmental green. They were huge spaces but that did nothing to allay her claustrophobia. The ceilings were very low, the rooms dim and aisles narrow between the rows of computers. A constant churning filled the air, a low tone like a growl. The air-conditioning was working like mad, given the number of computers and the electricity they’d require, but the atmosphere was close and stifling.

As for the computers, she’d never seen so many in her life. They were massive white boxes and were identified, curiously, not by numbers or letters but by decals depicting cartoon characters like Spider-Man, Batman, Barney, the Road Runner and Mickey Mouse.

“SpongeBob?” she asked, nodding at one.

John offered his first smile. “It’s another layer of security Andrew thought of. We have people looking online for anybody talking about SSD and innerCircle. If there’s a reference to the company and a cartoon name, like Wile E. Coyote or Superman, it might mean somebody’s a little too interested in the computers themselves. The names jump out more than if we just numbered the computers.”

“Smart,” she said, reflecting on the irony that Sterling preferred people to be numbered and his computers named.

They entered the Intake Center, painted a grim gray. It was smaller than the data pens and boosted her claustrophobia even further. As in the pens, the only decorations here were the logo of the watchtower and illuminated window, and a large picture of Andrew Sterling, a posed smile on his face. Below it was the caption “You’re Number One!”

Maybe it referred to market share or to an award the company had won. Or maybe it was a slogan about the importance of employees. Still, to Sachs it seemed ominous, as if you were at the top of a list you didn’t want to be on.

Her breathing was coming quickly as the sense of confinement grew.

“Gets to you, doesn’t it?” the guard asked.

She gave a smile. “A little.”

“We make our rounds but nobody spends more time in the pens than we have to.”

Now that she’d broken the ice and gotten John to answer in more than monosyllables, she asked him about the security, to verify if Sterling and the others were being straight.

They were, it seemed. John reiterated what the CEO had said: None of the computers or workstations in the rooms had a slot or port to download data, merely keyboards and monitors. And the rooms were shielded, the guard said; no wireless signals could get out. And he explained too what Sterling and Whitcomb had told her earlier about data from each pen being useless without the data from the others and from Intake. There wasn’t much security on the computer monitors but to get into the pens you needed your ID card, a passcode and a biometric scan-or, apparently, a big security guard watching your every move (which was just what John had been doing, and not so subtly).

The security outside the pens was tight too, as the executives had told her. Both she and the guard were searched carefully when they left each one and had to walk through both a metal detector and a thick frame called a Data-Clear unit. The machine warned, “Passing through this system permanently erases all digital data on computers, drives, cell phones and other devices.”

As they returned to Sterling’s office John told her that to his knowledge nobody had ever broken into SSD. Still, O’Day regularly had them run drills to prevent security intrusions. Like most of the guards, John didn’t carry a gun but Sterling had a policy that at least two armed guards be present twenty-four hours a day.

Back in the CEO’s office, she found Pulaski sitting on a huge leather sofa near Martin’s desk. Though not a small man, he seemed dwarfed, a student who’d been sent to the principal’s office. In her absence, the young officer had taken the initiative to check on the Compliance Department head, Samuel Brockton-Whitcomb’s boss, who had all-access rights. He was staying in Washington, D.C.; hotel records showed he’d been at brunch in the dining room at the time of the killing yesterday. She noted this, then glanced over the all-access permission list.

Andrew Sterling, President, Chief Executive Officer

Sean Cassel, Director of Sales and Marketing

Wayne Gillespie, Director of Technical Operations

Samuel Brockton, Director, Compliance Department

Alibi-hotel records confirm presence in Washington

Peter Arlonzo-Kemper, Director of Human Resources

Steven Shraeder, Technical Service and Support Manager, day shift

Faruk Mameda, Technical Service and Support Manager, night shift

She said to Sterling, “I’d like to interview them as soon as possible.”

The CEO called his assistant and learned that, other than Brockton, everyone was in town, though Shraeder was handling a hardware crisis in the Intake Center and Mameda would not be coming in until three that afternoon. He instructed Martin to have them come upstairs for interviews. He’d find a vacant conference room.

Sterling told the intercom to disconnect and said, “All right, Detective. It’s up to you now. Go clear our name…or find your killer.”

Chapter Twenty

Rodney Szarnek had their mousetrap in place and the young shaggy-haired officer was happily trying to hack into SSD’s main servers. His knee bobbed and he whistled from time to time, which irritated Rhyme, but he let the kid alone. The criminalist had been known to talk to himself when searching crime scenes and considering possible approaches to a case.

Takes all kinds…

The doorbell rang; it was an officer from the CS lab in Queens with a present, some evidence from one of the earlier crimes: the murder weapon, a knife, used in the coin theft and killing. The rest of the physical evidence was “in storage somewhere.” A request had been made but no one could say when, or if, it could be located.

Rhyme had Cooper sign the chain-of-custody form-even after trial, protocols must be followed.

“That’s strange: Most of the other evidence is missing,” Rhyme remarked though he realized that, being a weapon, the knife would have been retained in a locked facility in the lab’s inventory, rather than archived with nonlethal evidence.

Rhyme glanced at the chart about the crime. “They found some of that dust in the knife handle. Let’s see if we can figure out what it is. But, first, what’s the story on the knife itself?”

Cooper ran the manufacturer’s information through the NYPD weapons database. “Made in China, sold in bulk to thousands of retail outlets. Cheap, so we can assume he paid cash for it.”

“Well, hadn’t expected much. Let’s move on to the dust.”

Cooper donned gloves and opened the bag. He carefully brushed the handle of the knife, whose blade was dark brown with the victim’s blood, and it shed traces of white dust onto the examination paper.

Dust fascinated Rhyme. In forensics the term refers to solid particles less than five hundred micrometers in size and made up of fibers from clothing and upholstery, dander from human and animal skin, fragments of plants and insects, bits of dried excrement, dirt, and any number of chemicals. Some types are aerosol, others settle quickly on surfaces. Dust can cause health problems-like black lung-and be dangerously explosive (flour dust in grain elevators, for instance) and can even affect the climate.

Forensically, thanks to static electricity and other adhesive properties, dust is often transferred from perpetrator to crime scene and vice versa, which makes it extremely helpful to police. When Rhyme was running the Crime Scene division of the NYPD he’d created a large database of dust, gathered from all five boroughs of the city and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut.

Only small amounts adhered to the knife handle but Mel Cooper collected enough to run a sample through the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, which breaks substances down into their component parts, then identifies each one. This took some time. It wasn’t Cooper’s fault. His hands, surprisingly large and muscular for such a slight man, moved quickly and efficiently. It was the machines that plodded away slowly, performing their methodical magic. While they waited for the results Cooper ran additional chemical tests on another sample of the dust to reveal materials the GC/MS might not find.

Eventually the results were available and Mel Cooper explained the combined analysis as he wrote the details on the whiteboard. “All right, Lincoln. We’ve got vermiculite, plaster, synthetic foam, glass fragments, paint particles, mineral wool fibers, glass fibers, calcite grains, paper fibers, quartz grains, low-temperature combustion material, metal flakes, chryso-tile asbestos and some chemicals. Looks like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, paraffin, olefin, napthene, octanes, polychlorinated biphenyls, dibenzodioxins-don’t see those very often-and dibenzofurans. Oh, and some brominated diphenyl ethers.”

“The Trade Center,” Rhyme said.

“It is?”

“Yep.”

The dust from the collapsed World Trade Towers in 2001 had been the source of health problems for workers near Ground Zero, and variations of its composition had been in the news lately. Rhyme was well aware of its composition.

“So he’s downtown?”

“Possibly,” Rhyme said. “But you could find the dust all over the five boroughs. Let’s leave it a question mark for the time being…” He grimaced. “So our profile so far: a man who might be white or a light-skinned ethnic. Who might collect coins and might like art. And his residence or place of work might be downtown. He might have children, might smoke.” Rhyme squinted at the knife. “Let me see it up close.” Cooper brought the weapon to him and Rhyme stared at every millimeter of the handle. His body was defective but his eyesight was as good as a teenager’s. “There. What’s that?”

“Where?”

“Between the hasp and the bone.”

It was a tiny fleck of something pale. “You could see that?” the tech whispered. “I missed it completely.” With a needle probe he worked it out and put it on an examination slide. He looked at it through a microscope. He started with lower magnifications, which are enough, 4 to 24 power, unless you need the magic of a scanning electron microscope. “Crumb of food, looks like. Something baked. Orange tint. Spectrum suggests oil. Maybe junk food. Like Doritos. Or potato chips.”

“Not enough to run through the GC/MS.”

“No way,” Cooper confirmed.

“He wasn’t going to plant something as small as that at the fall guy’s house. It’s some other bit of real information about Five Twenty-Two.”

What the hell was it? Something from his lunch the day of the killing?

“I want to taste it.”

“What? There’s blood on it.”

“The handle, not the blade. Just where that fleck is. I want to find out what it is.”

“There’s not enough to taste. This little chip? You can hardly see it. I didn’t see it.”

“No, the knife itself. Maybe I can find a flavor or spice that’ll tell us something.”

“You can’t lick a murder weapon, Lincoln.”

“Where’s that written down, Mel? I don’t remember reading that. We need information about this guy!”

“Well…okay.” The tech held the knife close to Rhyme’s face and the criminalist leaned forward and touched his tongue to the place where they’d found the fleck.

“Jesus Christ!” He reared his head back.

“What’s wrong?” Cooper asked, alarmed.

“Get me some water!”

Cooper tossed the knife onto the examination table and went to call Thom, as Rhyme spit on the floor. His mouth was on fire.

Thom came running. “What’s wrong?”

“Man…that hurts. I asked for water! I just ate some hot sauce.”

“Hot sauce, like Tabasco?”

“I don’t know what kind!”

“Well, you don’t want water. You want milk or yogurt.”

“Then get some!”

Thom came back with a carton of yogurt and fed Rhyme several spoonfuls. To his surprise the pain went away immediately. “Phew. That hurt… Okay, Mel, we’ve learned something else-maybe. Our boy likes his chips and salsa. Well, let’s just go with a snack food and hot sauce. Put it on the chart.”

As Cooper wrote, Rhyme glanced at the clock and snapped, “Where the hell is Sachs?”

“Well, she’s at SSD.” Cooper looked confused.

“I know that. What I mean is why the hell isn’t she back here?…And, Thom, I want some more yogurt!”

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

· Lives in/near downtown Manhattan?

· Eats snack food/hot sauce

NONPLANTED EVIDENCE

· 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

· Dust, from World Trade Center attack, possibly indicating residence/job downtown Manhattan

· Snack food with hot sauce

Chapter Twenty-one

The conference room where Sachs and Pulaski had been led was as minimalist as Sterling’s office. She decided a good way to describe the entire company would be “austere deco.”

Sterling himself escorted them to the room and gestured to two chairs, beneath the logo of the window atop the watchtower. He said, “I don’t expect to be treated any differently than anyone else. Since I have all-access rights I’m a suspect too. But I have an alibi for yesterday-I was on Long Island all day. I do that a lot-drive to some of the big discount stores and the membership shopping clubs to see what people are buying, how they buy, what times of day. I’m always looking for ways to make our business more efficient, and you can’t do that unless you know our clients’ needs.”

“Who were you meeting with?”

“Nobody. I never tell anyone who I am. I want to see the operation the way it actually works. Blemishes and everything. But my car’s E-ZPass records should show that I went through the Midtown Tunnel tollbooth about nine A.M. eastbound and then came back through about five-thirty. You can check with DMV.” He recited his tag number. “Oh, and yesterday? I called my son. He took the train up to Westchester to go hiking in some forest preserve. He went by himself and I wanted to check on him. I called about two in the afternoon. The phone records’ll show a call from my Hampton house. Or you can take a look at the incoming call list on his mobile. It should have the date and time. His extension is seven one eight seven.”

Sachs wrote this down, along with the number of Sterling’s summer house’s phone. She thanked him, then Jeremy, the “outside” assistant, arrived and whispered something to his boss.

“Have to take care of something. If there’s anything you need, anything at all, just let me know.”

A few minutes later the first of their suspects arrived. Sean Cassel, the director of Sales and Marketing. He struck her as quite young, probably midthirties, but she’d seen very few people in SSD who were over forty. Data was perhaps the new Silicon Valley, a world of youthful entrepreneurs.

Cassel, with a long face, classically handsome, seemed athletic; solid arms, broad shoulders. He was wearing the SSD “uniform,” in his case a navy suit. The white shirt was immaculate and the cuffs clasped with heavy gold links. The yellow tie was thick silk. He had curly hair, rosy skin and peered steadily at Sachs through glasses. She hadn’t known Dolce & Gabbana made frames.

“Hi.”

“Hello. I’m Detective Sachs, this is Officer Pulaski. Have a seat.” She shook his hand, noting the firm grip that lingered longer than the clasp with Pulaski.

“So you’re a detective?” The sales director had not a shred of interest in the patrolman.

“That’s right. Would you like to see my ID?”

“No, that’s okay.”

“Now, we’re just getting information about some of the employees here. Do you know a Myra Weinburg?”

“No. Should I?”

“She was the victim of a murder.”

“Oh.” A flash of contrition, as the hip façade vanished momentarily. “I heard something about a crime. I didn’t know it was a murder, though. I’m sorry. Was she an employee here?”

“No. But the person who killed her might have had access to information in your company’s computers. I know you have full access to innerCircle; is there any way somebody who works for you could assemble an individual’s dossier?”

He shook his head. “To get a closet you need three passcodes. Or a biomet and one.”

“Closet?”

He hesitated. “Oh, that’s what we call a dossier. We use a lot of shorthand in the knowledge service business.”

Like secrets in a closet, she assumed.

“But nobody could get my passcode. Everyone’s very careful about keeping them secret. Andrew insists on it.” Cassel removed his glasses and polished them with a black cloth that appeared magically in his hand. “He’s fired employees who’ve used other people’s passcodes even with their permission. Fired on the spot.” He concentrated on his glass-polishing task. Then looked up. “But let’s be honest. What you’re really asking about isn’t passcodes but alibis. Am I right?”

“We’d like to know that too. Where were you from noon to four P.M. yesterday?”

“Running. I’m training for a mini-triathlon… You look like you run too. You’re pretty athletic.”

If standing still while punching holes in targets at twenty-five and fifty feet is athletic, then yes. “Could anybody verify that?”

“That you’re athletic? It’s pretty obvious to me.”

Smile. Sometimes it was best to play along. Pulaski stirred-which Cassel noted with amusement-but she said nothing. Sachs didn’t need anybody to defend her honor.

With a sideways glance at the uniformed officer, Cassel continued, “No, I’m afraid not. A friend stayed over. But she left about nine-thirty. Am I a suspect or anything?”

“We’re just getting information at this point,” Pulaski said.

“Are you now?” He sounded condescending, as if he were talking to a child. “Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.”

A line from an old TV show. Sachs couldn’t remember which one.

Sachs asked where he’d been at the times of the other killings-the coin dealer, the earlier rape and the woman who’d owned the Prescott painting. He replaced the glasses and told her he didn’t recall. He seemed completely at ease.

“How often do you go into the data pens?”

“Maybe once a week.”

“Do you take any information out?”

He frowned slightly. “Well…you can’t. The security system won’t let you.”

“And how often do you download dossiers?”

“I don’t know if I ever have. It’s just raw data. Too noisy to be helpful for anything I do.”

“All right. Well, I appreciate your time. I think that’ll do it for now.”

The smile and flirt faded. “So is this a problem? Something I should be worried about?”

“We’re just doing some preliminary investigation.”

“Ah, not giving anything away.” A glance at Pulaski. “Play it close to the chest, right, Sergeant Friday?”

Ah, that was it, Sachs realized. Dragnet. The old police show she and her father would watch in rerun years ago.

After he’d left, another employee joined them. Wayne Gillespie, who oversaw the technical side of the company-the software and hardware. He didn’t exactly fit Sachs’s impression of a geek. Not at first. He was tanned and in good shape, wore an expensive silver-or platinum-bracelet. His grip was strong. But on closer examination she decided he was a classic techie after all, somebody dressed by his mother for class photographs. The short, thin man wore a rumpled suit and a tie that wasn’t knotted properly. His shoes were scuffed, his nails ragged and not properly scrubbed. His hair could use a trim. It was as if he was playing the role of corporate exec but infinitely preferred to be in a dark room with his computer.

Unlike Cassel, Gillespie was nervous, hands constantly in motion, fiddling with three electronic devices on his belt-a BlackBerry, a PDA and an elaborate cell phone. He avoided eye contact-flirt was the last thing on his mind, though, like the sales director, his wedding ring finger was bare. Maybe Sterling preferred single men in positions of power at his company. Loyal princes rather than ambitious dukes.

Sachs’s impression was that Gillespie had heard less than Cassel about their presence here and she snagged his attention when she described the crimes. “Interesting. Okay, interesting. That’s sleek, he’s pianoing data to commit crimes.”

“He’s what?”

Gillespie flicked his fingers together with nervous energy. “I mean, he’s finding data. Collecting it.”

No comment about the fact that people had been murdered. Was this an act? The real killer might have feigned horror and sympathy.

Sachs asked his whereabouts on Sunday and he too had no alibi, though he launched into a long story of code he was debugging at home and some role-playing computer game he was competing in.

“So there’d be a record of when you were online yesterday?”

A hesitation now. “Oh, I was just practicing, you know. I wasn’t online. I looked up and suddenly it was late. You’re so nod, everything else kind of disappears.”

“Nod?”

He realized he was speaking a foreign language. “Oh, I mean, like, you’re in a zone. You get caught up in the game. Like the rest of your life dozes off.”

He claimed not to know Myra Weinburg either. And no one could have gotten access to his passcodes, he assured her. “As for cracking my words, good luck-they’re all sixteen-digit random characters. I’ve never written them down. I’m lucky I’ve got a good memory.”

Gillespie was on his computer “in the system” all the time. He added defensively, “I mean, it’s my job.” Though he frowned in confusion when asked about downloading individual dossiers. “There’s, like, no point. Reading about everything John Doe bought last week at his local grocery store. Hello…I’ve got better things to do.”

He also admitted that he spent a lot of time in the data pens, “tuning the boxes.” Her impression was that he liked it there, found it comfortable-the same place that she couldn’t escape from fast enough.

Gillespie too was unable to recall where he’d been at the times of the other killings. She thanked him and he left, pulling his PDA off his belt before he was through the doorway and typing a message with his thumbs faster than Sachs could use all her fingers.

As they waited for the next all-access suspect to arrive, Sachs asked Pulaski, “Impressions?”

“Okay, I don’t like Cassel.”

“I’m with you there.”

“But he seems too obnoxious to be Five Twenty-Two. Too yuppie, you know? If he could kill somebody with his ego, then, yeah. In a minute…As for Gillespie? I’m not so sure. He tried to seem surprised about Myra’s death but I’m not sure he was. And that attitude of his-‘pianoing’ and ‘nod’? You know what those are? Expressions from the street. ‘Pianoing’ means looking for crack, like your fingers are all over the place. You know, frantic. And ‘nod’ means being drugged out on smack or a tranquilizer. It’s how kids from the burbs talk trying to sound cool when they’re scoring from dealers in Harlem or the Bronx.”

“You think he’s into drugs?”

“Well, he seemed pretty twitchy. But my impression?”

“I asked.”

“It’s not drugs he’s addicted to, it’s this-” The young officer gestured around him. “The data.”

She thought about this and agreed. The atmosphere in SSD was intoxicating, though not in a pleasant way. Eerie and disorienting. It was like being on painkillers.

Another man appeared in the doorway. He was the Human Resources director, a young, trim, light-skinned African American. Peter Arlonzo-Kemper explained that he rarely went into the data pens but had permission to, so that he could meet with employees at their job stations. He did go online into innerCircle from time to time on personnel-related issues-but only to review data on employees of SSD, never the public.

So he had accessed “closets,” despite what Sterling had said about him.

The intense man pasted a smile on his face and answered in monotones, frequently changing the subject, the gist of his message being that Sterling-always “Andrew,” Sachs had noticed-was the “kindest, most considerate boss anybody could ask for.” Nobody would ever think about betraying him or the “ideals” of SSD, whatever those might be. He couldn’t imagine a criminal within the hallowed halls of the company.

His admiration was tedious.

Once she got him off the worship, he explained that he had been with his wife all day on Sunday (making him the only married employee she’d talked to). And he’d been cleaning out his recently deceased mother’s house in the Bronx on the date Alice Sanderson had been killed. He’d been alone but imagined he could find someone who’d seen him. Arlonzo-Kemper couldn’t recall where he’d been during the times of the other killings.

When they had finished the interviews the guard escorted Sachs and Pulaski back to Sterling’s outer office. The CEO was meeting with a man about Sterling’s age, solid and with combed-over dark blond hair. He sat slouching in one of the stiff wooden chairs. He wasn’t an SSD employee: He wore a Polo shirt and a sports jacket. Sterling looked up and saw Sachs. He ended the meeting and rose, then escorted the man out.

Sachs looked at what the visitor was holding, a stack of papers with the name “Associated Warehousing” on top, apparently the name of his company.

“Martin, could you call a car for Mr. Carpenter?”

“Yes, Andrew.”

“We’re all together, are we, Bob?”

“Yes, Andrew.” Carpenter, towering over Sterling, somberly shook the CEO’s hand, then turned and left. A security guard led him down the hall.

The officers accompanied Sterling back into his office.

“What did you find?” he asked.

“Nothing conclusive. Some people have alibis, some don’t. We’ll keep pursuing the case and see if the evidence or witnesses lead us anywhere. There’s one thing I was wondering. Could I get a copy of a dossier? Arthur Rhyme’s.”

“Who?”

“He’s one of the men on the list-one that we think was wrongly arrested.”

“Of course.” Sterling sat at his desk, touched his thumb to a reader beside the keyboard and typed for a few seconds. He paused, eyes on the screen. Then more keyboarding and a document began printing out. He handed the thirty or so pages to her-Arthur Rhyme’s “closet.”

Well, that was easy, she noted. Then Sachs nodded at the computer. “Is there a record of you doing that?”

“A record? Oh, no. We don’t log our internal downloads.” He looked over his notes again. “I’ll have Martin pull the client list together. It might take two or three hours.”

As they walked into the outer office, Sean Cassel stepped inside. He wasn’t smiling. “What’s this about a list of clients, Andrew? You’re going to give that to them?”

“That’s right, Sean.”

“Why clients?”

Pulaski said, “We were thinking that somebody who works for an SSD client got information he used in the crimes.”

The young man scoffed. “Obviously that’s what you think… But why? None of them has direct innerCircle access. They can’t download closets.”

Pulaski explained, “They might’ve bought mailing lists that had the information in them.”

“Mailing lists? Do you know how many times a client would have to be in the system to assemble all the information you’re talking about? It’d be a full-time job. Think about it.”

Pulaski blushed and looked down. “Well…”

Mark Whitcomb, of the Compliance Department, was standing near Martin’s desk. “Sean, he doesn’t know how the business works.”

“Well, Mark, I’m thinking it’s more about logic, really. Doesn’t it seem? Each client would have to buy hundreds of mailing lists. And there are probably three, four hundred of them who’ve been in the closets of the sixteens they’re interested in.”

“Sixteens?” Sachs asked.

“It means ‘people.’” He waved vaguely toward the narrow windows, presumably suggesting humanity outside the Gray Rock. “It comes from the code we use.”

More shorthand. Closets, sixteens, pianoing…There was something smug, if not contemptuous, about the expressions.

Sterling said coolly, “We need to do everything we can to find the truth here.”

Cassel shook his head. “It’s not a client, Andrew. Nobody would dare use our data for a crime. It’d be suicide.”

“Sean, if SSD’s involved in this we have to know.”

“All right, Andrew. Whatever you think best.” Sean Cassel ignored Pulaski, gave a cold, nonflirtatious smile to Sachs and left.

Sachs said to Sterling, “We’ll pick up that client list when we come back to interview the tech managers.”

As the CEO gave instructions to Martin, Sachs heard Mark Whitcomb whisper to Pulaski, “Don’t pay any attention to Cassel. He and Gillespie-they’re the golden boys of this business. Young Turks, you know. I’m a hindrance. You’re a hindrance.”

“Not a problem,” the young officer said noncommittally, though Sachs could see he was grateful. He has everything but confidence, she thought.

Whitcomb left, and the two officers said good-bye to Sterling.

Then the CEO touched her arm gently. “There’s something I want to say, Detective.”

She turned to the man, who stood with his arms at his side, feet spread, looking up at her with his intense green eyes. It was impossible to look away from his focused, mesmerizing gaze.

“I’m not going to deny that I’m in the knowledge service provider field to make money. But I’m also in it to improve our society. Think about what we do. Think about the kids who’re going to get decent clothes and nice Christmas presents for the first time because of the money their parents save, thanks to SSD. Or about the young marrieds who can now find a bank that’ll give them a mortgage for their first house because SSD can predict that in fact they’ll be acceptable credit risks. Or the identity thieves that’re caught because our algorithms see a glitch in your credit card spending patterns. Or the RFID tags in a child’s bracelet or wristwatch that tell the parents where they are every minute of the day. The intelligent toilets that diagnose diabetes when you don’t even know you’re at risk.

“And take your line of work, Detective. Say you’re investigating a murder. There’re traces of cocaine on a knife, the murder weapon. Our PublicSure program can tell you who with a cocaine arrest in his background used a knife in the commission of a felony any time in the past twenty years, in any geographic area you like, and whether they were right- or left-handed and what their shoe sizes are. Before you even ask, their fingerprints pop up on the screen, along with their pictures, and details of their M.O.’s, distinguishing characteristics, disguises they’ve used in the past, distinctive voice patterns and a dozen more attributes.

“We can also tell you who bought that particular brand of knife-or maybe even that very knife. And possibly we know where the purchaser was at the time of the crime and where he is now. If the system can’t find him, it can tell you the percentage likelihood of his being at a known accomplice’s house and display their fingerprints and distinguishing characteristics. And this whole bundle of data comes to you in a grand total of about twenty seconds.

“Our society needs help, Detective. Remember the broken windows? Well, SSD is here to help…” He smiled. “That’s the wind-up. Here’s the pitch. I’m asking that you be discreet in the investigation. I’ll do whatever I can-especially if it seems this is somebody from SSD. But if rumors get started about breaches here, careless security, our competitors and critics would jump on that. And jump hard. It could badly interfere with SSD’s job to fix as many windows as we can and make this world better. Are we in agreement?”

Amelia Sachs suddenly felt bad about this duplicitous mission, planting the seeds to encourage their perp to go after the trap without telling Sterling. She struggled to maintain eye contact as she said, “I think we’re in complete agreement.”

“Wonderful. Now, Martin, please show our guests out.”

Chapter Twenty-two

“Broken windows?”

Sachs was telling Rhyme about the SSD logo.

“I like that.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. Think about it. It’s a metaphor for what we do here. We find the small bits of evidence and that leads us to the big answer.”

Sellitto nodded toward Rodney Szarnek, sitting in the corner, oblivious to everything but his computer and still whistling. “Kid in the T-shirt’s got the trap in place. And he’s trying to hack in now.” He called, “Any luck, Officer?”

“Heh-those folk know what they’re doing. But I’ve got a dozen tricks up my sleeve.”

Sachs told them that the head of security didn’t believe that anyone could hack into innerCircle.

“Only makes the game sweeter,” Szarnek said. He finished another coffee and resumed the faint whistling.

Sachs then told them about Sterling, the company and how the data-mining process worked. Despite what Thom had explained yesterday and despite their preliminary research, Rhyme hadn’t realized how extensive the industry was.

“He acting fishy?” Sellitto said. “This Sterling?”

Rhyme grunted at the, to him, pointless question.

“No. He’s cooperative. And, good for us, he’s a true believer. Data’s his god. Anything that jeopardizes his company he wants to root out.”

Sachs then described the tight security at SSD, how very few people had access to all three data pens, and how it was impossible to steal data even if you got inside. “They’ve had one intruder-a reporter-who was just after a story, not even stealing trade secrets. He did time and his career is over with.”

“Vindictive, hm?”

Sachs considered this. “No. I’d say protective… Now, as for employees: I interviewed most of them who had access to people’s dossiers. There are a few that weren’t accounted for yesterday afternoon. Oh, and I asked if they log downloads; they don’t. And we’ll be getting a list of clients who’ve bought data about the vics and fall guys.”

“But the important thing is you let them know about an investigation and gave them all the name Myra Weinburg.”

“Right.”

Then Sachs took a document from her briefcase. Arthur’s dossier, she explained. “Thought it might be helpful. If nothing else, you might be interested in it. Seeing what your cousin’s been up to.” Sachs removed the staple and mounted it on the reading frame near Rhyme-a device that turned pages for him.

He glanced at the document. Then back to the charts.

“Don’t you want to look through it?” she asked.

“Maybe later.”

She returned to her briefcase. “Here’s the list of SSD employees who have access to the dossiers-they’re called ‘closets.’”

“As in secrets?”

“Right. Pulaski’s out checking their alibis. We have to go back to talk to the two technical managers but here’s what we have so far.” On a whiteboard she wrote their names and some comments.

Andrew Sterling, President, Chief Executive Officer

Alibi-on Long Island, to be verified

Sean Cassel, Director of Sales and Marketing

No alibi

Wayne Gillespie, Director of Technical Operations

No alibi

Samuel Brockton, Director, Compliance Department

Alibi-hotel records confirm presence in Washington

Peter Arlonzo-Kemper, Director of Human Resources

Alibi-with wife, to be verified

Steven Shraeder, Technical Service and Support Manager, day shift

To be interviewed

Faruk Mameda, Technical Service and Support Manager, night shift

To be interviewed

Client of SSD (?)

Awaiting list from Sterling

“Mel?” Rhyme called. “Check NCIC and the department.”

Cooper ran the names through the National Crime Information Center and the NYPD equivalent, as well as the Justice Department’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program.

“Wait…may have a hit here.”

“What is it?” Sachs asked, moving forward.

“Arlonzo Kemper. Juvie in Pennsylvania. Assault twenty-five years ago. The record’s still sealed.”

“The age would be right. He’s about thirty-five. And he’s light-skinned.” Sachs nodded at the 522 profile chart.

“Well, get the record unsealed. Or at least find out if it’s the same guy.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Cooper typed some more.

“Any references to the others?” Rhyme nodded toward the suspect list.

“Nope. Just him.”

Cooper ran various state and federal database searches and checked some professional organizations. The tech shrugged. “Went to UC-Hastings. No connection with Pennsylvania that I can find. Seems like a loner: Aside from college credentials, his only organization is the National Association of Human Resource Professionals. He was on the technology task force two years ago but hasn’t done much since.

“Okay, here’s what they have on the juvie. He attacked another kid in a detention home… Oh.”

“Oh what?”

“It’s not him. No hyphen. The name’s different. The juvenile was first name Arlonzo, last name Kemper.” He glanced at the chart. “He’s ‘Peter,’ last name ‘Arlonzo-Kemper.’ I typed it in wrong. If I’d included the hyphen, it wouldn’t have shown up at all. Sorry.”

“Not the worst of sins.” Rhyme shrugged. This was a sobering lesson about the nature of data, he reflected. They seemingly had found a suspect and even Cooper’s characterization of him suggested he might be the one-He seems to be a loner-yet the lead was completely wrong, due to the minuscule error of missing a single keystroke. They might have come down hard on the man-and misdirected resources-if Cooper hadn’t realized his mistake.

Sachs sat down beside Rhyme, who, seeing her eyes, asked, “What is it?”

“Funny, but now that I’m back, I feel like some kind of spell’s been broken. I think I want an outside opinion. About SSD. I lost perspective when I was there… It’s a disorienting place.”

“How so?” Sellitto asked.

“You ever been to Vegas?”

Sellitto and his ex had. Rhyme gave a brief laugh. “Las Vegas, where the only question is how much disadvantage you have. And why would I want to give money away?”

Sachs continued, “Well, it was like a casino. The outside doesn’t exist. Small-or no-windows. No watercooler conversation, nobody laughing. Everybody’s completely focused on their jobs. It’s like you’re in a different world.”

“And you want somebody else’s opinion on the place,” Sellitto said.

“Right.”

Rhyme suggested, “Journalist?” Thom’s partner, Peter Hoddins, was a former reporter for The New York Times and was now writing nonfiction books about politics and society. He’d probably know people from the business desk who covered the data-mining industry.

But she shook her head. “No, somebody who’s had firsthand contact with them. A former employee maybe.”

“Good. Lon, can you call somebody at Unemployment?”

“Sure.” Sellitto called the New York State unemployment department. After ten minutes or so of bouncing around from office to office he found the name of a former SSD assistant technical director. He’d worked for the data miner for a number of years but had been fired a year and a half ago. Calvin Geddes was his name and he was in Manhattan. Sellitto got the details and handed the note to Sachs. She called Geddes and arranged to see him in about an hour.

Rhyme had no particular opinion about her mission. In any investigation you need to cover all bases. But leads like Geddes and Pulaski’s checking on alibis were, to Rhyme, like images seen in an opaque window’s reflection-suggestions of the truth but not the truth itself. It was only the hard evidence, scant though it was, that held the real answer to who their killer was. And so he turned back to the clues.

Move…

Arthur Rhyme had given up being scared of the Lats, who were ignoring him anyway. And he knew the big fuck-you black guy wasn’t any threat.

It was the tattooed white guy who bothered him. The tweaker-what meth-heads were apparently called-scared Arthur a lot. Mick was his name. His hands twitched, he scratched his welty skin and his eerie white eyes jumped like bubbles in boiling water. He whispered to himself.

Arthur had tried to avoid the man all yesterday, and last night he’d lain awake and in between bouts of depression spent a lot of time wishing Mick away, hoping that he’d go to trial today and vanish from Arthur’s life forever.

But no such luck. He was back this morning and seemed to be staying close. He continued to glance at Arthur. “You and me,” he once muttered, sending a chill right down to Arthur’s tailbone.

Even the Lats didn’t seem to want to hassle Mick. Maybe you had to follow certain protocols in jail. Some unwritten rules of right and wrong. People like this skinny tattooed druggie might not play by those rules, and everybody here seemed to know it.

Ever’body know ever’thing round here. ’Cept you. You don’ know shit…

Once he laughed, looked at Arthur as if recognizing him and started to rise but then seemed to forget what he’d intended and sat down again, picking at his thumb.

“Yo, Jersey Man.” A voice in his ear. Arthur jumped.

The big black guy had come up behind him. He sat down next to Arthur. The bench creaked.

“Antwon. Antwon Johnson.”

Should he make a fist and tap it? Don’t be a fucking idiot, he told himself and just nodded. “Arthur-”

“I know.” Johnson glanced at Mick and said to Arthur, “That tweaker fucked up. Don’t do that meth shit. Fuck you up forever.” After a moment he said, “So. You a brainy guy?”

“Sort of.”

“The fuck ‘sorta’ mean?”

Don’t play games. “I have a physics degree. And one in chemistry. I went to M.I.T.”

“Mitt?”

“It’s a school.”

“Good one?”

“Pretty good.”

“So you know science shit? Chemistry and physics and everything?”

This line of questioning wasn’t at all like that of the two Lats’, the ones who’d tried to extort him. It seemed like Johnson was really interested. “Some things. Yeah.”

Then the big guy asked, “So you know howta make bombs. One big enough to blow that motherfucking wall down.”

“I…” Heart thudding again, harder than before. “Well-”

Antwon Johnson laughed. “Fuckin’ wit’ you, man.”

“I-”

“Fuckin’. Wit. You.”

“Oh.” Arthur laughed and wondered if his heart would explode right at this moment or would wait till later. He hadn’t gotten all of his father’s genes, but had the faulty cardiac messages been included in the package?

Mick said something to himself and took an intense interest in his right elbow, scratching it raw.

Both Johnson and Arthur watched him.

Tweaker…

Johnson then said, “Yo, yo, Jersey Man, lemme ask you somethin’.”

“Sure.”

“My momma, she religious, you know what I’m saying? And she tellin’ me one time the Bible was right. I mean, all of it was exactly the way that shit was wrote. Okay but listen up: I’m thinking, where’s the dinosaurs in the Bible? God created man and woman and earth and rivers and donkeys and snakes an’ shit. Why don’t it say God created dinosaurs? I mean, I seen their skeletons, you know. So they was real. So whatsa fuckin’ truth, man?”

Arthur Rhyme looked at Mick. Then at the nail pounded in the wall. His palms were sweating and he was thinking that, of all the things that could happen to him in jail, he was going to get killed because he took a scientist’s moral stand against intelligent design.

Oh, what the fuck?

He said, “It would be against all the known laws of science-laws that have been acknowledged by every advanced civilization on earth-for the earth to be only six thousand years old. It would be like you sprouting wings and flying out that window there.”

The man frowned.

I’m dead.

Johnson fixed him with an intense gaze. Then he nodded. “I fuckin’ knew it. Didn’t make no sense at all, six thousand years. Fuck.”

“I can give you the name of a book to read about it. There’s this author Richard Dawkins and he-”

“Don’ wanna read no fuckin’ book. Take yo’ word fo’ it, Mr. Jersey Man.”

Arthur really felt like tapping fists now. But he refrained. He asked, “What’s your mother going to say when you tell her?”

The round black face screwed up in astonishment. “I ain’ gonna tell her. That’d be fucked up. You never win no arguments ’gainst yo’ mother.”

Or your father, Arthur said to himself.

Johnson then grew serious. He said, “Yo. Word up you din’t do what they busted you fo’.”

“Of course not.”

“But you got yo’ ass collared anyway?”

“Yep.”

“The fuck that happen?”

“I wish I knew. I’ve been thinking about it since I got arrested. It’s all I think about. How he could’ve done it.”

“Who’s ‘he’?”

“The real killer.”

“Yo, like in The Fugitive. Or O.J.”

“The police found all kinds of evidence linking me to the crime. Somehow the real killer knew everything about me. My car, where I lived, my schedule. He even knew things I bought-and he planted them as evidence. I’m sure that’s what happened.”

Antwon Johnson considered this and then laughed. “Man. That yo’ fucking problem.”

“What’s that?”

“You went out an’ you bought ever’thing. Shoulda just boosted it, man. Then nobody know shit what you about.”

Chapter Twenty-three

Another lobby.

But a lot different from SSD’s.

Amelia Sachs had never seen anything quite so messy. Maybe when she was a beat officer, responding to domestics among druggies in Hell’s Kitchen. But even then a lot of those people had had dignity; they made the effort. This place made her cringe. The not-for-profit organization Privacy Now, located in an old piano factory in the city’s Chelsea district, won the prize for slovenly.

Stacks of computer printouts, books-many of them law books and yellowing government regulations-newspapers and magazines. Then cardboard boxes, which contained more of the same. Phonebooks too. Federal Registers.

And dust. A ton of dust.

A receptionist in blue jeans and a shabby sweater pounded furiously on an old computer keyboard and spoke, sotto voce, into a hands-free telephone. Harried people in jeans and T-shirts, or corduroys and wrinkled work shirts, walked into the office from up the hall, swapped files or picked up phone-message slips and disappeared.

Cheap printed signs and posters filled the walls.

BOOKSTORES: BURN YOUR CUSTOMERS’ RECEIPTS, BEFORE THE GOVERNMENT BURNS THEIR BOOKS!!!

On one wrinkled rectangle of art board was the famous line from George Orwell’s novel, 1984, about a totalitarian society:

Big Brother Is Watching You.

And sitting prominently on the scabby wall across from Sachs:

GUERRILLA’S GUIDE TO THE PRIVACY WAR

· Never give out your Social Security Number.

· Never give out your phone number.

· Hold loyalty card swap parties before you go shopping.

· Never volunteer for surveys.

· “Opt out” every chance you can.

· Don’t fill out product registration cards.

· Don’t fill out “warranty” cards. You don’t need one for the warranty. They’re information gathering devices!

· Remember-the Nazis’ most dangerous weapon was information.

· Stay off the “grid” as much as possible.

She was digesting this when a scuffed door opened and a short, intense-looking man with pale skin strode up to her, shook her hand and then led her back into his office, which was even messier than the lobby.

Calvin Geddes, the former employee of SSD, now worked for this privacy rights organization. “I went over to the dark side,” he said, smiling. He’d abandoned the conservative SSD dress code, and was wearing a yellow button-down shirt without a tie, jeans and running shoes.

The pleasant grin faded quickly, though, as she told him the story of the murders.

“Yep,” he whispered, his eyes hard and focused now. “I knew something like this would happen. I absolutely knew it.”

Geddes explained that he had a technical background and had worked with Sterling’s first company, SSD’s predecessor, in Silicon Valley, writing code for them. He moved to New York and lived a nice life as SSD skyrocketed to success.

But then the experience had soured.

“We had problems. We didn’t encrypt data back then and were responsible for some serious identity thefts. Several people committed suicide. And a couple of times stalkers signed up as clients-but only to get information from innerCircle. Two of the women they were looking for were attacked, one almost died. Then some parents in custody battles used our data to find their exes and kidnapped the children. It was tough. I felt like the guy who helped invent the atom bomb and then regretted it. I tried to put more controls in place at the company. And that meant that I didn’t believe in the quote ‘SSD vision,’ according to my boss.”

“Sterling?”

“Ultimately, yes. But he didn’t actually fire me. Andrew never gets his hands dirty. He delegates the unpleasantries. That way he can appear to be the most wonderful, kindest boss in the world… And as a practical matter there’s less evidence against him if other people do his butchery… Well, when I left I joined Privacy Now.”

The organization was like EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, he explained. PN challenged threats to individuals’ privacy from the government, businesses and financial institutions, computer providers, telephone companies, and commercial data brokers and miners. The organization lobbied in Washington, sued the government under the Freedom of Information Act to find out about surveillance programs, and sued individual corporations that weren’t complying with privacy and disclosure laws.

Sachs didn’t tell him about the data trap Rodney Szarnek had put together but explained in general terms how they were looking for SSD customers and employees who might be able to patch together dossiers. “The security seems very tight. But that was what Sterling and his people told us. I wanted an outside opinion.”

“Happy to help.”

“Mark Whitcomb told us about the concrete firewalls and keeping the data divided up.”

“Who’s Whitcomb?”

“He’s with their Compliance Department.”

“Never heard of it. It’s new.”

Sachs explained, “The department is like a consumer advocate within the company. To make sure all government regulations are complied with.”

Geddes seemed pleased, though he added, “That didn’t come about out of the goodness of Andrew Sterling’s heart. They probably got sued once too often and wanted to make a good show for the public and Congress. Sterling’s never going to give one inch if he doesn’t have to… But about the data pens, that’s true. Sterling treats data like the Holy Grail. And hacking in? Probably impossible. And there is no way anybody could physically break in and steal data.”

“He told me that very few employees can log on and get dossiers from innerCircle. As far as you know, is that true?”

“Oh, yeah. A few of them have to have access but nobody else. I never did. And I was there from the beginning.”

“Do you have any thoughts? Maybe any employees with a troubling past? Violent?”

“It’s been a few years. And I never thought anybody was particularly dangerous. Though, I’ve got to say, despite the big happy family façade Sterling likes to put on, I never really got to know anyone there.”

“What about these individuals?” She showed him the list of suspects.

Geddes looked it over. “I worked with Gillespie. I knew Cassel. I don’t like either of them. They’re caught up in the whole data-mining curve, like Silicon Valley in the nineties. Hotshots. I don’t know the others. Sorry.” Then he studied her closely. “So you’ve been there?” he asked with a cool smile. “What’d you think of Andrew?”

Her thoughts jammed as she tried to come up with a brief summary of her impressions. Finally: “Determined, polite, inquisitive, smart but…” Her voice petered out.

“But you don’t really know him.”

“Right.”

“Because he presents the great stone face. In all the years I worked with him I never really knew him. Nobody knows him. Unfathomable. I love that word. That’s Andrew. I was always looking for clues… You notice something odd about his bookshelves?”

“You couldn’t see the spines of the books.”

“Exactly. I snuck a peek once. Guess what? They weren’t about computers or privacy or data or business. They were mostly history books, philosophy, politics: the Roman Empire, Chinese emperors, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Stalin, Idi Amin, Khrushchev. He read a lot about the Nazis. Nobody used information the way they did and Andrew doesn’t hesitate to tell you. First major use of computers to keep track of ethnic groups. That’s how they consolidated power. Sterling’s doing the same in the corporate world. Notice the company name, SSD? The rumor is he chose it intentionally. SS-for the Nazi elite army. SD-for their security and intelligence agency. You know what his competitors say it stands for? ‘Selling Souls for Dollars.’” Geddes laughed grimly.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. Andrew doesn’t dislike Jews. Or any other group. Politics, nationality, religion and race mean nothing to him. I heard him say once, ‘Data have no borders.’ The seat of power in the twenty-first century is information, not oil or geography. And Andrew Sterling wants to be the most powerful man on earth… I’m sure he gave you the data-mining-is-God speech.”

“Saving us from diabetes, helping us afford Christmas presents and houses and solving cases for the police?”

“That’s the one. And all of it’s true. But tell me if those benefits are worth somebody knowing every detail about your life. Maybe you don’t care, provided you save a few bucks. But do you really want ConsumerChoice lasers scanning your eyes in a movie theater and recording your reactions to those commercials they run before the movie? Do you want the RFID tag in your car key to be available to the police to know that you hit a hundred miles an hour last week, when your route only took you along roads that were posted fifty? Do you want strangers knowing what kind of underwear your daughter wears? Or exactly when you’re having sex?”

“What?”

“Well, innerCircle knows you bought condoms and KY this afternoon and your husband was on the six-fifteen E train home. It knows you’ve got the evening free because your son’s at the Mets game and your daughter’s buying clothes at The Gap in the Village. It knows you put on cable-TV porn at seven-eighteen. And that you order some nice tasty postcoital take-out Chinese at quarter to ten. That information is all there.

“Oh, SSD knows if your children are maladjusted in school and when to send you direct-mail flyers about tutors and child-counseling services. If your husband is having trouble in the bedroom and when to send him discreet flyers about erectile dysfunction cures. When your family history, buying patterns and absences from work put you in a presuicidal profile-”

“But that’s good. So a counselor can help you.”

Geddes gave a cold laugh. “Wrong. Because counseling potential suicide victims isn’t profitable. SSD sends the name to local funeral homes and grief counselors-who could snag all of the family as customers, not just a single depressed person after he shoots himself. And, by the way, that was a very lucrative venture.”

Sachs was shocked.

“Did you hear about ‘tethering’?”

“No.”

“SSD has defined a network based just on you. Call it ‘Detective Sachs World.’ You’re the hub and the spokes go to your partners, spouses, parents, neighbors, coworkers, anybody it might help SSD to know about and profit from that knowledge. Everybody who has any connection is ‘tethered’ to you. And each one of them is his or her own hub, and there are dozens of people tethered to them.”

Another thought and his eyes flashed. “You know about metadata?”

“What’s that?”

“Data about data. Every document that’s created by or stored on a computer-letters, files, reports, legal briefs, spreadsheets, Websites, emails, grocery lists-is loaded with hidden data. Who created it, where it’s been sent, all the changes that have been made to it and who made them and when-all recorded there, second by second. You write a memo to your boss and for a joke you start out with ‘Dear Stupid Prick,’ then delete it and write it correctly. Well, the ‘stupid prick’ part is still in there.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh, yes. The disk size of a typical word-processing report is much larger than the text in the document itself. What’s the rest? Metadata. The Watchtower database-management program has special bots-software robots-that do nothing but find and store metadata from every document it collects. We called it the Shadow Department, because metadata’s like a shadow of the main data-and it’s usually much more revealing.”

Shadow, sixteens, pens, closets…This was a whole new world to Amelia Sachs.

Geddes enjoyed having a receptive audience. He leaned forward. “You know that SSD has an education division?”

She thought back to the chart in the brochure that Mel Cooper had downloaded. “Yes. EduServe.”

“But Sterling didn’t tell you about it, did he?”

“No.”

“Because he doesn’t like to let on that its main function is to collect everything it possibly can about children. Starting with kindergarten. What they buy, what they watch, what computer sites they go to, what their grades are, medical records from school…And that’s very, very valuable information for retailers. But you ask me, what’s scarier about EduServe is that school boards can come to SSD and run predictive software on their students and then gear educational programs to them-in terms of what’s best for the community-or society, if you want to be Orwellian about it. Given Billy’s background, we think he should go into skilled labor. Suzy should be a doctor but only in public health… Control the children and you control the future. Another element of Adolf Hitler’s philosophy, by the way.” He laughed. “Okay, no more lecturing…But you see why I couldn’t stomach it anymore?”

But then Geddes frowned. “Just thinking about your situation-we had an incident once at SSD. Years ago. Before the company came to New York. There was a death. Probably just a coincidence. But…”

“No, tell me.”

“In the early days we farmed out a lot of the actual data-collection part of the business to scroungers.”

“To what?”

“Companies or individuals who procure data. A strange breed. They’re sort of like old-time wildcatters-prospectors, you could say. See, data have this weird allure. You can get addicted to the hunt. You can never find enough. However much they collect, they want more. And these guys are always looking for new ways to collect it. They’re competitive, ruthless. That’s how Sean Cassel started in the business. He was a data scrounger.

“Anyway, one scrounger was amazing. He worked for a small company. I think it was called Rocky Mountain Data in Colorado… What was his name?” Geddes squinted. “Maybe Gordon somebody. Or that might’ve been his last name. Anyway, we heard that he wasn’t too happy about SSD taking over his company. The word is he scrounged everything he could find about the company and Sterling himself-turned the tables on them. We thought maybe he was trying to dig up dirt and blackmail Sterling into stopping the acquisition. You know Andy Sterling-Andrew Junior-works for the company?”

She nodded.

“We’d heard rumors that Sterling had abandoned him years ago and the kid tracked him down. But then we also heard that maybe it was another son he abandoned. Maybe by his first wife, or a girlfriend. Something he wanted to keep secret. We thought maybe Gordon was looking for that kind of dirt.

“Anyway, while Sterling and some other people were out there negotiating the purchase of Rocky Mountain, this Gordon guy dies-an accident of some kind, I think. That’s all I heard. I wasn’t there. I was back in the Valley, writing code.”

“And the acquisition went through?”

“Yep. What Andrew wants, Andrew shall have… Now, let me throw out one thought about your killer. Andrew Sterling himself.”

“He has an alibi.”

“Does he? Well, don’t forget he is the king of information. If you control data, you can change data. Did you check out that alibi real carefully?”

“We are right now.”

“Well, even if it’s confirmed, he has men who work for him and would do whatever he wants. I mean anything. Remember, other people do his dirty work.”

“But he’s a multimillionaire. What’s his interest in stealing coins or a painting, then murdering the victim?”

“His interest?” Geddes’s voice rose, as if he were a professor talking to a student who just wasn’t getting the lesson. “His interest is in being the most powerful person in the world. He wants his little collection to include everybody on earth. And he’s particularly interested in law enforcement and government clients. The more crimes that are successfully solved using innerCircle, the more police departments, here and abroad, are going to sign on. Hitler’s first task when he came to power was to consolidate all the police departments in Germany. What was our big problem in Iraq? We disbanded the army and the police-we should have used them. Andrew doesn’t make mistakes like that.”

Geddes laughed. “Think I’m a crank, don’t you? But I live with this stuff all day long. Remember, it’s not paranoia if somebody’s really out there watching everything you do every minute of the day. And that’s SSD in a nutshell.”

Chapter Twenty-four

Awaiting Sachs’s return, Lincoln Rhyme listened absently as Lon Sellitto explained that none of the other evidence in the earlier cases-the rape and coin theft-could be located. “That’s fucking weird.”

Rhyme agreed. But his attention veered from the detective’s sour assessment to his cousin’s SSD dossier, sitting beside him on the turning frame. He tried to ignore it.

But the document drew him, needle to magnet. Looking at the stark sheets, black type on white paper, he told himself that, as Sachs had suggested, perhaps something helpful could be found in it. Then he admitted that he was simply curious.

STRATEGIC SYSTEMS DATACORP, INC. INNERCIRCLE ^® DOSSIERS

Arthur Robert Rhyme

SSD Subject Number 3480-9021-4966-2083

Lifestyle

· Dossier 1A. Consumer products preferences

· Dossier 1B. Consumer services preferences

· Dossier 1C. Travel

· Dossier 1D. Medical

· Dossier 1E. Leisure-time preferences

Financial/Educational/Professional

· Dossier 2A. Educational history

· Dossier 2B. Employment history, w/income

· Dossier 2C. Credit history/current report and rating

· Dossier 2D. Business products and services preferences

Governmental/Legal

· Dossier 3A. Vital records

· Dossier 3B. Voter registration

· Dossier 3C. Legal history

· Dossier 3D. Criminal history

· Dossier 3E. Compliance

· Dossier 3F. Immigration and naturalization

The information contained herein is the property of Strategic Systems Datacorp, Inc. (SSD). The use hereof is subject to the Licensing Agreement between SSD and Customer, as defined in the Master Client Agreement. © Strategic Systems Datacorp, Inc. All rights reserved.

Instructing the turning frame to flip through the pages, he skimmed the dense document, all thirty pages of it. Some categories were full, some sparse. The voter registration was redacted, and the compliance and portions of the credit history referred to separate files, presumably because of legislation limiting access to such information.

He paused at the extensive lists of the consumer products bought by Arthur and his family (they were described by the creepy phrase “tethered individuals”). There was no doubt that anybody reading the dossier could have learned enough about his buying habits and where he shopped to implicate him in the murder of Alice Sanderson.

Rhyme learned about the country club Arthur belonged to, until he had quit several years ago, presumably because he’d lost his job. He noted the package vacations he’d bought; Rhyme was surprised he’d taken up skiing. Also, he or one of the children might have a weight problem; somebody had joined a dieting program. A health club membership for the entire family too. Rhyme saw a lay-away purchase for some jewelry around Christmastime; a chain jewelry store in a New Jersey mall. Rhyme speculated: small stones socketed in a large setting-a make-do gift, until times were better.

Seeing one reference, he gave a laugh. Like him, Arthur seemed to favor single-malt whisky-Rhyme’s new favorite brand, in fact, Glenmorangie.

His cars were a Prius and a Cherokee.

The criminalist’s smile faded at that reference, though, as he recalled another vehicle. He was picturing Arthur’s red Corvette, the car he’d received from his parents on his seventeenth birthday-the car in which Arthur had driven off to Boston to attend M.I.T.

Rhyme thought back to the boys’ respective departures for college. It was a significant moment for Arthur, and for his father too; Henry Rhyme was ecstatic that his son had been accepted by such a fine school. But the cousins’ plans-rooming together, jousting over girls, outshining the other nerds-didn’t work out. Lincoln wasn’t accepted by M.I.T. but went instead to the University of Illinois-Champagne/Urbana, which offered Lincoln a full scholarship (and had some panache back then because it was located in the town where HAL, the narcissistic computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, was born).

Teddy and Anne were pleased their son was going to a home-state school, as was his uncle; Henry had told his nephew that he hoped the boy would return to Chicago often and continue to help him with his research, possibly even assist in his classes from time to time.

“Sorry you and Arthur won’t be rooming together,” Henry said. “But you’ll see each other summers, holidays. And I’m sure your father and I can swing some trips out to Bean Town for a visit.”

“That might work out,” Lincoln had said.

Keeping to himself that while he was devastated he hadn’t been accepted by M.I.T., there was an upside to the rejection-because he wanted never to see his goddamn cousin ever again.

All because of the red Corvette.

The incident had occurred not long after the Christmas Eve party at which he’d won the concrete piece of history, on a breathlessly cold day in February, which, sun or cloud, is Chicago’s most heartless month. Lincoln was competing in a science fair at Northwestern in Evanston. He asked Adrianna if she wanted to accompany him, thinking that he might go for the marriage proposal afterward.

But she couldn’t make it; she was going shopping with her mother at Marshall Field’s department store in the Loop, lured by a big sale. Lincoln had been disappointed but thought nothing more of it and concentrated on the fair. He won first place in the senior division, then he and his friends packed up their projects and carted everything outside. Fingers blue and breath clouding around them in the painful air, they loaded the gear in the belly of the bus and sprinted for the door.

It was then that somebody called, “Hey, check it out. Excellent wheels.”

A red Corvette was streaking through campus.

His cousin Arthur was at the wheel. Which wasn’t odd; the family lived nearby. What did surprise Lincoln, though, was that the girl beside Arthur, he believed, was Adrianna.

Yes, no?

He couldn’t be sure.

The clothes matched: a brown leather jacket and a fur hat, which looked identical to the one Lincoln had given her at Christmas.

“Linc, Jesus, get your ass in here. We gotta close the door.”

Still, Lincoln remained where he was, staring at the car as it fishtailed around the corner on the gray-white street.

Could she have lied to him? The girl he was considering marrying? It didn’t seem possible. And cheating on him with Arthur?

Trained in science, he examined the facts objectively.

Fact One. Arthur and Adrianna knew each other. His cousin had met her months ago in the counselor’s office where she worked after class at Lincoln’s high school. They could very easily have exchanged phone numbers.

Fact Two. Arthur, Lincoln now realized, had stopped asking about her. This was odd. The boys had spent plenty of time talking about girls but recently Art hadn’t once mentioned her.

Suspicious.

Fact Three. On reflection, he decided that Adie sounded evasive when she’d demurred about the science fair. (And he hadn’t mentioned its site as Evanston, which meant she wouldn’t hesitate to cruise around the gridded streets with Art.) Lincoln was slammed with jealousy. I was going to give her a piece of Stagg Field, for God’s sake! A splinter of the true cross of modern science! He considered other times when she’d begged off seeing him under circumstances that, in retrospect, seemed strange. He counted three or four.

Still he refused to believe it. He crunched through the snow to a pay phone, and called her house and asked to speak to the girl.

“Sorry, Lincoln, she’s out with friends,” said Adrianna’s mother.

Friends…

“Oh. I’ll try her later… Say, Mrs. Waleska, did you two ever get downtown for that sale at Field’s today?”

“No, the sale’s next week… I have to get supper ready, Lincoln. You stay warm. It’s freezing outside.”

“It sure is.” Lincoln knew this for a fact. He was standing at a phone kiosk, his jaw shivering, no desire to pick up the 60 cents that had leapt from his quivering hands into the snow after he’d tried repeatedly to feed the coins into the phone.

“Jesus Christ, Lincoln, get in the bus!”

Later that night he called and managed to maintain a normal conversation for a time, before asking how her day had gone. She explained that she’d enjoyed the shopping with Mom but the crowds were terrible. Garrulous, rambling, digressive. She sounded dead guilty.

Still, he couldn’t take the matter on faith.

And so he kept up appearances. The next time Art was visiting he left his cousin in the rec room downstairs and slipped outside with a dog hair roller-exactly the sort used now by crime-scene teams-and collected evidence from the Corvette’s front seat.

He slipped the tape into a Baggie and, when he saw Adrianna next, he took some samples of fur from her hat and coat. He felt cheap, scalded with shame and embarrassment but that didn’t stop him from comparing the strands with one of the high school’s compound microscopes. They were the same-both fur from the hat and synthetic fibers from the coat.

The girlfriend he was considering marrying had been cheating on him.

And from the quantity of fibers in Arthur’s car he concluded she’d been there more than once.

Finally, a week later, he spotted them in the car, leaving no doubt.

Lincoln didn’t bow out graciously or angrily. He just bowed out. Without the heart for a confrontation, he let his relationship with Adrianna wind down. The few times they went out were stiff and riddled with awkward silences. To his further dismay, she actually seemed upset about his growing distance. Damn it. Did she think she could have it both ways? She seemed mad at him…even while she was cheating.

He distanced himself from his cousin too. Lincoln’s excuse was final exams, track meets and-the blessing in disguise: Lincoln’s rejection by M.I.T.

The two boys saw each other occasionally-familial obligations, graduation ceremonies-but everything had changed between them, changed fundamentally. And of Adrianna neither boy had said a single word. At least not for many years after that.

My whole life changed. If it weren’t for you, everything would’ve been different…

Even now Rhyme found his temple throbbing. He couldn’t feel any coolness on his palms but he supposed they were sweating. These hard thoughts, though, were interrupted by Amelia Sachs, striding through the door.

“Any developments?” she asked.

A bad sign. If she’d had a breakthrough with Calvin Geddes she would have said so up front.

“No,” he admitted. “Still waiting to hear from Ron about the alibis. And no bites on the trap that Rodney put together.”

Sachs took the coffee Thom offered and lifted half a turkey sandwich from a tray.

“The tuna salad’s better,” said Lon Sellitto. “He made it himself.”

“This’ll do.” She sat beside Rhyme, offered him a bite. He had no appetite and shook his head. “How’s your cousin doing?” she asked, glancing at the open dossier on the turning frame.

“My cousin?”

“How’s he doing in detention? This has to be hard for him.”

“Haven’t had a chance to talk to him.”

“He’s probably too embarrassed to contact you. You really should call.”

“I will. What’d you find out from Geddes?”

She admitted that the meeting had yielded no great revelations. “Mostly it was a lecture on the erosion of privacy.” She gave him some of the more alarming bullet points: the personal data collected daily, the intrusions, the danger of EduServe, the immortality of data, the metadata records of computer files.

“Anything useful to us?” he asked acerbically.

“Two things. First, he’s not convinced Sterling’s innocent.”

“You said he’s got an alibi,” Sellitto pointed out, taking another sandwich.

“Maybe not him personally. He might be using somebody else.”

“Why? He’s a CEO of a big company. What’s in it for him?”

“The more crime, the more society needs SSD to protect them. Geddes says he wants power. Described him as the Napoléon of data.”

“So he’s got a hired gun breaking windows so he can step in and fix them.” Rhyme nodded, somewhat impressed with the idea. “Only it backfired. He never thought we’d tip to the fact the SSD database was behind the crimes. Okay. Put it on the list of suspects. An UNSUB working for Sterling.”

“Now, Geddes also told me that a few years ago SSD acquired a Colorado data company. Their main scrounger-that’s a data collector-was killed.”

“Any link between Sterling and the death?”

“No idea. But it’s worth checking out. I’ll make some calls.”

The doorbell rang and Thom answered. Ron Pulaski entered. He was grim-faced and sweaty. Rhyme sometimes had an urge to tell him to take it easier but since the criminalist himself didn’t, he figured the suggestion would be hypocritical.

The rookie explained that most of the alibis for Sunday checked out. “I checked with the E-ZPass people and they confirmed Sterling went through the Midtown Tunnel when he said. I tried his son to see if his dad called from Long Island just to double-check. But he was out.”

Pulaski continued, “Something else-the Human Resources director? His only alibi was his wife. She backed him up but she was acting like a scared mouse. And she was like her husband: ‘SSD is the greatest place in the world. Blah, blah, blah…’”

Rhyme, distrustful of witnesses in any event, didn’t make much of this; one thing he’d learned from Kathryn Dance, the body language and kinesics expert with the California Bureau of Investigation, was that even when people are telling the God’s truth to police they often look guilty.

Sachs went to their suspect list and updated it.

Andrew Sterling, President, Chief Executive Officer Alibi-on Long Island, verified. Awaiting son’s confirmation

Sean Cassel, Director of Sales and Marketing No alibi

Wayne Gillespie, Director of Technical Operations No alibi

Samuel Brockton, Director, Compliance Department Alibi-hotel records confirm presence in Washington

Peter Arlonzo-Kemper, Director of Human Resources Alibi-with wife, verified by her (biased?)

Steven Shraeder, Technical Service and Support Manager, day shift To be interviewed

Faruk Mameda, Technical Service and Support Manager, night shift

To be interviewed

Client of SSD (?)

Awaiting list from Sterling

UNSUB recruited by Andrew Sterling (?)

Sachs looked at her watch. “Ron, Mameda should be in by now. Could you go back and talk to him and Shraeder? See where they were yesterday at the time of the Weinburg murder. And Sterling’s assistant should have the client list ready. If not, perch in his office until he gets it. Look important. Better yet, look impatient.”

“Go back to SSD?”

“Right.”

For some reason, he didn’t want to, Rhyme could see.

“Sure. Just let me call Jenny and check up on things at home.” He pulled out his phone and hit speed dial.

Rhyme deduced from part of the conversation that he was talking to his young son, and then, sounding even more childish, presumably the baby girl. The criminalist tuned it out.

It was then that his own phone rang; 44 was the first number on caller ID.

Ah, good.

“Command, answer phone.”

“Detective Rhyme?”

“Inspector Longhurst.”

“I know you’re working on that other case of yours but I thought you might like an update.”

“Of course. Please, go ahead. How’s the Reverend Goodlight?”

“He’s fine, if a bit scared. He’s insisting that no new security people or officers come into the safe house. He only trusts the ones who’ve been with him for weeks.”

“Hardly blame him.”

“I have a man screening everyone who gets close. Former SAS chap. They’re the best in the business… Now, we went through the Oldham safe house from top to bottom. Wanted to share with you what we found. Traces of copper and lead, consistent with bullets that had been milled or shaved. A few grains of gunpowder. And a few very small traces of mercury. My ballistics expert says he might be making a dum-dum bullet.”

“Yes, that’s right. Liquid mercury’s poured into the core. Causes hideous damage.”

“They also found some grease used in lubricating the receivers of rifles. And there were traces of hair bleach in the sink. And several dark gray fibers-cotton, quite thick with laundry starch. Our databases suggest they match the fabric in uniforms.”

“Do you think that the evidence was planted?”

“Our forensics people say not. The traces were quite minuscule.”

Blond, sniper, uniform…

“Now, one other incident set off alarms here: an attempted break-in at an NGO near Piccadilly-that’s a nongovernmental organization. A nonprofit. The office was the East African Relief Agency, Reverend Goodlight’s outfit. Guards came by and the culprit fled. He threw away his lock pick down the sewer. But we had a stroke of luck. Fellow on the street saw where. Well, to summarize, our people found it and discovered some soil on the tool. It contained a type of hop that’s grown exclusively in Warwickshire. This hop had been processed for use in making bitter.”

“Bitter? Like beer?”

“Ale, yes. Now it so happens that we have a database of alcoholic drinks here at the Met. And their ingredients.”

Just like mine, he reflected. “You do?”

“Put that together myself,” she said.

“Excellent. And?”

“The only brewery that uses this hop is near Birmingham. Now, we got an image of the NGO intruder on CCTV and, because of the hop, I thought I’d check the Birmingham CCTV tapes. Indeed, the same man arrived at New Street station several hours later, getting off the train with a large rucksack. We lost him in the crowds, I’m afraid.”

Rhyme considered this. The big question was: Were the hops planted on the tool to lead them off? That was the sort of thing that he could only get a feel for if he had examined the scene himself or had possession of the evidence. But now it was just down to what Sachs called a gut feel.

Planted or not?

Rhyme decided. “Inspector, I don’t believe it. I think Logan’s pulling a double reversal. He’s done this before. He wants us focused on Birmingham while he goes ahead with the hit in London.”

“I’m glad you say that, Detective. I was leaning that way myself.”

“We should play along. Where is everyone on the team?”

“Danny Krueger’s in London with his people. So’s your FBI man. The French agent and the Interpol chap were checking out leads in Oxford and Surrey. They didn’t play out, though.”

“I’d get them all to Birmingham. Immediately. In a subtle but obvious way.”

The inspector laughed. “Making sure Logan thinks we’ve swallowed the bait.”

“Exactly. I want him to think we believe we have a chance to catch him there. And send some tactical people too. Make a noise about it, make it look as if you’re pulling them back from the shooting zone in London.”

“But in fact beef up the surveillance there.”

“Right. And tell them he’s going for the long shot. He’ll be blond and dressed in a gray uniform.”

“Brilliant, Detective. I’ll get right to it.”

“Keep me posted.”

“Cheers.”

Rhyme ordered the phone to disconnect, just as a voice from across the room intruded. “Heh, the long and the short of it is your friends at SSD are good. I can’t get to first base, hacking in.” It was Rodney Szarnek. Rhyme had forgotten about him.

He rose and joined the officers. “innerCircle’s tighter than Fort Knox. And so is their database management system, Watchtower. I really doubt somebody could break in without a massive array of supercomputers, which you just aren’t going to find at Best Buy or RadioShack.”

“But?” Rhyme could see that his face was troubled.

“Well, SSD’s got some security on the system I’ve never seen before. It’s pretty robust. And, I’ve got to say, scary. I had an anonymous ID and was wiping my tracks as I went. But what happens? Their security bot broke into my system and tried to identify me from what it found in the free space.”

“And, Rodney, what exactly does that mean?” Rhyme was trying to be patient. “Free space?”

He explained that fragments of data, even deleted data, could be found in the empty space of hard drives. Software could often reassemble it into readable form. The SSD security system knew that Szarnek had covered his tracks so it had slipped inside his computer to read the data in the empty space and find out who he was. “It’s pretty freaky. I just happened to catch it. Otherwise…” He shrugged and took comfort in his coffee.

Rhyme had a thought. The more he considered the idea, the more he liked it. He looked over at the skinny Szarnek. “Hey, Rodney, how’d you like to play real cop for a change?”

The carefree-geek visage disappeared. “You know, I don’t really think I’m up for that.”

Sellitto finished chewing the last of his sandwich. “You haven’t lived till a bullet breaks the sound barrier right next to your ear.”

“Wait, wait, wait…The only time I do any shooting is role-playing games and-”

“Oh, you wouldn’t be the one at risk,” Rhyme said to the computer man, as his amused gaze slipped to Ron Pulaski, who was closing his phone.

“What?” the rookie asked with a frown.

Chapter Twenty-five

“Anything else you need, Officer?”

Sitting in the SSD conference room, Ron Pulaski looked up into the emotionless face of Sterling’s second assistant, Jeremy Mills. He was the “outside” assistant, the young officer recalled. “No, I’m fine, thanks. But I wonder if you could check with Mr. Sterling about some files he was getting together for us. A list of clients. I think Martin was handling it.”

“I’d be happy to bring it up with Andrew when he’s out of his meeting.” Then the broad-shouldered man walked around the room, pointing out the air-conditioning and light switches like the bellboy who’d escorted Jenny and Pulaski to their fancy room on their honeymoon.

Which reminded Pulaski again of how Jenny resembled Myra, the woman who’d been raped and killed yesterday. The way her hair lay, the slightly crooked smile he loved, the-

“Officer?”

Pulaski glanced up, realized his mind had been wandering. “Sorry.”

The assistant was studying him as he pointed out a small refrigerator. “Soda and water in here.”

“Thanks. I’m all set.”

Pay attention, he told himself angrily. Forget Jenny. Forget the children. People’s lives are at stake here. Amelia thinks you can handle these interviews. So handle them.

You with us, rookie? I need you with us.

“If you want to make a call you can use this one. Dial nine for an outside line. Or you can just push this button, then speak the number. It’s voice activated.” He pointed at Pulaski’s cell phone. “That probably won’t work too well here. Lot of shielding, you know. For security.”

“Really? Okay.” Pulaski thought back; hadn’t he seen somebody using a phone or BlackBerry here earlier? He couldn’t recall.

“I’ll have those employees come in. If you’re ready.”

“That’d be great.”

The young man headed down the hall. Pulaski took his notebook out of his briefcase. Glanced at the names of the employees he had yet to interview.

Steven Shraeder, Technical Service and Support Manager, day shift.

Faruk Mameda, Technical Service and Support Manager, night shift.

He rose and peered into the hall. Nearby a janitor was emptying trash cans. He recalled he’d seen him yesterday, doing the same; it was as if Sterling was afraid that any brimming garbage would give the company a bad name. The solid man glanced at Pulaski’s uniform without reaction and returned to his task, which he performed methodically. Looking farther down the immaculate corridor, the young cop could see a security guard standing at attention. Pulaski couldn’t even get to the restroom without passing him. He returned to his seat to await the two men on the suspect list.

Faruk Mameda was first, a young man of Middle Eastern ancestry, Pulaski judged. He was very handsome, solemn-faced and confident. He held Pulaski’s eye easily. The young man explained that he’d been with a small company SSD had acquired five or six years ago. His job was to supervise the technical-service staff. Single, with no family, he preferred working nights.

The cop was surprised that he didn’t have a trace of foreign accent. Pulaski asked if Mameda had heard about the investigation. He claimed he hadn’t heard the details-which could have been true, since he worked the night shift and had just gotten to work. All he knew was that Andrew Sterling had called and told him to speak to the police about a crime that had occurred.

He frowned as the police officer explained, “There’ve been several murders recently. We think information from SSD was used in planning the crimes.”

“Information?”

“About the victims’ whereabouts, some items they’d bought.”

Curiously Mameda’s next question was “Are you talking to all the employees?”

How much to tell, how much not to? That was one thing Pulaski never knew. Amelia always said it was important to grease the interview wheel, to keep the conversation going but never to give too much away. After the head injury, he believed his judgment had worsened and was nervous about what to say to wits and suspects. “Not all of them, no.”

“Just certain ones who’re suspicious. Or you’ve decided ahead of time are suspicious.” The employee’s voice was defensive now, his jaw tight. “I see. Sure. Happens a lot nowadays.”

“The person we’re interested in is a man, and he has full access to innerCircle and Watchtower. We’re talking to everyone who fits that description.” Pulaski had figured out Mameda’s concern. “Nothing to do with your nationality.”

The attempt at reassurance missed the mark. Mameda snapped, “Ah, well, my nationality is American. I’m a U.S. citizen. Like you. That is, I assume you’re a citizen. But maybe not. After all, very few people in this country were here originally.”

“I’m sorry.”

Mameda shrugged. “Some things in life you have to get used to. It’s unfortunate. The land of the free is also the land of the prejudiced. I…” His voice faded as he glanced past and above Pulaski, as if someone were standing behind him. The cop turned slightly. No one was there. Mameda said, “Andrew said he wants full cooperation. So I’m cooperating. Could you ask me what you need to, please? It’s a busy evening.”

“People’s dossiers-closets, you call them?”

“Yes. Closets.”

“Do you ever download them?”

“Why would I download a dossier? Andrew wouldn’t tolerate that.”

Interesting: the wrath of Andrew Sterling was the first deterrent. Not the police or the courts.

“So you haven’t?”

“Never. If there’s a bug of some sort or the data are corrupt or there’s an interface problem, I may look at a portion of the entries or the headers but that’s it. Only enough to figure out the problem and write a patch or debug the code.”

“Could somebody have found your passcodes and gotten into innerCircle? And downloaded dossiers that way?”

He paused. “Not from me they couldn’t. I don’t have them written down.”

“And you go to the data pens frequently, all of them? And Intake too?”

“Yes, of course. That’s my job. Repair the computers. Make sure the data are flowing smoothly.”

“Could you tell me where you were on Sunday afternoon between twelve and four?”

“Ah.” A nod. “So that’s what this is really about. Was I at the scene of the crime?”

Pulaski had trouble looking at the man’s dark, angry eyes.

Mameda put his hands flat on the table, as if he were going to rise in anger and storm out. But he sat back and said, “I had breakfast in the morning with some friends…” He added, “They’re from the mosque-you’ll probably want to know.”

“I-”

“After that I spent the rest of the day alone. I went to the movies.”

“By yourself?”

“Fewer distractions. I usually go alone. It was a film by Jafar Panahi-the Iranian director. Have you ever see-” His mouth tightened. “Never mind.”

“You have the ticket stub?”

“No…After that I did some shopping. I got home at six, I’d guess. Checked to see if they needed me here but the boxes were running smoothly so I had dinner with a friend.”

“In the afternoon did you buy anything with a credit card?”

He bristled. “It was window-shopping. I got some coffee, a sandwich. Paid cash for it…” He leaned forward, whispered harshly, “I don’t really think you asked everybody all these questions. I know what you think of us. You think we treat women like animals. I can’t believe you’d actually accuse me of raping someone. That’s barbaric. And you’re insulting!”

Pulaski struggled to look Mameda in the eye as he said, “Well, sir, we are asking everybody with access to innerCircle about their whereabouts yesterday. Including Mr. Sterling. We’re just doing our job.”

He calmed slightly but continued to fume when Pulaski asked his whereabouts at the times of the other killings. “I don’t have any idea.” He refused to say any more and with a grim nod, stood and walked out.

Pulaski tried to figure out what had just happened. Was Mameda acting guilty or innocent? He couldn’t tell. Mostly he felt outmaneuvered.

Think harder, he told himself.

The second employee to be interviewed, Shraeder, was the opposite of Mameda: pure geek. He was gawky, the clothes ill-fitting and wrinkled, ink stains on his hands. His glasses were owlish and the lenses smeared. Definitely not in the SSD mold. While Mameda was defensive, Shraeder seemed oblivious. He apologized for being late-which he wasn’t-and explained that he’d been in the middle of debugging a patch. He then embarked on the details, speaking as if the cop had a degree in computer science, and Pulaski had to steer him back on track.

His fingers twitching, as if he were typing on an imaginary keyboard, Shraeder listened in surprise-or feigned surprise-when Pulaski told him about the murders. He expressed sympathy and then, in answer to the young officer’s questions, said he was in the pens frequently and could download dossiers, though he never did. He too expressed confidence that nobody could get access to his passcodes.

As for Sunday he had an alibi-he’d come into the office around 1 P.M. to follow up after a big problem on Friday, which he again tried to explain to Pulaski before the cop cut him off. The young man walked to the computer in the corner of the conference room, typed and then swiveled the screen for Pulaski to see. It was his time sheets. Pulaski looked over the entries for Sunday. He had indeed clocked in at 12:58 P.M. and didn’t leave until after five.

Since Shraeder had been here at the time Myra was killed Pulaski didn’t bother to ask about the other crimes. “I think that’ll be all. Thanks.” The man left and Pulaski sat back, staring out a narrow window. His palms were sweating, his stomach in a knot. He pulled his cell phone off its holster. Jeremy, the sullen assistant, was right. No damn reception.

“Hi, there.”

Pulaski jumped. Gasping, he looked up to see Mark Whitcomb in the doorway, several yellow pads under his arm and two cups of coffee in his hands. He lifted an eyebrow. Beside him was a slightly older man, with prematurely salt-and-pepper hair. Pulaski figured this had to be an SSD employee-since he was in the uniform of white dress shirt and dark suit.

What was this about? He struggled to put a casual smile on his face and nodded them in.

“Ron, wanted you to meet my boss, Sam Brockton.”

They shook hands. Brockton looked Pulaski over carefully and said, with a wry smile, “So you were the one who had the maids checking up on me down at the Watergate hotel in D.C.?”

“Afraid so.”

“At least I’m off the hook as a suspect,” Brockton said. “If there’s anything we can do in the Compliance Department, let Mark know. He’s brought me up to speed on your case.”

“Appreciate that.”

“Good luck.” Brockton left Whitcomb, who offered Pulaski a coffee.

“For me? Thanks.”

“How’s it going?” Whitcomb asked.

“It’s going.”

The SSD executive laughed and dusted a flop of blond hair off his forehead. “You folks’re as evasive as we are.”

“I guess we are. But I can say everybody’s been cooperative.”

“Good. You finished?”

“Just waiting for something from Mr. Sterling.”

He poured sugar into the coffee. He overstirred nervously, then stopped himself.

Whitcomb lifted his cup to Pulaski’s as if toasting. He looked out at the clear day, the sky blue, the city rich green and brown. “Never liked these small windows. Middle of New York and no views.”

“I was wondering. Why is that?”

“Andrew’s worried about security. People taking pictures from outside.”

“Really?”

“It’s not entirely paranoid,” Whitcomb said. “Lot of money involved in data mining. Huge.”

“I suppose.” Pulaski wondered what kind of secrets somebody could see through a window from four or five blocks away, the closest office building this high.

“You live in the city?” he asked Pulaski.

“Yep. We’re in Queens.”

“I’m out on the Island now but I grew up in Astoria. Off Ditmars Boulevard. Near the train station.”

“Hey, I’m three blocks from there.”

“Really? You go to St. Tim’s?”

“St. Agnes. I’ve been to Tim’s a few times but Jenny didn’t like the sermons. They guilt you too much there.”

Whitcomb laughed. “Father Albright.”

“Ooooo, yeah, he’s the one.”

“My brother-he’s a cop in Philly-he decided that all you had to do if you wanted a murderer to confess is to put him in a room with Father Albright. Five minutes and he’ll confess to anything.”

“Your brother’s a cop?” Pulaski asked, laughing.

“Narcotics task force.”

“Detective?”

“Yeah.”

Pulaski said, “My brother’s in Patrol, Sixth Precinct, down in the Village.”

“That’s too funny. Both our brothers…So you went in together?”

“Yeah, we’ve kind of done everything together. We’re twins.”

“Interesting. My brother’s three years older. He’s a lot bigger than I am. I might be able to pass the physical but I wouldn’t want to have to tackle a mugger.”

“We don’t do much tackling. It’s mostly reasoning with the bad guys. Probably what you do in the Compliance Department.”

Whitcomb laughed. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“I guess that-”

“Hey, look who it is! Sergeant Friday.”

Pulaski’s gut thudded as he looked up to see slick, handsome Sean Cassel and his sidekick, the too-hip technical director, Wayne Gillespie, who joined the act by saying, “Back to get more facts, ma’am? Just the facts.” He gave a salute.

Since he’d been talking to Whitcomb about church, the moment took Pulaski right back to the Catholic high school where he and his brother had been continually at war with the boys from Forest Hills. Richer, better clothes, smarter. And fast with the cruel snipes. (“Hey, it’s the mutant brothers!”) A nightmare. Pulaski sometimes wondered if he’d gone into police work simply for the respect a uniform and gun would bring him.

Whitcomb’s lips tightened.

“Hey, Mark,” Gillespie said.

“How’s it going, Sergeant?” Cassel asked the officer.

Pulaski had been glared at on the street, been sworn at, dodged spit and bricks, and sometimes hadn’t dodged so well. None of those incidents had upset him as much as the sly words slung around like this. Smiling and playful. But playful the way a shark teases its meal before he devours it. Pulaski had looked up “Sergeant Friday” on Google on his BlackBerry and learned this was a character from an old TV show called Dragnet. Even though Friday was the hero, he was considered a “square,” which apparently meant a straight arrow, somebody extremely uncool.

Pulaski’s ears had burned as he read the information on the tiny screen, realizing only then that Cassel had been insulting him.

“Here you go.” Cassel handed Pulaski a CD in a jewel box. “Hope it helps, Sarge.”

“What’s this?”

“The list of clients who’ve downloaded information about your victims. You wanted it, remember?”

“Oh. I was expecting Mr. Sterling.”

“Well, Andrew’s a busy man. He asked me to deliver it.”

“Well, thanks.”

Gillespie said, “You’ve got your work cut out for you. Over three hundred clients in the area. And none of them got less than two hundred mailing lists.”

“That’s what I was telling you,” Cassel said. “You’re gonna be burning the midnight oil. So do we get junior G-man badges?”

Sergeant Friday was often mocked by the people he interviewed…

Pulaski was grinning, though he didn’t want to.

“Come on, guys.”

“Chill, Whitcomb,” Cassel said. “We’re joking around. Jesus. Don’t be so uptight.”

“What’re you doing down here, Mark?” Gillespie asked. “Shouldn’t you be looking for more laws we’re breaking?”

Whitcomb rolled his eyes and gave a sour grin, though Pulaski saw he too was embarrassed-and hurt.

The officer said, “You mind if I look it over here? In case I have some questions?”

“You go right ahead.” Cassel walked him to the computer in the corner and logged on. He put the CD in the tray, loaded it and stepped back, as Pulaski sat. The message on the screen asked what he wanted to do. Flustered, he found himself with a number of choices; he didn’t recognize any of them.

Cassel stood over his shoulder. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

“Sure. Just wondering what program’s best?”

“You don’t have many options,” Cassel said, laughing, as if this were obvious. “Excel.”

“X-L?” Pulaski asked. He knew his ears were red. Hated it. Just hated it.

“The spreadsheet,” Whitcomb offered helpfully, though to Pulaski that was no help whatsoever.

“You don’t know Excel?” Gillespie leaned forward and typed so fast his fingers were a blur.

The program loaded and a grid popped up, containing names, addresses, dates and times.

“You’ve read spreadsheets before, right?”

“Sure.”

“But not Excel?” Gillespie’s eyebrows were lifted in surprise.

“No. Some others.” Pulaski hated himself for playing right into their hands. Just shut up and get to work.

“Some others? Really?” Cassel asked. “Interesting.”

“It’s all yours, Sergeant Friday. Good luck.”

“Oh, that’s E-X-C-E-L,” Gillespie spelled. “Well, you can see it on the screen. You might want to check it out. It’s easy to learn. I mean, a high school kid could do it.”

“I’ll look into that.”

The two men left the room.

Whitcomb said, “Like I said earlier-nobody around here likes them very much. But the company couldn’t function without them. They’re geniuses.”

“Which I’m sure they’ll let you know.”

“You’ve got that right. Okay, I’ll let you get to work. You all right here?”

“I’ll figure things out.”

Whitcomb said, “If you get back here to the snake pit, come by and say hi.”

“Will do.”

“Or let’s meet in Astoria. Get some coffee. You like Greek food?”

“Love it.”

Pulaski flashed on an enjoyable time out. After his head injury the officer had let some friendships slide, uncertain if people would enjoy his company. He’d like hanging out with another guy, a beer, maybe catching an action flick, most of which Jenny didn’t care for.

Well, he’d think about it later-after the investigation was over, of course.

When Whitcomb was gone, Pulaski looked around. No one was nearby. Still, he recalled Mameda glancing up uneasily behind and above Pulaski’s shoulder. He thought of the special he and Jenny had recently seen about a Las Vegas casino-the “eyes in the sky” security cameras everywhere. He recalled too the security guard up the hall and the reporter whose life had been ruined because he’d spied on SSD.

Well, Ron Pulaski sure hoped there was no surveillance here. Because his mission today entailed something much more than just collecting the CD and interviewing suspects; Lincoln Rhyme had sent him here to break into what was probably the most secure computer facility in New York City.

Chapter Twenty-six

Sipping strong, sweet coffee in the café across the street from the Gray Rock, thirty-nine-year-old Miguel Abrera was flipping through a brochure he’d received in the mail recently. It was yet another in a recent series of unusual occurrences in his life. Most were merely odd or irritating; this one was troubling.

He looked through it yet again. Then closed it and sat back, glancing at his watch. He still had ten minutes before he had to return to the job.

Miguel was a maintenance specialist, as SSD called it, but he told everybody he was a janitor. Whatever the title, the tasks he performed were a janitor’s tasks. He did a good job and he liked the work. Why should he be ashamed of what he was called?

He could have taken his break in the building but the free coffee that SSD provided was lousy and they didn’t even give you real milk or cream. Besides, he wasn’t one for chitchat and preferred enjoying a newspaper and coffee in solitude. (He missed smoking, though. He’d bargained away cigarettes in the emergency room and even though God hadn’t kept his side of the deal, Miguel had given up the habit anyway.)

He glanced up to see a fellow employee enter the café, Tony Petron, a senior janitor who worked executive row. The men exchanged nods and Miguel was worried that the man would join him. But Petron went to sit in the corner by himself to read e-mail or messages on his cell phone and once again Miguel looked over the flyer, which was addressed to him personally. Then, as he sipped the sweet coffee, he considered the other unusual things that had happened recently.

Like his time sheets. At SSD you simply walked through the turnstile and your ID card told the computer when you entered and when you left. But a couple of times in the past few months his sheets had been off. He always worked a forty-hour week and was always paid for forty hours. But occasionally he’d happened to look at his records and saw that they were wrong. They said he came in earlier than he had, then left earlier. Or he missed a weekday and worked a Saturday. But he never had. He’d talked to his supervisor about it. The man had shrugged. “Software bug maybe. As long as they don’t short you, no problemo.”

And then there was the issue of his checking-account statement. A month ago, he’d found to his shock that his balance was ten thousand dollars higher than it should be. By the time he’d gone to the branch to have them correct it, though, the balance was accurate. And that had happened three times now. One of the mistaken deposits was for $70,000.

And that wasn’t all. Recently he’d had a call from a company about his mortgage application. Only he hadn’t applied for a mortgage. He rented his house. He and his wife had hoped to buy something but after she and their young son died in the auto accident he hadn’t had the heart to consider a house.

Concerned, he checked his credit report. But no mortgage application was listed. Nothing out of the ordinary, though he noted that his credit rating had been raised-significantly. That too was odd. Though, of course, he didn’t complain about this particular fluke.

But none of those things troubled him as much as this flyer.

Dear Mr. Abrera:

As you are quite aware, at various times in our lives we go through traumatic experiences and suffer difficult losses. It’s understandable that at moments like this, people have trouble moving on in life. Sometimes they even have thoughts that the burden is too great and they consider taking impulsive and unfortunate measures.

We, at Survivor Counseling Services, recognize the difficult challenges facing persons like you, who’ve suffered a serious loss. Our trained staff can help you get through the difficult times with a combination of medical intervention and one-on-one and group counseling to bring you contentment and remind you that life is indeed worth living.

Now, Miguel Abrera had never considered suicide, even at his worst, just after the accident eighteen months ago; taking his own life was inconceivable.

That he received the flyer in the first place was worrying. But two aspects of the situation really unnerved him. The first was that the brochure had been sent to him directly-not forwarded-at his new address. No one involved in his counseling or at the hospital where his wife and child died knew that he’d moved a month ago.

The second was the final paragraph:

Now that you’ve taken that vital first step of reaching out to us, Miguel, we’d like to set up a no-cost evaluation session at your convenience. Don’t delay. We can help!

He had never taken any steps to contact the service.

How had they gotten his name?

Well, it was probably just an odd set of coincidences. He’d have to worry about it later. Time to get back to SSD. Andrew Sterling was the kindest and most considerate boss anybody could ask for. But Miguel had no doubt that the rumors were true: He reviewed every employee’s time sheets personally.

Alone in the conference room at SSD, Ron Pulaski looked at the cell phone window, as he wandered frantically-walking in a grid pattern, he realized, not unlike searching a crime scene. But he had no reception, just like Jeremy had said. He’d have to use the landline. Was it monitored?

Suddenly he realized that although he’d agreed to help Lincoln Rhyme do this, he was at serious risk of losing the most important thing in his life after his family: his job as an NYPD cop. He was thinking now how powerful Andrew Sterling was. If he’d managed to ruin the life of a reporter with a major newspaper a young cop wouldn’t stand a chance against the CEO. If they caught him he’d be arrested. His career would be over. What would he tell his brother, what would he tell his parents?

He was furious with Lincoln Rhyme. Why the hell hadn’t he protested the plan to steal the data? He didn’t have to do this. Oh, sure, Detective…anything you say.

It was totally crazy.

But then he pictured the body of Myra Weinburg, eyes gazing upward, hair teasing her forehead, looking like Jenny. And he found himself leaning forward, crooking the phone under his chin and hitting 9 for the outside line.

“Rhyme here.”

“Detective. It’s me.”

“Pulaski,” Rhyme barked, “where the hell have you been? And where are you calling from? It’s a blocked number.”

“First time I’ve been alone,” he snapped. “And my cell doesn’t work here.”

“Well, let’s get moving.”

“I’m on a computer.”

“Okay, I’ll patch in Rodney Szarnek.”

The object of the theft was what Lincoln Rhyme had heard their computer guru comment on: the empty space on a computer hard drive. Sterling had claimed the computers didn’t keep track of employees’ downloading dossiers. But when Szarnek had explained about information floating around in the ether of SSD’s computer, Rhyme had asked if that might include information about who had downloaded files.

Szarnek thought it was a real possibility. He said that getting into innerCircle would be impossible-he’d tried that-but there would be a much smaller server that handled administrative operations, like time sheets and downloads. If Pulaski could get into the system, Szarnek might be able to have him extract data from the empty space. The techie could then reassemble it and see if any employees had downloaded the dossiers of the victims and the fall guys.

“Okay,” Szarnek now said, coming on the phone. “You’re in the system?”

“I’m reading a CD they gave me.”

“Heh. That means they’ve only given you passive access. We’ll have to do better.” The tech gave him some commands to type, incomprehensible.

“It’s telling me I don’t have permission to do this.”

“I’ll try to get you root.” Szarnek gave the young cop a series of even more confusing commands. Pulaski flubbed them several times and his face grew hot. He was furious with himself for transposing letters or typing a backward slash instead of a forward.

Head injury…

“Can’t I just use the mouse, look for what I’m supposed to find?”

Szarnek explained that the operating system was Unix, not the friendlier ones made by Windows or Apple. It required lengthy typed commands, which had to be keyboarded exactly.

“Oh.”

But finally the machine responded by giving him access. Pulaski felt a huge burst of pride.

“Plug the drive in now,” Szarnek said.

From his pocket the young officer took a portable 80-gigabyte hard drive and slipped the plug into the USB port on the computer. Following Szarnek’s instructions, he loaded a program that would turn the empty space on the server into separate files, compress them and store them on the portable drive.

Depending on the size of the unused space, this could take minutes or hours.

A small window popped up and the program told Pulaski only that it was “working.”

Pulaski sat back, scrolling through the customer information from the CD, which was still on the screen. In fact, the information on customers was mostly gibberish to him. The name of the SSD client was obvious, along with the address and phone number and names of those authorized to access the system, but much of the information was in.rar or.zip files, apparently compressed mailing lists. He scrolled to the end-front matter, Chapter fourteen.

Brother…it would take a long, long time to pick through them and find if any customers had compiled information on the victims and-

Pulaski’s thoughts were interrupted by voices in the hall, coming closer to the conference room.

Oh, no, not now. He carefully picked up the small, humming hard drive and slipped it into his slacks pocket. It gave a clicking sound. Faint, but Pulaski was sure it could be heard across the room. The USB cable was clearly visible.

The voices were closer now.

One was Sean Cassel’s.

Closer yet…Please. Go away!

On the screen in a small square window: Working…

Hell, Pulaski thought to himself and scooted the chair forward. The plug and the window would be clearly visible to anybody who stepped only a few feet into the room.

Suddenly a head appeared in the doorway. “Hey, Sergeant Friday,” Cassel said. “How’s it going?”

The officer cringed. The man would see the drive. He had to. “Good, thanks.” He moved his leg in front of the USB port to obscure the wire and plug. The gesture felt way obvious.

“How d’you like that Excel?”

“Good. I like it a lot.”

“Excellento. It’s the best. And you can export the files. You do much PowerPoint?”

“Not too much of that, no.”

“Well, you might some day, Sarge-when you’re police chief. And Excel is great for your home finances. Keep on top of all those investments of yours. Oh, and it comes with some games. You’d like ’em.”

Pulaski smiled, while his heart pounded as loudly as the hard drive whirred.

With a wink, Cassel disappeared.

If Excel comes with games, I’ll eat the disk, you arrogant son of a bitch.

Pulaski wiped his palms on his dress slacks, which Jenny had ironed that morning, as she did every morning or the night before if he had an early tour or a predawn assignment.

Please, Lord, don’t let me lose my job, he prayed. He thought back to the day when he and his twin brother had taken the police officer exam.

And the day they’d graduated. The swearing-in ceremony too, his mother crying, the look he and his father shared. Those were among the best moments of his life.

Would all that be wasted? Goddamnit. Okay, Rhyme’s brilliant and no one cared more about collaring perps than he did. But breaking the law like this? Hell, he was home sitting in that chair of his, being waited on. Nothing would happen to him.

Why should Pulaski be the sacrificial lamb?

Nonetheless he concentrated on his furtive task. Come on, come on, he urged the collection program. But it continued to churn away slowly, assuring him only that it was on the job. No bar easing to the right, no countdown, like in the movies.

Working…

“What was that, Pulaski?” Rhyme asked.

“Some employees. They’re gone.”

“How’s it going?”

“Okay, I think.”

“You think?”

“It-” A new message popped up: Completed. Do you want to write to a file?

“Okay, it’s finished. It wants me to write to a file.”

Szarnek came on the line. “This is critical. Do exactly what I tell you.” He gave instructions on how to create the files, compress them and move them to the hard drive. Hands shaking, Pulaski did as instructed. He was covered in sweat. In a few minutes the job was done.

“Now you’re going to have to erase your tracks, put everything back the way it was. To make sure nobody does what you just did and finds you.” Szarnek sent the officer into the log files and had him type more commands. Finally he got these taken care of.

“That’s it.”

“Okay, get out of there, rookie,” Rhyme urged.

Pulaski hung up, unplugged the hard drive and slipped it back into his pocket, then logged off. He rose and walked outside, blinking in surprise to see that the security guard had moved closer. Pulaski realized he was the same one who’d escorted Amelia through the data pens, walking just behind her-as if he were taking a shoplifter to a store manager’s office to await the police.

Had the man seen anything?

“Officer Pulaski. I’ll take you back to Andrew’s office.” His face was unsmiling and his eyes didn’t reveal a thing. He led the officer up the hall. With every step the hard drive chafed against his leg and felt as if it were red hot. More glances at the ceiling. It was acoustic tile; he couldn’t see any damn cameras.

Paranoia filled the halls, brighter than the stark white lighting.

When they arrived Sterling waved him into the office, turning over several sheets of paper he was working on. “Officer, you got what you needed?”

“I did, yes.” Pulaski held up the client list CD like a kid at show-and-tell in school.

“Ah, good.” The CEO’s bright green eyes looked him over. “And how’s the investigation going?”

“It’s going okay.” These were the first words that came to Pulaski’s mind. He felt like an idiot. What would Amelia Sachs have said? He had no clue.

“Is it now? Anything helpful in the client list?”

“I just looked through it to make sure we could read it okay. We’ll go over it back at the lab.”

“The lab. In Queens? Is that where you’re based?”

“We do work there, a few other places too.”

Sterling gave no response to Pulaski’s evasion, just smiled pleasantly. The CEO was about four or five inches shorter but the young officer felt he was the one looking up. Sterling walked with him into the outer office. “Well, if there’s anything else, just let us know. We’re one hundred percent behind you.”

“Thanks.”

“Martin, make those arrangements we talked about earlier. Then take Officer Pulaski downstairs.”

“Oh, I can find my way.”

“He’ll show you out. You have a good night.” Sterling returned to his office. The door closed.

“I’ll just be a few minutes,” Martin said to the policeman and picked up the phone and turned slightly, out of earshot.

Pulaski strolled to the door and looked up and down the hall. A figure emerged from an office. He was speaking in hushed tones on his mobile. Apparently in this part of the building cell phones worked fine. He squinted at Pulaski, said a brief farewell and flipped the phone shut.

“Excuse me, Officer Pulaski?”

He nodded.

“I’m Andy Sterling.”

Sure, Mr. Sterling’s son.

The young man’s dark eyes confidently looked right into Pulaski’s, though his handshake seemed tentative. “I think you called me. And my father left a message that I was supposed to talk to you.”

“Yeah, that’s right. You have a minute?”

“What do you need to know?”

“We’re checking into certain people’s whereabouts on Sunday afternoon.”

“I went hiking up in Westchester. I drove up there about noon and got back-”

“Oh, no, it’s not you we’re interested in. I’m just checking where your father was. He said he called you at around two from Long Island.”

“Well, yes, he did. I didn’t take the call, though. I didn’t want to stop on my hike.” He lowered his voice. “Andrew has trouble separating business from pleasure and I thought he might want me to come into the office and I didn’t want to screw up my day off. I called him back later, about three-thirty.”

“Do you mind if I take a look at your phone?”

“No, not at all.” He opened the phone and displayed the incoming-call list. He’d received and made several calls on Sunday morning but in the afternoon only one call was on the screen: from the number Sachs had given him-Sterling’s Long Island house. “Okay. That’ll do it. Appreciate it.”

The young man’s face was troubled. “It’s terrible, from what I’ve heard. Someone was raped and murdered?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you close to catching him?”

“We have a number of leads.”

“Well, good. People like that should be lined up and shot.”

“Thanks for your time.”

As the young man walked off, Martin appeared and glanced at Andy’s receding back. “If you’d follow me, Officer Pulaski.” With a smile that might as well have been a frown, he walked toward the elevator.

Pulaski was being eaten alive by nervous energy, the disk drive filling his thoughts. He was sure everybody could see it outlined in his pocket. He began rambling. “So, Martin…you been with the company long?”

“Yes.”

“You a computer person too?”

A different smile, which meant nothing more than the other one. “Not really.”

Walking down the hallway, black and white, sterile. Pulaski hated it here. He felt strangled, claustrophobic. He wanted the streets, he wanted Queens, the South Bronx. Even the danger didn’t matter. He wanted to leave, just put his head down and run.

A tickle of panic.

The reporter not only lost his job but was prosecuted under criminal trespass statutes. He served six months in state prison.

Pulaski was also disoriented. This was a different route from the one he’d taken to get to Sterling’s office. Now Martin turned a corner and pushed through a thick door.

The patrolman hesitated when he saw what was ahead: a station manned by three unsmiling security guards, along with a metal detector and an X-ray unit. These weren’t the data pens, so there was no data-erasing system, as in the other part of the building, but he couldn’t smuggle out the portable hard drive without being detected. When he’d been here earlier with Amelia Sachs they hadn’t passed through any security stations like these. He hadn’t even seen any.

“Don’t think we went through one of these last time,” he said to the assistant, trying to sound casual.

“Depends on whether people’ve been unattended for any period of time,” Martin explained. “A computer makes the assessment and lets us know.” He smiled. “Don’t take it personally.”

“Ha. Not at all.”

His heart pounded, his palms were damp. No, no! He couldn’t lose his job. He just couldn’t. It was so important to him.

What the hell had he done, agreeing to do this? He told himself he was stopping the man who’d killed a woman who looked a lot like Jenny. A terrible man who had no problem with killing anyone if it suited his purpose.

Still, he reflected, this isn’t right.

What would his parents say when he confessed to them that he was being arrested for stealing data? His brother?

“You have any data on you, sir?”

Pulaski showed him the CD. The man examined the case. He called a number, using speed dial. He stiffened slightly and then spoke quietly. He loaded the disk into a computer at his station and looked over the screen. The CD apparently was on a list of approved items; but still the guard ran it through the X-ray unit, studying the image of the jewel box and the disk inside carefully. It rolled on the conveyor to the other side of the metal detector.

Pulaski started forward but a third guard stopped him. “Sorry, sir, please empty your pockets and put everything metal on there.”

“I’m a police officer,” he said, trying to sound amused.

The guard replied, “Your department has agreed to abide by our security guidelines, since we’re government contractors. The rules apply to everybody. You can call your supervisor to check, if you’d like.”

Pulaski was trapped.

Martin continued to watch him closely.

“Everything on the belt, please.”

Think, come on, Pulaski raged to himself. Figure something out.

Think!

Bluff your way through this.

I can’t. I’m not smart enough.

Yes, you are. What would Amelia Sachs do? Lincoln Rhyme?

He turned away, knelt down and spent several moments carefully unlacing his shoes, slowly pulling them off. Standing, he placed the polished shoes on the belt and added his weapons, ammo, cuffs, radio, coins, phone and pens to a plastic tray.

Pulaski started through the metal detector and it went off with a squeal as the unit sensed the hard drive.

“You have anything else on you?”

Swallowing, shaking his head, he patted his pockets. “Nope.”

“We’ll have to wand you.”

Pulaski stepped out. The second guard passed the wand over his body and stopped at the officer’s chest. The device gave a huge squeal.

The patrolman laughed. “Oh, sorry.” He undid a button on his shirt and displayed the bulletproof vest. “Metal heart plate. Forgot about it. Stops everything but a full-metal-jacket rifle slug.”

“Probably not a Desert Eagle,” the guard said.

“Now here’s my opinion: A fifty-caliber handgun is just not natural,” Pulaski joked, finally drawing smiles from the guards. He started to remove the shirt.

“That’s all right. I don’t think we need to make you strip, Officer.”

With shaking hands Pulaski buttoned his shirt, right over the spot where the drive rested-between his undershirt and the vest; he’d stuffed it there when he’d bent down to unlace his shoes.

He gathered up his gear.

Martin, who’d bypassed the metal detector, guided him through another door. They were in the main lobby, a large, stark area in gray marble, etched with a huge version of the watchtower and window logo.

“Have a good day, Officer Pulaski,” Martin said, turning back.

Pulaski continued to the massive glass doors, trying to control the shaking of his hands. He was noticing for the first time the bank of TV cameras monitoring the lobby. His impression was of vultures, sitting serenely on the wall, waiting for wounded prey to gasp and fall.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Even hearing Judy’s voice, taking tearful comfort in its familiarity, Arthur Rhyme couldn’t stop thinking about the tattooed white guy, the sizzling meth freak, Mick.

The guy kept talking to himself, he slipped his hands inside his pants every five minutes or so, and he seemed to turn his eyes to Arthur almost as frequently.

“Honey? Are you there?”

“Sorry.”

“I have to tell you something,” Judy said.

About the lawyer, about the money, about the children. Whatever it was, it would be too much for him. Arthur Rhyme was close to exploding.

“Go ahead,” he whispered, resigned.

“I went to see Lincoln.”

“You what?”

“I had to… You don’t seem to believe the lawyer, Art. This isn’t going to just fix itself.”

“But…I told you not to call him.”

“Well, there’s a family involved here, Art. It’s not just what you want. There’s me and the children. We should’ve done it before.”

“I don’t want him involved. No, call him back and tell him thanks but it’s fine.”

“Fine?” Judy Rhyme blurted. “Are you crazy?”

He sometimes believed she was stronger than he was-probably smarter too. She’d been furious when he’d stormed out of Princeton after being passed over for the professorship. She’d said he was behaving like a child having a tantrum. He wished he’d listened to her.

Judy blurted, “You’ve got this idea that John Grisham is going to show up in court at the last minute and save you. But that’s not going to happen. Jesus, Art, you ought to be grateful I’m doing something.”

“I am,” he said quickly, his words darting out like squirrels. “It’s just-”

“Just what? This is a man who nearly died, was paralyzed over his whole body and now lives in a wheelchair. And he’s stopped everything to prove you’re innocent. What the hell are you thinking of? You want your children to grow up with a father in prison for murder?”

“Of course not.” He wondered again if she really believed his denial that he hadn’t known Alice Sanderson, the dead woman. She wouldn’t think he’d killed her, of course; she’d wonder if they’d been lovers.

“I have faith in the system, Judy.” God, that sounded weak.

“Well, Lincoln is the system, Art. You should give him a call and thank him.”

Arthur hesitated, then asked, “What does he say?”

“I just talked to him yesterday. He called to ask about your shoes-some of the evidence. But I haven’t heard from him again.”

“Did you go see him? Or just call?”

“I went to his place. He lives on Central Park West. His town house is real nice.”

A dozen memories of his cousin came to mind, rapid-fire.

Arthur asked, “How does he look?”

“Believe it or not, pretty much like when we saw him in Boston. Well, no, actually he looks in better shape now.”

“And he can’t walk?”

“He can’t move at all. Just his head and shoulders.”

“What about his ex? Do he and Blaine see each other?”

“No, he’s seeing someone else. A policewoman. She’s very pretty. Tall, redhead. I have to say, I was surprised. I shouldn’t have been, I guess. But I was.”

A tall redhead? Arthur thought immediately of Adrianna. And tried to put that memory aside. It refused to leave.

Tell me why, Arthur. Tell me why you did it.

A snarl from Mick. His hand was back in his pants. His eyes flickered hatefully toward Arthur.

“I’m sorry, honey. Thanks for calling him. Lincoln.”

It was then that he felt hot breath on his neck. “Yo, getoffadaphone.”

A Lat was standing behind him.

“Offadaphone.”

“Judy, I have to go. There’s only one phone here. I’ve used up my time.”

“I love you, Art-”

“I-”

The Lat stepped forward and Arthur hung up, then slipped back to his bench in a corner of the detention area. He sat staring at the floor in front of him, the scuff in the shape of a kidney. Staring, staring.

But the distressed floor didn’t hold his attention. He was thinking of the past. More memories joined those of Adrianna and his cousin Lincoln…Arthur’s family’s home on the North Shore. Lincoln’s in the western suburbs. Arthur’s stern king of a father, Henry. His brother, Robert. And shy, brilliant Marie.

Thinking too of Lincoln’s father, Teddy. (There was an interesting story behind the nickname-his given name wasn’t Theodore; Arthur knew how it had come about but, curiously, he didn’t think Lincoln did.) He’d always liked Uncle Teddy. A sweet guy, a little shy, a little quiet-but who wouldn’t be in the shadow of an older brother like Henry Rhyme? Sometimes when Lincoln was out, Arthur would drive to Teddy and Anne’s. In the small, paneled family room, uncle and nephew would watch an old movie or talk about American history.

The spot on the Tomb’s floor now morphed into the shape of Ireland. It seemed to move as Arthur stared, eyes fixed on it, willing himself away from here, disappearing through a magic hole into the life Out There.

Arthur Rhyme felt complete despair now. And he understood how naive he’d been. There were no magical exit routes, and no practical ones either. He knew Lincoln was brilliant. He’d read all the articles in the popular press he could find. Even some of his scientific writing: “The Biologic Effects of Certain Nanoparticulate Materials…”

But Arthur understood now that Lincoln could do nothing for him. The case was hopeless and he’d be in jail for the rest of his life.

No, Lincoln’s role in this was perfectly fitting. His cousin-the relative he’d been closest to while growing up, his surrogate brother-ought to be present at Arthur’s downfall.

A grim smile on his face, he looked up from the spot on the floor. And he realized that something had changed.

Weird. This wing of detention was now deserted.

Where had everybody gone?

Then approaching footsteps.

Alarmed, he glanced up and saw somebody moving toward him fast, feet scuffling. His friend, Antwon Johnson. Eyes cold.

Arthur understood. Somebody was attacking him from behind!

Mick, of course.

And Johnson was coming to save him.

Leaping to his feet, turning…So frightened he felt like crying. Looking for the tweaker, but-

No. No one was there.

Which is when he felt Antwon Johnson slip the garrote around his neck-homemade apparently, from a shirt torn into strips and twisted into a rope.

“No, wha-” Arthur was jerked to his feet. The huge man pulled him off the bench. And dragged him to the wall from which the nail protruded, the one he’d seen earlier, seven feet from the floor. Arthur moaned and thrashed.

“Shhhh.” Johnson looked around at the deserted alcove of the hall.

Arthur struggled but it was a struggle against a block of wood, against a bag of concrete. He slammed his fist pointlessly into the man’s neck and shoulders, then felt himself lifted off the floor. The black man hefted him up and hooked the homemade hangman’s noose to the nail. He let go and stood back, watching Arthur kick and jerk, trying to free himself.

Why, why, why? He was trying to ask this question but only wet sputtering came from his lips. Johnson stared at him in curiosity. No anger, no sadistic gleam. Just watching with mild interest.

And Arthur realized, as his body shivered and his vision went black, that this was all a setup-Johnson had saved him from the Lats for only one reason: He wanted Arthur for himself.

“Nnnnnn-”

Why?

The black man kept his hands at his sides and leaned close. He whispered, “I’m doin’ you a favor, man. Fuck, you’d do yourself in a month or two anyway. You ain’t made for it here. Now jus’ stop fightin’ it. Go easier, you jus’ give it up, you know what I’m sayin’?”

Pulaski returned from his mission at SSD and held up the sleek gray hard drive.

“Good job, rookie,” Rhyme said.

Sachs winked. “Your first secret op assignment.”

He grimaced. “It didn’t feel much like an assignment. It felt more like a felony.”

“I’m sure we can find probable cause if we look hard enough,” Sellitto reassured him.

Rhyme said to Rodney Szarnek, “Go ahead.”

The computer man plugged the hard drive into the USB port on his battered laptop and typed with firm, certain strikes on the keyboard, staring at the screen.

“Good, good…”

“You have a name?” Rhyme snapped. “Somebody at SSD who downloaded the dossiers?”

“What?” Szarnek gave a laugh. “It doesn’t work that way. It’ll take a while. I have to load it on the mainframe at Computer Crimes. And then-”

“How long a while?” Rhyme grumbled.

Szarnek once again blinked, as if seeing for the first time that the criminalist was disabled. “Depends on the level of fragmentation, age of the files, allocation, partitioning, and then-”

“Fine, fine, fine. Just do the best you can.”

Sellitto asked, “What else did you find?”

Pulaski explained about his interviews of the remaining technicians who had access to all of the data pens. He added that he’d talked to Andy Sterling, whose cell phone confirmed that his father had called from Long Island at the time of the killing. His alibi held up. Thom updated their suspect chart.

Andrew Sterling, President, Chief Executive Officer

Alibi-on Long Island, verified. Confirmed by son

Sean Cassel, Director of Sales and Marketing

No alibi

Wayne Gillespie, Director of Technical Operations

No alibi

Samuel Brockton, Director, Compliance Department

Alibi-hotel records confirm presence in Washington

Peter Arlonzo-Kemper, Director of Human Resources

Alibi-with wife, verified by her (biased?)

Steven Shraeder, Technical Service and Support Manager, day shift

Alibi-in office, according to time sheets

Faruk Mameda, Technical Service and Support Manager, night shift

No alibi

Client of SSD (?)

List provided by Sterling

UNSUB recruited by Andrew Sterling (?)

So now everyone at SSD who had access to innerCircle knew of the investigation…and still the bot guarding the NYPD “Myra Weinburg Homicide” file had not reported a single attempted intrusion. Was 522 being cautious? Or did the concept of the trap miss the mark? Was the entire premise that the killer was connected to SSD completely wrong? It occurred to Rhyme that they’d been so awed by the power of Sterling and the company that they were neglecting other potential suspects.

Pulaski produced a CD. “Here are the clients. I looked it over fast. There’re about three hundred fifty of them.”

“Ouch.” Rhyme grimaced.

Szarnek loaded the disk and opened it up on a spreadsheet. Rhyme looked over the data on his flat-screen monitor-nearly a thousand pages of dense text.

“Noise,” Sachs said. She explained what Sterling had told her about data’s being useless if it’s corrupt, too sparse or too plentiful. The tech scrolled through the swamp of information-which clients had bought which lists of data-mined details… Too much information. But then Rhyme had a thought. “Does it show the time and date of when the data was downloaded?”

Szarnek examined the screen. “Yes, it does.”

“Let’s find out who downloaded information just before the crimes.”

“Good, Linc,” Sellitto said. “Five Twenty-Two’d want the most up-to-date data possible.”

Szarnek considered this. “I think I can hack together a bot to handle it. Might take some time but, yeah, it’s doable. Just let me know exactly when the crimes occurred.”

“We can get you those. Mel?”

“Sure.” The tech began to compile the details of the coin theft, the painting theft and two rapes.

“Hey, you’re using that program Excel?” Pulaski asked Szarnek.

“That’s right.”

“What is it, exactly?”

“Your basic spreadsheet. Mostly used for sales figures and financial statements. But now people use it for a lot of things.”

“Could I learn it?”

“Sure. You can take a course. Say, the New School or Learning Annex.”

“Should have boned up on it before now. I’ll check them out, those schools.”

Rhyme believed he now understood Pulaski’s reticence to go back to SSD. He said, “Put that low on your list, rookie.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Remember, people hassle you in all sorts of different ways. Don’t assume they’re right and you’re wrong just because they know something you don’t. The question is: Do you need to know it to do a better job? Then learn it. If not, it’s a distraction and to hell with it.”

The young officer laughed. “Okay. Thanks.”

Rodney Szarnek took the CD and the portable hard drive and bundled up his computer to head down to the Computer Crimes Unit and its mainframe.

After he left, Rhyme glanced at Sachs, who was on the phone, tracking down information on the data scrounger killed in Colorado several years ago. He couldn’t hear the words but she was clearly getting relevant information. Her head was forward, lips moist, and she tugged at a strand of hair. Her eyes were sleek and focused. The pose was extremely erotic.

Ridiculous, he thought. Concentrate on the goddamn case. He tried to push the sensation away.

He was only somewhat successful.

Sachs hung up the phone. “Got something from the Colorado State Police. That data scrounger’s name was P. J. Gordon. Peter James. Goes mountain biking one day and never comes home. They found his bike at the bottom of a cliff, battered up. It was beside a deep river. The body shows up twenty miles downstream a month or so later. Positive DNA match.”

“Investigation?”

“Not much of one. Kids’re always killing themselves with bikes and skis and snowmobiles in that area. It was ruled accidental. But a few open questions remained. For one thing, it seemed that Gordon had tried to break into the SSD servers in California-not the database but the company’s own files and some employees’ personal ones. Nobody knows if he got inside or not. I tried to track down other people from the company, Rocky Mountain Data, to find out more. But nobody’s around anymore. Looks like Sterling bought the company, took its database and let everybody go.”

“Anybody we can call about him?”

“No family that the state police could find.”

Rhyme was nodding slowly. “Okay, this is an interesting premise, if I can use your flavor-of-the-week participle, Mel. This Gordon’s doing his own data mining in SSD’s files and finds something about Five Twenty-Two, who realizes he’s in trouble, about to be found out. Then he kills Gordon and makes it look like an accident. Sachs, the police in Colorado have any case files?”

She sighed. “Archived. They’ll look for them.”

“Well, I want to find out who at SSD was with the company back then, when Gordon died.”

Pulaski called Mark Whitcomb at SSD. After a half hour he called back. A conversation with Human Resources revealed that dozens of employees were with the company at that time, including Sean Cassel, Wayne Gillespie, Mameda and Shraeder, as well as Martin, one of Sterling’s personal assistants.

The large number meant that the Peter Gordon matter wasn’t much of a lead. Rhyme hoped, though, that if they got the full Colorado State Police report, maybe he could find some evidence that pointed them toward one of the suspects.

He was staring at the list when Sellitto’s phone rang. He took the call. The criminalist saw the detective stiffen. “What?” he snapped, glancing at Rhyme. “No shit. What’s the story?…Call me as soon as you know.”

He hung up. His lips were pressed together and a frown crossed his face. “Linc, I’m sorry. Your cousin. Somebody moved on him in detention. Tried to kill him.”

Sachs walked over to Rhyme, rested her hand on his shoulder. He could feel alarm in the gesture.

“How is he?”

“The director’ll call me back, Linc. He’s in the emergency clinic there. They don’t know anything yet.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

“Hey there.”

Pam Willoughby, ushered into the town house foyer by Thom, was smiling. The girl said hello to the crew there, who greeted her with smiles, despite the terrible news about Arthur Rhyme. Thom asked her how school had gone today.

“Great. Really good.” Then she lowered her voice and asked, “Amelia, you have a minute?”

Sachs glanced at Rhyme, who nodded her toward the girl, meaning: There’s nothing we can do about Art until we know more; go ahead.

She stepped into the hallway with the girl. Funny about young people, Sachs was thinking, you can read everything in their faces. The moods, at least, if not always the reasons behind them. When it came to Pam, Sachs sometimes wished she had more of Kathryn Dance’s skill in reading how the girl felt and what she was thinking. This afternoon, though, she seemed transparently happy.

“I know you’re busy,” Pam said.

“No problem.”

They walked into the parlor across the front foyer of the town house.

“So?” Sachs smiled conspiratorially.

“Okay. I did what you said, you know. I just asked Stuart about that other girl.”

“And?”

“It’s just they used to go out-before I met him. He even told me about her a while ago. He ran into her on the street. They were just talking is all. She was kind of a clinger, you know. She was that way when they were going out and it’s one of the reasons he didn’t want to see her anymore. And she was holding on to him when Emily saw them-and he was trying to get away. That’s all. Everything’s, like, cool.”

“Hey, congrats. So the enemy is definitely out of the picture?”

“Oh, yeah. It has to be true-I mean, he couldn’t date her, because he could lose his job-” Pam’s voice came to an abrupt halt.

Sachs didn’t need to be an interrogator to realize that the girl had stumbled. “Lose his job? What job?”

“Well, you know.”

“Not exactly, Pam. Why would he lose his job?”

Blushing, she stared at the Oriental rug at their feet. “Like, she’s sort of in his class this year.”

“He’s a teacher?”

“Kind of.”

“At your high school?”

“Not this year. He’s at Jefferson. I had him last year. So it’s okay if we-”

“Wait, Pam…” Sachs was thinking back. “You told me he was in school.”

“I said I met him at school.”

“And Poetry Club?”

“Well-”

“He was the adviser,” Sachs said, grimacing. “And he coaches soccer. He doesn’t play it.”

“I didn’t exactly lie.”

First, Sachs told herself, don’t panic. That’s not going to help anything. “Well, Pam, this is…” And what the hell is it? She had so many questions. She asked the first one in her thoughts: “How old is he?”

“I don’t know. Not that old.” The girl looked up. Her eyes were hard. Sachs had seen her defiant and moody and determined. She’d never seen the girl this way-trapped and defensive, almost feral.

“Pam?”

“I guess, maybe, like forty-one or something.”

The no-panic rule was starting to crumble.

What the hell should she do? Yes, Amelia Sachs had always wanted children in her life-spurred by memories of the wonderful times she’d spent with her father-but she hadn’t thought much about the tougher job of parenting.

“Be reasonable” was the guideline here, Sachs told herself. But it was about as effective as “Don’t panic” at the moment. “Well, Pam-”

“I know what you’re going to say. But it’s not about that.”

Sachs wasn’t so sure. Men and women together…To some extent it’s always about that. But she couldn’t consider the sexual aspect of the problem. It would only fuel the panic and destroy the reasonable.

“He’s different. We have this connection… I mean, the guys in school, it’s sports or video games. So boring.”

“Pam, there are plenty of boys who read poetry and go to plays. Weren’t there any boys in Poetry Club?”

“It’s not the same… I don’t tell anybody what I went through, you know, with my mother and everything. But I told Stuart and he understood. He’s had a tough time too. His father was killed when he was my age. He had to put himself through school, working two jobs or three.”

“It’s just not a good idea, honey. There’re problems you can’t even imagine now.”

“He’s nice to me. I love being with him. Isn’t that the most important thing?”

“That’s part of it but it’s not everything.”

Pam’s arms folded defiantly.

“And even if he’s not your teacher now he could get into really bad trouble too.” Somehow, saying this made Sachs feel that she’d already lost the argument.

“He said I’m worth the risk.”

You didn’t need to be Freud to figure it out: A girl whose father had been killed when she was young and whose mother and stepfather were domestic terrorists…she was primed to fall for an attentive, older man.

“Come on, Amelia, I’m not getting married. We’re just dating.”

“Then why not take a break? A month. Go out with a couple other guys. See what happens.” Pathetic, Sachs told herself. Her arguments smacked of a losing rear-guard action.

An exaggerated frown. “Like, why would I want to do that? I’m not out there trying to hook a boy, just to have somebody, like every other girl in my class.”

“Honey, I know you feel something for him. But just give it some time. I don’t want you hurt. There are a lot of wonderful guys out there. They’ll be better for you and you’ll be happier in the long run.”

“I’m not breaking up with him. I love him. And he loves me.” She gathered up her books and said coolly, “I better go. I have homework.” The girl started toward the door but then stopped and turned back. She whispered, “When you started going out with Mr. Rhyme, didn’t somebody say it was a stupid idea? That you could find somebody who wasn’t in a wheelchair? That there were lots of ‘wonderful guys’ out there? I bet they did.”

Pam held her eye briefly, then turned and left, closing the door behind her.

Sachs reflected that, yes, indeed, somebody had said just that to her, practically those very words.

And who else but Amelia Sachs’s own mother?

Miguel Abrera 5465-9842-4591-0243, the “maintenance specialist,” as the corporately correct say, left work at his usual time, around 5:00 P.M. He now gets out of the subway car near his home in Queens and I’m right behind him as he strolls home.

I’m trying to stay calm. But it’s not easy.

They-the police-are close, close to me! Which has never happened before. In years and years of collecting, many dead sixteens, many ruined lives, many people in jail on my account, nobody has ever come close like this. Since I learned about the police suspicions, I’ve kept up a good facade, I’m sure. Still, I’ve been analyzing the situation frantically, picking through the data, looking for the lump of gold that tells me what They know and what They don’t. How much at risk I really am. But I can’t find the answer.

There’s too much noise in the data!

Contamination…

I’m running through how I’ve behaved lately. I’ve been careful. Data certainly can work against you; they can pin you to the grid like a blue Morpho menelaus butterfly, smelling of cyanide’s almond perfume, on a velvet board. But those of us in the know, we can use data for protection too. Data can be erased, can be massaged, can be skewed. We can add noise on purpose. We can place Data Set A right next to Data Set X to make A and X seem much more similar than they are. Or more different.

We can cheat in the simplest of ways. RFIDs, for instance. Slip a smart pass transponder into someone’s suitcase and it will show your car’s been in a dozen places over the weekend, while in fact it’s actually been sitting in your garage the whole time. Or think about how easy it is to put your employee ID into an envelope and have it delivered to the office, where it sits for four hours until you ask somebody to collect the package and bring it to you in a restaurant downtown. Sorry, forgot to pick it up. Thanks. Lunch is on me… And what do the data show? Why, that you were slaving away at work, while in reality you were wiping your razor clean as you stood over someone’s cooling body during those hours in question. That nobody actually saw you at your desk is irrelevant. Here are my time sheets, Officer… We trust data, we don’t trust the human eye. There are a dozen more tricks I’ve perfected.

And now I have to rely on one of the more extreme measures.

Ahead of me now Miguel 5465 pauses and glances into a bar. I know for a fact that he drinks rarely and if he goes in for a cerveza it will throw off the timing a bit but that won’t ruin my plans for this evening. He forgoes the drink, though, and continues along the street, head cocked to the side. I actually feel sorry that he didn’t give in and indulge, considering he has less than an hour to live.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Finally somebody from the detention center called Lon Sellitto.

He nodded as he listened. “Thanks.” He disconnected. “Arthur’s going to be okay. He’s hurt but not bad.”

“Thank God,” Sachs whispered.

“What happened?” Rhyme asked.

“Nobody can figure it out. The perp’s Antwon Johnson, doing fed time for kidnapping and state lines. They moved him to the Tombs for trial on related state charges. He just kind of snapped, looks like, tried to make it look like Arthur hanged himself. Johnson denied it at first, then claimed Arthur wanted to die, asked him to help.”

“The guards found him in time?”

“No. Weird. Another prisoner went after Johnson. Mick Gallenta, two-timer in for meth and smack. He was half Johnson’s size, took him on, knocked him out and got Arthur down from the wall. Nearly started a riot.”

The phone rang and Rhyme noticed a 201 area code.

Judy Rhyme.

He took the call.

“Did you hear, Lincoln?” Her voice was unsteady.

“I did. Yes.”

“Why would somebody do that? Why?”

“Jail’s jail. It’s a different world.”

“But it’s just a holding cell, Lincoln. It’s detention. I could understand if he were in prison with convicted murderers. But most of those people are awaiting trial, aren’t they?”

“That’s right.”

“Why would somebody risk his own case by trying to kill another prisoner there?”

“I don’t know, Judy. It doesn’t make sense. Have you talked to him?”

“They let him make a call. He can’t speak very well. His throat was damaged. But it’s not too bad. They’re keeping him in for a day or two.”

“Good,” Rhyme said. “Listen, Judy, I wanted more information before I called but…I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to show that Arthur’s innocent. It looks like there’s someone else behind it. He killed another victim yesterday and I think we can tie him to the murder of the Sanderson woman.”

“No! Really? Who the hell is it, Lincoln?” No longer treading on ice, no longer carefully choosing words and worried about offending. Judy Rhyme had grown tough in the last twenty-four hours.

“That’s what we’re trying to find out now.” He glanced at Sachs then turned back to the speakerphone. “And it doesn’t look as if he had any connection with the victim. No connection at all.”

“You…?” Her voice faded. “Are you sure about that?”

Sachs identified herself and said, “That’s right, Judy.”

They could hear her inhaling. “Should I call the lawyer?”

“There’s nothing he can do. As things stand now, Arthur’s still under arrest.”

“Can I call Art and tell him?”

Rhyme hesitated. “Yes, sure.”

“He asked about you, Lincoln. In the clinic.”

“Did he?”

He sensed Amelia Sachs was looking at him.

“Yes. He said whatever came of it, thank you for helping.”

Everything would’ve been different….

“I should go, Judy. We have a lot to do. We’ll let you know what we find.”

“Thank you, Lincoln. And everybody there. God bless you.”

A hesitation. “Good-bye, Judy.”

Rhyme didn’t bother with the voice command. He disconnected with his right index finger. He had better control with the ring finger of his left hand but the right moved fast as a snake.

Miguel 5465 is a survivor of tragedy and a dependable employee. He regularly visits his sister and her husband on Long Island. He wires Western Union money to his mother and sister in Mexico. He’s a moral man. Once, a year after his wife and child died, he got a precious $400 out of an ATM machine in an area of Brooklyn known for its prostitutes. The janitor, though, balked. The money went back into his account the next day. Unfair he had to pay the $2.50 service charge at the ATM.

I know a lot more about Miguel 5465, more than most other sixteens in the database-because he’s one of my escape hatches.

Which I desperately need now.

I’ve been grooming him as a surrogate for the past year. After he dies the diligent police will begin to put the pieces together. Why, we’ve found the killer/rapist/art-and-coin thief! He confessed in his suicide note-despondent and driven to murder by the death of his family. And in a box in his pocket, a fingernail from the victim Myra Weinburg.

And look at what else we have here: Sums of money passed through his account and vanished inexplicably. Miguel 5465 looked into getting a large mortgage to buy a house on Long Island, with a half million down, despite his salary of $46,000 a year. He went on art-dealer Web sites, inquiring about Prescott paintings. In the basement of his apartment building is a five-pack of Miller beer, Trojan condoms, Edge shave cream and a photo of Myra Weinburg’s realm from OurWorld. Also hidden are books on hacking and thumb drives containing passcode-cracking programs. He’s been depressed and even called a suicide counseling service just last week to ask for a brochure.

And then there are his time sheets, revealing that he was out of the office when the crimes occurred.

Slam dunk.

In my pocket is his suicide note, a reasonable facsimile of his handwriting, from the copies of his canceled checks and loan applications, conveniently scanned and obscenely available online. It’s written on paper similar to what he bought a month ago at his neighborhood drugstore and the ink is from the same type of pen he owns a dozen of.

And since the last thing the police want is an extensive investigation into their prime data contractor, SSD, that will be the end of the matter. He’ll die. Case closed. And I’ll go back to my Closet, survey the mistakes I made and work on how to be more clever in the future.

But isn’t that just a life lesson for us all?

As for the suicide itself, I looked at Google Earth and ran a basic prediction program, which suggested how he would get home from the subway station after leaving SSD. Miguel 5465 will most likely take a path through a small urban park here in Queens, right next to the expressway. The irritating rush of traffic and the gassy atmosphere from diesel exhaust mean the park is usually deserted. I’ll come up fast behind him-don’t want him to recognize me and grow cautious-and deliver a half dozen blows to the head with the BB-filled iron pipe. Then I’ll slip the suicide note and box containing the fingernail into his pocket, drag him to the railing and over he goes onto the highway, fifty feet below.

Miguel 5465 is walking slowly, glancing into storefronts. And I’m thirty, forty feet behind, head down, inconspicuously lost in after-work music, like dozens of other commuters returning home, though my iPod is off (music is one thing I don’t collect).

Now, the park is one block away. I-

But wait, something’s wrong. He’s not turning toward the park. He pauses at a Korean deli, buys some flowers and turns away from the commercial strip, heading toward a deserted neighborhood.

I’m processing this, running the behavior through my knowledge base. The prediction’s not working.

A girlfriend? A relative?

How the hell can there be something about his life I don’t know?

Noise in the data. I hate it!

No, no, this isn’t good. Flowers for a girlfriend don’t fit the profile of a suicidal killer.

Miguel 5465 continues down the sidewalk, the air fragrant with the spring smell of cut grass and lilac and dog urine.

Ah, got it now. I relax.

The janitor walks through the gate of a cemetery.

Of course, the dead wife and kid. We’re doing fine. The prediction holds. We’ll just have a brief delay. His path home will still take him through the park. This might be even better, a last visit to the wife. Forgive me for raping and murdering in your absence, dear.

I follow, keeping a safe distance, in my comfortable shoes, rubber-soled, making no sound whatsoever.

Miguel 5465 makes a direct line to a double grave. There he blesses himself, kneels in prayer. Then he leaves the flowers beside four other bouquets, in varying degrees of wilt. Why haven’t the cemetery trips shown up on the grid?

Of course-he pays cash for the flowers.

He stands up and starts to walk away.

I begin to follow, breathing deeply.

When: “Excuse me, sir.”

I freeze. Then turn slowly to the groundskeeper, who is talking to me. He’s come up silently, treading over the carpet of short, dewy grass. And he looks from my face toward my right hand, which I slip into my pocket. He might or might not have seen the beige cloth glove I’m wearing.

“Hi,” I say.

“I saw you in the bushes there.”

How do I respond to that?

“The bushes?”

His eyes reveal to me that he’s protective of his dead folks.

“Can I ask who you’re visiting?”

His name is on the front of his overalls but I can’t see it clearly. Stony? What kind of name is that? I’m riddled with anger. This is Their fault…Them, the people after me! They’ve made me careless. I’m addled by all the noise, all the contamination! I hate Them hate Them hate…

I manage a sympathetic smile. “I’m a friend of Miguel’s.”

“Ah. You knew Carmela and Juan?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Stony, or is it Stanley, is wondering why I’m still here since Miguel 5465 is gone. A shift in posture. Yes, it’s Stony… His hand moves closer to the walkie-talkie riding on his hip. I don’t recall the names on the tombstones. I’m wondering if Miguel’s wife was named Rosa and the boy Jose and I’ve just waltzed into a trap.

Other people’s cleverness is so tedious.

Stony glances at his radio and when he looks up the knife is already halfway into his chest. One, two, three punches, careful around the bone-you can twist a finger if you’re not careful, as I’ve learned the hard way. It’s very painful.

The shocked groundskeeper is more resilient than I’d expected, though. He lunges forward and grabs my collar with the hand not gripping the wound. We struggle, grappling and pushing and pulling, a macabre dance among the graves, until his hand falls away and he drops onto his back on the sidewalk, a snaky strip of asphalt that leads to the cemetery office. His hand finds the walkie-talkie at the same instant my blade finds his neck.

Zip, zip, two quiet slashes open the artery or vein or both and send a surprising torrent of blood into the sky.

I dodge it.

“No, no, why? Why?” He reaches for the wound, helpfully getting his hands out of the way and allowing me to do the same on the other side of his neck. Slash, slash, I can’t stop myself. It’s unnecessary but I’m mad, furious-at Them for throwing me off stride. They forced me to use Miguel 5465 as an escape. And now They’ve distracted me. I got careless.

More slashing…Then I stand back and in thirty seconds, after a few eerie kicks, the man is unconscious. In sixty, life becomes death.

I can only stand, numb from this nightmare, gasping from the effort. I’m hunched over and I feel like a miserable animal.

The police-They-will know I was the one, of course. The data are all there. The death happened at the gravesite of an SSD employee’s family, and, after the wrestling match with the groundskeeper, I’m sure there’s some evidence the clever police can trace to the other scenes. I don’t have time to clean up.

They’ll understand that I’d followed Miguel 5465 to fake his suicide and was interrupted by the groundskeeper.

Then a clatter from the walkie-talkie. Someone is asking for Stony. The voice isn’t alarmed; it’s a simple inquiry. But with no response they’ll come looking for him soon.

I turn and leave quickly, as if I’m a mourner overcome with sorrow and bewildered by what the future holds.

But then, of course, that’s exactly who I am.

Chapter Thirty

Another killing.

And there was no doubt that 522 had committed it.

Rhyme and Sellitto were on a hot list for immediate notification about any homicides in New York City. When the call arrived from the Detective Bureau, it took only a few questions to find out that the victim, a cemetery groundskeeper, had been murdered next to the grave of an SSD employee’s wife and child, most likely by a man who’d followed the worker there.

Too much of a coincidence, of course.

The employee, a janitor, was not a suspect. He was talking to another visitor just outside the cemetery when they heard the groundskeeper’s screams.

“Right.” Rhyme nodded. “Okay, Pulaski?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Call somebody at SSD. See if you can find out where everybody on the suspect list was in the past two hours.”

“All right.” Another stoic smile. He sure didn’t like the place.

“And, Sachs-”

“I’ll run the scene at the cemetery.” She was already heading for the door.

After Sachs and Pulaski left, Rhyme called Rodney Szarnek at the NYPD Computer Crimes Unit. He explained about the recent killing and said, “I’m guessing he’s hungry for information about what we’ve learned. Have there been any hits on the trap?”

“Nothing outside the department. Just one search. Somebody from a Captain Malloy’s office in the Big Building. Read through the files for twenty minutes then logged off.”

Malloy? Rhyme laughed to himself. Though Sellitto had been keeping the captain updated, as instructed, he apparently couldn’t shake his nature as an investigator and was gathering as much information as he could-maybe intending to offer suggestions. Rhyme would have to call and tell him about the trap and that the bait files contained nothing helpful.

The tech said, “I assumed it was okay for them to look it over, so I didn’t call you.”

“It’s fine.” Rhyme disconnected. He stared at the evidence boards for a long time. “Lon, I’ve got an idea.”

“What?” Sellitto asked.

“Our boy’s always one step ahead of us. We’ve been going about this like he’s any other perp. But he’s not.”

The man who knows everything…

“I want to try something a little different. I want some help.”

“From who?”

“Downtown.”

“Big area. Where exactly?”

“Malloy. And somebody at City Hall.”

“City Hall? The fuck for? Why do you think they’ll even take your phone call?”

“Because they have to.”

“That’s a reason?”

“You’ve gotta convince them, Lon. We need an edge on this guy. But you can do it.”

“Do what exactly?”

“I think we need an expert.”

“What kind?”

“Computer expert.”

“We’ve got Rodney.”

“He’s not exactly what I have in mind.”

The man had been knifed to death.

Efficiently, yes, but also gratuitously, stabbed in the chest and then viciously slashed-in anger, Sachs assessed. This was another side to 522. She’d seen injuries like these at other scenes; the energetic and ill-aimed cuts suggested that the killer was losing control.

That was good for the investigators; emotional criminals are also careless criminals. They’re more public and they leave more evidence than perps who exercise self-control. But, as Amelia Sachs had learned from her days on the street, the downside is that they’re much more dangerous. People as crazed and dangerous as 522 drew no distinction among their intended victims, innocent bystanders and the police.

Any threat-any inconvenience-had to be dealt with instantly and fully. And to hell with logic.

In the harsh halogen lamps set up by the crime-scene team, bathing the graveyard in unreal light, Sachs looked over the victim, on his back, feet splayed where they’d danced outward in his death throes. A huge comma of blood leading away from the corpse stained the asphalt sidewalk in Forest Hills Memorial Gardens and a fringe of grass beyond.

None of the canvassers could find any witnesses, and Miguel Abrera, the SSD janitor, couldn’t add anything. He was badly shaken both because he’d been a potential target of the killer and because his friend had died; he’d gotten to know the groundskeeper in his frequent visits to the graves of his wife and child. That night he’d had a vague feeling that someone had followed him from the subway and he’d even stopped and glanced into a bar window to look for reflections of a mugger tailing him. But the trick hadn’t worked-he’d seen no one-and he’d continued on to the cemetery.

Now, in her white overalls, Sachs directed two crime-scene officers from the main CS operation in Queens to photograph and video everything. She processed the body and began to walk the grid. She was especially diligent. This was an important scene. The killing had happened fast and violently-the groundskeeper had obviously surprised 522-and they had grappled, which meant more chances to find some evidence here that would lead to more information about the killer and his residence or place of work.

Sachs began on the grid-walking over the scene foot by foot in one direction and then turning perpendicular and searching the same area again.

Halfway through she stopped abruptly.

A noise.

She was sure it was the sound of metal against metal. A gun chambering a round? A knife opening?

She looked around quickly but saw only the dusk-blanketed cemetery. Amelia Sachs didn’t believe in ghosts, and normally found resting grounds like this peaceful, even comforting. But now her teeth were clenched, her palms sweating in the latex gloves.

She’d just turned back to the body when she gasped, seeing a flash of light nearby.

Was it a streetlight through those bushes?

Or 522 moving closer, a knife in his hand?

Uncontrolled…

And she couldn’t help but think he’d already tried once to kill her-the setup near DeLeon Williams’s house with the federal agent-and failed. Maybe he was determined to finish what he’d started.

She returned to her task. But as she was nearly finished collecting evidence, she shivered. Movement again-this time on the far side of the lights, but still within the cemetery, which had been closed by patrol officers. She squinted through the glare. Had it been the breeze jostling a tree? An animal?

Her father, a lifer of a cop and a generous source of street wisdom, once told her, “Forget the dead bodies, Amie, they’re not going to hurt you. Worry about the ones who made’em dead.”

Echoing Rhyme’s admonition to “search carefully, but watch your back.”

Amelia Sachs didn’t believe in a sixth sense. Not in the way people think of the supernatural. To her, the whole natural world was so amazing and our senses and thought processes so complex and powerful that we didn’t need superhuman skills to make the most perceptive of deductions.

She was sure somebody was there.

She stepped out of the crime-scene perimeter and strapped her Glock onto her hip. Tapped the grip a few times to orient her hand, in case she needed to draw fast. She went back to the grid, finished with the evidence and turned quickly in the direction where she’d seen the movement earlier.

The lights were blinding but she knew without doubt that a man was there, in the shadows of the building, studying her from the back of the crematorium. Maybe a worker but she wasn’t taking any chances. Hand on her pistol, she strode forward twenty feet. Her white jumpsuit made a nice target in the failing light but she decided not to waste time stripping it off.

She drew her Glock and pushed fast through the bushes, starting a painful jog on arthritic legs toward the figure. But then Sachs stopped, grimacing, as she looked at the loading dock of the crematorium, where she’d seen the intruder. Her mouth tightened, angry at herself. The man, a silhouette against a streetlight outside the cemetery, was a cop; she could see the outline of the patrolman’s hat and noted the slumped, bored posture of a man on guard duty. She called, “Officer? You see anybody over there?”

“No, Detective Sachs,” he answered. “Sure haven’t.”

“Thanks.”

She finished with the evidence, then released the scene to the medical examiner tour doctor.

Returning to her car, she opened the trunk and began stripping off the white jumpsuit. She was chatting with the other officers from the CS main headquarters in Queens. They too had changed out of their own overalls. One frowned and was looking around for something he’d misplaced.

“Lose something?” she asked.

The man frowned. “Yeah. It was right here. My hat.”

Sachs froze. “What?”

“It’s missing.”

Shit. She tossed the jumpsuit into the trunk and jogged fast to the sergeant from the local precinct, who was the immediate supervisor here. “Did you have anybody secure the loading dock?” she asked breathlessly.

“Over there? Naw. I didn’t bother. We had the whole area sealed and-”

Goddamnit.

Turning, she sprinted to the loading dock, her Glock in hand. She shouted to the officers nearby, “He was here! By the crematorium. Move!”

Sachs paused at the old redbrick structure, noticing the open gate leading out to the street. A fast search of the grounds revealed no sign of 522. She continued on to the street and looked out fast, left and right. Traffic, curious onlookers-dozens of them-but the suspect was gone.

Sachs returned to the loading dock and wasn’t surprised to find the police officer’s hat lying nearby. It sat next to a sign, Leave Caskets Here. She collected the hat, slipped it into an evidence bag and returned to the other officers. Sachs and a local precinct sergeant sent officers around the neighborhood to see if anybody had spotted him. Then she returned to her car. Of course, he’d be far away by now but still she couldn’t shake the raw uneasiness-which was due mostly to the fact that he hadn’t tried to escape when he saw her walking toward the crematorium but casually stood his ground.

Though what chilled her the most was the memory of his casual voice-referring to her by name.

“Are they going to do it?” Rhyme snapped as Lon Sellitto walked through the door from his mission downtown with Captain Malloy and the deputy mayor, Ron Scott, about what Rhyme was calling the “Expert Plan.”

“They’re not happy. It’s expensive and they-”

“Bull…shit. Get somebody on the phone.”

“Hold on, hold on. They’ll do it. They’re making the arrangements. I’m just saying they’re grumbling about it.”

“You should have told me up front they agreed. I don’t care how much they grumble.”

“Joe Malloy’ll give me a call with the details.”

At around 9:30 P.M. the door opened and Amelia Sachs entered, carrying the evidence she’d collected at the groundskeeper’s murder scene.

“He was there,” she said.

Rhyme didn’t understand her.

“Five Twenty-Two. At the cemetery. He was watching us.”

“No shit,” Sellitto said.

“He was gone by the time I realized it.” She held up a patrolman’s hat and explained that he’d been watching her in disguise.

“The fuck he’d do that for?”

“Information,” Rhyme said softly. “The more he knows, the more powerful he is, the more vulnerable we become…”

“You canvass?” Sellitto asked.

“A team from the precinct did. Nobody saw anything.”

“He knows everything. We know zilch.”

She unpacked the crate as Rhyme’s eyes took in each evidence-collection bag she lifted out. “They struggled. Could be some good transfer trace.”

“Let’s hope.”

“I talked to Abrera, the janitor. He said that for the past month, he’s noticed some strange things. His time sheets were changed, there were deposits into his checking account he didn’t make.”

Cooper suggested, “Like Jorgensen-identity theft?”

“No, no,” Rhyme said. “I’ll bet Five Twenty-Two was grooming him to take the fall. Maybe a suicide. Plant a note on him…It was his wife and child’s grave?”

“That’s right.”

“Sure. He’s despondent. Going to kill himself. Confesses to all the crimes in a suicide note. We close the case. But the groundskeeper interrupts him in the act. And now Five Twenty-Two’s up a creek. He can’t try this again; we’ll be expecting a fake suicide now. He’ll have to try something else. But what?”

Cooper had started going over the evidence. “No hairs in the hat, no trace at all…But you know what I’ve got? A bit of adhesive. Generic though. Can’t source it.”

“He removed the trace with tape or a roller before he left the hat,” Rhyme said, grimacing. Nothing 522 did would surprise him anymore.

Cooper then announced, “From the other scene-by the grave-I’ve got a fiber. It’s similar to the rope used in the earlier crime.”

“Good. What’s in it?”

Cooper prepared the sample and tested it. A short time later he announced, “Okay, got two things. The most common is naphthalene in an inert crystal medium.”

“Mothballs,” Rhyme announced. The substance had figured in a poisoning case years ago. “But they’d be old ones.” He explained that naphthalene had largely been abandoned in favor of safer materials. “Or,” he added, “from out of the country. Fewer safety codes on consumer products in a lot of places.”

“Then something else.” Cooper gestured at the computer screen. The substance it revealed was Na(C₆H₁₁NHSO₂O). “And it’s bound with lecithin, carnauba wax, citrus acid.”

“What the hell’s that?” Rhyme blurted.

Another database was consulted. “Sodium cyclamate.”

“Oh, artificial sweetener, right?”

“That’s it,” Cooper said, reading. “Banned by the FDA thirty years ago. The ban’s still under challenge but no products have been made with it since the seventies.”

Then Rhyme’s mind made a few leaps, mimicking his eyes as they jumped from item to item on the evidence boards. “Old cardboard. Mold. Desiccated tobacco. The doll’s hair? Old soda? And boxes of mothballs? What the hell does it add up to? Does he live near an antiques store? Over one?”

They continued the analysis: minute traces of phosphorus sesquisulfide, the main ingredient in safety matches; more Trade Center dust; and leaves from a dieffenbachia, also called leopard lily. It was a common houseplant.

Other evidence included paper fibers from yellow legal pads, probably two different ones because of the color variations in the dyes. But they weren’t distinctive enough to trace to a source. Also, more of the spicy substance that Rhyme had found in the knife used to murder the coin collector. This time they had enough to properly examine the grains and the color. “It’s cayenne pepper,” Cooper announced.

Sellitto mumbled, “Used to be you could pin somebody to a Latin neighborhood with that. Now, you can get salsa and hot sauce everywhere. Whole Foods to 7-Elevens.”

The only other clue was a shoeprint in the dirt of a recently dug grave near the site of the killing. Sachs deduced it was 522’s because it appeared to have been left by someone running from that area toward the exit.

Comparing the electrostatic print with the database of shoe treadmarks revealed that 522’s shoes were well-worn size-11 Skechers, a practical, though not particularly stylish, model often worn by workers and hikers.

While Sachs took a phone call, Rhyme told Thom to write the details on the chart as he dictated. Rhyme stared at the information-much more than when they’d started. Yet it was leading them nowhere.

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

· Lives in/near downtown Manhattan?

· Eats snack food/hot sauce

· Lives near antiques store?

· Wears size-11 Skechers work shoe

NONPLANTED EVIDENCE

· 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

· Dust, from World Trade Center attack, possibly indicating residence/job downtown Manhattan

· Snack food/cayenne pepper

· Rope fiber containing:

· Cyclamate diet soda (old or foreign)

· Naphthalene mothballs (old or foreign)

· Leopard lily plant leaves (interior plant)

· Trace from two different legal pads, yellow colored

· Treadmark from size-11 Skechers work shoe

Chapter Thirty-one

“Appreciate you seeing me, Mark.”

Whitcomb, the Compliance Department assistant, smiled agreeably. Pulaski figured he must really love his job to be still working so late-just after nine-thirty. But then, the cop realized, he himself was still on the job.

“Another killing? And that same guy did it?”

“We’re pretty sure.”

The young man frowned. “I’m sorry. Jesus. When?”

“About three hours ago.”

They were in Whitcomb’s office, which was a lot homier than Sterling’s. And sloppier too, which made it more comfortable. He set aside the legal pad he was jotting on and gestured at a chair. Pulaski sat, noting pictures of family on his desk, some nice paintings on the walls, along with diplomas and some professional certificates. Pulaski had glanced up and down the quiet halls, extremely glad that Cassel and Gillespie, the school bullies, weren’t here.

“Say, that your wife?”

“My sister.” Whitcomb gave a smile but Pulaski had seen that look before. It meant, this’s a tough subject. Had the woman died?

No, it was the other answer.

“I’m divorced. Keep pretty busy here. Tough to have a family.” The young man waved his arm, indicating SSD, Pulaski supposed. “But it’s important work. Real important.”

“I’m sure it is.”

After trying to reach Andrew Sterling, Pulaski called Whitcomb, who had agreed to meet the cop and hand over the time sheets for that day-to see which of their suspects had been out of the office at the time the groundskeeper was killed.

“I’ve got some coffee.”

Pulaski noted that the man had a silver tray on his desk, with two china cups.

“I remembered how you liked it.”

“Thanks.”

The slim man poured.

Sipping the coffee. It was good. Pulaski was looking forward to the day when finances improved and he could afford a cappuccino maker. He loved his coffee. “You work late every night?”

“Pretty often. Government regulations’re tough in any industry but in the information business the problem is that nobody’s quite sure what they want. For instance, states can make a lot of money selling driver’s license information. Some places the citizens go ballistic and the practice’s banned. But in other states it’s perfectly okay.

“Some places, if your company gets hacked you have to notify the customers whose information gets stolen, whatever kind of data it is. In other states you only have to tell them if it’s financial information. Some, you don’t have to tell them anything. It’s a mess. But we’ve got to stay on top of it.”

Thinking of security breaches, Pulaski was stabbed by guilt that he’d stolen the empty-space data from SSD. Whitcomb had been with him around the time he’d downloaded the files. Would the Compliance officer get into trouble if Sterling found out about it?

“So here we go.” Whitcomb handed him about twenty pages of time sheets for that day.

Pulaski flipped through them, comparing the names with their suspects. First, he noted the time Miguel Abrera had left-a little after 5:00 P.M. Then Pulaski’s heart jolted when he happened to glance down at the name Sterling. The man had left just seconds after Miguel, as if he were following the janitor… But then Pulaski realized that he’d made a mistake. It was Andy Sterling, the son, who’d left then. The CEO had left earlier-at about four-and had returned only about a half hour ago, presumably after business drinks and dinner.

Again, he was angry with himself that he hadn’t read the sheet properly. And he’d nearly called Lincoln Rhyme when he’d seen the two departure times so close together. How embarrassing would that have been? Think better, he told himself angrily.

Of the other suspects, Faruk Mameda-the night-shift technician with the attitude-had been in SSD at the time of the killing. Technical Operations Director Wayne Gillespie’s entries revealed that he’d left a half hour before Abrera but he’d returned to the office at six and stayed for several hours. Pulaski felt a petty disappointment that this seemed to take the bully off the list. All the others had left with enough time to follow Miguel to the cemetery or to precede him there and lie in wait. In fact, most employees were out of the office. Sean Cassel, he noticed, had been out for much of the afternoon but had returned-a half hour ago.

“Helpful?” Whitcomb asked.

“A little. You mind if I keep this?”

“No, go right ahead.”

“Thanks.” Pulaski folded the sheets and put them into his pocket.

“Oh, I talked to my brother. He’s going to be in town next month. Don’t know if you’d be interested but I was thinking you might like to meet him. Maybe you and your brother. You could swap cop stories.” Then Whitcomb smiled, embarrassed, as if that was the last thing police officers wanted to do. Which it wasn’t, Pulaski could have told him; cops loved cop stories.

“If the case, you know, is solved by then. Or what do you say?”

“Closed.”

“Like that TV show. The Closer, sure…If it’s closed. Probably can’t have a beer with a suspect.”

“You’re hardly a suspect, Mark,” Pulaski said, laughing himself. “But, yeah, it’s probably better to wait. I’ll see if my brother can make it too.”

“Mark.” A soft voice spoke from behind them.

Pulaski turned to see Andrew Sterling, black slacks and a white shirt, sleeves rolled up. A pleasant smile. “Officer Pulaski. You’re here so often I should put you on payroll.”

A bashful grin.

“I called. The phone went to your voice mail.”

“Really?” The CEO frowned. Then the green eyes focused. “That’s right. Martin left early today. Anything we can help you with?”

Pulaski was about to mention the time sheets but Whitcomb jumped in fast. “Ron was saying there’s been another murder.”

“No, really? By the same person?”

Pulaski realized he’d made a mistake. Going around Andrew Sterling was stupid. It wasn’t as if he thought Sterling was guilty or would try to hide anything; the cop just wanted the information quickly-and frankly, he also wanted to avoid running into Cassel or Gillespie, which might’ve happened if he’d gone to executive row for the time sheets.

But now he realized he’d gotten information about SSD from a source that wasn’t Andrew Sterling-a sin, if not an outright crime.

He wondered if the businessman could sense his discomfort. He said, “We think so. Seems like the killer had originally targeted an SSD employee but ended up killing a bystander.”

“Which employee?”

“Miguel Abrera.”

Sterling immediately recognized the name. “In maintenance, yes. Is he all right?”

“He’s fine. A little shaken up. But okay.”

“Why was he targeted? Do you think he knows something?”

“I can’t say,” Pulaski told him.

“When did this happen?”

“About six, six-thirty tonight.”

Sterling squinted faint wrinkles into the skin around his eyes. “I’ve got a solution. What you should do is get your suspects’ time sheets, Officer. That’d narrow down the ones with alibis.”

“I-”

“I’ll take care of it, Andrew,” Whitcomb said quickly, sitting down at his computer. “I’ll get them from Human Resources.” To Pulaski he said, “It shouldn’t take long.”

“Good,” Sterling said. “And let me know what you find.”

“Yes, Andrew.”

The CEO stepped closer, looking up into Pulaski’s eyes. He shook his hand firmly. “Good night, Officer.”

When he was gone, Pulaski said, “Thanks. I should’ve asked him first.”

“Yeah, you should have. I assumed you did. The one thing that Andrew doesn’t like is to be kept in the dark. If he has the information, even if it’s bad news, he’s happy. You’ve seen the reasonable side of Andrew Sterling. The unreasonable side doesn’t seem much different. But it is, believe me.”

“You won’t get in trouble, will you?”

A laugh. “As long as he doesn’t find out I got the time sheets an hour before he suggested it.”

As Pulaski walked toward the elevator with Whitcomb, he glanced back. There at the end of the corridor was Andrew Sterling, talking to Sean Cassel, their heads down. The sales director was nodding. Pulaski’s heart bumped hard. Then Sterling strode off. Cassel turned and, polishing his glasses with the black cloth, looked directly at Pulaski. He smiled a greeting. His expression, the officer read, said the businessman wasn’t the least surprised to see him there.

The elevator arrival bell dinged and Whitcomb gestured Pulaski inside.

The phone rang in Rhyme’s lab. Ron Pulaski reported what he’d learned at SSD about the whereabouts of the suspects. Sachs transcribed the information on the suspects chart.

Only two were in the office at the time of the killing-Mameda and Gillespie.

“So it could be any one of the other half dozen,” Rhyme muttered.

“The place was virtually empty,” the young officer said. “Not many people were in late.”

“They don’t need to be,” Sachs pointed out. “The computers do all the work.”

Rhyme told Pulaski to go on home to his family. He pressed back into his headrest and stared at the board.

Andrew Sterling, President, Chief Executive Officer

Alibi-on Long Island, verified. Confirmed by son

Sean Cassel, Director of Sales and Marketing

No alibi

Wayne Gillespie, Director of Technical Operations

No alibi

Alibi for groundskeeper’s killing (in office, according to time sheets)

Samuel Brockton, Director, Compliance Department

Alibi-hotel records confirm presence in Washington

Peter Arlonzo-Kemper, Director of Human Resources

Alibi-with wife, verified by her (biased?)

Steven Shraeder, Technical Service and Support Manager, day shift

Alibi-in office, according to time sheets

Faruk Mameda, Technical Service and Support Manager, night shift

No alibi

Alibi for groundskeeper’s killing (in office, according to time sheets)

Client of SSD (?)

Awaiting list from NYPD Computer Crimes Unit

UNSUB recruited by Andrew Sterling (?)

But was 522 one of them at all? Rhyme wondered once again. He thought of what Sachs had told him about the concept of “noise” in data mining. Were these names just noise? Distractions, keeping them from the truth?

Rhyme executed a smart turn on the TDX and again faced the whiteboards. Something nagged. What was it?

“Lincoln-”

“Shh.”

Something he’d read, or heard about. No, a case-from years ago. Hovering just out of memory. Frustrating. Like trying to scratch an itch on his ear.

He was aware of Cooper looking at him. That irritated too. He closed his eyes.

Almost…

Yes!

“What is it?”

Apparently he’d spoken out loud.

“I think I’ve got it. Thom, you follow popular culture, don’t you?”

“What on earth does that mean?”

“You read magazines, newspapers. Look at ads. Are Tareyton cigarettes still made?”

“I don’t smoke. I’ve never smoked.”

“I’d rather fight than switch,” Lon Sellitto announced.

“What?”

“That was the ad in the sixties. People with a black eye?”

“Don’t recall it.”

“My dad used to smoke ’em.”

“Are they still made? That’s what I’m asking.”

“I don’t know. But you don’t see ’em much.”

“Exactly. And the other tobacco we found was old too. So whether or not he smokes, it’s a reasonable assumption he collects cigarettes.”

“Cigarettes. What kind of collector is that?”

“No, not just cigarettes. The old soda with the artificial sweetener. Maybe cans or bottles. And mothballs, matches, doll’s hair. And the mold, the Stachybotrys Chartarum, the dust from the Trade Towers. I don’t think it’s that he’s downtown. I think he just hasn’t cleaned in years…” A grim laugh. “And what other collection have we been dealing with lately? Data. Five Twenty-Two’s obsessed with collecting… I think he’s a hoarder.”

“A what?”

“He hoards things. He never throws anything away. That’s why there’s so much ‘old.’”

“Yeah, I think I’ve heard of that,” Sellitto said. “It’s weird. Creepy.”

Rhyme had once searched a scene where a compulsive hoarder had died, crushed to death under a pile of books-well, he was immobilized and took two days to die of internal injuries. Rhyme described the cause of death as “unpleasant.” He hadn’t studied the condition much but he’d learned that New York had a task force to help hoarders get therapeutic assistance and protect them and their neighbors from their compulsive behavior.

“Let’s give our resident shrink a call.”

“Terry Dobyns?”

“Maybe he knows somebody at the hoarding task force. Have him check. And get him over here in person.”

“At this hour?” Cooper asked. “It’s after ten.”

Rhyme didn’t even bother to offer the punch line of the day: We’re not sleeping; why should anyone else? A look conveyed the message just fine.

Chapter Thirty-two

Lincoln Rhyme had his second wind.

Thom had fixed food again and, although Rhyme generally took no particular pleasure in eating, he’d enjoyed the chicken club sandwiches with the aide’s homemade bread. “It’s James Beard’s recipe,” the aide announced, though the reference to the revered chef and cookbook author was utterly lost on Rhyme. Sellitto had wolfed down one sandwich and taken another with him when he left for home. (“Even better than the tuna,” he judged.) Mel Cooper asked for the bread recipe for Gretta.

Sachs was on the computer sending some e-mails. Rhyme was going to ask what she was doing when the doorbell rang.

A moment later Thom ushered into the lab Terry Dobyns, the NYPD behaviorist whom Rhyme had known for years. He was a little balder, a little thicker in the belly than when they’d first met-when Dobyns had sat with Rhyme for hours at a time, during that terrible time after the accident that left him paralyzed. The doctor still had the same kind, perceptive eyes that Rhyme recalled, and a calming, nonjudgmental smile. The criminalist was skeptical of psychological profiling, preferring forensics, but he had to admit that Dobyns had from time to time offered brilliant and helpful insights into the perps Rhyme pursued.

He now said hello to everyone, took coffee from Thom and declined food. He sat on a stool next to Rhyme’s wheelchair.

“Good call, about the hoarding. I think you’re right. And first, let me tell you that I checked with the task force and they looked into the known hoarders in the city. There aren’t many and the odds are that it’s none of them. I eliminated the women, since you told me about the rape. Of the men, most are elderly or nonfunctioning. The only two that fit the functioning profile are in Staten Island and the Bronx and they were accounted for by social workers or family members at the time of the killing on Sunday.”

Rhyme wasn’t surprised-522 was too smart not to cover his tracks. But he’d hoped for a small lead, at least, and scowled at the dead end.

Dobyns couldn’t help but smile. This had been an issue they’d dealt with years ago. Rhyme had never been comfortable expressing personal anger and frustration. Professionally, though, he’d always been a master at it.

“But I can give you some insights that might be helpful. Now, let me tell you about hoarders. It’s a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. That occurs when a subject is faced with conflict or tensions they can’t emotionally confront. Focusing on a behavior is much easier than looking at the underlying problem. Hand washing and counting are symptoms of OCD. So is hoarding.

“Now, it’s rare for somebody who hoards to be dangerous per se. There are health risks-animal and insect infestation, mold and fire hazards-but essentially hoarders just want to be left alone. They’d live surrounded by their collection if they could and never go outside.

“But your fellow, well, he’s a strange breed. A combination of narcissistic, antisocial personality and hoarding OCD. If he wants something-apparently collectible coins or paintings or sexual gratification-he has to have it. Absolutely has to. Killing is nothing to him if it helps him acquire what he wants and protect his collection. In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that killing calms him down. Living humans give him stress. They would disappoint him, they’d abandon him. But inanimate objects-newspapers, cigar boxes, candy, even bodies-you can tuck away in your lair; they never betray you… I don’t suppose you’re interested in the childhood factors that may have made him that way?”

“Not really, Terry,” Sachs said. She was smiling at Rhyme, who was shaking his head.

“First, he’s going to need space. A lot of it. And with the real estate prices here he’s either very resourceful or very rich. Hoarders tend to live in big, older houses or town houses. They never rent. They can’t stand the thought of a landlord with rights to come into their living area. And the windows will be painted black or taped over. He has to keep the outside world away.”

“How much space?” she asked.

“Rooms and rooms and rooms.”

“Some of the SSD employees would have plenty of money,” Rhyme speculated. “The senior people.”

“Now, because your perp is so high functioning, he’ll be leading two lives. We’ll call them the ‘secret’ life and the ‘façade.’ He needs to exist in the real world-to add to his collection and maintain it. And so he’ll keep up appearances. He’ll probably have a second house or a part of a single one that’ll appear normal. Oh, he’d prefer to live in his secret place. But if he did, only there, people would start to take notice. So he’ll also have a living space that seems like anybody in his socioeconomic situation would have. The residences might be connected or nearby. The ground floor could be normal, the upstairs where he keeps his collection. Or the basement.

“As for his personality, he’ll play a role in his façade life that’s almost the opposite of who he really is. Say the real Five Twenty-Two’s personality is snide and petty. The public Five Twenty-Two will be measured, calm, mature, polite.”

“He could appear to be a businessman?”

“Oh, easily. And he’ll play the part very, very well. Because he has to. It makes him angry, resentful. But he knows if he doesn’t his trove could be endangered and that’s simply not acceptable to him.”

Dobyns looked over the charts. He nodded. “Now, I notice you’re wondering about children? I really doubt he has any. He probably just collects toys. That again is something about his childhood. He’ll be single too. It’s rare to find a married hoarder. His obsession with collecting is too intense. He wouldn’t want to share his time or space with another person-and frankly it’s hard to find a partner who’s so codependent she puts up with him.

“Okay, the tobacco and matches? He hoards cigarettes and matchbooks but I doubt very much he smokes. Most hoarders have huge stockpiles of papers and magazines, flammable objects. This perp isn’t stupid. He’d never risk a fire because it could destroy his collection. Or at least expose him, when the fire department comes. And he probably has no particular interest in coins or art. He has an obsession with collecting for its own sake. What he collects is secondary.”

“So he probably doesn’t live near an antiques store?”

Dobyns gave a laugh. “That’s exactly what his place’ll look like. But, of course, without customers…Well, I can’t think of much else. Except to tell you how dangerous he is. From what you’ve told me you’ve already stopped him several times. That makes him furious. He’ll kill anybody who interferes with his trove, kill them without a second thought. I can’t impress that on you enough.”

They thanked Dobyns. He wished them luck and the psychologist left. Sachs updated the UNSUB list, based on what he’d told them.

UNSUB 522 PROFILE

· Male

· Probably nonsmoker

· Probably no wife/children

· 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

· Eats snack food/hot sauce

· Wears size-11 Skechers work shoe

· Hoarder. Suffers from OCD

· Will have a “secret” life and a “façade” life

· Public personality will be opposite of his real self

· Residence: Won’t rent, will have two separate living areas, one normal and one secret

· Windows will be covered or painted

· Will become violent when collecting or trove are threatened

“Helpful?” Cooper asked.

Rhyme could only shrug.

“What do you think, Sachs? Could it be anybody you talked to at SSD?”

She shrugged. “I’d say Gillespie came the closest. He seemed just plain odd. But Cassel seemed the slickest-in terms of putting on a good façade. Arlonzo-Kemper’s married, which takes him out of the running, according to Terry. I didn’t see the technicians. Ron did.”

With an electronic trill, a caller ID box popped up on the screen. It was Lon Sellitto, back home but apparently still at work on the Expert Plan that Rhyme and the detective had put together earlier.

“Command, answer phone…Lon, how are we doing?”

“It’s all set, Linc.”

“Where are we?”

“Watch the eleven o’clock news. You’ll find out. I’m going to bed.”

Rhyme disconnected and turned on the TV in the corner of the lab.

Mel Cooper said good night. He was packing up his briefcase when his computer dinged. He looked over the screen. “Amelia, you’ve got an e-mail here.”

She wandered over, sat down.

“Is it the Colorado State Police, about Gordon?” Rhyme asked.

Sachs said nothing but he noticed an eyebrow rise as she read through the lengthy document. Her finger disappeared into her long red hair, tied back in a ponytail, and worried her scalp.

“What?”

“I’ve got to go,” she said. She rose quickly.

“Sachs? What is it?”

“It’s not about the case. Call me if you need me.”

And with that she was out the door, leaving behind a cloud of mystery as subtle as the aroma of the lavender soap she’d been favoring recently.

The 522 case was moving fast.

And yet cops always have to juggle other aspects of their lives.

Which was why she was now standing uneasily in front of a tidy detached house in Brooklyn, not far from her own home. The night was pleasant. A delicate breeze, fragrant with lilac and mulch, waltzed around her. It would be good to sit on the curb or a door stoop here and not do what she was about to.

What she had to do.

God, I hate this.

Pam Willoughby appeared in the doorway. She was wearing sweats and had her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was talking to one of the other foster children, another teenager. Their faces had that conspiratorial yet innocent expression teenage girls wear like makeup. Two dogs played at their feet: Jackson, the tiny Havanese, and a much larger but equally exuberant Briard, Cosmic Cowboy, who lived with Pam’s foster family.

The policewoman would meet the girl here occasionally, then they’d head off for a movie or Starbucks or ice cream. Pam’s face usually brightened when she saw Sachs.

Not tonight.

Sachs got out of the car and leaned against the hot hood. Pam picked up Jackson and joined her as the other girl waved to Sachs and disappeared into the house with Cosmic Cowboy.

“Sorry to come by so late.”

“It’s okay.” The girl was cautious.

“How’s homework?”

“Homework’s homework. Some’s good, some sucks.”

True now, true in Sachs’s day.

Sachs petted the dog, which Pam clutched possessively. She did this often with her things. The girl always refused offers to let someone else carry her book bag or groceries. Sachs guessed that so much had been taken away from her, she held tight to whatever she could.

“So. What’s up?”

She could think of no way to ease gently into the subject. “I talked to your friend.”

“Friend?” Pam asked.

“Stuart.”

“You what?” Light fragmented by leaves of a ginkgo tree fell on her troubled face.

“I had to.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Pam…I was worried about you. I had a friend in the department-somebody who does security checks-look him up.”

“No!”

“I wanted to see if there were any skeletons in his closet.”

“You didn’t have any right to do that!”

“True. But I did anyway. And I just got an e-mail back.” Sachs felt her stomach muscles clench. Facing killers, driving 170 mph…those were nothing. She was shaken badly now.

“So is he a fucking murderer?” Pam snapped. “A serial killer? A terrorist?”

Sachs hesitated. She wanted to touch the girl’s arm. But didn’t. “No, honey. But…he’s married.”

In the dappled light Sachs saw Pam blink.

“He’s…married?”

“I’m sorry. His wife’s a teacher too. A private school on Long Island. And he has two children.”

“No! You’re wrong.” Sachs saw Pam’s free hand was clenched so tightly the muscles had to be cramping. Anger filled her eyes, but there wasn’t much surprise. Sachs wondered if Pam would be running through certain memories. Maybe Stuart had said he didn’t have a home phone, only a mobile. Or maybe he’d asked her to use a particular e-mail account, not his general one.

And my house is such a mess. I’d be embarrassed for you to see it. I’m a teacher, you know. We’re absentminded… I need to get a housekeeper…

Pam blurted, “It’s a mistake. You’ve got him mixed up with somebody else.”

“I went to see him just now. I asked him and he told me.”

“No, you didn’t! You’re making it up!” The girl’s eyes flared and a cold smile crossed her face, cutting deep into Sachs’s heart. “You’re doing just what my mother did! When she didn’t want me to do something, she lied to me! Just like you’re doing.”

“Pam, I’d never-”

“Everybody takes things away from me! You’re not going to! I love him and he loves me, and you’re not taking him away!” She wheeled and made for the house, the dog firmly under her arm.

“Pam!” Sachs’s voice choked. “No, honey…”

As the girl stepped inside she looked back once fast, hair swirling, posture stiff as iron, leaving Amelia Sachs grateful that the backlight prevented her from seeing Pam’s face; she couldn’t have stomached witnessing the hatred she knew was there.

The travesty at the cemetery still burns like fire.

Miguel 5465 should have died. Should be pinned to a velvet board for the police to examine. They’d say case closed and all would be well.

But he didn’t. That butterfly got away. I can’t try to fake a suicide again. They’ve learned something about me. They’ve collected some knowledge…

Hate Them hate Them hate Them hate Them…

I’m so close to taking my razor and storming out and…

Calm. Down. But it’s becoming harder and harder to do that, as the years go by.

I’ve canceled certain transactions for this evening-I was going to celebrate the suicide-and now I head into my Closet. Being surrounded by my treasures helps. I wander through the fragrant rooms and hold several items close to me. Trophies from various transactions over the past year. Feeling the dried flesh and fingernails and hair against my cheek is such a comfort.

But I’m exhausted. I sit down in front of the Harvey Prescott painting, gaze up at it. The family looking back. As with most portraits their eyes follow you wherever you are.

Comforting. Eerie too.

Maybe one of the reasons I love his work so much is that these people were created fresh. They have no memories to plague them, to make them edgy, to keep them up all night and to drive them out into the streets, collecting treasures, and trophies.

Ah, memories:

June, five years old. Father sits me down, tucks his unlit cigarette away and explains to me I’m not theirs. “We brought you into the family because we wanted you wanted you badly and we love you even if you aren’t our natural son you understand don’t you…” Not exactly, I don’t. I stare at him blankly. Kleenex twisting in Mother’s damp hands. She blurts that she loves me like a natural-born son. No, loves me more, though I don’t understand why she would. It sounds like a lie.

Father leaves for his second job. Mother goes to take care of the other children, leaving me to consider this. My feeling is that something’s been taken away from me. But I don’t know what. I look out my window. It’s beautiful here. Mountains and green and cool air. But I prefer my room and that’s where I go.

August, seven years old. Father and Mother have been fighting. The oldest of us, Lydia, is crying. Don’t leave don’t leave don’t leave…I myself plan for the worst, stocking up. Food and pennies-people never miss pennies. Nothing can stop me from collecting them, $134 worth of shiny or dull copper. Hide them in boxes in my closet…

November, seven years old. Father returns from where he’s been for a month, “scratching for the elusive dollar,” which he says a lot. (Lydia and I smile when he does.) He asks where the other children are. She tells him she couldn’t handle all of them. “Do the math. The fuck you thinking of? Get on the phone and call the city.”

“You weren’t here,” she cries.

This mystifies Lydia and me but we know it’s not good.

In my closet are $252 in pennies, thirty-three cans of tomatoes, eighteen of other vegetables, twelve of SpaghettiOs, which I don’t even like but I have them. That’s all that’s important.

October, nine years old. More emergency foster placements. At the moment there are nine of us. We help, Lydia and me. She’s fourteen and knows how to take care of the younger ones. Lydia asks Father to buy the girls dolls-because she never had one and it’s important-and he said how can they make money from the city if they spend it on crap?

May, ten years old. I come back from school. It took all I could do to take some of the pennies and buy a doll for Lydia. I can’t wait for her reaction. But then I see I made a mistake and left the closet door open. Father is inside, ripping open the boxes. The pennies are lying like dead soldiers on a battlefield. He fills his pockets and takes the boxes. “You steal it you lose it.” I’m crying and telling him I found the pennies. “Good,” Father says triumphantly. “I found ’em too and that must mean they’re mine… Right, young man? How can you argue with that? You can’t. And, Jesus, almost five hundred bucks there.” And pulls the cigarette out from behind his ear.

Want to understand somebody taking your things away, your soldiers, your dolls, your pennies? Just close your mouth and pinch your nose. That’s what’s it like and you can’t do it very long before something terrible happens.

October, eleven years old. Lydia’s gone. No note. She doesn’t take the doll. Fourteen-year-old Jason comes to live with us from Juvenile. He pushes into my room one night. He wants my bed (mine’s dry and his isn’t). I sleep in his wet one. Every night for a month. I complain to Father. He tells me to shut up. They need the money and they get a bonus for ED kids like Jason and…He stops talking. Does he mean me too? I don’t know what ED means. Not then.

January, twelve years old. Flashing red lights. Mother sobbing, the other foster children sobbing. The burn on Father’s arm was painful but fortunately, the fireman says, the lighter fluid on the mattress didn’t ignite fast. If it was gasoline he’d be dead. As they take Jason away, dark eyes under dark brows, he screams he didn’t know how the lighter fluid and matches got into his book bag. He didn’t do it, he didn’t! And he didn’t pin up those pictures of people burned alive in his classroom at school.

Father screams at mother, Look at what you did!

You wanted the bonus! she screams back.

The ED bonus.

Emotionally disturbed, I found out.

Memories, memories…Ah, some collections I would gladly give away, leave in a Dumpster if I could.

I smile up at my silent family, the Prescotts. Then I turn back to the problem at hand-Them.

I’m calmer now, the edginess dulled. And I’m confident that like my lying father, like panicked Jason Stringfellow led off by the police, like the sixteens screaming at the climax of a transaction, those pursuing me-They-will soon be dead and dust. And I’ll be living out my days happily with my two-dimensional family and my treasures here in the Closet.

My soldiers, the data, are about to march into battle. I’m like Hitler in his Berlin bunker, ordering his Waffen-SS troops to meet the invaders. Data are invincible.

I see now that it’s nearly 11:00 P.M. Time for the news. I need to see what They know about the death at the cemetery and what They don’t. On goes the TV.

The station has “gone live” to City Hall. Now the deputy mayor, Ron Scott, a distinguished-looking man, is explaining that the police have put together a task force to investigate a recent murder and rape, and a murder this evening in a Queens cemetery, which seems related to the earlier crime.

Scott introduces an NYPD inspector, Joseph Malloy, who “will discuss the case more specifically.”

Though he doesn’t, not really. He shows a composite of the perpetrator that resembles me only in the way it resembles about 200,000 other men in the city.

White or light-skinned? Oh, please.

He tells people to be cautious. “We think the perpetrator has used techniques of identity theft to get close to his victims. Lower their defenses.”

Be wary, he goes on to say, of anyone you don’t know but who has knowledge of your purchases, bank accounts, vacation plans, traffic violations. “Even little things you wouldn’t normally pay attention to.”

In fact, the city has just flown in an expert in information management and security from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Carlton Soames will spend the next few days assisting the investigators and advising them on the issue of identity theft, which they believe is the best way to find the perpetrator.

Soames looks like a typical ruffled-haired small-town Midwest boy gone smart. An awkward grin. Suit a little off center, glasses a bit smudged, the asymmetrical glare tells me. And how much wear would that wedding ring show? Plenty, I’ll bet. He looks like the sort who married early.

He doesn’t say anything but gazes out like a nervous animal at the press and the camera. Captain Malloy continues, “In an age when identity theft is increasing, and the consequences are increasingly grave-”

The pun, obviously unintentional, is unfortunate.

“-we take seriously our responsibility to protect the citizens of this city.”

The reporters jump into the fray, pelting the deputy mayor, captain and unsettled professor with questions a third-grader could have come up with. Malloy generally demurs. The word “ongoing” is his shield.

Deputy Mayor Ron Scott reassures the public that the city is safe and everything is being done to protect them. The press conference ends abruptly.

We go back to the regular news, if you can call it that. Tainted veggies in Texas, a woman on a hood of a truck caught in a Missouri flood. The President has a cold.

I shut off the set and sit in my dim Closet, wondering how best to process this new transaction.

An idea occurs to me. It’s so obvious, though, that I’m skeptical. But, surprise, it takes only three phone calls-to hotels close to One Police Plaza-to find the one where Dr. Carlton Soames is registered.