The Burial Hour

Chapter 1

‘Mommy.’

‘In a minute.’

They trooped doggedly along the quiet street on the Upper East Side, the sun low this cool autumn morning. Red leaves, yellow leaves spiraled from sparse branches.

Mother and daughter, burdened with the baggage that children now carted to school.

In my day...

Claire was texting furiously. Her housekeeper had — wouldn’t you know it? — gotten sick, no, possibly gotten sick, on the day of the dinner party! The party. And Alan had to work late. Possibly had to work late.

As if I could ever count on him anyway.

Ding.

The response from her friend:

Jesus. A tearful emoji accompanied the missive. Why not type the goddamn ‘o’ in ‘tonight’? Did it save you a precious millisecond? And remember apostrophes?

‘But, Mommy...’ A nine-year-old singsongy tone.

‘A minute, Morgynn. You heard me.’ Claire’s voice was a benign monotone. Not the least angry, not the least peeved or piqued. Thinking of the weekly sessions: Sitting in the chair, not lying back on the couch — the good doctor didn’t even have a couch in his office — Claire attacked her nemeses, the anger and impatience, and she had studiously worked to avoid snapping or shouting when her daughter was annoying (even when she behaved that way intentionally, which, Claire calculated, was easily one-quarter of the girl’s waking hours).

And I’m doing a damn good job of keeping a lid on it.

Reasonable. Mature. ‘A minute,’ she repeated, sensing the girl was about to speak.

Claire slowed to a stop, flipping through her phone’s address book, lost in the maelstrom of approaching disaster. It was early but the day would vanish fast and the party would be on her like a nearby Uber. Wasn’t there someone, anyone, in the borough of Manhattan who might have decent help she could borrow to wait a party? A party for ten friggin’ people! That was nothing. How hard could it be?

She debated. Her sister?

Nope. She wasn’t invited.

Sally from the club?

Nope. Out of town. And a bitch, to boot.

Morgynn had slowed and Claire was aware of her daughter turning around. Had she dropped something? Apparently so. She ran back to pick it up.

Better not be her phone. She’d already broken one. The screen had cost $187 to fix.

Honestly. Children.

Then Claire was back to scrolling, praying for waitperson salvation. Look at all these names. Need to clean out this damn contact list. Don’t know half these people. Don’t like a good chunk of the rest. Off went another beseeching message.

The child returned to her side and said firmly, ‘Mommy, look—’

‘Ssssh.’ Hissing now. But there was nothing wrong with an edge occasionally, of course, she told herself. It was a form of education. Children had to learn. Even the cutest of puppies needed collar-jerk correction from time to time.

Another ding of iPhone.

Another no.

Goddamn it.

Well, what about that woman that Terri from the office had used? Hispanic, or Latino... Latina. Whatever those people called themselves now. The cheerful woman had been the star of Terri’s daughter’s graduation party.

Claire found Terri’s number and dialed a voice call.

‘Hello?’

‘Terri! It’s Claire. How are you?’

A hesitation then Terri said, ‘Hi, there. How’re you doing?’

‘I’m—’

At which point Morgynn interrupted yet again. ‘Mommy!’

Snap. Claire spun around and glared down at the petite blonde, hair in braids, wearing a snug pink leather Armani Junior jacket. She raged, ‘I am on the phone! Are you blind? What have I told you about that? When I’m on the phone? What is so f—’ Okay, watch the language, she told herself. Claire offered a labored smile. ‘What’s so... important, dear?’

‘I’m trying to tell you. This man back there?’ The girl nodded up the street. ‘He came up to another man and hit him or something and pushed him in the trunk.’

‘What?’

Morgynn tossed a braid, which ended in a tiny bunny clip, off her shoulder. ‘He left this on the ground and then drove away.’ She held up a cord or thin rope. What was it?

Claire gasped. In her daughter’s petite hand was a miniature hangman’s noose.

Morgynn replied, ‘That’s what’s so—’ She paused and her tiny lips curled into a smile of their own. ‘Important.’

Chapter 2

‘Greenland.’

Lincoln Rhyme was staring out the parlor window of his Central Park West town house. Two objects were in his immediate field of vision: a complicated Hewlett-Packard gas chromatograph and, outside the large nineteenth-century window, a peregrine falcon. The predatory birds were not uncommon in the city, where prey was plentiful. It was rare, however, for them to nest so low. Rhyme, as unsentimental as any scientist could be — especially the criminal forensic scientist that he was — nonetheless took a curious comfort in the creatures’ presence. Over the years, he’d shared his abode with a number of generations of peregrines. Mom was here at the moment, a glorious thing, sumptuously feathered in brown and gray, with beak and claws that glistened like gunmetal.

A man’s calm, humorous voice filled the silence. ‘No. You and Amelia cannot go to Greenland.’

‘Why not?’ Rhyme asked Thom Reston, an edge to his tone. The slim but sturdy man had been his caregiver for about as long as the line of falcons had resided outside the old structure. A quadriplegic, Rhyme was largely paralyzed south of his shoulders, and Thom was his arms and legs and considerably more. He had been fired as often as he’d quit but here he was and, both knew in their hearts, here he would remain.

‘Because you need to go someplace romantic. Florida, California.’

‘Cliché, cliché, cliché. Might as well go to Niagara Falls.’ Rhyme scowled.

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘I’m not even responding.’

‘What does Amelia say?’

‘She left it up to me. Which was irritating. Doesn’t she know I have better things to think about?’

‘You mentioned the Bahamas recently. You wanted to go back, you said.’

‘That was true at the time. It’s not true any longer. Can’t one change one’s mind? Hardly a crime.’

‘What’s the real reason for Greenland?’

Rhyme’s face — with its prominent nose and eyes like pistol muzzles — was predatory in its own right, much like the bird’s. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Could it be that there’s a practical reason you want to go to Greenland, a professional reason? A useful reason?’

Rhyme glanced at the single-malt scotch bottle sitting just out of reach. He was largely paralyzed, yes. But surgery and daily exercise had returned to him some ability to move his right arm and hand. Fate had helped too. The beam that had tumbled upon his neck from a crime scene many years ago and severed and crushed many nerves had left a few outlying strands intact, if injured and confused. He could grasp objects — like single-malt scotch bottles, to pick a random example — but he could not rise from his complex wheelchair to fetch them if Thom, playing nursemaid, kept them out of goddamn reach.

‘Not cocktail hour yet,’ the aide announced, noting the arc of his boss’s vision. ‘So, Greenland? ’Fess up.’

‘It’s underrated. Named “Greenland” while much of it’s barren. Not the least verdant. Compare Iceland. Quite green. I like the irony.’

‘You’re not answering.’

Rhyme sighed. He disliked being transparent and hugely disliked being caught being transparent. He would appeal to truth. ‘It seems that the Rigspolitiet, the Danish police, have been doing rather important research into a new system of horticultural spectrographic analysis in Greenland. A lab in Nuuk. That’s the capital, by the way. You can situate a sample in a much narrower geographic area than with standard systems.’ Rhyme’s brows rose involuntarily. ‘Nearly the cellular level. Imagine! We think all plants are the same—’

‘Not a sin of mine.’

Rhyme groused, ‘You know what I mean. This new technique can narrow down a target area to three meters!’ He repeated, ‘Imagine.’

‘I’m trying to. Greenland — no. And has Amelia actually deferred to you?’

‘She will. When I tell her about the spectrograph.’

‘How about England? She’d love that. Is that show on still, the one she likes? Top Gear? I think the original is off the air but I heard there’s a new version. She’d be great on it. They let people go out on the racetrack. She’s always talking about driving a hundred and eighty miles an hour on the wrong side of the road.’

‘England?’ Rhyme mocked. ‘You’ve just lost your argument. Greenland and England offer the same degree of romance.’

‘You’ll find some disagreement there.’

‘Not from the Greenlanders.’

Lincoln Rhyme did not travel much. The practical consequences of his disability added a layer of complication to journeys but physically, his doctors reported, there was no reason not to hit the road. His lungs were fine — he’d weaned himself off a ventilator years ago, the chest scar present but not prominent — and as long as such matters as the piss ’n’ shit details — his words — and low-chafing clothing were attended to, there was little chance of being afflicted by the quad’s bane: autonomic dysreflexia. A good portion of the world was disabled-accessible now — with most enterprises, from restaurants to bars to museums, offering ramps and special restrooms. (Rhyme and Sachs had shared a smile when Thom pointed out an article in the paper about a school that had recently installed a disabled ramp and bathroom; the place taught only one thing: tap dancing.)

No, much of Rhyme’s reluctance to travel and his reclusiveness were simply because he was, well, a recluse. By nature. Working in his laboratory — the parlor here, filled with equipment — and teaching and writing for scientific journals appealed to him far more than tired sights polished for tourists.

But, given what was on his and Sachs’s agenda in the next few weeks, a trip outside Manhattan was necessary; even he admitted that one could not honeymoon in one’s own hometown.

Plans for trips to labs specializing in horticultural spectrometry, or locales of wooing romance, were, though, put on hold for the moment; the door buzzer sounded. Rhyme glanced at the security video and thought: Well.

Thom rose and returned a moment later with a middle-aged man in a camel-tan suit, which he might have slept in, though he probably hadn’t. He moved slowly but with little hesitation, and Rhyme thought that pretty soon he’d be able to discard the cane, which was, however, a pretty nifty accessory. Black with a silver head in the shape of an eagle.

The man looked around the lab. ‘Quiet.’

‘Is. A few small private jobs recently. Nothing fun. Nothing exciting. Nothing since the Steel Kiss killer.’ A recent perpetrator had taken to sabotaging household items and public conveyances — with tragic and occasionally gruesome results.

NYPD detective Lon Sellitto, in the Major Cases Division, had been Rhyme’s partner — before Rhyme had moved up to captain and taken over the Crime Scene Unit. Nowadays Sellitto would occasionally hire Rhyme to consult on cases in which special forensic expertise was needed.

‘What’re you looking at? Tan is all I had.’ Sellitto waved toward his suit.

‘Daydreaming,’ Rhyme said. ‘I wasn’t looking at anything.’

Not true, but he hadn’t been regarding either the curious color of or the savage wrinkles in the suit. He was noting, with satisfaction, that Sellitto was recovering well following the attack on him by poison, which had caused major nerve and muscle damage — hence, the cane. While the detective was always fighting his weight, Rhyme thought he looked better on the portly side, like now. The sight of a gaunt, gray Lon Sellitto had been alarming.

‘Where’s Amelia?’ Sellitto asked.

‘In court. Testifying in the Gordon case. On the calendar first thing. Should be over with soon. Then she was going shopping. For our trip.’

‘Buying herself a trousseau? What is that anyway?’

Rhyme had no idea. ‘Something about weddings, clothing. I don’t know. But she’s got a dress already. Something frilly. Blue. Or maybe pink. Today she’s shopping for me. What’s so goddamn funny, Lon?’

‘Picturing you in a tuxedo.’

‘Just sweats and a shirt. Maybe a tie. I don’t know.’

‘Tie? And you didn’t complain?’

True, Rhyme had little patience for what he considered affectation. But this occasion was different. For all her edge and edginess and her need of speed and blunt firearms, her passion for tactical solutions, Sachs had a splinter of teen girl within her and she was enjoying the game of wedding planning. This included shopping for a whatever-the-hell-it-was trousseau and a romantic honeymoon, and if that pleased her, by God, Rhyme was more than happy to accommodate.

Though he really hoped he could convince her about Greenland.

‘Well, tell her to shop later. I need her to run a scene. We’ve got a situation.’

A ping resounded within Rhyme the way a submarine’s sonar detects something unexpected off the port bow.

He texted Sachs and received no response. ‘Maybe on the stand, testifying. Tell me more.’

Thom appeared in the doorway — Rhyme hadn’t realized he’d left. The aide said, ‘Lon, coffee? Cookies? I’ve been baking. I’ve got a couple of different kinds. One is—’

‘Yes, yes, yes.’ It was Rhyme answering. ‘Bring him something. Make a decision yourself. I want to hear his story.’

Situation...

‘Proceed,’ he told Sellitto.

‘Anything chocolate,’ Sellitto called to Thom’s back.

‘Easily arranged.’

‘Kidnapping, Linc. Upper East Side. Apparently one adult male snatched another.’

‘Apparently? What requires interpretation?’

‘The only wit was nine years old.’

‘Ah.’

‘Perp grabs vic, tosses him into a car trunk. Takes off.’

‘The girl is sure about this? Not a figment of her overactive little imagination, stoked by watching too much television, ruining her thumbs on video games, reading too many Hello Pony stories?’

‘Hello Kitty. Ponies are a different book.’

‘Did Mommy or Daddy confirm?’

‘Morgynn, the girl, was the only one who saw. But I think it’s legit. She found a calling card he’d left behind.’ Sellitto held up his phone and displayed a photo.

At first Rhyme couldn’t make out the image. It was a picture of a dark shape, thin, lying on a sidewalk.

‘It’s a—’

Rhyme interrupted. ‘Noose.’

‘Yep.’

‘Made out of?’

‘Not sure. Girl said he set it on the spot where he got the vic. She picked it up but the responding set it back in the same place he’d left it, more or less.’

‘Great. I’ve never worked a scene contaminated by a nine-year-old.’

‘Relax, Linc. All she did was pick it up. And the responding wore gloves. Scene’s secure, waiting for somebody to run it. Somebody, as in Amelia.’

The noose was made out of dark material, which was stiff, since segments were not flush with the pavement, as would be the case with more limp fibers. From the size of the poured-concrete sidewalk panel, the noose was about twelve to fourteen inches long in total, the neck hoop about a third of that.

‘The wit’s still on scene. With Mommy. Who isn’t very happy.’

Neither was Rhyme. All they had to go on was a nine-year-old schoolgirl with the observational skills and perception of a... well, nine-year-old schoolgirl.

‘The vic? Rich, politically active, connected with OC, record?’

Sellitto said, ‘No ID yet. Nobody reported missing. A few minutes after the snatch somebody saw a phone fly outta a car — dark sedan, nothing more. Third Avenue. Dellray’s boys’re running it. We find out who, we find out why. Business deal gone bad, vic has information somebody wants, or the old standby. For-profit ransom.’

‘Or it’s a psycho. There was the noose, after all.’

‘Yeah,’ Sellitto said, ‘and the vic just happened to be WTWP.’

‘What?’

‘Wrong time, wrong place.’

Rhyme scowled once more. ‘Lon?’

‘It’s going around the department.’

‘Flu viruses — not viri, by the way — go around the department. Idiotic expressions do not. Or should not, at least.’

Sellitto used the cane to rise to his feet and aimed his bulky form toward the tray of cookies that Thom was setting down, like a Realtor seducing prospective buyers at a condominium open house. The detective ate one, then two, then another, nodded approval. He poured himself a cup of coffee from a silver pitcher and spilled in artificial sweetener, his concession to the battle against calories being to sacrifice refined sugar for pastry.

‘Good,’ he announced through a mouthful of cookie. ‘You want one? Some coffee?’

The criminalist’s eyes swiveled instinctively toward the Glenmorangie, sitting golden and alluring on the high shelf.

But Lincoln Rhyme decided: No. He wanted his faculties about him. He had a feeling that the girl’s observations were all too accurate, that the kidnapping had occurred just as she had described it and that the macabre calling card was a taunting message of a death soon to be.

And perhaps more after that.

He texted Amelia Sachs once again.

Chapter 3

A plop, as water fell from ceiling to floor.

Ten feet.

Every four seconds.

Plop, plop, plop.

The resulting sound wasn’t a splash. The floor of this old, old factory, now abandoned, was scarred from the passage of metal and wooden objects, and the water didn’t accumulate in pools but eased away in crevices and cuts, as patterned as an old man’s face.

Plop, plop.

Moans, too, as the chill autumn breeze slipped over the mouths of ducts, pipes and vents, the way you’d blow across a bottle neck to make a hooing sound. Didn’t see that much anymore, no, you didn’t. Because kids used to do it mostly with soda bottles, which were now plastic, not glass. Plastic didn’t work very well. Beer bottles you could use but adults didn’t get any pleasure out of the hooo-hoooing sounds.

Stefan had once written a piece of music to be played on Mountain Dew bottles, each filled with a different amount of water to produce a chromatic scale of twelve notes. He had been six years old.

The tones the factory now made were a C sharp, an F, a G. There was no rhythm, as the wind was irregular. Also:

Distant traffic, a constant.

More-distant exhalations of jet airplanes.

Not distant at all: a rat skittering.

And, of course, the most captivating sound of all: the rasping breath of the man sitting in a chair in the corner of this dim storage room. Hands bound. Feet bound. Around his neck, a noose. The string Stefan had left on the sidewalk as a grisly announcement of the kidnapping was a cello string; this noose was made of two longer strings, bound together to extend the length — they were the lowest and thickest strings of an upright double bass, one of those instruments that made the happy transition from classical music to jazz. Made of mutton serosa — the lining of a sheep’s intestine — these were the most expensive musical strings on the market. Each had cost $140. They produced the richest tone, and there were world-class violinists, cellists and bass players who would never think of playing a baroque piece on anything but this. Gut strings were far more temperamental than metal or nylon strings and might go out of tune at the slightest change in temperature or humidity.

For Stefan’s immediate purpose, though, the strings’ intolerance of humidity was irrelevant; for hanging someone, they worked just great.

The loop hung loosely around the man’s neck and the tail rested on the floor.

Stefan shivered from excitement, the way any pilgrim would at the beginning of his quest. He shivered from the chill too, even though he was an insulated man — in all senses: heavy-set with long, dense curly dark hair dropping well past his ears, and full beard, and a silken pelt of chest and arm hair. And he was swathed in protective clothing too: a white sleeveless undershirt beneath a heavy dark-gray work shirt, a black waterproof jacket and dungarees, also dark gray. They were like cargo pants but not cargo pants because the place where he’d been living until recently did not permit anyone to have pockets. Stefan was thirty years old but appeared younger, thanks to the smooth, baby-fat skin.

The room these two men were in was deep within the sprawling place. He’d set it up yesterday, moving in a table and chairs he’d found in other parts of the factory. A small battery-powered light. His musical, recording and video equipment too.

The watch on his wrist revealed the time to be 10:15 a.m. He should get started. He’d been careful but you never knew about the police. Had that little girl seen more than it seemed she had? The license plate was smeared with mud but someone might have noted the first two letters. Maybe enough to track the vehicle to the long-term parking lot at JFK airport, where it had been until yesterday. Using algorithms, using deductions, using interview skills... they might put an identification together.

Can’t have that now, can we? Have to be careful.

I am, don’t worry.

Stefan believed he might have spoken these words aloud. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if he thought his messages to Her or spoke them. Wasn’t sure if Her responses were real or not, either.

He laid the equipment out in front of him, examining keyboards and computer, cords and plugs. Switches clicked on. Hard drives hummed, adding sound.

Plop.

Moan.

Hum.

Good.

Ah, and the rat, too.

Skitter.

As long as there were sounds, distracting sounds, seductive sounds, Stefan had a good chance of keeping the Black Screams away.

So far, so good.

And now to add one more sound, one of his own making. He played a melody on the Casio. He was not an exceptional musician but, given his love, his addiction, his obsession, he knew his way around a keyboard. He ran through the music once, then twice. These were good renditions. He tried it again.

Stefan didn’t pray, as such, but he did send a thought of thanks to Her for the inspiration to pick this composition.

Now he rose and walked to the blindfolded man, who was wearing dark business slacks and a white business shirt. His jacket was on the floor.

Stefan was holding a digital recorder. ‘Don’t say anything.’

The man nodded and remained silent. Stefan gripped the noose and pulled it taut. With his other hand, he held the recorder in front of the man’s mouth. The choking noise issuing from his lips was delightful. Complex, varied in tone and modulation.

Almost, you might say, musical.

Chapter 4

Kidnappings and other serious investigations are generally run out of the Major Cases operation at 1PP, and there was a series of conference rooms reserved for task forces running such cases in that nondescript building not far from City Hall in downtown Manhattan. Nothing high-tech, nothing sexy, nothing out of binge-worthy TV shows. Just plain rooms.

Because Lincoln Rhyme was involved, however, and his condition made commuting troublesome, his parlor — not One Police Plaza — was serving as HQ for the noose-kidnapping case.

And the Victorian-era dwelling was buzzing.

Lon Sellitto was still here, along with two additions: A slender, tidy, academic-looking middle-aged man in tweedy, blue clothes that might be called, at best, frumpy. Mel Cooper sported a pale complexion, a thinning crown and a pair of glasses that were stylish only thanks to the Harry Potter franchise. On his feet were Hush Puppies. Beige.

The other newcomer was Fred Dellray, senior special agent in the FBI’s Southern District office. With skin the shade of the mahogany desk he now half-sat on, half leaned against, the tall, strikingly rangy man was dressed in an outfit that you wouldn’t see... well, anywhere. A dark-green jacket, an orange button-down shirt and a tie that a bird-lover might say was too canary to be true. A pocket square was purple. His slacks were modest, by comparison, navy-blue houndstooth.

While Cooper was sitting patiently on a lab stool, awaiting the evidence that Sachs was soon to return with, Dellray pushed off from the desk and paced, juggling two phone calls. The boundary between state and federal jurisdiction in criminal investigations is as gray as the East River in March but one undisputed area of joint authority is kidnapping. And for this offense, there was rarely any bickering over who wanted to run point. Saving the life of a person taken by force deflates egos fast.

Dellray disconnected one then the other phone and announced, ‘Maybe got ourselves an ID of the vic. Took a bit of funny-doing, putting Part A together with Part B. But s’all coming down on the pretty side of probable.’

Dellray had advanced degrees — including psychology and philosophy (yes, one could philosophize as a hobby) — but he somehow fell naturally into a street patois of his own making, not gang-talk, not African American Vernacular English. It was, like his clothing and his penchant for reading Heidegger and Kant to his children, pure Dellray.

He mentioned the phone that Sellitto had told Rhyme about, the one that the kidnapper had possibly flung out the window of his car, to keep from being traced, as he sped away from the scene with the victim in the trunk.

‘Our tech brain boys were all super ’cited ’bout trying to crack it — always a challenge those Apple folk give us. It’s like playing Angry Birds to our team. When, lo and behold, there’s no password! This day and age! They’re prowling through the call logs, when, what happens, it rings. It’s some business-soundin’ fella waiting for Phone-Boy to show up for breakfast, grapefruit getting hot, oatmeal cold.’

‘Fred?’

‘My, we are impatient this morning. Phone belongs to one Robert Ellis, head of a teensy start-up — my own description — in San Jose. In town lookin’ for seed money. No record, pays his taxes. Profile’s as booooring as a corset salesman’s. And when I’m saying start-up don’t be thinkin’ Facebook, Crap-Chat, anything sexy and lucrative. His spec-i-al-i-ty’s media buying. So it’s not looking like a competitor snatched him.’

‘Associates or family hear from the taker? About ransom?’ Sellitto asked.

‘Nup. Phone logs show calls to a mobile registered to a woman lives at the same address he does. So, status ‘o’ girlfriend’s a solid guess. But the provider says her phone’s, of all things, way, way over in Japan. Presumably in the company of said lady, one Ms Sabrina Dillon. My ASAC called her but hasn’t heard back. Other numbers aren’t remarkable. Just a guy in town for business. Doesn’t seem to have much else in the way of family we could find.’

‘Domestic issues?’ Mel Cooper asked. He was a lab specialist, yes, but also an NYPD detective who’d worked cases for years.

Dellray: ‘Nothin’ on the radar. Though, even if so, I’m thinking a bit of cheatin’ nookie doesn’t really make you trunk-worthy.’

‘True,’ Sellitto said.

Rhyme said, ‘No OC connection.’

‘Uh-uh. Boy is not a gangbanger, ’less they’re teaching that now at UCLA. His alma mater. A coupla years ago.’

Sellitto said, ‘So, we’re leaning toward some crazy.’

There was the noose, after all...

‘May be agreeing with you there, Lon,’ Dellray said.

‘Speculation,’ Rhyme grumbled. ‘We’re wasting time.’

Where the hell were Sachs and the evidence collection teams?

Cooper’s computer made a cheerful noise and he looked it over.

‘From your evidence folks, Fred.’

Rhyme wheeled forward. The federal crime scene unit — the Physical Evidence Response Team — had analyzed the phone carefully and found no fingerprints. The perp had wiped it before pitching it out of the car.

But the techs had found some trace — smudges of dirt and, wedged invisibly into the OtterBox cover, a short, light-colored hair. Human. There was no bulb attached, so no DNA analysis was possible. It was dry and appeared to have been dyed platinum blond.

‘Picture of Ellis?’

A few minutes later Cooper downloaded an image from California DMV.

A nondescript man of thirty-five. Lean face. His hair was brown.

Whose head had the paler hair come from?

The kidnapper himself?

The aforementioned Sabrina?

The door opened and Rhyme could tell that Amelia Sachs had returned. Her footfalls were distinctive. Before she even breached the doorway, he was calling, ‘Sachs! Let’s take a look.’

She entered through the archway, nodded a greeting to all. Then handed over the milk crate, containing evidence bags, to Cooper, who set them aside. He now dressed in full protective gear — booties, gloves, bonnet and splash guard, which mutually protected examiner and evidence.

He set the items out on examination tables, which were in a separate part of the parlor, away from where the others, dressed in street clothing, clustered, to avoid contamination.

The pickings were sparse. Rhyme knew this, as he’d been ‘with’ Sachs, via video feed, as she’d walked the grid at the scene. All she’d found was the noose, random trace from where the abduction had occurred and shoe print and tire mark evidence.

But even the tiniest of substances can, in theory, lead directly to your perp’s front door.

‘So?’ Sellitto asked. ‘What’d the munchkin say?’

Sachs: ‘I’d trade the girl — Morgynn — for two of her mothers. She’ll be in politics someday. Maybe a cop. She wanted to hold my gun. Anyway, the unsub was a heavyset white male, long dark hair, full beard, wearing dark casual clothes and dark baseball cap, long bill. A little taller than me. Same age as her tennis coach, Mr Billings, who is — I checked — thirty-one. She didn’t know the kind of car except it wasn’t a Tesla, which her father drives — and tells everybody he drives. Morgynn didn’t catch any distinguishings, but he was wearing blue gloves.’

‘Damn,’ Rhyme muttered. ‘Anything else?’

‘No, but this was a first. Her mother, Claire, asked if I — or somebody I knew on the force — would want to moonlight as a waitperson at a party tonight.’

‘What’s she paying?’ Sellitto asked.

In no mood for humor, Rhyme said, ‘First, the noose. Any prints?’

Cooper tested the cord in the fuming tent to raise invisible fingerprints and said, ‘A few slivers. Nothing to work with.’

‘What’s it made out of?’ Dellray asked.

‘I’m checking now.’ Cooper looked at the material closely under a microscope — set on relatively low magnification. He then consulted a visual database.

‘I can run the chromatograph but I’m sure it’s proteins — collagen, keratin and fibroin. I’d say catgut.’

Sellitto wrinkled his nose. ‘That’s disgusting.’

Thom was laughing. ‘No cats involved.’

Cooper said, ‘That’s right. It’s called catgut but it’s from sheep or goat intestines.’

Sellitto said, ‘Why’s that any less disgusting?’

The tech was online. He continued, ‘Gut was used as surgical sutures. Now the only use is musical-instrument strings. Steel and synthetic materials’re more frequent nowadays, but’ — he gave a shrug — ‘catgut is still common. Could’ve come from a hundred stores, concert halls and schools around the area. The length of this one? Probably from a cello.’

‘And the noose?’ Dellray asked. ‘Isn’t it s’posed to have thirteen coils? For bad luck?’

Rhyme didn’t know about catgut, and little about musical instruments, but he was familiar with nooses. It was properly called a hangman’s knot. It was not meant to tighten, like a slipknot, and choke. Death was from a snapped neck, which led to suffocation, yes, though not because the throat was closed but because signals from brain to lungs shut down. The wide knot, expertly positioned behind the left ear of the condemned, cracked the spine not far above where Rhyme’s had broken.

Answering Dellray, he said, ‘Some had thirteen coils. Most hangmen used eight back in the day. That worked just as well. Okay, what else?’

Sachs had used a gelatin lifter and an electrostatic device to capture the shoe prints that were probably the unsub’s, based on the girl’s account of where he had stood and walked.

Cooper consulted a database. He said, ‘A Converse Con. Size ten and a half.’

Naturally, a very common sneaker. Impossible to trace to a single retail source from the tread alone. Rhyme knew this about the shoe, since he was the one who had created and still helped maintain the NYPD’s database of footwear.

Sachs’s attempt to lift tire treads had been, on the other hand, unsuccessful. Other cars and trucks had driven in about the same path as the kidnapper’s sedan, obliterating distinctive tread impressions.

Rhyme said, ‘I suppose we better ask. What else did the child have to say?’

Sachs described how the kidnapping had unfolded.

‘A hood over the vic’s head. And he went limp?’ Sellitto asked. ‘Suffocated?’

Rhyme said, ‘Pretty short period of time. Drugs maybe. Chloroform — a classic. You can also use homemade concoctions.’

‘What color was the hood?’ Cooper asked.

‘Dark.’

‘I’ve got a fiber here,’ the tech added, looking at the evidence bag notation. ‘Cotton. Amelia, you rolled it up right next to where he left the noose.’

Rhyme looked at the monitor on which a tuft of fiber was displayed. He had a decision to make. The intact fiber could have important evidentiary value. Say they found a hood in the possession of a suspect; he could be linked to the crime if its fibers could be associated with this one (you didn’t say ‘matched’; only DNA and fingerprints actually matched).

That would be good for the prosecutor’s case at trial. But having the fiber in its present state didn’t get you any closer to discovering who the perp was and where he lived or worked. Cotton, though, was wonderfully absorbent and this tiny piece might hold very helpful clues. The problem was that they could be unlocked only with the gas chromatograph — an instrument that isolated and identified substances. And to analyze the fiber required that it be destroyed.

‘Burn it, Mel. I want to know if there’s anything inside.’

The tech prepared the sample for the Hewlett-Packard. The whole process would take no more than twenty minutes.

In the meantime, Sellitto and Dellray checked in with their respective supervisors. There’d still been no ransom demands, and no CCTV in the area had recorded the incident or the car speeding away. Dellray then uploaded all the information they had to NCIC, the National Crime database, to see if similar incidents had been reported elsewhere. None.

Rhyme said, ‘Let’s get a chart going.’

Sachs pulled a whiteboard close and took a dry marker. ‘What do we call him?’

Often the month and day were used as a temporary nickname for an unknown subject. This perp would be UNSUB 920, for September 20.

But before they decided on a moniker, Cooper stirred and looked at the screen of the GC/MS computer. ‘Ah. You were right, Lincoln. The fiber — presumably from the hood — shows traces of chloroform. Also, olanzapine.’

‘Knocky-out drug?’ Dellray asked. ‘Roofie for kidnappers?’

Cooper was typing. ‘A generic antipsychotic. Serious stuff.’

‘From our boy’s medicine cabinet? Or the vic’s?’ Sellitto wondered aloud.

Rhyme said, ‘Media buyer and psychosis don’t fit together felicitously. I’d vote for the perp.’

Cooper took soil samples from an evidence bag marked, Vicinity of the unsub’s shoes. ‘I’ll GC it too.’ And he stepped to the chromatograph.

Dellray’s phone hummed and a long finger stabbed Answer. ‘Yeah?... No... We’ll take a look-see.’

He said to the room, ‘Special agent BFF of mine, in Des Moines, was being all diligent. Had just read the NCIC wire when he got a call from some woman. She saw her son watchin’ YouVid, the streaming site? Nasty stuff. Live video of a guy being strangled — in a noose. We oughta see.’

Sachs walked to a laptop, which was connected via a thick, flat HDMI cable to a large monitor against a nearby wall. She typed and called up the site.

The video depicted a man in shadows. It was hard to see for sure, and he was blindfolded, but the face could have been Robert Ellis’s. His head was cocked to the side — because the noose was tugging his neck upward. Ankles bound with duct tape, arms tied or taped behind his back, he stood on a wooden box, about two by two feet.

As horrific as this was, the soundtrack was just as eerie. A snippet of a human gasp had been recorded and used as the downbeat for music being played on an organ or electric keyboard. The tune was familiar, ‘The Blue Danube.’

You could count out the time — a waltz — as gasp, two, three, gasp, two, three.

‘Christ,’ Sellitto muttered.

How long, Rhyme wondered, could a man stand like that before collapsing or slipping off, before his legs gave way or he fainted — and fell to the noose’s grip? The short fall would not, like traditional executions, break his neck, but would slowly and agonizingly strangle him to death.

As the video continued, the music began gradually to slow, as did the gasps, still keeping perfect time to the flagging music.

The image of the man began to fade too, growing darker.

At the end of the three-minute running time, the music and desperate gasps faded to silence, the image to black.

Words in blood-red type materialized on the screen — words that because they were otherwise so ordinary became unspeakably cruel.

Chapter 5

‘Rodney?’

Lincoln Rhyme was talking to their contact at the NYPD Computer Crimes Unit, downtown. One Police Plaza.

Rodney Szarnek was brilliant and quirky (a geek, say no more) but also into the most obnoxious head-banging, heavy-metal rock music from your worst nightmares.

‘Rodney, please!’ Rhyme shouted into the speakerphone. ‘Make it vanish.’

‘Oh, sorry.’

The music diminished, though it didn’t vanish.

‘Rodney, you’re on here with a bunch of people. Speaker. Don’t have time to make introductions.’

‘Hi, every—’

‘We’ve got an abduction and the perp’s rigged something so the vic only has a little while to live.’

The music shut off completely.

‘Tell me.’

‘Amelia’s sending you a YouVid link right now. A video of the victim.’

‘Is it still up?’ he asked.

‘As far as we know. Why?’

‘If there’s a violent video — real life, not fake — YouVid’ll probably take it down. If there’re complaints or if their algorithm catches it and their vid police decide it violates TOS, terms of service, down it comes. Have somebody download and record it.’

Dellray said, ‘Our folks’re all over it. Done and done.’

‘Hi, Fred.’ A pause, then Szarnek said, ‘Got it... Man. Already twenty-thousand-plus views. And a ton of likes. Sick world out there. So this’s that guy snatched a few hours ago? I read the wire.’

‘We think,’ Sachs said.

‘Hey, Amelia. Okay. And you need the location where this was sent from. Hoping he’s still alive. Okay, okay. There. I’ve sent the vid and an expedited request to the Warrants Desk. They’ll be on the phone with a magistrate, who’ll approve it ASAP. Minutes, I’m talking. I’ve worked with YouVid before. They’re in the US, New Jersey, thank God, so they’ll cooperate. If the server was overseas, we might never hear from them. I’ll call you back as soon as I can start tracing.’

They disconnected. Rhyme said to Sachs, ‘Get that chart going. What do we have so far?’ A nod at the whiteboard. She grabbed a marker and started.

As she wrote, Rhyme turned to the computer to look at the video again. The screen changed. A red block of type came up.

This video has been removed for violation of our Terms of Service.

A moment later, though, the video arrived from Dellray’s technical people, via an email. An MP4 file. Rhyme and the others viewed it again, hoping it might yield clues as to where the footage had been shot.

Nothing. A stone wall. A wooden box. Robert Ellis, the victim, struggling atop the improvised gallows.

One slip, one muscle cramp would kill him.

Sachs was finished jotting a moment later. Rhyme looked over the chart, wondering if there was anything in it that might hold clues to let them narrow down where their perp lived or worked or where he’d taken his victim to make the perverse tape.

Rodney Szarnek, from Computer Crimes, called back. On the other end of the line was, thank you, only the geeky voice, no raw, wah-wah guitar licks. ‘Lincoln?’

‘You have a location?’

‘New York metro area.’

Something I don’t know, please.

‘I know you’re disappointed. But I can narrow it down. Maybe four, five hours.’

‘Too long, Rodney.’

‘I’m just saying. He’s used proxies. That’s the bad news. The good is that he doesn’t really know what he’s doing. He’s logged onto some free VPNs, which—’

‘No time for Greek,’ Rhyme grumbled.

‘It’s amateur stuff. I’m working with YouVid and we can crack it but—’

‘Four hours.’

‘Less, I’m hoping.’

‘Me too.’ Rhyme disconnected.

‘Have something else here, Lincoln.’ Mel Cooper was at the Hewlett-Packard gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer.

‘The footprint trace? Something he stepped in?’

‘Right. We have more olanzapine, the antipsychotic. But something else. Weird.’

‘Weird is not a chemical property, Mel. Nor is it particularly fucking helpful.’

Cooper said, ‘Uranyl nitrate.’

‘Jesus,’ Rhyme whispered.

Dellray frowned and asked, ‘What, Linc? That’s some pretty bad shit, I’m hearing?’

Rhyme was resting the back of his skull against the headrest of his wheelchair, staring at the ceiling. He was vaguely aware of the question.

Sellitto now: ‘Uranus nitrate. Is it dangerous?’

‘Uranyl,’ Rhyme corrected impatiently. ‘Obviously it’s dangerous. What would you call uranium salt dissolved in nitric acid?’

‘Linc,’ Sellitto said patiently.

‘It’s radioactive, produces renal failure and acute tubular necrosis. It’s also explosive and highly unstable. But my exclamation was positive, Lon. I’m delighted that our perp may have trod in this stuff.’

Dellray said, ‘’Cause it’s highly and extremely and deliciously rare.’

‘Bingo, Fred.’

Rhyme explained that the substance had been used to create weapons-grade uranium for the Manhattan Project — the effort to make the first atomic bomb in World War II. While the project’s engineering headquarters had been based, temporarily, in Manhattan, hence the name, most of the work in constructing the bombs had occurred elsewhere, notably Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Richland, in Washington State.

‘But there was some actual construction and assembly in the New York area. A company in Bushwick, Brooklyn, made uranyl nitrate. They couldn’t produce enough, though, and gave up the contract. The company’s long gone but the site still has residual radiation.’

‘How do you—’ Sellitto began.

Rhyme said smoothly, ‘EPA waste sites. Wonderful, Lon. Don’t you study them? You don’t collect them?’

A sigh. ‘Linc.’

‘I do. They tell us such wonderful things about our neighborhoods.’

‘Where is it?’ Cooper asked.

‘Well, I don’t have the address memorized. It’s an EPA waste site, designated as such. Bushwick, Brooklyn. How many could there be? Look it up!’

Only a moment later Cooper said, ‘Wyckoff, not far from Covert Street.’

‘Near Knollwood Park Cemetery,’ said Sachs, a Brooklyner born and bred. She stripped off her lab jacket and gloves and started out of the parlor, calling, ‘Lon, get a tac team together. I’ll meet them there.’

Chapter 6

Stefan froze at the sound.

A sound nearly as troubling as a Black Scream, though it was soft, meek: a beep on his mobile phone.

It told him that someone had entered the factory complex. An app was connected via Wi-Fi to a cheap security camera, mounted at the facility’s entrance.

Oh, no, he thought. I’m sorry! He silently pleaded to Her not to be angry.

A glance into the next room, where Robert Ellis was balancing so precariously on the wooden crate. Then back to his phone. The webcam — high-def and color — showed a red sports car, one of those from the sixties or seventies, parked at the entrance, and a woman was climbing out. He saw a badge on the redhead’s hip. Behind her, police cars were pulling up fast.

His jaw quivered. How had they gotten here, and so quickly?

He closed his eyes, at the throbbing, the ocean roar, in his head.

Not a Black Scream, not now. Please!

Move! You have to move.

He looked over his gear. None of this could be found. Stefan had been careful, but connections could be made, evidence could be discovered, and he absolutely could not afford to be stopped.

He could not, under any circumstances, disappoint Her.

I’m sorry, he repeated. But Euterpe, of course, did not reply.

Stefan stuffed his computer into his backpack, and from the canvas sports bag he’d brought he extracted two other items. A quart jar of gasoline. And a cigarette lighter.

Stefan loved fire. Absolutely loved it. Not the jerky dance of orange and black flames, not the caress of heat. No, what he loved was, not surprisingly, the sound.

His only regret was that he would not be around to hear the crackle and moan as fire turned what is into what is not.

Sachs ran to the twelve-foot-high chain link, the six uniforms behind her.

The gate was secured with a chain and an imposing padlock.

‘Anybody got a breaching tool, bolt cutters?’

But these were patrol officers. They stopped speeders, defused domestics, helped out motorists, restrained mad dogs, busted street buys. Breaching tools were not among their issue gear.

She stood with her hands on her hips, gazing at the factory complex.

There was no question of waiting for Emergency Service; the victim was about to hang to death. The only issue was how to get inside.

Well, one way was obvious and it would have to do. She would gladly have sacrificed her Torino but the snout of the fifty-year-old muscle car was delicate. The squad cars were mounted with push bumpers — those black battering rams that you saw in high-speed-chase videos.

‘Keys,’ she called to a young patrol officer standing nearby, a stout African American woman. She handed them over at once. People tended to respond quickly to an Amelia Sachs demand.

‘Everybody, back.’

‘What’re you... Oh, Detective, no, you aren’t. I gotta write it up, you mess up my front end.’

‘I’ll do the footnotes.’ Sachs dropped into the driver’s seat, went for the belt. Backed up. She shouted out the window, ‘Follow me and spread out and search like hell. Remember, this guy’s got minutes.’

If he’s still alive.

‘Hey, Detective. Look!’ Another officer was pointing into the complex. At the end of a two-story wing of the factory a haze of white and gray mist formed into liver-colored smoke and spiraled upward fast — pushed hard by the heat from a fire. Intense heat.

‘Jesus.’

The unsub had tipped to them and set fire to the room where, she guessed, he’d made the video, intent on destroying the evidence.

And that meant he’d set fire to Robert Ellis too, whether or not he’d already died from hanging.

A voice shouted, ‘I’m calling FD.’

Sachs jammed the accelerator to the floor. The Ford Interceptors weren’t the gutsiest wheels on the block — punching in at 365 horses — but the hundred-foot takeoff run propelled the bulky vehicle plenty fast enough to pop the chain link like plastic and send the two sides of the gate butterflying into the air.

She continued on, the six cylinders exhaling fiercely.

The other cars were directly behind her.

In less than a minute she was at the building that was burning. There was no indication of fire in the front; the smoke was billowing from the back, though it would also be filling the interior, which Sachs and the others now had to hurry through, if they wanted to save the victim.

They had no masks or oxygen but Sachs hardly thought about that. She grabbed a Maglite from the purloined car. Drawing her Glock, she nodded to two other officers — one a short, handsome Latino man, the other a blond woman, hair in a severe ponytail.

‘We can’t wait. You two, with me. We go in, smoke or no.’

‘Sure, Detective.’ The woman nodded.

Sachs, the de facto commander, turned to the others. ‘Alonzo and Wilkes’re going up the middle with me. I want three of you around back, flanking the unsub. And somebody take wheels and circle the perimeter. He can’t’ve gotten very far. Any vehicle, anybody, assume it’s hostile.’

The others left.

The blond officer, Wilkes, covered Alonzo and Sachs as they shouldered their way through the door — thank God, unlocked. She dropped to a crouch inside, sweeping with light and muzzle. Wilkes followed.

It occurred to her just as she breached the portal that the perp was probably certifiably crazy and might have decided to hang around and kill some blue, in a suicidal fit.

But no gunshots.

Listening.

No sounds.

Was Ellis dead? If so, she hoped he’d died from the hanging, not the flames.

The three now started jogging through the corridor, Sachs trying to stay oriented and keeping in mind — in general — where the smoke had been coming from. The factory was decrepit and it stank of mold. Near the entrance, the walls were decorated with graffiti, and there was a collection of used condoms, spent matches, needles and cigarette butts on the floor. Not a lot, though, and Sachs supposed that even the most desperate johns and addicts knew what a toxic-waste Superfund site was and that there were healthier places to shoot up or get a blow job.

Signs above or beside the doors: Machine Operations. Fissile Research. Radiation Badge Testing Center — Do Not Pass Checkpoint B Without Test.

‘Funny, Detective,’ the man beside her said, gasping from the jog.

‘What’s that, Alonzo?’

‘No smoke here.’

True. Odd.

The black column had been quite thick, rising into the sky from a source very close. But there was no smoke directly around them.

Hell, she thought. This was a facility that had fabricated radioactive materials. Maybe at the end of this corridor they would find a thick, and impenetrable, security door, keeping the smoke out — but barring their way, as well.

They came to an L in the hallway, and paused at the juncture but only for a moment. Sachs crouched and went low, sweeping her gun forward.

Wilkes covered her again, with Alonzo going wide.

Nothing but emptiness.

Her radio crackled. ‘Patrol Four Eight Seven Eight. Gap in the fence in the back, K. A local outside said he saw white male, heavyset, beard, exit five minutes ago, running. Bag or backpack. Didn’t see where he went or if he had wheels.’

‘K,’ Sachs whispered. ‘Call it in to the local precinct and ESU. Anyone in the back of the building? Source of fire?’

No one answered. But another officer radioed that the fire department had just arrived and were through the chain link.

Sachs and her colleagues continued up the dogleg of a corridor. Keep going, keep going, she told herself, breathing hard.

They were almost to the back of the wing. Ahead of them was a door. It wasn’t as intimidating or impenetrable as she’d expected: just a standard wooden one and actually slightly ajar. Yet still there was no smoke, which meant there had to be another room, on the other side of this portal, sealed up, where the victim would be.

Sprinting now, Sachs ran through the doorway, pushing forward fast to find the chamber that was in flames.

And, with a breathtaking thud, she slammed directly into Robert Ellis, knocking him off the wooden box. He screamed in terror.

‘Jesus Lord,’ she cried. Then to her backup: ‘In here, fast!’

She clutched Ellis around the waist and lifted hard to keep the pressure of the noose off his neck. Damn, he was heavy.

While Wilkes covered them once more — there was no certainty that the fleeing man was the perp or, if he was, that he was operating alone — Sachs and the other officer lifted Ellis up; Alonzo worked the noose off and pulled the blindfold from his eyes, which scanned the room frantically, like a terrified animal’s. They eased him to the floor.

Ellis was choking and sobbing. ‘Thank you, thank you! God, I was going to die!’

She looked around her. No fire. Here or in an adjacent room. What the hell was going on?

‘You wounded, hurt?’ She helped him ease to the floor.

‘He was going to hang me! Christ. Who is he?’ His voice was groggy.

She repeated the question.

‘I don’t know. Not bad, I guess. My throat hurts. He dragged me around with a fucking noose around my neck. But I’m all right.’

‘Do you know where he went?’

‘No. I couldn’t see. He was in the other room, I think. That’s what it sounded like. I was blindfolded most of the time.’

Her radio clattered. ‘Portable Seven Three Eight One. Detective Sachs, K?’ A woman’s voice.

‘Go ahead.’

‘We’re in the back of the building. The fire’s here. It’s in an oil drum. Looks like he set it to burn up the evidence. Electronic stuff, papers, cloth. Gone.’

Pulling on gloves, Sachs removed the duct tape binding Ellis’s hands and feet. ‘Can you walk, Mr Ellis? I want to clear the room here and search it.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ He was unsteady, his legs not working right, but together she and Alonzo helped him outside the building to the empty lot where the fire had been extinguished.

She glanced into the drum. Shit. The clues were ash, scorched metal and plastic globs. So this perp, the Composer, might be insane but he’d had the foresight to try to destroy the evidence.

Madness and brilliance were a very bad combination in a suspect.

She sat Ellis down on what looked like a large spool for cable. Two med techs turned the corner and she waved them over.

With bewildered eyes, Ellis scanned the scene, which seemed like a set of a bad dystopian movie. He asked, ‘Detective?’

‘Yes?’

Muttering, Ellis said, ‘I was just walking down the street and next thing I knew he had this thing over my head and I was passing out. What does he want? Is he a terrorist? ISIS or something?’

‘I wish I could tell you, Mr Ellis. Fact is, we have no idea.’

Chapter 7

He sweated.

Palms, scalp, his hair-coated chest.

Damp, despite the autumn chill.

Moving fast, partly to keep from being seen.

Partly because the harmony of his world had been shaken. Like kicking a spinning top.

Like hitting the wrong notes, like losing the perfect rhythm of a metronome.

Stefan was walking down a street in Queens. Manic. Armpits prickling, scalp itching. The sweat ran and ran. He’d just left the transient hotel he’d been living, well, hiding, in, after slipping out of the horrible, silent world where he’d been for years.

He now carted a wheelie suitcase and a computer bag. Not all his possessions, of course. But enough for now. He’d learned that, while the kidnapping had made the press, no one seemed to connect him personally to it or to composing a tune that had a very impressive if unsettling rhythm section.

His muse... She was looking out for him from Olympus, yes. But still the police had come close.

So close!

That red-haired police woman he’d seen on the webcam. If he hadn’t set the thing up or if he’d missed the tone it uttered announcing their presence, he might have been captured by them and Harmony would be forever denied him.

Head down, walking quickly, fighting off a Black Scream — as he felt discord prickle his skin.

No...

He controlled it, barely.

Stefan could not help but think of the music of the spheres...

This philosophical concept moved him to his core. It was a belief that everything in the universe — planets, the sun, comets, other stars — gave off energy in the form of audible tones.

Musica mundanus, the ancients had called it.

Similar was Musica humana, the tones created within the human body.

And finally there was Musica instrumentis. Actual music played on instruments and sung.

When these tones — whether planets, the human heart, a cello performance — were in harmony, all was good. Life, love, relationships, devotion to the God of your choosing.

When the proportions were off, the cacophony was ruinous.

Now the spheres were tottering, and his chance of salvation, of rising into the state of Harmony, pure Harmony, was in jeopardy.

Stifling an urge to cry, Stefan dug into his jacket pocket and pulled a paper towel out. He mopped his face, his neck, and shoved the damp wad away.

Looking around. No eyes focused on him. No red-haired policewomen running toward him, in four-four march time.

But that didn’t mean he was safe. He circled the block twice, on foot, and stopped in the shadows near the stolen car. Finally, he could stand it no longer. He had to get away. He had to be safe.

Pausing at the car, another look around, then he set his suitcase in the backseat and the computer bag on the passenger’s side in the front. He climbed in and started the engine.

The grind, the cough, the purr of cylinders.

He pulled slowly into traffic.

No one followed; no one stopped him.

He thought to Her: I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful. I will.

He had to keep Her happy, pleased with him, of course. He couldn’t afford to offend Euterpe. She was the one guiding him on his journey to Harmony, which, according to the music of the spheres, corresponded to Heaven, the most exalted state one could exist in. Christ had his stations of the cross, on his journey. Stefan had his too.

Euterpe, daughter of Zeus, one of the nine muses. She was, of course, the muse of music, pictured often in a robe and carrying a flute or pan pipes, a handsome face, an intelligent face, as befit the offspring of a god.

He drove around, a half-dozen blocks, until he was positive no one followed.

With his muse in mind, another thought occurred. Stefan, a distracted boy in school, had nonetheless liked mythology. He recalled that Zeus had fathered other children too, and one was Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. He couldn’t remember who her mother might be, but she was different from Euterpe’s; they were half-sisters.

But that didn’t mean the women were in harmony. Oh, not at all. In fact, now just the opposite. They were enemies.

Euterpe, guiding Stefan to Harmony.

Artemis — in the form of the red-haired policewoman — trying to stop them both.

But you won’t, he thought.

And as he drove he forced away a budding Black Scream and concentrated on his next composition. He had a good piece of music in mind for his next hangman’s waltz. Now all he needed was another victim, to provide the perfect bass line, in three-quarter time.

Chapter 8

Sachs finished walking the grid and stood back to examine the scene.

The gallows was a jerry-rigged arrangement — the noose affixed to a broom handle jammed into a gap in the cinder blocks of the uranium factory wall. The wooden-box base, which Robert Ellis had been forced to stand on, was old, marked with military stencils — indecipherable numbers and letters — in faded olive-drab paint on the sides. By the time Sachs had inadvertently tackled him, he’d reported, he wasn’t sure he could have stayed upright more than five minutes. He was already growing light-headed from the effort.

She walked outside, where the evidence techs were finishing up with chain-of-custody cards. There wasn’t much to document; the fire’d worked real well.

She asked Robert Ellis, ‘You talk to Sabrina?’

‘No. I haven’t heard back. The time. I don’t know the time in Japan.’ He was still bleary. The medics had pronounced him largely uninjured, as he himself had assured Sachs, but the drugs and presumably the tightened noose around his neck — to elicit gasps for the recording — had muddled his thoughts.

With disbelief in his voice Ellis said, ‘He kept doing it — three times or four maybe.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Pulling the noose, recording me choking. I heard him play it back, over and over. As if the sounds I was making weren’t what he wanted. He was like a musical conductor, you know. Like he could hear in his mind the sound he wanted but he wasn’t getting it. He was so calculating, so cold about it.’

‘Did he say anything?’

‘Not to me. He talked to himself. Just rambling. I couldn’t hear most of it. I heard him say “music” and “harmony” and just weird stuff. I can’t really remember exactly. I feel pretty spacey. Nothing made sense. “Listen, listen, listen. Ah, there it is. Beautiful.” He seemed to be talking to some, I don’t know, imaginary person.’

‘No one else was there?’

‘I couldn’t see — you know, the blindfold. But it was just the two of us, I’m sure. I would’ve heard.’

What are you up to? she wondered to the Composer — it was the name they had selected for the unsub, Rhyme had told her. It seemed to fit a complex, sinister perp better than today’s date.

‘Still no thoughts on why he went after you?’

‘I don’t have any enemies, no exes. I’ve been with my girlfriend for years. I’m not rich, she’s not rich.’

Her phone buzzed. It was the officer who’d driven around the perimeter of the plant and found the witness — a boy — who reported that the Composer was fleeing. She had a brief conversation.

After disconnecting, she closed her eyes and sighed briefly.

She called Rhyme.

‘Sachs, where are you?’

‘I’m almost on my way.’

‘Almost. Why almost?’

‘The scene’s done. I’m just getting the vic’s statement.’

‘Somebody else can do that. I need the evidence.’

‘There’s something you should know.’

He must’ve heard the concern in her tone. Slowly he said, ‘Go on.’

‘One of the respondings was looking for more witnesses near where the unsub escaped. Didn’t find anyone. But she did spot a plastic bag he must’ve dropped while he was running. Inside were two more miniature nooses. Look likes he’s just getting started.’

Rhyme’s eyes scanned the treasures Sachs and the evidence collection techs had brought back.

The ECs left, one of them saying something to Rhyme. A joke. A farewell. A comment about the weather or the cleanliness of the Hewlett-Packard gas chromatograph. Who knew, who cared? He wasn’t paying attention. His nose detected the whiff of burned plastic and hot metal — radiating from the destroyed evidence.

Or the evidence the perp had tried to destroy. In fact, water is a far more efficient contaminant than fire, though flames do remove DNA and fingerprints pretty damn well.

Oh, Mr Composer, you tried. But let’s see how successful you were.

Fred Dellray was gone. He’d been summoned to Federal Plaza unexpectedly — a confidential informant had reported an impending assassination of a US attorney involved in a major drug prosecution.

Rhyme had complained: ‘Impending versus actual, Fred? Come on. Our vic has been one hundred percent certified snatched.’

‘Orders’re orders,’ the agent had replied as he left.

And then, insult to injury, Dellray had just called back saying that it was a false alarm. He could get back within the hour.

‘Fine, fine, fine.’

Lon Sellitto was still here, presently canvassing law enforcement agencies around the country to see if there were any echoes of the Composer’s MO.

None, so far.

Not that Rhyme cared about that.

Evidence. That’s what he wanted.

So they began poring over what had been collected at the factory.

Here, a single Converse Con shoe print. Ten and a half.

Here, two short pale hairs that seemed identical to the one found on Ellis’s cell phone.

Here, four slivers of shiny paper — photo stock, it looked like.

Here, a burned T-shirt, probably the ‘broom’ used to obliterate marks on the floor and wipe fingerprints.

Here, gone almost completely, the dark baseball cap he’d worn. No hair, no sweat.

Here, plastic globs and metal parts — his musical keyboard and an LED light.

Here, a Baggie, one-gallon, containing two more miniature nooses, probably made of cello strings. No fingerprints. Not helpful in any way, except to tell them that he had more victims in mind.

No phone, no computer — those devices we so dearly love... and that betray us and our secrets so nonchalantly.

Though he’d swept, Sachs had collected plenty of dust and splinters of wood, and bits of concrete from the floor around the gallows room. The GC/MS rumbled for some time, again and again burning up samples. The results revealed traces of tobacco, as well as cocaine, heroin and pseudoephedrine — the ingredient in decongestants that was present here because of its second utility: making methamphetamine.

Sachs said, ‘Not a lot of traffic but the place had its crack-house attractions.’

One find, more or less intact, was a scrap of paper:

‘Wheel of Fortune,’ Mel Cooper said.

‘What’s that?’

Nobody replied to Rhyme’s question, as they all tried to complete the words, Thom too. Nothing, so they moved on.

The remains of the musical keyboard, presumably the one on which the Composer had recorded his eerie composition, contained a serial number. Sellitto called the manufacturer but the company, in Massachusetts, was presently closed. He’d check again in the morning, though the Composer had been so careful about so many aspects of the kidnapping that he’d surely bought the Casio with cash.

No fingerprints on it. Or anything else.

The noose that had been used to try to murder Robert Ellis was made of two gut instrument strings tied together in a carrick bend knot. This was a common knot, Rhyme knew; knowing how to tie it did not suggest any special nautical or other professional background.

The gut strings, larger versions of the calling card the schoolgirl had found, were for an upright bass. Rhyme had little hope that they’d find a clerk who’d remember a purchaser like the Composer, given their skimpy description of him... and the fact that there were thousands of musicians in the area who’d use such strings.

To break into the factory, the Composer had sliced through the chain at the gate with a bolt cutter and replaced it with his own. Both the lock and chain were generic.

The battery-powered router and Wi-Fi-enabled webcam — which had apparently alerted him to the police’s arrival — were similarly untraceable.

A canvass by dozens of officers found no witnesses to follow up on the boy who’d reported that somebody resembling the Composer had fled the plant around the time of the fire.

After the information went up on the board, Rhyme wheeled in front of it.

Sachs too gazed. She called up a map of the area on one of the big-screen monitors. She tapped the place to the north of the factory, about where he’d escaped, and said absently, ‘Where the hell’re you going?’

Sellitto, also looking over the chart, said, ‘He’s got a car. He can drive home. He can drive to a subway and take the train, leave the car on the street. He can—’

Rhyme had a fast thought. ‘Sachs!’

She, Sellitto and Cooper were looking toward him. They seemed alarmed. Maybe it was his angered expression.

‘What, Rhyme?’

‘What you just asked.’

‘Where he lives.’

‘No, you didn’t ask that. You asked where he was going?’

‘Well, I meant, where’s his home.’

‘Forget that.’ He scanned the chart. ‘Those scraps of paper you found? The photo paper?’

‘Right.’

‘Play jigsaw puzzle with them. See how they fit together.’

After pulling on gloves she opened the plastic evidence envelope and arranged the slips. ‘They make a frame, see? Something was cut out of the middle. A perfect square.’

Rhyme then consulted his computer. He asked, ‘One that measures fifty-one millimeters by fifty-one, by any chance?’

Sachs applied a ruler. She laughed. ‘Exactly.’

Sellitto grunted, ‘How the hell’d you know that, Linc?’

‘Goddamn it.’ He nodded at the burned triangle of paper, containing the mysterious code.

More typing. Rhyme reviewed the screen and said, ‘Try this: “Cash Tendered. Exchange Rate. Converted Amount. Transaction Amount.”’ He nodded at the screen. ‘I found a receipt from a currency exchange. That’s what it is. And the square cut out of the glossy paper. It’s the size—’

Sellitto filled in, ‘A passport photo. Oh, hell.’

‘Exactly,’ Rhyme said, exhaling slowly. ‘Call Washington.’

‘DC?’ Cooper asked.

‘Of course DC. I hardly want a cup of Starbucks or a Microsoft Windows upgrade, now, do I? Tell the State Department to alert the embassies that the Composer’s headed out of the country. Dellray too. Get him on the wire to the FBI offices abroad.’ Another scowl. ‘Don’t know what good it’ll do. No solid description or other info to give Passport Control.’ He shook his head in dismay. ‘And if he’s as smart as he seems to be, he’s not wasting any time. He’s probably halfway to London or Rio by now.’