The Midnight Lock

20

Intent.

That’s the main thing — the “key,” you might say — that defines the crime of possessing lock-picking tools. In New York, the law is clear:

Nearly all states have laws like New York’s. You can buy whatever you need to pick locks, provided you do not plan to use them in furtherance of a crime. It’s the prosecutor’s job to prove that and it’s a task that can be difficult.

If for some reason an officer of the law were to have stopped me as I was walking down the street toward Carrie Noelle’s apartment and poked through my backpack, noting the tools, I would simply hand him the business card that reads Day & Night Locksmith Services, which is a complete fake, by the way. He might be suspicious and call the number. An answering service would pick up, taking the sting out of the suspicion. And he’d be thinking: Hard to prove intent, so the DA won’t be interested.

He’d let me go. He might be curious about — and troubled by — my locking-blade brass knife but, then again, I follow the law and keep it concealed, a must in New York. And its length of inches is permissible in the city (it’s also a length that’s not a problem for me, as I know full well what kind of damage that much razor-sharp metal can do).

You don’t need a Los Zetas serrated hunting knife to get blood to spray.

On the other hand, if, at the moment, a cop were to find me as I am now, in stocking cap and clear latex gloves, with those selfsame tools, and a page from the Daily Herald, he would deduce intent to forcibly enter into premises to commit a felony.

Which is why I’m crouching once again in the abandoned, unstable Bechtel Building, across from Carrie Noelle’s apartment and not making a move until the street is deserted, until there is no one to note my presence.

I scan the surroundings. Present are some cars, some late-night revelers, a homeless man pushing a cart.

I grow impatient until finally, an opportunity. I’m across the street and, in a matter of seconds, through the service door. Some locks don’t even deserve the name.

Soon I’ve climbed to Carrie’s floor and am waiting in the fire stairwell, listening carefully.

I hear some clicks, some thuds. I’ll wait for silence.

I unzip my backpack and open my tool case. I feel the brass knife in my pocket.

I’m breathing slowly. Concentrating, all too aware of the greatest challenge I — and all trespassing lockpickers — face: time.

Historians can’t say for certain when and where the first lock was made, but they can say when the earliest lock was discovered. It was in the palace of Dur-Sharrukin, now called Khorsabad in Iraq — the site destroyed by ISIL a few years back. The lock dates to about 4000 B.C. It secured a massive door, which probably weighed hundreds of pounds.

The key was equally imposing and had to be carried on a guard’s shoulder. It wasn’t particularly sophisticated. In fact, it was so easy to duplicate by thieves and intruders that the royals took to installing multiple keyways in the door — only one of which worked. The purpose of this was to keep the intruder on the premises trying keyway after keyway for so long that the guards would find and then gut him after the briefest of trials, or no trial at all.

This is the reason most burglars are caught: because they can’t breach their target before being spotted or heard. If you hear a clink-tink in your hallway and you rise from your TV-viewing spot to peek out and see nothing — because the picker is already inside your neighbor’s apartment — you put it down to a cat, a rat, a settling building.

If you see someone in a ski mask and gloves, irritated because he can’t defeat the lock, well, the results are obvious.

Speed...

Hence my agonizing practice with the SecurPoint 85.

Time is one enemy of the lockpicker; noise is another.

I have no idea what the wooden locks of ancient eras sounded like (wood was phased out in Roman days), but metal on metal undeniably makes noise, when inserting, when turning, when unseating.

Clink-tink...

So I need to make the process as silent as possible.

If I don’t, it could be the disaster of 2019 all over again.

And I cannot let that happen.

In the stairwell of Carrie Noelle’s building, I listen closely.

Silence.

Now. Go.

Fast, I’m into the hallway and at her door.

First, the knob lock. Three seconds, it’s open.

And the SecurPoint 85?

Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

People are lazy and often don’t bother to lock the deadbolt. Or they’re forgetful.

I twist the knob and push.

Ah, but Carrie Noelle has been diligent, turning the latch before it was jammy time. The SecurPoint 85 is snug.

Go...

In goes the tension wrench, and I turn it, putting torsion on the plug with my left hand.

My right inserts the sharpened rake. Feeling the pins as I move the rake up and down, back and forth. Seeing them in my mind’s eye — I’ve dismantled a hundred locks, touched the pins, smelled the metal, felt all the parts heavy in my hand.

I lose myself in the process of becoming the key.

A dark side of zen...

I’m not religious but I consider lock-picking mystical, akin to the transfiguration of Jesus from man to spirit. Buddha from ignorance to enlightenment. Gandalf the Grey to Gandalf the White.

Click, click.

There are ten pins in this lock — two in each hole. Manipulating them.

I have not been breathing since I started.

Little finger, left hand, keeps taut the tension wrench, while the rake probes.

Fifteen seconds...

Push, push... But gently. Don’t anger those pins that have yet to be tricked up into their tunnels. You can’t bully them. They have to be seduced.

Click, click...

Then the wrench swivels, and the one-inch-throw deadbolt leaves the strike panel.

I’ve done it!

The SecurPoint is a disgrace to its name.

In twenty seconds, no less.

I stand, shoot graphite on the hinges. Then I’m closing the door with outer-space silence.

Carrie is not an alarm kind of girl, so there is no need to flood the house with RF waves, or to spend the first five seconds of the Visit cutting wires.

A few steps inside. I listen.

I hear the hum of the refrigerator. The bubbling from the aquarium.

It’s dark but not black. One thing I’ve learned is that unless you mount thick shades on all the windows, New York — Manhattan particularly — is filled with illumination. Light from a million sources bleeds inside through dozens of tiny fissures. This is true every minute of every day.

When my eyes acclimate I walk, cautiously, farther into the apartment itself.

I’m moving through a long hallway. I pass a door, closed presently. It leads to a small bedroom. Beside the door sit a half-dozen children’s toys, among them an eerie-faced doll, a wooden locomotive, a puzzle, also wood, in which play involves rearranging letters to spell words.

I continue past the bedroom down the corridor. The kitchen is to the left, living room to the right. Comfortable couches and chairs, fake leather. A pommeled coffee table, covered with magazines and makeup and socks and more toys. The aquarium is impressive. I know nothing about fish but the colors are quite appealing.

In the back is the larger bedroom.

I take my brass knife from my pocket and open it, giving the faintest of clicks (I have graphited it too). Gripping the handle hard, the blade side up.

If I had been heard and was about to be attacked, now is the moment when it would happen.

I step inside.

But here she dozes. Pretty Carrie Noelle. She’s sprawled on the bed in a tangle of purple floral sheets and a bedspread that seems too thick for the temperature in the apartment, which is not that cool. But this is what she’s chosen for swaddling. People wage a war against insomnia and will use whatever weapon or tactic gives them advantage.

I fold the knife and replace it in my pocket.

Then look over Carrie once more.

Most women I’ve observed in the Visits sleep on their sides, a pillow or bunch of blankets between their legs. This is not a sexual thing, I’m convinced. Also, no one wears pajamas, much less nightgowns, unless it’s a sexy garment and there’s a man on the sinister side of the bed (as happened once — a surprise discovery that resulted in my fast retreat). No, the de rigueur outfit for bed among the female persuasion is sweatpants or boxer shorts and a T-shirt. And you’d be surprised at how many single women, of all ages, are accompanied to slumber with a stuffed animal or two.

I return to the living room. I look at her bookshelf. Carrie enjoys murder mysteries and bios and cookbooks, and — as in every apartment I’ve visited — she has a thousand-dollar collection of self-help and exercise books. Most, hardly cracked.

In the kitchen I find a bottle of red wine, an Australian shiraz. It’s a good one — and it features a screw top. (Those from Down Under, I recall from the formal and fancy meals of my childhood, my father lecturing, are not afraid to sell fine wines in easy-to-open bottles. And why should they be? It only makes sense.)

I dig for a crystal glass and fill it halfway. I sip. It’s quite decent. Then I correct myself. It’s quite good. “Decent” does not mean quality. It means only the opposite of indecent — that is, not obscene. Anyone who practices the science of locksmithing knows that precision is everything. A thousandth of a thousandth of a millimeter of error in the bitting of a key will render it useless — except for steadying a wobbly table leg.

I walk to the front bedroom, quietly open the door. I look in and see all the children’s toys. And the crib in the corner.

Children can make the Visits problematic. Waking up at all hours and screaming for attention.

I’ll get back to this room but for the moment I return to the bathroom outside Carrie’s bedroom.

There’s a lipstick on the counter that describes itself as Passion Rouge. I’ll use this to sign my calling card, the page from the Daily Herald.

I wonder what the police think of it. If they’re diligent, and they probably are, they’ll be considering the articles on the signature page, the ads on the reverse side, who the editors are, who the publisher is...

Are they thinking about more than that? Are they thinking page 3, the February 17 edition?

3

2/17

I suspect — no, I know — they aren’t.

Where should I leave the paper? I wonder.

I decide, unimaginatively: underwear drawer again. I’m sure that results in tears. Then the newspaper slips from my mind and, gazing around the cozy bathroom, I fantasize about another outcome for Carrie Noelle.

I’m recalling the famous murder scene in the movie Psycho. The victim is in the shower when the killer slips into the bathroom, holding high the knife with which he plans to slash her to death. The tension is unbearable...

I imagine a variation. I don’t leave the signed newspaper at all and slip into the darkness, as planned.

No, I’m standing in the bathtub, hiding behind the drawn shower curtain. There I wait — for Carrie to walk sleepily inside to start her morning routine... and make that pretty face all the prettier.

21

She awoke at dawn.

Some noise from the street broke her slumber.

Squinting at the bedside clock. Nearly 5 a.m. Damn.

Groggy from the pill last night, Carrie Noelle sighed. If I fall asleep now, I can still get one hour and twenty minutes.

Staring at the ceiling.

If I fall asleep now, I can still get one hour and eighteen minutes.

Noelle gripped the long pillow she embraced when she slept and rolled to her left side.

She gasped and reared back.

The eyes of a Madame Alexander doll — on its side as well — were staring at her.

While no one can dispute the artistry of these works, they are just plain fucking scary when they’re twelve inches from your face, and you don’t remember propping it on your neighboring pillow when you hit the hay at midnight.

Couldn’t help but think: Two glasses of wine and the Ambien before bed (I know, I know, not good).

She must’ve been picking up some of the toys and carted it in here without thinking.

Noelle pressed her lips together. Morning mouth — like she’d eaten sand, which she’d actually done, once, on a dare by a cute fellow middle-schooler.

She reached for the bottle of Fiji water on the nightstand.

Not there.

She looked around. Wait. It was on the left bedside table — the farthest from the side she slept on. Why did she leave it there?

It was full, so she hadn’t taken a sip in the middle of the night and then set it on the table after a fit of tossing and turning.

Noelle rolled upright and climbed from her bed. From the floor she retrieved the pair of jeans shed last night and a sweatshirt that was sitting on a small Queen Anne chair that was her de facto clothing caddy.

She gasped once more.

Beneath the sweatshirt, sitting spread out on the seat of the chair, was a bra. It was pink and decorated with tiny embroidered red roses.

The garment was one she had not worn for years — it was too small now. There’d be no reason for her to dig it out from where it spent its days, along with other skinny apparel: in a tied bag in the bottom of her closet.

Doll, water, bra...

What the hell were you doing, girl?

No more duets of alcohol and pharma. Period.

Maybe she’d been sleepwalking. It did happen. She’d read an article in the Times about the phenomenon. True, mostly adolescents and children were afflicted. But the condition did occur in adults sometimes.

Sleepwalking...

Or chardonnay-walking.

She turned to where her phone was — or was supposed to be: on the floor, plugged in and charging, beneath the bedside table.

No. Not there.

She’d probably kicked the iPhone under the table or bed after the jeans came off.

Well, look.

I can’t.

Deep breath. The childhood fears, the clichés about the boogeyman under the bed.

Get. The. Damn. Phone.

On her knees fast, truly expecting a sinewy hand to zip from the dust-bunny world and close around her wrist.

No one — no thing — attacked.

But there was no phone either.

She walked to the doorway that led into the living room. Noelle froze.

A gasp. The phone was stuck in the sand on the bottom of her aquarium, standing upright. The fish circled it like the apes examining the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Heart pounding, sweat pricking her scalp, beneath her arm, she leaned forward. On the coffee table, before the beige couch that faced the aquarium, was a glass that appeared to contain the dregs of red wine.

Carrie Noelle did not drink red wine. A headache issue.

And even if she did, she wouldn’t have used this glass, her mother’s Waterford, which had been tucked away in the sideboard, under several layers of tablecloths and napkins, as inaccessible as the 32B bra.

Then she understood.

He’d been here!

The story in the news!

Some man had just broken into an apartment on the Upper West Side. Some psycho who called himself the Locksmith. He could get through even the most sophisticated security systems — even, apparently, the expensive top-of-the-line model deadbolt that Noelle had had installed.

She stepped into her Nikes and started down the hall.

But she stopped, fast, at the sound.

What... What is that?

She cocked her head and made out the faint notes tinkling from the second bedroom.

It was Brahms’s “Lullaby,” and the tune was coming from the mobile above the baby crib.

Son of a bitch, she thought. Now more angry than scared. She ran into the kitchen for a weapon and stared at the countertop.

The butcher block knife holder was there.

All of the knives were gone.

Glancing at the second bedroom, she noted that the door was open — it had been closed when she went to bed. That she remembered clearly.

Jesus, he was in there now, with the knives!

It was then that she remembered the toolbox, which rested in the bottom of the bathroom closet. No knives inside but there was a hammer. It was the only weapon she could think of so it would have to do. She turned and stepped into the bathroom fast, closing and locking the door.

Thinking, fat lot of good that’ll do. If he got through a four-hundred-and-fifty-dollar deadbolt, how long would the knob lock stop him?

As she flung the closet door open and dropped to her knees to dig for the tool kit, she paused and looked up.

The shower curtain, which she’d left open last night, was drawn closed.

22

Amelia Sachs finished walking the grid at the crime scene, Apartment 4C, 501 East 97th Street.

She’d done the Bechtel Building, the Locksmith’s entry and exit routes into and out of Carrie Noelle’s building and had just completed her apartment itself.

Wearing white Tyvek overalls and other standard crime-scene gear, she carried a dozen paper and plastic bags out into the hallway, and handed off to an evidence collection tech — a young, talented Latina, whom Sachs had wanted to recruit to work regularly with her and Rhyme — a plan put on hold now that her husband had been summarily fired.

She tried to quash the anger she felt at the brass’s foolishness. No, that was too mild. Their idiocy.

This she was not able to do.

Politics...

“Terrible,” Sonja Montez said, somber faced, as she looked at a large plastic bag containing a baby’s rotating mobile of angels. She had a four- and a six-year-old at home.

“Do the CoCs and get them into the bus.”

“Sure, Detective.” She put the bags, from which chain-of-custody cards dangled, into a large plastic tub and walked to the elevator.

Sachs spent another fifteen minutes in the apartment, then she too left and descended to the main floor. Outside, she noted the large crowd, staring at the police activities.

Reporters too. As always, the press hovered, and... pressed.

“Is this the Locksmith?” one called.

“Detective Sachs!”

“Was there a Daily Herald page here too?”

She said nothing and began stripping off the overalls.

Ron Pulaski approached. The young officer ran a hand through his short blond hair and absently worried the scar on his forehead. He’d suffered a head injury on the job years ago, and it had been a long slog back to full health.

“Sucks about Lincoln.”

“Yeah. Any luck with locksmithing shops?”

“No. Just that they were all impressed at the perp’s skill.”

Sachs scoffed. “Not helpful.”

“No.”

She glanced up toward the window that would be Noelle’s. “He was drinking her wine. Just like he ate Annabelle Talese’s cookies. Sitting on the couch with his feet up on her coffee table.”

“Drinking?” Pulaski was frowning. “He’s careful about friction ridges. But careless about DNA?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll have to see.”

“Brother. What’s the guy about?” He thought for a moment. “I think he’s flaunting. Home invasion, sitting there, throwing the intrusion into the victims’ faces.”

“Throwing it in our faces too.” Sachs had run serial perp cases before. Narcissism was a key component to their personalities. They believed they were special; they could play God.

Her eyes slipped to the reporters.

She happened to glance behind the throng and notice a gray Cadillac, one of the newer ones. It was stopped in a traffic lane, which wasn’t odd, since there were other curious drivers slowing or pausing as they or their passengers eyed the police action. Given the dark windows, she wasn’t one hundred percent certain but it appeared that the driver — in shades and a black hat — was videoing or photographing her. While others in the crowd were filming the ambulance, the crime scene van, the police cars and the white-gowned techs, his phone was aimed directly her way. She knew that it was not uncommon for the perp to return to the scene during an investigation. Sometimes this was to glean what the cops were discovering. Other times, it was to bask in their handiwork.

Narcissism...

When he seemed suddenly aware she was observing him, he set the phone down, put the car in gear and sped on. Sachs stepped into the street but caught only the tag’s state — New York — not the number, before it disappeared around the corner.

“Something?” Pulaski asked.

“The gray Caddie. More interested in us than I would’ve liked.”

“You think our perp drives a Cadillac?”

“Why not? Locksmithing’s just a hobby, according to Benny Morgenstern. Who knows what he does for a living? You find anything here?”

Pulaski said, “We’ve talked to a couple dozen neighbors, businesspeople, deliverymen. Nobody’s seen anything.”

He and a half-dozen officers from local precincts had checked escape routes the Locksmith might have taken. It appeared that he’d broken a window in the back of the building and dropped into an alley to escape. The fact that he hadn’t used either the front entrance or the service door meant he’d left just minutes earlier — the police presence would have surprised him.

“Security cameras?”

“None that’re working.”

Half the cams one sees in stores and on the street are fake or not hooked up. Recording security video is a time-consuming and complicated job. And cameras and boxes can be expensive.

“What we talked about before,” she whispered. “You okay helping?”

“Absolutely, Amelia.”

“Fourth floor. East stairwell.” Sachs nodded at Noelle’s. “Then the Bechtel Building. Front lobby.”

“Got it.” The young officer walked off.

Her eyes scanned once more for the gray Cadillac. No sign of it. Sachs stepped to her Torino, from which she retrieved her dark blue sport coat, pulling it on over the black sweater. She also wore black jeans and boots. Then she walked to a nearby blue-and-white and sat down in the backseat.

“How are you doing?” Sachs asked Carrie Noelle.

“Okay, I suppose.” The woman returned Sachs’s phone and thanked her for its use. Her own, which Sachs had retrieved from the aquarium, would be going into evidence on the off chance that the Locksmith had touched it without gloves.

Noelle said, “I have to ask. How’d you get here so fast? My neighbors heard me calling for help and they said you were downstairs in seconds. How on earth did that happen?”

23

Lincoln Rhyme.

That was the answer to Carrie Noelle’s question.

“We had leads that the Locksmith might have some connection to your block.”

Sachs let it go at that and didn’t share that, as his last act as a criminalist, before he was furloughed, Rhyme considered the evidence collected thus far: the dish detergent, shards of old-time porcelain insulator, the brick dust. Then he’d composed the memo that Sachs — his “special envoy” — had taken downtown to hand deliver to Lon Sellitto, as email couldn’t be trusted. The instructions were to have the lieutenant send patrol officers in Midtown North, the 19, 20, 23, 24 and 28 Houses to search for a demo site involving an old, red-brick building. Those police precincts bordered Central Park, which Rhyme had targeted as a focal point because of the dish detergent used in cleaning the park’s gates.

Early this morning, 4:30 a.m., Sellitto got a report of a possible location. A patrolman responded, telling the lieutenant that his beat included the red-brick Bechtel Building on East 97th, half demolished and awaiting a new developer, since the existing one was in bankruptcy. They knew of the structure because it was the site of drug activity and they would occasionally roust the pushers. The resourceful officer had sent pictures of that and surrounding buildings.

Sellitto had in turn forwarded them to Sachs, keeping Rhyme out of the chain, though in the predawn hours she had, of course, shared everything with her husband.

“He doesn’t live in the place,” Rhyme had said as he lay in bed. “And if there’s no active demo going on, he doesn’t work there.”

“Which means he might be using it for surveillance.” Sachs had pointed to one of the pictures — of the apartment at 501 East 97th. “The service door’s right across from one of the windows.”

“Get down there now.”

Twenty minutes later she’d pulled up in front of the Bechtel Building, meeting Ron Pulaski and two blue-and-whites. They’d done no more than huddle to come up with a plan of action, when a call came in from Dispatch, reporting a break-in, in the very building she was gazing at.

She, Pulaski and the uniforms had responded, covering the exits and hurrying upstairs where a hysterical Carrie Noelle sat in a neighbors’ apartment. Escorted by Pulaski downstairs, she’d waited in the back of the squad car while Sachs and the ECTs walked the grid.

The woman described a break-in that was identical to Annabelle Talese’s. She had no idea when the suspect had left.

Sachs asked Noelle the same questions that she’d asked Talese — about stalkers, exes, anyone who might wish her harm.

Sachs suspected the answers would be the same as well: Noelle could think of no one who had a motive to harm or threaten her or invade her home. Which gave credence to the theory that the intrusions were most likely random, though his purpose was still a mystery.

“It was so terrible,” Noelle whispered. “My job, I sell collectible toys. He put a doll in bed next to me. And he turned on that mobile, you know, over a baby’s crib? The Brahms ‘Lullaby.’ I’ll never be able to hear that music again.” Noelle dug for a tissue in her purse and dabbed her eyes. She opened a bottle of some medication and took two pills, swallowing them dry.

Thirty feet away, Evidence Collection Technician Sonja Montez had removed the Tyvek coveralls. Stripping off the cocoon had revealed a striking woman of dark complexion, bright pink lipstick and blue eyeshadow. She wore a striped black and red blouse and burgundy side-zippered slacks. She caught Sachs’s eye and gave a thumbs-up. Meaning the evidence was in the CSU bus, all the chain-of-custody cards filled out.

Sachs noted a car pulling up. It was roughly the same shade as the Cadillac and, at first, she tensed, but then noted it was a different make. A woman was behind the wheel. She spoke to a uniformed officer and he guided her to the curb. She parked and climbed out. Noelle’s sister, it seemed.

Noelle asked, “Is it okay if I go now? I don’t want to be anywhere near here.”

Sachs recalled Annabelle Talese’s words.

He stole my home. I loved it so much, and he took it away from me...

“Of course. I’ll call if I have any more questions. And if you think of anything else, let me know.” They had exchanged cards.

It was then that she heard a male voice. “Detective Sachs.”

She turned to see Commander Alonzo Rodriguez walking toward her. His dark eyes, close-set in a round and balding head, took in the evidence in the back of the CS bus. With him was a slim man — also balding — in a fine suit. Sachs knew him. Abraham Potter. He had some job in the mayor’s office, probably an aide. He looked imperious but she suspected he didn’t possess particular power, and was probably a skilled tattletale.

Camera crews were filming their way. Rodriguez seemed more than aware of that.

With a faux smile beneath his odd, stringy mustache, he said, “I know there was a little friction in yesterday’s meeting. I just wanted to say one thing.”

“Okay.”

“When word comes down from on top, there’s not a lot that can be done about it.”

“Is there anything I can help you with, Commander?”

He cleared his throat. “Detective, there’s an officer at the crime scene lab in Queens. He’s expecting that evidence” — a nod at the cartons — “to be logged in, in thirty minutes, with all the chain-of-custody cards duly executed.”

“Noted.”

“You know the consequences if that doesn’t happen.”

She didn’t answer.

“You’ve given all the evidence you’ve collected to the collection technicians.” A nod at the bus.

“Yes,” she said coolly.

Then in Rodriguez’s moonish face, split in half by the handlebar, a smile, of sorts, appeared. He walked toward her car. “But before you go, indulge me.” And he gestured her to follow with a crooked finger.

24

At 5:04 a.m., with Carrie Noelle snoozing contentedly one room away, I turned on the hanging mobile in the room where she stored the children’s toys she sold online.

I heard the bleat of a police siren and looked out the window to see several police squad cars and unmarked ones driven by plainclothes cops descending in front of the Bechtel and Carrie’s apartment buildings.

I thought, again, of 2019. The disaster.

And my palms, in the expensive clear surgical gloves, began to sweat. My heart to pound.

Then more officers were descending on the block where the Bechtel Building stood. They were looking round.

Looking for me?

Impossible.

Or perhaps not.

The more I considered it, the more I believed this wasn’t a coincidence.

Those in the lock industry don’t believe in omens. Locksmithing is science, it’s mechanics, it’s physics. Pins retreat because we make them retreat. The third time — or the thirtieth — is the charm only because that’s the time we’ve achieved just the right combination of tension and raking.

Then, with the bleat of a siren, I heard Carrie stir in her bedroom.

Out!

I took all of the knives from the butcher block, slipped one in my bag, along with the panties I’d taken earlier, and hid the others in the freezer. This would slow her down because she’d think I’m armed — if I took just one, she might not notice.

Then a look out of Carrie’s front door. The hall was empty, so I left. This time without relocking the SecurPoint 85. No time for dramatic flourishes.

I couldn’t leave by the front door to the street, so I did via the back window. Breaking a window to escape is like bumping a lock. But I comfort myself with the thought that it was painted shut; there was no lock to pick. As I climbed out I reflected that I probably shed evidence, but, fortunately, there was a hose on the ground, beside some trash bags. I pointed the nozzle at where I landed and turned the stream on full. Hairs and DNA that I might have left would soon be down the storm drain.

Now, an hour later, I’m on crowded 97th Street, along with curious spectators and the press.

I learn that I was right; this is no coincidence. A tall redhead detective — there’s a gold badge on her hip — is talking to a young blond officer in a uniform. He calls her Amelia and he’s Ron and she mentions Carrie Noelle by name.

In fact, there she is, mouse-timid in the back of a squad car.

How the hell...?

I know for a fact that Carrie didn’t call them; when they arrived she was still Sleeping Beauty and her phone had been drowned in the aquarium.

Nobody could have seen me break into the apartment or they would have called the police much earlier.

Somehow, they figured out that I was targeting her.

I consider this.

Figuring out my assault on Carrie specifically was impossible; only I knew I had a Visit to her planned. But what isn’t impossible is that they decided I was going after someone in this neighborhood. No. On this block.

This has to be it. Amelia points to someone in one of those spaceman crime-scene suits and then to the Bechtel Building. And he, or she, begins to encircle the front with police tape.

Of course!

I glance at my feet.

My betraying shoes.

I picked up some dirt or mud or something telltale on one of the earlier visits here and tracked it to Annabelle Talese’s. The police traced it to the Bechtel Building. This seems incredible to me, but then to a layperson picking a SecurPoint — or, for that matter, any stout deadbolt — would be akin to magic.

I call up Google. All it takes is “crime scene” and “Amelia” and “NYPD,” and I’m inundated with references to Amelia Sachs, decorated detective, daughter of a decorated patrol officer, married to the decorated former detective, now consultant, Lincoln Rhyme.

Their specialty is forensics.

I’m furious with myself. What if this Rhyme and his wife had made the deduction earlier and sent officers here then, when I was crouched in the dank front lobby of the Bechtel Building, waiting for the chance to start my Visit?

It wouldn’t have taken long to get to the “intent” question. Once the officers discovered the tools — my stocking cap that pulls down into a full-face mask, page 3 of the Daily Herald and, of course, the knife, technically legal though it may be — I’d be on my way to jail.

Which would be, for me, pure hell.

My hands are actually tremoring.

And that is a condition that no lockpicker can tolerate.

So, in the future, shoes with plain leather soles.

Amelia spends some time talking to Carrie Noelle in the back of the car. I can imagine the exchange, as they each try to figure out the why-me question.

I calm and focus on the situation. After Carrie — still pretty but pale and with hair askew — drives off with her ride, I edge closer to Amelia. I want to learn more about my pursuers. It’s a risk being here, though no one seems to pay me any mind. Sunglasses — and the morning is in fact sunny — a turned-up collar on my sumptuous leather jacket. On my head I’ve swapped the stocking cap for a more common Mets baseball hat. I have never been to a game, not that team, not any. My father, I happen to reflect, was too busy to take me to any amusement, especially a common one. That, however, was the least of his sins, and the fact is I would have hated his company anyway.

I notice some tension between Amelia and a man who has the smug quality of someone in power. I guess he’s a police captain or some other brass. The rotund man sports a self-conscious handlebar mustache. Maybe he fancies himself Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective Poirot. He’s dark-complexioned. Latino, I gauge. Or possibly Mediterranean.

There’s another suited man, skinny and bald, and he stands by, observing with unemotional eyes.

The exchange between them is not a full-on argument but he’s lording something over her, louder than he needs to be, with the result that the nearby press continue to film.

Poirot reminds me of my father.

My impression is that police department politics are more involved than the art of crime solving.

The dispute seems to be about the evidence she has collected.

He walks to an old-time car, a Ford Torino. It’s hers. I’ve just seen her take a jacket from it and tug the garment over her appealing figure. Poirot is saying, “But before you go, indulge me.” He gestures condescendingly for her to follow.

The skinny man joins them, and a flash of sunlight fires from his smooth skull.

Poirot peers into the interior of the vehicle like a traffic cop hoping to spot some weed or an open beer. He then points to the trunk.

Hands on hips, she regards him closely.

More video cameras are gobbling up the scene. How ironic: I see a crew from WMG — the Whittaker Media Group channel — a part of the empire that publishes the Daily Herald.

There’s a standoff for a moment between Amelia and Poirot. It seems his condescending poke toward her trunk proves nearly to be too much for Amelia. She is a few inches taller than him, and she leans close, glaring. He doesn’t give an inch.

After a moment she pulls keys from the pocket of her black jeans. Most cars back then — the ’60s — came with two different keys: one for the ignition, one for the doors and trunk. The reason for that has been much debated, and I don’t have an answer to the mystery.

Amelia opens the trunk. Poirot glances in and doesn’t see what he’d hoped to see.

She slams the lid and walks toward the front of the car, removing her phone and making a call. Poirot remains nearby, watching her with his arms crossed, like a principal before a high school student possibly guilty of an infraction.

Ignoring the man, Amelia finishes her call, then drops into the low car. The big engine fires up crisply and she skids into traffic.

Poirot looks after her and then walks away, his face both smug and disappointed as if he wanted to catch her in a no-no. Baldie is at his side, now on his mobile.

The Belgian detective ignores questions from the press, several of whom ask again — nearly demanding — if this was the work of the Locksmith and if, this time, he murdered anyone.

In truth, my thoughts are still on Amelia. I understand she’s married but that doesn’t stop me from picturing her alone in bed, as she sleeps in a T-shirt and boxers, on her side, a long pillow or curled duvet between her slim legs. In the video playing in my head, I’m in the room, just a few feet away, staring down, enjoying what I’m seeing, her mouth slightly open, her knees drawn up and — particularly vivid — her red hair splayed out upon the pillow, arcing and glossy, like a hawk’s unfurled wings.

25

What’s she doing here? Lincoln Rhyme wondered.

Amelia Sachs was walking into Rhyme’s town house. Apparently, given the timing, she would have come directly here from the scene on East 97th. Rhyme was surprised. He thought she’d go straight to Queens to supervise the processing of the evidence at the main lab, per fiat from Willis and Rodriguez — and ultimately, the mayor. She should be in their lab; the team needed to move fast. The Locksmith was smart, and careful, but he’d stumbled once, leading them to his next victim. Maybe he’d slipped up again, this time directing them to his home or office, or revealing his identity.

It was odd to watch her enter without the evidence cartons. Perhaps she’d come here to pick up some things she needed before going on to Queens. Even though Rhyme’s lab was a small fraction of the size of the main NYPD operation, his was better financed per square foot and had newer and in some cases more sophisticated instrumentation. If she took any — fine, she could help herself — but damn it, the city was going to pay for transport and recalibration. And he’d want a receipt.

Sachs said, “Carrie’s fine.”

“Who?”

“The vic. Carrie Noelle.”

He knew she was all right. He’d heard.

Not relevant.

“But this one was more troubling.”

“How so?”

“He moved all her knives — hid them. And shorted out her phone in the aquarium.”

Rhyme considered his wife’s words. “He didn’t want her to have a way to communicate and didn’t want her to have weapons. Because this time he was considering attacking her.”

“That’s what I think.”

“Why didn’t he?” Rhyme asked.

“Maybe he heard we were there. One of the blue-and-whites hit the siren, to move a car along. He heard it, saw us and got out fast.”

“The siren, really?” Rhyme grimaced. “At least, if that’s the case, Sachs, I suppose we saved her.”

She nodded.

“Did he leave a newspaper?”

“He did. In her underwear drawer again. Same page. Same message — in lipstick.”

“The hell’s that about? I’m voting it’s a misdirection.”

And then recalled that his vote would not be counting for anything in the investigation.

The doorbell sounded and Rhyme and Sachs glanced at the security monitor. Thom had heard too and he appeared in the hallway, looking neat and trim, as he always did. Dark slacks and a blue dress shirt, a blue and purple floral tie. “Answer it?” he asked, noting that they continued to look at the monitor and had not unlocked the door themselves.

The caller was a large, tanned man, with a shaved, or naturally bald, head. After a moment he held up a gold NYPD shield.

Sachs and Rhyme shared a glance. She said, “Don’t know him.”

On his chair arm controller, Rhyme hit the intercom.

“Help you?”

“Captain Rhyme?”

“That’s right, Detective.”

“You have a minute?”

A pause. “Sure.” A nod to Thom, who walked to the door and unlatched it.

A moment later the man, with broad shoulders and a handsome, thoughtful face was in the parlor, looking past Rhyme and Sachs, who stepped away and typed on her phone. He said, “Well, that’s impressive.”

He meant the lab.

Rhyme knew. Nothing to comment on.

The large man turned and nodded to Sachs and Rhyme. She slipped her phone away and focused on the visitor.

“Detective.” A glance to Sachs. Then back to Rhyme: “This won’t take long, Captain. I’m Richard Beaufort, the One One Two. I’m following up on the Buryak case.”

We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty...

“Are you?” Rhyme reminded himself to keep a lid on the impatience and anger.

“Yessir. I’m contacting everyone involved in the trial and putting together a file of all the documentation they have about it. Pain in the ass, I know. For me too. Do you have anything here? Evidentiary reports, anything like that? Copies are fine. You can keep the originals.”

“Postmortem, hm?” Rhyme wheeled closer to Beaufort, who towered. The height disparity was one thing about his condition that had been so very hard to get used to: he was always lower than those around him. Rhyme’s personality had been forceful — if not domineering — and being looked down at was a blow. Oddly, though, over the years he’d come to realize that he actually had more power in the chair; those talking to, or arguing with, him lowered their heads, which was, in a way, an act of submission.

“I honestly don’t know what they have in mind, sir. I was just told to collect any documentation.”

“I think we gave the prosecutor everything.” He looked to Sachs, who nodded. Then Rhyme said, “But there are some evidence charts we did, flow diagrams, you know. It’s secondary material. Would they want that?”

“I think they would. Is that a scanning electron microscope?” He walked to the glass partition. “And a chromatograph. In a Central Park West town house. I’ll be damned.”

Rhyme continued, “They’re photos — digital — of the charts. Like those.” Rhyme pointed and Beaufort looked toward the whiteboards on easels. One was of the Locksmith case, the others about the Buryak and the Gregorios case — the murder by the homeless man. There were crime scene photos of the bloody body. They were explicit and bright and stark. Beaufort gave no reaction.

He asked, “A thumb drive, or something?”

“Sure.” He wheeled to the computer, instructed it to call up the Buryak file. He scrolled through to find the JPGs of the charts and, after Sachs had loaded a blank thumb drive into the USB slot, copied the files and pasted them. She handed the drive to Beaufort.

“Thanks, Captain, Detective...” He pocketed the small rectangle. “Appreciate it.” He started to leave, then paused. “I’m sorry about what happened.”

The Hindenburg? World War Two? The Great Recession? Rhyme reined himself in and said, “Thanks.”

“They didn’t ask me but I would’ve told them it’s a bad idea. We need you, a lot of the line people say so. Brass too.”

“You take care, Detective,” Rhyme said.

“You too.”

Thom showed him out.

As soon as the door closed, Rhyme turned to Sachs. “So?”

“Take a look. I’ll send it to you.” She typed on her phone and a moment later a ding rang out in the lab. Rhyme called up his email.

He was looking at what she’d just downloaded from the NYPD personnel database and sent to him.

Richard Beaufort was indeed a detective, third-class, with the NYPD. And, yes, he had been assigned to the 112 House, the precinct in which Buryak’s mansion was located. However, he’d never had anything to do with the Buryak case. In fact, for the past four months, he had had nothing to do with criminal investigation. He’d been transferred to a different job.

He was on Mayor Tony Harrison’s security detail.

Rhyme muttered, “Son of a bitch was here to see if I was working the Locksmith case.”

“Rodriguez was at the Noelle scene, playing it up for the cameras. Potter was there too, the mayor’s aide.”

“To report that we’re toeing the line.” Rhyme scoffed. “The press’s really playing it up big. They like notorious bad guys. Looks better when they get caught. The Zodiac Killer, the Boston Strangler. And here we’ve got a nefarious serial perp. The Locksmith gets collared on the mayor’s watch — and without my help — his poll numbers go up. I don’t know why any human being would run for political office.”

Rhyme again reflected: I’m fucking housebound, no work to do, no desire to look for alternatives.

He thought of what Commander Brett Evans had said last night.

New Jersey...

Commercial lab work...

Jesus Christ.

He said, “You’ve got to get to Queens. That blood trace Mel found? If he used the knife once he’s going to use it again. That’s a given.”

She didn’t answer but glanced down as her phone dinged with a text. “Just a second.” She walked into the hallway and then out onto the front porch. On the monitor, he saw her looking up and down the street. She returned and, head down, sent yet another text.

“Sachs. I’m serious. You need to get started.”

Now, she held up a wait-a-second index finger and walked to the front door once more. He heard it open. He heard voices.

And into the lab walked Ron Pulaski and Mel Cooper. They were each carting crates containing evidence bags.

“The hell’s this?”

Sachs told the men who had just entered, “I watched Beaufort drive off. He’s clear. And I don’t think they’re going to waste manpower surveilling us.” She turned to Rhyme. “They may not like you at the moment, but they don’t dislike you enough to spend money spying on and busting you.”

Cooper walked to a locker and donned a face mask and gloves, booties, lab coat. He carried his crate into the sterile part of the lab and then took Pulaski’s and did the same.

“I’ll repeat my question,” Rhyme muttered.

Sachs: “I double-dipped the evidence. Took two samples of each. From the Bechtel Building and Noelle’s.”

“You did what?”

“I hid the second set in both scenes,” Sachs continued. “Ron went back and got them after I left.”

Rhyme looked from one to the other.

She said, “We talked about it. Lon too. We know the risk. Are they going to fire us? Maybe. Arrest for obstruction? Not likely.”

Cooper said, “Let’s face it, Lincoln, we didn’t have a choice. The Queens lab is good. But not as good as we are.”

Pulaski said, “Maybe some of your ego’s rubbing off on us, Lincoln.”

Sachs then said, “We never did ask you, of course. Your ass is on the line too. What do you say?”

The three were looking his way.

Rhyme, not a man of many words but rarely speechless, said nothing for a moment. Finally: “Thank you.”

26

Rhyme was listening to Sachs’s description of the Carrie Noelle home invasion.

“He did the same thing as at Annabelle’s. Moved personal effects, stole underwear and a knife. No dessert, but he drank some of her wine.”

“Left the glass?”

“He did.”

Rhyme grunted affirmatively, thinking: Possibly DNA.

Sachs pulled on booties, gloves, a cap and a white lab jacket and stepped into the sterile portion of the parlor, where Mel Cooper was logging the evidence in and signing his name on the chain-of-custody cards.

The items that the Locksmith touched were a doll, some clothes, a wine bottle and glass, a wooden block and the knives it had contained, a tube of lipstick, a children’s mobile in a second bedroom that served as a storeroom for the toys she blogged about and sold online.

“He started it playing.”

Cooper said, “Must have freaked her out. Imagine.”

She said, “Had to let that go to Queens, the mobile. Couldn’t cut it in half, her phone too, but we’ve got almost everything else.”

“Footprints?”

“Everything but the bathroom was carpeted, and there he stood on the rug.”

“Friction ridges?” Rhyme called. This was just a formality, and Sachs and Cooper confirmed he’d worn gloves and left no fingerprints.

“I want that DNA,” he said. “Check the wineglass.”

Sachs handed Cooper the heavy goblet. “Couldn’t afford for that to go to the lab. I wanted it here.”

Rhyme agreed. “Hold it up,” he called.

The tech lifted it to the camera and Rhyme wheeled to a large monitor. He noted a smear around the lip.

“Swab it and give me the analysis.”

Cooper did as instructed. Soon he had an answer. “Sodium carbonate peroxyhydrate.”

“Goddamn it.”

Pulaski, the scribe manning the whiteboard, looked his way.

Rhyme continued, “It’s oxygen bleach.”

“Hell,” Sachs muttered.

“What’s the matter?” the young patrol officer asked.

“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Rhyme grumbled. “He can’t leave touch DNA because he’s wearing gloves, and he’s got some head covering so we can’t get a hair. The only chance to snag his DNA was from imbibing the vic’s wine. And he cleaned the rim off with one of the few substances in the universe that destroy deoxyribonucleic acid.”

“Doesn’t alcohol?” Pulaski asked.

“No, Rookie. Alcohol is used to extract and store DNA. Regular bleach won’t do it either. You need to start reading my book.”

“I have. You don’t mention oxygen bleach.”

“Oh.” Rhyme hesitated. “It’s in the eighth edition.”

“I didn’t know there was an eighth. I have the seventh.”

Rhyme muttered, “The eighth’s not out yet. I’ll make sure you get a copy.”

Pulaski said, “If he’s that worried about DNA, it might mean he’s in CODIS.”

The database repository of DNA, accessible to law enforcement agencies. Unlike the fingerprint database, which logs the prints of millions of both criminals and innocent citizens (like those applying for government jobs or a concealed carry permit), nearly all those in CODIS have broken the law.

“Possibly, but most smart perps — like the Locksmith — are going to want to leave as little of themselves behind as possible as a matter of course.”

“Why didn’t he just take the glass with him?” Cooper wondered.

Sachs offered, “I’d guess he wanted to make sure she saw it. The intrusion was more invasive that way. He wants to cause the most damage he can. There’s a sadistic side to him.”

Pulaski said, “So the glass is useless as evidence.”

“Who said that, Rookie? Mel, the bleach. Give me the percentage breakdown of the sodium carbonate and peroxyhydrate.”

The tech told him the concentrations of the two ingredients.

Rhyme sighed. “Now, it’s useless. In those proportions, it’s off-the-shelf commercial oxy bleach. If they’d been unique amounts we could have deduced he made it himself and, therefore, had a degree or training in science. But this?” He gestured impatiently. “It tells us... he’s got cash and the address of a home improvement or drug store.”

Sachs’s phone hummed, and she answered.

“Lon. You’re on speaker.”

“Hey. I’d say hi to Lincoln, but I know he’s not there. On vacation somewhere, I’ll bet.”

Rhyme called out, “Hello, Lon. I understand you’re a co-conspirator too.”

Sellitto chuckled. “I didn’t hear that. Listen, I talked to Whittaker Media’s legal department. The chief general counsel, a guy named Douglas Hubert. They don’t have any names yet but he’s putting together a list of possible suspects who might have a gripe with the paper or the TV network. Going to be a long one. A lot of folks don’t care for the rag.”

“Disgruntled employees?”

“Hubert’s looking at them too. And he said that the head of the whole shebang, Averell Whittaker, is retiring and selling the company. I’m wondering if maybe a buyer hired the Locksmith then leaked the story to drive down the value of the company. Might be worth looking into.”

“We’ll do that, Lon.”

“Any leads?” Sellitto asked.

“Not yet.”

“All right. Keep me posted.”

After he’d disconnected, Rhyme said, “Let’s keep at it.”

Sachs and Cooper began examining each item for foreign substances the Locksmith might have left on the carpet or the objects he touched.

“More dried blood. From the carpet outside her bedroom. It matches the sample from the Talese scene.”

“Suggests that there was a fair amount of it he stepped in. Maybe he wiped at it but didn’t bother to seriously clean his shoes. Okay, what else?”

Pulaski added the discoveries to the board, which Rhyme now studied.

“Secondary scenes?” Rhyme asked.

Sachs and Cooper examined next the evidence collected from the Bechtel Building.

Sachs said, “Nothing at all at the entrance — the service door, the floor leading to the stairwell, the stairwell itself. And the exit?” She scoffed. “It was a back window he broke. He jumped into the alleyway and turned on a hose. Flooded the whole area.”

Water destroys trace as efficiently as fire.

Rhyme sighed. “What does all this tell us? That he walks around the streets of New York.”

He was angry. His wife and his friends were risking their jobs to bring him evidence, and the evidence was not paying off.

“We need more.”

“Have a thought,” Sachs said. “I had the impression somebody was watching me.”

She explained about a gray Cadillac whose driver seemed a little more than casually interested in her and the scene.

“Can’t say for sure — the car may have been a coincidence. But I’m going with the assumption he never left. He wanted to know who was investigating him, and how.”

“Bechtel Building,” Rhyme said.

Sachs nodded. “We know he used it as a vantage point before. Maybe he used it again, to keep an eye on the investigation. It’d be perfect. The windows’re smeared — you can see out, but looking inside, it’s just blackness. I’m going back. Who knows? Could be, this time he got careless.”

“Friends: Back to New York, Have you heard about this crazy man, the Locksmith? He breaks into people’s apartments for rape and murder. Or are they just SAYING he’s crazy? I’ve heard reports he’s working for the Hidden, a soldier to rain terror down upon the citizens of the city to further the movement’s agenda of destruction.

“And does he have an ally in City Hall? If New York has the best police department in the world — as they claim — why haven’t they been able to stop him?

“I submit it’s because they’ve been infiltrated by the Hidden too. They don’t want to find him.

“I say this to those of you living in the Big Apple: Next time you hear a click or a footstep or a breath in the middle of the night, you might not be alone. The Locksmith — and the Hidden — may have come for you.

“And is the policeman you call on your side? Or theirs?

“Say your prayers and stay prepared!

“My name is Verum, Latin for ‘true.’ That is what my message is. What you do with it is up to you.”

27

Now, Labyrinth chased Brick.

Drawing a smile from Buryak.

In Kiev, teenage Viktor had a dog, a terrier mix, and leaving Let behind was the hardest part of the trip to the New World, though he walked three miles through city streets to bestow the dog on his cousin, Sasha, who loved it and who, he knew, would give it a good home.

Then animals past and present slipped from Buryak’s mind as the landline phone hummed with the tone from the intercom at the front gate.

“Yes?”

“Aaron.”

A moment later Buryak watched a man stride up the walk from the driveway in front of the garage. He was wearing a dark suit and a white shirt, a pink tie. His facial features suggested he was of mixed race, though his pallor was light — close to that of Buryak’s own. He wore headgear you rarely saw: a beret, black. He was tall, over six feet, and broad chested and beefy. He wasn’t overweight as such; he was simply big.

Buryak had cultivated multiple sources who would gather the information he auctioned off under the guise of tractors or smelting irons. Aaron Douglass manned a narrow but decidedly helpful conduit; it was also undoubtedly the cleverest in the organization.

“You think of that yourself?” Buryak had asked the man, speaking of his inspired idea for gathering data. “You are fucking brilliant in the head.”

Douglass was also called on from time to time to handle special assignments. As an enforcer. He came up with solutions that minimized risks to Buryak. Problems were solved and nothing ever got traced back to him.

The man was a firewall. No prosecutor or investigator would ever turn Aaron Douglass, because Buryak had information on him too.

Buryak’s mansion featured two entrances. On the inside of the gate, the driveways split, the right leading to the formal front door, the left to Buryak’s office. His wife, Maria, was out, but she knew the rules. He’d instructed her to circle the block if there was a car parked in front of the office — as Douglass’s gray Cadillac presently was.

The meeting wouldn’t take long.

Douglass now walked to this office door and knocked.

Buryak rose and let him in, and, as he did with every human being who entered, he wanded him for recording devices and transmitters. Douglass scored negative; like all employees and contractors, he knew the rules and had left his phones and weapons in the car.

“Aaron.”

Douglass pulled his beret off and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. Maybe the unusual headgear made him feel like a soldier.

“Mr. Buryak. Congratulations on the case.” He eyed the cats, now preening, with the eye of someone who had never owned an animal in his life. The bulky man sat on the couch, where Buryak indicated.

Even the laudatory comment set off a match-rasp of rage within him.

“Came close, too close. Word on the street about him? Murphy?”

“Maybe revenge for a hijacking a year ago, maybe because he was fucking Serge Lombrowski’s wife.”

“My lawyer, Coughlin, didn’t want to go there. He said it is not our job to prove who did it.” He snickered. “How desperate was Lombrowski’s wife? For Christ’s sake, look at Leon’s face.” A sip of tea. “So, the Chemist situation?”

“I’ll lay out what I’ve found. His wife, the detective, she’s working this crazy case, the Locksmith.”

“He’s married?”

“That’s right.”

“Is he not...?” Buryak hesitated. Not trying to be politically correct. He just couldn’t recall the man’s condition.

“Quadriplegic,” Douglass said. “Tetraplegic, they say in Europe. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be married.”

“No. Of course not.”

Married. An interesting fact, a helpful fact. Maybe.

“And this Locksmith case?”

“That’s what he calls himself, or the media calls him that. He breaks into women’s apartments and rearranges shit in their house and then leaves. He can get through any lock in the city in like thirty seconds.”

“Pervert.”

“I guess, but no rape, no assault. He doesn’t kill anybody.”

“So. Robbery?”

“No. He fucks with their minds.”

Going to all that effort and risk... and not making money? Insane.

“Why?”

“No idea.” Douglass shrugged. “I spent the morning following her — Amelia. Oh, here’s her picture, by the way. I took it at the scene.”

“Attractive.”

Douglass shrugged. He had never mentioned women, or men, in his life. Maybe sex didn’t interest him. He was one of the few men over whom Buryak did not have the leverage of a vulnerable family.

But Douglass had another secret that kept him in line.

“Her name’s Amelia, like I said. Detective. Works crime scenes, mostly. So I followed her to see if she was running something to do with us, with you.”

“Did she make you?”

“No, she might’ve seen the Caddie, so I swapped out for my SUV.”

“Then the big question I must ask: Is Rhyme — and her, too, I

guess — looking into me?”

“I think so. Here’s what I found. Amelia went back to his town house, where he works. He’s got a lab—”

“Yes, yes, I know it well,” Buryak said darkly. “The three hundred block of Central Park West.”

Douglass cocked his head. Then, when Buryak said nothing more, continued, “Only there was something odd. There was a cruiser parked up the block.”

“A Land Cruiser? What is that, Toyota?”

“No, I mean, a police cruiser. Two guys inside, was all I could see. After a while, this guy leaves Rhyme’s apartment and Amelia comes out and waves the guys in. They grab some crates from the trunk.”

“Crates?”

“It was NYPD evidence inside. I could see the bags. Chain-of-custody cards.”

“Why do you think it’s about me?”

Douglass looked at him, as if Buryak had missed something. “You did hear, didn’t you?... Oh, no, sure. You don’t watch the news.”

Buryak was impassioned about the commodity he sold: factual information, hard, verifiable data. Not speculation, not rumor, not guesses.

Media...

Douglass continued, “Rhyme got fired. He’s not working for the department anymore.”

“Because—”

“He screwed up at your trial, and that fucked with the mayor’s ratings. So whatever they’re up to, it can’t be an official NYPD case. You were right, I think — about what your research picked up in the prosecutor’s office. He’s gunning for you.”

“He is an arrogant prick. And now he’s lost his job. All the more reason to bring me down.”

Brick approached. Buryak bent to pull her onto his lap, but she walked away. He remembered that villain from the James Bond movies, holding the cat. The cat just sat there and took the creepy stroking. It wasn’t a Maine Coon; they had minds of their own. You could pet them if they wanted to be petted. Otherwise, forget it.

Buryak sipped tea. When Douglass had first started working for him, he’d been offered a beverage. He declined. On the second visit, he did the same. Buryak had stopped offering.

Buryak said, “That trial made me quite tense. I wish I could just get a little peace. Maria has a masseuse she goes to, Palm Beach, when she is upset. Ah, what I wouldn’t give for a little peace...”

The man had mastered the language of speaking as if a prosecutor was listening to every word.

Aaron Douglass had, in turn, mastered understanding the language of Buryak. It was like a code, perfectly clear when you had the key.

Now, Buryak was sending an unequivocal message to Douglass, who easily translated: Find muscle, somebody good and discreet, and make sure that person “corrects” the situation with this Rhyme and his wife, all the while keeping Buryak insulated.

“There’s a masseur I use sometimes,” Douglass said. “He’s very good. And I know he’s available. I’ll call him now.”

“A massage, yes, yes.” Buryak stretched and rose. He glanced at the cats. “Better feed my livestock now. Do you have pets, Aaron?”

A very brief hesitation.

Was he thinking of the wisdom of giving away some personal information?

“No.”

“Ah, they can add a great deal to your life.”

“I’ll remember that.”

28

As Sachs piloted the Torino to a curb on East 97th Street she was aware of flash of white: a Lexus SUV turned quickly west on a cross street and drove out of sight.

She believed she’d seen it earlier, close to Rhyme’s town house. Had this vehicle been following her? She’d had her eye out for the gray Cadillac, which she hadn’t seen, but she now wondered if she was being double-teamed.

By whom? And why?

Nothing to do about it. Except stay aware.

She parked up the street from the Bechtel Building and tossed the NYPD official business placard on the dash, then stepped out. Sticking to shadows and looking around frequently for gray sedans or white SUVs — and any other pedestrian surveillance — she made her way to the building. A few doors down, she paused and studied it carefully, with an eye out for threats.

Human threats, she meant. The building itself — oh, it was a given that the place was a death trap. The stone façade, three stories tall, was pitted and soot stained, and the crowning cornice piece into which was carved Bechtel was cracked horizontally. It seemed that not much beyond a gust of wind could topple the broken portion and send it crashing to earth. The glass was missing from most windows. A portion of the north wall had collapsed into a vacant lot, and sizable chunks of ceiling and walls had come down inside.

She saw no movement.

Sachs radioed Dispatch and reported, “Detective Five Eight Eight Five. I’m ten-twenty at Four Nine Nine East Nine Seven. K.”

“Roger, Five Eight Eight Five.”

Then she clicked her Motorola to mute; inopportune crackles had betrayed any number of officers.

The front double door, scrawled over with graffiti, was nailed shut, but one could gain entry from the lot — the route the Locksmith would have taken to get inside and surveil Carrie Noelle’s building.

She ducked under a large, rusty sign.

She made her way through the chain-link fence gate, in a contortionist’s maneuver that sent a pang through her arthritic bones. Some medical procedures had helped but certain maneuvers reminded painfully of the temperament of her joints.

Sachs was prepared to collect evidence if the Locksmith had returned, but she was not in Tyvek overalls. Hardly wise to wear a white outfit when there was a possibility her prey was still inside the dark rooms. Her concession to forensic propriety was the black latex gloves she wore, hair tucked up under a baseball cap and rubber bands around her boot soles — to differentiate her feet from the perp’s. If a long strand of red hair contaminated the evidence, it could be easily excluded. The same with a fiber from her jacket.

Once inside, she paused at a collapsed wall and a pile of rubble.

Listening.

A drip of water, a faint creak that she put down to settling structure.

No breathing, no footsteps.

She pulled her short Maglite from her jacket pocket and clicked it on, holding the black tube in her left hand, so her right was free to draw. The beam swept over the first-floor lobby. Nothing appeared to have come down since she’d been here a few hours ago. Making minimal noise, she returned to the window where the Locksmith had stood to view Carrie’s building.

A tile sign on an intact wall told her that the Bechtels had made home appliances a century ago. Now the structure was used for something quite different: Needles and crack pipes littered the floor, and some cardboard cartons had been broken down into homeless mattresses. Wads of filthy cloth were piled up against some of these. Empty malt liquor and booze bottles too. Vodka seemed to give the most kick for the buck.

But as she swung the light back and forth on the floor and around the large room, she spotted something that told her, yes, somebody had been here since her first search: a small candy wrapper, Jolly Rancher, in green apple flavor.

Had it been the Locksmith? Junkies might have a sweet tooth like anyone else but they would probably not crash a building with police tape around it.

The wrapper went into a bag. She collected trace from around where it had lain with an adhesive roller. She tore the sheet off and slipped it into a second bag.

She moved on, searching slowly, looking for prints of a size 11 running shoe. If he’d been observing the police activity, the front window would not do him much good, but the windows on the building’s west side would offer a good view of where she and the ECTs had staged.

She would check there, but first a thought occurred to her. Was it possible that the building did have some inhabitants — perhaps someone who’d gotten a look at the Locksmith?

Sachs started into the darker reaches of the building, leaving day-light behind and relying on her flashlight. She paused every so often to listen for the sound of footsteps, the sound of a breath, the sound of an unhappy board under shoes.

The sound of a pistol being cocked, or a knife flicking open.

29

Deep in the Bechtel Building, the man watched the flashlight beam swinging slowly back and forth.

He saw the woman pause and cock her head, listening. Moving on once more. She was cautious, as one would be in a place like this. Walking, pausing, walking on.

Lyle Spencer was a large man, six feet four inches tall and he weighed two hundred and forty pounds. He was sustained by the physical; he had been — throughout all phases of his life. Muscle, you could count on. Muscle worked.

His face was long and striking and stern, with dark eyes set off by pale skin. On his head was a dusting of close-cropped hair of gray-blond hue. His muscles were bulky, earned with old-fashioned weights on bars. He had a contempt for exercise machines but couldn’t say why. His hands were wide, fingers long. He had once broken a man’s wrist using only two of those fingers and a thumb.

Because he was here illegally and because of the clammy atmosphere inside the Bechtel Building he thought of an incident years ago, involving another woman, one he’d shot to death with a carefully placed round in the back of her head. The second slug was accurately placed too, but he was sure the first had killed her.

Spencer’s eyes were now accustomed to the dark and he moved in a general direction around behind the woman. He studied the floor before each step.

Something in the southwest corner of the manufacturing space had caught her attention. Spencer wondered what it might have been. In any event this was good. If whatever she’d seen would hold her attention for a little bit longer, he could get behind her. He looked at the floor and noted a pipe, about eighteen inches long. He lifted it silently.

He now moved through the dim showroom where years ago solidly built ovens and refrigerators and dishwashers had sat, probably all white, though maybe pale green or pink, which he believed were popular colors for domestic devices in mid-century.

Dark passages, the smell of wet stone, the smell of mold.

He recalled the scent of the blood from the woman he shot. Her husband’s too. He’d killed them both that day.

Now, he eased forward silent and studied her flashlight beam, and from the width of the bright disk on the wall he knew approximately where she was standing, examining whatever it was she was examining. If she stayed in that corner, yeah, it would be good. Though he was a large man, Lyle Spencer could move quickly. Much of his height was in leg, not torso. His strides were long.

He considered options.

There really was only one.

Get behind her.

The beam of her light was sweeping slowly over the floor. She’d be facing away from the door he was near.

Now, he told himself. And stepped forward.

30

Lyle Spencer’s world lit up with white fire.

“Drop the rod. Now. I am armed and I will fire.” Her voice was razor raw.

He turned, glaring into the brilliant light in her hand.

Ah, clever. He glanced to the side. The woman had tied up the flashlight with a grocery bag — there were dozens on the floor — and left it dangling from an old piece of skeletonized machinery to trick him. Her new flashlight wasn’t one at all. It was the app on her phone.

He shook his head in dismay and looked calmly at the muzzle of her pistol, aimed directly at him.

The rod, pointed toward the ground now, swung back and forth in his hand, the way a baseball player casually carries the bat to home plate.

“I’m a police officer. Drop the rod now. You move one step, I will fire.”

He had no doubt that she would.

Back and forth, back and forth.

She held the weapon perfectly steady. The bigger Glocks, he knew, were not light weapons.

Back and forth.

“Do it now.” Not shouted, as another cop might have done. The voice was calm, icy. Her final warning.

A moment longer. He dropped the rod, which hit the concrete and bounced, ringing twice, with the sound of a dull bell.

I’m walking along a street on the Upper East Side, my eyes on the vehicle I’m about to break into, a block away.

Seeing the model and make of the car, I can’t help but think about Englishman Joseph Bramah, who created a cylindrical key lock in the late 1700s that was so sophisticated it’s still in use today. (He offered a sizable challenge reward to anyone who could pick it. The reward stood for sixty-seven years, until the great Exhibition of 1851, where it was picked by none other than my idol, Alfred Hobbs.)

Bramah found a huge market for his lock but he wasn’t able to make them fast enough to turn a profit. So, the brilliant inventor (beer draft pumps, modern toilets, banknote presses) invented something else that turned his business around: the assembly line.

Which supposedly inspired Henry Ford, and the industrialist began using the technique to manufacture cars.

And it happens to be a descendant of Ford’s Model T that I’m about to break into just now.

If you need to crack a vehicle lock, you can often use a jiggler, also called a tryout key. They look sort of like standard pin tumbler keys but are flat. My set includes fifteen on a ring. They’re in my jacket pocket right now and I’m fingering them as I approach the car.

And, oh, yes, Officer, I’m carrying lock-picking tools with illegal intent... just for the record.

It’s quicker to use a rake and tension tool in a car lock — faster yet to yank the cylinder out with a dent puller — but neither would work here. With a jiggler, you insert it and, just like the name, work it back and forth with one hand, like you’re using the proper key. If somebody was watching you, they might wonder what you’re up to, but if you pretend to be making a phone call and absently playing with the key, you can get away with it.

Out comes my cell phone in one hand and the jiggler keys in the other. I look around. The street isn’t deserted but it’s not crowded either, and even more important, I know the owner of the car is busy elsewhere.

The door opens with the second jiggler. There’s no bar on the steering wheel, which I find odd. A car like this one would be easily stolen. That’s the thing about locks and security devices. Anybody can get burglarized; you’ll never be able to keep yourself completely secure. You just need to make your car or apartment a little bit harder to burgle than your neighbors’.

I suspect there’s a cutoff switch to the ignition hidden somewhere under the dash. Maybe two. Might even be radio controlled.

No matter. I’m not here to steal the car; I’m presently driving a very nice luxury set of wheels myself.

All I care about is one thing. And it takes me just a few minutes to locate what I seek. I find it not in the glove box but rubber banded to the back of the driver’s sun visor. I memorize what I’ve found, and in ten seconds the door is closed, relocked and I’m walking down the street, reciting the address.

Oh, this is very good news.

Since Lincoln Rhyme, I’ve read, lives on the Upper West Side, and the address I just memorized is in Brooklyn, this means that even though she’s his wife, Crime Scene Girl Amelia must spend some nights by herself.

The fantasy I conjured earlier has a basis in reality.

She has a bedroom all her own.

31

As they stood in the decrepit, half-collapsed manufacturing room of the Bechtel Building, Sachs handed the man back his driver’s license and employee ID card.

Lyle P. Spencer, forty-two, was the security director for Whittaker Media Group, the publisher of the Daily Herald. Not being able to see her clearly, just someone in street clothes, he’d thought she might have been a dealer or an addict.

“Or the Locksmith.” His voice was a resonant baritone.

“Locksmith?” she asked.

He asked, “You have proof it’s a man?”

Interesting thought. Assumptions.

“Size eleven man’s shoe. But in answer to your question. No, we don’t.”

“I was just trying to get out of the place, the door behind you. And call the police from the street. Tell them there was an intruder here.”

“The pipe?” A glance at the floor.

“In case it came to that.”

She asked why not a firearm.

“Don’t own one.”

“You’re security. But no carry ticket?” It’s almost impossible to get a conceal carry permit in the city, but there’s an exception for those who need a weapon in their line of work.

“I run the New York security operation. I don’t get into the field much.”

Spencer added that if he happened to do so — like now — he wore personal protection gear, which was plenty for him.

Sachs reflected that his size alone would be a deterrent. His arms, chest and legs were massive.

“You realize you’re violating a crime scene.”

The man shrugged. “Technically, being within a defined crime scene isn’t an offense. Guilty of civil trespass, yes, but the complaining witness is the owner of the place and he’s busy with bankruptcy, it looks like. The only crime you’d be interested in is tampering with evidence, which is to alter, destroy, conceal or remove it with the purpose of hiding the truth or making it unavailable for a proceeding or investigation.”

The recitation told her a great deal about Lyle P. Spencer.

“We’ll move on,” she said. “Why’re you here?”

Spencer explained that when his boss heard that somebody’d left Heralds at both of the intrusions, he wanted him to investigate. “His — for the time being I’ll go with male — his MO, from what I’ve heard, paints him an organized offender. That means he would have surveilled the building before the intrusions. I couldn’t find any sites he might’ve done that from for the first incident, on the West Side. Annabelle Talese’s.”

“He was probably in a deli across the street, but it’d been scrubbed by the time I figured that out.”

He nodded, then looked around. “But this was a perfect spot to stage for the intrusion last night.”

“We found brick dust at the prior scene. That’s what got us here.”

“Sure. Picked it up in his shoe and left it at the first scene, and you narrowed it down to the Bechtel Building. Smart.” He seemed impressed. “And he came back.”

“The candy wrapper. You noticed that?” Sachs asked.

“No crime scene officer’d miss it first time around. If it was his, he probably was here to watch the operation, check out who was after him.”

“Why I’m here now. Where were you L.E.?”

“Albany. Patrol after the navy, then got my gold shield. But, with a family, I decided private security made sense. I basically doubled my income and haven’t been shot at.” He glanced at the Glock on her hip.

“Military police?”

“No. I was special ops, a SEAL.”

“You searched the entire place?”

“Ground floor. No way to get upstairs, not safely, but that would be true for him too. I didn’t see any other footprints or evidence, other than the wrapper.”

“Does Mr. Whittaker have any thoughts on who the Locksmith might be?”

“We’ve talked about it and, no, he doesn’t.”

Sachs said, “We’ve been in touch with your legal department. They’re pulling together a list of threats and complaints.”

“I know. Doug Hubert’s people’re doing it. They’ll be thorough.”

Sachs said, “Can you get me in to see Averell Whittaker himself?”

“I can. Yes.”

They completed a walk-around and she saw no suggestion the Locksmith had been anywhere else but in the front. Spencer had been careful to stick to the gravel, avoiding the flat portions of the floor, thick with telltale reddish brick dust.

She’d been watching his eyes and noted his alert body language when a rat nosed out of a pile of rocks, regarded the two visitors and retreated slowly, with apparent irritation.

They returned to the front of the building and she stepped outside — away from the cringey sense that the whole place was about to come down and bury them alive.

She said, “Oh, here’s something else I have to ask.”

Spencer preempted. “What time was the break-in? Early, wasn’t it?”

“Around four a.m.”

“I have an apartment in Whittaker Tower.” He withdrew a notebook and pen and jotted a name and phone number. He tore off the sheet and handed it to her. “That’s the head of building security. He’ll show you RFID entry records and video. I got home at one a.m. and left for work at six.”

She pocketed the sheet.

As if he couldn’t resist, he said to her, “Now what was your question?”

32

“Well. This is a set of wheels.”

Lyle Spencer was sitting shotgun in her red Ford Torino Cobra. They were on their way to Rhyme’s to drop off the evidence that Sachs had collected at the Bechtel Building, and then they would go on to lofty Whittaker Tower to meet with the head of the media empire.

“What’s under the hood?” Lyle asked.

“A four-oh-five.”

“Beautiful.”

“You know cars.”

“Follow Formula One.” His tone was: But then again, who doesn’t? “Used to do some showroom stock when I was upstate. I’m guessing you know what that is.”

Amelia Sachs only smiled.

Stock cars come in a number of different categories and are raced in many types of circuits. Originally “stock” meant just that — the car came from the dealer’s stock of inventory and wasn’t modified in any way. Then the various racing organizations — NASCAR being the biggest — allowed modifications. “Showroom stock” or “production stock” required that the car be nearly identical to what a consumer could buy, with only a few safety modifications, like a roll cage.

She felt his eyes on her as she slammed through the four-speed shifter, then hard dropped into second, turned and casually steered into the skid. The wheels responded handily.

Spencer was nodding. “You can see. I’m not exactly built like a jockey. My biggest problem was fitting into the cage. Wanted to have the steering column shortened but couldn’t get a ruling on that one.” He patted the dash. “I drove one of these in a couple races.”

“A Torino?”

“That’s right. A Talladega.”

Sachs exhaled a fast laugh. “No.”

“Uhm.”

There was no more famous stock car in the early days of racing than the redesigned 1969 Torino Cobra, which was renamed the Talladega, after the famed racetrack. The car dominated NASCAR in ’69 and ’70.

“You race anymore?”

“Nup. Don’t even own a car now. Sold my SUV when I moved into the city. Four parking tickets in one day. I go to Avis or Hertz if I need wheels.”

His tone was wistful. He would miss driving. She could understand. The power of the pistons, the whine, the speed, the sense of a vehicle always on the edge, always a half second away from flying out of control. The consuming feel of that car that you were a part of and was part of you... It was wholly addictive.

She said, “Maybe, it works out, you can take it for a spin.”

His eyes shone. “I may think about that.”

She swerved around a texting yellow cab driver who veered into her lane, saw in the corner of her eye that Spencer’s left leg extended just a bit, while his right arm moved back, subconsciously mimicking her fierce clutching and the downshift.

In ten minutes they were at Rhyme’s town house.

Spencer said, “You’re going to want to check that alibi.”

Sachs slipped the shifter into first gear, killed the engine and set the brake. She tapped her phone. “I already did.” She’d texted Lon Sellitto about the man and asked him to call security at Whittaker Tower.

“That was fast.”

“We don’t have much time. I needed to know whether to trust you or bust you. I’ll be five minutes.” She stepped out then turned back to the huge man. She bent down into the open window. “I’m going to have to ask a favor.”

“Anything I find out about a threat, even if it leads somewhere in the company, I’ll let you know ASAP.”

“Okay, I meant to say, I’m going to ask you two favors. One is what you just said. The other is not mentioning to anybody that the evidence I just collected ended up here.”

“Which is where?” He was looking at Rhyme’s stately town house.

“My husband and I live here,” she said. “Lincoln Rhyme. He’s a criminalist. Former NYPD.”

“Wait. Lincoln Rhyme’s your husband?”

She nodded.

“Damn.” He appeared both impressed and mystified. Then he gave a smile. “What evidence? I don’t know anything about any evidence.” He shrugged and she wondered if the massive shoulders had ever torn a garment seam with a gesture like that. “I tend to get amnesia. I was going to see a doctor for it but I kept forgetting to make the appointment.” Delivered deadpan.

She dug black nitrile gloves from her pocket and pulled them on. “Aren’t you curious why I asked?”

“You’re running a renegade operation you don’t want the brass to know about. Maybe you’re worried about corruption, maybe politics, maybe you shook a stick at the wrong person. Been there, done that.” Lyle Spencer — the man who, she’d calculated, had had four hours’ sleep last night — yawned and, to the extent he could, stretched back, crossed his arms across that massive chest and closed his eyes.

33

“Here are the tax consequences,” said the man who looked like he would know everything there was to know about tax consequences.

He had the pale complexion of somebody who spent his days in offices in front of computers and calculators. Gray suit, white shirt, trim hair. In his forties. His glasses, Averell Whittaker decided, should not be called glasses at all but spectacles.

The two men were in Whittaker’s home office, high atop the tower that bore his family name. The structure was on opulent Park Avenue.

The accountant had his hand on the thick document as if it were a bomb with a spring trigger and were he to let go the results would be disastrous.

Which they would be indeed.

Whittaker said, “Thank you, John. I’ll review it.”

This he wouldn’t do. He knew exactly what was going to happen, and he knew exactly what the consequences, tax and otherwise, would be. It was John’s job — along with his team of a dozen other people — to look out for Whittaker and his companies. And to stop him from doing something stupid.

But stupid in one man’s eye is noble in another’s.

Whittaker said, “Langston, Holmes says the papers’ll be ready next week.”

A pause. “All right.”

The two words were spoken as if Whittaker had just told him he was about to rappel down a thousand-foot cliff.

At night, in a rainstorm.

After the accountant was gone, Whittaker picked up his cane, which was ebony and topped with a brass sculpture of a woman’s head. He’d selected this one, rather than the lighter and rubber-tipped version recommended by the doctor, because the woman bore a passing resemblance to Mary.

He rose and limped his way to the window. He caught a glimpse of himself in the antique mirror decorating one wall. His face was gray, the unhealthy visage mocked by the perfect, thick, white hair, the imperial nose, the wizard brows and, beneath them, piercing black stones of eyes.

Then he stared out the window at a vista that included perhaps three hundred thousand people.

And where are you?

He returned to his computer and, not sitting, logged in to his email.

His heart sank yet again. Not that he truly expected a reply.

But he’d hoped. Oh, had he hoped.

Where?...

The missive went on and on.

It also went unanswered.

He recalled the last conversation they’d had: in the bar at Donelli’s, a posh place, filled with posh people — most of them media kings and queens and princes and celebs.

Whittaker was there often and to him it was simply a watering hole.

Given his son’s feeling about his father’s profession, it was also the absolutely wrong place to meet with Kitt. And, making matters worse, the boy had shown up in jeans and flannel. Even the help was dressed better.

I should have picked a different place, he’d thought.

The conversation had struggled and stalled, like the muddy Range Rover during that photo safari the family had taken years ago.

Idealist Kitt, activist Kitt, ever perplexed why his father refused to abandon the Whittaker Media Group brand of “journalism,” the quotation marks supplied by his son’s thin fingers.

Whittaker had, for an instant, nearly said that the company is what put him through a good school and bestowed upon him an ample trust fund.

Thank God he’d held his peace. Though apparently whatever had transpired during that uneasy meal was enough to create a deep, perhaps irreparable, rift.

They hadn’t spoken in eight months.

Finally Whittaker had worked up courage. And, just the other day, sent the email.

And, shamefully, he had included the line,

Playing that card was a sign of his desperation.

Where are you?

His mobile vibrated. Since he’d gotten sick — well, since the sickness decided to stop being coy and chose to blossom — he’d developed a sensitivity to loud and jarring sounds.

He glanced at the caller ID.

“Jo.”

His niece’s low, even voice said, “That policewoman’s here. The one Spencer called about.”

“All right. I’m coming out.”

A sigh. The police... About that man terrorizing people, leaving Daily Heralds...

The crows were coming home to roost. In droves.

No, the vultures...

Gripping the cane, he moved slowly across the rich Persian carpet, predominantly blue, a shade that reminded him of Mary’s eyes.

34

A wide door of rich mahogany opened slowly and a man stepped out of what seemed to be a home office.

He was using a brass-headed black cane for support. He was not old. Amelia Sachs guessed he was late sixties, maybe early seventies. He’d been a handsome man at one point but was now sunken and fragile. The skin was loose and gray. Cancer not cardio, she guessed. He was attentive to personal details, though. His hair was perfectly coiffed and he was smoothly shaven. She smelled floral cologne. His dark suit and white shirt were not baggy. Photos on the mantel and walls told her he’d lost much weight lately, which meant that the garments were recently tailored or purchased, despite his numbered days. We fight disease on many fronts.

Averell Whittaker nodded an affectionate greeting to the couple Sachs had just met: Joanna Whittaker, the man’s niece, and her fiancé, Martin Kemp. A nod to Lyle Spencer too.

One other person as well: Alicia Roberts was the armed guard assigned for Whittaker’s personal protection. The solidly built blond woman, with hair in a tight bun, wore a dark suit. She seemed to be ex-military.

Sachs identified herself and shook Whittaker’s dry, firm hand. He sat, adjusted his paisley pocket square and then gestured everyone to sit. Sachs eased into the cream-colored leather chair. She and Rhyme had pursued a perpetrator to Italy not long ago and she’d had a chance to sit on some very upscale furniture. This chair would have stood up quite nicely to any of those.

When Lyle Spencer sat, the chair creaked.

The apartment was in the residential portion of Whittaker Tower. The building was commercial to the top ten floors — the Whittaker Media Group newspaper, TV and radio operations — and above that private residences. The massive living room was decorated with subdued elegance. She saw a Picasso on one wall. The artist who did that pointillism thing — Sachs could never remember — was responsible for another. From the north-facing floor-to-ceiling windows you could see the Bronx and — given the lofty height of sixty-four stories — maybe an outer ring of Westchester.

Her entire town house in Brooklyn could have been tucked tidily into this room.

Whittaker began, “This person calling himself the Locksmith, leaving the newspapers, he hasn’t hurt anyone?”

“Not in the two cases over the past couple of days. He breaks in, rearranges things and lets her know that he’s been there.”

“Lord,” Joanna said.

“We did find a small amount of blood, but no other direct evidence of violence.”

Sachs took a notepad from her inner pocket and clicked a pen to ready. She held up her Sony and, when there were nods all around, pressed Record. “The two victims say they don’t have any connection to anyone at your paper or TV channel. They don’t know why he’s leaving the newspapers.” She gave the names and asked, “Do they mean anything to you?”

The family members regarded one another. “No,” Whittaker said, and Joanna shook her head. Martin Kemp did as well.

Sachs asked about the progress of the legal department in pulling together the list of threatening letters and complaints the media company had received.

Whittaker replied, “Doug said it should be ready in an hour or so.” He sighed. “It will be a big file. We’ve tread on many toes for many years. And then the equal opportunity issues. Whittaker Media has not had the most diverse and felicitous workplace environment.”

Joanna said, “Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with us. Like that man who shot Reagan. Hinckley? He was inspired by The Catcher in the Rye. But there was nothing in the book that called for violence.” The woman had long brunette hair, tied back severely into a ponytail. The strands were thin and the tail swayed when she looked over the visitors, which she did in a staccato way. Her gray eyes, beneath close-knit brows, were keen and her mien stern. Her dark navy suit was cut like a man’s. The face was square and she had a prominent nose. Sachs liked that she wore her features proudly and hadn’t given in to pressure from anyone, society included, to change her contours.

Sachs said, “Possibly.” She explained her thinking that the Locksmith might be using the Herald as a token — to protest media’s intrusion into people’s lives.

“Ah,” Whittaker said sadly, “he’s breaking in — just the way we do.”

Sachs shrugged. “Just a thought I had. Also, he could be planting the papers as a complete misdirection.”

“How’s that?” Martin Kemp asked. He had a voice that could earn him a slot as an FM radio host.

“He could be up to something else entirely, not involving you, and he’s focusing attention on the newspaper.”

“What would the something else be?” Whittaker asked.

“We don’t have any theories yet. We also know that you’re selling the company. Is it possible that a potential buyer hired the Locksmith to put you in a bad light, reduce the value?”

He gave a laugh, which to Sachs seemed almost sorrowful. “Buyers... Well, it might be helpful, Detective, if you knew a bit about Whittaker Media. I have to confess that the brand of journalism we offer isn’t quite up to the New York Times standard.”

“Averell,” Joanna said kindly and touched his knee.

“No, she should know.” The man shrugged, which resulted in a minor wince. He continued, “Charlotte Miller. There’s one example. Of many.”

The name was familiar, Sachs said, but she couldn’t place it.

“It was about a year ago. Aide to a U.S. congressman from Alabama. Marvin Doyle.”

That too echoed. She said nothing and let Whittaker continue. “One of those terrible things. He assaulted her. Drugs in her drink, something like that. The police investigated but there wasn’t enough evidence to go forward with a prosecution. Charlotte didn’t give up, though. She wanted to tell her story and expose him. I bought it and paid her for exclusivity. Put a top writer on it. We promised it was going to be serialized. But it never ran.”

“Why not?”

“Because I killed it. Do you know buy and bury?”

“No.”

“It’s when a newspaper or TV station buys the rights to a story with no intention of running it. Basically they lock up the story and the subject forever. You can’t sell it anywhere. That’s what we did with Charlotte.”

“To protect Doyle?”

Whittaker was somberly regarding the brass figurehead of a woman on his cane. “Exactly. He was our friend in Congress. He supported legislation to make it easier for media companies to capture and sell viewer data and harder for us to get sued.”

The memory came back to her. “Wasn’t there a death or something? Related to it?”

“A few months after the story would have run Doyle tried to rape another woman, an intern. She fought back. He killed her. Negligent homicide. If the story had run maybe that wouldn’t’ve happened.”

Silence in the room, so high in the stratosphere that you could hear not a single horn, not a single growl of a truck engine.

“Averell,” Kemp said softly.

But the man would not be deterred. “And then there’s the quality of our reporting. I put ‘quality’ in invisible quotation marks. A Daily Herald reporter went down to Virginia on a story. It was about a teacher running a satanic cult in her high school history classroom. There were reports of sex and animal sacrifice. A man in North Carolina read the article, drove there and shot up the school. Killed the teacher and a girl in the class, wounded three.”

She shook her head.

“You know how the rumor started? She was teaching her students about the Salem witch trials. That was all. A simple history lesson, but the reporter — with his editor’s blessing — couldn’t resist the satanic hook. Turned out that the teacher was gay and a couple of students in her class came from families that didn’t approve. They started the rumors and just plain lied. The reporter quoted the teacher’s denial, but that, obviously, had no effect on the shooter. I said the editor approved the story, but I gave him full rein.”

Grim-faced, he said, “It was incidents like those that finally made the decision for me. A month ago I decided it was time to put the empire to sleep. Forgive the long answer to your question, Detective, but I’m not selling to anyone. There are no buyers — except for our production equipment, trucks, computers. I’m liquidating and sinking every penny into a foundation for ethical journalism.”

Sachs jotted notes. Then she looked up. “So unless we come up with another motive, we’ll have to go on the assumption that he’s motivated by revenge for something the paper’s done. The word ‘reckoning’ does suggest that.”

Lyle Spencer said, “I was thinking: If they were different pages with each invasion, it might be the newspaper or company in general he’s angry with. But since he’s leaving the same page, It’s probably something about one of the articles there.”

Sachs had been about to make the same observation. She pulled up the picture of page 3 on her phone again and locked it open.

Whittaker said, “Ever since Doug told me, I’ve been thinking about the stories. Well, can’t be the Russians. They’d probably happily take credit for weaponizing AIDS. The second headline is true, but it’s not the senator’s love child. We make that clear in the story somewhere. The third one? The actress didn’t fill out a form right in her divorce affidavit, and she was investigated but never charged. And that’s hardly the sort of transgression that leads to psychotic stalkers. The last? Every media outlet from Car and Driver to the Wall Street Journal’s got proof of illegal wiretaps by the feds. That’s used chewing gum.”

“So, the fourth story.”

“I think it’s possible. It’s about the Apollos, a group of Neanderthals who’re anti-feminist. They feel women should stay in the home, et cetera. It’s acceptable to beat your wife if she quote ‘misbehaves.’ Which is anything that displeases the husband. A wife has to have sex on demand.”

“Why do you think this story motivated them?”

Whittaker grimaced. “Again, journalistic standards. Our reporter was... less than diligent. He made up some quotes. Painted them even worse than they really are. There was a huge backlash and attacks on members of the group — I mean physical attacks. The Apollos named in the story were bullied and beaten up. One of the leaders was shot and paralyzed.”

“So the Locksmith could be an Apollo.”

“Or hired by them,” Spencer pointed out.

Whittaker shrugged, wincing once more. Was it the cancer? Maybe arthritis. Amelia Sachs knew the malady only too well.

Sachs said, “I want the names of everybody the reporter interviewed for the story. The reporter’s name and number too.”

“I’ll get that for you,” Whittaker said.

The group sounded despicable, but a crime was a crime.

Whittaker asked, “And with what he posted on social media, asking who’ll be next, he’s going to keep going?”

“We have to assume that.”

Joanna closed her eyes briefly. “And think what would happen if a victim woke up when he was there.”

Sachs said, “We should assume that he” — a glance toward Spencer, thinking of his earlier gender comment — “or she is targeting not only the company but you personally. You should be aware of any threats. Anyone following, observing you.” Pointing toward the mantel, Sachs said, “That picture is of you and your wife?”

Whittaker replied, “Yes. Mary passed a few years ago.”

“Who’s the young man in it?”

“My son, Kitt.” A deep breath. “We’re estranged. He’s been out of touch for eight months or so.”

Sachs could now see a different kind of pain in the man’s eyes. “Do either of you talk to him?” she asked Joanna and Kemp.

His niece and her fiancé shook their heads.

Sachs got his mobile number and then asked, “You have a work number for him?”

There was a pause. Joanna said, “We don’t actually know what he does. He’s a lost soul. When we were in touch, it seemed like he jumped from job to job: he was going to do something for the environment, then he was going to fly commercial drones—”

Kemp said, “Then it was gas and oil leases, remember? And something about videography and computers.”

Whittaker said, “I’m sure nothing came of them. I have no idea what he’s doing now. Probably living off his trust fund.”

“Social media?”

Joanna said, “He doesn’t have any accounts. Doesn’t trust them — or didn’t.”

She asked the woman and her fiancé if they worked for Whittaker Media too. Joanna did, but not on the media side. She ran the company’s charitable foundation. Kemp worked in real estate on Wall Street.

Sachs supposed they weren’t in as much danger as Whittaker or the journalists on the paper, but still advised them to be watchful as well.

Spencer’s phone sounded and he read a text. He replied. “Doug Hubert’s got the threat list compiled. We can pick it up now. I can take you over there.”

Sachs handed out cards to each of them. “Please, call me if you can think of anything else.” Pocketing the recorder and pad and pen, she walked to the door with Spencer, and both nodded goodbye to Alicia Roberts, the quiet woman guard.

They were in the alcove when she heard, “One minute, Detective.” Whittaker was up and walking after them slowly, listing into his cane. He glanced at Spencer, who got the message and said, “I’ll be in the hall.”

He said, “Detective, this is... I know we don’t know each other from Adam, but I want to say one thing. I don’t have a lot of time left. And my only son’s become a stranger to me. I haven’t been the best father... No, I’ve been a terrible father. I want him in my life again, to try to make up for what I’ve done. If you find him, could you tell him that? It’s not your business, I understand, but...”

“I will.”

His face softened in gratitude. He turned away, but not before Sachs caught a glint of what might be tears in his eyes.

“Excuse me.”

Sachs was on Park Avenue, heading toward the north side of Whittaker Tower, which was the business entrance to WMG. Lyle Spencer was at her side.

They had just made their way through a small crowd of protesters outside Whittaker Tower. The majority of signs took aim at fake news, some about diversity hiring.

She glanced back at the voice.

The man, wearing blue jeans and a black windbreaker, had a lean face framed with curly dark hair. Sideburns. The word “ferret” came to mind.

“Excuse me, Officer Sachs.”

She stopped and turned to face him.

The ferret approached, eyeing Spencer’s bulk. Speaking quickly, he said to Sachs, “I see your eyes, you’re thinking. But, no. We haven’t met. Among cops, you’re a celeb. Can I say ‘cop’? Nothing offensive about that, right?” He talked a mile a minute. “Sheldon Gibbons. I’m with InsideLook Magazine.” He displayed a press badge. She noted the last name, which added another mammal to the equation. Wasn’t that a monkey or orangutan?

“Is this your partner?”

Neither Sachs nor Spencer answered.

“Can I help you?”

Gibbons said, “And sorry, it’s ‘Detective’ Sachs. I called you ‘Officer.’”

She was going to give him a few seconds’ worth of polite but that was it. She cocked her head.

He brandished a digital recorder, much like hers.

“Were you seeing Averell Whittaker about the Locksmith?”

She said, “I’m asking permission to see that.”

Gibbons frowned. “I’m sorry?”

“Can I see your recorder?”

“I guess.” He handed it over.

She hit Stop. And gave it back to him.

He offered a conspiratorial — and maybe admiring — grin.

Sachs asked, “What do you want?”

“Whittaker Media is one of my beats. I was asking if you were talking to Averell about the Locksmith.”

“Why do you think I was seeing him? It’s a big building.”

“You came out of the south hallway. There’s only one elevator there and it goes directly to his suite.”

She said nothing.

“Come on. This is a great story. A guy breaks into apartments and leaves one of Whittaker’s papers? Like a journalistic Batman villain? What angle are you following? Do you think the Locksmith’s a former employee?”

“I have no comment. On that. On anything.”

“Is Whittaker himself in any danger? How about his niece, Joanna? Was she there? She visits a lot.” A coy smile. “Maybe the Locksmith’s extorting her charity. It’s well endowed.”

“On anything,” she repeated.

Gibbons offered a card. “I tell it like it is, Detective. I don’t trash cops in my stories. I report the facts, unlike some news institutions.” He nodded toward the skyscraper. “Threats against Whittaker and Joanna, that’s a valid story. I want to report it. Help me out. Who knows, maybe publicity’ll drum up some witnesses for you.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Gibbons.” She slipped the business card away, thinking that if she threw it out now, a scene might ensue.

“Take care, Detective Sachs. Keep me in mind.”

She and Spencer continued to the entrance. She looked back and noted that Gibbons did not circle back to the crowd to fish for stories. He’d apparently given up on his reporting duties for the time being and had vanished from sight.

35

So the Locksmith had returned to the Bechtel Building.

Mel Cooper was analyzing what Sachs had found on her second visit to the place, where she had happened to meet the Whittaker Media security chief, Lyle Spencer.

“What do we have, Mel?”

“Wrapper from a Jolly Rancher piece of candy.”

“Why do we think it’s his?”

“Bit of dish detergent on it, same profile as earlier. And some graphite — the grade that locksmiths use.”

“Prints, DNA?”

“None.”

“So he carefully unwrapped the candy before popping it into his mouth. Couldn’t he tear it open with his teeth, and be helpful? So this delicacy? Is it rare? Limited sources? Will it lead us someplace?”

Cooper bent over the computer and typed. “The number-one hard candy in America. One million two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of revenue every year.”

Rhyme sighed.

“Halloween? A million pounds’re sold.”

“Thank you, Mel,” Rhyme said acerbically. “I could have deduced the wrapper’s uselessness evidentially from the revenue stat, without the weight information.”

Cooper, unfazed, continued, “Around it, on the floor, Amelia found traces of boron, copper and iron. It was probably his since the control samples from the building don’t show any of these.”

“Put them on the board,” Rhyme called to Thom, their current scribe, and up went the notes.

The significance?

That he couldn’t say. Not yet. These were among the most common materials in the manufacturing industry.

So little evidence...

Rhyme couldn’t sweep from his mind Sachs’s earlier speculations.

The paper’s a red herring. Nothing to do with what he’s really up to. He’s an illusionist and’s got something else entirely going on.

He tried to put himself into the mind of the man who was the Locksmith’s doppelganger — the Watchmaker.

How do the cogs fit together?

Newspapers, knives, tricky locks, lingerie, two innocent, unrelated victims (and possibly more), days-old human blood...

What are you trying to construct?

But he had no answers. Rhyme’s eyes went to the photo of the splashy newspaper page and his mind to a place where it had gone, reluctantly, earlier: the question of what was motivating the Locksmith to commit these complex and risky crimes against the paper — and, ultimately, against the Whittakers?

“What’s the story behind the family?” Rhyme asked.

Cooper said he didn’t know much. He was not a consumer of Whittaker Media Group products. He read the Times and the Wall Street Journal, and he and his girlfriend watched little TV news; mostly they listened to NPR and podcasts.

That was basically Thom’s journalistic diet too, the aide reported.

“You want me to look into them?”

“No. I’ll do it.” Rhyme went online and engaged in some high-school-level research. In a half hour he had a rough picture of the Whittakers and their empire.

Averell and Lawrence had inherited a modest chain of newspapers in the New York suburbs from their father, a few radio stations too. The operation was only marginally profitable. The brothers, Ivy League grads (both academically and athletically distinguished) were ambitious. They’d never wanted anything to do with the mundane and profit-neutral chain and pursued careers other than journalism. Averell in manufacturing, Lawrence in investing.

But when their father passed away and left them the papers, they decided to exploit the opportunity given them.

The business model of reporting about Westchester County planning and zoning meetings and covering light opera and modern dance left both brothers cold.

It was time for a makeover. Averell was quoted as saying, “The New York Times promises to deliver all the news that’s fit to print. And Rolling Stone delivers all the news that fits. We’re going to deliver all the news that people want.”

Overnight most of the employees were fired and the local papers sold. All the resources went into founding the Daily Herald, a national paper in both print and online editions. Its stories were classic tabloid fare, with one exception: it took no political stance whatsoever editorially. They wanted advertisers and readers from the entire spectrum, and so the reporters focused on, or sank into, the world of celebrity and scandal.

Almost from the first day — the banner headline being about an actor who had evicted his own mother from his home so his girlfriend could move in — the Herald hit big, and the cash flowed.

Several years ago, Whittaker Media acquired a limping TV station and created the WMG channel, its content as tawdry — and appealing — as its print counterpart.

The Googled articles Rhyme skimmed — and there were many of them — were punctuated with photos of Averell and Mary, and their son, Kitt. There were nearly as many of Lawrence and Betty and their Joanna. Athletically built, with fierce eyes, Averell looked every inch the captain of industry or ruthless prosecutor, while alcoholic Lawrence was retiring and unkempt and dowdy. Their wives were always photographed as if they were on their way to a fundraiser. Kitt seemed sullen and he dressed down. Joanna was her mother’s daughter, smiling for the camera and, sometimes, wearing a gown that matched Betty’s.

It was a lush life. The homes were palatial and in one series of pictures Betty and Joanna hosted a garden party in a greenhouse that was bigger than Rhyme’s town home. The company rose to the ranks of the Fortune 500, and the foursome appeared at galas, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the Academy Awards and untold black-tie events in Manhattan.

Then harder times.

Betty died, a heart attack, and her husband proved not to be the savvy Wall Street investor he fancied himself. He racked up severe debts and only by selling his brother his shares in the company did he avoid bankruptcy. Averell kept Lawrence on as a highly paid employee — while Joanna, a junior reporter for the paper, was given a huge raise and put in charge of the company’s charitable arm. Averell even signed over a vacation house and one of his yachts to that side of the family.

Then several years ago, Mary died from cancer, and after that Kitt largely vanished from the pictures of Averell, Joanna and her fiancé, Martin Kemp.

Recently the company itself began to unravel. Rhyme read about the consequences of false or careless reporting, resulting in assaults, suicides, even murder.

Complaints about Averell and his management approach began to surface too. He did not want women in any senior positions — he felt they created a distraction in the workplace — and the company’s minority hiring was a sham. One article in a competing newspaper called it the “White-aker Media Group.”

Finally, Averell underwent an epiphany and decided to liquidate the empire and put the proceeds into a foundation, which would promote ethics and minority education in journalism and create a watchdog group to oversee the threats to reporters around the world.

“Averell Whittaker Does a 180,” read one headline.

Rhyme logged off.

“Anything helpful?” Thom asked.

“Not really,” Rhyme muttered, his eyes on the Locksmith evidence board. He wondered again if the Locksmith’s whole plan was misdirection.

Looking to the side, he scanned the board that had been devoted to the Viktor Buryak matter.

And what, Viktor, are you and yours up to right now?

A question that could not be answered, of course, so Lincoln Rhyme let it vanish from his thoughts and turned back to the mute evidence board devoted to the Locksmith.

36

“You know,” Aaron Douglass was saying, “you think about Austin. They claim to have the best food trucks in the world. Or at least more of them. Not true.”

He and Arnie Cavall were on a corner of Madison Avenue in the eighties, the poshest of the posh. Shorter than towering Douglass, Arnie looked up, confused by the lecture, but attentive. He was the “masseur” that Douglass had told Buryak about, which meant he wasn’t one at all.

Douglass continued, “New York wins. You’ve got lángos — that’s Hungarian fried bread with a bunch of stuff on it. Out of this world. Then, of course, tacos, Korean bowls, gyros, empanadas, pupusas — El Salvador, the best are with cornmeal — lobster rolls, though they’re pricey and you have to watch for too much mayonnaise.”

Arnie might have been short but he was strapped with muscles. He wore a denim vest over a white shirt. Tight-fitting jeans, cowboy boots. Just the thing for stomping, Douglass guessed. He wore three rings on his right hand. Big ones. Were they for punching?

Douglass was wearing what he usually wore — nods to the villain in the movie The Matrix, dark suit and white shirt and tie (now pale blue, unlike the film). You couldn’t see the tie, though; a napkin was tucked into his collar. Douglass was presently eating a maple-flavored tempeh burger with kale, tomato and garlic aioli on spelt bread. As he was enjoying it, occasionally bits of sandwich escaped.

Arnie was studying the elaborate sandwich.

“You should get something.” A nod at the truck. Their other specialty was artichoke lentil cake with barbecue sauce. Douglass wasn’t vegan, but people who were made some very good dishes.

Arnie shook his head.

Douglass adjusted his black beret. He didn’t know why more people didn’t wear them. Comfortable. Stylish. Easily stashed.

“You need an app or have to go online and find out where particular trucks will be. It’s kind of a game.”

“That right?”

This was one of the ten trucks that Viktor Buryak ran, making some money from the food, but that wasn’t the point, of course. Everybody in the organization knew that Buryak was always looking for smart ways to collect information he could broker, and Douglass had scored big-time by coming up with the idea.

You think of that yourself? You are fucking brilliant in the head...

Yeah, Douglass was — at least with this. Food trucks were perfect for espionage and intelligence gathering. No one ever paid attention to the presence of a food truck. Drivers could suck up all sorts of information and take pictures to their heart’s content.

Douglass enjoyed doing this particular job for Buryak — handling security and collecting intelligence at the trucks — because he loved to eat. He made the rounds of the trucks in the city, collecting information that was too sensitive to be sent via phone, and taking care of any risks to the drivers. And he was always comped dishes. He must have had five meals a day.

“There she is.”

Amelia Sachs, and the oversize guy with her — also in a Matrix dark suit — were walking out of Whittaker Tower. He was carrying a large folder. They were stopped by a skinny guy with a grin that Douglass thought was phony. They had a brief conversation and Detective Amelia and the companion continued down the sidewalk.

“Got a good look at her?”

“Yeah. Who’s the big guy?”

“Don’t know.”

Douglass finished the food and wiped his face. Doing the dishes, for him, was wrapping everything up and dropping it in the nearest waste container. He fished a bottle of water from his pocket and sipped. He supposed eating this way wasn’t healthy, always on the run. But this was the least unhealthy thing about his life.

Detective Amelia started the car and spun it one eighty, went right past the food truck without glancing at it. Everybody did this. Unless of course they were hungry.

“And I get five K for it?” Arnie asked.

“Five K.”

The man appeared uncertain. “What you told me, it sounds risky.”

“Life’s risky. Maybe I’ll get salmonella from that sandwich. I’m not negotiating.”

A sigh. Arnie said, “Okay.”

“And I need a complete loss of memory when this’s over with.”

“I sometimes forget my mother’s birthday.”

“I’m not joking.” Five Gs buys you the right to crack the whip occasionally.

“I got it, I got it. Everything’ll go away after. When and where?”

“I don’t know yet. It’ll have to be deserted and we can’t have witnesses.”

“She didn’t look like a cop.”

“No, she doesn’t. Here’s a down payment.” He handed the man an envelope. “A thousand. And another thousand for a beat-up van. And score some other plates for it. Don’t put ’em on now. You do that just before the job.”

“I’ve done this before. How big?”

Douglass supposed it didn’t matter, and he said this. Then: “You clear the deck for the next two days. You don’t take any other jobs.”

“What if—”

“You don’t take any other jobs.”

“I don’t take any other jobs.” Arnie nodded quickly.

“I gotta talk to my associate here.”

Arnie looked around.

“The driver,” Douglass snapped. “The food truck.”

“Oh. Yeah, okay. You know, I had an idea. I’ll get a white van. That’s the most common color. What do you think?”

“It’s a fine idea. Now leave.”

After Arnie left, Douglass told the food truck driver that he’d done a good job with the sandwich and asked for a Cuban coffee.

Douglass sipped the coffee and thanked the driver, who also handed over an envelope — the results of some espionage work. Money changed hands. Smells wafted from the truck. As much as he loved food, he was a terrible cook and was, at the moment, between wives (he was good at getting married but not so great at staying that way).

“What’s the bestseller today?”

“Creole-grilled tofu, I’d say.”

“Make me one and wrap it up. I’ll have it for dinner.”

37

Back in the womb of my workshop.

A change of clothes, some peanut butter cheese crackers, some decaf coffee.

I’m looking over the knives I’ve acquired — Annabelle’s and Carrie’s. They’re of a functional design, nothing fancy. Carrie’s is the sharpest. I have their panties too. One pair blue, one pair pink. But I’m less interested in them than the blades.

The knives and the garments are sitting on a table beside my workbench. There are also two copies of the Daily Herald; they both still have page 3 intact.

That is one very troubled newspaper.

I feel the weight of my own knife, the beautiful construction of brass, in my pocket.

I content mod for a bit. I peruse a video of a woman who’s lip-synching a top 40 song. She’s good. The autobot has sent it to me not for any violent or sexual issue, but because she’s violating the copyright law. She doesn’t have a blanket ASCAP or BMI license, which would give her the rights to “sing” the tune. However, I will leave it up for a few days. I have spotted a mole on her neck that I believe is cancerous. I don’t want to go to too much trouble, so I simply log on like any other person and leave a comment that she ought to have it checked out.

My mother died of that disease.

I watch some more vids and play God for a bit.

Delete...

Sign in...

Let stand...

We content moderators spend hours upon hours looking for vids that violate either the law or that famous “community standard,” which is quite the odd phrase, since there must be a billion distinct communities in cyberspace, ranging from ethereally noble to disgustingly depraved. The company sends us guidelines, but basically community standards are what I decide they are.

I say I play God, and I do. Often posters, desperate for likes and shares, fling up buckets of content that I have to loose my lightning bolt of judgment upon.

I’ve seen hundreds of executions, suicide attempts, rapes, child beatings and molestations, people shooting up and OD’ing, survivalists giving step-by-step instructions about bomb making, animals hurt, racial invective, calls to revolution, facts cited by politicians and pundits and bumpkins that even I — smart but hardly an expert — know are blatantly false.

Hours upon hours.

There is no end in sight.

My company, ViewNow, is smaller than YouTube and not owned by one of the mega-tech outfits, but it’s not insignificant. Over two hundred hours of videos are uploaded every minute, and each day millions of people watch four billion videos. If you watched every video that was available on ViewNow today, it would take thousands of years of nonstop viewing to see everything.

It’s really breathtaking.

All social media platforms employ content moderators.

We’re the grunts in the front lines of battle, like the grad students somebody told me about, with sledgehammers at the first nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago with orders to go into the radioactive pile and break it apart before a reaction melted the Second City.

Their plight may be apocryphal. Ours isn’t.

Some platforms stash their content mods in boiler rooms, which might be located anywhere in the world. Many of these sites are in Manila and India. Those mods used to work in call centers throughout South Asia but grew tired of irate customers and insults about accents and they flocked to the moderating profession, hoping it would be a springboard to a good job in tech.

This never happens for the vast majority. Content modding is not a springboard to anything... except — for most — depression. After all, we don’t spend ten hours a day watching vids on how to make a sponge cake or snowboarding. We root out the bad stuff. I mean, the really bad stuff — videos that can never be unseen and that sit, festering, in our heads forever.

I know of four mods who’ve committed suicide, another two dozen who’ve tried. Marriages have ended and livers grown distended from cirrhosis. ViewNow has a counseling department. Nobody uses it because there’s no time, not when a billion hours of video remain to be viewed.

Otherwise gentle people have turned violent after a few months at CM work.

As for me?

Of course, I have no problem whatsoever with the job.

I’m a born content moderator and always have been. Real life or a high-def monitor. Not a bit of difference to me.

I’ve never liked the verb “peeping,” much less using the word in the silly-sounding combination with “Tom.” According to the myth, or factual history (no one knows), Tom was a tailor who was the only person in Coventry to catch a glimpse of the naked Godiva riding through the city (to get her husband to lower rents on his tenants, a strange form of protest and one that sounds pretty far-fetched, to say the least). The scenario was somewhat skewed since she was the one outside and Tom was peeping, if you can call it that, from the privacy of his tailor shop.

Tom was struck blind by God or fate or whoever, though there was no particular statute he’d broken, it seemed. As for today, the offense of peeping falls somewhere within the laws of trespass and invasion of privacy and if there’s a participle it’s usually “peeking,” not “peeping.” The laws have now been expanded to include spying by drone and hacking into webcams, as well as revenge porn and posting without permission.

I knew as a boy that what I did was wrong and creepy and embarrassing and, if I was on someone else’s property, a crime (you can stare and leer at someone, drooling and grinning madly to your heart’s content, if you do it from the sidewalk). But nothing would stop me. I had to get closer. I snuck up to houses in the pleasant suburban village where we lived and peered through windows. Hundreds of times. The problem with the offense is that if you’re close enough to see, you’re also close enough to be seen. The more my outrageous dangling from trees or hovering on trash cans became, the riskier were the ventures, and the police might be summoned.

Overburdened, as always, officers recognized I was weird but not a physical threat and tended to treat me as a nuisance. They left the matter of discipline and reeducation up to my father.

The self-described captain of industry was not a moral man so he was not concerned about the wrong of what his son did; it was the embarrassment and the bruising of his reputation that stung. Had his boy been a shoplifter, a pot dealer, a teen drunk, he might have been fine with those younger-days misbehaviors. But the creep factor, coupled with the fact that there was no significant police involvement and punishment meted out pushed him over the edge. He took the law into his own hands and jailed me himself. If he found out that I’d transgressed, it was solitary confinement in our house.

Not just house arrest, free to roam from room to room. Oh, no, I was locked into bedrooms, then pantries, then bathrooms, then closets — one in particular so reeking of naphtha and cedar, I’d get high. He’d leave a bucket for the personal functions.

It was on the second or third detention that I learned I could pick the locks and escape. They were mostly Home Depot hardware that could be opened with a knife blade or a straightened coat hanger. My bedroom had a rim lock — the sort with the traditional keyhole-shaped opening, the design dating back hundreds of years. This was more challenging but, well, I managed.

The first time took me an hour. The next five minutes.

I didn’t necessarily want to go anywhere but I needed to know I could.

Then the tipping point.

I had been caught at the house of a prominent lawyer. His sobbing daughter believed she had seen me gazing at her naked from outside the bathroom window. Her father sped to our house and, once inside, confronted me and my father. Denials streamed and I was tearfully upset — that I got caught, of course.

The lawyer paid little attention to me, as if I, being a mere thirteen-year-old, were a virus unable to make choices about where to float and whom to infect.

The man’s fury was focused on my father.

“Your son’s a pervert,” the lawyer muttered, which was patently untrue. My obsession isn’t and never was about sex; I want to get inside people in a different way. In fact, it was the daughter Heather who pranced into the bathroom and disrobed, while I was observing a fight between the parents in an adjoining bedroom. I blamed her. But that was not an argument to raise in the moment.

The man then said he represented powerful unions. His clients had “associates,” a benign word sculpted ominously. Did my father get the drift? If I weren’t punished, his business would be “disrupted.” The tone of his voice suggested violence was a possibility.

My father turned to me, sitting beneath the two powerful men, though he spoke to the lawyer. “Don’t worry, there’ll be consequences.”

And, yes, there were.

38

Rhyme looked up at the man accompanying Sachs into the parlor.

He was huge and imposing, a born fighter or wrestler. He was gazing at Rhyme with... what was it? He seemed intimidated. Odd, as he outweighed Rhyme by a hundred pounds easily, and was purely physical.

Then his eyes swayed to the equipment on the sterile side of the room. The look shifted to awe.

Sachs introduced Rhyme to Lyle Spencer.

So this was the security man she had told him about.

He set down a thick file folder. “The Whittaker Media complaints and threats, from the public and from employees.”

“That many?” It had to contain five hundred documents.

Spencer said, “And these are just the ones in the past year.”

Sachs said, “We’ll scan them and get started.” Rhyme’s turning frame could handle bound books but there was no device in the lab that could display and sequence single sheets of paper. She took a call on her mobile.

“Mel Cooper,” came the voice from inside the sterile portion of the lab.

“Lyle Spencer.”

Lincoln Rhyme rarely thought to introduce people.

Spencer studied the lab. “Quite the setup. But you’ve heard that before.”

“It suits. When I need something sophisticated, we farm it out.”

Spencer said, “My first job, we didn’t have anything like this in the entire county. Everything had to go to the state lab. Took forever to get results.”

“Amelia said you were L.E.”

“Detective. Albany.”

Just like Rhyme, he’d left law enforcement for a different, though allied, job. In his case, though, the move would have been voluntary. More money and less risk.

Disconnecting the call, Sachs joined them.

“That was the super of Kitt’s building.”

She’d explained that Averell’s son, the slim, gaunt-faced young man Rhyme recalled from the online pictures, had not been seen for several days. The superintendent knew this because his mailbox was full and the postman complained to him.

“Think it’s related?” Rhyme asked.

Sachs said, “The papers in the two apartments set the stage, then the Locksmith, or the Apollos, or somebody else kidnap or kill Whittaker’s son? Makes sense.”

She asked Spencer, “And he has hardly any connection to the family?”

“Not that I ever heard of.”

Rhyme said, “Where does he work?”

Sachs explained that the family didn’t know what he did. All she had was the one mobile number and email and he wasn’t responding.

“DMV,” Rhyme said.

Sachs went online to the state’s secure website and entered her username and passcode.

“He owns an Audi A6. I’ll send the tag to LPR.”

The NYPD’s license plate recognition system was made up of cameras mounted to squad cars. As officers drove through the streets of the city, the cameras constantly scanned for license plates and recorded images of the tags, along with the time and the location of each one. The result was exabytes of data. The system was a big help in finding cars whose drivers had fled accidents or were registered to suspects or those with outstanding warrants. The whole concept was controversial in that it sucked up and recorded hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens’ plates too. Civil liberties groups complained, raising privacy concerns.

Rhyme understood this worry. But, in the end, he sided with the LPR system. It had helped them close a half-dozen cases.

“He’s red-flagged now. If any cruisers have a hit I’ll get a call.”

Spencer said, “I have a meeting with Mr. Whittaker.” A nod toward Rhyme. “Confession. I could have messengered over the file or given it to Amelia. But, to be honest, I just wanted to meet you. We had some of your books in our library in Albany. I studied them.”

“Ah,” Rhyme said.

He started for the door then stopped. “Amelia told me about the Locksmith operation. It’s sensitive. If anyone asks, you’re not involved in the case.”

“Thanks.”

With another nod, to Sachs, the large man walked into the hallway and out the door.

“I checked him out,” she said.

“Assumed you would. What’s his story?”

“Not sure,” Sachs said. “Something happened. Not the military, I think — he was a SEAL. Something more recent. PD in Albany, I’d guess.” She told him that he’d been trying to leave the Bechtel Building, armed with a brain-beating pipe, when she’d lit him up. “It was odd. I targeted him center mass. Identified myself. Had him blinded by the flashlight on my phone. But he didn’t drop his weapon. He just stood there.”

“Deer in the headlights.”

“Nope. I thought he was thinking of coming at me. Never seen anybody looking so relaxed with muzzle gaze.”

“Any idea why?”

“Scar on his head. You see it?”

“No.”

“I’d guess he was in a bad firefight. PTSD.”

Rhyme, a lab man, a crime scene man, had occasionally experienced violence in the line of work. But ironically the only serious injury he’d experienced had come from an outright accident, not a gunshot. A beam had fallen onto his neck in a construction site he was searching. He could not imagine the panic, the noise, the chaos, the horror of a firefight. Sachs — no stranger to combat — had told him that the average length was three to seven seconds, though it seemed like long minutes.

She said, “I don’t think he wants to be a security guard.”

“A well-paid one, I’ll bet.”

“He mentioned a family, so I’m sure he needs the money. But he’s like us. Blue is in his blood. He misses it.”

Then Lyle Spencer and his inner angels or demons vanished like morning mist as Rhyme’s eyes scanned the file.

“No other P.E. to analyze.” A sour glance toward the sterile portion of the lab. “Let’s read the complaints and threats. How many are there? Two million? Three? Thom! Thom! I need you to scan some documents. Let’s go!”

39

Don’t worry, there’ll be consequences.

My father might have gotten me into treatment. Lord knew, he had the money.

But instead he hired a locksmith and had three of the most expensive locks in the craftsman’s stock installed on each of the two basement doors — one into the house and the other into the garden.

They were, however, installed backward.

Anyone outside simply could use the latch to open the door; the person inside, though — which would be me — would need keys, the only copies of which my father kept with him. The locksmith was perplexed and, before he started the job, asked a few questions.

He stopped his inquiries when handed ten one-hundred-dollar bills, on top of his fee.

Our mansion was large but the cellar was not — about twenty by thirty feet with a finished bathroom and wood floors and paneling, though there was no ceiling. Just black painted beams and pipes overhead.

A bed. A three-legged dresser, propped against the wall. A television, with basic cable. No computer. Father was afraid I’d email someone for help and I would have. Food would be set at the top of the stairs three times a day. There was a bag for laundry.

My father was serious about my being a prisoner and told me to pack up clothes, books, games, whatever I wanted. I was going to be taken out of school for “health” reasons but I would read my lessons and take tests at the end of the semester.

I did as ordered and collected two boxfuls of items and clothing from my room and descended into the prison.

“You ruin your life, that’s your choice. But when you threaten my life’s work, that’s the end of it.”

He added that he was sorry it had come to this. But actions have consequences. The first sentence was a lie. The second, obviously, he passionately believed in.

The air was either too chill or too warm and always damp. The solitude was a worm. The quiet was a scream. The boredom was like pepper in my throat. The mindless television killed my spirit and, I was convinced, my brain cells. I’d start books. I’d lose interest.

I would scream at times, cry, sit in a dark corner huddled for hours. Think about killing myself. What would be the most efficient way to die?

What saved my sanity — and my life — were locks.

The DeWalt 345, the Morgan-Hill, the Stoddard. The elegant impregnable devices became the center of my subterranean world. I found a safety pin in one of my boxes and tried to pick each one. I had no idea what I was doing and thus had no success. I remembered the satisfaction of opening the bedroom door with a modified coat hanger key but, with these devices, I was unable to duplicate that warm, marvelous sensation of the latch clicking home and freeing me.

I would stare at them for hours — the ones on the back door were just past the foot of my bed. After some hours, they appeared to begin to move, to swell in size, to shrink into dark holes, to sway or to shine with sparkling, swirling light.

I began to talk to them, and I believed they replied to me. They had three different personalities.

After five months, my father released me, I’m sure at the behest of my mother, who was largely cowed by him but had argued strongly against my imprisonment. I could hear them upstairs — the tone and the give-and-take, if not the actual words. He issued a stern warning that I’d go back inside if I ever peeped again.

I nodded, agreeing submissively, but felt no contrition whatsoever.

My solitary had let me see who I truly was. The deprivation — and the ensuing ordeal — convinced me that only peeping could bring me comfort.

Those terrible months had also taught me I had to be smarter. And to make sure I would never be imprisoned again.

At a secondhand bookstore I bought the Ultimate Guide to Lock-picking, 10th Edition, the most comprehensive tome on the subject ever written. At a home improvement store I bought a set of lock-picking tools, surprised they were available over the counter.

What better locks to hone my skill on than the three models that had kept me imprisoned? I still remember that day when I raked open the Morgan-Hill pin tumbler, which was described in the book as a nearly unpickable lock. I was in heaven. After a few weeks I was able to open all three locks on the doors in minutes.

Nothing could keep me in.

I began making Visits once more, now far smarter and more careful. I only went out late at night, when Father and Mother were asleep. I would dress in black and choose only the houses that I could approach under cover.

What I saw made little difference. Sometimes it was mundane, girls sipping soda. A grandmother knitting. Boys at a computer game. Sometimes men and women together, coupling, sweaty and lost to the world. The occasional fight.

Sometimes I did more than spy. One night I left a condom in the backseat of the car owned by the wife of the lawyer who had been responsible for the imprisonment. Let the couple make sense of that but whatever happened I think it didn’t end well for either of them.

Consequences...

Other people who had crossed me would get a Visit too. I’d leave knives outside their doors. A doll in their window. Once I painted a swastika on the right rear fender of a Mercedes owned by a man who’d yelled at me about something. The man would probably get all the way to work before he’d begin to wonder about the staring.

Those Visits were about justice. The others? They just made me feel good.

Then, finally, I was away to college, a good one, given my father’s money, and into the real world.

I made half-hearted attempts to get well. All I wanted was meds, to get the peeping under control. I’d tell the doctors a variation of a story, substituting an addiction to video games for peeping but describing in detail my imprisonment, which raised a shrink eyebrow or two.

Dr. Patricia dressed in beige, unoffensive outfits and had an utterly unsexy but engaging way about her. She might have been thirty-five; she might have been sixty.

“You were thinking about a job change?” she once asked me.

I told her the truth — that unlike my father I was not career minded. “I flit.” I actually said that, and added, “Like a butterfly.”

“You’re young. You have time. Just ask yourself: What might you like to do, what’s enjoyable that you can earn a living at?”

I told her I’d think about that.

And being the strategic therapist that she was, she inquired: “And how is Aleksandra? Things are going well with her?”

“Yes. Very good.”

Dr. Patricia diagnosed me as suffering from anxiety and depression, laced with some ADHD — all very fixable. She gave me Wellbutrin, which has fewer sexual side effects than other antidepressants. I guess she didn’t want to hamper my relationship with my Russian beauty.

Then toward our last session, she said, leaning forward for emphasis, “But there’s one thing you have to do. You’ll never be free until you confront the issue of what your father did to you in the basement. You need to talk to him about it. Tell him how the cellar affected you. It could be that he’ll beg for forgiveness. You’ll reconcile.”

I told her I would think about her suggestion. I tucked the idea away and dusted it off from time to time.

Now, I glance at my phone for the time. It’s afternoon. My Visits only work, of course, after midnight. But sometimes you get an urge to peep, to peer, to possibly do more.

Sometimes you need to hurt.

For the simple joy of it.

I take a shower and then dress. I pick up my knife. It’s not only a helpful weapon, and tool, but it has great sentimental value.

It was given to me by Dev Swensen, my lock-picking mentor. He machined it himself. Brass is an unusual metal for a weapon. Unlike its stronger cousin, bronze, brass is rarely used in weapons. Not that it can’t be honed to razor sharpness; it’s just that it won’t hold an edge very long. It needs to be sharpened after each use.

Into my pocket it goes.

Completely concealed, Officer. And short enough to be legal.

I don the Mets cap, sunglasses and a raincoat. I collect my gaudy, precious souvenir keychain and step outside, making sure, as I always do, the locks are nice and snug.

40

Was that guy following her?

No...

But maybe.

She’d noticed him about halfway on the walk to the school — four blocks total. She’d turned back absently at the sound of a horn and noted that he had looked away slightly, as if he’d been gazing at her.

A block farther along she peeked again. What made it suspicious this time was that he was the same distance behind her. Had he slowed down intentionally to keep pace?

Taylor Soames was savvy in all the ways that a Manhattan woman had to be, especially a single woman. The brunette was attractive enough, she felt, and dressed in outfits that displayed her figure, which she worked hard to maintain and was proud of. But they were never overtly suggestive or revealing. She attracted eyes, which was okay — it was the nature of men and women — but she was sharp enough to know when a look crossed the line.

With this fellow, she just couldn’t tell. The sunglasses...

She arrived at the school where she was going to pick up her daughter. Roonie had stayed late after class for chess club. Rather than going inside, though, Soames waited. She wanted to see if she was truly being followed.

The man ducked into the Korean deli on the corner, pulling a phone from his pocket.

To make a call?

Or pretend to?

She assessed: A raincoat on a day of no rain, shades with little sun. A baseball cap pulled low. Younger, rather than older. More creepy than slavering. But she was standing outside a school, so “creep” took on an intensified meaning.

She just couldn’t tell.

How embarrassing if the police confronted an innocent man.

Maybe, she thought, it’s my ego that’s the problem.

Though usually her radar was correct.

Damn it, was he now looking out at her through the milky plastic window of the deli?

She chatted with a few of the other moms, also picking up their middle-school children.

Checked her phone for emails and texts.

A man’s voice behind her. “Oh, you’re Roonie’s mom, right? Hi.”

The parent had stepped out of the front door of the large redbrick school. He wore the sticky visitor’s ID badge plastered to a very nice suit.

“Ben.” They nodded. “I’m Meghan Nelson’s dad. We met a month ago. PTO. Before the great schism.”

She laughed, with a shake of her head. The power play among the parents in a middle school had all the high drama of a royal court coup.

“Is Meghan in Roonie’s class? I don’t remember, sorry.”

“No, she’s sixth grade.”

Soames’s eyes returned to the vegetable stand. The stalker was either gone or had walked deeper into the deli.

Ben said, “We went to the gymnastics meet. The one at Hunter. Meghan thinks Roonie totally rocks.” He laughed at his dip into teen speak.

Soames smiled. “Really, how sweet. Is that her sport too?”

“She wishes but she’s big-boned. And too tall.”

His daughter, he explained, wasn’t into sports, but she was a wiz at singing and dancing. “Meghan’s the theatrical one in the family.” He gave a laugh. “Second only to my ex.”

Then Ben looked past Soames — toward the deli.

“All okay?” she asked.

“Nothing. Just... this guy was staring at me.”

“Was he wearing sunglasses?”

“Yeah, like he was some kind of player. He stepped back inside.”

“And a raincoat and baseball cap?”

“That’s him, yeah,” Ben said.

“I think he was looking at me.” She explained about the suspected following.

“Well... you want me to go talk to him?”

“God no.”

Ben offered a smile.

“I knew a stalker once, my ex.” Soames was feeling relaxed talking to him. “It was just that he wasn’t inspired to stalk me, only his secretary.”

He touched his bare ring finger. “Five years for me.”

“Three.”

Ben was a good-looking man; his thick dark hair was swept back, with premature gray streaks. Which, Soames had always felt, added to the sexy quota. And the suit was truly gorgeous. He had money.

“You want to call the police?”

“No. It’s probably nothing.”

Silence arose between them. Ben was looking up the street. She could feel his mind working. And she wasn’t surprised when he said, “Look, I don’t know your situation, but...” Funny how even the handsome ones grew positively bashful when about to ask the question. “You like Broadway?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Meghan’s got a part in Annie.” He nodded to the school. “The end of school play. Interested in going?”

She laughed at the Broadway reference. “I’d love to.”

When he looked up the street, she scanned his body fast. Athletic.

And she loved graying hair.

She thought back to the last time she’d been with a man. Fortunate I have a good memory, she reflected.

Then she looked again at the deli.

Imagination, or not?

There were so many crazy people in the world, and particularly in such a densely packed city like this. She’d read in the Times about the number of people who were true sociopaths. Quite a few. The story said that most were harmless but some could snap for virtually no reason whatsoever.

“Nine one one?” he asked.

A faint laugh. “You’re reading my mind. But no. I don’t even see him anymore.”

“You said you lived near here?”

“Four blocks.” She nodded south.

“I’ll walk you.”

“Oh, no, you don’t have to. You’ve got to pick up Meghan.”

“She’s staying at the ex’s tonight. I just came by to drop off a backpack. Maybe if this guy sees me he might think I’m a boyfriend and leave you alone.”

One terrible thought flashed through her head. What if the sunglasses man was dangerous, and, in a psychotic rage, jealous of Ben, attacked him?

“I’m insisting. If you don’t agree, then I’ll have to start following you.”

She smiled.

They chatted for another few minutes until Roonie stepped out of the school. The slim girl, hair pulled back in a ponytail, had a large backpack over her shoulder.

“This is Mr. Nelson. His daughter’s in the sixth grade.”

“Meghan. You know her?”

“I think, yeah.”

Soames was not, of course, going to mention the stalker to her daughter so she said only that their apartment was on Mr. Nelson’s way home and he was going to walk with them.

He glanced in Soames’s direction with a wink at the white lie.

“Cool,” the girl said, and they started on their way.

“Hey, let me carry that.” Ben nodded at the backpack.

“Really?” Roonie asked.

“You bet,” he said, and lifted the heavy pack off her shoulder and slung it onto his own.

The threesome started south.

“So, Roonie, what routine do you like best in gymnastics?”

41

“Oh, I don’t know,” the girl tells me. “Balance beam, I think. Unevens, too.”

I nod at Roonie’s response.

I could tell her what Aleksandra said, about Russian girls: dancers or gymnasts.

Better not to.

Come to think of it, both Taylor and Roonie have a slightly Slavic cast of face.

Of the two, the girl is the prettier. Mom isn’t jealous of you. Not yet. I have a feeling it may happen.

As I walk along beside them — enjoying playing the role of Ben Nelson — I glance over pretty Taylor and skinny Roonie, thinking they have no idea what’s hit them.

It was just like picking a lock. I followed her from her apartment, trying to get Taylor to notice me. I actually had to step in front of a taxi to get him to honk. At last she turned and noted me and seemed to grow suspicious.

She looked once more a few minutes later and I knew the hook was in.

“And tell Mr. Nelson about the camp you have coming up.”

“Oh,” she says, smiling. “It’s the best. We’re going to Wilmington. It’s a famous place. There’ll be a hundred of us from all over the East Coast. Jenna Carson trained there.”

“No way,” I say, exhaling with the breath of the impressed.

After she arrived at the school, I ducked into the deli. Off with the coat, sunglasses and hat — all cheap and disposable. I stuffed them into a plastic bag I bought for a dollar from the clerk. Underneath was a Brooks Brothers suit.

When she wasn’t looking, I slipped around the corner to the back of Hawthorne Middle School and dumped the bag in the trash. I picked the Steel-Tec lock on the school’s service door in three seconds. Pasting a parent’s ID label on my chest, I climbed the stairs to the main floor and stepped outside.

Oh, you’re Roonie’s mom, right? Hi.

I stoked her paranoia about that sunglasses-wearing creep who might have been following her. If you think you’re being stalked and someone independently confirms it, well, then you are being stalked. Set in stone.

Almost too easy.

“Like, what’s your daughter’s sport?” Roonie asks.

I tell her, “She takes after my side of the family. Zip athletic skill. But she likes to act. I’ve done a little of that myself.”

“Cool.” Now it’s balance-beam Roonie’s turn to be impressed.

Taylor looks at me admiringly.

“We saw your gymnastics meet. You were really good. You nailed your routine!”

She grins shyly and I believe she’s blushing.

Taylor now chats, as they walk along the gritty, damp sidewalk and I’m in heaven. I’ve picked the lock of these two females’ lives.

I see that Taylor has fallen silent. She seems troubled and I wonder if she’s suspicious, even if she doesn’t know that the man beside her is not who he seems to be and has a very sharp knife in his pocket.

It occurs to me that maybe what’s bothering her is that by frustrating the stalker, he decided to assault someone else.

Is her gut pinging with guilt at the moment that she might have set in motion a chain of events that will end in an assault, a rape, a murder?

Well, I think, that faint trickle of remorse is nothing compared to the pain you’re going to feel, Taylor.

And, Roonie, you too.

The girl now pulls her phone from her back right pocket and shows me a video of some famous gymnast. Jenna Whoever.

“She’s amazing.”

“That’s the routine I’m working up now.”

“Maybe Mr. Nelson and Meghan can come to your next meet?”

“Yeah, like, sure.”

We cross the street. Taylor points ahead and says, “That’s our building, right there.”

And I think: I know.

“Friends: Follow-up to my news from my home, the West Coast. Remember the post about the government contracts for infrastructure projects around the country, using steel produced by a well-known company, based in California? They were using pig iron from eastern Europe in forging beams for bridges and highways, recall?

“Well, now I’ve learned that in a construction site in Northern California, two workers are in serious condition after beams, made with the substandard steel, shattered. And what was the project? A highway bridge over a two-hundred-foot chasm.

“Next time you drive over a bridge, ask yourself: Was it built with defective steel?

“This is corruption at its worst.

“Why isn’t the General Services Administration in Washington doing anything about it? Because, of course, they’re controlled by the Hidden!

“Say your prayers and stay prepared!

“My name is Verum, Latin for ‘true.’ That is what my message is. What you do with it is up to you.”

42

There but for the grace...

One of the two lead shields on the Alekos Gregorios homicide, Detective Tye Kelly, stood in the double doorway of the old gym, now a homeless shelter, brightly lit and clean but smelling to the back of his nose like disinfectant. Men were the only occupants here. The Department of Homeless Services — a very different DHS than the one that first comes to mind — wanted no trouble. Homeless people were just like homed people with regard to impulse control, or lack thereof. The problem here was that there were no doors you could hide behind and lock.

His partner, the other detective on the case, walked up behind him and looked over the huge room.

“Cleaner than I thought,” Crystal Wilson said, hands on her trim hips. Today, coincidentally, they both wore dark gray suits. Her top was a black sweater, his a powder blue shirt. Each had jet black hair. His was thinning. Hers was done in neat cornrows. Kelly was at first surprised she’d never seen a shelter, but she’d come up in the 112, where there were none.

This one, the Deloitte House, was in a different precinct, west, where there were several official and unofficial shelters.

Wilson said, “It’s bed B-eighty-six.”

He wondered if she’d be thinking the same thing as he, a play on Bingo.

But under the circumstances — the location and their mission at the moment — neither of them acknowledged the thought.

Kelly was aware of the eyes following them and certain hand movements, as things were slipped away. Weapons, drugs and alcohol were forbidden in the shelters of New York City, but that had nothing to do with the reality of weapons, drugs and alcohol — especially in a shelter that was woefully understaffed and featured virtually no security. Still Kelly knew from experience that there was little to be gained from rousts and as long as no one flaunted their contraband, or threatened anyone, then let them be.

Leave them something, Kelly thought.

After all, there but for the grace...

Michael Xavier, his age somewhere from thirty to forty-five, sat on the edge of his bed, chewing his lips — from the antipsychotic drugs — and muttering to himself. He was not alone in this. Xavier was a bulky man. He was in a T-shirt that revealed arms that were both fat and muscular. He had an unruly beard. On his feet were shabby leather shoes. These matched, unlike the footwear of Alekos Gregorios’s killer. But leads had to start somewhere.

Tye Kelly was big and imposing and his brows met in a line. They were arched high above his unsmiling eyes, all of which made him look like an irritated boxer. Wilson was petite and affected a gentle expression, both amused and curious, giving her the appearance of a first-grade teacher, not first-grade gold shield. He let her talk.

“Mr. Xavier, I’m Detective Wilson and this is Detective Kelly.” Badges were displayed. Across the hall came a shout, “Get the fuck out!” But it was apparently directed to something invisible floating near the ceiling.

The man grunted, looked them over and said, “Is what it is.”

“I wonder if you could tell us where you were last Tuesday night? Do you recall? Around nine p.m.?”

He chewed some more and stared at them. He muttered something.

“What was that, sir?”

Xavier fell silent and played with a fingernail.

“Where did he say he saw it?” Kelly asked Wilson.

His partner answered, “Under the bed.”

Kelly got down on one knee and swept the beam of his small tactical flashlight under the cot. Damn. Cleaner than the floor at home.

Detectives from the 112 House had called a dozen shelters — located within five miles around the home of murder victim Gregorios — and asked if any staff had seen bottles of any brand of cherry-flavored chlorine dioxide, the fake medicine, in the possession of any white male residents who matched the description of the homeless man that Gregorios’s son had told them about.

The director of Deloitte had seen the email and called the 112 and reported seeing a bottle of cherry-flavored Miracle Sav.

After Lincoln Rhyme had told him that there’d been trace of the stuff found on Gregorios’s clothes — and none recovered in the man’s house — Kelly had looked the substance up and, while it could be used as a legitimate cleanser, some people were stupid enough to drink it like medicine, causing kidney failure, vomiting, shedding of internal mucous membranes. It had even been given as enemas to children to cure autism and had seriously injured scores and killed several. (Kelly wished he’d been called in to run one of those cases.)

“Mr. Xavier, do we have permission to go through your locker?” she asked.

This was dicey. If the bottle were inside and could be linked to the murder scene, a defense counsel would leap on the search as unconstitutional because, in his current mental state, Xavier was not able to give consent.

On the other hand, the vicious nature of the killing meant that if he were the perp, he needed to be collared — and now.

“Is what it is, is what it is, is what it is...”

She sat on the unoccupied bed across from his. “Mr. Xavier?”

Kelly then froze. He said, “Never mind. Glove up and open it.”

“But...” she protested. She’d be thinking probable cause. And, because she was in law school at night, Fourth Amendment.

“We got it. Plain sight.”

He’d shined the light up into the springs of the cot and saw something tucked under the mattress. He pulled on blue latex gloves and reached in, removing the bloodstained wallet.

It was Alekos Gregorios’s.

Wilson opened the locker. Underneath two mismatched shoes was a bottle. She lifted out the Adidas-Nike pair of joggers, and the partners looked down at a bloodstained knife, about eight inches long, and a bottle of Miracle Sav.

In bold red print was the legend that reported that, among eliminating other maladies, the potion had been “proven to cure all forms of mental illness and dementia.”

43

Lon Sellitto was on the speaker.

“The Apollos’re the lead suspects.”

He explained that after the hit-piece Daily Herald article about the “women haters” had come out and senior members had gone into hiding, the officers whom Sellitto had assigned to find the potential suspects were having trouble tracking them down. “They’re posting plenty of threats, though. One guy in particular, nicknamed ‘Chosen,’ is calling for Whittaker’s beheading.”

A trace of his IP address, though, ended at a proxy in Europe.

He added, “And the psych department chimed in. They think it’s somebody connected to the group because of the profile. The Locksmith steals underwear. That suggests he’s sexualizing women. And the knife he takes: he wants to hurt them, subconsciously.”

“Doesn’t seem all that subconscious,” Rhyme observed.

Sellitto added that the reporter who’d written the story and the editor who’d assigned and approved it had left Whittaker and were not returning calls. They were no longer in New York.

As for the WMG legal department file that Doug Hubert had prepared, not a single one of the 495 complaints and letters of threat pointed the spotlight toward a perp like the Locksmith.

Most of the employee complaints were about equal employment, diversity and discrimination. A few OSHA issues. The threatening letters from those who had been the target of articles raised the issue of defamation, and the majority were sent by attorneys. The Locksmith’s assault on the company — if that’s what the home invasions were — wouldn’t arise out of any conflict he’d put his real name to via a lawyer’s letter. The others’ grievances came out of journalistic sins the paper had committed, but were minor, and the remedy was retraction.

“Waste of time,” Rhyme had muttered. He had returned to his waiting state: skeptical of all crime-solving techniques that did not involve evidence. The witch-doctory of psychological profiling, for instance.

Sellitto continued, “On the forensic side, I’m not getting shit from Queens.”

The NYPD lab had its set of the evidence from the Carrie Noelle scene, though nothing from the man’s second visit to the Bechtel Building. The techs there were top notch but the Locksmith was one of thousands of cases they were running. Rhyme could dedicate himself fully to the investigation — even if illegally.

“So,” Sellitto grumbled. “Do not get your ass busted. You’re our only source for the nitty-gritty.”

“By which I assume you mean incisive forensic analysis.”

“I’m serious, Linc. There’re people who want heads to roll.”

“As quickly as clichés.”

Sachs said, “We’re being careful.”

Sellitto scoffed, “You know what’s inevitable?”

“Death and taxes is always a good answer, though, of course, that’s a cliché too.”

“If we collar the Locksmith, the question’s going to come up how we did it. And since Queens isn’t giving me squat, the whole world’ll be looking right at you, Linc.”

“Allow me one more hackneyed turn of phrase: we’ll cross that bridge when.”

“Well, let me just say, forewarned is forearmed.”

“Touché, Lon.”

They disconnected.

Sellitto was right. But what choice did they really have? This man had to be stopped before he put to use one of those knives he was so fond of.

Sachs took a call and jotted some notes. She edited an entry note on the whiteboard, replacing the number 22 with 26.

Rhyme asked, “Mel? That graphite on the Jolly Rancher wrapper? You ever run it?”

The tech had not, other than to confirm it was professional grade, and he did so now.

Rhyme then was looking at some pictures of trace on the flat-screen monitor. The tiny slivers of deep yellow metal had taken his attention.

“What?” Sachs noted his gaze.

“That brass. We know it’s been machined. Metals don’t shed.”

She snapped her fingers. “Key-making machine.”

“He might work at a home improvement or hardware store. That’s one lead but we don’t have the manpower to survey them all. We’ll keep it in mind if we find something to narrow down the geographic field. But another lead is that he might privately own one himself. Are they rare, Sachs? Are they expensive? Let’s hope so. I want to know how many key-machine manufacturers there are and what their records of private sales are like.”

She called Lon Sellitto back with this request, and, after a conversation, she disconnected. Rhyme knew that the detective would assign canvassers right away.

He turned back to the chart.

The Locksmith was intelligent, given to planning, careful, and he was aware of, and he studied, his pursuers.

Rhyme thought again of the Watchmaker. The Locksmith was truly his heir... But then he corrected the notion, which suggested that their present perp had somehow replaced the earlier. But that wasn’t the case at all. Oh, yes, the Watchmaker might have met his fate in one of his enterprises gone wrong. Rhyme, however, couldn’t believe that. He had a feeling that the man was very much alive... and very much involved in other plots.

He wondered again if one of which might have to do with the intelligence from the UK, relayed to Rhyme by the FBI. The gist was that unknown Person X had hired unknown Person Y to kill Person Z.

Person Z’s identity was quite well known, according to the report. Lincoln Rhyme himself.

Sachs, reading a text, said, “Bad news about the key-cutting machine.”

“You can buy them for a thousand dollars and they’re sold at dozens of retail locations so he could pay with nice tidy untraceable cash,” Rhyme guessed.

“More or less.”

“Hell.”

Sachs scrolled through her phone and apparently found a number. She placed a call. And hit the Speaker button. Rhyme heard it ringing.

“Hello?”

“Lyle?”

“Amelia,” Spencer said.

“I’m here with Lincoln and Mel Cooper.”

“Any breaks in the case?”

“Nothing much. None of the complaints Legal found panned out. The lead detective’s focusing on the Apollos, but nothing solid. I’m calling to see if anybody’s heard anything from Whittaker’s son.”

“I’m with Mr. Whittaker and his niece right now.”

They heard him pose the question. And the answers from both Whittaker and Joanna and her fiancé, Martin Kemp, were negative.

“I’d like to take a look at his apartment. Does anybody there have a key?”

No one in the family did.

“The building have a super?” Sachs asked.

Joanna said, “Yes. Lives there.”

Sachs told them, “I can get a warrant for a welfare check. Spencer, you free tomorrow morning?”

“What time’s good?”

“Make it nine.”

“See you then.”

They disconnected.

She shook her head. “Hope nothing’s happened to him. They had a fight and his father wanted to reconcile, then he goes missing.”

“What did they fight about?” Rhyme asked absently.

“Seems he didn’t like his father’s muckraking and running a media empire that was light on women on executive row and heavy on them in short skirts in front of the camera. Well, you saw the complaints.” She nodded at the file folder the WMG legal department had provided.

But Whittaker Media’s policies and practices didn’t interest Rhyme much. He was gazing at the chart, gazing at the crime scene photos on the monitor, gazing at the evidence bags in the sterile portion of the lab, lined up in a way that for some reason suggested to Lincoln Rhyme cattle at a slaughterhouse.

Something had to be there.

Something...

His eyes then turned toward the photographs, once more, in particular the ones she had taken at the Bechtel Building crime scene.

“Mel,” Rhyme called sharply. “I’ve got a job for you.”

“What?”

“An autopsy.”

Cooper paused and cleared his throat. “Well, Lincoln, I don’t do postmortems.” The tech was uneasy.

“You need to rise to the occasion,” Rhyme said solemnly. “Just this once.”

44

I’m in my workshop.

And staring at my Tower of London keychain, a prized possession.

The Tower has always been special for me because of the Ceremony of the Keys:

In the Tower, every night at 9:53, the chief yeoman warder — a Beefeater — locks the outer and tower gates, then marches to the Bloody Tower. A sentry challenges him and he tells the sentry he’s got the Queen’s keys and is allowed to pass. The ceremony ends at exactly 10 p.m. In hundreds of years it’s never been canceled.

I am lying on the firm futon, thinking of Taylor Soames.

And her pain.

Oh, not physical.

No, a subtler kind.

And much more enduring. You gut someone with a brass knife and the agony is fleeting.

What I did was much more satisfying.

After I dropped them off at her building Taylor would have trekked upstairs with her Roonie, euphoric at the wonderful turn of events.

So damn hard to meet decent men in this city, but she’d pulled it off!

Ben Nelson ticked all the right boxes. Divorced five years, so the domestic drama was largely a thing of the past. He had a daughter close in age to that of her own child. A gentleman. No beer gut. A pelt of natural hair — to which I’d added a little gray makeup, because I know she likes that in a man. Resources (the Brooks Brothers suit — and any woman who says she doesn’t want a man with money? Liar!). Humor. And, on first blush, not a perv. I didn’t examine boob or leg. Well, once — the former — but she was looking away and didn’t catch me. We’re all human.

And chivalrous. Walking them back home, protecting them from that stalker! And even carrying slim Roonie’s backpack.

Ben was just the man for the job.

But soon that anticipatory joy would begin to evaporate.

I wouldn’t call — and my burner is already battery-less and destined for landfill, so when she works up the courage to phone me, nothing. She’ll try to recall the name of my employer. Good luck with that. Even I can’t remember the name I made up.

Then she’ll check with the Hawthorne school.

No record of any parent named Ben Nelson. Or daughter Meghan.

She’d begin — by tomorrow night, or so — to be feeling the searing effects of the betrayal: the sorrow that the relationship she’d hoped might come to be was now a bonfire.

And poor Taylor would be feeling utter terror too.

Because she would have been thinking if they’d met when Roonie was out of town, she might have asked him in for a drink. And one thing would lead to another...

There’s sexual assault by force. There’s also assault by misrepresentation.

And, my God, Ben had even met her daughter — the petite girl with the odd name and a daunting and elegant routine on the balance beam.

He’d even touched her shoulder, when he lifted off the book bag!

No...

That thought will bring tears.

The victory was as delicious as the thought of Annabelle Talese seeing the cookie plate beside her bed and Carrie Noelle waking up to the stare of a holy-shit Madame Alexander doll.

Delicious...

At the moment, though, all is good. Taylor’s and Roonie’s lives are proceeding on a course of hope.

And what are my ladies up to at the moment?

I know very well. Taylor has tucked petite Roonie into a bed covered with a lavender and white bedspread, just a touch threadbare. The bed rests against the blue wall on which are three racks that were meant to hold dog leads but are now festooned with colorful ribbons at the end of which dangle gymnastics medals.

The girl is wearing fluffy pajamas, in pink. They came with a detachable hood with a glistening satin unicorn horn and horse-like ears, as apparently unicorns and equines share DNA. Roonie’s tablet is charging on the bedside table, which is painted pale green.

Her room is not as cluttered tonight as it has been. The girl can be a bit of a slob.

She’s not ready for sleepy time yet, though, and she’s doing some kind of weird pantomime — like dancing with your hands and arms only, to rock songs.

Taylor herself is having a glass of wine — a sauvignon blanc — and a late-night treat of hers: mint Oreos. She is in sweats.

How do I know this?

Because mother and daughter are telling me. Via their phones.

Roonie is posting thirty-second clips on a platform like TikTok, one right after the other.

And Taylor is doing a livestream on my very own ViewNow. She is talking about books — she’s in a club and volunteers at a library — and fielding the comments that come streaming in, ignoring others.

Which, it’s no surprise, is how I am able to execute my Visits, whether in someone’s bedroom anonymously, or in person on the street like tonight.

Videos are one of the most efficient keys ever invented.

Keys to opening up lives.

With Taylor and Roonie, I learned in the brief span of a few days all the facts I’d ever want about the mother and daughter. I caught some of the girl’s posts about gymnastics and then Taylor made a few appearances. I did some light internet diving and found names and interests and career details. Segueing to other social media told me all about her. Public divorce records too. Pictures of her on social media with five different men in the past year explained she was likely single.

Some bordered on risqué, which told me even more.

Roonie was an avid poster on sites like YouTube and ViewNow. Gymnastics routines, stretching exercises, recipes, makeup tutorials, outfits of the day. I learned so much about mascara and lasagna and how far your money will go at Claire’s, Justice and Forever 21 that I could be her father.

I found out too about the play, in which my fictional Meghan would appear (though sadly not in the lead).

And — from videos posted by the school and the PTO — I learned what the school visitors’ passes look like, not high definition, but sufficient to duplicate into a reasonable facsimile. I discovered the controversy within the parent-teacher organization.

Sitting back and watching the videos for hour after hour after hour, I can see the types of locks and deadbolts and alarms people have. I can see who has dogs and door bars, I can see who keeps a shotgun nearby (rare in New York City but occasionally). I know where the knives are, and the toolboxes. I can see who has carpet — for silent stalking — and I can hear who lives on busy streets to cover up my noise (remembering the 2019 disaster, as always). I know the layout of every apartment before I approach. I know who has young children, who might need a bit of nursing or potty and might destroy my perfectly good evening.

I can even see who delivers the pizza (handbills stuck to the fridge with silly little magnets), who their doctors are, who has diabetes (insulin needle reminders), and who has a little too much love of the bottle.

I knew Carrie Noelle had the lunch date because she wrote it in red marker on a wall calendar.

People share so very much...

In college, I remember, I became fascinated with Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

People think it’s about ape-like creatures becoming humans. Ah, but the broader view about survival of the species is what so gripped me.

The theory is quite simple. It has four components:

One, individual creatures within a population differ.

Two, those differences are passed on from parents to their offspring.

Three, some of those individuals are more successful in surviving than others.

Four, those successful ones have survived because of traits that they have inherited and that they will in turn pass on to their subsequent generations. The unsuccessful die off.

In the wilderness, deer that are the color of the surrounding woods will tend to survive, while albino deer, which stand out to predators, will not.

This is exactly my worldview. People who don’t post anything online are invisible to threats like me. Those who do? Well, think of poor Annabelle Talese, the influencer, online day and night. And Carrie Noelle running her mini-QVC toy-shopping show out of her home and Taylor Soames and Roonie, who post in hopes of meeting mates or friends or because of ego or boredom or loneliness or... who knows why?

The difference is that by posting, they choose to be the albino deer.

So that if the wolf, the coyote, the human hunter, were to take them as trophies, well, their deaths would really be of their own making.

This is simple logic to me.

45

“The cause of death was asphyxia,” Mel Cooper reported to Rhyme.

Cooper, in the sterile portion of the parlor, was staring down at what was left of the corpse. Which was not of the human variety, but rather a Musca domestica, the common housefly discovered by Sachs in one of the Locksmith’s footsteps in the Bechtel Building.

The tech explained that it had perished because its muscles had frozen up in a state of tetany, which is essentially a nonstop contraction. It could neither fly nor breathe. The immediate cause for this was the blocking of acetylcholinesterase, an enzyme that allows the muscles to relax. The reason for the blockage of the multisyllabic enzyme was a particular organophosphate, a fancy name for insecticide.

Cooper continued, “The substances in the toxin are parathion, malathion, diazinon, terbufos.”

Amelia Sachs laughed. “Sounds like the names of the bad guys in a superhero movie.”

Rhyme had never seen a superhero movie but on the basis of that observation alone he thought he might give one a try, though he guessed his respect for logic and science and rational thought might dampen the careless treatment of the natural world that the filmmakers would rely on.

The insect’s demise had given them a lead, possibly, if not an earthshattering breakthrough. A search revealed that only one product contained the “bad guys” in the same proportions as those found in the dead fly. It was Fume-Assure, and it was used by large-scale fumigation companies, of which a half-dozen operated in Manhattan. One helpful executive, intrigued at being part of a police investigation, explained that that particular insecticide was used almost exclusively for fumigating old, unoccupied buildings, which would be renovated and put up for sale.

“You can’t tent in Manhattan but you seal the windows and doors. Pump this stuff in. Let it sit for a week then vent.”

“Apartment buildings? Offices?”

“Anything. High-rise, low-rise.”

In Rhyme’s mind, the chain went: The fly was found within the Locksmith’s footprint at the Bechtel Building. No one would have fumigated a building that was about to be torn down, so it was most likely that he had picked it up someplace else. Could that location be helpful? No way of knowing. But Rhyme decided to make the assumption that it was. Why not? The case wasn’t overflowing with leads. So, they would look for an old building that was unoccupied and up for sale. He wouldn’t live there, unless he was a squatter, which didn’t seem likely, but would have another connection with it. Maybe staking out the next victim.

Or perhaps, it now occurred to Rhyme, it was a building somehow related to his profession.

He commanded his phone: “Text Pulaski.” The screen dutifully appeared and the blink of the cursor encouraged him to continue:

A moment later, the young officer responded.

They closed up shop for the night and a half hour later Rhyme was in bed, Sachs beside him, already asleep. As he closed his eyes and let his head ease against his wife’s, smelling a floral shampoo, he reflected that deductions arising from the fly’s demise were somewhat unlikely, but that didn’t mean they weren’t worth considering. After all, “long shot” was a phrase that could be applied to nearly all aspects of policing, especially that odd and esoteric art form known as forensic science.

“Friends: Poor New York. The Locksmith is still at large and I have discovered why. I got access to a classified report from the highest sources. The Locksmith is working with the authorities. He breaks into your apartments and houses and plants listening devices, and their signals go directly to the CIA and FBI and other top-secret agencies deep in the bowels of nondescript office buildings in Washington. If he’s crazy, he’s crazy like a fox. But don’t think you’re safe. He murdered two people when they discovered him planting the bugs.

“Demand that the authorities answer for this. And buy surveillance detectors!

“Say your prayers and stay prepared!

“My name is Verum, Latin for ‘true.’ That is what my message is. What you do with it is up to you.”