The Midnight Lock

46

In my workshop, I awake early, chilled.

In two senses: From the draft in the old bakery supply building.

And from a thought.

Specifically the image of red-haired Detective Amelia as she went about her meticulous business at the crime scene outside Carrie Noelle’s apartment.

She seemed sharp, giving no-nonsense orders and carefully assessing the bags of evidence, which I am pretty sure, but not positive, contain nothing that can lead them to me.

But I’m not taking any chances. After all, she and her husband, this Lincoln Rhyme, placed me at Carrie’s as if by magic.

It wasn’t magic, however. It was cold science that they practiced. While there is a mysticism about locks and keys, which derives from what or who the lock is guarding, the workings of the devices run by the laws of nature.

I need to take precautions.

I roll from the bed. The simple futon is hard, good for a back often aching from spending hours hunched over a workbench or computer — in a chair that I will replace with the ergonomic one. I really will. Someday.

I hit the bathroom, my bare feet stinging on the chill black-and-white hexagonal tiles. Then I dress and make some decaf coffee and eat half a bagel with cream cheese, considering the problem I face.

If this problem were a lock to which I had no key I would first consider: Do I need to open it? Can I do without what’s in the apartment or steamer trunk or car that the lock is guarding? If yes, then I move on.

But if what’s being protected is significant and, especially, life-threatening, then I decide that I need to take on the task of picking.

In this case, the lock — well, the problem — is the danger of the police finding my identity.

Yes, there is a place containing damning evidence, and redheaded Amelia and the wheelchair-bound Lincoln Rhyme could in fact find it.

How could I have been so careless?

What’s the solution going to be?

The three types of lock picking: the snap gun, a snake rake or a bump key.

In this instance, I don’t have time for the subtle approach.

What I’m about to do would correspond to using a bump key.

Brute force.

That’s my only option, no matter the risk — to me or to whoever might die in the process.

A half hour later, I am in an area of downtown Manhattan where a number of buildings are being razed for yet more commercial/residential developments.

My destination, ahead of me, is the ancient Sandleman Building, on the top floor of which is Dev Swensen’s long-closed shop. After my father opened my eyes to the esoteric world of lock picking, I eventually learned of Swensen, a lanky, wild-haired Scandinavian. He was renowned for his picking skills but he existed far outside the mainstream of the community. The blond former pro snowboarder was eccentric and politically active — extremely libertarian. He believed in open access to everything. There should be no secrets, governmental or otherwise. And so over the years he learned how to pick virtually any lock in existence. He was never caught but it was suspected that he picked the locks of hundreds of military installations, banks, corporate headquarters, media outlets and politicians’ and executives’ homes. He never entered a single facility. He simply turned what was closed into what was open, and then he left.

I studied for several years with Swensen, coming regularly to his shop in the Sandleman Building. We became friends.

Swensen did more than locksmithing, however. He was also a renowned computer hacker. Using an alias, he had spent years breaking into government databases and private accounts and published whatever he found.

No secrets...

Then three years ago he learned he was about to be arrested for some hacks. He took his go-bag and fled to Norway, leaving behind everything (the brass knife was a farewell present to me). The authorities seized his shop but they had no interest in the locksmithing tools and equipment, only the computers and storage devices. After they left, they simply sealed the place up, leaving all items nondigital untouched, apparently waiting for his family or business associates to remove everything. But there was no family and Swensen’s shop was forgotten.

Not by me, though.

I kept returning, hiking up to the twelfth floor of the deserted building. Originally I was going to take Swensen’s books on lock picking — a wonderful library — and help myself to tools and hardware. I grew interested, though, in what was against the back wall: a collection of safes and safe doors. Dial locks were something I had little experience in, so I returned frequently to the shop to practice safecracking, using Swensen’s notebooks to learn the art.

But I was careless. I brought food and drink. As I practiced on the safes, I never wore gloves. I left receipts and possibly even mail!

Now, on this overcast, damp morning, in a workman’s yellow jacket, hard hat, clear gloves and smooth-soled shoes — no telltale treads — I walk to the chain-link gate barring entry to the back of the building, carrying the two-gallon can of gasoline. The padlock is one of those with a combination, so it takes time — twenty or so seconds — to open it. Another look around. No people. No cameras.

Then into the loading dock of the building, where I shut off the electricity at the main panel and the water supply, to disable the alarm and the sprinklers — if there are any. Then I pour the fragrant gasoline onto a pile of wood scrap at the foot of the stairway. I use a candle lighter to ignite the liquid and instantly a rage of flames sweeps through the scrap pile and starts upward. Forty minutes from now every micron of trace I’ve left will be gone forever.

47

Kitt Whittaker lived in a high-rise about five blocks from his father’s complex on the Upper East Side.

Sachs’s Torino pulled up at the same time as Sellitto’s NYPD unmarked. Lyle Spencer, the autoless former racer, was on foot.

The officers got out and Sachs looked up at the building, a slab of shiny glass and metal.

Sellitto brushed at his gray overcoat as if trying to smooth the wrinkles. His expression was sour. “I got a call from downtown. You heard about this asshole? He goes by Verum.”

Spencer said, “He posts some kind of conspiracy crap.”

“Never heard of him,” Sachs said.

Sellitto continued, “He says we’re working with the Locksmith. Some deep movement. Called the Hidden.”

“Us, the police? Seriously?”

“Oh, yeah. He’s planting bugs in the apartments and he’s killed a couple of people who’ve found him.”

“Listening devices?” Sachs sounded incredulous.

“All bullshit,” Spencer said.

“Yeah, sure. But tell that to the seven thousand five hundred and fifty people who’ve called OnePP and their local precincts to complain. The mayor, commissioner... they’re livid. That number by the way came directly from Dep Com Sally Willis.”

“Livid enough to put Lincoln back on duty?”

“That’s part of it too. He’s working for the Hidden. I told him earlier.”

“What?”

“He got Buryak off because he’s working for the governor and the CIA or some shit like that. Nobody believes it but it’s drawing attention to Linc. So, yeah, in answer to your question, he’s still out.”

Sachs said, “Next thing, we’ll see the Locksmith was at Ford’s Theatre the night Lincoln was shot.”

Sellitto grumbled. “Big problem is witnesses’re going to freeze up if they think we’re working with the Locksmith.”

Spencer muttered, “Jesus.”

They met the super of Kitt’s building outside and Sellitto displayed the warrant, which had been issued on the grounds both of a welfare check and that Kitt might be a material witness. The slim man, who spoke in an eastern European accent, glanced at the papers, without reading. He led them to the fifteenth floor and down a subdued copper and oak corridor to 1523.

She nodded to Spencer who placed a call to Kitt’s landline.

They could hear it ring inside. After four tones, it went silent.

“Voice mail.”

“We’re going in,” Sachs said.

The super stepped forward, but she shook her head and took the key from him and motioned him back. Standing to the side, she unlocked the door and pushed it open an inch. She handed the key back to the uneasy super and he retreated.

Sachs glanced at Sellitto, who nodded. Her hand was near her Glock. Sellitto was on the left side of the door. Spencer, a civilian, stood ten feet back, arms crossed. She wondered how many dynamic entries he’d done as a cop in Albany. His eyes, evaluating them and scanning the hallway ahead of and behind them, told her: quite a few.

Just before she pushed the door open she drew her weapon. Maybe nerves, maybe a sixth sense. Sellitto, glancing her way, paused a beat and then drew his as well.

Sachs shoved open the door. “Police! Serving a warrant! Show yourself!” They were pushing inside, weapons up, swinging the pistols back and forth, always dipping or raising the muzzles when they crossed before one another. This was as automatic as blinking.

The living space featured a large, rectangular living room/dining room, kitchen to the right. Out the window was a panoramic view of Brooklyn and looking south she could see where her own town house was, in general location, not the ancient structure itself.

His father’s living room was only marginally larger.

“Kitchen clear,” Sellitto called.

Though obvious, Sachs said, “Living room clear.”

The choreography of settled procedure.

Then on to the bedrooms, both of which were unoccupied. One, the bed unmade and cluttered, would be Kitt’s, while the other was prepared for guests but had not been used for some time.

“Bathroom clear,” Sellitto called.

“Second bathroom, clear.”

There remained one more door, on the far side of the living area. Maybe another bedroom. They regarded each other and walked to it, stood once again on either side — a somewhat futile precaution because bullets penetrate Sheetrock like this about as fast as a needle pokes through silk. She glanced and he nodded.

Door open, weapons up.

An office. Empty as well. It was small; no “clears!” were required.

“I’ll check in here.” She holstered her gun and pulled on latex gloves.

Donning gloves himself, Sellitto said that he’d go through the kitchen.

The office contained a desk and several file cabinets. She went through drawers and found office supplies, real estate listings, a catalog of drones, various computer hardware parts. Also reams of business documents, many of them government contracts, requests for proposals. Evidence of the pipe dreams of making it as a tycoon in an industry so very different from tainted journalism, she guessed.

She remembered Kitt’s cousin and father saying he had never really found a career that suited.

He’d given up on all of these, she guessed, and was now on to some other hope.

She opened all the cabinet drawers. Filled with tax and accounting and investment records.

She started to close one and noted the tops of the files were slightly higher than the lip of the cabinet; they brushed against it. When she lifted out several folders, and shone her pocket flashlight down into the drawer, she saw why.

A false bottom.

Maybe where he hid drugs.

She lifted out all the files and with her knife pried up the white plastic sheet.

“Lon. Take a look at this.”

48

The lock was bigger than he’d expected.

Ron Pulaski, still breathing hard after the climb to this, the top floor of the building, was now trying to jimmy the hunk of a padlock with a twenty-four-inch crowbar.

It didn’t budge.

He stepped back. And surveyed the wall. This was the only office on this side of the hallway and there was only one door. Across the hall were two other offices, but they were completely empty and showed no signs of recent habitation. The prints leading from the stairs to this shop door, though, indicated that somebody had been here recently — maybe the past week.

But how to get in?

He set to work once more.

He had to.

Lincoln Rhyme believed it was important — because of a dead fly.

Pulaski wasn’t exactly sure how that had worked, but the man had decided that certain pesticides in the fly’s corpse suggested this building might have a connection to the Locksmith.

And it seemed pretty likely that this was the case because the door he was trying to break into had this sign painted on its wooden façade:

Pulaski tried once more, and this time one of the hinge screws seemed to move a fraction of an inch. A few minutes later one flange on the middle hinge was slightly loose. One more. The bar slipped out and whacked him in the thumb. Pain exploded.

He inhaled deeply against the sting.

He paused.

The young officer smelled a fire nearby. He turned his eyes to the stairwell, from which wisps of smoke were now curling.

Amelia Sachs pulled the hood of the crime scene overalls back, tossed her hair. For her, this unique, piquant smell of the plastic garment would forever be associated with the curious combination of challenge and tragedy. She dialed Rhyme’s number and when he answered said, “Averell Whittaker’s son Kitt — he’s the Locksmith.”

“Tell me.”

She explained what they had found hidden in the filing cabinet, all the drawers of which had false bottom panels. There were books on lock picking, sets of lock-picking tools. Panties matching the description of those stolen from Carrie Noelle’s and Annabelle Talese’s apartments. Also two copies of the February 17 edition of the Daily Herald, missing page 3.

In the closet was a pair of brandless running shoes whose tread seemed to match the pattern at the earlier scenes.

“And it looks like there’s red brick dust in the treads, Rhyme. Flecks of dried blood too.”

“He learned his lesson and went to plain soles, so he doesn’t pick up as much trace.”

“In a basket in the kitchen, Lon found a packet of green-apple Jolly Ranchers. Looks like there’s graphite on it.”

Rhyme said, “You mentioned the underwear he stole. What about the knives?”

“They’re not here.”

She was holding a small carton containing plastic and paper bags of what she’d collected. Chain-of-custody cards dangled from some items, like From... To tags on Christmas presents. She added, “But there’s not much else, no computer, no phone. He’s got to have more tools too. A workshop someplace else.”

“Any leads to where?”

“No.”

“Get the evidence in. Send out his ID on the wire. But I wouldn’t announce it publicly. That’ll spook him.”

“Agreed,” she said.

Sachs had declared the apartment a crime scene, and that would now be information accessible to everyone at OnePP. Willis would hear and send Beaufort and Rodriguez to make sure that any evidence from the scene would be logged in to the Queens lab. She’d have to move fast.

A crowd was gathering, a couple of dozen people. Reporters too. Always the press, calling questions. She ignored them.

Lon Sellitto joined her. “Still nothing on Kitt’s Audi in the vehicle recognition system.”

Sachs removed the booties and they went into an evidence bag for later examination. Occasionally key evidence was picked up from places the crime scene investigators had trod. Then the gloves came off and she blew on her hands to dry the sweat.

Sachs walked to the front of the CSU bus and spoke to the tech who was behind the wheel. She was a tall woman with mahogany-colored skin and an elaborate tattoo of an iguana on her forearm, now concealed under her jacket.

“Izzy, need you to do something for me.”

“And that tone tells me there’s something shady going on.” She was amused.

“Shady might be an overstatement. Can we go with hazy?”

“I can live with hazy. What d’you have in mind, Amelia?”

“There are going to be people at OnePP who want that evidence to get to the lab quick as a lick.”

“What my grams used to say.”

Sachs was frowning. “I may’ve heard there’re some traffic jams — accidents, maybe. Everything’s slowed up. That tunnel — it’s always dicey. And the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge? Forget it.”

Izzy said, “So what you’re saying is it might be better for me to take a different way?”

“Only a thought.”

The tech said, frowning, “Maybe the Triborough. I could go north in Manhattan, cross the bridge, then south to Queens. Maybe take Central Park West.”

“That’s an idea. And you know Mel Cooper’s visiting Lincoln Rhyme at the moment. You could say hi.”

“Mel is a dear. And that man can dance!”

“You might even show Mel what you’ve got.” She nodded at the cartons. “You know, he’s working the case. Give him a preview.”

Cooper’s name, not Rhyme’s, would go on the chain-of-custody card. One could assume that the technician had examined the evidence in the Queens lab, not Rhyme’s parlor.

Sachs grew serious. “You know there are people who’ve threatened to reprimand anybody who helps Lincoln on a case.”

“Rodriguez.” She scowled. “Always thought he was a stand-up man. But now he comes on with ‘nobody’s supposed to work with Lincoln.’ Lord, you know, Lincoln Rhyme is the whole reason I went into crime scene work.” The woman’s broad face blossomed with a coy smile. “I’ll be on my way now. Ah, all that traffic. The Queensboro, the tunnel.”

“That tunnel can be a bitch.”

“Sure can be, Amelia.” The woman turned and whistled — it was really quite piercing. The other CSU tech, an older Anglo, turned and jogged to the bus and jumped into shotgun. Sachs slammed the rear doors shut and thumped the side with her palm.

The vehicle’s tires actually spun and squealed and off-gassed pale smoke. With blue lights flashing, it skidded onto the street, under Izzy’s expert touch.

Ignoring reporters’ calls about what had happened, she walked to Lyle Spencer, who was standing beside the Torino.

Sachs said, “You shocked at the news? About Kitt?”

Spencer exhaled air through puffed-out cheeks. “Putting it mildly. You heard, a lot of friction in the family, the estrangement. But never in a million years...”

“If you were going to have a workshop/safe house, how would you handle it?”

Spencer said, “Something small, off the books. I’d pay cash. No application process or credit check. With Kitt’s resources, trust fund, he could pay whatever the landlord wanted.”

“I didn’t see anything inside that gave me any clues. Let’s hope Lincoln’ll find something in the evidence to narrow it down.”

A cheerful voice called: “Detective. We have to stop meeting like this.”

She turned to see the man she’d labeled a ferret.

The reporter. Sheldon Gibbons. A name as memorable as his face.

How the hell had he found her?

He was armed with his digital recorder once more. While other reporters would jab their cameras and recorders forward like fencers and pepper their subjects with shouted questions, Gibbons was calm, almost eerily calm, though he still spoke quickly. “Kitt Whittaker lives in that building. First, you were talking to his father and Joanna — did you mention she was there, at the tower the other day? I don’t remember?”

There was no response.

“Well, now you’re here, but in crime-scene regalia. Is he all right? Has he been assaulted?”

“You do remember, I don’t make comments for the press?”

“Has he been injured — maybe by the father of the Hunter Mill student who was killed? That fake satanic cult story. You know about it?” It would be utterly exhausting to listen to this man for any length of time.

“No comment. There’ll be a press conference later, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure of that too. But I happen to be here now. Why wasn’t there a guard on Kitt, in light of the Locksmith’s threats? Are you guarding Joanna too? And Averell himself?”

“Go away,” Spencer grumbled ominously as he stared at Gibbons.

The reporter held up a hand and said in a smooth voice, “First Amendment. I have a right to be here. Who’re you? I saw you with Detective Sachs earlier. Are you NYPD? Do you work for Whittaker Media?”

Spencer said nothing.

“Have you heard what Verum, the vlogger, is saying — that the NYPD has been infiltrated and is purposely not investigating the Locksmith case vigorously? I know you’re involved in that case, Detective.”

Gibbons looked around with narrowed eyes. “Hm. No ambulance or medical examiner. I guess Kitt isn’t hurt. Or dead. Has he gone missing, by any chance?”

The reporter suddenly ceased to exist to Sachs. She noted that Lon Sellitto had taken a call and was staring at the ground, his usually expressionless face a mask of concern.

He disconnected and sighed.

“Lon?”

The rumpled detective turned to her. “Amelia... I have to tell you. It’s Ron.”

49

Sachs skidded her Grand Torino off Hudson Street and aimed toward the Sandleman Building, rising about ten or twelve stories into the gray sky. It was narrow and grimy. A large banner read For Sale. Commercial.

Sachs could see no flames but smoke flowed from floors about a third of the way up. Two helicopters hovered nearby.

Spencer gripped the dashboard as the muscle car skidded to a stop two blocks away on a deserted street. She wanted to leave the way clear for more emergency vehicles if they were needed.

Sachs and Spencer trotted forward, moving over and around the snaky hoses. Patrol was keeping back spectators and most of the uniforms knew Sachs and, as Spencer was with her and he looked like a gold shield in his undertaker suit, let them both through to the command post.

A panoply of emergency vehicles, fire trucks mostly, sat like discarded toys. Dozens of firefighters were running hoses. The command post was an FDNY van that read Battalion Chief on the side.

Spencer said, “He knows we’re onto him and he destroyed his workshop?”

Sachs said, “Probably not. Lincoln found a lead to an old locksmith company. Must have some connection to him, though, since I’ll bet he’s behind the fire and wants to erase the evidence he was there.”

She looked at a broken-out window on the top floor. Pulaski’s head was visible, and white smoke flowed past him. Not terrible yet. From here, she could see flames in the windows of the seventh and eighth floors. They were thick, tumbling orange and black masses.

She knew the battalion chief, Earl Prescott. Nodded to her side. “Lyle Spencer, he’s with me.”

A nod to Spencer.

“The situation?”

“It’s bad. I’ve been in touch with your officer. He’s on the top floor, but he can’t get on the roof — it’s sealed — and he can’t go down. All the stairs are burning and it’s too hot. I can’t get my people up there either. We’re pumping fast but the place is a hundred years old. A tinderbox. The building has sprinklers, but looks like the perp shut the water off and the control’s buried under tons of burning debris. No doubt about the arson. We found the remains of a gas can in the loading dock.

“Wish the news was better.” He gestured to the helicopters. “No LZ on the roof. And they can’t lower a rescue team because of the fire. Too much heat turbulence. One crew said they’d try. I vetoed it. I had to. Bird comes down hard here, you can imagine.”

Sachs noted that there were two hook and ladders. The chief followed her gaze and said, “Their reach is only a hundred feet into the air and change. And look.” He pointed to a one-story building, an abandoned storefront, that was under Pulaski’s window. This meant the ladder truck couldn’t get directly beneath him. Because of that angle, the basket would only get fifty feet in the air, and even then it would not be directly under the window.

“We’re pumping all we can into the higher floors. Maybe it’ll knock down the fire. But even with his head out the window, the smoke’s going to get him soon.”

She made a call on her phone.

A coughing voice answered. “Amelia, I was almost into the office. The locksmithing office.” More coughs. “I couldn’t get in. Was it arson?”

“Had to be. Found a gas can.”

Pulaski: “Means there’s some evidence inside.”

“Don’t worry about it. We just want you down. Are there any other windows you can get to? They can’t get the basket close.”

“This is... the only one.” The voice was a rasp.

“Okay. Save your breath. We’re working on it.”

Prescott said, “There’s a mountain rescue team with the state police. They’re in a chopper on the way. Should be here in a half hour, probably less.”

Spencer was studying the building. “He doesn’t have that kind of time.” He turned to the chief. “You have a line gun?”

The chief looked him over, then glanced to Sachs, who nodded.

“We do, sure.”

The yellow plastic device looked like a child’s toy gun with an eight-inch orange projectile, like a light bulb, on the end. To the tail of this was tied a thin yellow line that fed from a spool. You put a .22 cartridge in the gun and when it was fired, the projectile carried the line to the person needing rescue. The twine was too thin for that purpose, but rescue workers then tied their end to a more solid rope, which could be pulled up by the person in distress.

“He can haul up a Sterling self-rescue,” Spencer said.

Sachs was aware of the device. It was an emergency rappelling unit. It was used as a last resort for firefighters trapped in high floors when — just like now — the stairs were blocked. You donned a harness and hooked one end of the device’s rope to a pipe or beam. Then climbed out the window and using a hand brake lowered yourself to the ground.

He asked Sachs, “Has he ever used one?”

“I have no idea.” She pulled out her phone again and placed the call. “Ron? Have you ever used a...” She looked at Spencer, who said, “Sterling self-rescue.”

She repeated it.

“No.”

Spencer said, “Okay. Hang tight. We’ll work something out.”

She told him this and disconnected.

The fire was worse now. The smoke thicker. Her heart was pounding hard. She’d known Pulaski for years. She’d mentored him. She thought of breaking the news of his death to his wife and children, to his twin brother, also a cop.

No, she’d think of—

Spencer said to the chief, “Fire the line gun and have him haul up a climbing line.”

“Climbing line?”

“At least three-quarter inch. You have that?”

“We do, but he can’t shimmy down it.”

“He’s not going to. I’ll climb up, rig him with the Sterling.”

“How do you mean?”

Spencer was impatient. He repeated what he’d said then added, “We’ve got to move.”

“Nobody can climb a rope a hundred feet in the air.”

“I can.”

“Well, sir, you’re civilian, aren’t you?”

Sachs said, “He’s deputized.”

Though there was no procedure for conferring that status in the NYPD handbook, the fire department chief either didn’t know this or decided if there was any time to circumvent procedure it was now.

She continued, “Get him what he needs.”

“Give me oxygen, a mask and two Sterlings. And gloves with wrist straps, and boots. Size thirteen if you have them.”

The radio clattered. “Chief, water’s not doing shit. It’s flowing down the stairs on both sides; the fire’s in the core. We can’t reach it.”

“Roger.” Then to Spencer, “Okay, we’ll get what you need.” He ordered two of his men to do so.

Spencer said, “Can you call him?”

Sachs did and handed over the phone, on speaker.

“Yes?” Coughing, hard breathing.

“Officer, this is Lyle Spencer. We’re going to fire a tie line to you, then you’re going to drag a climbing rope up. What can you secure it to?”

“There’s a...” Fierce coughing. “A radiator under the window.”

“Good. I’ll get back to you.” He handed the phone to Sachs.

A flash of white on the street as a large van turned the corner. It was Lincoln Rhyme’s Sprinter — his disabled-accessible vehicle. It parked and a side door opened and an elevator lowered Rhyme and his chair to the sidewalk. He rolled away from the van, which curled its accessory up. Thom drove off to find a parking space out of the way of the official vehicles.

Rhyme approached. The chief nodded.

He said to Sachs, “When I heard, I had to come. How is he?”

Sachs briefed him, and together the somber couple watched Spencer get ready for the climb.

The security man said, “Call Ron. Speaker.”

She did.

“It’s Lyle, Officer. Stand back from the window. Grab the yellow projectile that’s coming up. Then pull up the climbing line.”

Spencer pulled his suit jacket and tie off and dumped them on the ground, kicked his shoes off and pulled on the boots, then gloves. As he was fitted with an oxygen tank, he nodded to a firewoman who held the line gun in a ladder basket about forty feet in the air. The first shot missed by a yard or so. She compensated and the second zipped through the empty window.

Immediately the thin yellow line began snaking through the window, taking with it the much thicker climbing rope.

Spencer borrowed a knife and cut a length of rope from another coil. About ten feet. He tied this around his chest, letting the tail dangle. He called toward Sachs’s phone, still open. “How you doing, Officer?”

“Hanging in there.”

The coughing was fiercer.

“What I need you to do is tie the thicker rope to the radiator.”

She heard Pulaski say, “Look, mister, you’re not going to try to—”

“Quit talking, son. Save that air. See you in a minute. Oh, and by the way, when you tie the rope to the radiator, keep in mind: really fucking tight.”

50

Lyle Spencer ran up the ladder to the roof of the one-story building.

There, holding the climbing line, he looked up.

The rope rose straight to the twelve-inch ledge outside Pulaski’s window. He shook it, like a battle rope, and the sine curve headed upward, dissipating about forty feet up.

Get to it, sailor.

Spencer leapt into the air, two feet or so, and gripped the rope. He did a pull-up, then lifted his legs and gripped the rope between the top of his left foot and bottom of his right — the classic S-hook climbing technique.

He then straightened his legs and rose a yard or so up the rope.

Lift... grip... straighten.

Only one hundred feet to go.

Well, one hundred and change.

Breathe. Exhale.

Now, only ninety.

And change.

Lift... grip... straighten.

Already his arms were feeling sore but no muscle was screaming.

“Evacuate, evacuate, evacuate,” the chief called over a loudspeaker.

At this the trucks blared their intersection horns three times, which was the universal signal to get the hell out. Always done, in addition to the transmission, in case of a radio malfunction or a particularly loud conflagration.

Well, guess that meant his opinion was that the building was about to come down.

Nothing to do about it now, except climb.

Lift... grip... straighten.

Eighty feet wasn’t so far. Less than a third of the length of a football field.

Seventy feet.

Sixty feet.

Have to say, Trudes, it is pretty damn far.

Fifty.

Jesus, Lord, the hurt.

Lift... grip... straighten.

“I don’t know, Dad.” The girl’s voice is uneasy.

“Come on, hons, you can do it,” Spencer says to her.

They’re fifty feet off the ground, he and twelve-year-old Trudie, blond and slim and ponytailed. They are rising at about the same pace upward.

“I don’t know,” she gasps.

“One step, one grip at a time,” he encourages.

“I got it,” the girl says and lunges for another rock above her head.

And she falls, gasping and calling out.

The spotters, who have her well under control, slow her descent and she does a rather stately abseil to the floor, which is covered in green padding.

“You good?” he calls, looking down.

“I’m good.”

Up ten more feet and Spencer rings the sixty-foot bell and descends. The soft surface always struck him as pointless since if you hit anything except marshmallow at more than thirty miles an hour, you can say goodbye to a lot of portions of your body.

“Want to head home?” he asks his daughter.

“No, kinda want to try it again.”

That’s my girl, he thinks, but doesn’t dare say. Instead, he nods to the wall. “Beauty before brains.”

Lift... grip... straighten.

Spencer looked up at the twelfth-floor ledge.

How far?

Thirty-five feet.

Lift... grip... straighten.

Twenty-five.

His record in the SEALs was one hundred and fifty feet. But, okay, that was a few years ago.

Gasping. How much more could his arm muscles — and his back — take?

Fifteen.

He looked up.

Now, ten feet.

Lift... grip... straighten.

Now six, five, three.

Finally he was at the ledge.

“Hey,” he shouted.

Jesus, was the officer passed out? That would be a high-magnitude complication.

“Hey!”

Ron Pulaski’s face appeared in the window. Eyes streaming, he was coughing. His face was a mask of resignation, fear and bewilderment.

Gasping, breathing hard. “Listen. I’m going to throw this rope to you. I need you to catch it. So dust off those outfield skills. All right?”

“Sure.”

Spencer took the tail of the rope tied around his chest. His feet were twisted around the climbing rope into a good S-shaped pinch and his left hand gripped it hard.

“I’m going to need you to pull me over the sill. Pull like a son of a bitch. Get on your back under the window, bend your legs and then straighten them. I’ll help with the main rope.”

“Maybe I should tie it around me.”

Spencer nearly laughed. “You don’t want to do that, son. Here it comes.”

“I’m ready.”

Spencer stared at his hand, inches in front of him and thought, Come on, Mr. Right, do your stuff! Which was a softball field joke between Trudie and himself.

Releasing his grip with his right, he took the chest rope and tossed as hard as he could into the window.

“Got it!”

“How’s that, Trudes?”

“Knew you could do it, Dad.”

“Pull!”

“Watch out for the broken glass on the window frame,” Ron called.

Least of my worries.

The kid might have been skinny but he was strong. Soon Spencer could grip the windowsill with his gloved hands.

“Again.”

Summiting was the tensest moment of a climb.

Spencer tugged himself upward as Ron pulled fiercely.

Then he was tumbling on top of the officer.

“We’ve only got minutes. We need to move.”

He turned on the oxygen and slapped the mask on Pulaski’s face. The officer inhaled deeply and his color returned. After thirty seconds, Pulaski handed it back and Spencer too inhaled the sweet nothing.

He mounted the gray and red Sterling FCX around Pulaski’s waist, then showed him how the lever worked to release tension on the rope and lower himself slowly.

“You cool with it?” The smoke was getting worse even in the time Spencer had been here. Sparks and heat flowed from the stairwell.

He nodded.

Spencer put on the mask and inhaled deeply, blinked away the tears from the smoke. He saw a crowbar on the floor and he used it to crush the rest of the broken glass on the bottom of the frame. He then clamped the hook of the FCX to the radiator and helped Pulaski into the window, and, gripping the man’s belt tightly, eased him around so that the front of his body was facing the building. “I’ve got you. Okay...” He saw that the device was properly rigged. And let go of the belt. “You’re free. Easy with the lever. Down you go.”

“Hey, look, Lyle... I don’t know what to say. I—”

“Later. Now get the hell out of here.”

51

I park the glistening black Audi A6 at the curb and climb out, cautious. Looking around.

Police.

Fire.

Responding to what I’m responsible for.

The conflagration within the Sandleman Building.

It’s not burning as fast as I’d hoped but it’s fast enough. Flames are crawling up the core and I’m sure no one will get to Dev Swensen’s shop in time to save anything incriminating against me.

But I’m not here because of the building.

I have another mission.

To take some photographs.

I need a set of keys. Many people are sooooo careless, and leave them in glove compartments, in cup holders, tucked above sun visors.

Or, in this instance, in the ignition itself.

Shame on you, driver. What’s the good of locks if you leave the keys within the fox’s grasp.

Of course, he’s not a complete fool. He’s kept the engine running for the air-conditioning and taken a second set with him to lock the door.

I look up and down the street.

I’m invisible. Who wouldn’t be when there’s a burning high-rise and a thousand flashing lights? Crouching, I open the door with the jiggler. I pluck the keys out and I take dozens of pictures from all angles. People think you make a wax impression of a key — they’ve seen that on TV. In fact, that works only for the most rudimentary skeleton keys. For pin and tumbler, you need high megapixel pictures.

To augment my efforts, I take a sixty-second video.

I have enough.

I slide them back into the ignition, start the engine, lock the door with the button inside and ease it shut.

In sixty seconds I’ve fired up the Audi and am headed away from the excitement. As much as I’d love to watch the building come down, I have some pressing errands.

Ron Pulaski was safely down, being given oxygen and water.

But there was no sign of Lyle Spencer, still on the twelfth floor. The fire was rising and the smoke was growing black and thicker.

“What’s he doing?” Rhyme muttered.

Sachs said, “Jesus. The flames’ll be at his floor any time now.”

Two minutes passed.

Three.

Five.

“Call him.”

As she lifted her phone, it hummed with an incoming call. “It’s him.” She put it on speaker. “Lyle. Are you all right?”

“I broke through the door Ron was trying to get into.” He paused, presumably for oxygen. “The lock shop — it’s burning. Only had time to scoop up some dust and dirt from in front of a workstation. Got it in a bag. I’ll pitch it down.”

“Get out, Lyle,” Rhyme said. “The flames’re one floor below you.”

Spencer disconnected without responding that he’d heard.

Rhyme saw him appear in the window and toss a weighted paper bag out. It sailed to the street and landed near one of the firemen who picked it up and, seeing Sachs wave, brought it to them.

She put it in an evidence bag. She noted the fireman’s name, Rhyme saw, but tucked the bag away; they’d do chain-of-custody later.

Sachs said, “Why isn’t he coming down? Is he still looking for something?”

Is he still alive?

They stared at the window.

Come on, Lyle.

Inside the building, the ninth or tenth floor collapsed with a mammoth roar, firing smoke and embers from windows. The building groaned.

It was then that Spencer appeared in the window. He seemed to be breathing into the mask deeply, filling his lungs. Then, curiously, he lifted his head and was gazing out over the city, like a tourist on the Empire State Building’s observation platform. His body language was serene.

Spencer looked down at the assembly of fire trucks.

Rhyme said, “Send him a text. We need him down now. And repeat ‘Need.’”

Sachs looked at her husband and then sent the message.

They could see him fish his phone from his pocket and look at it for a long moment. Then he slid it back.

Again studying the cityscape.

And down at the roof of the one-story building a hundred feet below.

Another floor collapsed. The building seemed to rock.

At last Spencer bent down and hooked the escape rig to something inside the hallway. He doffed the mask and tank — to lose the weight for the journey downward, Rhyme supposed — and then turned and scooted himself over the sill then ledge.

While Ron Pulaski had descended in a jerking fashion, Lyle Spencer returned to earth with balletic elegance, as casually as another man might cross the street, assured by a radiant green light that his passage was safe.

52

“Well, it’s Lincoln Rhyme.”

Turning the chair, he found himself looking at two men approaching. They appeared troubled, but Rhyme’s impression was that they were affecting that expression artificially.

Maybe they thought he was here in an official capacity.

The speaker was big, tanned Richard Beaufort. Rhyme now realized he looked like some star he’d seen on a TV show — about police, as a matter of fact. Also present was Abe Potter, the mayor’s aide, a slim, balding man with dark tufts of straight hair above each ear. He resembled no one memorable.

Sachs glared toward them, but Rhyme said, “It’s okay,” and drove to meet them.

“Detective Beaufort... Congratulations.”

“On...?” The officer frowned.

“Your assignment to the mayor’s office security. I assume it’s new. You said you were working follow-up on the Buryak case just the other day, out of the One One Two House.” Rhyme remembered Sachs told him Beaufort had been transferred some time ago.

“Well, I have several assignments.” He rubbed his fingers together, a sign of stress probably. Once again Rhyme thought of Sachs’s edginess, though in her case it didn’t arise because she lied.

“I remember, from my days on the force, it was always a challenge. All that juggling.”

Potter wasn’t a physical force but his voice was firm. “Mr. Rhyme, it was made clear to you that you can’t work on any case for the NYPD.”

Nice touch, the “Mr.,” reminding that Rhyme was a civilian. At least Willis had captained him.

He cast a querying look toward the two men.

“There’s been an arrest in the Gregorios murder.”

The killing in Queens.

“A homeless man?”

“That’s right. And this was displayed on the brag board at the press conference.” Potter looked at Beaufort, who brandished his phone.

The photo depicted a table and a whiteboard, on which were a mug shot of the homeless suspect, looking dazed, and pictures of a bloody wallet, a filleting knife, also crimson, and of a bottle of cherry-flavored Miracle Sav. Beneath the bottle of the gut-destroying “medicine” was a printout of Rhyme’s email to Detectives Kelly and Wilson.

Rhyme had never approved of brass’s showing off at press conferences: the stacks of drugs, the bags of money, the pictures of SWAT apprehending the suspect, the evidence. It was arrogant and unseemly. It also gave away techniques. Bad guys owned TVs too.

Beaufort muttered, “Dep Com Willis and the mayor feel this is a violation of the prohibition you are well aware of. It was highly embarrassing. And it was an insult to the chain of command. Not taking them seriously.”

Rhyme looked up at Potter and asked, “Did the mayor make a statement condemning my involvement in the Gregorios case?”

“Well, he did, yes.”

“What’s his opponent’s name, again, in the race for governor?”

Potter regarded Beaufort but finally answered, “Edward Roland.”

That’s right, the billionaire.

“Who, in turn, issued a statement attacking the mayor.”

“I don’t know what your point is here, Mr. Rhyme.”

He asked, “Do either of you play chess?”

They exchanged glances once more. Frowning, Beaufort asked, “I’m sorry?”

“Never mind.” Rhyme noted Sachs was looking at him. He gave her a brief it’s-okay nod. “So the mayor’s press comment about me was based on my email on the brag board.”

“That’s right,” Potter said, a bit imperiously, Rhyme thought. “You didn’t think it’d make the news, did you?”

“And he sent you here to... arrest me?”

“At this point, a public statement of contrition.”

“Mea culpa and I promise I won’t do it again.”

“We need to make an example of flouting the rules.”

Rhyme looked over Beaufort’s photo once more. He was studying the brag board carefully.

When it appeared that the two men realized his interest was bordering on analytical, Beaufort tucked the mobile away.

Rhyme was thinking there were a few things he wanted to mention to Detectives Tye Kelly and Crystal Wilson, the shields from the 112, about the collar. But the pair in front of him were the last people on earth to bring the topic up with.

“Lincoln,” Beaufort said, “you don’t seem to appreciate the trouble you’re in.”

“Time stamp,” was the criminalist’s response.

“What?” Potter asked.

“You saw the date of the email, but not the time. Detective Kelly has the original. If you’d thought to look at it, you’d see that that email was sent several hours before the fiat — which by the way means a legal and definitive declaration. And I’m not sure that’s what the mayor and the commissioner issued. But that’d be a matter for a different day.”

“Time stamp.” Potter’s face tightened and he would undoubtedly be thinking of the conversation he would be having with the mayor, who would likely blame his aide and Beaufort for not checking something as simple as the timing of Rhyme’s memo.

Beaufort tried, “Well, what are you doing here now?”

“I’m here—”

A voice boomed. “He’s here to see me.”

The three men turned to Commanding Officer Brett Evans. The tall, distinguished man, with a military bearing, nodded a greeting to Rhyme, then turned and looked coolly at the other men. “I was going to meet Lincoln and his wife downtown for lunch. Then this call came in.” He looked at the flaming building. “Their colleague was in danger. They both came down here to see about him. I did too.”

Evans continued, “I’m hooking Lincoln up with my friends at New Jersey State Police. The OFS. They’re interested in hiring him.” Evans added some heft to the word as he said, “Consulting.”

Potter looked at Beaufort.

Without a word, the two men returned to their car, Potter dropping into the driver’s seat. They didn’t depart, though. They’d be watching to make sure Rhyme didn’t prowl the scene.

Rhyme nodded his appreciation to Evans, who grinned. “How’d I do?”

“Oscar quality.”

“How’s Ron Pulaski?”

“He’ll be fine. Whittaker’s security man saved him.”

“Really? No one was hurt?”

“No.”

The two men watched several more floors collapse in explosions of dancing embers and shrouds of orange flame. Evans asked, “The Locksmith was behind this?”

“I’m sure.”

“I do have some names, Lincoln. New Jersey State Police.”

“Thanks, Brett. I will think about it.”

“Will you really?” Evans kept a stone face for a moment. Then laughed.

“But I appreciate it.”

The man then grew serious. “Just be careful.”

Rhyme glanced toward Beaufort and Potter. “I will.”

“Well, them, yes. But that’s not what I mean. I heard that Buryak isn’t happy he was brought to trial and one of the people he’s the least happy with is you. Some blogger was saying that there was a conspiracy to get him arrested and convicted. And you might be involved.”

Now Rhyme was the one who smiled. “Lon told me about that. Crazy. But I’m sure I’m well into Buryak’s rearview mirror by now.”

53

Forty minutes ago Aaron Douglass had watched Lincoln Rhyme, accompanied by a trim, athletic man in a nice shirt and slacks and tie leave the town house. They got into a Sprinter, which featured a wheelchair-accessible ramp, and pulled away from the curb.

Once again driving his gray Cadillac, Douglass had put the sleek car into gear and followed. The vehicles made their way south — eventually arriving here, the site of a building fire.

He had no idea what was going on but he did note with pleasure that someone else was present too — the person he was actually most interested in seeing and had hoped to catch: Amelia Sachs.

Parking on a side street, he’d called his “masseur,” broad-chested Arnie Cavall. “Need you. Now. With the van.” And gave the address.

Douglass had joined a small crowd, where he asked what was going on.

A man said, “Heard it was that serial killer, the Locksmith. He tried to kill somebody in the building.”

Ah, the man who could break into any place, the man Amelia Sachs was pursuing when she and Rhyme were not trying to nail Viktor Buryak. He asked, “Did they catch him?”

A toothy middle-aged woman in a large hat muttered, “They’ll never catch him. He works for the police.”

“You’re crazy.” This was from somebody else in the crowd.

“I heard that online,” the woman countered angrily. “It’s a trusted source!”

Douglass left them to have it out — or not — and stepped to a vantage point where he could see both Rhyme and Sachs. They were near an FDNY command post. There was a cluster of firefighters and police — some uniforms and some detectives. He then circled the scene, spotting her distinctive car parked not far away, on a side street. Douglass watched Rhyme have a conversation with two men in suits, who left when a third man showed up. Finally Rhyme returned to Amelia and the mountain climber — the man who’d accompanied her from Whittaker Tower when he and Arnie were at the maple-flavored tempeh burger food truck.

The big man had just rescued someone from the building.

A spectacular feat.

The man was massaging his shoulder and taking occasional whiffs of oxygen.

Douglass noted with interest that Rhyme’s wheelchair had climbed right over thick fire department hoses. It was quite a piece of machinery.

He texted Arnie.

The reply:

He walked slowly around the neighborhood and side streets, studying the layout. He thought, Yeah, it could work.

Soon Arnie pulled up to the intersection Douglass had sent him. He was in a battered Econoline van. He parked and nodded.

Douglass looked over the beat-up vehicle, perfect for transporting meth or disposing bodies or delivering flowers. Whatever it was ordinarily used for, the important thing is that it was nondescript and looked like a thousand others on the streets of the city — just the sort of vehicle to use when you ran down a policewoman.

And, as Arnie had recommended, it was nondescript white.

“Good,” Douglass said, nodding at the wheels.

“I figured this’d be best.” The small, wiry man looked over at the rescue workers, all the cars and trucks, the millions of lights.

He continued, “That’s them. The ones we saw when we was at the food truck. She’s hot.”

Echoing Viktor Buryak’s more elegant observation about the policewoman.

“The fuck’s that got to do with anything?”

“Yeah, but,” Arnie said, going nowhere after that.

Douglass pointed. “There’s her car. We’ll wait until they head back to it and the Sprinter. That’s Rhyme’s. I need them together.”

“Can he drive?”

“No. The guy with him. He’s his aide or something.”

“Does it have a ramp?”

“Let’s focus, here, Arnie.”

“Sure. When they’re headed back to the car and the van.”

Douglass was now pointing to the middle of the block. “That’s a good spot. When she’s right about there.”

“By the containers and trash.”

“That’s right.” He thought for a moment. “How fast should you go to hurt somebody bad but not kill them?”

Arnie considered this.

“I’d say forty.”

“Too fast. Thirty.”

Amelia Sachs looked once more at the ropes dangling from the rappel window, now filled with flames. First one cord then the other fell to the roof of the building before, their ends burning.

“Don’t know I could have done that, Rhyme.”

Her essential fear was claustrophobia and she had no particular concern about heights, other than the usual. But still.

The criminalist said nothing but his eyes too strayed to the window.

“What’d they say?” she asked.

“Beaufort and Potter? Wanted a public apology because I wrote a memo for the Gregorios case.”

“Seriously?” Her lips tightened in disgust.

“It’s gone away. But they’re persistent. Oh, and Brett Evans wants me to move to Trenton or Newark. Or some such. It’s a curious time, Sachs...” His voice lowered. “So, Kitt’s the one?” he asked.

She nodded. “All the bad blood within the family, I told you — hating his father’s brand of journalism. Always an activist, they said. Did Izzy drop off the evidence at your place?”

“Mel divided it in half, and she went on to Queens. He’s working on it now.”

“I’ll get back there,” she said and turned, heading for her car.

Rhyme accompanied her, wheeling at her pace. Her Torino was parked at the end of the block.

As there was no traffic, they remained in the middle of the street; Manhattan sidewalks were difficult for Rhyme’s chair. They were narrow, cluttered with refuse bins and frequently cracked and uneven.

“You seem doubtful that Kitt’s doing it to make a political statement.”

“That’s part of it in a way. But you ask me, it’s something else, deeper, between father and son. Remember what he wrote? ‘Reckoning’?”

After a moment, she gave a laugh. He looked her way.

“His cousin or her fiancé said Kitt’s problem was he dabbled, jumped from job to job. Looks like he finally found the one thing he’s good at. Lock picking and home invasion. He’s not bad at arson either.”

They were going west, against traffic, so there was no need to worry about approaching vehicles behind them. Still, Amelia Sachs had been a street cop, patrolling places like the Deuce — West 42nd Street — before it became the Disneyland that it was today. And so situational awareness ranked high among her innate survival skills. She glanced about frequently, eyes constantly moving. Instinct.

Now, they came to an intersection and she looked down a side street.

And froze.

“What is it?”

“Block away, a gray Cadillac.”

She reminded Rhyme about the possible surveillance at the Carrie Noelle scene.

“It wasn’t here an hour ago. And this isn’t a new-Cadillac kind of street.”

“No.”

They heard a sound behind them, a vehicle. A battered white van started their way.

Rhyme asked, “At Carrie’s? You make the driver?”

“Never got a good look. Male. Hat, maybe. That’s it.” She unbuttoned her jacket, so her Glock was exposed. She scanned both sides of the street, over and between the cars that lined the curb. “Something feels wrong here. Rhyme, move to the curb.”

He did.

Sachs stepped into the middle of the cobblestoned street, crouching slightly, like a soldier looking for a sniper nest or a hidey-hole from which an attacker might emerge.

54

Lincoln Rhyme, his chair banked against the curb, between two cars, watched Amelia Sachs, moving slowly toward the entrance to a narrow alley.

But apparently she saw no sign of any threat from there or any of the windows facing the street.

Then Rhyme focused on the approaching white Econoline.

Was that the threat?

“Sachs! The van!”

She turned as it grew closer. Her hand started to draw her Glock.

Just then the vehicle eased to a stop. The doors opened and two men got out. One was large, tall, in his forties. He wore a black beret. The Caddie driver? Rhyme wondered. She’d mentioned a hat.

The other was smaller — age impossible to tell.

“Detective Sachs, Captain Rhyme,” the taller one said. He stepped forward. Sachs kept her hand gripping her weapon.

They approached, both keeping their hands visible. In his right he was displaying something. What was it? A wallet?

No, a badge holder, with an ID on one side and an NYPD gold shield on the other. “I’m Aaron Douglass, Organized Crime squad.”

He stopped but Sachs gestured them forward. Rhyme joined them too.

They looked closely at the ID, which seemed legit. Then they simultaneously took in the smaller man.

Douglass continued, “And this is Arnie Cavall. He’s a CI, works for me some.”

“Hey,” Arnie said in a cheerful voice. “How ya doing?” He was speaking to Sachs, ignoring Rhyme.

Douglass said, with some awe in his voice, “Captain Rhyme, a real honor to meet you, sir. And Detective Sachs.”

She said, “You’ve been tailing me. From that scene on Ninety-Seventh Street.”

“That’s right, I have.”

Rhyme muttered, “What the hell’s this all about?”

“We need to shoot a movie.”

Sachs called Lon Sellitto, who apparently called somebody else. Maybe another call was involved.

A moment later she got a text with Douglass’s picture and the confirmation that the detective, assigned to NYPD Organized Crime, had been embedded for six months within Viktor Buryak’s organization. The mobster knew he was NYPD but believed he’d caught himself a crooked cop, having no idea he was undercover.

“Slowly I’ve been getting Buryak to trust me. I run part of his information-gathering operation. A small one. But everything I give him, I tone it down or change the details, so nobody innocent gets hurt. He has me do some enforcement work, like this. But that I fuck with too so there’re no injuries.”

“You said, ‘enforcement work, like this,’” Rhyme said. “Explain.”

It seemed that Buryak was convinced that Rhyme, with Sachs’s help, was out to get him because he’d been embarrassed in court. The mobster couldn’t be tried again for the death of Leon Murphy, but believed Rhyme was on a mission to nail him for some other case or even frame him. Apparently Buryak hadn’t heard, or didn’t buy, the conspiracy blogger Verus’s theory that both he and Rhyme were working for the Hidden to sow chaos in the streets.

Rhyme scoffed. “I don’t have any time for crap like that. And even if I did, I’d need a whole team to get something on him. He’s the slipperiest fish I’ve ever seen.”

Douglass exhaled a sigh. “I know that. Everybody knows that. But Buryak suffers from a serious case of paranoia. He doesn’t think in specifics. All he knows is that one of the best forensic cops in the world has decided to bring him down and I’m supposed to discourage that. Make sure you’re too scared or upset to pursue him anymore.” He glanced at Sachs. “By running you over. Not killing you. He doesn’t want that to happen. Just hurt you bad and scare the hell out of you both.”

Rhyme believed he saw his wife smile slightly at this.

Amelia Sachs did not scare particularly easily.

She asked, “What do you mean by ‘movie’?”

Buryak, the undercover cop explained, wanted a video of the “accident.”

“He doesn’t trust you?”

Douglass snickered. “I think it’s more he wouldn’t mind seeing you get wiped out — for his own personal enjoyment. He’s pretty pissed off that you’ve got this V for Vendetta action going on.”

Rhyme said, “We’ve got work at home.” They had the evidence from Kitt Whittaker’s apartment and the trace that Lyle Spencer had just risked his life to collect.

She said, “All right, let’s get it over with. What d’you have in mind?”

Douglass’s plan was that he was going to make a phone video as if he were surreptitiously spying on her. He would then shift the camera to the van speeding down the street. She’d stand in a doorway nearby and the van would slam into the containers where Sachs had been standing. She would then lie down on the sidewalk, as if she were unconscious and hurt.

“Won’t he be expecting a story on the news?” Sachs asked.

“If somebody took a shot at you, maybe. But just a traffic accident, no fatalities? Not really newsworthy. Anyway, you have a better plan?”

Sachs looked up and down the street, then said, “Okay, cameraman. Where do you want me?”

“Friends: Thomas Jefferson wrote, ‘What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two.’

“The Hidden will not win!

“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.”

55

One take.

That’s all they had time for.

As Sachs, Rhyme and now a curious Thom waited across the street, Douglass called his stunt driver, Arnie, who had apparently fallen madly in love with the leading lady in the space of a mere ten minutes.

While the cop manned the phone’s camera, Arnie got the van up to about thirty-five or so and careened into the construction waste bins, scattering wood, cardboard, metal scraps and coffee cups and fast-food wrappers everywhere. He parked. Sachs and Douglass walked to the mess and she lay down on the sidewalk. Douglass got some footage of her, apparently unconscious.

A woman’s voice from a window, “Are you all right? You need some help?”

Sachs rose and called up, “No we’re all good, thanks. We’re shooting an independent film.”

The elderly woman said, “You have a permit?”

Douglass said, “It’s on file.”

“I don’t see any crew.”

“That’s why it’s an independent,” he replied.

“The mayor has a film office. I know. I read about it.”

“That’s who we have the permit from.”

She continued watching for a moment. “You’re going to clean that up, aren’t you?”

“Sure, we will.” Douglass then said to Arnie, “Take care of that.”

The slight man grimaced but got to work.

The woman turned back into her apartment and shut the window.

Douglass looked at the video. “Good job. Maybe you could be a stuntwoman.”

Sachs grunted. Rhyme could tell she felt faintly ridiculous, but he couldn’t fault the undercover cop’s plan. An alternative might have Buryak actually ordering a hit on Sachs or himself.

Rhyme said, “The Murphy case was the best chance we had to get him, and we saw how that turned out. Do you have anything at all on him?”

“Zip. He’s the most careful OC boss I’ve ever investigated. Nothing’s committed to paper or computer or phone. He doesn’t even give direct orders when he’s alone with his crew. He hints, he suggests. He has layers of people insulating him. He assumes everybody’s bugged, even me, and I’ve gotten about as close as anybody can. Metal detectors outside his office. Scramblers, encryption.”

Rhyme said, “Well, his business is selling information and data. If he knows how to mine it, he knows how to keep it from being mined.”

Sachs waved to the trash. “But here — Buryak ordered assault with a deadly weapon. Conspiracy. Even if you didn’t intend it to happen, Buryak did. And you know conspiracy. It’s a wide net.”

It was Rhyme who spoke. “Ah, Sachs, but I’ll bet Buryak didn’t actually tell Detective Douglass to attack you, did he?”

“Exactly. Didn’t say a single word that can be traced. The worse he said was he wanted a ‘masseur.’”

“Euphemism,” Sachs said, shaking her head.

Rhyme thought for a moment then said to Douglass, “You’re after Buryak... You following the Red Hook drops?”

“No, what’s that?”

“Buryak’s name came up. Remember, Sachs?”

She nodded. “When we were working the Murphy case, a CI mentioned him. Buryak. Something about shipments of product at the Red Hook piers next few weeks. It wasn’t part of the homicide so we just sent it to Narcotics.”

Rhyme said, “Couple hundred kilos.”

Sachs corrected, “Bigger, I remember.”

Douglass shook his head. “Well, Buryak never touches product himself. You’ll never catch him buying or selling anything other than information. But maybe we’ll catch somebody in the net who’ll dime him out.” He gave a wry smile. “I’ve spent six months of my life trying to roll up Buryak and I’ve got nothing. Then this tip comes out of left field and maybe that’s how he’s going to get collared. Hell of a line of work we’re in, don’t you think? Hell of a line.”

56

Four people were in on the conversation.

Lincoln Rhyme was supposedly off the case, yes, but since those on the call were only Sachs, Averell Whittaker and his niece, he’d decided to take the chance of an appearance, though he let Sachs handle the lead.

She explained about their discovery that Kitt was the Locksmith.

The gasp was from Averell Whittaker. “No.”

Joanna Whittaker said, “That’s not possible.”

Sachs explained about the evidence she’d found in his apartment — the shoes, the victims’ underwear, picking tools, the Daily Heralds.

“It can’t be...” His voice faded.

Then Joanna was whispering, “Jesus. I just realized something.”

Her uncle was saying, “What is it, Jo?”

“The newspapers. Page three, February seventeenth. Aunt Mary died March second, two thousand seventeen.”

Rhyme said, “It’s a code. Damn it. Missed it completely. Page three represents the third month, March. The February issue? February’s the second month, so we get the number two. And the date, the seventeenth, is the year. Three/two/seventeen.”

Sachs said, “We were focusing on the content. It had nothing to do with the Apollos or Russian hacks or anything else on the page.”

“Oh my God...” Averell Whittaker cleared his throat. “I didn’t mention this, but the reason Kitt walked out of my life, our lives. It’s my fault—”

“Uncle—”

“No, it is! I was busy buying that damn TV station and wasn’t at Mary’s bedside when she passed.”

Silence between uncle and niece. Finally Joanna said, “She wasn’t alone. Kitt was there. And — how could you know? The doctors themselves couldn’t say for sure how long she had.”

“I... I feel that it’s my fault. The way I treated him. The neglect...” Did the man choke a sob? Rhyme could only imagine the shock of a father learning his son was a felon and potentially a murderer.

“Averell...” Joanna coddled. “Don’t think that way. Nobody forced him to go off the grid, to do the things he’s done.”

Rhyme glanced Sachs’s way, and the look meant that they needed to move things along.

She said, “We’re pretty sure he’s living out of a workshop in the city. Do you have an idea where he might have some place like that?”

Silence again. Joanna spoke. “No, like we said, we’ve been wholly out of touch... seems like forever. Uncle Averell?”

The man was struggling to speak. “No, nothing.”

“Is your fiancé there?” Sachs asked Joanna.

“No, he’s at work, but I’ll call him. I’ll do it now.” There was a pause as she made another call on a different phone and broke the news to Kemp. A moment of silence. “I know, I know... but they’re sure. They found evidence and... you know how he’s been...” Her voice faded as if she didn’t want to be too hard on her cousin in front of his father. She asked about a workshop or someplace else he might be staying. Another pause. “Did he say where? Anything more?... All right, honey. I’ll see you later.” She came back on the line with Sachs and Rhyme. “Martin works in real estate. Late last year Kitt asked him about subletting an artist’s loft or workshop. What neighborhoods would be the most out of the way? He said he didn’t want distractions.”

“Why did he want it?” Rhyme whispered, and Sachs repeated the question.

A moment later, Joanna said, “Kitt didn’t say.”

“What did Martin tell him?” Sachs asked.

“He recommended Long Island City, Spanish Harlem, the South Bronx. But he never heard back from Kitt about what he decided on.”

Sachs said, “Please keep this to yourself for the time being. We don’t want to tip our hand. We want to find him and bring him into custody safely.”

“Thank you for that,” Joanna said.

“Ah, Kitt,” Whittaker whispered. They ended the call.

“So,” Rhyme said, offering an exasperated sigh, “our perp, he’s hiding out somewhere in an area that’s about sixty square miles. What could the problem possibly be?”

The gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer is a remarkable merger of two devices essential to forensic scientists.

Lincoln Rhyme had always insisted on having one in the lab, though the units are quite pricey. They’re used to find out what an unknown sample of evidence might be. Chromatography, which was invented in Russia in the early 1900s, has been described as a horse race. An unknown sample is vaporized into a gas, which then begins a journey through a column filled with a liquid or a gel. Different substances within the sample move at different speeds through the column. The result is a graph of the materials. Each one is then analyzed in the companion device, the mass spectrometer, which identifies them.

In the sterile portion of the lab Mel Cooper and Amelia Sachs were using the GC/MS to unlock the secrets of the evidence she’d collected from Kitt Whittaker’s apartment and the site of the Sandleman Building fire that had nearly been Ron Pulaski’s funeral pyre.

As they waited for the results, Cooper confirmed that the running shoe in Kitt’s closet was the one he’d worn in the first two apartment invasions and the Bechtel Building, replaced now by smooth-soled shoes, which held less trace — as Rhyme had speculated he’d done.

Outside, Lyle Spencer and Rhyme watched. The criminalist hoped some unique geographic trace would adhere to something Sachs had bagged and tagged and this would lead them to the man’s workshop. Even if they could narrow down only a five- or six-block area, the canvassers, armed with pictures of Kitt Whittaker, could then go to work.

Spencer had pulled a shoulder muscle in the climb — that remarkable ascent — and had stripped to a T-shirt as he applied an ice pack Thom had fixed up for him. He was perhaps the most muscular man Rhyme had ever seen. On one biceps was a tattoo of an anchor; on the other were the initials T.S. in Old English type.

Spencer coughed yet again. The smoke was still embedded in his lungs.

“From The Towering Inferno,” Cooper called.

Another popular cultural reference, Rhyme deduced. He was referring to the evidence that Spencer had lifted from the floor, just before his descent to the ground.

“We’ve got ammonia, urea nitrogen, phosphate, soluble potash.”

“Ah,” Rhyme said, “fertilizer. I didn’t know what to make of the boron, copper and iron from the Bechtel Building. Now, combined with these, it’s fertilizer.” He asked Spencer, “Your arm okay to write the notations on the board?”

“Sure.” He did so, then stepped back and reviewed the entries. “Bricks in a wall.”

Rhyme’s very expression. It meant small bits of evidentiary discoveries, while not dispositive in themselves, could be combined into a formidable case for the prosecution. The more bricks the better, even if one duplicated another. Redundancy was good. Rhyme knew all too well that defense attorneys always managed to cast doubts on some of the evidence.

What you describe is possible.

No further questions...

Rhyme said, “Any hits on the accelerant he used?”

Cooper ran some of the ash Sachs had collected near the point of ignition. Shortly the results were displayed on one of the high-def monitors.

Rhyme studied the results. “Hell. I know the brand. He could’ve bought it from any one of a hundred stations in the city. Useless.”

There was nothing else from the Inferno building. Cooper and Sachs were now looking at trace she had found in Kitt’s apartment.

Reading from the computer analyzer, Cooper said, “Have water. In addition to H2O, there’s sodium, chloride, magnesium, sulfate and calcium.”

Sachs took the sample and peered at it through the other staple of any forensic lab: the compound microscope. Compared to the chromatograph, this instrument was simplicity itself. you looked through lenses and something small became big.

She pushed a button and the image she was seeing went up on the screen for Rhyme and Spencer to view as well.

Rhyme called, “I recognize this. Algae bloom. So, seawater.”

Cooper said, “And one more thing: additional water, in which are suspended aluminum oxide, hydrotreated light petroleum distillates, glycol, white mineral oil and methyl-four-isothiazoline.”

Spencer looked toward Rhyme, expecting a repeat display of his knowledge.

“Don’t know it, but we’ve got a special database we use.”

Spencer seemed impressed. “Interesting.”

Rhyme turned to Cooper, and called, “Google.”

Spencer and Sachs both laughed.

No more than ten seconds later they had the answer: it was most likely an expensive polish used to protect wood from the elements. It was particularly popular with collectors of wood-sided cars and boats.

Spencer wrote this up on the chart.

The two in the sterile portion of the room prepared more samples.

Rhyme was looking at the photographs Sachs had taken at Kitt Whittaker’s apartment. “That stain. In the front entryway. Do you see it? You get samples from the rug there, Sachs?”

She flipped through the clear glassine envelopes. “Here, yes.” She held one up.

“Burn it.”

She prepped a sample for the GC/MS.

Rhyme shot a serious gaze to Lyle Spencer. “I need a drink. And — more important — a hand to reach it.”

A few minutes later the men were in the far corner of the parlor. Rhyme had his single malt, Spencer a Bulleit. Rhyme was a peat person. Bourbon didn’t appeal.

Sitting at a ninety-degree angle to Rhyme, the security man settled into the rattan chair that he had decided years ago to have Thom discard. Yet here it still was.

“You run many homicides?” Rhyme asked.

The man coughed briefly. “Albany? Lord, yes. Mostly street crime. Amazed some of those bozos weren’t picked up years before. But there was some sophisticated stuff too. An assassination attempt of the governor. A bill he was going to sign, don’t even remember what it was for, but not so popular among certain circles.” Spencer’s hand went to his scalp, just above the right ear. “Got clipped on that takedown. The slug singed my hair. I remember the smell as much as the fright. Vile.”

Rhyme recalled Sachs’s mentioning the scar.

PTSD...

He fell silent, eyes taking in the notes and photos on the whiteboard devoted to the Alekos Gregorios murder, for which Michael Xavier, the homeless man, was now in jail.

Then Rhyme turned his wheelchair slightly, and moved it closer to the security man’s, so that they could not be heard by Cooper or Sachs.

Spencer lifted a questioning eyebrow.

Rhyme said, “Tell me why.”

57

No elaboration was necessary.

Lyle Spencer, it was clear, knew what the criminalist was referring to.

Rhyme was talking about what he’d seen at the burning building. Spencer, standing in the top-floor window, looking out over the city. He hadn’t been thinking about how to best rappel down. He’d been thinking about leaping into the void.

Suicide.

A sip of the caramel-colored bourbon. Spencer said, “I’ve been somewhat honest with you and Amelia. Not completely honest. Yeah, Navy SEAL. Decorated. A detective in Albany. Decorated. Funny when you use that word. What does ‘decorated’ mean? You were an NYPD captain, right?”

Rhyme nodded.

“So at dress events you got to wear a lot of cabbage on your chest.”

“Some cabbage.”

“That’s what it is. That’s all it is.” After a lengthy pause. “Let me tell you about Freddy Geiger. How’s that for a name?”

“Memorable.”

Spencer was now focused on the rim of his glass. “We have a big problem in Albany with meth, fent, oxy. Also sniffing gasoline and paint thinner. Geiger stepped into the market. He wanted to class up the city.” A dark laugh. “His product was heroin.

“We had a credible tip about a deal going down, quarter million worth of H. Maybe that’s small change here, in the city, but that was a lot for the Five One Eight. I was the lead gold shield. It was a hard takedown. All went to hell.

“Make a long story short, our intel didn’t tell us Geiger’s brother and his wife were in town from Buffalo. They took off and my partner and I went after them, chased ’em to this abandoned mill — the Bechtel Building reminded me of it. We went in after them.” He shook his head. “Should’ve sealed it and waited, but we didn’t. We walked into an ambush. My partner took a load of buckshot in the chest. He had a plate but he went down and the wife tried for a kill shot, missed, and I took her out. Two shots in the back of her head. Her husband turned the scattergun my way and I took him out too.” A grimace. “No choice.”

“Tough.”

A slow nod.

“Then came the bad part.” He offered a sour laugh.

He had Rhyme’s full attention.

“Waiting for the rest of the team to get there, I looked outside. I saw a kid hiding in the bushes. I was afraid he’d rabbit so I circled around, solo, and came up behind him.”

“Your SEAL training. It helped.”

“I’m good at that, yeah. Got behind him, took him down and zipped him. Then I saw he was doing something funny. Looking at me, then into the bushes. It was a backpack he’d dumped. Cash. Three hundred K, give or take.”

Spencer took another sip, then the whisky seemed to turn on him. His face tightened and he put the glass on the floor beside the chair. “Do you get as bored with confessions as I do?”

“They can be excruciating. This one isn’t — if that’s what it is.”

“No surprise endings here, Lincoln. I cut his restraints and he took off. I hid the backpack on another part of the property and got back to my team. I picked it up the next day. The crown molding’s nice here.” The security man was looking up.

Rhyme glanced too. It was an elaborate zigzag pattern. If anyone had asked him to describe it without looking, he could not have.

“My daughter, Trudie, was diagnosed with an orphan disease. You heard of that?”

Ah, the tat: T.S.

“No.”

“It means an illness that affects less than two hundred thousand people in the country. Very rare.” He gave a soft laugh. “Trudie was proud that it was exotic. She said, ‘Don’t give me no stinkin’ ordinary disease like everybody else gets.’ Well, because there’s a small market for orphan pharmaceuticals, the companies can’t spread development costs around. So a year’s treatment for some of the diseases is off the charts. Some are seven hundred K a year.

“Trudie’s wasn’t that high but it was a hell of a lot more than insurance and what I could scrape together from friends and family — and refinancing. Then came Geiger’s money. From heaven. It covered the treatment — and helped with her lifestyle. She was active, athletic. We’d bike together and rock climb. The disease caused muscle atrophy. But we could afford good PT.”

“You laundered the money?”

“Eight banks, invested in a couple of quote ‘businesses.’” Spencer rocked his neck from side to side. He winced, this man who had just climbed a hundred feet straight up into the air.

“I mentioned no surprise endings.”

“The skel you let go got busted for something else and dimed you out.”

He nodded. “I didn’t do the one thing that anybody serious would have done: claimed he went for a weapon and took him out. Couldn’t do that, of course.

“If there was any good news, it was that my daughter died a month before I got busted. She never knew what I’d done.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I cut a deal. I pled guilty and the state waived restitution. They could have taken our house, car, pension, everything. See, I didn’t technically steal from Geiger: I stole from us. Confiscated money goes into the police budget, or somebody’s budget in Albany. I was never too clear on that. Anyway, the prosecutors thought it’d look bad with our daughter dying to penalize my wife too.

“I got thirteen months. Medium security upstate. My wife divorced me, married a nice guy and they’ve got a kid, his.”

“Amelia said you talked about a family.”

“Technically. They’re just not mine. I needed the security job to give them something every month. They don’t have a lot of money.” He looked Rhyme in the eyes. “So if it seemed like an ex-cop — a disgraced but decorated ex-cop — died saving another cop from a burning building the insurance company wouldn’t say suicide and deny the claim. That’s what you spotted when I was up in the window.”

“I could tell.”

“Amelia didn’t. She lit me up in the Bechtel Building and this thought came over me. Fuck it. That’d be it. I had the pipe. I could’ve gone for her. And that would be it.” A shake of his head. “I remember her eyes. She was wondering why I was hesitating. She didn’t get it.”

“No. That’s not something that would occur to her.”

Amelia Sachs might dig a nail into her skin, she might drive on the edge, she might be first through the door in a dynamic entry, but Rhyme knew she had never asked the to-be-or-not-to-be question.

Spencer continued, “It wouldn’t’ve been right under those circumstances. Not for her. And the insurance company would probably’ve balked. Suicide by cop. They know about that.”

Rhyme nodded.

Spencer asked, “But you... you got it.”

“I knew, yes.”

“Because of what happened?” A nod at the wheelchair.

“That’s right. I’ve been there.”

“Why’d you change your mind?”

Rhyme sipped the scotch. “Funny thing happened. A while ago there was a serial kidnapper here in the city. The Bone Collector.”

“I know about him.”

“He was targeting me because of a mistake I made at a crime scene. I cleared it too soon. A perp was still there. When he tried to escape he killed the wife and the child of the man who’d become the Bone Collector. He decided to come after me. Revenge. But then he discovered I was planning on killing myself.”

“Put a crimp in his plans, didn’t it?”

Rhyme chuckled. “How do you get revenge by killing someone who wants to die? You’re doing them a favor. So, he planned a series of crimes.”

“The kidnappings?”

A nod. “And ones that I was particularly suited to run. And so I ran them.”

“And, because of that, you changed your mind about killing yourself.”

“That’s right.”

“And then he tried to kill you.”

“Exactly. That plan didn’t work either.”

Spencer eased back in the chair. Rattan is noisy to start with and under his weight the piece of furniture groaned. “I lost the three things that mattered to me. My daughter. My wife. My cop job. That’s why I’m always a footstep away from rappelling without a rope.”

It was odd to hear the voice of a man so big, so imposing, crack.

“Sometimes it’s tough,” Rhyme said softly. “I can’t say I never think about it anymore. But I always end up with: What the hell — why not enjoy a meal or conversation with Amelia for a little longer? Why not bicker with Thom for a little longer? Why not watch the peregrines and their nestlings on the ledge outside my window a little longer? Why not put some despicable perps in prison? Life’s all about odds, and as long as the needle’s past the fifty percent mark, being here is better than not.”

The big man nodded, retrieved his glass then held it up like a toast.

Rhyme had no idea if his words, every one of them as true as the periodic table of the elements, registered. But he could do nothing more, or less, than tell Lyle Spencer what had saved him — and what continued to do so.

Spencer had a brief coughing fit. He rose and walked to a table near the sterile portion of the room where he’d left his water bottle. He drank from it, as he absently looked over the evidence chart.

“Rhyme,” came Sachs’s voice from the sterile part of the parlor. It might have been his imagination, but it seemed that there was an urgency to it. “I’ve got the results of that carpet sample in Kitt’s apartment. You’re going to want to see this.”

58

I do love my workshop.

Yes, there are echoes of the imprisonment in the Consequences Room, but most of the time the anger is more than compensated for by all of my friends here: the 142 locks, the keys, my tools, my devices, my machinery.

It’s especially nice when I’m engaged in a project, as now. I’m making pin tumbler keys that will open a knob lock and deadbolt.

Working with a sharp file and steel brush.

Pin tumbler keys are the most common of them all, those little triangular pieces of metal that jangle from all our keychains, the ones virtually no different from those that opened the lock created by Linus Yale and son.

I have a blank in my vise and I’m bitting by hand with a file, leaving tiny brass shavings on the workbench.

I’m engaged in the art of duplicating a key when you don’t have the original... or the all-powerful code. Every key has a code that will allow it to open the lock that has the corresponding one. There are two layers of coding. The blind code is gibberish, KX401, for instance. You can announce that code to the world but no one can cut a key from it. The blind code has to be translated, via esoteric charts or software, into the bitting code, like 22345, which together with depth and spacing numbers allows you to cut the appropriate key, even if you’ve never seen the original.

But there’s another way to copy a key, and that’s what I’m doing now. You can work from a photograph and if you’ve had experience, of course, like me, it’s possible to create a working duplicate. (A big scandal recently: On TV, an election official unwisely displayed the key to his county’s voting machines, to assure voters of the security of the devices. Within hours lockpickers re-created the key — not to alter any votes, but to simply fulfill what God put them on this earth to do: open what was closed.)

I compare my work every ten or twenty seconds with the photos I took of the keys in the ignition at the Sandleman blaze. It takes some time but finally, I know that these are perfect duplications.

Good.

It’s a very special door they will be opening tonight.

I have a little time so I decide to do some content moderating. I’m not in the mood for a beheading, but it’s always fun to check in on politics. I wonder what kind of crazy post Verum put up lately. I find it amusing in the extreme that I stand accused of being part of that secret cabal known as the Hidden.

Joanna Whittaker walked into her uncle’s apartment, whose view she had always admired.

New York City at your feet.

She smiled to Alicia Roberts, the security guard. “Where’s Averell?”

“In his office.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, making some calls.”

“I won’t bother him just yet.”

Joanna walked to the couch and sat in the embracing, luxurious leather. She wore a sober suit of black wool, an Alexander McQueen. She happened to glance at a picture of herself and her father, Lawrence, on the wall nearby. Together they were holding up a copy of the Herald, open to a page on which was a story she’d written exposing a philandering politician. She was smiling and pointing at her byline. In her younger days — which were, of course, not so long ago — she was quite the terror as an investigative reporter. Those were the days when her father was an equal partner in the company and you found more women in the halls of Whittaker Media.

She smiled at the memory of the assignment. Leveling her eyes at the squirmy politician, she’d asked, “You’re not answering my question, Senator. Did you tell your wife you were going to the Adirondacks with her attorney’s daughter?”

“It was nothing.”

“That’s not responsive. My question was: Did your wife know you were going to the Adirondacks with her attorney’s daughter?”

“I’m not going to answer that question.”

“I’m giving you the opportunity to counter her claim that you lied about the trip.”

“I... the girl, she was eighteen. It was just...”

“Did you tell your wife that you were going to the Adirondacks with her attorney’s daughter?”

“No, I fucking didn’t, okay?”

“When you two got to the Rosemont Inn—”

“This interview is over with.”

“I’m running the story. This is your last chance to comment.”

And on and on.

That job had been so much fun. Making the foolish squirm.

Seeing her byline too. That was a rush.

She looked over at the coffee table, which was stacked with documents about the Foundation for Ethical Journalism.

Nothing like it presently existed, at least not in the scale her uncle envisioned — and quite the scale it would be, since he was using ninety percent of the proceeds of his multibillion-dollar media empire to fund the nonprofit.

And what would her father, Lawrence, have thought about his brother’s grand plan?

Not much, she knew. He’d found nothing wrong in journalism as titillation and leer, which both brothers seemed to be fine with for so many years. The indisputable fact was that far more people cared about sex scandals and conspiracies than cared about the G20 or an antitrust investigation into Facebook.

Unless of course there were sex scandals and conspiracies at the G20 and within the halls of the SEC.

Joanna smiled at that thought, since, perhaps, there were. And they were just waiting to be reported on.

Her phone sang with a text. It was from her fiancé, Martin Kemp.

She replied:

Joanna rose and walked to the front alcove.

Alicia looked up from the padded bench she was seated on, where she’d been reading emails or texts. “Ms. Whittaker, can I help you with anything?”

“No, nothing.”

From inside her jacket Joanna pulled the lengthy, razor-edge butcher knife and holding the handle in a plastic bag, she drew the blade quickly around the woman’s neck, once, twice and then again, severing veins and arteries.

Spitting blood, choking, eyes wide, the woman reached for her gun, but Joanna had dropped the knife and was holding the guard’s arm still with one hand. With the other, protected by the bag, she pulled the weapon from its holster and slid it far away from her reach, across the floor.

“Why?” Alicia whispered.

Joanna didn’t answer. Her thoughts had moved on.