The Midnight Lock

62

A clatter outside the door. Voices, but hushed.

In the den that served as his home office, Averell Whittaker glanced at the closed door. Perhaps Joanna had dropped by. She did that some. It wasn’t the maid’s day. Maybe his niece and the security guard, Alicia Roberts, were making tea or coffee.

His eyes returned to the sales contract he was reviewing. Eighty pages, plus addenda. And this was just one of a dozen contracts for disposition of the equipment, the vehicles, the computers... endless.

How hard it was to do the right thing. You couldn’t just push a button and turn the Whittaker Media empire into a do-gooding nonprofit foundation.

But he’d get it all done in his time left. He was so energized about the project. It would scrutinize print and broadcast stories in the U.S. and abroad and flag the ones it found inaccurate, after a rigorous review by fact-checkers. It would expose threats to reporters (which had multiplied exponentially in recent years). It would have a legal defense fund for reporters jailed or threatened. It would report ties between politicians and corporate interests and media companies. It would examine the FCC and other governmental entities to make sure that the regulations and laws did not limit First Amendment rights. And it would champion minority education in journalism.

But, as often, his mind soon wandered to his son.

It seemed inconceivable that he was the psychopath the police said he was.

Yet there was no doubt about his son’s resentment for him. An idealist all his life, Kitt never liked the brand of journalism that Whittaker Media hawked.

Of course, that alone wasn’t enough. It was also his father’s neglect.

But how could I do otherwise? Fifteen-hour days keeping the business going, weathering the storms all media is subject to. A world Kitt didn’t want and was unsuited for. He was collateral damage.

And, of course, there was that terrible incident with Mary’s passing.

Dying without her husband by her side.

3/2/17.

He thought: But it was so important for the family. I had to buy the TV station, and it had to be done that day, or the option would have lapsed and...

He gave a hollow laugh. Even now I’m making excuses.

And, yes, I did it for the family... but mostly I did it for myself.

He looked out over the vast city, today muted by a milky complexion, the vast, bristling horizon foreshortened.

And now his son was a criminal... and, the police said, a threat to him and others.

At least in making his statement to — and about — his father, he’d done nothing more than upset several people. Whittaker prayed the police would find him before he actually hurt someone.

Or himself.

Oh, Kitt. I’m sorry...

He heard another scrape from outside.

Who was there?

He stood and, assisted by his cane, hobbled across the carpet. How he hated the accessory, a sign of dependency, a sign of weakness.

Pushing through the doorway, saying, “Hello, who’s—”

Averell Whittaker froze at the sight of the tableau before him.

“Kitt!”

His son sat in a wheelchair. The young man’s head lolled and he stared straight ahead. He seemed drunk or drugged. Behind him, gripping the handles, was Martin Kemp. The baby-faced man was swallowing and looking typically uncertain. And on the floor just inside the living room lay the Alicia Roberts her throat cut. Ample blood was drenching the blue and gold rug Mary had bought in Jordan so many years ago.

“No...”

Then he heard a sound from behind him and as he turned, his niece stepped forward and shoved him down the low stairs that led to the living room. He stumbled and fell hard onto the marble, crying out in pain.

63

“My shoulder,” he moaned. “It’s broken...”

Whittaker climbed unsteadily to his feet and, grimacing, struggled to a chair. His head drooped and he was breathing heavily. “The pain...”

Joanna paid no attention to her uncle. She looked toward Kemp. “Is she dead?” She was impatient.

“Well, I mean...” He gestured at the still body, the soak of blood.

She scoffed. “Check and see? All right?”

“They’ll... won’t I leave fingerprints on her?”

Joanna closed her eyes briefly in irritation. “Why would you not check to see if someone who’d been stabbed was alive or dead? Wouldn’t everybody do that? If your prints weren’t there, that would be suspicious.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

He bent down over the woman, pressed his fingers on her neck. “There’s no pulse.”

“Check her eyes.”

He hesitated.

“It’s not a horror movie, Marty. She’s not going to possess you with her gaze.”

He grimaced at the verbal slap and nervously rubbed his hands together then lifted the woman’s lids.

“I don’t know... It... Yeah, I guess she’s gone.”

Whittaker whispered, “Jo, please... What are you doing?”

The woman turned disappointed eyes upon him. “It’s reckoning time, Averell.”

“What?” He winced.

“For one, stealing the company from my father...”

Whittaker snapped, “Your father was a drunk! He pledged shares for loans to cover his bad investments. Illegally. It took two years to get that nullified. I gave him a generous allowance.”

“He was humiliated.”

Whittaker muttered, “He made his bed. Some would’ve cut him off completely.”

“And dissolving the company? Everything Father worked for?”

“We wrote stories that cost lives. I can’t be a part of that anymore.”

He looked away, as Joanna continued, “Your foundation’s a joke. Nobody cares about the press, about news, about facts.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is, yes.”

“I wasn’t going to dissolve your charity.”

Her face flared with rage. “Where you can count on your little niece to keep her head down and not get into any trouble.”

He looked at his son. “What’s wrong with him? What’ve you done?”

“He’s drugged.”

“We’ll work something out. Please...”

Her stern face, with the fleshy nose and thick eyebrows, gazed at him with what might perhaps be a modicum of sadness.

Then he thought of the security guard and knew there’d be no negotiation.

He saw the scene unfolding. They would kill him, using the same knife, then Kitt — probably injecting him with more drugs, an overdose. It would look like a suicide. The empire would go to Joanna.

“You’ll keep the company running,” he whispered.

“Yes, though, in a different direction. Verum?”

“The conspiracy theorist, the crank. Do you know him?”

With what Whittaker believed was a modicum of pride, she said, “I am him.”

“Jo... no! You don’t believe that crap.”

She scoffed. “And you don’t believe that stories about secret love children and the vice president’s grandfather helping Lee Harvey Oswald kill John Kennedy belong on a front page. But there they are. And that made you a very wealthy man.”

“It’s different,” he raged.

“You’re right, Averell. I’m the next generation.”

“Fah... Father...” Kitt was more aware now. He glanced at his wrists strapped to the wheelchair arms. He shook his head, took a breath. “Father?” His head drooped.

Joanna walked to her fiancé and was speaking to him. She appeared impatient.

Whittaker couldn’t hear what they were saying exactly. She apparently had killed the security guard, and it was now Kemp’s task to murder Whittaker and Kitt. But he was balking. Her face was filled with contempt.

He’d check pulses and eyes, he’d corroborate stories, but he wasn’t going to wield the blade.

“Martin,” Whittaker called.

But when the man looked his way, a pathetic expression on his face, and appeared about to speak, Joanna snapped her fingers and he fell silent.

She looked at him with disgust and, using a bloody plastic bag, picked up the knife that she’d used to kill Alicia. Striding across the sumptuous carpet to where he sat, she studied him, as if deciding to slash the left side of his neck or the right.

Whittaker slumped in the fake Chippendale chair, which he and Mary had bought in New England and refinished together after taking a class in doing trompe l’oeil and faux painting furniture. It had been a happy weeklong project.

Whittaker called in a weak voice, “Kitt?” Louder, “Kitt?”

His son opened his eyes.

Joanna stood over him and Whittaker, who looked up, expecting to see a hint of regret in that face, which bore a passing resemblance to that of his brother.

But there was none. Only regal impatience.

“Just let me say one thing,” Whittaker whispered, wincing as he shifted a few inches.

She paused and cocked her head toward him.

“I’m sorry, son.”

Kitt blinked slowly.

Averell Whittaker grabbed his cane in both hands — he’d been feigning injury to his shoulder — and swung the top, the brass head, with all his strength into his niece’s face.

64

Joanna was on her knees, howling in rage and pain.

She was still gripping the knife and slashing toward Whittaker’s legs as he rose. The blade did not connect and he launched his foot into her belly, doubling her over.

He turned to face Kemp, who was ashen white. The man had picked up another kitchen knife. He was advancing slowly. But his terror vastly outweighed his aggression.

Please, God, for the next ten minutes give me whatever strength You can. Let me save my son and then You can take me...

Brandishing the cane, Averell Whittaker strode across the room to meet Kemp head-on.

Joanna was struggling to stand. She spat blood.

Martin asked, “Honey, are you okay?”

“What a stupid fucking question. Kill him.”

Stopping six feet from Kemp, Whittaker said, “Martin, you can save yourself. It’s not too late. Call nine one one.”

The man debated a moment. Whittaker thought he might actually do so. But no. He’d never disobey Mama.

Holding the knife forward, he lunged, his face an odd mix of determination, anger and utter fear.

Whittaker stepped aside and swung the cane, forcing him back a few feet. Then looked past him and with wide eyes called, “Alicia, you’re alive!”

Kemp gasped and, before he caught himself, he turned to where the body lay.

Joanna shouted, “No, you idiot!”

It was only a half-second distraction but it was all that Whittaker needed. He swung the cane like a baseball bat and connected with the hand that held the knife. Kemp screamed — an actual high-pitched wail — and the blade fell to the floor, as Martin dropped to his knees, cradling his shattered fingers. Whittaker tossed away the cane and picked up the knife.

He turned to face his niece, who was scanning the entryway. She was looking at the floor.

Whittaker spotted the gun before she did, a small black pistol.

Joanna staggered toward the weapon. There was no chance that Whittaker could beat her to it. He did the only thing he could, slipped the knife into his pocket and stepped to Kitt, then pushed the wheelchair into the closest room, a library. He slammed the door and locked it.

He heard a crash as one of the two, Martin probably, kicked the wood hard.

Would she shoot her way in? That would hardly play, according to the fiction she’d created, but she was desperate.

The kicking stopped. He heard Joanna say, “Good idea.”

Whittaker looked around and spotted the landline phone. He lifted it and heard: “At the tone the time will be...”

Martin Kemp had apparently done something right.

Whittaker hung up, jammed a chair under the knob. He moved his son out of the line of fire in case Joanna did decide to shoot.

The kicking began again. One of the panels cracked.

Averell Whittaker withdrew the knife from his pocket.

65

My computer beeps.

I’ve been summoned by a ViewNow algorithm, so I put on my content moderator hat. I scoot the laptop closer and maximize the screen.

It’s a VNLive post. Tammybird335 is streaming in real time. She’s a pretty woman around twenty, I’d guess. Her long brown hair is flyaway and some strands are pasted to her face from tears. She wears a bulky sweatshirt with a high school crest on it — from a better place and time in her life.

Either she or somebody in the comments have used the word “suicide,” which the algorithm spotted.

Tammy’s at her desk. Behind her is an unmade bed. Pictures of some tropical locations are on the wall. A ragged stuffed dog sits on the floor. Weeping, she says, “My mother’s out with her boyfriend all the time, like she doesn’t give a shit about me. And he tries to hug me all the time... And at school, the kids’re so mean... I’m shy. I can’t help it. It’s too fucking much! Nobody cares. I mean, nobody! I think I should just do it. I don’t know...”

The comments are rolling in.

In the chans — the underground message boards, where you can find just about everything — there are a number of lengthy forums devoted to suicide; they don’t exist to get people help. They’re how-to guides. Hundreds of thousands of pro-self-harm fans. The chans are text and still photos, a few GIFs, so they tend not to end up on ViewNow, but occasionally there’s a video post that makes its way here.

In the comments I see someone has courteously sent Tammy a hyperlink to one of the forums.

She continues, “There’s no point to anything. My boyfriend said he hates me. He called me fat.”

Tammybird begins to sob.

At ViewNow we can access the IP address of everyone who posts. I can send Tammybird’s to the cops and they can get a warrant so that the poster’s internet providers will hand over her physical address — as long as she’s not using a proxy, which she isn’t. A welfare check ensues. This can happen fast, especially in a case of looming suicide. The authorities could be at her door within the hour.

But now I have a dilemma. If I push the button to save her, my name appears on the reports the police will read. And I absolutely don’t want this to happen.

On the other hand, if Tammy takes the advice of some of the helpful commentators and does the deed and it’s discovered that I reviewed the post, questions will arise as to why I didn’t get her help.

The police again.

So?

Out of self-interest, I decide I’ll send it to our law-enforcement liaison department.

But I’m in no hurry. I tap the keys to unearth her ISP slowly, thinking, if I’m lucky they won’t get to her in time.

And, if I’m particularly lucky, she might even kill herself on the livestream.

66

The tactical team approached the door.

Quiet. Utterly quiet.

Sachs, in the lead, knew they were pros. Any metal that could clink had been wrapped in strips of cloth or electrical tape. All phones and radios were on mute.

The entire six-person team, four men, two women, plus Sachs, were even breathing silently. That’s easy — even if it appears comical — you just open your mouth wide.

The op had all come together quickly.

“Rhyme, I’ve got the results of that carpet sample in Kitt’s apartment. You’re going to want to see this.”

He’d looked over her discovery and he, Sachs and Spencer began discussing the totality of the evidence from the scenes.

Rhyme had said, “That’s our answer. Call Lon and get an ESU tac team together. Hurry. We’re out of time.”

And now here they were.

They paused and listened at the door. She nodded to an S&S officer, Search and Surveillance. The man tried to find a gap between the door and the threshold, but there wasn’t enough space through which to fish a fiber optic camera stalk. He shook his head.

Nodding, Sachs stepped close and examined the door. She thought of the subtle touch of the Locksmith. The fine tools, the delicate manipulation of the intricate mechanism inside. Sachs put an electronic stethoscope against the door and listened.

Good enough for her.

She stepped back and whispered, “Breaching team. Ready?”

You never shoot the lock out of a door, as actors do on TV and in the movies.

Amelia Sachs knew that doing so was useless at best, disastrous at worst, given that bullets ricochet or fragment on deadbolts and lock surfaces, which are, after all, made to withstand the impact of blows, including gunshots. That shrapnel will put your eye clean out.

But hinges... that’s another matter. When taking out a door, a breaching team will use special rounds, usually fired from a twelve-gauge shotgun. The slugs are made from sintered material — metal powder suspended in wax. This will blow the hinges out, tout de suite. No one has a better sense of humor than cops and within the New York City Emergency Service Unit, they were known as “Avon’s Calling” rounds, a reference to a door-to-door makeup sales business that Sachs had heard about from her mother.

She whispered to the lead breacher, “Go.”

He placed the muzzle against the bottom hinge and pulled the trigger. Sachs had turned away but felt the muzzle blast on the parts of her back that were above and below the bulletproof plate she wore. The sound was astonishingly loud in the closed area of the hallway. A second shot on the top hinge and then the coup de grace was the battering ram in the middle. The door collapsed inward and landed with what was probably a loud crash — who could tell after the stunning report of the scattergun?

Sachs, in the lead, and the other ESU officers streamed inside, dispersing to avoid the bottleneck of the door, known as the “death funnel.” They cried, “Police on a warrant! Police! Show yourself!”

There was no one in the massive open living area of Averell Whittaker’s lofty apartment, other than the body of the security guard, Alicia Roberts, whose death was not unanticipated, since she hadn’t picked up the calls from her boss, Lyle Spencer, to warn her that she might be in danger.

One ESU officer went to the body. “She’s gone.”

Sachs then noted a parlor door kicked open. She and two other officers approached.

“Police! Show yourselves! Come out, hands above your head.”

A voice behind her. “Security guard’s weapon is missing.”

Sachs called, “I want that gun on the floor now. Throw it so I can see it.”

“I’ll kill Averell!” It was Joanna’s voice. “Let us go.”

Sachs said to the S&S officer beside her, “Video in.”

He unhitched the small camera once more and turned it on, then extended the flexible lens cable. He and Sachs approached the doorway, she covering him. He fed the lens in and, on the screen, Sachs saw Joanna Whittaker, her face stained with blood, standing behind her uncle, holding a pistol toward the door. Her fiancé, Martin Kemp, gripped a knife uncertainly as he stood over a young man — Kitt Whittaker, she recognized — who was strapped in a wheelchair.

“Drop the weapon!”

“Back off! You arrest me and there’ll be trouble! You’ll regret it!”

What on earth did that mean?

Sachs turned to the woman ESU officer who’d checked on the body of the security guard. “Flash-bang. I want this over with. We’re not negotiating.”

“Okay, Detective.” She drew from her belt a stun grenade, which looked very much like a canister of pepper spray. The body of the device was cardboard and contained a powerful explosive charge. To use one, you held down the lever on the side — the “spoon” — and pulled the pin. Then you tossed it into the desired location. In three and a half seconds it exploded, with a huge flash and a report that was around 140 decibels. Being next to one when it detonated was an extremely unpleasant experience.

Joanna said, “I’m not kidding. I have friends you don’t know about. Back out now!”

Sachs nodded to another officer. “You too. Flash-bang.”

The man hesitated. “A space like that, you’ll only need one.”

Joanna was ranting, “It’ll be the biggest mistake of your life.”

Sachs smiled. “Let’s go with two. Pull the pins.”

67

Joanna Whittaker joined Kemp on her belly.

Two officers approached and cuffed them both, rolling them over and muscling them into a sitting position.

Her face wasn’t scared, or angry, or frustrated. It was completely emotionless, though would occasionally reveal pain. Apparently Averell Whittaker had delivered quite the blow. Her cheek looked to be broken.

Martin Kemp was whimpering, leaving no doubt who wore the pants in this criminal household, Sachs reflected, even if the observation was a throwback, and possibly politically incorrect.

Kitt Whittaker had been drugged. Sachs helped him onto a couch, while other officers cleared the apartment. She and Rhyme were sure that Joanna and Kemp were the only perps involved in the scheme but protocol insisted that every inch of a crime scene be rendered safe. She got the word that it was clear, and she radioed for the medics.

Soon the EMTs were in the room. Sachs performed triage, and they tended to Kitt first, determining that he did not have a life-threatening amount of opiates in his system. That would have come later, after they’d staged the scene where he killed his father and then himself.

The medicos then tended to Joanna and her fiancé — the shattered face and, in his case, hand.

“You all right?” Sachs asked Averell Whittaker, who looked at her absently and nodded. He turned his attention back to his son and asked a medical tech, “You’re sure my son’ll be all right?” He was shouting, an aftereffect of the bang part of the grenades.

“Yessir. They just gave him enough to sedate him. He’ll be fine.”

“Kitt,” Whittaker said and rested a hand on the young man’s arm. His son turned his way groggily and gave no reaction.

Kemp said, “Look, Officer, please...”

Joanna glanced at her sniveling fiancé. “You shut the hell up. If you say one word...”

So witness intimidation would be another charge. Though that was the least of the woman’s legal concerns.

A shadow in the doorway. And two other men entered the room, Lincoln Rhyme and Lyle Spencer.

Spencer saw the body of the woman personal protection guard. His face fell and he stepped to her, knelt down, taking her hand. He shook his head and stood. Spencer’s angry eyes turned toward Joanna. Maybe Alicia and Spencer had been friends, or more, in addition to colleagues. He balled up his fist and started toward the Whittaker niece, who cowered away.

Sachs intercepted him. And touched his arm. “No,” she said softly. “We’ll get it done the right way.”

He exhaled slowly and nodded.

Joanna cut an icy gaze toward Rhyme and then Sachs and asked, “How? How on earth?”

“Rhyme, I’ve got the results of that carpet sample in Kitt’s apartment. You’re going to want to see this.”

He and Spencer look Sachs’s way. She says, “Electrolytes: sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, bicarbonate, and phosphates, immunoglobulins, proteins, enzymes, mucins and nitrogenous products. It’s saliva.”

“Whose? Kitt’s?”

Mel Cooper is operating the fast DNA analyzer. He holds up a hand. They have a sample of Kitt’s DNA from his tooth- and hairbrushes, which she collected at his apartment.

“Come on, come on.” Rhyme is impatient, though Cooper cannot will the equipment to speed up.

Finally: “It’s his.”

Sachs says, “And one more thing. Blood. Very small trace in Kitt’s apartment. Near the doorway. The stain you spotted, Rhyme.”

Rhyme’s pulse increases; he feels it in his temple. They’re onto something here.

Another DNA test. The blood was Kitt’s as well.

Spencer says, “Not enough quantity to suggest a lethal wound. Even a twenty-two’ll leave more than that tiny stain.”

Rhyme thinks for a minute. “Run a sample through the HA.”

Mel Cooper turned on the hematology analyzer, a compact instrument the size of a bloated laptop. He runs the test and reads the results. “Mostly normal, but there’re some unusual substances present, things you don’t usually see in a normal blood analysis: creatine kinase, lactate dehydrogenase and myoglobin.”

Rhyme says, “Kitt was hit with a stun gun. Those are muscle proteins released in cases of rhabdomyolysis. Skeletal muscle damage. That’s how they subdued him. He fell and must’ve hit his head. The blood.”

Spencer says, “Or maybe he bit his lip or his hand or arm to leave some trace.”

Rhyme is nodding. “Yes, it’s a possibility.”

Sachs calls, “But who’s ‘they’?”

“Ah, the big question. Yes, yes, let’s work with the premise that Kitt’s being set up. He was kidnapped and the evidence was planted in his closet and file cabinets. By whom?” Rhyme then says slowly in a musing tone, staring at the whiteboard, “Let’s look at the big picture. What’s unexplained so far? Seawater, discovered only in Kitt’s apartment. What does that tell us?”

No one answers, but it’s a rhetorical inquiry anyway.

“Let’s keep going. Another mystery ingredient. Fertilizer. Found in the Sandleman and in the Bechtel Buildings — when you found the candy wrapper, Sachs. No, no, no...” Rhyme is grimacing. “I don’t think the Locksmith returned to the Bechtel Building at all. I think somebody else, the ultimate unsub here, returned to the building and dropped the wrapper on purpose. They kidnapped Kitt and planted the candy, the panties and other evidence in his apartment. But they inadvertently left things leading back to them. Fertilizer and seawater.”

“They?” Sachs repeats.

Rhyme says, “If it’s not Kitt, then—”

Spencer completes his thought, “—why would the Locksmith be leaving a coded newspaper page about Mary Whittaker’s death?”

“Which has the effect of pointing the finger at Kitt,” Sachs says. “And which was suggested by Joanna Whittaker.”

Rhyme says, “Who has an oceangoing yacht and a greenhouse.” He was recalling the articles he’d read online about the family. “And the wood polish we found; it’s used on vessels as well as cars.”

Spencer nods. “She raises orchids. I’ve been in her apartment in Battery Park City.”

“And,” Sachs says, “she’d have access to a whole library of past issues of the Daily Herald. She could get as many page threes of the February seventeenth issue as she wanted.”

Spencer mutters, “She’s going to kill Mr. Whittaker and Kitt. She’ll inherit the company. Shit.” He dials a number and listens. “Mr. Whittaker’s not answering.” He tries another call. After a moment his face grows stricken. “Alicia’s not either.”

Rhyme says, “That’s our answer. Call Lon and get an ESU tac team together. Hurry. We’re out of time.”

Now, in Averell Whittaker’s soaring apartment, Lincoln Rhyme responded to Joanna’s question — how on earth? — by offering a droll look that said, Figure it out yourself... or don’t.

Amelia Sachs — the officiating police officer present — now got to work. She walked up to Joanna and Kemp, who were sitting on the floor. The woman glared. “I want a chair.”

It was as if Joanna hadn’t even spoken. Sachs said, “We need to know the identity of the real Locksmith and where to find him.”

“Why would I know that?” She looked aghast.

Sachs said evenly, “Because you hired him.” She glanced at the knives stolen from the apartments of Annabelle Talese and Carrie Noelle, one of which was bloody; a plastic bag was around the handle. “And we can prove it. The knives won’t have your prints on them but the bag will.”

Silence.

“Tell us. And we can work something out with the DA.”

Joanna Whittaker offered a sly smile. “I think it’s time for the lawyer.”

68

“How’s your arm?” Kitt asked his father.

Averell Whittaker looked at the limb. The fall, from Joanna’s shove, hadn’t done more than bruise the tissue. But it had taken the wind out of him, and the discoloration was impressive.

“Not bad,” he said to his son. “And you’re feeling...?”

“Groggy. Still the headache. In my apartment Jo or Martin Tased me.” He touched a scab on his head. “I fell. Then they injected me with something.” His voice was a whisper. “My cousin. My own cousin.”

They were in Whittaker’s Sag Harbor getaway, a six-bedroom Tudor on Long Island Sound. The property was in the name of a trust. The press didn’t know about it. The vultures were still staking out the high-rise on Park Avenue.

This house echoed with memories. He and Mary had built the place — the planning and construction occupied one of the happiest few years in their lives. The couple and Kitt had spent many a weekend here. Along with his brother, Lawrence, and dear Betty.

Joanna too.

Whittaker was staring out the window at the sparkles on the waves. Long Island Sound was a sloppy body of water, at least near the North Shore. Dun-colored and rocky and home to an infestation of horseshoe crabs, perhaps the most space-alien sea creature that ever existed.

“What was it like? Where they kept you?”

“It was their boat. Your old yacht. The one you gave Uncle Lawrence.” He shrugged, suggesting what he’d endured wasn’t that bad. But it would have been. Whittaker knew the conditions would have been nearly unbearable. He would have been chained or somehow restrained. And there’d been the cloud of impending death hanging over him.

The hopelessness he would have felt.

And betrayal.

Kitt and Joanna had never been particularly close — she hewed to her uncle’s and father’s society life, while he had no interest. But, my God, they’d shared dozens of holiday dinners. Spent family vacation time in Curaçao, Saint Martin, Guadalupe, Cap d’Antibes.

“Kitt. I made a mistake. A terrible mistake.”

His son sipped his beer. His lips were parched, and Whittaker boiled with anger again at what his niece and her spineless fiancé had done.

“Your mother...”

He knew that Kitt had not engineered this terrible crime, but that didn’t change the fact that Joanna’s premise was true: Kitt had disappeared from the family because of that terrible day years ago, March 2, when Whittaker had sat in his office and, after agonizing negotiations, signed the purchase deal to buy the TV station chain and had not been in St. Theresa Hospital.

“Go on.”

And he proceeded to confess about the acquisition. Then added, “I’ve only wanted to apologize and beg you to forgive me.”

The young man seemed perplexed. “Because you weren’t at Mother’s bedside?”

Whittaker nodded and felt his eyes fill with tears.

“You do know that she lapsed into unconsciousness a couple of days before she passed. In fact, you were one of the last people to see her awake — that Saturday. You were there all night, holding her hand. The day she died, when I was there, she was asleep. The doctor said she’d never regain consciousness.”

“My God, no. I didn’t know that.”

Kitt offered a pallid laugh. “And to be honest? I wouldn’t’ve wanted you there anyway. What would we have had to talk about? Oh, Father, our lives went in such different directions. I never hated you, resented you. We were just entirely different people.”

“I blamed myself. I neglected you. It was my fault you never had a career. I should have given you guidance.”

“Never had a career?”

“Joanna said you jumped from job to job. Computers, drones, real estate, videography, oil and gas... One thing after another.”

Now the laugh was hearty. “But I have a career and I have you to thank for it.”

Averell Whittaker was frowning.

The handsome young man brushed his long hair from his forehead. “The truth, Father? I didn’t respect what you and Uncle Lawrence did. The paper, the TV station? You weren’t... helping people. I went in a different direction.”

“What exactly do you do?”

“I’m CEO of a nonprofit I created. We use drones to look for environmental violations.”

“I never heard about it.”

“I use a different name. Mother’s maiden name.”

“What does it do?”

“There’re rewards offered by the EPA and local environmental organizations. We create databases of violators and make it public on our servers. I studied all of those things Joanna mentioned, yes. Wasn’t dabbling. They’re part of the job.”

“And it does well?”

“Not great, not by your standards. But we did about fifty million last year.”

“My Lord.” After a moment Whittaker frowned. “When you went missing, why didn’t anyone from the company contact me? They’d know I’m your father.”

“I spend most of my time in the field, running the drones. I’m gone for weeks at a time.”

Kitt finished the beer and opened another. “Your articles and op-ed pages came down in favor of big oil and gas, anti-environmentalist. I didn’t think you’d want to have anything to do with me... Hey...”

Whittaker had set down his wine and was hugging his son fiercely. After a moment the son reciprocated the embrace.

Kitt asked a question out of the blue: “Will you miss the paper and the TV station when they’re gone?”

“Not at all. I can’t wait to get the foundation started.” He eyed his son closely and told him in detail what it would be doing. The young man seemed to approve.

Then Whittaker offered a coy, hopeful smile.

“What?”

Whittaker asked, “Well, I’m just thinking... How’d you like a slot on the board?”

A moment of consideration, then: “I would. I’d like that very much.”

“Say, you hungry? Do you want some food? We can stay in. Better not to go out, or even order takeaway. Damn reporters. But Isla keeps the place pretty well stocked.”

Whittaker walked into the kitchen and his son followed.

The father looked into the Sub-Zero, while the son watched, apparently amused, as if Whittaker had never gazed into a refrigerator before. Which was not far off the mark. “Omelette. It’s really the only thing I can cook.”

“That sounds good to me.”

Whittaker opened a good Rhône, a Châteauneuf-du-Pape, House of the Pope, and poured two glasses of the spicy wine.

He began cracking eggs into a bowl and then coaxing out the few bits of shell that had gotten in. It was a tricky job. Kitt made toast, buttered the slices with a rasp of blade and put them on a serving plate.

Soon the shell-free eggs sizzled and spattered in the skillet, and Averell Whittaker’s son walked to the buffet in the dining room to hunt for placemats and silverware for the table.

69

Defensive wounds.

Or, more accurately, the lack of defensive wounds.

There were only three knife slashes in the body of Alekos Gregorios — the man slashed to death in the backyard of his large Queens home.

Rhyme had earlier noted the wounds but, as he’d been asked only to analyze some trace evidence, hadn’t paid much attention to them. Then Richard Beaufort had inadvertently ignited Rhyme’s interest when he flashed his picture of the brag board.

The Locksmith was still at large, but once a mystery arose in an investigation, even one that was technically closed, Lincoln Rhyme could not let it go. He now gazed up at the whiteboard devoted to the case and considered the question.

Yes, one reason for the lack of defensive cuts could be that the killer had surprised him, as Rhyme had earlier speculated. But, after more thought, he asked himself: How could a stumbling, incoherent homeless man like Xavier get close enough to murder someone with three strokes of a knife and the victim not hold his hands up, fighting to grab the blade?

It was possible, certainly, but a more likely explanation was that Gregorios knew the killer, who was physically close to him, probably because they were having a conversation. Then, in a flash, out came the knife and the slaughter began.

Known to the victim.

Could be a friend, neighbor... or a family member.

Well, they had the name of one such person who’d seen the victim that day. His son. They’d had dinner at about six — at which time father had reported to son about the encounter with the homeless man.

Or, more accurately, the son had told the police that’s what his father had said.

What if the man’s son, whose first name was Yannis, had been lying, setting up the homeless man?

Had the son returned later, met his father in the garden and stabbed him? Then taken his wallet and dabbed his slacks with Miracle Sav medicine, a unique and therefore damning bit of evidence? And then planted the evidence in the homeless shelter, turning Michael Xavier into a fall guy for the killing?

Rhyme thought for a moment. “Mel?”

The detective glanced his way from the sterile portion of the lab.

“I need you to do something. It’s a little... odd.”

“Odder than conducting a postmortem on a fly?”

“Only a bit.”

“Detective Tye Kelly?”

“That’s right.”

“Hey, this’s Detective Mel Cooper. I’m out of the Queens lab.”

“Okay.”

“I worked with Lincoln Rhyme.”

“What’s the story about that, somebody at OnePP sidelining him? That sucks.”

“Sure does. He did some work on the Gregarios case, right?”

“Yeah, he helped us close it.”

“About that. I was looking over the file, just happened to see it, and I was having some doubts.”

Kelly chuckled. “You’re not sure about something Lincoln Rhyme concluded about a case? You really want to go there?”

They were on speaker and Cooper and Rhyme shared a glance. Cooper, it seemed, was struggling to keep a straight face.

“Hear me out.” He recited what Rhyme had told him about the lack of defensive wounds and the theory that the son had set up the homeless man.

“But we checked out Yannis — that’s the Greek version of John, by the way. I never knew that. Got him on security video nearby, getting out of his car around five thirty, walking toward his father’s house, then walking back around seven and leaving.”

Rhyme was thinking. He scrawled a note and pushed it in front of Cooper, who read and nodded.

“Detective,” he said, “where did he park?”

A pause. Computer keys typed. “It was the Arbor Vale Convenience Mall, about a block away from his dad’s house.”

“His father had a driveway, didn’t he?” Cooper was catching on. Rhyme hadn’t needed to prompt.

“Yeah, he did, but the son said he wanted to stop into a grocery store and pick up something for dinner.”

“Did he?”

“Yeah.”

Rhyme wrote and Cooper delivered the lines.

“Seems a little odd he just left the car there and walked.”

“I guess, maybe. One-way streets. Probably faster to hoof it.”

Cooper read another of Rhyme’s notes.

Kelly asked, “You there, Detective?”

“Yes. But you could also argue that he left it there to leave some proof of when he arrived and when he left. The video, you know.”

“Give you that.”

Another note.

“You have the whole night’s video from the mall?”

“Yeah, we were looking for a homeless guy around the time of the killing, after what the son told us. But we didn’t see anyone in the mall tape.”

Rhyme jotted.

“Where was the camera?” Cooper asked.

“Across the street, pointed at the stores.”

“Can you call it up?”

“Where’s this going?”

Cooper improvised. “Just a few loose ends.”

“All right.” Kelly typed.

Rhyme wrote out his theory. Cooper shook his head and laughed.

“What’s that?” Kelly asked.

“Buddy here just showed me a present he got his girlfriend.” A chuckle. “Only I don’t know whether it’s more for her or for him.”

“One of those presents, yeah. All right, I’ve got the video.”

“Run it from a half hour before the killing to a half hour after. Scrub it. But look at what’s in front of the camera. Look at what’s reflected back toward it, in the windows of the vehicles driving past.”

“Reflected,” Kelly said absently. “Okay, I’m not seeing much, just the street at the base of the pole the security camera’s mounted — Christ.”

Again, the two men in Rhyme’s town house glanced each other’s way.

Cooper said, “Is it Yannis’s car pulling up, and him getting out?”

“It fucking well is. I can see him in some bus window’s reflections. Eight forty-eight. About ten minutes before his father died.”

Cooper gave him Rhyme’s explanation. “Yannis couldn’t park in his father’s driveway when he came back to kill him. Neighbors would see. He knew he could park on the street near the mall but wanted to be out of sight of the camera. The only place he could do that was directly underneath it.

“Later the son got into the shelter and planted the evidence implicating Xavier. I checked security and it’s basically nonexistent. Anybody could walk in and out.”

It had been Ron Pulaski who’d determined this.

“Damn. It’s a whole new case. My partner and me’ll jump on it...” There was some typing. “Okay, just got Yannis’s DMV picture. We’ll do some canvassing, check into his history with his father.”

Cooper read what would be the final note. “You want to send me the full file, I’ll take a look at the rest of the evidence. See if I can help shore up anything.”

“Hell, yes.” They heard some more typing. “Okay, it’s on its way. Hey, I can’t thank you enough. Clearing a case with the wrong suspect’s worse than not clearing it at all.” His voice drew conspiratorial. “Listen, Detective, I don’t know how this thing with Lincoln Rhyme’s going to fall out, but don’t worry, I won’t say a word you’re the one second-guessing him.”

“Kind of you, Detective Kelly. He can be pretty difficult.”

“That’s what I hear.”

70

Something about his face.

Weaselly.

In his native language, he thought: E keqe.

Evil.

Trouble.

The doorman was watching the tall redhead stride from the lobby of Whittaker Tower — or the “Stronghold,” which was how all the doormen around here thought of it. She walked through the police barricade set up to keep reporters back, though there weren’t as many as on a typical day. The word had spread that Mr. Whittaker and his son had left town.

The sixty-five-year-old wore a long gray coat and matching hat. The epaulettes were a little too much, like a faded senior military commander on trial in the world court, but they’d come with the uniform, so there they were.

The Whittaker doorman, Frank, whom he saw about a hundred times a day, wore blue. Frank had joked about the Civil War. It took a minute but he’d gotten it. Their uniforms, blue and gray. He was from Kosovo, and he knew there was only one civil conflict of note: the one in which your family was killed.

The redhead, who’d just departed the Whittaker building, was on her phone as she walked north on Park Avenue, oblivious to the world.

Oblivious to the weaselly man, e keqe, who followed her.

The doorman thought “trouble” because of the way the weasel had looked around, and, head down, slipped from the shadows where, it seemed, he’d been waiting for her.

He was slim, in a dark jacket and jeans, a backpack slung over his shoulder.

Coincidence?

Maybe, maybe not. When she crossed the street at a light, so did he, though not at the intersection. He dodged through traffic and wove between plants in the divider between the north and south lanes.

When Redhead got to the other side of the street, she kept going north.

Weasel Man did too. The doorman noticed that his hand was in his pocket.

Was she in danger?

When she turned east on 82nd, so did he.

Maybe he should call 911.

And tell them what?

That a man in dark clothing was following a woman in dark clothing on the Upper East Side of New York? He could tell the dispatcher about the man’s face. It too was dark. No, not a Black person. I mean, weaselly and evil.

The dispatcher would pause and ask if he could be more specific.

Ach, probably it was nothing, not worth a call, all that hassle.

Should he go and warn her himself? At this point it would mean a jog, and the ninety-kilo doorman certainly was not in the mood for that, not at this age, not with these bones.

Besides, he might lose his job if he did the good deed.

Fuck it.

Anyway, now he had to hold the door open for Mrs. Jankowski, who — even though her late husband owned a string of dental practices — tipped him five lousy dollars every Christmas.

The old kurvë...

Amelia Sachs continued along 82nd Street, cell pressed against her ear, noting how the buildings grew more modest with every block.

More deserted regarding passersby too.

Her nemesis — arthritis — had largely improved in recent years, but her mission now required her to walk briskly and she was feeling the pain in her left limb.

“No,” she was saying into the phone. “They’re not sure about the arraignment.”

At the corner of York Avenue and 82nd, she turned north and continued walking, though somewhat more slowly.

She approached a warehouse she knew. It was here, last year, she’d nailed a human trafficker and rescued three young women he’d smuggled into the country from El Salvador for a sex ring.

She looked the place over. It was much the same, though in better shape than then. Apparently it had been bought or rented by a coffee bean supply company. The scent on the air told her this without her seeing any product.

The loading dock was recessed and as she passed, she turned inside quickly, dropped the phone into her jacket and lifted her switchblade knife from her right hip pocket. Flicked it open and, counting to three, stepped out fast, grabbing the man who had been following her from Whittaker Tower.

Sheldon Gibbons, the reporter, gasped.

She held the knife up and spun him around.

“What the hell?”

“Quiet!”

She put the knife away, ratcheted on cuffs and turned him back to face her.

Eyeing him closely, she said, “I’m curious. Did you decide to call yourself the Locksmith? Or was that Joanna Whittaker’s idea?”

71

“Jesus. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Amelia Sachs frisked Gibbons and found only wallet, phone, keys and digital recorder.

She was explaining: “Something didn’t seem quite right. You just happened to know I was a cop at Whittaker’s building. And you just happened to be at Kitt’s?”

“I do my research. I know all the cops that’re media fodder. I don’t mean that in a bad way. The press like you. Former model turns detective! Good material. Inspiring for the young girls out there.” The words came rat-a-tat. “And at Kitt’s? I have a police scanner. I heard the call.”

This made some sense but she said, “I called Frontpage Media, the publisher of InsideLook. You don’t work there. The number on your business card goes to a burner. They’d never heard of you.”

“It’s helpful to have a publication’s label. I go undercover for my stories. Just like cops do. You’re accusing me of being the Locksmith and you didn’t even check my alibi.”

“That’ll be on the agenda.”

“All right. The truth?”

Sachs wondered if her face tightened into a sardonic expression. Never heard that before.

“I was following you because I want to interview Averell Whittaker and his son. They’re in hiding. Nobody at the company’ll talk to me. The press department’s shut me out. I thought you were going to see them. I’m writing an exposé about Joanna. She used to be the wicked witch of the media world when she worked for her father. Bullying employees, sources, playing politicians against each other.”

Sachs kept an eye on his arms. If he were the Locksmith, this would be an easy escape. Distract her, slip the cuffs and swing, or turn and run, deciding to risk the chance of a Taser.

“And I’ve talked to employees at the charity she runs. She’s the same way there — a Nazi. And how’s this? One of the accounting people thinks she’s cooking the books. Using contributions to fund some of her projects on the side. Probably that Verum thing she does.”

“Give me a publisher’s name.”

“This is top secret. I’m only telling you be—”

“Publisher. Or jail.”

“First Amendment.”

Sachs said, “Publisher or jail.”

The disgusted look was memorable. He then said, “Allen-Drews Publishing.”

“Editor?”

Sighing, he gave the name.

“Number too.”

She called and the man answered. She identified herself. “Sheldon Gibbons was at a crime scene and I’d like to confirm that he’s under contract to publish a book with you about Joanna Whittaker.”

“Well, that’s right. Is something wrong?” the editor asked.

“No, I just needed to confirm that he had a valid reason to be at the scene.”

“If it had to do with Joanna Whittaker, then yes.”

“Thank you.”

They disconnected.

“So, cuffs off?”

“Writing a book doesn’t make you not-the-Locksmith. Give me an alibi for one of the intrusions.” She gave him the dates and times of the Talese and the Noelle break-ins.

“Home, I’m sure. You can call my wife. We just had twins and I’m up with them a lot at night. And there’s a doorman.”

Sachs got the number and called. The conversation she had with the woman was pretty much what she’d expected. The wife confirmed his presence, with the duet of crying in the background lending credence. Sachs did most of the talking, largely reassuring the woman that her husband was not in any trouble or danger.

She disconnected. “Turn around.”

Freed, he rubbed his wrists as she re-holstered the chrome cuffs and looked around. He smiled coyly. “So I’m guessing this isn’t too far from Averell Whittaker’s place, where he’s hiding.”

Sachs scoffed, flagging that his effort was a waste of time. “I only came this way, to the warehouse, so we could have this little chat.”

“Can I interview you for my book?”

“No.”

“Do you ever say, ‘Yes’? Or, ‘I’d be happy to help you out’?”

“Neither.”

“Might raise your profile.”

Considering that profile upping was the last thing she wanted to do — in light of the edict that Lincoln Rhyme was forbidden from investigating cases — she hit him with another negative.

“On deep background. No names. Can you tell me what Whittaker said about his niece trying to kill him?”

“Have a good day, Gibbons.”

As he started away, a thought occurred. She said, “Wait.”

He turned, his face wary, as if expecting to see the blade again.

“Have you been tailing Joanna and Martin Kemp?”

“That’s right. Checking out their haunts, stores they go to, banks, lawyers, friends.”

“In the past week, did either of them go to what looked like a warehouse or storeroom or workshop?”

“Actually, yeah.”

“Where?”

“Lower East Side. One of the old tenement neighborhoods.”

There wasn’t much left of the ramshackle Manhattan. Hell’s Kitchen in West Midtown was gone. Harlem was redeveloped. The railyards were now all underground, the surrounding residential and industrial clutter bulldozed away and the ’hoods turned into glitz. But there were still pockets of tattered buildings — one and two stories — south and east, where immigrants had settled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Interesting, she reflected, this was one neighborhood that Kemp had not mentioned when asked about places Kitt was thinking of for a workshop.

“Who was there?”

“I didn’t see. Joanna picked up a bag and dropped something off. I just saw the hand and then the door closed.”

If it was the Locksmith’s workshop, Joanna was probably picking up Annabelle’s or Carrie’s underwear and the knives to implicate Kitt.

“You have an address?”

Now he was coy. It was a what-can-you-do-for-me look. “If I had an exclusive or access to records, something...”

“Okay, I’ve got a good story for you, Gibbons.”

“Yeah?” His eyes were eager.

“I’ll even give you the headline: ‘Reporter Does the Right Thing.’”

“In this business, you always have to give it a try.” He shrugged. “Argyle Street, Lower East Side. I don’t know the number but the building had a name. Something about baking supplies.”

Well, that didn’t end well.

I’m in my workshop in the Sebastiano building, I’ve called up a TV station on my computer. It’s one of the traditional stations, not WMG, Whittaker’s outlet. I suspect I wouldn’t get an accurate account of the arrest of Joanna and her fiancé for attempting to murder her family members on that channel.

I’m packing up, suitcases, boxes. I won’t be able to stay here much longer. Joanna will eventually sell me out in exchange for a reduced sentence. But I have a little time; she’ll be a hard negotiator.

Glancing occasionally at the computer, I note that some of the unanswered questions that arose in apartment 2019 are now being explained: Joanna had planned the murders to gain control of the Whittaker Media empire. And the man she was setting up to be the Locksmith was none other than her own cousin, Kitteridge Whittaker, a handsome young man, with the face of a crusading politician.

Since he isn’t in fact the perpetrator, that means, the anchor-woman says in anchor-speak, that the real Locksmith is still at large.

Which hardly needs to be said, but then I don’t know the average IQ of the audience.

Yet the Shakespearean soap opera of the Whittaker family is of less interest to the viewing audience than the fact that Joanna is Verum.

This is taking the bulk of airtime.

There have already been incidents. Her supporters aren’t happy she’s been arrested. Arson, broken windows, graffiti.

I see a sign: Free Verum now!

One talking head speculates that she wanted control of her uncle’s company because she hoped to use Whittaker’s media outlets as a bullhorn in spreading her messages.

Another one offers that she grew disgusted by her capitalist upbringing and, like a true revolutionary, wanted to undermine the System, “with a capital ‘S.’”

I actually laugh out loud. They have no idea that she whipped up Verum simply for the ego and the money.

A woman in an ugly knit hat and stained coat chants: “Free her now! Free her now! We’ve said our prayers and we’re prepared!”

If I were truly God, and could moderate the content of humankind, I would delete this crone with a single keystroke.

The newscast ends with the comment that the police do not yet have any leads as to the identity of the Locksmith.

Back to work. Sadly I’m not going to get the full half million, but that’s all right. The 200K plus my substantial savings and my inheritance is enough for a fresh start. A nice workshop/apartment — decked out with that new chair I’ve been looking forward to. We content moderators know a lot about the dark web. I can create a new identity for myself in a week.

And get down to doing what I was born to do.

72

The setup was this:

One sniper and her spotter, across the street from the Locksmith’s suspected workshop, the old Sebastiano Bakery Supply building.

One surveillance team in a battered florist delivery van with eyes and ears on the place.

One four-person dynamic entry team south, one north, each a half block from the front door. They were inside, respectively, a plumbing repair truck and an unmarked but highly battered white van, not unlike the one that played a two-ton prop in Sachs’s dramatic film debut earlier, directed by undercover cop Aaron Douglass.

And out of sight, ambulances and a squadron of uniforms. A fire truck too, given the Locksmith’s attempt at destroying the evidence in the Sandleman Building.

Sachs spoke into her cell phone. “We’re on location, Rhyme.”

“Any sign of him?”

“Nothing. Windows’re shuttered. Only one functioning door in and out, the front. The delivery entrance, in the back. It’s been bolted shut. There’ll be a small cellar with a coal chute. That door’s been sealed too.” She was looking over a photo from the Department of Buildings that showed the layout of the place. New York City records were very much as old as New York City. “Thinking if he spots us he could rabbit through adjoining basements, but he’d have to break through the walls — no adjoining doors. They’re brick and sandstone. Anyway, we have eyes on the neighboring structures too.”

Rhyme would normally have been on the radio, the frequency that was used for operations like this. But, of course, he was in NYPD purgatory. He’d have to find out about the operation after it was completed.

“You going in?”

“Yep. The north team.”

He would know that that crew was going in first, and that Sachs, among the four, would be in the lead.

He wouldn’t ask if she didn’t want to leave the cowboy stuff to ESU, younger and most with military training. It would be like asking Rhyme if he was sure he wanted to spend another hour or two or three analyzing a smidgeon of trace that, somehow, might hold the key to identifying a perp.

“K. Let me know.”

They disconnected.

Then Sachs, in helmet and full body armor, was out of the van, and with the three members of her team was moving low along the sidewalk to the front door of the baking supply company. The south team approached too and would go through the door after the north.

Using hand signals only, Sachs directed the fourth member of her team — the breacher — to the door, while the others covered him. Unlike at the Whittaker apartment, they would here be using full-on C4 charges, on the hinges and on the three locks. They were formidable and new, certainly not the make and model that deterred burglars one hundred years ago.

The breacher approached silently and placed the sticky-backed charges beside each hinge and a larger one on the locks, then he backed away ten feet and hefted a battering ram in case the explosions did not completely knock down the door. Sachs nodded to the woman beside her — Sanchez stenciled on her tac vest — and they both front slung their Heckler & Koch MP5 assault rifles and pulled flash-bangs from their belts.

Speaking softly — the mikes were in low-volume-pickup mode — Sachs said, “Sniper?” She looked across the street and up, noting that the woman and her spotter were well hidden and the barrel of the Remington 700P .308 was not visible.

“In position, covering. No sign of movement.”

“Roger. South team?”

They were only thirty feet away and rather than respond verbally, that team leader lifted a thumb.

Sachs felt her heart thud and she was filled with exhilaration. Two things brought her unlimited joy: driving on the edge, engine wailing, and the instant before a dynamic entry.

She gave the hand signal to all the troops to hunker down for the bang, then held up three fingers of her left hand. She tucked them away one by one. As the last curled into a fist, the breacher whispered, “Fire in the hole,” and sent the signal to the plastic charges. Five simultaneous explosions shook the ground beneath them, as the door splintered and crashed inside. No ram would be necessary.

First Sachs, then Sanchez pulled the grenade pins and pitched them inside.

A few seconds later, when they detonated, Sachs and her trio, followed by the south team charged forward, muzzles swiveling up and down out of one another’s way, as the tactical halogens affixed beneath the machine guns’ muzzles swept the dim place. “Police, police, police!”

The officers fanned out in the large room, which appeared unoccupied.

There were some storage areas and a bathroom. Officers cleared them fast.

She looked around. There was no doubt it was the Locksmith’s workshop. There had to be a hundred locks on the wall. Machinery too, and the key-making machine that she and Rhyme speculated he had. Books and papers. No computers, phones or tablets were visible, but they might be in drawers — or, she thought angrily, with him in a different location.

An apartment elsewhere, probably. There was a bed and a small kitchen but this didn’t seem a full-time residence.

“Breach successful,” she called into the radio. “Negative on suspects, main floor. Breaching cellar.”

In the floor was a trapdoor. As she’d thought before, it would be an unlikely escape route for him, but maybe he had found one of the old tunnels that latticed this part of town, to move goods underground from one company to another. None were shown on the city maps that she’d examined but they often weren’t.

The north team walked to the trapdoor. Sachs sighed. She hated clearing cellars.

“Away from the door. In case he rigged it.”

The officers stepped back. Sachs gripped the rope used to lift the door and, moving as far away as she could, yanked the heavy, three-foot square of wood up.

No explosions, no gunshots.

She and Sanchez stepped forward, staring down into the darkness, illuminated by their tactical halogens. She saw only disintegrating concrete and brick. “Police! If anyone’s down there, show yourself.”

Nothing appeared but leisurely dust motes.

“Camera.”

An ESU officer named Brill pulled from his belt the same model of camera that had been used in Whittaker’s apartment. He fed the lens through the trapdoor opening and clicked the unit to night vision. A three-hundred-and-sixty-degree scan showed trash bags and boxes, stacks of wood, a few pieces of rusting machinery whose purpose she couldn’t deduce.

“I count five instances of cover,” Brill said. “Boxes and the trash west and north and east corners. And the coal bin in the back.”

“Agreed.”

Brill substituted his camera for his machine gun.

Pulling another flash-bang off her tactical belt, Sachs said, “I’m going down.”

She glanced at Sanchez’s belt. The woman front slung then nodded and lifted off a grenade as well.

“Two each, quadrant them.”

If the Locksmith were below, he’d be hiding far away from the trapdoor. They’d fling the devices toward the corners of the cellar.

The woman nodded.

“One final chance. Show yourself!” When there was no response, Sachs tossed her first grenade then stepped back as Sanchez threw hers. As they were greeted with two loud cracks, they repeated the choreography, targeting the two remaining corners.

Sachs glanced down and drew her Glock, set her foot on the top rung of the stairs.

She stopped.

Jesus...

“Back, back!”

She clambered to the main floor, stumbling onto her side, and scrabbling away as a swirling cloud of flame shot from the opening and into the air, ten feet.

73

The garbage bags and boxes, Sachs realized, must have held more of the Locksmith’s favorite substance: gasoline.

Just as she started down, she could smell the sweet aroma.

A trip wire, maybe on the door, would have started a timer, which he’d set to make sure that as many police as possible were inside before it activated a detonator to ignite the gas.

“Out, out!” She then transmitted into her radio, “We have fire. Need FD now.”

She helped up Sanchez, who appeared to have broken or twisted her ankle when she fell escaping the explosive flames.

The orange and yellow tornado, accompanied by oily black smoke, roiled higher into the old structure.

Choking, Sachs helped Sanchez to the door, where another officer guided her toward the ambulance.

Sachs turned back, swinging her flashlight back and forth through the gathering flames and smoke, to make sure no one else was left inside. She didn’t see anyone but counted heads outside; the entry teams were accounted for and there were no injuries other than Sanchez’s.

Stepping back inside she examined the room — to the extent she could, given the smoke. The floor was solid oak and it would take some time to burn through it. She started toward the Locksmith’s workbench, hoping for some — for any — evidence, thinking of the key trace that Lyle Spencer had snagged before that fire had destroyed the Sandleman Building.

She got halfway to the workstation before she began to feel lightheaded from the fumes.

Forgot about that little aspect of fires...

The oxygen thing.

She turned and stumbled through the door, sucking in masses of air and spitting out the smoke residue.

The firefighters arrived and began running hoses.

Just as well she left. Maybe the floor was holding, but the flames had risen through the walls and the entire main floor was now engulfed in a raging blaze. How much gas had he used? Gallons upon gallons.

The loss of clues to the man’s identity was one consequence of the trap.

But it meant something else too. The Locksmith wouldn’t have set it while he was still here. With the arrest of Joanna and Kemp, he’d know it was only a matter of time before they gave up his name in exchange for a plea deal.

Which meant that he’d undoubtedly bundled up his most important possessions, cleaned out his bank account and was presently a hundred miles from the city by now, and still on the run.

He had been as efficient at destroying evidence as he had been at avoiding leaving it at the scenes.

In the parlor of his town house, Lincoln Rhyme was looking at the photos Sachs had taken of the gutted Sebastiano Bakery Supply Company. He noted too that the neighboring structures were destroyed as well.

“Was it gasoline, like at the other site?”

“Yes,” Sachs replied. She’d taken a lengthy shower, but the lavender scent from her shampoo was laced with the aroma of smoke from burnt wood.

“The building wasn’t stable — the floors — but I could stand in the doorway and get some shots.”

“All those are locks?” Rhyme nodded to the screen, noting the scores of scorched devices. “Quite a collection.”

“You’re thinking of the Watchmaker again.”

He smiled briefly. He had been. The “nemesis” owned hundreds of timepieces.

“They’re cut from the same cloth. Intelligent. Tacticians. Dark artists, you could say. And both obsessed with mechanical devices. Very retro.”

“You’re sounding poetic today.”

His focus returned to the case. “And the reporter’s alibi checks out? What’s his name again?”

“Sheldon Gibbons. It does. Neighbors and his wife and — more important — phone records and security cams confirm it. Funny. He looked the sleaziest but turned out to be the most authentic journalist of the bunch. He’s writing an exposé on Joanna.”

“What’s the rookie’s status?”

“Finishing up soon.”

Pulaski was walking the grid down at Joanna’s apartment in Battery Park City and running her yacht too. They had no way of knowing when the Locksmith had been there last — a week or two, possibly. If he’d been there at all. There was little chance that the pair had committed to paper or bytes any identifying information about the Locksmith, and they would have communicated on burner phones. Rhyme had hoped for some trace evidence, at least.

This did not seem likely, though. Pulaski had reported it was obvious that an energetic cleaning crew had descended on the sumptuous living space not long ago. Whether this was for the purpose of eradicating any evidentiary connection between herself and the Locksmith, or simply Joanna’s fastidious ways, the end result was the same.

In the sterile portion of the lab Mel Cooper was finishing up with the evidence collected at the apartment of Averell Whittaker, though Rhyme guessed there would be little helpful. The Locksmith himself would never have been to the abode.

And this was the case, Cooper reported.

Rhyme said, “Get on home. But make an appearance at the lab in Queens. Remember we’re renegade.”

Beaufort, Potter and Mayor Harrison still had a price on Rhyme’s head and that of anyone working with him.

Cooper stepped out of the lab, and tossed out his gloves, cap and booties, then dropped the white cotton lab jacket into a wicker bin, for Thom to launder. He stepped into the first-floor bathroom, where he scrubbed up. Then, calling “Bye,” he left via the back door.

A man’s voice called from the lobby of the town house. “We’re ready for you, Detective.”

Rhyme called, “Go get him, Sachs.”

She gave a brief laugh and walked into the front hallway of the town house.

Rhyme piloted his chair to the parlor doorway.

The film crew — three young men, in jeans and work shirts or T’s — had set up a fancy video camera on a substantial tripod. One handed her a lapel mike and she pinned it to the front of her blouse.

A small monitor sat on a portable metal table. On this was being broadcast a press conference down at One Police Plaza. The point man was Commanding Officer Brett Evans — the supporter of Rhyme during the Buryak-acquittal incident. He was talking about the arrest of Joanna Whittaker and her fiancé, Martin Kemp, in the attempted murder of their uncle, as well as for the kidnapping of Kitt, whom they were going to frame for the death.

Sachs said to the lead cameraman, “You going to do the five, four, three thing with your fingers?”

The producer smiled. “You want me to?”

“Sure.”

She took a deep breath. Amelia Sachs was a woman who had driven cars well over 150 miles an hour, who had been shot at, and on more than one occasion faced burial alive — her greatest fear — without a runaway pulse. And she’d been a fashion model for some of the biggest clothing and makeup companies in the world — but those assignments didn’t involve speaking lines; she simply had to remain still and look sultry. Now, Rhyme thought she was nervous... and irritated with herself for feeling that way.

Rhyme smiled at her. She gave a faint laugh and turned back, to stare down the camera.

“Okay, coming up.”

On the screen Evans was saying, “And we’d like to enlist the aid of everyone in the tri-state area to find this dangerous criminal. I’ve asked one of our detectives to give you a description of the Locksmith and some other information. If you see anyone who you think might be him, call nine one one immediately. And do not, I repeat, do not attempt to apprehend him on your own. Now to Detective Amelia Sachs, NYPD.”

The monitor went silent, the red light came on, and the finger-counting engineer did his thing.

“Good evening.” Sachs didn’t have a script but didn’t need one. She stood beside a whiteboard on which Mel Cooper, who had fine handwriting, had penned the bullet-point descriptors of the Locksmith. She recited them now. His sex, his build, his shoe size, his MO, his obsession with locks, his likely interest in lock-picking conventions, his connection to the Sebastiano Bakery Supply building on Argyle Street. He’d driven an Audi A6 recently, and he’d been known to visit certain locations — the sites of the recent intrusions and the Sandleman Building.

She added, “Now, we’re making headway in the NYPD crime scene lab in Queens.”

The improvised line was clever.

“We’re analyzing some solid evidence we’ve just discovered. We expect a breakthrough soon, but evidence is only part of the solution in finding this man. We need witnesses. We need you.” She nodded, and the little red eye on the camera went out.

She exhaled long.

“Good job.” The cameraman lifted an eyebrow. “Hey, Detective, you ever get tired of the cop thing you might want to think about acting.”

“I’ll stick to policing. It’s less stressful.”

74

I’m eating a Spartan meal in a modest coffee shop — a not unpleasant place filled with professionals bent over phones, tablets, computers; gabbing blue-collar workers; lovers who’ve passed the two- or three-month mark and no longer need fancy-night-out dates.

The lighting is green and cold, but not a soul cares.

A bowl of soup, Texas toast exuding butter. Soda. Caffeine free, of course.

I’m on a device too — my computer, reading the news about the death of my workshop. All gone, many of my beloved tools and locks and keys. I’m surprised they learned about it so soon. I have a feeling that it wasn’t Joanna who gave them the address; it would be Lincoln and Amelia who somehow figured it out. (Oh, and sorry, Joanna — looks like you lost that bargaining chip.)

It’s a shame that I had to booby-trap it (and a shame too that nobody was killed in the raid). But I had no choice. Time to take my money, my most important things and favorite lock-picking and other tools and flee.

But not quite yet.

I change screens and log on to Tammybird’s channel once more. Ah, the little thing is still with us. She’s at her grandmother’s house and is thanking everyone for their support. God too, which makes me smile, since He, of course, is me. She’s going to get help. The comments continue to scroll.

Goodbye, Tam, I think. And go to yet another site. Now I’m watching a girl doing gymnastic maneuvers, which ten thousand other girls and young women execute daily and post on ViewNow, YouTube and the others.

I think of Dr. Patricia’s happy assessment that I’m not beyond repair, since I have a girlfriend. Of course, the way she asked the question was: “Are you seeing anybody?” And I replied that I was. “Her name is Aleksandra.”

What she didn’t know was that, yes, I was indeed “seeing” somebody, but the verb “viewing” would be more accurate. I spent hours upon hours observing the young Russian woman’s ViewNow channel. Aleksandra lives in a small suburb of Moscow and has never been to the United States. I have an intimate relationship with her, though it is one that she does not participate in. She doesn’t even know I exist.

I remember that in the comments section of a makeup tutorial someone said that she looked like a gymnast, with her slim figure and bunned hair. She replied, “All Russian girls, when we are in youths, we are ballerinas or we are gymnasts. There are no exceptions to rule.”

The girl I’m watching now, doing stretches, is talented, to be sure, though I wonder if she knows that the majority of the 7,435 views are by teenage boys and men, many middle-aged, who don’t give a shit about the floor routines or her skill on the balance beam. I suspect she does not.

For myself, I’m not even watching Roonie Soames’s contortions. I’m looking past her, confirming what I’ve learned about the apartment she shares with her mother, Taylor — the woman who surely remains troubled nightly about the question of who Ben Nelson really is and what did he want.

In particular I’m checking to see if she was concerned enough about the disappearance to change her security. I see she was not.

Hargrove Deadbolt and a knob pin and tumbler I could pick with two paper clips.

A simple alarm, no door bar.

Still no weapons — nearly always the rule in Manhattan (though there are the occasional hunters, and you might see Granddad’s ancient WWII rifle, just as accurate and deadly as it was seventy-five years ago).

And since the last time I tuned in to the girl’s videos, they have not bought a rottweiler or pit bull.

Smooth sailing for tonight’s Visit.

Now, the girl is lecturing on hamstrings.

I wonder how devastated she’ll be when she finds out that by her thoughtless postings, revealing to the world the vulnerabilities of the apartment, she’ll be responsible for her mother’s death? Roonie had already spilled to Ben Nelson that she’ll be in Wilmington for gymnastics camp. I calculate this means she’ll be gone by now. Leaving Taylor home alone tonight.

And if not... Oh, well.

I now memorize the layout of the apartment and click the computer to sleep. I finish the last scoops of soup — it’s quite hearty and flavorful — and think about the fate of an innocent woman.

But then I correct myself.

Innocent?

Of course not. Oh, she did nothing to deserve what will happen, but neither does the gazelle who carelessly strays too far from the herd or doesn’t act on the molecules of predator musk because those last few leaves are hard to resist. The idea of justice is singularly human and not a neat fit for every situation where one starts the day alive and ends it dead.

Ah, Taylor...

I feel the weight of the brass knife in my back pocket. Picture it hovering over flesh.

Picture it within flesh.

The check comes and I pay, and step into the New York City night, filled with the scent of exhaust, garlic from an Italian restaurant, the perfume on the necks of the female halves of couples walking by in date euphoria.

In a few minutes I’m at my car — not Kitt Whittaker’s Audi, but my own more modest Toyota. In the backseat, I unzip a canvas bag and extract brown overalls. I tug them on and zip up. I walk around to the trunk and open it.

There’s a carton, which looks like something a UPS man would deliver, and I slip into it an RF alarm-disabling device.

Down goes the trunk and, after a scan of the area, I walk several blocks to the subway and board a train. I mount earbuds, as if listening to music, but I’m not. I’m studying fellow passengers. Wondering about where they live, what are their apartments like, what do they and their partners look like and sound like when making dinner or making love.

I’m opening up their lives. Their secrets are mine...

We arrive at the station, and I step from the car onto the platform, into the salty, hot-rubber-scented air of the New York City subway.

And then to the surface.

A few blocks from the exit, I walk past the front door I will soon break into, eyeing it casually, looking for threats.

None.

All I see are people jogging, eating snacks, walking arm in arm, trudging, focused and self-protective.

No one notices me.

I’m a parcel deliveryman.

One of thousands in New York.

I’m invisible.

I lean against a substantial tree, pretending to make a phone call, until I decide that the threat to me is minimal.

Clutching the box, I climb to the door. Reaching into the carton, I press the switch on the RF transmitter, sending out its stream of radio waves to confound the alarm on the other side of the wood.

I pat my back pocket to make sure the brass knife is accessible. I then remove the two keys I made earlier.

I’ve seasoned them with graphite and they work perfectly in the locks.

I open the door, step inside.

A slow, deep breath... but the tense five seconds come and go; the radio jammer has worked its magic. The alarm remains silent as I ease the door shut.

There’s no click this time. No risk of another 2019.

I take the knife from my pocket and open it, making sure that this act too remains completely silent.

75

Lincoln Rhyme was in an alien space.

His kitchen.

He had never cared much for cooking. He certainly didn’t mind a good meal now and then, but to him food was largely fuel. If anything interested him, it was the chemistry of the process. Thom, an expert with whisk and blade and flame, had told him how yolks thicken and yeast inflates and oil and liquid — chemical enemies — become allies when headed for a salad.

He had suggested that his aide might want to write a book about the science of cooking. Thom had replied it was about a hundred years too late.

His phone hummed.

“Sachs.”

“I’m downtown,” she was saying through the speaker. “The war room. We’ve had over three hundred calls about my broadcast.”

He wouldn’t’ve expected that many.

“Anything useful?”

“Some possible spottings. Mostly people on Argyle Street, near the Sebastiano Company.”

“And?”

“Still checking them out. We looked over the security videos around Joanna’s apartment but if the Locksmith was ever there, he managed to avoid the cameras. There was a blind spot at the service entrance.” She chuckled. “One caller said she knows the Locksmith’s an alien. And I don’t mean immigration-wise.”

“They do come out of the woodwork.”

She grew serious. “Have you heard about the Verum situation?”

“No. I’m in the dark, being a member of the Hidden.”

“Seems like Joanna — well, her alter ego — has thousands of followers. They’re not happy their beloved leader’s in jail. Lot of online traffic, threats. Some riots. No kidding.”

“This case’s been one for the books, Sachs. When’ll you be home?”

“Late. Two, three. Sooner if we get a lead and nail him.”

“Optimist... ’Night.”

He disconnected and looked around him.

The kitchen was paneled and windowed like any from a hundred and fifty years ago, but the many devices arrayed and installed here were state of the art — not unlike his parlor, forty feet away.

He noted oddly shaped knives and ladles and spatulas. There was a round wooden cylinder with inch and centimeter markings burnt into it. Ah, a rolling pin.

He was not here, however, to ponder the mysteries of turning flora and fauna into edibles. Whisky was his mission, a quite nice Glenmorangie, the eighteen-year-old version. He lifted down the bottle and wedged it between his legs, then sliced through the paper seal with a short, sharp knife. The cork stopper proved a bit more challenging but in thirty seconds it was out. He poured a glass and he didn’t spill a drop.

He set the bottle back on the counter and took a small sip.

Heavenly.

Driving via left ring finger, he turned the chair and motored into the hallway. He passed through the doorway into the dining room, a formal place with elaborate crown molding and a table that sat eight. The legs ended in lion paws gripping a ball — a flourish that Rhyme had always found ironic, since his own toes could grip nothing and probably never would. It was one of the many observations that had so pained him in the first months of his altered condition and that he now considered with amusement, if at all.

How perspectives change...

He and Amelia had had a very pleasant meal here just before the Buryak case and the Locksmith investigation roared to life.

With the chair moving nearly silently over the smooth oak floors, Rhyme steered into the hallway and then turned right through the open doorway of the larger of the two front parlors, the one that contained the lab.

There he braked to a stop and lowered the glass from which he was about to take a sip.

Wearing a deliveryman’s brown uniform, a man of medium build, and with dark hair, stood with his arms crossed. He was looking at one of the whiteboards, the one that detailed evidence of the Alekos Gregorios murder case.

The intruder held a knife in his right hand. The pale-yellow color told Rhyme it was brass and it appeared homemade. He now guessed that the tiny filings of the metal Amelia had discovered at the scene came possibly not from making keys, but from sharpening the blade.

The man turned.

Lincoln Rhyme squinted as he stared at the man’s face. He was rarely caught off guard, but he certainly was now.

Oh, he could hardly be surprised that the man in the overalls, who’d broken through his locks and security system so efficiently and quietly, was the Locksmith.

But what he would never have guessed was that the man’s true identity — verified by a fast glimpse at the DMV picture on the board — was Yannis Gregorios, the man who had slashed his father to death in the backyard of the family’s unpretentious mansion in a lovely neighborhood of Queens.

76

Before he said anything I was aware that Lincoln Rhyme had entered the room.

It’s curious how this happens. Something about soundwaves maybe ricocheting and being absorbed differently when the dynamic form of a human being invades a space, all the more so when that person is in a complicated, motorized conveyance.

I tell him, “Don’t bother to call anyone.” I nod toward the RF box. “Radio frequency? It’s jamming all the circuits. I turned it on when I heard you hang up with Amelia.”

Lincoln’s finger is in fact on a keypad. But the green light on my box means that the former cop and I are as isolated as one can be in Manhattan.

I turn back to the whiteboard on which he can see my picture and the picture of my father. His photo was taken by a crime scene technician and adequately captured the rictus of pain that preceded the peace of death.

So Lincoln considers me a suspect. I wonder why.

My picture is from the DMV. Not surprising that the police would have scoured the crime scene, my father’s house, and discovered no suitable pictures of me. He had none.

Your son’s a pervert...

“You didn’t believe Xavier was the one?”

Unfazed, Rhyme said, “It wasn’t my case so I didn’t focus on it until I thought about the lack of defensive wounds. That somebody he knew might’ve done it. You’d been there earlier, maybe you came back. And were having a conversation with him. Then...” He nods at the knife.

I hear Joanna’s voice:

Why did you want to kill me?

I needed to...

Like the kid posting the Los Zetas beheading, I had to have more and more and more...

Hence, my Visit to apartment 2019, the first time to use the knife.

And we saw how that turned out.

No. Absolutely not. You can’t hurt a soul...

But the urge didn’t leave.

And so I paid a visit to my father.

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...

And that’s just what I did. I met with him for dinner and talked about the imprisonment.

He said it made a man out of me.

I said, well, it certainly made me who I am.

I thanked him for dinner, left and returned a few hours later and, with three strokes, killed him.

He did beg, yes. Though for his life, not forgiveness.

Now, Lincoln studies me. It’s an intense and chilling experience. The dark eyes probe. “I know you’re good at what you do,” he tells me and seems to mean it. “But here, how did you...”

Lincoln’s voice fades and he gives a dour laugh with a glance at the front door. “The video that Amelia made! You got the make of the lock and picked it!”

“I’m good, yes, but I wouldn’t have time to pick locks on Central Park West. I had keys to get in. I followed you down to that fire, on the lower west side. I was going to tap your assistant on the head and get images of the keys. He was lucky he left them in the ignition of the Sprinter. But I did need the video to see the type of alarm. A BRT-4200. That’s a good one. I had to program three separate jamming codes. It’s sophisticated.” He nodded at the panel. “But as you can hear — or can’t hear — it’s not really sophisticated enough.”

Lincoln closes his eyes briefly. “So that’s how you got into the victims’ apartments. Through their videos. Annabelle Talese was an influencer. Carrie Noelle ran her toy sales operation out of her apartment.”

In his eyes there is a look that I choose to take as admiration.

“And it’s how you met Joanna Whittaker,” Lincoln says. “You watched her posts as Verum. That must have been tricky. She went to a lot of trouble to stay anonymous, I’d imagine.”

I tell him, “The challenge.” Then I click my tongue. “But I object to ‘victim,’ Lincoln. The posters are co-conspirators.”

I share my theory of social media as a form of natural selection. “I’m just culling, eliminating the oblivious and stupid and weak.”

Rhyme gives another look at the door.

“It’s just you and me. If you’re going to say your aide is back soon, I saw him leave a half hour ago. He got into his friend’s car. They kissed. I know about Thom and his partner — there were articles about his loyal service to you online. So it’s date night for them. And Amelia’s at headquarters. I heard her tell you. Anyway, I won’t be long.”

“Yannis. Do you go by that?”

“From my last name. Greg.”

“Greg.” His voice is analytical. Without a hint of anxiety. It occurs to me that someone in his condition faces death frequently. “Are there any other victims — sorry, but they are victims — other than your father?”

I think about how close I came with Carrie — the shower scene. My father’s death had freed me, but Joanna had said no, and so I kept my knife in my pocket and left.

“No. Just him.”

“And now you’re going to kill me and leave town?”

While I would rather have made a Visit to Amelia Sachs’s Brooklyn apartment — the image of her hair as hawk wings simply will not go away — it was Lincoln who had to go. Had I killed her first he would have done all he could to find me.

And when he’s gone, then it will be time for my Visit with Taylor Soames.

I look Lincoln over closely. “We lock our cars, our homes, our offices, our money in banks. I know all about locks, every kind... But you’re one that I’ve never come across before.”

“Me?”

“A locked man. You’re a locked man, Lincoln. And there’s only one key to free you.”

77

“Is that the murder weapon?” Lincoln asks.

“That’s right.”

“You just smeared some of his blood on the butcher knife and planted it in Xavier’s locker at the shelter.”

I nod, recalling sharpening my folding knife. It was that run-in with my father’s ribs that required the satisfying whetstone.

Lincoln says, “Brass. Alloy of copper and zinc. Sometimes with some manganese, aluminum, arsenic.

“Chemically I’ve always found the metal quite interesting — it’s a substitutional alloy. Some copper atoms are substituted for some of zinc. There’s a symmetry to it I enjoy. But why brass? It’s softer than bronze. That has a whole historic era named after it.”

“Because,” I tell him, “brass is the metal of keys.” I scoff. “And, don’t put it down, Lincoln. Brass does define a whole section of the orchestra.”

Lincoln is shaking his head. “We found dried blood at the Locksmith’s scenes. We dated it to about the time your father was stabbed to death. Never made the connection.”

As if he’s speaking to himself.

I move on.

“You’ve been banned from working for the NYPD. You’re in your condition.” I glance at the chair. “I’d think you’d welcome death. You’ve taught your wife and your protégés your skill. Passing on the torch. Do you have nerves in your neck?”

Lincoln says sourly, “I have nerves everywhere.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I have sensation in my neck. Nowhere below my shoulders.”

“I don’t want you to be in pain. So the jugular’s out. But if I were to slice through the veins in your arms, you’d feel nothing?”

“Not true. I’d feel pretty pissed off.”

How can I not smile? “You’re a puzzle, Lincoln. Just like the best locks. Riddles and pin tumblers have a lot in common. You know Richard Feynman?”

“Of course. Physicist. One of the creators of the atom bomb.”

“He loved locks. There wasn’t much to do in Alamogordo when he was off the clock. He’d amuse himself by cracking the combination locks of the filing cabinets that held the nuclear weapons’ secrets. Locks, puzzles...”

This has gone on for too long and now it’s time to leave. I’m eager for my Visit with Taylor Soames and, perhaps, Roonie.

Stretch your hamstrings slowly and be sure to wear leg warmers...

I start toward him.

He tilts his head. “Before you do this. Please. Answer a question.”

I pause.

“What would your idea of hell be?”

There’s only one: being trapped forever in a place where I can’t peer into private lives, can’t slip into their bedrooms and bend close enough to feel their sleep heat radiate from their bodies. Can’t cut open their secrets.

Can’t cut open their bodies...

I do not answer him, of course.

But it seems I don’t need to. I see in Lincoln Rhyme’s face what might be a cast of perfect understanding. This is followed by the narrowest of narrowing eyes, which connote sorrow and regret.

And I realize to my utter shock, this look is conveying sympathy not for himself, but for me.

Oh, Christ, no!

The door to the second parlor, across the entryway, flies open and a half-dozen men and women, some in uniform, all with guns drawn, charge out. I’m not surprised to see Amelia in the front and I now understand what she said over the phone were lines that had been scripted to make me believe that she was downtown.

They are shouting, so loud I can feel the words in my chest, “Drop it, drop the weapon!” I’m so shocked that I’m frozen and incapable of moving, incapable of relaxing my grip on the knife.

Being trapped forever in a place where I can’t peer into private lives...

I consider taking a step toward them.

And letting that be the end.

But they’ve done this before and, in the instant of my hesitation, they’re on me.

78

“Well, if he isn’t a people cop after all.”

Rhyme cut a look to his former partner and grumbled, “Beg your pardon?”

Sellitto said, “Your interrogation. You got a confession about killing his father. And found out there were no other vics. Played a little of the old mind games. See, evidence isn’t everything, Linc.”

A shrug. “I figured as long as we had him, why not chat? Obviously he has father issues, so I thought I’d rile him up and see where it went. It’s easy to get somebody to fess up when he’s about to murder the confessee. But, for the record, evidence is a more elegant way to build a case and it always will be.”

“Have to have the last word, don’t you, Linc?” Sellitto was smiling.

“Uhm.”

Yannis Gregorios sat in a chair, hands cuffed behind him. His eyes were constantly in motion.

Amelia Sachs did the Miranda thing, and asked, “Do you wish to waive your right to speak to an attorney before questioning?”

“No,” Gregorios answered absently.

It hardly mattered; they had enough to put him away forever.

Rhyme noted that he was taking in doors and windows — well, specifically, locks and latches.

“Rookie?”

“Lincoln?” asked Ron Pulaski.

“Zip-tie his wrists.”

“We’ve got the cuffs double locked. Nobody can get out of ’em.”

Rhyme lowered his head and the man apparently came to understand that the prisoner they were soon to be taking downtown was nicknamed “the Locksmith.”

“Oh, good point.”

The young man slipped on the nylon restraints.

Gregorios’s face revealed not the anger one might expect. His eyes were gazing at Rhyme as if the two were competitors in a champion chess match and Rhyme had just made the opening move in a game long anticipated.

The Watchmaker had once looked at him with an identical expression.

Two uniforms, a sturdy man and woman, arrived. “Transport to Central Booking.”

Pulaski nodded at Gregorios and each of the patrol officers took an arm and led him to the door, Pulaski following.

“A moment?” Gregorios said. His escorts stopped. He looked back to Rhyme. “It seems we’re now both locked men. I wonder who’ll be free first.”

He turned and the four vanished out the door.

To Gregorios, yes, Rhyme had expressed surprise as to how he’d breached his castle — and the other victims’.

In fact, though, his team had figured out the Locksmith’s likely MO — Talese and Noelle had broadcast images of their dwellings, their security systems, their solitary lifestyles and such details as their tendency to take sleeping aids or indulging in a glass or two of wine before bed.

So Rhyme had proposed that Sachs broadcast a plea for help from the citizens in Rhyme’s apartment, the camera angle wide enough to catch the locks and the alarm panel.

Would it work? They didn’t know. But it was worth a try.

A surveillance team from NYPD Tech Services planted videos outside the town house and then Rhyme sent Thom off with his partner. Sellitto and Sachs had placed a tac team in the parlor.

The Locksmith had fallen for the bait.

Now, Sachs and Mel Cooper were packing up the evidence. The TV was on to a cable network’s news channel and “Breaking Story” appeared. The anchor-woman reported, “A suspect tentatively identified as the Locksmith has been arrested in Manhattan. Thirty-year-old Yannis Gregorios, a content moderator with ViewNow, has been charged with the series of break-ins that terrorized the city.

“He was also charged with the murder of his father, Alekos Gregorios, stabbed to death last week.

“A source within the police department reported that the famous criminologist Lincoln Rhyme was part of the team that pursued the alleged killer. A former captain with the New York City Police, Rhyme is best known for capturing the Bone Collector, a serial kidnapper and killer who roamed the streets of New York years ago.”

“Oh, shit,” Sellitto muttered.

Rhyme grimaced. “I know, I know. Makes me mad too. They always get it wrong. A criminologist studies the sociology of crime and I can’t think of anything more boring. I’m a criminalist.”

“That’s not what I frigging mean.”

Rhyme realized that Sellitto, Cooper and Sachs had stopped their tasks and were staring his way.

And then it hit him.

Now everyone — including those in Police Plaza — would know he’d broken the prohibition on consulting.

“I don’t see a problem,” he said, feeling cheerful. “I did happen to catch the psycho, didn’t I? Ten dollars says they’ll forgive and forget. No, make it a hundred. Who’s on?”