The Watchmaker’s Hand

32

From the early-morning shadows of an alley across from his next target, Charles Vespasian Hale was looking over the jobsite.

Specifically, his attention was upon a cluster of men near the entrance — there were two other ways into the place, but they had been sealed with four-by-eight plywood sheets.

The men were engaged in a lively conversation. Sports? Streaming TV shows? Women?

But, having been transformed from craftsmen to guards, they were observant, surely hoping for the chance to whip the hide of the man who’d pissed on their sacred profession.

Wearing jeans, a dark windbreaker, a black baseball cap, he studied them now, these stocky men in brown overalls, yellow and orange vests and yellow hard hats. Their hands were blunt, their brows broad, faces tanned. The job would pay well, and Hale supposed they, like the late Andy Gilligan, owned boats for weekend diversion. One smoked — furtively, breaking a rule — while another sipped coffee. The third occasionally lifted a brown paper bag to his lips. Hale had learned that a surprising number of skyscraper workers drank, especially those doing beam work. Their deaths from falling were underreported.

These three looked about occasionally, but being amateurs at the security business, they missed much.

Including Hale himself.

He gazed skyward to the Swenson-Thorburg AB tower crane soaring into the sky, the tubing like blood-coated bone, the company’s signature crimson hue.

The slewing unit — the massive turntable — was unlocked and, like the one he’d seen yesterday at the dead-drop site, the jib swiveled slightly in the wind.

The crane was, from this base view, a brute of a creature. But from his research for the project here in New York, Hale had come to see them as devices of great subtlety. Their development in fact paralleled the evolution of timepieces.

From shadoofs — pivoting levers that held buckets to scoop up well water — to derrick cranes (named after Thomas Derrick, the famed Elizabethan hangman) to the towers of the 1970s, cranes, like clocks, drove the engines of industry, and therefore society. At some point, cities could no longer grow geographically and remain cities. Horizontal expansion did not work. It was cranes that made cities seek the skies, drawing more and more population, and grow increasingly powerful.

To Hale, though, there was one immutable difference between cranes and clocks. While he could not conceive of destroying any watch or clock (other than IED timers, of course), he could without any twitch of concern bring one of these monsters crashing to its knees.

And this particular tumble, in a few hours, would be spectacular.

The crane itself was only slightly higher and heavier than the one he’d brought down yesterday. But the difference was this: there was no operator in the cab to heroically point the jib where it could do the least harm. When the Swenson-Thorburg AB died, so would many people. The building the jib towered over was 1960s construction: the superstructure, of course, was steel. But much of the rest was soft aluminum and glass — which would explode under the impact like a thousand hand grenades made of sharpened shards and collapse upon itself. Layer upon layer of building material, bone and blood.

He looked at his watch.

The time was 7:03 a.m.

There remained, of course, the question of getting the acid delivered to the device’s counterweight trolley. This would be a bit trickier than the first one, given the guards.

Whose eyes diligently scanned the street, the sidewalk, pedestrians, passing vehicles — especially those that slowed as drivers and passengers shot fast, nervous glances at the spidery red legs of the crane, which reached to a hazy sky.

Could any of these be the crane killer?

But after a few minutes of observing the impromptu guards, Hale decided that the risk of his being discovered in the act of sabotage was minimal.

The trio was keenly observant, yes. But they were looking everywhere except where they should.

33

No luck with the acid manufacturers.

No luck finding who might have hired the Watchmaker, and why, now that housing terrorism seemed unlikely.

No luck with the FBI’s finding leads from Hale’s front-of-the-airplane accommodations on the flight to JFK.

No luck with the dirt that Pulaski had collected at the Gilligan shooting, supplemented by what Sachs had found at the Helprins’ house in Queens.

Then Rhyme grew irritated that he’d even thought the word “luck,” a concept that had no place in forensic science, or any other branch of serious study — despite the Seneca poster in FBI agent Fred Dellray’s office.

Lyle Spencer’s hunting expedition last night had confirmed that every tower crane site he stopped at was guarded by at least three individuals, either workers volunteering for the job or rent-a-cops. All the exits were either sealed off or guarded, and floodlights turned on to illuminate the ground around the crane bases.

At 7:30 this morning, however, they did catch a break.

The NYPD’s Computer Crimes operation had called. They’d been notified that a computer found at a crime scene needed to be cracked. The division itself didn’t have supercomputers to break passwords, but used an outside service that could. Sachs — who appeared better this morning — agreed to meet the Computer Crimes detective there with Gilligan’s laptop.

With some luck, Rhyme thought acerbically, they might find information on it that could lead them to the Watchmaker’s safe house or reveal the next target.

After she’d left, the computer in one hand, the green tank in another, Rhyme happened to be looking at a nearby monitor. The news was on, a local station. Thom had, irritatingly, left the unit running when he’d brought breakfast into the lab. Rhyme rolled forward for the remote to shut it off. But then he happened to focus on the present story.

Eyes sweeping from the TV to the map of the city, defaced with the red marks indicating the cranes.

“Thom! Thom!”

The aide appeared, eyebrow raised. “You sound... I don’t know. Alarmed.”

“Hardly. I should sound urgent. There’s a difference.”

“Well, what’s so urgent, then?”

“Your new mission.” Eyes still on the map, he said, “You get to help solve the case — and, even better, you get to do it just like I do. Sitting on your ass.”

“Investors this morning are moving out of the mortgage market and into equities and corporate bonds following the attack yesterday by domestic terrorists on a crane on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, with threats of more to come unless demands for affordable housing are met.

“The jobsite where the first attack occurred is where Evans Development is constructing a luxury high-rise that will ultimately soar eighty-five stories into the air. With the three lower floors devoted to retail and commercial, the rest of the building, designed by Japanese architect Niso Hamashura will contain 984 co-op units ranging in size from eighteen hundred square feet to thirteen thousand.

“Developers in the city have suspended construction while the police and federal authorities hunt for the terrorists. Reggie Novak, president of the Tri-State Developers’ Association, has warned that member companies might face bankruptcy if the stoppage continues for more than a few days. Stocks are trading lower this morning.”

34

Not the nerd Sachs had expected.

Walking toward her in front of Emery Digital Solutions’ downtown headquarters, on cobblestoned Marquis Street, Arnold Levine nodded. He wore polished shoes, a pale blue shirt, a navy tie and a navy-blue suit. The only clash in his couture was that the gold badge holder was brown and the belt it was hung on was black. Hardly a sin.

Didn’t computer guys wear hoodies and sweats?

Levine was a supervisor in the NYPD Computer Crimes Unit, one of the country’s premier agencies battling cyberterrorism, child exploitation and fraud.

No, nothing nerdish about him at all.

Until he started to talk.

Shaking her hand enthusiastically, he rambled, “I lobbied One PP for a supercomputer. I could find a reasonable one: an HPE Cray SC 250kW NA with a liquid-cooled cabinet. A bargain — two hundred and thirty-five K. They said no. So we have to farm out the work.” A nod at the building. “If anybody can do it, it’s them.”

She inhaled, smelling the exhausty, damp-pavement scent of mornings in Manhattan. The breath controlled the impending coughing spell, but the sting was still there. She thought about the green tank in the car, but decided to leave it there. It somehow represented a sign of weakness.

They walked past security vehicles — a police unit and an unmarked sedan with U.S. government plates, both parked with a good view of the building. Then, inside, they were met by two more guards, large men, armed, who looked at their IDs closely and then regarded a computer for their names. They were nodded through a magnetometer and then emerged, collecting their metal on the other side.

“Wait here,” said one of the guards. “Mr. Emery’ll be right out.”

Levine, in full nerd mode now, said with a conspiratorial whisper, “Oh, that Cray? The super box I mentioned? I told them we could lease out the time when we weren’t using it, but it was no to that too. A security thing, they said. But anybody could write script to firewall it. I could do that; you could do that. What they didn’t want to do—”

“Was write a check for two hundred and thirty-five K.”

“Exactly right.”

He wore a wedding ring, and she wondered if he inundated his spouse with nonstop tech recitations. Maybe she was a nerd too.

He continued to ramble, she continued to not listen. The time was 8:10.

The Watchmaker’s next deadline loomed.

A minute later, the door leading into the interior of the company opened with an electronic lock click, and a tall, lean man in his mid-thirties stepped out. He was gangly and dressed in orange jeans, a rust-colored T, blue running shoes.

“Detectives Sachs and Levine? Ben Emery.”

They shook hands.

She couldn’t help but notice that Emery’s eyes grew intrigued as they took in her face — then wistful when they arrived at her left hand and the wedding band. He gave the tiniest of shrugs and gestured them back into the bowels of the operation.

The place was cold and dim and filled with workstations dominated by monitors and pale beige boxes, all sprouting a million wires. The purposes of the devices were an utter mystery to her, and she was sure, even if Levine or Emery had explained the point of them, she would have understood nothing.

He led them down long corridors, offering details of what each department did, as if they’d asked. Levine nodded knowingly from time to time and asked enthusiastic questions.

Soon they arrived at a workstation in the back of the facility, that of a large man in a Hawaiian shirt, cargo pants and black flip-flops. He was Stanley Grier and he was the one who would be doing the forensic analysis and cracking the passcode.

She handed him the warrant she’d just gotten from a night-court magistrate. He scanned it, then pulled on latex gloves and took the bag from Sachs, checking the serial number of the computer to make sure the paperwork was in order. He extracted the unit, set it squarely in the center of his immaculate workstation. He put his name and signature on the chain-of-custody card.

“It’s been swept for explosives and radiation,” she said.

“Well, figured that. Okay. I’ll get to work and see what’s what. I’ll make a mirror, but I may have to open it up and pull the hard drive out.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “Though if it comes to trial, you may have to testify that you didn’t disturb any data.”

“Been there, done that,” Grier said.

A coughing fit took her and all three men glanced her way. It seemed that Levine and Emery were concerned for her, while Grier’s frown suggested that exhaled breath and spittle might infect the servers, as if she were spreading digital, not physiological, viruses. She didn’t explain about the toxin but concentrated on controlling the spasms.

“Are you...?” Emery began.

“Fine,” she said, a snipped word, though offered with a smile of thanks. “How long, do you think?” she asked Grier.

“No way of knowing. Was the owner a good guy or a bad one?”

“Bad.”

“Then he probably made the password rigorous.” A frown. “They tend to do that.”

She said, “We need to get the data. And ASAP. The vic — the victim — was working with the man who sabotaged that crane on Eighty-Ninth Street. There might be something in there about where the next attack’s going to be.”

“Well. Shit. That’s at ten, right?”

She nodded.

“I’ll get to it.” He grabbed a handful of cables and began plugging them into the laptop and his own workstation.

Emery saw them out of the building and with a last regretful look at the unavailable Amelia Sachs, he wished them a good day.

Outside, she took a call from Rhyme and nodded toward Levine, who reciprocated, walked to his PD car pool sedan and drove off, headed downtown.

“Rhyme.”

“I didn’t hear, so no miracles?”

“The computer? No. They just got started.”

“You okay to handle something?”

“Yes,” she said firmly.

He said nothing more about her condition. Then in a voice she thought was uncharacteristically mysterious he added, “Just to let you know: it’s a little odd.”

35

A news story.

Lincoln Rhyme had been inspired by a report on cable TV, which Sachs found amusing since he never watched the tube. And with Thom’s help, he’d formulated the “odd” task for her.

She now was playing it out, cruising slowly into a parking garage on the Upper East Side.

A hostile attendant approached, seeing the rattling muscle car, the garage being a fiefdom where renegade wheels were not welcome. Upon viewing the shield and ID, he retreated, though the scowl remained. She wondered if, on exiting, he’d charge her the $28.99 per hour. She guessed he would, her public service notwithstanding.

Rhyme’s theory had to do with who had really hired the Watchmaker for the crane sabotage, now that they believed it had nothing to do with striking a blow for reasonably priced housing.

Real estate, however, might be involved.

The news story he’d seen was about how the freeze on construction was affecting the market. He’d explained, “I like the idea of the Watchmaker coming up with a plan to game the system.”

“How?”

“Hale’s hired by a developer. He comes up with a plan to tip cranes over. The market plummets. The anchors love that word, don’t they? ‘Plummet.’ I heard it four times this morning. Then they buy up the devalued property. Or buy shares in something called REITs. Real estate investment trusts. Thom found out about them. They’re like a mutual fund for property, not stock. And one story said that with the work stoppage, builders’re going to fall behind schedule and miss milestones. The financing bank can foreclose. Then the perps buy up the property for cheap.”

Thom had come up with a list of six developers, four in Manhattan, one in Queens and one in Brooklyn. Their companies were private, more likely to break the law than publicly traded ones.

Rhyme split the list, half to Sachs, half to Lyle Spencer, and sent them out for reconnaissance.

She now motored into the garage attached to the high-rise office building where the man first on her list had his company. Rasheed Bahrani — worth only $21 billion, falling low in the net-worth catalog.

As she cruised up and down the ramp in the expansive garage, she was searching not for the man, but for his car.

She’d borrowed an MPH-900 license plate reader from the Traffic division and mounted it — with duct tape — to the driver’s-side window of her Torino. The lens of the LPR scanned each plate as she drove past.

Bahrani owned four cars and she certainly could have manually looked for the make and model of the vehicles. But that would be slow — and given the deadline, they couldn’t afford the time. The LPR could read the plates instantly and so she could drive as fast as the geography of the garage would allow and still get a ping when the device spotted one of the tags.

The engine growled loudly under the low ceiling as she pushed ahead in second gear. And as in every garage on earth, any turns produced an alarming — and, to her, addictive — squeal.

Two levels, three, seven, ten, twelve... She caught a whiff of scalding tire tread.

She got to the top floor, skidded in a smoky circle and started down, foot off the pedals, letting the gears do the braking.

At floor nine, she had a hit and skidded to a stop.

There it was.

Bahrani’s Bentley Mulsanne. One of the most luxurious cars in the world.

She didn’t roll in those circles, but guessed the tag was north of a quarter million dollars and the iron under the hood topped 500 horsepower. A turbocharger had to be involved. There were probably ways to break into a new Bentley, but the technique would surely need the computer power of Emery Digital Solutions. Picking a mechanical lock — the relatively easy way of breaking into her Ford — was not an option.

But without access to the interior (she had no warrant anyway), she would settle for the dirt on the ground under the four doors — in the places the developer and any passengers, ideally the Watchmaker himself, had stood upon climbing out of the vehicle.

She shifted into first, killed the engine and set the parking brake, fixing the car in place on the steep incline. A few hits of oxygen. From the backseat she took a backpack. Concerned that, if Bahrani were behind the sabotage, he or a security man might be keeping an eye out for just such surveillance. She walked to the fish-eye lens camera covering this level and blasted it with nitrogen gas. The frosting would last about ten minutes and then thaw. She’d be gone and the system would be functioning once more to protect against muggers and carjackers.

Latex gloves on, she hurried to the car and used electrostatic sheets to pick up footprints, and, with a portable vacuum, collect trace. These samples went into four separate bags — one for the concrete beneath each door. She jotted the make and plate on each bag and the location of the samples. She took samples too from under the trunk. The bags all went into a milk crate she kept in the back.

Then on the trail again.

There were no other hits in this garage, and fifteen minutes later she was on to Suspect Two. No luck here. The Mercedes, Rolls and Ferrari he owned weren’t in the lot that serviced the office of Willis Tamblyn (who came in at a respectable $29B).

She pulled into traffic and headed to the Upper West Side to hit the third suspect’s building, the richest of the group. It seemed incongruous that any of these men, as wealthy as they were, would come up with a deadly and destructive plan like this for the sake of earning yet another hundred million or so.

But maybe the perp didn’t have as much money as the press and Wikipedia reported. Look at Bernie Madoff.

Or maybe collecting property and wealth were a compulsion to him. And he was like any other addict, always needed more, more, more.

She happened to glance at the car’s clock, which sat to the right of the amp gauge and above the oil.

The time was 8:50.

An hour until the next attack.

And where, Sachs wondered, would that be?

36

On the eighth floor of St. Francis hospital, in a room midway along Ward S, Dr. Anita Gomez is calling, “Almost there,” reassuring sweaty MaryJeanne McAllister, who is huffing and grunting in pain. “Eight centimeters. Won’t be long. You’re doing fine.” Labor started early; her husband is out of town, hurrying back, and MaryJeanne is on the phone with him. Apparently, he’s concerned about the sounds issuing from his wife’s mouth. MaryJeanne says, “He wants you to give me some meds. There’s too much pain.” Dr. Gomez refrains from explaining that the level of pain MaryJeanne is experiencing seems perfectly normal. Plus, her patient didn’t want an epidermal or spinal, afraid, wrongly, that it might affect the baby and Dr. Gomez tells her this. “He wants...” A grunt. “Holy shit!... To talk to you.” And offers the phone. The doctor takes it, shuts it off and drops it on a table. “No!” the patient rages. But then she falls silent, apart from the breathing. Both women frown. They hear a curious noise. Low in pitch, from outside. What is that? Dr. Gomez wonders, but then it’s obscured by the mother’s unearthly wail. She hits nine centimeters. “Call my husband,” she rages. Dr. Gomez cheerfully replies, “Get ready to push.”

On the seventh floor, directly below ob-gyn delivery, neurosurgeon Carla DiVito is preparing to repair an aneurysm in the brain of Tyler Sanford in surgical suite 11. The patient presented with what he described as a searing headache, the “worst he’d ever experienced.” Tests of the condition — the swelling of a vessel in the brain — revealed it had not yet ruptured, but the ballooning was sizable. DiVito, the anesthesiologist, two nurses and a resident are present in the room that is, of course, spotless and sterile, but is tiled in the bile green that designers in the 1960s felt, for some unearthly reason, that patients and physicians preferred. Sanford is unconscious and a small portion of his skull has been removed — the burnt smell from the saw lingering unpleasantly as always. Since the aneurysm is large, Dr. DiVito will be using a flow diverter rather than clipping off the vessel. “How do you like it?” a nurse asks. He is nodding toward the Aesculap Aeos robotic microscope hovering over the open brain. “Heaven,” the doctor replies. In the past, most neurosurgeons suffered significant ergometric problems — back pain, primarily — from bending over a patient for hours. The microscope allows her to remain upright and view the incision and procedure on a vertical 4K screen. Whereas she could only do one such procedure a day, now she can easily do two. She glances up to her team briefly. “Let’s get started.”

On the sixth floor, directly under suite 11, is recovery room 3E. The wife and adult son of Henry Moskowitz are sitting beside the bed. “We can have it in the pavilion,” the son, David, says. He’s raised the topic of the venue for his daughter’s sixteenth birthday party, eight months away, not because it must be planned now, but because it will, he hopes, distract his mother from her husband’s condition. She’s always on board for party planning, as he well knows. She considers. “The pavilion’s good. They didn’t trim the grass very well for Edna’s.” “No,” her son agrees. They both stare at the unconscious man, the wealth of machinery around him. The surgeon has assured them that the quadruple bypass went well, and he should be coming out of the anesthetic soon. David now cocks his head, hearing some groaning from outside. Thunder? No, the day is clear. But the brief sound put him in mind of the party venue. “We should see what size tents they have. October can be rainy.” “Yes,” his mother says. “It can.”

On each of these three floors — and for that matter, every floor in this building — near the middle is a room roughly twenty by twenty. The doors are double-locked and covered by large signs: FIRE HAZARD and No Smoking, the latter of which, of course, dated to a different era, but had remained, perhaps because the message still imparted a historical, almost genetic, urgency. Inside these rooms are scores of tanks of oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, nitrous oxide and regular air. Some of these are stored, some fitted to hoses that feed into wall sockets. Also present are tanks of sevoflurane, an anesthetic. While nonflammable in itself, fires and explosions can occur when this gas reacts with an absorbent used in anesthesia procedures, barium hydroxide lime, of which there are several containers here as well. In addition, here are receptacles of cyclopropane, divinyl ethel, ethyl chloride and ethylene. These facilities are known among staff as the Dynamite Rooms.

And eighty feet above this stack of suites and rooms sits the jib of a Swenson-Thorburg AB tower crane. Like all the others in the city it is no longer in service, temporarily halted because of the sabotage. Since the only weights on the front jib are cables, the trolly and hook, the counterweight blocks had been shuttled close to the cab and locked in position. Until a few minutes ago, moment — balance — had been achieved. Now, though, the jib is ever so slowly leaning forward toward the hospital. This is because of what is known in the industrial world as an “acid attack,” a term of art having nothing to do with tossing a caustic solution at a political rival or a cheating lover. It merely means there is a chemical reaction in progress. In this case, hydrofluoric acid was released from a plastic container and is presently engaged in, first, acting on the calcium hydroxide in the cement to turn it into a paste of calcium silicate hydrate, and, second, liquifying that resultant. A slurry of this mixture is sloughing off the blocks, along with bits of the rear trolley and brackets holding the blocks to it. This residue is sprinkling down to the jobsite — the place being deserted — though none of the skeleton crew at the entrance notices. Several of them thought they heard a moaning or groaning. This is the sound of the slewing plates binding as the tower mast leans forward. But since they’ve been guarding the entrance and are convinced no one could sabotage their crane, they put the sound down to the wind or an aircraft or a distant truck and return to their argument about a recent draft pick in the NFL.

37

So. It’s back to this.

Reviewing damn security videos. What security guards do, looking for kids who shoplift necklaces and candy bars at Walmart.

But, with a perp who has the inconsiderate habit of dissolving the most important physical evidence with acid, there was little else to do.

An irritated Lincoln Rhyme scrubbed the video into the far past and then back to the not-so-far.

He was not alone. Mel Cooper was doing the same at a nearby computer.

Two forensic analysts — the best in the city — with no evidence to analyze.

Though not happy with the task, he acknowledged the possibility of finding a nugget or two this way. While it was true that he didn’t trust witnesses, even the most cooperative, he did trust his own eyes — all the more because he believed that after he’d been robbed of so much by the accident, his other senses had been enhanced. Perhaps his imagination, but he’d come to believe that if he saw something himself it was the truth.

As he searched, he was thinking of the question that had dogged them from the beginning: How had the Watchmaker gotten the hydrofluoric acid onto the counterweights?

They knew he was somewhere near the crane yesterday morning when it came down — because Garry Helprin, the operator, had seen his beige SUV nearby.

And that meant he was probably present somewhere on video too, captured when he made his way to the tower, climbed it and planted the device. The operator started work at 9:00 and probably would have seen an intruder make the climb, so the device was planted prior to that. But how much prior? He knew from the discovery in the wheel well of the jet at JFK airport that the Watchmaker had been in the country for only a few days, which at least set a limit on the footage to search. This still meant, though, that Rhyme had to scrub through hundreds of hours of video, from multiple sources. He had footage from seven cameras.

Five of these were private security cameras with fair to poor resolution. Two of them were better, being newer additions to the Domain Awareness System.

“Nothing,” Cooper muttered.

Rhyme glanced at the clock on the wall nearby.

9:14.

Then a look at the map and a fleeting thought: Which one is your target, Charles?

He returned to the screen and scrubbed more quickly, focusing on the night before and the morning of the attack.

But the only person climbing the crane tower, at any time before the incident, was Helprin, just before 9 a.m.

The cameras were blocked occasionally by trucks stopping at lights or making deliveries at the jobsite or to nearby office buildings and apartments. Of particular irritation were advertising trucks, flatbeds toting large billboards. Most were cigarette ads — forbidden on TV — and for medicines to treat maladies whose nature was not clear from the content. Also, a number of campaign ads. Two, Rhyme noted, were pushing for voters to cast a ballot for Marie Leppert, the cartel buster running against the man who was Rhyme’s own representative in Washington, former activist (and criminal) Stephen Cody.

At one point, a large black bird nearly slammed into the camera, startling him.

When no clear suspects were evident, Rhyme turned his attention to the spectators, aware that perps do indeed return to the scene of the crime occasionally. He took note in particular of those who had visited the site on two separate occasions, if he could find them.

The most curious of these was a small, hunched-over homeless man in a bizarre orange and brown hat, like a nineteenth-century soldier’s, and a dirty brown overcoat. Rhyme noticed him because of his odd costume, yes, but also because of the man’s obsessive interest in the site. He held a blue-and-white coffee cup to collect change, but wasn’t doing much solicitation. He actually walked right past a businessman offering him a bill. He moved around the perimeter until the fire department’s Biotox unit arrived to neutralize the acid and they cleared everyone away.

Rhyme saw that he returned a couple of hours later. Most of the construction crew had gone home, so he just walked onto the site.

He seemed to be looking for something. Scavenging for valuables? Probably. He’d found something; there was a glistening metal object in his hand. If he spent much time there, maybe he’d be somebody for Sachs to talk to. If he could be located.

The second person who visited the site twice was memorable only because he was a musician. He carried a pale blue-gray guitar case, the word “Martin” printed on the side. Rhyme had learned from an investigation years ago that this was one of the best acoustic brands in the world. The man holding it at the jobsite was of medium build, white and bearded, a dark baseball cap with no logo tugged down firmly on his head. He wore sunglasses. He was in a black leather jacket and blue jeans.

His first visit was an hour after the collapse, then he returned four hours later. Rhyme could not deduce the man’s purpose in being present. Unlike the homeless man, who was drawn to the wreckage, the musician was constantly scanning the crowds, as if he were planning to meet someone.

He made two circuits of the site on his second visit. Apparently not finding what or whom he sought, he turned and left. Rhyme could have captured an image, but the sunglasses and the low brim of the hat meant facial recognition wouldn’t work.

His presence, like that of the homeless man, was probably nothing. Coincidence.

He continued to scrub, three days ago, two, yesterday. Daytime. Nighttime. Nobody approached the base of the mast except the operator.

He reflected: You’d think they’d make an algorithm that could spot perps doing all kinds of things — like climbing tower cranes.

Algorithms. Computers, data...

A thought occurred: Today there was a new type of Edmond Locard’s “dust” in the criminalist’s world digital bits and bytes. The ones and zeros that could lead you to your suspect’s home or office as efficiently as soil samples and bloodstains.

Except not in this case.

He sighed and returned to the monitor, scrubbing through the near bird strike.

But wait...

He froze the playback and reversed, frame by frame.

The black thing filled the screen.

It wasn’t a bird.

“Mel. Is this what I think?”

The technician looked. “It is. A drone.” Cooper flew “unmanned ariel vehicles” as a hobby and knew them well.

The stopped image had caught two propellers in motion.

“Goddamn. That’s how he did it.”

Drones could not legally be flown in the city, but misdemeanors would be no deterrent to the Watchmaker.

“Would it be big enough to carry the payload?”

“A commercial model, yes.”

“They’re tracked aren’t they?”

“Right. FAA, the Bureau and Homeland Security. But the last two’re the most active.”

Rhyme instructed the phone, “Call Dellray.”

The FBI agent answered on the first ring.

“Lincoln.”

“Fred. The cranes. We think the Watchmaker might be placing the device on them with a drone. Mel says you and DHS track them.”

“Oh, yeah. We’re the boys ’n’ gals for you. Our Counterterror folk. They’re lookin’ for birds all. The. Time. I’ll patch you through to a buddy — still hiding out on the other side of the office, by the way. No end of trouble I’m givin’ them for that. Hold tight.”

Rhyme’s eyes drifted to the map of the cranes in the city. He was thinking back to the early hours of the morning. Lyle Spencer had returned from his visits to the towers that they’d decided were most likely to be the next target. He’d reported that the bases of the cranes were all well guarded.

With a drone, those precautions were useless.

Then a baritone voice sounded into the phone. “Mr. Rhyme. Special Agent Sanji Khan, Counterterror. How can I help?”

Rhyme explained that he believed the device used to sabotage the crane on the Upper East Side was put in place with a drone. “You monitor them, right?”

“We do. FAA and DHS too. We coordinate findings. Radar and RF — radio frequency. If there’s a UAV — unmanned ariel vehicle — anywhere, we get a location. GPS from the RF is best. Radar’s dicey in the city.”

“Have you had any alerts lately?”

“Alert? No.” Khan added, “There’s an algorithm that only scrambles a response if the thing is near a high-profile target — airports, government buildings, embassies, concert halls, parades, that sort of thing. If the flight’s under ten minutes and it’s a low-threat location, we just log the details and don’t go after anybody. Usually it’s somebody gets a birthday or Christmas present and starts playing with it without knowing the law.”

“If I gave you the time and location, could you let me know if a drone was there? And — this is important — if it’s been logged again anywhere in the city?”

“Sure... If he’s flying the same unit. They have unique profiles.”

“Mel, give him the details! Agent, this is Detective Cooper on the line.”

The tech looked up the information and recited it into the speakerphone.

No more than sixty seconds later — the gap filled with Khan’s hard-pounding keyboarding — the agent said, “I’ve got it here. There’s a log report of a flight just where you describe it, Eighty-Ninth Street, early in the morning before the crane came down. Flew over the site, hovered, and then went dark on East Eighty-Eighth.”

Where Hale’s SUV was parked. The box in the back that Helprin had seen would be what he stored it in.

“We profiled it in the Carter Max4000 line.”

“Big enough to deliver a few liters of liquid?”

“Easy.”

“Now, other flights by the same one?”

“Yessir. Three of them. Classified as probably random and not acted on either.”

“Where?”

“One was in the four hundred block of Towson Street, Brooklyn. Another in front of an office building, Manhattan, 556 Hadley, between SoHo and downtown. East. The last one was 622 East Twenty-Third. It’s been quiet since. But it’s on the wire now. If it goes aerial again, we’ll be on it and get tactical involved. You want to be included?”

“Yes,” Rhyme said absently. He was staring at the map. No cranes, that block of Brooklyn. No cranes near Hadley. But East 23rd, there was one. A bright red circle.

“Mel, what’s at that address, on Twenty-Third?”

Rhyme glanced at the clock. Just over a half hour until the next attack.

The tech typed on a nearby keyboard and a crisp picture appeared on the screen in front of Rhyme. It was from a satellite image database.

In the middle of a U-shaped complex of yellow-tan brick buildings sat a massive crane, with a yellow cab and jibs atop a red tower.

The buildings made up the St. Francis Hospital Center.

“Mel, call their security and the local precinct. Evacuate the place. And get Amelia over there. Now.”

38

Amelia Sachs arrived at the hospital and skidded to a stop, the crane looming in front of her.

It was in the middle of a jobsite, the jib hovering over the main building — the north side of the U that the complex was configured in. The hour was not yet ten, but the device was tilting and the counterweights were shedding bits of concrete and drips of liquid — the HF acid was already at work.

Moment had been compromised.

Her eyes were drawn upward. The bright red color, the shade of fresh blood. When the thing fell it would strike the middle of the top floor, about eight stories up. The front jib was eighty or ninety feet higher than the crest of the building. Upon impact, the many tons of metal would accelerate as they fell and slam into the structure with incredible force, slicing through at least the top three or four floors.

This was a crane that Lyle Spencer had checked last night. He had found guards at the base of the mast and the entrance to the site. But Rhyme’s text a few minutes ago explained why his efforts had been a waste of time; Hale was using a drone to plant the acid.

Sachs looked at the oxygen tank on the seat beside her. Without the mask on, she inhaled deeply.

Some sting, some coughing.

Was the goddamn stuff eating away at more and more parts of her lung, like the counterweights in front of her?

A hit of oxygen.

Glancing around the scene that was, like the first collapse, a circus of vehicles and lights and people in uniforms of all shades and styles.

She closed her eyes and lowered her head as she inhaled from the tank a half-dozen times.

Good enough for now. Go.

Climbing from the Torino, she spotted the NYPD incident commander, a gray-haired uniformed captain of about fifty. He was as thin and pale as the man beside him was dark-complected and stocky, the FDNY battalion chief, who was in black slacks and a white shirt under a fire department jacket, dark with yellow stripes. The firefighters didn’t need hard hats, of course, they had their own helmets, in classic firefighter shape, yellow. His had a crest of a badge on the front topped with a large CHIEF and his number below. His name was Williams.

She tilted her belt badge toward them. “Sachs. Major Cases. I’m one of the leads on this one.”

“Oh,” the police IC said, O’Reilly on his breastplate. “You’re with Lincoln Rhyme?”

She nodded, her preferred response to a question that could be answered several ways.

Looking up, “Can it be turned?” If the jib was rotated 90 degrees, it would face the street, which was cordoned off and a fall would cause little damage.

The battalion chief said, “The minute we got that call from Captain Rhyme, that this was the next one to go? I asked the foreman that. But it’s frozen in place. The turntable plates are already buckled.”

She looked over the building it was aimed at again. The hospital looked fragile. It had been constructed in the 1960s and was made of aluminum and glass and metal panels, blue in color and rusting around the edges. There’d be a steel superstructure, but little else to stop the massive knife of the jib.

Some patients, visitors and staff sprinted out. But many ambled, simply unable to move quickly. They limped, they wheeled in chairs. A few wheeled their IV units beside them, as if they were robotic companions from a science fiction movie.

“Evac progress?”

O’Reilly told her, “Well, we’ve got out a lot of the ambulatories, visitors and nonessential staff. Floors one through five. The problem is, above that, it’s aimed at rooms where there’re procedures going on. I mean, patients open, on tables in operations. Open heart. Brain surgery. Giving birth. You can’t just wheel them out. They’re closing up the patients they can and rigging lines and life support to the beds to move them. Some’re pretty, what’s the word? Fragile.”

“Can’t they just get them to lower floors? The thing’s not going to crash through the whole building.”

“No, we need everybody out entirely,” Williams said. “The thing is also aimed for the gas supply rooms. Hundreds of canisters and wall lines. Oxygen and flammable gases. Hospitals’re like grain elevators. A spark and that’s it.”

A groan sounded from the base of the tower as it tilted and the jib eased downward another few feet.

The battalion chief added, “I had some people rig tethers.” He pointed to cables attached to the mast about halfway up and connected to the girders on the addition that was being built. “I don’t know if they’ll do any good. Doesn’t look like it. They’re already bending the beams they’re attached to. Maybe bought some time.”

After a coughing fit, Sachs gazed up at the precarious structure. She asked, “Is the operator here?”

“The crane operator?” the IC asked. “No reason for him to be. The site’s shut down. Why?”

“Maybe he’d know some way to, I don’t know, shift the weight? Or to shore it up somehow we’re not thinking of?”

“Well, there’s nobody here.”

And a thought occurred.

She ripped her phone from her pocket and scrolled for a number. It was the mobile of the operator from the first collapse, Garry Helprin. She tapped it.

Buzzing, buzzing...

Thinking, Please answer.

Please...

But he didn’t.

Voice mail.

Hell.

She cleared her throat. “Garry, it’s Detective Sachs. There’s another crane coming down. It’s aimed at a hospital. We want any thoughts you have about slowing it. They’re rigging tether lines, but I don’t think they’ll last. Call me or Lincoln Rhyme.”

She gave both numbers, then turned to the incident commanders. “I’m going to help with the evac. I’ll call you if I hear back.”

Another glance at the crane. It had sagged another two degrees.

How much longer?

No point in speculating. She grabbed the oxygen tank from the Torino and a Motorola from the coms van, then ran toward the entrance.

Inside the dim, chaotic lobby, she saw the elevator doors open and the lights above them blinking. Of course, risk of fire. They’d been put in fire service mode. She looked at the stairway, people streaming down.

Stairs.

Steep stairs.

Eight flights.

Oh, man.

Three deep hits of sweet O, and she slung the green tank over her shoulder and started up.

Gasping for breath with every step.

39

The scenario upstairs was worse than she’d thought.

On the eighth floor, the top, thirty patients, visitors and staff remained, clustered at the east and west exits at the far end of the hallway. But then, wait — she had to supplement the count by doubling the number of patients; it was the ob-gyn and delivery ward.

These narrow fire exits were the only routes that could be used since the main exit — the elevators — was not available. The backlog was due to the number of patients who were not ambulatory. Mothers who had given birth minutes before, C-section patients, and several, she was told by a nurse, who were here not as ob-gyn, but had been moved to recovery rooms from downstairs, presumably because of space shortage. The latter two groups were confined to beds. Several were still unconscious.

Sachs joined the other rescue workers, wheeling to the exits chairs and beds of patients who couldn’t walk.

Out the window facing south, the tower was clearly visible, the tubes glowing in the morning sun. It was not very close, but that structure itself was only half of the risk. When the collapse came, the mast would cut through the side walls of the hospital, the jib the top.

As she looked, it eased forward another few feet.

Were the tether straps holding?

Not very well, apparently.

Sachs learned, to her relief, that the evacuees didn’t need to get all the way down to the street. They only had to get to five, where there was a bridge to the east building. There, the elevators were working.

One aide called, “Detective, can’t we just stage everybody where they are? In front of the exits?”

“No. Out of the building. Fire risk.” Nodding to the room directly behind her: the gas storage and supply room the battalion chief had told her about. The HAZARD sign was small, the No Smoking one big, the Danger Flammable Substances the largest of all.

She spotted a new mother and her swathed baby in a wheelchair, in the corner, alone. She was crying as hard as the newborn. Sachs gripped the handles and hurried the pair down the hall and got her in the queue for extraction down the stairs. “Can you walk?” she asked.

In broken English she said, “I can. I wanted to. They say I can’t. I asked. It’s against the rules.”

Sachs smiled to her. “Today’s different.” Sachs helped her up, and led her to the exit, where she handed her off to a nurse who had just crested the stairs. He took the patient by the shoulders and they descended. “One step at a time. You’re doing fine. Boy or girl?”

Their voices were lost as they disappeared into the dim stairway.

Chatter cascaded through her radio.

“LeRoi. I’m on seven. Cleared all the theaters but three. They can’t move. Two are on heart-lung machines, the other is halfway through a kidney transplant. And there’s a brain surgeon refuses to move. She says it would kill the patient. Cutting staff to minimum and getting unnecessary workers out.”

The sixth-floor workers reported similar problems. It was a post-op recovery ward, with a number of patients who were unconscious and in precarious condition from surgery.

Somebody shouted through the coms, “I got twelve fucking beds here the size of double-wides. I need bodies in 6-W to carry ’em down. Now!”

Sachs sped one more mama and infant to the exit and then noticed some activity beside her — in a recovery room, cut off from the corridor with a frosted-glass window. Inside were three patients, sleeping off the anesthetic. An elderly woman, an older man and a teenage boy. Also a half-dozen family members or friends, who had refused to leave those they were visiting.

Or simply didn’t believe the announcement of impending disaster.

Like the others, these beds were on wheels, but they were connected to a half-dozen instruments mounted on the wall and racks. Nurses and orderlies were frantically in the process of detaching the devices and setting them directly beside the snoozing patients.

A groan from outside.

Sachs looked out the window.

The mast was tilting farther.

“You need to go now!” Sachs grabbed some big plastic instrument, probes attaching it to the patient via colorful wires. She shoved it into the hands of one of the male visitors. He sagged under the weight. “You.” She pointed to a woman of about thirty. “Time to put those health club muscles to work. Take that one.” She pointed to another bulky device. It seemed to weigh thirty or forty pounds.

“I don’t know—”

“Take it!”

She did, and managed.

All the equipment was on battery power, so Sachs unplugged the units and pointed.

The three beds cruised slowly toward the western exit, the one with the least backlog.

Coughing, spitting, Sachs trotted along the corridor, checking rooms.

All empty.

Until she got to S-12.

She walked inside to hear a wrenching sound: a groaning scream, if there was such a thing. An extremely pregnant woman lay on her back, pillows behind her head, her feet up in stirrups. Her doctor — the name tag read Dr. A. Gomez — was bending forward and calling, “Push.”

The woman was sweating, her dark hair plastered to her head, uttering unearthly sounds and occasionally firing off some heartfelt swear words.

Assuming Sachs, as a woman, was cognizant of all things obstetrics, the doctor said, “She’s ten centimeters.”

“Okay?”

“I lost my nurse... Push!”

So they really said that.

Sachs had a coughing fit.

“You sick?” the doctor asked.

“No, acid exposure.”

The woman slapped her stethoscope on Sachs’s chest. “Breathe.”

Sachs did.

“Again.”

Once more.

“You’re all right.”

“What?”

“You’re fine. I know lungs.”

Just like that...

“Now, I need your help.”

“Look, you better find somebody else.”

“Oh, who?” the doctor asked, genuinely mystified.

This portion of the corridor was empty.

“Did they teach you this in cop school?”

“I missed that part.”

“Well, Detective, there’re eight billion people on earth and they all got here the same way. It’s not that hard.” A fast smile. “You’ll do fine. Clean gloves.” Then to the woman: “Breathe. Push!”

“Jesus Christ!” the woman wailed.

“Is she... okay?”

“Ah, yes. She’s good.”

Sachs ripped off the blue latex and grabbed clear surgical gloves, thicker than what she wore at crime scenes. It’s nearly impossible to pull them on moist fingers, so she blew hard to dry them.

Once gloved, she turned to the doctor, who said, “I need the vitals. That monitor there. Call them out. Temperature, pulse, respiration, blood pressure. That’s all I need for now.”

For now? What the hell was coming next?

Another scream, apparently.

Brother, the woman had lungs.

“I want some fucking drugs!”

“You’re doing fine. Push!”

Sachs was calling out numbers.

The patient: “I want—”

At that moment came an explosion, a cannon shell, from outside. The room next to the one they were in disappeared in a blast of glass shards and plastic and metal and Sheetrock.

Sachs glanced through the glass wall.

It was the steel restraining cable the battalion chief had ordered rigged; the thing had snapped and shot into the room, blown the door off the hinges and embedded itself deep in the hallway wall.

Those in the corridor screamed, though it seemed no one had been hit. Had they been, the metal would have sliced through their flesh and bone effortlessly.

Seeing, briefly, bloody rebar rods...

How many more tether cables were there? She believed she’d seen a half dozen.

“Drugs, I want some drugs!”

“Push!” From the doctor.

Another metallic groan from outside. The tower bent closer.

“I want some—!”

Sachs leaned close to the patient. “Shut up and push!”

40

“I went to see him. They wouldn’t let me up.”

The detective sitting across from Ron Pulaski nodded at the patrolman’s words.

“I just wanted to wish him the best. I brought some candy. Who needs flowers? But they wouldn’t let me up.”

“Probably a legal thing. You being the driver of the car that hit him.”

“Just felt so bad about it. Guess I looked pretty miserable. Nurse took pity on me and told me he’ll be all right. Some burns, concussion, but he should be out in a few days.”

The interview Pulaski had been summoned to was being conducted in the office of Internal Affairs detective Ed Garner, which made Pulaski feel more or less comfortable, since it was cluttered, the desk piled high with case files and rows of Redweld folders on the floor. The family pictures revealed that he and his wife had two children about the ages of Pulaski and Jenny’s. The whole family liked to fish, it seemed.

Both men wore dark suits and white shirts, Garner’s collar and cuffs contrasting with his dark skin. Pulaski’s tie was red, Garner’s deep green, and Pulaski thought they both could have walked out of Police Plaza and gone straight to a funeral.

The IA detective had a notebook open in front of him and a digital recorder sitting next to it, the red Recording dot illuminated.

“Now, Officer Pulaski—” Garner was speaking.

“Ron is fine.”

His last name sounded too official. Like he’d already been convicted of negligent operation of a vehicle under the influence and was about to be sentenced to prison by a stern judge.

“Okay, Ron,” he said in a friendly voice. “Good. Let’s go that way — I’m Ed. Now, you’re pretty freaked out. Of course you are. But we’ll get through this as fast as we can. Get you back home. Just some preliminaries we have to get out of the way. Today we’re just taking your statement for an internal review. This is not a criminal investigation. The sole point of my questions’re to see if NYPD administrative and procedural rules were followed in the incident on Parker Street.”

Pulaski was looking at a file folder. His own. It wasn’t thick — a quarter inch. Maybe less.

“Officer? Ron?”

He hadn’t been paying attention. He’d been looking at the folder.

“You understand you have a right to an attorney.”

“I’ve called some. Nobody I talked to was available yet. And I want to get back on the street ASAP.”

Eddie Tarr and his red sedan were out there somewhere.

“So.” He lifted his palms. “Here I am.”

“Our report will go to the accident review board. You’re—”

“Familiar? Yes.”

“The board’ll determine if there’s been a breach of procedure. And if there has been, what action should be taken. Now, I said this wasn’t a criminal case, but there’s the possibility it could become one. Badges from the local house’ve run the scene, canvassing. That’s a separate thing. If the facts warrant, the findings’ll be referred to the DA’s office. So, two investigations. You follow?”

What was there not to? “Yes.”

“Now, you have the right against self-incrimination in the criminal investigation. But since this, here, is administrative, we can compel you to talk to us. If you don’t, you’ll be subject to department discipline. Failure to cooperate.”

“Okay. But what I say here can’t be used in any criminal investigation.”

Garner nodded with a smile. “If there is one. Correct.”

Pulaski noted that Garner hadn’t asked him if it was all right to record. There was probably some fine print in the Patrolman’s Handbook that said when you signed on, you consented to having red-eyed space monsters record your statements.

“Okay, all that crap’s out of the way. In your own words, tell me what happened.” Then the detective gave a half smile. “Though who the hell else’s words’d you use?”

Pulaski didn’t laugh, but the IA cop’s comment took a bit of the tension out of the room. He took a breath. “Okay, I was driving back up to Lincoln Rhyme’s town house after checking out a lead to a case I’m running for Major Cases. And this SUV just was there. Just appeared. I didn’t even get to the brake. Just bang.” He fell silent, seeing the vehicle, hearing the sound.

“Do you recall how fast you were going?”

“Not really, maybe forty.”

“What was the speed limit?”

“Last sign I saw was thirty-five.”

“But you’re not sure that’s what it was when the collision occurred.”

“I... No, I’m not sure. No.”

“Do you remember where exactly in the intersection the accident occurred? I mean, was the other vehicle in the right or the center turn lane of Halmont?”

“I don’t know.”

Garner consulted a sheet of paper.

“You were on your mobile. That’s what the phone logs show.”

“Yes, I was. Crime Scene in Queens had called. Question about a scene I’d run earlier in the day.”

“Where were you on Parker exactly when you got the call?”

“I don’t really remember. I’d guess fifty feet from the intersection.”

“Now you’re approaching Halmont. How many pedestrians did you see in the intersection?”

“I don’t remember. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“And cars?”

“Again, no clue.”

“And as you approached, you didn’t see the light turn yellow, then red?”

“I... I guess I didn’t. The last I looked it was green.”

“And when was that?”

“I don’t know. Like everybody else. You glance up. It’s green. You keep going.” A shrug. “The signal? Did anybody check to make sure it was working okay?”

“Oh, yeah, Traffic checked it out. It was working. Could you have been looking around, concentrating on the call?”

“I was listening, you know, but not really concentrating.”

Garner lifted an eyebrow. “You climbed out and jumped through those flames to get to the SUV. Took some balls.”

“Wasn’t as bad as it looked.”

In fact, it wasn’t even a decision. He’d rolled through the open window of his car and, seeing the flames from the ruptured gas tank of the SUV he’d hit, just instinctively charged the vehicle to help the occupants, though the only one — the driver — was by then out and lying on the pavement.

“All right, good, Ron. Now, the positive drug test. That sets off alarm bells, you understand. Do you do recreational drugs?”

“No, never. Well, to be honest, I tried pot once. Hated it. It was years ago.”

Garner said, “I smoked some in college. Just made me drowsy. Fell asleep in English — which had this professor that made you sleepy anyway. That happen to you?”

“Don’t really remember. I think it did.”

“But no drugs since then?”

“No.”

“Alcohol?”

“Wine or beer some. Two, three times a week.”

“Now, describe how you think the fentanyl got into your system.”

“As near as I can figure, I ran a dealer collar. Biggy with the M-42s in East New York. When we cleared the place I found one of his lieutenants, he was lying face down, and, you know, unresponsive. I rolled him over, administered Narcan and started chest compression. But he was gone.”

“You didn’t wear gloves?”

“I know it’s procedure, but I wanted to move fast. I thought I could save him.” He shook his head. “His crew, they knew he was there, dying, and they didn’t do anything. Not a thing.”

“At least you put the assholes away.”

“Yeah... This does happen, right?”

“What’s that?”

“Failing a drug test because you touched somebody at a bust?”

“Oh, yeah. The board’s been here before. How would you describe your physical state?”

“A stiff neck.”

“Oh, not from the accident. In general.”

“Good.”

“No injuries?”

“No.”

“All right, Ron, your colonoscopy’s over. Oh, just one other thing, could you draw a diagram of where you were in the intersection when the accident happened?”

“Draw?” He exhaled a brief laugh. “I’m no artist. My daughter should do it for you.”

“Ha. In our house, it’s my son. Just do the best you can.” He handed Pulaski a sheet of paper and pen, and a file folder to set the paper on; the desk was too cluttered to write.

He gave it a shot and handed it back.

Pulaski was silent, eyes on the picture of Garner and his family. They remained there a long time.

“Ron?”

Apparently Garner had asked him something.

“Sorry, what?”

“I said, ‘That’s it.’ ”

He rose. “I guess we’re going to get sued.”

“Oh, yeah, big-time. But we’ve got insurance. And good lawyers. Speaking of which, whatever the board does, you gotta lawyer up too. You’ll be named in the suit personally.”

Pulaski didn’t respond. He was picturing himself as a defendant in court.

His tone sympathetic, Garner said, “We’ve got psychologists on call. I’d recommend talking to one.”

“I don’t really need that. I already have somebody.”

“Really? Who?”

“My wife.”

41

Amelia Sachs asked urgently, “Aren’t you going to slap her?”

“What?”

Sachs nodded to the bloody, damp and wrinkled little form lying in a blue square of cloth in the doctor’s hands.

“You know, slap her on the butt? Make her breathe?”

“Oh. We don’t do that anymore. Not for years.”

Dr. Gomez suctioned some gunk from the nose and mouth and rubbed the infant with the cloth. Yes, she seemed to be breathing fine and was crying softly.

Glancing at Sachs: “Have to get the cord. I need your help.”

Right. Has to be cut. That much she knew. Sachs pulled from her back pocket the sleek Italian switchblade she always carried. Hit the button. It snapped open.

The doctor stared.

Sachs said, “We can sterilize it.”

The woman frowned. “I just meant could you hold her while I clamp?”

Oh.

She put the knife away. And carefully took the baby.

In less than a minute the cord was clamped and severed and, to Sachs’s relief, the infant was in the arms of her mother, who was sobbing — maybe in fear of another cable strike or the falling tower, though possibly from the birthing experience. Both, probably.

“Can she walk?” Sachs asked.

“Bleeding, a chair’s better.”

The mom: “Bleeding! You didn’t tell me I’d be bleeding.”

A cheerful response: “Yes, I did, ma’am. You’ll be fine.”

There was a wheelchair in the corner. The doctor and Sachs got the mother into it.

Sachs pushed the chair into the corridor.

Hell, both exits were now completely backed up. The severed cable had panicked everyone and that caused a crush. Several people had tried to carry the massive beds down the stairs but hadn’t been strong enough and pieces of furniture were sitting on the tops of the steps, jamming the doorways.

Rescue workers were trying to calm everyone and free the beds. This wasn’t working.

Sachs thought back to her promise to Rhyme that she would only wound the Watchmaker.

She now changed her mind.

She pushed the mother and baby toward the closest exit while Dr. Gomez, noticing with a frown that a nurse at the opposite exit had fallen, hurried toward her.

“I want a pain pill!” the new mother demanded.

Sachs ignored her.

Just then another cable broke free and exploded into the window where Dr. Gomez was walking to the injured hospital worker. The woman disappeared in a cascade of dust and glass shards.

No...

“Doctor!”

She couldn’t see if the woman had been hit. She parked the wheelchair next to the west exit and started toward where she’d last seen Gomez.

She still could see nothing of the strike’s aftermath; the smoke and dust were too dense.

Then she noticed something odd and paused.

On the linoleum floor in front of her, a shadow appeared and began to move.

What...?

It filled the floor, a latticework of black lines.

The shadow of the mast.

She turned to the window just as screams filled the corridor.

“It’s coming down!” someone cried.

Sachs dove to the floor and rolled against the wall, which she figured would provide some protection. Unless of course the crane simply caved in the entire floor, burying them all under a breath-stealing andiron of debris...

Claustrophobia...

At least she wouldn’t have to suffer that horror for very long; the collapse would ignite the gas and flammable solvents and burn everyone here to death within minutes.

And she noted too: the coughing had stopped.

Waiting for the crash...

Waiting...

For the crash that didn’t happen.

Instead of the deafening sound of collapsing metal and glass, another noise grew evident and then increased in volume.

Thump, thump, thump...

She rose and made her way cautiously to the window. She turned to her left and saw Dr. Gomez was on her feet and walking to the injured worker.

The crane was still looming in sight. But no longer moving their way.

Thump, thump...

About forty feet above the mast was a helicopter. A hook had been lowered from a winch above the open door and had snapped onto the front jib.

The craft was big, but hardly meant to lift weights like the crane, and a worker sat strapped in the doorway, his hand on a control on the winch. If the mast finally gave way and fell freely, he would have to release the cable so it didn’t pull the craft to the ground with it.

But so far the chopper was handling the load. The mast sank slowly.

Down, down, slowly...

Twenty feet from the top of the building.

Then ten.

With a resounding metallic clang, the mast came to rest against what would be the steel girder of the crown. The helicopter remained in position.

The cable slacked, and the tower and jib were stable.

The worker pulled the pin, releasing the cable. It fell, shimmering in a band of sun, and dropped straight down as the helicopter hovered for a moment, like an angel’s halo above the genuflecting crane, and then rose slowly into a faultless sky.

42

She was outside the main building, watching crews run cables from the tower and jib to rebar rods set in the concrete foundation of the addition.

Reminding her of what amounted to the murder weapon that had killed the operator’s friend in such a horrid way.

Here, at least, a better ending.

Crews were also atop the main building, dismantling the jib and lowering the segments to the roof where, she supposed, another chopper would remove them.

Her phone purred.

“Rhyme.”

“I heard. It got lassoed.”

She explained that Garry Helprin, the operator, had gotten the message she left, learned of the impending disaster and called the head of his company. The boss had scrambled their heavy-lifting S-64E Sikorsky — which was doing a job on West 55th Street and the Hudson. The pilot had dumped the load and sped to the hospital. It took only two attempts to hook the mast like a bass.

Rhyme told her, “And Counterterrorism at the Bureau found two other drone flights. But not near any jobsites. A residential block in Brooklyn and an office building, Manhattan. We’re trying to find the connection. Walk the grid, Sachs. I need evidence. And get me all the video footage you can.”

“What?” The word was uttered as an astonished whisper. “You want video?”

“It’s all right, Sachs. Locard has given me dispensation.”

He disconnected.

She waved to the evidence collection techs who were suiting up on the perimeter of the site. She walked their way, diverting briefly to talk to two uniforms, young, possibly recent additions to the Patrol roster. “Canvass hospital security and nearby offices and stores for video. SD cards, though it’s better if you can upload it. Here.” She handed them one of her business cards, which included instructions on secure uploads to her NYPD database for video evidence.

A whole new world...

“Yes, ma’am,” they said simultaneously... and a bit eerily.

They walked off briskly, and Sachs joined the trio of collection officers. Rhyme wanted his evidence, but there wouldn’t be much. They had to wait until the mast was stable enough to climb, and even then the only prize would be the melted delivery system. And what would that yield?

They’d identified the drone, Rhyme had told her in a text, but it was a common model, with more than a thousand units sold in the past year. Oh, the Watchmaker might have been nearby to fly the UAV to its perch but, then again, he could have sat in his living room a mile away and directed the machine to the crane.

A voice intruded. “Miss? Policeman? Woman?”

She turned to see the patient whose baby she’d just helped deliver. She was in a wheelchair; an orderly had pushed her here.

“I’m MaryJeanne. Two n’s. McAllister. We never met, not official.” They shook hands. Her dark hair, flyaway earlier, was pulled back in a taut ponytail.

Sachs looked down at the tiny child, swaddled and snoozing. You can’t really say they’re cute or pretty at this stage, so she didn’t. She asked, “How are you both doing?”

“She’s good. I still hurt. But I can’t take anything. Not with...” She nodded downward. “You know, I’ll be nursing. I was... a little loud. Sorry about that.”

“You were fine, truly.”

“You see that thing?” she whispered, nodding at the crane. “I thought it was over.”

“So did I,” Sachs said. “You have somebody coming to take you home?”

“My husband. The baby was a surprise. Well, I don’t mean that way. I mean she was way early. He was out of town, but he’s driving back now.”

“You need another blanket?”

“I’m good. You know, we never came up with a girl name we liked. We had a dozen for boys. Troy, Erik with a ‘k.’ Tate... But nothing for girls. So. How would you feel, I mean would it be okay if we named her after you?”

Sachs couldn’t help but smile at the charming gesture. “My name’s Amelia.”

MaryJeanne cocked her head, then she frowned. “No. Don’t like it. Got anything else?”

Sachs’s smile became a stifled laugh. “My last name’s Sachs, and you don’t want that one. Hey. How about something a little different?”

“What?”

“My husband’s last name. Rhyme.”

“Like what songs do?”

“That’s right.”

“Yeah. I like that one. Rhyme McAllister. I could go with that.”

Sachs looked a final time at the baby. The tiny thing was quiet, no longer crying for the moment, and completely enwrapped in naïve sleep and in the enviable ignorance of the evil that had been a part of her arrival on this earth.

43

Amelia Sachs was watching a crane — a mobile one, not a tower — lift to the ground detached segments of the mast and jib that had been leaning against St. Francis. Soon the portion of the trolley that had been largely melted by the HF acid would be accessible.

The odds of collecting helpful evidence?

Not great, but maybe they’d get a brand name of a circuit board, or they’d find that this acid concentration was unique — and therefore easier to source.

Her phone sounded.

“Rhyme,” she answered.

“Sachs, where are you?”

“Hospital. Near the crane. Should be able to get some samples pretty soon. Pictures too.”

“Let the techs run the scene. I’ve got a lead. Have to move fast.”

“Tell me.”

“The samples you and Lyle took? In the garages? We had a positive hit. One of the developers we targeted left HF trace on the ground under the passenger door of his limo.”

“Which car?” She wondered if it was the Bentley.

“It’s a Mercedes that Lyle sampled. It’s owned by one of the biggest developers in the area. Willis Tamblyn.”

The one she tried to find after the Bentley but hadn’t been able to.

“No record, but Lon checked city logs. He’s been in the Structures and Engineering building a dozen times in the last year.”

So his theory was making sense: this developer hired the Watchmaker to devalue property so he could pick it up cheap.

“We’ve had it on the LPR wire and they had a hit on the Merc five minutes ago. About three blocks from you.”

“So he’s here, looking over Hale’s handiwork. And he’s probably pissed we stopped the collapse. Where’s the Merc?”

He gave her the address. “I’m sending you Tamblyn’s DMV picture.”

She glanced at her phone. In his fifties, thinning hair, stern face, like smiling would be painful. He looked like... a real estate developer.

“I’m on my way.”

They disconnected. She ripped off the cumbersome white Tyvek overalls and pulled on her black sport jacket once more. A lead had come up, she told the three evidence collection techs; they should continue with the scene. She’d be back soon.

A jog wasn’t a pleasing proposition, given her battered lungs and windpipe.

But Dr. A. Gomez had declared her fine, so jog she did.

Thinking of an old expression of her father’s, one that she lived her life by:

Patrolwoman Evelyn Maple, a ten-year vet on the NYPD, was keeping selfie takers out of the scene.

Yes, the crane was stabilized and dismantled.

Yes, the crews looked like they knew what they were doing.

But she, a mother of two, was keeping her damn distance. Because you never knew what could happen. Why wasn’t everybody else doing the same?

“You, you can’t be on that side of the rope.”

“It’s tape, technically, Officer.” Snotty little blond cheerleader sort.

The officer was not tall, about five-four, and petite, so she lacked the intimidation factor she wished she had.

On the other hand, she had a badge and a gun and an extremely cool gaze, and the combination tended to get people to do what she wanted.

Tape, not rope...

You, move along. It’s not safe. It’s private property. You’ll get squashed like a squirrel in Larchmont...

She squinted toward where the concrete counterweights of the big bright red crane were dangling as the acid or whatever it was ate through the brackets that held them to a metal trolley on the rear end of the boom.

Was someone there?

Yes.

Seriously?

Somebody was walking around the base of the crane, a massive concrete slab. He was looking down and picking things up.

A scavenger.

Maple ducked under the tape herself and made her way toward him. He was clearly homeless: dirty brown overcoat, squat orange and brown cap, shoes that didn’t match, no socks.

Trespassing on a crime scene.

Looking for spare coins or valuables from victims?

Disgusting.

“Sir, excuse me.”

He turned around, surprised.

“You have some ID?”

He looked at her with mad — though not, in her opinion, dangerous — eyes.

He said passionately, “New York has been transformed.”

“Let me see some ID.”

“Don’t have any. But don’t you think the streets are wider than they used to be? Sidewalks’re cleaner. The geraniums hanging from lampposts, the trees are more obvious.”

Oh, man.

One of those.

Maple had heard that the terror attacks were all about housing and getting people off the street. People like this.

He waved his arm. “See, they’re hiding in their homes, they’re afraid of those things.” His palm ended up aimed at the crane. “So who do we see on the streets? Statues! Famous leaders. And department store mannequins. They’re all correct shades now. Have you noticed?

“And how quiet it is! No jackhammers, no dynamite warning horns, not much honking. A siren or two, but they’re pretty rare. You don’t need a siren if there’re no cars to get out of your way headin’ for that shooting or the coronary, right?

“Transformed. Cranes come down, and the city’s gone back in time a hundred years. It’s 1900, except no a-ooo-ga squeeze horns on internal combustion vehicles and no clop clop of horses. And the shit! New York used to have a hundred thousand horses in the city. They produced two million pounds of shit a day.”

Hm. Never thought about it. But she was tired of him now. “Sir, do you have a shelter you stay in?”

“Downtown.”

“Why don’t you just go on down there now. This place isn’t safe.”

He rattled his cup. “This woman. She gave me a handful of pennies. Pennies! But the joke was on her. She had to go to all the trouble. And I still got twenty-four cents.” He cocked his head. “Like twenty-four hours in the day. That means something. Do you believe in signs, Officer?”

“Why don’t you just head on home now?”

“All right, all right.” He made his way back to the sidewalk and turned in the direction where Maple had seen that detective disappear just a few moments ago, moving quickly.

Amelia Sachs. Long red hair.

Tall.

Ah...

The homeless man stopped and turned back. “What do you think they did with it?”

“What’s that, sir?” Maple asked, weariness in her voice.

“Two million pounds a day.”

He continued down the sidewalk.

He had to be completely nuts. A businessman glanced at him and tried to slip a bill into his cup. He missed and it fluttered to the ground.

The homeless man glanced back — it looked like it was a ten or twenty — and just let it lie there as he continued down the sidewalk once more, walking with what almost seemed to be an intense purpose.

44

Sachs was breathless as she strode along the sidewalk to where the license plate number recognition system had placed the Mercedes owned by Willis Tamblyn, the developer who had possibly — likely? — hired the Watchmaker to create chaos in the New York real estate market.

She called, “Rhyme, you there? I’m on my way.”

“How far?”

“Three, four minutes. Odds that Tamblyn came here to meet the Watchmaker?”

“Don’t know. And I’m thinking,” Rhyme added slowly. “It might be a setup. Maybe Hale’s one step ahead of us. Or thinks he is.”

“And the car’s a trap?”

“Possibly.”

“The flash-bangs and breaching charges that Gilligan stole? An IED in the Merc.”

Rhyme said, “Or more HF acid. If there’s nobody in it, stand down and wait for Bomb Squad.”

“K. I’m almost there.”

She signed off and changed to the tactical frequency.

“Detective Five Eight Eight Five. ESU. Further to the attempted incident at Twenty-Third. Over.” The words came out between gasps. She might have been fine, but her lungs didn’t completely believe the assessment.

A clatter then: “Amelia. Bo Haumann. K.”

This time the operation warranted the chief of the Emergency Service Unit himself, not just a captain commander.

“Bo.”

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Three minutes out. On foot. And you?”

“Six or seven.” The man’s voice was raspy, and she’d always wondered why. As far as she knew, he didn’t smoke. At any rate, the lean, grizzled man certainly looked the part of someone with a voice like this. “What’s the scenario?”

“Got a car owned by a Willis Tamblyn. Real estate developer. Possible he hired Charles Hale—”

“The Watchmaker.”

“Right. To take down the cranes.”

“Why?”

“Money.”

“One motive that never fails.”

“I’m about there, Bo. I can see the vehicle. I’m taking a look. Over.”

“K.”

Ahead was the long, gleaming black limo. Fast, sleek, intelligent. But like that luxurious piece of machinery she’d seen earlier in the day, the Bentley, the Mercedes drove by electronics, not heart, and she wouldn’t have owned one for the world.

Sachs slowed to a casual businessperson lope as she crossed the street onto the block where the vehicle was parked, then caught her breath. This was a stretch of wholesale shops and warehouses, so there was minimal foot traffic. It was a good location for a takedown — low risk for collateral damage, though there was a downside to the sparsity; she and other officers, even in street clothes, would be more obvious to the observant Watchmaker, whose survival skills were legendary.

If this was a trap, though, she doubted he would spring it when she was outside the vehicle. The amount of explosives Gilligan had stolen was not nearly enough to create a big enough bang to injure anyone unless they were in the vehicle itself.

It would take a huge IED — pounds of C4 — to create a blast radius that large to kill officers merely nearby the car.

Still, she moved up slowly.

When she was even with the car, she casually looked inside and noted that it was occupied. So, not a trap.

A large man, complexion nearly as dark as the car’s paint job, sat in the driver’s seat, reviewing texts, or playing a game on his phone. He was in a black suit and a white shirt. In the backseat was a brown suitcase, a wheelie model. It was closed.

Before the man looked her way, she veered left and stepped into a store that sold buttons, of which there had to be a hundred thousand on display.

An Asian woman in a flowery dress called, “Wholesale only.”

Sachs, a former model, remembered the days of fashion shoots, when a product manager for the designer’s house would send a very nervous young assistant scurrying off to a store just like this to find an accessory for a gown because he didn’t feel the existing one “spoke to his vision.”

She held up her ID. “Police action. Go in the back. Stay there.”

The wide-eyed woman blinked and then turned one-eighty and headed for the door.

“And don’t make any calls.”

The clerk dropped her phone on the counter as if it were on fire and disappeared into the back.

She radioed, “Bo. I’m in Feldstein’s Buttons and Fixtures. Vehicle is occupied. Black male, thirties. He’s muscle. Couldn’t tell about weapons. He didn’t make me. Suitcase in the back, closed. I don’t think it’s a trap, but the luggage is making me nervous.”

Haumann said, “Bomb Squad and Fire’s on silent roll ups, six, seven minutes out. We’re there in four.”

The driver tapped his earpiece and sat forward slightly. The Merc’s engine turned over.

“Bo. Driver took a call and’s starting the engine. And he’s looking behind. Tamblyn’s on his way here. Maybe with the Watchmaker. I’m going to get the muscle out of the vehicle.”

“Can you wait for backup?”

“No time. They’re going to be leaving. I’ll get the driver inside the store, restrained. Tamblyn gets here, looks in the driver’s seat. I come up behind. If the Watchmaker’s with him, I get both down on their knees. Wait for you.”

Haumann hesitated. “All right. We’ll speed it up. Out.”

He didn’t say “Be careful” out loud, but his tone offered the sentiment.

She eased outside.

Another glance up and down the street.

A half-dozen people, but no Tamblyn.

Approaching the car, she noted the driver was reading his phone’s screen.

ID in her left hand. Her right was near her weapon.

Was detaining him legal? she wondered.

It might be iffy constitutionally — a tiny bit of HF acid trace on a shoe print in a commercial garage supporting probable cause? Maybe Tamblyn, but the driver? That was a close call.

But she’d worry about the law later.

Catch ’em first.

This was the Watchmaker they were after.

As she moved up to the window, about to rap on it — and draw down, if necessary — she realized that somebody among those she’d noted on the street had come up directly behind her.

She glanced back and saw a homeless man. He was in a stained coat and wore a weird hat, like a Middle Eastern warlord. He was vaguely familiar. Yes, he’d been at the first scene!

Amelia Sachs had made one of the fundamental mistakes in an arrest scenario: focusing on the obvious suspect and dropping her defenses with the apparently innocent.

But then she was looking past the hat, the coat, the tattered shoes, the dirty face, and she realized she recognized him from someplace other than the 89th Street scene.

From the DMV pictures Lincoln Rhyme had just sent.

Clean the face, comb the hair... and it was Willis Tamblyn, the developer, the man who, they now believed, had hired the Watchmaker to bring New York City’s cranes tumbling down to earth.

45

After closing and double-locking the door of his home in Queens, he kissed Jenny and called hello to the children, a greeting they might or might not have heard, as they were upstairs with their phones and computers. The parents had decided to keep them home today because of the publicity their father had garnered from the accident and the suspension.

And — though they didn’t share it with the children, of course — the threat that the Eddie Tarr investigation might or might not pose.

The dogs arrived, as always upon his entering, to greet him enthusiastically. Auggie was a dual citizenship canine — a mini Australian shepherd, aka American shepherd. He ran to Ron with the remnants of a stuffed toy he had recently eviscerated.

“Thanks,” he said, taking the limp thing, a dragon, and tossing it into the hallway, where the dog collected the hide and began chewing again. He seemed pleased of the acknowledgment and ripped and chomped all the harder.

Daisy was a kaleidoscope of genes: papillon, sheltie, Aussie, Jack Russell, and Chihuahua. The children sometimes reminded the sweet thing that her ultimate ancestor was the wolf. To no effect.

He noted that Jenny wasn’t wearing her usual household sweats but a flaring black skirt and red blouse. The slim woman looked like she was headed out for a night with the girls. “Book club?” he asked.

“Nope. Stayin’ home with my man.”

A smile, another kiss.

Her freckled face grew serious. “Reporter came by. Wanted to know my reaction to my husband being investigated. Distracted driving while under the influence.”

Ron frowned. He’d supposed the accident would get reported, but how had the fact he’d been on a phone call at the time even come up?

“I sent him away, tail between his legs. You can’t pepper spray reporters,” Jenny said, “I have that right?”

“They have laws against it.”

“Somebody in Albany needs to get that off the books.”

He kissed her again, this time her forehead. She was a foot shorter and this portion of her face was a frequent landing spot for his lips. Her appearance was much the same as it had been when they’d met years ago... Her hair was now a bob, which had the curious effect of changing the shape of her face, emphasizing different angles. He liked her hair short, liked it long. She was beautiful to him and had always been. Always would be.

He was then aware that the accident had made him sentimental and he kicked that emotion out the door.

“Lunch!” she called.

Seconds later, Martine and Brad descended the stairs like stuntpeople. It was apparently a race, with older Brad beating Martine by a nose. Preteen fashion dictated hoodies, both light gray. And, of course, baggy shorts — plaid in Brad’s case, bright orange in his sister’s. She was always the bolder in fashion choices and had already — to Ron’s horror — wondered aloud if tattoos hurt.

The two children, both blond and dusted with Mom’s freckles, knew their mealtime tasks — pouring water and soda and milk and bringing out the serving dishes of cold cuts, potato chips, pickles, salad, sliced watermelon. Ron sat down in his customary chair, the one with arms. He didn’t do this because he was the head of the family. It was because it was the most uncomfortable chair of the dining set. He could buy a new one. Another thing he now had time to get around to.

They dished up, they ate, they talked.

Like, Donovan? Going to the Mets? And Boston. It’s going to suck... Totally. Can I go to the retreat?... Luis and Harvey’re going... Near West Point. They have a tour. There’s some military museum there. I’m tired of the flute... Morgan’s got a guitar. Her father bought her a Fender... Oh, where we went last summer, Lake George?... There’s this TikTok video... A cat... After dinner... The test? Yeah, it went okay...

The conversation jogged and flowed everywhere — except to the subject of why Dad would be staying home for a while. Children are ever curious and fiercely perceptive. Much of their life was their soccer teams, their virtual worlds, their hanging with friends, their texting — but they also had news feeds and forums and they were as conversant on the topic of their father’s suspension as anyone. Probably more than ninety percent of NYPD personnel.

And so, when the eating dwindled and plates were clean, Ron decided it was time.

“All right. Family meeting.”

A concept not regularly exercised in this household. His own father had convened get-togethers once or twice a year, and Ron and Tony, his twin brother, would sit down on the carpeted floor while their mother took her rocker and Dad would talk about downsizing and what a move to Queens from Brooklyn would mean or that Grandad Bill had passed or that the doctor had found something and he needed to be in the hospital for a while...

So Ron had understandably come to associate the idea of an official family conference with unhappiness and had never convened one.

Until now.

They moved to the living room.

He took an armchair so that Jenny couldn’t sit beside him, which, for some reason, he felt would magnify the gravity and upset the children more.

“You know a little about what’s going on. But I’m going to tell you everything.”

He explained to them about the crash, how he was going to be ticketed and maybe even charged for running a red light and hurting somebody. The person he’d hit was going to live. Because of the police department rules he had to take some time off.

He and their mother would make sure they’d be fine. This was just a temporary thing. Their lives would hardly change at all.

And there was no way to hide or buff it:

The drugs.

About which the children were, sadly, conversant, given the school’s health curriculum.

He’d explained about the sticky, potent nature of fentanyl. How he and their mother had never done anything recreationally except a little pot (tell them everything, just not too much of everything).

That part was a mistake. That part would get straightened out.

They nodded that they understood.

But did they wholly?

And, for that matter, how convincing could he be when he wasn’t sure that it would get straightened out?

The one part of everything that did not make it into the final version: that he might be arrested and go to jail.

A bridge to be crossed later, if required.

He asked if they had any questions.

Brad asked: “Are we going to have to move?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

Martine wanted to ask something, but didn’t. Ron — like all parents, a psychic — said, “There’s no talk of me losing my job. And if I did, I’d get a new one. Easy-peasey.”

Relief flowed into the girl’s face.

A sensation that her father absolutely did not feel.

At the thought of leaving the only job he had ever wanted, or keeping the badge but being desked, Ron’s gut tightened, his heart stuttered. He controlled the urge to cry. Barely.

Brad, the more reserved of the two, said, “Maybe we should, like, stay home.”

Ron reached out and gripped the boy’s forearm. “No, we go on with our life. We live it normally. We don’t let things like this affect us. We rise above it. You ever hear that expression?”

They nodded.

“Now, are you okay with this?”

They said, “Sure” and “Okay.”

But the words were flimsy. They were confused and shaken and, possibly, afraid.

This broke Ron Pulaski’s heart.

But he fired up a smoke screen of his own: “Clear the table, finish your homework. Then Monopoly with dessert.”

Their smiles were genuine. Their favorite version of the game was Dog-opoly. Which would give them the chance to resume the ongoing discussion of adding a canine to the household.

“Homework?” Ron asked again.

Martine, in grade school, didn’t have any.

“Mine’s done,” Brad said.

But he said it in a way that Ron had heard gangbangers on the street say, “Ain’t got nothing on me.”

“All of it?” Ron asked.

“Kinda.”

“Kinda?” He laughed. “Either the light’s on or it isn’t.”

Lincoln Rhyme, when hearing a phrase like “most unique” would say, “Either it’s unique or it isn’t. Like being pregnant.” Ron thought the table lamp metaphor more appropriate.

“Maybe this paper. But it’s almost finished.”

“Well, maybe you can finish it later. Go get the game.”

The boy’s face brightened.

The children readied the table in the rec room and brought their ringers — Auggie and Daisy — with them. Ron and Jenny walked into the kitchen to finish the cleanup. Wiping the counter, Jenny said, “How does this affect what you told me yesterday? Your talk with Lon?”

About taking over for Lincoln Rhyme.

If he got fired, nothing would stop him from being a consultant for the NYPD like Lincoln. Except his credibility as an expert witness would be destroyed. And that meant he’d never be hired.

Indicted and convicted... Well, that was something else.

“Depends on the findings.”

“They’d be idiots to let you go. Look what you did at that scene yesterday. Getting that lead on the bomber. The task force must’ve been in heaven.”

Over the moon...

“There’s politics, there’s optics.”

“How did the interview go?”

A shrug. “The IA cop, he was decent. Didn’t go half as bad as I thought it would.”

Thinking back to the half hour with Garner.

And staring out the window.

She walked close and put her arms around him, her head against his chest. “Whatever happens, we’ll get through it.”

Ron resisted the gravitational tug to look toward the mantel above the fireplace.

“We’re ready.” Brad’s voice.

“Daddy, what do you want to be? I’m the cat and Brad’s the mailman.”

He called, “I’ll be the fire hydrant.”

“That’s gross.”

Nobody wanted to be the hydrant in Dog-opoly, but Ron couldn’t think of the other pieces.

And then he paused, looking out the window once again.

“What is it?” Jenny was looking at his focused eyes.

He kissed her forehead. “I’ll be right in. Have to make a call.”

As Jenny took a half gallon of ice cream from the freezer, Ron stepped outside onto the back porch.

Pulling out his phone, he looked up a contact number and placed a call.

“Hey, Ron,” Lyle Spencer said. “How’re you doing? I heard. Man, I’m sorry about what happened.”

“I’m okay. Thanks. Listen, can you spare a few minutes now?”

“For you, absolutely.”

46

Amelia Sachs handed his ID back.

The man in the homeless garb was indeed Willis Tamblyn.

Now that she could look past the costume and smudged face, it was clear that he was the man in the DMV picture Rhyme had sent.

Tamblyn was worth, she recalled, about $29 billion — though that was according to a Google search anyway, so who really knew? He had been a real estate developer in New York City and New Jersey all his professional life. He’d been born poor. In the press about him, the word “bootstrap” appeared frequently. And once or twice the phrase “with a conscience” in such a way that the reporter penning the story seemed surprised to be including it in the same sentence with “real estate developer.”

Nearby was Bo Haumann and one of the ESU tactical teams. The threat assessment was low, but low wasn’t nonexistent.

Tamblyn’s driver checked out too. He was a former NYPD officer, who’d tripled his salary — and maybe extended his life span — by going private. He had no record and the concealed-carry for his weapon was in order.

“We found evidence that links you to the first crane collapse.”

“Well, obviously it would. I was there.” He gave a breathy laugh. “You even saw me. But you don’t remember.”

“No, I do.”

Tamblyn tilted his head slightly. “What evidence exactly? I’m curious.”

“Trace evidence.” Give your subjects something that keeps them talking, Sachs thought, but never anything they can use.

He frowned more wrinkles into a wrinkled face. “Ah. You vacuumed up, or whatever you do, dirt outside my car. No, all the big developer’s cars. Who else, I wonder. Liebermann? Frost? Bahrani? And assumed one of us hired a hit man with a hacksaw to tip cranes over for fun and profit. A cruiser spotted this.” A nod at the Mercedes. “And called it in. Do you say, ‘Calling it in’?” He nodded broadly. “I know. It was the acid! In the news. That’s the trace. Bad stuff. I steered clear.”

She wished she had, though the lungs were clearly on the mend.

“Okay, sure I was at the collapse on Eighty-Ninth Street. And the hospital.” A nod north. “And the Bingham construction site where the elevator dropped sixty feet and broke a workman’s back. I was at the Richard Henderson development on the Hudson. The big glass tower? Construction waste wasn’t secured. A ton of scrap lumber was blown over the side. It fell six hundred feet and hit three workers at a hundred miles an hour. One was killed. Another lost an arm.”

He nodded to his cell phone, which she’d removed from his overcoat and placed on the hood of his car. “I video the sites, then I write reports on how the accidents could’ve been prevented. Laborers’ International, Brotherhood of Carpenters, Plumbing and Pipefitting, Sheet Metal, Painters and Allied Trades... All the unions report incidents to me. I play detective.” He cut his gaze toward the shield on her belt, almost as if he wished he had one.

“You’re a crusading developer, saving workers’ lives.”

He liked the phrase.

“I meet regularly with the mayor and the director of safety at Structures and Engineering.”

Explaining why he’d logged in there.

The man had removed the odd hat and overcoat. They appeared grimy, but that was all part of the stage acting, it seemed. The dirt and grease were spray paint. While she’d originally expected an unpleasant odor, all she detected was a faint lavender scent. Maybe shampoo, though Tamblyn seemed like a cologne kind of guy.

“Why the disguise?”

“I’m like a restaurant reviewer. The companies and developers know me. If they were to see me and there’s unsafe conditions, they’d cover them up. Or manhandle me off the site. Sometimes I’m a tourist, sometimes a street musician. Homeless is best. I’m invisible.” He scoffed. “I got right behind you, didn’t I? If I’d been the man behind the collapse, you’d be dead.”

Couldn’t argue with him there.

“And when you act insane, they just want you to go away.” He told her an officer had just detained him at the hospital scene. But once he started to ramble, she got tired of him pretty fast and sent him along.

“Frederick,” he said, looking to his driver. “Water, towels.” He turned back to her and she nodded okay.

The driver walked to the back of the vehicle and removed the requested items from the trunk, which Sachs and ESU had already cleared. He handed his boss the bottle and the cloth towels — which looked sumptuous. She’d never seen towels that thick.

Tamblyn rinsed the dirt off his hands. The water splashed and flew. He didn’t care who or what got wet. Sachs stepped back. When he was done, he dried, and then began removing the crud from beneath his nails with a file portion of a pair of clippers. “Dirty nails. You want somebody to think you’re an unfortunate soul, if you ever go undercover, you need dirty nails.”

She didn’t respond, but decided it was not bad advice.

He studiously cleaned each fingertip, rolling the residue into tiny balls and dropping them on the sidewalk. “Are you believing me? Ah, your face says not exactly... All right. Call this number.”

He recited one and she dialed. The line rang once and was picked up. “Hello?” A man’s impatient voice.

Sachs asked, “Who is this?”

“The fuck. Who is this and how did you get this number?”

“Detective Amelia Sachs, NYPD. I’m with Willis Tamblyn. Who am I speaking to?”

“Tony Harrison.”

The mayor of New York.

“Is Willis all right?”

“Yes. Let me call you on the City Hall line,” she said.

“Are you—?”

She disconnected and called the main number and in ten seconds was speaking to the man once again.

He grumbled, “Your conspiracy bones satisfied, and my authenticity established, Detective Sachs?”

“Yes.” Maybe a “sir” might be in order. She wasn’t in the mood.

“Mr. Tamblyn has been at several of the crime scenes involving the crane collapses.”

“I know. That’s what he does. Anything more?”

“No. I—”

The line went dead.

She said, “The collapses were intentional. How can you guard against that?”

He shrugged. “Wind happens. Metal failure happens. Terrorists happen. Contractors have to be ready for anything. Look at what we learned on Eighty-Ninth. The operator had a rope in the cab. A hundred dollars’ worth of rope saved his life. That went into my report. And the hospital? I’m going to recommend the city doesn’t approve freestanding cranes. They have to be attached to the structure they’re building.”

She asked, “Did you see anyone at either of the sites who gave you the impression they were involved?”

“No. Just a bunch of jackals who wanted selfies at a disaster. Now, can I go?”

Her phone buzzed.

She told Tamblyn, “Not yet.” Then, to the phone: “Rhyme. I’ve got him. Only, it’s not quite what we thought.” She explained about Tamblyn’s mission, and the mayor’s confirmation.

“Homeless...” Rhyme said. “I saw somebody earlier, on one of the videos. Let me check something... Ah, yes, it’s Tamblyn. That’s what he was holding, a cell phone.” He fell silent. “Put him on speaker.”

She tapped the button and moved the unit closer to Tamblyn. She said, “It’s Lincoln Rhyme. He’s—”

The developer said, “I know who he is... Mr. Rhyme.”

“Mr. Tamblyn. We could use your help. Let me run a few ideas by you and see what you think.”

“I suppose. If it’s urgent. I have an engagement.” And started on the nails of his right hand.

Rhyme said, “Urgent, yes. We just checked the countdown clock. It’s been reset. Only this time whoever’s behind it has upped the deadline. Another crane comes down in just a few hours.”

47

“Senator, four o’clock.”

Not a reference to time.

Position of threat.

The two men were in Lower Manhattan, east of Wall Street.

A glance to his right and behind.

He noted a fortyish man in jeans, dark baseball cap and a sweatshirt, no logo, navy blue. The kind favored by street thieves. Toss-aways, they were called. You mug somebody, run and throw away what you were wearing to fool those searching for you.

“Why’s it a threat, you think?”

Peter, the tall, broad “personal security specialist,” replied, “Paused when we waited for the light, made a call that might not have been a call. It looked fake.” The sun flared off Peter’s naked scalp.

“You see him earlier?”

“No.”

“We’ll keep an eye out.”

Edward Talese, a U.S. senator from New York, had just met with his party’s presidential campaign manager. The meeting between her and Talese had gone well and he’d come away with a list of donors to cuddle up with.

Talese was fifty-nine years old and sturdy of build and he wore his blond hair in a crew cut, which deemphasized the lack thereof. Not that he cared. His face was bulldog scrunched, though the jowls echoed a different breed — a bloodhound. Talese knew he was sometimes described in canine metaphors, and that was okay by him. He owned four: a wolfhound, a Malinois, a bluetick and a Chihuahua. Some people were amused that of the quartet the only one he himself had brought into the family was Buttercup, who weighed in at six pounds, three ounces. And that, only because she was overweight.

Normally he and Peter would be in the limo, which was bullet resistant (a phrase that, for some reason, amused him, as if the car merely disdained lead projectiles). But the first meeting had been at campaign headquarters downtown and to get to the next, with a donor at the Water Street Hotel, it was far more efficient and faster to walk than to negotiate the impossible Financial District traffic.

He wondered now if this exposure was a mistake.

He looked back once more.

He couldn’t tell if the man was still there; the lunchtime crowds were thick.

The day was clear. Strong sunlight slanted downward and replicated itself in a hundred windows, the reflected beams dimmer and cooler than the original act, but still glary.

Ahead he caught a glimpse of City Hall, impressive as ever. They would normally have cut through Steve Flanders Square, in front of the elaborate structure, but it was closed off, sealed with yellow police tape.

“What happened there?” the senator asked.

“Look.” He pointed to a construction site where one of those cranes was being built. The site was deserted.

“Oh, that affordable housing gang, or whoever.”

The crane was only sixty, seventy feet high. But, Talese supposed, could do some damage if it came down. Affordable housing — that was their gripe. He sympathized — he’d discussed the issue with the head of Housing and Urban Development — but killing people to make their point?

“That way.” Peter pointed and unbuttoned his jacket to reveal his firearm.

After some minutes of serpentine travel — dodging people who were glued to their phones — Talese and Peter emerged again into the sun. They crossed the busy street to the hotel, a structure impressive if you loved metal and glass. The word “cozy” need not apply.

“See him?” Talese was looking back.

“He turned. Probably nothing.”

In the bright, functional lobby, he expected to be greeted by the campaign donor himself, an impossibly wealthy hedge fund manager. When he didn’t see the man, he pulled out his phone. Before he placed the call, though, a tall man in a dark suit and white shirt walked directly up to him. Peter stirred.

“Senator Talese.”

Not a question. Anyone with a TV knew who he was.

“Mr. Roth won’t be able to take your meeting. But there’s someone else who’d like to see you.”

Peter said, “We’ll see some ID.”

He produced it.

Noting the man’s employer, Talese lifted an eyebrow.

The meeting, it seemed, was going to be considerably different from the one he’d had planned.

48

In his town house, on the line with Willis Tamblyn, Lincoln Rhyme was saying into the phone, “The person actually sabotaging the cranes is a hired gun. Charges millions for jobs like this.”

“My.”

Rhyme thought Tamblyn seemed unimpressed. Millions to him was probably just a private jet budget.

“We want to know who hired him. We find that out, we find him. So we need a motive.”

He imagined Sachs was nearly smiling to hear him say the disreputable M-word.

Rhyme continued, “First, it was what you might’ve heard in the news: activists forcing the city to convert old government property into affordable housing. But we’ve discarded that.”

“Well, I’d think so,” he said sardonically. “You should’ve called me right up front. I’d’ve told you. There are plenty of shits in the affordable housing movement and most of them are stupid. Naïve, at least. But extortion? Not their thing. And they couldn’t pull together a fee like that anyway.”

Rhyme said, “Then we were thinking of—”

Tamblyn interrupted. “An amoral real estate developer. Like me.”

“Yes. Driving down the market to pick up properties for cheap.”

A scoffing exhalation. “And how exactly would that work?”

Rhyme said, “REITs, for one.”

Tamblyn seemed perplexed at the very thought. “They’re long-term. And valuation is based on funds from operations, and interest rates. Not New York Post headlines. Next?”

Sachs came in with: “Manipulating the stock market?”

Now an outright laugh. “You can’t be serious. You want to play that game, you pick one stock, go short, get an anonymous blog, post fake stories about the dangers of electric cars or a dermatology drug, and cash out when the price dips. Then go to jail, by the way. The SEC’s been there. Falling cranes? Wall Street may hiccup, but they’ve forgotten about it come cocktail hour.”

Rhyme tried: “Delays in construction. The projects go bankrupt. A developer moves in—”

“And buys them for a song? Where did you hear that?”

“A news story...”

“Oh, oh... On the news. Of course it has to be true... Well, the last thing banks want is to own property they hold the mortgage on. The construction milestones? Nobody takes them seriously. It gets worked out.”

Rhyme’s eyes were taking in the evidence boards. He glanced absently toward the sterile portion of the parlor, where Mel Cooper was analyzing yet more trace Sachs and Pulaski had collected. His expression explained he was finding nothing new.

“Sachs, show him a list of the properties that were on the Kommunalka Project demand list.”

Tamblyn grunted. “I’m meeting someone.”

Rhyme said, “Five hours. Till another crane.”

“It’s Lucien’s. Do you know how long it takes to get a reservation?”

Sachs said, “I’ve got it.”

“Mr. Tamblyn?” Rhyme prompted.

“I’m reading, I’m reading.”

“Is there any strategic reason our perp would want those properties transferred to a corporation? Some’re former government installations. Maybe there’re records stored there? Research facilities? Some geographic reason? They’re adjacent to critical locations? Or, maybe, to keep them off the market?”

In a distracted voice, Tamblyn said, “You have quite the devious mind. Impressive. But... no.”

Rhyme asked, “Why?”

“Ninety percent of them ain’t going anywhere anytime soon. They’re frozen. On no-transfer lists.”

“No-transfer?” Sachs asked.

“They’re toxic. Literally. A couple’re Superfund. The others? Cleanup’ll take years. He had to’ve known that. Sounds like he closed his eyes and picked some property that was city owned without thinking about it.”

Rhyme asked, “So your opinion — your expert opinion — is that these crimes have nothing to do with real estate?”

“Well, this guy is your million-dollar killer, not mine, but on what you’ve given me, that’s correct. He has something else in mind entirely.”

49

“Mr. President.”

“Edward.”

Senator Talese stepped into the parlor. The exterior and lobby of the hotel may have been bland, but these rooms were decidedly posh.

But, then again, it was the Presidential Suite.

The commander in chief rose from a couch that was surrounded by a sea of paperwork and strode forward over the off-white sponge of carpet to grip the man’s hand. President William Boyd was a tall, angular man whose mixed-race heritage showed in the soft tone of his skin. He was known for his ready smile, which he flashed now.

Talese was senior in the opposing party and he wondered what Boyd would think if he knew that he’d just spent the last two hours strategizing about removing him from office come the election in November. Then decided the man wouldn’t care. It was all part of the game. And in fact he and Boyd had worked together frequently, beating down partisanship when they could and getting compromise legislation hammered out.

“Senator.” The tall, regal First Lady stood in the doorway.

“Mrs. Boyd.”

“How’re Emily and the girls? The grandchildren?”

“All well, thank you.” Talese noted the First Daughter, ten years old, was also in good form, fervently tapping her iPad screen.

“I’ll leave you to it.” The woman closed the double doors behind her.

The men sat. Boyd said, “Sometimes, this business, don’t you feel like a magician? Sleight of hand, misdirection. Do you know any card tricks, Edward?”

“I do, sir. I play hearts with my grandkids and I watch my loose change vanish. So the hedge fund manager I was supposed to meet — it was a disappearing act.”

“I’d hardly dig up a rich man to fund my opponent’s war chest, would I? Caught you off guard.”

“Yessir.”

The man stretched. Despite his apparently robust health, he looked tired. But then Talese had worked with three presidents and they were perpetually tired. The job simply tuckers you out.

“The polls... It’s going to be a coin toss in November.”

“Close. Yes.”

“Good CEOs don’t last — business or government. And I don’t mean good as in talented and efficient. I mean as in doing good.” Boyd rose and poured himself coffee. He lifted an eyebrow. Talese shook his head. “You ever see the movie Fail Safe, Edward?”

“Long time ago. Our bombers get a message by mistake to nuke Moscow. Are we worried about war?”

“No, no. I’m thinking of that scene where the president asks the American ambassador in Russia to sacrifice himself, so they’ll know that Moscow’s been destroyed.”

“He stays on the phone until it’s destroyed in the blast. The Russian ambassador in New York does the same.”

They traded the two cities to avoid all-out war. Like swapping queens at chess.

A chilling flick.

Talese continued, “Melted ambassadors. This is not a very auspicious conversation, Mr. President.”

“My infrastructure bill, Edward...”

“Ah.” And Talese saw what was coming and was suddenly aware of the concept of seeing his life pass before his eyes. In this case, his political life. “Only just a bit more popular than nuclear holocaust, I’ll give you that.”

A laugh.

Boyd’s legislation would be a massive overhaul of the country’s roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, railroads and the like. Improving safety and employing tens of thousands of workers.

Opponents, all of them vehement, said that bill might bankrupt the country.

Talese was looking down at the bird’s-eye maple coffee table.

Boyd: “You’ve read the drafts. What do you think?”

“In theory, it might work.”

With a coy tone in his voice, the president said, “I’ve heard some feedback... Off the record, of course. You like the idea.”

Where did the man get his intelligence?

“Edward, help me get this off the ground.”

“Mr. President...”

Boyd leaned forward. “Your clean water legislation? I’ll make sure it happens.”

Jesus.

That would be a miracle...

The senator sighed. “Dinner the other night? I mentioned that the water bill was coming in at one point two billion. And Sammi said, ‘Guess somebody left the faucet running.’ ”

A chuckle. “We need more twelve-year-olds in Congress.”

Just like Boyd to know the names and ages of his oppo’s grandchildren.

“I vote for it, it’ll be the end of my career.”

“Ah, you’re not up for four years. Voters’ll forget.”

“My party won’t. After this term I won’t be able to get any job short of dogcatcher.”

Talese looked out the window as the sun cast its relentless light on the magnificent city.

Not impulsive as a politician, not impulsive as a husband or father or grandfather, Senator Edward Talese of New York did not act impulsively now. His quick mind ordered facts and consequences and said, “I’ll do it, sir. You’ve got my vote.”

Dogcatcher...

The president rose quickly and took Talese’s hand in both of his.

“I’ve been thinking of a title for when I write my autobiography,” the senator mused. “Or, when my ghostwriter does. I’ve got it now: The Devil’s Bargainer.”

The president laughed his famous laugh.

The two walked to the door.

Talese said, “That movie? The one where the two ambassadors got nuked? At least they avoided World War Three. That was something.”

50

Lincoln Rhyme’s email inbox flashed with a Zoom request to join a meeting five minutes from now.

The host was the homeless billionaire Willis Tamblyn.

This would be a follow-up to their prior conversation a half hour ago.

After the developer had shot down their theories about the Watchmaker’s motives, Rhyme had wondered if the developer could help in another way.

“Six months?” Tamblyn had muttered.

“What?” Rhyme had asked.

“How long it takes to get that reservation at Lucien’s.”

Rhyme had asked, “Will it still be in business six months from now, do you think?”

There’d been a pause. “Jacques won’t be happy. What do you need?”

Rhyme had said, “A developer has to know a lot about the history of the city, its geography, I assume.”

“Are you joking? Someone once wrote that nobody knows more about New York City than Willis Tamblyn. I took offense. Saying ‘nobody knows more.’ That puts me on an equal footing with every Tom, Dick and Loser of developers. The right way to say it is simpler and doesn’t involve a negative. I know more than any other living person about the city.”

“Then maybe you can help us find a location. It’s where the co-conspirators met in the crane attack.”

“Conspirators,” Tamblyn had said slowly, savoring either the word or the concept itself. Perhaps both.

“This is what our officers found in the soil.” And he had sent a picture from the murder board.

Andy Gilligan, homicide

  ◦ clay soil

  ◦ oyster shells, old

  ◦ decaying substances, all probably several hundred years old:

    wool

    leather

    varnished wood

    liquor

    horsehair

    charcoal

Garry Helprin, attempted homicide

  ◦ clay soil

  ◦ oyster shells, old

  ◦ decaying substances, all probably several hundred years old:

    wool

    leather

    varnished wood

    liquor

    horsehair

    charcoal

    ammonia and isocyanic acid

“Let me look into it.”

This is what Tamblyn was now going to be Zooming about.

Rhyme clicked on the invite.

Tamblyn’s face appeared, wide-angle, from his phone camera. He was at a fancy dining table.

Lucien’s? He’d gone after all, it seemed.

The developer suddenly muttered to a man in a white jacket. “I know I’m on the phone. I know it’s against your policy. I also know I could write a check for this place on the spot and turn it into an Arby’s franchise. The maître d’ will tell you who I am. Now go away. Mr. Rhyme? So, that evidence you found? The best I can do is tell you that when foundation crews dig up anything that might be historical, they have to tell the city. And the construction comes to a halt, and the bleeding hearts get court orders to preserve the site for further inspection. Screw it if the company goes out of business and hardworking men and women get fired.”

He calmed. “Well, I’ve seen these items you found before. A military connection. Revolutionary War. The wood is from gun stocks, horsehair from, yes, you guessed it. The liquor’s key. Did you know that soldiers back then fought drunk? I saw a show on cable. Makes sense. Would you go charging up against musket balls and bayonets sober? I myself wouldn’t.

“That still leaves a lot of possibilities, though. Battlefields, training sites, camps. The army and navy’ve always been stationed here. The clay and oyster shells probably mean downtown Manhattan, southwest Brooklyn, north Staten Island, eastern Jersey down to Newark. But I don’t know that does you a lot of good.”

More than five hundred miles of shoreline...

Rhyme’s eyes rose to the ceiling, considering the man’s words.

And the thought emerged.

Military installations...

Ammonia and isocyanic acid.

Urea.

Which is the main source of saltpeter — sodium nitrate, used in the manufacture of gunpowder.

A student of explosives, like all forensic scientists, Rhyme knew that in the nineteenth century gunpowder was always in short supply and manufacturers — desperate for saltpeter, the main source for which was pee — would pay preachers so they could collect dried urine from church pews, where it accumulated after parishioners remained in their seats to listen to sermons that stretched on for hours, and let their natural functions simply occur — rather than risk the wrath of God or, more likely, the appearance of irreverence by slipping away to the outhouse.

Rhyme asked, “Is there anywhere you can think of where gunpowder was manufactured in the area back then — and in a place where construction might’ve been halted?”

“Ah, that’s easy. There’s a current job on hiatus because excavators found an old military installation where gunpower was made. Late seventeen hundreds. Down in Greenwich Village. It used to be known as Gunners’ Row. They changed it years ago. Now it’s called Hamilton Court.”

Before him, rising two hundred feet into the air, was an Engström-Aber tower crane, a self-erecting model.

Bold yellow with a blue cab, this model, he’d learned, was a workhorse in the city. Hale couldn’t help but admire it. The mast measured twelve by twelve feet, and the forward jib — made of eleven sections — totaled two hundred and seventy feet, while the counterweight jib extended sixty-nine. It could heft fifty-five thousand pounds. Not surprising, it was expensive to rent; few construction companies owned tower cranes; to justify the expense, a unit would have been used weekly, and not many contractors did high-rise jobs that required them. The E-A came in at $15,900 per month.

And the meter was ticking. Sitting unused did not excuse the rent, and a crazy man who might tip it over was not an act of God under the rental agreement.

He now parked a half block from the site. Gazing about and seeing no one, other than drivers of vehicles oblivious to him and his SUV, he tapped to life his tablet and found the diagram that was among those that the unfortunate Andy Gilligan had stolen from the city’s DSE department. He looked from the glossy surface to the grounds around him.

Yes, there it was — a four-foot-wide concrete tunnel that would be used to channel rainwater and snowmelt runoff to a drainage system under a nearby road and ultimately to the Hudson River.

All was good. Yes, the workers-turned-guards were diligent and took their task seriously. Their coffee and cigarettes did not distract from their vigil.

Of course, the danger they were looking for, like air-raid wardens in World War II England, was coming from the sky, they believed.

Searching for one of the acid-toting drones.

And once again the amateur guards were looking everywhere but the place they should be looking.

Climbing from the vehicle, he donned the hard hat — yellow like the other workers wore — and zipped his Carhartt overalls up tight at the neck. He walked to the back, raised the liftgate and pulled out the heavy backpack.

He made his way to the tunnel and began to shimmy through. At the end, some fifty feet away, he climbed the steel rungs set into the concrete as a ladder and emerged near the crane’s base. Above him the jib loomed. The wind was up and there was a faint whistle as it streamed through the yellow tubing and black support wires. The operator had released the clutch so that the jib weather-vaned safely.

He examined the base of the mast. The drone was resting in peace, but his plan didn’t call for that anyway. Nor was any of the lovely HF acid involved.

This crane incident would be different.

In a few minutes, the packages had been delivered and he returned to the tunnel and made his way back to the car.

In the driver’s seat he tossed the helmet into the back, began the drive back to his safe house on Hamilton. As he left, he examined the site once more.

He supposed that this particular crane, while towering, garnered less attention than others. The area around it had been completely cleared in a four-hundred-foot circumference. So if, for some reason, the terrorist, or pyscho, sabotaged it, there were no apartments or office buildings to crush.

Which didn’t mean there was no target within the crane’s reach.

The most important one in fact of his whole project.

51

Detective Lyle Spencer — a full foot taller than Ron Pulaski — stood at the door. He wore a black suit and white shirt, no tie. Pulaski looked up and shook the man’s meaty hand.

They stepped into the living room, and Ron introduced the detective to Jenny. They too shook hands.

The children, at the Dog-opoly board, looked up. Jenny said, “And our children. Martine and Brad. This is Detective Spencer.”

“You’re big.”

“Brad!” she said.

Spencer laughed. “Not a worry.” The detective’s eyes looked around the comfortable room: affordable furniture, pictures, vacation souvenirs, sports uniforms, family relics going back generations. Then the accessories that make a dwelling a home: video game cartridges, magazines, recipe cards, soccer and softball gear, mismatched running shoes, pretzel and potato chip packets.

Jenny cast her husband a playfully exasperated look, and he realized he’d forgotten to tell her there’d be a houseguest calling.

“We’ll be out back.”

“The game!” Martine called.

“I won’t be long.”

“Coffee? Beer?”

Both declined Jenny’s offer.

Brad called, “Detective Spencer? Were you like Special Forces?”

“SEALs.”

“Man... Team Six?”

“No.”

“But did you do secret missions?”

“Oh, you bet. But I can’t talk about them.”

“Cool!”

Ron nodded to the kitchen and the two men walked through it, and onto the back porch. The covered rectangle, unscreened, overlooked a patch of lawn ringed with planting beds in which nothing had been planted. They were weed free, though, and filled with fragrant mulch, which Ron and the children had spread themselves. It was not that long ago — less than a month — though that pleasant Saturday afternoon might have been a decade ago.

Ron noted the big man’s somber expression, not present when he’d arrived.

They looked over the grass.

Filling the silence, Spencer asked softly, “When did it happen?”

It...

“Or we can move on. Just wanted to ask.”

“No. It’s okay. A few years. How’d you know?”

“Your wife said ‘our children.’ Not ‘two of our children.’ And I met an older boy and a younger girl. But there were pictures on the mantel of Brad and an older girl.”

The man was, after all, a detective.

And looking at the face, big and tough, but tinted with pain, Ron Pulaski knew another fact about Lyle Spencer. They had something in common.

Ron said, “Cancer. Happened fast. Man, you do everything... and sometimes everything isn’t enough.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Over the years we must’ve had a hundred people over, Jenny and me. Probably looked at that same picture. Nobody made the leap. Maybe they wondered and didn’t want to ask. But I don’t think so. They just didn’t notice. And your situation?”

Looking out over the yard, the man said, “Wasn’t that different. We had a daughter too. Then... It was an orphan disease.”

Ron shook his head.

“Term of art, our doctor said. A rare disease. In the U.S., the definition is less than two hundred thousand people have it.” He gave a dim laugh. “I told Lincoln. And you know him. He said the word ‘orphan’ comes from the Greek. And it doesn’t mean just a child without his parents. It can mean a parent who’s lost a child.

“There’re sometimes drugs to treat orphan diseases, but the companies don’t develop them on scale. Not profitable. A single pill might cost a quarter million dollars.”

“No!”

“That’s what she needed. I was upstate, at a small sheriff’s office. I helped myself to some drug money to pay for it.”

Ron knew that Spencer had had a convoluted route to becoming an NYPD detective. He’d heard about a conviction, but the governor had pardoned him and expunged his record, which allowed him to join up. He’d wondered what had happened.

“It work at all, the drug?”

“For a while. Then it didn’t.”

If there ever was a justifiable crime, it was the one Spencer had committed.

Spencer asked, “Lincoln and Amelia know?”

“No.” There was no discernible reason for not telling them. He just hadn’t. “You? You said Lincoln knows.”

“He deduced it. He wondered why I was about to play high dive off the side of a building, that Locksmith case we worked, little while ago.”

So, the detective had considered killing himself. He must have been a widower, or his wife might have left him after the daughter’s death and his arrest. Ron knew too that after his spinal cord accident, years ago, Lincoln had found a doctor willing to rig a setup so he could end his life.

After his daughter’s death, Ron had never considered anything that extreme. He had the rest of his family to be there for. But that wasn’t to say that he — and Jenny — didn’t die in a way. Part of them would forever remain lifeless.

Spencer said, “One of the hardest things. Bug — our nickname — she knew. Knew everything, and it was like, she just accepted it, got on with life while she had it. ‘What’s for dinner?’ Or, ‘Dad, like really? You forgot the Netflix passcode again?’ ”

Ron was nodding and, just barely, keeping the tears banked. “Same thing with Claire, yes. I never knew if it was courage or denial. Or something else.” A deep breath. “Never figured that out.”

Their grief counselor had said, “You need to embrace the memories and then do what she would have wanted for you two: to move on.”

But he and Jenny agreed that was bullshit. What Claire would have wanted was to cry at Disney movies, to gossip with other girls, to flirt with boys and fight with Mom and Dad when she turned thirteen and pick a college and meet the right person and maybe, someday, have children of her own.

That’s what the girl would have wanted.

Her parents’ state of mind wasn’t — and shouldn’t have been — a thing she considered at all.

So they had mourned then, and they mourned now. They would always mourn.

Jenny had said it best earlier: They had gotten through it, yes. But move on? Never.

Finally, Ron asked, “So. What I was asking?”

Spencer took a notebook from his sport coat pocket. “Did some digging. And hate to break the news, Ron, but you’ve got yourself one hell of a problem.”

52

As good a tactical solution as she could put together under the circumstances.

There was little cover on the cul-de-sac street, Hamilton Court, which was lined with buildings in various degrees of human-made destruction and natural decay. The short avenue had been a commercial area at one point, presumably devoted to wholesale food — the Meatpacking District was not far away. But developers had seen the glow of Manhattan profits and had scooped up the block.

Then, as Willis Tamblyn explained, the project crashed, thanks to a few pieces of old armament and traces of rum.

She was at the chained-off entrance, surveying the two hundred feet of cobblestones before her.

The evidence suggested that the Watchmaker and Gilligan had spent time here. The question, however, was whether this was the killer’s safe house, or simply a random spot they’d picked to stop at and have a conversation.

Except Rhyme and Sachs didn’t think it was the latter. Aerial views of Hamilton Court showed a trailer, the sort used as headquarters on construction jobs. It was dusty and battered and invisible from the main streets. A good safe house.

Sachs had also speculated: The street is old, the buildings are old. Which would appeal to the Watchmaker psychologically, as the place was from a different moment in time.

An analysis she did not, of course, share with Lincoln Rhyme, who maintained a negative view of psych profiling.

As she directed the three entry teams into place, she noticed something else that suggested the trailer was his temporary home: a video camera at the mouth of the cul-de-sac, facing inward and hidden in a pile of bricks. She could understand security cameras on the trailer itself, but why cover the street leading to it? The logical answer was: to give warning of officers approaching.

She and one of the dynamic entry teams, four persons total on each, were now staged behind this pile of rubble, out of view of the camera.

“This is Car Seven. We’re ready. K.”

Her earpiece clattered loudly. She turned the volume down. “Roger, Seven.”

Two plain-clothed detectives in an SUV marked with the logo of an actual real estate company were parked on Hudson, fifty feet away.

At Sachs’s word, they would drive up to the entrance of Hamilton and turn into the mouth of Hamilton, blocking the camera.

“Five Eight Eight Five,” she radioed. “Teams Two and Three, report. K.”

“Team Two. In position behind 208 Hamilton. Back entrance breached. Clear route to trailer.”

“Roger, Two. Three?”

“Three, we’re second floor 216 Hamilton. Clear view of target premises. Sniper and spotter in position.”

“Roger.”

She charged her M4. The weapon could be fired fully automatic, burst or semi, and she moved the selector to auto.

I’ll try to keep him alive, Rhyme. But I’m not risking a single soul on my teams.

Her heart tapped at just above normal velocity, and the slight elevation was not from concern about the operation itself or its success. It was the pleasure she felt at moments like this. The pure joy swelling within her just before a tactical operation. Her palms were dry and, for a change, she felt no urge to dig a nail into a cuticle or her scalp, a compulsive habit that persisted from her youth. Her nerves were presently at rest.

A deep breath. The faintest trace of congestion. Hardly noticeable.

You’re fine...

She glanced back at her team, two men, one woman. Younger than she. Their eyes still. Their bodies coiled. They crouched — and she envied them their youthful knees.

One of the men gripped his weapon with tight fingers. He was gazing at the ground, his lips pressed hard together — the only portion of his face, other than the eyes, that was visible, due to the Nomex hoods. He realized she was looking his way. When he met her gaze, she nodded.

And he came down from that troubled place where he’d momentarily perched. It would be his first time out.

“Three,” she called. “What do you see? K.”

“Shades are down. No visual. But we have a heat signature.”

“Human?”

“Likely. Right temp. And in motion.”

So, the Watchmaker was inside.

“K. Team Two, move to the front of 208. Advise. And, Zillow Girl, pull into position.”

A laugh from the detective in Car Seven. She said, “On the move.”

The SUV now drove past Sachs and Team One, then pulled into the mouth of the cul-de-sac, blocking the security camera. The stocky woman, made a bit stockier by the body armor under her floral dress, climbed out and grabbed a stack of file folders from the backseat. A prospective buyer of the property — also an ESU detective — stepped from the passenger side and looked around, as if assessing whether this was a place he wanted to sink half a billion dollars into.

“Three, any response to the presence?”

“Negative. He’s in the middle of the trailer. Not moving anymore. Maybe at a table.”

“Five Eight Eight Five to Two. We go in first, you’re behind.”

“Roger. K.”

“All teams. Remember the briefing. Special rules of engagement. One call to surrender, if it’s ignored and there’s the least threat signature, lethal force is authorized.”

They confirmed.

She took a deep breath, smelling wet stone and pungent exhaust from the SUV. Her weapon’s safety off, finger outside the trigger, muzzle aware.

“Team Two, we’re on the move.”

A glance behind her, nods from the team.

Then the four were out of cover and jogging toward the trailer, crouching.

“Three, heat signal?”

“Moved a foot or two. Away from the door. Slow. I don’t think he’s onto you.”

“K.”

Thirty feet from the door.

The Watchmaker, she was thinking... Would this be their last confrontation?

Twenty...

Team Two, led by Sharonne Brown, a woman she had worked with for years. The ESU officer was built like Sachs, slim and tall, one difference being that Brown was in the gym at least an hour a day and could bench-press two hundred pounds without shedding a drop of sweat.

Sachs nodded and Brown’s team fell in behind hers, staggered, for better firing coverage — and to minimize cluster damage from a shooter inside.

Ten feet away.

“Three, we’re here. Signature?”

“He’s moved a few feet again, but still not near any windows.”

She had a passing thought: Gilligan had stolen and delivered to the Watchmaker the DSE documents, some of them maps of underground passages, of which most in the city were here and farther south. Did he possibly have an escape route planned through a tunnel?

Maybe, but they had the element of surprise.

Anyway, there were no tactical variations possible, given the layout and the urgency.

Sachs pointed to the windows, and Brown directed two of her officers to cover them. Hale wouldn’t try to escape that way, but they were perfect firing stations. He might even have mounted steel plates behind the blinds and would fire from a small porthole.

Three reported, “Moved a few inches, but not toward the windows. He doesn’t know you’re there.”

Or he’s holding a submachine gun pointed at the door, waiting for the first person in.

Then they were at the trailer.

This was no-knock. The breaching officer moved up fast and quickly mounted a C4 charge on the lock plate. Double wad.

They each carried gas masks and neoprene smocks, to protect against HF acid and gas. But she had decided they shouldn’t wear the gear during the assault. That would be dangerous, limiting field of sight and movement of weapons. If he was inside, there wasn’t much risk of exposure to the stuff.

Even as she thought this, though, she pictured the construction worker lying in the tunnel at the first scene, his skin dissolving, blood bubbling. This image had replaced that of the gory rebar rods.

She scanned the team. They nodded. The breaching officer lifted the detonator pad, but refrained from a “Fire in the hole!” They didn’t want to give the Watchmaker the slightest indication of their presence.

Sachs nodded.

The packet exploded with a sharp crack, and she started forward.

53

Ron Pulaski unfolded the document Lyle Spencer had produced.

Spencer said, “I called in a marker, and got that. It’s a draft. They’re still working on it.”

Ron looked down at the sheet in his hand.

“Subject?” he whispered. “That’s what they’re calling me?”

On the goddamn phone call. That’s what I wasn’t concentrating on.

Because I was looking at the picture of Garner’s family and thinking about my dead daughter...

What the hell? Half a joint twenty years ago?

Because you intentionally sat me down in front of a cluttered desk. There was nothing else to write on but my lap. Christ...

Burdick.

Hell.

“It’s all out of fucking context,” he muttered, using a word that rarely escaped his lips, and had never done so in his family home. “For all I know, they doctored the tape to make me sound like a zombie.”

Spencer asked, “The injury they’re talking about?”

Eyes on the lawn, he paused and said, “It was a job. The first one I worked with Lincoln and Amelia.”

He explained how he’d turned a corner of a building while searching for an unsub, too close to the wall, and the perp, who’d been lying in wait, caught him in the forehead with a billy club.

The lump went away not too long after, but the brain injury remained. He’d lost memory, lost his ability to make decisions and to work out the simplest of problems.

His parents, Jenny, his brother, had all been there to support him and help with the rehab. They also encouraged him to get back into his uniform.

Which he couldn’t do.

He wasn’t afraid. Like the old adage about getting back up on the horse after a fall. That meant you’d been hurt once and were worried about getting hurt again. He couldn’t even remember the attack, let alone any pain he’d suffered.

What troubled him: He was worried about endangering a partner, a bystander.

Worried about hesitating when he had to act.

Worried about not unpacking a situation properly and making the right decisions.

And so he avoided the risk altogether. Though it killed him to give up his beloved street patrol, he chose to hide. He sat at home, he walked, he drank coffee and watched games. He wrestled with taking other lines of work. Maybe programming on a computer in the NYPD’s statistics department. That was important, he told himself. You needed accurate figures when it was budget time.

Then came Lincoln Rhyme.

And with his trademark bluster and impatience, he told Ron what everyone else was tiptoeing around: Get over it.

“Everybody’s got something wrong with them, Rookie. Hm?” And didn’t bother to glance down at his useless legs.

Two months later, the day after his last head injury rehab session, Ron donned the uniform once more.

Now, looking over his tiny backyard, Ron said to Lyle Spencer, “This’s a hit job.”

“Why?”

“Burdick was contaminating my crime scene. We could’ve had a private conversation, but he was grandstanding in front of the press. I threatened him with obstruction. Nearly cuffed him.”

“So he sent Garner after you.” He shook his head. “Personal vendetta? Man, that’s low... And, I’ve gotta say, it took a lot of effort. He must really have it in for you. And those medical records of yours. They’re going to be a problem. Hell, they might even change them. Make it seem worse. Maybe say something like there’s permanent damage.”

Medical records, Ron Pulaski was thinking.

Medical records...

“Listen, thanks, Lyle.”

“Anytime. I’ve got zero patience for bullshit. Especially when it’s coming from our team.”

He walked the man around the house to his car. He said, “And, you know, anything you want to talk about.”

Spencer nodded, understanding Ron was not speaking of Burdick’s setup. “Same goes for you.”

They shook hands and Spencer got into his unmarked, the Dodge listing to the left under his weight.

Standing on his trim lawn, which he so enjoyed tending, Ron stared down the street, watching the detective’s car disappear.

He was again thinking, Medical reports.

And then thinking one more thing, which he now just couldn’t get out of his mind.

Personal vendetta? Man, that’s low... And a lot of work.

54

“I could smell it, Rhyme.”

Amelia Sachs walked into the town house carrying the oddest bit of evidence he’d ever seen: a metal door, sealed in cellophane wrap. Where the hinges had been were nothing but clusters of bullet holes.

The gloves, he noted too, were not standard latex. They were black. Neoprene probably, which told Rhyme precisely what smell she was referring to.

“The construction trailer? After we breached the door, I could smell it. I aborted and backed out. He had a trap — charges on a couple of drums of HF. The place is gone.”

“Injuries?”

“No, the teams’re good.”

She’d explained that Hale had fooled them yet again. The heat signature “proving” that he was inside was only a lantern or heat lamp set at about 98 degrees, placed on a Roomba.

“A what?”

“Vacuum cleaner you can program to move on its own.”

Such a thing existed?

“At least the charges were small. If there had been a half ki of C4, and it blew the canisters, that would’ve made things awkward.”

Amelia Sachs tended toward understatement on the topic of risk to her person.

“And that?” he said, pointing at the door she carried.

“I wanted something,” she grumbled. “Got my mask on and emptied two mags into the hinges and ripped it off just before I had to dodge the acid.” She added an exasperated, “I’m pretty pissed. I’ll need to do an FDR. They won’t waive it. I checked.”

Any time an officer’s weapon was fired, even accidentally, he or she had to fill out a Firearms Discharge Report. They were lengthy. The city took guns seriously and firing them even more so.

She handed the tech the door. “Mel. Here.”

Cooper stepped from the sterile portion of the parlor, and in his own neoprenes took the thing from her.

Rhyme said, “The knob.”

She was nodding. “I’m betting he didn’t wear gloves all the time, and he was probably pretty sure that if there was a breach, the acid’d not only kill the intruder but would melt the knob into sludge, along with any trace he’d left there.”

Fifteen minutes later, they had answers. The Watchmaker’s fingerprints were on the knob. A few grains of sand, similar to those in the lot where Gilligan died and more of the trace that led Tamblyn to give them Hamilton Court. There was also a short hair with the bulb attached, so DNA could be run, but that would be a formality, as the fingerprints left no doubt.

“And traces of silicone,” Cooper called.

Rhyme’s brow troughed. “Hard to source. One of the most common substances on earth. There are hundreds of suppliers. You create trimethyl, dimethyl and methyl chlorosilane from the element silicon. Do that, add the ‘e’ and you’ve got flexible, heat- and cold-resistant stuff that’s used in, well, a million different things: lubricants, food processing and medicine, caulks, gaskets, sealants. And don’t you love this: it has excellent release and adhesion properties. Imagine a contradiction like that.”

Chemistry was never far from the mind of Lincoln Rhyme.

Cooper called through the intercom, “So, too many possibilities to figure out what he’s using it for.”

“Hm,” was Rhyme’s confirmation.

Sachs asked, “Used something made out of silicone to store acid?”

“Probably not. HF’ll degrade it. And if this is on the doorknob, it was a gel or liquid.”

Had she risked her life for nothing? Rhyme was wondering.

Yet he kept in mind what he told his classes: a finding of flour alone doesn’t tell you much. But traces of yeast, egg yolk, milk and salt could lead you to a murderous baker.

And here? What else had they discovered that might help narrow the search? He scanned the whiteboards. And saw no answers.

The lab phone buzzed.

The caller was Dellray on his mobile.

“Fred.”

A British voice responded. “Unfurled an interesting fact here, Lincoln. Quite interesting.”

Who the hell was this?

“Is that you?”

“Undercover. I’m Sir Percy Thompson, a London casino owner and playboy. If they still have playboys. I need to stay in character. Accent’s a bit tricky. I mean dodgy. I’m aiming for Covent Garden.”

“What’s so interesting?”

Fred Dellray was not a man to be rushed, but he chopped off some backstory and subplotting. “Has to do with your drones. No reports since the hospital. But have something interesting about the prior sightings.”

Rhyme recalled. Two flights were logged, but they had not been near any construction sites. “Where were they again?”

The FBI agent told him: “The four hundred block of Towson Street, Brooklyn. Then the office building, 556 Hadley, Manhattan. I was wondering what kind of family relationships the two flights shared. Might they be siblings? Cousins?”

The typical Dellray jargon was utterly absent. It was disorienting. Sachs had made him watch a few episodes of a show called Downton Abbey (not bad, he’d assessed), and Dellray sounded exactly like one of the characters.

He continued, “I found nothing obvious to me. But I’ve been playing with a new toy we have here. It’s called ORDA, which people might call an acronym, but we know—”

“It’s only an acronym if it spells a real word.”

“Quite. This one stands for Obscure Relationship Data Analysis.”

“Familiar with it. Used it myself.”

“You, the emperor of evidence?”

Rhyme had originally been skeptical of the software, which processed trillions of bits of data taken from two or more things — maybe places, people, events — that seemed to have nothing in common. But the software was capable of finding the most ethereal connections.

“And?” Rhyme asked.

“And the electronic brain came back with the aforementioned interesting thing. A certain individual lives on the block that was strafed in Brooklyn. And his office is on the block it flew by in the city.”

Rhyme and Sachs eyed each other.

He asked, “And who is it?”

“This would seem to be quite the day for your civics lessons, Lincoln...”

55

It was crazy, what he was doing.

Breaching the barbed-wire fence of party affiliation and voting for the president’s infrastructure bill.

Doing good...

As Senator Edward Talese and Peter, his bodyguard, were walking to a media interview, he was speculating what would happen to him when he voiced the vote on the Senate floor.

Goodbye to the good committee assignments.

Dogcatcher...

He had to smile.

Thinking of his affection for Buttercup, all six pounds and three ounces of her.

They walked for another half block and Talese realized he was hungry. “We’ll stop at Ross’s deli.”

“Yessir. Good.”

At times of stress, what was better than a “mile-high” pastrami sandwich, slammed down on the counter in front of you by surly carvers, who only reluctantly would hand over an extra pickle as if you were a bank robber demanding small bills?

Talese loved the place.

They walked in silence for a time, dodging the pedestrians and traffic downtown, similar to their walk in the opposite direction not long ago. Though there was one difference. The radiant sunlight was now gone, obscured by a layer of imposing clouds.

He was looking forward to the interview, which would probably focus on his clean water legislation. And with that a burst of pure happiness within him — he now had Boyd’s support. The bill would surely pass. Other topics would come up, of course, but at this stage of his career, so many years of elected office under his belt, so many days of political battle, he was confident he could answer or evade any question aimed at him by the probing, but easily anticipated, journalists.

“No sign, sir.”

Peter would be referring to the man in the throwaway attire they’d seen earlier. Probably just another citizen on the streets of Manhattan. One of millions. A worker, a professor, a tourist.

But then it occurred to him that if anyone knew of his conversation with the president and was inclined to make sure that he did not cast the vote for Boyd’s bill, someone with issues with a huge infrastructure spending bill, that individual might just resort to efforts a lot more serious than lobbying.

If he died, the governor would appoint a new senator to finish out his term, and that man or woman would absolutely not support the president’s plan.

Just then he happened to notice someone across the square looking his way. He was big and dark-complected. Not of mixed race, it seemed, but Anglo with olive-tinted skin.

Looking down at his phone, he strode forward along a route that would soon intercept the two men.

His suit jacket was a touch too large, and the senator wondered if the man was armed.

“Peter.”

“I made him too, sir.”

“He alone?”

“Can’t tell. On the street, yes. But somebody else in a building? Don’t know.”

Too many windows for a shooter to fire from.

Was he a colleague of the man who had followed him earlier?

And, if he was, and Talese was their target, what would their mission be here in public?

Although, thinking back to some of those cases he’d run as a prosecutor, it was astonishing how many professional killers had gunned down someone in the middle of a crowded street and even the most seemingly cooperative witnesses saw nothing helpful.

The large man was getting closer and ignoring Talese and his guard — or so it seemed. His eyes taking in the area, the people, the windows, the cars...

Talese felt his heart thud at triple the usual pace.

He slowed.

And then a sharp voice sounded behind him.

“Senator?”

Talese turned fast.

Was this it? A bullet?

Peter spun about too, his hand inside his jacket.

But the man who approached wore a gold shield on his belt.

NYPD detective.

Talese’s face tightened into a querying look. He glanced around, noting that the man on the intersecting path was getting closer yet.

“Detective, there’s—” Talese began.

But the cop cut him off, saying, with irritation, “Your phone’s off.”

“My... Oh.” He fished in his pocket. He’d shut it off, per the rules of meeting with the president — so it could be used neither as a recording device nor as a homing tracker to guide a Hellfire missile.

“I’m Lon Sellitto.”

Peter said, once again, “I’ll see some ID, please.”

Talese expected the bulky man, in a wrinkled raincoat, to gripe. He was wearing a badge, after all. But without hesitating, he offered a card.

The guard examined it and sent a text. In a matter of seconds, the phone hummed. He nodded to his boss. “Legit.”

“Look,” Talese said, nodding over his shoulder, “there’s somebody—”

He didn’t need to finish the sentence because Sellitto was lifting a hand in greeting to the very person the senator was referring to.

The big somber man joined them and displayed his own badge. It resembled that of an old-time sheriff.

“I’m U.S. marshal Michael Quayle, Senator. Your phone’s off.”

“I know, I know.” Talese revived the unit and it immediately began chiming with texts and reports of voice mail messages.

“All right, Detective, Marshal. What’s this about?”

Sellitto said, “After we’re out of the open, Senator.”

“I really want—”

“Out of the open,” Quayle echoed in a tone that would accept no argument.

A black SUV pulled to the curb and squealed to a stop. The marshal gestured for the senator to get in first, which he did. This vehicle seemed a lot more than merely bullet resistant.

When the men were inside, Sellitto said to the driver, “Federal building.”

“Yessir.”

The Suburban galloped off, bounding hard on the uneven streets. No one wore belts and Talese had to grip the handhold firmly.

“Okay.” The senator looked pointedly at the detective.

Sellitto said, “You’re familiar with the crane accidents in the city.”

“Sure. A domestic terror outfit wants affordable housing units.”

“No. That was a cover. To keep us focused away from what the unsub’s really got in mind.”

“Which is?”

“You dead.”

Talese nodded slowly. So perhaps his concerns today were not so paranoid after all.

“Who is it?”

“We know the identity of the mechanic. But not who’s hired him.”

“My family...”

“They’re safe. We have a team in your house.”

“He’s... This man? The mechanic? Where is he?”

“We don’t know. We’re looking for him now.”

“How did you find out?”

“The cranes were sabotaged with drones. DHS gave us a map of other flights. He flew one over the block you live on, in Brooklyn, and also near your office here.”

“Jesus.”

Peter said, “You should know, Detective. An hour ago, little longer, we were on our way to a meeting and it looked like somebody was following us. I made him and he turned down another street.”

Sellitto pulled out a notebook, a battered one like detectives in TV shows always use. “Description.”

Talese and Peter gave it to the detective.

“Is there any reason somebody would want you dead? Whistleblowing? Any old prosecutions that may’ve come back?”

“No...”

But he was looking out the window, reflecting: Was what he’d thought of earlier possible? That someone wanted him dead because of his vote for the tax bill?

“I have no idea. I mean, yes, I put a lot of bad guys away. It was years ago. But a few of them were sociopaths. I can track down their names and see if anybody’s been released lately.”

Sellitto looked his way for a moment, then tucked the pad away and pulled out his phone.

Talese said, “I’m scheduled to go on TV in an hour. Can we stop at the studio?”

“No.”

“But it’s CNN,” Talese said.

Still texting, the detective said, “The answer’s still no. And do me a favor and sit back.”

“Sit back?”

“Yeah, away from the window. You’re putting me in the line of fire too.”

56

“Talese’s at the federal building.”

Lon Sellitto’s voice was coming through the speaker into the parlor.

Rhyme asked, “The theory? Who wants him dead and why?”

“He says he doesn’t know. But he was like sixty-eight percent he doesn’t know.”

Rhyme asked, “Can you up the dial?”

“I can try. He’s a politician. Either they’re evasive or they lie. Give me a mob enforcer any day. They sing like chickadees.”

“You stopped at the tech department, right?”

“It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever done for you, Linc.”

“But you did it?”

“Yeah.”

“More on that later.”

As soon as they disconnected, his phone hummed again.

“Rhyme here.”

“Detective, I’m Ben Emery. Emery Digital Solutions? Two of your officers dropped off a computer for us to crack. I wanted to give you an update.”

Ah, good. Rhyme still hoped emails on Gilligan’s laptop could reveal who’d hired Hale, for what purpose and where future attacks might be. Maybe even an alternative safe house now that his primary one had self-destructed.

“Do you have anything?”

“Afraid it’s moving slowly.”

Wasn’t this the day and age of supercomputers? Couldn’t teenagers hack into a laptop while texting and playing video games simultaneously?

Emery continued, “We’re brute forcing, but he used an SHA-256 hash.”

“Which is?” Rhyme’s voice betrayed his impatience.

“Secure Hash Algorithm 256.”

A sigh. “And ‘hash’ is?”

“Software that turns one string of data into another one. To passcode protect something, you create a password, right? Then you feed it into a hash generator and it becomes a string of data. Let’s say the password’s your name: Lincoln Rhyme. Loved that book about you by the way...”

“Mr. Emery,” Rhyme muttered.

“All right. Well. I just sent you the hash of your name. It’s on your phone.”

A text arrived.

“All right. The passcode’s your name. Somebody needs to crack it. It’s easy to find the hash — there’s no reason to hide it, since hashes only go one way. You can’t turn it back into the password. Like you can’t turn ground beef back into a sirloin. But what you can do is start typing characters into the hash generator. Randomly, hoping for a match. And after a few hours of typing words in you decide to try Lincoln Rhyme—”

“And bang. You see that that hash matches your password hash. And you’re in.”

“Exactly!” He sounded pleased Rhyme got it. “That’s what we’re doing now. Inputting words and characters, hoping to find a hash that matches. Not typing them in, of course. It’s all done automatically. We’re running about a trillion hashes a second.”

“Excellent. So, you’ll crack it soon? A few hours, you were saying?”

A pause. “Well, Detective Rhyme, that was just an illustration. Why I’m calling... If we don’t have it now, that means he’s probably using a mix of uppercase, lowercase, numbers and special characters like question marks and percentage signs.”

Rhyme frowned. “You’re saying it might take a day or more?”

This pause was longer. “Uhm. If he’s got a fifteen-character password, which isn’t unusual, about two hundred million years.”

“Is that... Are you joking?”

“Uhm, well, no, sir,” said the man who, it was clear to Rhyme, probably never joked about computer matters.

“You have to have a faster computer there.”

“Doesn’t matter. Even with Fugaku, in Japan” — he said this almost reverently — “you might shave off a few hundred thousand years is all. But maybe we’ll be lucky and he used something short.”

Ah, the damn L-word again.

Rhyme added another unnecessary: “Let me know the minute you find something.”

“I’ll do that, sir. Oh, just one question?”

“Yes?”

“That Detective Sachs. Just checking. She is married, right?”

Was he really asking that?

“Uhm. Yes.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

They disconnected.

He ordered his phone, “Call Pulaski.”

A moment later: “Lincoln. How’s the case?”

“Taken some turns. It’s not real estate. The cranes’re a misdirection. He had us focus on the drones delivering the acid, when he was really using them to check his real target. Hale was hired to take out a U.S. senator. Edward Talese.”

“Why?”

“Not sure yet. And Gilligan’s computer’s a bust. The expert says it could take two hundred million years to crack it.”

“How many?”

“Two hundred million.”

“Phew. That’s a relief. I thought you said two hundred billion.”

“Looks like your sense of humor isn’t on paid leave. What’re you doing?”

A pause as dense as Emery’s. “I’m not prepared to answer that at this point in time.”

No idea what that sentence meant, nor was Rhyme inclined to find out.

“I have a question. What size shoe do you wear?”

“Is this like a dog whistle?”

“A what?”

“A question that’s really about something else.”

“When I ask a question, Pulaski, it’s about the question. What size?”

57

There she goes, another part of history.

He was eighty-eight years old, Simon Harrow was. His head bald, his spine curved. But on the whole, pain free — just those humid days of summer and spring... The remedy to the condition? Don’t leave the house on humid days of summer and spring.

Just sit on his balcony and gaze out over downtown Manhattan.

There she goes, being destroyed by the developers.

He was looking at a patchwork of construction near the Holland Tunnel, that artery that led from the city, under the broad and regal Hudson River into New Jersey’s industrial heart.

His own turf was for the time being safe from the wrecking ball. The ancient apartment in SoHo was rent-controlled, much to the dismay of the landlord, who sent the superintendent of the red-brick complex around occasionally to “see how he was doing,” meaning to find out if Harrow had conveniently died, allowing the man to elevate the rent to the stars.

Harrow, however, was determined to remain alive for his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, his parrot, Rimbaud... and the landlord himself.

Love was the motive for the first categories. Spite for the last one.

His coffee, cooling, the New York Times sitting folded upon his lap, he scanned the construction site. Demolition was done and a new series of buildings was beginning to emerge, though the job was on hold temporarily, thanks to some crazy man attacking jobsites.

His opinion about the end of yet another neighborhood in Manhattan — in this case the southwestern edge of SoHo — was by no means negative. Some had called New York City a living, breathing creature, but Harrow didn’t think of the place in such a limited way. He considered the five boroughs an evolutionary tree, many species appearing and adapting to the times, or, if not, vanishing.

Natural selection urban-style.

This was one neighborhood that had been transformed significantly. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, South of Houston had grown from sooty industrial to professional and chic and artsy.

Change...

One of the most significant had been what he was looking at now: the Holland Tunnel, which had required a massive redevelopment of the neighborhood to make way for the ventilation towers and approach routes.

His eyes rose to the entrance. His father had been a boy when the tunnel opened in the late 1920s, and Harrow Senior had grown fascinated with the project the way other boys then loved dirigibles and cowboys and the Dodgers. The man regaled his son with stories about the tunnel’s creation. Shields, like massive tin cans, dug through the earth beneath the river from both sides of the adjoining states. Those moving from New Jersey east were faster, as they had to push through ground that was mostly mud, the consistency of toothpaste. The sandhogs — tunnel workers — from the New York side had to contend with rock. Because of concerns about water and mud seeping into the tunnels during construction, the working areas were kept under high pressure and the sandhogs had to go through decompression after their shifts like scuba divers so they didn’t suffer from the bends.

While Harrow was not troubled about the concept of a city molting its old skin, he wasn’t pleased that one of the buildings going up nearby would cut off his view of the Palisades.

On the other hand, it might be residential, and the thought of what he might catch a glimpse of around a swimming pool made up for the altered vista of nature.

“Let’s hope for residential,” he said, sipping more cool coffee.

Rimbaud, sitting on a nearby perch, did not weigh in, occupied, as he was, with feather preening.

Harrow now frowned, noticing two bright flashes appear from the jobsite. Two loud bangs followed seconds later.

Something had happened at the base of the cranes.

Lord, this was one of the attacks!

The huge thing was starting to tilt.

He removed his glasses and wiped the lenses and replaced them.

The sound of a Klaxon began to fill the air.

It leaned farther and farther...

Then, like cutting a marionette’s strings, it collapsed fast. His apartment was about a half mile away and it took a second or two for the sound of the collision to reach him.

“Shit,” Harrow gasped, grabbing his phone and dialing 911, even though he was sure dozens if not hundreds of calls were already being made.

A voice nearby startled him. “Shit!”

He glanced up. Rimbaud was looking over the cloud of dust in the distance. He squawked once more. “Shit. Uh-huh. Shit.”

58

Jenny had made a joke when Martine was born.

“You ever notice the smell? It’s Eau d’Hospital.”

And Ron Pulaski had inhaled and said, “Yeah. They all smell alike. Don’t do a start-up that sells it. I’d think it’d be a limited market.”

Pulaski was aware of the same scent now as he walked, head down, along the corridor of the general administration wing.

He was in East Side General Hospital illegally. At least where he presently was, in the guts of the place. He could, of course, spend as much time in the visitor area as he wished. But strolling through the security door with the expired NYPD ID card and a silver badge that was a souvenir Brad had bought in the gift shop of one of the big movie studios after a tour? Nope. Not good. He wasn’t in uniform — that would be an offense too far, he judged — but was in a dark suit and white shirt. A tie that he wore maybe three times a year.

So, a silver-badge detective. Probably no one would know that was a contradiction.

He’d signed in, but the scrawl was illegible, as was the lettering in the Print Your Name block. He thought of Detective Ed Garner’s trick, getting him to draw a sloppy diagram of where the accident took place and of Burdick’s plan of using his past medical incident to sideline him.

It took a moment to let the anger dissipate.

A pleasant nod to some nurses, two round men in good moods. He passed a lunchroom, a copier room, several meeting rooms... and then he came to the site of his second impending crime: Records.

He stepped into the large room — easily fifty feet long, twenty wide — and saw that it was unoccupied. He sat down at a nearby workstation and clicked on the computer. Medical files were stored here digitally as well as the original hard copies, he learned. To find them you first typed in the patient’s name and date of birth, then the date of their admission. This called up the digital file and also gave the location of the physical file itself.

A strident warning against violating patients’ privacy rights under HIPAA appeared. But that went away by itself after two seconds.

Now for the hunt.

He’d expected layers of frustration and challenge.

A knotty gut, sweating brow and palms.

None of that.

No passwords were required and in less than a minute he found exactly what he needed.

Twenty minutes later, he strode from the hospital, a dozen sheets, folded letter size, sitting in the right breast pocket of his wedding-graduation-funeral suit jacket.

Feeling good about the operation.

Now for the other part of his mission: a trip to a junkyard in Queens.

He was thinking about the best way to get there when he became aware of a vehicle slowing beside him.

A glance to his right, at the beat-up white van.

His eyes took in the driver’s window and he stopped fast, seeing two things simultaneously. One was the ski-masked driver.

The second was the muzzle of the weapon pointing his way just before it fired.

“There’s an issue, Mr. President.”

Secret Service agent Glenn Wilbur, a tall broad-shouldered man in an impeccable suit, was looking into the second bedroom of the suite.

William Boyd glanced up from his daughter’s luggage, which he’d been helping her pack. There were only so many stuffed animals and Disney sweatshirts and pairs of Uggs that would fit in a single gym bag.

He nodded to the living room and joined the agent, out of earshot of his family. His wife was on the phone, lost in a conversation, probably about campaign plans for the forthcoming election. She was his de facto campaign manager and a damn good one. If he won in November, it would mostly be because of her.

“Go ahead.”

“Those cranes?”

“The attacks, right.”

“Another one just came down.”

“Jesus. I’ll draft a statement. Anyone hurt?”

“Four people in cars in serious condition. No one killed.”

“You think this is a security issue. For us?”

“We’ve discussed it, the team. The chatter is your infrastructure bill’s making you a lot of enemies. And the crane that just came down? It did block the Holland Tunnel.”

“Our route to Newark?”

“Yessir. The George Washington Bridge’s parking lot. Everybody’s diverting to it now. We’ll have to use Exit Plan B.”

“Which is?”

“Scramble Marine One. There’s a helipad near the U.N. We’ll be there in a half hour.”

“We’re close to the Verrazzano. Why not move Air Force One to JFK?”

“It’s jammed up too. And even if the crane’s just a coincidence, we have to treat the highways to all the airports as compromised.”

The president smiled. “Out of an abundance of caution.”

One of Wilbur’s favorite expressions.

The agent nodded. It was his version of a grin.

“We’ll take surface streets to the helipad. And a decoy convoy’ll go via the Queensboro to LaGuardia.”

He placed a call and put the phone on speaker.

“Agent Murphy,” the voice said.

“Dan. It’s Wilbur. I’m here with the president.”

“Hello, sir.”

“Dan.”

Wilbur said, “We’re scrapping Exit A. We’re going to B.”

“U.N., helipad. Roger that. Any specific threat factors?”

“Not at this time. Get Marine One there stat. I’m running Sirdee now for the route. I’ll text it to the drivers and the rest of the team.”

A whole new world now, Boyd reflected. Sirdee — the Secure Route Determining algorithm — resided on a huge computer somewhere and at lightning speed considered hundreds of factors in finding what was the safest course for government officials to move from one point to another. In presenting the program to the government, the company that had developed it gave an example. Their software factored in all the known parameters for the presidential visit to Dallas on November 22, 1963, and concluded that the least secure route from Love Field to the Trade Mart — where President John F. Kennedy was to speak — was through Dealey Plaza and past the Texas School Book Depository.

Murphy said, “I’ll call NYPD.” He paused. “One thing. We can get eyes along the surface route, but there’s no time to clear underground all the way to the U.N.”

Wilbur glanced at the president. “Or we can stay put, wait for them to clear the tunnel entrance. Seven, eight hours, I’d guess.”

Boyd said, “I’d guess there’re a hundred possible routes to the helipad. The odds that somebody’d know exactly where to place a device? That’s not going to happen.”

Wilbur said to the phone, “Get the motorcades downstairs, Dan.”

Murphy said, “Making the call now.” He disconnected.

Wilbur walked to the door and stepped outside, to tell the hallway agents the new plan.

“Daddy.”

The president returned to the doorway where his daughter was holding in both arms a large rabbit with a blue gingham kerchief on its head. “Elisabetta won’t fit.”

Too bad there was no algorithm that could figure out the best way to pack a ten-year-old’s gym bag.

Boyd walked over and took the toy from her. “It’s all right, honey. I’ll put her in one of mine.”

59

“It’s done,” Simone told him.

For these final stages of the project, they were not using any electronic communications devices at all. Only in-person conversations.

Charles Hale, in the driver’s seat of his SUV, was looking out the windshield. This part of the city was deserted. Three cranes reigned over the neighborhood and everyone was staying inside. If they had to get to the grocery store, they jogged.

He heard the faint voice of the newscaster on the radio and turned the volume up.

“...The authorities are speculating it will take eight to ten hours to reopen the Holland Tunnel after an explosion brought down a crane at a construction site on Varick Street this afternoon. This is the third crane that’s been destroyed in the past two days... Police still have no leads in the investigation. Most jobsites in the area remained closed...”

Hale looked toward the woman beside him. She was in leather pants, black, a dark brown sweater and a jacket that matched the trousers. Today her hair — now dyed brunette — was in a double braid, the strands of which were joined at the end with a crimson ribbon.

“A question,” Hale asked slowly.

Simone lifted an eyebrow.

“Is there anyone?”

He found himself surprised that he asked.

But not surprised that she was hesitating.

While the question could have a hundred contexts, she knew his meaning.

Simone said finally, “I’m not good at things like that. It ends. It always ends. For his sake, for mine.” After a moment: “The same for you, I’m thinking.”

“The same.”

She said, “I was married. Briefly. My idea. I was young. Not a good decision.”

He was thinking of her time in Africa.

Circumstances changed...

A shake of his head explained that he had never married.

She said, “There are lines we have to live within. People like us. This is awfully philosophical, isn’t it?”

He gave another smile. “But true.”

A siren sounded in the distance. It got closer. He wasn’t troubled and it was clear she wasn’t either. If anybody were to come for them, they wouldn’t announce it.

The police car or ambulance sound Dopplered into the lower, departing tone and eventually faded.

He looked at his watch.

He needed to move on to the next step.

Time, counting down.

Always, always...

He asked, “Do you know Prague?”

“We did a job there, my team. I would have liked to stay for a while. But we needed to evac.”

“In Old Town Square there’s a medieval astronomical clock. The Orloj. Tourists come to see it. Lots of tourists. Big crowds on the weekends. Hard for surveillance to see anything. I’ll be there next year. The first Saturday in May.”

She reached for his hand. The grip, fingers entwined, was far more intimate than a kiss.

In the rearview mirror, he believed he saw someone glancing at the SUV, the pose reminding him of the man he’d seen in the monitor at the mouth of Hamilton Court last night. He was carrying something, a suitcase, Hale believed.

He turned to look directly.

But the figure was gone.

Now that he was turned fully around, he lifted his backpack from the floor. He reached inside.

He extracted a white box, six by six by two inches. It was closed and fixed with a rubber band. He handed this to her. She frowned, then opened the lid.

And lifted out the bone clock, the one he’d told her about, the one the Russian political prisoner had made.

“Ah.” She studied it for a long moment. “I was going to bring something for you. A wheel, the kind I use in my steam engines. Our wheels are real wheels.”

“Not gears pretending to be something else.”

A glance into his eyes.

He showed her how to set the time and where the switch was that released the tiny weights. He moved it now.

She held the clock to her ear and seemed to find the ticking pleasant. As he always did.

She reboxed the gift, and slipped it into her own backpack, where he saw the grip of a large semiautomatic pistol. She climbed out of the car and bent down to speak to him through the open door. “You’re doing it now?”

He nodded.

He hoped if she said anything it wouldn’t be common, like good luck or take care.

It wasn’t.

What she said was a single word: “Prague.”

60

Endgame...

Lincoln Rhyme had been thinking of his earlier concern, of not being able to grasp the Watchmaker’s strategy to win their deadly chess game.

But what if that was not the proper question?

Perhaps the query should be: What is your real goal?

What if you have no interest in taking the king?

Maybe it’s the queen you want. Or her knight? Or the king’s bishop?

Or a lowly pawn, which might one day ascend to the role of matriarch of the board by traipsing doggedly and unnoticed all the way to the distant edge of the checkerboard world.

And even if it’s then checkmate to you, and your king is snagged... You don’t care. You’ve won after all.

Lon Sellitto took a call. His conversation was lengthy — and apparently alarming.

He disconnected. “Okay, Linc. Stuff’s happening. That was the mayor’s office. The counter’s disappeared from that website, 13Chan. And Computer Crimes and the Bureau were monitoring chatter. ‘Kommunalka’ was the keyword. CC intercepted an email. Anonymous account in Philly to an anonymous account here, Manhattan. It says, ‘It’s time. Do the last one, and place packages where discussed on alternate routes. And keep up the façade of Kommunalka. There are people who are checking, they don’t believe it. We can’t let them find us. Remember: “Men make their own history.” — Karl Marx.’

“That’s why we couldn’t find Kommunalka. It’s a front for some other radical outfit. Group X.”

Mel Cooper said, “And ‘Do the last one.’ Does that mean a crane?”

Sellitto: “So it was Group X that hired the Watchmaker, and...” His phone hummed and he took the call. This conversation was troubled too. “No shit. Send me details.” He disconnected. “Another one, Linc. A crane.”

“Where?”

“Downtown.”

Mel Cooper had tuned in to the news on his phone. He called, “It was at a jobsite near the entrance to the Holland. Nobody dead. Injuries. Some serious.”

“What did it hit?”

Cooper examined his screen. “Odd. No buildings anywhere near it. Landed on a street is all. The injuries were in cars and trucks.”

Sellitto lifted the phone away from his ear and filled in with information that was likely not public. “This one was different. He used C4.”

“Ah, now that’s significant.”

“Why?”

“Time.”

“Huh?”

“Obvious,” Rhyme muttered. “He can’t know for certain exactly when the acid’d eat through the counterweights of the cranes. But for some reason he needed this one to drop at a particular time. Down. To. The. Minute.” Frowning at the murder board, the map of the city. “The Holland’s closed?”

“At least eight hours, they’re talking maybe longer. The traffic’s a—”

“Yes, yes, yes, I’m sure it’s a fittingly clichéd adjective or participle about vehicular congestion. Why that time, why that location?”

Rhyme settled on one particular entry.

Senator Talese reported possibly being followed to meeting at Water Street Hotel.

   Subject was white male, in jeans, sunglasses, cap, sweatshirt (possibly throwaways). Medium build.

   Turned when it appeared that Talese and bodyguard might have seen him. Unknown if another watcher took his place.

“We got it wrong, I think,” Rhyme said, angry.

“How’s that?”

“If he used C4 on the crane, he could’ve placed a device in a drone and killed Talese that way. No, the drone was about tracking Talese, not killing him. And when the Watchmaker found out we’d made the drone and he couldn’t use it anymore, he switched to human surveillance to follow the senator... Why? He knows where Talese lives, he knows where his office is...”

Silence.

“But he wouldn’t know where the meeting was this afternoon. Who Talese was meeting with. That’s what he wanted to find out. Call him. We need to know now.”

Sellitto pulled his phone from his pocket, scrolled, then made a call.

The senator answered on the second ring.

“Detective, what’s the news?” came the irritated voice out of the speaker.

“Senator, I need to know something,” Rhyme said.

A pause.

Sellitto said, “You’re on with Lincoln Rhyme.”

“Oh.” Irritation had given way to reserved admiration.

That again...

“You were on your way to a meeting today and you noticed someone was following. What was the meeting about? Who was there?”

The hesitation ended with the cautious words “There’s a national security component here.”

“I don’t need state secrets. I just need to know who was at the goddamn meeting.”

An exhalation of surprise, probably at Rhyme’s sharp tone. “I was just saying, Mr. Rhyme, that I can’t.”

“The perp isn’t targeting you. He’s after the person or persons you were going to meet. He was using you to find them.”

“Oh, Jesus. I didn’t know... I was meeting with the president.”

“I assume of the United States.”

“That’s right.”

Sellitto said, “Okay, it’s all making sense. There’s some radical outfit, in Philly, that made up the Kommunalka Project. Which wants the city to do something it can’t — transfer that property because it’s toxic.

“That gives them the excuse to sabotage the cranes. The first two were just for show. The last one’s all that really mattered: blocking the Holland Tunnel. The president’s got to use an alternative route the Secret Service doesn’t have time to clear. And Hale’s planted bombs along them. Fuck, maybe that’s what Eddie Tarr’s in town for!”

Mel Cooper said, “Boyd, you know how unpopular he is. There’ve been threats... Something about an infrastructure bill he’s trying to push through Congress. The Secret Service’s already stopped three or four plans to assassinate him.”

Rhyme was hardly aware of the conversations unfolding as Sellitto called the Secret Service and Cooper got in touch with the Visitor Security Division of the NYPD, a name that sounded like a public relations office for touring Boy Scouts, but in fact coordinated protection for domestic and foreign officials.

Holding the phone away from his ear, Sellitto said to Rhyme, “A decoy motorcade’s going to LaGuardia. The real one’s going to the helipad by the U.N. Damn, that’s why he had Gilligan steal the diagrams and maps from DSE — all the tunnels and foundations. He’s going to plant under the route.”

The criminalist’s eyes were on the whiteboard on which were taped the very stolen documents Sellitto was talking about.

“Linc, you with me?” Sellitto was brandishing the phone like a pistol.

“Hm.” Eyes on the charts.

The detective held up his phone. “Linc! The Secret Service knows you understand Hale. And you know the city... The motorcade’s in motion. Where do you think it’s safe for them to go?”

“Lon, please. If you don’t mind? Could you move a little to the left? I can’t see the board.”

61

The calls he was listening to on the police scanner were in shorthand, but there was no doubt about their meanings.

The translation was assisted by the urgency in the voices.

Priority Deliv... Traveler One... Need a corridor west from Avenue A, and Eight to special loc at Port Authority. CC sending texts. EOTD, for route. Clear intersections, sweep shooting sites. Report to unit commanders...

EOTD...

Encryption of the day.

Charles Hale wondered if the authorities thought the new route for the presidential motorcade would actually be safe.

Or were they jittery and nervous and sweaty, wondering if they’d been double-bluffed again?

After all, they were responsible for the life of the most powerful man in the world.

Dozens of voices called in, some zipping to other frequencies...

He was in the front seat of his SUV, which was parked in the shadow of a gloomy tenement that was only five stories high, but with its dark façade seemed much taller.

In front of him, the blue-and-white police car, which had been parked curbside, hit the light bar and strobed out of view silently. An unmarked black sedan too, U.S. government plates.

When they were gone, and he was sure there were no others in the vicinity, he eased the SUV forward and parked just past a manhole in the middle of the street. He hit the yellow flashing light on the dash and climbed out. He was in a Department of Public Works jumper, an orange safety vest and a hard hat, this one off-white.

With a hook he pulled the manhole cover off and muscled Simone’s phony bread maker out through the back of the vehicle and onto the ground. He removed it from the carton. He tugged a length of cable from the winch mounted in the back of the SUV, hooked on the device and eased it into the passage below the street. Next, he lowered a hand truck and finally his backpack.

Down the rungs permanently cemented into the concrete wall. They were slick so he moved carefully. On the floor he slung the backpack over his shoulder and, with some effort, scooped up the device with the lip of the cart and began a short journey into the dim tunnel, the way illuminated by an LED lamp mounted on his hard hat. He moved surely along the route, which he’d memorized from the charts that Andy Gilligan had stolen. When he was near his destination, he needed more precise guidance and so he examined the geo-positioning locator on his phone and continued another ten feet until he was precisely where he needed to be.

From the backpack Hale took a pulley and affixed it to an overhead water pipe. He then hooked a length of nylon rope to the “bread-making” device and pulled it upward as high as it would go. He locked the pulley and tied the end of the rope to a pipe at floor level. He reached up and opened the small door on the bottom and pressed the Armed button and a small dot of light went from green to red.

He paused.

He believed he sensed a very unmechanical scent coming from the base of the device. Was it floral? Yes.

And with that understanding, he realized why it was familiar.

He’d smelled it last night. In bed.

Then he climbed to the street and looked around. No one. Echoes of sirens glanced off the half-dozen buildings here and elsewhere, coming from a hundred directions at once in this architecturally complex city.

The traffic cones went into the back of the SUV, and moments later, the yellow light extinguished, he was cruising along the cobblestoned streets.

One stop to make, and then: his final mission.

62

“It’s clear.”

Lon Sellitto was looking over the screen of the computer attached to the security device, which he’d announced was just like those “newfangled TSA ones” at the airport.

Rhyme took his word for it, not having flown in years.

No, no explosives, no radiation.

They were looking at a wrapped brown paper package, addressed to Rhyme, no return label. It had been dropped off moments ago. The courier had left it, rung the bell and continued down the street.

Rhyme asked, “X-ray?”

Sellitto examined the device’s screen. “Some rectangular thing. And an envelope.” His phone whirred and he glanced at the screen. “It’s the uniform I sent after the delivery guy.” He answered and spoke into the unit: “What’d you find? You’re on speaker.”

“Sure, Detective. He works for Same-Day, a commercial delivery service. Local. It’s legit. I know it. My brother-in-law—”

“Yeah, okay. What’s the story?”

“He was at Starbucks, Fifty-Seventh Street. This guy comes up with a package, that package you got, and he says he’s in a bind. He was on his way to drop it off, but he just got a call, some injury in the family, and he’s got to get to Jersey like now.”

Rhyme called, “Okay, he spun a story, offered the kid money and he took it — more cash than he told you, of course.”

“Two hundred.”

“More likely five. What’d the guy look like?”

“White, fifties, medium build. Jogging outfit. Cap. Sunglasses. Clean-shaven.”

“He have anything else with him?”

“Backpack. Also black. He gave the messenger the box and the money and left. The kid took the train uptown and dropped it off at Captain Rhyme’s. Oh, the guy said something else. Just leave it and ring the bell. The person who lives there doesn’t like strangers.”

Rhyme gave a laugh.

After Sellitto disconnected the call, Rhyme said to him, “The box. Open it, but in there.” He indicated the biotox examination chamber. “No poison darts, from the X-ray, but that doesn’t mean there’s no poison. Remember our botulinum theory — Watchmaker’s wanting to sneak some inside. Highly unlikely, but let’s be safe.”

Sellitto was looking over the unit, about two feet tall. Plexiglas, triple seals and negative pressure, feeding into a closed filtration system. There were thick neoprene gloves built into the side. “I don’t know how the damn thing works.”

“How hard is it, Lon? Open the lid, put the package in, close the lid.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay.”

With his back to Rhyme, Sellitto placed the package into the unit. Rhyme motored close and watched him work the paper off and, with a razor knife, cut the tape. Slowly. Very slowly.

“Don’t make me nervous, Linc.”

“What’m I doing?”

“You’re staring at me.”

“Where else am I going to stare?”

“What’s that poison again?”

“Botulinum,” he answered cheerfully. “The most deadly tox on earth. Eight ounces could kill the population of the world.”

“Funny, Linc. Hilarious.” A pause. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

Rhyme gazed down into the large container as the detective removed the contents.

The standard technique for determining the presence of deadly botulinum — the Lethal Mouse Assay, which pretty much said it all — had been replaced by more humane techniques. But in this case no analysis was necessary. The objects, poisoned or not, could remain inside.

Sellitto extracted them now. The envelope and the rectangular thing: a billfold, which he opened, pulling out several cards.

“Well.” A whisper.

He displayed them to Rhyme.

The card on top was Ron Pulaski’s driver’s license.

63

Gets confusing.

A homophone is a word that is pronounced like another word but is spelled differently and has a different meaning: flour and flower.

A homograph, a close cousin, is a word that is spelled the same as another but has a different meaning and might or might not be pronounced differently: bass and bass.

Homonym, most textbooks preach, is the umbrella descriptor that embraces both, though some purists — newspaper editors and nineteen-year-old English majors passionate about the subject, for instance — will occasionally take exception.

Charles Vespasian Hale was in Central Park once more, reflecting on these grammatical novelties, as he gazed at Lincoln Rhyme’s town house through his bird-watching binoculars.

He was thinking of the word: “watch.”

Here was Hale now, an expert at watches, pretending to watch birds while actually watching the abode of the man he was about to kill, all the while the police, whose shift is called a watch, are watching for him.

Some homonyms derive from very different roots: bass the fish is from the Proto-Germanic bars, meaning “sharp,” because of the creature’s dorsal fin. Bass, the musical tone and instrument, come from Anglo-Norman baas, meaning “low.”

“Watch” is the more common variety, with all modern meanings deriving from the same root: the Saxon, waecce. The noun means “wakefulness,” the adjective “observant,” both in the context of guard duty.

After he swapped vehicles once again, at a garage on West 46th Street, Hale had paid a thousand dollars to a deliveryman to take the package to Rhyme’s, then had driven here. He cast his heavy Nikon binoculars about, as if in search of a bird that had zipped to an accommodating stop on a nearby branch, but Hale always returned focus to the blunt, brown structure, where so many of his plans had been destroyed.

By the grain of sand.

Through the unshaded windows he caught the occasional flash of motion.

The cause of the activity would be the package.

Now he looked around for threats.

None. He knew the town house was well guarded, by nondescript humans and very obvious security cameras. But here, at some distance, he was safe. However important Rhyme was, the NYPD could not deploy a regiment of officers, fanned out through the park, to guard him.

He scanned again and stopped, noting someone to the east.

Far across the park was a man looking in his direction.

And was it the stranger he believed he’d seen twice before — at Hamilton Court and, not long ago, behind the SUV where he’d sat with Simone?

Too far away to tell.

If so, what organization was he with, if any?

Clearly not NYPD or FBI. They would have moved in by now.

A foreign operative would want him back in the jurisdiction where charges had been filed against him, and there were a lot of those. But extradition would also involve local authorities.

More likely this person had rendition — kidnapping — in mind.

Then too there were the enemies who would dole out justice quickly and extrajudicially.

Or, forget justice, just call it what it was: revenge.

But maybe, nothing at all.

Just another birdwatcher...

And indeed when he looked once more, the person was gone.

He turned his binoculars away from where they were trained — on a small jittery bird of brown and black plumage — back to Rhyme’s town house.

Now there was a flurry of motion as Lon Sellitto hurried out the door. He spoke briefly to the pair of uniformed officers outside, who nodded, and the round detective walked quickly to a car and sped away.

The present had been opened.

64

His headache was brutal.

As his vision returned, Ron Pulaski inhaled deeply, like that might make the pain recede.

Curiously, the effort worked, a bit.

Or maybe headaches from being knocked out with horse tranquilizer just naturally diminished upon waking.

He was looking around. Taking stock.

He was lying on an air mattress, in the corner of a windowless room — a basement, he guessed.

The stark lighting was from a single overhead bulb. The door was metal — and, surely, locked.

He struggled to rise, which sent a new pinwheel of agony through his head, and his vision began to crinkle to black once more. He lay back. Then rose and checked the door.

Locked tightly, yes.

Then back to bed.

Remembering the minutes leading up to the blackness.

The ski mask.

The muzzle of the animal control tranq gun, the projectile apparently containing enough drug to knock a fair-sized horse to the ground.

During a case he’d worked with Lincoln and Amelia a few years ago, Pulaski had learned that the drug in question — used by wife on husband — was a mixture of etorphine and acepromazine. The side effects upon waking had not been part of that investigation, but Pulaski could now attest to one: it left you feeling really shitty.

He slowly sat up then, in relative control once more, rose to his feet again. Woozy, but he’d stay awake.

And upright.

Looking around more carefully now. On the floor on the other side of the mattress sat the medical records he’d stolen from the hospital. His phone and wallet, though, were missing. The first because it was Kidnapping 101 to take the victim’s means of communicating with the outside world. The second so that they could prove they’d got him.

And who was they?

Hale was behind it, but he probably wasn’t the ski-masked tranq shooter.

And there would be another player too. Lincoln had told him on several occasions that Charles Hale never worked for himself only. He always had a client.

And that person or entity?

High up, pulling strings. But no point in guessing their identity.

Not enough facts.

Pulaski noted there was no bottled water, no food, no toilet. The stay was going to be short.

Released soon.

Or they had more permanent plans in mind.

No windows or other doors, much less secret panels.

In the center of the chamber was a cage housing the HVAC system. But it was secured to the floor with thick padlocks. Still, he made his way to it, and feeling dizzy once more, he sat on the mesh, lowering his head.

Then he studied the cage.

No way to open it.

But wait. It wasn’t HVAC at all. It was some kind of improvised device. He noted a sealed quart jar made of some kind of thick plastic. Inside was a liquid, reaching nearly to the top.

Pulaski sighed and scanned the label on the jar.

Pulaski squinted and studied the assembly. Attached to the jar was a metal box about two by two by three inches. A short antenna protruded. Upon receiving a signal, the explosive charge in the box would detonate and shatter or melt the plastic, sending the corrosive liquid flowing into the room.

He recalled Lincoln Rhyme describing what the acid and the gas it created did to the human body.

He thought it wise to find a better place to sit and returned to the mattress.

Though he supposed the distance made no difference. Nowhere in the cell would be safe when the jar blew open.

Ron Pulaski lay back on the mattress and turned his thoughts to his family: Jenny and his children: Brad, Martine and, of course, Claire.

65

Lincoln Rhyme was now alone.

Sellitto had left.

Sachs was downtown. And Thom was out as well.

Just before he’d left, the aide had poured a healthy dose of twelve-year-old single malt into a crystal glass. Rhyme’s right hand now gripped the Waterford. While it wasn’t a social sin to drink scotch out of a plastic tumbler through a straw, as he’d had to do for years, the beverage seemed to taste better in a glass. No double-blind study for this, but Rhyme was convinced.

He sipped and turned his attention back to the letter that had been in the package. Sellitto had taken a picture through the Plexiglas of the biotox container and the image now sat on Rhyme’s tablet.

Rhyme typed in the URL and almost instantly he heard the man’s voice, in real time.

“Lincoln.”

The screen was black.

Rhyme said, “It’s not working. I can’t see you.”

“No. You won’t. My camera’s off. But you’re visible to me. Now, go to the second bookcase from the back of the parlor. With the old books in it. The antiques about criminal investigation.”

Rhyme frowned. “How did you... Ah, Andy Gilligan told you about it. My Judas.” He motored to the oak stand. Three or four dozen volumes. One was not as ancient as the others. Crime in Old New York. It had been central to the first case he and Sachs had worked, tracking down a serial kidnapper nicknamed the Bone Collector.

“And?” Rhyme asked.

“There’s a reproduction of a book dating to the mid-sixteen hundreds.”

Even the facsimile was two hundred years old.

“Quite a title,” Hale said. “Andy told me.”

Looking at it, Rhyme recited, “The Triumphs of Gods Revenge against the crying and execrable sinne of (willfull and premeditated) murther.”

A subhead added another ten lines or so to the jacket.

Rhyme said, “It’s the first known true crime book.”

The killer mused, “Crime... Always an obsession — the inequity, the cruelty we humans visit on one another. Look at the popularity of the TV shows and podcasts.”

“I don’t watch, I don’t listen.”

“I know you don’t. I picked that book because it wasn’t likely you’d be flipping through it to answer a thorny present-day forensics question.”

“Ah, but never dismiss the old techniques out of hand. They can occasionally be helpful. We never want technology to substitute for sense, as I think you’d appreciate. The past should serve the present.”

“Let’s move along, Lincoln. There’s something behind the book.”

Rhyme lifted the volume off the shelf and clumsily set it aside. He reached in and extracted what had been hidden behind it, a roll of dark blue cloth. He set it on the chair’s tray and unfurled it. He looked down at the two hypodermics.

“What’s the drug?”

“Fentanyl. Now, that EKG in the corner? Hook yourself up to it.”

Rhyme stared at the needles for a long moment. “No.”

A pause.

The criminalist continued. “There’s something I have to do first.”

“The longer you wait—”

Firmly: “There’s something I’m going to do first... The birds.”

“The...?”

“Peregrine falcons. They nest on my window ledge. Upstairs.”

“I never figured you for someone who had pets, Lincoln.”

A hollow laugh. “Pets? Hardly. They choose to live here. I don’t know why. Fatter pigeons in this part of the park maybe? More stupid squirrels? But here they’ve settled and I’ve enjoyed watching them nest, propagate and hunt. I’m going upstairs.”

Hale was apparently debating. “All right... Here’s what you’ll do. You have a pulse oximeter on the chair. Put it on one of your fingers and turn it so I can see its screen.”

Rhyme did. “Clear enough?”

“Your oxygen levels are good, Lincoln. And your pulse lower than most people’s under these circumstances.”

“Pulse rates increase when adrenaline spills into the bloodstream because of the fight-or-flight response. I can’t do either. So why get riled up?”

“All right, go upstairs, but keep the signal active. One phone call from me and Pulaski is dead.”

A chuckle. “You’ve won, Charles. There’re no tricks I can pull. I just want to see the birds one last time.”

Rhyme guided the chair into the small elevator and pressed the button to take him to the second floor. He wheeled out of the cage and turned to the left into the hallway and then to the main bedroom, which faced Central Park West. The glass was bulletproof and the view of the greenery and distant battlement of posh buildings on the East Side were distorted.

He looked down to the nest.

The birds — a couple and two fledglings — turned their heads his way. The faces, by nature, radiated hostile suspicion, whatever was truly in their hearts. Of the quartet, the youngsters were by far the more aggressive. They would spar for sparring’s sake. Their parents took prey — at two hundred miles an hour — not for the joy of killing; for them the process was merely shopping for dinner.

He gazed at them for a full minute, then said, “All right. I’m ready.” Glancing down at the hypos. “Two. In case I dropped one, I assume. Fentanyl...” He added sardonically, “Such a lovely concoction of phenethyl, piperidinyl, phenylpropanamide. You know you can change the potency by moving the methyl group into the three-position of the ring. I assume this is the strongest. Now, your word about Ron?”

“My word.”

Rhyme sighed, looked at the birds one more time and slipped the needle into the vein on the back of his left hand. He slowly pressed the plunger.

By the time the last of the liquid was in the blood vessel, his head was lolling.

The heart rate on the sensor began a countdown.

In ten seconds, the small screen read 0.

And there it remained.

66

As with so many human constructs meant to interpret indifferent nature, time knows no natural intervals. We’ve decided on hours and minutes and seconds.

So while it could be said that Lincoln Rhyme died at 10:14:53 post meridiem on Tuesday, April 16, the most accurate way to put it is the truism: he lived the length of time from his birth to his death.

Requiescat in pace, Lincoln.

Hale put the tablet into his backpack and, still crouching in the bushes, pulled out his phone and read the message he’d received a few moments earlier. It was from the pilot, reporting that the plane was in Teterboro, the private airport in New Jersey, and ready to go at any time. The drive there would take forty minutes.

This portion of his mission was completed, yes, but he decided he’d been inaccurate to think of Rhyme’s death as the finale. It was the penultimate mission — next to last.

Clocks are not moral or amoral. They count second by second, marking moments of joy and sorrow and pain and pleasure and cruelty, but they remain utterly indifferent to what occurs at any particular click.

This was the template too for Charles Vespasian Hale, who with no affect whatsoever carried out his jobs in the most logical way possible, regardless of the consequence to anyone.

And so it was with no regret — or joy — that he dialed the number that detonated the charge on the acid jar in the warehouse basement where Ron Pulaski was held. He’d kept him alive until now in case Rhyme had wanted proof that he was all right.

Lincoln Rhyme had died thinking that he had saved the life of the young man. That would have brought him some peace.

But Hale could not afford another grain of sand in the works of his life.

Pulaski was heir to Rhyme’s skill and had that grit that would motivate him to do whatever it took to find Hale and either bring him back to New York for trial or — he believed the officer capable of it — kill him on the spot.

He had to go.

And Amelia Sachs?

She was less of a threat. Justice was within her, like a vein of a diamond. But revenge was not. She wouldn’t choose to forgo her job of stopping evil in the city for the lengthy and possibly futile mission of pursuing her husband’s killer.

Hale had been dramatic with Rhyme in describing the effects of HF gas on Ron Pulaski. There was no time-release mechanism on the device. All the acid in the jar would flood the room at once. A painful death, yes, but brief. He’d be dead by now.

Hale looked around him and, seeing no threats, lifted his backpack to his shoulder.

With a fleeting thought of Simone, he began the hike back to the SUV — and from there, to his new life.

67

Her world was abuzz.

A barred owl!

Rare in Central Park, and Carol would not miss it for the world. It was nighttime, yes, but serious birdwatchers took to the forest and field at all hours, especially in hopes of catching a glimpse of the stunning creature, which was as tall as the great horned — seventeen to twenty-five inches — and had the distinction of being the only owl on earth with brown eyes.

Like other birdwatchers presently in Central Park, she would be patient and dogged and happily ignore the pain of “bird neck,” from staring straight up into the trees.

She was walking quickly, camera bouncing on her chest, night-vision binoculars in hand. You never strung two accessories around you. The tap and clank would scare off your subject. And always, rubber-soled shoes, quiet as spilling flour.

Then she slowed. Not because of the owl, or any other bird. She had noted a person not far ahead, walking her way. He was passing through a cone of overhead light.

Was it...?

Yes, it was him! David. The fellow birdwatcher from the other day. The unmarried man, with a job.

He wore tan overalls — which gave a hint as to his profession — and had a backpack over his shoulder.

She’d been back to this area several times in hopes of seeing him again.

Couldn’t wait to tell him about the barred owl — that would be a surefire catch — and maybe together they could stalk it.

Then, she might ask, Coffee?

Alcohol was never suggested by a woman first, but if he did...

Ah, the complex choreography of the mating game.

A bird flashed by — not a brown streak, so it wasn’t the owl in question. She ignored it and slowed, fixing a smile on her face, standing a bit taller.

He walked closer yet, head down, examining a phone.

When he was about twenty-five, thirty feet away, she called out a bright “David!” Wondering if he’d remember her name. Of course she’d identify herself. She hated it when people assumed you knew who they were.

He stopped.

And looked up. He was frowning.

Damn, she sensed she hadn’t handled it right. She’d been too far away when she called out. She should’ve waited.

But then Carol noted he was looking not at her but over her shoulder.

She turned and gasped.

A tall redheaded woman in jacket and jeans and bulletproof vest was trotting forward, leading a dozen other officers, some in full battle gear. She held a large black pistol. Others slipped from the bushes beside and behind David.

Who, she now guessed, might not be a David after all.

He shook his head and lifted his hands above his head.

Carol had had potential romances fail for any number of reasons.

None of them involved arrests.

“You, keep moving,” the redhead said to her sternly.

“Well, no need to be huffy,” Carol replied, but strode quickly away.

When she was some distance from the officers, she glanced back and watched David being handcuffed. His eyes were up, in the air, and she wondered if, whatever had landed him in hot water, he was in fact a birdwatcher and had spotted something important.

But, no, he was staring at the town house directly across Central Park West. She wondered what took the man’s attention so completely.

She noticed the nest of peregrines on a ledge. But it couldn’t be that; the birds were impressive but common.

Ah, then she saw he was looking above the nest, where a dark-haired man was sitting in the window.

After a moment, the occupant smoothly backed away and vanished, as if floating.

But then, ghostly men in windows and criminal romantic partners vanished from her thoughts, as a bird — then a half dozen, then scores — zipped into view.

They were male robins, which clustered on branches to sleep, while the females and young stayed on the ground.

Hardly a rare sighting, but the gathering — eerie in its reminiscence of the Hitchcock movie The Birds — was worth recording.

Carefully, so as not to scare them away, she lifted the camera, turned on the night-vision mode and pressed the button to add the stilling dormitory to her collection.

68

Rhyme eyed the Watchmaker as Sachs led him into the parlor and seated him in one of the wicker chairs.

The tan jumpsuit the man wore was not a garment that looked natural on him, but Rhyme knew it would be a costume in today’s drama.

He looked very different from the last time they’d seen each other. The cosmetic surgeon had given him ten years, and someone — or maybe he himself — had plucked out easily half his hair.

His wrists were cuffed and on his left was a large silver-colored watch, its dark face sporting a dozen small windows.

Complications...

Sachs wanded the watch with the nitrate detector.

“Clear.”

His two phones were also clean, but — just to be safe — were sitting in the biohazard box at the moment.

Hale said, “Ron Pulaski.”

“He’s safe. Disappointed you lied, Charles.”

Was there a fraction of relief in his eyes that the young officer had survived after all? Rhyme believed so.

Sachs announced, “I’m going to walk the grid in the warehouse — as soon as Fire finishes removing the HF.” She glanced at Hale. “Might lead us in the direction of Woman X.”

This definitely brought a reaction, a troubled frown. For an instant. Then, like mist under bright sun, it was gone.

After she left, Rhyme said to Sellitto, “Leave us alone, would you?”

“Linc...”

“I’ve got the panic button.”

The detective nodded. “All right, but the uniforms stay outside.”

“Fine.”

Sellitto took a last glance at the Watchmaker, poured a cardboard cup of coffee from Thom’s urn and walked outside.

Rhyme wheeled closer.

The man’s frowning silence asked the obvious question. How?

“We got intel from England that they’d intercepted traffic about an attempt to kill me. Someone in the UK, communicating with someone here about the job.

“I asked a student of mine — really quite the brilliant mind — to pretend to be the killer. What would be the best way to do it? He decided the assassin would get to me through a weakness. Something vitally important to me. Something I couldn’t be without. And that would make me careless. He posited evidence. And had the idea that the killer would plant botulinum in something Amelia collected at a crime scene.”

Hale nodded and, despite the circumstances, seemed impressed. “Clever boy, your student. A not-unreasonable tactic. But botulinum? It’s the devil to handle. Even worse than acid.”

Rhyme continued, “And I decided sabotaging evidence was too obvious. But his premise was solid. Get to me through something vitally important. I have a reputation for being a curmudgeon, dyspeptic, rude. ‘Asshole’ is used on occasion too. But I actually do care for people. Well, some people. Ron is one of them. Amelia. Mel Cooper. Lon. A few others. People I would sacrifice myself for.

“I assumed you’d take Sellitto, Amelia or Ron, and probably Ron. He’d be easier to grab than my wife. She carries a switchblade, you know. And she’s the best shot in the department. I had NYPD Tech Services hide a tracker in their shoes. We got to Ron ten minutes after he woke up in your cell.

“As for your visit here, the park.” Rhyme nodded out the window. “You tried to kill the first crane operator because of what he’d seen in your SUV. Binoculars. And that book? With the gaudy jacket? We found it, finally. Birds of New York.”

“How did you figure out the hypodermics?”

“My hand’s too unsteady for a firearm. Can hardly hang myself, now, can I? Poison would be perfect. How would you get it to me? Well, Andy Gilligan was working for you. He could’ve hidden something inside. He was interested in the old books, so that’s where we searched first. We found the needles. Swapped the fentanyl out for distilled water and rigged a pulse oximeter that could be controlled remotely so it would count down to zero.”

Hale’s eyes radiated his dismay. “The falcons... That’s why the falcons. I was going to have you hook up the full EKG down here.” He nodded to the box. “But you’d planned on that. You went upstairs so the only vital sign indicator was the pulsimeter. Tu es egregie excogitator.”

“I accept the compliment. And mine to you.” Rhyme shook his head with genuine admiration. “All the complications in your plot — to keep us misdirected. Impressive, Charles. First, the affordable housing demand. Kommunalka?”

“Did you like that, Lincoln? I pictured a bunch of bearded radicals living in a frame house in Astoria, taking turns reading Das Kapital to each other late into the night.”

“When that turned out to be a sham, we decided it was all about real estate manipulation.”

“What?” He seemed confused.

“Someone hiring you to sabotage the cranes to crash the real estate market. You were in the pay of a robber baron — if they still have those — who was going to scoop up property for a song.”

Now a laugh from the man’s lips. “Never even considered it.”

“Really?”

“You get credit for that one, Lincoln. No, I wanted to lead you right to the assassination plot. A mysterious cell in Philadelphia, resentful of the president’s infrastructure bill. The cranes tumbling down, the last one blocking the Holland Tunnel. The president has to get out of town via some alternative route and, bang.”

“And so we’d think of that, you intentionally flew the drone in front of the Domain Awareness camera. The drones led us to Senator Talese. And Talese led us to the president. I assume it was Gilligan who gave you the details of his trip to New York and the meeting with the senator.”

“Andy was a wealth of information.”

“A good plan. It kept us from looking at other places, like, say, Emery Digital Solutions. So you could plant your device there.”

“No,” came the dismayed whisper. So emotionless otherwise, Hale didn’t seem the sort of man who would ever give a response like this. What Rhyme saw actually chilled him.

Until this moment, the man would have the hope that his primary mission was still on track. Now he knew the plans were shattered.

The man’s head dipped.

Rhyme said, “I kept wondering about Gilligan’s death. Why would you kill him? And was there anything odd about the murder? One thing stood out. His computer — well, a computer you bought and wrote his name on. We wanted to get inside it, and who should appear to help us but Al Levine, NYPD Computer Crimes investigator. As if we, or somebody on the team, contacted him. But nobody did. He initiated it. That is to say, you did.

“We found silicone — a main ingredient in plastic surgery wound healing — and a hair, one of yours, that had been plucked out. You made yourself older and balder. So Amelia wouldn’t recognize you at Emery Digital. You needed her because you could masquerade as a cop all you wanted, but only a real officer could get a warrant to get inside Emery.

“And what was the purpose of the whole thing? To get inside the company and geotag the set of servers you were interested in. Then, this afternoon, you dressed up like a repairman.” Rhyme nodded to the overalls. “Went underground and planted the device directly underneath them.”

Rhyme now frowned. “But that’s as far as I got. What I couldn’t figure out — and still can’t — is why. What was this all about, Charles?”

Endgame...

The Watchmaker gave a mournful smile. “Very simple, Lincoln. I was going to travel into the future.”

69

Rhyme said, “I know that Emery does security for lots of government facilities, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology. You mean you were going to change the atomic clock?”

Hale tilted his head at what was apparently a curious comment. “There’s no single atomic clock. There are nineteen of them around the world. If one were hacked, the others would override any deviation instantly.”

The man’s eyes took in the evidence boards. He nodded to them. “When I make a timepiece, I do the same thing. Plot it out on a board. At the end of the designing, when I’m ready to start, it’s completely covered — notes, diagrams, flowcharts.” He fell silent. Then he whispered, “The future...” He turned back to Rhyme. “My profession isn’t as lucrative as you might think, Lincoln. Big fees, but big costs. I have retirement planned in a distant location... Where it’s expensive to maintain anonymity.”

Bribing officials can add up, Rhyme supposed.

“Do you know what NTP is?”

“No.”

“Network Time Protocol. It sends the atomic time to networks that adjust clocks in computers, phones, GPS systems, scientific instruments, avionics... Anything that depends on accurate time. When your computer, your phone, your tablet, your car, the TV all show that it’s 11:34 a.m., you have NTP to thank.

“Now, let’s say you want to log on to a secure website — a bank, your brokerage account, an election committee, the U.S. Army, a porn site. You click on the uniform resource locator — the URL. Your browser needs to check the security certificate of the website to make sure it’s legitimate. I won’t bore you with HTTP versus HTTPS and secure sockets layers. All you need to know is that if the certificate’s valid, you can log on and send and receive all the sensitive information you want — banking account information, passwords, socials, naughty pix, anything — and be sure it’s safe.

“But certificates have an expiration date. After that, the data that users send are there for the taking, unencrypted. Emery handles NTP traffic security for hundreds of networks around the world.”

“So your virus infects the networks and moves the time forward, past the security certificate’s expiration date.”

“Exactly. I log on, steal what I want, reset the clock and back out. It’s weeks or months before anybody notices. If ever.”

Rhyme found himself viewing what Hale had done with a grudging admiration.

“It’s imperfect, but I figured that I could get into maybe fifty of every thousand networks I attacked. I’d be going after hedge funds and investment banks. Million-dollar transfers to my offshore accounts... Or that’s what would have happened... Except for you.”

“You didn’t upload it?”

“No. I scheduled that for later, when the networks’d be clogged with traffic about President Boyd.”

“So that’s why the fake assassination.”

“It tied up communications and police, and pulled the NYPD and FBI guards off Emery. An assassination is all hands on board.”

Rhyme was looking at photos of the device that Hale had hoisted to the ceiling under the cybersecurity company. “But how would it work? Aren’t the servers at Emery Digital shielded or something?”

“From cellular and radio intrusion, yes. But not from induction.”

“Electromagnetic force.” Rhyme knew about this from a prior case in which someone used the New York power grid as a weapon. “Nikola Tesla designed a system to transmit power over the grid wirelessly. Never got into widespread use, but we charge our phones on those pads.”

A nod. “Well, power’s electricity. So is data. That’s what the device does. Electromagnetic transmission of the viruses to infect the time protocols.”

Silence between the men now.

After a moment Rhyme offered, “I’m skeptical.”

Hale turned from a photograph he’d been looking at. A picture of Rhyme and Sachs in Lake Como, where they’d not only gotten married but stopped a killer in the same several days. His brows rose. “Skeptical?”

“This plan — the cranes, the housing activists, the assassination — so you can line your pockets? It doesn’t seem like you. I can’t imagine you without a client.”

“It was time for me to get off the merry-go-round.” Then in a whisper: “Everything comes to an end, now, doesn’t it? Don’t you feel that way too?”

“What can you tell me about the woman you were working with? The one who kidnapped Ron?”

“Not a single thing, Lincoln, not a thing.”

Rhyme knew that the evidence might give them leads, but Hale would remain completely uncooperative regarding his colleague.

Hale frowned as he saw something on the mantel.

“May I?”

Rhyme nodded.

Hale walked to the fireplace and studied a gold pocket watch, made by Breguet, a famed craftsman who’d lived many years ago. The face was white, the numbers in roman numerals. Some small dials showed phases of the moon and a perpetual calendar. Rhyme knew it also had a parachute inside, an anti-shock mechanism revolutionary for the time.

It had been a gift from the Watchmaker years ago and had been accompanied by a note of warning.

“You’ve kept it wound.”

“What good is a watch that doesn’t run? An object of beauty, maybe.” Rhyme shrugged. “But beauty is overrated.”

“Indeed.” The Watchmaker put the Breguet back on the ledge.

Rhyme was looking out the window once more, gazing toward a spot about three hundred yards into Central Park. A faint glint in the distance, which then vanished.

Hale asked, “You’ve seen him too?”

“Twice. Surveillance tapes. Near the cranes.”

Nodding, Hale said, “I don’t know who he is. Do you have any idea?”

“Andy Gilligan’s brother.”

“Ah, Mick. That explains how he knew about the trailer on Hamilton Court — I saw him there last night. Andy would have told him.”

“He’s connected — organized crime.” Rhyme added, “I saw him with a guitar case.”

“So that’s what he was carrying.” A faint smile crossed Hale’s face. “And I suspect he’s not a student of Segovia or Jeff Beck.”

“Do you see him now?” Rhyme asked.

Hale squinted. “No. Andy told me they used to hunt.”

Rhyme said, “There’s a back entrance here, it leads onto a cul-de-sac. They can bring the detention center transport van around.”

After a lengthy moment during which the only sounds were the occasional snapping of an old, settling structure and the shushing of traffic, Hale said, “Even without reading Einstein, we know how time expands and contracts. Fast when you’re making babies, slow when you’re having them. Do you know what time does when you’re in a twelve-by-twelve cell, Lincoln? It turns on you. Your best friend becomes a python. That’s not for me.”

“I’ve adapted.” Rhyme nodded to his wheelchair.

“We share quite a bit, Lincoln. But I have no interest in adaptation.”

Rhyme noticed Hale’s eyes had slipped to the evidence bag containing his burner phones.

“You want to make a call?” He was thinking of Woman X.

Hale debated, but whether it was from the slim chance that someone might trace it or for some other reason, he shook his head. “No. I think not.” He sounded wistful.

Hale looked at the monitor depicting the street in front of the town house. Two police cruisers waited there, each with officers inside. No one was on the sidewalk.

His eyes met Rhyme’s.

The criminalist nodded.

Hale walked into the lobby, disappearing from Rhyme’s view. A moment later there was a click of the door latch. A patch of illumination grew into a trapezoid on the marble of the hallway as the door hinge squeaked softly. The man’s stark, elongated shadow ran from the door to the security scanner.

There was silence.

Then Rhyme blinked at two sounds, a second apart.

The first was the thud of a bullet striking the Watchmaker’s chest. The second was the resounding boom of a rifle shot from Central Park.

Hale was flung backward into the hallway, both he and the floor spattered with blood.

Rhyme heard shouts from outside as officers leapt from the cars and crouched on the side closest to the town house, scanning for a target, though Rhyme knew that the shooter was speeding away.

Almost immediately came the distant bleat of sirens, growing closer.

Rhyme concentrated on the man who lay on his back. Moving slowly, trying to draw his legs up, gripping air with long fingers as if reaching for a safety rope.

Or for a set of watchmaking tools.

Would he turn his head so that they might share a last gaze? Rhyme wondered.

He did not.

70

“Tell me, Captain Rhyme. The details.”

Detective Lawrence Hylton and his Caribbean-inflected voice were back again — the officer who glanced off all things Internal Affairs. The time was 9 a.m., the morning after Hale had died.

“The deceased and I have a history. I thought I could get him to tell me about what he was doing here, why he was behind the cranes collapsing, the assassination plot, the sabotage of the cybersecurity company. Who his accomplice was. We had a conversation. I think he looked at the monitor and thought he could make it past the officers outside. He got to the hall and opened the door, and he was shot before I could hit the panic button.”

He nodded his head toward the control pad of his chair.

“Sometimes signals from my brain are a bit delayed.” Rhyme rarely played this card. He decided this situation, though, warranted doing so, even though his words were not in the least true. “Where was the shooter?”

“We aren’t sure, but we think that high-rise — Seventy-Second Street. The middle of the park. Two hundred fifty, three hundred yards. Small caliber. Two twenty-three probably.”

An assault rifle. The weapons had short barrels, but shot flat and fast, and with a good scope they were — obviously — accurate enough to kill at a distance. They also fit quite well into a guitar case.

“Who else was in the town house?”

Rhyme was hardly in the mood for any debriefing. But under the circumstances he decided to stay blandly cooperative.

“No one. I was alone.”

“When did your wife, Detective Sachs, leave?”

“About forty minutes before the incident. The exact time’ll be on the security cam time stamp. Lon Sellitto left then too. Amelia has alibi witnesses at the Ron Pulaski crime scene. And Lon went to One PP. If you were suggesting they might have been the shooter.”

“I wasn’t.” The reply was flat. Hylton looked over his notebook. “And your assistant...”

Rhyme found himself oddly affected by what had just happened. Not rattled, but... hollow. That was the word. He corrected stiffly, “Not my ‘assistant.’ ‘Caregiver.’ Or ‘aide.’ An assistant has a different connotation — an easier job, all around.”

“Your caregiver then. How did he happen not to be here?”

“Because he happened to be shopping.”

“Ah. But by leaving you alone here, isn’t that... Well, I mean, isn’t it a risk?”

“Quads rarely self-immolate. Or starve to death over the course of an hour or two.”

“Captain.” Hylton spoke with labored patience.

“Thom Reston has many, many skills. Sniping is not among them.”

“You can appreciate how odd this is.”

“I made an error in judgment, trusting Hale. I thought he would be more cooperative if he were not chained to a radiator.”

The officer said pointedly, “And just coincidentally a person was laying in wait to shoot him.”

Rhyme chose not to say what came into his mind: A person lies in wait. A chicken lays, whether it’s waiting for anything or not.

“The suspect was in custody. He was caught. He was going to spend the rest of his days in a twelve-by-twelve room. Do you really think there’s an NYPD officer who would commit murder two just to shorten the judicial process?”

Hylton didn’t respond. He looked to his notes for guidance. They apparently offered none. “Who do you think? If you had to guess.”

“I don’t need to guess at all. I know who the shooter was. Andy Gilligan’s brother.”

“I’ll send a team to his house.”

“Yes, you’ll need to go through the motions.”

“So he’s gone, you think?”

“Gone.”

Hylton closed his notebook. “I also need to get a statement from Patrolman Pulaski. Where is he now?”

Rhyme looked at the time on a nearby monitor. “Engaged at the moment. But I’m sure he’ll call you when he’s free.”

71

The burn recovery was coming along fine.

Dr. Amit Bakshi paused and looked over the electronic patient records of Aaron Stahl, the student whose SUV the NYPD police officer had run into, resulting in a conflagration that apparently made quite the scene in Lower Manhattan.

An ER doc with twelve years of experience in the city, Bakshi had treated many people for auto accidents. In New York City, the injuries tended to be less severe, since one couldn’t drive that fast — as opposed to New Castle, Pennsylvania, where he’d started practicing medicine, and State Route 17, with that curve.

Dead Man’s Zone.

In New York, cars rarely exploded in flames, but the EMTs who brought him in had explained that the incident was a fluke occurrence, as the NYPD officer’s car just happened to shove Aaron’s SUV into some construction supplies, some bars or tubing, which ripped open the gas tank. Modern-day safety precautions by automakers, only got you so far when jagged metal was involved.

“Hey, Doctor.”

“Hello, sir,” Bakshi replied. He believed that being slightly formal bestowed comfort in his patients. Even with a nineteen-year-old.

He offered a nod and smile to Aaron’s older sister, Natalia, who sat bedside.

The woman, late twenties, he guessed, nodded in return, with a reserved smile, and continued to text. Much signage here was devoted to forbidding the use of cell phones. Not a soul paid attention.

Bakshi had tried to deduce the nature of the family situation, but had been unsuccessful. Neither parent had come to visit. Perhaps these two were orphans.

Bakshi turned his attention to his patient to ask the basic questions that had to be asked, and to check vitals — and the informative less-than-vitals; like espionage, medicine was first and foremost about intelligence.

He examined the wound.

The young man was improving well.

“It’s looking good. You can go home tomorrow.”

Aaron winced. “The pain. Man, it’s really bad still.”

Comments like this always raised a red flag with Bakshi, as it did with all doctors, who might be in a position to prescribe pain meds. Of course, the drugs existed for a vital reason. But the border between relief and abuse was often thin as fishing line. Aaron had answered on the admission sheet that he had three glasses of wine a week and did not do recreational drugs.

The template response of ten million patients.

You could cut and paste it.

“It’s just, it’s not only the burn. My neck too, the crash.”

Aaron’s ortho scans had come back negative, but pain was a creature unto itself. Both cunning and a master of disguise. It appeared, it vanished, it attacked, it retreated, then circled in from the rear.

“I’ll give you four days’ worth. Then check in with your regular GP.”

“Great. Thanks.” The gratitude seemed delivered with an edge of grudge.

Natalia was saying, “Tomorrow? Not today?” She hadn’t lifted her head as she texted and Bakshi realized she was responding to his comment from a moment ago.

She continued, “I’d like to get him out of here as soon as—”

The sentence had ended abruptly and with a gasp.

“No one move,” came a man’s stern voice from the door.

Bakshi spun around.

“Shit,” Aaron was saying.

“No!” A dismayed whisper from his sister.

Into the room was walking a trim blond man who, with an exceedingly grim face, was gazing from patient to sister and back.

“It’s him, that Pulaski! He’s the one who hit Aaron!”

“Sir—” Bakshi shut up when he saw the gun in the man’s hand.

Pulaski said, “Could you give us a minute?”

“I... I...”

Natalia said, “He can’t be here! He’s not supposed to be here! Call security!”

Bakshi gripped the chart tablet and looked back at the nurses’ station. It was empty.

“Help!” Natalia cried.

“Shhh,” Pulaski said, wincing at her mini scream.

Pulaski glanced at Bakshi, who said in a whisper, “Can I leave?”

“I just asked you to, didn’t I?” Pulaski now sounded almost amused.

The doctor backed slowly into the hallway and, when he figured it would be safe, ran silently to the nearest station and grabbed a phone from its cradle.

72

“Ron,” came the voice from the doorway. A tall, uniformed PD officer walked into the room. Her brown hair was gathered into a businesslike bun.

“Hey...”

The officer, Sheri Sloane, turned her long, dark-complected face to Aaron and looked him up and down, then took in the woman.

Aaron snapped, “The hell is going on?”

Natalia said, “You’re suspended! He told us...” Her voice faded with the lapse. “We heard you were suspended.”

Pulaski noted how she’d begun the sentence.

Sloane tugged on blue latex gloves and approached. “Could you stand please?”

“I—”

Pulaski snapped, “Stand.”

Anger filling her face, the woman did as told. Sloane frisked her carefully. Then the policewoman went through her purse.

“Clean.”

Her role and Pulaski’s reversed. She drew her weapon and Pulaski holstered his. They had worked together in the past and had the choreography down.

Pulaski pulled on gloves of his own and tugged the patient’s bedclothes up, searching closely. His backpack as well. He too was unarmed.

The woman laughed in astonishment. “You’re trying to intimidate us! Scare us out of suing you! When we get you in court, you’re going to be so fucked...”

Pulaski frowned — an exaggerated expression. “Court? You think that’s really a wise move?”

“You can’t talk to us that way,” Aaron said, sounding like a petulant schoolboy — though in actuality he was a student only in the sense that he hadn’t graduated from high school.

“Shhhhh.” Pulaski waved a palm like pushing away campfire smoke. “Now, let’s get the technical stuff out of the way. Natalia Baskov and Aaron Stahl, you’re under arrest for conspiracy to commit fraud, for subverting police procedure, obstruction of justice — always a good one.”

“The kitchen sink,” Sloane said. “One of my favorites.”

“There’ll be other charges too, but that’s enough for us to get started.”

Aaron muttered, “This is such bullshit.”

Baskov — not a sister, not a relative at all, but the daughter of a Brooklyn mob capo. Aaron was a numbers runner for her father and all-around punk.

The officer ran through the Miranda warning and when they acknowledged understanding it, he said, “Do you wish to waive the right to remain silent? But before you answer that let me just tell you what we’ve found. Might be helpful.”

Aaron began to bluster again. Baskov said, “Shut up.” And turned back to Pulaski. “Go ahead.”

“First, I’ve been reinstated as an officer. Just so you understand. Now, I’ve also been authorized by the New York County District Attorney to discuss your assisting us in an investigation in exchange for possibly — and I said possibly — coming to some agreement about charging. I need you to listen. Are you going to listen?”

Aaron tried: “What the—?”

Baskov said, “We’re going to listen.”

“There were a few things that made me curious about the accident and I thought I’d check them out. First, I went to the city hospital records room and got your blood workup from the accident.” He was looking at a suddenly less defiant and considerably more concerned Aaron.

These papers were what he’d had with him when Charles Hale’s assistant, Woman X, tranqued him and hauled him off to the acid room. (Lyle Spencer’s news that Burdick was probably planning to use a fellow cop’s own medical chart about an old injury against him might have inspired someone else to slip into the hospital and steal and destroy those records. Which, of course, Pulaski would never do. “Borrowing” Aaron Stahl’s file, though, while a little borderline, was really just part of his investigation.)

He continued, “Aaron, your blood work showed the presence of triamcinolone and lidocaine. Injectable painkillers. Which the responding medical technicians did not give you. You shot yourself up with them before the crash so that it didn’t hurt too much. Because you were paid to drive in front of me and take the hit. I suspect you didn’t expect to catch fire, but” — he shrugged — “every job has its downside, right? And also on your chart, Narcan, administered probably two days ago. You’ve got an opioid problem, Aaron. Which means you have a dealer — and therefore access to fentanyl. Somebody in the crowd helping me after the accident managed to get some on my skin. That’s why I tested positive. Hell, you might even’ve paid off an EMT. I don’t know.”

Pulaski wondered if Aaron had intentionally passed an arm through the unexpected flames at the crash, just so he could hit the doctors up for more drugs.

If true, nothing but sad.

“And after that I went to look at your burned-out SUV, the junkyard where they towed it in Queens. And guess what I found inside? A wad of plastic that had been an Opticom.”

“Shit,” muttered Baskov.

Opticoms are remote controls carried by many first responders to change traffic lights, so, say, a fire truck can turn all the reds it’s approaching to green.

“You used it to switch the lights when I was in the intersection. Nobody was paying attention until the collision, so everybody saw my light was red, yours was green. Oh, and another thing that didn’t get burned up completely? The crash helmet you wore. And one final thing we’ve got. The main witness who gave a statement that I ran the light? Theresa Lemerov? She isn’t exactly what you’d call objective. A cop friend of mine in Brooklyn followed her. She was in your brother’s house all day, and—”

“Wait,” Aaron barked.

Pulaski lifted an eyebrow.

“My brother?”

“Evan Stahl. Theresa, the main witness, knew your family, and that—”

“My brother.” His face was red with anger. “Did your friend say she spent the night?”

“What?”

“Did Theresa spend the night with my brother?”

Baskov: “Oh, Jesus, Aaron. Let it go.”

Aaron muttered, “That bitch! She said she’d never have anything to do with him again. I take a fall, nearly get burnt alive, and the first thing she does is run to Evan. Oh, and that prick—”

Baskov said, “Would you just be quiet?”

Amen to that.

“So, where was I? Right. I knew Burdick was setting me up — but I thought it was just to get me fired because I dissed him in front of some reporters. But it was bigger than that. It was about me hunting for Eddie Tarr.”

When Baskov blinked, his theory became proof.

“Tarr needed me off his trail for a murder I was investigating — just until he could finish a job here. He paid Burdick to get me out of the picture. First, Burdick tried to get me suspended at a crime scene and when that didn’t work, he hired your father.” A glance at Baskov. “He set up the crash.

“So here’s the thing. I want Burdick. A solid case. Gold. I’ve got a circumstantial one. I want witnesses.

“If I was to give you a statement...”

“Hey, I know shit too!” Aaron’s defiance had become desperation.

Being the daughter of a capo, she needed only one look to silence him. She said, “And emails, dates and places.”

Pulaski said, “This’s making my heart sing.”

She shrugged. “What do I get?”

“We,” Aaron blurted.

“The DA can guarantee the state won’t go for anything more than four years, medium sec.”

“Can I get it in writing?”

“No. And the offer’s starting to melt.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Me too!” Aaron said desperately.

Because he’d ruined Pulaski’s very comfortable car, he said, “I don’t know we’ll need you. I’ll have to think about it.”

Baskov said, “Well, it’s pretty much like you said. Burdick had a partner in the department. Somebody named Gilligan. A detective.”

Ah, interesting. He nodded for her to go on.

“But you got one thing wrong. Yeah, Burdick came to my dad and paid him to get you off Tarr’s ass. Only, the money — and the idea for the crash — came from somebody else. His name was Hale. Charles Hale, I think.”

Jesus.

So, the device that took down the last crane was one of Tarr’s IEDs.

Pulaski’s homicide murder case, seemingly unrelated, brought them full circle back to the Watchmaker.

There was noise from the hallway; uniformed officers had arrived to take Baskov to Central Booking and Aaron Stahl to the detention wing of Bellevue city hospital.

After they’d carted away the prisoners, Pulaski called Lon Sellitto to tell him how it had gone. When he disconnected he and Sloane walked down the corridor toward the exit. She asked, “How’d you put it all together, Ron?”

He told her about the hit job of a report Burdick had submitted to the Officer Involved Accident board. And Lyle Spencer’s comment about how much effort had gone into sidelining Pulaski.

“Then I was thinking about the call I got just before the intersection? From a tech in Crime Scene? It was a problem, chain of custody, the evidence from my scene. I don’t make mistakes involving chain of custody. Never. I talked to the clerk today. Burdick’d forced her to make the call just so he could claim I was distracted.”

Sloane said, “You’ve got Burdick. But the question is, you think you can turn him? To give up Tarr.”

Pulaski considered this for a moment. “Depends,” he answered.

“On what?”

“On just how much of a weasel he really is.”

“Good evening, I’m Amber Andrews, here with breaking news. Agents with the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives today raided the hangar at a small airport in Bergen County, New Jersey, arresting a man on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Eddie Kevin Tarr, forty-three, has been considered one of the most dangerous bomb makers in the world and has sold an unknown number of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, to terrorists and organized criminals over the past decade. Tarr is allegedly responsible for the bomb that brought down the tower crane in Lower Manhattan yesterday, resulting in the closing of the Holland Tunnel for nearly sixteen hours.”