The Watchmaker’s Hand

73

“I think we’ve got some pix,” Pulaski said. “Her.”

Rhyme understood: Ron meant the Watchmaker’s associate.

Woman X.

The two men and Amelia Sachs were in the parlor. Pulaski had been ardently tracking the woman, who’d been fast with the tranquilizer gun and had either constructed or commissioned Hale’s magic induction device.

“I want her. Nothing personal.” He’d said this offhandedly.

Which made it somewhat personal in Rhyme’s mind, but no matter. Apparently, the young officer had had some success.

“I was scrubbing through video around Hamilton Court and found a half-second clip of the two of them together. Hale and the woman. I pulled a capture. It wasn’t great, but I enhanced it with Stable Diffusion. You know it?”

“No.”

“It’s an AI — artificial intelligence text-to-image art generator. I loaded in the capture and kept making modifications — like witness artists do. Then I sent the JPG to Domain Awareness to start matching. I just got a call from them. They had some hits.” He sat at the keyboard and typed. Seconds later they were on a video call — like Zoom, but with higher security — to the control room of the Domain Awareness operation.

Officer Bobby Hancock was a burly man with a beard not forbidden by, but uncharacteristic in, the NYPD.

“Ron.”

“Bobby. Go ahead.”

“Is that Lincoln Rhyme?”

The criminalist offered an impatient punctuation-free: “Yes it is go ahead Officer.”

“Sure. From the image Ron gave us we did a citywide profile and found the subject. That Stable Diffusion thing? We talked to the brass and’re going to be opening an AI-generative operation. Really smart.”

Rhyme and Sachs shared a glance. He again felt a bit of pride for his protégé. He could see Sachs did too.

“Twice we placed her in the company of Hale. And we had a solo of her, West Side — Midtown. Here they are.”

The images came onto the screen. Not high-def, but clear enough. She was in her early thirties, Rhyme guessed. Pretty in a wholesome, not runway model way. Slim, maybe athletic, but her clothes — jeans and a sport team sweatshirt — were concealing. Her blond hair was in a complicated braid.

In the first two, she was walking down the sidewalk beside Hale. In one they were looking around suspiciously. In the other, they were regarding each other.

In the third image she was on the sidewalk in a part of town featuring old brownstones, not unlike Rhyme’s.

“Those’re from videos,” Rhyme said. “Any others worth looking at?”

“Nope. Just more of the same, walking. One, two seconds each.”

Woman X wasn’t holding anything, say, a coffee cup that — by heavy-duty policework — they might’ve found and lifted prints from.

“Thanks, Bobby.”

“Sure.”

Pulaski said, “The one where she was by herself. I’ve been looking at images of neighborhoods. That could be a block in the West Thirties. Bad fire a couple of days ago. Arson. A pro job. Termite and napalm. Maybe a coincidence. But insurance scams don’t use accelerants like that. The army uses accelerants like that. I’ve sent a team to canvass.”

“And be sure—”

Pulaski finished the sentence. “That they know about acid IEDs.”

Sachs studied one of the pictures for a long moment.

From her eyes, he could tell she was onto something.

“What, Sachs?”

“Her face. The second shot, looking at him.”

“Hm.”

Pulaski frowned. “What do you see?”

Neither answered. She asked, “How do we handle it?”

The answer struck him almost immediately. “Thom! Thom!”

The aide appeared. “I have a pot on the stove.”

“Well, unstove it. We need some more help.”

“Yes?” he muttered.

Rhyme said, “You have the way with words.”

The man grimaced at the flagrant buttering up.

“It’s true,” Rhyme protested, seeing the expression.

“What do you need?”

“Simple. I want you to write an obituary.”

74

New York City is home to a number of neighborhoods in which celebrities and the powerful reside.

But no place has as many per square foot as these four hundred acres.

Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, just south of Westchester County, is home to Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Otto Preminger, Mark Twain, F. W. Woolworth, and Celia Cruz, the Queen of Salsa, and scores more of the famous.

The infamous too. Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, the legendary gangland figure of Harlem, is interred here.

As is someone with an equally disturbing history, a recent addition: Charles Vespasian Hale, whose gravesite Amelia Sachs, Ron Pulaski and Lyle Spencer were now observing from a gardening shed near North Border Avenue, running roughly parallel to East 233rd Street.

Like most of the cemetery, this portion resembled a Long Island estate rather than an ominous gargoyle-filled setting for a Stephen King novel.

His gravesite had been chosen — by Lincoln Rhyme — because it was near a cluster of dense bushes, which were now providing cover for a half-dozen Emergency Service Unit officers in full military gear and camo.

In responding to his request — bordering on demand — the brass made clear they couldn’t commit to a large number of officers, and they couldn’t commit for very long. But Rhyme and Pulaski had made the point that Woman X would surely be leaving town soon, if she hadn’t already left, and so the troop commitment wouldn’t last longer than one day.

And what were the odds that she’d show up?

More than negligible, Rhyme and Sachs believed.

This was because of the second CCTV picture of Hale and Woman X, the one revealing a particular look on her face. It was the way he and Sachs occasionally regarded each other — and the way they’d seen Pulaski and his wife, Jenny, do the same.

There was no doubt that Hale and this woman were lovers.

So Rhyme had decided to lure her here via the obituary, which Thom had done a masterful job penning. It described how the man responsible for the crane collapses had been a career criminal and offered some facts about his early life. Much was speculation, but a paid obit did not need to adhere to the standard of true journalism. In fact, there was only one detail that mattered: his interment in Woodlawn.

By the time the piece hit the internet, an hour ago, Sachs and the others were already in place.

Would she indeed come to pay her last respects?

It was a sentimental gesture toward a man who was indisputably unsentimental.

Yet that look on her face — and the one suggested by his, though muted by the glasses — was undeniable.

In any event, they had no other options in their hunt for her. So here the trio waited in a hot shed, amid bags of fertilizer, which, Sachs reflected, maybe stank fiercely, but would provide good protection against bullets, should a firefight break out.

The day was suitably ominous, dark, and the sky was about to revisit an earlier rain.

Good for the operation. Few visitors were present.

Unlike some of the multimillion-dollar temples here, which were the resting place of multimillion-dollar corpses, Hale’s grave was simple. A plaque, flat on the ground, for a tombstone. Of necessity it had been engraved quickly. Name and date. Thom had suggested putting a clock face on it. Rhyme had said, “No.”

Another hour passed. Sachs radioed for the third time, “Stay alert.”

The more likely danger in stakeouts is not gunplay but falling asleep and letting your subject waltz off to freedom.

She was scanning once more when she was startled by a series of shots and a ragged cry. They were coming from just outside the cemetery. “Help! Help me! Ambulance!” A man’s voice.

“Bullshit,” Pulaski said. “It’s her. A diversion.”

Sachs grabbed the radio and nearly shouted, “No one move! Stay in position!”

Damn. Too late. One of the ESU officers had risen and stepped from the brush. She dropped to cover quickly.

Instinct — and who could blame her? But the woman had, perhaps, given away the whole game.

“Ron, call the local house. They’ve probably got somebody on the way, but make sure they check it out. And have the respondings call us with what they find.”

As he made the call, Sachs lifted a pair of powerful Nikon binoculars and scanned the opposite side of the cemetery, looking for lens flare, in case Woman X was using her own pair to surveil them.

Nothing.

But of course Sachs had been careful to make sure her binoculars were shaded; why wouldn’t X do the same?

Into the radio: “Detective Five Eight Eight Five to ESU team leader. You see anybody near the gravesite?”

“Negative, Detective,” the captain radioed back. “There was a groundskeeper and an elderly couple. Nowhere near the grave. And they took off when they heard the shots.”

“K.”

Pulaski said, “Not a soul in sight. And this is probably the only stakeout in history where soul makes sense.”

She gave a faint smile and continued to scan. “Okay, Charles... Talk to me.” A whisper. Maybe the others heard, maybe not. “What’s your girlfriend up to?”

A call from the local precinct on her mobile. “Yes?”

“Five Eight Eight Five?” A man’s voice, Bronx-inflected.

“Go ahead.”

“Just heard from respondings. We’ve got him, Detective. Get this. Somebody, a woman, paid this homeless guy ten K, yeah, that’s right, ten, to fire a gun into the dirt outside the cemetery and scream for help. We found him a couple blocks away. He was just sitting on the curb drinking a malt. No resistance. Seemed pretty fucking happy.”

“He told you about her?”

“Yeah. He didn’t want us to think he’d used the piece to hurt anybody. He just needed the money. Handed the weapon over. It’s cold. No number on it.”

She sighed. “Hair in braids? Blond? Thirties?”

“That’s right. Except it was brown. Her hair.”

So Miss Clairol had paid a visit.

“And what was she wearing?”

“Something dark. That’s all he remembered.”

“The money?”

“Said he gave it to a church.”

“Yeah, right. We’ll never see it.” Sachs continued to scan the grounds. No sign of human movement.

The officer continued, “He’s got a couple priors. Drugs. Drunk and disorderly. Even if he gets time, which I doubt, he’ll do six months. Not enough leverage to give up the money.”

And even if they found it — unlikely — what would it show? Woman X wasn’t going to give anything away by touching the bills.

She disconnected, sighed.

Spencer asked, “Did she think we’d all go running to the gunshots and leave the grave unattended?”

“It was never about her getting to the grave. She ran the scam just to see if we were on stakeout.”

“Flush us.”

“Yep. She took off the minute the officer broke cover. Hell. My fault. I should’ve told everybody to expect something like that.”

Nodding at the officers, Spencer said, “Instinct. I almost went too.”

“Yeah.”

The ESU commander called in. “She’s gone, right?”

Probably, she thought. What she said was: “Maybe.”

A pause. It was her operation. He needed her okay to leave.

“Stay in position.”

Another pause, this one more irritated, if science can radiate that trait. “Roger, Five Eight Eight Five.”

Two hours later, she got the inevitable call. “ESU to Five Eight Eight Five.”

“Go ahead.”

“Detective, we’ve gotta stand down. Sorry, but my people need to get back to watch.”

“Understood.”

The woman was surely long gone. Now that she knew there’d been surveillance once, she’d assume there would always be eyes on the grave, maybe a camera, maybe plain-clothed.

The ESU team emerged from the trees and joined Sachs, Spencer and Pulaski outside the shed. They discussed who’d write the report up — ESU glancing at her in a way that said “Your op, you do the paperwork.” She agreed. They started back to where their cars and an unmarked van were parked, in the shadows of a narrow street across 233rd. On instinct, Sachs stopped abruptly. Pulaski looked her way as she turned back.

“No,” she whispered, nearly a gasp.

She, Pulaski and Spencer jogged back to the grave. There, on the plaque that was Hale’s tombstone, was a folded piece of paper, weighed down by a red-painted ring about five inches across.

They scanned about them.

“The shots...” Sachs muttered.

Pulaski nodded. “It was a diversion.”

It sure was. But not to shift attention away from the grave while Woman X slipped up to it. No, the purpose of the assault was just what they had believed: that it was a trick to flush them — to find out what the officers on surveillance duty were wearing.

So she could dress in similar gear. She must’ve had a wardrobe in her car or van. It was just the foresight Hale himself would have.

She’d strolled right up behind the officer, invisible, because she too was in a full ESU tactical outfit.

Which Sachs now found behind a tree about forty feet from the grave.

Woman X had been among them the whole time, since delivering the gun and cash to the homeless guy.

Sachs grabbed her radio.

“Detective Five Eight Eight Five to Central. K.”

“Go ahead, Five Eight Eight Five. K.”

“We’re at the operation at Woodlawn, North Border Avenue near the lake. Suspect was here ten minutes ago. But has left. I need citywide on a fugitive. White female, thirties, brown hair braided. Medium build. Possibly dark clothing. Probably armed. I’m uploading a Domain Awareness picture now.” She lowered the phone and typed, sending the picture to Central’s secure server.

“Got it, Detective.” A pause. Woman X resembled about a hundred thousand residents of New York City. “Further to?”

She’d want vehicle, scars, footwear, other distinguishings, direction of travel, known locations.

Of which Sachs had none.

“Negative.”

“Roger, Five Eight Eight Five.”

They signed off.

She returned to Pulaski, who was looking down at the note, which he held in gloved hands.

“It’s a poem.”

Sachs couldn’t help but give a brief laugh. Well, this was a first.

After reading the words, she called Rhyme.

“I heard, Sachs. She gamed us.” He sounded amused, as if part of him had believed all along that anyone who’d been close to Hale was easily smart enough to elude an on-the-fly police trap. “What’d she leave?”

“A poem.”

“Hm. Read it.”

Sachs pulled on her own gloves and took the sheet.

Season

For C.V.H.

Somewhere in the autumn apple’s cells

A change occurs:

The curious investiture of ripeness.

So love, a type of season too,

Completes the heart

And moves us closer to fruition.

Unless...

A crow or sudden frost

Or spill of blood on parlor wall

Cuts short the time required for those ends,

And leaves behind the unfulfilled

To dwell on ways to make amends.

Rhyme grunted. Poetry, even less than prose fiction, did not figure in his world. “And it means what, do you think?”

Sachs chuckled. “It’s a love poem, Rhyme.”

“Hm. How?”

“It says that love changes us. Makes us whole, like a season ripens fruit. But that’s only part of the message.”

“What’s the rest?”

“A threat. Making amends. She’s saying she’ll be coming for us. Ah, and there’s something else?”

Rhyme said, “I caught it. The ‘blood on parlor wall.’ She knows how and where he died. She was in the park when it happened. Watching us.”

They had lost one enemy, and gained another.

“Handwriting?”

“No, computer. Generic paper.”

“Untraceable, naturally. And the hunk of metal?”

“A wheel.” She picked up a dark-red-painted metal disk about five inches across. Spokes radiated from hub to ring. “Part of a clock, I’d guess.”

“Show me.”

Sachs turned on her video camera and hit the live stream app. She held up the wheel.

“It’s not from a clock. We ran a case a year ago. The Brooklyn Museum of Industry.”

“Remember. Vaguely.”

“It’s a miniature wheel from a steam engine. A toy maybe or a hobbyist’s.” After a brief pause: “I wonder if it’s sentimental, or practical.”

“How do you mean, Rhyme?”

“Heartfelt emotion was no part of Hale’s makeup. I have a feeling Woman X is the same way. I think she left the wheel for a reason. To lead us somewhere. Or lead us away from somewhere.”

“If that’s true, then she’s as good at engineering plans as he was.”

She heard a faint laugh from the other end of the line. “How long did it take us to find Hale’s real name?”

“Years. We knew him as, what? Richard Logan, Gerald Duncan, finally Hale.”

“But we always knew him as the Watchmaker... Woman X needs a nickname too.”

“Fine with me. Can’t think of any at the moment.”

After a brief silence Rhyme said, “Maybe here’s one. Just thinking about her plots, all the planning. How does ‘the Engineer’ sound?”

“I like it. But you know what I’d like more?”

“Which is?”

“To see her in detention.”

“That day will come, Sachs. That day will come.”

She hoped so.

Though she could not push from her mind the last stanza of the poem.

And leaves behind the unfulfilled

To dwell on ways to make amends.

They disconnected.

Ron Pulaski had been on his phone, and he now disconnected. “I just called for a CS bus. I’ll get started on the spiral.”

“The what?”

“Oh, I’m searching in spirals now. Not grids.”

Interesting idea. She’d watch him and maybe try it herself on her next scene.

The ESU team leader approached. The compact, crew-cut army vet was grimacing. “Sorry, Detective. No sign of her on the streets. And I checked the cemetery office. The CCTV was running when we got here, but somehow it got fried ten minutes ago. All the data’s wiped.”

No surprise there.

“Just no clue where she’s gone.”

Pulaski gave a fast laugh. “Oh, we’ve got plenty of clues. Where the homeless guy was when the two of them talked, the gun, the poem. The approaches to and from the grave. The grave itself. The wheel. Surveillance footage outside the cemetery.”

“Still doesn’t seem like much,” the ESU man said.

“It doesn’t need to be. It just needs to point us somewhere.” Pulaski pulled on booties over his shoes and new latex gloves. “And we’ll go from there.”

75

“Lincoln. The news.”

Thom’s voice was calling from the kitchen, where he was fixing dinner. Rhyme didn’t know what was on the menu, but it smelled good. He usually thought of food as fuel — his reverence was reserved for beverages — but occasionally he enjoyed a fine meal. And his caregiver was just the man for creating one.

Rhyme called in response: “Why?”

“I heard his name mentioned.”

“Eight million people in the city, Thom. Can we narrow, some?”

“Just put it on.”

“News,” Rhyme murmured, clicking the remote, “is apprentice history...” The screen came to life. “It’s an ad! Cosmetics, long hair and slow motion. Useless. No shampoo will give anyone that hair who didn’t have that hair before the shampoo.”

“Well,” Thom offered, sighing, “either wait without complaining or change the channel.”

He changed the channel.

A blond anchorwoman, her highly made-up face as serious as could be, was saying “...has denied the allegations. But supporters and donors are already distancing themselves from the representative.”

A picture appeared, a postage-sized one in the lower right-hand corner of the cluttered screen, the man Lyle Spencer had spoken to about the Kommunalka Project.

Representative Stephen Cody.

The crawl read:

Her low voice gave the details:

Several other politicians chimed in with opinions, among them Senator Edward Talese of New York.

Thom stepped into the doorway. “How’s that for a twist?”

He handed a glass of wine to his boss, who thanked him with a nod. A cabernet. Some people could tell where the grapes came from, the nature of the earth in which the vines had grown, the year it had been bottled. Rhyme could tell two things only: it contained alcohol and had a not-unpleasant taste.

His eyes returned to the TV.

An image came on the screen of the representative scurrying through a sea of reporters from a black sedan into his Manhattan town house, head down. Their voices swelled and rattled as their questions ricocheted around the front yard. The one question that was discernible through the TV was: “Representative, you support green reform, but you’re riding in a limo. Could you comment on that?”

A criticism that seemed a bit milquetoast, considering the man had apparently just nodded favorably to the violent overthrow of the government.

As Thom disappeared into the kitchen, Rhyme motored into the front hallway. It had been released as a crime scene and the floor and walls had been scrubbed clean of the Watchmaker’s blood.

Here he brought the wheelchair to a stop more or less on the spot where the bullet had landed. His eyes dropped to the marble.

Ten minutes later, he heard Thom’s voice. “Who’s here?”

“How’s that?” Rhyme called absently.

“I heard you talking to someone.”

“Hardly.”

Rhyme returned to the parlor, set the wine on a side table and said to his phone, “Command. Call Sachs.”

76

Rhyme and Lon Sellitto were in his town house, listening over the speaker.

Amelia Sachs was at the garage on West 46th Street where, two days ago, Charles Hale had swapped one SUV out for another before driving to the park to send Rhyme to sleep forever.

She reported: “No cameras. That’s curious. Nearly all garages in the city have them. Hale must’ve searched for a while to find this one.”

Rhyme said, “And since he was planning on leaving right after he killed me, he wouldn’t care if he was recorded only picking up a new car. But he would care if he was meeting somebody secretly. Somebody who’d be here after he was gone.”

“Exactly, Rhyme. No cameras in the garage, but... I found one in a retail store across the street. I did a timeline. A limo entered the garage fifteen minutes before Hale got there and left three minutes after he did in his new SUV. I ran the limo’s tag. And you’re not going to believe who it’s registered to.”

“I make it one security,” the ESU officer’s voice came through the Motorola earpiece. He had the richest baritone Sachs had ever heard and if he decided to get out of policing, he’d have a future as a radio announcer or a narrator of audiobooks.

“Roger. I have eyes on two. ESU Team Two?”

“No one else I can see. Only the subject and the guard, who’s armed. Saw a piece on his right-side belt. Large. Maybe a forty-five.”

Sachs was in a store once again, this time electronics, not buttons. It was located in downtown Manhattan, not far from Wall Street. Under cover of the window merchandise, she was eyeing the two individuals who were walking along the street. The bodyguard was six three or so and of Lyle Spencer’s side-of-beef build. His head was shaved, common among ex-military or ex-police security specialists.

She radioed, “Five Eight Eight Five to ESU Three. What do you see?”

The woman, Laticia Krueger, a sniper, was atop First Federal Bank, a five-story structure whose roof featured both a good view of the street and a perfect nest for a shooter and her spotter.

“Just the two, Detective. Subject and guard.”

“K. ESU, all units. I’m going to make the call.”

In total there were eight Emergency Service officers nearby.

Would they be needed?

Time to see.

She pulled out a mobile and placed a speed-dial call.

As she watched the pair approach, the security guard frowned and fished his own cell from his pocket. He glanced at the number and answered.

Sachs heard “Yo, Barney. We’re on Rector. We’ll be at the car in—”

“This is Detective Amelia Sachs, NYPD. I have Barney’s phone. Your associate’s in custody. Do not give a reaction to this call.”

“What—?”

“I said, no reaction.”

He fell silent.

“There’s a team about to move in and arrest your boss. We know you’re armed. You’re surrounded by a half-dozen tactical officers and a sniper has you in her sights. No, don’t look around. Just keep walking like nothing’s going on. Say, ‘That’s right,’ if you understand.”

“That’s right.”

“Now, you’re going to remove your weapon from the holster, thumb and index only, and drop it behind the standpipe you’re coming up to. Keep walking another twenty feet. Then you’ll stop and lie down face-first on the sidewalk. Do you understand?”

“Look, I—”

“Say, ‘Sure thing’ if you understand.”

A pause. “Sure thing.”

“Is your boss armed? And if you lie, it’ll be obstruction of justice.”

“No.”

“Do you have a second weapon?”

“No.”

“Any other associates in the area?”

“No.”

“You’re doing fine. You’re a great actor. Netflix quality. All right, almost there.”

Sachs stepped away from the window, then pushed outside. “Now,” she said into the phone and disconnected.

The guard tossed the gun exactly as directed and continued along the sidewalk. It appeared that he was counting the steps. When he hit twenty, he went down. Harder than he needed to. He winced.

Into the Motorola, Sachs said, “ESU, move in, move in, move in!”

The guard’s employer noted he’d lagged behind and turned to see him on the ground and stepped forward, alarmed, probably concerned he’d had a heart attack.

But then, with the officers moving in, it was clear what was going on. And concern morphed to disgust.

Sachs was about to call, “Raise your hands!”

But there was no need. Marie Leppert, the former federal prosecutor that she was, did so of her own accord.

77

Normally, a prisoner went to Central Booking.

In this case, however, because Lincoln Rhyme was involved, the prisoner had made a detour.

At the takedown, Sachs had apprised Marie Leppert of her rights and arrested her for homicide, reckless endangerment, terrorism and that wonderful catchall charge “conspiracy,” a spawn of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute. Under RICO — hated by the mob and white-collar wrongdoers alike — Leppert and Charles Vespasian Hale actually counted as an organization.

Go figure...

Now, fully enwrapped in Fourth and Fifth Amendment protective armor, Leppert sat across from Lincoln Rhyme in the same chair that Hale had perched in not long before.

Sachs and Lon Sellitto were present too.

In a whiny voice like that of an accused child, Leppert said, “It’s not my fault.”

Rhyme cocked his head. “No?”

“I swear... Everything that happened, all the bad things. That was Hale. Not me.”

Sachs asked, “Where did you meet him? It was Texas, right?” She had largely recovered from the acid fumes, though her voice was still low and formidable.

Rhyme asked, “His Mexican projects?” Hale had business dealings down there years ago, perhaps thinking it would be a place to retire.

The candidate said, “That’s right. I did research into the cartels and local politicians in the north, Chihuahua mostly. Some people I talked to told me — almost reverently — about this American. He was like a consultant. He helped politicians get elected.”

Credible so far. Hale was more than a killer. Rhyme could see him doing oppo political work — though his schemes would probably involve far more than negative advertising and PR campaigns.

But was she feigning ignorance of this side of his “consultancy”?

Rhyme didn’t know. And his human polygraph, Lyle Spencer, wasn’t present.

She continued, “Who was he? I remember wondering.” Now her face grew earnest. “I saw prosecuting only as a stepping stone. I wanted to be in office. I left Justice and tried running for a seat in Houston. That didn’t work, not in a good old boy network like that. A New England girl didn’t stand a chance.” She offered a knowing glance to Sachs.

No sympathy was returned. His wife was not a woman to let any network of good — or bad — old boys divert her from whatever she set her sights on. Nor play any games to get there.

“I came back home here, worked on Wall Street for a few years and got donors for a PAC. I decided I wanted Cody’s seat. But as soon as I jumped into the campaign, I could see it wasn’t going to work out.”

Her thin lips grew thinner.

Rhyme finished, “So you pulled in favors in Texas and got a message to this... consultant. Hale.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever hear from him, but he contacted me right away.”

The woman leaned forward and Rhyme detected floral perfume or shampoo. The species of vegetation eluded him. “All I did was ask him to move the electoral needle in my favor. Oppo tactics, or whatever. Like candidates do all the time. He agreed and he got to work. He wanted to know about Cody’s background. When he learned he’d been a radical activist, and had actually done time in prison, he said he’d use that. And he went off on his own. Sabotaging cranes, the assassination plot? He never told me any of that. I swear to God.”

“You didn’t think it was a little suspicious that he wanted payment in untraceable diamonds?”

In Hale’s backpack was an envelope containing what was probably a half-million dollars’ worth of gems — this would be the purpose for the meeting in the garage just before Hale embarked on his birdwatching visit to Central Park to kill Rhyme.

“Well...” She was thinking quickly. “I thought it was a tax thing. But that was his business.”

Sellitto asked, “Were you going to deduct it as a business expense?”

“Uhm. Yes. Of course I was.”

Rhyme had learned over the years that some suspects — often former law enforcers and attorneys — invariably think they can talk their way out of trouble. Had he been her lawyer, he would have said: Shut up. Now.

He asked, “So you knew nothing about the illegal sides of his plan?”

“No!”

Sachs added, “None of them?”

“No, no, no! The cranes, the assassination thing? Hacking into the security company and uploading the forged emails? That was all his idea!”

And with that:

Gotcha.

The choreography of the interview, carefully worked out by Rhyme and Sachs ahead of time, had had the desired effect. The trap snapped shut.

It was not public knowledge how the emails got into Cody’s account. There’d been no press report about Woman X’s induction hacking device or Emery Digital.

Their eyes met. She said, “I want my lawyer.”

Sachs rose and, tucking the notebook into the same rear pocket that contained her switchblade, said, “You’ll get that chance. Downtown.”

Leppert turned back to Rhyme. In a whisper: “How? How did you find out?”

“Oh, I had an informer.”

“Who?” Leppert asked bitterly.

But Lincoln Ryme did not answer.

Now, the day after Leppert’s arrest, it was at last time for Thom’s dinner.

The scent was arresting.

Rhyme detected mild fish, mushrooms more pungent than generic fungi, garlic, dry white wine. Vermouth, he decided. Fresh bread too.

Sachs was setting the table, and Lincoln Rhyme was once again in the hallway where Charles Hale had died.

An old Glenmorangie whisky was in hand.

He was thinking of the other day, his exchange with Thom, after he’d been in the hallway — parked on the spot where the Watchmaker had died.

“Who’s here?”

“How’s that?”

“I heard you talking to someone.”

“Hardly...”

Ah, but that was not exactly the truth.

He recalled now his comment to Marie Leppert: that it was an informer that led to her.

And it was.

Charles Vespasian Hale himself.

Though more accurately: his ghost.

That was whom Rhyme had been talking to here in the hallway.

Charles, if anyone were to ask, I will deny to the hilt that I’m speaking with a person no longer of this earth. But I have to say that something is troubling me. You dismissed my comment that I was skeptical that you did this for yourself, claiming that, no, you had no client.

You pitched a good case for your self-interest — tweaking the NTP servers and collecting enough money to give yourself an unlimited bankroll for your life in Venezuela or wherever you would make your own personal Leisure World.

But on reflection I now believe I was right. A timepiece exists for a purpose: it serves its owner. For you, the same.

You are, if you’ll forgive me, on the clock for someone.

But for whom?

Let’s run through it all: I tip to the fact that the assassination plot’s fake and your whole point is to plant the infamous device underneath Emery Digital. I confront you with it. And what do you do? Why, you improvise, of course, and spin the tale of hacking the network time protocols. But, when you look at it, wasn’t that an awful lot of work just to make some money? Don’t you have Romanian or Chinese connections happy to crack into a hedge fund or bank directly? A weekend’s work, and suddenly you’re a hundred million richer.

So take NTP out of the equation. You obviously breached Emery for a purpose. What was it?

Could Woman X’s device possibly be used to doctor someone’s email account? Maybe someone whose messages have made the news in a big way lately — because they spoke favorably about that most horrific of crimes: presidential assassination.

Representative Stephen Cody’s?

A man whom my expert interrogator, Lyle Spencer, had vetted and to whom he’d given a clean bill of health.

And if so, who would gain from the forgery?

For one, the candidate who was behind Cody in the polls: Marie Leppert, former prosecutor in Texas, near Mexico, where you had a base of operation.

That’s what this was about all along: discrediting Cody, just long enough for him to lose the election. The Kommunalka, its secret radical parent cell, the assassination... All complications.

You’re not responding, Charles, hm? Hardly expect you to. Though I believe your eyes, those intense blue eyes that I am picturing now, are telling me that I’m spot-on.

Well, there’s a way to find out for certain.

And so their “conversation” over, Rhyme had then motored into the parlor, instructing his phone: “Call Sachs.”

While Rhyme had called Emery Digital and learned that, yes, Emery did handle both the.com and.gov email accounts of Stephen Cody, Amelia had gone to the garage where Hale had swapped SUVs one final time and learned of his meeting with Marie Leppert.

“Quod erat demonstrandum, Charles. I’ve proved my case.”

Now, tonight, en route to the dining room, Rhyme paused. His eyes went to the pocket watch on the mantel. The Breguet.

And he gave a sudden laugh of understanding. Hale needed some way to execute his sham assassination attempt by diverting the president. But he could have picked any number of ways — a series of bombs, ending with a small one in the Holland Tunnel. That would’ve done the trick.

But he’d decided to sabotage cranes.

Why?

Drama, certainly. A tumbling tower crane got the city’s attention.

But there was another reason, Rhyme believed, and it was the source of his brief laugh.

Because cranes resemble the hands of timepieces.

Hands...

And was there yet one additional meaning as well? I’ll forego the poker metaphor and pick this one: Was Hale saying that his complex plot here — his last, as it turned out — was, of all his schemes through the years, his finest sleight of hand?

A play on words for anyone who might get it, though Rhyme had a feeling it was meant exclusively for him.

“Dinner,” his aide called.

Noting that no one was watching, Lincoln Rhyme now lifted his glass toward the watch and sipped.

He then moved from the parlor into the dining room, where Thom was placing the first course on the table, and Amelia Sachs was lighting candles.