Time is the fire in which we burn.
– DELMORE SCHWARTZ
Lincoln Rhyme had been awake for more than an hour.
A young officer from the Coast Guard had delivered a jacket found floating in New York Harbor, a man's size 44. It was, the captain of the boat deduced, probably the missing victim's; both sleeves were covered in blood, the cuffs slashed.
The jacket was a Macy's house brand and contained no other trace or evidence that could lead back to the owner.
He was now alone in the bedroom with Thom, who'd just finished Rhyme's morning routine-his physical therapy exercises and what the aide delicately called "hygienic duties." (Rhyme referred to them as the "piss 'n' shit detail," though usually only when easy-to-shock visitors were present.)
Amelia Sachs now walked up the stairs and joined him. She dropped her jacket in a chair, walked past him, opened the curtains. She looked out the window, into Central Park.
The slim young man sensed immediately that something was up. "I'll go make coffee. Or toast. Or something." He vanished, closing the door behind him.
So what was this? Rhyme wondered unhappily. He'd had more than enough personal issues recently than he wanted to deal with.
Her eyes were still looking over the painful brightness of the park. He asked, "So what was this errand that was so important?"
"I stopped by Argyle Security."
Rhyme blinked and looked at her face closely. "They're the ones that called after you got written up in the Times, when we closed that case about the illusionist."
"Right."
Argyle was an international company that specialized in safeguarding corporate executives and negotiating the release of kidnapped employees-a popular crime in some foreign countries. They'd offered Sachs a job making twice what she did as a cop. And promised her a carry permit-a license for a concealed weapon-in most jurisdictions, unusual for security companies. That and the promise to send her to exotic and dangerous locations caught her interest, though she'd turned them down immediately.
"What's this all about?"
"I'm quitting, Rhyme."
"Quitting the force? Are you serious?"
She nodded. "I've pretty much decided. I want to go in a different direction. I can do good things there too. Protecting families, guarding kids. They do a lot of antiterrorist work."
Now he too stared out the window at the stark, bald trees of Central Park. He thought about his conversation with Kathryn Dance the previous day, about his early days of therapy. One doctor, a sharp, young man with the NYPD, Terry Dobyns, had told him, "Nothing lasts forever." He'd meant this about the depression he'd been experiencing.
Now the sentence meant something very different and he couldn't get the words out of his mind.
Nothing lasts forever…
"Ah."
"I think I have to, Rhyme. I have to."
"Because of your father?"
She nodded, dug her finger into her hair, scratched. Winced at that pain, or at some other.
"This's crazy, Sachs."
"I don't think I can do it anymore. Be a cop."
"It's pretty fast, don't you think?"
"I've thought about it all night. I've never thought about anything so much in my life."
"Well, keep thinking. You can't make decisions like this after you get some bad news."
"Bad news? Everything I thought about Dad was a lie."
"Not everything," Rhyme countered. "One part of his life."
"But the most important part. That's who he was first, Rhyme. A cop."
"It was a long time ago. The Sixteenth Avenue Club was closed up when you were a baby."
"That makes him less corrupt?"
Rhyme said nothing.
"You want me to explain it, Rhyme? Like evidence? Add a few drops of reagent and look at the results? I can't. All I know is I have a really bad taste in my mouth. This's affected how I look at the whole job."
He said kindly, "It's gotta be tough. But whatever happened to him doesn't touch you. All that matters is you're a good cop, and a lot fewer cases'll be closed if you leave."
"I'll only close cases if my heart's in it. And it's not. Something's gone." She added, "Pulaski's coming along great. He's better now than I was when I started working with you."
"He's better because you've been training him."
"Don't do that."
"What?"
"Butter me up, drop those little comments. That's what my mother used to do with my father. You don't want me to leave, I understand, but don't play that kind of card."
But he had to play the card. And any other he could think of. After the accident Rhyme had wrestled with suicide on a number of occasions. And though he'd come close he always rejected the choice. What Amelia Sachs was now considering was psychic suicide. If she quit the force he knew that she'd be killing her soul.
"But Argyle? It's not for you." He shook his head. "Nobody takes corporate security seriously, even-especially-the clients."
"No, their assignments're good. And they send you back to school. You learn foreign languages… They even have a forensics department. And the money's good."
He laughed. "Since when has this ever been about money?…Give it some time, Sachs. What's the hurry?"
She shook her head. "I'm going to close the St. James case. And I'll do whatever you need to nail the Watchmaker. But after that…"
"You know, if you quit, a lot of buttons get pushed. It'll affect you for a long time, if you ever wanted to come back." He looked away, blood pounding in his temple.
"Rhyme." She pulled a chair up, sat and closed her hand around his-the right one, the fingers of which had some sensation and movement. She squeezed. "Whatever I do, it won't affect us, our life." She smiled.
You and me, Rhyme…
You and me, Sachs…
He looked off. Lincoln Rhyme was a scientist, a man of the brain, not the heart. Some years ago Rhyme and Sachs had met on a hard case-a series of kidnappings by a killer obsessed with human bones. No one could stop him, except these two misfits-Rhyme, the quadriplegic in retirement, and Sachs, the disillusioned rookie betrayed by her cop lover. Yet, somehow, together, they had forged a wholeness, filling the ragged gaps within each of them, and they'd stopped the killer.
Deny it as much as he wanted to, those words, you and me, had been his compass in the precarious world they'd created together. He wasn't at all convinced that she was right that they wouldn't be altered by her decision. Would removing their common purpose change them?
Was he witnessing the transition from Before to After?
"Have you already quit?"
"No." She pulled a white envelope from her jacket pocket. "I wrote the resignation letter. But I wanted to tell you first."
"Give it a couple of days before you decide. You don't owe it to me. But I'm asking. A couple of days."
She stared at the envelope for a long moment. Finally she said, "Okay."
Rhyme was thinking: Here we are working on a case involving a man obsessed with clocks and watches, and the most important thing to me at this moment is buying a little time from Sachs. "Thanks." Then: "Now, let's get to work."
"I want you to understand… "
"There's nothing to understand," he said with what he felt was miraculous detachment. "There's a killer to catch. That's all we should be thinking about."
He left her alone in the bedroom and took the tiny elevator downstairs to the lab, where Mel Cooper was at work.
"Blood on the jacket's AB positive. Matches what was on the pier."
Rhyme nodded. Then he had the tech call the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab about the ASTER information-the thermal scans to find possible locations of roof tarring.
It was early in California but the tech managed to track down somebody and put some pressure on him to find and upload the images. The pictures arrived soon after. They were striking but not particularly helpful. There were, as Sellitto had suggested, hundreds, possibly thousands of buildings that showed indications of elevated heat, and the system couldn't discriminate between locations that were being reroofed, under construction, being heated with Consolidated Edison steam or simply had particularly hot chimneys.
All Rhyme could think to do was tell Central that any assaults or break-ins in or near a building having roofing work done should be patched through to them immediately.
The dispatcher hesitated and said she'd put the notice on the main computer.
The tone of her voice suggested that he was grasping at straws.
What could he say? She was right.
Lucy Richter closed the door to her co-op and flipped the locks.
She hung up her coat and hooded sweatshirt, printed on the front with 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, and on the back the division's slogan: Steadfast and loyal.
Her muscles ached. At the gym, she'd done five miles, at a good pace and 9-percent incline, on the treadmill, then a half hour of push-ups and crunches. That was something else military service had done: taught her to appreciate muscle. You can put down physical fitness if you want, make fun of it as vanity and a waste of time but, fact is, it's empowering.
She filled the kettle for tea and pulled a sugared doughnut out of the fridge, thinking about today. There were plenty of things that needed to be done: phone calls to return, emails, baking cookies and making her signature cheesecake for the reception on Thursday. Or maybe she'd just go shopping with friends and buy dessert at a bakery. Or have lunch with her mother.
Or lie in bed and watch the soaps. Pamper herself.
It was the start of heaven-her two weeks away from the land of the bitter fog-and she was going to enjoy every minute of it.
Bitter fog…
This was an expression she'd heard from a local policeman outside Baghdad, referring to fumes and smoke following the detonation of an IED-improvised explosive device.
Explosions in movies were just big flares of flaming gasoline. And then were gone, nothing left, except the reaction shot on the characters' faces. In reality what remained after an IED was a thick bluish haze that stank and stung your eyes and burned your lungs. Part dust, part chemical smoke, part vaporized hair and skin, it remained at the scene for hours.
The bitter fog was a symbol of the horror of this new type of war. There were no trusted allies except your fellow soldiers. There were no battle lines. There were no fronts. And you had no clue who the enemy was. It might be your interpreter, a cook, a passerby, a local businessman, a teenager, an old man. Or somebody five klicks away. And the weapons? Not howitzers and tanks but the tiny parcels that produced the bitter fog, the packet of TNT or C4 or C3 or the shaped charge stolen from your own armory, hidden so inconspicuously that you never saw it until…well, the fact was you never saw it.
Lucy now rummaged in a cabinet for the tea.
Bitter fog…
Then she paused. What was that sound?
Lucy cocked her head and listened.
What was that?
A ticking. She felt her stomach twist at the sound. She and Bob had no wind-up clocks. But that's what it sounded like.
What the hell is it?
She stepped into the small bedroom, which they used mostly as a closet. The light was out. She flicked it on. No, the sound wasn't coming from there.
Her palms sweating, breath coming fast, heart pounding.
I'm imagining the sound… I'm going crazy. IED's don't tick. Even timed devices have electronic detonators.
Besides, was she actually thinking that somebody had left a bomb in her co-op in New York City?
Girl, you need some serious help.
Lucy walked to the master bedroom doorway. The closet door was open, blocking her view of the dresser. Maybe it was…She stepped forward. But then paused. The ticking was coming from someplace else, not in here. She went up the hall to the dining room and looked inside. Nothing.
She then continued on to the bathroom. She gave a laugh.
Sitting on the vanity, next to the tub, was a clock. It looked like an old one. It was black and on the face was a window with a full moon staring at her. Where had it come from? Had her aunt been cleaning out her basement again? Had Bob bought it when she was away and set it out this morning after she'd left for the health club?
But why the bathroom?
The freaky moon face looked at her with its curious gaze, almost malevolent. It reminded her of the faces of the children along the roadside, their mouths curved into an expression that wasn't quite a smile; you had no idea what was going on in their heads. When they looked at you, were they seeing their saviors? Their enemy? Or creatures from another planet?
Lucy decided she'd call Bob or her mother and ask about the clock. She went into the kitchen. She made the tea and carried the mug into the bathroom, the phone too, and ran water into the tub.
Wondering if her first bubble bath in months would do anything to wash away the bitter fog.
On the street in front of Lucy's apartment Vincent Reynolds watched two schoolgirls walk past.
He glanced at them but felt no deepening of the hunger already ravaging his body. They were high school kids and too young for him. (Sally Anne had been a teenager, true, but so had he, which made it okay.)
Through his cell phone, Vincent heard Duncan's whispered voice. "I'm in her bedroom. She's in the bathroom, running a bath… That's helpful."
Water boarding…
Because the building had a lot of tenants, and he could easily be spotted picking the lock, Duncan had climbed to the top of a building several doors down and made his way over the roofs to Lucy's, then down the fire escape and into her bedroom. He was real athletic (another difference between the friends).
"Okay, I'm going to do it now."
Thank you…
But then he heard, "Hold on."
"What?" Vincent asked. "Is something wrong?"
"She's on the phone. We'll have to wait."
Hungry Vincent was sitting forward. Waiting was not something he did well.
A minute passed, two, five.
"What's going on?" Vincent whispered.
"She's still on the phone."
Vincent was furious.
Goddamn her…He wished he could be there with Duncan to help kill her. What the hell was she doing making phone calls now? He wolfed down some food.
Finally the Watchmaker said, "I'm going to try to get her off the phone. I'll go back up to the roof and come down the stairs into the hallway. I'll get her to open the door." Vincent heard some rare emotion in the man's next comment. "I can't wait any longer."
You don't know the half of it, thought Clever Vincent, who surfaced momentarily before being sent away by his starving other half.
Stripping for her bath, Lucy Richter heard another sound. Not the ticking of the moon clock. From somewhere nearby. Inside? The hallway? The alley?
A click. Metallic.
What was it?
The life of the soldier is the sound of metal on metal. Slipping the long rounds of rifle ammo, fragrant with oil, into the clips, loading and locking the Colts, vehicle door latches, fueler's belt buckles and vests clinking. The ring of a slug from an AK-47, dancing off a Bradley or Humvee.
The noise again, click, click.
Then silence.
She felt chill air, as if a window was open. Where? The bedroom, she decided. Half naked, she walked to the bedroom doorway and glanced in. Yes, the window was open. But when she'd glanced in earlier, hearing the ticking, hadn't it been closed? She wasn't sure.
The Lucy commanded: Don't be so damn paranoid, soldier. Getting pretty tired of this. There're no IED's, no suicide bombers here, no bitter fog.
Get a grip.
One arm covering her breasts-there were apartments across the alley-she closed and locked the window. Looked down into the alley. Saw nothing.
It was then that somebody began pounding on the front door. Lucy spun around, gasping. She pulled on a bathrobe and hurried to the dark foyer. "Who's there?"
There was a pause, then a man's voice called, "I'm a police officer. Are you all right?"
She called, "What's wrong?"
"It's an emergency. Please open the door. Are you okay?"
Alarmed, she pulled the robe belt tight and undid the deadbolts, thinking of the bedroom window and wondering if somebody'd been trying to break it. She unhooked the chain.
Lucy twisted the lock, reflecting only after the door began to push open toward her that she probably should've asked to see an ID or a badge before she unhooked the chain. She'd been caught up in a very different world for so long that she'd forgotten there were still plenty of bad people stateside.
Amelia Sachs and Lon Sellitto arrived at the old apartment building in Greenwich Village, nestled on quaint Barrow Street.
"That's it?"
"Uh-huh," Sellitto said. His fingers were blue. His ears, red.
They looked into the alley beside the building. Sachs surveyed it carefully.
"What's her name?" she asked.
"Richter. Lucy I think's her first name."
"Which window's hers?"
"Third floor."
She glanced up at the fire escape.
They continued on to the front stairs of the apartment building. A crowd of people were watching. Sachs scanned their faces, still convinced that the Watchmaker had swept up at the first scene because he intended to return. Which meant he might have remained here too. But she saw no one that resembled him or his partner.
"We're sure it was the Watchmaker?" Sachs asked Frank Rettig and Nancy Simpson, cold and huddling next to the Crime Scene rapid response van, parked cockeyed in the middle of Barrow.
"Yep, he left one of those clocks," Rettig explained. "With the moon faces."
Sachs and Sellitto started up the stairs.
"One thing," Nancy Simpson said.
The detectives stopped and turned.
The officer nodded at the building, grimacing. "It won't be pretty."
Sachs and Sellitto ascended the stairs slowly. The air in the dim stairwell smelled of pine cleanser and oil furnace heat.
"How'd he get in?" Sachs mused.
"This guy's a ghost. He gets in however he fucking wants to."
She looked up the stairwell. They paused outside the door. A nameplate said, Richter/Dobbs.
It won't be pretty…
"Let's do it."
Sachs opened the door and walked into Lucy Richter's apartment.
Where they were met by a muscular young woman in sweats, hair pinned up. She turned away from the uniformed officer she'd been talking to. Her face darkened as she glanced at Sachs and Sellitto and noticed the gold badges around their necks.
"You're in charge?" asked Lucy Richter angrily, stepping forward, right in Lon Sellitto's face.
"I'm one of the detectives on the case." He identified himself. Sachs did too.
Lucy Richter put her hands on her hips. "What the hell do you people think you're doing?" the soldier barked. "You know there's some psycho leaving these goddamn clocks when he kills people. And you don't tell anybody? I didn't survive all these months of combat in the goddamn desert just to come home and get killed by some motherfucker because you don't bother to share that information with the public."
It took some time to calm her down.
"Ma'am," Sachs explained, "his M.O. isn't that he's delivering these clocks ahead of time to let people know he's on his way. He was here. In your apartment. You were lucky."
Lucy Richter was indeed fortunate.
About a half hour ago a passerby happened to see a man climb onto her fire escape and head for the roof. He'd called 911 to report it. The Watchmaker had apparently glanced down, realized he'd been spotted and fled.
A search of the neighborhood could find no trace of him and no witnesses had seen anyone matching the Watchmaker's image on the computer composite.
Sachs glanced toward Sellitto, who said, "We're very sorry for the incident, Ms. Richter."
"Sorry," she scoffed. "You need to go public with it."
The detectives glanced at each other. Sellitto nodded. "We will. I'll have Public Affairs make an announcement on the local news."
Sachs said, "I'd like to search your apartment for evidence he might've left. And ask you a few questions about what happened."
"In a minute. I have to make some calls. My family'll hear about this on the news. I don't want them to worry."
"This is pretty important," Sellitto said.
The soldier opened her cell phone. In a firm voice she added, "Like I said, in a minute."
"Rhyme, you there?"
"Go ahead, Sachs." The criminalist was in his laboratory, connected to Sachs via radio. He recalled that in the next month or so they'd planned to try a high-definition video camera mounted to her head or shoulder, broadcasting to Rhyme's lab, which would let him see everything that she saw. They'd joked and called it a James Bond toy. He felt a pang that it would not be Sachs inaugurating this device with him.
Then he forced the sentiment away. What he often told those working for him he now told himself: There's a perp out there; nothing matters but catching him and you can't do that if you're not concentrating 100 percent.
"We showed Lucy the composite of the Watchmaker. She didn't recognize him."
"How'd he get inside today?"
"Not sure. If he's sticking to his M.O. he picked the front door lock. But then I think he went up to the roof and climbed down the fire escape to the vic's window. He got inside, left the clock and was waiting for her. But for some reason he climbed back outside. That's when the wit outside saw him and the Watchmaker booked on out of here. Went back up the fire escape."
"Where was he inside her apartment?"
"He left the clock in the bathroom. The fire escape is off the master bedroom so he was in there too." She paused. Then came on a moment later. "They've been canvassing for witnesses but nobody saw him or his car. Maybe he and his partner are on foot since we've got his SUV." A half dozen different subway lines serve Greenwich Village and they could easily have escaped via any of them.
"I don't think so." Rhyme explained that he felt the Watchmaker and his assistant would prefer wheels. The choice of using vehicles or not when committing a crime is a consistent pattern in a criminal's M.O. It rarely changes.
Sachs searched the bedroom, the fire escape, the bathroom and the routes he would've taken to get to those places. She checked the roof too. It had not been recently tarred, she reported.
"Nothing, Rhyme. It's like he's wearing a Tyvek suit of his own. He's just not leaving anything behind."
Edmond Locard, the famed French criminalist, developed what he called the exchange principle, which stated that whenever a physical crime occurs, there is some transfer of evidence between the criminal and the location. He leaves something of himself at the scene and he takes some of the scene with him when he departs. The principle is deceptively optimistic, though, because sometimes the trace is so minuscule it's missed and sometimes it's easily located but provides no helpful leads for investigators. Still Locard's principle holds that there would be some transfer of materials.
Rhyme often wondered, though, if there existed the rare criminal who was as smart as, or smarter than, Rhyme himself and if such a person could learn enough about forensic science to commit a crime and yet flaunt Locard's principle-leave behind no evidence and pick up none himself. Was the Watchmaker such a person?
"Think, Sachs… There's got to be more. Something we're missing. What does the vic say?"
"She's pretty shaken up. Not really concentrating."
After a pause Rhyme said, "I'm sending down our secret weapon."
Kathryn Dance sat across from Lucy Richter in the living room of her apartment.
The soldier was beneath a Jimi Hendrix poster and a wedding photo of Lucy and her husband, a round-faced, cheerful man in a dress military uniform.
Dance noted the woman was pretty calm, considering the circumstances, though, as Amelia Sachs had said, something was clearly troubling her. Dance had the impression that it was partly something other than the attack. She didn't exhibit the post-traumatic stress reactions of a near miss; she was troubled in a more fundamental way.
"If you don't mind, could you go through the details again?"
"If it'll help catch that son of a bitch, anything." Lucy explained that she'd gone to the gym to work out that morning. When she returned she found the clock.
"I was upset. The ticking…" Her face now revealed a subtle fear reaction. Fight-or-flight. At Dance's prompting she explained about the bombs overseas. "I guessed it was a present or something but it kind of freaked me out. Then I felt a breeze and went to look. I found the bedroom window open. That's when the police showed up."
"Nothing else unusual?"
"No. Not that I can remember."
Danced asked her a number of other questions. Lucy Richter didn't know Theodore Adams or Joanne Harper. She couldn't think of anyone who'd want to hurt her. She'd been trying to recall something else that could help the police but was drawing a blank.
The woman was outwardly brave ("that son of a bitch") but Dance believed that something in Lucy's mind was preventing her, subconsciously, from focusing on what had just happened. The classic defensive crossing of her arms and legs was a sign, indicating not deception but a barrier against whatever was threatening her.
The agent needed a different approach. She put her notebook down.
"What are you doing in town?" she asked conversationally.
Lucy explained that she was here on leave from her duty in the Middle East. Normally she'd have met her husband, Bob, in Germany, where they had friends, but she was getting a commendation on Thursday.
"Oh, part of that parade, supporting the troops?"
"Right afterward."
"Congratulations."
Her smile fluttered. Dance noticed the minuscule reaction.
And she noted one in herself, as well; Kathryn Dance's husband had been recognized for bravery under fire by the Bureau four days before he'd died. But that was a crackle of static that Dance immediately tuned out.
Shaking her head, the agent continued. "You come back to the States and look what happens-you run into this guy. That's pretty shitty. Especially after being overseas."
"It's not that bad over there. Sounds worse on the news."
"Still…But it looks like you're coping pretty well."
Her body was telling a very different story.
"Oh, yeah. You do what you have to. No big deal." Her fingers were-entwined.
"What do you do there?"
"I manage fuelers. Basically it's running supply trucks."
"Important job."
A shrug. "I guess."
"Good to be here on leave, I'll bet."
"You ever in the service?"
"No," Dance answered.
"Well, in the army, remember rule number one: Never pass up R and R. Even if it's just drinking punch with the brass and collecting a wall decoration."
Dance kept drawing her out. "How many other soldiers'll be at the ceremony?"
"Eighteen."
Lucy wasn't comfortable at all. Dance wondered if her underlying uneasiness was because she might have to say a few words in front of the crowd. Public speaking was higher on the fear scale than skydiving. "And how big's the event going to be?"
"I don't know. A hundred. Maybe two."
"Is your family going?"
"Oh, yeah. Everybody. We're going to have a reception here afterward."
"As my daughter says," Dance offered, "parties rock. What's on the menu?"
"Forgeddabout it," Lucy joked. "We're in the Village. It'll be Italian. Baked ziti, scampi, sausage. My mother and aunt're cooking. I'm making dessert."
"My downfall," Dance said. "Sweets…I'm getting hungry." Then she said, "Sorry, I got distracted." Leaving the notebook closed, she looked into the woman's eyes. "Back to your visitor. You were saying, you made your tea. Running the bath. You feel a breeze. You go into the bedroom. The window's open. What was I asking? Oh, was there anything else you saw that was out of the ordinary?"
"Not really." She said this quickly, as before, but then she squinted. "Wait. You know…there was one thing."
"Really?"
Dance had done what's known as "flooding." She'd decided that it wasn't only the Watchmaker that was bothering Lucy but rather her duty overseas, as well as the upcoming awards ceremony, for some reason. Dance had gone back to the topics and kept bombarding her with questions, in hopes of numbing her and letting the other memories break through.
Lucy rose and walked to the bedroom. Saying nothing, Dance followed her. Amelia Sachs joined them.
The soldier looked around the room.
Careful, Dance told herself. Lucy was onto something. Dance kept silent. Too many interviewers ruin a session by pouncing. The rule with vague memories is that you can let them surface but you can rarely reel them in.
Watching and listening are the two most important parts of the interview. Talking comes last.
"There was something that bothered me, something other than the window being open… Oh, you know what? I've got it. When I walked to the bedroom earlier, to see about the ticking, something was different-I couldn't see the dresser."
"Why was that unusual?"
"Because when I left to go to the health club I glanced at it to see if my sunglasses were there. They were and I picked them up. But then when I looked into the room later, when I heard the ticking, I couldn't see the dresser-because the closet door was partly open."
Dance said, "So after the man left the clock he was probably hiding in the closet or behind the door."
"Makes sense," Lucy said.
Dance turned to Sachs, who nodded with a smile and said, "Good. I better get to work." And she pulled open the closet door with her latex-gloved hand.
A second time they'd failed.
Duncan was driving even more carefully, meticulously, than he usually did.
He was silent and completely calm. Which bothered Vincent even more. If Duncan slammed down his fist and screamed, like his stepfather, Vincent would have felt better. ("You did what?" the man had raged, referring to the rape of Sally Anne. "You fat pervert!") He was worried that Duncan had had enough and was going to give up the whole thing.
Vincent didn't want his friend to go away.
Duncan merely drove slowly, stayed in his lane, didn't speed, didn't try to beat yellow lights.
And didn't say a word for a long time.
Finally he explained to Vincent what had happened: As he'd started to climb to the roof-planning to get into the building, knock on Lucy's door and get her to hang up the phone, he'd glanced down and seen a man in the alley, staring at him, pulling his cell phone from his pocket, shouting for Duncan to stop. The killer had hurried to the roof, run west several buildings then rapelled into the alley. He'd then sprinted to the Buick.
Duncan was driving meticulously, yes, but without any obvious destination. At first Vincent wondered if this was to lose the police but there didn't seem to be any risk of pursuit. Then he decided that Duncan was on automatic pilot, driving in large circles.
Like the hands of a clock.
Once again the shock of a narrow escape faded and Vincent felt the hunger growing again, hurting his jaw, hurting his head, hurting his groin.
If we don't eat, we die.
He wanted to be back in Michigan, hanging out with his sister, having dinner with her, watching TV. But his sister wasn't here, she was miles and miles away, maybe thinking of him right now-but that didn't give him any comfort… The hunger was too intense. Nothing was working out! He felt like screaming. Vincent had better luck cruising strip malls in New Jersey or waiting for a college coed or receptionist jogging through a deserted park. What was the point of-
In his quiet voice Duncan said, "I'm sorry."
"You…?"
"I'm sorry."
Vincent was disarmed. His anger diminished and he wasn't sure what to say.
"You've been helping me, working hard. And look what's happened. I've let you down."
Here was Vincent's mother, explaining to him, when he was ten, that she'd let him down with Gus, then with her second husband, then with Bart, then with Rachel the experiment, then with her third husband.
And every time, young Vincent had said just what he said now. "It's okay."
"No, it's not…I talk about the great scheme of things. But that doesn't minimize our disappointments. I owe you. And I'll make it up to you."
Which is something his mother never said, much less did, leaving Vincent to find what comfort he could in food, TV shows, spying on girls and having his heart-to-hearts.
No, it was clear that his friend, Duncan, meant what he was saying. He was genuinely remorseful that Vincent hadn't been able to have Lucy. Vincent still felt the urge to cry but now for a different reason. Not from the hunger, not from frustration. He felt filled with an odd sensation. People hardly ever said nice things to him like this. People hardly ever worried about him.
"Look," Duncan said, "the one I'm going to do next. You're not going to want her."
"Is she ugly?"
"Not really. It's just the way she's going to die…I'm going to burn her."
"Oh."
"In the book, remember the alcohol torture?"
"Not really."
The pictures in the book were of men being tortured; they hadn't interested Vincent.
"You pour alcohol on the lower half of someone's body and set fire to it. You can put out an alcohol fire quickly if they confess. Of course, I'm not going to be putting it out."
True, Vincent agreed, he wouldn't want her after that.
"But I have another idea."
Duncan then explained what he had in mind, Vincent's spirits improving with every word. Duncan asked, "Don't you think it'll work out for everybody?"
Well, not quite everybody, thought Clever Vincent, who was back and in a pretty good mood, all things considered.
Sitting in front of the evidence charts, Rhyme heard Sachs come back on the line.
"Okay, Rhyme. We've found he was hiding in the closet."
"Which one?"
"In Lucy's bedroom."
Rhyme closed his eyes. "Describe it to me."
Sachs gave him the whole scene-the hallway leading to the bedroom, the layout of the bedroom itself then the furniture, pictures on the wall, the Watchmaker's entrance and exit route and other details. Everything was described in precise, objective detail. Her training and experience shone as sharply as her red hair. If she left the force he wondered how long it would take another cop to walk the grid as well as she did.
Forever, he thought cynically.
Anger flared for a moment. Then he forced the emotion away and concentrated again on her words.
Sachs described the closet. "Six feet four inches wide. Filled with clothes. Men's on the left, women's on the right, half and half. Shoes on the floor. Fourteen pair. Four men's, ten women's."
A typical ratio, Rhyme reflected, for a married couple, thinking of his own closet from years ago. "When he was hiding, was he lying on the floor?"
"No. Too many boxes."
He heard her ask a question. Then she came back on the line. "The clothes're ordered now but he must've moved them. I can see some boxes moved on the floor and a few bits of that roofing tar we found earlier."
"What were the clothes he was hiding between?"
"A suit. And Lucy's army uniform."
"Good." Certain garments, like uniforms, are particularly good at collecting evidence, thanks to their prominent epaulettes, buttons and decorations. "Was he against the front or back?"
"Front."
"Perfect. Go over every button, medal, bar, decoration."
"Okay. Give me a few minutes."
Then silence.
His impatience, laced with anger, was back. He stared at the whiteboards.
Finally she said, "I found two hairs and some fibers."
He was about to tell her to check the hairs against samples in the apartment. But of course he didn't need to do this. "I compared the hairs to hers. They don't match." He began to tell her to find a sample of the woman's husband's hair when Sachs said, "But I found her husband's brush. I'm ninety-nine percent sure they're his."
Good, Sachs. Good.
"But the fibers…they don't seem to match anything else here." Sachs paused. "They look like wool, light-colored. Maybe a sweater…but they were caught on a pocket button at about shoulder level for a man of the Watchmaker's height. Could be a shearling collar."
A reasonable deduction, though they'd have to examine the fibers more carefully in the lab.
After a few minutes she said, "That's about it, Rhyme. Not much but it's something."
"Okay, bring everything in. We'll go over it here." He disconnected the line.
Thom wrote down the information Sachs gave them. After the aide left the room Lincoln Rhyme stared again at the charts. He wondered if the notes he was looking at weren't simply clues in a homicide case, but evidence of a different sort of murder: the corpse of the last crime scene he and Amelia Sachs would ever work together.
Lon Sellitto was gone and, inside Lucy Richter's apartment, Sachs was just finishing packing up the evidence. She turned to Kathryn Dance and thanked her.
"Hope it's helpful."
"That's the thing about crime scene work. Only a couple of fibers, but they could be enough for a conviction. We'll just have to see." Sachs added, "I'm heading back to Rhyme's. Listen, I don't know if you'd be willing but could you do some canvassing in the neighborhood? You've sure got the touch when it comes to wits."
"You bet."
Sachs gave her some printouts with the Watchmaker's composite picture and left, to head back to Rhyme's.
Dance nodded at Lucy Richter. "You're doing okay?"
"Fine," the solider replied and offered a stoic smile. She walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on the stove. "You want some tea? Or coffee?"
"No. I'm going to be outside looking for witnesses."
Lucy was staring down at the floor, a good semaphore signal to a kinesics expert. Dance said nothing.
The soldier said, "You said you were from California. You going back soon?"
"Tomorrow, probably."
"Just wondering if you'd have time for coffee or something." Lucy played with a potholder. On it were the words 4th Infantry Division. Steadfast and Loyal.
"Sure. We'll work it out." Dance found a card in her purse and wrote her hotel name on it, then circled her mobile on the front.
Lucy took it.
"Call me," Dance said.
"I will."
"Everything okay?"
"Oh, sure. Just fine."
Dance shook the woman's hand, then left the apartment, reminding herself of an important rule in kinesic analysis: Sometimes you don't need to uncover the truth behind every deception you're told.
Amelia Sachs returned to Rhyme's with a small carton of evidence.
"What do we have?" he asked.
Sachs went over again what she'd found at the scene, then added details on the boards.
According to the NYPD crime scene database on fibers, what Sachs had discovered on Lucy's uniform was from a shearling coat, the sort of collar found on leather jackets that used to be worn by pilots-bomber jackets. Sachs had field-tested the clock for nitrates-this one wasn't explosive either-and it was identical to the other three, yielding no trace except a recent stain of what turned out to be wood alcohol, the sort used as an antiseptic and for cleaning. As with the florist, the Watchmaker hadn't had time to leave another poem or had chosen not to.
Rhyme agreed to go public with the announcement about the calling card of the clock, though he predicted that all the announcement would do would be to guarantee that the killer didn't leave a clock until he was sure the victim was unable to call for help.
The trace that Sachs had found along the route where the killer had most likely escaped revealed nothing helpful.
"There wasn't anything else," she explained.
"Nothing?" Rhyme asked. He shook his head.
Locard's principle…
Ron Pulaski arrived, pulling off his coat and hanging it up. Rhyme noticed that Sachs's eyes turned at once to the rookie.
The Other Case…
Sachs asked, "Any luck with the Maryland connection?"
The rookie replied, "Three ongoing federal investigations into corruption at the Baltimore waterfront. One of them has a link to the New York metro area but it was only the Jersey docks. And it's not about drugs. They're looking into kickbacks and falsified shipping documents. I'm waiting to hear back from Baltimore PD about state investigations. Neither Creeley or Sarkowski had any property in Maryland and neither of them ever went there on business that I could find. The closest Creeley got was regular business meetings in Pennsylvania to meet some client. And Sarkowski didn't travel at all. Oh, and still no client list from Jordan Kessler. I left a message again but he hasn't returned the call."
He continued. "I found a couple of people assigned to the One One Eight who were born in Maryland but they don't have any connection there now. I ran a roster of names of everybody who's assigned to the house against property tax databases in Maryland-"
"Wait," Sachs said. "You did that?"
"Was that wrong?"
"Uhm, no, Ron. It was right. Good thinking." Sachs shared a smile with Rhyme. He lifted an eyebrow, impressed.
"Maybe. But nothing panned out."
"Well, keep digging."
"Sure thing."
Sachs then walked over to Sellitto and asked, "Got a question. You know Halston Jefferies?"
"Dep inspector at the One Five Eight?"
"Right. What's with him? Got a real short fuse."
Sellitto laughed. "Yeah, yeah, he's a rageaholic."
"So I'm not the only one he acts that way with?"
"Nup. Reams you out for no reason. How'd you cross paths?" He glanced at Rhyme.
"Nope," the criminalist replied cheerfully. "That'd have to be her case. Not my case."
Her exasperated look didn't faze him. Pettiness could, in some circumstances, be quite exhilarating, Rhyme reflected.
"I needed a file and I went to the source. He thought I should've gotten his okay."
"But you needed to keep the brass in the dark about what's going on at the One One Eight."
"Exactly."
"It's just the way he is. Had some problems in the past. His wife was a socialite-"
"That's a great word," Pulaski interrupted, "'socialite,' like 'socialist.' Only they're opposites. In a way."
When Sellitto shot him a cool look the rookie fell silent.
The detective continued. "I heard they lost some serious money, Jefferies and his wife. I mean big money. Money you and me, we can't even find where the decimal point goes. Some business thing his wife was into. He was hoping to run for office-Albany, I think. But you can't go there without big bucks. And she left him after the business fell through. Though with a temper like that, he had to've had issues beforehand."
She was nodding at this information when her phone rang. She answered. "That's right, that's me… Oh, no. Where?…I'll be there in ten minutes."
Her face pale and grave, she hurried out the door, saying, "Problem. I'll be back in a half-hour."
"Sachs," Rhyme began. But he heard only the slamming front door in response.
The Camaro eased up over the curb on West Forty-fourth Street, not far from the West Side Highway.
A big man in an overcoat and a fur hat squinted at Sachs as she climbed out of the car. She didn't know him, or he her, but the all-business parking job and the NYPD placard on the dash made it clear she was the one he was waiting for.
The young man's ears and nose were bright red and steam curled from his nose. He stamped his feet to keep the circulation going. "Whoa, this's cold. I'm sicka winter already. You Detective Sachs?"
"Yeah. You're Coyle?"
They shook hands. He had a powerful grip.
"What's the story?" she asked.
"Come on. I'll show you."
"Where?"
"The van. In the lot up the street."
As they walked, briskly in the cold, Sachs asked, "What house you from?" Coyle had identified himself as a cop when he called.
The traffic was loud. He didn't hear.
She repeated her question. "What house you from? Midtown South?"
He blinked at her. "Yeah." Then blew his nose.
"I was there for a while," Sachs told him.
"Hmm." Coyle said nothing else. He directed her through the large parking lot. At the far end Coyle stopped, next to a Windstar van, the windows dark, the motor running.
He glanced around. Then opened the door.
Canvassing apartments and stores in Greenwich Village, near Lucy Richter's, Kathryn Dance was reflecting on the symbiotic relationship between kinesic and forensic sciences.
A practitioner of kinesics requires a human being-a witness, a suspect-the same way a forensic scientist requires evidence. Yet this case was distinguished by a surprising absence of both people and physical clues.
It frustrated her. She'd never been involved in an investigation quite like this one.
Excuse me, sir, madam, hey there, young man, there was some police activity near here earlier today, did you hear about it, ah, good, I wonder if you happened to see anyone in that area, leaving quickly. Or did you see anything suspicious, anything out of the ordinary? Take a look at this picture…
But, nothing.
Dance didn't even recognize chronic witnessitis, the malady where people clearly know something but claim they don't, out of fear for themselves or their families. No, after forty freezing minutes on the street, she'd found the problem was simply that nobody'd seen squat.
Excuse me, sir, yes, it's a California ID but I'm working with the New York Police Department, you can call this number to verify that, now have you seen…
Zero.
Dance was taken aback once, shocked actually, when she approached a man coming out of an apartment. She'd blinked and her thoughts froze as she stared up at him-he was identical to her late husband. She'd controlled herself and run through her litany. He'd sensed something was up, though, and frowned, asking if she was all right.
How unprofessional can we be? Dance thought angrily. "Fine," she'd said with a fake smile.
Like his neighbors, though, the businessman hadn't seen anything unusual and headed up the street. With a long look back at him, Dance continued her search.
She wanted a lead, wanted to help nail this perp. Like any cop, of course, she wanted to take a sick, dangerous man off the streets. But she also wanted to spend time interviewing him after he'd been collared. The Watchmaker was different from any other perp she'd ever come up against. Kathryn Dance wanted badly to find out what made him tick-and laughed to herself at the unintended choice of words.
She continued stopping people for another block but found no one who could help.
Until she met the shopper.
On the sidewalk a block from Lucy's apartment she stopped a man wheeling a handcart filled with groceries. He glanced at the composite picture of the Watchmaker and said impulsively, "Oh, yeah, I think I saw somebody who looked like him… " Then he hesitated. "But I didn't really pay any attention." He started to leave.
Kathryn Dance, though, knew instantly he'd seen more.
Witnessitis.
"This's really important."
"All I saw was somebody running up the street. That's it."
"Listen, got an idea. Anything perishable in there?" She nodded at the grocery cart.
He hesitated again, trying to anticipate her. "Not really."
"How 'bout if we get some coffee and I ask you a few more questions. You mind?"
She could tell he did mind but just then a blast of icy wind rocked them and he looked like he wouldn't mind getting out of the cold. "I guess. But I really can't tell you anything else."
Oh, we'll see about that.
Amelia Sachs sat in the back of the van.
With Coyle's help, she was struggling to get retired detective Art Snyder into a sitting position on the backseat of the van. He was half conscious, muttering words she couldn't hear.
When Coyle had first opened the door, Snyder had been sprawled out, head back, unconscious, and she thought-to her horror-that he'd killed himself. She soon learned that he was simply drunk, though extremely so. She'd shaken him gently. "Art?" He'd opened his eyes, frowning and disoriented.
Now, the two officers got him on a seat.
"No, just wanna sleep. Leave me alone. Wanna sleep."
"This's his van?"
"Yeah," Coyle answered.
"What happened? How'd he get here?"
"He was up the street at Harry's. They wouldn't serve him-he was drunk already-and he wandered outside. I came in to buy some ciggies just after. The bartender knew I was a cop and told me about him. Didn't want him to drive off and kill himself or somebody else. I found him here, halfway inside. Your card was in his pocket."
Art Snyder shifted groggily. "Leave me alone." His eyes closed.
She glanced at Coyle. "I'll take over from here."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. Only, could you flag down a cab, send it over here?"
"Sure."
The cop climbed out of the van and walked away. Sachs crouched down, touched his arm. "Art?"
He opened his eyes, squinting as he recognized her. "You…"
"Art, we're going to get you home."
"Leave me alone. Leave me the fuck alone."
There was a cut on his forehead and his sleeve was torn from a fall. He'd vomited not long ago.
He snapped, "Haven't you done enough? Haven't you fucking done enough to me?" His eyes bulged. "Go away. I want to be alone. Leave me alone!" He rolled to his knees, tried crawling to the driver's seat. "Go…away!"
Sachs pulled him back. He wasn't a small man but the alcohol had weakened him. He tried to stand but fell back on the seat.
"You were doing great." She nodded at a pint bottle on the floor. It was empty.
"What's it to you? What the fuck is it to you?"
"What happened?" she persisted.
"Don't you get it? You happened. You."
"Me?"
"Why did I think it'd keep quiet? There're no fucking secrets in the department. I ask a few questions for you, where's the fucking file, what happened to it…next thing, my buddy I was meeting to play pool I told you about? He never shows. And doesn't return my calls…" He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Then I get a call-this guy was my partner for three years, him and me and our wives were going on a cruise. Guess who can't fucking make it?…All because I was asking questions. A retired cop asking questions…I should've told you to go fuck yourself the minute you walked through the door."
"Art, I-"
"Oh, don't worry, lady. I didn't mention your name. Didn't mention anything." He groped for the bottle. He saw it was empty. And flung it to the floor.
"Look, I know a good counselor. You can-"
"Counselor? What's he gonna counsel me on? How I fucked up my life?"
She glanced toward the bottle. "You stumbled. Everybody stumbles."
"Not what I'm talking about. This's because I fucked everything up."
"What do you mean, Art?"
"Because I was a cop. I wasted everything. I wasted my life."
She felt a chill; his words echoed her feelings. He was expressing exactly the reason she wanted to leave the force. She said, "Art, how 'bout we get you home?"
"I could've done a hundred other things. My brother's a plumber. My sister went to grad school and works for an ad agency now. She did that butterfly commercial for those feminine things. She's famous. I could've done something."
"You're just feeling-"
"Don't," he snapped, pointing a finger at her. "You don't know me good enough to talk to me that way. You got no right."
Sachs fell silent. True. She didn't have the right.
"Whatever happens 'causa what you're looking into, I'm fucked. Good or bad, I'm fucked."
Her heart chilled to see his anger and pain; she put her arm around him, "Art, listen-"
"Get your hands off me." His head lolled against the window.
Coyle walked up a moment later, directing a Yellow Cab toward the van. Together Coyle and Sachs helped Snyder to the cab and got him inside. She gave the driver Snyder's address, then emptied her wallet, handing him close to fifty dollars and the detective's car keys. "I'll call his wife, let her know he's coming," she told the cabbie. The taxi eased into thick Midtown traffic.
"Thanks," she said to Coyle, who nodded and walked off. She was grateful he didn't ask any questions.
After he was gone, Sachs reached into her pocket and extracted Snyder's pistol, which she'd lifted from his rear belt holster when she'd put her arm around him. Maybe he had another piece at home but at least he wouldn't be using this one to kill himself. She unloaded it, kept the bullets and hid the weapon in the springs under the front passenger seat. She then locked the door and returned to her car.
Her index finger dug into her thumb. Her skin itched. Her anger steamed as she realized that apart from the extortion and the stolen evidence there was a broader crime that her father-and all crooked cops-committed. Her simple effort to get to the truth had turned into something flinty and dangerous, affecting even the innocent. Snyder's future life as a retiree, which he'd looked forward to for years, was dissolving. All because of whatever happened at the 118th Precinct.
Just like the families of the convicted cops in the Sixteenth Avenue Club had their lives changed forever by what her father and his buddies had done. Wives and children had been forced to give up their homes to banks and quit school to get jobs; they'd been ostracized, forever tainted by the scandal.
She still had time to get out-leave police work, and get out. Get into Argyle, get away from the bullshit and the politics, make a new life for herself. She still had time. But for Art Snyder, it was too late.
Why, Dad? Why'd you do it?
Amelia Sachs would never know.
Time had passed on and taken with it any chance she might find answers to that question.
All she could do was speculate, which does nothing but leave a wound in the soul that feels like it will never heal.
Turning back the clock was the only answer and that, of course, was no answer at all.
Tony Parsons was sitting across from Kathryn Dance in a coffee shop, his shopping cart of groceries beside them.
He squinted and shook his head. "I've been trying to remember but I really can't think of anything else." He grinned. "Think you wasted your money." He lifted his coffee cup.
"Well, we'll give it a shot." Dance knew he had more information. Her guess was that he'd spoken without thinking-oh, how interrogators love impulsive subjects-and then realized that the man he'd seen might be a killer, maybe even the one who'd committed those horrible murders at the pier and in the alleyway the previous day. Dance knew that people who are happy to give statements about cheating neighbors and shoplifting teens grow forgetful when the crimes turn capital.
Maybe a tough nut, Dance reflected, but that didn't bother her. She loved challenges (the exhilaration she often felt when a subject finally confessed was always dulled by the thought that the signature on his statement marked the end of another verbal battle).
She poured milk into her coffee and looked longingly at a piece of apple pie sitting in a display case at the counter. Four hundred and fifty calories. Oh, well. She turned back to Parsons.
He poured some extra sugar into his coffee and stirred it. "You know, maybe if we just talked about it for a bit I could remember something else."
"That's a great idea."
He nodded. "Now, then, let's have us a good old heart-to-heart."
And gave her a big smile.
She was his consolation prize.
She was his present from Gerald Duncan.
She was the killer's way of saying he was sorry and meaning it, not like Vincent's mother.
It was also a good way to slow down the police-raping and killing one of their own. Duncan had mentioned the redheaded policewoman working at the site of the second murder and suggested Vincent take her (oh, yes, please…red hair, like Sally Anne's). But, watching the police at Lucy Richter's apartment in Greenwich Village from the Buick, he and Duncan had realized there was no way to get to the redhead; she was never by herself. Yet the other woman, a plainclothed detective or something, started up the street by herself, looking for witnesses, it seemed.
Duncan and Vincent had gone into a discount store and bought the handcart, a new winter jacket, and fifty dollars' worth of soap, junk food and soda to fill the cart with. (Somebody wheeling around groceries isn't suspicious-his friend, always, always thinking.) The plan was for Vincent to start trolling the streets of Greenwich Village until he found the second cop, or she found him, then he'd lead her to an abandoned building a block from Lucy Richter's place.
Vincent would take her to the basement and he could have her for as long as he wanted, while Duncan would take care of the next victim.
Duncan had then studied Vincent's face. "Would you have a problem killing her, the policewoman?"
Afraid he'd disappoint his friend, who was doing him such a wonderful favor, Vincent had said, "No."
But Duncan obviously knew it wasn't true. "Tell you what-just leave her in the basement. Tie her up. After I'm through in Midtown, I'll drive down there and take care of her myself."
Vincent had felt a lot better, hearing that.
The hunger raged through him now as he looked over Kathryn Dance, sitting only a few feet from him. Her braid, her smooth throat, her long fingers. She wasn't heavy but she had a good figure, not like those skinny model sorts you saw a lot of in the city. Who'd want somebody like that?
Her figure made him hungry.
Her green eyes made him hungry.
Even her name, Kathryn, made him hungry. For some reason it seemed to fall into the same category of name as Sally Anne. He couldn't say why. Maybe it was old-fashioned. Also, he liked the way she looked hungrily at the desserts. She's just like me! He could hardly wait to get her facedown in the building up the street.
He sipped the coffee. "So, you were saying you're from California?" Vincent-well, Helpful Tony Parsons-asked.
"That's right."
"Pretty, I'll bet."
"Is, yes. Parts of it. Now think back to what you saw exactly. That man running? Tell me about him."
Vincent knew he'd have to stay focused-at least until they were alone at the abandoned building. "Be careful," the killer had said, briefing him. "Be coy. Pretend that you know something about me but you don't want to talk. Be hesitant. That's how a real witness would be."
Now he told her-coyly and hesitantly-a few more things about the man running up the street and added to the vague description of Gerald Duncan, though it was pretty much what the police knew anyway, since they had that computer picture of him (he'd have to tell Duncan about that). She jotted some notes.
"Any unusual characteristics?"
"Hmm. Don't remember any. Like I said, I wasn't very close."
"Any weapons?"
"Don't think so. What exactly did he do?"
"There was an attempted assault."
"Oh, no. Anybody hurt?"
"No, fortunately."
Or un-, thought Clever Vincent/Tony.
"Was he carrying anything?" Agent Dance asked.
Keep it simple, he reminded himself. Don't let her trip you up.
He frowned thoughtfully and hesitated. Then he said, "You know, he might've been. Carrying something, I mean. A bag, I think. I couldn't really see. He was going pretty fast… " He stopped speaking.
Kathryn cocked her head. "You were going to say something else?"
"I'm sorry I'm not more help. I know it's important."
"That's okay," the woman said reassuringly, and for a moment Vincent had a pang of guilt about what was going to happen to her in a few minutes.
Then the hunger told him not to feel guilty. It was normal to have the urge.
If we don't eat, we die…
Don't you agree, Agent Dance?
They sipped coffee. Vincent told her a few other tidbits about the suspect.
She was chatting like a friend. Finally he decided the time was right. He said, "Look, there is something else… I was kind of scared before. You know, I'm around here every day. What if he comes back? He might figure out I said something about him."
"We can keep it anonymous. And we'll protect you. I promise."
A clever hesitation. "Really?"
"You bet. We'll have a policeman guarding you."
Now, there's an interesting idea. Can I have the redhead?
He said to Dance, "Okay, I saw where he ran to. It was the back door of a building up the street. He ran inside."
"The door was unlocked? Or did he have a key?"
"Unlocked, I think. I'll show you if you want."
"That'd be very helpful. Are you through?" She nodded at the cup.
He drained the coffee. "Am now."
She flipped closed her notebook, which he'd have to remember to get from her after he was finished.
"Thanks, Agent Dance."
"You're very welcome."
As he wheeled the groceries outside, the agent paid the check. She joined him and they started up the sidewalk where he directed.
"Is it always this cold in New York in December?"
"A lot of times, yep."
"I'm freezing."
Really? You look plenty hot to me.
"Where are we going?" she asked, slowing down and looking at the street signs. She squinted against the glare. She paused and jotted in her notebook, reciting as she wrote. "The perp was recently in this location, Sherman Street in Greenwich Village." She looked around. "Went up alley between Sherman and Barrow… " A glance at Vincent. "What side of the street's the alley on? North, south? I need to be accurate."
Ah, she's meticulous too.
He thought for a moment, disoriented by the hunger more than the bitter cold. "That'd be southeast."
She looked at her notebook, laughing. "Can hardly read it-the shivering. This cold is too much. I can't wait to get back to California."
And you'll be waiting a purty long time, missy…
They resumed walking.
"You have a family?" she asked.
"Yep. A wife and two kids."
"I have two children. Son and daughter."
Vincent nodded, wondering: How old is the daughter?
"So this's the alley?" she asked.
"Yep. There's where he ran to." Pulling the grocery cart behind him, he started into the alley that would lead to their love nest, the abandoned building. He felt a painful erection.
Vincent reached into his pocket and gripped the handle of his knife. No, he couldn't kill her. But if she fought back, he'd have to protect himself.
Slash the eyes…
It'd be gross but her bloody face wouldn't be a problem for Vincent; he preferred them on their bellies anyway.
They were walking deeper into the passageway now. Vincent looked around and saw the building, forty or fifty feet away.
Dance paused again, opened the notebook. She recited what she wrote: "The alley runs behind six, no, seven residential buildings. There are four Dumpsters here. The surface of the alley is asphalt. The perpetrator ran this way, going south." Gloves back on, over her quivering fingers, which ended in deliciously red nails.
The hunger was consuming Vincent. He felt himself withering away. He gripped the knife in a tense hand, breathing quickly.
She paused once more.
Now! Take her.
He started to pull the knife from his pocket.
But the bark of a siren cut through the air, coming from the other end of the alley. He glanced at it in shock.
And then he felt the gun muzzle touch the back of his head.
Agent Dance was shouting, "Raise your hands. Now!" Gripping his shoulder.
"But-"
"Now."
She shoved the gun harder into his skull.
No, no, no! He let go of the knife and lifted his arms.
What was going on?
The police car skidded to a stop in front of them, another right behind it. Four huge cops jumped out.
No…Oh, no…
"On your face," one of them ordered. "Do it!"
But he couldn't move, he was so shocked.
Then Dance was stepping back as police officers surrounded him, pulling him to the ground.
"I didn't do anything! I didn't!"
"You!" one of the men cried. "On your belly-now."
"But it's cold, it's dirty! And I haven't done anything!"
They flung him to the hard ground. He grunted as the breath was knocked from his body.
It was just like with Sally Anne, all over again.
You, fat boy, don't fucking move! Pervert!…
No, no, no!
Hands were all over him, grappling. He felt the pain as his arms were pulled taut behind him and cuffs were ratcheted on. He was searched, pockets turned inside out.
"Got an ID, got a knife."
It was now, it was thirteen years ago, Vincent could hardly tell.
"I didn't do anything! What's this all about?"
One of the officers said to Agent Dance, "We heard you loud and clear. You didn't need to go into the alley with him."
"I was afraid he'd bolt. I wanted to stay with him as long as I could."
What was going on? Vincent wondered. What did she mean?
Agent Dance glanced at the officer and nodded toward Vincent. "He was doing a good job until we got into the diner. Once we sat down I knew he was faking."
"No, you're crazy. I-"
She turned to Vincent. "Your accent and expressions were inconsistent and your body language told me you weren't really having a conversation with me at all. You had another agenda, trying to manipulate me for some reason… Which turned out to be getting me alone in the alley."
She explained that when she'd paid the check she'd slipped her phone out of her pocket and hit REDIAL, calling an NYPD detective she'd been working with. She'd whispered briefly what she'd concluded and had him send officers to the area. She'd kept the phone line open, hidden under her notebook.
That's why she was reciting the names of the streets out loud; she was giving them directions.
Vincent then looked at her hands. She caught his eye. And held up the pen she'd been writing with. "Yep. That's my gun."
He looked back at the other cops. "I don't know what's going on here. This is bullshit."
One of them said, "Listen, why don't you save your breath. Just before she called we got a report that the getaway driver in the attack earlier was back in the neighborhood with a cart of groceries. He was a fat, white guy."
Her name's Sally Anne, fat boy. She escaped and called the police and told us all about you…
"That's not me! I haven't done anything. You're wrong. You're so wrong."
"Yeah," one of the uniformed cops said with an amused expression, "we hear that a lot. Let's go."
They gripped him by the upper arms and hauled him roughly to the squad car. He heard Gerald Duncan's voice in his mind.
I'm sorry. I've let you down. I'll make it up to you…
And something hardened within pudgy Vincent Reynolds. He decided that nothing they could do to him would ever make him betray his friend.
The large, pear-shaped man sat next to the front window of Lincoln Rhyme's laboratory, hands cuffed behind him.
His driver's license and DMV records revealed that he wasn't Tony Parsons but Vincent Reynolds, a twenty-eight-year-old word-processing operator who lived in New Jersey and worked for a half dozen temp agencies, none of which knew much about him, other than what the basic employment checks and résumé verification had revealed; he was a model, if unmemorable, employee.
With a mix of anger and uneasiness, Vincent alternated glances between the floor and the officers around him-Rhyme, Sachs, Dance, Baker and Sellitto.
There were no priors or warrants out on him and a search of his shabby apartment in New Jersey revealed no obvious connection to the Watchmaker. Nor evidence of a lover, close friends or parents. The officers found a letter he was writing to his sister in Detroit. Sellitto got her number from Michigan State Police and called. He left a message for her to call them.
He was working Monday night, at the time of the pier and Cedar Street killings, but he'd taken time off since then.
Mel Cooper had emailed a digital picture of him to Joanne Harper at the florist shop. The woman reported that he did resemble the man staring in her window, but she couldn't be certain, because of the glare, the dirty glass in the front windows of her workshop and his sunglasses.
Though they suspected him of being the Watchmaker's accomplice, the evidence linking him to the scenes was sketchy. The shoe print from the garage where the SUV had been abandoned was the same size as his shoes, thirteen, but there were no distinguishing marks to make a clear match. Among the groceries-which Rhyme suspected he'd bought as a cover to get close to Dance or another investigator-were chips, cookies and other junk food. But these packages were unopened and a search of his clothes revealed no crumbs that might specifically match what had been recovered in the SUV.
They were holding him only for possession of an illegal knife and interfering with a police operation-the usual charge when a phony witness comes forward.
Still, a good portion of City Hall and Police Plaza wanted to pull an Abu Ghraib on Vincent and browbeat or threaten him until he squealed. This was Dennis Baker's preference; the lieutenant had been getting pressure from City Hall to find the perp.
But Kathryn Dance said, "Doesn't work. They curl up like rolly bugs and give you garbage." She added, "For the record, torture's very inefficient at getting accurate information."
And so Rhyme and Baker had asked her to handle Vincent's interview. They needed to find the Watchmaker as fast as possible and, if rubber hoses were out, they wanted an expert.
The California special agent now drew the curtains closed and sat down across from Vincent, nothing between them. She scooted the chair forward until she was about three feet away. Rhyme supposed this was to get into his space and help break down his resistance. But he also realized that if Vincent flipped out he could lunge forward and injure her severely with his head or teeth.
She was undoubtedly aware of this too but gave no indication of feeling in danger. She offered a reserved smile and said calmly, "Hello, Vincent. I know you've been informed of your rights and you've agreed to talk to us. We appreciate that."
"Absolutely. Anything I can do. This is a big…" he shrugged…"misunderstanding, you know."
"Then we'll get everything straightened out. I just need some basic information first." She asked his full name, address, age, where he worked, if he'd ever been arrested.
He frowned. "I already told him this." A look at Sellitto.
"I'm sorry. Left hand, right hand, you know. If you wouldn't mind going over it again."
"Oh, all right."
Rhyme figured that since he was giving her verified facts, she'd be creating a baseline kinesic reading. Now that Kathryn Dance had altered the criminalist's opinion about interviewing and witnesses, he was intrigued by the process.
Dance nodded pleasantly as she jotted down Vincent's responses and thanked him from time to time for his cooperation. Her politeness confused Rhyme. He himself would be a hell of a lot tougher.
Vincent grimaced. "Look, I can, you know, talk to you for as long as you want. But I hope you sent somebody to look for that man I saw. You don't want him to get away. I'm worried about that. I try to help, and look what happens-this's the story of my life."
Though what he'd told Dance and the officers on the scene about the suspect wasn't helpful. The building he claimed the killer disappeared into showed no signs that anyone had been inside recently.
"Now if you could go through the facts once more. Tell me what happened. Only, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like you to tell it to me in reverse order."
"What?"
"Reverse chronological order. It's a good way to jump-start memories. Start with the last event first and go back in time from there. The suspect-he's going through the doorway of that old building in the alley… Let's begin with some specifics. The color of the door."
Vincent shifted in his chair, frowned. After a moment he gave his account, starting with the man pushing through the doorway (he couldn't remember the color). Vincent then explained what happened just before that-the man running down the alley. Then entering it. And before that he was running down the street. Finally Vincent told them about spotting a man on Barrow, looking around uneasily, then breaking into a run.
"Okay," Dance said, jotting notes. "Thank you, Vincent." She gave a faint frown. "But why did you tell me your name was Tony Parsons?"
"Because I was scared. I did a good deed, I told you what I saw, but I was afraid the killer would murder me if he found out my name." His jaw trembled. "I wished I hadn't said anything about what I'd seen. But I did and got scared. I told you I was afraid."
The man's whining irritated Rhyme. Grill him, he silently urged Kathryn Dance.
But she asked pleasantly, "Tell me about the knife."
"Okay, I shouldn't've had it. But I was mugged a few years ago. It was terrible. I'm so stupid. I should've just left it at home. I usually do that. I just don't think. And then it gets me in trouble."
Then she slipped her jacket off and set it on the chair next to her.
He continued. "Everybody else is smart enough not to get involved. I say something and look what happens." Gazing at the floor, disgust twitching at the corners of his mouth.
Dance asked details of how he learned about the Watchmaker's killings and where he was at the times of the other attacks.
The questions were curious to Rhyme. Superficial. She wasn't probing the way he would have, demanding alibis and pulling apart his story. What seemed to be some good leads, she let drop. Dance never once asked if there was another reason he'd been leading her into the alley, which they all suspected was to murder her-perhaps even to torture her into telling what the police might know about the Watchmaker.
The agent gave no reaction to his answers but merely jotted notes. Finally the agent looked behind Vincent at Sachs. "Amelia, could you do me a favor?"
"Sure."
"Could you show Vincent the footprint we found?"
Sachs rose and got the electrostatic image. She held it up for Vincent to look at.
"What about it?" he asked.
"That's your size shoe, isn't it?"
"About."
She continued to stare at him, saying nothing. Rhyme sensed she was setting up a brilliant trap. He watched them both closely…
"Thanks," Dance said to Sachs, who sat down again.
The agent eased forward, slightly more into the suspect's personal space. "Vincent, I'm curious. Where'd you get the groceries?"
A brief hesitation. "Well, at the Food Emporium."
Rhyme finally understood. She was going to draw him out about the groceries and then ask him why he'd bought them in Manhattan if he lived in New Jersey-since everything in the cart would be available closer to home and probably cheaper. She leaned forward, pulling off her glasses.
Now-she was going to snare him.
Kathryn Dance smiled and said, "Thank you, Vincent. I think that'll be it. Hey, you thirsty?" the agent added. "Want a soda?"
Vincent nodded. "Yeah. Thanks."
Dance glanced at Rhyme. "Could we get him something?"
Rhyme blinked and shot a perplexed look at Sachs, who was frowning. What the hell was Dance thinking? She hadn't gotten a single bit of information out of him. The criminalist was thinking, A waste of time. That's all she's going to ask him? And now she's playing hostess? Reluctantly Rhyme called Thom, who brought Dance a Coke.
Dance put a straw in and held it up for the handcuffed man to drink from. He drained the glass in seconds.
"Vincent, just give us a few minutes alone, if you don't mind, and I think we'll get this all straightened out."
"Okay. Sure."
The patrol officers escorted him out. Dance shut the door behind him. Dennis Baker shook his head, staring unhappily at the agent. Sellitto muttered, "Worthless."
Dance frowned. "No, no, we're doing fine."
"We are?" Rhyme asked.
"Right on track…Now, here's the situation. I got his baseline readings and then asked him about the reverse order of events-it's a good way to catch up deceptive subjects who've been improvising. People can describe an actual series of past events in any order-from start to finish or backward-without a problem. But people fabricate events in only one direction, start to finish. When they try to reconstruct it backward, they don't have the cues that they used in creating the scenario and they trip up. So, I learned right up front that he's the Watchmaker's assistant."
"You did?" Sellitto laughed.
"Oh, that was obvious. His recognition responses were off the charts. And he's not afraid for his personal safety, like he claimed. No, he knows the Watchmaker and he's been involved in the crimes but in a way that I can't figure out. More than just a getaway driver."
"But you didn't ask him about any of that," Baker pointed out. "Shouldn't we be picking apart where he said he was at the times of the attacks at the florist shop and the apartment in Greenwich Village?"
Rhyme's observation, too.
"Oh, no. Worst thing to do. If I did, those are the subjects he'd stonewall on instantly." She continued. "He's a complicated person, there's a lot of conflict going on inside him, and my feeling is that he's in the second state of stress response, depression. That's essentially anger turned inward. And it's very difficult to break through. Given his personality type, I'd need to create a sympathetic bond between us and it would take days, maybe weeks, to get to the truth with traditional interrogation methods. But we don't have days. Our only chance is to try something radical."
"What?"
Dance nodded at the straw Vincent had used. "Can you order a DNA test?" she asked Rhyme.
"Yes. But it'll take some time."
"That's okay, as long as we can say truthfully it's been ordered." She smiled. "Never lie. But you don't have to tell a suspect everything."
Rhyme wheeled around to the main portion of the lab, where Mel Cooper and Pulaski were still working on the evidence. He explained what they needed and Cooper packaged the straw in plastic and filled out a DNA analysis request. "There. Technically it's been ordered. The lab just doesn't know it yet." He laughed.
Dance explained: "There's something big he's keeping from me. He's very nervous about it. His response to my question about being arrested was deceptive but it's also very rehearsed. I think he was collared but it was a while ago. There're no prints on file so he fell through the cracks-maybe a lab screwup, maybe he was a juvenile. But I know he's run into the law before. And I finally got a sense of what it might be. That's why I took my jacket off and had Amelia walk around in front of him. He's eating up the two of us with his eyes. Trying not to but he can't help it. That makes me think there's a sexual assault or two in his past. I want to bluff and use that against him.
"The problem is," she continued, "that he could call me on it. Then we lose our bargaining power and it'll take a long time to grind him down and get anything helpful."
Sellitto said to Rhyme, "I know where you come down on it."
Hell, yes, Rhyme thought. "Take the chance."
Sellitto asked, "And you, Dennis?"
"I oughta call downtown. But we'd be kicking ourselves if they say no. Go ahead and do it."
The agent said, "One other thing I need to do. I have to take myself out of the equation. Whatever he had planned with me in the alley, we have to let it go. If I bring it up it'll move the relationship to a different place and he's going to stop talking to me; we'll have to start over again."
"But you know what he was going to do to you?" Sachs asked.
"Oh, I know exactly what he had in mind. But we have to stay focused on our goal-finding the Watchmaker. Sometimes you just have to let other things slide."
Sellitto looked at Baker and nodded.
The agent walked to the closest computer and typed some commands, then a user name and pass code. She squinted when the website appeared and typed in some more commands. A page of some suspect's DNA rolled onto the screen.
Dance opened her purse and replaced the sheep glasses with the wolf ones. "Now it's time for the fun part." She walked to the door and opened it, asked that Vincent be brought back.
The big man, sweat stains under his arms, lumbered back into the room and sat down in the chair, which groaned under his weight. He was cautious.
Dance broke the silence with, "I'm afraid we've got a problem, Vincent."
His eyes narrowed.
Dance held up the plastic evidence bag containing the straw he'd drunk from. "You know about DNA, don't you?"
"What're you talking about?"
Rhyme wondered, Is it going to work? Will he fall for it?
Was Vincent going to end the interview, clam up and insist on an attorney? He had every right to do that. The bluff would end in disaster and they might never get any information from him until after the Watchmaker had killed his next victim.
Calmly Dance asked, "You ever seen your DNA analysis, Vincent?"
Dance turned the computer monitor toward Vincent. "I don't know if you're aware of the FBI's Combined DNA Index System. We call it CODIS. Whenever there's a rape or sexual assault and the perp isn't caught, his fluids, skin and hair are collected. Even with a condom, there's usually some material left on or near the victim with DNA in it. The profile is stored and when police get a suspect, his profile is matched against what's in the forensic index. Take a look."
Beneath the heading CODIS were dozens of lines of numbers, letters, grids and fuzzy bars virtually incomprehensible to anyone unfamiliar with the system.
The man was completely still, though his breathing was heavy. His eyes, to Rhyme, seemed defiant. "This's bullshit."
"You know, Vincent, that nobody ever beats a case built on solid DNA. And we've gotten convictions years after the assaults."
"You can't… I didn't say it was okay to do that." He stared at the bagged straw.
"Vincent," Kathryn Dance said softly, "you're in trouble."
Technically true, Rhyme reflected. He was in possession of a deadly weapon.
Never lie…
"But you've got something we want." A pause, then Dance continued. "I don't know about New York procedures but in California our district attorneys have a lot of latitude to work with cooperative suspects."
She looked at Sellitto, who took over. "Yeah, Vincent, same thing here. The DA'll listen to our recommendations."
Lost in the bars on the computer screen, his teeth set, Vincent said nothing.
Baker continued. "Here's the deal: If you help us get the Watchmaker and if you confess to the prior sexual assaults, we'll get you immunity on the murder and assault counts for the two victims the other day. We'll make sure you have access to a treatment center. And you'll be isolated from the general population."
Dance said firmly, "But you have to help us. Right now, Vincent. What do you say?"
The man glanced at the screen that contained a DNA analysis that had nothing whatsoever to do with him. His leg was bouncing slightly-a sign that a debate was raging within him.
He turned his defiant eyes to Kathryn Dance.
Yes or no? What would it be?
A full minute passed. Rhyme heard only the ticking of the Watchmaker's clocks.
Vincent grimaced. He looked up at them with cold eyes. "He's a businessman from the Midwest. His name's Gerald Duncan. He's staying in a church in Manhattan. Can I have another Coke?"
"Where is he now?" Dennis Baker barked.
"There was somebody else he was going to…" Vincent's voice faded.
"Kill?"
The suspect nodded.
"Where?"
"I don't know exactly. He said Midtown, I think. He didn't tell me. Really."
They glanced at Kathryn Dance, who apparently sensed no deception and nodded.
"I don't know whether he's there now or the church."
He gave the address.
Sachs said, "I know it. Closed a while ago."
Sellitto called ESU and had Haumann put together some tactical teams.
"He was going to meet me back in the Village in an hour or so. Near that building in the alley."
Where, Rhyme reflected, Vincent had been going to kill and rape Kathryn Dance. Sellitto ordered unmarked cars stationed near the building.
"Who's the next victim?" Baker asked.
"I don't know. I really don't. He didn't tell me anything about her because…"
"Why?" Dance asked.
"I wasn't going to have anything to do with her."
Do with her…
Rhyme understood. "So you were helping him out and in exchange he'd let you have the victims."
"Only the women," Vincent said quickly, shaking his head in disgust. "Not men. I'm not weird or anything… And only after they were dead, so it wasn't really rape. It's not. Gerald told me that. He looked it up."
Dance and Sellitto seemed unmoved by this but Baker blinked. Sachs was trying to control her temper.
Baker asked, "Why weren't you going to do anything with the next one?"
"Because…he was going to burn her to death."
"Jesus," Baker muttered.
"Is he armed?" Rhyme asked.
Vincent nodded. "He's got a gun. A pistol."
"A thirty-two?"
"I don't know."
"What's he driving?" Sellitto asked.
"It's a dark blue Buiek. It's stolen. A couple years old."
"License plates?"
"I don't know. Really. He just stole it."
"Put out an EVL," Rhyme ordered. Sellitto called it in.
Dance leapt in with, "And what else?" She sensed something.
"What do you mean?"
"What about the car upsets you?"
He looked down. "I think he killed the owner. I didn't know he was going to. I really didn't."
"Where?"
"He didn't tell me."
Cooper sent out a request for any reports of recent carjackings, homicides or missing persons.
"And…" Vincent swallowed. His leg was bouncing faintly again.
"What?" Baker asked.
"He killed somebody else too. This college student, I think, a kid. In an alley around the corner from the church, near Tenth Avenue."
"Why?"
"He saw us coming out of the church. Duncan stabbed him and put the body in a Dumpster."
Cooper phoned the local precinct house to check this out.
"Let's have him call Duncan," Sellitto said, nodding at Vincent. "We could trace his mobile."
"His phone won't work. He takes the battery and SIM chip out when we're not actually…you know, working."
Working…
"He said you can't trace it that way."
"Is the phone in his name?"
"No. It's one of those prepaid ones. He buys a new one every few days and throws out the old one."
"Get the number," Rhyme ordered. "Run it with the service providers."
Mel Cooper called the major mobile companies in the area and had several brief conversations. He hung up and reported, "East Coast Communications. Prepaid, like he said. Cash purchase. No way to trace it if the battery's out."
"Hell," Rhyme muttered.
Sellitto's phone rang. Bo Haumann's Emergency Service Unit teams were on their way. They'd be at the church in a few minutes.
"Sounds like that's our only hope," Baker said.
He, Sachs and Pulaski hurried out the door to join the tactical operation. Rhyme, Dance and Sellitto remained in his lab, to try to learn more about Gerald Duncan from Vincent, while Cooper searched databases for any information on him.
"What's his interest in clocks and time and the lunar calendar?" Rhyme asked.
"He collects old clocks and watches. He really was a watchmaker-a hobby, you know. It's not like he has a shop or anything."
Rhyme said, "But he might've worked for one at some point. Find out the professional organization of watchmakers. Collectors too."
Cooper typed on his keyboard. He asked, "America only?"
Dance asked Vincent, "What's his nationality?"
"He's American, I guess. He doesn't have an accent or anything."
After browsing a number of websites Cooper shook his head. "It's a popular business. The big groups seem to be the Geneva Association of Watchmakers, Jewelers and Goldsmiths, the Association Interprofessionnelle de la Haute Horlogerie in Switzerland; the American Watchmakers Institute; the Swiss Association of Watch and Jewelry Retailers, also in Switzerland; the British Association of Watch and Clock Collectors; the British Horological Institute; the Employers' Association of the Swiss Watch Industry; and the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industries…but there're dozens more."
"Send them emails," Sellitto said. "Ask about Duncan. As a watchmaker or collector."
"And Interpol," Rhyme said. Then to Vincent: "How did you meet?"
The man gave a rambling account about a coincidental, innocent meeting. Kathryn Dance listened and in her calm voice asked a few questions and announced that he was being deceptive. "The deal is you play straight with us," she said, leaning forward. Her gaze was cool through her predator glasses.
"Okay, I was just, like, summarizing, you know."
"We don't want summaries," Rhyme growled. "We want to know how the fuck you met him."
The rapist admitted while it was a coincidence, the meeting wasn't so innocent. He gave the details of their initial contact at a restaurant near where Vincent worked. Duncan was checking out one of the men who'd been killed the previous day and Vincent had his eye on a waitress.
What a pair, these two, Rhyme reflected.
Mel Cooper looked up from the computer screen. "Getting some hits here…We've got sixty-eight Gerald Duncans in fifteen midwestern states. I'm running warrants and VICAP first then cross-referencing approximate ages and professions. You can't narrow down the location any more?"
"I would if I could. He never talked about himself."
Dance nodded. She believed him.
Lon Sellitto asked the question that Rhyme had been about to. "We know he's targeting specific victims, checking 'em out ahead of time. Why? What's he up to?"
The rapist answered, "His wife."
"He's married?"
"Was."
"Tell us."
"His wife and him came to New York on vacation a couple years ago. He was at a business dinner somewhere and his wife went to a concert by herself. She was walking back to the hotel on this deserted street and she got hit by a car or truck. The driver took off. She screamed for help but nobody came to save her, nobody even called the police or fire department. The doctor said that she probably lived for ten, fifteen minutes after she was hit. And even somebody who wasn't a doctor could've stopped the bleeding, he said. Just a pressure point or something like that. But nobody helped."
"Run all the hospitals for admissions under the name Duncan, eighteen to thirty-six months ago," Rhyme ordered.
But Vincent said, "Don't bother. Last year he broke into the hospital and stole her chart. The police report too. Bribed a clerk or something. He's been planning this ever since."
"But why's he picking these victims?"
"When the police investigated they got the names of ten people who were nearby when she died. Whether they could have saved her or not, I don't know. But Gerald, he convinced himself they could have. He's spent the past year finding out where they live and what their schedules are. He needed to get them alone so they could die slowly. That's the important thing to him. Like his wife died slowly."
"The man on the pier Tuesday? Is he dead?"
"He's gotta be. Duncan made him hold on and then cut his arms and just stood there watching him until he fell into the river. He said he tried to swim for a while but then he just stopped moving and floated under the pier."
"What was his name?"
"I don't remember. Walter somebody. I didn't help him with the first two. I didn't, really." He glanced at Dance with fear in his eyes.
"What else do you know about Duncan?" she asked.
"That's about it. The only thing he really liked to talk about was time."
"Time? What about it?"
"Anything, everything. The history of time, how clocks work, about calendars, how people sense time differently. He'd tell me, like, the term 'speed up' comes from pendulum clocks. You'd move the weight up on the pendulum to make the clock run faster. 'Slow down'-you moved the weight down to slow it… With anybody else it would've been just boring. But the way he talked about it, well, you kind of got caught up in what he was saying."
Cooper looked up from his computer screen. "We've got a couple of replies from the watchmaker associations. No record of a Gerald Duncan…Wait, here's Interpol…Nothing there either. And I can't find anything in VICAP."
Sellitto's phone rang. He took the call and spoke for a few minutes. He eyed the rapist coolly as he talked. Then he disconnected.
"That was your sister's husband," he said to Vincent.
The man frowned. "Who?"
"Your sister's husband."
Vincent shook his head. "No, you must've talked to the wrong person. My sister's not married."
"Yes, she is."
The rapist's eyes were wide. "Sally Anne's married?"
With a disgusted glance at Vincent, Sellitto said to Rhyme and Dance, "She was too upset to return the call herself. Her husband did. Thirteen years ago he locked her in the basement of their house for a week while their mother and stepfather were on their honeymoon. His own sister… He tied her down and sexually assaulted her repeatedly. He was fifteen, she was thirteen. He did juvie time and was released after counseling. Records were sealed. That's why we had no hits on IAFIS."
"Married," Vincent whispered, ashen-faced.
"She's been treated for depression and eating disorders ever since. He was caught stalking her a dozen times, so she got a restraining order. The only contact between them in the past three years is letters he's been sending."
"He's been threatening her?" Dance asked.
Sellitto muttered, "Nope. They're love letters. He wanted her to move here and live with him."
"Oh, man," muttered the unflappable Mel Cooper.
"Sometimes he'd write recipes in the margins. Sometimes he'd draw porn cartoons. The brother-in-law said if there's anything they can do to make sure he stays in jail forever, they'll do it." Sellitto looked at the two patrol officers standing behind Vincent. "Get him out of here."
The officers helped the big man to his feet and they started out the door. Vincent Reynolds could hardly walk, he was so shaken. "How could Sally Anne get married? How could she do this to me? We were going to be together forever… How could she?"
Like assaulting a medieval castle.
Sachs, Baker and Pulaski joined Bo Haumann around the corner from the church in the nondescript Chelsea section of town. The ESU troops had deployed quietly up and down the streets surrounding the place, keeping a low profile.
The church had only enough doors to satisfy the fire code, and steel bars on most of the windows. This would make it difficult for Gerald Duncan to escape, of course, but it also meant that ESU had few options for access. That, in turn, increased the likelihood that the killer had booby-trapped the entrances or would wait for them with a weapon. And the stone walls, two feet thick, also made the risk greater than it might otherwise have been because the Search and Surveillance team's thermal-and sound-sensing equipment was largely useless; they simply couldn't tell if he was inside.
"What's the plan?" asked Amelia Sachs, standing next to Bo Haumann in the alley behind the church. Dennis Baker was beside her, his hand close to his pistol. His eyes danced around the streets and sidewalk, which told Sachs that he hadn't been on a tactical entry for a long time-if ever. She was still pissed about the spying; she wasn't very sympathetic that he was sweating.
Ron Pulaski was nearby, his hand resting on the grip of his Glock. He too rocked nervously on his feet as he gazed at the imposing, sooty structure.
Haumann explained that the teams would do a simple dynamic entry through all doors, after taking them out with explosive charges. There was no choice-the doors were too thick for a battering ram-but charges would clearly announce their presence and give Duncan a chance to prepare at least some defense within the building. What would he do when he heard the explosions and the footsteps of the cops charging inside?
Give up?
A lot of perps do.
But some don't. They either panic or cling to some crazy idea that they can fight their way though a dozen armed officers. Rhyme had told her about Duncan's mission of revenge; she didn't figure somebody that obsessed would be the surrendering type.
Sachs took her position with a side-door entry team while Baker and Pulaski remained at the command post with Haumann.
Through her headset she heard the ESU commander say, "Entry devices are armed… Teams, report, K."
The A, B and C teams called in that they were ready.
In his raspy voice, Haumann called, "On my count…Five, four, three, two, one."
Three sharp cracks resounded as the doors blew open simultaneously, setting off car alarms and shaking nearby windows. Officers poured inside.
It turned out that their concern about fortified positions and booby traps had been unfounded. The bad news, though, was that a search of the place made it clear that the Watchmaker was either one of the luckiest men on earth or had anticipated them yet again. He wasn't here.
"Check this out, Ron."
Amelia Sachs stood in a doorway of a small, upstairs storeroom in the church.
"Freaky," the young officer offered.
That worked.
They were looking at a number of moon-faced clocks stacked against a stone wall. The faces stared out with their cryptic look, not quite a smile, not quite a leer, as if they knew exactly how much time was allotted for your life and were pleased to be counting down to the final second.
All of them were ticking, a sound that Sachs found unnerving.
She counted five of them. Which meant he had one with him.
Burn her to death…
Pulaski was zipping up his Tyvek crime scene suit and strapping his Glock outside the overalls. Sachs told him that she'd walk the grid up here, where Vincent had said the men had been staying. The rookie would take the ground floor of the church.
He nodded, looking uneasily at the dark corridors, the shadows. The blow to his skull the previous year had been severe and a supervisor had wanted to sideline him, put him behind a desk. He'd struggled to come back from the head injury and simply would not let the brass take him off the street. She knew he got spooked sometimes. She could see in his eyes that he was constantly making the decision whether or not to step up to the task in front of him. Even though he always chose to do so, there were some cops, she knew, who wouldn't want to work with him because of this. Sachs, though, would far rather work with somebody who confronted his ghosts every time he went out on the street. That was guts.
She'd never hesitate to have him as a partner.
Then she realized what she'd thought and qualified it: If I were going to stay on the force.
Pulaski wiped his palms, which Sachs could see were sweaty, despite the chill, and pulled on latex gloves.
As they divided up the evidence collection equipment she said, "Hey, heard you got jumped in the garage, running the Explorer scene."
"Yeah."
"Hate it when that happens."
He gave a laugh that meant he understood this was her way of saying it's okay to be nervous. He started for the door.
"Hey, Ron."
He stopped.
"By the way, Rhyme said you did a great job."
"He did?"
Not in so many words. But that was Rhyme. Sachs said, "He sure did. Now, go search the shit out of that scene. I want to nail this bastard."
He gave a grin. "You bet."
Sachs said, "It's not a Christmas present. It's a job."
And nodded him downstairs.
She found nothing that suggested who the next victim was but at least there was a significant amount of evidence in the church.
From Vincent Reynolds's room Sachs recovered samples of a dozen different junk foods and sodas, as well as proof of his darker appetites: condoms, duct tape and rags, presumably to use as gags. The place was a mess. It smelled of unwashed clothes.
In Duncan's room Sachs found horological magazines (without subscription labels), watchmaker's and other tools (including the wire cutters that were probably used to cut the chain link fence at the first scene) and clothes. Unlike Vincent's this room was eerily pristine and ordered. The bed was so tautly made that a drill instructor would have approved. The clothes hung perfectly in the closet (all the labels removed, she noticed), the space between the hangers exactly the same. Items on the desk were aligned at exact angles to one another. He was careful to leave next to nothing about himself personally; two museum programs, from Boston and Tampa, were hidden up under a trash container, but while they suggested he'd been to those cities, they weren't, of course, where Vincent said he lived, the Midwest. There was also a pet hair roller.
It's like he's wearing a Tyvek suit of his own…
She also found some clues that were possibly from the prior crime scenes-a roll of duct tape that would probably match the tape at the alley and that, presumably, was used to gag the victim on the pier. She found an old broom with dirt, fine sand and bits of salt on it. She guessed it was what he'd used to sweep the scene around where Teddy Adams had been killed.
There was also evidence that she hoped might reveal his present location or that related in some way to the next victims. In a small plastic Tupperware container were some coins, three Bic pens, receipts from a parking garage downtown and a drugstore on the Upper West Side, and a book of matches (missing three of them) from a restaurant on the Upper East Side. There were no fingerprints on any of these items. She also found a pair of shoes whose treads were dotted with gaudy green paint, and an empty gallon jug that had contained wood alcohol.
There were no fingerprints but she did find plenty of cotton fibers the same color of those in the Explorer. She then found a plastic bag containing a dozen pairs of the gloves themselves, no store labels or receipts. The bag had no prints on it.
In his search downstairs Ron Pulaski didn't find much but he made a curious discovery: a coating of white powder in a toilet. Tests would tell for certain but he believed it was from a fire extinguisher since he also found a trash bag near the back door, inside of which was the empty carton an extinguisher had been sold in. The rookie had looked over the box carefully but there were no store labels to indicate where it had been purchased.
Why the extinguisher had been discharged was unclear. There was no evidence that anything in the bathroom had been burning.
She had a call patched through to Vincent Reynolds, in the lockup, and he told her that Duncan had recently bought a fire extinguisher. He didn't know why it had been discharged.
After chain-of-custody cards were filled out, Sachs and Pulaski joined Baker, Haumann and the others just inside the front door of the church, where they'd been waiting while the two officers walked the grid. Sachs called Rhyme on the radio and told him and Sellitto what they'd found.
As she recited the evidence, she could hear Rhyme instructing Thom to include it on the charts.
"Boston and Tampa?" the criminalist asked, referring to the museum programs. "Vincent might be wrong. Hold on." He had Cooper check with Vital Statistics and DMV for any Gerald Duncans in those cities but, while there were residents with that name, their ages didn't match the perp's.
The criminalist was silent for a moment. Then he said, "The fire extinguisher…I'm betting he made an incendiary device out of it. He used alcohol as the accelerant. There was some on the clock at Lucy Richter's apartment too. That's how he's going to burn the next victim to death. And what's the one thing about fire extinguishers?"
"Give up," Sachs replied.
"They're invisible. One could be sitting right next to somebody and they'd never think twice about it."
Baker said, "I say we take whatever clues we've found here and divide them up, hope one of them leads us to the next victim. We've got receipts, those matches, the shoes."
Rhyme's voice crackled over the radio, "Whatever you do, make it fast. According to Vincent, if he's not at the church, he's on his way to the next victim. He might already be there by now."
THE WATCHMAKER
CRIME SCENE ONE
Location:
Repair pier in Hudson River, 22nd Street.
Victim:
Identity unknown.
Male.
Possibly middle-aged or older, and may have coronary condition (presence of anticoagulants in blood).
No other drugs, infection or disease in blood.
Coast Guard and ESU divers checking for body and evidence in New York Harbor.
Checking missing persons reports.
Recovered jacket in New York Harbor. Bloody sleeves. Macy's, size 44. No other clues, no sign of body.
Perp:
See below.
M.O.:
Perp forced victim to hold on to deck, over water, cut fingers or wrists until he fell.
Time of attack: between 6 P.M. Monday and 6 A.M. Tuesday.
Evidence:
Blood type AB positive.
Fingernail torn, unpolished, wide.
Portion of chain link fence cut with common wire cutters, untraceable.
Clock. See below.
Poem. See below.
Fingernail markings on deck.
No discernible trace, no fingerprints, no footprints, no tire tread marks.
CRIME SCENE TWO
Location:
Alley off Cedar Street, near Broadway, behind three commercial buildings (back doors closed at 8:30 to 10 P.M.) and one government administration building (back door closed at 6 P.M.).
Alley is a cul-de-sac. Fifteen feet wide by one hundred and four feet long, surfaced in cobblestones, body was fifteen feet from Cedar Street.
Victim:
Theodore Adams.
Lived in Battery Park.
Freelance copywriter.
No known enemies.
No warrants, state or federal.
Checking for a connection with buildings around alley. None found.
Perp:
The Watchmaker.
Male.
No database entries for the Watchmaker.
M.O.:
Dragged from vehicle to alley, where iron bar was suspended over him. Eventually crushed throat.
Awaiting medical examiner's report to confirm.
No evidence of sexual activity.
Time of death: approximately 10:15 P.M. to 11 P.M. Monday night. Medical examiner to confirm.
Evidence:
Clock.
No explosives, chemical- or bioagents.
Identical to clock at pier.
No fingerprints, minimal trace.
Arnold Products, Framingham, MA.
Sold by Hallerstein's Timepieces, Manhattan.
Poem left by perp at both scenes.
Computer printer, generic paper, HP LaserJet ink.
Text:
The full Cold Moon is in the sky,
shining on the corpse of earth,
signifying the hour to die
and end the journey begun at birth.
– The Watchmaker
Not in any poetry databases; probably his own.
Cold Moon is lunar month, the month of death.
$60 in pocket, no serial number leads; prints negative.
Fine sand used as "obscuring agent." Sand was generic. Because he's returning to the scene?
Metal bar, 81 pounds, is needle-eye span. Not being used in construction across from the alleyway. No other source found.
Duct tape, generic, but cut precisely, unusual. Exactly the same lengths.
Thallium sulfate (rodent poison) found in sand.
Soil containing fish protein-from perp, not victim.
Very little trace found.
Brown fibers, probably automotive carpeting.
Other:
Vehicle.
Ford Explorer, about three years old. Brown carpet. Tan.
Review of license tags of cars in area Tuesday morning reveals no warrants. No tickets issued Monday night.
Checking with Vice about prostitutes, re: witness.
No leads.
INTERVIEW WITH HALLERSTEIN
Perp:
EFIT composite picture of the Watchmaker-late forties, early fifties, round face, double chin, thick nose, unusually light blue eyes. Over 6 feet tall, lean, hair black, medium length, no jewelry, dark clothes. No name.
Knows great deal about clocks and watches and which timepieces had been sold at recent auctions and were at current horologic exhibits in the city.
Threatened dealer to keep quiet.
Bought 10 clocks. For 10 victims?
Paid cash.
Wanted moon face on clock, wanted loud tick.
Evidence:
Source of clocks was Hallerstein's Timepieces, Flatiron District.
No prints on cash paid for clocks, no serial number hits. No trace on money.
Called from pay phones.
CRIME SCENE THREE
Location:
481 Spring Street.
Victim:
Joanne Harper.
No apparent motive.
Didn't know second victim, Adams.
Perp:
Watchmaker.
Assistant.
Probably man spotted earlier by victim, at her shop.
White, heavyset, in sunglasses, cream-colored parka and cap. Was driving the SUV.
M.O.:
Picked locks to get inside.
Intended method of attack unknown. Possibly planning to use florist's wire.
Evidence:
Fish protein came from Joanne's (orchid fertilizer).
Thallium sulfate nearby.
Florist's wire, cut in precise lengths. (To use as murder weapon?)
Clock.
Same as others. No nitrates.
No trace.
No note or poem.
No footprints, fingerprints, weapons or anything else left behind.
Black flakes-roofing tar.
Checking ASTER thermal images of New York for possible sources.
Results inconclusive.
Other:
Perp was checking out victim earlier than attack. Targeting her for a purpose. What?
Have police scanner. Changing frequency.
Vehicle.
Tan.
No tag number.
Putting out Emergency Vehicle Locator.
423 owners of tan Explorers in area. Cross-reference against criminal warrants. Two found. One owner too old; other is in jail on drug charges.
Owned by man in jail.
WATCHMAKER'S EXPLORER
Location:
Found in garage, Hudson River and Houston Street.
Evidence:
Explorer owned by man in jail. Had been confiscated, and stolen from lot, awaiting auction.
Parked in open. Not near exit.
Crumbs from corn chips, potato chips, pretzels, chocolate candy. Bits of peanut butter crackers. Stains from soda, regular, not diet.
Box of Remington.32-caliber auto pistol ammo, seven rounds missing. Gun is possible Autauga Mk II.
Book-Extreme Interrogation Techniques. Blueprint for his murder methods? No helpful information from publisher.
Strand of gray-and-black hair, probably woman's.
No prints at all, throughout entire vehicle.
Beige cotton fibers from gloves.
Sand matching that used in alleyway.
Smooth-soled size-13 shoe print.
CRIME SCENE FOUR
Location:
Barrow Street, Greenwich Village.
Victim:
Lucy Richter.
Perp:
Watchmaker.
Assistant.
M.O.:
Planned means of death unknown.
Entry/exit routes not determined.
Evidence:
Clock.
Same as others.
Left in bathroom.
No explosives.
Wood alcohol stain, no other trace.
No note or poem.
No recent roof tarring.
No fingerprints or shoe prints.
No distinctive trace.
Wool fibers from shearling jacket or coat.
INTERVIEW WITH VINCENT REYNOLDS
AND SEARCH OF CHURCH
Location:
10th Avenue and 24th Street.
Perp:
Watchmaker:
Name is Gerald Duncan.
Businessman from "the Midwest," specifics unknown.
Wife died in NY; he's murdering for revenge.
Armed with pistol and box cutter.
His phone can't be traced.
Collects old clocks and watches.
Searching watchmakers and horologic organizations.
No immediate hits.
No info from Interpol or criminal information databases.
Assistant:
Vincent Reynolds.
Temp employee.
Lives in New Jersey.
History of sexual assaults.
Evidence:
Five additional clocks, identical to others. One missing.
In Vincent's room:
Junk food, sodas.
Condoms.
Duct tape.
Rags (gags?).
In Duncan's room:
Horological magazines.
Tools.
Clothes.
Programs from Tampa and Boston art museums.
Additional duct tape.
Old broom with dirt, sand and salt.
Three Bic pens.
Coins.
Receipt from parking garage, downtown.
Receipt from drugstore on Upper West Side.
Book of matches from restaurant on Upper East Side.
Shoes with bright green paint.
Empty gallon jug of alcohol.
Pet hair roller.
Beige gloves.
No fingerprints.
Fire extinguisher residue.
Empty box that contained fire extinguisher.
Extinguisher to be alcohol incendiary device?
Other:
Murdered a student near the church, was a witness.
Local precinct is checking.
Vehicle is a stolen, dark blue Buick.
Murdered driver.
Searching-carjackings, homicides, missing persons.
Emergency Vehicle Locator ordered; no hits yet.
Sarah Stanton walked quickly over the frozen sidewalk back to the Midtown office building where she worked, clutching her Starbucks latte and a chocolate chip cookie-a guilty pleasure, but a reward for what would be a long day at the office.
Not that she needed a tasty incentive to get back to her workstation; she loved her job. Sarah was an estimator for a large flooring and interior design company. The mother of an eight-year-old, she'd gone back to work a few years earlier than planned, thanks to a tough divorce. She'd started as a receptionist and moved her way up quickly to become the head estimator for the company.
The work was demanding, a lot of numbers-but the company was good and she liked the people she worked with (well, most of them). And she had flexibility with her hours, since she was in the field a lot, meeting with clients. This was important because she had to get her son dressed and ready for school, then escort him all the way to Ninety-fifth Street by 9 A.M. and then head back to Midtown for her job, the timetable subject always to the whims of the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Today she would work more than ten hours; tomorrow, she was taking off entirely to go Christmas shopping with her boy.
Sarah swiped her entry card and pushed through the back door of the building, then performed her afternoon workout routine-walking up the stairs to her office rather than use the elevator. The company took up all of the third floor but her workstation was in a smaller office, which occupied only a portion of the second floor. This office was quiet, housing only four employees, but Sarah preferred that. The bosses rarely came down here and she could get her work done without interruption.
She climbed to the landing and paused. She reached for the door handle, thinking as she nearly always did: Why did these doors open without any kind of lock from the stairwell side? It'd be pretty easy for somebody-
She jumped, hearing a faint tap of metal. Spinning around, Sarah saw no one.
And…was that the sound of breathing?
Was somebody hurt?
Should she go see? Or call security?
"Is anyone there? Hello?"
Only silence.
Probably nothing, she thought. And stepped into the corridor that led to the back door of her office. Sarah unlocked the door and walked down the long corridor of the company.
Shedding her coat and setting the coffee and cookie on her desk, she sat down at her workstation, glancing at her computer.
Odd, she thought. On the screen was the window that read, "Date and Time Properties."
This was the utility in the Windows XP operating system that you used to set the date and time and time zone of your computer. It showed a calendar with the day's date indicated and, to the right, both an analog clock with sweep hands and below it a digital clock, both ticking off the seconds.
The screen hadn't been there before she'd made the run to Starbucks.
Had it popped up by itself? she wondered. Why? Maybe somebody'd used her computer while she was away, though she had no idea who it might be or why.
No matter. She closed the window on the screen and scooted forward.
She glanced down. What was that?
Sarah saw a fire extinguisher under her desk. It hadn't been there earlier either. The company was always doing weird things like this. Putting in new lighting, coming up with evacuation plans, rearranging furniture, for no apparent reason.
Now, fire extinguishers.
Probably something else we have the terrorists to thank for.
Taking a fast look at her son's picture, feeling comfort in seeing his smile, she set her purse under her desk and unwrapped her cookie.
Lieutenant Dennis Baker walked slowly down the deserted street. He was south of Hell's Kitchen in a largely industrial area on the west side.
As he'd suggested, the officers had divided up the clues found at the church in their hunt for the Watchmaker. He'd told Sachs and Haumann that he'd remembered a warehouse that was being painted with that same shade of sickly green paint found on the shoes in the Watchmaker's room. While the rest of the team were tracking down other leads, he'd come here.
The massive building stretched along the street, dark, abandoned, bleak even in the sharp sunlight. The lower six or seven feet of the grimy brick walls were covered with graffiti and half the windows were broken-some even shot out, it seemed. On the roof was a faded sign, Preston Moving and Storage, in an old-style typeface.
The front doors, painted that green color, were locked and chained shut but Baker found a side entrance, half hidden behind a Dumpster. It was open. He looked up and down the street then pulled the door open and stepped inside. Baker started through the dim place, lit only by slanting shafts of light. The smell was of rotting cardboard and mildew and heating oil. He drew his pistol. It felt awkward in his hand. He'd never fired a single shot in the line of duty.
Walking silently along the corridor, Baker approached the facility's main storage area, a massive open space whose floor was dotted with pools of greasy standing water and trash. Plenty of condoms too, he noticed in disgust. This was probably the least romantic site for a liaison you could imagine.
A flash of light from the offices lining the wall caught his attention. His eyes were growing accustomed to the dimness and as he walked closer he noticed a burning desk lamp inside a small room. There was one other thing he could see, as well.
One of the black, moon-faced clocks-the Watchmaker's calling cards.
Baker started forward.
Which is when he stepped on a large patch of grease he hadn't been able to see in the darkness and went down hard on his side, gasping. He dropped his pistol, which slid away across the filthy concrete floor. He winced in pain.
It was at this moment that a man jogged up fast behind him from one of the side corridors.
Baker glanced up into the eyes of Gerald Duncan, the Watchmaker.
The killer bent down.
And he offered his hand, helping Baker up. "You all right?"
"Just got the wind knocked out of me. Careless. Thanks, Gerry."
Duncan stepped away, retrieved Baker's pistol and handed it to him. "You didn't really need that." He laughed.
Baker put the gun back in his holster. "Wasn't sure who else I might run into, other than you. Spooky place."
The Watchmaker gestured toward the office. "Come on inside. I'll tell you exactly what's going to happen to her."
What was going to happen meant how the men were going to commit murder.
And the "her" he was referring to was an NYPD detective named Amelia Sachs.
Sitting on one of the chairs in the warehouse office,
Dennis Baker brushed at his slacks, now stained from the fall.
Italian, expensive. Shit.
He said to Duncan, "We've got Vincent Reynolds in custody and we took the church."
Duncan would know this, of course, since he himself had made the call alerting the police that the Watchmaker's partner was wheeling a grocery cart around the West Village (Baker had been surprised, and impressed, that Kathryn Dance had tipped to Vincent even before Duncan dimed out his supposed partner).
And Duncan had known too that the rapist would give up the church under pressure.
"Took a little longer than I thought," said Baker, "but he caved."
"Of course he did," Duncan said. "He's a worm."
Duncan had planned the sick fuck's capture all long; it was necessary to feed the cops the information to make them believe that the Watchmaker was a vengeful psychopath, not the hired murderer he actually was. And Vincent was key to pointing the police in the right direction for the completion of Duncan's plan.
And that plan was as elaborate and elegant as the finest timepiece. Its purpose was to halt Amelia Sachs's investigation threatening to unearth an extortion ring that Baker had been running from the 118th Precinct.
Dennis Baker came from a family of law enforcers. His father had been a transit cop, who retired early after he took a spill down a subway station stairwell. An older brother worked for the Department of Corrections and Baker's uncle was a cop in a small town in Suffolk County, where the family was from. Initially he'd had no interest in the profession-the handsome, well-built young man wanted big bucks. But after losing every penny in a failed recycling business, Baker decided to join up. He moved from Long Island to New York City and tried to reinvent himself as a policeman.
But coming to the job later in life-and the cocky, TV-cop style he adopted-worked against him, alienating brass and fellow officers. Even his family history in law enforcement didn't help (his relatives fell low in the blue hierarchy). Baker could make a living as a cop but he wasn't destined for a corner office in the Big Building.
So he decided to go for the bucks after all. But not via business. He'd use his badge.
When he first started shaking down businessmen he wondered if he'd feel guilty about it.
Uh-uh. Not a bit.
The only problem was that to support his lifestyle-which included a taste for wine, food and beautiful women-he needed more than just a thousand or so a week from Korean wholesalers and fat men who owned pizza parlors in Queens. So Baker, a former partner and some cops from the 118th came up with a plan for a lucrative extortion ring. Baker's cohorts would steal a small amount of drugs from the evidence lockers or would score some coke or smack on the street. They'd target the children of rich businessmen in Manhattan clubs and plant the drugs on them. Baker would talk to the parents, who'd be told that for a six-figure payment, the arrest reports would disappear. If they didn't pay, the kids'd go to jail. He'd also occasionally plant drugs on businessmen themselves.
Rather than just taking the money, though, they'd arrange for the victims to lose it in sham business deals, like with Frank Sarkowski, or in fake poker games in Vegas or Atlantic City-the approach they took with Ben Creeley. This would provide the marks with a reasonable explanation as to why they were suddenly two or three hundred thousand dollars poorer.
But then Dennis Baker made a mistake. He got lazy. It wasn't easy finding the right marks for the scam and he decided to go back to some of the earlier targets for a second installment of extortion money.
Some paid the second time. But two of them-Sarkowski and Creeley-were businessmen with pretty tough hides, and while they were willing to pay once to get Baker out of their hair, they drew the line at a second payment. One threatened to go to the police, and one to the press. In early November Baker and a cop from the 118th had kidnapped Sarkowski and driven him to an industrial section of Queens, near where a client of his company had a factory. He'd been shot, the crime staged to look like a mugging. Several weeks later Baker and the same cop had broken into Creeley's high-rise, strung a rope around the businessman's neck and tossed him off the balcony.
They'd stolen or destroyed the men's personal files, books and diaries-anything that might've led back to Baker and his scam. As for the police reports, there was virtually nothing in Creeley's that was incriminating but the Sarkowski file contained references to evidence that a sharp investigator might draw some troubling conclusions from. So one of the people involved in the plan had engineered its disappearance.
Baker thought the deaths would go unnoticed and they continued with their scam-until a young policewoman showed up. Detective Third-Grade Amelia Sachs didn't believe that Benjamin Creeley had committed suicide and started looking into the death.
There was no stopping the woman. They had no choice but to kill her. With Sachs dead or incapacitated Baker doubted that anyone else would follow up on the cases as fervently as she was. The problem, of course, was that if she wereto die, Lincoln Rhyme would deduce immediately that her death was related to the St. James investigation and then nothingwould stop him and Sellitto from pursuing the killers.
So Baker needed Sachs to die for a reason unrelated to the 118th Precinct crimes.
Baker put some feelers out to a few organized crime wise guys he knew and soon he heard from Gerald Duncan, a professional killer who could manipulate crime scenes and set up fake motives to steer suspicion completely away from the man or woman hiring him to kill. "Motive is the one sure way to get yourself caught," Duncan had explained. "Eliminate the motive, you eliminate suspicion."
They'd agreed on a price-brother, the man wasn't cheap-and Duncan had gone to work planning the job.
Duncan tracked down some loser he could use to feed information about the Watchmaker to the police. Vincent Reynolds turned out to be a perfect patsy, soaking up the story Duncan fed him-about going psycho because of a dead wife and killing apathetic citizens.
Then, the previous day, Duncan had put the plan into operation. The Watchmaker killed the first two of the victims, picked at random-some guy he'd kidnapped from West Street in the Village and murdered on the pier and the one in the alley a few hours later. Baker had made sure Sachs was assigned to the case. There were two more attempted murders by the killer-the fact they didn't succeed was irrelevant; the Watchmaker was still one spooky doer, who needed to be stopped fast.
Then Duncan made his next moves: sending Vincent to attack Kathryn Dance, so that the police would believe that the Watchmaker was willing to kill police officers, and setting up Vincent to be captured and dime the Watchmaker out to the police.
It was now time for the final step: The Watchmaker would kill yet another cop, Amelia Sachs, her death entirely the work of a vengeful killer, unrelated to the 118th Precinct investigation.
Duncan now asked, "She found out you were spying on her?"
Baker nodded. "You called that right. She's one smart bitch. But I did what you suggested."
Duncan anticipated that she'd be suspicious of everyone except people she knew personally. He'd explained that when people suspect you, you have to give them another-harmless-reason for your behavior. You simply confess to the lesser crime, act contrite and they're satisfied; you're off the suspect list.
At Duncan's suggestion, Baker asked some officers about Sachs. He heard rumors that she'd been involved with a crooked cop and he'd ginned up an email from someone in the Big Building and used that as a reason to be spying on her. She wasn't happy, but she didn't suspect him of anything worse.
"Here's the plan," Duncan now explained, showing him a diagram of an office building in Midtown. "This's where the last victim works. Her name's Sarah Stanton. She's got a cubicle on the second floor. I picked the place because of the layout. It'll be perfect. I couldn't put one of the clocks there because the police announced the killer was using them-but I pulled up the time and date window on her computer."
"Good touch."
Duncan smiled. "I thought so." The killer's voice was soft, his words precise, but the tone was filled with the modest pleasure of an artisan showing off a finished piece of furniture or a musical instrument…or a watch, Baker reflected.
Duncan explained that he'd dressed like a workman, waited until Sarah went out then planted a fire extinguisher, filled with flammable alcohol. In a few minutes Baker was to call Rhyme or Sellitto and report that he'd found evidence of where the extinguisher bomb was planted. The ESU and bomb squad would then speed to the office, Amelia Sachs too.
"I set the device up so that if she moves the extinguisher a certain way, it'll spray her with alcohol and ignite. Alcohol burns really fast. It'll kill or injure her but won't set fire to the whole office." The police, he continued, might even disarm the device and save the woman. It wouldn't matter; all that Duncan cared about was getting Amelia Sachs into the office to search the scene.
Sarah's cubicle was at the end of a narrow corridor. Sachs would be searching it alone, as she always did. When she turned her back, Baker, waiting nearby, would shoot her and anybody else present. The weapon he'd use was Duncan's.32 automatic, loaded with bullets from the same box he'd intentionally left in the SUV for the police to find. After shooting Sachs, Baker would break a nearby window, which was fifteen feet above an alleyway. He'd throw the gun out, making it seem as if the Watchmaker had leapt out the window and escaped, dropping the gun. The unusual murder weapon, linked to the rounds found in the Explorer, would leave no doubt that the Watchmaker was the killer.
Sachs would be dead and the investigation into the corruption at the 118th Precinct would grind to a halt.
Duncan said, "Let some other officers get to her body first but it'd be a nice touch if you pushed them aside and tried to resuscitate her."
Baker said, "You think of everything, don't you?"
"What's so miraculous about timepieces," Duncan said, gazing at the moon-faced clock, "is that none of them ever has more or fewer parts than is needed to do what the watchmaker intends. Nothing missing, but nothing superfluous." He added in a soft voice, "It's pure perfection, wouldn't you say?"
Amelia Sachs and Ron Pulaski were slogging through the cold streets of lower Manhattan, and she was reflecting that sometimes the biggest hurdles in a case weren't from the perps but from bystanders, witnesses and victims.
They were following up on one of the clues that had been uncovered in the church, receipts from a parking garage not far from the pier where the first victim had died. But the attendant was unhelpful. Lady, no, he no familiar. Nobody look like him I remember. Ahmed-maybe he saw him… Oh, but he not here today. No, I don't know his phone number…
And so it went.
Frustrated, Sachs nodded toward a restaurant adjacent to the parking garage. She said, "Maybe he stopped in there. Let's give it a try."
Just then her radio crackled. She recognized Sellitto's voice. "Amelia, you copy?"
She grabbed Pulaski's arm and turned up the volume, so they both could hear. "Go ahead, K."
"Where are you?"
"Downtown. The parking garage didn't pan out. We're going to canvass a couple of restaurants."
"Forget it. Get up to Three Two Street and Seven Avenue. Fast. Dennis Baker's found a lead. Looks like the next vic's in an office building there."
"Who is she?"
"We're not sure exactly. We'll probably have to sweep the whole place. We've got Arson and the bomb squad on the way-she's the one he's going to burn to death. Man, I hope we're in time. Anyway, get up there now."
"We'll be there in fifteen minutes."
The fire department was sending two dozen men and women into the twenty-seven-story midtown building. And Bo Haumann was assembling five ESU entry teams-expanded ones, six cops each, rather than the typical four-to do a floor-by-floor search.
Sachs's drive here had taken closer to a half hour, thanks to holiday traffic. Not a huge delay but the extra fifteen minutes made a big difference: She'd missed a spot on an entry team. Amelia Sachs was officially a crime scene detective but her heart was also with tactical teams, the ones who went through the perps' doors first.
If they found the Watchmaker here, it would've been her last chance for a take-down before she quit the force. She supposed she'd see some excitement in her new job as security specialist at Argyle, but the local law enforcers would surely get most of the tactical fun.
Sachs and Pulaski now ran from the car to the command post at the back door of the office building.
"Any sign of him?" she asked Haumann.
The grizzled man shook his head. "Not yet. We had a sequence on a video camera in the lobby of somebody kind of looked like the composite, carrying a bag. But we don't know if he left or not. There're two back and two side door exits that aren't alarmed and aren't scanned by cameras."
"You evacuating?" a man's voice asked.
Sachs turned around. It was Detective Dennis Baker.
"Just started," Haumann explained.
"How'd you find him?" Sachs asked.
Baker said, "That warehouse with the green paint-he used it as a staging area. I found some notes and a map of this building."
The policewoman was still angry about Baker's spying on her but solid police work deserves credit and she nodded to him and said, "Good job."
"Nothing inspired," he replied with a smile. "Just pounding the pavement. And a little bit of luck." Baker's eyes rose to the building as he pulled his gloves on.
Sitting in her cubicle, Sarah Stanton heard another squawk over the building's public address system above her head.
It was a running joke in the office that the company put some kind of filter on the speakers that made the transmissions completely unintelligible. She turned back to her computer, calling, "What're they saying? I can't make heads or tails of it."
"Some announcement," one of her coworkers called.
Duh.
"They keep doingthat. Pisses me off. Is it a fire drill?"
"No idea."
A moment later she heard the whoop of the fire alarm.
Guess it is.
After 9/11 the alarm had gone off every month or so. The first couple times she'd played along and trooped downstairs like everybody else. But today the temperature was in the low twenties and she had way too much work to do. Besides, if it really was a fire and the exits were blocked she could just jump out the window. Her office was only on the second floor.
She returned to her screen.
But then Sarah heard voices at the far end of the corridor that led to her cubicle. There was an urgency about the sound. And something else-the jangling of metal. Firemen's equipment? she wondered.
Maybe something really was happening.
Heavy footsteps behind her, approaching. She turned around and saw policemen in dark outfits, with guns. Police? Oh, God, was it a terrorist attack? All she thought about was getting to her son's school, picking him up.
"We're evacuating the building," the cop announced.
"Is it terrorists?" somebody called. "Has there been another attack?"
"No." He didn't explain further. "Everybody move out in an orderly fashion. Take your coats, leave everything else."
Sarah relaxed. She wouldn't have to worry about her son.
Another of the officers called, "We're looking for fire extinguishers. Are there any in this area? Don't touch them. Just let us know. I repeat, do not touch them!"
So there is a fire, she thought, pulling on her coat.
Then she reflected that it was curious that the fire department would use the company's extinguishers on a fire. Didn't they have their own? And why should they be so concerned that we'd use one? Not like you need special training.
I repeat, do not touch them!…
The policeman looked into an office near Sarah's workstation.
"Oh, Officer? You want an extinguisher?" she asked. "I've got one right here."
And she pulled the heavy red cylinder off the floor.
"No!" cried the man and he leaped toward her.
Sachs winced as the transmission crackled loudly through her earpiece.
"Fire and containment team, second floor, southeast corner office. K. Lanam Flooring and Interiors. Now! Move, move, move!"
A dozen firefighters and officers from the bomb squad shouldered their equipment and sprinted fast toward the rear door.
"Status?" Haumann shouted into his microphone.
All they could hear were harried voices over the raw howl of the fire alarm.
"Do you have detonation?" the head of ESU repeated urgently.
"I don't see smoke," Pulaski said.
Dennis Baker stared up at the second floor. He shook his head.
"If it's alcohol," one of the fire chiefs said, "there won't be smoke until the secondary materials ignite." He added evenly, "Or her hair and skin."
Sachs continued to scan the windows, clenching her fists. Was the woman dying in agony now? With police officers or firemen alongside her?
"Come on," Baker whispered.
Then a voice clattered through the radio: "We've got the device… We've…Yeah, we've got it. It didn't detonate."
Sachs closed her eyes.
"Thank God," Baker said.
People were streaming out of the office building now, under the gaze of ESU and patrol officers who were looking for Duncan, comparing the composite pictures with the faces of the workers.
An officer led a woman up to Sachs, Baker and Pulaski, just as Sellitto joined them.
The potential victim, Sarah Stanton, explained that she'd found a fire extinguisher under her desk; it hadn't been there earlier and she hadn't seen who'd left it. Somebody in the office remembered seeing a workman in a uniform nearby but couldn't remember details and didn't recognize the composite or recall where he'd gone.
"Status of the device?" Haumann called.
An officer radioed, "Didn't see a timer but the pressure gauge on the top was blank. That could be the detonator. And I can smell alcohol. Bomb squad's got it in a containment vessel. They're taking it up to Rodman's Neck. We're still sweeping for the perp."
"Any sign of him?" Baker asked.
"Negative. There're two fire stairwells and the elevators. He could've gotten out that way. And we've got four or five other companies on that floor. He might've gotten into one of them. We'll search 'em in a minute or two, as soon as we get an all-clear for devices."
Ten minutes later officers reported that there were no other bombs in the building.
Sachs interviewed Sarah, then called Rhyme and told him the status of the case so far. The woman didn't know the other victims and had never heard of Gerald Duncan. She was very upset that the man's wife might've been killed outside her apartment, though she remembered nothing of any fatal accidents in the area.
Finally Haumann told them that all of his officers had finished the sweep; the Watchmaker had escaped.
"Hell," Dennis Baker muttered. "We were so close."
Discouraged, Rhyme said, "Well, walk the grid and tell me what you find."
They signed off. Haumann sent two teams to stake out the warehouse that Duncan had used as a staging site in case the killer returned there and Sachs dressed in the white Tyvek bodysuit and grabbed a metal suitcase containing basic evidence collection and preservation equipment.
"I'll help," Pulaski said, also dressing in the white overalls.
She handed him the suitcase and she picked up another one.
On the second floor, she paused and surveyed the hallway. After photographing it Sachs entered Lanam Flooring and proceeded to Sarah Stanton's workstation.
She and Pulaski set up the suitcases and extracted the basic evidence collection equipment: bags, tubes, swabs, adhesive rollers for trace, electrostatic footprint sheets and latent-print chemicals and equipment.
"What can I do?" Pulaski asked. "You want me to search the stairwells?"
She debated. They'd have to be searched eventually but she decided that it would be better to run them herself; they were the most logical entry and exit routes for the Watchmaker and she wanted to make certain that no evidence was missed. Sachs surveyed the layout of Sarah's cubicle and then noticed an empty workstation next to it. It was possible that the Watchmaker had waited there until he had a chance to plant the bomb. Sachs told the rookie, "Run that cubicle."
"You got it." He stepped into the cubicle, pulled out his flashlight and began walking a perfect grid. She caught him sniffing the air too, another of Lincoln Rhyme's dictates for crime scene officers searching. This boy was going to go places, she reflected.
Sachs stepped into the cubicle where they'd found the device. She heard a noise and glanced back. It was only Dennis Baker. He came up the corridor and stopped about twenty feet from the cubicles, far enough away so there was no risk of contaminating the scene.
She wasn't sure exactly why he was here but, since they still weren't sure where the Watchmaker was, she was grateful for his presence.
Search well but watch your back…
This was the difference:
Detective Dennis Baker-along with a cop from the 118th-had murdered Benjamin Creeley and Frank Sarkowski. It had been tough but they'd done it without hesitation. And he was prepared to kill any other civilians who threatened their extortion scheme. No problem at all. Five million dollars in cash-their haul to date-buries a lot of guilt.
But Baker had never killed a fellow cop.
Frowning, fidgeting, he was watching Amelia Sachs and the kid, Pulaski, who also presented an easy target.
A big difference.
This was killing family members, fellow officers.
But the sad truth was that Sachs and, by association, Pulaski, could destroy his life.
And so there was no debate.
He now studied the scene. Yes, Duncan had it planned perfectly. There was the window. He glanced out. The alley, fifteen feet below, was deserted. And next to him was the gray metal chair the killer had told him about, the one he'd pitch through the window after killing the officers. There was the large air-conditioning intake vent, whose grate he'd remove after the shots, to make it appear that the Watchmaker had been hiding inside.
A deep breath.
Okay, it's time. He had to act fast, before anyone else came onto the scene. Amelia Sachs had sent the other officers into the main hallway but someone could return here at any minute.
He took the.32 and quietly pulled back the slide to make certain a bullet was in the chamber. Holding the gun behind his back, he eased closer. He was staring at Sachs, who moved around the crime scene almost like a dancer. Precise, fluid, lost in concentration, as she searched. It was beautiful to watch.
Baker tore himself out of this reverie.
Who first? he debated.
Pulaski was ten feet from him, Sachs twenty, both facing away.
Logically, Pulaski should be the first one, being closer. But Baker had learned from Lincoln Rhyme about Sachs's skill as a marksman. She could draw and fire in seconds. The kid had probably never even fired his weapon in combat. He might get his hand on his pistol after Baker killed Sachs, but the rookie would die before he could draw.
A few breaths.
Amelia Sachs unwittingly cooperated. She stood up from where she'd been crouching. Her back presented a perfect target. Baker pointed his gun high on her spine and squeezed the trigger.
To most people the sound would be a simple metallic click, lost in the dozen other ambient noises of a big-city office building.
To Amelia Sachs, though, it was clearly the spring-activated firing pin of an automatic weapon striking the primer cap of a malfunctioning bullet, or someone dry-firing a gun. She'd heard the distinctive sound a hundred times-from her own pistols and her fellow officers'.
This click was followed with what usually came next-the shooter working the slide to eject the bad round and chamber the next one in the clip. In many cases-like now-the maneuver was particularly frantic, the shooter needed to clear the weapon instantly and get a new bullet ready fast. It could be a matter of life and death.
This all registered in a fraction of a second. Sachs dropped the roller she was using to collect trace. Her right hand slammed to her hip-she always knew the exact place where her holster rested-and an instant later she spun around, hunched in a combat shooting position, her Glock in her hand, facing where the sound had come from.
She saw in her periphery, to her right, Ron Pulaski, standing up in the next office, looking at her weapon, alarmed, wondering what she was doing.
Twenty feet away was Dennis Baker, his eyes wide. In his gloved hand was a tiny pistol, a.32, she thought, pointed her way, as he worked the slide. She noted that it was an Autauga MKII, the type of gun that Rhyme speculated the Watchmaker might have.
Baker blinked. Couldn't speak for a moment. "I heard something," he said quickly. "I thought he'd come back, the Watchmaker."
"You pulled the trigger."
"No, I was just chambering a round."
She glanced at the floor, where the bum shell lay. The only reason for it to be there was if he'd tried to shoot, then ejected the defective bullet.
Taking the tiny.32 in his left hand, Baker lowered his right. It strayed to his side. "We have to be careful. I think he's back."
Sachs centered the sights directly on Baker's chest.
"Don't do it, Dennis," she said, nodding toward his hip, where his regulation pistol rested. "I willfire. I'm assuming you've got armor under your suit. My first slug'll be on your chest but two and three'll go higher. It won't be nice."
"I…You don't understand." His eyes were wide, panicked. "You have to believe me."
Wasn't that one of the key phrases that signaled deception, according to Kathryn Dance?
"What's going on?" Pulaski asked.
"Stay there, Ron," Sachs ordered. "Don't pay attention to a thing he says. Draw your weapon."
"Pulaski," Baker said, "she's going nuts. Something's wrong."
But from the corner of her eye she saw the rookie pull his weapon and aim it in Baker's direction.
"Dennis, set the thirty-two on the table. Then with your left hand take your service piece by the grip-thumb and index finger only. Set it down too then move back five steps. Lie facedown. Okay. You clear on that?"
"You don't understand."
She said calmly, "I don't need to understand. I need you to do what I'm telling you."
"But-"
"And I need you to do it now."
"You're crazy," Baker snapped. "You've had it in for me ever since you found out I was checking into you and your old boyfriend. You're trying to discredit me… Pulaski, she's going to kill me. She's gone rogue. Don't lether bring you down too."
Pulaski said, "You've been apprised of Detective Sachs's instructions. I'll disarm you if it's necessary. Now, sir, what's it going to be?"
Several seconds passed. It seemed like hours. Nobody moved.
"Fuck." Baker set the pistols where he'd been told and lowered himself to the floor. "You're both in deep shit."
"Cuff him," Sachs told Pulaski.
She covered Baker while the bewildered rookie got the man's hands behind him and ratcheted on the cuffs.
"Search him."
Sachs grabbed her Motorola. "Detective Five Eight Eight Five to Haumann. Respond, K."
"Go ahead, K."
"We've got a new development here. I've got somebody in cuffs I need escorted downstairs."
"What's going on?" the ESU head asked. "Is it the perp?"
"That's a good question," she replied, holstering her pistol.
With this latest twist in the case, a new person was present in front of the Midtown office building where Detective Dennis Baker had apparently just attempted to kill Amelia Sachs and Ron Pulaski.
Using the touch-pad controller, Lincoln Rhyme maneuvered the red Storm Arrow wheelchair along the sidewalk to the building's entrance. Baker sat in the back of a nearby squad car, cuffed and shackled. His face was white. He stared straight ahead.
At first he'd claimed that Sachs was targeting him because of the Nick Carelli situation. Then Rhyme decided to check with the brass. He asked the senior NYPD official who'd sent the email about it. It turned out that it was Bakerwho'd brought up a concern about Sachs's possible connection with a crooked cop and the brass had never sent the email at all; Baker'd written it himself. He'd created the whole thing as cover in case Sachs caught him following or checking up on her.
Using the touch pad, Rhyme eased closer to the building, where Sellitto and Haumann had set up their command post. He parked and Sellitto explained what had happened upstairs. But added, "I don't get it. Just don't get it." The heavy detective rubbed his bare hands together. He glanced up at the clear, windy sky as if he'd just realized it was one of the chilliest months on record. When he was on a case, hot and cold didn't really register.
"You find anything on him?" Rhyme asked.
"Just the thirty-two and latex gloves," Pulaski said. "And some personal effects."
A moment later Amelia Sachs joined them, holding a carton containing a dozen plastic evidence bags. She'd been searching Baker's car. "It's getting better by the minute, Rhyme. Check this out." She showed Rhyme and Sellitto the bags one by one. They contained cocaine, fifty thousand in cash, some old clothing, receipts from clubs and bars in Manhattan, including the St. James. She lifted one bag that seemed to contain nothing. On closer examination, though, he could see fine fibers.
"Carpeting?" he asked.
"Yep. Brown."
"Bet they match the Explorer's."
"That's what I'm thinking."
Another link to the Watchmaker.
Rhyme nodded, staring at the plastic bag, which rippled in the chill wind. He felt that burst of satisfaction that occurred when the pieces of the puzzle started to come together. He turned to the squad car where Baker sat and called through the half-open window. "When were you assigned to the One One Eight?"
The man stared back at the criminalist. "Fuck you. You think I'm saying anything to you pricks? This is bullshit. Somebody planted all that on me."
Rhyme said to Sellitto, "Call Personnel. I want to know his prior assignments."
Sellitto did and, after a brief conversation, looked up and said, "Bingo. He was at the One One Eight for two years. Narcotics and Homicide. Promoted out to the Big Building three years ago."
"How did you meet Duncan?"
Baker hunkered down in the backseat and returned to his job of staring straight ahead.
"Well, isn't this a tidy little confluence of our cases," Rhyme said, in good humor.
"A what?" Sellitto barked.
"Confluence. A coming together, Lon. A merger. Don't you do crosswords?"
Sellitto grunted. "What cases?"
"Obviously, Sachs's case at the One One Eight and the Watchmaker situation. They weren't separate at all. Opposite sides of the same knife blade, you could say." He was pleased with the metaphor.
His Case and the Other Case…
"You want to explain?"
Did he really need to?
Amelia Sachs said, "Baker was a player in the corruption at the One One Eight. He hired the Watchmaker-well, Duncan-to take me out 'cause I was getting close to him."
"Which pretty much proves there is indeed something rotten in Denmark."
Now it was Pulaski's chance not to get it. "Denmark? The one in Europe?"
"The one in Shakespeare, Ron," the criminalist said impatiently. And when the young officer grinned blankly Rhyme gave up.
Sachs took over again. "He means it's proof there was majorcorruption at the One One Eight. Obviously they're doing more than just sitting on investigations for some crew out of Baltimore or Bay Ridge."
Looking up absently at the office building, Rhyme nodded, oblivious to the cold and the wind. There were some unanswered questions, of course. For instance, Rhyme wasn't sure if Vincent Reynolds really was a partner or was just being set up.
Then there was the matter of where the extortion money was, and Rhyme now asked, "Who's the one in Maryland? Who're you working with? Was it OC or something else?"
"Are you deaf?" Baker snapped. "Not a fucking word."
"Take him to CB," Sellitto said to the patrol officers standing beside the car. "Book him on assault with intent for the time being. We'll add some other ornaments later." As they watched the RMP drive away, Sellitto shook his head. "Jesus," the detective muttered. "Were we lucky."
"Lucky?" Rhyme grumbled, recalling that he'd said something similar earlier.
"Yeah, that Duncan didn't kill any more vics. And here too-Amelia was a sitting duck. If that piece hadn't misfired…" His voice faded before he described the tragedy that had nearly occurred.
Lincoln Rhyme believed in luck about as much as he believed in ghosts and flying saucers. He started to ask what the hell did luck have to do with anything, but the words never came out of his mouth.
Luck…
Suddenly a dozen thoughts, like bees escaping from a jostled hive, zipped around him. He was frowning. "That's odd… " His voice faded. Finally he whispered, "Duncan."
"Something wrong, Linc? You okay?"
"Rhyme?" Sachs asked.
"Shhhhh."
Using the touch-pad controller he turned slowly in a circle, glanced in a nearby alleyway, then at the bags and boxes of evidence Sachs had collected. He gave a faint laugh. He ordered, "I want Baker's gun."
"His service piece?" Pulaski asked.
"Of coursenot. The other one. The thirty-two. Where is it? Now, hurry!"
Pulaski found the weapon in a plastic bag. He returned with it.
"Field-strip it."
"Me?" the rookie asked.
"Her." Rhyme nodded at Sachs.
Sachs spread out a piece of plastic on the sidewalk, replaced her leather gloves with latex ones and in a few seconds had the gun dismantled, the parts laid out on the ground.
"Hold up the pieces one by one."
Sachs did this. Their eyes met. She said, "Interesting."
"Okay. Rookie?"
"Yessir?"
"I've got to talk to the medical examiner. Track him down for me."
"Well, sure. I should call?"
Rhyme's sigh was accompanied by a stream of breath flowing from his mouth. "You couldtry a telegram, you couldgo knock, knock, knockin' on his door. But I'll bet the best approach is to use…your…phone.And don't take no for an answer. I needhim."
The young man gripped his cell phone and started punching numbers into the keypad.
"Linc," Sellitto said, "what's this-"
"And I need you to do something too, Lon."
"Yeah, what?"
"There's a man across the street watching us. In the mouth of the alley."
Sellitto turned. "Got him." The guy was lean, wearing sunglasses despite the dusk, a hat and jeans and a leather jacket. "Looks familiar."
"Invite him to come over here. I'd like to ask him a few questions."
Sellitto laughed. "Kathryn Dance's really having an effect on you, Linc. I thought you didn't trust witnesses."
"Oh, I think in this case it'd be good to make an exception."
Shrugging, the big detective asked, "Who is he?"
"I could be wrong," Rhyme said with the tone of a man who believed he rarely was, "but I have a feeling he's the Watchmaker."
Gerald Duncan sat on the curb, beside Sachs and Sellitto. He was handcuffed, stripped of his hat, sunglasses, several pairs of beige gloves, wallet and a bloody box cutter.
Unlike Dennis Baker's, his attitude was pleasant and cooperative-despite his being pulled to the ground, frisked and cuffed by three officers, Sachs among them, a woman not noted for her delicate touch on takedowns, particularly when it came to perps like this one.
His Missouri driver's license confirmed his identity and showed an address in St. Louis.
"Christ," Sellitto said, "how the hell'd you spot him?"
Rhyme's conclusion about the onlooker's identity wasn't as miraculous as it seemed. His belief that the Watchmaker might not have fled the scene arose before he'd noticed the man in the alley.
Pulaski said, "I've got him. The ME."
Rhyme leaned toward the phone that the rookie held out in a gloved hand and had a brief conversation with the doctor. The medical examiner delivered some very interesting information. Rhyme thanked him and nodded; Pulaski disconnected. The criminalist maneuvered the Storm Arrow wheelchair closer to Duncan.
"You're Lincoln Rhyme," the prisoner said, as if he was honored to meet the criminalist.
"That's right. And you're the quoteWatchmaker."
The man gave a knowing laugh.
Rhyme looked him over. He appeared tired but gave off a sense of satisfaction-even peace.
With a rare smile Rhyme asked the suspect, "So. Who was he really? The victim in the alleyway. We can search public records for Theodore Adams, but that'd be a waste of time, wouldn't it?"
Duncan tipped his head. "You figured that out too?"
"What about Adams?" Sellitto asked. Then realized that there were broader questions that should be asked. "What's going on here, Linc?"
"I'm asking our suspect about the man we found in the alley yesterday morning, with his neck crushed. I want to know who he was and how he died."
"This asshole murdered him," Sellitto said.
"No, he didn't. I just talked to the medical examiner. He hadn't gotten back to us with the final autopsy but he just gave me the preliminary. The victim died about five or six P.M. on Monday, not at eleven. And he died instantly of massive internal injuries consistent with an automobile accident or fall. The crushed throat had nothing to do with it. The body was frozen solid when we found it the next morning, so the tour doc couldn't do an accurate field test for cause or time of death." Rhyme cocked his eyebrow. "So, Mr. Duncan. Who and how?"
Duncan explained, "Just some poor guy killed in a car crash up in Westchester. His name's James Pickering."
Rhyme urged, "Keep going. And remember, we're eager for answers."
"I heard about the accident on a police scanner. The ambulance took the body to the morgue in the county hospital. I stole the corpse from there."
Rhyme said to Sachs, "Call the hospital."
She did. After a brief conversation she reported, "A thirty-one-year-old male ran off the Bronx River Parkway about five Monday night. Lost control on a patch of ice. Died instantly, internal injuries. Name of James Pickering. The body went to the hospital but then it disappeared. They thought it might've been transferred to another hospital by mistake but they couldn't find it. The next of kin aren't taking it too well, as you can imagine."
"I'm sorry about that," Duncan said, and he did look troubled. "But I didn't have any choice. I have all his personal effects and I'll return them. And I'll pay for the funeral expenses myself."
"The ID and things in the wallet that we found on the body?" Sachs asked.
"Forgeries." Duncan nodded. "Wouldn't pass close scrutiny but I just needed people fooled for a few days."
"You stole the body, drove him to the alley and set him up with an iron bar on his neck to make it look liked he'd died slowly."
A nod.
"Then you left the clock and note too."
"That's right."
Lon Sellitto asked, "But the pier, at Twenty-second Street? What about the guy you killed there?"
Rhyme glanced at Duncan. "Is your blood type AB positive?"
Duncan laughed. "You're good."
"There never was a victim on the pier, Lon. It was his own blood." Looking over the suspect, Rhyme said, "You set the note and clock on the pier, and poured your blood around it and on the jacket-which you tossed into the river. You made the fingernail scrapings yourself. Where'd you get your blood? You collect it yourself?"
"No, I got it at a hospital in New Jersey. I told them I wanted to stockpile it before some surgery I was planning."
"That's why the anticoagulants." Stored blood usually has a thinning agent included to prevent it from clotting.
Duncan nodded. "I wondered if you'd check for that."
Rhyme asked, "And the fingernail?"
Duncan held up his ring finger. The end of the nail was missing. He himself had torn it off. He added, "And I'm sure Vincent told you about a young man I supposedly killed near the church. I never touched him. The blood on the box cutter and on some newspaper in the trash nearby-if it's still there-is mine."
"How did that happen?" Rhyme asked.
"It was an awkward moment. Vincent thought the kid saw his knife. So I had to pretend that I killed him. Otherwise Vincent might suspect me. I followed him around the corner, then ducked into an alley, cut my own arm with the knife and smeared some of my own blood on the box cutter." He showed a recent wound on his forearm. "You can do a DNA test."
"Oh, don't worry. We will… " Another thought. "And the carjacking-you never killed anybody to steal the Buick, did you?" They'd had no reports either of missing students in Chelsea or of drivers murdered during the commission of a carjacking anywhere in the city.
Lon Sellitto was compelled to chime in again with, "What the hell's going on?"
"He's not a serial killer," Rhyme said. "He's not any kind of killer. He set this whole thing up to make it look like he was."
Sellitto asked, "No wife killed in an accident?"
"Never been married."
"How'd you figure it out?" Pulaski asked Rhyme.
"Because of something Lon said."
"Me?"
"For one thing, you mentioned his name, Duncan."
"So? We knew it."
"Exactly. Because Vincent Reynolds told us. But Mr. Duncan is someone who wears gloves twenty-four/seven so he won't leave prints. He's way too careful to give his name to a person like Vincent-unless he didn't care if we found out who he was.
"Then you said it was lucky he didn't kill the recent victims and Amelia. Pissed me off at first, hearing that. But I got to thinking about it. You were right. Wedidn't really save any victims at all. The florist? Joanne? I figured out he was targeting her, sure, but she's the one who called nine-one-one after she heard a noise in the workshop-a noise he probably made intentionally."
"That's right," Duncan agreed. "And I left a spool of wire on the floor to warn her that somebody'd broken in."
Sachs said, "Lucy, the soldier in Greenwich Village-we got an anonymous phone call from a witness about a break-in. But it wasn't a witness at all, right? It was you making that call."
"I told Vincent that somebody in the street called nine-one-one. But, no, I called from a pay phone and reported myself."
Rhyme nodded at the office building behind them. "And here-the fire extinguisher was a dud, I assume."
"Harmless. I poured a little alcohol on the outside but it's filled with water."
Sellitto was on the phone, calling the Sixth Precinct, the NYPD Bomb Squad headquarters. A moment later he hung up. "Tap water."
"Just like the gun you gave Baker, the one he was going to use to kill Sachs here." Rhyme glanced at the dismantled.32. "I just checked it out-the firing pin's been broken off."
Duncan said to Sachs, "I plugged the barrel too. You can check. And I knew he couldn't use his own gun to shoot you because that would tie him to your death."
"Okay," Sellitto barked. "That's it. Somebody, talk to me."
Rhyme shrugged. "All I can do is get us to this station, Lon. It's up to Mr. Duncan to complete the train ride. I suspect he's planned to enlighten us all along. Which is why he was enjoying the show from the grandstand across the street."
Duncan nodded and said to Rhyme, "You hit it on the head, Detective Rhyme."
"I'm decommissioned," the criminalist corrected.
"The whole point of what I've done is what just happened-and, yes, I was enjoying it very much: watching that son of a bitch Dennis Baker get arrested and dragged off to jail."
"Keep going."
Duncan's face grew still. "A year ago I came here on business-I own a company that does lease financing of industrial equipment. I was working with a friend-my best friend. He saved my life when we were in the army twenty years ago. We were working all day drafting documents then went back to our hotels to clean up before dinner. But he never showed. I found out he'd been shot to death. The police said it was a mugging. But something didn't seem right. I mean, how often do muggers shoot their victims point-blank in the forehead-twice?"
"Oh, shooting fatalities during the commission of robberies are extremely rare, according to recent…" Pulaski's voice trailed off, under Rhyme's cool glance.
Duncan continued. "Now, the last time I saw him my friend told me something odd. He said that the night before, he'd been in a club downtown. When he came out, two policemen pulled him aside and said they'd seen him buying drugs. Which was bullshit. He didn't do drugs. I know that for a fact. He knew he was being shaken down and demanded to see a police supervisor. He was going to call somebody at headquarters and complain. But just then some people came out of the club and the police let him go. The next day he was shot and killed.
"Too much of a coincidence. I kept going back to the club and asking questions. Cost me five thousand bucks but finally I found somebody willing to tell me that Dennis Baker and some of his fellow cops ran shakedown scams in the city."
Duncan explained about a scheme of planting drugs on businessmen or their children and then dropping the charges for huge extortion payments.
"The missing drugs from the One One Eight," Pulaski said.
Sachs nodded. "Not enough to sell but enough to plant as evidence, sure."
Duncan added, "They were based out of some bar in lower Manhattan, I heard."
"The St. James?"
"That's it. They'd all meet there after their shifts at the station house were over."
Rhyme asked, "Your friend. The one who was killed. What was his name?"
Duncan gave them the name and Sellitto called Homicide. It was true. The man had been shot during an apparent mugging and no perp was ever collared.
"I used my connection I'd made at the club-paid him a lot of money-to get introduced to some people who knew Baker. I pretended I was a professional killer and offered my services. I didn't hear anything for a while. I thought he'd gotten busted or gone straight and I'd never hear from him. It was frustrating. But finally Baker called me and we met. It turns out he'd been checking me out to see if I was trustworthy. Apparently he was satisfied. He wouldn't give me too many details but said he had a business arrangement that was in jeopardy. He and another cop had taken care of some 'problems' they'd been having."
Sachs asked, "Creeley or Sarkowski? Did he mention them?"
"He didn't give me any names but it was obvious that he was talking about killing people."
Sachs shook her head, eyes troubled. "I was upset enough thinking that some of the cops from the One One Eight were taking kickbacks from mobsters. And all along theywere the actual killers."
Rhyme glanced at her. He knew she'd be thinking of Nick Carelli. Thinking of her father too.
Duncan continued. "Then Baker said there was a new problem. He needed someone else eliminated, a woman detective. But they couldn't kill her themselves-if she died everyone'd know it was because of her investigation and they'd follow up on the case even more intensely. I came up with this idea of pretending to be a serial killer. And I made up a name-the Watchmaker."
Sellitto said, "That's why there were no hits in the watchmaker trade associations." They'd all come back negative on a Gerald Duncan.
"Right. The character was all a creation of mine. And I needed someone to feed you information and make you think there really was a psycho, so I found Vincent Reynolds. Then we started the supposed attacks. The first two I faked, when Vincent wasn't around. The others-when he was with me-I bungled them on purpose.
"I had to make sure you found the box of bullets that'd connect the Watchmaker to Baker. I was going to drop them somewhere so you'd find them. But"-Duncan gave a laugh-"as it turned out, I didn't have to. You found out about the SUV and nearly got us."
"So that's why you left the ammunition inside."
"Yep. The book too."
Another thought occurred to Rhyme. "And the officer who searched the garage said it was curious you parked out in the open, not at the doorway. That was because you had to make sure we found the Explorer."
"Exactly. And all the other supposed crimes were just leading up to this one-so you could catch Baker in the act of trying to kill her. That'd give you probable cause, I figured, to search his car and house and find evidence to put him away."
"What about the poem? 'The full Cold Moon…'"
"I wrote it myself." Duncan smiled. "I'm a better businessman than a poet. But it seemed sufficiently scary to suit my needs."
"Why'd you pick these particular people as victims?"
"I didn't. I picked the locationsbecause they'd allow us to get away quickly. This last one, the woman here, was because I needed a good layout to flush out Baker."
"Revenge for your friend?" Sachs asked. "A lot of other people would just've had him killed outright."
Duncan said sincerely, "I'd never hurt anybody. I couldn't do that. I might bend the law a bit-I admit I committed some crimes here. But they were victimless. I didn't even steal the cars; Baker got them himself-from a police pound."
"The woman who was the first victim's supposed sister?" Sachs asked. "Who was she?"
"A friend I asked to help. I lent her a lot of money a few years ago but there was no way she could repay it. So she agreed to help me out."
"And the girl in the car with her?" Sachs asked.
"Her real daughter."
"What's the woman's name?"
A rueful smile. "I'll keep that to myself. Promised her I would. Just like the guy in the club who set me up with Baker. That was part of the deal and I'm sticking to it."
"Who else is involved in the shakedowns at the One One Eight, other than Baker?"
Duncan shook his head regretfully. "I wish I could tell you. I want them put away as much as Baker. I tried to find out. He wouldn't talk about his scheme. But I got the impression there's somebody involved other than the officers from the precinct."
"Somebody else?"
"That's right. High up."
"From Maryland or with a place there?" Sachs asked.
"I never heard him mention that. He trusted me but only up to a point. I don't think he was worried about my turning him in; it seemed like he was afraid I'd get greedy and go after the money myself. It sounded like there was a lot of it."
A dark-colored city car pulled up to the police tape and a slim, balding man in a thin overcoat climbed out. He joined Rhyme and the others. He was a senior assistant district attorney. Rhyme had testified at several of the trials the man had prosecuted. The criminalist nodded a greeting and Sellitto explained the latest developments.
The prosecutor listened to the bizarre turn the case had taken. Most of the perps he put away were stupid Tony Soprano sorts or even more stupid crackheads and punks. He seemed amused to find himself with a brilliant criminal-whose crimes, as it turned out, were not nearly as serious as it seemed. What excited him far more than a serial killer was the career-making prosecution of a deadly corruption scam in the police department.
"Any of this going through IAD?" he asked Sachs.
"No. I've been running it myself."
"Who cleared that?"
"Flaherty."
"The inspector? Running Op Div?"
"Right."
He began asking questions and jotting notes. After doing so, in precise handwriting, for five minutes he paused. "Okay, we've got B and E, criminal trespass…but no burglary."
Burglary is breaking and entering for the purpose of committing a felony, like larceny or murder. Duncan had no purpose other than trespassing.
The prosecutor continued. "Theft of human remains-"
"Borrowing. I never intended to keep the corpse," Duncan reminded him.
"Well, it's up to Westchester to decide that one. But here we've also got obstruction of justice, interference with police procedures-"
Duncan frowned. "Though you could say that since there were no murders in the first place, the police procedures weren't necessary, so interference with them is moot."
Rhyme chuckled.
The assistant district attorney, however, ignored the comment. "Possession of a firearm-"
"Barrel was plugged," Duncan countered. "It was inoperable."
"What about the stolen motor vehicles? Where'd they come from?"
Duncan explained about Baker's theft from the police impound lot in Queens. He nodded to the pile of his personal effects, which included a set of car keys. "The Buick's parked up the street. On Thirty-first. Baker got it from the same place as the SUV."
"How'd you take delivery of the cars? Anybody else involved?"
"Baker and I went together to pick them up. They were parked in a restaurant lot. Baker knew some of the people there, he said."
"You get their names?"
"No."
"What was the restaurant?"
"Some Greek diner. I don't remember the name. We took the four-ninety-five to get out there. I don't remember the exit but we were only on the freeway for about ten minutes after we got out of the Midtown Tunnel and turned left at the exit."
"North," Sellitto said. "We'll have somebody check it out. Maybe Baker's been dealing in confiscated wheels too."
The prosecutor shook his head. "I hope you understand the consequences of this. Not just the crimes-you'll have civil fines for the diversion of emergency vehicles and city employees. I'm talking tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars."
"I have no problem with that. I checked the laws and sentencing guidelines before I started this. I decided the risk of a prison sentence was worth exposing Baker. But I wouldn't have done this if there was any chance somebody innocent would get hurt."
"You still put people at risk," Sellitto muttered. "Pulaski was attacked in the parking garage where you left the SUV. He could've been killed."
Duncan laughed. "No, no, I'mthe one who saved him. After we abandoned the Explorer and were running out of the garage I spotted that homeless guy. I didn't like the looks of him. He had a club or tire iron or something in his hand. After Vincent and I split up, I went back to the garage to make sure he didn't hurt anybody. When he started toward you"-Duncan glanced at Pulaski-"I found a wheel cover in the trash and pitched it into the wall so you'd turn around and see him coming."
The rookie nodded. "That's what happened. I thought the guy stumbled and made the noise himself. But whatever, I was ready for him when he came at me. And there was a wheel cover nearby."
"And Vincent?" Duncan continued. "I made sure he never got close enough to any women to hurt them. I'mthe one who turned him in. I called nine-one-one and reported him. I can prove it." He gave details about where and when the rapist was caught-which confirmed that he'd been the one who called the police.
The prosecutor looked like he needed a time-out. He glanced at his notes, then at Duncan, and rubbed his shiny head. His ears were bright red from the cold. "I've gotta talk to the district attorney about this one." He turned to two detectives from Police Plaza who'd met him here. The prosecutor nodded at Duncan and said, "Take him downtown. And keep somebody on him close-remember, he's diming out crooked cops. People could be gunning for him."
Duncan was helped to his feet.
Amelia Sachs asked, "Why didn't you just come to us and tell us what happened? Or make a tape of Baker admitting what he'd done? You could've avoided this whole charade."
Duncan gave a harsh laugh. "And who could I trust? Who could I send a tape to? How did I know who was honest and who was working with Baker?…It's a fact of life, you know."
"What's that?"
"Corrupt cops."
Rhyme noticed Sachs gave absolutely no reaction to this comment, as two uniformed officers led their perp, such as he was, to a squad car.
They were, at least temporarily, once again a team.
You and me, Sachs…
Lincoln Rhyme's case had become Amelia Sachs's and if the Watchmaker had turned out to be toothless there was still a lot of work left to do. The corruption scandal at the 118th house was now "front-burnered," as Sellitto said (prompting Rhyme's sardonic comment, "Now there's a verb you don't hear every day"). Benjamin Creeley's and Frank Sarkowski's killer or killers had yet to be identified specifically from among the cops who were suspected of complicity. And the case against Baker had to be cobbled together and the Maryland connection-and the extortion money-unearthed.
Kathryn Dance volunteered to interview Baker but he was refusing to say a word so the team had to rely on traditional crime scene and investigative work.
On Rhyme's instruction, Pulaski was cross-referencing Baker's phone calls and poring over his records and Palm Pilot, trying to find out whom he spent the most time with at the 118th and elsewhere but wasn't coming up with anything helpful. Mel Cooper and Sachs were analyzing evidence from Baker's car, house on Long Island and office at One Police Plaza, as well as the houses or apartments of several girlfriends he'd been dating recently (none of whom knew about the others, it turned out). Sachs had searched with her typical diligence and had returned to Rhyme's with cartons of clothes, tools, checkbooks, documents, photos, weapons and trace from his tire treads.
After an hour of looking over all of this, Cooper announced, "Ah. Got something."
"What?" Rhyme asked.
Sachs told him, "Found some ash in the clothes that were in the trunk of Baker's car."
"And?" Sellitto asked.
Cooper added, "Identical to the ash found in the fireplace at Creeley's. Places him at that scene."
They also found a fiber from Baker's garage that matched the rope used in Benjamin Creeley's "suicide."
"I want to link Baker to Sarkowski's death too," Rhyme said. "Get Nancy Simpson and Frank Rettig out to Queens, that place where his body was found. Take some soil samples. We might be able to place Baker or one of his buddies there too."
"The soil I found at Creeley's, in front of the fireplace," Sachs pointed out, "had chemicals in it-like from a factory site. It might match."
"Good."
Sellitto called Crime Scene in Queens and ordered the collection.
Sachs and Cooper also found samples of sand and some vegetation that turned out to be seaweed. These substances were found in Baker's car. And there were similar samples in his garage at home.
"Sand and seaweed," Rhyme commented. "Could be a summer house-Maryland, again. Maybe Baker's got one, or a girlfriend of his."
But a check of the real estate databases showed that this wasn't the case.
Sachs wheeled in the other whiteboard from Rhyme's exercise room and she jotted the latest evidence. Clearly frustrated, she stood back and stared at the notations.
"The Maryland connection," she said. "We've gotto find it. If they killed two people, and nearly Ron and me, they're willing to kill more. They know we're closing them up and they won't want any witnesses. And they're probably destroying evidence right now."
Sachs was silent. She looked flustered.
It's hard when your lover is also your professional partner. But Lincoln Rhyme couldn't hold back, even-especially-with Amelia Sachs. He said in a low, even voice, "This's yourcase, Sachs. You've been living it. I haven't. Where does it all point?"
"I don't know." She dug a thumbnail into her finger. Her mouth tight, she shook her head, staring at the evidence chart. Loose ends. "There's not enough evidence."
"There's neverenough evidence," Rhyme reminded. "But that's not an excuse. That's what we're here for, Sachs. We're the ones who examine a few dirty bricks and figure out what the entire castle looked like."
"I don't know."
"I can't help you, Sachs. You've got to figure this one out on your own. Think about what you've got. Somebody with a connection to Maryland…somebody following you in a Mercedes…saltwater and seaweed…cash, a lot of cash. Crooked cops."
"I don't know," she repeated stridently.
But he wasn't giving an inch. "That's not an option. You haveto know."
She glared at him-and at the hard message beneath the words, which was: You can walk out that door tomorrow and throw away your career if you want. But for now you're still a cop with a job to do.
Her fingernails worried her scalp.
"There's something more, something you're missing," Rhyme muttered as he too gazed at the evidence charts.
"So, you're saying we have to think outside the box," said Ron Pulaski.
"Ah, clichés," Rhyme snapped. "Well, okay, if you're in a box, maybe you're there for a reason. Isay don't think outside it; I say look more closely at what's inside with you… So, Sachs, what do yousee in there?"
She stared at the charts for some moments.
Then she smiled and whispered, "Maryland."
BENJAMIN CREELEY HOMICIDE
56-year-old Creeley, apparently suicide by hanging. Clothesline. But had broken thumb, couldn't tie noose.
Computer-written suicide note about depression. But appeared not to be suicidally depressed, no history of mental/emotional problems.
Around Thanksgiving two men broke into his house and possibly burned evidence. White men, but faces not observed. One bigger than other. They were inside for about an hour.
Evidence in Westchester house:
Broke through lock; skillful job.
Leather texture marks on fireplace tools and Creeley's desk.
Soil in front of fireplace has higher acid content than soil around house and contains pollutants. From industrial site?
Traces of burned cocaine in fireplace.
Ash in fireplace.
Financial records, spreadsheet, references to millions of dollars.
Checking logo on documents, sending entries to forensic accountant.
Diary re: getting oil changed, haircut appointment and going to St. James Tavern.
Analysis of ash from Queens CS lab:
Logo of software used in corporate accounting.
Forensic accountant: standard executive compensation figures.
Burned because of what they revealed, or to lead investigators off?
St. James Tavern
Creeley came here several times.
Apparently didn't use drugs while here.
Not sure whom he met with, but maybe cops from the nearby 118th Precinct of the NYPD.
Last time he was here-just before his death-he got into an argument with persons unknown.
Checked money from officers at St. James-serial numbers are clean, but found coke and heroin. Stolen from precinct?
Not much drugs missing, only 6 or 7 oz. of pot, 4 of coke.
Unusually few organized crime cases at the 118th Precinct but no evidence of intentional stalling by officers.
Two gangs in the East Village possible but not likely suspects.
Interview with Jordan Kessler, Creeley's partner, and follow-up with wife.
Confirmed no obvious drug use.
Didn't appear to associate with criminals.
Drinking more than usual, taken up gambling; trips to Vegas and Atlantic City. Losses were large, but not significant to Creeley.
Not clear why he was depressed.
Kessler didn't recognize burned records.
Awaiting list of clients.
Kessler doesn't appear to gain by Creeley's death.
Sachs and Pulaski followed by AMG Mercedes.
FRANK SARKOWSKI HOMICIDE
Sarkowski was 57 years old, owned business in Manhattan, no police record, murdered on November 4 of this year, survived by wife and two teenage children.
Victim owned building and business in Manhattan. Business was doing maintenance for other companies and utilities.
Art Snyder was case detective.
No suspects.
Murder/robbery?
Was shot to death as part of apparent robbery. Weapon recovered on scene-Smith amp; Wesson knockoff,.38 Special, no prints, cold gun. Case detective believes it could have been a professional hit.
Business deal went bad?
Killed in Queens-not sure why he was there.
Deserted part of borough, near natural gas tanks.
File and evidence missing.
File went to 158th Precinct on/around November 28. Never returned. No indication of requesting officer.
No indication where it went in the
158th.
DI Jefferies not cooperative.
No known connection with Creeley.
No criminal record-Sarkowski or company.
Rumors-money going to cops at the 118th Precinct. Ended up someplace/someone with a Maryland connection. Baltimore mob involved?
No leads.
No indications of mob involvement.
No other Maryland connections found.
THE WATCHMAKER
CRIME SCENE FIVE
Location:
Office building, Thirty-second Street and Seventh Ave.
Victims:
Amelia Sachs/Ron Pulaski.
Perp:
Dennis Baker, NYPD
M.O.:
Gunshot (attempt).
Evidence:
.32 Autauga Mk II pistol
Latex gloves.
Recovered from Baker's car, home, office:
Cocaine.
$50,000 cash.
Clothing.
Receipts from clubs and bars, incl. the St. James.
Carpeting fibers from Explorer.
Fiber that matched the rope used in Creeley's death.
Ash found at Baker's same as ash in Creeley's fireplace.
Presently taking soil samples from site where Sarkowski was murdered.
Sand and seaweed. Oceanfront Maryland connection?
Other:
Gerald Duncan set up entire scheme to implicate Dennis Baker and others who killed Duncan's friend. Eight or ten other officers from the 118th are involved, not sure who. Someone else, other than cops from the 118th, is involved. Duncan no longer homicide suspect.
Amelia Sachs walked into a tiny, deserted grocery store in Little Italy, south of Greenwich Village. The windows were painted over and a single bare bulb burned inside. The door to the darkened back room was ajar, revealing a large heap of trash, old shelves and dusty cans of tomato sauce.
The place resembled a former social club of a smalltime organized crime crew, which in fact it had been until it was raided and closed up a year ago. The landlord was temporarily the city, which was trying to dump the place, but so far, no takers. Sellitto had said it'd be a good, secure place for a sensitive meeting of this sort.
Seated at a rickety table were Deputy Mayor Robert Wallace and a clean-cut young cop, an Internal Affairs detective. The IAD officer, Toby Henson, greeted Sachs with a firm handshake and a look in his eyes that suggested if she offered any positive response to an invitation to go out with him, he'd give her the evening of her life.
She nodded grimly, focused only on doing the hard job that lay ahead. Her rethinking of the facts, looking withinthe box, as Rhyme urged, had produced results, which turned out to be extremely unpleasant.
"You said there was a situation?" Wallace asked. "You didn't want to talk about it over the phone."
She briefed the men about Gerald Duncan and Dennis Baker. Wallace had heard the basics but Henson laughed in surprise. "This Duncan, he was just a citizen? And he wanted to bring down a crooked cop? That's why he did this?"
"Yep."
"He have names?"
"Only Baker's. There're about eight or ten others from the One One Eight but there's someone else, a main player."
"Someone else?" Wallace asked.
"Yep. All along we were looking for somebody with a connection to Maryland… Did we get thatone wrong."
"Maryland?" the IAD man asked.
Sachs gave a grim laugh. "You know that game of Telephone?"
"You mean at a kids' party? You whisper something to the person next to you and by the time it goes around, it's all different?"
"Yep. My source heard 'Maryland.' I think it was 'Marilyn.'"
"A person's name?" When she nodded, Wallace's eyes narrowed. "Wait, you don't mean…?"
"Inspector Marilyn Flaherty."
"Impossible."
Detective Henson shook his head. "No way."
"I wish I was wrong. But we've got some evidence. We found sand and saltwater trace in Baker's car. She's got a house in Connecticut, near the beach. And I've been followed by somebody in a Mercedes AMG. At first I thought it was a crew from Jersey or Baltimore. But it turns out that that's what Flaherty owns."
"A cop owns an AMG?" the Internal Affairs officer asked in disbelief.
"Don't forget Flaherty's a cop making a couple hundred thousand a year illegally," Sachs said stiffly. "And we found a black-and-gray hair about the length of hers in the Explorer that Baker had stolen from the pound. Oh, and remember: She definitely didn't want IAD to handle the case."
"Yeah, that was strange," Wallace agreed.
"Because she was going to bury the whole thing. Give it to one of her people to 'handle.' But it would've disappeared."
"Holy shit, an inspector," whispered the IAD pretty boy.
"She's in custody?" Wallace asked.
Sachs shook her head. "The problem is we can't find the money. We don't have probable cause to subpoena her bank records or get paper to search her house. That's why I need you."
Wallace said, "What can I do?"
"I've asked her to meet us here. I'm going to brief her on what happened-only a watered-down version. I want you to tell her that we've discovered Baker has a partner. The mayor's called a special commission and he's going to pull out all the stops to track them down. Tell her that Internal Affairs is totally on board."
"You're thinking she'll panic, head for the money and you'll nail her."
"That's what we hope. My partner's going to put a tracker on her car while she's in here tonight. After she leaves, we're going to tail her… Now, are you okay lying to her?"
"No, I'm not." Wallace looked down at the rough tabletop, marred with graffiti. "But I'll do it."
Detective Toby Henson had apparently lost all interest in his romantic future with Sachs. He sighed and gave an assessment that she couldn't help but agree with. "This's going to be bad."
Now, what've we learned?
Ron Pulaski, accustomed to thinking webecause of the twin thing, asked himself this question.
Meaning: What've Ilearned in working on this case with Rhyme and Sachs?
He was determined to be the best cop he could and he spent a lot of time evaluating what he'd done right and what he'd done wrong on the job. Walking down the street now toward the old grocery store where Sachs was meeting with Wallace, he couldn't really see that he'd messed up anything too bad on the case. Oh, sure, he could've run the Explorer scene better. And he was damn sure going to keep his weapon outsidethe Tyvek jump-suit from now on-and not use choke holds, unless he really had to.
But on the whole? He'd done pretty good.
Still, he wasn't satisfied. He supposed this feeling came from working for Detective Sachs. That woman set a high bar. There was always something else to check out, one more clue to find, another hour to spend on the scene.
Could drive you crazy.
Could also teach you to be one hell of a cop.
He'd really have to step up now, with her leaving. Pulaski'd heard that rumor, of course, and he wasn't very happy about it. But he'd do what was necessary. He didn't know, though, that he'd ever have her drive. After all, at the moment, hurrying down the freezing street, he was thinking of his family. He really wanted just to head home. Talk to Jenny about her day-not his, no, no-and then play with the kids. That was so fun, just watching the look in his boy's eyes. It changed so fast and so completely-when his son noticed something he'd never seen before, when he made connections, when he laughed. He and Jenny would sit on the floor with Brad in between them, crawling back and forth, his tiny fingers gripping Pulaski's thumb.
And their newborn daughter? She was round and wrinkled as an old grapefruit and she'd lie nearby in the SpongeBob bassinet and be happy and perfect.
But the pleasure of his family would have to wait. After what was about to happen, it was going to be a long night.
He checked street numbers. He was two blocks from the storefront where he'd be meeting Amelia Sachs. Thinking: What else've I learned?
One thing: You damn well better have learned to steer clear of alleys.
A year ago he'd nearly been beaten to death because he'd been walking too close to a wall, with a perp hiding around the corner of a building. The man had stepped out and walloped him in the head with a billy club.
Careless and stupid.
As Detective Sachs had said, "You didn't know. Now you do."
Approaching another alley now, Pulaski veered to the left to walk along the curb-in the unlikely event that somebody, a mugger or junkie, was hiding in the alley.
He turned and looked down it, saw the empty stretch of cobblestones. But at least he was being smart. That's the way it was, being a cop, learning these small lessons and making them a part of-
The hand got him from behind.
"Jesus," he gasped as he was pulled through the open door of the van at the curb, which he hadn't seen because he was staring into the alley. He gasped and started to call out for help.
But his assailant-Deputy Inspector Halston Jefferies, his eyes cold as the moon overhead-slapped his hand over the rookie's mouth. Somebody else grabbed Pulaski's gun hand and in two seconds flat he'd disappeared into the back of the van.
The door slammed shut.
The front door of the old grocery store opened and Marilyn Flaherty walked inside, closed the door behind her and latched it.
Unsmiling, she looked around the bleak store, nodded at the other officers and Wallace. Sachs thought she looked even more tense than usual.
The deputy mayor, playing it cool, introduced her to the IAD detective. She shook his hand and sat at the battered table, next to Sachs.
"Top secret, hm?"
Sachs said, "This's turned into a hornets' nest." She watched the woman's face carefully as she laid out the details. The inspector kept up the great stone face, giving nothing away. Sachs wondered what Kathryn Dance would see in her stiff-backed posture, the tight lips, the quick, cold eyes. The woman was virtually motionless.
The detective told her about Baker's partner. Then added, "I know how you feel about Internal Affairs but, with all respect, I've decided we need to bring them in."
"I-"
"I'm sorry, Inspector." Sachs turned toward Wallace.
But the deputy mayor said nothing. He simply shook his head, sighed, then glanced at the IAD man. The young officer pulled out his weapon.
Sachs blinked. "What…Hey, what're you doing?"
He trained the gun on the space midway between her and Flaherty.
"What is this?" the inspector gasped.
"It's a mess," Wallace said, sounding almost regretful. "It's a real mess. Both of you, keep your hands on the table."
The deputy mayor looked them over, while Toby Henson handed his own gun to Wallace, who covered the women.
Henson wasn't IAD at all; he was a detective out of the 118th, part of the inner circle of the extortion ring, and the man who'd helped Dennis Baker murder Sarkowski and Creeley. He now pulled on leather gloves and took Sachs's Glock from her holster. He patted her down for a backup piece. There was none. He searched the inspector's purse and removed her small service revolver.
"You called it right, Detective," Wallace said to Sachs, who stared at him in shock. "We've got a situation…a situation." He pulled out his cell phone and made a call to one of the officers in front, also part of the extortion scheme. "All clear?"
"Yep."
Wallace disconnected the phone.
Sachs said, "You? It was you? But…" Her head swivelled toward Flaherty.
The inspector asked, "What's this all about?"
The deputy mayor nodded at the inspector and said to Sachs, "Wrong in a big way. She had nothing to do with it. Dennis Baker and I were partners-but businesspartners. On Long Island. We grew up there. Had a recycling company together. It went bust and he went to the academy, became a cop. I got another business up and running. Then I got involved in city politics and we stayed in touch. I became police liaison and ombudsman and got a feel for what kind of scams worked and what didn't. Dennis and I came up with one that did."
"Robert!" Flaherty snapped. "No, no…"
"Ah, Marilyn…" was all the silver-haired man could muster.
"So," Amelia Sachs said, her shoulders sagging, "what's the scenario here?" She gave a grim laugh. "The inspector kills me and then kills herself. You plant some money in her house. And…"
"And Dennis Baker dies in jail-he messes with the wrong inmate, falls down the stairs, who knows? Too bad. But he should've been more careful. No witnesses, that's the end of the case."
"You think anybody's going to buy it? Somebody at the One One Eight'll turn. They'll get you sooner or later."
"Well, excuse me, Detective, but we have to put out the fires we've got, don't you think? And you're the biggest fucking fire I've got at the moment."
"Listen, Robert," Flaherty said, her voice brittle, "you're in trouble but it's not too late."
Wallace pulled on gloves. "Check the street again, tell them to get the car ready." The deputy mayor picked up Sachs's Glock.
The man walked to the door.
Wallace's eyes turned cold as he looked over Sachs and took a firm grip on the pistol.
Sachs stared into his eyes. "Wait."
Wallace frowned.
She looked him over, eerily calm under the circumstances, he thought. Then she said, "ESU One, move in."
Wallace blinked. "What?"
To the deputy mayor's shock, a man's voice shouted from the darkened back room, "Nobody move! Or I will fire!"
What was this?
Gasping, Wallace looked into the doorway, where an ESU officer was standing, his H amp;K machine gun's muzzle moving from the politician to Henson at the front door.
Sachs reached down and grabbed something under the table. Her hand emerged with another Glock. She must've clipped it there earlier! She spun to the front door, training the pistol on Henson. "Drop the weapon! Get down on the floor!" The ESU officer shifted his gun back to the deputy mayor.
Wallace, thinking in panic: Oh, Christ, it's a sting… All a setup.
"Now!" Sachs shouted again.
Henson muttered, "Shit." He did as he was told.
Wallace continued to grip Sachs's Glock. He looked down at it.
Her eyes on Henson, Sachs turned slightly toward Wallace. "That piece you're holding's unloaded. You'd die for no reason."
Disgusted, he dropped the gun on the table, held his hands up.
Mystified, Inspector Flaherty was scooting back in her chair, standing up.
Sachs said into her lapel, "Entry teams, go."
The front door crashed open and a half dozen cops pushed inside-ESU officers. Following them were Deputy Inspector Halston Jefferies and the head of Internal Affairs Division, Captain Ron Scott. A young blond patrolman entered too.
The ESU officers muscled Wallace to the floor. He felt the pain in his hip and joints. Henson was cuffed as well. The deputy mayor looked outside and saw the two other officers from the One One Eight, the ones who'd been standing guard in front. They were lying on the cold sidewalk, in restraints.
"Hell of a way to find out," Amelia Sachs said to no one as she reloaded her own Glock and slipped it back in her holster. "But it sure answers our question."
The query she'd referred to wasn't about Robert Wallace's guilt-they'd learned beforehand that he was one of Baker's partners; it was about whether Marilyn Flaherty had been involved too.
They'd set up the whole thing to find out, as well as get a taped admission from Wallace.
Lon Sellitto, Ron Scott and Halston Jefferies had established a command post in a van up the street and hidden the ESU sniper in the back room to make sure Wallace and the cop with him didn't start shooting before Sachs had a chance to tape the conversation. Pulaski was supposed to take the front door with one team, and another one would take the back. But at the last minute they learned that Wallace had other officers with him, cops from the 118, who might or might not be crooked, so they'd had to change plans a bit.
Pulaski, in fact, nearly walked right into Wallace's cops outside the storefront and ruined the whole thing.
The rookie said, "Inspector Jefferies pulled me into the command van just before those guys outside saw me."
Jefferies snapped, "Walking down the street like a Boy Scout on a fucking hike. You want to stay alive on the streets, kid, keep your goddamn eyes open." The inspector's rage seemed tame in comparison with yesterday's tantrum, Sachs noted. At least he wasn't spitting.
"Yessir. I'll be more careful in the future, sir."
"Jesus Christ, they let anybody into the academy these days."
Sachs tried to repress a smile. She turned to Flaherty. "Sorry, Inspector. We just had to make sure you weren't a player." She explained her suspicions and the clues that had led her to believe that the inspector might've been working with Baker.
"The Mercedes?" Flaherty asked. "Sure, it was mine. And, sure, you were being tailed. I had an officer from Op Div keeping an eye on you and Pulaski. You were both young, you were inexperienced and you might've been way out of your league. I gave him my own car to use because you would've noticed a pool vehicle right away."
The expensive car had indeed thrown her off and actually started her thinking in another direction. If the mob wasn't involved, she was beginning to wonder that maybe Pulaski had called it wrong about Creeley's partner, Jordan Kessler, and that the businessman might somehow be involved in the deaths. Maybe, she'd speculated, Creeley and Sarkowski had gotten caught up in one of the Enron-style investigations currently under way and were killed because of something they'd learned about corporate fraud at a client's company. Kessler seemed to be the only player in the game who could afford a vehicle like an AMG Merc.
But now she realized that the case was all about corrupt cops, and the ash in Creeley's fireplace wasn't from doctored accounting records but simply evidence that they'd burned to make sure they destroyed any records of the extortion money, as she'd originally speculated.
Now the inspector's attention turned to Robert Wallace. She asked Sachs, "How'd you find him?"
"Tell him, Ron," she instructed Pulaski.
The rookie began. "Detective Sachs here ascertained…" He paused.
"Detective Sachs found a bunch of trace in Baker's vehicle and house that gave us the idea, well, gave Detectives Sachs and Rhyme the idea that maybe the other person involved lived near a beach or marina."
Sachs took it up. "I didn't think that DI Jefferies was involved because he wouldn't request a file sent to his own precinct if he wanted to destroy it. Somebody else had it routed there and intercepted it before it was logged in. I went back to him and asked if anybody had been in the file room lately, somebody who might have a connection to the case. Somebody had. You." A glance at Wallace. "Then I asked the next logical question. Did you have a Maryland connection? And you sure did. Just not an obvious one."
Thinking inside the box…
"Oh, Jesus Christ," he muttered. "Baker told me you'd mentioned Maryland. But I never thought you'd find it."
Ron Scott, the IAD head, said to Flaherty, "Wallace has a boat docked at his place on the South Shore of Long Island. Registered in New York but built in Annapolis. She's The Maryland Monroe." Scott looked him over and gave a cold laugh. "You boat people really love your puns."
Sachs said, "The sand, seaweed and saltwater trace in Baker's car and house match those at his marina. We got a warrant and searched the boat. Got some good evidence. Phone numbers, documents, trace. Over four million in cash-oh, and a lot of drugs too. Plenty of liquor, probably perped. But I'd say the booze's the least of your problems."
Ron Scott nodded to two ESU officers. "Get him downtown. Central Booking."
As he was led out, Wallace called back, "I'm not saying anything. If you think I'm going to name names, you can forget about it. I'm not confessing."
Flaherty gave the first laugh Sachs had ever heard from her. "Are you mad, Robert? Sounds like they've got enough evidence to put you away forever. You don't need to say a word. Actually, I'd just as soon you didn't open your goddamn mouth ever again."