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Lincoln Rhyme Book 07
Chapter 1 "How long did it take them to die?" The man this question was posed to didn't seem to hear it. He looked in the rearview mirror again and concentrated on his driving. The hour was just past midnight and the streets in lower Manhattan were icy. A cold front had swept the sky clear and turned an earlier snow to slick glaze on the asphalt and concrete. The two men were in the rattling Band-Aid-mobile, as Clever Vincent had dubbed the tan SUV. It was a few years old; the brakes needed servicing and the tires replacing. But taking a stolen vehicle in for work would not be a wise idea, especially since two of its recent passengers were now murder victims. The driver--a lean man in his fifties, with trim black hair--made a careful turn down a side street and continued his journey, never speeding, making precise turns, perfectly centered in his lane. He'd drive the same whether the streets were slippery or dry, whether the vehicle had just been involved in murder or not. Careful, met
Chapter 1
Chapter 2 What is that? From his squeaky chair in the warm office, the big man sipped coffee and squinted through the bright morning light toward the far end of the pier. He was the morning supervisor of the tugboat repair operation, located on the Hudson River north of Greenwich Village. There was a Moran with a bum diesel due to dock in forty minutes but at the moment the pier was empty and the supervisor was enjoying the warmth of the shed, where he sat with his feet up on the desk, coffee cradled against his chest. He wiped some condensation off the window and looked again. What is it? A small black box sat by the edge of the pier, the side that faced Jersey. It hadn't been there when the facility had closed at six yesterday, and nobody would have docked after that. Had to come from the land side. There was a chain-link fence to prevent pedestrians and passersby from getting into the facility, but, as the man knew from the missing tools and trash drums (go figure), if somebody want
Chapter 2
Chapter 3 A small sound from outside the window. A crunch of snow. Amelia Sachs stopped moving. She glanced out at the quiet, white backyard. She saw no one. She was a half hour north of the city, alone in a pristine Tudor suburban house that was still as death. An appropriate thought, she reflected, since the owner of the place was no longer among the living. The sound again. Sachs was a city girl, used to the cacophony of urban noises--threatening and benign. The intrusion into the excessive suburban quiet set her on edge. Was its source a footstep? The tall, red-haired detective, wearing a black leather jacket, navy blue sweater and black jeans, listened carefully for a moment, absently scratching her scalp. She heard another crunch. Unzipped her jacket so her Glock was easily accessible. Crouching, she looked outside fast. Saw nothing. And returned to her task. She sat down on the luxurious leather office chair and began to examine the contents of a huge desk. This was a frustratin
Chapter 3
Chapter 4 They were terrible ways to die. Amelia Sachs had pretty much seen it all, or so she thought. But these were as cruel means of death as she could recall. She'd spoken to Rhyme from Westchester and he'd told her to hurry to lower Manhattan, where she was to run two scenes of homicides committed apparently hours apart by somebody calling himself the Watchmaker. Sachs had already run the simpler of the two--a pier in the Hudson River. It was a fast scene to process; there was no body and most of the trace had been swept away or contaminated by the abrasive wind flowing along the river. She'd photographed and videoed the scene from all angles. She noted where the clock had been--troubled that the scene had been disturbed by the bomb squad when they'd collected it for testing. But there was no alternative, with a possible explosive device. She collected the killer's note, too, partly crusted with blood. Then she'd taken samples of the frozen blood. She noted fingernail marks on the
Chapter 4
Chapter 5 The body of Teddy Adams was gone, the grieving relatives too. Lon Sellitto had just left for Rhyme's and the scene was officially released. Ron Pulaski, Nancy Simpson and Frank Rettig were removing the crime scene tape. Still stung by the look of desperate hope in the face of Adams's young niece, Amelia Sachs had gone over the scene yet again with even more diligence than usual. She checked other doorways and possible entrance and escape routes the perp might've used. But she found nothing else. She didn't remember the last time a complicated crime like this had yielded so little evidence. After packing up her equipment she mentally shifted back to the Benjamin Creeley case and called the man's wife, Suzanne, to tell her that several men had broken into their Westchester house. "I didn't know that. Do have any idea what they stole?" Sachs had met the woman several times. She was very thin--she jogged daily--and had short frosted hair, a pretty face. "It didn't look like much
Chapter 5
Chapter 6 Vincent Reynolds was walking down the chilly streets of SoHo, in the blue light of this deserted part of the neighborhood, east of Broadway, some blocks from the area's chic restaurants and boutiques. He was fifty feet behind his flower girl--Joanne, the woman who would soon be his. His eyes were on her, and he felt a hunger, keen and electric, as intense as the one he'd felt the night he met Gerald Duncan for the first time, which had proved to be a very important moment for Vincent Reynolds. After the Sally Anne incident--when Vincent got arrested because he lost control--he told himself that he'd have to be smarter. He'd wear a ski mask, he'd take the women from behind so they couldn't see him, he'd use a condom (which helped him slow down, anyway), he'd never hunt close to home, he'd vary the techniques and the neighborhoods of the attacks. He'd plan the rapes carefully and be prepared to walk away if there was a risk he'd get caught. Well, that was his theory. But in the
Chapter 6
Chapter 7 A moment later an NYPD patrol officer brought in a short, trim businessman wearing an expensive suit. Dance didn't know if they'd actually arrested him but the way he touched his wrists told her that he'd been in cuffs recently. Dance greeted the man, who was uneasy and angry, and nodded him to a chair. She sat across from him--nothing between them--and scooted forward until she was in a neutral proxemic zone, the term referring to the physical space between a subject and an interviewer. This zone can be adjusted to make the subject more or less comfortable. She was not too close to be invasive but not so far away as to give him a sense of security. ("You push the edge of edgy," she'd say in her lectures.) "Mr. Cobb, my name's Kathryn Dance. I'm a law enforcement agent and I'd like to talk to you about what you saw last night." "This is ridiculous. I already told them"--a nod at Rhyme--"everything I saw." "Well, I just arrived. I don't have the benefit of your previous answer
Chapter 7
Chapter 8 He came here? Amelia Sachs, standing beside a planter that smelled of urine and sported a dead yellow stalk, glanced through the grimy window. She suspected the place would be bad, knowing the address, but not this bad. Sachs was standing outside the St. James Tavern, on a wedge of broken concrete rising from the sidewalk. The bar was on East Ninth Street, in Alphabet City, the nickname referring to the north-south avenues that ran through it: A, B, C and D. The place had been a terror some years ago, a remnant of the gang wastelands on the Lower East Side. It had improved somewhat (crack houses were morphing into expensive fix-'em-uppers w/ vu) but it was still a rough-and-tumble 'hood; sitting in the snow at Sachs's feet was a discarded hypodermic needle, and a spent 9-millimeter shell casing rested on the window ledge six inches from her face. What the hell had accountant/venture capitalist, two-home-owning, Beemer-driving Benjamin Creeley been doing in a place like this t
Chapter 8
Chapter 9 Amelia Sachs collected Ron Pulaski from Rhyme's, a kidnapping she gathered the criminalist wasn't too pleased about, though the rookie didn't seem very busy at the moment. "How fast've you had her up to?" Pulaski touched the dashboard of her 1969 Camaro SS. Then he said quickly, "I mean 'it,' not 'her.'" "You don't need to be so politically correct, Ron. I've been clocked at one eighty-seven." "Whoa." "You like cars?" "More, I like cycles, you know. My brother and I had two of 'em when we were in high school." "Matching?" "What?" "The cycles." "Oh, because we're twins, you mean. Naw, we never did that. Dress alike and stuff. Mom wanted us to but we were dorky enough as it was. She laughs now, of course--'cause of our uniforms. Anyway, when we were riding, it wasn't like we could just go out and buy whatever we wanted, two matching Hondas 850s or whatever. We got whatever we could, second-or third-hand." He gave a sly grin. "One night, Tony was asleep, I snuck into the garage
Chapter 9
Chapter 10 As he drove, the big detective fidgeted, he touched his belly, he tugged at his collar. Kathryn Dance took in the body language of Lon Sellitto as he drove the unmarked Crown Vic--the same official vehicle she had in California--fast through the streets of New York, grille lights flashing, no siren. The call she'd taken in the cab was from him, once again asking if she'd help them in the case. "I know you've got a flight, I know you've got to get home, but..." He explained that they'd discovered a possible source for the clocks left at the Watchmaker's crime scenes and wanted her to interview the man who might've sold them. There was a possibility, though slight, that he had some connection with the Watchmaker and they wanted her opinion about him. Dance had debated only a brief moment before agreeing. She'd regretted her abrupt departure from Lincoln Rhyme's town house earlier; Kathryn Dance hated leaving a case unfinished, even if it wasn't hers. She'd had the cab turn aro
Chapter 10
Chapter 11 "How many?" Rhyme said, shaking his head as he repeated what Sellitto had just told him. "He's planning ten victims?" "Looks that way." Sitting on either side of Rhyme in the lab, Kathryn Dance and Sellitto showed him the composite picture of the Watchmaker that the detective had made at the clock store, using EFIT--Electronic Facial Identification Technology, a computerized version of the old Identi-Kit, which reconstructed a suspect's features from witness prompts. The image was of a white man in his late forties or early fifties, with a round face, double chin, thick nose and unusually light blue eyes. The dealer had added that the killer was a little over six feet tall. His body was lean and his hair black and medium length. He wore no jewelry. Hallerstein recalled dark clothes but couldn't remember exactly what he was wearing. Dance then recounted Hallerstein's story. A man had called the shop a month earlier, asking for a particular kind of clock--not a specific brand
Chapter 11
Chapter 12 A heavyset woman walked into the small coffee shop. Black coat, short hair, jeans. That's how she'd described herself. Amelia Sachs waved from a booth in the back. This was Gerte, the other bartender at the St. James. She was on her way to work and had agreed to meet Sachs before her shift. There was a no-smoking sign on the wall but the woman continued to strangle a live cigarette between her ruddy index and middle fingers. Nobody on the staff here said anything about it; professional courtesy in the restaurant world, Sachs guessed. The woman's dark eyes narrowed as she read the detective's ID. "Sonja said you had some questions. But she didn't say what." Her voice was low and rough. Sachs sensed that Sonja had probably told her everything. But the detective played along and gave the woman the relevant details--the ones that she could share, at least--and then showed her the picture of Ben Creeley. "He committed suicide." No surprise in Gerte's eyes. "And we're looking into
Chapter 12
Chapter 13 Amelia Sachs skidded to a stop in front of Ron Pulaski. After he jumped in she pointed the car north and gunned the engine. The rookie gave her the details of the meeting with Jordan Kessler. He added, "He seemed legit. Nice guy. But I just thought I ought to check with Mrs. Creeley myself to confirm everything--about what Kessler gets because of Creeley's death. She said she trusts him and everything's on the up-and-up. But I still wasn't sure so I called Creeley's lawyer. Hope that was okay." "Why wouldn't it be okay?" "Don't know. Just thought I'd ask." "It's always okay to do too much work in this business," Sachs told him. "The problems're when somebody doesn't do enough." Pulaski shook his head. "Hard to imagine somebody working for Lincoln and being lazy." She gave a cryptic laugh. "And what'd the lawyer say?" "Basically the same thing Kessler and the wife said. He buys out Creeley's share at fair market value. It's all legit. Kessler said his partner had been drinkin
Chapter 13
Chapter 14 At Rhyme's, Sachs delivered the evidence to Mel Cooper. Before she put on her latex gloves, she walked to a canister and pulled out a few dog biscuits, fed them to Jackson. He ate them down fast. "You ever think about getting a helper dog?" Kathryn Dance asked Rhyme. "He is a helper dog." "Jackson?" Sachs frowned. "Yep. He helps plenty. He distracts people so I don't have to entertain them." The women laughed. "I mean a real one." One of his therapists had suggested a dog. Many paraplegics and quadriplegics had helper animals. Not long after the accident, when the counselor had first brought it up, he'd resisted the idea. He couldn't explain why, exactly, but believed it had to do with his reluctance to depend on something, or someone, else. Now, the idea didn't seem so bad. He frowned. "Can you train them to pour whiskey?" The criminalist looked from the dog to Sachs. "Oh, you got a call when you were at the scene. Someone named Jordan Kessler." "Who? "He said you'd know."
Chapter 14
Chapter 15 The bungalow was in Long Island City, that portion of Queens just over the East River from Manhattan and Roosevelt Island. Christmas decorations--plenty of them--were perfectly arranged in the yard, the sidewalk perfectly cleared of ice and snow, the Camry in the driveway perfectly clean, despite the recent snow. Window frames were being scraped for a new coat of paint, and a stack of bricks sat destined for a new path or patio. This was the house of a man with newly acquired free time. Amelia Sachs hit the doorbell. The front door opened a few seconds later and a solid man in his late fifties squinted up at her. He was in a green velour running suit. "Detective Snyder?" Sachs was careful to use his former title. Being polite gets you further than a gun, her father used to say. "Yeah, come on in. You're Amelia, right?" Last name versus first name. You always choose which battles you want to fight. She smiled, shook his hand and followed him inside. Cold streetlight bled insi
Chapter 15
Chapter 16 Vincent's hunger was returning, as thick and heavy as a tide, and he couldn't stop staring at the women on the street. His mental violations made him even hungrier. Here was a blonde with short hair, carrying a shopping bag. Vincent could imagine his hands cupping her head as he lay on top of her. And here was a brunette, her hair long like Sally Anne's, dangling from underneath her stocking cap. He could almost feel the quivering of her muscles as his hand pressed into the small of her back. Here, another blonde, in a suit, carrying a briefcase. He wondered if she'd scream or cry. He bet she was a screamer. Gerald Duncan was now driving the Band-Aid-mobile, maneuvering it down an alley and then back to a main street, heading north. "No more transmissions." The killer nodded at the police scanner, from which was clattering only routine calls and more traffic information. "They've changed the frequency." "Should I try to find the new one?" "They'll be scrambling it. I'm surpr
Chapter 16
Chapter 17 Ron Pulaski didn't believe he'd ever felt pressure like this, standing in the freezing-cold garage, staring at the tan Explorer, brilliantly lit by spotlights. He was alone. Lon Sellitto and Bo Haumann--two legends in the NYPD--were at the command post, downstairs from this level. Two crime scene techs had set up the lights, thrust suitcases into his hands and left, wishing him good luck in what seemed like a pretty ominous tone of voice. He was dressed in a Tyvek suit, without a jacket, and he was shivering. Come on, Jenny, he said silently to his wife, as he often did in moments of stress, think good thoughts for me. He added, though speaking only to himself, Let me not fuck this up, which is what he'd share with his brother. Headsets sat on his ears and he was told he was being patched into a secure frequency directly to Lincoln Rhyme, though so far he'd heard nothing but static. Then abruptly: "So what've you got?" Lincoln Rhyme's voice snapped through the headsets. Pula
Chapter 17
Chapter 18 "Hey, Amie. Gotta talk." "Sure." Sachs was driving to Hell's Kitchen in Midtown Manhattan, on her quest for the Frank Sarkowski homicide file. But she wasn't thinking about that. She was thinking of the clocks at the crime scenes. Thinking of time moving forward and time standing still. Thinking of the periods when we want time to race ahead and save us from the pain we're experiencing. But it never does. It's at these moments that time slows interminably, sometimes even stops like the heart of a death-row prisoner at the moment of execution. "Gotta talk." Amelia Sachs was recalling a conversation from years earlier. Nick says, "It's pretty serious." The two lovers are in Sachs's Brooklyn apartment. She's a rookie, in her uniform, her shoes polished to black mirrors. (Her father's advice: "Shined shoes get you more respect than an ironed uniform, honey. Remember that." And she had.) Dark-haired, handsome, bulging-muscle Nick (he too could've been a model) is also a cop. More
Chapter 18
Chapter 19 Their new car was a Buick LeSabre. "Where'd you get it?" Vincent asked Duncan as he climbed into the passenger seat. The car sat idling at the curb in front of the church. "The Lower East Side." Duncan glanced at him. "Nobody saw you?" "The owner did. Briefly. But he's not going to be saying anything." He tapped his pocket, where the pistol rested. Duncan nodded toward the corner where he'd slashed the student to death earlier. "Any police around?" "No. I mean, I didn't see any." "Good. Sanitation probably picked up the Dumpster and the body's halfway out to sea on a barge." Slash their eyes... "What happened at the garage?" Vincent asked. Duncan gave a slight grimace. "I couldn't get close to the Explorer. There weren't that many cops, but some homeless man was there. He was making a lot of noise and then I heard shouting and cops started running into the place. I had to leave." They pulled away from the curb. Vincent had no idea where they were going. The Buick was old and
Chapter 19
Chapter 20 "I need a case file." "Yeah." The woman was chewing gum. Loudly. Snap. Amelia Sachs was in the file room at the 158th Precinct in Lower Manhattan, not far from the 118th. She gave the night-duty file clerk at the gray desk the number of the Sarkowski file. The woman typed on a computer keyboard, a staccato sound. A glance at the screen. "Don't have it." "You sure?" "Don't have it." "Hm." Sachs gave a laugh. "Where do we think it's run off to?" "Run off to?" "It came here on the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth of November from the One Three One house. It looked like it was requested from somebody here." Snap. "Well, it's, like not logged in. You sure it came here?" "No, not one thousand percent. But--" "One thousand?" the woman asked, chewing away. A pack of cigarettes sat next to her, ready to be scooped up in a hurry when she fled downstairs on her break or left for the night. "Is there any scenario where it wouldn't've been logged?" "Scenario?" "Would a file always be logged
Chapter 20
Chapter 21 Kathryn Dance was alone with Rhyme in his town house. Well, Jackson, the Havanese, was present too. Dance was holding the dog. "That was wonderful," she told Thom. The three of them had just finished a dinner of the aide's beef bourguignon, rice, salad and a Caymus Cabernet. "I'd ask for the recipe but I'd never do it justice." "Ah, an appreciative audience," he said, glancing at Rhyme. "I'm appreciative. Just not excessively." Thom nodded at the bowl that had held the main course. "To him it's 'stew.' He doesn't even try the French. Tell her what you think of food, Lincoln." The criminalist shrugged. "I'm not fussy about what I eat. That's all." "He calls it 'fuel,'" the aide said and carted the dishes to the kitchen. "You have dogs at home?" Rhyme asked Dance, nodding at Jackson. "Two. They're a lot bigger than this guy. The kids and I take 'em to the beach a couple times a week. They chase seagulls and we chase them. Exercise all around. And if that sounds too healthy, do
Chapter 21
Chapter 22 Vincent Reynolds was studying the woman in the restaurant, a slim brunette, about thirty, in sweats. Her short hair was pulled back and stuck in place with bobby pins. They'd followed her from her old apartment in Greenwich Village, first to a local tavern and now here, a coffeehouse a few blocks away. She and her friend, a blonde in her twenties, were having a great time, laughing and talking nonstop. Lucy Richter was enjoying her last brief moments on earth. Duncan was listening to classical music on the Buick's sound system. He was his typically thoughtful, calm self. Sometimes you just couldn't tell what was going on in his mind. Vincent, on the other hand, felt the hunger unraveling within him. He ate a candy bar, then another. Fuck the great scheme of things. I need a girl.... Duncan took out his gold pocket watch and looked at it, gently wound the stem. Vincent had seen the watch a few times but he was always impressed with the piece. Duncan had explained that it was
Chapter 22
Chapter 23 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,
Chapter 23
Chapter 24 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
Chapter 24
Chapter 25 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 ca
Chapter 25
Chapter 26 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.)
Chapter 26
Chapter 27 "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 exchang
Chapter 27
Chapter 28 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
Chapter 28
Chapter 29 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 th
Chapter 29
Chapter 30 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
Chapter 30
Chapter 31 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 s
Chapter 31
Chapter 32 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 in
Chapter 32
Chapter 33 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
Chapter 33
Chapter 34 Alone now, Rhyme and Sachs looked over the tables containing the evidence that had been collected in both the St. James corruption scandal and the Watchmaker case. Sachs was concentrating hard, but Rhyme knew she was distracted. They'd stayed up late and talked about what had happened. The corruption was bad enough but that officers themselves had actually tried to kill other cops shook her even more. Sachs claimed she was still undecided about quitting the force but one look at her face told Rhyme that she was going to leave. He also knew she'd had a couple of phone calls with Argyle Security. There was no doubt. Rhyme now glanced at the small rectangle of white paper sitting in her briefcase open in his lab: the envelope containing Sachs's letter of resignation. Like the glaring light of the full moon in a dark sky, the whiteness of the letter was blinding. It was hard to see it clearly, it was hard to see anything else. He forced himself not to think about it and looked b
Chapter 34
Chapter 35 Lon Sellitto was back in Rhyme's lab, pacing angrily. Duncan's lawyer, it seemed, had met with the assistant district attorney and in exchange for an affidavit admitting guilt, the payment of $100,000 for misuse of police and fire resources, and a written guarantee to testify against Baker, all the criminal charges were dropped, subject to being reinstated if he reneged on the appearance in court as a witness against Baker. He'd never even been printed or booked. The big, rumpled detective stared at the speakerphone, glowering, hands on his hips, as if the unit itself were the incompetent fool who'd released a potential killer. The defensiveness in the prosecutor's voice was clear. "It was the only way he'd cooperate," the man said. "He was represented by a lawyer from Reed, Prince. He surrendered his passport. It was all legit. He's agreed not to leave the jurisdiction until Baker's trial. I've got him in a hotel in the city, with an officer guarding him. He's not going any
Chapter 35
Chapter 36 A taxicab pulled up in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on Fifth Avenue. The huge building was decorated for Christmas, dolled up in the tasteful Victorian regalia that you'd expect on the Upper East Side. Subdued festive. Out of this cab climbed Charles Vespasian Hale, who looked around carefully on the remote chance that the police were following him. It would have been exceedingly unlikely that he'd be under surveillance. Still, Hale took his time, looked everywhere for anyone showing him the least attention. He saw nothing troubling. He leaned down to the open taxi window and paid the driver--tendering the cash in gloved hands--and, hooking a black canvas bag over his shoulder, he climbed the stairs into the large cathedral-like lobby, which echoed with the sound of voices, most of them young; the place was lousy with kids freed from school. Evergreens and gold and ornaments and tulle were everywhere. Bach two-part inventions plucked away cheerily on a recorded h
Chapter 36
Chapter 37 In doing his research into watchmaking, so that he could be a credible revenge killer, Charles Hale had learned of the concept of "complications." A complication is a function in a watch or clock other than telling the time of day. For instance, those small dials that dot the front of expensive timepieces, giving information like day of the week and date and time in different locations, and repeater functions (chimes sounding at certain intervals). Watchmakers have always enjoyed the challenge of getting as many complications into their watches as possible. A typical one is the Patek Philippe Star Calibre 2000, a watch featuring more than one thousand parts. Its complications offer the owner such information as the times of sunrise and sunset, a perpetual calendar, the day, date and month, the season, moon phases, lunar orbit and power reserve indicators for both the watch's movement and the several chimes inside. The trouble with complications, though, is that they're just
Chapter 37
Chapter 38 Entering the sixth-floor conference room with seventeen other soldiers from all branches of the armed services, United States Army Sergeant Lucy Richter gave a brief smile to her husband. A wink too to her family--her parents and her aunt--who were sitting across the room. The acknowledgment was perhaps a little abrupt, a little distant. But she was not here as Bob's wife or as a daughter or niece. She was here as a decorated soldier, in the company of her superior officers and her fellow men and women at arms. The soldiers had assembled downstairs in the building, while their families and friends had come to the conference room. Waiting for their grand entrance, Lucy had chatted with a young man, an air force corps-man from Texas who'd come back to the States for medical treatment (one of those fucking rocket-propelled grenades had ricocheted off his chest pack before exploding several yards away). He was eager to get back home, he'd said. "Home?" she'd asked. "I thought we
Chapter 38
Chapter 39 "Oh, thank you," Charlotte whispered, speaking both to Jesus and to the man who'd made their mission a success. She was sitting forward, staring at the TV. The special news report about the evacuation of the Metropolitan Museum and the halting of public transportation in the area had been replaced by a different story--the bombing at the HUD building. Charlotte squeezed her husband's hand. Bud leaned over and kissed her. He smiled like a young boy. The news anchorwoman was grim--despite her restrained pleasure at being on duty when such a big story broke--as she gave what details there were: A bomb had gone off within the Housing and Urban Development building in lower Manhattan, where a number of senior government and military officials had been attending a ceremony. An undersecretary of state and the head of the Joint Chiefs were present. The cameras showed smoke pouring from the windows of a conference room. The important detail--the casualty count--had not come in yet, t
Chapter 39
Chapter 40 Inside the shabby hotel room, Lincoln Rhyme shook his head in disbelief as Sachs told him what she'd just learned: that they had known Charlotte some years ago when she'd come to New York using the pseudonym Carol Ganz. She and her daughter, whose name was Pammy, had been victims in the first case Sachs and Rhyme had worked together--the very one he'd been thinking of earlier, the kidnapper obsessed with human bones, a perp as clever and ruthless as the Watchmaker. To pursue him, Rhyme had recruited Sachs to be his eyes and ears and legs at the crime scenes and together they'd managed to rescue both the woman and her daughter--only to learn that Carol was really Charlotte Willoughby. She was part of a right-wing militia movement, which abhorred the federal government and its involvement in world affairs. After their rescue and reunion, the woman managed to slip a bomb into the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan. The explosion killed six people. Rhyme and Sachs had take
Chapter 40
Chapter 41 Sachs finished searching the scene at the house in Brooklyn and sent what little evidence she could find to Rhyme's. She stripped off her Tyvek outfit and pulled her jacket on, then hurried through the cutting chill to Sellitto's car. In the back sat Pam Willoughby, clutching her Harry Potter book and sipping hot chocolate, which the big detective had scrounged for her. He was still in the perp's safe house, finishing up the paperwork. Sachs climbed in, sat beside her. At Kathryn Dance's suggestion, they'd brought the girl here to examine the place and the Watchmaker's possessions in hopes that something might trigger a memory. But the man hadn't left much behind and in any event nothing Pammy saw gave her any more insights about him. Smiling, Sachs looked the girl over, remembering that strange expression of hope when she'd seen her in the rental car at the first scene. The policewoman said, "I've thought about you a lot over the years." "Me too," the girl said, looking dow
Chapter 41
Chapter 42 Before and After. People move on. For one reason or another, they move on, and Before becomes After. Lincoln Rhyme heard these words floating through his head, over and over. Broken record. People move on. He'd actually used the phrase himself--when he'd told his wife he wanted a divorce, not long after his accident. Their relationship had been rocky for some time and he had decided that whether or not he survived the broken neck, he was going to go forward on his own and not tie her down to the difficult life of a gimp's wife. But back then "moving on" meant something very different from what Rhyme was facing now. The life he'd constructed over the past few years, a precarious life, was about to change in a big way. The problem, of course, was that by going to Argyle Security, Sachs wasn't really moving on. She was moving back. Sellitto and Cooper were gone and Rhyme and Pulaski were alone in the downstairs lab, parked in front of an examination table, organizing evidence i
Chapter 42
Chapter 43 The December day wasn't particularly cold but the ancient furnace in Rhyme's town house was on the fritz and everyone in his ground floor lab huddled in thick jackets. Clouds of steam blew from their mouths with every exhalation, and extremities were bright red. Amelia Sachs wore two sweaters and Pulaski was in a padded green jacket from which dangled Killington ski lift tickets like a veteran soldier's campaign medals. A skier cop, Rhyme reflected. That seemed odd, though he couldn't say why exactly. Maybe something about the dangers of hurtling down a mountain with a hair-trigger 9-millimeter pistol under your bunny suit. "Where's the furnace repair guy?" Rhyme snapped to his aide. "He said he'll be here between one and five." Thom was wearing a tweed jacket, which Rhyme had given him last Christmas, and a dark purple cashmere scarf, which had been one of Sachs's presents. "Ah, between one and five. One and five. Tell you what. Call him back and--" "That's what he told--"
Chapter 43
Author's Note Authors are only as good as the friends and fellow professionals around them, and I'm extremely fortunate to be surrounded by a truly wonderful ensemble: Will and Tina Anderson, Alex Bonham, Louise Burke, Robby Burroughs, Britt Carlson, Jane Davis, Julie Reece Deaver, John Gilstrap, Cathy Gleason, Jamie Hodder-Williams, Kate Howard, Emma Longhurst, Diana Mackay, Joshua Martino, Carolyn Mays, Tara Parsons, Seba Pezzani, Carolyn Reidy, Ornella Robbiati, David Rosenthal, Marysue Rucci, Deborah Schneider, Vivienne Schuster, Brigitte Smith, Kevin Smith and Alexis Taines. Special gratitude, as always, to Madelyn Warcholik. Those interested in the subject of watchmaking and watch collecting will enjoy Michael Korda's compact and lyrical Marking Time.
About the Author Former journalist, folksinger and attorney Jeffery Deaver's novels have appeared on a number of best-seller lists around the world, including The New York Times,the Timesof London and the Los Angeles Times.His books are sold in 150 countries and are translated into thirty-five languages. The author of twenty-one novels, he's been awarded the Steel Dagger and Short Story Dagger from the British Crime Writers' Association, is a three-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Reader's Award for Best Short Story of the Year and is a winner of the British Thumping Good Read Award. He's been nominated for six Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, an Anthony Award and a Gumshoe Award. His book A Maiden's Gravewas made into an HBO movie staring James Garner and Marlee Matlin, and his novel The Bone Collectorwas a feature release from Universal Pictures, starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. His most recent books are The Twelfth Card, Garden of Beasts, The Vanishe
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