innerCircle(r) grows at the rate of hundreds of thousands of entries a day.
THE TOOLS
* Watchtower DBM(r), the most comprehensive database management system in the world. Your partner in strategic planning, Watchtower(r) helps you target your goals, extracts the most meaningful data from innerCircle(r) and delivers a winning strategy directly to your desk, 24/7, via our lightning-fast and super-secure servers. Watchtower(r) meets and exceeds the standards that SQL set years ago.
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* FORT(r) (Finding Obscure Relationships Tool), a unique and revolutionary product which analyzes millions of seemingly unrelated facts to determine connections human beings couldn't possibly discover on their own. Whether you're a commercial company wishing to know more about the marketplace (or about your competitors) or a law enforcement organization faced with a difficult criminal case, FORT(r) will give you the edge!
* ConsumerChoice(r) monitoring software and equipment allows you to determine consumers' accurate responses to advertising, marketing programs and new or proposed products. Forget subjective focus group opinions. Now, through biometric monitoring, you can gather and analyze individuals' true feelings about your potential plans--often without their awareness that they're being observed!
* Hub Overvue(r) information consolidation software. This easy-to-use product allows you to control every database within your organization--and, in appropriate circumstances, within other companies' operations as well.
* SafeGard(r), security and identity verification software and services. Whether your concerns are terrorist threats, corporate kidnapping, industrial espionage or employee or customer theft, SafeGard(r) assures that your facilities will remain secure, letting you concentrate on your core business. This division includes the world's leading background verification, security and substance-screening companies, used by corporate and government clients throughout the world. The SafeGard(r) Division of SSD is also home to the industry leader in biometric hardware and software, Bio-Chek(r).
* NanoCure(r) medical research software and services. Welcome to the world of microbiologic intelligent systems for the diagnosis and treatment of illness. Working with M.D.'s, our nanotechnologists are crafting solutions to the common health problems facing today's populace. From monitoring genetic issues to developing injectible tags to help in detecting and curing persistent, deadly illnesses, our NanoCure(r) Division is working to create a healthy society.
* On-Trial(r) civil litigation support systems and services. From products liability to antitrust cases, On-Trial(r) streamlines document handling and deposition and evidence control.
* PublicSure(r) law enforcement support software. This is THE system for the consolidation and management of criminal and allied public records stored in international, federal, state and local databases. Through PublicSure(r) search results can be downloaded to offices, patrol car computers, PDA's or cell phones within seconds of the request, helping investigators bring cases to speedy conclusions and enhancing the preparedness and security of officers in the field.
* EduServe(r), scholastic support software and services. Managing what children learn is vital in a successful society. EduServe(r) helps school boards and teachers in facilities from K to 12 most efficiently utilize their resources and offer services that guarantee the best education per tax dollar spent.
Rhyme laughed in disbelief. "If Five Twenty-Two can get his hands on all this information . . . well, he's the man who knows everything."
Mel Cooper said, "Okay, listen to this. I was looking at the companies that SSD owns. Guess one of them."
Rhyme replied, "I'll go with whatever the hell their initials were--DMS. The maker of that RFID tag in the book, right?"
"Yep. You got it."
No one said anything for some moments. Rhyme noticed everyone in the room was looking at the glowing window logo of SSD on the computer screen.
"So," Sellitto muttered, eyes on the chart. "Where do we go from here?"
"Surveillance?" suggested Pulaski.
"That makes sense," Sellitto said. "I'll give S and S a call, set up some teams."
Rhyme gave a cynical glance. "Surveillance at a company with, what? A thousand employees?" He shook his head, then asked, "You know Occam's razor, Lon?"
"Who the fuck is Occam? A barber?"
"A philosopher. The razor's a metaphor--cutting away unnecessary explanations for a phenomenon. His theory was that when you have multiple possibilities the simplest is almost always the correct one."
"So what's your simple theory, Rhyme?"
Staring at the brochure, the criminalist answered Sachs, "I think you and Pulaski should go pay a visit to SSD tomorrow morning."
"And do what?"
He gave a shrug. "Ask if anybody who works there is the killer."
Chapter Sixteen
Ah, home at last.
I close the door.
And lock out the world.
I breathe deeply and, setting my backpack on the couch, go into the spotless kitchen and drink some pure water. No stimulants for me at the moment.
That edgy thing again.
The town house is a nice one. Prewar, huge (it would have to be when you live the way I do, given my collections). Not easy to find the perfect place. It took me some time. But here I am, largely unnoticed. It's obscenely easy to be virtually anonymous in New York. What a marvelous city! Here, the default mode of existence is life off the grid. Here, you have to fight to be noticed. Many sixteens do that, of course. But then, the world's always had more than its share of fools.
Still, listen, you need to keep up appearances. The front rooms of my town house are simple and tastefully decorated (thank you, Scandinavia). I don't socialize here much but you need a facade to seem normal. You have to function in the real world. If you don't, sixteens begin to wonder if there's something going on, if you're someone other than you seem.
And it's a short step from that to someone coming round, poking into your Closet and taking everything away from you. Everything you've worked so hard for.
Everything.
And that's the worst of the worst.
So you make sure your Closet is secret. You make sure your treasures are hidden behind curtained or blocked windows, while you maintain your other life in full view, the sunlit side of the moon. To stay off the grid it's best to have a second living space. You do what I've done: keep this Danish modern patina of normalcy clean and ordered, even if it grates on your nerves like steel on slate to be there.
You have a normal house. Because that's what everybody has.
And you maintain a pleasant connection with associates and friends. Because that's what everyone does.
And you date occasionally and entice her to spend the night and you go through the motions.
Because that too is what everyone does. No matter that she doesn't get you as hard as when you've smooth talked your way into a girl's bedroom, smiling, aren't we soul mates, look at everything we have in common, with a tape recorder and a knife in your jacket pocket.
Now, I pull the shades in the bay windows and head to the back of the living room.
"Wow, this is like a really neat place. . . . It looks bigger from the outside."
"Yeah, funny how that happens."
"Hey, you've got a door in your living room. What's through there?"
"Oh, that. Just storage. A closet. Nothing to see. Want some wine?"
Well, what's through there, Debby Sandra Susan Brenda, is where I'm headed right now. My real home. My Closet, I call it. It's like a keep--that last defensible spo
t of a medieval castle--the sanctuary in the center. When all else failed, the king and his family would retreat to the keep.
I enter mine through that magic doorway. It actually is a closet, a walk-in, and inside you'll see hanging clothes and shoe boxes. But push them aside and you'll find a second door. It opens on to the rest of the house, which is far, far bigger than the facade's horrifying blond Swedish minimalism.
My Closet . . .
I enter it now and lock the doors behind me and turn on the light.
Trying to relax. But after today, after the disaster, I'm having trouble shaking the edgy.
This isn't good this isn't good this . . .
I drop into my desk chair and boot up the computer as I stare at the Prescott painting in front of me, courtesy of Alice 3895. What a touch he had! The eyes of the family members are fascinating. Prescott managed to give each one a different gaze. It's clear they're all related; the expressions are similar in that way. Yet they're also different, as if each is imagining a different aspect of life as a family: happy, troubled, angry, mystified, controlling, controlled.
It's what a family is all about.
I suppose.
I open the backpack and take out the treasures I've acquired today. A tin canister, a pencil set, an old cheese grater. Why would somebody throw these away? I also unload some practical items I'll use in the next few weeks: some preapproved credit mailings that people carelessly discarded, credit card vouchers, phone bills. . . . Fools, I was saying.
There's another item for my collection, of course, but I'll get to the tape recorder later. It's not as great a find as it could be, since Myra 9834's throaty screams while I detached the fingernail had to be muted by duct tape (I was worried about passersby). Still, everything in a collection can't be a crown jewel; you need the mundane to make the special soar.
I then wander through my Closet, depositing the treasures in the appropriate places.
It looks bigger from the outside . . .
As of today, I have 7,403 newspapers, 3,234 magazines (National Geographics being the cornerstone, of course), 4,235 matchbooks . . . and, forgoing the numbers: coat hangers, kitchen utensils, lunch boxes, soda pop bottles, empty cereal boxes, scissors, shaving gear, shoe horns and trees, buttons, cuff links boxes, combs, wristwatches, clothes, tools useful and tools long outmoded. Phonograph records in colors, records in black. Bottles, toys, jam jars, candles and holders, candy dishes, weapons. It goes on and on and on.
The Closet consists of, what else? Sixteen galleries, like a museum's, ranging from those holding cheerful toys (though that Howdy Doody is pretty damn scary) to rooms of some things that I treasure but most people would find, oh, unpleasant. Hair and nail clippings and some shriveled mementoes from various transactions. Like this afternoon's. I deposit Myra 9834's fingernail in a prominent spot. And while this would normally give me enough pleasure to make me hard again, now the moment is dark and spoiled.
I hate Them so much. . . .
With quivering hands I close the cigar box, taking no pleasure from my treasures at the moment.
Hate hate hate . . .
Back at the computer, I'm reflecting: Maybe there's no threat. Maybe it's just an odd set of coincidences that led Them to DeLeon 6832's house.
But I can't take any chances.
The problem: The risk that my treasures will be taken from me, which is consuming me now.
The solution: To do what I started in Brooklyn. To fight back. To eliminate any threats.
What most sixteens, including my pursuers, don't understand and what puts Them at a pathetic disadvantage is this: I believe in the immutable truth that there is absolutely nothing morally wrong with taking a life. Because I know that there is eternal existence completely independent of these bags of skin and organ we cart around temporarily. I have proof: Just look at the trove of data about your life, built up from the moment you're born. It's all permanent, stored in a thousand places, copied, backed up, invisible and indestructible. After the body goes, as all bodies must, the data survive forever.
And if that's not the definition of an immortal soul, I don't know what is.
Chapter Seventeen
The bedroom was quiet.
Rhyme had sent Thom home to spend Sunday night with Peter Hoddins, the caregiver's longtime partner. Rhyme gave the aide a lot of crap. He couldn't help that and sometimes he felt bad about it. But he tried to compensate and when Amelia Sachs was staying with him, as tonight, he shooed Thom off. The young man needed more of a life outside the town house here, taking care of a feisty old crip.
Rhyme heard tinkering in the bathroom. The sounds of a woman getting ready for bed. Clinks of glass and snaps of plastic lids, aerosol hisses, water running, fragrances escaping on humid bathroom air.
He liked moments like these. They reminded him of his life in the Before.
Which in turn brought to mind the pictures downstairs in the laboratory. Beside the one of Lincoln in his tracksuit was another, in black and white. It showed two men wearing suits on their lanky frames, in their twenties, standing side by side. Their arms hung straight, as if they were wondering whether to embrace.
Rhyme's father and uncle.
He thought often of Uncle Henry. His father not so much. This had been true throughout his life. Oh, there was nothing objectionable about Teddy Rhyme. The younger of the two siblings was simply retiring, often shy. He loved his nine-to-five job crunching numbers in various labs, loved to read, which he did every evening while lounging in a thick, well-worn armchair, while his wife, Anne, sewed or watched TV. Teddy favored history, especially the American Civil War, an interest that, Rhyme supposed, was the source of his own given name.
The boy and his father coexisted pleasantly, though Rhyme recalled many awkward silences present when father and son were alone. What troubles also engages. What challenges you makes you feel alive. And Teddy never troubled or challenged.
Uncle Henry did, though. In spades.
You couldn't be in the same room with him for more than a few minutes without his attention turning to you like a searchlight. Then came the jokes, the trivia, recent family news. And always the questions--some asked because he was genuinely curious to learn. Most, though, asked as a call to debate with you. Oh, how Henry Rhyme loved intellectual jousting. You might cringe, you might blush, you might grow furious. But you'd also burn with pride at one of the rare compliments he offered because you knew you'd earned it. No false praise or unwarranted encouragement ever slipped from Uncle Henry's lips.
"You're close. Think harder! You've got it in you. Einstein had done all his important work when he was just a little older than you."
If you got it right, you were blessed with a raised eyebrow of approval, tantamount to winning the Westinghouse Science Fair prize. But all too often your arguments were fallacious, your premises straw, your criticisms emotional, your facts skewed. . . . At issue, though, wasn't his victory over you; his only goal was arriving at the truth and making sure you understood the route. Once he'd diced your argument to fine chop, and made sure you saw why, the matter was over.
So you understand where you went wrong? You calculated the temperature with an incorrect set of assumptions. Exactly! Now, let's make some calls--get some people together and go see the White Sox on Saturday. I need a ballpark hot dog and we sure as hell won't be able to buy one at Comiskey Park in October.
Lincoln had enjoyed the intellectual sparring, often driving all the way to Hyde Park to sit in on his uncle's seminars or informal discussion groups at the university; in fact, he had gone more frequently than Arthur, who was usually busy with other activities.
If his uncle were still alive, he'd undoubtedly stroll into Rhyme's room now without a glance at his motionless body, point at the gas chromatograph and blurt, "Why are you still running that piece of crap?" Then settling down across from the evidence whiteboards, he'd start questioning Rhyme about his handling of the 522 case.
Yes, but is it log
ical for this individual to behave in this manner? State your givens once more for me.
He thought back to the night he'd recalled earlier: the Christmas Eve of his senior year in high school, at his uncle's house in Evanston. Present were Henry and Paula and their children, Robert, Arthur and Marie; Teddy and Anne with Lincoln; some aunts and uncles, other cousins. A neighbor or two.
Lincoln and Arthur had spent much of the evening playing pool downstairs and talking about plans for the next fall and college. Lincoln's heart was set on M.I.T. Arthur, too, planned to go there. They were both confident of admission and that night were debating rooming together in a dorm or finding an off-campus apartment (male camaraderie versus a babe lair).
The family then assembled at the massive table in his uncle's dining room, Lake Michigan churning nearby, the wind hissing through bare, gray branches in the backyard. Henry presided over the table the way he presided over his class, in charge and aware, a faint smile below quick eyes taking in all the conversations around him. He'd tell jokes and anecdotes and ask about his guests' lives. He was interested, curious--and sometimes manipulative. "So, Marie, now that we're all here, tell us about that fellowship at Georgetown. I think we agreed it'd be excellent for you. And Jerry can come visit on weekends in that fancy new car of his. By the way, when's the deadline for the application? Coming up, I seem to recall."
And his wispy-haired daughter avoided his eyes and said what with Christmas and final exams, she hadn't quite finished the paperwork. But she would. Definitely.
Henry's mission, of course, was to get his daughter to commit in front of witnesses, no matter that she'd be separated from her fiance for another six months.
Rhyme had always believed that his uncle would have made an excellent trial lawyer or politician.
After the remnants of the turkey and mincemeat pie were cleared away and the Grand Marnier, coffee and tea had appeared, Henry ushered everyone into the living room, dominated by a massive tree, busy fireplace flames and a stern painting of Lincoln's grandfather--a triple doctorate and a professor at Harvard.