"Once was enough for me. He picked me apart until I wanted to cry."
"He cross-examined everybody, Art. That's why he was so brilliant. He made you think, he pushed you until you got the right answer."
"But some of us could never get the right answer. I was good. But I wasn't great. And the son of Henry Rhyme was supposed to be great. It didn't matter, though, because he had you. Robert went to Europe, Marie moved to California. And even then he didn't want me. He wanted you!"
The other son . . .
"I didn't ask for the role. I didn't sabotage you."
"Didn't you? Ah, Mr. Innocent. You didn't play the game? You just accidentally drove up to our house on weekends, even when I wasn't there? You didn't invite him to come to your track meets? Sure, you did. Answer me: Which of them would you really want for a father, mine or yours? Did your father ever fawn over you? Ever whistle for you from the stands? Give you that raised eyebrow of approval?"
"That's all bullshit," Rhyme had snapped. "You've got some issue with your father and what do you do? You sabotage me. I could've gotten into M.I.T. But you ruined that! And my whole life changed. If it weren't for you, everything would've been different."
"Well, I can say the same about you, Lincoln. I can say the same. . . ." A harsh laugh. "Did you even try with your father? What do you think he felt, having a son like you, who was a hundred times smarter than he was? Going off all the time because he'd rather hang out with his uncle. Did you even give Teddy a chance?"
At that, Rhyme had slammed the phone into the cradle. It was the last time they talked. Several months later he was paralyzed at the crime scene.
Everything would've been different. . . .
After he'd explained this to Sachs she said, "That's why he never came to see you after you were hurt."
He nodded. "Back then, after the accident, all I could do was lie in bed and think that if Art hadn't changed the application I would have gotten into M.I.T. and maybe done graduate work at Boston University or joined the BPD or come to New York earlier or later. In any case I probably wouldn't've been at the subway crime scene and . . ." His voice dissolved to silence.
"The butterfly effect," she said. "A small thing in the past makes a big difference in the future."
Rhyme nodded. And he knew that Sachs could take in this information with sympathy and understanding and make no judgments about the broader implications--which he would choose: walking and leading a normal life, or being a crip and perhaps a far better criminalist because of it . . . and, of course, being her partner.
This was the type of woman Amelia Sachs was.
He gave a faint smile. "The funny thing is, Sachs . . ."
"There was something to what he said?"
"My own father never seemed to notice me at all. He certainly never challenged me the way my uncle did. I did feel like Uncle Henry's other son. And I liked it." He'd come to realize that maybe, subconsciously, he had been pursuing boisterous, full-of-life Henry Rhyme. He was pelted with a dozen fast memories of the times he'd been embarrassed by his father's shyness.
"But it's no excuse for what he did," she said.
"No, it's not."
"Still," she began.
"You're going to say that it happened a long time ago, let bygones be bygones, water over dams and under bridges?"
"Something like that," she offered with a smile. "Judy said he asked about you. He's reaching out. Forgive him."
You two were like brothers. . . .
Rhyme glanced over the still topography of his immobile body. Then back to Sachs. He said softly, "I'm going to prove he's innocent. I'll get him out of jail. I'll give him his life back."
"That's not the same, Rhyme."
"Maybe not. But it's the best I can do."
Sachs began to speak, perhaps to make her case again, but the subject of Arthur Rhyme and his betrayal vanished as the phone buzzed and on the computer screen came Lon Sellitto's number.
"Command, answer phone. . . . Lon. Where are we?"
"Hey, Linc. Just wanted to let you know our computer expert's on his way."
*
The guy was familiar, the doorman thought--the man who nodded pleasantly as he left the Water Street Hotel.
He nodded back.
The guy was on his cell phone and he paused near the door, as people eased around him. He was talking, the doorman deduced, to his wife. Then the tone changed. "Patty, sweetheart . . ." A daughter. After a brief conversation about a soccer game he was back on with the wife, sounding more adult, but still adoring.
He fell into a certain category, the doorman knew. Been married fifteen years. Faithful, looked forward to getting home--with a bag of tacky, heartfelt presents. He wasn't like some guests: the businessman who'd arrive wearing his wedding ring and leave for dinner with finger naked. Or the tipsy businesswoman being escorted into the elevator by a hunky coworker (they never shed their rings; they didn't need to).
The things a doorman knows. I could write a book.
But the question nagged: Why was this guy so familiar?
And then he was saying to the wife, with a laugh, "You saw me? It made the news there? Mom did too?"
Saw him. A TV celebrity?
Wait, wait. Almost there . . .
Ah, got it. Last night, watching the news on TV. Sure--this guy was a professor or doctor of some kind. Sloane . . . or Soames. A computer expert from some fancy school. The one that Ron Scott, the assistant mayor or whatever, was talking about. The prof was helping the police with that rape and murder on Sunday and some other crime.
Then the professor's face went still and he said, "Sure, honey, don't worry. I'll be fine." He disconnected and looked around.
"Hey, sir," the doorman said. "Saw you on TV."
The professor smiled shyly. "Did you?" He seemed embarrassed by the attention. "Say, can you tell me how to get to One Police Plaza?"
"Right up there. About five blocks. By City Hall. You can't miss it."
"Thanks."
"Good luck." The doorman was watching a limo approach, pleased that he'd had a brush with a semi-celebrity. Something to tell his own wife about.
Then he felt a thunk on his back, almost painful, as another man hurried out the door of the hotel and pushed past him. The guy didn't look back and said nothing by way of apology.
Prick, thought the doorman, watching the man, who was moving fast, head down, in the same direction as the professor. The doorman didn't say anything, though. However rude they were, you just put up with it. They could be guests or friends of guests or they could be guests next week. Or even executives from the home office, testing you.
Just put up and shut up. That was the rule.
The TV professor and the rude asshole faded from the doorman's thoughts as a limo stopped and he stepped forward to open the door. He got a nice view of soft cleavage as the guest climbed out; it was better than a tip, which he knew, absolutely knew, she wasn't going to give him anyway.
I could write a book.
Chapter Thirty-four
Death is simple.
I've never understood why people complicate it. Movies, for instance. I'm not a fan of thrillers but I've seen my share. Sometimes I'll take a sixteen out on a date, to stave off boredom, to keep up appearances or because I'm going to kill her later, and we'll sit in a movie theater and it's easier than dinner; you don't have to talk so much. And I watch the film and think, What on earth is going on up there on the screen, setting up these contrived ways to kill?
Why use wires and electronics and elaborate weapons and plots when you can walk up to someone and beat them to death with a hammer in thirty seconds?
Simple. Efficient.
And make no mistake, the police are smart (and, how's this for irony, a lot of them have SSD and innerCircle helping them out). The more complicated the scheme, the more chance of leaving behind something they can use to track you down, the more chance for witnesses.
And my plans today for this
sixteen I'm following through the streets of lower Manhattan are simplicity itself.
The failure at the cemetery yesterday is behind me now and I'm exhilarated. I'm on a mission and, as part of it, I'll be adding to one of my collections.
As I follow my target I dodge sixteens right and left. Why, look at them all. . . . My pulse is picking up. My head is throbbing at the thought that these sixteens are themselves collections--of their past. More information than we can comprehend. DNA is, after all, nothing more than a database of our bodies and genetic history, stretching back millennia. If you could plug that into hard drives, how much data could you extract? Makes innerCircle look like a Commodore 64.
Breathtaking . . .
But back to the task at hand. I maneuver around a young sixteen, smell her perfume, which she dabbed on this morning in her Staten Island or Brooklyn apartment in a sad attempt to exude competence and came off as cheaply seductive. I move closer to my target, feeling the comfort of the pistol against my skin. Knowledge may be one kind of power, but there are others that are nearly as effective.
*
"Hey, Professor, we've got some activity."
"Uh-huh," Roland Bell replied, his voice spilling from the speakers in the surveillance van, where sat Lon Sellitto, Ron Pulaski and several tactical officers.
Bell, an NYPD detective who worked with Rhyme and Sellitto occasionally, was on his way from the Water Street Hotel to One Police Plaza. He'd traded his typical jeans, work shirt and sports coat for a rumpled suit, since he was playing the role of the fictional professor Carlton Soames.
Or, as he'd put it in his North Carolina drawl, "A stinkball on a hook and line."
Bell now whispered into a lapel microphone as invisible as the tiny speaker in his ear, "How close?"
"He's behind you about fifty feet."
"Uhm."
Bell was at the core of Lincoln Rhyme's Expert Plan, which was based on his increasing understanding of 522. "He's not taking our computer trap but he's dying for information. I know it. We need a different sort of trap. Hold a press conference and lure him out into the open. Have them announce that we've hired an expert and get somebody undercover up onstage."
"You're assuming he watches TV."
"Oh, he'll be checking the media to see how we're handling the case, especially after the incident at the cemetery."
Sellitto and Rhyme had contacted somebody not connected with the 522 case--Roland Bell was always game, if he wasn't on another assignment. Rhyme had then called a friend at Carnegie Mellon University, where he'd lectured several times. He told him about 522's crimes, and the authorities at the school, which was renowned for its work in high-technology security, agreed to help. Their webmaster added Carlton Soames, Ph.D., to the school's Web site.
Rodney Szarnek faked a resume for Soames and sent it out to dozens of science Web sites, then cobbled together a credible site for Soames himself. Sellitto got a room for the professor at the Water Street Hotel, held the press conference and waited to see if 522 would take the bait in this trap.
Which apparently he had.
Bell had left the Water Street Hotel not long before and paused, carrying on a credible but fake phone call and standing in the open long enough to make sure he caught 522's attention. Surveillance showed that a man had quickly left the hotel just after Bell and was now following him.
"You recognize him from SSD? He one of the suspects on our list?" Sellitto asked Pulaski, sitting beside him, staring at the monitor. Four plainclothes officers were a block or so from Bell; two wore hidden video cameras.
On the crowded streets, though, it was hard to get a clear view of the killer's face. "Could be one of the service techs. Or, weird, it almost looks like Andrew Sterling himself. Or, no, maybe it's that he kind of walks like him. I'm not sure. Sorry."
Sweating heavily in the hot van, Sellitto wiped his face, then leaned forward and said into the mike, "Okay, Professor, Five Twenty-Two's moving up. Maybe forty feet behind you. He's in a dark suit, dark tie. He's carrying a briefcase. His gait profile suggests that he's armed." Most cops who've worked the street for a few years can recognize the difference in posture and walking patterns when a suspect is carrying a weapon.
"Gotcha," commented the laconic officer, who carried two pistols himself and was ambidextrously talented with them.
"Man," Sellitto muttered, "I hope this works. Okay, Roland, go ahead with the right turn."
"Uhm."
Rhyme and Sellitto didn't believe that 522 would shoot the professor on the street. What would killing him accomplish? Rhyme speculated that the killer's intent was to abduct Soames, to learn what the police knew, then murder him later or perhaps threaten him and his family to have Soames sabotage the investigation. So the script called for Roland Bell to take a detour out of public view, where 522 would make his move and they'd nail him. Sellitto had found a construction site that would work well. It featured a long sidewalk, cordoned off to the public, that was a shortcut to One Police Plaza. Bell would ignore the Closed sign and head down the sidewalk, where he'd be lost to sight after thirty or forty feet. A team was hiding at the far end to move in when 522 approached.
The detective made the turn, stepping around the barrier tape and heading up the dusty sidewalk, while the rattle and slam of jackhammers and pile drivers filled the interior of the van from Bell's sensitive mike.
"We've got you on visual, Roland," Sellitto said as one of the officers beside him hit a switch and another camera took up surveillance. "You watching, Linc?"
"No, Lon, Dancing with the Celebrities is on. Jane Fonda and Mickey Rooney are up next."
"It's Dancing with the Stars, Linc."
Rhyme's voice clattered into the van. "Is Five Twenty-Two going to make the turn? Or is he going to balk? . . . Come on, come on. . . ."
Sellitto moved the mouse and double-clicked. Another image, on a split screen, popped up, from a Search and Surveillance team's video camera. It depicted a different angle: Bell's back moving down the sidewalk, away from the camera. The detective was glancing with curiosity at the construction site, as any normal passerby would. A moment later, 522 appeared behind him, keeping his distance, looking around too, though obviously with no interest in the workers; he was scanning for witnesses or the police.
Then he hesitated, looked around once more. And started to close the distance.
"Okay, everybody, heads up," Sellitto called. "He's moving up on you, Roland. We're going to lose you on visual in about five seconds so keep an eye out. You copy?"
"Yep," said the easy-going officer. As if answering a bartender who'd asked if he wanted a glass with his bottle of Budweiser.
Chapter Thirty-five
Roland Bell wasn't quite as calm as he sounded.
The widower father of two children, a nice house in the burbs and a sweetheart down in the Tarheel State he was getting pretty close to proposing to . . . All those domestic things tended to add up on the negative side when you were asked to be a sitting duck on an undercover set.
Still, Bell couldn't help but do his duty--particularly when it came to a perp like this 522, a rapist and killer, a species of criminal that Bell had a particular dislike for. And, truth be told, he didn't mind the rush from ops like this one.
"We all find our levels," his daddy had often said, and once the boy realized that the man wasn't talking about misplaced tools he embraced that philosophy as a cornerstone of his life.
His jacket was unbuttoned and his hand poised to draw, aim and let fly with his favorite pistol, an example of Italy's finest firepower. He was glad Lon Sellitto had stopped his banter. He needed to hear this fellow's approach, and the slam slam slam of the pile driver was plenty loud. Still, concentrating hard, he heard a scrape of shoes on the sidewalk behind him.
Make it thirty feet.
Bell knew the takedown team was in front of him, though he couldn't see them, or they him, because of a sharp curve in the sidewalk. The plan was for them to take 522 as
soon as the backdrop was safe and no bystanders were in danger. This portion of the sidewalk was still partly visible from a nearby street and the construction site and they'd been gambling that the killer wouldn't attack until Bell was closer to the tactical officers. But he seemed to be moving in more quickly than they'd planned on.
Bell hoped, though, that the man would hold off for a few minutes; a firefight here could endanger a number of passersby and construction workers.
But the logistics of the takedown vanished from his mind as he heard two things simultaneously: the sound of 522's footsteps breaking into a run toward him and, much more alarming, the cheerful Spanish chatter of two women, one pushing a baby carriage, as they emerged from the back of the building right next to Bell. The tac officers had sealed off the sidewalk but apparently nobody'd thought to notify the superintendents of the buildings whose rear doors faced it.
Bell glanced back and saw the women walk right in between him and 522, who was staring at the detective and running forward. In his hand was a gun.
"We've got trouble! Civvies between us. Suspect's armed! Repeat, he's got a weapon. Move in!"
Bell started for his Beretta but one of the women, seeing 522, screamed and jumped back, slamming into Bell, knocking him to his knees. His gun dropped to the sidewalk. The killer blinked in shock and froze, undoubtedly wondering why a college professor was armed, but he recovered fast and aimed at Bell, who was going for his second gun.
"No!" the killer shouted. "Don't try it!"
The officer could do nothing but lift his hands. He heard Sellitto say, "First team'll be there in thirty seconds, Roland."
The killer said nothing, just snarled for the women to flee, which they did, and then he stepped forward, gun on Bell's chest.
Thirty seconds, the detective thought, breathing hard.
It might as well have been a lifetime.
*
Walking from the parking garage to One Police Plaza, Captain Joseph Malloy was irritated that he hadn't heard anything about the set involving Detective Roland Bell. He knew Sellitto and Rhyme were desperate to find this perp and he'd reluctantly agreed to the phony press conference but it really was over the line, and he wondered what the fallout would be if it didn't work.
Hell, there'd be fallout if it did work. One of the top rules in city government: Don't fuck with the press. Especially in New York.