"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 they were 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 locations because 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."
&
nbsp; "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'm the 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'm the 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 got to 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 your case, 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 never enough 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 have to 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, cliches," Rhyme snapped. "Well, okay, if you're in a box, maybe you're there for a reason. I say don't think outside it; I say look more closely at what's inside with you. . . . So, Sachs, what do you see in there?"
She stared at the charts for some moments.
Then she smiled and whispered, "Maryland."
BENJAM
IN 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.