"The Mercedes?" Flaherty asked. "Sure, it was mine. And, sure, you were being tailed. I had an officer from Op Div keeping an eye on you and Pulaski. You were both young, you were inexperienced and you might've been way out of your league. I gave him my own car to use because you would've noticed a pool vehicle right away."
The expensive car had indeed thrown her off and actually started her thinking in another direction. If the mob wasn't involved, she was beginning to wonder that maybe Pulaski had called it wrong about Creeley's partner, Jordan Kessler, and that the businessman might somehow be involved in the deaths. Maybe, she'd speculated, Creeley and Sarkowski had gotten caught up in one of the Enron-style investigations currently under way and were killed because of something they'd learned about corporate fraud at a client's company. Kessler seemed to be the only player in the game who could afford a vehicle like an AMG Merc.
But now she realized that the case was all about corrupt cops, and the ash in Creeley's fireplace wasn't from doctored accounting records but simply evidence that they'd burned to make sure they destroyed any records of the extortion money, as she'd originally speculated.
Now the inspector's attention turned to Robert Wallace. She asked Sachs, "How'd you find him?"
"Tell him, Ron," she instructed Pulaski.
The rookie began. "Detective Sachs here ascertained . . ." He paused. "Detective Sachs found a bunch of trace in Baker's vehicle and house that gave us the idea, well, gave Detectives Sachs and Rhyme the idea that maybe the other person involved lived near a beach or marina."
Sachs took it up. "I didn't think that DI Jefferies was involved because he wouldn't request a file sent to his own precinct if he wanted to destroy it. Somebody else had it routed there and intercepted it before it was logged in. I went back to him and asked if anybody had been in the file room lately, somebody who might have a connection to the case. Somebody had. You." A glance at Wallace. "Then I asked the next logical question. Did you have a Maryland connection? And you sure did. Just not an obvious one."
Thinking inside the box . . .
"Oh, Jesus Christ," he muttered. "Baker told me you'd mentioned Maryland. But I never thought you'd find it."
Ron Scott, the IAD head, said to Flaherty, "Wallace has a boat docked at his place on the South Shore of Long Island. Registered in New York but built in Annapolis. She's The Maryland Monroe." Scott looked him over and gave a cold laugh. "You boat people really love your puns."
Sachs said, "The sand, seaweed and saltwater trace in Baker's car and house match those at his marina. We got a warrant and searched the boat. Got some good evidence. Phone numbers, documents, trace. Over four million in cash--oh, and a lot of drugs too. Plenty of liquor, probably perped. But I'd say the booze's the least of your problems."
Ron Scott nodded to two ESU officers. "Get him downtown. Central Booking."
As he was led out, Wallace called back, "I'm not saying anything. If you think I'm going to name names, you can forget about it. I'm not confessing."
Flaherty gave the first laugh Sachs had ever heard from her. "Are you mad, Robert? Sounds like they've got enough evidence to put you away forever. You don't need to say a word. Actually, I'd just as soon you didn't open your goddamn mouth ever again."
III
8:32 A.M. THURSDAY
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
--LOUIS-HECTOR BERLIOZ
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 back at the evidence.
Gerald Duncan--dubbed "Perp Lite" by witty Thom--was awaiting arraignment on the infractions he had committed, all minor ones (the DNA analysis revealed that the blood on the box cutter, on the jacket fished out of the harbor and pooled on the pier was Duncan's own, and the fingernail crescent was a perfect match).
The 118th Precinct corruption case was moving slowly.
There was sufficient evidence to indict Baker and Wallace, as well as Toby Henson. Soil at the Sarkowski crime scene and the samples Sachs had collected at Creeley's Westchester house matched trace found in Baker's and Henson's homes. Of course, they had a rope fiber implicating Baker in Creeley's death, but similar fibers were found on Wallace's boat. Henson owned leather gloves whose texture patterns matched those found in Westchester.
But this trio wasn't cooperating. They were rejecting any plea bargains, and no evidence implicated anyone else, including the two officers who'd been outside the East Village social club, who claimed they were innocent. Rhyme had tried to unleash Kathryn Dance on them but they were refusing to say anything.
Eventually, Rhyme was confident, he could find all the perps from the 118th and build cases against them. But he didn't want eventually; he wanted now. As Sachs had pointed out, the other cops from the St. James might be planning to kill more witnesses--maybe even make another attempt on her or Pulaski. It was also possible that one or more of them were forcing Baker, Henson and Wallace to remain silent by threatening their families.
Besides, Rhyme was needed on other cases. Earlier he'd gotten a call about another incident--FBI Agent Fred Dellray (temporarily sprung from financial crimes hell) explained that there'd been a breakin and arson at the federal National Institute of Standards and Technology operation in Brooklyn. The damage was minor but the perp had breached a very sophisticated security system and, with terrorism on everyone's mind, any burglary of a government facility got attention; the Feds wanted Rhyme to assist in the forensic side of the investigation. He wanted to help but he needed to get the Baker-Wallace extortion case wrapped up first.
A messenger arrived with the file on the murder of Duncan's businessman friend, engineered by Baker when the man refused to be extorted. The case was still open--there's no statute of limitations on murder--but there'd been no entries for a year. Rhyme was hoping to find some leads in the older case that might help them identify perps from the 118th Precinct.
Rhyme first went into the New York Times archive and read the short account of the death of the victim, Andrew Culbert. It reported nothing other than that he was a businessman from Duluth and had been killed during an apparent mugging in Midtown. No suspects were found. There was no follow-up to the story.
Rhyme had Thom mount the investigation report on his page-turning frame and the criminalist read through the sheets. As often, in a cold case, the notes were in several different handwritings, since the investigation had been passed on--with progressively less energy--as time passed. According to the crime scene report, there'd been little trace, no fingerprints or footprints, no shell casings (death was from two shots to the forehead, the slugs ubiquitous .38 Specials; a test of the weapons they'd collected from Baker and the other cops at the 118th revealed no ballistics matches).
"You have the crime scene inventory?" he asked Sachs.
"Let's see. Right here," she said, lifting the sheet. "I'll read it."
He closed his eyes so he'd have a better image of the items.
"Wallet," Sachs read, "one hotel room key to the St. Regis, one minibar key, one Cross pen, one PDA, one
packet of gum, a small pad of paper with the words 'Men's room' on the top. The second sheet said 'Chardonnay.' That's it. The lead detective from Homicide was John Repetti."
Rhyme was looking off, his mind stuck on something. He looked at her. "What?"
"I was saying, Repetti, he ran the case out of Midtown North. You want me to call him?"
After a moment Lincoln Rhyme replied, "No, I need you to do something else."
It's possessed.
Listening to the scratchy recording of the bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson singing "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" through her iPod, Kathryn Dance stared at her suitcase, bulging open, refusing to close.
All I bought was two pairs of shoes, a few Christmas presents . . . okay, three pairs of shoes, but one was pumps. They don't count. Oh, but then the sweater. The sweater was the problem.
She pulled it out. And tried again. The clasps got to within a few inches of each other and stopped.
Possessed . . .
I'll go for the elegant look. She found the plastic valet laundry bag and offloaded jeans, a suit, hair curlers, stockings and the offending, and bulky, sweater. She tried the suitcase again.
Click.
No exorcist was necessary.
Her hotel room phone rang and the front desk announced she had a visitor.
Right on time.
"Send 'em up," Dance said and five minutes later Lucy Richter was sitting on the small couch in Dance's room.
"You want something to drink?"
"No, thanks. I can't stay long."
Dance nodded at a small fridge. "Whoever thought up minibars is evil. Candy bars and chips. My downfall. Well, everything's pretty much my downfall. And to add insult to injury the salsa costs ten dollars."
Lucy, who looked like she'd never had to count a calorie or gram of fat in her life, laughed. Then she said, "I heard they caught him. The officer guarding my house told me. But he didn't have any details."
The agent explained about Gerald Duncan, how he was innocent all along, and about the corruption scandal at an NYPD precinct.
Lucy shook her head at the news. Then she was looking around the small room. She made some pointless comments about framed prints and the view out the window. Soot, snow and an air shaft were the essential elements of the landscape. "I just came by to say thanks."
No, you didn't, thought Dance. But she said, "You don't need to thank me. It's our job."
She observed that Lucy's arms were uncrossed and the woman was sitting comfortably now, slightly back, shoulders relaxed, but not slumped. A confession, of some sort, was coming.
Dance let the silence unravel. Lucy said, "Are you a counselor?"
"No. Just a cop."
During her interviews, though, it wasn't unusual for suspects to keep right on going after the confession, sharing stories of other moral lapses, hated parents, jealousy of siblings, cheating wives and husbands, anger, joy, hopes. Confiding, seeking advice. No, she wasn't a counselor. But she was a cop and a mother and a kinesics expert, and all three of those roles required her to be an expert at the largely forgotten art of listening.
"Well, you're real easy to talk to. I thought maybe I could ask your opinion about something."
"Go on," Dance encouraged.
The soldier said, "I don't know what to do. I'm getting this commendation today, the one I was telling you about. But there's a problem." She explained more about her job overseas, running fuel and supply trucks.
Dance opened the minibar, extracted two $6 bottles of Perrier. Lifted an eyebrow.
The soldier hesitated. "Oh, sure."
She opened them and handed one to Lucy. Keeping hands busy frees up the mind to think and the voice to speak.
"Okay, this corporal was on my team, Pete. A reservist from South Dakota. Funny guy. Very funny. Coached soccer back home, worked in construction. He was a big help when I first got there. One day, about a month ago, he and I had to do an inventory of damaged vehicles. Some of them get shipped back to Fort Hood for repairs, some we can fix ourselves, some just are scrapped.
"I was in the office and he'd gone to the mess hall. I was going to pick him up at thirteen hundred hours and we were going to drive to the bone lot. I went to get him in a Humvee. I saw Petey there, waiting for me. Just then an IED went off. That's a bomb."
Dance knew this, of course.
"I was about thirty, forty feet away when it blew. Petey was waving and then there was this flash and the whole scene changed. It was like you blinked and the square became a different place." She looked out the window. "The front of the mess hall was gone, palm trees--they just vanished. Some soldiers and a couple of civilians who'd been standing there . . . One instant there, then they were gone."
Her voice was eerily calm. Dance recognized the tone; she heard it often in witnesses who'd lost loved ones in crimes. (The hardest interviews to do, worse than sitting across from the most amoral killer.)
"Petey's body was shattered. That's the only way to describe it." Her voice caught. "He was all red and black, broken. . . . I've seen a lot over there. But this was so terrible." She sipped the water and then clutched the bottle like a child with a doll.
Dance offered no words of sympathy--they'd be useless. She nodded for the woman to continue. A deep breath. Lucy's fingers intertwined tightly. In her work, Dance characterized this gesture--a common one--of trying to strangle the unbearable tension arising from guilt or pain or shame.
"The thing is . . . I was late. I was in the office. I looked up at the clock. It was about twelve fifty-five but I had a half cup of soda left. I thought about throwing it out and leaving--it'd take five minutes to get to the mess hall--but I wanted to finish the soda. I just wanted to sit and finish it. I was late getting to the mess hall. If I'd been on time he wouldn't've died. I would've picked him up and we'd have been a half mile away when the IED blew."
"Were you injured?"
"A little." She pulled up her sleeve and displayed a large leathery scar on her forearm. "Nothing serious." She stared at the scar and then drank more water. Her eyes were hollow. "Even if I'd been just one minute late at least he'd've been in the vehicle. He probably would have survived. Sixty seconds . . . That would've made the difference between him living and dying. And all because of a soda. All I wanted was to finish my goddamn soda." A sad laugh escaped her dry lips. "And then who shows up and tries to kill me? Somebody calling himself the Watchmaker, leaving a big-ass clock in my bathroom. For weeks all I can think about is how a single minute, one way or the other, makes the difference between life and death. And here's this freak throwing it in my face."
Dance asked, "What else? There's something more, isn't there?"
A faint laugh. "Yep, here's the problem. See, my tour was scheduled to be up next month. But I felt so guilty about Pete that I told my CO I'd reenlist."
Dance was nodding.
"That's what this ceremony's about. It's not about getting wounded. We're wounded every day. It's about reenlisting. The army's having a tough time getting new recruits. They're going to use the reenlisters as poster children for the new army. We like it so much we want to go back. That sort of thing."
"And you're having second thoughts?"
She nodded. "It's driving me crazy. I can't sleep. I can't make love to my husband. I can't do anything. . . . I'm lonely, I'm afraid. I miss my family. But I also know we're doing something important over there, something good for a lot of people. I can't decide. I simply can't decide."
"What would happen if you told them you changed your mind?"
"I don't know. They'd be pissed probably. But we're not talking court-martial. It's more my problem. I'd be disappointing people. I'd be backing down from something. Which I've never done in my life. I'd be breaking a promise."
Dance thought for a moment, sipping the water. "I can't tell you what to do. But I will say one thing: My job is finding the truth. Most everybody I deal with are perps--criminals. They know the truth and they're lying to save
their butts. But there're also a lot of people I come across who lie to themselves. And usually they don't even know it.
"But whether you're deceptive to the cops or your mother or husband or friends or yourself, the symptoms're always the same. You're stressed, angry, depressed. Lies turn people ugly. The truth does the opposite. . . . Of course, sometimes it seems like the truth is the last thing we want. But I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a suspect to confess and he gives me this look, it's like pure relief in his face. The weirdest thing: Sometimes they even say thanks."
"You're saying I know the truth?"
"Oh, yeah. You do. It's there. Covered up real good. And you might not like it when you find it. But it's there."
"How do I find it? Interrogate myself?"
"You know, that's a great way to put it. Sure, what you do is look for the same things I look for: anger, depression, denial, excuses, rationalization. When do you feel that way and why? What's behind this feeling or that one? And don't let yourself get away with anything. Keep at it. You'll find out what you really want."
Lucy Richter leaned forward and hugged Dance--something very few subjects ever did.
The soldier smiled. "Hey, got an idea. Let's write a self-help book. The Girl's Guide to Self-Interrogation. It'll be a best seller."
"In all our free time." Dance laughed.
They tapped the water bottles together with a ring.
Fifteen minutes later they were halfway through the blueberry muffins and coffee that they'd ordered from room service when the agent's mobile phone chirped. She looked at the number on caller ID. Kathryn Dance shook her head and gave a laugh.
The doorbell of Rhyme's town house rang. Thom arrived in the lab a moment later, accompanying Kathryn Dance. Her hair was loose, not in the taut braid of earlier, and the iPod headsets dangled around her neck. She took off a thin overcoat and greeted Sachs and Mel Cooper, who'd just arrived.
Dance bent down and petted Jackson, the dog.
Thom said, "Hmm, how'd you like a going-away present?" Nodding at the Havanese.
She laughed. "He's adorable but I'm about at my livestock limit at home--both the two-and four-legged variety."