It had been Rhyme on the phone, asking her, please, could she help them out once more?
"I promise it's the last time," he now said as she sat beside him.
She asked, "So what's up?"
"There's a glitch in the case. And I need your help."
"What can I do?"
"I remember you told me about the Hanson case in California--looking over the transcript of his statement gave you some insights into what he was up to."
She nodded.
"I'd like you to do the same thing for us."
Rhyme now explained to her about the murder of Gerald Duncan's friend, Andrew Culbert, which set Duncan on the path of bringing down Baker and Wallace.
"But we found some curious things in the file. Culbert had a PDA but no cell phone. That was odd. Everybody in business nowadays has a cell phone. And he had a pad of paper with two notes on it. One was 'Chardonnay.' Which might mean that he'd written it to remind himself to buy some wine. But the other was 'Men's room.' Why would somebody write that? I thought about it for a bit and it occurred to me that it was the sort of thing that somebody'd write if they had a speech or hearing problem. Ordering wine in a restaurant, then asking where the rest rooms were. And no cell phone, either. I wondered if maybe he was deaf."
"So," Dance said, "Duncan's friend was killed because the mugger lost his temper when the victim couldn't understand him or didn't hand over the wallet fast enough. He thought that Baker killed his friend but it was just a coincidence."
Sachs said, "It gets trickier."
Rhyme said, "I tracked down Culbert's widow in Duluth. She told me he'd been deaf and mute since birth."
Sachs added, "But Duncan said that Culbert had saved his life in the army. If he was deaf he wouldn't've been in the service."
Rhyme said, "I think Duncan just read about a mugging victim and claimed he was his friend--to give some credibility to his plan to implicate Baker." The criminalist shrugged. "It might not be a problem. After all, we collared a corrupt cop. But it leaves a few questions. Can you look at Duncan's interview tape and tell us what you think?"
"Of course."
Cooper typed on his keyboard.
A moment later a wide-angle video of Gerald Duncan came on the monitor. He was sitting comfortably in an interview room downtown as Lon Sellitto's voice was giving the details: who he was, the date and the case. Then the statement proper began. Duncan recited essentially the same facts that he'd told Rhyme while sitting on the curb outside the last "serial killer" scene.
Dance watched, nodding slowly as she listened to the details of his plan.
When it was finished Cooper hit PAUSE, freeze-framing Duncan's face.
Dance turned to Rhyme. "That's all of it?"
"Yes." He noticed her face had gone still. The criminalist asked, "What do you think?"
She hesitated and then said, "I have to say . . . My feeling is that it's not just the story about his friend getting killed that's a problem. I think virtually everything he's telling you on that tape is a complete lie."
Silence in Rhyme's town house.
Total silence.
Finally Rhyme looked up from the image of Gerald Duncan, motionless on the screen, and said, "Go on."
"I got his baseline when he was mentioning the details of his plan to get Baker arrested. We know certain aspects of that are true. So when the stress levels change I assume he's being deceptive. I saw major deviations when he's talking about the supposed friend. And I don't think his name's Duncan. Or he lives in the Midwest. Oh, and he couldn't care less about Dennis Baker. He has no emotional interest in the man's arrest. And there's something else."
She glanced at the screen. "Can you cue to the middle? There's a place where he touches his cheek."
Cooper ran the video in reverse.
"There. Play that."
"I'd never hurt anybody. I couldn't do that. I might bend the law a bit. . . ."
Dance shook her head, frowning.
"What?" Sachs asked.
"His eyes . . ." Dance whispered. "Oh, this's a problem."
"Why?"
"I'm thinking he's dangerous, very dangerous. I spent months studying the interview tapes of Ted Bundy, the serial killer. He was a pure sociopath, meaning he could deceive with virtually no outward signs whatsoever. But the one thing I could detect in Bundy was a faint reaction in his eyes when he claimed he'd never killed anyone. The reaction wasn't a typical deception response; it revealed disappointment and betrayal. He was denying something central to his being." She nodded to the screen. "Exactly what Duncan just did."
"Are you sure?" Sachs asked.
"Not positive, no. But I think we've got to ask him some more questions."
"Whatever he's up to, we better have him moved to level-three detention until we can figure it out."
Since he'd been arrested for only minor, nonviolent crimes Gerald Duncan would be in a low-security holding tank down on Centre Street. Escape from there was unlikely but not impossible. Rhyme ordered his phone to call the supervisor of Detention in downtown Manhattan.
He identified himself and gave instructions to move Duncan to a more secure cell.
The jailer said nothing. Rhyme assumed this was because he didn't want to take orders from a civilian.
The tedium of politics . . .
He grimaced then glanced at Sachs, meaning that she should authorize the transfer. It was then that the real reason for the supervisor's silence became clear. "Well, Detective Rhyme," the man said uneasily, "he was only here for a few minutes. We never even booked him."
"What?"
"The prosecutor, he cut some deal or another, and released Duncan last night. I thought you knew."
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 anywhere. What's the big deal? I've done this a hundred times."
"What about Westchester?" Rhyme called into the speakerphone. "The stolen corpse?"
"They agreed not to prosecute. I said we'd help them out on a few other cases they needed our cooperation for."
The prosecutor would see this as a gold ring in his career; bringing down a gang of corrupt cops would catapult him to stardom.
Rhyme shook his head, livid. Incompetence and selfish ambition infuriated him. It's hard enough to do this job without interference from politicians. Why the hell hadn't anybody called him first, before releasing Duncan? Even before Kathryn Dance's opinion about the interview tape, there were too many unanswered questions to release the man.
Sellitto barked, "Where is he?"
"Anyway, what proof--?"
"Where the fuck is he?" Sellitto raged.
The prosecutor hesitated and gave them the name of a hotel in Midtown and the mobile number of the officer guarding him.
"I'm on it." Cooper dialed the number.
Sellitto continued. "And who was his lawyer?"
The assistant district attorney gave them this name too. The nervous voice said, "I really don't see what all the fuss--"
Sellitto hung up. He looked at Dance. "I'm about to push some serious buttons. You know what I'm s
aying?"
She nodded. "We've got fan-hitting shit out in California too. But I'm comfortable with my opinion. Do whatever you can to find him. I mean, everything. I'll give that same opinion to whoever you want me to. Chief of department, mayor, governor."
Rhyme said to Sachs, "See what the lawyer knows about him." She took the name, flipped open her phone. Rhyme knew of Reed, Prince, of course. It was a large, respected firm on lower Broadway. The attorneys there were known for handling high-profile, white-collar criminal defense.
In a grim voice Cooper said, "We've got a problem. That was the officer at the hotel suite, guarding Duncan. He just checked his room. He's gone, Lincoln."
"What?"
"The officer said he went to bed early last night, saying he wasn't feeling well and he wanted to sleep in today. Looks like he picked the lock to the adjacent room. The officer has no idea when it happened. Could've been last night."
Sachs pinched her phone closed. "Reed, Prince doesn't have a lawyer on staff with the name he gave the prosecutor. And Duncan isn't a client."
"Oh, goddamn," Rhyme snapped.
"All right," Sellitto said, "time for the cavalry." He called Bo Haumann at ESU and told them they needed to arrest their suspect yet again. "Only we aren't exactly sure where he is."
He gave the tactical officer the few details they had. Haumann's reaction, which Rhyme didn't hear, could nonetheless be inferred from Sellitto's expression. "You don't need to tell me, Bo."
Sellitto left a message with the district attorney himself and then called the Big Building to inform the brass about the problem.
"I want more on him," Rhyme said to Cooper. "We were too fucking complacent. We didn't ask enough questions." He glanced at Dance. "Kathryn, I really hate to ask this. . . ."
She was putting away her cell phone. "I've already canceled my flight."
"I'm sorry. It's not really your case."
"It's been my case since I interviewed Cobb on Tuesday," Dance said, her green eyes cold, her lips drawn.
Cooper was scrolling through the information they'd learned about Gerald Duncan. He made a list of phone numbers and started calling. After several conversations he said, "Listen to this. He's not Duncan. The Missouri State Police sent a car out to the address on the license. It's owned by a Gerald Duncan, yeah, but not our Gerald Duncan. The guy who lived there was transferred to Anchorage for his job for six months. The house's empty and up for rent. Here's his picture."
The image was a driver's license shot of a man very different from the one they'd arrested yesterday.
Rhyme nodded. "Brilliant. He checked the paper for rental listings, found one that'd been on the market for a while and figured it wasn't going to rent for the next few weeks because of Christmas. Same as the church. And he forged the driver's license we saw. Passport too. We've been underestimating this guy from the beginning."
Cooper, staring at his computer, called out, "The owner--the real Duncan--had some credit card problems. Identity theft."
Lincoln Rhyme felt a chill in the center of his being, a place where in theory he could feel nothing. He had a sense that an unseen disaster was unfolding quickly.
Dance was staring at the still image of Duncan's face as intently as Rhyme stared at his evidence charts. She mused, "What's he really up to?"
A question they couldn't begin to answer.
Riding the subway, Charles Vespasian Hale, the man who'd been masquerading as Gerald Duncan, the Watchmaker, checked his wristwatch (his Breguet pocket watch, which he'd grown fond of, wouldn't fit the role he was about to assume).
Everything was right on schedule. He was taking the train from the Brooklyn neighborhood where he had his primary safe house, feeling anticipation and an edginess too, but nonetheless he was as close to harmony as he'd ever been in his life.
Very little of what he'd told Vincent Reynolds about his personal past had been true, of course. It couldn't be. He planned a long career at his profession and he knew that the mealy rapist would spill everything to the cops at the first threat.
Born in Chicago, Hale was the son of a high school Latin teacher (hence the middle name, after a noble Roman emperor) and a woman who was the manager of the petites department at a suburban Sears store. The couple never talked much, didn't do much. Every night after a quiet supper his father would gravitate to his books, his mother to her sewing machine. For familial activity they might settle in two separate chairs in front of the small television set and watch bad sitcoms and predictable cop dramas, which allowed them a unique medium of communication--by commenting on the shows, they expressed to each other the desires and resentments that they'd never have the courage to say directly.
Quiet . . .
The boy had been a loner for much of his life. He was a surprise child and his parents treated him with formal manners and apathy and a quizzical air, as if he were a species of plant whose watering and fertilizing schedule they were unsure of. The hours of boredom and solitude grew to be an open sore, and Charles felt a desperation to occupy his time, for fear the excruciating stillness in the household would strangle him.
He spent hours and hours outside--hiking and climbing trees. For some reason it was better to be alone when you were outside. There was always something to distract you, something you might find over the next hill, on the next branch up in the maple tree. He was in the field biology club at school. He went on Outward Bound expeditions and was always the first to cross the rope bridge, dive off the cliff, rappel down a mountainside.
If he was condemned to be inside, Charles developed a habit of filling his time by putting things in order. Arranging office supplies and books and toys could endlessly fill the painful hours. He wasn't lonely when he did that, he didn't ache with boredom, he wasn't afraid of the silence.
Did you know, Vincent, that the word "meticulous" comes from the Latin meticulosus, meaning fearful?
When things weren't precise and ordered, he'd grow frantic, even when the glitch was something as silly as a misaligned train track or a bent bicycle spoke. Anything not running smoothly would set him on edge the way a fingernail screech on a blackboard caused other people to cringe.
Like his parents' marriage, for instance. After the divorce, he never spoke to either of them again. Life should be tidy and perfect. When it wasn't, you should be free to eliminate the disorderly elements altogether. He didn't pray (no empirical evidence that you could put your life in order or achieve your goals via divine communication) but if he had, Charles would have prayed for them to die.
Hale went into the army for two years, where he flourished in the atmosphere of order. He went to Officer Candidate School and caught the attention of his professors, who, after he was commissioned, tapped him to teach military history and tactical and strategic planning, at which he excelled.
After he was discharged he spent a year hiking and mountain climbing in Europe then he returned to America and went into business as an investment banker and venture capitalist, studying law at night.
He worked as an attorney for a time and was brilliant at structuring business deals. He made very good money but there was an underlying loneliness about his life. He shunned relationships because they required improvisation and were full of illogical behavior. More and more his passion for planning and order took on the role of lover. And like anyone who substitutes an obsession for a real relationship, Hale found himself looking for more intense ways to satisfy himself.
He found a perfect solution six years ago. He killed his first man.
Living in San Diego, Hale learned that a business associate had been badly injured. Some drunk driver had plowed into the man's car. The accident shattered the businessman's hip and snapped both legs--one of which had to be amputated. The driver expressed no remorse whatsoever and continued to deny he'd done anything wrong, even blaming the accident on the victim himself. The punk was convicted but, a first-time offender, he got off with a light sentence. Then he began harassing Hale's associa
te for money.
Hale decided that enough was enough. He came up with an elaborate plan to terrify the kid into stopping. But as he looked over the scheme he realized it made him feel uncomfortable, edgy. There was something clumsy about it. The plan wasn't as precisely ordered as he wanted. Finally he realized what the trouble was. His scheme left the victim scared but alive. If the kid died, then it would work perfectly and there'd be nothing to trace back to Hale or his injured associate.
But could he actually kill a human being? The idea sounded preposterous.
Yes or no?
On a rainy October night he made his decision.
The murder went perfectly and the police never suspected the man's death was anything but an unfortunate home electrocution accident.
Hale was prepared to feel remorse. But there was none. Instead he was ecstatic. The plan had been so perfectly executed, the fact that he'd killed someone was irrelevant.
The addict wanted more of his drug.
A short time later Hale was involved in a joint venture in Mexico City--building a development of upscale haciendas. But a corrupt politician managed to throw up enough stumbling blocks so the deal was going to collapse. Hale's Mexican counterpart explained that the petty politician had done this a number of times.
"It's a shame he can't be removed," Hale had said coyly.
"Oh, he can never be removed," the Mexican said. "He is, you would say, invulnerable."
This caught Hale's attention. "Why?"
The crooked Distrito Federal commissioner, the Mexican explained, was obsessed with security. He drove in a huge armored SUV, a Cadillac custom-made for him, and was always with armed guards. His security company constantly planned different routes for him to get to and from his homes and offices and meetings. He moved his family from house to house randomly and often didn't even stay in houses that he owned, but in friends' or rentals. And he often traveled with his young son--the rumors were that he kept the boy near as a shield. The commissioner also had the protection of a senior federal interior minister.
"So, you could say he's invulnerable," the Mexican explained, pouring two glasses of very expensive Patron tequila.
"Invulnerable," mused Charles Hale in a whisper. He nodded.
Not long after this meeting, five apparently unrelated articles appeared in the October 23 edition of El Heraldo de Mexico.