bounty hunter.

They’d caught a goddamn bounty hunter.

Well, as the man corrected, a “bond recovery specialist.”

“How the fuck did that happen?” was Lincoln Rhyme’s question.

“We’re checking,” Lon Sellitto said, standing dusty and hot beside the construction site where the man who’d been following Roland Bell sat in cuffs.

He wasn’t exactly under arrest. In fact, he hadn’t done anything wrong at all; he was licensed to carry a pistol and was merely trying to effect a citizen’s arrest of a man he believed to be a wanted criminal. But Sellitto was pissed off and ordered him cuffed.

Roland Bell himself was on the phone, trying to find out if 522 had been spotted elsewhere in the area. But so far no one on the takedown teams had seen anyone fitting the scant profile of the killer. “Might as well be in Timbuktu,” Bell drawled to Sellitto and folded up his phone.

“Look—” began the bounty hunter from his curb perch.

“Shut up,” the heavy detective barked for the third or fourth time. He returned to his conversation with Rhyme. “He follows Roland, moves in and looks like he’s going to take him out. But seems he’s just serving a warrant. He thought Roland was somebody named William Franklin. They look alike, Franklin and Roland. Lives in Brooklyn and missed a trial date on an assault with a deadly, and firearm possession. The bond company’s been after him for six months.”

“Five Twenty-Two set it all up, you know. He found this Franklin in the system and sent the bondsman after him to keep us distracted.”

“I know, Linc.”

“Anybody see anything helpful? Somebody staking us out?”

“Nope. Roland just checked with all the teams.”

Silence. Then Rhyme asked, “How did he know it was a trap?”

Though that wasn’t the most important issue. There was really only one question they wanted the answer to and that was “What the hell is he really up to?”

Do They think I’m stupid?

Did They think I wouldn’t be suspicious?

They know about knowledge service providers at this point. About predicting how sixteens will act, based on past behavior and the behavior of others. This concept has been a part of my life for a long, long time. It should be part of everyone’s. How will your next-door neighbor react if you do X? How will he react if you do Y? How will a woman behave when you’re accompanying her to a car while you’re laughing? When you’re silent and fishing in your pocket for something?

I’ve studied Their transactions from the moment They became interested in me. I sorted them, analyzed Them. They’ve been brilliant at times—for instance, that trap of theirs: letting SSD employees and customers know about the investigation and waiting for me to peek at NYPD files on the Myra 9834 case. I almost did, came within an ENTER keystroke of searching but just had a feeling something was wrong. I know now I was right.

And the press conference? Ah, that transaction smelled off from the beginning. Hardly fit predictable and established patterns of behavior. I mean, for the police and the city to meet journalists at that time of night? And the particular assemblage up on the podium certainly didn’t ring true.

Of course, maybe it was legit—even the best fuzzy logic and predictive behavior algorithms get it wrong occasionally. But it was in my interest to check further. I couldn’t, even casually, talk to any of Them directly.

So instead, I did what I do best.

I looked into the closets, gazed through my secret window at the silent data. I learned more about the folks up there on the podium during the press conference: the deputy mayor, Ron Scott, and Captain Joseph Malloy—the man supervising the investigation against me.

And the third person, the professor. Carlton Soames, Ph.D.

Except… Well, he wasn’t.

He was a cop decoy.

A search engine request did turn up hits for Professor Soames on the Carnegie Mellon Web site, and on his own site as well. His C.V. was also tucked away conveniently into various other sites.

But it took me only a few seconds to open up the coding of those documents and examine the metadata. Everything about the phony prof had been written and uploaded yesterday.

Do They think I’m stupid?

If I’d had time I could have learned exactly who the cop was. I could have gone to the TV network’s Web site archive, found the press conference, frozen an image of the man’s face and done a biometric scan. I’d compare that image to DMV records in the area and police and FBI personnel photos to come up with the man’s real identity.

But that would have been a lot of work, and unnecessary. I didn’t care who he was. All I needed was to distract the police and give myself time to locate Captain Malloy, the one who would be a veritable database of information about the operation.

I easily found an outstanding warrant for a man bearing a rough resemblance to the cop playing Carlton Soames—a white male in his thirties. Simple matter then to call the bail bondsman, claiming to be an acquaintance of the fugitive and reporting that I’d spotted him at the Water Street Hotel. I described what he was wearing and hung up fast.

Meanwhile I waited at the parking garage near Police Plaza where Captain Malloy parks his low-end Lexus (its oil change and wheel rotation long overdue, the dealer’s data report) every morning between 7:48 and 9:02 A.M.

I engaged the enemy at exactly 8:35.

There followed the abduction, the drive to the warehouse on the West Side, and the judicious use of forged metal to execute a memory dump from the admirably courageous database. I’m feeling the inexplicable, more-than-sexual satisfaction of knowing I’ve completed a collection: the identities of all the sixteens who are after me, some of the people tethered to Them and how They’re running the case.

Some information was particularly revealing. (The name Rhyme, for instance. That’s the key as to why I’m in this fix, I now understand.)

My soldiers will soon be on their way, marching into Poland, marching into the Rhineland…

And, as I’d hoped, I got something for that collection of mine, one of my favorites, by the way. I should wait until I’m back in my Closet but I can’t resist. I fish for the tape recorder and I hit REWIND then PLAY.

A happy coincidence: I find the exact spot where Captain Malloy’s screams hit a crescendo. It chills even me.

He awoke from an uneasy sleep filled with bumpy nightmares. His throat hurt from the garrote, inside and out, though the stinging was worse in his mouth—from the dryness.

Arthur Rhyme glanced around at the dingy, windowless hospital room. Well, a cell in an infirmary inside the Tombs. No different from his own cell or that terrible common room where he’d almost been murdered.

A male nurse or orderly came into the room, examined an empty bed and wrote something down.

“Excuse me,” Arthur rasped. “Can I see a doctor?”

The man looked his way—a large African American. Arthur felt a surge of panic, thinking this was Antwon Johnson, who’d stolen a uniform and snuck in here to finish what he’d started…

But, no, it was somebody else. Still, the eyes were just as cold and they spent no more time regarding Arthur Rhyme than they would glancing at a spill on the floor. He left without a word.

A half hour passed, Arthur dipping into and out of waking.

Then the door opened again and he glanced up, startled, as another patient was brought in. He’d had appendicitis, Arthur deduced. The operation was over and he was recovering. An orderly got him into bed. He handed the man a glass. “Don’ drink it. Rinse ’n’ spit.”

The man drank.

“No, I’m tellin’ you—”

He threw up.

“Fuck.” The orderly tossed a handful of paper towels at him and left.

Arthur’s fellow patient fell asleep, clutching the towels.

It was then that Arthur looked out the window in the door. Two men stood outside, one Latino, one black. The latter squinted, staring directly at him, then whispered something to the other, who briefly looked too.

Something about their posture and expressions told Arthur their interest wasn’t mere curiosity—seeing the con who’d been saved by Mick, the tweaker.

No, they were memorizing his face. Why?

Did they want to kill him too?

Another surge of panic. Was it only a matter of time until they were successful?

He closed his eyes but then decided he shouldn’t sleep. He didn’t dare. They’d move on him when he was asleep, they’d move on him if he closed his eyes, they’d move on him if he didn’t pay complete attention to everything, everyone, every minute.

And now his agony was complete. Judy had said that Lincoln might have found something that could prove his innocence. She didn’t know what, and so Arthur had no way to judge if his cousin was simply being optimistic, or if he’d discovered some concrete proof that he’d been wrongly arrested. He was furious at this ambiguous hope. Before he’d talked to Judy, Arthur Rhyme had resigned himself to a living hell and an impending death.

I’m doin’ you a favor, man. Fuck, you’d do yourself in a month or two anyway… Now jus’ stop fightin’ it…

But now, realizing that freedom might be attainable, resignation blossomed into panic. He saw in front of him some hope that could be taken away.

His heart began its manic thudding again.

He grabbed the call button. Pushed it once. Then again.

No response. A moment later another pair of eyes appeared in the window. But they weren’t a doctor’s. Was it one of the cons he’d seen before? He couldn’t tell. The man was looking directly at him.

Struggling to control the fear that trickled down his spine like electricity, he pressed the call button again, then held it down.

Still no response.

The eyes in the window blinked once, then vanished.