achs returned from her trip to Police Plaza a lot faster than if she’d taken public transportation—or paid attention to stoplights. Rhyme knew that she’d slapped a flashing light on the dash of her car, a 1969 Camaro SS, which she’d had painted fiery red a few years ago to match Rhyme’s preferred shade for his wheelchairs. Like a teenager, she still looked for any excuse to fire up the massive engine and sear rubber off the tires.

“Copied everything,” she said, carrying a thick folder into the room. She winced as she set it on an examining table.

“You okay?”

Amelia Sachs suffered from arthritis, she had all her life, and popped glucosamine, chondroitin and Advil or Naprosyn like jelly beans but she rarely acknowledged the condition, fearful that the brass might stick her behind a desk on a medical if they found out. Even when she and Rhyme were alone she downplayed the pain. But today she admitted, “Some twinges’re worse than others.”

“Want to sit?”

A shake of the head.

“So. What’ve we got?”

“Report, evidence inventory and copies of the photos. No videos. They’re with the D.A.”

“Let’s get everything on the board. I want to see the primary crime scene and Arthur’s house.”

She walked to a whiteboard—one of the dozens in the lab—and transcribed information as Rhyme watched.

ALICE SANDERSON HOMICIDE

ALICE SANDERSON APARTMENT:

• Traces of Edge Advanced Gel shave cream, with aloe

• Crumbs determined to be Pringles, fat free, barbecue flavor

• Chicago Cutlery knife (MW)

• TruGro fertilizer

• Shoeprint of Alton EZ-Walk, size 10 1/2

• Fleck of latex glove

• References to “Art” and a prepaid mobile number in phonebook, now no longer active. Untraceable (Possible affair?)

• Two notes: “Art—drinks” (office) and “Arthur” (home)

• Wit saw light blue Mercedes, partial tag NLP

ARTHUR RHYME’S CAR:

• 2004 light blue Mercedes sedan, C Class, New Jersey license NLP 745, registered to Arthur Rhyme

• Blood on door, rear floor (DNA match to victim’s)

• Bloody washcloth, matching set found in victim’s apartment (DNA match to victim’s)

• Dirt with composition similar to dirt in Clinton State Park

ARTHUR RHYME’S HOUSE:

• Edge Advanced Gel with aloe, shave cream, associated with that from primary crime scene

• Pringles barbecue-flavored chips, fat free

• TruGro fertilizer (garage)

• Spade containing dirt similar to dirt in Clinton State Park (garage)

• Chicago Cutlery knives, same type as the MW

• Alton EZ-Walk shoes, size 10 1/2, tread similar to that at primary crime scene

• Direct-mail flyers from Wilcox Gallery, Boston, and Anderson-Billings Fine Arts, Carmel, about shows of Harvey Prescott paintings

• Box of Safe-Hand latex gloves, rubber composition similar to that of fleck found at primary crime scene (garage)

“Man, it’s pretty incriminating, Rhyme,” Sachs said, standing back, hand on her hips.

“And using a prepaid cell? And references to ‘Art.’ But no address where he lives or works. That would suggest an affair… Any other details?”

“No. Other than the pictures.”

“Tape them up,” he instructed while scanning the chart, regretting that he hadn’t searched the scene himself—vicariously, that was, with Amelia Sachs, as they often did, via a microphone/headset or a high-definition video camera she wore. It seemed like a competent CS job, but not stellar. No photos of the nonscene rooms. And the knife… He saw the picture of the bloody weapon, beneath the bed. An officer was lifting a flap of dust ruffle to get a good shot. Was it invisible with the cloth down (which meant the perp might logically have missed it in the frenzy of the moment) or was it visible, suggesting it had been left intentionally as planted evidence?

He studied the picture of packing material on the floor, apparently what the Prescott painting had been wrapped in.

“Something’s wrong,” he whispered.

Sachs, standing at the whiteboard, glanced his way.

“The painting,” Rhyme continued.

“What about it?”

“LaGrange suggested two motives. One, Arthur stole the Prescott as a cover because he wanted to kill Alice to get her out of his life.”

“Right.”

“But,” Rhyme went on, “to make a homicide seem incidental to a burglary, a smart perp wouldn’t steal the one thing in the apartment that could be connected to him. Remember, Art had owned a Prescott. And he had direct-mail flyers about them.”

“Sure, Rhyme, that doesn’t make any sense.”

“And say he really did want the painting and couldn’t afford it. Well, it’s a hell of a lot safer and easier to break in and cart it off during the day when the owner’s at work, rather than murder them for it.” His cousin’s demeanor too, though not high in Rhyme’s arsenal when he assessed guilt or innocence, nagged. “Maybe he wasn’t playing innocent. Maybe he was innocent… Pretty incriminating, you said? No.Too incriminating.”

He thought to himself: Let’s just postulate that he didn’t do it. If not, then the consequences were significant. Because this wasn’t simply a case of mistaken identity; the evidence matched too closely—including a conclusive connection between her blood and his car. No, if Art was innocent, then someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to set him up.

“I’m thinking he was framed.”

“Why?”

“Motive?” he muttered. “We don’t care at this point. The relevant question now is how. We answer that, it can point us to who. We might get why along the way, but that’s not our priority. So we start with a premise that someone else, Mr. X, murdered Alice Sanderson and stole the painting, then framed Arthur. Now, Sachs, how could he have done it?”

A wince—her arthritis again—and she sat. She thought for several moments, then said, “Mr. X followed Arthur and followed Alice. He saw they had an interest in art, put them together at the gallery and found their identities.”

“Mr. X knows she owns a Prescott. He wants one but can’t afford it.”

“Right.” Sachs nodded at the evidence chart. “Then he breaks into Arthur’s house, sees that he owns Pringles, Edge shave cream, TruGro fertilizer, and Chicago Cutlery knives. He steals some to plant. He knows what shoes Arthur wears, so he can leave the footprint, and he gets some of the dirt from the state park on Arthur’s shovel…

“Now, let’s think about May twelfth. Somehow Mr. X knows that Art always leaves work early on Thursdays and goes running in a deserted park—so he doesn’t have an alibi. He goes to the vic’s apartment, kills her, steals the painting and calls from a pay phone to report the screams and seeing a man take the painting to a car that looks a lot like Arthur’s, with a partial tag number. Then he heads out to Arthur’s house in New Jersey and leaves the traces of blood, the dirt, the washcloth, the shovel.”

The phone rang. The caller was Arthur’s defense lawyer. The man sounded harried as he reiterated everything that the assistant district attorney had explained. He offered nothing that might help them and, in fact, tried several times to talk them into pressuring Arthur to take a plea. “They’ll nail him up,” the man said. “Do him a favor. I’ll get him fifteen years.”

“That’ll destroy him,” Rhyme said.

“It won’t destroy him as much as a life sentence.”

Rhyme said a chilly good-bye and hung up. He stared again at the evidence board.

Then something else occurred to him.

“What is it, Rhyme?” Sachs had noticed that his eyes were rising to the ceiling.

“Think maybe he’s done this before?”

“How do you mean?”

“Assuming the goal—the motive—was to steal the painting, well, it’s not exactly a onetime score. Not like a Renoir you fence for ten million and disappear forever. The whole thing smells like an enterprise. The perp’s hit on a smart way to get away with a crime. And he’s going to keep at it until somebody stops him.”

“Yeah, good point. So we should look for thefts of other paintings.”

“No. Why should he steal just paintings? It could be anything. But there’s one common element.”

Sachs frowned then provided the answer. “Homicide.”

“Exactly. Since the perp frames somebody else, he has to murder the victims—because they could identify him. Call somebody at Homicide. At home if you need to. We’re looking for the same scenario: an underlying crime, maybe a theft, the vic murdered and strong circumstantial evidence.”

“And maybe a DNA link that might’ve been planted.”

“Good,” he said, excited at the thought they might be on to something here. “And if he’s sticking to his formula, there’ll be an anonymous witness who gave nine-one-one some specific identifying information.”

She walked to a desk in the corner of the lab, sat and placed the call.

Rhyme leaned his head back in his wheelchair and observed his partner on the phone. He noticed dried blood in her thumbnail. A mark was just visible above her ear, half hidden by her straight red hair. Sachs did this frequently, scratching her scalp, teasing her nails, damaging herself in small ways—both a habit and an indicator of the stress that drove her.

She was nodding, and her eyes took on a focused gaze, as she wrote. His own heart—though he couldn’t feel it directly—had speeded up. She’d learned something significant. Her pen dried up. She tossed it onto the floor and whipped out another as quickly as she drew her pistol in combat shooting competitions.

After ten minutes she hung up.

“Hey, Rhyme, get this.” She sat next to him, in a wicker chair. “I talked to Flintlock.”

“Ah, good choice.”

Joseph Flintick, his nickname intentionally or otherwise a reference to the old-time gun, had been a homicide detective when Rhyme was a rookie. The testy old guy was familiar with nearly every murder that had been committed in New York City—and many nearby—during his lengthy tenure. At an age when he should have been visiting his grandchildren, Flintlock was working Sundays. Rhyme wasn’t surprised.

“I laid it all out for him and he came back with two cases that might fit our profile right off the top of his head. One was a theft of rare coins, worth about fifty G. The other a rape.”

“Rape?” This added a deeper, and much more disturbing, element to the case.

“Yep. In both of them an anonymous witness called to report the crime and gave some information that was instrumental in ID’ing the perp—like the wit calling about your cousin’s car.”

“Both male callers, of course.”

“Right. And the city offered a reward but neither of them came forward.”

“What about the evidence?”

“Flintlock didn’t remember it too clearly. But he did say that the trace and circumstantial connections were right on. Just what happened to your cousin—five or six types of associated class evidence at the scene and in the perps’ houses. And in both cases the victims’ blood was found on a rag or article of clothing in the suspects’ residence.”

“And I’ll bet there weren’t any fluid matches in the rape case.” Most rapists are convicted because they leave behind traces of the Three S’s—semen, saliva or sweat.

“Nope. None.”

“And the anonymous callers—did they leave partial license plate numbers?”

She glanced at her notes. “Yeah, how did you know?”

“Because our perp needed to buy some time. If he left the whole tag number, the cops’d head right to the fall guy’s house and he wouldn’t have time to plant the evidence there.” The killer had thought out everything. “And the suspects denied everything?”

“Yep. Totally. Rolled the dice with the jury and lost.”

“No, no, no, this’s all too coincidental,” Rhyme muttered. “I want to see—”

“I asked somebody to pull the files from the disposed cases archives.”

He laughed. One step ahead of him, as often. He recalled when they’d first met, years ago, Sachs a disillusioned patrol officer ready to give up her career in policing, Rhyme ready to give up more than that. How far they’d both come since then.

Rhyme spoke into his stalk mike. “Command, call Sellitto.” He was excited now. He could feel that unique buzz—the thrill of a budding hunt. Answer the damn phone, he thought angrily, and for once he wasn’t thinking about England.

“Hey, Linc.” Sellitto’s Brooklyn-inflected voice filled the room. “What’s—”

“Listen. There’s a problem.”

“I’m kinda busy here.” Rhyme’s former partner, Lieutenant Detective Lon Sellitto, hadn’t been in the best of moods himself lately. A big task force case he’d worked on had just tanked. Vladimir Dienko, the thug of a Russian mob boss from Brighton Beach, had been indicted last year for racketeering and murder. Rhyme had assisted with some of the forensics. To everyone’s shock the case against Dienko and three of his associates had been dismissed, just last Friday, after witnesses had stonewalled or vanished. Sellitto and agents from the Bureau had been working all weekend, trying to track down new witnesses and informants.

“I’ll make it fast.” He explained what he and Sachs had found about his cousin and the rape and coin-theft cases.

“Two other cases? Friggin’ weird. What’s your cousin say?”

“Haven’t talked to him yet. But he denies everything. I want to have this looked into.”

“‘Looked into.’ The fuck’s that mean?”

“I don’t think Arthur did it.”

“He’s your cousin. Of course you don’t think he did it. But whatta you have concrete?”

“Nothing yet. That’s why I want your help. I need some people.”

“I’m up to my ass in the Dienko situation in Brighton Beach. Which, I gotta say, you’d be helping on except, no, you’re too busy sipping fucking tea with the Brits.”

“This could be big, Lon. Two other cases that stink of planted evidence? I’ll bet there are more. I know how much you love your clichés, Lon. Doesn’t ‘getting away with murder’ move you?”

“You can throw all the clauses you want at me, Linc, I’m busy.”

“That’s a phrase, Lon. A clause has a subject and predicate.”

“What-fucking-ever. I’m trying to salvage the Russian Connection. Nobody at City Hall or the Federal Building’s happy about what happened.”

“And they have my deepest sympathies. Get reassigned.”

“It’s homicide. I’m Major Cases.”

The Major Cases Division of the NYPD didn’t investigate murders, but Sellitto’s excuse brought a cynical laugh to Rhyme’s lips. “You work homicides when you want to work them. When the hell have department protocols meant anything to you?”

“Tell you what I’ll do,” the detective mumbled. “There’s a captain working today. Downtown. Joe Malloy. Know him?”

“No.”

“I do,” said Sachs. “He’s solid.”

“Hey, Amelia. You surviving the cold front today?”

Sachs laughed. Rhyme snarled, “Funny, Lon. Who the hell’s this guy?”

“Smart. No compromises. And no sense of humor. You’ll appreciate that.”

“Lots of comedians round here today,” Rhyme muttered.

“He’s good. And a crusader. His wife was killed in a B and E five, six years ago.”

Sachs winced. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, and he gives the job a hundred fifty percent. Word is he’s headed for a corner office upstairs some day. Or maybe even next door.”

Meaning City Hall.

Sellitto continued, “Give him a call and see if he can get a few people released for you.”

“I want you released.”

“Not gonna happen, Linc. I’m running a fucking stakeout. It’s a nightmare. But keep me posted and—”

“Gotta go, Lon… Command, disconnect phone.”

“You hung up on him,” Sachs pointed out.

Rhyme grunted and placed a call to Malloy. He’d be furious if he got voice mail.

But the man answered on the second ring. Another senior cop working on Sunday. Well, Rhyme had done so pretty often too and had the divorce to show for it.

“Malloy here.”

Rhyme identified himself.

A brief hesitation. Then: “Well, Lincoln… I don’t believe we’ve ever met. But I know about you, of course.”

“I’m here with one of your detectives, Amelia Sachs. We’re on speaker, Joe.”

“Detective Sachs, afternoon,” said the stiff voice. “What can I do for you two?” Rhyme explained about the case and how he believed Arthur was being set up.

“Your cousin? I’m sorry to hear that.” But he didn’t sound particularly sorry. Malloy would be worried that Rhyme wanted him to intervene and get the charges reduced. Uh-oh, appearance of impropriety at the most innocent. Or, at the worst, an internal-affairs investigation and the media. Weighed against that, of course, was the bad form of not helping out a man who provided invaluable service to the NYPD.And one who was a gimp. Political correctness thrives in city government.

But Rhyme’s request, of course, was more complicated. He added, “I think there’s a good chance that this same perp committed other crimes.” He gave the details of the coin theft and the rape.

So not one but three individuals had been wrongly arrested by Malloy’s NYPD. Which meant that three crimes had in fact gone unsolved and the real perp was still at large. This portended a major public-relations nightmare.

“Well, it’s pretty odd. Irregular, you know. I understand your loyalty to your cousin—”

“I have a loyalty to the truth, Joe,” Rhyme said, not caring if he sounded pompous.

“Well…”

“I just need a couple of officers assigned to us. To look over the evidence in these cases again. Maybe do some legwork.”

“Oh, I see… Well, sorry, Lincoln. We just don’t have the resources. Not for something like this. But I’ll bring it up tomorrow with the deputy commissioner.”

“Actually, think we could call him now?”

Another hesitation. “No. He’s got something going on today.”

Brunch. Barbecue. A Sunday-matinee performance of Young Frankenstein or Spamalot.

“I’ll raise the issue tomorrow at the briefing. It’s a curious situation. But you won’t do anything until you hear from me. Or someone.”

“Of course not.”

They disconnected. Rhyme and Sachs were both silent for a few long seconds.

A curious situation…

Rhyme gazed at the whiteboard—on which sat the corpse of an investigation shot dead just as it had lurched to life.

Snapping the quiet, Sachs asked, “Wonder what Ron’s up to.”

“Let’s find out, why don’t we?” He gave her a genuine—and rare—smile.

She pulled out her phone, hit a speed dial number, then SPEAKER.

A youthful voice crackled, “Yes, ma’am, Detective.”

Sachs had been after young patrolman Ron Pulaski to call her Amelia for years but usually he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

“You’re on speaker, Pulaski,” Rhyme warned.

“Yes, sir.”

And the “sir” bothered Rhyme, but he had no inclination to correct the young man now.

“How are you?” Pulaski asked.

“Does it matter?” Rhyme responded. “What’re you doing? Right now. And is it important?”

“Right now?”

“I think I just asked that.”

“Washing dishes. Jenny and I just had Sunday brunch with my brother and his wife. We went to the farmers’ market with the kids. It’s a blast. Do you and Detective Sachs ever get to—?”

“You’re at home then. And not doing anything.”

“Well. The dishes.”

“Leave ’em. Get over here.” Rhyme, a civilian, had no authority to order anybody in the NYPD, even traffic cops, to do anything.

But Sachs was a detective third-class; while she couldn’t order him to help them, she could formally request a shift in assignment. “We need you, Ron. And we might need you tomorrow too.”

Ron Pulaski worked regularly with Rhyme, Sachs and Sellitto. Rhyme had been amused to learn that his assignments for the quasi-celeb forensic detective elevated the status of the young officer within the department. He was sure that the supervisor would agree to hand over Pulaski for a few days—as long as he didn’t call Malloy or anyone else downtown and learn that the case wasn’t a case at all.

Pulaski gave Sachs the name of the commander at the precinct house. Then asked, “Oh, sir? Is Lieutenant Sellitto working on this one? Should I call and coordinate with him?”

“No,” blurted both Rhyme and Sachs.

A brief silence followed, then Pulaski said uncertainly, “Well, then, I guess I’ll be there as soon as I can. Just, can I dry the glasses first? Jenny hates water spots.”