’m watching the policewoman as she searches the trash can where I dumped the evidence. I was dismayed at first but then I realized I shouldn’t have been. If They were smart enough to figure out about me, They’re smart enough to find the trash.

I doubt They got a good look at me but I’m being very careful. Of course, I’m not at the scene itself; I’m in a restaurant across the street, forcing down a hamburger and sipping water. The police have this outfit called the “Anti-crime” detail, which has always struck me as absurd. As if other details are pro-crime. Anti-crime officers wear street clothes and they circulate at crime scenes to find witnesses and, occasionally, even the perps, who have returned. Most criminals do so because they’re stupid or behave irrationally. But I’m here for two specific reasons. First, because I’ve realized I have a problem. I can’t live with it so I need a solution. And you can’t solve a problem without knowledge. I’ve already learned a few things.

For instance, I know some of the people who are after me. Like this redheaded policewoman in a white plastic jumpsuit concentrating on the crime scene the way I concentrate on my data.

I see her step out of the area, surrounded by yellow tape, with several bags. She sets these in gray plastic boxes and strips off the white suit. Despite the lingering horror from the disaster of this afternoon, I feel that twinge inside as I see her tight jeans, the satisfaction from my transaction with Myra 9834 earlier today wearing off.

As the police head back to their cars she makes a phone call.

I pay the bill and walk nonchalantly out the door, acting like any other patron on this fine late-afternoon Sunday.

Off. The. Grid.

Oh, the second reason I’m here?

Very simple. To protect my treasures, to protect my life, which means doing whatever’s necessary to make Them go away.

“What’d Five Twenty-Two leave in that trash can?” Rhyme was speaking into the hands-free phone.

“There’s not much. We’re sure it’s his stuff, though. Bloody paper towel and some wet blood in plastic bags—so he could leave some in Williams’ car or garage. I’ve already sent a sample to the lab for a preliminary DNA match. Computer printout of the vic’s picture. Roll of duct tape—Home Depot house brand. And a running shoe. It looked new.”

“Just one?”

“Yep. The right.”

“Maybe he stole it from Williams’ place to leave a print at the scene. Anybody get a look at him?”

“A sniper and two guys from the S and S team. But he wasn’t very close. Probably white or light-skinned ethnic, medium build. Tan cap and sunglasses, backpack. No age, no hair color.”

“That’s it?”

“Yep.”

“Well, get the evidence here stat. Then I want you to walk the grid at the Weinburg rape scene. They’re preserving it till you get there.”

“I’ve got another lead, Rhyme.”

“You do? What’s that?”

“We found a Post-it note stuck to the bottom of the plastic bag with the evidence in it. Five Twenty-Two wanted to ditch the bag; I’m not sure he wanted to pitch out the note.”

“What is it?”

“A room number of a residence hotel, Upper East Side, Manhattan. I want to check it out.”

“You think it’s Five Twenty-Two’s?”

“No, I called the front desk and they say the tenant’s been in the room all day. Somebody named Robert Jorgensen.”

“Well, we need the rape scene searched, Sachs.”

“Send Ron. He can handle it.”

“I’d rather you ran it.”

“I really think we need to see if there’s any connection between this Jorgensen and Five Twenty-Two. And fast.”

He couldn’t dispute her point. Besides, both of them had ridden Pulaski hard in teaching him how to walk the grid—Rhyme’s coined expression for searching a crime scene, a reference to looking over the area according to the grid pattern, the most comprehensive way of discovering evidence.

Rhyme, feeling both like a boss and a parent, knew that the kid would have to run his first homicide scene solo sooner or later. “All right,” he grumbled. “Let’s hope this Post-it lead pays off.” He couldn’t help adding, “And isn’t a complete waste of time.”

She laughed. “Don’t we always hope that, Rhyme?”

“And tell Pulaski not to screw up.”

They disconnected and Rhyme told Cooper the evidence was on its way.

Staring at the evidence charts, he muttered, “He got away.”

He ordered Thom to put the sparse description of 522 on the whiteboard.

Probably white or light-skinned…

How helpful is that?

Amelia Sachs was in the front seat of her parked Camaro, the door open. Late-afternoon spring air was wafting into the car, which smelled of old leather and oil. She was jotting notes for her crime-scene report. She always did this as soon as possible after searching a scene. It was amazing what one could forget in a short period of time. Colors changed, left became right, doors and windows moved from one wall to another or vanished altogether.

She paused, distracted once again by the odd facts of the case. How had the killer managed to come so close to blaming an innocent man for an appalling rape and murder? She’d never run into a perp like this; planting evidence to mislead the police wasn’t unusual but this guy was a genius at pointing them in the wrong direction.

The street where she’d parked was two blocks away from the trash-can crime scene, shadowed and deserted.

Motion caught her eye. Thinking of 522, she felt a throb of uneasiness. She glanced up and in the rearview mirror saw somebody walking her way. She squinted, studying him carefully, though the man seemed harmless: a clean-cut businessman. He was carrying a take-out bag in one hand and talking on his cell phone, a smile on his face. A typical resident out to get Chinese or Mexican for dinner.

Sachs returned to her notes.

Finally she was finished and tucked them into her briefcase. But then something struck her as strange. The man on the sidewalk should have passed the Camaro by now. But he hadn’t. Had he gone into one of the buildings? She turned to the sidewalk where he’d been.

No!

She was staring at the take-out bag, sitting on the sidewalk to the left and behind the car. It was just a prop!

Her hand went for her Glock. But before she could draw, the right side door was ripped open and she was staring into the face of the killer, eyes narrowed, lifting a pistol toward her face.

The doorbell rang and a moment later Rhyme heard yet another distinctive footfall. Heavy ones.

“In here, Lon.”

Detective Lon Sellitto nodded a greeting. His stocky figure was encased in blue jeans and a dark purple Izod shirt, and he was wearing running shoes, which surprised Rhyme. The criminalist rarely saw him in casual clothes. He was also struck by the fact that, while Sellitto didn’t seem to own a suit that wasn’t fiercely wrinkled, this outfit looked hot off the ironing board. The only disfigurements were a few stretch marks in the cloth where his belly jutted past his waistband, and the bulge in the back where his off-duty pistol was not efficiently hidden.

“He rabbited, I heard.”

Rhyme spat out, “Gone completely.”

The floor creaked under the big man’s weight as he ambled to the evidence charts and looked them over. “That’s what you’re calling him? Five Twenty-Two?”

“May twenty-second. What happened with the Russian case?”

Sellitto didn’t answer. “Mr. Five Twenty-Two leave anything behind?”

“We’re about to find out. He ditched a bag of evidence he was going to plant. It’s on its way.”

“That was courteous.”

“Iced tea, coffee?”

“Yeah,” the detective muttered to Thom. “Thanks. Coffee. You have skim milk?”

“Two percent.”

“Good. And any of those cookies from last time? The chocolate chip ones?”

“Just oatmeal.”

“Those’re good too.”

“Mel?” Thom asked. “You want something?”

“If I eat or drink near an examining table, I get yelled at.”

Rhyme snapped, “It’s hardly my fault if defense lawyers have this thing about excluding contaminated evidence. I didn’t make the rules.”

Sellitto observed, “See your mood hasn’t improved. What’s going on in London?”

“Now that’s a subject I don’t want to talk about.”

“Well, just to improve your spirits we got another problem.”

“Malloy?”

“Yep. He heard Amelia was running a scene and I okayed an ESU action. He got all happy thinking it was the Dienko case, then all sad when he found out it wasn’t. He asked if it was connected with you. I’ll take a fist on the chin for you, Linc, but not a bullet. I dimed you out… Oh, thanks.” Nodding as Thom brought him the refreshments. The aide set a similar offering on a table not far from Cooper, who pulled on latex gloves and started on a cookie.

“Some scotch, if you please,” Rhyme said quickly.

“No.” Thom was gone.

Scowling, Rhyme said, “I figured Malloy’d bust us as soon as ESU was involved. But we need brass on our side now that it’s a hot case. What do we do?”

“Better think of something fast ’cause he wants us to call. Like a half hour ago.” He sipped more coffee and, with some reluctance, set down the remaining quarter of his cookie with the apparent resolve not to finish it.

“Well, I need the brass on board. We’ve got to have people out there looking for this guy.”

“Then let’s call. You ready?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Sellitto dialed a number. Hit SPEAKER.

“Lower the volume,” Rhyme said. “I suspect this could be loud.”

“Malloy here.” Rhyme could hear the sounds of the wind, voices and the clink of dishes or glassware. Maybe he was at an outdoor café.

“Captain, you’re on speaker with Lincoln Rhyme and me.”

“Okay, what the hell is going on? You could’ve told me that the ESU operation was what Lincoln called me about earlier. Did you know I deferred the decision about any operation till tomorrow?”

“No, he didn’t,” Rhyme said.

The detective blurted, “Yeah, but I knew enough to figure it out.”

“I’m touched you’re both taking the heat for each other but the question is why didn’t you tell me?”

Sellitto said, “’Cause we had a good chance to collar a rapist-murderer. I decided we couldn’t afford any delays.”

“I’m not a child, Lieutenant. You make your case to me and I’ll make the judgment. That’s how it’s supposed to work.”

“Sorry, Captain. It seemed like the right decision at the time.”

Silence. Then: “But he got away.”

“Yes, he did,” Rhyme said.

“How?”

“We got a team together as fast as we could but the cover wasn’t the best. The UNSUB was closer than we thought. He saw an unmarked or one of the team, I guess. He took off. But he ditched some evidence that could be helpful.”

“Which is on its way to the lab in Queens? Or to you?”

Rhyme glanced at Sellitto. People rise in rank in institutions like the NYPD based on experience, drive and quick minds. Malloy was a good half-step ahead of them.

“I’ve asked for it to come here, Joe,” Rhyme said.

No silence this time. The sound from the speaker was a resigned sigh. “Lincoln, you understand the problem, don’t you?”

Conflict of interest, Rhyme thought.

“There’s a clear conflict of interest with you as an advisor to the department and trying to exonerate your cousin. And beyond that, the implication is that there’s been a wrongful arrest.”

“But that’s exactly what happened. And two wrongful convictions.” Rhyme reminded Malloy about the rape and coin-theft cases that Flintlock had told them about. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if this’s happened other times too… You know Locard’s Principle, Joe?”

“That was in your book, the one from the academy, right?”

The French criminalist Edmond Locard stated that whenever a crime occurs there’s always a transfer of evidence between the perpetrator and the crime scene or the victim. He was referring specifically to dust but the rule applies to many substances and types of evidence. The connection may be difficult to find but it exists.

“Locard’s Principle guides what we do, Joe. But here’s a perp who’s using it as a weapon. It’s his M.O. He kills and gets away because somebody else is convicted of the crime. He knows exactly when to strike, what kind of evidence to plant and when to plant it. The crime-scene teams, the detectives, the lab people, the prosecutors and judges… he’s used everybody, made them accomplices. This has nothing to do with my cousin, Joe. This has to do with stopping a very dangerous man.”

A sighless silence now.

“Okay, I’ll sanction it.”

Sellitto was lifting an eyebrow.

“With caveats. You keep me informed of every development in the case. I mean everything.”

“Sure.”

“And, Lon, you try not being straight with me again and I’ll transfer you to Budgets. Understand me?”

“Yeah, Captain. Absolutely.”

“And since you’re at Lincoln’s, Lon, I assume you want a reassignment from the Vladimir Dienko case.”

“Petey Jimenez’s up to speed. He’s done more of the legwork than I have and he’s set up the stings personally.”

“And Dellray’s running the snitches, right? And the federal jurisdiction?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay, you’re off it. Temporarily. Open a file on this UNSUB—I mean, send out a memo about the file you’ve already started on the sly. And listen to me: I’m not raising any issues of innocent people being convicted wrongly. Not raising it with anybody. And you’re not going to either. That issue is not on the table. The only crime you’re running is a single rape-murder that occurred this afternoon. Period. As part of his M.O. this UNSUB might have tried to shift the blame to somebody else but that’s all you can say and only if the subject comes up. Don’t raise the issue yourself and, for God’s sake, don’t say anything to the press.”

“I don’t talk to the press,” Rhyme said. Who did, if they could avoid it? “But we’ll need to look into the other cases to get an idea of how he operates.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t,” the captain said, firm but not strident. “Keep me posted.” He hung up.

“Well, we got ourselves a case,” Sellitto said, surrendering to the abandoned quarter of a cookie and washing it down with the coffee.

Standing on the curb with three other men in street clothes, Amelia Sachs was talking to the compact man who’d ripped open the door of her Camaro and leveled his weapon at her. He’d turned out not to be 522 but a federal agent who worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“We’re still trying to put it together,” he said, and glanced at his boss, an assistant special agent in charge of the Brooklyn DEA office.

The ASAC said, “We’ll know more in a few minutes.”

Not long before, at gunpoint in the car, Sachs had lifted her hands slowly and identified herself as a police officer. The agent had taken her weapon and had checked her ID twice. He’d returned the gun, shaking his head. “I don’t get it,” he said. He apologized but his face didn’t seem to suggest he was sorry. Mostly the expression said that, well, he just didn’t get it.

A moment later his boss and two other agents had arrived.

Now the ASAC got a call and listened for a few minutes. He then snapped his mobile shut and explained what seemed to have happened. Not long before somebody had made an anonymous call from a pay phone reporting that an armed woman fitting Sachs’s description had just shot somebody in what seemed to be a drug dispute.

“We’ve got an operation going on here at the moment,” he said. “Looking into some dealer and supplier assassinations.” He nodded toward his agent, the one who’d tried to arrest Sachs. “Anthony lives a block away. The operations director sent him here to assess the sit while he scrambled the troops.”

Anthony added, “I thought you were leaving so I grabbed some old take-out bags and moved in. Man…” Now the import of what he’d nearly done was sinking in. He was now ashen and Sachs reflected that Glocks have a very light trigger pull. She wondered just how close she’d come to being shot.

“What were you doing here?” the ASAC asked.

“We had a homicide-rape.” She didn’t explain about 522’s setting up innocent people to take the fall. “I’m guessing our perp spotted me and made a call to slow up pursuit.”

Or get me killed in a friendly fire incident.

The federal agent shook his head, frowning.

“What?” Sachs asked.

“Just thinking this guy is pretty sharp. If he called NYPD—which most people would’ve—they’d know about your operation and who you were. So he called us instead. All we’d know was that you were a shooter and we’d approach with caution, ready to take you out if you pulled a weapon.” A frown. “That’s smart.”

“Pretty fucking scary too,” Anthony said, his face still white.

The agents left and she made a call.

When Rhyme answered she told him about the incident.

The criminalist digested this, then he said, “He called the Feds?”

“Yep.”

“It’s almost as if he knew they were in the middle of a drug op. And that the agent who tried to collar you lived nearby.”

“He couldn’t know that,” she countered.

“Maybe not. But he sure as hell knew one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“He knew exactly where you were. Which means he was watching. Be careful, Sachs.”

Rhyme was explaining to Sellitto how the perp had set up Sachs in Brooklyn.

“He did that?”

“Looks like it.”

The men were discussing how he might’ve gotten the information—and coming to no helpful conclusions—when the phone trilled. Rhyme glanced at caller ID and answered quickly. “Inspector.”

Longhurst’s voice filled the speaker. “Detective Rhyme, how are you?”

“Good.”

“Excellent. Just wanted to let you know: We’ve found Logan’s safe house. It wasn’t in Manchester after all. It was in Oldham, nearby. East of the city.” She then explained that Danny Krueger had learned from some of his people that a man believed to be Richard Logan had inquired about purchasing some parts for guns. “Not guns themselves, mind. But if you have the parts to repair guns, presumably you could also make one.”

“Rifles?”

“Yes. Large caliber.”

“Any identity?”

“No, though they thought Logan was U.S. military. Apparently he promised he could get them some discount ammunition in bulk in the future. He seemed to have official army documents about inventories and specifications.”

“So, the shooting zone in London’s in play.”

“It would seem. Now, about the safe house: We have contacts in the Hindi community in Oldham. They’re quite impeccable. They heard about an American who’s rented an old house on the outskirts of town. We managed to track it down. We haven’t searched yet. Our team could have done it but we thought it best to talk to you first.”

Longhurst continued, “Now, Detective, my sense is that he doesn’t know we found out about the safe house. And I suspect there may be some rather helpful evidence inside it. I’ve rung up some fellows at MI5 and borrowed a bit of an expensive toy from them. It’s a high-definition video camera. We’d like to have one of our officers wear it and have you guide him through the scene, tell us what you think. We should have the equipment on site in forty minutes or so.”

To do a proper search of the safe house, including the exits and entrances, the drawers, the toilets, closets, mattresses… it would consume the better part of the night.

Why was this happening now? He was convinced that 522 was a real threat. In fact, given the time line—with the earlier cases, his cousin’s and the murder today—the crimes seemed to be accelerating. And he was particularly troubled by the latest event: 522’s turning on them, and nearly getting Sachs shot.

Yes, no?

After a moment of agonizing debate, he said, “Inspector, I’m sorry to say, something’s come up here. We’ve had a series of homicides. I need to focus on them.”

“I see.” Unflappable British reserve.

“I’ll have to hand over the case to your command.”

“Of course, Detective. I understand.”

“You’re free to make any and all decisions.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence. We’ll get it sorted out and I’ll keep you informed. I better ring off now.”

“Good luck.”

“And to you.”

This was hard for Lincoln Rhyme, stepping away from a hunt, especially when the quarry was this particular perp.

But the decision had been made. Five Twenty-Two was now his only prey.

“Mel, get on the phone and find out where the hell that evidence from Brooklyn is.”