kay, this is a surprise.

The Upper East Side address and the fact that Robert Jorgensen was an orthopedic surgeon had led Amelia Sachs to expect that the Henderson House Residence, the address on the Post-it note, would be a lot nicer than this.

But it was a disgusting dive, a transients’ hotel inhabited by druggies and drunks. The flyblown lobby, filled with mismatched and moldy furniture, stank of garlic, cheap disinfectant, useless air freshener and sour human odor. Most homeless shelters were more pleasant.

Standing in the grimy doorway, she paused and turned. Still uneasy about 522’s surveillance and the ease with which he’d set up the federal officers in Brooklyn, she looked carefully around the street. Nobody seemed to be paying much attention to her, but then the killer would have been nearby at DeLeon Williams’s house too and she’d missed him completely. She studied an abandoned building across the street. Was somebody gazing at her from one of the grime-covered windows?

Or there! On the second floor was a large broken window and she was sure she saw motion in the darkness. Was it a face? Or light from a hole in the roof?

Sachs stepped closer and examined the building carefully. But she found no one and decided her eyes had played tricks on her. She turned back to the hotel and, breathing shallowly, stepped inside. At the front desk she flashed her badge to the hopelessly overweight clerk. He didn’t seem the least bit surprised, or troubled, that a cop was here. She was directed toward the elevator. It opened to a foul stench. Okay, the stairs.

Wincing from the strain on her arthritic joints, she pushed through the door on the sixth floor and found room 672. She knocked, then stepped aside. “Police. Mr. Jorgensen? Please open the door.” She didn’t know what connection this man might have to the killer so her hand hovered near the grip of her Glock, a fine weapon, as dependable as the sun.

No answer but she believed she heard the sound of the metal cover of the peephole.

“Police,” she repeated.

“Put your ID under the door.”

She did.

A pause, then several chains were undone. And a deadbolt. The door opened a short way but was stopped by a security bar. The gap was bigger than that left by a chain but not large enough for someone to get through.

The head of a middle-aged man appeared. His hair was long and unwashed, his face marred with an unruly beard. The eyes were twitchy.

“You’re Robert Jorgensen?”

He peered at her face, then at her ID again, turning the card over and holding it up to the light, though the laminated rectangle was opaque. He handed it back and unhooked the security bar. The door swung open. He examined the hall behind her, then gestured her in. Sachs entered cautiously, hand still near her weapon. She checked the room and closets. The place was otherwise unoccupied and he was unarmed. “You’re Robert Jorgensen?” she repeated.

He nodded.

She then looked over the sad room more carefully. It contained a bed, desk and chair, armchair and ratty couch. The dark gray carpet was stained. A single pole lamp cast dim yellow light, and the shades were drawn. He was living, it seemed, out of four large suitcases and a gym bag. He had no kitchen but a portion of the living room contained a miniature fridge and two microwaves. A coffeepot too. His diet was largely soup and ramen noodles. A hundred manila file folders were carefully lined up against the wall.

His clothes were from a different time in his life, a better time. They seemed expensive but were threadbare and stained. The heels of the rich-looking shoes were worn down. Guessing: He lost his medical practice due to a drug or drinking problem.

At the moment he was occupied by an odd task: dissecting a large hardcover textbook. A chipped magnifying glass on a gooseneck stand was clamped to the desk and he’d been slicing out pages and cutting them into strips.

Maybe mental illness had led to his downfall.

“You’re here about the letters. It’s about time.”

“Letters?”

He studied her suspiciously. “You’re not?”

“I don’t know about any letters.”

“I sent them to Washington. But you do talk, don’t you? All you law enforcers. You public-safety people. Sure you do. You have to, everybody talks. Criminal databases and all that…”

“I really don’t know what you mean.”

He seemed to believe her. “Well, then—” His eyes went wide, looking down at her hip. “Wait, is your cell phone on?”

“Well, yes.”

“Jesus Christ in heaven! What’s wrong with you?”

“I—”

“Why don’t you run down the street naked and tell every stranger you see your address? Take the battery out. Not just shut it off. The battery!”

“I’m not doing that.”

“Take it out. Or you can get the hell out right now. The PDA too. And pager.”

This seemed to be a deal breaker. But she said firmly, “I’m not dumping my memory. I’ll do the phone and the pager.”

“Okay,” he grumbled and leaned forward as she slipped the batteries out of the two devices and shut off the PDA.

Then she asked for his ID. He debated and dug out a driver’s license. The address was Greenwich, Connecticut, one of the ritziest towns in the metro area. “I’m not here about any letters, Mr. Jorgensen. I just have some questions. I won’t take much of your time.”

He gestured her toward the gamy couch and sat down on a wobbly chair at the desk. As if he couldn’t help himself he turned to the book and with a razor knife cut a piece off the spine. He handled the knife expertly, fast and sure. Sachs was glad the desk was between them and her gun unobstructed.

“Mr. Jorgensen, I’m here about a crime that was committed this morning.”

“Ah, sure, of course.” Lips pursing, he glanced at Sachs again and his expression was clear: resignation and disgust. “And what was I supposed to have done this time?”

This time?

“The crime was a rape and murder. But we know you weren’t involved. You were here.”

A cruel grin. “Ah, keeping track of me. Sure.” Then a grimace. “Goddamnit.” This was in response to something he found, or didn’t find, in the bit of book spine he was dissecting. He tossed it into the trash. Sachs noticed half-open garbage bags containing remnants of clothes, books, newspapers and small boxes that had also been cut apart. Then she glanced into the larger microwave and saw that it contained a book.

Germ phobic, she supposed.

He noticed her gaze. “Microwaving’s the best way to destroy them.”

“Bacteria? Viruses?”

He laughed at the question as if she were joking. He nodded at the volume in front of him. “But sometimes they’re really hard to find. You have to, though. You need to see what the enemy looks like.” Now a nod at the microwave. “And pretty soon they’ll start making ones that you can’t even nuke. Ah, you better believe it.”

They… them… Sachs had been a beat cop in the Patrol Division for some years—a portable, they were called in cop slang. She’d worked Times Square back when it was, well, Times Square, before the place became Disneyland North. Patrolwoman Sachs had had lots of experience with the homeless and emotionally disturbed. She recognized signs of paranoid personality, maybe even schizophrenia.

“Do you know a DeLeon Williams?”

“No.”

She offered the names of the other victims and fall guys, including Rhyme’s cousin.

“No, never heard of any of them.” He seemed to be answering truthfully. The book took all his attention for a long thirty seconds. He removed a page and held it up, grimacing again. He pitched it out.

“Mr. Jorgensen, this room number was found on a note near the crime scene today.”

The hand with the knife froze. He looked at her with scary, burning eyes. Breathlessly he asked, “Where? Where the hell did you find it?”

“In a trash bin in Brooklyn. It was stuck to some evidence. It’s possible this killer discarded it.”

In a ghastly whisper he asked, “You have a name? What does he look like? Tell me!” He half rose and his face grew bright red. His lips trembled.

“Take it easy, Mr. Jorgensen. Calm down. We’re not positive he’s the one who left the note.”

“Oh, he’s the one. You bet he is. That motherfucker!” He leaned forward. “You have a name?”

“No.”

“Tell me, goddamnit! Do something for me for a change. Not to me!”

She said firmly, “If I can help you, I will. But you have to stay calm. Who are you talking about?”

He dropped the knife and sat back, shoulders slumped. A bitter smile spread across his face. “Who? Who? Why, God, of course.”

“God?”

“And I’m Job. You know Job? The innocent man God tormented. All the trials he inflicted? That’s nothing compared to what I’ve been through… Oh, it’s him. He found out where I am now and wrote it down on that note of yours. I thought I’d escaped. But he’s got me again.”

Sachs thought she saw tears. She asked, “What’s this all about? Please, tell me.”

Jorgensen rubbed his face. “Okay… A few years ago I was a practicing doctor, lived in Connecticut. Had a wife and two wonderful children. Money in the bank, retirement plan, vacation house. A comfortable life. I was happy. But then a strange thing happened. No big deal, not at first. I applied for a new credit card—to get miles in my frequent-flier program. I was making three hundred thousand a year. I’d never missed a credit card or mortgage payment in my life. But I was rejected. Some mistake, I thought. But the company said that I was a credit risk since I’d moved three times in the past six months. Only I hadn’t moved at all. Somebody had gotten my name, Social Security number and credit information and rented apartments as me. Then he defaulted on the rent. But not before he’d bought nearly a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise and had it delivered to those addresses.”

“Identity theft?”

“Oh, the mother lode of identity theft. God opened credit cards in my name, ran up huge bills, had the statements sent to different addresses. Never paid them, of course. As soon as I’d get one straightened out he’d do something else. And he kept getting all this information on me. God knew everything! My mother’s maiden name, her birthday, my first dog’s name, my first car—all the things companies want to know for passwords. He got my phone numbers—and my calling card number. He ran up a ten-thousand-dollar phone bill. How? He’d call time and temperature in Moscow or Singapore or Sydney and leave the phone off the hook for hours.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because he’s God. And I’m Job… The son of a bitch bought a house in my name! A whole house! And then defaulted on it. I only found out when a lawyer working for a collection agency tracked me down at my clinic in New York and asked about making payment arrangements for the three hundred and seventy thousand dollars I owed. God also ran up a quarter million in online gambling debts.

“He made bogus insurance claims in my name and my malpractice carrier dropped me. I couldn’t work at my clinic without insurance, and nobody would insure me. We had to sell the house and, of course, every penny went to the debt quote I had run up—which was by then about two million dollars.”

“Two million?”

Jorgensen closed his eyes briefly. “And then things got worse. My wife was hanging in there throughout all of this. It was hard but she was with me… until God had presents—expensive ones—sent in my name to some former nurses at the clinic, bought with my credit card, and that included invitations and suggestive comments. One of the women left a message at home thanking me and saying she’d love to go away for the weekend. My daughter got it. She was crying uncontrollably when she told my wife. I think she believed I was innocent. But she still left me four months ago and moved in with her sister in Colorado.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Oh, well, thank you very much. But I’m not through yet. Oh, no. Just after my wife left, the arrests started. It seems guns purchased with a credit card and fake driver’s license in my name were used in armed robberies in East New York, New Haven and Yonkers. One clerk was seriously wounded. The New York Bureau of Investigation arrested me. They finally let me go but I’ve still got an arrest on my record. That’ll be there forever. Along with the time the Drug Enforcement Agency arrested me because a check of mine was traced to the purchase of illegally imported prescription drugs.

“Oh, and I was actually in prison for a while—well, not me: somebody that God sold fake credit cards to and a driver’s license in my name. Of course, the prisoner was somebody altogether different. Who knows what his real name is? But as far as the world is concerned, government records show that Robert Samuel Jorgensen, Social Security number nine two three, six seven, four one eight two, formerly of Greenwich, Connecticut, was a prisoner. It’s on my record too. For-ever.”

“You must’ve followed up, called the police.”

He scoffed. “Oh, please. You’re a cop. You know where something like this falls in the priority of police work? Just above jaywalking.”

“Did you learn anything that might help us? Anything about him? Age, race, education, location?”

“No, nothing. Everywhere I looked there was only one person: me. He took me away from myself… Oh, they say there are safeguards, there are protections. Bullshit. Yes, if you lose a credit card, maybe you’re protected to a point. But if somebody wants to destroy your life, there’s nothing you can do about it. People believe what computers tell us. If they say you owe money, you owe money. If it says you’re a bad insurance risk, you’re a bad risk. The report says you have no credit, then you have no credit, even if you’re a multimillionaire. We believe the data; we don’t care about the truth.

“Ah, want to see what my most recent job was?” He jumped up and opened his closet, displaying a fast food franchise uniform. Jorgensen returned to his desk and set to work on the book again, muttering, “I’ll find you, you fucker.” He glanced up. “And do you want to know the worst part of all?”

She nodded.

“God never lived in the apartments he rented in my name. He never took delivery of the illegal drugs. Or got any of the merchandise he had shipped. The police recovered everything. And he never lived in the beautiful house he bought. Get it? His only point was to torment me. He’s God, I’m Job.”

Sachs noticed a picture on his desk. It was of Jorgensen and a blond woman about his age, their arms around a teenage girl and young boy. The house in the background was very nice. She wondered why 522 would go to all the trouble to destroy a man’s life, if in fact their perp was behind this. Was he testing out techniques to use to get close to victims and to implicate fall guys? Was Robert Jorgensen a guinea pig?

Or was 522 a cruel sociopath? What he’d done to Jorgensen might be called a nonsexual rape.

“I think you should find another place to live, Mr. Jorgensen.”

A resigned smile. “I know. It’s safer that way. Always be harder to find.”

Sachs thought to herself of an expression her father had used. She thought it described her own life view pretty well. “When you move they can’t getcha…”

He nodded at the book. “You know how he found me here? This, I’ve got a feeling. Everything started to go bad just after I bought it. I keep thinking it’s got the answer. I nuked it but that didn’t work—obviously. There’s got to be an answer inside. There’s got to be!”

“What are you looking for exactly?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No.”

“Well, tracking devices, of course. They put them in books. And clothes. Pretty soon they’ll be in almost everything.”

So not germs.

“Microwaves destroy tracking devices?” she asked, playing along.

“Most of them. You can break the antennae too but they’re so small nowadays. Almost microscopic.” Jorgensen fell silent and she realized he was staring at her intently as he considered something. He announced. “You take it.”

“What?”

“The book.” His eyes were dancing madly around the room. “It’s got the answer in it, the answer to everything that’s happened to me… Please! You’re the first one who hasn’t rolled their eyes when I told them my story, the only one who hasn’t looked at me like I’m mad.” He sat forward. “You want to get him as much as I do. You have all sorts of equipment, I’ll bet. Scanning microscopes, sensors… You can find it! And it’ll lead you to him. Yes!” He thrust it toward her.

“Well, I don’t know what we’re looking for.”

He nodded sympathetically. “Oh, you don’t have to tell me. That’s the problem. They change things all the time. They’re always one step ahead of us. But please…”

They…

She took the book, debating about slipping it into a plastic evidence bag and attaching a chain-of-custody card. She wondered how loud the ridicule would be in Rhyme’s town house. Probably better just to carry it.

He leaned forward and pressed her hand hard. “Thank you.” He was crying again.

“So you’ll move?” she asked.

He said he would and gave her the name of another transient hotel, one down on the Lower East Side. “Don’t write it down. Don’t tell anybody. Don’t mention me on the phone. They’re listening all the time, you know.”

“Call me if anything else comes to mind about… God.” She gave him her card.

He memorized the information on it, then tore the cardboard up. He stepped into the bathroom, flushed half down the toilet. He noticed her curiosity. “I’ll flush the other half later. Flushing something all at once is as stupid as leaving bills in your mailbox with the red flag up. People are such fools.”

He walked her to the door, leaned close. The stink of unwashed clothing hit her. His red-rimmed eyes gazed fiercely at her. “Officer, listen to me. I know you have that big gun on your hip. But that won’t do any good against somebody like him. You have to get close before you can shoot him. But he doesn’t have to get close at all. He can sit in a dark room somewhere, sip a glass of wine and bring your life down in pieces.” Jorgensen nodded at the book in her hand. “And now that you’ve got that, you’re infected too.”