’ve been checking the news—there are so many efficient ways to get information nowadays—and I’ve heard nothing about any redheaded police officers gunned down by fellow law enforcers in Brooklyn.

But at the least They’re afraid.

They’d be edgy now.

Good. Why should I be the only one?

As I walk I reflect: How did this happen? How could it possibly have happened?

This isn’t good, this isn’t good this this…

They seemed to know exactly what I was doing, who my victim was.

And that I was on the way to DeLeon 6832’s house at just that moment.

How?

Running through the data, permutating them, analyzing them. No, I can’t understand how They did it.

Not yet. Have to think some more.

I don’t have enough information. How can I draw conclusions if I don’t have the data? How?

Ah, slow down, slow down, I tell myself. When sixteens walk quickly they shed data, revealing all sorts of information, at least to those who are smart, who can make good deductions.

Up and down the gray, urban streets, Sunday no longer beautiful. An ugly day, ruined. The sunlight’s harsh and tainted. The city’s cold, its edges ragged. The sixteens are mocking and snide and pompous.

I hate them all!

But keep your head down, pretend to enjoy the day.

And, most of all, think. Be analytical. How would a computer, confronted with a problem, analyze the data?

Think. Now, how could They have found out?

One block, two blocks, three blocks, four…

No answers. Only the conclusion: They’re good. And another question: Who exactly are They? I suppose—

I’m struck with a terrible thought. Please, no… I stop and dig through my backpack. No, no, no, it’s gone! The Post-it, stuck to the evidence bag, and I forgot to pull it off before I threw everything out. The address of my favorite sixteen: 3694-8938-5330-2498, my pet—known to the world as Dr. Robert Jorgensen. I’d just found where he’d fled to, trying to hide, and jotted it on a Post-it. I’m furious I didn’t memorize it and throw away the note.

I hate myself, hate everything. How could I be so careless?

I want to cry, to scream.

My Robert 3694! For two years he’s been my guinea pig, my human experiment. Public records, identity theft, credit cards…

But, most of all, ruining him was a huge high. Orgasmic, indescribable. Like coke or heroin. Taking a perfectly normal, happy family man, a good, caring doctor, and destroying him.

Well, I can’t take any chances. I have to assume someone will find the note and call him. He’ll flee… and I’ll have to let him go.

Something else has been taken away from me today. I can’t describe how I feel when that happens. It’s pain like fire, it’s fear like blind panic, it’s falling and knowing you’ll collide with the blurring earth at any moment but not… quite… yet.

I blunder through the herds of antelope, these sixteens roaming on their day of rest. My happiness is destroyed, my comfort gone. Whereas just hours ago I looked at everyone with benign curiosity or lust, but now I simply want to storm up to someone and slice his pale flesh, thin as tomato skin, with one of my eighty-nine straight razors.

Maybe my Krusius Brothers model from the late 1800s. It has an extra-long blade, a fine stag’s horn handle and is the pride of my collection.

“Evidence, Mel. Let’s look it over.”

Rhyme was referring to what had been collected in the trash can near DeLeon Williams’s house.

“Friction ridges?”

The first items Cooper examined for fingerprints were the plastic bags—the one holding the evidence 522 had presumably intended to plant and the bags inside, containing some still-wet blood and a bloody paper towel. But there were no prints on the plastic—a disappointment, since it preserves them so well. (Often they’re visible, not latent, and can be observed without any special chemicals or lighting.) Cooper did find indications that the UNSUB had touched the bags with cotton gloves—the sort experienced criminals prefer to latex gloves, which retain the perp’s prints inside the fingers very efficiently.

Using various sprays and alternative light sources, Mel Cooper examined the rest of the items and found no prints on these either.

Rhyme realized that this case, like the others he suspected 522 was behind, was different from most in that it presented two categories of evidence. First, false evidence that the killer intended to plant to implicate DeLeon Williams; he’d undoubtedly made sure that none of this would lead back to himself personally. Second, real evidence that he’d left accidentally and that could very well lead to his home—such as the tobacco and the doll’s hair.

The bloody paper towel and wet blood were in the first category, intended to be left. Similarly the duct tape, meant to be slipped into Williams’s garage or car, would undoubtedly match strips used to gag or bind Myra Weinburg. But it would have been kept carefully protected from 522’s dwelling so it didn’t pick up any trace.

The size-13 Sure-Track running shoe probably wasn’t going to be stashed at Williams’s house but it was still “planted” evidence in the sense that 522 had undoubtedly used it to leave a print of a shoe similar to one of Williams’s. Mel Cooper tested the shoe anyway and found some trace: beer on the tread. According to the database of fermented beverage ingredients, created for the NYPD by Rhyme years ago, it was most likely Miller brand. That could be in either category—planted or real. They’d have to see what Pulaski recovered from the Myra Weinburg crime scene to know for sure.

The bag also contained a computer printout of Myra’s photo, probably included to suggest Williams had been stalking her online; it was therefore meant to be planted as well. Still, Rhyme had Cooper check it carefully but a ninhydrin test revealed no fingerprints. Microscopic and chemical analyses revealed generic, untraceable paper, printed with Hewlett-Packard laser toner, also untraceable beyond the brand name.

But they did make a discovery that might prove helpful. Rhyme and Cooper found something embedded in the paper: traces of Stachybotrys Chartarum mold. This was the infamous “sick building” mold. Since the amounts found in the paper were so small, it was unlikely that 522 meant it to be planted. More likely it came from the killer’s residence or place of work. The presence of this mold, which was found indoors almost exclusively, meant that at least part of his home or workplace would be dark and humid. Mold can’t grow in a dry location.

The Post-it note, also probably not intended to be planted, was a 3M brand, not the cheaper generic but still impossible to source. Cooper had found no trace in the note other than a few more spores of the mold, which at least told them that the Post-it’s source probably was 522. The ink was from a disposable pen sold in countless stores around the country.

And that was it for the evidence, though as Cooper was jotting the results, a tech from the outside lab Rhyme used for expedited medical analysis called and reported that the preliminary test confirmed the blood found in the bags was that of Myra Weinburg.

Sellitto took a phone call, had a brief conversation then hung up. “Zip… The DEA traced the call about Amelia to a pay phone. Nobody saw the caller. And nobody on the expressway saw anyone running. The canvass at the two closest subway stations didn’t turn up anything suspicious around the time he got away.”

“Well, he’s not going to do anything suspicious, now, is he? What did the canvassers think? An escaping murderer would jump a turnstile or strip his clothes off and change into a superhero outfit?”

“Just telling you what they said, Linc.”

Grimacing, he asked Thom to write the results of the search up on the whiteboard.

STREET NEAR DELEON WILLIAMS’S HOUSE

• Three plastic bags, ZipLoc freezer style, one-gallon

• One right size-13 Sure-Track running shoe, dried beer in tread (probably Miller brand), no wear marks. No other discernible trace. Bought to leave imprint at scene of crime?

• Paper towel with blood in plastic bag. Preliminary test confirms it’s the victim’s

• 2 ccs blood in plastic bag. Preliminary test confirms it’s the victim’s

• Post-it with address of the Henderson House Residence, Room 672, occupied by Robert Jorgensen. Note and pen untraceable. Paper untraceable. Evidence of Stachybotrys Chartarum mold in paper

• Picture of victim, apparently computer printout, color. Hewlett-Packard printer ink. Otherwise untraceable. Paper untraceable. Evidence of Stachybotrys Chartarum mold in paper

• Duct tape, Home Depot house brand, not traceable to particular location.

• No friction-ridge prints

The doorbell rang and Ron Pulaski walked briskly into the room, carrying two milk crates containing plastic bags, evidence from the scene where Myra Weinburg had been killed.

Rhyme noted immediately that his expression had changed. His face was still. Pulaski often cringed or seemed perplexed or occasionally looked proud—he even blushed—but now his eyes seemed hollow, not at all like the determined gaze of earlier. He glanced at Rhyme with a nod, walked sullenly to the examination tables, handed off the evidence to Cooper and gave him the chain-of-custody cards, which the tech signed.

The rookie stepped back, looking over the whiteboard chart Thom had created. Hands in his jeans pockets, Hawaiian shirt untucked, he wasn’t seeing a single word.

“You all right, Pulaski?”

“Sure.”

“You don’t look all right,” Sellitto said.

“Naw, it’s nothing.”

But that wasn’t true. Something about running his first solo homicide scene had upset him.

Finally he said, “She was just lying there, faceup, staring at the ceiling. It’s like she was alive and looking for something. Frowning, kind of curious. I guess I expected her to be covered up.”

“Yeah, well, you know we don’t do that,” Sellitto muttered.

Pulaski looked out the window. “The thing is… okay, it’s crazy. It’s just she looked a little like Jenny.” His wife. “Kind of weird.”

Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs were similar in many ways when it came to their work. They felt you needed to summon empathy in searching crime scenes, which allowed you to feel what the perp, and the victim, experienced. This helped to better understand the scene and find evidence you otherwise might not.

Those who had this skill, as harrowing as its consequences might be, were masters at walking the grid.

But Rhyme and Sachs differed in one important aspect. Sachs believed it was important never to become numb to the horror of crime. You needed to feel it every time you went to a scene, and afterward. If you didn’t, she said, your heart grew hard, you moved closer to the darkness within the people you pursued. Rhyme, on the other hand, felt you should be as dispassionate as possible. Only by coldly putting aside the tragedy could you be the best police officer you could—and more efficiently stop future tragedies from occurring. (“It’s not a human being anymore,” he’d lectured his new recruits. “It’s a source of evidence. And a damn good one.”)

Pulaski had the potential to be more like Rhyme, the criminalist believed, but at this early stage of his career he fell into Amelia Sachs’s camp. Rhyme felt for the young man now but they had a case to solve. At home tonight Pulaski could hold his wife close and silently mourn the death of the woman she resembled.

He asked gruffly, “You with us, Pulaski?”

“Yes, sir. I’m fine.”

Not exactly, but Rhyme had made his point. “You processed the body?”

A nod. “I was there with the M.E.’s tour doctor. We did it together. I made sure he wore rubber bands on his booties.”

To avoid confusion when it came to footprints Rhyme had a policy of his crime scene searchers’ putting rubber bands around their feet, even when they were in the hooded plastic jumpsuits worn to prevent contamination from their own hair, skin cells and other trace.

“Good.” Rhyme then glanced eagerly at the milk crates. “Let’s get going. We ruined one plan of his. Maybe he’s mad about it and is out targeting somebody else. Maybe he’s buying a ticket to Mexico. Either way, I want to move fast.”

The young cop flipped open his notebook. “I—”

“Thom, come on in here. Thom, where the hell are you?”

“Oh, sure, Lincoln,” said the aide with a cheerful smile, walking into the room. “Always happy to drop everything in the face of such polite requests.”

“We need you again—another chart.”

“Do you?”

“Please.”

“You don’t mean it.”!!!“Thom.”

“All right.”

“‘Myra Weinburg Crime Scene.’”

The aide wrote the heading and stood ready with the marker, as Rhyme asked, “Now, Pulaski, I understand it wasn’t her apartment?”

“That’s right, sir. A couple owned it. They’re on vacation, on a cruise ship. I managed to get through to them. They’d never heard of Myra Weinburg. Man, you should’ve heard them; they were way upset. They didn’t have any idea who it might’ve been. And to get in he broke the lock.”

“So he knew it was empty and that there was no alarm,” Cooper said. “Interesting.”

“Whatta you think?” Sellitto was shaking his head. “He just picked it for location?”

“It was real deserted around there,” Pulaski put in.

“And what was she doing, do you think?”

“I found her bike outside—she had a Kryptonite key in her pocket and it fit.”

“Biking. Could be that he’d checked out her route and knew she’d be by there at a certain time. And somehow he knew the couple were going to be away so he wouldn’t have any disturbances… Okay, rookie, run through what you found. Thom, if you would be so kind as to write this down.”

“You’re trying too hard.”

“Ha. Cause of death?” Rhyme asked Pulaski.

“I told the doctor to have the medical examiner expedite the autopsy results.”

Sellitto laughed gruffly. “And what’d he say to that?”

“Something like ‘Yeah, right.’ And a couple other things too.”

“You need a bit more starch in your collar before you can make requests like that. But I appreciate the effort. What was the preliminary?”

He looked over his notes. “Suffered several blows to the head. To subdue her, the M.E. thought.” The young officer paused, perhaps recalling his own, similar injury a few years ago. He continued, “Cause of death was strangulation. There were petechiae in the eyes and inside the eyelids—pinpoint hemorrhages—”

“I know what they are, rookie.”

“Oh, sure. Right. And venous distention in the scalp and face. This is the probable murder weapon.” He held up a bag containing a length of rope about four feet long.

“Mel?”

Cooper took the rope and carefully opened it over a large sheet of clean newsprint, dusting to dislodge trace. He then examined what he’d found and took a few samples of the fibers.

“What?” Rhyme asked impatiently.

“Checking.”

The rookie took refuge in his notes again. “As far as the rape, it was vaginal and anal. Postmortem, the tour doctor thought.”

“Posing of the body?”

“No… but one thing I noticed, Detective,” Pulaski said. “All her fingernails were long, except one. It was cut really short.”

“Blood?”

“Yes. It was cut right down to the quick.” He hesitated. “Probably premortem.”

So 522’s a bit of a sadist, Rhyme reflected. “He likes pain.”

“Check the other crime-scene photos, from the earlier rape.”

The young officer hurried off to find the pictures. He shuffled through them and found one, squinting. “Look at this, Detective. Yeah, he cut off a fingernail there too. The same finger.”

“Our boy likes trophies. That’s good to know.”

Pulaski nodded enthusiastically. “And think about it—the wedding ring finger. Probably something about his past. Maybe his wife left him, maybe he was neglected by his mother or a mother figure—”

“Good point, Pulaski. Reminds me—we forgot something else.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Did you check your horoscope this morning before we started the investigation?”

“My…?”

“Oh, and who got the tea-leaf-reading assignment? I forget.”

Sellitto was chuckling. Pulaski was blushing.

Rhyme snapped, “Psychological profiling isn’t helpful. What’s helpful about the nail is knowing that Five Twenty-Two now has in his possession a DNA connection to the crime. Not to mention that if we can decide what kind of implement he used to remove the trophy, we might be able to trace the purchase and find him. Evidence, rookie. Not psychobabble.”

“Sure, Detective. Got it.”

“‘Lincoln’ is fine.”

“Okay. Sure.”

“The rope, Mel?”

Cooper was scrolling through the fiber database. “Generic hemp. Available in thousands of retail outlets around the country.” He ran a chemical analysis. “No trace.”

Crap.

“What else, Pulaski?” Sellitto asked.

He went through the list. Fishing line, binding her hands, and cutting through the skin, which resulted in the bleeding. Duct tape covered her mouth. The tape was Home Depot brand, of course, torn off the roll 522 had ditched; the ragged ends matched perfectly. Two unopened condoms were discovered near the body, the young officer explained, holding up the bag. They were Trojan-Enz brand.

“And here are the swabs.”

Mel Cooper took the plastic evidence bags and checked the vaginal and rectal swabs. The M.E.’s office would give a more detailed report but it was clear that among the substances were traces of a spermicidal lubricant similar to that used with the condoms. There was no semen anywhere at the scene.

Another swab, from the floor, where Pulaski found the treadmark of a running shoe, revealed beer. It proved to be Miller brand. The electrostatic image of the tread was, naturally, a size-13 Sure-Track right shoe—the same that 522 had ditched in the trash can. “And the owners of the loft had no beer, right? You did search the kitchen and pantry?”

“Right, yes, sir. And I didn’t find any.”

Lon Sellitto was nodding. “Bet you ten bucks that Miller is DeLeon’s brew of choice.”

“I won’t take you up on that one, Lon. What else was there?”

Pulaski held up a plastic bag containing a brown fleck that he’d found just above the victim’s ear. Analysis revealed it to be tobacco. “What’s the story with that, Mel?”

The tech’s examination revealed that it was a fine-cut piece, the sort used in cigarettes, but it was not the same as the Tareyton sampler in the database. Lincoln Rhyme was one of the few nonsmokers in the country who decried the bans on smoking; tobacco and ash were wonderful forensic links between criminal and crime scene. Cooper couldn’t tell the brand. He decided, though, that because the tobacco was so desiccated it was probably old.

“Did Myra smoke? Or the people in the loft?”

“I didn’t see any evidence of it. And I did what you’re always telling us. I smelled the scene when I got there. No smell of smoking.”

“Good.” Rhyme was pleased with the search so far. “What’s the friction-ridge situation?”

“Checked fingerprint samples of the homeowners—from the medicine cabinet and things in the bedside table.”

“So you weren’t fudging. You really did read my book.” Rhyme had devoted a number of paragraphs in his forensic text to the importance of collecting control prints at crime scenes and where to best find them.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m so pleased. Did I make any royalties?”

“I borrowed my brother’s.” Pulaski’s twin was a cop down at the Sixth Precinct in Greenwich Village.

“Let’s hope he paid for it.”

Most of the prints found in the loft were the couples’—which they determined from the samples. The others were probably from visitors but it wasn’t impossible that 522 had been careless. Cooper scanned all of them into the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. The results would be available soon.

“Okay, tell me, Pulaski, what was your impression of the scene?”

The question seemed to throw him. “Impression?”

“Those are the trees.” Rhyme lowered his eyes toward the evidence bags. “What did you think of the forest?”

The young officer thought. “Well, I did have a thought. It’s stupid, though.”

“You know I’ll be the first one to say if you’ve come up with a stupid theory, rookie.”

“It’s just, when I first got there my impression was that the struggle seemed off.”

“How do you mean?”

“See, her bike was chained to a lamppost outside the loft. Like she’d parked it, not thinking anything was wrong.”

“So he didn’t just grab her on the street.”

“Right. And to get into the loft you went through a gate and then down a long corridor to the front door. It was real narrow and it was packed with things the couple stored outside—jars and cans, sports things, some stuff to be recycled, tools for their garden. But nothing was disturbed.” He tapped another photo. “But look inside—that’s where the struggle began. The table and the vases. Right by the front door.” His voice went soft again. “Looks like she fought real hard.”

Rhyme nodded. “All right. So Five Twenty-Two lures her to the loft, smooth-talking her. She locks up the bike, walks down the corridor and they go into the loft. She stops in the entryway, sees he’s lying and tries to get out.”

He considered this. “So he must’ve known enough about Myra to put her at ease, and make her feel that she could trust him… Sure, think about it: He’s got all this information—about who people are, what people buy, when they’re on vacation, whether they have alarms, where they’re going to be… Not bad, rookie. Now we know something concrete about him.”

Pulaski struggled to keep a smile off his face.

Cooper’s computer dinged. He read the screen. “No hits on the prints. Zero.”

Rhyme shrugged, not surprised. “I’m interested in this idea—that he knows so much. Somebody give DeLeon Williams a call. Was Five Twenty-Two right about all the evidence?”

Sellitto’s brief conversation revealed that, yes, Williams wore size-13 Sure-Track shoes, he regularly bought Trojan-Enz brand condoms, he had forty-pound fishing line, he drank Miller beer and he’d recently been to Home Depot for duct tape and hemp rope to use as a tie-down.

Looking at the evidence chart of the earlier rape, Rhyme noted that the condoms used by 522 in that crime were Durex. The killer had used those because Joseph Knightly bought that brand.

On the speakerphone he asked Williams, “Is one of your shoes missing?”

“No.”

Sellitto said, “So he bought a pair. Same type, same size as you’ve got. How’d he know that? Have you seen anybody on your property recently, maybe in your garage, going through your car or trash? Or have you had a break-in recently?”

“No, we sure haven’t. I’m out of work and here most days taking care of the house. I’d know. And it’s not the best neighborhood in the world; we’ve got an alarm. We always put it on.”

Rhyme thanked him and they disconnected.

He stretched his head back and gazed at the chart, as he dictated to Thom what to write.

MYRA WEINBURG CRIME SCENE

• COD: Strangulation. Awaiting final M.E. report

• No mutilation or arranging of body but ring fingernail, left hand, was cut short. Possible trophy. Premortem most likely

• Condom lubricant, from Trojan-Enz

• Unopened condoms (2), Trojan-Enz

• No used condoms, or body fluids

• Traces of Miller beer on floor (source other than crime scene)

• Fishing line, 40-pound monofilament, generic brand

• Four-foot length of brown hemp rope (MW)

• Duct tape on mouth

• Tobacco flake, old, from unidentified brand

• Footprint, Sure-Track man’s running shoe, size 13

• No fingerprints

Rhyme asked, “Our boy called nine-one-one, right? To report the Dodge?”

“Yeah,” Sellitto confirmed.

“Find out about the call. What he said, what his voice sounded like.”

The detective added, “The earlier cases too—your cousin’s and the coin theft and earlier rape.”

“Good, sure. I didn’t think about that.”

Sellitto got in touch with central dispatch. Nine-one-one calls are recorded and kept for varying periods of time. He requested the information. Ten minutes later he received a callback. The 911 reports from Arthur’s case and today’s murder were still in the system, the dispatch supervisor reported, and had been sent to Cooper’s e-mail address as.wav files. The earlier cases had been sent to archives on CD. It could take days to find them but an assistant had sent in a request for them.

When the audio files arrived, Cooper opened and played them. They were of a male voice telling the police to hurry to an address where he’d heard screaming. He described the get-away vehicles. The voices sounded identical.

“Voice print?” Cooper asked. “If we get a suspect, we can compare it.”

Voice prints were more highly regarded in the forensic world than lie detectors, and were admissible in some courts, depending on the judge. But Rhyme shook his head. “Listen to it. He’s talking through a box. Can’t you tell?”

A “box” is a device that disguises a caller’s voice. It doesn’t produce a weird, Darth Vader sound; the timbre is normal, if a little hollow. Many directory assistance and customer service operations use them to make employees’ voices uniform.

It was then that the door opened and Amelia Sachs strode into the parlor, carrying a large object under her arm. Rhyme couldn’t tell what it was. She nodded, then gazed at the evidence chart, saying to Pulaski, “Looks like a good job.”

“Thanks.”

Rhyme noted that what she held was a book. It seemed half disassembled. “What the hell is that?”

“A present from our doctor friend, Robert Jorgensen.”

“What is it? Evidence?”

“Hard to say. It was really an odd experience, talking to him.”

“Whatta you mean by odd, Amelia?” Sellitto asked.

“Think Batboy, Elvis and aliens behind the Kennedy assassination. That sort of odd.”

Pulaski exhaled a fast laugh, drawing a withering look from Lincoln Rhyme.