he told a story of a troubled man whose identity had been stolen and his life ruined. A man who described his nemesis as God, and himself as Job.

Clearly he was unhinged; “odd” didn’t go far enough. Yet if even partly true, his story was moving and hard to listen to. A life completely in tatters, and the crime pointless.

But then Sachs caught Rhyme’s complete attention when she said, “Jorgensen claims the man behind it’s been keeping track of him ever since he bought this book two years ago. He seems to know everything he’s doing.”

“Knows everything,” Rhyme repeated, looking at the evidence charts. “Just what we were talking about a few minutes ago. Getting all the information he needs on the victims and the fall guys.” He filled her in on what they’d learned.

She handed the book to Mel Cooper and told him Jorgensen believed it held a tracking device.

“Tracking device?” Rhyme scoffed. “He’s been watching too many Oliver Stone movies… All right, search it if you want. But let’s not neglect the real leads.”

Sachs’s calls to the police in the various jurisdictions where Jorgensen had been victimized weren’t productive. Yes, there’d been identity theft, no question. “But,” one cop in Florida asked, “you know how much of this goes on? We find a fake residence and raid it but by the time we get there it’s empty. They’ve taken all the merch they’d charged to the vic’s account and headed off to Texas or Montana.”

Most of them had heard of Jorgensen (“He sure writes a lot of letters”) and were sympathetic. But none had any specific leads to an individual or gang who might have been behind the crimes and they couldn’t devote nearly enough time to the cases as they would have liked. “We could have another hundred people on staff and still not be able to make any headway.”

After she’d hung up, Sachs explained that since 522 knew Jorgensen’s address, she’d told the residence hotel clerk to let her know immediately if anyone called or came around asking about him. If the clerk agreed, Sachs would neglect to bring up the residence hotel with the city’s building inspection office.

“Nicely done,” Rhyme said. “You knew there were violations?”

“Not until he agreed at, oh, about the speed of light.” Sachs walked to the evidence that Pulaski had gotten from the loft near SoHo, looking it over.

“Any thoughts, Amelia?” Sellitto asked.

She stood, staring at the boards, one fingernail taking on another as she tried to make sense out of the disparate collection of clues.

“Where’d he get this?” She picked up the bag containing the printout of Myra Weinburg’s face—looking sweet and amused, her eyes on the camera that had snapped her picture. “We should find out.”

Good point. Rhyme hadn’t considered the source of the picture, merely that 522 had downloaded it from a Web site somewhere. He’d been more interested in the paper as a source of clues.

In the photo Myra Weinburg was standing beside a flowering tree, gazing back at the camera, a smile on her face. She was holding a pink drink in a martini glass.

Rhyme noticed Pulaski gazing at the picture too, his eyes troubled again.

The thing is… she looked a little like Jenny.

Rhyme noted distinctive borders and what appeared to be the strokes of some letters to the right, disappearing out of frame. “He’d’ve got it online. To make it look like DeLeon Williams was checking her out.”

Sellitto said, “Maybe we could trace him through the site he downloaded it from. How can we tell where he got it?”

“Google her name,” Rhyme suggested.

Cooper tried this and found a dozen hits, several referring to a different Myra Weinburg. The ones that related to the victim were all professional organizations. But none of the photos of her was similar to the one that 522 had printed out.

Sachs said, “Got an idea. Let me call my computer expert.”

“Who, that guy at Computer Crimes?” Sellitto asked.

“No, somebody even better than him.”

She picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Pammy, hi. Where are you?… Good. I’ve got an assignment. Go online for a Web chat. We’ll do audio by phone.”

Sachs turned to Cooper. “Can you boot up your webcam, Mel?”

The tech typed and a moment later his monitor filled with an image of Pam’s room at her foster parents’ house in Brooklyn. The face of the pretty teenager appeared as she sat down. The image was slightly distorted by the wide-angle lens.

“Hi, Pam.”

“Hi, Mr. Cooper” came the lilting voice through the speakerphone.

“I’ll take over,” Sachs said and replaced Cooper at the keyboard. “Honey, we’ve found a picture and we think it came from the Internet. Could you take a look and tell us if you know where?”

“Sure.”

Sachs held up the sheet to the webcam.

“It’s kind of glary. Can you take it out of the plastic?”

The detective pulled on latex gloves and carefully slipped the sheet out, held it up again.

“That’s better. Sure, it’s from OurWorld.”

“What’s that?”

“You know, a social-networking site. Like Facebook and MySpace. It’s the hot new one. Everybody’s on it.”

“You know about those, Rhyme?” Sachs asked.

He gave a nod. Curiously, he’d been thinking about this recently. He’d read an article in The New York Times about networking sites and virtual existence worlds like Second Life. He’d been surprised to learn that people were spending less time in the outside world and more in the virtual—from avatars to these social-networking sites to telecommuting. Apparently teenagers today spent less time out of doors than in any other period in U.S. history. Ironically, thanks to an exercise regimen that was improving his physical condition and his changing attitudes, Rhyme himself was becoming less virtual and was venturing out more. The dividing line between abled and disabled was blurring.

Sachs now asked Pam, “You can tell for sure it’s from that site?”

“Yeah. They’ve got that special border. If you look close it’s not just a line; it’s little globes, like the earth, over and over again.”

Rhyme squinted. Yes, the border was just as she’d described it. He thought back, recalling OurWorld from the article. “Hello, Pam… there are a lot of members, aren’t there?”

“Oh, hi, Mr. Rhyme. Yeah. Like, thirty or forty million people. Whose realm is that one?”

“Realm?” Sachs asked.

“That’s what they call your page. Your ‘realm.’ Who is she?”

“I’m afraid she was killed today,” Sachs said evenly. “That’s the case I told you about earlier.”

Rhyme wouldn’t have mentioned the murder to a teenager. But this was Sachs’s call; she’d know what to share and what not to.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Pam was sympathetic but not shocked or dismayed by the hard truth.

Rhyme asked, “Pam, can anybody log on and get into your realm?”

“Well, you’re supposed to join. But if you don’t want to post anything or host your own realm you can crack in just to look around.”

“So you’d say that the man who printed this out knows computers.”

“Yeah, he’d have to, I guess. Only he didn’t print it out.”

“What?”

“You can’t print or download anything. Even with the print screen command. There’s a filter on the system—to prevent stalkers, you know. And you can’t crack it. It’s like what protects copyrighted books online.”

“Then how did he get the picture?” Rhyme asked.

Pam laughed. “Oh, he probably did what we all do at school if we want a shot of a cute guy or some weird Goth chick. We just take a picture of the screen with a digital camera. Everybody does that.”

“Sure,” Rhyme said, shaking his head. “Never occurred to me.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Rhyme,” the girl said. “A lot of times people miss the obvious answer.”

Sachs glanced at Rhyme, who smiled at the girl’s reassurance. “Okay, Pam. Thanks. I’ll see you later.”

“‘Bye!”

“Let’s fill in the portrait of our friend.”

Sachs picked up the marker and stepped to the whiteboard.

UNSUB 522 PROFILE

• Male

• Possibly smokes or lives/works with someone who does, or near source of tobacco

• Has children or lives/works near them or near source of toys

• Interest in art, coins?

• Probably white or light-skinned ethnic

• Medium build

• Strong—able to strangle victims

• Access to voice-disguise equipment

• Possibly computer literate; knows OurWorld. Other social-networking sites?

• Takes trophies from victims. Sadist?

• Portion of residence/workplace dark and moist

NONPLANTED EVIDENCE

• Dust

• Old cardboard

• Hair from doll, BASF B35 nylon 6

• Tobacco from Tareyton cigarettes

• Old tobacco, not Tareyton, but brand unknown

• Evidence of Stachybotrys Chartarum mold

Rhyme was looking over the details when he heard Mel Cooper laugh. “Well, well, well.”

“What?”

“This is interesting.”

“Be specific. I don’t need interesting. I need facts.”

“It’s still interesting.” The lab man had been shining a bright light on the slit-open spine of Robert Jorgensen’s book. “You were thinking the doctor was crazy, talking about tracking devices? Well, guess what? Oliver Stone may have a movie here—there is something implanted in it. In the spine tape.”

“Really?” Sachs said, shaking her head. “I thought he was nuts.”

“Let me see,” Rhyme said, his curiosity piqued and skepticism on temporary hold.

Cooper moved a small high-definition camera closer to the examining table and hit the book with an infrared light. It revealed underneath the tape a tiny rectangle of crisscrossed lines.

“Take it out,” Rhyme said.

Carefully Cooper slit the spine tape and removed what appeared to be an inch-long piece of plasticized paper printed with what looked like computer circuit lines. Also, a series of numbers and the manufacturer’s name, DMS, Inc.

Sellitto asked, “The fuck is it? Really a tracking device?”

“I don’t see how. There’s no battery or power source that I can find,” Cooper said.

“Mel, look up the company.”

A fast business search revealed it was Data Management Systems, based outside Boston. He read a description of the outfit, one division of which manufactured these little devices—known as RFID tags, for radio frequency identification.

“I’ve heard about those,” Pulaski said. “It was on CNN.”

“Oh, the definitive source for forensic knowledge,” Rhyme said cynically.

“No, that’s CSI,” Sellitto said, drawing another aborted laugh from Ron Pulaski.

Sachs asked, “What does it do?”

“This is interesting.”

“Again, interesting.”

“Essentially it’s a programmable chip that can be read by a radio scanner. They don’t need a battery; the antenna picks up the radio waves and that gives them enough juice to work.”

Sachs said, “Jorgensen was talking about breaking off antennas to disable them. He also said you could destroy some of them in a microwave. But that one”—she gestured—“he couldn’t nuke. Or so he said.”

Cooper continued, “They’re used for inventory control by manufacturers and retailers. In the next few years nearly every product sold in the U.S. will have its own RFID tag. Some major retailers already require them before they’ll stock a product line.”

Sachs laughed. “That’s just what Jorgensen was telling me. Maybe he wasn’t as National Enquirer as I thought.”

“Every product?” Rhyme asked.

“Yep. So stores know where the stuff in inventory is, how much stock they have, what’s selling faster than other things, when to restock the shelves, when to reorder. They’re also used for baggage handling by airlines so they know where your luggage is without having to visually scan the bar code. And they’re used in credit cards, driver’s licenses, employee IDs. They’re called ‘smart cards’ then.”

“Jorgensen wanted to see my department ID. He looked it over real carefully. Maybe that’s what he was interested in.”

“They’re all over the place,” Cooper continued. “In those discount cards you use in grocery stores, in frequent-flier cards, in tollbooth smart pass transponders.”

Sachs nodded at the evidence boards. “Think about it, Rhyme. Jorgensen was talking about this man he called God knowing all about his life. Enough to steal his identity, to buy things in his name, take out loans, get credit cards, find out where he was.”

Rhyme felt the excitement of moving forward in the hunt. “And Five Twenty-Two knows enough about his victims to get close to them, get inside their defenses. He knows enough about the fall guys to plant evidence that’s identical to what they have at home.”

“And,” Sellitto added, “he knows exactly where they were at the time of the crime. So they won’t have an alibi.”

Sachs looked over the tiny tag. “Jorgensen said his life started to fall apart around the time he got that book.”

“Where’d he buy it? Any receipts or price stickers, Mel?”

“Nope. If there were he cut them out.”

“Call Jorgensen back. Let’s get him in here.”

Sachs pulled out her phone and called the transient hotel where she’d just met with him. She was frowning. “Already?” she asked the clerk.

Doesn’t bode well, Rhyme reflected.

“He’s moved out,” she said after hanging up. “But I know where he’s going.” She found a slip of paper, placed another call. Though after a brief conversation she hung up, sighing. Jorgensen wasn’t at that hotel either, she said; he hadn’t even called to make a reservation.

“Do you have a cell number?”

“He doesn’t have a phone. He doesn’t trust them. But he knows my number. If we’re lucky he’ll call.” Sachs walked closer to the tiny device. “Mel. Cut the wire off. The antenna.”

“What?”

“Jorgensen said now that we’ve got the book, we’re infected too. Cut it off.”

Cooper shrugged and glanced at Rhyme, who thought the idea was absurd. Still, Amelia Sachs didn’t spook easily. “Sure, go ahead. Just make a notation on the chain-of-custody card. ‘Evidence rendered safe.’”

A phrase usually reserved for bombs and handguns.

Rhyme then lost interest in the RFID. He looked up. “All right. Until we hear from him, let’s speculate… Come on, folks. Be ballsy. I need some thoughts here! We’ve got a perp who can get his hands on all this goddamn information about people. How? He knows everything the fall guys bought. Fishing line, kitchen knives, shave cream, fertilizer, condoms, duct tape, rope, beer. There’ve been four victims and four fall guys—at least. He can’t follow everybody around, he doesn’t break into their houses.”

“Maybe he’s a clerk at one of those big discount stores,” Cooper suggested.

“But DeLeon bought some of the evidence at Home Depot—you can’t buy condoms and snack food there.”

“Maybe Five Twenty-Two works for a credit card company?” Pulaski suggested. “He can see what people buy that way.”

“Not bad, rookie, but some of the time the vics must’ve paid cash.”

It was Thom, surprisingly, who provided one answer. He fished out his keys. “I heard Mel mention the discount cards earlier.” He displayed several small plastic cards on his key chain. One for A&P, one for Food Emporium. “I swipe the card and get a discount. Even if I pay cash the store still knows what I bought.”

“Good,” Rhyme said. “But where do we go from there? We’re still looking at dozens of different sources the victims and fall guys shopped at.”

“Ah.”

Rhyme looked at Sachs, who was staring at the evidence board with a faint smile on her face. “I think I’ve got it.”

“What?” Rhyme asked, expecting the clever application of a forensic principle.

“Shoes,” she said simply. “The answer’s shoes.”