he conference room where Sachs and Pulaski had been led was as minimalist as Sterling’s office. She decided a good way to describe the entire company would be “austere deco.”

Sterling himself escorted them to the room and gestured to two chairs, beneath the logo of the window atop the watchtower. He said, “I don’t expect to be treated any differently than anyone else. Since I have all-access rights I’m a suspect too. But I have an alibi for yesterday—I was on Long Island all day. I do that a lot—drive to some of the big discount stores and the membership shopping clubs to see what people are buying, how they buy, what times of day. I’m always looking for ways to make our business more efficient, and you can’t do that unless you know our clients’ needs.”

“Who were you meeting with?”

“Nobody. I never tell anyone who I am. I want to see the operation the way it actually works. Blemishes and everything. But my car’s E-ZPass records should show that I went through the Midtown Tunnel tollbooth about nine A.M. eastbound and then came back through about five-thirty. You can check with DMV.” He recited his tag number. “Oh, and yesterday? I called my son. He took the train up to Westchester to go hiking in some forest preserve. He went by himself and I wanted to check on him. I called about two in the afternoon. The phone records’ll show a call from my Hampton house. Or you can take a look at the incoming call list on his mobile. It should have the date and time. His extension is seven one eight seven.”

Sachs wrote this down, along with the number of Sterling’s summer house’s phone. She thanked him, then Jeremy, the “outside” assistant, arrived and whispered something to his boss.

“Have to take care of something. If there’s anything you need, anything at all, just let me know.”

A few minutes later the first of their suspects arrived. Sean Cassel, the director of Sales and Marketing. He struck her as quite young, probably midthirties, but she’d seen very few people in SSD who were over forty. Data was perhaps the new Silicon Valley, a world of youthful entrepreneurs.

Cassel, with a long face, classically handsome, seemed athletic; solid arms, broad shoulders. He was wearing the SSD “uniform,” in his case a navy suit. The white shirt was immaculate and the cuffs clasped with heavy gold links. The yellow tie was thick silk. He had curly hair, rosy skin and peered steadily at Sachs through glasses. She hadn’t known Dolce & Gabbana made frames.

“Hi.”

“Hello. I’m Detective Sachs, this is Officer Pulaski. Have a seat.” She shook his hand, noting the firm grip that lingered longer than the clasp with Pulaski.

“So you’re a detective?” The sales director had not a shred of interest in the patrolman.

“That’s right. Would you like to see my ID?”

“No, that’s okay.”

“Now, we’re just getting information about some of the employees here. Do you know a Myra Weinburg?”

“No. Should I?”

“She was the victim of a murder.”

“Oh.” A flash of contrition, as the hip façade vanished momentarily. “I heard something about a crime. I didn’t know it was a murder, though. I’m sorry. Was she an employee here?”

“No. But the person who killed her might have had access to information in your company’s computers. I know you have full access to innerCircle; is there any way somebody who works for you could assemble an individual’s dossier?”

He shook his head. “To get a closet you need three passcodes. Or a biomet and one.”

“Closet?”

He hesitated. “Oh, that’s what we call a dossier. We use a lot of shorthand in the knowledge service business.”

Like secrets in a closet, she assumed.

“But nobody could get my passcode. Everyone’s very careful about keeping them secret. Andrew insists on it.” Cassel removed his glasses and polished them with a black cloth that appeared magically in his hand. “He’s fired employees who’ve used other people’s passcodes even with their permission. Fired on the spot.” He concentrated on his glass-polishing task. Then looked up. “But let’s be honest. What you’re really asking about isn’t passcodes but alibis. Am I right?”

“We’d like to know that too. Where were you from noon to four P.M. yesterday?”

“Running. I’m training for a mini-triathlon… You look like you run too. You’re pretty athletic.”

If standing still while punching holes in targets at twenty-five and fifty feet is athletic, then yes. “Could anybody verify that?”

“That you’re athletic? It’s pretty obvious to me.”

Smile. Sometimes it was best to play along. Pulaski stirred—which Cassel noted with amusement—but she said nothing. Sachs didn’t need anybody to defend her honor.

With a sideways glance at the uniformed officer, Cassel continued, “No, I’m afraid not. A friend stayed over. But she left about nine-thirty. Am I a suspect or anything?”

“We’re just getting information at this point,” Pulaski said.

“Are you now?” He sounded condescending, as if he were talking to a child. “Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.”

A line from an old TV show. Sachs couldn’t remember which one.

Sachs asked where he’d been at the times of the other killings—the coin dealer, the earlier rape and the woman who’d owned the Prescott painting. He replaced the glasses and told her he didn’t recall. He seemed completely at ease.

“How often do you go into the data pens?”

“Maybe once a week.”

“Do you take any information out?”

He frowned slightly. “Well… you can’t. The security system won’t let you.”

“And how often do you download dossiers?”

“I don’t know if I ever have. It’s just raw data. Too noisy to be helpful for anything I do.”

“All right. Well, I appreciate your time. I think that’ll do it for now.”

The smile and flirt faded. “So is this a problem? Something I should be worried about?”

“We’re just doing some preliminary investigation.”

“Ah, not giving anything away.” A glance at Pulaski. “Play it close to the chest, right, Sergeant Friday?”

Ah, that was it, Sachs realized. Dragnet. The old police show she and her father would watch in rerun years ago.

After he’d left, another employee joined them. Wayne Gillespie, who oversaw the technical side of the company—the software and hardware. He didn’t exactly fit Sachs’s impression of a geek. Not at first. He was tanned and in good shape, wore an expensive silver—or platinum—bracelet. His grip was strong. But on closer examination she decided he was a classic techie after all, somebody dressed by his mother for class photographs. The short, thin man wore a rumpled suit and a tie that wasn’t knotted properly. His shoes were scuffed, his nails ragged and not properly scrubbed. His hair could use a trim. It was as if he was playing the role of corporate exec but infinitely preferred to be in a dark room with his computer.

Unlike Cassel, Gillespie was nervous, hands constantly in motion, fiddling with three electronic devices on his belt—a BlackBerry, a PDA and an elaborate cell phone. He avoided eye contact—flirt was the last thing on his mind, though, like the sales director, his wedding ring finger was bare. Maybe Sterling preferred single men in positions of power at his company. Loyal princes rather than ambitious dukes.

Sachs’s impression was that Gillespie had heard less than Cassel about their presence here and she snagged his attention when she described the crimes. “Interesting. Okay, interesting. That’s sleek, he’s pianoing data to commit crimes.”

“He’s what?”

Gillespie flicked his fingers together with nervous energy. “I mean, he’s finding data. Collecting it.”

No comment about the fact that people had been murdered. Was this an act? The real killer might have feigned horror and sympathy.

Sachs asked his whereabouts on Sunday and he too had no alibi, though he launched into a long story of code he was debugging at home and some role-playing computer game he was competing in.

“So there’d be a record of when you were online yesterday?”

A hesitation now. “Oh, I was just practicing, you know. I wasn’t online. I looked up and suddenly it was late. You’re so nod, everything else kind of disappears.”

“Nod?”

He realized he was speaking a foreign language. “Oh, I mean, like, you’re in a zone. You get caught up in the game. Like the rest of your life dozes off.”

He claimed not to know Myra Weinburg either. And no one could have gotten access to his passcodes, he assured her. “As for cracking my words, good luck—they’re all sixteen-digit random characters. I’ve never written them down. I’m lucky I’ve got a good memory.”

Gillespie was on his computer “in the system” all the time. He added defensively, “I mean, it’s my job.” Though he frowned in confusion when asked about downloading individual dossiers. “There’s, like, no point. Reading about everything John Doe bought last week at his local grocery store. Hello… I’ve got better things to do.”

He also admitted that he spent a lot of time in the data pens, “tuning the boxes.” Her impression was that he liked it there, found it comfortable—the same place that she couldn’t escape from fast enough.

Gillespie too was unable to recall where he’d been at the times of the other killings. She thanked him and he left, pulling his PDA off his belt before he was through the doorway and typing a message with his thumbs faster than Sachs could use all her fingers.

As they waited for the next all-access suspect to arrive, Sachs asked Pulaski, “Impressions?”

“Okay, I don’t like Cassel.”

“I’m with you there.”

“But he seems too obnoxious to be Five Twenty-Two. Too yuppie, you know? If he could kill somebody with his ego, then, yeah. In a minute… As for Gillespie? I’m not so sure. He tried to seem surprised about Myra’s death but I’m not sure he was. And that attitude of his—‘pianoing’ and ‘nod’? You know what those are? Expressions from the street. ‘Pianoing’ means looking for crack, like your fingers are all over the place. You know, frantic. And ‘nod’ means being drugged out on smack or a tranquilizer. It’s how kids from the burbs talk trying to sound cool when they’re scoring from dealers in Harlem or the Bronx.”

“You think he’s into drugs?”

“Well, he seemed pretty twitchy. But my impression?”

“I asked.”

“It’s not drugs he’s addicted to, it’s this—” The young officer gestured around him. “The data.”

She thought about this and agreed. The atmosphere in SSD was intoxicating, though not in a pleasant way. Eerie and disorienting. It was like being on painkillers.

Another man appeared in the doorway. He was the Human Resources director, a young, trim, light-skinned African American. Peter Arlonzo-Kemper explained that he rarely went into the data pens but had permission to, so that he could meet with employees at their job stations. He did go online into innerCircle from time to time on personnel-related issues—but only to review data on employees of SSD, never the public.

So he had accessed “closets,” despite what Sterling had said about him.

The intense man pasted a smile on his face and answered in monotones, frequently changing the subject, the gist of his message being that Sterling—always “Andrew,” Sachs had noticed—was the “kindest, most considerate boss anybody could ask for.” Nobody would ever think about betraying him or the “ideals” of SSD, whatever those might be. He couldn’t imagine a criminal within the hallowed halls of the company.

His admiration was tedious.

Once she got him off the worship, he explained that he had been with his wife all day on Sunday (making him the only married employee she’d talked to). And he’d been cleaning out his recently deceased mother’s house in the Bronx on the date Alice Sanderson had been killed. He’d been alone but imagined he could find someone who’d seen him. Arlonzo-Kemper couldn’t recall where he’d been during the times of the other killings.

When they had finished the interviews the guard escorted Sachs and Pulaski back to Sterling’s outer office. The CEO was meeting with a man about Sterling’s age, solid and with combed-over dark blond hair. He sat slouching in one of the stiff wooden chairs. He wasn’t an SSD employee: He wore a Polo shirt and a sports jacket. Sterling looked up and saw Sachs. He ended the meeting and rose, then escorted the man out.

Sachs looked at what the visitor was holding, a stack of papers with the name “Associated Warehousing” on top, apparently the name of his company.

“Martin, could you call a car for Mr. Carpenter?”

“Yes, Andrew.”

“We’re all together, are we, Bob?”

“Yes, Andrew.” Carpenter, towering over Sterling, somberly shook the CEO’s hand, then turned and left. A security guard led him down the hall.

The officers accompanied Sterling back into his office.

“What did you find?” he asked.

“Nothing conclusive. Some people have alibis, some don’t. We’ll keep pursuing the case and see if the evidence or witnesses lead us anywhere. There’s one thing I was wondering. Could I get a copy of a dossier? Arthur Rhyme’s.”

“Who?”

“He’s one of the men on the list—one that we think was wrongly arrested.”

“Of course.” Sterling sat at his desk, touched his thumb to a reader beside the keyboard and typed for a few seconds. He paused, eyes on the screen. Then more keyboarding and a document began printing out. He handed the thirty or so pages to her—Arthur Rhyme’s “closet.”

Well, that was easy, she noted. Then Sachs nodded at the computer. “Is there a record of you doing that?”

“A record? Oh, no. We don’t log our internal downloads.” He looked over his notes again. “I’ll have Martin pull the client list together. It might take two or three hours.”

As they walked into the outer office, Sean Cassel stepped inside. He wasn’t smiling. “What’s this about a list of clients, Andrew? You’re going to give that to them?”

“That’s right, Sean.”

“Why clients?”

Pulaski said, “We were thinking that somebody who works for an SSD client got information he used in the crimes.”

The young man scoffed. “Obviously that’s what you think… But why? None of them has direct innerCircle access. They can’t download closets.”

Pulaski explained, “They might’ve bought mailing lists that had the information in them.”

“Mailing lists? Do you know how many times a client would have to be in the system to assemble all the information you’re talking about? It’d be a full-time job. Think about it.”

Pulaski blushed and looked down. “Well…”

Mark Whitcomb, of the Compliance Department, was standing near Martin’s desk. “Sean, he doesn’t know how the business works.”

“Well, Mark, I’m thinking it’s more about logic, really. Doesn’t it seem? Each client would have to buy hundreds of mailing lists. And there are probably three, four hundred of them who’ve been in the closets of the sixteens they’re interested in.”

“Sixteens?” Sachs asked.

“It means ‘people.’” He waved vaguely toward the narrow windows, presumably suggesting humanity outside the Gray Rock. “It comes from the code we use.”

More shorthand. Closets, sixteens, pianoing… There was something smug, if not contemptuous, about the expressions.

Sterling said coolly, “We need to do everything we can to find the truth here.”

Cassel shook his head. “It’s not a client, Andrew. Nobody would dare use our data for a crime. It’d be suicide.”

“Sean, if SSD’s involved in this we have to know.”

“All right, Andrew. Whatever you think best.” Sean Cassel ignored Pulaski, gave a cold, nonflirtatious smile to Sachs and left.

Sachs said to Sterling, “We’ll pick up that client list when we come back to interview the tech managers.”

As the CEO gave instructions to Martin, Sachs heard Mark Whitcomb whisper to Pulaski, “Don’t pay any attention to Cassel. He and Gillespie—they’re the golden boys of this business. Young Turks, you know. I’m a hindrance. You’re a hindrance.”

“Not a problem,” the young officer said noncommittally, though Sachs could see he was grateful. He has everything but confidence, she thought.

Whitcomb left, and the two officers said good-bye to Sterling.

Then the CEO touched her arm gently. “There’s something I want to say, Detective.”

She turned to the man, who stood with his arms at his side, feet spread, looking up at her with his intense green eyes. It was impossible to look away from his focused, mesmerizing gaze.

“I’m not going to deny that I’m in the knowledge service provider field to make money. But I’m also in it to improve our society. Think about what we do. Think about the kids who’re going to get decent clothes and nice Christmas presents for the first time because of the money their parents save, thanks to SSD. Or about the young marrieds who can now find a bank that’ll give them a mortgage for their first house because SSD can predict that in fact they’ll be acceptable credit risks. Or the identity thieves that’re caught because our algorithms see a glitch in your credit card spending patterns. Or the RFID tags in a child’s bracelet or wristwatch that tell the parents where they are every minute of the day. The intelligent toilets that diagnose diabetes when you don’t even know you’re at risk.

“And take your line of work, Detective. Say you’re investigating a murder. There’re traces of cocaine on a knife, the murder weapon. Our PublicSure program can tell you who with a cocaine arrest in his background used a knife in the commission of a felony any time in the past twenty years, in any geographic area you like, and whether they were right- or left-handed and what their shoe sizes are. Before you even ask, their fingerprints pop up on the screen, along with their pictures, and details of their M.O.’s, distinguishing characteristics, disguises they’ve used in the past, distinctive voice patterns and a dozen more attributes.

“We can also tell you who bought that particular brand of knife—or maybe even that very knife. And possibly we know where the purchaser was at the time of the crime and where he is now. If the system can’t find him, it can tell you the percentage likelihood of his being at a known accomplice’s house and display their fingerprints and distinguishing characteristics. And this whole bundle of data comes to you in a grand total of about twenty seconds.

“Our society needs help, Detective. Remember the broken windows? Well, SSD is here to help…” He smiled. “That’s the wind-up. Here’s the pitch. I’m asking that you be discreet in the investigation. I’ll do whatever I can—especially if it seems this is somebody from SSD. But if rumors get started about breaches here, careless security, our competitors and critics would jump on that. And jump hard. It could badly interfere with SSD’s job to fix as many windows as we can and make this world better. Are we in agreement?”

Amelia Sachs suddenly felt bad about this duplicitous mission, planting the seeds to encourage their perp to go after the trap without telling Sterling. She struggled to maintain eye contact as she said, “I think we’re in complete agreement.”

“Wonderful. Now, Martin, please show our guests out.”