incent Reynolds was studying the woman in the restaurant, a slim brunette, about thirty, in sweats. Her short hair was pulled back and stuck in place with bobby pins. They'd followed her from her old apartment in Greenwich Village, first to a local tavern and now here, a coffeehouse a few blocks away. She and her friend, a blonde in her twenties, were having a great time, laughing and talking nonstop.

Lucy Richter was enjoying her last brief moments on earth.

Duncan was listening to classical music on the Buick's sound system. He was his typically thoughtful, calm self. Sometimes you just couldn't tell what was going on in his mind.

Vincent, on the other hand, felt the hunger unraveling within him. He ate a candy bar, then another.

Fuck the great scheme of things. I need a girl...

Duncan took out his gold pocket watch and looked at it, gently wound the stem.

Vincent had seen the watch a few times but he was always impressed with the piece. Duncan had explained that it was made by Breguet, a French watchmaker who lived a long time ago ("in my opinion the finest who ever lived").

The watch was simple. It had a white face, Roman numerals and some small dials that showed the phases of the moon and was a perpetual calendar. It also had a "parachute," an antishock system in it, Duncan explained. Breguet's own invention.

Vincent now asked him, "How old is it, your watch?"

"It was made in the year twelve."

"Twelve? Like in Roman times?"

Duncan smiled. "No, sorry. That's the date on the original bill of sale, so that's what I think of as the year of manufacture. I mean the year twelve in the French revolutionary calendar. After the monarchy fell, the republic declared a new calendar, starting in seventeen ninety-two. It was a curious concept. The weeks had ten days, and each month had thirty. Every six years was a leap year devoted exclusively to sports. For some reason, the government thought the calendar would be more egalitarian than the traditional one. But it was too unwieldy. It only lasted fourteen years. Like a lot of revolutionary ideas — they seem good on paper but they're not very practical."

Duncan studied the golden disk with affection. "I like watches from that era. Back then a watch was power. Not many people could afford one. The owner of a watch was a man who controlled time. You came to him and you waited until the time he'd set for the meeting. Chains and fobs were invented so that even when a man carried a watch in his pocket, you still could see he owned one. Watchmakers were gods in those days." Duncan paused. "I was speaking figuratively, but in a way it's true."

Vincent cocked an eyebrow.

"There was a philosophical movement in the eighteenth century that used the watch as a metaphor. It held that God created the mechanism of the universe, then wound it up and started it running. Sort of a perpetual clock. God was called the 'Great Watchmaker.' Whether you believe it or not, the philosophy had a lot of followers. It gave watchmakers an almost priestlike status."

Another glance at the Breguet. He put it away. "We should go," Duncan said, nodding at the women. "They'll be leaving soon."

He put the car in gear, signaled and pulled into the street, leaving behind their victim, about to lose her life to one man and, soon after, her dignity to another. They couldn't take her tonight, though, because Duncan had learned that she had a husband who worked odd hours and could be home at any moment.

Vincent was breathing deeply, trying to keep the hunger at bay. He ate a pack of chips. He asked, "How are you going to do it? Kill her, I mean."

Duncan was silent for a few moments. "You asked me a question earlier. About how long it took the first two victims to die."

Vincent nodded.

"Well, it's going to take Lucy a long time." Although they'd lost the book on torture, Duncan had apparently memorized much of it. He now described the technique he'd use to murder her. It was called water boarding. You suspend the victim on her back with her feet up. Then you tape her mouth shut and pour water up her nose. You can take as long as you like to kill the person if you give her air from time to time.

"I'm going to try to keep her going for a half hour. Or forty minutes, if I can."

"She deserves it, hm?" Vincent asked.

Duncan paused. "The question you're really asking is why am I killing these particular people."

"Well..." It was true.

"I've never told you."

"No, you haven't."

Trust is nearly as precious as time...

Duncan glanced at Vincent then back to the street. "You know, we're all on earth for a certain period of time. Maybe only days or months. Many years, we hope."

"Right."

"It's as if God — or whatever you believe in — has a huge list of everybody on earth. When the hands of His clock hit a certain time, that's it. They're gone... Well, I have my own list."

"Ten people."

"Ten people... The difference is that God doesn't have any good reason for killing them. I do."

Vincent was quiet. For a moment he wasn't clever and he wasn't hungry. He was just regular Vincent, listening to a friend sharing something that was important.

"I'm finally comfortable enough telling you what that reason is."

And he proceeded to do just that.

The moon was a band of white light on the hood of the car, reflecting into her eyes.

Amelia Sachs was now speeding along the East River, the emergency flasher sitting cockeyed on the dash.

She felt a weight crushing her, the consequences from all the events of the past few days: The likelihood that corrupt officers were involved with killers who'd murdered Ben Creeley and Frank Sarkowski. The risk that Inspector Flaherty might take the case away from her at any minute. Dennis Baker's espionage and the vote of no confidence from the brass about Nick. Deputy Inspector Jefferies's tantrum.

And, most of all, the terrible news about her father.

Thinking: What hope is there in doing your job, working hard, giving up your peace of mind, risking your life, if the business of being a cop ultimately spoils the decent core within you?

She slammed the shifter into fourth, nudging the car to seventy. The engine howled like a wolf at midnight.

No cop was better than her father, more solid, more conscientious. And yet look at what had happened to him... But then she realized that no, no, she couldn't think of it that way. Nothing had happened to him. Turning bad was his own decision.

She remembered Herman Sachs as a calm, humorous man, who enjoyed his afternoons with friends, watching car races, roaming with his daughter through Nassau County junkyards in treasure hunts for elusive carburetors or gaskets or tailpipes. But now she knew that that persona was merely the facade, beneath which was a much darker person, someone she hadn't known at all.

Within Amelia Sachs's soul was an edgy force, something that made her doubt and made her question and compelled her to take risks, however great. She suffered for this. But the reward was the exhilaration when an innocent life was saved or a dangerous perp collared.

That fire drove her in one direction; it had apparently pushed her father in another.

The Chevy fishtailed. She easily brought the skid under control.

Over the Brooklyn Bridge, a skidding turn off the highway. A dozen more turns, this way, that way, heading south.

Finally she found the pier she was looking for and hit the brakes, coming to a stop at the end of ten-foot skid marks. She got out of the car, slamming the door hard. Making her way through a small park, over a concrete barricade. Sachs ignored the warning sign and walked out onto the pier, through a steady, hissing wind.

Man, it was cold.

She stopped at a low wooden railing, gripped it in her gloved hands. Memories assaulted her:

At age ten, a warm summer night, her father boosting her up onto the pylon halfway out on the pier — it was still there — holding her tight. She wasn't afraid because he'd taught her to swim at the community pool and, even if a gust of wind had blown them off the pier into the East River, they'd simply swim back to the ladder, laughing and racing, climb back up — and maybe they'd even jump off again together, holding hands as they plummeted ten feet into the murky, warm water.

At age fourteen, her father with his coffee and she with a soda, looking at the water as he spoke about Rose. "Your mother, she has her moods, Amie. It doesn't mean she doesn't love you. Remember that. She's just that way. But she's proud of you. Know what she just told me the other day?"

And later, after she'd become a cop, standing here, beside the very same Camaro she'd driven tonight (though painted yellow at the time, a beautiful shade for a muscle car). Sachs in her uniform, Herman in his tweed jacket and cords.

"I've got a problem, Amie."

"Problem?"

"Sort of a physical thing."

She'd waited, feeling her fingernail dig into her thumb.

"It's a bit of cancer. Nothing serious. I'll be going through the treatment." He gave her the details — he'd always talked straight to his daughter — and then he grew uncharacteristically grave, shaking his head. "But the big problem... I just paid five bucks for a haircut and now I'm going to lose it all." Rubbing his scalp. "Wish I'd saved the money."

The tears now rolled down her cheeks. "Goddamn it," Sachs muttered to herself. Stop.

But she couldn't. The tears continued and the icy moisture stung her face.

Returning to the car, she fired up the big engine and returned to Rhyme's. When she got home he was upstairs in bed, asleep.

Sachs stepped into the exercise room, where Pulaski had written up the evidence charts on the Creeley/Sarkowski cases. She couldn't help but smile. The diligent rookie had not only stashed the whiteboard here but he'd covered it with a sheet. She pulled the cloth off and looked over his careful writing then added a few notations of her own.

BENJAMIN CREELEY HOMICIDE

• 56-year-old Creeley, apparently suicide by hanging. Clothesline. But had broken thumb, couldn't tie noose.

• Computer-written suicide note about depression. But appeared not to be suicidally depressed, no history of mental/emotional problems.

• Around Thanksgiving two men broke into his house and possibly burned evidence. White men, but faces not observed. One bigger than other. They were inside for about an hour.

• Evidence in Westchester house:

o Broke through lock; skillful job.

o Leather texture marks on fireplace tools and Creeley's desk.

o Soil in front of fireplace has higher acid content than soil around house and contains pollutants. From industrial site?

o Traces of burned cocaine in fireplace.

o Ash in fireplace.

 Financial records, spreadsheet, references to millions of dollars.

 Checking logo on documents, sending entries to forensic accountant.

 Diary re: getting oil changed, haircut appointment and going to St. James Tavern.

 Analysis of ash from Queens CS lab:

 Logo of software used in corporate accounting.

 Forensic accountant: standard executive compensation figures.

 Burned because of what they revealed, or to lead investigators off?

• St. James Tavern

o Creeley came here several times.

o Apparently didn't use drugs while here.

o Not sure whom he met with, but maybe cops from the nearby 118th Precinct of the NYPD.

o Last time he was here — just before his death — he got into an argument with persons unknown.

o Checked money from officers at St. James — serial numbers are clean, but found coke and heroin. Stolen from precinct?

 Not much drugs missing, only 6 or 7 oz. of pot, 4 of coke.

• Unusually few organized crime cases at the 118th Precinct but no evidence of intentional stalling by officers.

• Two gangs in the East Village possible but not likely suspects.

• Interview with Jordan Kessler, Creeley's partner, and follow-up with wife.

o Confirmed no obvious drug use.

o Didn't appear to associate with criminals.

o Drinking more than usual, taken up gambling; trips to Vegas and Atlantic City. Losses were large, but not significant to Creeley.

o Not clear why he was depressed.

o Kessler didn't recognize burned records.

o Awaiting list of clients.

o Kessler doesn't appear to gain by Creeley's death.

• Sachs and Pulaski followed by AMG

FRANK SARKOWSKI HOMICIDE

• Sarkowski was 57 years old, no police record, murdered on November 4 of this year, survived by wife and two teenage children.

• Victim owned building and business in Manhattan. Business was doing maintenance for other companies and utilities.

• Art Snyder was case detective.

• No suspects.

• Murder/robbery?

o Was shot to death as part of apparent robbery. Weapon recovered on scene — Smith & Wesson knockoff,.38 Special, no prints, cold gun. Case detective believes it could have been a professional hit.

• Business deal went bad?

• Killed in Queens — not sure why he was there.

o Deserted part of borough, near natural gas tanks.

• File and evidence missing.

o File went to 158th Precinct on/around November 28. Never returned. No indication of requesting officer.

o No indication where it went in the 158th.

o DI Jefferies not cooperative.

• No known connection with Creeley.

• No criminal record — Sarkowski or company.

• Rumors — money going to cops at the 118th Precinct. Ended up someplace/someone with a Maryland connection. Baltimore mob involved?

o No leads.

Sachs stared at the chart for a half hour until her head began to nod. She returned upstairs, stripped, stepped into the shower and let the hot water pulse down on her, hard, stinging, for a long time. She dried off, pulled on a T-shirt and silk boxers, and returned to the bedroom.

She climbed into bed beside Rhyme and rested her head on his chest.

"You all right?" he asked groggily.

She said nothing but reached up and kissed his cheek. Then she lay back and stared at the bedside clock as the digital numbers flipped forward. The minutes passed slowly, slowly, each one an entire long day passing, until finally, close to 3 A.M., she slept.