eath is simple.

I’ve never understood why people complicate it. Movies, for instance. I’m not a fan of thrillers but I’ve seen my share. Sometimes I’ll take a sixteen out on a date, to stave off boredom, to keep up appearances or because I’m going to kill her later, and we’ll sit in a movie theater and it’s easier than dinner; you don’t have to talk so much. And I watch the film and think, What on earth is going on up there on the screen, setting up these contrived ways to kill?

Why use wires and electronics and elaborate weapons and plots when you can walk up to someone and beat them to death with a hammer in thirty seconds?

Simple. Efficient.

And make no mistake, the police are smart (and, how’s this for irony, a lot of them have SSD and innerCircle helping them out). The more complicated the scheme, the more chance of leaving behind something they can use to track you down, the more chance for witnesses.

And my plans today for this sixteen I’m following through the streets of lower Manhattan are simplicity itself.

The failure at the cemetery yesterday is behind me now and I’m exhilarated. I’m on a mission and, as part of it, I’ll be adding to one of my collections.

As I follow my target I dodge sixteens right and left. Why, look at them all… My pulse is picking up. My head is throbbing at the thought that these sixteens are themselves collections—of their past. More information than we can comprehend. DNA is, after all, nothing more than a database of our bodies and genetic history, stretching back millennia. If you could plug that into hard drives, how much data could you extract? Makes innerCircle look like a Commodore 64.

Breathtaking…

But back to the task at hand. I maneuver around a young sixteen, smell her perfume, which she dabbed on this morning in her Staten Island or Brooklyn apartment in a sad attempt to exude competence and came off as cheaply seductive. I move closer to my target, feeling the comfort of the pistol against my skin. Knowledge may be one kind of power, but there are others that are nearly as effective.

“Hey, Professor, we’ve got some activity.”

“Uh-huh,” Roland Bell replied, his voice spilling from the speakers in the surveillance van, where sat Lon Sellitto, Ron Pulaski and several tactical officers.

Bell, an NYPD detective who worked with Rhyme and Sellitto occasionally, was on his way from the Water Street Hotel to One Police Plaza. He’d traded his typical jeans, work shirt and sports coat for a rumpled suit, since he was playing the role of the fictional professor Carlton Soames.

Or, as he’d put it in his North Carolina drawl, “A stinkball on a hook and line.”

Bell now whispered into a lapel microphone as invisible as the tiny speaker in his ear, “How close?”

“He’s behind you about fifty feet.”

“Uhm.”

Bell was at the core of Lincoln Rhyme’s Expert Plan, which was based on his increasing understanding of 522. “He’s not taking our computer trap but he’s dying for information. I know it. We need a different sort of trap. Hold a press conference and lure him out into the open. Have them announce that we’ve hired an expert and get somebody undercover up onstage.”

“You’re assuming he watches TV.”

“Oh, he’ll be checking the media to see how we’re handling the case, especially after the incident at the cemetery.”

Sellitto and Rhyme had contacted somebody not connected with the 522 case—Roland Bell was always game, if he wasn’t on another assignment. Rhyme had then called a friend at Carnegie Mellon University, where he’d lectured several times. He told him about 522’s crimes, and the authorities at the school, which was renowned for its work in high-technology security, agreed to help. Their webmaster added Carlton Soames, Ph.D., to the school’s Web site.

Rodney Szarnek faked a résumé for Soames and sent it out to dozens of science Web sites, then cobbled together a credible site for Soames himself. Sellitto got a room for the professor at the Water Street Hotel, held the press conference and waited to see if 522 would take the bait in this trap.

Which apparently he had.

Bell had left the Water Street Hotel not long before and paused, carrying on a credible but fake phone call and standing in the open long enough to make sure he caught 522’s attention. Surveillance showed that a man had quickly left the hotel just after Bell and was now following him.

“You recognize him from SSD? He one of the suspects on our list?” Sellitto asked Pulaski, sitting beside him, staring at the monitor. Four plainclothes officers were a block or so from Bell; two wore hidden video cameras.

On the crowded streets, though, it was hard to get a clear view of the killer’s face. “Could be one of the service techs. Or, weird, it almost looks like Andrew Sterling himself. Or, no, maybe it’s that he kind of walks like him. I’m not sure. Sorry.”

Sweating heavily in the hot van, Sellitto wiped his face, then leaned forward and said into the mike, “Okay, Professor, Five Twenty-Two’s moving up. Maybe forty feet behind you. He’s in a dark suit, dark tie. He’s carrying a briefcase. His gait profile suggests that he’s armed.” Most cops who’ve worked the street for a few years can recognize the difference in posture and walking patterns when a suspect is carrying a weapon.

“Gotcha,” commented the laconic officer, who carried two pistols himself and was ambidextrously talented with them.

“Man,” Sellitto muttered, “I hope this works. Okay, Roland, go ahead with the right turn.”

“Uhm.”

Rhyme and Sellitto didn’t believe that 522 would shoot the professor on the street. What would killing him accomplish? Rhyme speculated that the killer’s intent was to abduct Soames, to learn what the police knew, then murder him later or perhaps threaten him and his family to have Soames sabotage the investigation. So the script called for Roland Bell to take a detour out of public view, where 522 would make his move and they’d nail him. Sellitto had found a construction site that would work well. It featured a long sidewalk, cordoned off to the public, that was a shortcut to One Police Plaza. Bell would ignore the Closed sign and head down the sidewalk, where he’d be lost to sight after thirty or forty feet. A team was hiding at the far end to move in when 522 approached.

The detective made the turn, stepping around the barrier tape and heading up the dusty sidewalk, while the rattle and slam of jackhammers and pile drivers filled the interior of the van from Bell’s sensitive mike.

“We’ve got you on visual, Roland,” Sellitto said as one of the officers beside him hit a switch and another camera took up surveillance. “You watching, Linc?”

“No, Lon, Dancing with the Celebrities is on. Jane Fonda and Mickey Rooney are up next.”

“It’s Dancing with the Stars, Linc.”

Rhyme’s voice clattered into the van. “Is Five Twenty-Two going to make the turn? Or is he going to balk?… Come on, come on…”

Sellitto moved the mouse and double-clicked. Another image, on a split screen, popped up, from a Search and Surveillance team’s video camera. It depicted a different angle: Bell’s back moving down the sidewalk, away from the camera. The detective was glancing with curiosity at the construction site, as any normal passerby would. A moment later, 522 appeared behind him, keeping his distance, looking around too, though obviously with no interest in the workers; he was scanning for witnesses or the police.

Then he hesitated, looked around once more. And started to close the distance.

“Okay, everybody, heads up,” Sellitto called. “He’s moving up on you, Roland. We’re going to lose you on visual in about five seconds so keep an eye out. You copy?”

“Yep,” said the easy-going officer. As if answering a bartender who’d asked if he wanted a glass with his bottle of Budweiser.