Rather than just taking the money, though, they’d arrange for the victims to lose it in sham business deals, like with Frank Sarkowski, or in fake poker games in Vegas or Atlantic City—the approach they took with Ben Creeley. This would provide the marks with a reasonable explanation as to why they were suddenly two or three hundred thousand dollars poorer.
But then Dennis Baker made a mistake. He got lazy. It wasn’t easy finding the right marks for the scam and he decided to go back to some of the earlier targets for a second installment of extortion money.
Some paid the second time. But two of them—Sarkowski and Creeley—were businessmen with pretty tough hides, and while they were willing to pay once to get Baker out of their hair, they drew the line at a second payment. One threatened to go to the police, and one to the press. In early November Baker and a cop from the 118th had kidnapped Sarkowski and driven him to an industrial section of Queens, near where a client of his company had a factory. He’d been shot, the crime staged to look like a mugging. Several weeks later Baker and the same cop had broken into Creeley’s high-rise, strung a rope around the businessman’s neck and tossed him off the balcony.
They’d stolen or destroyed the men’s personal files, books and diaries—anything that might’ve led back to Baker and his scam. As for the police reports, there was virtually nothing in Creeley’s that was incriminating but the Sarkowski file contained references to evidence that a sharp investigator might draw some troubling conclusions from. So one of the people involved in the plan had engineered its disappearance.
Baker thought the deaths would go unnoticed and they continued with their scam—until a young policewoman showed up. Detective Third-Grade Amelia Sachs didn’t believe that Benjamin Creeley had committed suicide and started looking into the death.
There was no stopping the woman. They had no choice but to kill her. With Sachs dead or incapacitated Baker doubted that anyone else would follow up on the cases as fervently as she was. The problem, of course, was that if she were to die, Lincoln Rhyme would deduce immediately that her death was related to the St. James investigation and then nothing would stop him and Sellitto from pursuing the killers.
So Baker needed Sachs to die for a reason unrelated to the 118th Precinct crimes.
Baker put some feelers out to a few organized crime wise guys he knew and soon he heard from Gerald Duncan, a professional killer who could manipulate crime scenes and set up fake motives to steer suspicion completely away from the man or woman hiring him to kill. “Motive is the one sure way to get yourself caught,” Duncan had explained. “Eliminate the motive, you eliminate suspicion.”
They’d agreed on a price—brother, the man wasn’t cheap—and Duncan had gone to work planning the job.
Duncan tracked down some loser he could use to feed information about the Watchmaker to the police. Vincent Reynolds turned out to be a perfect patsy, soaking up the story Duncan fed him—about going psycho because of a dead wife and killing apathetic citizens.
Then, the previous day, Duncan had put the plan into operation. The Watchmaker killed the first two of the victims, picked at random—some guy he’d kidnapped from West Street in the Village and murdered on the pier and the one in the alley a few hours later. Baker had made sure Sachs was assigned to the case. There were two more attempted murders by the killer—the fact they didn’t succeed was irrelevant; the Watchmaker was still one spooky doer, who needed to be stopped fast.
Then Duncan made his next moves: sending Vincent to attack Kathryn Dance, so that the police would believe that the Watchmaker was willing to kill police officers, and setting up Vincent to be captured and dime the Watchmaker out to the police.
It was now time for the final step: The Watchmaker would kill yet another cop, Amelia Sachs, her death entirely the work of a vengeful killer, unrelated to the 118th Precinct investigation.
Duncan now asked, “She found out you were spying on her?”
Baker nodded. “You called that right. She’s one smart bitch. But I did what you suggested.”
Duncan anticipated that she’d be suspicious of everyone except people she knew personally. He’d explained that when people suspect you, you have to give them another—harmless—reason for your behavior. You simply confess to the lesser crime, act contrite and they’re satisfied; you’re off the suspect list.
At Duncan’s suggestion, Baker asked some officers about Sachs. He heard rumors that she’d been involved with a crooked cop and he’d ginned up an email from someone in the Big Building and used that as a reason to be spying on her. She wasn’t happy, but she didn’t suspect him of anything worse.
“Here’s the plan,” Duncan now explained, showing him a diagram of an office building in Midtown. “This’s where the last victim works. Her name’s Sarah Stanton. She’s got a cubicle on the second floor. I picked the place because of the layout. It’ll be perfect. I couldn’t put one of the clocks there because the police announced the killer was using them—but I pulled up the time and date window on her computer.”
“Good touch.”
Duncan smiled. “I thought so.” The killer’s voice was soft, his words precise, but the tone was filled with the modest pleasure of an artisan showing off a finished piece of furniture or a musical instrument . . . or a watch, Baker reflected.
Duncan explained that he’d dressed like a workman, waited until Sarah went out then planted a fire extinguisher, filled with flammable alcohol. In a few minutes Baker was to call Rhyme or Sellitto and report that he’d found evidence of where the extinguisher bomb was planted. The ESU and bomb squad would then speed to the office, Amelia Sachs too.
“I set the device up so that if she moves the extinguisher a certain way, it’ll spray her with alcohol and ignite. Alcohol burns really fast. It’ll kill or injure her but won’t set fire to the whole office.” The police, he continued, might even disarm the device and save the woman. It wouldn’t matter; all that Duncan cared about was getting Amelia Sachs into the office to search the scene.
Sarah’s cubicle was at the end of a narrow corridor. Sachs would be searching it alone, as she always did. When she turned her back, Baker, waiting nearby, would shoot her and anybody else present. The weapon he’d use was Duncan’s .32 automatic, loaded with bullets from the same box he’d intentionally left in the SUV for the police to find. After shooting Sachs, Baker would break a nearby window, which was fifteen feet above an alleyway. He’d throw the gun out, making it seem as if the Watchmaker had leapt out the window and escaped, dropping the gun. The unusual murder weapon, linked to the rounds found in the Explorer, would leave no doubt that the Watchmaker was the killer.
Sachs would be dead and the investigation into the corruption at the 118th Precinct would grind to a halt.
Duncan said, “Let some other officers get to her body first but it’d be a nice touch if you pushed them aside and tried to resuscitate her.”
Baker said, “You think of everything, don’t you?”
“What’s so miraculous about timepieces,” Duncan said, gazing at the moon-faced clock, “is that none of them ever has more or fewer parts than is needed to do what the watchmaker intends. Nothing missing, but nothing superfluous.” He added in a soft voice, “It’s pure perfection, wouldn’t you say?”
Amelia Sachs and Ron Pulaski were slogging through the cold streets of lower Manhattan, and she was reflecting that sometimes the biggest hurdles in a case weren’t from the perps but from bystanders, witnesses and victims.
They were following up on one of the clues that had been uncovered in the church, receipts from a parking garage not far from the pier where the first victim had died. But the attendant was unhelpful. Lady, no, he no familiar. Nobody look like him I remember. Ahmed—maybe he saw him. . . . Oh, but he not here today. No, I don’t know his phone number. . . .
And so it went.
Frustrated, Sachs nodded toward a restaurant adjacent to the parking garage. She said, “Maybe he stopped in there. Let’s give it
a try.”
Just then her radio crackled. She recognized Sellitto’s voice. “Amelia, you copy?”
She grabbed Pulaski’s arm and turned up the volume, so they both could hear. “Go ahead, K.”
“Where are you?”
“Downtown. The parking garage didn’t pan out. We’re going to canvass a couple of restaurants.”
“Forget it. Get up to Three Two Street and Seven Avenue. Fast. Dennis Baker’s found a lead. Looks like the next vic’s in an office building there.”
“Who is she?”
“We’re not sure exactly. We’ll probably have to sweep the whole place. We’ve got Arson and the bomb squad on the way—she’s the one he’s going to burn to death. Man, I hope we’re in time. Anyway, get up there now.”
“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
The fire department was sending two dozen men and women into the twenty-seven-story midtown building. And Bo Haumann was assembling five ESU entry teams—expanded ones, six cops each, rather than the typical four—to do a floor-by-floor search.
Sachs’s drive here had taken closer to a half hour, thanks to holiday traffic. Not a huge delay but the extra fifteen minutes made a big difference: She’d missed a spot on an entry team. Amelia Sachs was officially a crime scene detective but her heart was also with tactical teams, the ones who went through the perps’ doors first.
If they found the Watchmaker here, it would’ve been her last chance for a take-down before she quit the force. She supposed she’d see some excitement in her new job as security specialist at Argyle, but the local law enforcers would surely get most of the tactical fun.
Sachs and Pulaski now ran from the car to the command post at the back door of the office building.
“Any sign of him?” she asked Haumann.
The grizzled man shook his head. “Not yet. We had a sequence on a video camera in the lobby of somebody kind of looked like the composite, carrying a bag. But we don’t know if he left or not. There’re two back and two side door exits that aren’t alarmed and aren’t scanned by cameras.”
“You evacuating?” a man’s voice asked.
Sachs turned around. It was Detective Dennis Baker.
“Just started,” Haumann explained.
“How’d you find him?” Sachs asked.
Baker said, “That warehouse with the green paint—he used it as a staging area. I found some notes and a map of this building.”
The policewoman was still angry about Baker’s spying on her but solid police work deserves credit and she nodded to him and said, “Good job.”
“Nothing inspired,” he replied with a smile. “Just pounding the pavement. And a little bit of luck.” Baker’s eyes rose to the building as he pulled his gloves on.
Chapter 30
Sitting in her cubicle, Sarah Stanton heard another squawk over the building’s public address system above her head.
It was a running joke in the office that the company put some kind of filter on the speakers that made the transmissions completely unintelligible. She turned back to her computer, calling, “What’re they saying? I can’t make heads or tails of it.”
“Some announcement,” one of her coworkers called.
Duh.
“They keep doing that. Pisses me off. Is it a fire drill?”
“No idea.”
A moment later she heard the whoop of the fire alarm.
Guess it is.
After 9/11 the alarm had gone off every month or so. The first couple times she’d played along and trooped downstairs like everybody else. But today the temperature was in the low twenties and she had way too much work to do. Besides, if it really was a fire and the exits were blocked she could just jump out the window. Her office was only on the second floor.
She returned to her screen.
But then Sarah heard voices at the far end of the corridor that led to her cubicle. There was an urgency about the sound. And something else—the jangling of metal. Firemen’s equipment? she wondered.
Maybe something really was happening.
Heavy footsteps behind her, approaching. She turned around and saw policemen in dark outfits, with guns. Police? Oh, God, was it a terrorist attack? All she thought about was getting to her son’s school, picking him up.
“We’re evacuating the building,” the cop announced.
“Is it terrorists?” somebody called. “Has there been another attack?”
“No.” He didn’t explain further. “Everybody move out in an orderly fashion. Take your coats, leave everything else.”
Sarah relaxed. She wouldn’t have to worry about her son.
Another of the officers called, “We’re looking for fire extinguishers. Are there any in this area? Don’t touch them. Just let us know. I repeat, do not touch them!”
So there is a fire, she thought, pulling on her coat.
Then she reflected that it was curious that the fire department would use the company’s extinguishers on a fire. Didn’t they have their own? And why should they be so concerned that we’d use one? Not like you need special training.
I repeat, do not touch them! . . .
The policeman looked into an office near Sarah’s workstation.
“Oh, Officer? You want an extinguisher?” she asked. “I’ve got one right here.”
And she pulled the heavy red cylinder off the floor.
“No!” cried the man and he leaped toward her.
Sachs winced as the transmission crackled loudly through her earpiece.
“Fire and containment team, second floor, southeast corner office. K. Lanam Flooring and Interiors. Now! Move, move, move!”
A dozen firefighters and officers from the bomb squad shouldered their equipment and sprinted fast toward the rear door.
“Status?” Haumann shouted into his microphone.
All they could hear were harried voices over the raw howl of the fire alarm.
“Do you have detonation?” the head of ESU repeated urgently.
“I don’t see smoke,” Pulaski said.
Dennis Baker stared up at the second floor. He shook his head.
“If it’s alcohol,” one of the fire chiefs said, “there won’t be smoke until the secondary materials ignite.” He added evenly, “Or her hair and skin.”
Sachs continued to scan the windows, clenching her fists. Was the woman dying in agony now? With police officers or firemen alongside her?
“Come on,” Baker whispered.
Then a voice clattered through the radio: “We’ve got the device. . . . We’ve . . . Yeah, we’ve got it. It didn’t detonate.”
Sachs closed her eyes.
“Thank God,” Baker said.
People were streaming out of the office building now, under the gaze of ESU and patrol officers who were looking for Duncan, comparing the composite pictures with the faces of the workers.
An officer led a woman up to Sachs, Baker and Pulaski, just as Sellitto joined them.
The potential victim, Sarah Stanton, explained that she’d found a fire extinguisher under her desk; it hadn’t been there earlier and she hadn’t seen who’d left it. Somebody in the office remembered seeing a workman in a uniform nearby but couldn’t remember details and didn’t recognize the composite or recall where he’d gone.
“Status of the device?” Haumann called.
An officer radioed, “Didn’t see a timer but the pressure gauge on the top was blank. That could be the detonator. And I can smell alcohol. Bomb squad’s got it in a containment vessel. They’re taking it up to Rodman’s Neck. We’re still sweeping for the perp.”
“Any sign of him?” Baker asked.
“Negative. There’re two fire stairwells and the elevators. He could’ve gotten out that way. And we’ve got four or five other companies on that floor. He might’ve gotten into one of them. We’ll search ’em in a minute or two, as soon as we get an all-clear for devices.”
Ten minutes later officers reported that there were no other bombs in
the building.
Sachs interviewed Sarah, then called Rhyme and told him the status of the case so far. The woman didn’t know the other victims and had never heard of Gerald Duncan. She was very upset that the man’s wife might’ve been killed outside her apartment, though she remembered nothing of any fatal accidents in the area.
Finally Haumann told them that all of his officers had finished the sweep; the Watchmaker had escaped.
“Hell,” Dennis Baker muttered. “We were so close.”
Discouraged, Rhyme said, “Well, walk the grid and tell me what you find.”
They signed off. Haumann sent two teams to stake out the warehouse that Duncan had used as a staging site in case the killer returned there and Sachs dressed in the white Tyvek bodysuit and grabbed a metal suitcase containing basic evidence collection and preservation equipment.
“I’ll help,” Pulaski said, also dressing in the white overalls.
She handed him the suitcase and she picked up another one.
On the second floor, she paused and surveyed the hallway. After photographing it Sachs entered Lanam Flooring and proceeded to Sarah Stanton’s workstation.
She and Pulaski set up the suitcases and extracted the basic evidence collection equipment: bags, tubes, swabs, adhesive rollers for trace, electrostatic footprint sheets and latent-print chemicals and equipment.
“What can I do?” Pulaski asked. “You want me to search the stairwells?”
She debated. They’d have to be searched eventually but she decided that it would be better to run them herself; they were the most logical entry and exit routes for the Watchmaker and she wanted to make certain that no evidence was missed. Sachs surveyed the layout of Sarah’s cubicle and then noticed an empty workstation next to it. It was possible that the Watchmaker had waited there until he had a chance to plant the bomb. Sachs told the rookie, “Run that cubicle.”
Kathryn Dance Ebook Boxed Set : Roadside Crosses, Sleeping Doll, Cold Moon (9781451674217) Page 120
