Sellitto thanked her again and Thom saw her out the door.
Rhyme said, “Ron, make yourself useful.”
The rookie looked at the evidence tables. “I already called about the rope, if that’s what you mean.”
“No, that’s not what I mean,” Rhyme muttered. “I said useful.” He nodded at the bottle of scotch sitting on a shelf across the room.
“Oh, sure.”
“Make it two,” Sellitto grumbled. “And don’t be stingy.”
Pulaski poured the whiskey and handed out two glasses—Cooper declined. Rhyme said to the rookie, “Don’t neglect yourself.”
“Oh, I’m in uniform.”
Sellitto choked a laugh.
“Okay. Maybe just a little.” He poured and then sipped the potent—and extremely expensive—liquor. “I like it,” he said, though his eyes were telling a different story. “Say, you ever mix in a little ginger ale or Sprite?”
Chapter 42
Before and After.
People move on.
For one reason or another, they move on, and Before becomes After.
Lincoln Rhyme heard these words floating through his head, over and over. Broken record. People move on.
He’d actually used the phrase himself—when he’d told his wife he wanted a divorce, not long after his accident. Their relationship had been rocky for some time and he had decided that whether or not he survived the broken neck, he was going to go forward on his own and not tie her down to the difficult life of a gimp’s wife.
But back then “moving on” meant something very different from what Rhyme was facing now. The life he’d constructed over the past few years, a precarious life, was about to change in a big way. The problem, of course, was that by going to Argyle Security, Sachs wasn’t really moving on. She was moving back.
Sellitto and Cooper were gone and Rhyme and Pulaski were alone in the downstairs lab, parked in front of an examination table, organizing evidence in the 118th Precinct scandal cases. Finally confronted with the evidence—and the fact they’d unwittingly hired a domestic terrorist—Baker, Wallace and Henson copped pleas and were diming out everybody involved at the 118th. (Though nobody would say a word about who’d hooked the Watchmaker up with Baker. Understandable. You simply don’t give up the name of a senior member of an OC crew when you’re headed off to the same prison he might end up in, thanks to your testimony.)
Preparing himself for Sachs’s departure, Rhyme had concluded that Ron Pulaski would eventually be a fine crime scene cop. He had ingenuity and intelligence and was as dogged as Lon Sellitto. Rhyme could wear the rough edges off him in eight months or a year. Together, he and the rookie would run scenes, analyze evidence and find perps, who’d go to jail or die trying not to. The system would keep going. The process of policing was bigger than just one man or woman; it had to be.
Yes, the system would keep going. . . . But it was impossibly hard to imagine that system without Amelia Sachs.
Well, fuck the goddamn sentiment, Rhyme said to himself, and get back to work. He glanced at the evidence board. The Watchmaker’s out there somewhere; I’m going to find him. He is . . . not . . . getting . . . away.
“What?” Pulaski asked.
“I didn’t say anything,” Rhyme snapped.
“Yeah, you did. I just . . . “He fell silent under Rhyme’s withering glare.
Returning to his tasks, Pulaski asked, “The notes I found in Baker’s office? They’re on cheap paper. Should I use ninhydrin to raise the latents?”
Rhyme started to respond.
A woman’s voice said, “No. First you try iodine fuming. Then ninhydrin, then silver nitrate. You have to do it in that order.”
Rhyme looked up to see Sachs in the doorway. He slapped a benign look on his face. Putting on a good front, he praised himself. Being generous. Being mature.
She continued, “If not, the chemicals can react and you can ruin the prints.”
Well, this is awkward, the criminalist thought angrily. He stared at the evidence boards as the silence between them roared like the December wind outside.
She said, “I’m sorry.”
Unusual to hear those words from her; the woman apologized about as often as Lincoln Rhyme did. Which was close to never.
Rhyme didn’t respond. He kept his eyes on the charts.
“Really, I’m sorry.”
Irritated at the greeting card sentiment, he glanced sideways, frowning, barely able to control his anger.
But he saw that she wasn’t speaking to him.
Her eyes were fixed on Pulaski. “I’ll make it up to you somehow. You can run the next scene. I’ll be copilot. Or the next couple of scenes.”
“How’s that?” the rookie asked.
“I know you heard I was leaving.”
He nodded.
“But I’ve changed my mind.”
“You’re not quitting?” Pulaski asked.
“No.”
“Hey, not a problem,” Pulaski said. “Wouldn’t mind sharing the job for a little while more, you know.” His relief at not being the only ant under Lincoln Rhyme’s magnifying glass clearly outweighed any disappointment at getting busted back down to assistant.
Sachs tugged a chair around to face Rhyme.
He said, “I thought you were at Argyle.”
“I was. To turn them down.”
“Can I ask why?”
“I got a call. From Suzanne Creeley. Ben Creeley’s wife. She thanked me for believing her, for finding out who’d really killed her husband. She was crying. She told me that she just couldn’t bear the thought that her husband had killed himself. Murder was terrible but a suicide—that would’ve undermined everything they’d had together over the years.”
Sachs shook her head. “A knot in a rope and a broken thumb . . . I realized that that’s what this job is all about, Rhyme. Not the crap I got caught up in, the politics, my father, Baker and Wallace . . . You can’t make it too complicated. Being a cop is about finding the truth behind a knot and a broken thumb. Nothing more than that.”
You and me, Sachs . . .
“So,” she asked, matter-of-fact, as she nodded toward the boards, “our bad boy—anything new on him?”
Rhyme told her about his present, the Breguet, then summarized: “A rock or mountain climber, possibly trained in Europe. He’s spent time in California, near the shore. And he’s been there recently. May live there now. Good education. Uses proper grammar, syntax and punctuation. And I want to go over every gear in the watch again. He’s a watchmaker, right? That means he’s probably taken the back off to poke around inside. If there’s a molecule of trace, I want it.” Rhyme nodded at the man’s note and added, “He admits he was watching Charlotte’s hotel around the time we collared her. I want every vantage point where he might’ve been standing searched. You’re recruited for that one, Ron.”
“Got it.”
“And don’t forget what we know about him. Maybe he’s gone and maybe he isn’t. Make sure your weapon’s in reach. Outside the Tyvek. Remember—”
“Search well but watch my back?” Pulaski asked.
“An A for retention,” the criminalist said. “Now get to work.”
IV
12:48 P.M. MONDAY
What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.
—SAINT AUGUSTINE
Chapter 43
The December day wasn’t particularly cold but the ancient furnace in Rhyme’s town house was on the fritz and everyone in his ground floor lab huddled in thick jackets. Clouds of steam blew from their mouths with every exhalation, and extremities were bright red. Amelia Sachs wore two sweaters and Pulaski was in a padded green jacket from which dangled Killington ski lift tickets like a veteran soldier’s campaign medals.
A skier cop, Rhyme reflected. That seemed odd, though he couldn’t say why exactly. Maybe something about the dangers of hurtling down a mountain with a ha
ir-trigger 9-millimeter pistol under your bunny suit.
“Where’s the furnace repair guy?” Rhyme snapped to his aide.
“He said he’ll be here between one and five.” Thom was wearing a tweed jacket, which Rhyme had given him last Christmas, and a dark purple cashmere scarf, which had been one of Sachs’s presents.
“Ah, between one and five. One and five. Tell you what. Call him back and—”
“That’s what he told—”
“No, listen. Call him back and tell him we got a report there’s a crazed killer loose in his neighborhood and we’ll be there to catch him between one and five. See how he likes them apples.”
“Lincoln,” the patient aide said. “I don’t—”
“Does he know what we do here? Does he know that we serve and protect? Call him and tell him that.”
Pulaski noted that Thom wasn’t reaching for the phone. He asked, “Uhm, you want me to? Call, I mean?”
Ah, the sincerity of youth . . .
Thom replied to the young officer, “Don’t pay him any attention. He’s like a dog jumping up on you. Ignore him and he’ll stop.”
“A dog?” Rhyme asked. “I’m a dog. That’s a bit ironic, isn’t it, Thom? Since here you are biting the hand that feeds you.” Pleased with the retort, he added, “Tell the repairman I think I’m suffering from hypothermia. I really think I am, by the way.”
“So you can feel—” the rookie asked, his question braking to a halt.
“Yes, I goddamn well can feel uncomfortable, Pulaski.”
“Sorry, wasn’t thinking.”
“Hey,” Thom said, laughing. “Congratulations!”
“What’s that?” the rookie asked.
“You’ve graduated to last-name basis. He’s beginning to think of you as a step above a slug. . . . That’s how he refers to the people he really likes. I, for instance, am merely Thom. Forever Thom.”
“But,” Sachs said to the rookie, “tell him you’re sorry again and you’ll be demoted.”
The doorbell sounded a moment later and first-name Thom went to answer it.
Rhyme glanced at the clock. The time was 1:02. Could it be that a repairman was actually prompt?
But, of course, this wasn’t the case. It was Lon Sellitto, who walked inside, started to take his coat off, then changed his mind. He glanced at his breath billowing from his mouth. “Jesus, Linc, with what the city coughs up for you, you can afford to pay your heating bill, you know. Is that coffee? Is it hot?”
Thom poured him a cup and Sellitto clutched it in one hand as he opened his briefcase with the other. “Finally got it.” He nodded at what he now extracted, an old Redweld folder disfigured with faded ink and pencil notations, many of the entries crossed out, evidence of years of frugal municipal government reuse.
“The Luponte file?” Rhyme asked.
“That’s it.”
“I wanted it last week,” the criminalist grumbled, the inside of his nose stinging from the cold. Maybe he’d tell the repairman he’d pay the bill in one to five months. He glanced at the folder. “I’d almost given up. I know how much you love clichés, Lon. Does the phrase ‘day late and a dollar short’ come to mind?”
“Naw,” the detective said amiably, “the one I’m thinking of is ‘If you do somebody a favor and they complain, then fuck ’em.’”
“That’s a good one,” conceded Lincoln Rhyme.
“Anyway, you didn’t tell me how classified it was. I had to find that out on my own, and I needed Ron Scott to track it down.”
Rhyme was staring at the detective as he opened the file and browsed through it. He felt an acute sense of uneasiness, wondering what he would find inside. Could be good, could be devastating. “There should be an official report. Find it.”
Sellitto dug through the folder. He held up the document. On the cover was an old typewritten label that read Anthony C. Luponte, Deputy Commissioner. The folder was sealed with a fading piece of red tape that said, Classified.
“Should I open it?” he asked.
Rhyme rolled his eyes.
“Linc, tell me when the good mood’s going to kick in, will you?”
“Put it on the turning frame. Please and thank you.”
Sellitto ripped open the tape and handed the booklet to Thom.
The aide mounted the report in a device like a cookbook holder, to which was attached a rubber armature that turned the pages when instructed by a tiny movement from Rhyme’s finger on his ECU touch pad. He now began to flip through the document, reading and trying to quell the tension within him.
“Luponte?” Sachs looked up from an evidence table.
Another page turned. “That’s it.”
He kept reading paragraph after paragraph of dense city government talk.
Oh, come on, he thought angrily. Get to the goddamn point. . . .
Would the message be good or bad?
“Something about the Watchmaker?” Sachs asked.
So far, there’d been no leads to the man, either in New York or in California, where Kathryn Dance had started her own investigation.
Rhyme said, “It doesn’t have anything to do with him.”
Sachs shook her head. “But that’s why you wanted it.”
“No, you assumed that’s why I wanted it.”
“What’s it about then, one of the other cases?” she asked. Her eyes went to the evidence boards, which revealed the progress of several cold cases they’d been investigating.
“Not those.”
“Then what?”
“I could tell you a lot sooner if I wasn’t interrupted so much.”
Sachs sighed.
At last he came to the section he sought. He paused, looked out the window at the stark brown branches populating Central Park. He believed in his heart that the report would tell him what he wanted to hear but Lincoln Rhyme was a scientist before all else and distrusted the heart.
Truth is the only goal. . . .
What truths would the words reveal to him?
He looked back at the frame and read the passage quickly. Then again.
After a moment he said to Sachs, “I want to read you something.”
“Okay. I’m listening.”
His right finger moved on the touch pad and the pages flipped back. “This is from the first page. Listening?”
“I said I was.”
“Good. ‘This proceeding is and shall be kept secret. From June eighteenth to June twenty-ninth, ninety seventy-four, a dozen New York City police officers were indicted by a grand jury for extorting money from shopkeepers and businessmen in Manhattan and Brooklyn and accepting bribes to fail to pursue criminal investigations. Additionally, four officers were indicted for assault pursuant to these acts of extortion. Those twelve officers were members of what was known as the Sixteenth Avenue Club, a name that has become synonymous with the heinous crime of police corruption.’”
Rhyme heard Sachs take a fast breath. He looked up and found her staring at the file the way a child stares at a snake in the backyard.
He continued reading. “ ‘There is no trust greater than that between the citizens of these United States and the law enforcement officers who are charged with protecting them. The officers of the Sixteenth Avenue Club committed an inexcusable breach of this sacred trust and not only perpetuated the crimes they were meant to prevent but brought inestimable shame upon their courageous and self-sacrificing brothers and sisters in uniform.
“ ‘Accordingly, I, the Mayor of the City of New York, hereby bestow upon the following officers the Medal for Valor for their efforts in bringing these criminals to justice: Patrolman Vincent Pazzini, Patrolman Herman Sachs and Detective Third-Grade Lawrence Koepel.’”
“What?” Sachs whispered.
Rhyme continued reading. “Each of these officers risked his life on a number of occasions by working undercover to provide information instrumental in identifying the perpetrators and gathering evidence to be used in their trials. Because of
the dangerous nature of this assignment, these commendations are being presented in a closed proceeding, and this record will be sealed, for the safety of these three courageous officers and their families. But they should rest assured that, although the praises for their efforts are not being sung in public, the gratitude of the city is no less.’”
Amelia Sachs was staring at him. “He—?”
Rhyme nodded at the file. “Your father was one of the good guys, Sachs. He was one of the three who got away. Only they weren’t perps; they were working for Internal Affairs. He was to the Sixteenth Avenue Club just what you were to the St. James crew, only he was undercover.”
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t know. I remembered something about the Luponte report and the corruption trials but I didn’t know your father was involved. That’s why I wanted to see it.”
“How ’bout that,” Sellitto said through a mouthful of coffee cake.
“Keep looking, Lon. There’s something else.”
The detective dug through the folder and found a certificate and a medal. It was an NYPD Medal for Valor, one of the highest commendations given by the department. Sellitto handed it to Sachs. Her full lips parted, eyes squinting, as she read the unframed parchment document, which bore her father’s name. The decoration swung from her unsteady fingers.
“Hey, that’s sweet,” said Pulaski, pointing at the certificate. “Look at all those scrolls and things.”
Rhyme nodded toward the folder on the turning frame. “It’s all in there, Sachs. His handler at Internal Affairs had to make sure that the other cops believed him. He gave your dad a couple thousand a month to spread around, make it seem like he was on the take too. He had to be credible—if anybody thought he was an informant, he could’ve been killed, especially with Tony Gallante involved. IAD started a fake investigation on him so it’d look believable. That’s the case they dropped for insufficient evidence. They worked out a deal with Crime Scene so that the chain-of-custody cards were lost.”
Sachs lowered her head. Then she gave a soft laugh. “Dad was always the modest one. It was just like him—the highest commendation he ever got was secret. He never said a thing about it.”
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