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"I don't want to be me anymore. And I don't want my mother to talk to me again. And I don't want any of those people she's with to find me."
Sachs preempted whatever the social worker was going to say. "We'll make sure nothing happens to you. That's a promise."
Pammy hugged her.
"So I can see you again?" Sachs asked.
Trying to contain her excitement at this, the girl said, "I guess. If you want."
"How 'bout shopping tomorrow?"
"Okay. Sure."
"Good. It's a date." Sachs had an idea. "Hey, you like dogs?"
"Yeah, some folks I stayed with in Missouri had one. I liked him better than the people."
She called Thom at Rhyme's town house. "Got a question."
"Go ahead."
"Any takers on Jackson yet?"
"Nope. He's still up for adoption."
"Take him off the market," Sachs said. She hung up and looked at Pam. "I've got an early Christmas present for you."
Sometimes even the best-designed watches simply don't work.
The devices really are quite fragile, when you think about it. Five hundred, a thousand minuscule moving parts, nearly microscopic screws and springs and jewels, all precisely assembled, dozens of separate movements working in unison. . . . A hundred things can go wrong. Sometimes the watchmaker miscalculates, sometimes a tiny piece of metal is defective, sometimes the owner winds the mechanism too tight. Sometimes he drops it. Moisture gets under the crystal.
Then again the watch might work perfectly in one environment but not in another. Even the famed Rolex Oyster Perpetual, revolutionary for being the first luxury divers' watch, can't withstand unlimited pressure underwater.
Now, near Central Park, Charles Vespasian Hale sat in his own car, which he'd driven here from San Diego--no trail at all, if you pay cash for gas and avoid toll roads--and wondered what had gone wrong with his plan.
He supposed the answer was the police, specifically Lincoln Rhyme. Hale had done everything he could think of to anticipate his moves. But the former cop managed to end up just a bit ahead of him. Rhyme had done exactly what Hale had been worried about--he'd looked at a few gears and levers and extrapolated from them how Hale's entire timepiece had been constructed.
He'd have plenty of time to consider what went wrong and to try to avoid the same problems in the future. He'd be driving back to California, leaving immediately. He glanced at his face in the rearview mirror. He'd dyed his hair back to its natural color and the pale blue contact lenses were gone, but the collagen, which gave him the thick nose and puffy cheeks and double chin, hadn't bled from his skin yet. And it would takes months before he regained the forty pounds he'd lost for the job and became himself again. He felt pasty and sluggish after all this time in the city and needed to get back to his wilderness and mountains once again.
Yes, he'd failed. But, as he told Vincent Reynolds, that wasn't significant in the great scheme of things. He wasn't concerned about the arrest of Charlotte Allerton. They knew nothing of his real identity (they'd believed all along his real name was Duncan) and their initial contacts had been through extremely discreet individuals.
Moreover, there was actually a positive side to the failure here--Hale had learned something that had changed his life. He'd created the persona of the Watchmaker simply because the character seemed spooky and would snag the attention of a populace and police turned on by made-for-TV criminals.
But as he got into the role, Hale found to his surprise that this character was the embodiment of his true personality. Playing the part was like coming home. He had indeed grown fascinated with watches and clocks and time. (He'd also developed an abiding interest in the Delphic Mechanism; stealing it at some point in the future was a distinct possibility.)
The Watchmaker . . .
Charles Hale was himself simply a timepiece. You could use a watch for something joyous like checking contractions for the birth of a baby. Or heinous: coordinating the time of a raid to slaughter women and children.
Time transcends morality.
He now looked down at what sat on the seat next to him, the gold Breguet pocket watch. In his gloved hands, he picked it up, wound it slowly--always better to underwind than over---and carefully slipped it between the sheets of bubble wrap in a large white envelope.
Hale sealed the self-adhesive flap and started the car.
There were no clear leads.
Rhyme, Sellitto, Cooper and Pulaski were sitting in the lab on Central Park West, going over the few things found in the perp's Brooklyn safe house.
