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“How’d Hale get his name?” Rhyme asked.
“A detective called this morning and asked if he’d seen anything suspicious. He was canvassing all the workers. He had a list. Which I’m sure Gilligan swiped when he was here and gave to Hale.”
Rhyme nodded, then asked, “Well, what did the operator see that nearly got him killed?”
“A beige SUV parked where it shouldn’t’ve been. Inside, a hard hat on the dash. A three-by-three-foot-by-eighteen-inch box in the back. No markings that he could remember. Gloves that were probably neoprene. Binoculars—nice ones—and a book, paperback with an orange and yellow cover. Letter ‘K’—the last letter on the cover. No other information.”
Rhyme said slowly, “All right. Maybe he’s worried about the SUV, but I’m sure it’s gone now. The Watchmaker wouldn’t use the same vehicle twice. The cardboard box, gloves, hat? Nothing there that Hale’d worry about. The binoculars or the book could be something. Why doesn’t he want us to see them?” No answer presented itself. He asked Sachs, “Get into the operator’s house?”
“No. The battalion commander wouldn’t release the scene. Too much acid and fumes. But I got a look through a window. The device had dissolved. Just like at Eighty-Ninth Street, on the counterweights.”
It was good she hadn’t pushed it. The exposure she’d had was bad enough. Any more might have knocked her into the hospital—and with their prey now being the Watchmaker, he couldn’t have her sidelined.
“And that?” Rhyme nodded to the carton Mel Cooper had taken.
The exceedinglyminusculecarton.
“I got shoe prints and trace, front and back doors.”
A moment later Cooper called, “The shoe print’s ninety percent likely the same as what Ron found at the Gilligan homicide scene. I’m looking at the trace now …” Eyes on the GC/MS screen, he called, “Same trace as earlier—the clay, bacteria, rotting wood and cloth fibers. Liquor. Again, old, old, old … But an addition: ammonia and isocyanic acid.”
“Urea,” Rhyme said.
Sellitto shrugged. “He walked through where somebody peed. Doesn’t tell us anything.”
“Walked through where somebody peed a long, long time ago. Those are what urea degrades into.”
Sachs wrote the discovery on the whiteboard.
By comparison, yes, Sellitto’s scrawl was terrible.
The detective looked at his watch. “I’m getting home, shower and dinner. You need me, call. Why do people say things like that? If you need me, of course you’re going to call.”
He steamed out of the town house. Mel Cooper said he was doing the same.
Ron Pulaski was downtown. He’d switched temporarily to the Eddie Tarr case and was tracking down a lead on the red sedan that the bomb maker had supposedly driven when he killed a witness on the Upper East Side. Apparently, though, the lead had not panned out and now he was returning to the city to accompany Sachs in making the rounds of construction sites that contained the tower cranes they considered the most likely targets. This was mostly to check security—but it was possible that they might happen upon the Watchmaker in the act.
Stranger things had happened.
Thom appeared in the doorway and asked, “Dinner?”
“We’ll get to it,” Rhyme said absently, staring at the murder boards.
At that moment, an email appeared on Rhyme’s computer, a Zoom request.
The name on the sender’s email matched a name on the board: Stephen Cody, the U.S. representative currently in a race for reelection. The man Lyle Spencer had interviewed earlier in the day.
That man Rhyme had never heard of, despite the fact he was the criminalist’s advocate in Washington, DC.
He said, “Sachs, let’s see what he has to say.”
She sat down at the computer attached to the largest monitor in the room and typed. A moment later they were looking at the man, businessman handsome, thick hair a bit mussed, the sleeves of his light blue shirt rolled up. He wore no tie and his collar was open. His eyeglasses had dark red frames. Rhyme wondered, in passing, if the color affected how he visually processed what he saw. Interesting idea. He’d do a study to see if frame color had any effect on visual acuity. Something to consider at crime scene searches.
“Representative Cody. I’m Detective Sachs.”
“Detective. And, Captain Rhyme, an honor to meet you.”
Rhyme nodded.
