She sensed he was deceptive, not only from the kinesics but his recognition response (in his case, the neutral visage, which deviated from his expressive baseline); most likely he knew the clock. But was he deceptive because he simply didn’t want to get involved, or because he sold clocks to someone he thought might be a criminal, or because he was involved in the killings himself?
Hands clasped in front of her, or purse on the counter?
In determining personality type, Dance had categorized the reluctant witness earlier, Cobb, as an extrovert; Hallerstein was the opposite, an introvert, someone who makes decisions based on intuition and emotion. She drew this conclusion about the dealer because of his clear passion for his clocks and the fact he was only a moderately successful businessman (he’d rather sell what he loved than run a mass-market operation and make more profit).
To get an introvert to tell the truth, she’d have to bond with him, make him feel comfortable. An attack like the one on Cobb would make Hallerstein freeze up instantly.
Dance sighed, her shoulders slumping. “You were our last hope.” She sighed, glancing at Sellitto, who, bless him, gave a good portrayal of a disappointed cop, shaking his head with a grimace.
“Hope?” Hallerstein asked.
“The man who bought these clocks committed a very serious crime. They’re the only real leads we have.”
The concern that blossomed in Hallerstein’s face seemed genuine but Kathryn Dance had met a lot of good actors. She put the paper back into her purse. “Those clocks were found next to his murder victims.”
Eyes frozen for a moment. This is one stressed-out shopkeeper we’ve got ourselves here.
“Murder?”
“That’s right. Two people were killed last night. The clocks might’ve been left as messages of some kind. We’re not sure.” Dance frowned. “The whole thing is pretty confusing. If I were going to murder someone and leave a message I wouldn’t hide it thirty feet away from the victim. I’d leave it a lot closer and out in the open. So we just don’t know.”
Dance watched his reaction carefully. To her calculated misstatement, Hallerstein gave the same response as would anyone unfamiliar with the situation, a shake of the head at the tragedy but no other reaction. Had he been the killer, he would most likely have given a recognition response—usually centering around the eyes and nose—that her words didn’t coincide with his knowledge of the facts. He would’ve thought: But the killer did leave it by the body; why would somebody move it? And that thought would have been accompanied by very specific gestures and body language.
A good deceiver can minimize a recognition response so that most people aren’t aware of it but Dance’s radar was operating at full strength and she believed the dealer passed the test. She was convinced he hadn’t been at the crime scenes or knew the Watchmaker.
She put her purse on the counter.
Lon Sellitto moved his hand away from his hip, where it had been resting.
But her job had just begun. They’d established that the dealer wasn’t the killer and didn’t know him, but he definitely had information.
“Mr. Hallerstein, the people who were killed died in very unpleasant ways.”
“Wait, they were on the news, right? A man was crushed? And then somebody was thrown into the river.”
“Right.”
“And . . . that clock was there?”
Almost “my” clock. But not quite.
Play the fish carefully, she told herself.
She nodded. “We think he’s going to hurt somebody again. And like I said, you were our last hope. If we have to track down other dealers who might’ve sold the killer the clocks it could take weeks.”
Hallerstein’s face clouded.
Dismay is easily recognized in a person’s face but it can arise in response to many different emotions—sympathy, pain, disappointment, sorrow, embarrassment—and only kinesics can reveal the source if the subject doesn’t volunteer the information. Kathryn Dance now examined the man’s eyes, his fingers caressing the clock in front of him, his tongue touching the corner of his lips. Suddenly she understood: Hallerstein was displaying the flight-or-fight response.
He was afraid—for his own safety.
Got it.
“Mr. Hallerstein, if you could remember anything to help us, we’d guarantee you were safe.”
A glance at Sellitto, who nodded. “Oh, you bet. We’ll put an officer outside your shop if we need to.”
The unhappy man toyed with a tiny screwdriver.
Dance took the picture out of her purse again. “Could you just take another look? See if you can remember anything.”
But he didn’t need to look. His posture caved in slightly, chest receding, head forward. Hallerstein sprinted into the acceptance response state. “I’m sorry. I lied.”
Which you hardly ever heard. She’d given him the chance to claim that he’d looked at the picture too fast or was confused. But he didn’t care about that. Do not pass go—it was confession time, pure and simple.
“I knew the clock right away. The thing is, though, he said if I told anybody, he’d come back, he’d hurt me, he’d destroy all my watches and clocks, my whole collection! But I didn’t know anything about any murder. I swear! I thought he was a crank.” His jaw was trembling and he put his hand back on the casing of the clock he’d been working on. A gesture that Dance interpreted to mean he was desperately seeking comfort.
She sensed something else as well. Kinesic experts have to judge if the subject’s responses are appropriate to the questions they’ve been asked or the facts they’ve been told. Hallerstein was troubled by the murders, yes, and afraid for himself and his treasures, but his reaction was out of proportion to what they’d been discussing.
She was about to explore this when the clock dealer explained exactly why he was so upset.
“He’s leaving these clocks at the places where he kills his victims?” Hallerstein asked.
Sellitto nodded.
“Well, I have to tell you.” His voice clutched and he continued in a whisper. “He didn’t just buy two clocks. He bought ten.”
Chapter 11
“How many?” Rhyme said, shaking his head as he repeated what Sellitto had just told him. “He’s planning ten victims?”
“Looks that way.”
Sitting on either side of Rhyme in the lab, Kathryn Dance and Sellitto showed him the composite picture of the Watchmaker that the detective had made at the clock store, using EFIT—Electronic Facial Identification Technology, a computerized version of the old Identi-Kit, which reconstructed a suspect’s features from witness prompts. The image was of a white man in his late forties or early fifties, with a round face, double chin, thick nose and unusually light blue eyes. The dealer had added that the killer was a little over six feet tall. His body was lean and his hair black and medium length. He wore no jewelry. Hallerstein recalled dark clothes but couldn’t remember exactly what he was wearing.
Dance then recounted Hallerstein’s story. A man had called the shop a month earlier, asking for a particular kind of clock—not a specific brand but any one that was compact, had a moon-phase feature and a loud tick. “Those were the most important,” she said. “The moon and a loud tick.”
Presumably so that the victims could hear the sound as they died.
The dealer ordered ten clocks. When they’d arrived the man came in and paid cash. He didn’t give his name or where he was from or why he wanted the clocks but he knew a great deal about timepieces. They talked about collectibles, who’d recently bought certain well-known timepieces at auctions and what horologic exhibits were presently in the city.
The Watchmaker wouldn’t let Hallerstein help him out to the car with the clocks. He’d made several trips, carrying them himself.
As for evidence at the shop there was very little. Hallerstein didn’t do much cash business, so most of the nine hundred dollars and change that the Watchmaker had paid him was still in the till. But th
e dealer had told Sellitto, “Won’t do you much good if you want fingerprints. He wore gloves.”
Cooper scanned the money for prints anyway and found only the dealer’s, which Sellitto had taken as controls. The serial numbers on the bills weren’t registered anywhere. Brushing the cash for trace revealed nothing but dust with no distinguishing characteristics.
They’d tried to determine exactly when the Watchmaker had contacted the dealer and, reviewing the telephone logs, they found the likely calls. But it turned out that they’d been made from pay phones, located in downtown Manhattan.
Nothing else at Hallerstein’s was of any help.
A call came in from Vice, reporting that the officers had no luck finding the prostitute Tiffanee, with e or y, in the Wall Street area. The detective said he’d keep on it but since there’d been a murder most of the girls had vanished from the neighborhood.
It was then that Rhyme’s eyes settled on one entry on the evidence chart.
Soil with fish protein . . .
Dragged from vehicle to alley . . .
He then looked at the crime scene photos again. “Thom!”
“What?” the aide called from the kitchen.
“I need you.”
The young man appeared instantly. “What’s wrong?”
“Lie down on the floor.”
“You want me to do what?”
“Lie down on the floor. And, Mel, drag him over to that table.”
“I thought something was wrong,” Thom said.
“It is. I need you to lie down on the floor. Now!”
The aide looked at him with an expression of wry disbelief. “You’re kidding.”
“Now! Hurry.”
“Not on this floor.”
“I tell you to wear jeans to work. You’re the one who insists on overpriced slacks. Put that jacket on—the one on the hook. Then hurry up. On your back.”
A sigh. “This is going to cost you big-time.” The aide pulled the jacket on and lay down on the floor.
“Wait, get the dog out of there,” Rhyme called. Jackson the Havanese had jumped out of his box, apparently thinking it was playtime. Cooper scooped the dog up and handed him to Dance.
“Can we get on with it? No, zip up the jacket. It’s supposed to be winter.”
“It is winter,” Cooper replied. “It’s just not winter inside.”
Thom zipped the jacket up to the neck and lay back.
“Mel, put some aluminum dust on your fingers and then drag him across the room.”
The tech didn’t even bother to ask the purpose of the exercise. He dipped his fingers in the dark gray fingerprint powder and stood over Thom.
“How do I drag him?”
“That’s what I want to figure out,” Rhyme said. He squinted. “What’s the most efficient way?” He told Cooper to grab the bottom of the jacket and pull it up over Thom’s face and drag him that way, headfirst.
Cooper pulled off his glasses and gripped the jacket.
“Sorry,” he muttered to the aide.
“I know, you’re just following orders.”
Cooper did as Rhyme told him. The tech was breathing heavily from the effort but the aide moved smoothly along the floor. Sellitto watched impassively and Kathryn Dance was trying to keep from smiling.
“That’s far enough. Take the jacket off and hold it open for me.”
Sitting, Thom disrobed. “Can I get up off the floor now?”
“Yes, yes, yes.” Rhyme was staring at the jacket. The aide climbed to his feet and dusted himself off.
“What’s this all about?” Sellitto asked.
Rhyme grimaced. “Damnit, the rookie was right and he didn’t even know it.”
“Pulaski?”
“Yep. He assumed the fish trace was from the Watchmaker. I assumed it was the victim’s. But look at the jacket.”
Cooper’s fingers had left traces of the aluminum fingerprint powder inside the garment, in exactly the places where the soil had been found on Theodore Adams’s jacket. The Watchmaker himself had left the substance on the victim when he was dragging him in the alley.
“Stupid,” Rhyme repeated. Careless thinking infuriated him—especially his own. “Now, next step. I want to know everything there is to know about fish protein.”
Cooper turned back to the computer.
Rhyme then noticed Kathryn Dance glancing at her watch. “Missed your plane?” he asked.
“I’ve got an hour. Doesn’t look good, though. Not with security and Christmas crowds.”
“Sorry,” the rumpled detective offered.
“If I helped, it was worth it.”
Sellitto pulled his phone off his belt. “I’ll have a squad car sent round. I can get you to the airport in a half hour. Lights and sirens.”
“That’d be great. I might make it.” Dance pulled on her coat and started for the door.
“Wait. I’ve got an offer for you.”
Both Sellitto and Dance turned their heads to the man who’d spoken.
Rhyme looked at the California agent. “How’d you like an all-expenses-paid night in beautiful New York City?”
She cocked an eyebrow.
The criminalist continued. “I’m wondering if you could stay for another day.”
Sellitto was laughing. “Linc, I don’t believe it. You’re always complaining that witnesses are useless. Changing your ways?”
Rhyme frowned. “No, Lon. What I complain about is how most people handle witnesses—visceral, gut feel, all that woo-woo crap. Pointless. But Kathryn does it right—she applies a methodology based on repeatable and observable responses to stimuli and draws verifiable conclusions. Obviously it’s not as good as friction ridges or reagent A-ten in drug analysis but what she does is . . .” He looked for a word. “Helpful.”
Thom laughed. “That’s the best compliment you could get. Helpful.”
“No need to fill in, Thom,” Rhyme snapped. He turned to Dance. “So? How ’bout it?”
The woman’s eyes scanned the evidence board and Rhyme noticed she wasn’t focused on the cold notations of the clues, but on the pictures. Particularly the photographs of Theodore Adams’s corpse, his frosted eyes staring upward.
“I’ll stay,” she said.
Vincent Reynolds walked slowly up the steps of the Metropolitan Museum on Fifth Avenue, out of breath by the time he got to the top. His hands and arms were very strong—helpful for when he had his heart-to-hearts with the ladies—but he got zero aerobic exercise.
Joanne, his flower girl, floated into his thought. Yes, he’d followed and come close to raping her. But at the last minute another of his incarnations had taken charge, Smart Vincent, who was the rarest of the brood. The temptation had been great but he couldn’t disappoint his friend. (Vincent also didn’t think it was a wise idea to give any grief to a man whose advice for dealing with conflict was to “slash the eyes.”) So he’d merely checked up on her again, eaten a huge lunch and taken the train here.
He now paid and entered the museum, noticing a family—the wife resembled his sister. He’d just written the previous week asking her to come to New York for Christmas but hadn’t heard back. He’d like to show her the sights. She could hardly come at the moment, of course, not while he and Duncan were busy. He hoped she’d visit soon, though. Vincent was convinced that having her more in his life would make a difference. It would provide a stability that would make him less hungry, he believed. He wouldn’t need heart-to-hearts quite so often.
I really wouldn’t mind changing a little bit, Dr. Jenkins.
Don’t you agree?
Maybe she’d get here for New Year’s. They could go to Times Square and watch the ball drop.
Vincent headed into the museum proper. There wasn’t any doubt about where to find Gerald Duncan. He’d be in the area that held the important touring exhibits—the treasures of the Nile, for instance, or jewels from the British Empire. Now, the exhibit was “Horology in Ancient Times.”
Hor
ology, Duncan had explained, was the study of time and timepieces.
The killer had come here several times recently. It drew the older man the way porn shops drew Vincent. Normally distant and unemotional, Duncan always lit up when he was staring at the displays. It made Vincent happy to see his friend actually enjoying something.
Duncan was looking over some old pottery things called incense clocks. Vincent eased up next to him.
“What’d you find?” asked Duncan, who didn’t turn his head. He’d seen Vincent’s reflection in the glass of the display case. He was like that—always aware, always seeing what he needed to see.
“She was alone in the workshop all the time I was there. Nobody came in. She went to her store on Broadway and met this delivery guy there. They left. I called and asked for her—”
“From?”
“A pay phone. Sure.”
Meticulous.
“And the clerk said she’d gone out for coffee. She’d be back in about an hour but she wouldn’t be in the store. Meaning, I guess, she’d go back to the workshop.”
“Good.” Duncan nodded.
“And what’d you find?”
“The pier was roped off but nobody was there. I saw police boats in the river, so they haven’t found the body yet. At Cedar Street I couldn’t get very close. But they’re taking the case real seriously. A lot of cops. There were two that seemed in charge. One of them was pretty.”
“A girl, really?” Hungry Vincent perked up. The thought of having a heart-to-heart with a policewoman had never occurred to him. But he suddenly liked the idea.
A lot.
“Young, in her thirties. Red hair. You like red hair?”
He’d never forget Sally Anne’s red hair, how it cascaded on the old, stinky blanket when he was lying on top of her.
The hunger soared. He was actually salivating. Vincent dug into his pocket, pulled out a candy bar and ate it fast. He wondered where Duncan was going with his comments about red hair and the pretty policewoman but the killer said nothing more. He stepped to another display, containing old-time pendulum clocks.
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