Pulaski was struck by the anonymous call, echoing the earlier cases, and immediately called Rhyme. The criminalist figured that if 522 was in fact behind the crime he was probably sticking to his plan: he would plant evidence blaming a fall guy and they needed to find which of the more than 1,300 older beige Dodges was the one 522 might pick. Sure, maybe the man wasn't 522 but even if not, they had the chance to collar a rapist and killer.
At Rhyme's instruction, Mel Cooper cross-matched Department of Motor Vehicles records with criminal records and came up with seven African-American men who had convictions for crimes more serious than traffic violations. One, though, was the most likely: an assault charge against a woman. DeLeon Williams was a perfect choice as a fall guy.
Happenstance and police work.
To authorize a tactical takedown, a lieutenant or higher was required. Captain Joe Malloy still had no clue about the clandestine 522 operation, so Rhyme called Sellitto, who grumbled but agreed to call Bo Haumann and authorize an ESU op.
Amelia Sachs had joined Pulaski and the team at Williams's house, where they'd learned from Search and Surveillance that only Williams was inside, not 522. There, they deployed to take the killer when he arrived to plant the evidence. The plan was tricky, improvised on the fly--and obviously hadn't worked, though they'd saved an innocent man from being arrested for rape and murder and perhaps had discovered some good evidence to lead to the perp.
"Anything?" she asked Haumann, who'd been conferring with some of his officers.
"Nope."
Then his radio clattered again and Sachs heard the loud transmission. "Unit One, we're on the other side of the highway. Looks like he's rabbited clean. He must've made it to the subway."
"Shit," she muttered.
Haumann grimaced but said nothing.
The officer continued, "But we've followed the route he probably took. It's possible he ditched some evidence in a trash can on the way."
"That's something," she said. "Where?" She jotted the address the officer recited. "Tell them to secure the area. I'll be there in ten." Sachs then walked up the steps and knocked on the door. DeLeon Williams answered, and she said, "Sorry I haven't had a chance to explain. A man we were trying to catch was headed to your house."
"Mine?"
"We think so. But he got away." She explained about Myra Weinburg.
"Oh, no--she's dead?"
"I'm afraid so."
"I'm sorry, real sorry."
"Did you know her?"
"No, never heard of her."
"We think the perp might've been trying to blame you for the crime."
"Me? Why?"
"We have no idea. After we investigate a little more we may want to interview you."
"Sure thing." He gave her his home and mobile numbers. Then frowned. "Can I ask? You seem pretty certain I didn't do it. How'd you know I was innocent?"
"Your car and garage. Officers searched them and didn't find any evidence from the murder scene. The killer, we're pretty sure, was going to plant some things there to implicate you. Of course, if we'd gotten here after he'd done that, you'd've had a problem."
Sachs added, "Oh, one more thing, Mr. Williams?"
"What's that, Detective?"
"Just some trivia you might be interested in. Do you know owning an unregistered handgun in New York City is a very serious crime?"
"I think I heard that somewhere."
"And some more trivia is that there's an amnesty program at your local precinct. No questions asked if you turn in a weapon . . . Okay, you take care. Enjoy the rest of your weekend."
"I'll try."
Chapter Eleven I'm watching the policewoman as she searches the trash can where I dumped the evidence. I was dismayed at first but then I realized I shouldn't have been. If They were smart enough to figure out about me, They're smart enough to find the trash.
I doubt They got a good look at me but I'm being very careful. Of course, I'm not at the scene itself; I'm in a restaurant across the street, forcing down a hamburger and sipping water. The police have this outfit called the "Anti-crime" detail, which has always struck me as absurd. As if other details are pro-crime. Anti-crime officers wear street clothes and they circulate at crime scenes to find witnesses and, occasionally, even the perps, who have returned. Most criminals do so because they're stupid or behave irrationally. But I'm here for two specific reasons. First, because I've realized I have a problem. I can't live with it so I need a solution. And you can't solve a problem without knowledge. I've already learned a few things.
For instance, I know some of the people who are after me. Like this redheaded policewoman in a white plastic jumpsuit concentrating on the crime scene the way I concentrate on my data.
I see her step out of the area, surrounded by yellow tape, with several bags. She sets these in gray plastic boxes and strips off the white suit. Despite the lingering horror from the disaster of this afternoon, I feel that twinge inside as I see her tight jeans, the satisfaction from my transaction with Myra 9834 earlier today wearing off.
As the police head back to their cars she makes a phone call.
I pay the bill and walk nonchalantly out the door, acting like any other patron on this fine late-afternoon Sunday.
Off. The. Grid.
Oh, the second reason I'm here?
Very simple. To protect my treasures, to protect my life, which means doing whatever's necessary to make Them go away.
*
"What'd Five Twenty-Two leave in that trash can?" Rhyme was speaking into the hands-free phone.
"There's not much. We're sure it's his stuff, though. Bloody paper towel and some wet blood in plastic bags--so he could leave some in Williams' car or garage. I've already sent a sample to the lab for a preliminary DNA match. Computer printout of the vic's picture. Roll of duct tape--Home Depot house brand. And a running shoe. It looked new."
"Just one?"
"Yep. The right."
"Maybe he stole it from Williams' place to leave a print at the scene. Anybody get a look at him?"
"A sniper and two guys from the S and S team. But he wasn't very close. Probably white or light-skinned ethnic, medium build. Tan cap and sunglasses, backpack. No age, no hair color."
"That's it?"
"Yep."
"Well, get the evidence here stat. Then I want you to walk the grid at the Weinburg rape scene. They're preserving it till you get there."
"I've got another lead, Rhyme."
"You do? What's that?"
"We found a Post-it note stuck to the bottom of the plastic bag with the evidence in it. Five Twenty-Two wanted to ditch the bag; I'm not sure he wanted to pitch out the note."
"What is it?"
"A room number of a residence hotel, Upper East Side, Manhattan. I want to check it out."
"You think it's Five Twenty-Two's?"
"No, I called the front desk and they say the tenant's been in the room all day. Somebody named Robert Jorgensen."
"Well, we need the rape scene searched, Sachs."
"Send Ron. He can handle it."
"I'd rather you ran it."
"I really think we need to see if there's any connection between this Jorgensen and Five Twenty-Two. And fast."
He couldn't dispute her point. Besides, both of them had ridden Pulaski hard in teaching him how to walk the grid--Rhyme's coined expression for searching a crime scene, a reference to looking over the area according to the grid pattern, the most comprehensive way of discovering evidence.
Rhyme, feeling both like a boss and a parent, knew that the kid would have to run his first homicide scene solo sooner or later. "All right," he grumbled. "Let's hope this Post-it lead pays off." He couldn't help adding, "And isn't a complete waste of time."
She laughed. "Don't we always hope that, Rhyme?"
"And tell Pulaski not to screw up."
They disconnected and Rhyme told Cooper the evidence was on its way.
Staring at the evidence charts, he
muttered, "He got away."
He ordered Thom to put the sparse description of 522 on the whiteboard.
Probably white or light-skinned . . .
How helpful is that?
*
Amelia Sachs was in the front seat of her parked Camaro, the door open. Late-afternoon spring air was wafting into the car, which smelled of old leather and oil. She was jotting notes for her crime-scene report. She always did this as soon as possible after searching a scene. It was amazing what one could forget in a short period of time. Colors changed, left became right, doors and windows moved from one wall to another or vanished altogether.
She paused, distracted once again by the odd facts of the case. How had the killer managed to come so close to blaming an innocent man for an appalling rape and murder? She'd never run into a perp like this; planting evidence to mislead the police wasn't unusual but this guy was a genius at pointing them in the wrong direction.
The street where she'd parked was two blocks away from the trash-can crime scene, shadowed and deserted.
Motion caught her eye. Thinking of 522, she felt a throb of uneasiness. She glanced up and in the rearview mirror saw somebody walking her way. She squinted, studying him carefully, though the man seemed harmless: a clean-cut businessman. He was carrying a take-out bag in one hand and talking on his cell phone, a smile on his face. A typical resident out to get Chinese or Mexican for dinner.
Sachs returned to her notes.
Finally she was finished and tucked them into her briefcase. But then something struck her as strange. The man on the sidewalk should have passed the Camaro by now. But he hadn't. Had he gone into one of the buildings? She turned to the sidewalk where he'd been.
No!
She was staring at the take-out bag, sitting on the sidewalk to the left and behind the car. It was just a prop!
Her hand went for her Glock. But before she could draw, the right side door was ripped open and she was staring into the face of the killer, eyes narrowed, lifting a pistol toward her face.
*
The doorbell rang and a moment later Rhyme heard yet another distinctive footfall. Heavy ones.
"In here, Lon."
Detective Lon Sellitto nodded a greeting. His stocky figure was encased in blue jeans and a dark purple Izod shirt, and he was wearing running shoes, which surprised Rhyme. The criminalist rarely saw him in casual clothes. He was also struck by the fact that, while Sellitto didn't seem to own a suit that wasn't fiercely wrinkled, this outfit looked hot off the ironing board. The only disfigurements were a few stretch marks in the cloth where his belly jutted past his waistband, and the bulge in the back where his off-duty pistol was not efficiently hidden.
"He rabbited, I heard."
Rhyme spat out, "Gone completely."
The floor creaked under the big man's weight as he ambled to the evidence charts and looked them over. "That's what you're calling him? Five Twenty-Two?"
"May twenty-second. What happened with the Russian case?"
Sellitto didn't answer. "Mr. Five Twenty-Two leave anything behind?"
"We're about to find out. He ditched a bag of evidence he was going to plant. It's on its way."
"That was courteous."
"Iced tea, coffee?"
"Yeah," the detective muttered to Thom. "Thanks. Coffee. You have skim milk?"
"Two percent."
"Good. And any of those cookies from last time? The chocolate chip ones?"
"Just oatmeal."
"Those're good too."
"Mel?" Thom asked. "You want something?"
"If I eat or drink near an examining table, I get yelled at."
Rhyme snapped, "It's hardly my fault if defense lawyers have this thing about excluding contaminated evidence. I didn't make the rules."
Sellitto observed, "See your mood hasn't improved. What's going on in London?"
"Now that's a subject I don't want to talk about."
"Well, just to improve your spirits we got another problem."
"Malloy?"
"Yep. He heard Amelia was running a scene and I okayed an ESU action. He got all happy thinking it was the Dienko case, then all sad when he found out it wasn't. He asked if it was connected with you. I'll take a fist on the chin for you, Linc, but not a bullet. I dimed you out. . . . Oh, thanks." Nodding as Thom brought him the refreshments. The aide set a similar offering on a table not far from Cooper, who pulled on latex gloves and started on a cookie.
"Some scotch, if you please," Rhyme said quickly.
"No." Thom was gone.
Scowling, Rhyme said, "I figured Malloy'd bust us as soon as ESU was involved. But we need brass on our side now that it's a hot case. What do we do?"
"Better think of something fast 'cause he wants us to call. Like a half hour ago." He sipped more coffee and, with some reluctance, set down the remaining quarter of his cookie with the apparent resolve not to finish it.
"Well, I need the brass on board. We've got to have people out there looking for this guy."
"Then let's call. You ready?"
"Yeah, yeah."
Sellitto dialed a number. Hit SPEAKER.
"Lower the volume," Rhyme said. "I suspect this could be loud."
"Malloy here." Rhyme could hear the sounds of the wind, voices and the clink of dishes or glassware. Maybe he was at an outdoor cafe.
"Captain, you're on speaker with Lincoln Rhyme and me."
"Okay, what the hell is going on? You could've told me that the ESU operation was what Lincoln called me about earlier. Did you know I deferred the decision about any operation till tomorrow?"
"No, he didn't," Rhyme said.
The detective blurted, "Yeah, but I knew enough to figure it out."
"I'm touched you're both taking the heat for each other but the question is why didn't you tell me?"
Sellitto said, "'Cause we had a good chance to collar a rapist-murderer. I decided we couldn't afford any delays."
"I'm not a child, Lieutenant. You make your case to me and I'll make the judgment. That's how it's supposed to work."
"Sorry, Captain. It seemed like the right decision at the time."
Silence. Then: "But he got away."
"Yes, he did," Rhyme said.
"How?"
"We got a team together as fast as we could but the cover wasn't the best. The UNSUB was closer than we thought. He saw an unmarked or one of the team, I guess. He took off. But he ditched some evidence that could be helpful."
"Which is on its way to the lab in Queens? Or to you?"
Rhyme glanced at Sellitto. People rise in rank in institutions like the NYPD based on experience, drive and quick minds. Malloy was a good half-step ahead of them.
"I've asked for it to come here, Joe," Rhyme said.
No silence this time. The sound from the speaker was a resigned sigh. "Lincoln, you understand the problem, don't you?"
Conflict of interest, Rhyme thought.
"There's a clear conflict of interest with you as an adviser to the department and trying to exonerate your cousin. And beyond that, the implication is that there's been a wrongful arrest."
"But that's exactly what happened. And two wrongful convictions." Rhyme reminded Malloy about the rape and coin-theft cases that Flintlock had told them about. "And I wouldn't be surprised if this's happened other times too. . . . You know Locard's Principle, Joe?"
"That was in your book, the one from the academy, right?"
The French criminalist Edmond Locard stated that whenever a crime occurs there's always a transfer of evidence between the perpetrator and the crime scene or the victim. He was referring specifically to dust but the rule applies to many substances and types of evidence. The connection may be difficult to find but it exists.
"Locard's Principle guides what we do, Joe. But here's a perp who's using it as a weapon. It's his M.O. He kills and gets away because somebody else is convicted of the crime. He knows exactly when to strike, what kind of evidence to plant and when to
plant it. The crime-scene teams, the detectives, the lab people, the prosecutors and judges . . . he's used everybody, made them accomplices. This has nothing to do with my cousin, Joe. This has to do with stopping a very dangerous man."
A sighless silence now.
"Okay, I'll sanction it."
Sellitto was lifting an eyebrow.
"With caveats. You keep me informed of every development in the case. I mean everything."
"Sure."
"And, Lon, you try not being straight with me again and I'll transfer you to Budgets. Understand me?"
"Yeah, Captain. Absolutely."
"And since you're at Lincoln's, Lon, I assume you want a reassignment from the Vladimir Dienko case."
"Petey Jimenez's up to speed. He's done more of the legwork than I have and he's set up the stings personally."
"And Dellray's running the snitches, right? And the federal jurisdiction?"
"That's right."
"Okay, you're off it. Temporarily. Open a file on this UNSUB--I mean, send out a memo about the file you've already started on the sly. And listen to me: I'm not raising any issues of innocent people being convicted wrongly. Not raising it with anybody. And you're not going to either. That issue is not on the table. The only crime you're running is a single rape-murder that occurred this afternoon. Period. As part of his M.O. this UNSUB might have tried to shift the blame to somebody else but that's all you can say and only if the subject comes up. Don't raise the issue yourself and, for God's sake, don't say anything to the press."
"I don't talk to the press," Rhyme said. Who did, if they could avoid it? "But we'll need to look into the other cases to get an idea of how he operates."
"I didn't say you couldn't," the captain said, firm but not strident. "Keep me posted." He hung up.
"Well, we got ourselves a case," Sellitto said, surrendering to the abandoned quarter of a cookie and washing it down with the coffee.
*
Standing on the curb with three other men in street clothes, Amelia Sachs was talking to the compact man who'd ripped open the door of her Camaro and leveled his weapon at her. He'd turned out not to be 522 but a federal agent who worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
"We're still trying to put it together," he said, and glanced at his boss, an assistant special agent in charge of the Brooklyn DEA office.
The ASAC said, "We'll know more in a few minutes."
Not long before, at gunpoint in the car, Sachs had lifted her hands slowly and identified herself as a police officer. The agent had taken her weapon and had checked her ID twice. He'd returned the gun, shaking his head. "I don't get it," he said. He apologized but his face didn't seem to suggest he was sorry. Mostly the expression said that, well, he just didn't get it.
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