The Broken Window

by Jeffery Deaver

  "Biking. Could be that he'd checked out her route and knew she'd be by there at a certain time. And somehow he knew the couple were going to be away so he wouldn't have any disturbances. . . . Okay, rookie, run through what you found. Thom, if you would be so kind as to write this down."

  "You're trying too hard."

  "Ha. Cause of death?" Rhyme asked Pulaski.

  "I told the doctor to have the medical examiner expedite the autopsy results."

  Sellitto laughed gruffly. "And what'd he say to that?"

  "Something like 'Yeah, right.' And a couple other things too."

  "You need a bit more starch in your collar before you can make requests like that. But I appreciate the effort. What was the preliminary?"

  He looked over his notes. "Suffered several blows to the head. To subdue her, the M.E. thought." The young officer paused, perhaps recalling his own, similar injury a few years ago. He continued, "Cause of death was strangulation. There were petechiae in the eyes and inside the eyelids--pinpoint hemorrhages--"

  "I know what they are, rookie."

  "Oh, sure. Right. And venous distention in the scalp and face. This is the probable murder weapon." He held up a bag containing a length of rope about four feet long.

  "Mel?"

  Cooper took the rope and carefully opened it over a large sheet of clean newsprint, dusting to dislodge trace. He then examined what he'd found and took a few samples of the fibers.

  "What?" Rhyme asked impatiently.

  "Checking."

  The rookie took refuge in his notes again. "As far as the rape, it was vaginal and anal. Postmortem, the tour doctor thought."

  "Posing of the body?"

  "No . . . but one thing I noticed, Detective," Pulaski said. "All her fingernails were long, except one. It was cut really short."

  "Blood?"

  "Yes. It was cut right down to the quick." He hesitated. "Probably premortem."

  So 522's a bit of a sadist, Rhyme reflected. "He likes pain."

  "Check the other crime-scene photos, from the earlier rape."

  The young officer hurried off to find the pictures. He shuffled through them and found one, squinting. "Look at this, Detective. Yeah, he cut off a fingernail there too. The same finger."

  "Our boy likes trophies. That's good to know."

  Pulaski nodded enthusiastically. "And think about it--the wedding ring finger. Probably something about his past. Maybe his wife left him, maybe he was neglected by his mother or a mother figure--"

  "Good point, Pulaski. Reminds me--we forgot something else."

  "What's that, sir?"

  "Did you check your horoscope this morning before we started the investigation?"

  "My . . . ?"

  "Oh, and who got the tea-leaf-reading assignment? I forget."

  Sellitto was chuckling. Pulaski was blushing.

  Rhyme snapped, "Psychological profiling isn't helpful. What's helpful about the nail is knowing that Five Twenty-Two now has in his possession a DNA connection to the crime. Not to mention that if we can decide what kind of implement he used to remove the trophy, we might be able to trace the purchase and find him. Evidence, rookie. Not psychobabble."

  "Sure, Detective. Got it."

  " 'Lincoln' is fine."

  "Okay. Sure."

  "The rope, Mel?"

  Cooper was scrolling through the fiber database. "Generic hemp. Available in thousands of retail outlets around the country." He ran a chemical analysis. "No trace."

  Crap.

  "What else, Pulaski?" Sellitto asked.

  He went through the list. Fishing line, binding her hands, and cutting through the skin, which resulted in the bleeding. Duct tape covered her mouth. The tape was Home Depot brand, of course, torn off the roll 522 had ditched; the ragged ends matched perfectly. Two unopened condoms were discovered near the body, the young officer explained, holding up the bag. They were Trojan-Enz brand.

  "And here are the swabs."

  Mel Cooper took the plastic evidence bags and checked the vaginal and rectal swabs. The M.E.'s office would give a more detailed report but it was clear that among the substances were traces of a spermicidal lubricant similar to that used with the condoms. There was no semen anywhere at the scene.

  Another swab, from the floor, where Pulaski found the treadmark of a running shoe, revealed beer. It proved to be Miller brand. The electrostatic image of the tread was, naturally, a size-13 Sure-Track right shoe--the same that 522 had ditched in the trash can. "And the owners of the loft had no beer, right? You did search the kitchen and pantry?"

  "Right, yes, sir. And I didn't find any."

  Lon Sellitto was nodding. "Bet you ten bucks that Miller is DeLeon's brew of choice."

  "I won't take you up on that one, Lon. What else was there?"

  Pulaski held up a plastic bag containing a brown fleck that he'd found just above the victim's ear. Analysis revealed it to be tobacco. "What's the story with that, Mel?"

  The tech's examination revealed that it was a fine-cut piece, the sort used in cigarettes, but it was not the same as the Tareyton sampler in the database. Lincoln Rhyme was one of the few nonsmokers in the country who decried the bans on smoking; tobacco and ash were wonderful forensic links between criminal and crime scene. Cooper couldn't tell the brand. He decided, though, that because the tobacco was so desiccated it was probably old.

  "Did Myra smoke? Or the people in the loft?"

  "I didn't see any evidence of it. And I did what you're always telling us. I smelled the scene when I got there. No smell of smoking."

  "Good." Rhyme was pleased with the search so far. "What's the friction-ridge situation?"

  "Checked fingerprint samples of the homeowners--from the medicine cabinet and things in the bedside table."

  "So you weren't fudging. You really did read my book." Rhyme had devoted a number of paragraphs in his forensic text to the importance of collecting control prints at crime scenes and where to best find them.

  "Yes, sir."

  "I'm so pleased. Did I make any royalties?"

  "I borrowed my brother's." Pulaski's twin was a cop down at the Sixth Precinct in Greenwich Village.

  "Let's hope he paid for it."

  Most of the prints found in the loft were the couple's--which they determined from the samples. The others were probably from visitors but it wasn't impossible that 522 had been careless. Cooper scanned all of them into the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. The results would be available soon.

  "Okay, tell me, Pulaski, what was your impression of the scene?"

  The question seemed to throw him. "Impression?"

  "Those are the trees." Rhyme lowered his eyes toward the evidence bags. "What did you think of the forest?"

  The young officer thought. "Well, I did have a thought. It's stupid, though."

  "You know I'll be the first one to say if you've come up with a stupid theory, rookie."

  "It's just, when I first got there my impression was that the struggle seemed off."

  "How do you mean?"

  "See, her bike was chained to a lamppost outside the loft. Like she'd parked it, not thinking anything was wrong."

  "So he didn't just grab her on the street."

  "Right. And to get into the loft you went through a gate and then down a long corridor to the front door. It was real narrow and it was packed with things the couple stored outside--jars and cans, sports things, some stuff to be recycled, tools for their garden. But nothing was disturbed." He tapped another photo. "But look inside--that's where the struggle began. The table and the vases. Right by the front door." His voice went soft again. "Looks like she fought real hard."

  Rhyme nodded. "All right. So Five Twenty-Two lures her to the loft, smooth-talking her. She locks up the bike, walks down the corridor and they go into the loft. She stops in the entryway, sees he's lying and tries to get out."

  He considered this. "So he must've known enough about Myra to put her at ease, and
make her feel that she could trust him. . . . Sure, think about it: He's got all this information--about who people are, what people buy, when they're on vacation, whether they have alarms, where they're going to be. . . . Not bad, rookie. Now we know something concrete about him."

  Pulaski struggled to keep a smile off his face.

  Cooper's computer dinged. He read the screen. "No hits on the prints. Zero."

  Rhyme shrugged, not surprised. "I'm interested in this idea--that he knows so much. Somebody give DeLeon Williams a call. Was Five Twenty-Two right about all the evidence?"

  Sellitto's brief conversation revealed that, yes, Williams wore size-13 Sure-Track shoes, he regularly bought Trojan-Enz brand condoms, he had forty-pound fishing line, he drank Miller beer and he'd recently been to Home Depot for duct tape and hemp rope to use as a tie-down.

  Looking at the evidence chart of the earlier rape, Rhyme noted that the condoms used by 522 in that crime were Durex. The killer had used those because Joseph Knightly bought that brand.

  On the speakerphone he asked Williams, "Is one of your shoes missing?"

  "No."

  Sellitto said, "So he bought a pair. Same type, same size as you've got. How'd he know that? Have you seen anybody on your property recently, maybe in your garage, going through your car or trash? Or have you had a break-in recently?"

  "No, we sure haven't. I'm out of work and here most days taking care of the house. I'd know. And it's not the best neighborhood in the world; we've got an alarm. We always put it on."

  Rhyme thanked him and they disconnected.

  He stretched his head back and gazed at the chart, as he dictated to Thom what to write.

  MYRA WEINBURG CRIME SCENE

  * * *

  * COD: Strangulation. Awaiting final M.E. report

  * No mutilation or arranging of body but ring fingernail, left hand, was cut short. Possible trophy. Premortem most likely * Condom lubricant, from Trojan-Enz

  * Unopened condoms (2), Trojan-Enz

  * No used condoms, or body fluids

  * Traces of Miller beer on floor (source other than crime scene)

  * Fishing line, 40-pound monofilament, generic brand

  * Four-foot length of brown hemp rope (MW)

  * Duct tape on mouth

  * Tobacco flake, old, from unidentified brand

  * Footprint, Sure-Track man's running shoe, size 13

  * No fingerprints

  Rhyme asked, "Our boy called nine-one-one, right? To report the Dodge?"

  "Yeah," Sellitto confirmed.

  "Find out about the call. What he said, what his voice sounded like."

  The detective added, "The earlier cases too--your cousin's and the coin theft and earlier rape."

  "Good, sure. I didn't think about that."

  Sellitto got in touch with central dispatch. Nine-one-one calls are recorded and kept for varying periods of time. He requested the information. Ten minutes later he received a callback. The 911 reports from Arthur's case and today's murder were still in the system, the dispatch supervisor reported, and had been sent to Cooper's e-mail address as .wav files. The earlier cases had been sent to archives on CD. It could take days to find them but an assistant had sent in a request for them.

  When the audio files arrived, Cooper opened and played them. They were of a male voice telling the police to hurry to an address where he'd heard screaming. He described the get-away vehicles. The voices sounded identical.

  "Voice print?" Cooper asked. "If we get a suspect, we can compare it."

  Voice prints were more highly regarded in the forensic world than lie detectors, and were admissible in some courts, depending on the judge. But Rhyme shook his head. "Listen to it. He's talking through a box. Can't you tell?"

  A "box" is a device that disguises a caller's voice. It doesn't produce a weird, Darth Vader sound; the timbre is normal, if a little hollow. Many directory assistance and customer service operations use them to make employees' voices uniform.

  It was then that the door opened and Amelia Sachs strode into the parlor, carrying a large object under her arm. Rhyme couldn't tell what it was. She nodded, then gazed at the evidence chart, saying to Pulaski, "Looks like a good job."

  "Thanks."

  Rhyme noted that what she held was a book. It seemed half disassembled. "What the hell is that?"

  "A present from our doctor friend, Robert Jorgensen."

  "What is it? Evidence?"

  "Hard to say. It was really an odd experience, talking to him."

  "Whatta you mean by odd, Amelia?" Sellitto asked.

  "Think Batboy, Elvis and aliens behind the Kennedy assassination. That sort of odd."

  Pulaski exhaled a fast laugh, drawing a withering look from Lincoln Rhyme.

  Chapter Fourteen She told a story of a troubled man whose identity had been stolen and his life ruined. A man who described his nemesis as God, and himself as Job.

  Clearly he was unhinged; "odd" didn't go far enough. Yet if even partly true, his story was moving and hard to listen to. A life completely in tatters, and the crime pointless.

  But then Sachs caught Rhyme's complete attention when she said, "Jorgensen claims the man behind it's been keeping track of him ever since he bought this book two years ago. He seems to know everything he's doing."

  "Knows everything," Rhyme repeated, looking at the evidence charts. "Just what we were talking about a few minutes ago. Getting all the information he needs on the victims and the fall guys." He filled her in on what they'd learned.

  She handed the book to Mel Cooper and told him Jorgensen believed it held a tracking device.

  "Tracking device?" Rhyme scoffed. "He's been watching too many Oliver Stone movies. . . . All right, search it if you want. But let's not neglect the real leads."

  Sachs's calls to the police in the various jurisdictions where Jorgensen had been victimized weren't productive. Yes, there'd been identity theft, no question. "But," one cop in Florida asked, "you know how much of this goes on? We find a fake residence and raid it but by the time we get there it's empty. They've taken all the merch they'd charged to the vic's account and headed off to Texas or Montana."

  Most of them had heard of Jorgensen ("He sure writes a lot of letters") and were sympathetic. But none had any specific leads to an individual or gang who might have been behind the crimes and they couldn't devote nearly enough time to the cases as they would have liked. "We could have another hundred people on staff and still not be able to make any headway."

  After she'd hung up, Sachs explained that since 522 knew Jorgensen's address, she'd told the residence hotel clerk to let her know immediately if anyone called or came around asking about him. If the clerk agreed, Sachs would neglect to bring up the residence hotel with the city's building inspection office.

  "Nicely done," Rhyme said. "You knew there were violations?"

  "Not until he agreed at, oh, about the speed of light." Sachs walked to the evidence that Pulaski had gotten from the loft near SoHo, looking it over.

  "Any thoughts, Amelia?" Sellitto asked.

  She stood, staring at the boards, one fingernail taking on another as she tried to make sense out of the disparate collection of clues.

  "Where'd he get this?" She picked up the bag containing the printout of Myra Weinburg's face--looking sweet and amused, her eyes on the camera that had snapped her picture. "We should find out."

  Good point. Rhyme hadn't considered the source of the picture, merely that 522 had downloaded it from a Web site somewhere. He'd been more interested in the paper as a source of clues.

  In the photo Myra Weinburg was standing beside a flowering tree, gazing back at the camera, a smile on her face. She was holding a pink drink in a martini glass.

  Rhyme noticed Pulaski gazing at the picture too, his eyes troubled again.

  The thing is . . . she looked a little like Jenny.

  Rhyme noted distinctive borders and what appeared to be the strokes of some letters to the right, disa
ppearing out of frame. "He'd've got it online. To make it look like DeLeon Williams was checking her out."

  Sellitto said, "Maybe we could trace him through the site he downloaded it from. How can we tell where he got it?"

  "Google her name," Rhyme suggested.

  Cooper tried this and found a dozen hits, several referring to a different Myra Weinburg. The ones that related to the victim were all professional organizations. But none of the photos of her was similar to the one that 522 had printed out.

  Sachs said, "Got an idea. Let me call my computer expert."

  "Who, that guy at Computer Crimes?" Sellitto asked.

  "No, somebody even better than him."

  She picked up the phone and dialed a number. "Pammy, hi. Where are you? . . . Good. I've got an assignment. Go online for a Web chat. We'll do audio by phone."

  Sachs turned to Cooper. "Can you boot up your webcam, Mel?"

  The tech typed and a moment later his monitor filled with an image of Pam's room at her foster parents' house in Brooklyn. The face of the pretty teenager appeared as she sat down. The image was slightly distorted by the wide-angle lens.

  "Hi, Pam."

  "Hi, Mr. Cooper" came the lilting voice through the speakerphone.

  "I'll take over," Sachs said and replaced Cooper at the keyboard. "Honey, we've found a picture and we think it came from the Internet. Could you take a look and tell us if you know where?"

  "Sure."

  Sachs held up the sheet to the webcam.

  "It's kind of glary. Can you take it out of the plastic?"

  The detective pulled on latex gloves and carefully slipped the sheet out, held it up again.

  "That's better. Sure, it's from OurWorld."

  "What's that?"

  "You know, a social-networking site. Like Facebook and MySpace. It's the hot new one. Everybody's on it."

  "You know about those, Rhyme?" Sachs asked.

  He gave a nod. Curiously, he'd been thinking about this recently. He'd read an article in The New York Times about networking sites and virtual existence worlds like Second Life. He'd been surprised to learn that people were spending less time in the outside world and more in the virtual--from avatars to these social-networking sites to telecommuting. Apparently teenagers today spent less time out of doors than in any other period in U.S. history. Ironically, thanks to an exercise regimen that was improving his physical condition and his changing attitudes, Rhyme himself was becoming less virtual and was venturing out more. The dividing line between abled and disabled was blurring.