The Watchmaker’s Hand

She explained that the substance, whatever it was, had begun to dissolve the concrete of the weights itself. “Made them lighter and the crane began to tip forward. The operator did what he could, but finally two of the weights dropped free, and that was it.” Her voice sounded husky and tired, and she paused for more oxygen. She coughed hard several times and wiped her mouth with a tissue, then glanced unobtrusively at it. Rhyme could see no blood, but his view was masked; he wondered if she could.

She repeated what she’d told him earlier — about all the workers in gloves and boots. Dressing like them, the unsub might as well have been invisible.

Murder in a construction site...

“The precinct’s got a dozen uniforms out canvassing stores and offices nearby. See if anybody got a look of someone carting a box into the site.”

Rhyme grimaced. Videos and witnesses, yet only enough evidence to fit into — not even fill — two small milk crates.

Ridiculous.

Sellitto looked toward Cooper, who was running samples through his equipment. “You found out what that shit is yet, Mel?”

Eyes on the crime scene images, Rhyme gave a brief laugh of surprise. “Well, we know what it is. The only question is can we find out where the unsub got it.”

“You know just by looking at the pictures?” Sellitto asked.

“Of course. That, and Amelia’s symptoms.”

“And?”

“Take radioactive toxins and botulinum out of the equation, and it’s the most dangerous substance on earth.”

10

“Hey,” said Andy Gilligan in greeting.

Charles Hale nodded and through the curtain in the door window scanned Hamilton Court once more.

The cop snapped, “I looked. Nobody was following. I know what I’m doing. Not my first circus.”

Wasn’t the expression “rodeo”?

Hale closed and locked the door, then put the gun back into the compartment, feeling no urge to explain his caution or to comment on the fact that Gilligan himself had been clutching a firearm as he approached the trailer.

They moved to the center section of the mobile construction headquarters and sat at the table. “Coffee?” Hale asked.

“No, I’m good.”

“It went all right?”

The detective clicked his tongue. “Perfect. None of them suspect anything. Now, here’s this,” Gilligan said, as if about to deliver a Christmas present to a buddy. He withdrew several sheets from his inside jacket pocket. It was quite the nice garment. The detective, Hale had learned, had several sources of income — all of it tax free — beyond what the NYPD paid him. Hale himself had put $100K into an offshore account for Gilligan this year alone.

“What is it?”

“Lifted it from a file at Rhyme’s. It’ll be helpful.”

Hale opened the sheets and scanned the list of eighteen names. Most of them were crossed out.

“You’ll want to talk to the others, the one’s I haven’t checked off,” Gilligan said. “Might be a witness.”

“What’s the climate like there, in Rhyme’s?”

“The crane thing’s got them occupied. Totally. My case is on the back burner.”

He was referring to the Department of Structures and Engineering theft. The possessive pronoun “my” was true in two senses: it was Gilligan’s case because he was lead detective on it — but also because he was the thief, the man who’d broken into the building and stolen the documents and drives.

He was the man Rhyme and Amelia Sachs had nicknamed Unsub 212.

The stolen DSE materials were what now covered the table in front of the men.

“Anything new I should know about Rhyme’s security?”

“No. Still just the parcel X-ray machine. The biotox frame. The detectors for bombs and radiation.”

When the detective had first reported to Hale that there was a uranium detector, Gilligan had laughed. “Rhyme thinks somebody’s going to nuke him?”

Hale had not bothered to explain that dirty devices — which spread radioactive material — are a far more realistic danger than a nuclear reaction.

“And still no metal detectors?”

“No.”

“The video you took? The card?”

Gilligan seemed hesitant as he handed Hale an SD card. “I didn’t get much. I didn’t want to, you know, be too obvious, taping.”

The detective had worn a body cam with a button lens on the occasions he’d been to Rhyme’s. Some of this was to allow Hale to see exactly what the defenses were like in the town house.

Hale also wanted to see the criminalist himself. Like a herpetologist needs to observe his favorite species of snake in its own environment.

He called up a movie-viewing program on his laptop, loaded the card and scrubbed through what Gilligan had recorded.

The quality was good for the most part. The detective had stood still and panned slowly. He did, however, cover the lens with his sleeve frequently — out of fear of being detected, probably.

Hale now froze a frame, leaning toward the screen.

He was looking at a particularly clear, well-lit capture.

And studied the image intensely.

Lincoln Rhyme is a handsome man, with a prominent nose and thick, trimmed dark hair. Those confined to wheelchairs sometimes gain weight or grow gaunt. Rhyme has done neither. He exercises, it’s clear.