The Watchmaker’s Hand

Hale pointed to a row of abandoned tenements on the other side of the lot.

Gilligan said, “I was thinking about Rhyme.”

“Yes?”

“My brother and me, we hunt. Have all our lives. We’re fucking good shots. Rhyme gets out of the town house some.”

Hale was thinking: Rhyme goes to the Manhattan School of Criminal Justice for the courses he teaches. Tuesday and Thursday and every other weekend. The school was two thousand, three hundred feet from the town house. Usually, his aide drove him in the disabled-accessible van, but on nice days he sometimes motored his way to and from class.

“I could get up on one of those buildings. Two shots. That’d be it. A third for his aide, so he doesn’t try any lifesaving shit. I’d only charge an extra fifty K. What do you think?”

Hale was silent. Then: “No, I think we’ll stick to what I’ve planned.”

Gilligan laughed. “We negotiating? Okay, thirty K.”

“The plan.”

“Like building a watch,” Gilligan said. “You don’t change the design halfway through.”

“Just like that.”

Hale had slowed and Gilligan walked ahead a few paces. When he turned back, he found that he was looking at Hale’s hand, which held a silenced weapon pointed his way.

His eyes revealed shock.

Disbelief too, as if having seen Hale put his Glock back into the compartment beside the trailer door, it was impossible to fathom the concept that someone could actually own two pistols.

11

Lon Sellitto: “So what is it, kryptonite?”

A pop culture reference, Rhyme guessed. Maybe some weapon used by a villain in a movie.

“An inorganic acid. Hydrofluoric. HF’s the chemical symbol. Technically it’s classified as a weak acid.”

Sachs scoffed and Sellitto grumbled, “Weak? Tell him that.” Nodding toward the pictures of the dead construction worker.

“That only means it partially dissociates in water. It’s an ion issue. It can be as corrosive as any other acid. But with HF, corrosion isn’t the real problem. It’s the combination of the elements that makes it so deadly. It’s a one-two punch. The H — hydrogen — burns through the top layer of skin so fast you hardly feel it... Though you definitely do an hour or two later. Then, once it’s in your body, the F — fluoride — attacks internal cells. The result is liquefaction necrosis. And the name of that condition pretty much says it all. Poisoning occurs by contact or inhalation. Breathe it and it’ll burn all the way through your lungs. Dyspnea, cyanosis, pulmonary edema.”

This description coincided with Sachs hitting the oxygen once more.

“Jesus,” Sellitto muttered. “Does it take much?”

“No, a few drops’ll kill you. There’s no antidote. And you can’t wash it off. All you can do is try to treat the symptoms. Massive pain and infection.” He called to Cooper, “Anything else in addition to the acid in the sample?”

“Fragments and sludge of industrial concrete, sand, steel, a little iron, all in states suggesting they were dissolved by the acid.”

“What’s the concentration?” Rhyme asked.

“Thirty-two percent.”

“That’s a mistake. Run it again or recalibrate the equipment.”

“Done all of the above. Thirty-two percent.”

The highest concentration that Rhyme had ever heard of was twenty, and that was just for shipment and storage — in very specialized containers. The product was then greatly diluted for sale to end users. On the market, it was, at the most, two to four percent. A concentration that Sachs had collected at the scene would quickly eat through anything but the very few materials impervious to it, and gas released when it was exposed to air could kill within minutes.

She had been very fortunate to have missed any more exposure in the tunnel beneath the jobsite.

He glanced her way. She was only half listening. She was inhaling more oxygen and staring at some pictures of upturned rebar rods. They were rusty, but two were darker. Dried blood.

The operator must have landed on these when he fell from the sky.

Rhyme nodded at another one of her pictures on the monitor, depicting the counterweight trolley. The acid delivery device was a smoking discolored blob.

“Damn it. He got it up there somehow. The top of the crane. We’ll have to work on that. Once it was in place, how was it activated?”

“The detonator,” Cooper said, holding up another clear plastic container. Inside was what appeared to be a small board of solid-state electronics, also deformed and charred by the acid. He was speaking with the respirator on, through the attached mike.

“Small charge, probably just pulled open a half-dozen big-caliber rounds for the gunpowder.”

“Antenna?”

“Hard to say.”

Rhyme grumbled, “Of course it’s hard to say. It’s melted into oblivion. But if you had to guess.”

“Not remote. Timed.”

As Rhyme had figured. “Is it off the shelf?”

“No. Homemade.”

So, impossible to trace.

“How much acid?”

Cooper shrugged. “At this concentration, two liters. Maybe three.”