The Broken Window (51 page)

· 1903 hours. Phone call. From subject’s mobile phone to landline of Subject 5732-4887-3360-4759

(Lincoln Henry Rhyme) (tethered individual). Subject was at Avenue of the Americas and 28thStreet. 14

seconds.

· 1907 hours. RFID scan, Associated Credit Union credit card, Avenue of the Americas and 34thStreet.

4 seconds. No purchase.

“Okay, she’s in Pam’s car. Why’s that? Where’s hers?”

“What’s the license?” Whitcomb asked. “Never mind, it’s faster just to use her code. Let’s see…”

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A window popped up and they could see a report that her Camaro had been impounded and towed from in front of her house. Nobody had any information on the pound it was destined for.

“Five Twenty-Two did that,” Rhyme whispered. “He must have. Like your wife, Pulaski. And the electricity here. He’s going after all of us, however he can.”

Whitcomb typed and the automobile information was replaced with a map, showing the hits on the geographic-positioning profile. It revealed Sachs’s movement from Brooklyn to Midtown. But then the trail stopped.

“The last one?” Rhyme asked. “The RFID scan. What was that?”

Whitcomb said, “A store read the chip in one of her credit cards. But it was brief. Probably she was in the car. She’d have to be walking pretty fast for that short a reading.”

“Did she keep going north?” Rhyme mused.

“That’s all the information we have. It’ll update soon.”

Mel Cooper said, “She might’ve taken Thirty-fourth Street to the West Side Highway. And gone north, out of the city.”

“There’s a toll bridge,” Whitcomb said. “If she crosses it we’ll get a hit on the license plate number. The girl whose car it is—Pam Willoughby—doesn’t have an E-ZPass. innerCircle would tell us if she did.”

At Rhyme’s instruction, Mel Cooper—the senior police officer among them—had an emergency vehicle locator sent out on Pam’s license number and car make.

Rhyme called the precinct house in Brooklyn, where he learned only that Sachs’s Camaro had indeed been towed. Sachs and Pam had been there briefly but had left quickly and hadn’t said where they were going. Rhyme called the girl on her mobile. She was in the city with a girlfriend. Pam confirmed that Sachs had discovered a lead after the break-in at her town house in Brooklyn but hadn’t mentioned what it was or where she was going.

Rhyme disconnected.

Whitcomb said, “We’ll feed the geopositioning hits and everything we’ve got about her and the case through FORT, the obscure relationship program, then Xpectation. That’s the predictive software. If there’s any way to find out where she’s gone, this’ll do it.”

Whitcomb looked up at the ceiling again. Grimaced. He rose and walked to the door. Rhyme could see him lock it, then wedge a wooden chair under the knob. He gave a faint smile as he sat down at the computer. He began to type.

“Mark?” Pulaski asked.

“Yes?”

“Thanks. And this time, I mean it.”

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Life is a struggle, of course.

My idol—Andrew Sterling—and I share the same passion for data, and we both appreciate their mystery, their allure, their immense power. But until I stepped into his sphere I never appreciated the full extent of using data as a weapon to expand your vision to every corner of the world. Reducing all of life, all of existence to numbers, then watching them billow into something transcendent.

Immortal soul…

I was in love with SQL, the workhorse standard for database management, until I was seduced by Andrew and Watchtower. Who wouldn’t have been? Its power and elegance are enthralling. And I’ve come to fully appreciate the world of data, thanks to him—though indirectly. He’s never given me more than a pleasant nod in the hall and a query about the weekend, though he knew my name without a glance at the ID on my chest (what a breathtakingly brilliant mind he has). I think of all the late nights I spent in his office, 2:00 A.M. or so, SSD empty, sitting in his chair and feeling his presence as I read through his spine-up library. Not a single one of those pedantic and silly businessman’s self-help books, but volumes and volumes revealing a much greater vision: books about the collection of power and geographic territory: the continental U.S. under the Manifest Destiny doctrine in the 1800s, Europe under the Third Reich,
mare nostra
under the Romans, the entire world under the Catholic Church and Islam.

(And they all appreciated the incisive power of data, by the way.) Ah, the things I’ve learned just from overhearing Andrew, savoring what he’s written in drafts of memos and letters and the book he’s working on.

“Mistakes are noise. Noise is contamination. Contamination must be eliminated.”

“Only in victory can we afford to be generous.”

“Only the weak compromise.”

“Either find a solution to your problem, or stop considering it a problem.”

“We are born to battle.”

“He who understands wins; he who knows understands.”

I consider what Andrew would think about what I’m up to, and I believe he’d be pleased.

And now, the battle against Them moves forward.

On the street near my home I press the key fob again and finally a horn gives a muted bleep.

Let’s see, let’s see… Ah, here we go. Look at this piece of junk, a Honda Civic. Borrowed, of course, since Amelia 7303’s car is now sitting in a pound—a coup I’m rather proud of. Never thought of trying that before.

My thoughts stray back to my beautiful redhead. Was she bluffing about what They knew? About Peter
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Gordon? That’s the funny thing about knowledge; such a fine line between truth and a lie. But I can’t take the chance. I’ll have to hide the car.

My thoughts go back to her.

The woman’s wild eyes, her red hair, the body… I’m not sure I can wait much longer.

Trophies…

A fast examination of the car. Some books, magazines, Kleenex, some empty Vitamin Water bottles, a Starbucks napkin, running shoes shedding rubber, a
Seventeen
magazine in the backseat and a textbook on poetry… And who owns this superb contribution to the world of Japanese technology? The registration tells me it’s Pamela Willoughby.

I’ll get a little more information on her from innerCircle then I’ll pay her a visit. Wonder what she looks like? I’ll check DMV to make sure she’s worth the trouble.

The car starts up just fine. Ease out carefully, no upsetting other drivers. Don’t want to make a scene.

A half block, into the alley.

What does Miss Pam like to listen to? Rock, rock, alternative, hip-hop, talk and NPR. Presets are extremely informative.

I’m already forming a game plan to arrange a transaction with the girl: getting to know her. We’ll meet at Amelia 7303’s memorial service (no body, no funeral). I’ll offer sympathy. I met her during the case she was working on. I really liked her. Oh, don’t cry, honey. It’s okay. Tell you what. Let’s get together. I can tell you all about the stories Amelia shared with me. Her father. And the interesting story of her grandfather’s coming to this country. (After I learned she was snooping around, I checked out her dossier. What an interesting history.) We got to be good friends. I’m really devastated… How about coffee? You like Starbucks? I always go there after my run in Central Park every evening. No! You too?

We sure seem to have something in common.

Oh, there’s that feeling again, thinking about Pam. How ugly can she be?

It might be a wait to get her into my trunk… I have to take care of Thom Reston first—and a few other things. But at least I have Amelia 7303 for tonight.

I drive into the garage and ditch the car—it’ll rest here until I swap plates and it goes to the bottom of the Croton reservoir. But I can’t think about that now. I’m pretty consumed, planning out the transaction with my red-haired friend, waiting back home in my Closet, like a wife for her husband after a really tough day at the office.

Sorry, no prediction can be made at this time. Please input more data and try your request again.

Despite drawing from the world’s largest database, despite the state-of-the-art software examining every detail of Amelia Sachs’s life at the speed of light, the program struck out.

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“I’m sorry,” Mark Whitcomb said, dabbing his nose. The high-def system on the video-conferencing system displayed the nasal injury quite prominently. It looked bad; Ron Pulaski had really slammed him.

The young man continued, sniffing, “There just aren’t enough details. What you get out is only as good as what you put in. It works best with a pattern of behaviors. All it tells us is that she’s going someplace she’s never been before, at least not on that route.”

Right to the killer’s house, Rhyme reflected in frustration.

Where the hell was she?

“Hold on a minute. The system’s updating…”

The screen flickered and changed. Whitcomb blurted, “I’ve got her! Some RFID hits twenty minutes ago.”

“Where?” Rhyme whispered.

Whitcomb put them on the screen. They were in a quiet block on the Upper East Side. “Two hits at stores. The duration of the first RFID scan was two seconds. The next was slightly longer, eight seconds.

Maybe she was pausing to check an address.”

“Call Bo Haumann now!” Rhyme shouted.

Pulaski hit speed dial and a moment later the head of Emergency Service came on the phone.

“Bo, I’ve got a lead on Amelia. She went after Five Twenty-Two and she’s disappeared. We’ve got a computer monitoring her whereabouts. About twenty minutes ago she was near six forty-two East Eighty-eighth.”

“We can be there in ten minutes, Linc. Hostage situation?”

“That’s what I’d say. Call me when you know something.”

They disconnected.

Rhyme thought back to her message on voice mail. It seemed so fragile, that tiny bundle of digital data.

In his mind he could hear her voice perfectly:
“I have a lead, a good one, Rhyme. Call me.”

He couldn’t help wondering if it would be their last communication.

Bo Haumann’s Emergency Service Unit A Team was standing near a doorway of a large town house on the Upper East Side: four officers in full body armor, holding MP-5s, compact, black machine guns.

They were carefully staying clear of the windows.

Haumann had to admit he hadn’t seen anything like this in all his years in the military or the police department. Lincoln Rhyme was using some kind of computer program that had tracked Amelia Sachs to this area, only it wasn’t through her phone or a wire or GPS tracker. Maybe this was the future of police
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work.

The device hadn’t given the actual location where the teams now were—a private residence. But a witness had seen a woman pause at both shops where the computer had spotted her, then she’d headed to this town house across the street.

Where she was presumably being held by the perp they were calling 522.

Finally, the team in the back called in. “B Team to One. We’re in position. Can’t see anything. Which floor is she on, K?”

“No idea. We just go in and sweep. Move fast. She’s been in there a while. I’ll hit the bell and when he comes to the door, we move in.”

“Roger, K.”

“Team C. We’ll be on the roof in three or four minutes.”

“Move it!” Haumann grumbled.

“Yes, sir.”

Haumann had worked with Amelia Sachs for years. She had more balls than most of the men who served under him. He wasn’t sure he
liked
her—she was pigheaded and abrupt and often bluffed her way onto point when she should have held back—but he sure as hell respected her.

And he wasn’t going to let her go down to a rapist like this 522. He nodded an ESU detective up to the porch—dressed in a business suit so that when he knocked on the door, a glance through the peephole wouldn’t tip off the killer. Once he opened the door, officers crouching against the front of the town house would leap up and rush him. The officer buttoned his jacket and nodded.

“Goddamnit,” Haumann radioed impatiently to the team in the back. “You in place yet or not?”

The door opened and she heard the killer’s footsteps enter the stinking, claustrophobic room.

Amelia Sachs was in a crouch, her knees in agony, struggling to get to the handcuff key in her front pocket. But surrounded by the towering stacks of newspapers, she hadn’t been able to turn far enough to reach into her front pocket. She’d touched it through the cloth, felt its shape, tantalizing, but couldn’t slip her fingers into the slit.

She was racked with frustration.

More footsteps.

Where, where?

One more lunge for the key… Almost but not quite.

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Then his steps moved closer. She gave up.

Okay, it was time to fight. Fine with her. She’d seen his eyes, the lust, the hunger. She knew he’d be coming for her at any moment. She didn’t know how she’d hurt him, with her hands cuffed behind her and the terrible pain in her shoulder and face from the fight earlier. But the bastard’d pay for every touch.

Only, where was he?

The footsteps had stopped.

Where? Sachs had no perspective on the room. The corridor he’d have to come through to get to her was a two-foot-wide path through the towers of moldy newspapers. She could see his desk and the piles of junk, the stacks of magazines.

Come on, come for me.

I’m ready. I’ll act scared, shy away. Rapists are all about control. He’ll be empowered—and careless—when he sees me cower. Then when he leans close, I’ll go for his throat with my teeth. Hold on and don’t let go, whatever happens. I’ll—

It was then that the building collapsed, a bomb detonated.

A massive crushing tide tumbled over her, slamming her to the floor and pinning her immobile.

She grunted in pain.

Only after a minute did Sachs realize what he’d done—maybe anticipating that she was going to fight, he’d simply pushed over stacks of the newspapers.

Legs and hands frozen, her chest, shoulders and head exposed, she was trapped by hundreds of pounds of stinking newspaper.