“That’s odd,” Pulaski offered. “Nobody by themselves in a restaurant doesn’t hit the electronics. He’s just staring out the window.”
“Because he feels like a shit for what he did.” Rhyme added, “Or thinking of ways to spend whatever the shooter paid him.”
Then he fell silent and squinted. “There’s something...”
“What’s that, Linc?”
“I want to see it again. From the minute he enters. Regular speed.”
Pulaski manipulated the controls. “You have something?”
The answer was: not exactly. But the images had triggered a vague association.
A memory.
Was it the restaurant?
No, he’d never seen it before.
The view outside?
No, just any city street.
Maybe it was something about Gilligan himself...
After all, the man had spent some hours here in the parlor on the DSE break-in case. He’d been here just this morning.
But, no, it was in a context different from the crime scene work they’d done together in the town house.
Clothing?
No...
A mannerism?
Then: “Yes!”
All three men in the lab looked his way.
What was familiar was the man’s stride.
And Lincoln Rhyme knew where he’d seen it before.
“Mel! I want the security cam of the DSE break-in. Put it on the second monitor.”
Rhyme motored closer to that screen. Come on, he thought impatiently. Come on.
“I’m getting it.”
Apparently, he’d spoken out loud.
Soon, a security video was playing, a case number and date appeared, glowing yellow, on a black screen. The scene came to life and they were looking at what a subtitle explained was the west hallway, first floor, of the Department of Structures and Engineering building. Unsub 212 was walking away from the camera toward the exit, the stolen file folders tucked under his right arm.
“Look at Gilligan’s walk at the diner. Look at the thief’s walk at DSE.”
Sellitto was whispering, “The fuck? They’re the same.”
Many law enforcement agencies were using gait-profiling software to identify perps and witnesses. It wasn’t yet admissible at trial in most states, but comparing how a known individual walked with an unknown individual in security videos like this could help investigators tentatively ID the perp. Rhyme didn’t have a program for this in the lab, but he hardly needed one. The two men were clearly the same.
“And his ear,” Pulaski said.
Ah, yes. In both videos he lifted his left hand and compulsively tugged the lobe, a nervous habit.
There was no doubt. Andy Gilligan was Unsub 212.
Sellitto said, “The hell is this about? The detective running the DSE theft case is also the goddamn perp? Somebody explain that to me.”
At that moment, Mel Cooper’s voice came through the speaker clearly. Normally placid, he sounded energized. “Well, we have something here. Where the shooter’s shell casings landed in the field and he picked them up? Guess what I found in the trace?”
“Mel!” Rhyme exhaled noisily. He wasn’t in the mood for dramatic setups.
Unfazed, the tech turned to them with a smile. “Hydrofluoric acid.”
“Jesus,” Sellitto muttered. “So, the shooter’s been to the crane collapse — or he’s Unsub Eighty-Nine himself.”
Rhyme said, “Too much of a coincidence for him to happen to have been at the scene for no reason. No, he’s the mechanic, either with the Kommunalka Project or hired by them. And he needed an inside man in the city government. He pays Gilligan to get him a list of the properties they want turned into affordable housing. That’s where the list came from. And he wanted charts and maps of building sites in the city so he can figure out which cranes are the best to sabotage.”
Sellitto helped himself to a cookie from a tray that Rhyme had not noticed earlier. Thom, a talented baker, was forever leaving out treats that visitors enjoyed but that his boss had little interest in.
Eyes back on the board, Rhyme whispered, “And the mystery man, the mechanic... Who the hell are you?”
The answer to that very question came just a moment later.
Thom Reston stepped into the parlor. “There isn’t much on Gilligan’s phone. No data, no downloads. Just records of calls. Some local — probably to other burners — but there were some to and from a number in England. I checked the exchange. It’s in Manchester. If that means anything.”
Rhyme was silent for a moment, letting the shock settle.
He said, “It means everything. Unsub Eighty-Nine, the crane man? It’s the Watchmaker.”
20
As he waited for the couple who were soon to die, Charles Vespasian Hale wondered if they had children.
He didn’t want the children, if any, to die — and didn’t want them not to die. They were irrelevant. All that mattered was the husband die because of what he’d seen, and that his wife die because he might have told her what he’d seen.
If that meant the kids grew up as orphans, so be it.
Unless they were accompanying their parents now and entered the house with them.
In which case, they wouldn’t grow up at all.
Hale eased back into the foliage of the small park across the street from their modest bungalow in Queens.
The house was owned by a worker at the jobsite where the crane had fallen. His name had been on the list that Gilligan had stolen from Rhyme’s apartment that morning. Hale had called the workers Gilligan had not gotten to, and only this man turned out to be a witness, having seen something “odd” at the site. An SUV parked where it shouldn’t have been.
It happened to be the vehicle Hale had driven there, to sabotage the crane.
Well, he’d ditched the Chevy already, but what was troubling was that the man had seen the contents of the SUV.
And so, the man had to die.
Hale hadn’t known that Moynahan Construction workers had a special lot. He’d parked on the street and left a hard hat on the dash. This is what caught the worker’s attention.
And signed his death warrant.
Hale had hurried to the man’s house here and, finding no one home, slipped inside and left the present for them.
Hale now remained behind the brush and weeds and waited.
Beside the park was a lawyer’s office. The attorney might or might not have been talented in court, but he or she was definitely a skilled linguist. A sign in the window reported that Spanish, Greek, Armenian, Turkish and Chinese were spoken. Hale had heard that soon the country would be minority white. He occasionally received calls from potential clients wishing to hire him to assassinate someone because they were of one of the “lesser races.”
Yes, that term had actually been used.
He always declined such offers, because, yes, he found such jobs distasteful, but also because those who held such views were invariably stupid — and that quality, in any criminal venture, was an undeniable liability.
Now a car slowed and pulled into the driveway. The couple got out. No children. That answered that question. Though, wait... The woman was roundly pregnant. So a partial yes.
His targets seemed to be an average couple. Average build, average hair, average gait. They walked quaintly arm in arm. No... That wasn’t accurate. He was gripping her arm for support. He was likely one of the half dozen injured when the crane collapsed. There’d been only two deaths, which was a disappointment. Not that he was sadistic by nature — hardly (sadism was inefficient); no, Hale simply wanted the attacks to splash. He needed the city to focus.