What was that?
A pop.
It was coming from the neighbor’s house.
The forty-four-year-old mother of three and part-time librarian looked across the narrow strips of side yards to the bungalow that was almost identical to the one she and her husband owned — identical to many of them, actually, in this part of Queens. Only, the next-door couple had gone with red trim, not yellow.
Abby decided she liked red better, but would never go to the expense of painting something that didn’t need to be painted. How stupid was that? Besides, that’d look like she did it because the neighbors had and even though that was true, she didn’t want anybody to think it was true.
Pop.
Her eyes on the bungalow, wondering about the sound. She was thinking what a time they’ve been through, the folks who lived there. The poor husband, the construction worker who’d nearly died in that terrible crane incident that morning.
Abby’s hubby, Tim, was a mechanic at Harbey’s Automotive — yes, not Harvey’s — and had never been in any danger even during the fire.
And the pregnant wife? Going to drop at any minute.
What a time...
One pour for you, she thought to the largest of the hanging plants — secretly her favorite.
One pour for you.
Good drinks, everybody.
Abby loved her plants. She talked to them and believed they did better because of the conversation.
She looked at their house once more.
Wait, what was that?
She was alarmed. Smoke? Was there a fire?
Grabbing her phone, she started to dial 911. Then she paused. No. She realized she was looking at the bathroom. It was steam. A few wisps slid from the partially open window and vanished quickly. And there was no smoke anywhere else.
That’s all it was. Steam.
She herself just loved hot baths.
Abby walked into the kitchen and filled her watering can once again. She walked through the house, careful not to spill on the carpet, and out the door to the front porch, where four more plants waited.
“One pour for you,” she said. And turning to the others, she whispered, “Just be patient. It’s almost your turn.”
As they waited for the lanky FBI agent to return, Rhyme noted some other aspects of Dellray’s office: photos of his wife and three children. So the couple had had another youngster... Then again, maybe he’d had three the last time the subject of his family came up.
The criminalist was perpetually short on knowledge of his colleagues’ personal lives.
Sellitto began to ask something. But Rhyme held up a finger as he stared forward — not at the evidence whiteboard, but out the window. Branches and leaves and clouds, and some striking blue sky beyond.
Dellray returned. He dropped into his chair. “Gotcha one for the ages, Lincoln. Didn’t come across my desk ’cause I’m spending my precious hours and brain cells putting some racist skinheads away. Now, this is most interesting. Three days ago, incident at JFK. No collateral intel, no chatter, no hot box alerts. Not. A. One. We all together on that?”
“I will be when you tell me what you found out.”
A chuckle. “Triple Seven on an international flight. Parks at the gate, everybody hightails it off the big steel bird, passengers, flight crew. Now, this is where it gets good.
“Next flight, few hours later, the first officer does a walk-around. What they have to do. Checks out the plane, kicks the tires, makes sure the wings’re bolted on. And she looks into the nosewheel well. And guess what that woman finds? You can’t, so I’ll tell ya. An oxygen tank, big enough for an eight-hour supply, a mask, and a thermal sleeping bag heated with a twelve-volt battery.”
At thirty-five thousand feet, temperatures can reach –70 Fahrenheit, though you won’t feel unpleasant for very long. Hypoxia — lack of oxygen — will kill you before cruising altitude.
One for the ages...
“Departed where? Manchester?”
“Yes indeed.”
Sellitto muttered, “The Watchmaker, just the sort of grand entrance he’d go for.”
“Evidence?” Rhyme asked.
“PERT bundled it up and took it down to Quantico.”
The Bureau’s Physical Evidence Response Team was good. And the lab in Quantico was perhaps the best in the world.
“Can they pull a print now? I... We have to know for sure.”
“Name’s Hale, right?”
“Charles Vespasian Hale.”
“Hold on.”
A green and yellow flash as he disappeared.
Rhyme’s eyes slipped out the window once again.
A crane stabbed the sky...
In his mind, the pieces were lining up.
But he needed the critical confirmation from Dellray.
Who was back, two minutes later.
“It’s your boy, Lincoln. Nothing big in the surprise department — Hale was smart enough to wear cloth gloves in the plane, but must’ve figured that’d be suspicious inside the terminal. They lifted a print on the door handle for the baggage crew. So the Watchmaker is the crane man.”
“Looks that way. Let Homeland Security know. He’s on their list too.”
They disconnected.
The Watchmaker. The man whose plots Rhyme had foiled several times in the United States and Mexico. The man Rhyme had actually arrested and incarcerated, though he’d managed to escape from a prison that was very difficult to escape from.
The man who was, to use the overly romantic and inartful term, Rhyme reflected, his nemesis.
Now it was Sellitto who was peering out the window. “He’s here. But where?”
Rhyme reflected for a moment. “That’s what I’ve been thinking about, and I have an idea.”
23
It was a twenty mph zone.
Amelia Sachs was doing sixty, and irritated that she had to slow for intersections.
She had dash flashers on the grille, but no siren. She’d have to look into that.
Hell. Speed bump. Down to forty.
Thud, bang.
Ouch...
Then faster.
Sachs was piloting her Torino, engine raging, down a trim residential street in Queens, a block of small, detached single-families. Red brick, beige stone, a few framed, painted in subdued colors. Not unlike the Brooklyn neighborhood she’d grown up in.
One reason for the speed: an earlier delay. A coughing fit had forced her to pull over, lower her head and breathe the sweet oxygen through the mask until the spasms ended. She actually pulled into the parking lot in front of a hospital’s emergency room.
Debating.
But then she’d controlled it and continued on to meet with the witness.
A brief coughing fit now, filling her with anger at the man who would use this shit as a weapon.
Anger at her own lungs for not resisting better.
Forget it.
Drive.
Once through an intersection, her right foot dropped hard and the car jerked ahead, speeding faster yet.
She was hands-free on her cell phone. Com had arranged a patch from the police radio frequency. The line was open to responding officers answering to the address in Queens, where the witness lived.
“Detective Five Eight Eight Five, come in. K.”
“Go ahead.”
“We’re on-site. Looks like a fire.”
“Negative. It’s acid fumes. Keep back. One whiff’ll kill you. I’ve called FD. They’re bringing the hazmat team.”
“Roger, Detective. It’s all over the place now, the smoke or fumes or whatever.”
“Just keep it secure. And stay back. I’d tell you to look for the perp, but we don’t have ID. He could be around there, waiting to see what happens.”