Could any of these be the crane killer?
But after a few minutes of observing the impromptu guards, Hale decided that the risk of his being discovered in the act of sabotage was minimal.
The trio was keenly observant, yes. But they were looking everywhere except where they should.
33
No luck with the acid manufacturers.
No luck finding who might have hired the Watchmaker, and why, now that housing terrorism seemed unlikely.
No luck with the FBI’s finding leads from Hale’s front-of-the-airplane accommodations on the flight to JFK.
No luck with the dirt that Pulaski had collected at the Gilligan shooting, supplemented by what Sachs had found at the Helprins’ house in Queens.
Then Rhyme grew irritated that he’d even thought the word “luck,” a concept that had no place in forensic science, or any other branch of serious study — despite the Seneca poster in FBI agent Fred Dellray’s office.
Lyle Spencer’s hunting expedition last night had confirmed that every tower crane site he stopped at was guarded by at least three individuals, either workers volunteering for the job or rent-a-cops. All the exits were either sealed off or guarded, and floodlights turned on to illuminate the ground around the crane bases.
At 7:30 this morning, however, they did catch a break.
The NYPD’s Computer Crimes operation had called. They’d been notified that a computer found at a crime scene needed to be cracked. The division itself didn’t have supercomputers to break passwords, but used an outside service that could. Sachs — who appeared better this morning — agreed to meet the Computer Crimes detective there with Gilligan’s laptop.
With some luck, Rhyme thought acerbically, they might find information on it that could lead them to the Watchmaker’s safe house or reveal the next target.
After she’d left, the computer in one hand, the green tank in another, Rhyme happened to be looking at a nearby monitor. The news was on, a local station. Thom had, irritatingly, left the unit running when he’d brought breakfast into the lab. Rhyme rolled forward for the remote to shut it off. But then he happened to focus on the present story.
Eyes sweeping from the TV to the map of the city, defaced with the red marks indicating the cranes.
“Thom! Thom!”
The aide appeared, eyebrow raised. “You sound... I don’t know. Alarmed.”
“Hardly. I should sound urgent. There’s a difference.”
“Well, what’s so urgent, then?”
“Your new mission.” Eyes still on the map, he said, “You get to help solve the case — and, even better, you get to do it just like I do. Sitting on your ass.”
“Investors this morning are moving out of the mortgage market and into equities and corporate bonds following the attack yesterday by domestic terrorists on a crane on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, with threats of more to come unless demands for affordable housing are met.
“The jobsite where the first attack occurred is where Evans Development is constructing a luxury high-rise that will ultimately soar eighty-five stories into the air. With the three lower floors devoted to retail and commercial, the rest of the building, designed by Japanese architect Niso Hamashura will contain 984 co-op units ranging in size from eighteen hundred square feet to thirteen thousand.
“Developers in the city have suspended construction while the police and federal authorities hunt for the terrorists. Reggie Novak, president of the Tri-State Developers’ Association, has warned that member companies might face bankruptcy if the stoppage continues for more than a few days. Stocks are trading lower this morning.”
34
Not the nerd Sachs had expected.
Walking toward her in front of Emery Digital Solutions’ downtown headquarters, on cobblestoned Marquis Street, Arnold Levine nodded. He wore polished shoes, a pale blue shirt, a navy tie and a navy-blue suit. The only clash in his couture was that the gold badge holder was brown and the belt it was hung on was black. Hardly a sin.
Didn’t computer guys wear hoodies and sweats?
Levine was a supervisor in the NYPD Computer Crimes Unit, one of the country’s premier agencies battling cyberterrorism, child exploitation and fraud.
No, nothing nerdish about him at all.
Until he started to talk.
Shaking her hand enthusiastically, he rambled, “I lobbied One PP for a supercomputer. I could find a reasonable one: an HPE Cray SC 250kW NA with a liquid-cooled cabinet. A bargain — two hundred and thirty-five K. They said no. So we have to farm out the work.” A nod at the building. “If anybody can do it, it’s them.”
She inhaled, smelling the exhausty, damp-pavement scent of mornings in Manhattan. The breath controlled the impending coughing spell, but the sting was still there. She thought about the green tank in the car, but decided to leave it there. It somehow represented a sign of weakness.
They walked past security vehicles — a police unit and an unmarked sedan with U.S. government plates, both parked with a good view of the building. Then, inside, they were met by two more guards, large men, armed, who looked at their IDs closely and then regarded a computer for their names. They were nodded through a magnetometer and then emerged, collecting their metal on the other side.
“Wait here,” said one of the guards. “Mr. Emery’ll be right out.”
Levine, in full nerd mode now, said with a conspiratorial whisper, “Oh, that Cray? The super box I mentioned? I told them we could lease out the time when we weren’t using it, but it was no to that too. A security thing, they said. But anybody could write script to firewall it. I could do that; you could do that. What they didn’t want to do—”
“Was write a check for two hundred and thirty-five K.”
“Exactly right.”
He wore a wedding ring, and she wondered if he inundated his spouse with nonstop tech recitations. Maybe she was a nerd too.
He continued to ramble, she continued to not listen. The time was 8:10.
The Watchmaker’s next deadline loomed.
A minute later, the door leading into the interior of the company opened with an electronic lock click, and a tall, lean man in his mid-thirties stepped out. He was gangly and dressed in orange jeans, a rust-colored T, blue running shoes.
“Detectives Sachs and Levine? Ben Emery.”
They shook hands.
She couldn’t help but notice that Emery’s eyes grew intrigued as they took in her face — then wistful when they arrived at her left hand and the wedding band. He gave the tiniest of shrugs and gestured them back into the bowels of the operation.
The place was cold and dim and filled with workstations dominated by monitors and pale beige boxes, all sprouting a million wires. The purposes of the devices were an utter mystery to her, and she was sure, even if Levine or Emery had explained the point of them, she would have understood nothing.
He led them down long corridors, offering details of what each department did, as if they’d asked. Levine nodded knowingly from time to time and asked enthusiastic questions.
Soon they arrived at a workstation in the back of the facility, that of a large man in a Hawaiian shirt, cargo pants and black flip-flops. He was Stanley Grier and he was the one who would be doing the forensic analysis and cracking the passcode.
She handed him the warrant she’d just gotten from a night-court magistrate. He scanned it, then pulled on latex gloves and took the bag from Sachs, checking the serial number of the computer to make sure the paperwork was in order. He extracted the unit, set it squarely in the center of his immaculate workstation. He put his name and signature on the chain-of-custody card.