“You used it to switch the lights when I was in the intersection. Nobody was paying attention until the collision, so everybody saw my light was red, yours was green. Oh, and another thing that didn’t get burned up completely? The crash helmet you wore. And one final thing we’ve got. The main witness who gave a statement that I ran the light? Theresa Lemerov? She isn’t exactly what you’d call objective. A cop friend of mine in Brooklyn followed her. She was in your brother’s house all day, and—”
“Wait,” Aaron barked.
Pulaski lifted an eyebrow.
“My brother?”
“Evan Stahl. Theresa, the main witness, knew your family, and that—”
“My brother.” His face was red with anger. “Did your friend say she spent the night?”
“What?”
“Did Theresa spend the night with my brother?”
Baskov: “Oh, Jesus, Aaron. Let it go.”
Aaron muttered, “That bitch! She said she’d never have anything to do with him again. I take a fall, nearly get burnt alive, and the first thing she does is run to Evan. Oh, and that prick—”
Baskov said, “Would you just be quiet?”
Amen to that.
“So, where was I? Right. I knew Burdick was setting me up — but I thought it was just to get me fired because I dissed him in front of some reporters. But it was bigger than that. It was about me hunting for Eddie Tarr.”
When Baskov blinked, his theory became proof.
“Tarr needed me off his trail for a murder I was investigating — just until he could finish a job here. He paid Burdick to get me out of the picture. First, Burdick tried to get me suspended at a crime scene and when that didn’t work, he hired your father.” A glance at Baskov. “He set up the crash.
“So here’s the thing. I want Burdick. A solid case. Gold. I’ve got a circumstantial one. I want witnesses.
“If I was to give you a statement...”
“Hey, I know shit too!” Aaron’s defiance had become desperation.
Being the daughter of a capo, she needed only one look to silence him. She said, “And emails, dates and places.”
Pulaski said, “This’s making my heart sing.”
She shrugged. “What do I get?”
“We,” Aaron blurted.
“The DA can guarantee the state won’t go for anything more than four years, medium sec.”
“Can I get it in writing?”
“No. And the offer’s starting to melt.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Me too!” Aaron said desperately.
Because he’d ruined Pulaski’s very comfortable car, he said, “I don’t know we’ll need you. I’ll have to think about it.”
Baskov said, “Well, it’s pretty much like you said. Burdick had a partner in the department. Somebody named Gilligan. A detective.”
Ah, interesting. He nodded for her to go on.
“But you got one thing wrong. Yeah, Burdick came to my dad and paid him to get you off Tarr’s ass. Only, the money — and the idea for the crash — came from somebody else. His name was Hale. Charles Hale, I think.”
Jesus.
So, the device that took down the last crane was one of Tarr’s IEDs.
Pulaski’s homicide murder case, seemingly unrelated, brought them full circle back to the Watchmaker.
There was noise from the hallway; uniformed officers had arrived to take Baskov to Central Booking and Aaron Stahl to the detention wing of Bellevue city hospital.
After they’d carted away the prisoners, Pulaski called Lon Sellitto to tell him how it had gone. When he disconnected he and Sloane walked down the corridor toward the exit. She asked, “How’d you put it all together, Ron?”
He told her about the hit job of a report Burdick had submitted to the Officer Involved Accident board. And Lyle Spencer’s comment about how much effort had gone into sidelining Pulaski.
“Then I was thinking about the call I got just before the intersection? From a tech in Crime Scene? It was a problem, chain of custody, the evidence from my scene. I don’t make mistakes involving chain of custody. Never. I talked to the clerk today. Burdick’d forced her to make the call just so he could claim I was distracted.”
Sloane said, “You’ve got Burdick. But the question is, you think you can turn him? To give up Tarr.”
Pulaski considered this for a moment. “Depends,” he answered.
“On what?”
“On just how much of a weasel he really is.”
“Good evening, I’m Amber Andrews, here with breaking news. Agents with the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives today raided the hangar at a small airport in Bergen County, New Jersey, arresting a man on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Eddie Kevin Tarr, forty-three, has been considered one of the most dangerous bomb makers in the world and has sold an unknown number of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, to terrorists and organized criminals over the past decade. Tarr is allegedly responsible for the bomb that brought down the tower crane in Lower Manhattan yesterday, resulting in the closing of the Holland Tunnel for nearly sixteen hours.”
III
Obit
73
“I think we’ve got some pix,” Pulaski said. “Her.”
Rhyme understood: Ron meant the Watchmaker’s associate.
Woman X.
The two men and Amelia Sachs were in the parlor. Pulaski had been ardently tracking the woman, who’d been fast with the tranquilizer gun and had either constructed or commissioned Hale’s magic induction device.
“I want her. Nothing personal.” He’d said this offhandedly.
Which made it somewhat personal in Rhyme’s mind, but no matter. Apparently, the young officer had had some success.
“I was scrubbing through video around Hamilton Court and found a half-second clip of the two of them together. Hale and the woman. I pulled a capture. It wasn’t great, but I enhanced it with Stable Diffusion. You know it?”
“No.”
“It’s an AI — artificial intelligence text-to-image art generator. I loaded in the capture and kept making modifications — like witness artists do. Then I sent the JPG to Domain Awareness to start matching. I just got a call from them. They had some hits.” He sat at the keyboard and typed. Seconds later they were on a video call — like Zoom, but with higher security — to the control room of the Domain Awareness operation.
Officer Bobby Hancock was a burly man with a beard not forbidden by, but uncharacteristic in, the NYPD.
“Ron.”
“Bobby. Go ahead.”
“Is that Lincoln Rhyme?”
The criminalist offered an impatient punctuation-free: “Yes it is go ahead Officer.”
“Sure. From the image Ron gave us we did a citywide profile and found the subject. That Stable Diffusion thing? We talked to the brass and’re going to be opening an AI-generative operation. Really smart.”
Rhyme and Sachs shared a glance. He again felt a bit of pride for his protégé. He could see Sachs did too.
“Twice we placed her in the company of Hale. And we had a solo of her, West Side — Midtown. Here they are.”
The images came onto the screen. Not high-def, but clear enough. She was in her early thirties, Rhyme guessed. Pretty in a wholesome, not runway model way. Slim, maybe athletic, but her clothes — jeans and a sport team sweatshirt — were concealing. Her blond hair was in a complicated braid.
In the first two, she was walking down the sidewalk beside Hale. In one they were looking around suspiciously. In the other, they were regarding each other.
In the third image she was on the sidewalk in a part of town featuring old brownstones, not unlike Rhyme’s.