Authors: Jeffery Deaver
“You must’ve followed up, called the police.”
He scoffed. “Oh, please. You’re a cop. You know where something like this falls in the priority of police work? Just above jaywalking.”
“Did
you
learn anything that might help us? Anything about him? Age, race, education, location?”
“No, nothing. Everywhere I looked there was only one person: me. He took me away from myself…
Oh, they say there are safeguards, there are protections. Bullshit. Yes, if you lose a credit card, maybe you’re protected to a point. But if somebody wants to destroy your life, there’s nothing you can do about it. People believe what computers tell us. If they say you owe money, you owe money. If it says you’re a bad insurance risk, you’re a bad risk. The report says you have no credit, then you have no credit, even if you’re a multimillionaire. We believe the
data
; we don’t care about the truth.
“Ah, want to see what my most recent job was?” He jumped up and opened his closet, displaying a fast food franchise uniform. Jorgensen returned to his desk and set to work on the book again, muttering, “I’ll find you, you fucker.” He glanced up. “And do you want to know the worst part of all?”
She nodded.
“God never lived in the apartments he rented in my name. He never took delivery of the illegal drugs. Or got any of the merchandise he had shipped. The police recovered everything. And he never lived in the beautiful house he bought. Get it? His only point was to torment me. He’s God, I’m Job.”
Sachs noticed a picture on his desk. It was of Jorgensen and a blond woman about his age, their arms around a teenage girl and young boy. The house in the background was very nice. She wondered why 522 would go to all the trouble to destroy a man’s life, if in fact their perp was behind this. Was he testing out techniques to use to get close to victims and to implicate fall guys? Was Robert Jorgensen a guinea pig?
Or was 522 a cruel sociopath? What he’d done to Jorgensen might be called a nonsexual rape.
“I think you should find another place to live, Mr. Jorgensen.”
A resigned smile. “I know. It’s safer that way. Always be harder to find.”
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Sachs thought to herself of an expression her father had used. She thought it described her own life view pretty well. “When you move they can’t getcha…”
He nodded at the book. “You know how he found me here? This, I’ve got a feeling. Everything started to go bad just after I bought it. I keep thinking it’s got the answer. I nuked it but that didn’t work—obviously. There’s got to be an answer inside. There’s
got
to be!”
“What
are
you looking for exactly?”
“Don’t you know?”
“No.”
“Well, tracking devices, of course. They put them in books. And clothes. Pretty soon they’ll be in almost everything.”
So not germs.
“Microwaves destroy tracking devices?” she asked, playing along.
“Most of them. You can break the antennae too but they’re so small nowadays. Almost microscopic.”
Jorgensen fell silent and she realized he was staring at her intently as he considered something. He announced. “You take it.”
“What?”
“The book.” His eyes were dancing madly around the room. “It’s got the answer in it, the answer to everything that’s happened to me… Please! You’re the first one who hasn’t rolled their eyes when I told them my story, the only one who hasn’t looked at me like I’m mad.” He sat forward. “
You
want to get him as much as I do. You have all sorts of equipment, I’ll bet. Scanning microscopes, sensors… You can find it! And it’ll lead you to him. Yes!” He thrust it toward her.
“Well, I don’t know what we’re looking for.”
He nodded sympathetically. “Oh, you don’t have to tell me. That’s the problem. They change things all the time. They’re always one step ahead of us. But please…”
They…
She took the book, debating about slipping it into a plastic evidence bag and attaching a chain-of-custody card. She wondered how loud the ridicule would be in Rhyme’s town house. Probably better just to carry it.
He leaned forward and pressed her hand hard. “Thank you.” He was crying again.
“So you’ll move?” she asked.
He said he would and gave her the name of another transient hotel, one down on the Lower East Side.
“Don’t write it down. Don’t tell anybody. Don’t mention me on the phone. They’re listening all the time, you know.”
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“Call me if anything else comes to mind about… God.” She gave him her card.
He memorized the information on it, then tore the cardboard up. He stepped into the bathroom, flushed half down the toilet. He noticed her curiosity. “I’ll flush the other half later. Flushing something all at once is as stupid as leaving bills in your mailbox with the red flag up. People are such fools.”
He walked her to the door, leaned close. The stink of unwashed clothing hit her. His red-rimmed eyes gazed fiercely at her. “Officer, listen to me. I know you have that big gun on your hip. But that won’t do any good against somebody like him. You have to get close before you can shoot him. But he doesn’t have to get close at all. He can sit in a dark room somewhere, sip a glass of wine and bring your life down in pieces.” Jorgensen nodded at the book in her hand. “And now that you’ve got that, you’re infected too.”
I’ve been checking the news—there are so many efficient ways to get information nowadays—and I’ve heard nothing about any redheaded police officers gunned down by fellow law enforcers in Brooklyn.
But at the least They’re afraid.
They’d be edgy now.
Good. Why should I be the only one?
As I walk I reflect: How did this happen? How could it
possibly
have happened?
This isn’t good, this isn’t good this this…
They seemed to know
exactly
what I was doing, who my victim was.
And that I was on the way to DeLeon 6832’s house at
just that moment.
How?
Running through the data, permutating them, analyzing them. No, I can’t understand how They did it.
Not yet. Have to think some more.
I don’t have enough information. How can I draw conclusions if I don’t have the
data
? How?
Ah, slow down, slow down, I tell myself. When sixteens walk quickly they shed data, revealing all sorts of information, at least to those who are smart, who can make good deductions.
Up and down the gray, urban streets, Sunday no longer beautiful. An ugly day, ruined. The sunlight’s harsh and tainted. The city’s cold, its edges ragged. The sixteens are mocking and snide and pompous.
I hate them all!
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But keep your head down, pretend to enjoy the day.
And, most of all,
think
. Be analytical. How would a computer, confronted with a problem, analyze the data?
Think. Now, how could They have found out?
One block, two blocks, three blocks, four…
No answers. Only the conclusion: They’re good. And another question: Who exactly
are
They? I suppose—
I’m struck with a terrible thought. Please, no… I stop and dig through my backpack. No, no, no, it’s gone! The Post-it, stuck to the evidence bag, and I forgot to pull it off before I threw everything out. The address of my favorite sixteen: 3694-8938-5330-2498, my pet—known to the world as Dr. Robert Jorgensen. I’d just found where he’d fled to, trying to hide, and jotted it on a Post-it. I’m furious I didn’t memorize it and throw away the note.
I
hate
myself, hate everything. How could I be so careless?
I want to cry, to scream.
My Robert 3694! For two years he’s been my guinea pig, my human experiment. Public records, identity theft, credit cards…
But, most of all, ruining him was a huge high. Orgasmic, indescribable. Like coke or heroin. Taking a perfectly normal, happy family man, a good, caring doctor, and destroying him.
Well, I can’t take any chances. I have to assume someone will find the note and call him. He’ll flee…
and I’ll have to let him go.
Something else has been taken away from me today. I can’t describe how I feel when that happens. It’s pain like fire, it’s fear like blind panic, it’s falling and knowing you’ll collide with the blurring earth at any moment but not… quite… yet.
I blunder through the herds of antelope, these sixteens roaming on their day of rest. My happiness is destroyed, my comfort gone. Whereas just hours ago I looked at everyone with benign curiosity or lust, but now I simply want to storm up to someone and slice his pale flesh, thin as tomato skin, with one of my eighty-nine straight razors.
Maybe my Krusius Brothers model from the late 1800s. It has an extra-long blade, a fine stag’s horn handle and is the pride of my collection.
“Evidence, Mel. Let’s look it over.”
Rhyme was referring to what had been collected in the trash can near DeLeon Williams’s house.
“Friction ridges?”
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The first items Cooper examined for fingerprints were the plastic bags—the one holding the evidence 522 had presumably intended to plant and the bags inside, containing some still-wet blood and a bloody paper towel. But there were no prints on the plastic—a disappointment, since it preserves them so well.
(Often they’re visible, not latent, and can be observed without any special chemicals or lighting.) Cooper did find indications that the UNSUB had touched the bags with cotton gloves—the sort experienced criminals prefer to latex gloves, which retain the perp’s prints
inside
the fingers very efficiently.
Using various sprays and alternative light sources, Mel Cooper examined the rest of the items and found no prints on these either.
Rhyme realized that this case, like the others he suspected 522 was behind, was different from most in that it presented two categories of evidence. First, false evidence that the killer intended to plant to implicate DeLeon Williams; he’d undoubtedly made sure that none of this would lead back to himself personally. Second, real evidence that he’d left accidentally and that could very well lead to his home—such as the tobacco and the doll’s hair.
The bloody paper towel and wet blood were in the first category, intended to be left. Similarly the duct tape, meant to be slipped into Williams’s garage or car, would undoubtedly match strips used to gag or bind Myra Weinburg. But it would have been kept carefully protected from 522’s dwelling so it didn’t pick up any trace.
The size-13 Sure-Track running shoe probably wasn’t going to be stashed at Williams’s house but it was still “planted” evidence in the sense that 522 had undoubtedly used it to leave a print of a shoe similar to one of Williams’s. Mel Cooper tested the shoe anyway and found some trace: beer on the tread. According to the database of fermented beverage ingredients, created for the NYPD by Rhyme years ago, it was most likely Miller brand. That could be in either category—planted or real. They’d have to see what Pulaski recovered from the Myra Weinburg crime scene to know for sure.
The bag also contained a computer printout of Myra’s photo, probably included to suggest Williams had been stalking her online; it was therefore meant to be planted as well. Still, Rhyme had Cooper check it carefully but a ninhydrin test revealed no fingerprints. Microscopic and chemical analyses revealed generic, untraceable paper, printed with Hewlett-Packard laser toner, also untraceable beyond the brand name.
But they did make a discovery that might prove helpful. Rhyme and Cooper found something embedded in the paper: traces of
Stachybotrys Chartarum
mold. This was the infamous “sick building” mold.
Since the amounts found in the paper were so small, it was unlikely that 522 meant it to be planted. More likely it came from the killer’s residence or place of work. The presence of this mold, which was found indoors almost exclusively, meant that at least part of his home or workplace would be dark and humid.
Mold can’t grow in a dry location.
The Post-it note, also probably not intended to be planted, was a 3M brand, not the cheaper generic but still impossible to source. Cooper had found no trace in the note other than a few more spores of the mold, which at least told them that the Post-it’s source probably was 522. The ink was from a disposable pen sold in countless stores around the country.
And that was it for the evidence, though as Cooper was jotting the results, a tech from the outside lab Rhyme used for expedited medical analysis called and reported that the preliminary test confirmed the blood found in the bags was that of Myra Weinburg.
Sellitto took a phone call, had a brief conversation then hung up. “Zip… The DEA traced the call about
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Amelia to a pay phone. Nobody saw the caller. And nobody on the expressway saw anyone running.
The canvass at the two closest subway stations didn’t turn up anything suspicious around the time he got away.”
“Well, he’s not going to do anything
suspicious,
now, is he? What did the canvassers think? An escaping murderer would jump a turnstile or strip his clothes off and change into a superhero outfit?”
“Just telling you what they said, Linc.”
Grimacing, he asked Thom to write the results of the search up on the whiteboard.
STREET NEAR DELEON WILLIAMS’S HOUSE
· Three plastic bags, ZipLoc freezer style, one-gallon
· One right size-13 Sure-Track running shoe, dried beer in tread (probably Miller brand), no wear marks. No other discernible trace. Bought to leave imprint at scene of crime?
· Paper towel with blood in plastic bag. Preliminary test confirms it’s the victim’s
· 2 ccs blood in plastic bag. Preliminary test confirms it’s the victim’s
· Post-it with address of the Henderson House Residence, Room 672, occupied by Robert Jorgensen.
Note and pen untraceable. Paper untraceable. Evidence of Stachybotrys Chartarum mold in paper
· Picture of victim, apparently computer printout, color. Hewlett-Packard printer ink. Otherwise untraceable. Paper untraceable. Evidence of Stachybotrys Chartarum mold in paper