The Cold Moon (34 page)

"How'd he get in?" Sachs mused.

"This guy's a ghost. He gets in however he fucking wants to."

She looked up the stairwell. They paused outside the door. A nameplate said,
Richter
/
Dobbs.

It won't be pretty...

"Let's do it."

Sachs opened the door and walked into Lucy Richter's apartment.

Where they were met by a muscular young woman in sweats, hair pinned up. She turned away from the uniformed officer she'd been talking to. Her face darkened as she glanced at Sachs and Sellitto and noticed the gold badges around their necks.

"You're in charge?" asked Lucy Richter angrily, stepping forward, right in Lon Sellitto's face.

"I'm one of the detectives on the case." He identified himself. Sachs did too.

Lucy Richter put her hands on her hips. "What the hell do you people think you're doing?" the soldier barked. "You
know
there's some psycho leaving these goddamn clocks when he kills people. And you don't
tell
anybody? I didn't survive all these months of combat in the goddamn desert just to come home and get killed by some motherfucker because you don't bother to share that information with the public."

It took some time to calm her down.

"Ma'am," Sachs explained, "his M.O. isn't that he's delivering these clocks ahead of time to let people know he's on his way. He was
here
. In your apartment. You were lucky."

Lucy Richter was indeed fortunate.

About a half hour ago a passerby happened to see a man climb onto her fire escape and head for the roof. He'd called 911 to report it. The Watchmaker had apparently glanced down, realized he'd been spotted and fled.

A search of the neighborhood could find no trace of him and no witnesses had seen anyone matching the Watchmaker's image on the computer composite.

Sachs glanced toward Sellitto, who said, "We're very sorry for the incident, Ms. Richter."

"Sorry," she scoffed. "You need to go public with it."

The detectives glanced at each other. Sellitto nodded. "We will. I'll have Public Affairs make an announcement on the local news."

Sachs said, "I'd like to search your apartment for evidence he might've left. And ask you a few questions about what happened."

"In a minute. I have to make some calls. My family'll hear about this on the news. I don't want them to worry."

"This is pretty important," Sellitto said.

The soldier opened her cell phone. In a firm voice she added, "Like I said, in a minute."

"Rhyme, you there?"

"Go ahead, Sachs." The criminalist was in his laboratory, connected to Sachs via radio. He recalled that in the next month or so they'd planned to try a high-definition video camera mounted to her head or shoulder, broadcasting to Rhyme's lab, which would let him see everything that she saw. They'd joked and called it a James Bond toy. He felt a pang that it would not be Sachs inaugurating this device with him.

Then he forced the sentiment away. What he often told those working for him he now told himself: There's a perp out there; nothing matters but catching him and you can't do that if you're not concentrating 100 percent.

"We showed Lucy the composite of the Watchmaker. She didn't recognize him."

"How'd he get inside today?"

"Not sure. If he's sticking to his M.O. he picked the front door lock. But then I think he went up to the roof and climbed down the fire escape to the vic's window. He got inside, left the clock and was waiting for her. But for some reason he climbed back outside. That's when the wit outside saw him and the Watchmaker booked on out of here. Went back up the fire escape."

"Where was he inside her apartment?"

"He left the clock in the bathroom. The fire escape is off the master bedroom so he was in there too." She paused. Then came on a moment later. "They've been canvassing for witnesses but nobody saw him or his car. Maybe he and his partner are on foot since we've got his SUV." A half dozen different subway lines serve Greenwich Village and they could easily have escaped via any of them.

"I don't think so." Rhyme explained that he felt the Watchmaker and his assistant would prefer wheels. The choice of using vehicles or not when committing a crime is a consistent pattern in a criminal's M.O. It rarely changes.

Sachs searched the bedroom, the fire escape, the bathroom and the routes he would've taken to get to those places. She checked the roof too. It had not been recently tarred, she reported.

"Nothing, Rhyme. It's like he's wearing a Tyvek suit of his own. He's just not leaving anything behind."

Edmond Locard, the famed French criminalist, developed what he called the exchange principle, which stated that whenever a physical crime occurs, there is some transfer of evidence between the criminal and the location. He leaves something of himself at the scene and he takes some of the scene with him when he departs. The principle is deceptively optimistic, though, because sometimes the trace is so minuscule it's missed and sometimes it's easily located but provides no helpful leads for investigators. Still Locard's principle holds that there would be
some
transfer of materials.

Rhyme often wondered, though, if there existed the rare criminal who was as smart as, or smarter than, Rhyme himself and if such a person could learn enough about forensic science to commit a crime and yet flaunt Locard's principle — leave behind no evidence and pick up none himself. Was the Watchmaker such a person?

"Think, Sachs... There's got to be more. Something we're missing. What does the vic say?"

"She's pretty shaken up. Not really concentrating."

After a pause Rhyme said, "I'm sending down our secret weapon."

Kathryn Dance sat across from Lucy Richter in the living room of her apartment.

The soldier was beneath a Jimi Hendrix poster and a wedding photo of Lucy and her husband, a round-faced, cheerful man in a dress military uniform.

Dance noted the woman was pretty calm, considering the circumstances, though, as Amelia Sachs had said, something was clearly troubling her. Dance had the impression that it was partly something other than the attack. She didn't exhibit the post-traumatic stress reactions of a near miss; she was troubled in a more fundamental way.

"If you don't mind, could you go through the details again?"

"If it'll help catch that son of a bitch, anything." Lucy explained that she'd gone to the gym to work out that morning. When she returned she found the clock.

"I was upset. The ticking..." Her face now revealed a subtle fear reaction. Fight-or-flight. At Dance's prompting she explained about the bombs overseas. "I guessed it was a present or something but it kind of freaked me out. Then I felt a breeze and went to look. I found the bedroom window open. That's when the police showed up."

"Nothing else unusual?"

"No. Not that I can remember."

Danced asked her a number of other questions. Lucy Richter didn't know Theodore Adams or Joanne Harper. She couldn't think of anyone who'd want to hurt her. She'd been trying to recall something else that could help the police but was drawing a blank.

The woman was outwardly brave ("that son of a bitch") but Dance believed that something in Lucy's mind was preventing her, subconsciously, from focusing on what had just happened. The classic defensive crossing of her arms and legs was a sign, indicating not deception but a barrier against whatever was threatening her.

The agent needed a different approach. She put her notebook down.

"What are you doing in town?" she asked conversationally.

Lucy explained that she was here on leave from her duty in the Middle East. Normally she'd have met her husband, Bob, in Germany, where they had friends, but she was getting a commendation on Thursday.

"Oh, part of that parade, supporting the troops?"

"Right afterward."

"Congratulations."

Her smile fluttered. Dance noticed the minuscule reaction.

And she noted one in herself, as well; Kathryn Dance's husband had been recognized for bravery under fire by the Bureau four days before he'd died. But that was a crackle of static that Dance immediately tuned out.

Shaking her head, the agent continued. "You come back to the States and look what happens — you run into this guy. That's pretty shitty. Especially after being overseas."

"It's not that bad over there. Sounds worse on the news."

"Still... But it looks like you're coping pretty well."

Her body was telling a very different story.

"Oh, yeah. You do what you have to. No big deal." Her fingers were-entwined.

"What do you do there?"

"I manage fuelers. Basically it's running supply trucks."

"Important job."

A shrug. "I guess."

"Good to be here on leave, I'll bet."

"You ever in the service?"

"No," Dance answered.

"Well, in the army, remember rule number one: Never pass up R and R. Even if it's just drinking punch with the brass and collecting a wall decoration."

Dance kept drawing her out. "How many other soldiers'll be at the ceremony?"

"Eighteen."

Lucy wasn't comfortable at all. Dance wondered if her underlying uneasiness was because she might have to say a few words in front of the crowd. Public speaking was higher on the fear scale than skydiving. "And how big's the event going to be?"

"I don't know. A hundred. Maybe two."

"Is your family going?"

"Oh, yeah. Everybody. We're going to have a reception here afterward."

"As my daughter says," Dance offered, "parties rock. What's on the menu?"

"Forgeddabout it," Lucy joked. "We're in the Village. It'll be Italian. Baked ziti, scampi, sausage. My mother and aunt're cooking. I'm making dessert."

"My downfall," Dance said. "Sweets... I'm getting hungry." Then she said, "Sorry, I got distracted." Leaving the notebook closed, she looked into the woman's eyes. "Back to your visitor. You were saying, you made your tea. Running the bath. You feel a breeze. You go into the bedroom. The window's open. What was I asking? Oh, was there anything else you saw that was out of the ordinary?"

"Not really." She said this quickly, as before, but then she squinted. "Wait. You know... there was one thing."

"Really?"

Dance had done what's known as "flooding." She'd decided that it wasn't only the Watchmaker that was bothering Lucy but rather her duty overseas, as well as the upcoming awards ceremony, for some reason. Dance had gone back to the topics and kept bombarding her with questions, in hopes of numbing her and letting the other memories break through.

Lucy rose and walked to the bedroom. Saying nothing, Dance followed her. Amelia Sachs joined them.

The soldier looked around the room.

Careful, Dance told herself. Lucy was onto something. Dance kept silent. Too many interviewers ruin a session by pouncing. The rule with vague memories is that you can let them surface but you can rarely reel them in.

Watching and listening are the two most important parts of the interview. Talking comes last.

"There
was
something that bothered me, something other than the window being open... Oh, you know what? I've got it. When I walked to the bedroom earlier, to see about the ticking, something was different — I couldn't see the dresser."

"Why was that unusual?"

"Because when I left to go to the health club I glanced at it to see if my sunglasses were there. They were and I picked them up. But then when I looked into the room later, when I heard the ticking, I couldn't see the dresser — because the closet door was partly open."

Dance said, "So after the man left the clock he was probably hiding in the closet or behind the door."

"Makes sense," Lucy said.

Dance turned to Sachs, who nodded with a smile and said, "Good. I better get to work." And she pulled open the closet door with her latex-gloved hand.

A second time they'd failed.

Duncan was driving even more carefully,
meticulously,
than he usually did.

He was silent and completely calm. Which bothered Vincent even more. If Duncan slammed down his fist and screamed, like his stepfather, Vincent would have felt better. ("You did
what
?" the man had raged, referring to the rape of Sally Anne. "You fat pervert!") He was worried that Duncan had had enough and was going to give up the whole thing.

Vincent didn't want his friend to go away.

Duncan merely drove slowly, stayed in his lane, didn't speed, didn't try to beat yellow lights.

And didn't say a word for a long time.

Finally he explained to Vincent what had happened: As he'd started to climb to the roof — planning to get into the building, knock on Lucy's door and get her to hang up the phone, he'd glanced down and seen a man in the alley, staring at him, pulling his cell phone from his pocket, shouting for Duncan to stop. The killer had hurried to the roof, run west several buildings then rapelled into the alley. He'd then sprinted to the Buick.

Duncan was driving meticulously, yes, but without any obvious destination. At first Vincent wondered if this was to lose the police but there didn't seem to be any risk of pursuit. Then he decided that Duncan was on automatic pilot, driving in large circles.

Like the hands of a clock.

Once again the shock of a narrow escape faded and Vincent felt the hunger growing again, hurting his jaw, hurting his head, hurting his groin.

If we don't eat, we die.

He wanted to be back in Michigan, hanging out with his sister, having dinner with her, watching TV. But his sister wasn't here, she was miles and miles away, maybe thinking of him right now — but that didn't give him any comfort... The hunger was too intense. Nothing was working out! He felt like screaming. Vincent had better luck cruising strip malls in New Jersey or waiting for a college coed or receptionist jogging through a deserted park. What was the point of —

In his quiet voice Duncan said, "I'm sorry."

"You... ?"