The Watchmaker’s Hand

The ESU team leader approached. The compact, crew-cut army vet was grimacing. “Sorry, Detective. No sign of her on the streets. And I checked the cemetery office. The CCTV was running when we got here, but somehow it got fried ten minutes ago. All the data’s wiped.”

No surprise there.

“Just no clue where she’s gone.”

Pulaski gave a fast laugh. “Oh, we’ve got plenty of clues. Where the homeless guy was when the two of them talked, the gun, the poem. The approaches to and from the grave. The grave itself. The wheel. Surveillance footage outside the cemetery.”

“Still doesn’t seem like much,” the ESU man said.

“It doesn’t need to be. It just needs to point us somewhere.” Pulaski pulled on booties over his shoes and new latex gloves. “And we’ll go from there.”

75

“Lincoln. The news.”

Thom’s voice was calling from the kitchen, where he was fixing dinner. Rhyme didn’t know what was on the menu, but it smelled good. He usually thought of food as fuel — his reverence was reserved for beverages — but occasionally he enjoyed a fine meal. And his caregiver was just the man for creating one.

Rhyme called in response: “Why?”

“I heard his name mentioned.”

“Eight million people in the city, Thom. Can we narrow, some?”

“Just put it on.”

“News,” Rhyme murmured, clicking the remote, “is apprentice history...” The screen came to life. “It’s an ad! Cosmetics, long hair and slow motion. Useless. No shampoo will give anyone that hair who didn’t have that hair before the shampoo.”

“Well,” Thom offered, sighing, “either wait without complaining or change the channel.”

He changed the channel.

A blond anchorwoman, her highly made-up face as serious as could be, was saying “...has denied the allegations. But supporters and donors are already distancing themselves from the representative.”

A picture appeared, a postage-sized one in the lower right-hand corner of the cluttered screen, the man Lyle Spencer had spoken to about the Kommunalka Project.

Representative Stephen Cody.

The crawl read:

U.S. representative’s emails show sympathy for presidential assassins.

Her low voice gave the details:

“Among the emails discovered are those in which Representative Cody is alleged to have said it was, quote, ‘a bummer the attempt didn’t work. Boyd’s still got a year to screw up the country.’ In another he allegedly wrote, quote, ‘Doesn’t anybody see that infrastructure plan of his is going to...’ I’m deleting the word he used. ‘...the middle class?’ And, quote: ‘How hard was it to kill an old man? Where’s Oswald when we need him?’

“Oswald of course is a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who assassinated President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

“Whether the assassination plot was real or not is being investigated by federal and city authorities.

“Cody has denied writing the emails and calls them part of a conspiracy to damage his campaign. WLAN News has not independently confirmed the authenticity of the emails, although an aide, speaking off the record, has said that they originated on Cody’s secure server, which only he had access to.

“Cody had been considered the front-runner in the upcoming contest against Marie Leppert, Manhattan businesswoman and former federal prosecutor, running for public office for the first time.

“Fifteen years ago, Cody was convicted of trespass and vandalism during environmental protests in Pennsylvania.”

Several other politicians chimed in with opinions, among them Senator Edward Talese of New York.

Thom stepped into the doorway. “How’s that for a twist?”