The Watchmaker’s Hand

“Next flight, few hours later, the first officer does a walk-around. What they have to do. Checks out the plane, kicks the tires, makes sure the wings’re bolted on. And she looks into the nosewheel well. And guess what that woman finds? You can’t, so I’ll tell ya. An oxygen tank, big enough for an eight-hour supply, a mask, and a thermal sleeping bag heated with a twelve-volt battery.”

At thirty-five thousand feet, temperatures can reach –70 Fahrenheit, though you won’t feel unpleasant for very long. Hypoxia — lack of oxygen — will kill you before cruising altitude.

One for the ages...

“Departed where? Manchester?”

“Yes indeed.”

Sellitto muttered, “The Watchmaker, just the sort of grand entrance he’d go for.”

“Evidence?” Rhyme asked.

“PERT bundled it up and took it down to Quantico.”

The Bureau’s Physical Evidence Response Team was good. And the lab in Quantico was perhaps the best in the world.

“Can they pull a print now? I... We have to know for sure.”

“Name’s Hale, right?”

“Charles Vespasian Hale.”

“Hold on.”

A green and yellow flash as he disappeared.

Rhyme’s eyes slipped out the window once again.

A crane stabbed the sky...

In his mind, the pieces were lining up.

But he needed the critical confirmation from Dellray.

Who was back, two minutes later.

“It’s your boy, Lincoln. Nothing big in the surprise department — Hale was smart enough to wear cloth gloves in the plane, but must’ve figured that’d be suspicious inside the terminal. They lifted a print on the door handle for the baggage crew. So the Watchmaker is the crane man.”

“Looks that way. Let Homeland Security know. He’s on their list too.”

They disconnected.

The Watchmaker. The man whose plots Rhyme had foiled several times in the United States and Mexico. The man Rhyme had actually arrested and incarcerated, though he’d managed to escape from a prison that was very difficult to escape from.

The man who was, to use the overly romantic and inartful term, Rhyme reflected, his nemesis.

Now it was Sellitto who was peering out the window. “He’s here. But where?”

Rhyme reflected for a moment. “That’s what I’ve been thinking about, and I have an idea.”

23

It was a twenty mph zone.

Amelia Sachs was doing sixty, and irritated that she had to slow for intersections.

She had dash flashers on the grille, but no siren. She’d have to look into that.

Hell. Speed bump. Down to forty.

Thud, bang.

Ouch...

Then faster.

Sachs was piloting her Torino, engine raging, down a trim residential street in Queens, a block of small, detached single-families. Red brick, beige stone, a few framed, painted in subdued colors. Not unlike the Brooklyn neighborhood she’d grown up in.

One reason for the speed: an earlier delay. A coughing fit had forced her to pull over, lower her head and breathe the sweet oxygen through the mask until the spasms ended. She actually pulled into the parking lot in front of a hospital’s emergency room.

Debating.

But then she’d controlled it and continued on to meet with the witness.

A brief coughing fit now, filling her with anger at the man who would use this shit as a weapon.

Anger at her own lungs for not resisting better.

Forget it.

Drive.

Once through an intersection, her right foot dropped hard and the car jerked ahead, speeding faster yet.

She was hands-free on her cell phone. Com had arranged a patch from the police radio frequency. The line was open to responding officers answering to the address in Queens, where the witness lived.

“Detective Five Eight Eight Five, come in. K.”

“Go ahead.”

“We’re on-site. Looks like a fire.”

“Negative. It’s acid fumes. Keep back. One whiff’ll kill you. I’ve called FD. They’re bringing the hazmat team.”

“Roger, Detective. It’s all over the place now, the smoke or fumes or whatever.”

“Just keep it secure. And stay back. I’d tell you to look for the perp, but we don’t have ID. He could be around there, waiting to see what happens.”

She coughed once again and glanced at the oxygen tank on the passenger’s seat.

No.

No time to stop.

“You all right, Detective?” the officer asked over the line.

“Fine.”

“What’s this all about?”

“Homeowner was a wit in the crane collapse this morning. Unsub got his address. Planted an IED — the acid, not explosives. I mean it, don’t get close.”

“Roger that.”

A skidding turn.

“I’ll be there in fifteen,” she said and disconnected.

Then she turned her head slightly and said to the passengers in the backseat, “How you doing there?”

The woman, sitting directly behind her, said, “I think I’m going to be sick. I’m sorry.”

“We’re almost there.”

“Okay.”

“And you, sir?”

“I’m fine. I like your car.”

In the rearview mirror, Sachs could see the couple. She looked peaked. He was gazing over the interior of the Ford as if he were a prospective buyer.

The man was the workman — the witness — the unsub had just tried to kill.

The call Sachs had received in the town house had come from him. He identified himself as one of the workmen at the site that morning. She decided to interview him herself and drove to Queens.