The Watchmaker’s Hand

“No. The battalion commander wouldn’t release the scene. Too much acid and fumes. But I got a look through a window. The device had dissolved. Just like at Eighty-Ninth Street, on the counterweights.”

It was good she hadn’t pushed it. The exposure she’d had was bad enough. Any more might have knocked her into the hospital — and with their prey now being the Watchmaker, he couldn’t have her sidelined.

“And that?” Rhyme nodded to the carton Mel Cooper had taken.

The exceedingly minuscule carton.

“I got shoe prints and trace, front and back doors.”

A moment later Cooper called, “The shoe print’s ninety percent likely the same as what Ron found at the Gilligan homicide scene. I’m looking at the trace now...” Eyes on the GC/MS screen, he called, “Same trace as earlier — the clay, bacteria, rotting wood and cloth fibers. Liquor. Again, old, old, old... But an addition: ammonia and isocyanic acid.”

“Urea,” Rhyme said.

Sellitto shrugged. “He walked through where somebody peed. Doesn’t tell us anything.”

“Walked through where somebody peed a long, long time ago. Those are what urea degrades into.”

Sachs wrote the discovery on the whiteboard.

By comparison, yes, Sellitto’s scrawl was terrible.

The detective looked at his watch. “I’m getting home, shower and dinner. You need me, call. Why do people say things like that? If you need me, of course you’re going to call.”

He steamed out of the town house. Mel Cooper said he was doing the same.

Ron Pulaski was downtown. He’d switched temporarily to the Eddie Tarr case and was tracking down a lead on the red sedan that the bomb maker had supposedly driven when he killed a witness on the Upper East Side. Apparently, though, the lead had not panned out and now he was returning to the city to accompany Sachs in making the rounds of construction sites that contained the tower cranes they considered the most likely targets. This was mostly to check security — but it was possible that they might happen upon the Watchmaker in the act.

Stranger things had happened.

Thom appeared in the doorway and asked, “Dinner?”

“We’ll get to it,” Rhyme said absently, staring at the murder boards.

At that moment, an email appeared on Rhyme’s computer, a Zoom request.

The name on the sender’s email matched a name on the board: Stephen Cody, the U.S. representative currently in a race for reelection. The man Lyle Spencer had interviewed earlier in the day.

That man Rhyme had never heard of, despite the fact he was the criminalist’s advocate in Washington, DC.

He said, “Sachs, let’s see what he has to say.”

She sat down at the computer attached to the largest monitor in the room and typed. A moment later they were looking at the man, businessman handsome, thick hair a bit mussed, the sleeves of his light blue shirt rolled up. He wore no tie and his collar was open. His eyeglasses had dark red frames. Rhyme wondered, in passing, if the color affected how he visually processed what he saw. Interesting idea. He’d do a study to see if frame color had any effect on visual acuity. Something to consider at crime scene searches.

“Representative Cody. I’m Detective Sachs.”

“Detective. And, Captain Rhyme, an honor to meet you.”

Rhyme nodded.

Cody explained he’d been a federal prosecutor before seeking office and had learned of Rhyme through that job. He’d also read some of the books in a series about Rhyme — some of the more famous cases he’d worked on. Rhyme had always wondered why the author bothered.

“Detective Spencer was asking me about the attack on the crane, some affordable housing activists. Housing’s one of my platform planks. A real problem everywhere, especially in New York. There’s something to their demands: we have so much square footage the government could put to good use, but there’s resistance. Major resistance.”

“Hm. A shame,” Rhyme mumbled and Sachs cut him a glance, which unfolded into: don’t be sarcastic, we might need him. His response was to lift an eyebrow in concession.

“But I’m sure you’re not interested in lectures. I’ll tell you what I found: None of the organizations in the affordable housing world know anything about this Kommunalka Project. And no one’s ever heard of affordable housing terrorism. When you think about it, it’s not a cause where violence really works. You can burn down ski resort developments, you can spike trees in lumber forests, you can monkey-wrench land-clearing bulldozers. But those’re directed against an enemy: the oil companies, the developers. Affordable housing’s goal isn’t to stop anybody from doing anything. It’s just to make living quarters available to people who can’t otherwise afford it.”

“Helpful,” Rhyme said. And it was true. He had not thought about that.

“If I hear anything else, though, I’ll be in touch.”

Sachs thanked him and they ended the meeting.

She said, “You going to vote for him?”

“I don’t know. When’s the election?”

“November. It’s always in November.”

“Is it? Who’s he running against?”