As horrific as this was, the soundtrack was just as eerie. A snippet of a human gasp had been recorded and used as the downbeat for music being played on an organ or electric keyboard. The tune was familiar, ‘The Blue Danube.’
You could count out the time — a waltz — as gasp, two, three, gasp, two, three.
‘Christ,’ Sellitto muttered.
How long, Rhyme wondered, could a man stand like that before collapsing or slipping off, before his legs gave way or he fainted — and fell to the noose’s grip? The short fall would not, like traditional executions, break his neck, but would slowly and agonizingly strangle him to death.
As the video continued, the music began gradually to slow, as did the gasps, still keeping perfect time to the flagging music.
The image of the man began to fade too, growing darker.
At the end of the three-minute running time, the music and desperate gasps faded to silence, the image to black.
Words in blood-red type materialized on the screen — words that because they were otherwise so ordinary became unspeakably cruel.
Chapter 5
‘Rodney?’
Lincoln Rhyme was talking to their contact at the NYPD Computer Crimes Unit, downtown. One Police Plaza.
Rodney Szarnek was brilliant and quirky (a geek, say no more) but also into the most obnoxious head-banging, heavy-metal rock music from your worst nightmares.
‘Rodney, please!’ Rhyme shouted into the speakerphone. ‘Make it vanish.’
‘Oh, sorry.’
The music diminished, though it didn’t vanish.
‘Rodney, you’re on here with a bunch of people. Speaker. Don’t have time to make introductions.’
‘Hi, every—’
‘We’ve got an abduction and the perp’s rigged something so the vic only has a little while to live.’
The music shut off completely.
‘Tell me.’
‘Amelia’s sending you a YouVid link right now. A video of the victim.’
‘Is it still up?’ he asked.
‘As far as we know. Why?’
‘If there’s a violent video — real life, not fake — YouVid’ll probably take it down. If there’re complaints or if their algorithm catches it and their vid police decide it violates TOS, terms of service, down it comes. Have somebody download and record it.’
Dellray said, ‘Our folks’re all over it. Done and done.’
‘Hi, Fred.’ A pause, then Szarnek said, ‘Got it... Man. Already twenty-thousand-plus views. And a ton of likes. Sick world out there. So this’s that guy snatched a few hours ago? I read the wire.’
‘We think,’ Sachs said.
‘Hey, Amelia. Okay. And you need the location where this was sent from. Hoping he’s still alive. Okay, okay. There. I’ve sent the vid and an expedited request to the Warrants Desk. They’ll be on the phone with a magistrate, who’ll approve it ASAP. Minutes, I’m talking. I’ve worked with YouVid before. They’re in the US, New Jersey, thank God, so they’ll cooperate. If the server was overseas, we might never hear from them. I’ll call you back as soon as I can start tracing.’
They disconnected. Rhyme said to Sachs, ‘Get that chart going. What do we have so far?’ A nod at the whiteboard. She grabbed a marker and started.
As she wrote, Rhyme turned to the computer to look at the video again. The screen changed. A red block of type came up.
This video has been removed for violation of our Terms of Service.
A moment later, though, the video arrived from Dellray’s technical people, via an email. An MP4 file. Rhyme and the others viewed it again, hoping it might yield clues as to where the footage had been shot.
Nothing. A stone wall. A wooden box. Robert Ellis, the victim, struggling atop the improvised gallows.
One slip, one muscle cramp would kill him.
Sachs was finished jotting a moment later. Rhyme looked over the chart, wondering if there was anything in it that might hold clues to let them narrow down where their perp lived or worked or where he’d taken his victim to make the perverse tape.
Rodney Szarnek, from Computer Crimes, called back. On the other end of the line was, thank you, only the geeky voice, no raw, wah-wah guitar licks. ‘Lincoln?’
‘You have a location?’
‘New York metro area.’
Something I don’t know, please.
‘I know you’re disappointed. But I can narrow it down. Maybe four, five hours.’
‘Too long, Rodney.’
‘I’m just saying. He’s used proxies. That’s the bad news. The good is that he doesn’t really know what he’s doing. He’s logged onto some free VPNs, which—’
‘No time for Greek,’ Rhyme grumbled.
‘It’s amateur stuff. I’m working with YouVid and we can crack it but—’
‘Four hours.’
‘Less, I’m hoping.’
‘Me too.’ Rhyme disconnected.
‘Have something else here, Lincoln.’ Mel Cooper was at the Hewlett-Packard gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer.
‘The footprint trace? Something he stepped in?’
‘Right. We have more olanzapine, the antipsychotic. But something else. Weird.’
‘Weird is not a chemical property, Mel. Nor is it particularly fucking helpful.’
Cooper said, ‘Uranyl nitrate.’
‘Jesus,’ Rhyme whispered.
Dellray frowned and asked, ‘What, Linc? That’s some pretty bad shit, I’m hearing?’
Rhyme was resting the back of his skull against the headrest of his wheelchair, staring at the ceiling. He was vaguely aware of the question.
Sellitto now: ‘Uranus nitrate. Is it dangerous?’
‘Uranyl,’ Rhyme corrected impatiently. ‘Obviously it’s dangerous. What would you call uranium salt dissolved in nitric acid?’
‘Linc,’ Sellitto said patiently.
‘It’s radioactive, produces renal failure and acute tubular necrosis. It’s also explosive and highly unstable. But my exclamation was positive, Lon. I’m delighted that our perp may have trod in this stuff.’
Dellray said, ‘’Cause it’s highly and extremely and deliciously rare.’
‘Bingo, Fred.’
Rhyme explained that the substance had been used to create weapons-grade uranium for the Manhattan Project — the effort to make the first atomic bomb in World War II. While the project’s engineering headquarters had been based, temporarily, in Manhattan, hence the name, most of the work in constructing the bombs had occurred elsewhere, notably Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Richland, in Washington State.
‘But there was some actual construction and assembly in the New York area. A company in Bushwick, Brooklyn, made uranyl nitrate. They couldn’t produce enough, though, and gave up the contract. The company’s long gone but the site still has residual radiation.’
‘How do you—’ Sellitto began.
Rhyme said smoothly, ‘EPA waste sites. Wonderful, Lon. Don’t you study them? You don’t collect them?’
A sigh. ‘Linc.’
‘I do. They tell us such wonderful things about our neighborhoods.’
‘Where is it?’ Cooper asked.
‘Well, I don’t have the address memorized. It’s an EPA waste site, designated as such. Bushwick, Brooklyn. How many could there be? Look it up!’