He said, “Detective, this is... I know we don’t know each other from Adam, but I want to say one thing. I don’t have a lot of time left. And my only son’s become a stranger to me. I haven’t been the best father... No, I’ve been a terrible father. I want him in my life again, to try to make up for what I’ve done. If you find him, could you tell him that? It’s not your business, I understand, but...”
“I will.”
His face softened in gratitude. He turned away, but not before Sachs caught a glint of what might be tears in his eyes.
“Excuse me.”
Sachs was on Park Avenue, heading toward the north side of Whittaker Tower, which was the business entrance to WMG. Lyle Spencer was at her side.
They had just made their way through a small crowd of protesters outside Whittaker Tower. The majority of signs took aim at fake news, some about diversity hiring.
She glanced back at the voice.
The man, wearing blue jeans and a black windbreaker, had a lean face framed with curly dark hair. Sideburns. The word “ferret” came to mind.
“Excuse me, Officer Sachs.”
She stopped and turned to face him.
The ferret approached, eyeing Spencer’s bulk. Speaking quickly, he said to Sachs, “I see your eyes, you’re thinking. But, no. We haven’t met. Among cops, you’re a celeb. Can I say ‘cop’? Nothing offensive about that, right?” He talked a mile a minute. “Sheldon Gibbons. I’m with InsideLook Magazine.” He displayed a press badge. She noted the last name, which added another mammal to the equation. Wasn’t that a monkey or orangutan?
“Is this your partner?”
Neither Sachs nor Spencer answered.
“Can I help you?”
Gibbons said, “And sorry, it’s ‘Detective’ Sachs. I called you ‘Officer.’”
She was going to give him a few seconds’ worth of polite but that was it. She cocked her head.
He brandished a digital recorder, much like hers.
“Were you seeing Averell Whittaker about the Locksmith?”
She said, “I’m asking permission to see that.”
Gibbons frowned. “I’m sorry?”
“Can I see your recorder?”
“I guess.” He handed it over.
She hit Stop. And gave it back to him.
He offered a conspiratorial — and maybe admiring — grin.
Sachs asked, “What do you want?”
“Whittaker Media is one of my beats. I was asking if you were talking to Averell about the Locksmith.”
“Why do you think I was seeing him? It’s a big building.”
“You came out of the south hallway. There’s only one elevator there and it goes directly to his suite.”
She said nothing.
“Come on. This is a great story. A guy breaks into apartments and leaves one of Whittaker’s papers? Like a journalistic Batman villain? What angle are you following? Do you think the Locksmith’s a former employee?”
“I have no comment. On that. On anything.”
“Is Whittaker himself in any danger? How about his niece, Joanna? Was she there? She visits a lot.” A coy smile. “Maybe the Locksmith’s extorting her charity. It’s well endowed.”
“On anything,” she repeated.
Gibbons offered a card. “I tell it like it is, Detective. I don’t trash cops in my stories. I report the facts, unlike some news institutions.” He nodded toward the skyscraper. “Threats against Whittaker and Joanna, that’s a valid story. I want to report it. Help me out. Who knows, maybe publicity’ll drum up some witnesses for you.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Gibbons.” She slipped the business card away, thinking that if she threw it out now, a scene might ensue.
“Take care, Detective Sachs. Keep me in mind.”
She and Spencer continued to the entrance. She looked back and noted that Gibbons did not circle back to the crowd to fish for stories. He’d apparently given up on his reporting duties for the time being and had vanished from sight.
35
So the Locksmith had returned to the Bechtel Building.
Mel Cooper was analyzing what Sachs had found on her second visit to the place, where she had happened to meet the Whittaker Media security chief, Lyle Spencer.
“What do we have, Mel?”
“Wrapper from a Jolly Rancher piece of candy.”
“Why do we think it’s his?”
“Bit of dish detergent on it, same profile as earlier. And some graphite — the grade that locksmiths use.”
“Prints, DNA?”
“None.”
“So he carefully unwrapped the candy before popping it into his mouth. Couldn’t he tear it open with his teeth, and be helpful? So this delicacy? Is it rare? Limited sources? Will it lead us someplace?”
Cooper bent over the computer and typed. “The number-one hard candy in America. One million two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of revenue every year.”
Rhyme sighed.
“Halloween? A million pounds’re sold.”
“Thank you, Mel,” Rhyme said acerbically. “I could have deduced the wrapper’s uselessness evidentially from the revenue stat, without the weight information.”
Cooper, unfazed, continued, “Around it, on the floor, Amelia found traces of boron, copper and iron. It was probably his since the control samples from the building don’t show any of these.”
“Put them on the board,” Rhyme called to Thom, their current scribe, and up went the notes.
The significance?
That he couldn’t say. Not yet. These were among the most common materials in the manufacturing industry.
So little evidence...
Rhyme couldn’t sweep from his mind Sachs’s earlier speculations.
The paper’s a red herring. Nothing to do with what he’s really up to. He’s an illusionist and’s got something else entirely going on.
He tried to put himself into the mind of the man who was the Locksmith’s doppelganger — the Watchmaker.
How do the cogs fit together?
Newspapers, knives, tricky locks, lingerie, two innocent, unrelated victims (and possibly more), days-old human blood...
What are you trying to construct?
But he had no answers. Rhyme’s eyes went to the photo of the splashy newspaper page and his mind to a place where it had gone, reluctantly, earlier: the question of what was motivating the Locksmith to commit these complex and risky crimes against the paper — and, ultimately, against the Whittakers?
“What’s the story behind the family?” Rhyme asked.
Cooper said he didn’t know much. He was not a consumer of Whittaker Media Group products. He read the Times and the Wall Street Journal, and he and his girlfriend watched little TV news; mostly they listened to NPR and podcasts.
That was basically Thom’s journalistic diet too, the aide reported.
“You want me to look into them?”
“No. I’ll do it.” Rhyme went online and engaged in some high-school-level research. In a half hour he had a rough picture of the Whittakers and their empire.
Averell and Lawrence had inherited a modest chain of newspapers in the New York suburbs from their father, a few radio stations too. The operation was only marginally profitable. The brothers, Ivy League grads (both academically and athletically distinguished) were ambitious. They’d never wanted anything to do with the mundane and profit-neutral chain and pursued careers other than journalism. Averell in manufacturing, Lawrence in investing.
But when their father passed away and left them the papers, they decided to exploit the opportunity given them.