Outside once more — unnoticed by diners or staff, he observed — Billy walked across the street and into the service alley that would lead to the back of Rhyme’s apartment.
The cul-de-sac was pungent — smelled a bit like the Chinese restaurant, now that he thought about it — but relatively clean. The ground was ancient cobblestones and patches of asphalt, dotted with slush and ice. Several Dumpsters sat well-ordered against brick walls. It seemed that several town houses, including Rhyme’s, and a larger apartment building backed onto this area.
Noting a video camera at the rear of Rhyme’s town house, he went about his faux business of checking electrical lines.
Ducking behind a Dumpster, as if searching for a troublesome bit of electrical wire conduit, Billy circumvented the camera and approached the door. He extracted the hypodermic that contained the snakeroot toxin from his toothbrush holder and slipped the syringe into his pocket.
Tremetol, a clear liquid, is an alcohol and would blend instantly with what Billy’s research had revealed was Rhyme’s favorite beverage — single-malt scotch. It would also be tasteless.
Billy’s palms sweated. His heart thudded.
For all he knew there might be ten armed officers inside, meeting with Rhyme at the moment. The alarm wouldn’t be on, not during the day, but he could easily be spotted lacing the bottle.
And possibly shot on the spot.
But the Modification, naturally, involved risk. What important missions didn’t? So, get on with it. Billy pulled out his phone, a prepaid model, untraceable, and pressed in a number.
Almost immediately he heard, ‘Police and fire. What’s your emergency?’
‘A man with a gun in Central Park! He’s attacking a woman.’
‘Where are you, sir?’
‘He’s got a gun! I think he’s going to rape her!’
‘Yes, sir. Where are you? Where exactly?’
‘Central Park West, about … I don’t know. It’s … uhm, okay, in front of Three Fifty Central Park West.’
‘Is anyone hurt?’
‘I think so! Jesus! Please. Send somebody.’
‘Describe him.’
‘Dark-skinned. Thirties.’
‘What’s your name—?’
Click.
It was sixty seconds later that he heard the sirens. He knew the 20th Precinct, located in Central Park, was nearby.
More sirens.
Dozens of squad cars, he guessed.
He waited until the sirens grew louder; they’d have to be drawing the attention of everyone in the town house. Gambling that no one could see the security monitor, Billy walked matter-of-factly to Rhyme’s back door. Paused again. He looked around. Nobody. He turned to the lock.
Later, the police might look at the security tape — if it was recorded at all — and see the intruder. But all they’d see would be a vague form, head down.
And by then it would be too late.
CHAPTER 45
‘The hell is going on?’ Rhyme barked.
The criminalist and Mel Cooper were in the front hallway of the town house, the door open. Ron Pulaski joined them. They were peering out into the street, which was filled with police cars, two ESU vans and two ambulances.
Blue lights, white, red. Flashing urgently.
Cooper’s and Pulaski’s hands were near their sidearms.
Thom was upstairs, probably observing from a bedroom window.
Five minutes ago Rhyme had heard frantic wails grow loud as emergency vehicles streaked along the street outside. He’d expected them to continue on Central Park West, but they didn’t. The vehicles braked to a stop just one door north. The piercing howls remained at peak pitch for a moment then one by one shut off.
Peering outside, Rhyme said, ‘Call downtown, Mel. Find out.’
He’d assumed at first that the incident had something to do with him — maybe the unsub had been making a frontal assault on the town house — but then he noted that the attention was focused on the park itself and that none of the officers who were part of the operation approached his place.
Cooper had a conversation with someone at Dispatch and then disconnected.
‘Assault in the park. Dark-skinned male, thirties. Maybe attempted rape.’
‘Ah.’ They continued to watch for another three or four minutes. Rhyme examined the park. It was hard to see anything through the mist and reinvigorated sleet. A rape? The urge for sex is more impulsive than that for money and more intense, he knew, but in this weather?
He wondered if he’d draw the crime scene side of the case and was thinking that given the icy rain the evidence would be a challenge.
But that put in mind Lon Sellitto, who would normally be the NYPD representative who’d contact him about potential jobs. The detective was still in the most intensive of intensive care wards, nowhere near consciousness.
Rhyme put the rape, or attempted rape, out of his mind. He, Pulaski and Cooper returned to the parlor laboratory, where they’d been analyzing the evidence Detective Cheyenne Edwards had delivered — the finds from the crime scene at Pam Willoughby’s.
There hadn’t been much, though the unsub had left in such a hurry that he’d neglected to pick up the hypodermic needle he’d stabbed Seth with and a vial of the poison he’d presumably been about to use on the young man. The substance was from the white baneberry plant — also called doll’s eyes, because the berries resemble eyeballs. Eerie. The toxin, Cooper explained, was cardiogenic; it basically stopped the heart. Of all the poisons their unsub was using this was the most humane, killing without the pain of toxins that attacked the GI and renal systems.
Rhyme noticed Ron Pulaski looking down at his phone. His face was lit with a faint blue glow.
Checking messages or the time? Rhyme wondered. Mobiles were used as watches more and more frequently nowadays.
Pulaski hung up and said to Rhyme, ‘I should go.’
So, time. Not texts.
Ron Pulaski’s undercover assignment at the funeral home was about to begin: to see who was collecting the Watchmaker’s remains and maybe, just maybe learn a bit more about the enigmatic criminal.
‘You all set, you ready to be Serpico, you ready to be Gielgud?’
‘Was he a cop? And, wait, didn’t Serpico get shot in the face?’
Rhyme and Pulaski had spent some time that morning on a cover story that would seem credible to the funeral home director and whoever was coming to collect the man’s remains.
Rhyme had never done undercover work but he knew the rules: Less is more and more is less. Meaning you research the hell out of your role, learn every possible fact, but when you present yourself to the perp, you offer up only the minimal. Inundating the bad guys with details is a sure giveaway.
So he and Pulaski had come up with a bio for Stan Walesa, a bio that would have made credible some connection with the Watchmaker. Rhyme had noted him walking around the lab all day, reciting facts they’d made up. ‘Born in Brooklyn, has an import-export company, investigated for insider trading, questioned in connection with a banking scam, divorced, knows weapons, was hired by an associate of the Watchmaker to transport some containers overseas, no, I can’t give his name away, no, I don’t know what was in the containers. Again: Born in Brooklyn, has an import-export …’
Now, as Pulaski pulled on his coat, Rhyme said, ‘Look, rookie, don’t think about the fact that this is our only chance to fill in gaps on the late Watchmaker’s biography.’
‘Um, okay.’
‘And if you mess up, we’ll never have this opportunity again. Don’t think about that. Put it out of your mind.’
‘I …’ The patrolman’s face relaxed. ‘You’re fucking with me, aren’t you, Lincoln?’