No, Joshua wasn’t the brightest bulb. But he’d been key in the Modification. After Billy had killed the victims, and the bodies had been discovered, Joshua, dressed in medical coveralls and face mask, had quickly appeared, carting into the tunnels the lights and batteries containing the bombs, set them up and vanished. Nobody thought twice about him. An emergency worker.
The young man now prattled on about his success in the masquerade, smuggling the devices into the crime scenes. He kept looking Billy’s way for approval, which his younger cousin gave in the form of a nod.
Harriet glanced at her son with a dip of eyelid, which Billy knew meant Quiet. But Joshua missed it. And kept talking.
‘It was pretty close at the Belvedere. I mean really. There were cops everywhere! I had to go through a different manhole than was in the plan. It added another six minutes but I don’t think it was a problem.’
The look from Aunt Harriet again.
Matthew didn’t need the patience that women in the AFFC were required to display. He snapped, ‘Shut up, son.’
‘Yessir.’
Billy was troubled by his uncle’s and aunt’s treatment of his cousin. Matthew was just plain mean and it was pathetic how Josh simply took it. As for Harriet, she largely ignored him. Billy sometimes wondered if she ever took her own son to the Oleander Room. He’d concluded no. Not because that would be too perverse. Rather because Josh probably didn’t have the stamina to meet his mother’s needs; even Billy could manage only three times an afternoon and Harriet occasionally seemed disappointed by that low sum.
Billy liked Joshua. He had fond memories of the years spent with him, his de facto brother. They’d tossed footballs and played catch because they thought they ought to. They’d flirted with girls for the same reason. They’d tinkered with cars. Finally in a moment of adolescent candor they admitted they didn’t really like sports or cars and were lukewarm about dating. And took up more enjoyable activities — stalking faggots and beating the crap out of them. Illegals, too. Or legals (they still weren’t white). Graffiti’ing crosses on synagogues and swastikas on black churches. They’d burned an abortion clinic to the ground.
Billy’s watch hummed. ‘It’s time.’ A few seconds later, another vibration.
Uncle Matthew looked at the backpack and gear bag. He announced, ‘We’ll pray.’
The family got down on their knees, even unsteady Matthew, and Harriet and Joshua took positions on either side of Billy. They all held hands. Harriet was gripping Billy’s. She squeezed his once. Hard.
Matthew’s voice — a bit weak but still powerful enough to split open sinners’ hearts — intoned, ‘Lord, we thank You for giving us the wisdom and the courage to do what we are about to do, in Your name. We thank You for the vision You put into our souls and for the plans You’ve delivered into our hands. Amen.’
‘Amen’ echoed through the room.
CHAPTER 62
Rhyme wheeled back and forth before the whiteboards in his parlor.
He glanced at the water main grid chart, which the DEP had just sent them via secure server, then back to the evidence. Water Tunnel 3 and all the branches were clearly diagrammed.
Ron Pulaski called, ‘We’ve got our Bomb Squad at the boutique and the restaurant. The army has their people at the third site — the Belvedere.’
‘Are they making a big scene?’ Rhyme asked, half-attentive. ‘Are all the lights and sirens going?’
‘I—’
Rhyme cut him off. ‘Is there any evacuation from downtown? I wanted the mayor to order an evacuation.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, put on the news and find out. Thom! Where the hell—?’
‘I’m here, Lincoln.’
‘The news. I need the news on! I asked you.’
‘You didn’t ask. You thought you asked.’ The aide lifted a chastising eyebrow.
‘Maybe I didn’t ask,’ Rhyme grumbled. The best ‘sorry’ the man was going to get. ‘But turn the fucking thing on now.’
In the corner the Samsung clicked to life.
Rhyme stabbed a finger at the screen. ‘Breaking News, News Alert, This Just In, We Interrupt This Program. Why aren’t I seeing those? … I’m looking at a fucking commercial for car insurance!’
‘Don’t use your arm for useless gestures.’ Thom changed the channel.
‘… press conference ten minutes ago the mayor told citizens of Manhattan and Queens that an evacuation would not be necessary at this time. He urged people—’
‘No evacuation?’ Rhyme sighed. ‘He could at least have cleared Queens. They can go east. Plenty of room on Long Island. Orderly evacuation. He could’ve arranged for that.’
Mel Cooper said, ‘It wouldn’t be orderly, Lincoln. It’d be chaos.’
‘I recommended announcing an evacuation. He ignored me.’
‘DEP’s calling,’ Pulaski said, nodding at the caller ID box on the main monitor over a worktable.
Rhyme’s mobile rang too. The area code was 404. Atlanta, Georgia.
‘It’s about goddamn time,’ he muttered. ‘You take the water people, rookie, and coordinate with Sachs. I’ll talk to our friends in Dixie. Let’s move, everyone! We’ve only got minutes!’
And he hit the answer button on his keypad hard, drawing another admonishing look from Thom.
CHAPTER 63
In his Department of Environmental Protection coveralls and hard hat, Billy Haven stepped into a cross street in Midtown, the East Side, and lifted a manhole cover with a hook, then descended partway and muscled the disk back in place.
He climbed down to a metal floor and began walking through the tunnel, under the shadow of a water main pipe glistening with condensation. This huge conduit ran from Water Tunnel 3’s main valve room, in central Midtown, to the three submains that supplied water throughout Manhattan and to parts of Queens. Approximately eighteen thousand households and businesses received water that passed through this pipe.
He switched the heavy gear bag from one hand to the other as he walked. It weighed 48 pounds. The contents were what he’d removed from the workshop on Canal Street: the drill, portable welding kit, electric cord and other tools, along with the bulky steel thermos. He didn’t have his American Eagle with him now. That part of the Modification was over with. No more inking with poison.
Though the Rule of Skin was still very much at work, of course.
He checked his GPS, made an adjustment and kept walking.
The plan for the Modification was complex, as befit a scheme delivered through an intermediary whom God Himself had picked.
The Commandments …
At the last scene, at TT Gordon’s tattoo parlor, the police would have found trace of explosives he’d intentionally planted and Lincoln Rhyme would immediately wonder about this anomaly. Explosives and poison? What was the relationship?
The Commandments speculated that Rhyme would then think: What if the poisoned tattoos were about something other than random killings by a psychotic?
They’d analyze the numbers in the tattoos and would come up with the flood in Genesis. He’d intentionally inked the tattoo artist in the Village with “the six hundredth” last, because it would have been too easy to find the flood passages in the Bible if he’d given them in proper order.
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights …