‘You found the notebook?’ The man sounded displeased. ‘I told Billy to transcribe it into an encrypted digital file on a computer with no Internet access. Then destroy the original.’ A pause. ‘But I’m not surprised. That whole gang from Southern Illinois seemed rather analog. And, yes, not particularly brilliant. Like the toxins Billy decided to use? I recommended commercial chemicals but Billy had this affection for plants. He spent a lot of time by himself in the woods, I gathered, sketching them when he was young. Tough childhood when your parents are killed by the federal government and your moral compass is a neo Nazi militia.’
‘The Modification? You coined the word?’
‘That was mine, yes. Though I was inspired by Billy’s avocation. Body modifying. It suited their apocalyptic views. I was embarrassed actually. Too on the nose. But they liked the sound.
‘You dictated it to Billy, the whole plan?’
‘That’s right. And his aunt. But Billy wrote it down. They came to visit me in prison. The cover was that Billy was writing a book about my life.’ He paused. ‘There’s a story I’ve been dying to tell but haven’t found the appropriate listener. I think you’ll appreciate it, Lincoln. When I was finished giving him the plan and he’d written it all down, I said, “It’s all yours, Moses. Go forth.” Billy and Harriet didn’t get it. I know you’re familiar with the theological concept of God as a watchmaker.’
When contemplating the origin of the universe, Isaac Newton, René Descartes and others of the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries argued that design requires a designer. If something as complex as a watch could not exist without a watchmaker, by analogy human life in the universe – far more complicated than a timepiece – surely could not exist without a God.
‘I had to explain that, given my nickname, dictating The Modification was as if I were God, handing down the Ten Commandments to Moses. I meant it as a joke. But they took it seriously. They started to refer to the plan as the Modification Commandments.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘I feel sorry for those who don’t appreciate irony. But to get back to the issue: how you found out about me … If you’re willing to share.’
‘Of course.’
‘You had the notebook. But it wasn’t in my handwriting; that was Billy’s. No fingerprints or DNA. I never touched it. And, yes, there were a lot of references to critical timing – when to administer the poison and where, the diversionary attacks, when to have Joshua, Billy’s cousin, get the batteries and lights in the underground passages where the crimes occurred, how many minutes after someone had called nine one one could the police be counted on to arrive. It’s all in the timing, of course. But leaping from that to my escape from prison?’
Rhyme wondered where the man was standing, what his posture was. Was he outside, cold? Or outside, hot, in balmy weather? ‘Nemesis’ was an imprecise term, not to mention melodramatic. But Rhyme allowed himself to think of the Watchmaker this way. He said, ‘Evidence.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me, Lincoln. But what?’
‘The tetrodotoxin. We found traces.’ The super poison from the fugu fish.
‘Oh, my …’ A sigh from the other end of the line. ‘I told Billy to destroy any residue.’
‘I’m sure he tried. There was just a minuscule amount of trace at one of the scenes.’ Rhyme, of all people, knew how difficult it was to banish all whispers of a substance. ‘We didn’t find any in his safe house, so where had it come from? I checked VICAP and nobody had used it in any crimes that had been reported in the last few years. So what could Billy have been doing with tetrodotoxin? Then it occurred to me: A clue was its nickname, the zombie drug. To induce the appearance of cardiac arrest and death.’
‘That’s right,’ the Watchmaker admitted. ‘Billy delivered some, smuggled in the pages of a book. In prison they check for shivs and heroin, not milligrams of fish ovary. I used it to fake the heart attack and get transferred to the hospital in White Plains.’
Was that a seagull cawing in the background? And then, a ship’s horn? No, a foghorn. Interesting. They were little used in this day of radar and GPS. Rhyme took note. A flare on his computer screen. It was a message from Rodney Szarnek, the computer crimes expert. It reported that the analysis of the Watchmaker’s call to Rhyme had been unsuccessful; it had skidded to a stop at an anonymous proxy switch in Kazakhstan.
Rhyme had lied about the phone trace.
He gave a mental shrug – nothing ventured, nothing gained – and returned to the conversation. ‘What finally convinced me, though, was a mistake you made.’
‘Really?’
‘When you were on the street with Ron Pulaski, you referred to the attempted hit in Mexico on the federal police official. The project you’d put together a few years ago.’
‘Right. I wanted to mention something specific. For credibility.’
‘Ah, but that case was sealed. If you were a legitimate lawyer who’d never met Richard Logan, like you claimed, you’d have had no idea about the Mexico City job.’
A pause. Then: ‘Sealed?’
‘Apparently the State Department and the Mexican Gabinete Legal were not happy that you – an American – had come minutes away from killing a high ranking Mexican law enforcer. They preferred to act as if the incident had never happened. There was no press about it.’
‘Oh.’ He sounded bitter.
Rhyme said, ‘Now answer me a question.’
‘All right.’
‘How did you get the gig? For the Stantons and their AFFC?’
‘It was time to get out of prison. I got in touch with the people who’d been involved in the domestic terror incident a few years ago when you and I went head to head. Remember?’
‘Of course.’
‘They set me up with the AFFC – another white supremacist militia. I told them I could put them on the map. Harriet and Billy came to visit me in prison and I laid out a plan. By the way, did you ever see them together, those two, aunt and nephew? Uneasy dynamic there. Gives a whole new meaning to the name American Families First.’
Rhyme demurred. The observation, true or not, didn’t interest him.
The Watchmaker continued, ‘They wanted to make a name for themselves. So we brainstormed. I came up with the idea of botulism in the drinking water. I learned that Billy was a tattoo artist. We’d tattoo victims with an Old Testament message. Apocalypse, I was saying. They just love that kind of rhetoric. Striking a blow for their idiotic values. They loved it too when I suggested they use poisons as the murder weapons. Justice for the minority and socialist values that were poisoning society, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, they just lapped that up. Well, Matthew did. Billy and Harriet seemed a bit more tempered. You know, Lincoln, the small minded are the most dangerous.’
Not necessarily, the criminalist reflected, considering the man he was conversing with at the moment.
CHAPTER 78
‘So,’ Rhyme continued, ‘in exchange for your plan they slipped you some of the tetrodotoxin. And arranged to bribe medical personnel and prison guards, so you’d be declared dead and smuggled out of the lockup. And found some homeless corpse to be shipped to the funeral home for cremation.’
‘More or less.’
‘Must have been pricey.’
‘Twenty million cash total.’
‘And the funeral home charade? With you as Weller. Why that?’
‘I knew you’d send somebody to see who was collecting the ashes. I had to make you believe in your heart that the Watchmaker was dead. The best way to do that was to have the family’s indignant lawyer come to town to collect his ashes … and report your undercover officer to the authorities. That was a wonderful turn. Didn’t anticipate that.’