"And the noose?" Dellray asked. "Isn't it s'posed to have thirteen coils? For bad luck?"
Rhyme didn't know about catgut, and little about musical instruments, but he was familiar with nooses. It was properly called a hangman's knot. It was not meant to tighten, like a slipknot, and choke. Death was from a snapped neck, which led to suffocation, yes, though not because the throat was closed but because signals from brain to lungs shut down. The wide knot, expertly positioned behind the left ear of the condemned, cracked the spine not far above where Rhyme's had broken.
Answering Dellray, he said, "Some had thirteen coils. Most hangmen used eight back in the day. That worked just as well. Okay, what else?"
Sachs had used a gelatin lifter and an electrostatic device to capture the shoe prints that were probably the unsub's, based on the girl's account of where he had stood and walked.
Cooper consulted a database. He said, "A Converse Con. Size ten and a half."
Naturally, a very common sneaker. Impossible to trace to a single retail source from the tread alone. Rhyme knew this about the shoe, since he was the one who had created and still helped maintain the NYPD's database of footwear.
Sachs's attempt to lift tire treads had been, on the other hand, unsuccessful. Other cars and trucks had driven in about the same path as the kidnapper's sedan, obliterating distinctive tread impressions.
Rhyme said, "I suppose we better ask. What else did the child have to say?"
Sachs described how the kidnapping had unfolded.
"A hood over the vic's head. And he went limp?" Sellitto asked. "Suffocated?"
Rhyme said, "Pretty short period of time. Drugs maybe. Chloroform--a classic. You can also use homemade concoctions."
"What color was the hood?" Cooper asked.
"Dark."
"I've got a fiber here," the tech added, looking at the evidence bag notation. "Cotton. Amelia, you rolled it up right next to where he left the noose."
Rhyme looked at the monitor on which a tuft of fiber was displayed. He had a decision to make. The intact fiber could have important evidentiary value. Say they found a hood in the possession of a suspect; he could be linked to the crime if its fibers could be associated with this one (you didn't say "matched"; only DNA and fingerprints actually matched).
That would be good for the prosecutor's case at trial. But having the fiber in its present state didn't get you any closer to discovering who the perp was and where he lived or worked. Cotton, though, was wonderfully absorbent and this tiny piece might hold very helpful clues. The problem was that they could be unlocked only with the gas chromatograph--an instrument that isolated and identified substances. And to analyze the fiber required that it be destroyed.
"Burn it, Mel. I want to know if there's anything inside."
The tech prepared the sample for the Hewlett-Packard. The whole process would take no more than twenty minutes.
In the meantime, Sellitto and Dellray checked in with their respective supervisors. There'd still been no ransom demands, and no CCTV in the area had recorded the incident or the car speeding away. Dellray then uploaded all the information they had to NCIC, the National Crime database, to see if similar incidents had been reported elsewhere. None.
Rhyme said, "Let's get a chart going."
Sachs pulled a whiteboard close and took a dry marker. "What do we call him?"
Often the month and day were used as a temporary nickname for an unknown subject. This perp would be UNSUB 920, for September 20.
But before they decided on a moniker, Cooper stirred and looked at the screen of the GC/MS computer. "Ah. You were right, Lincoln. The fiber--presumably from the hood--shows traces of chloroform. Also, olanzapine."
"Knocky-out drug?" Dellray asked. "Roofie for kidnappers?"
Cooper was typing. "A generic antipsychotic. Serious stuff."
"From our boy's medicine cabinet? Or the vic's?" Sellitto wondered aloud.
Rhyme said, "Media buyer and psychosis don't fit together felicitously. I'd vote for the perp."
Cooper took soil samples from an evidence bag marked, Vicinity of the unsub's shoes. "I'll GC it too." And he stepped to the chromatograph.
Dellray's phone hummed and a long finger stabbed Answer. "Yeah?...No...We'll take a look-see."
He said to the room, "Special agent BFF of mine, in Des Moines, was being all diligent. Had just read the NCIC wire when he got a call from some woman. She saw her son watchin' YouVid, the streaming site? Nasty stuff. Live video of a guy being strangled--in a noose. We oughta see."
Sachs walked to a laptop, which was connected via a thick, flat HDMI cable to a large monitor against a nearby wall. She typed and called up the site.
The video depicted a man in shadows. It was hard to see for sure, and he was blindfolded, but the face could have been Robert Ellis's. His head was cocked to the side--because the noose was tugging his neck upward. Ankles bound with duct tape, arms tied or taped behind his back, he stood on a wooden box, about two by two feet.
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.
(c) The Composer
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 U.S., New Jersey, thank God, so they'll cooperate. If the server was overseas, we might never hear from the
m. 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.
213 East 86th Street, Manhattan
--Incident: Battery/kidnapping. --MO: Perp threw hood over head (dark, possibly cotton), drugs inside to induce unconsciousness.
--Victim: Robert Ellis. --Single, possibly lives with Sabrina Dillon, awaiting return call from her (on business in Japan).
--Residence in San Jose.
--Owner of small start-up, media buying firm.
--No criminal or national security file.
--Perpetrator: --Calls himself the Composer.
--White male.
--Age: 30 or so.
--Approximately six feet, plus or minus.
--Dark beard and hair, long.
--Weight: stocky.
--Wearing long-billed cap, dark.
--Dark clothing, casual.
--Shoes: --Likely Converse Cons, color unknown, size 101/2.
--Driving dark sedan, no tag, no make, no year.
--Profile: --Motive unknown.
--Evidence: --Victim's phone. --No unusual calls/calling patterns.
--Short hair, dyed blond. No DNA.
--No prints.
--Noose. --Traditional hangman's knot.
--Catgut, cello length. --Too common to source.
--Dark cotton fiber. --From hood, used to subdue victim?
--Chloroform.
--Olanzapine, antipsychotic drug.
--YouVid video: --White male (probably vic), noose around neck.
--"Blue Danube" playing, in time to gasps (vic's?).
--"(c) The Composer" appeared at end.
--Faded to black and silence; indication of impending death?
--Checking location where it was uploaded.
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!"
Only a moment later Cooper said, "Wyckoff, not far from Covert Street."
"Near Knollwood Park Cemetery," said Sachs, a Brooklyner born and bred. She stripped off her lab jacket and gloves and started out of the parlor, calling, "Lon, get a tac team together. I'll meet them there."
Chapter 6
Stefan froze at the sound.
A sound nearly as troubling as a Black Scream, though it was soft, meek: a beep on his mobile phone.
It told him that someone had entered the factory complex. An app was connected via Wi-Fi to a cheap security camera, mounted at the facility's entrance.
Oh, no, he thought. I'm sorry! He silently pleaded to Her not to be angry.
A glance into the next room, where Robert Ellis was balancing so precariously on the wooden crate. Then back to his phone. The webcam--high-def and color--showed a red sports car, one of those from the sixties or seventies, parked at the entrance, and a woman was climbing out. He saw a badge on the redhead's hip. Behind her, police cars were pulling up fast.
His jaw quivered. How had they gotten here, and so quickly?
He closed his eyes, at the throbbing, the ocean roar, in his head.
Not a Black Scream, not now. Please!
Move! You have to move.
He looked over his gear. None of this could be found. Stefan had been careful, but connections could be made, evidence could be discovered, and he absolutely could not afford to be stopped.
He could not, under any circumstances, disappoint Her.
I'm sorry, he repeated. But Euterpe, of course, did not reply.
Stefan stuffed his computer into his backpack, and from the canvas sports bag he'd brought he extracted two other items. A quart jar of gasoline. And a cigarette lighter.
Stefan loved fire. Absolutely loved it. Not the jerky dance of orange and black flames, not the caress of heat. No, what he loved was, not surprisingly, the sound.
His only regret was that he would not be around to hear the crackle and moan as fire turned what is into what is not.
Sachs ran to the twelve-foot-high chain link, the six uniforms behind her.
The gate was secured with a chain and an imposing padlock.
"An
ybody got a breaching tool, bolt cutters?"
But these were patrol officers. They stopped speeders, defused domestics, helped out motorists, restrained mad dogs, busted street buys. Breaching tools were not among their issue gear.
She stood with her hands on her hips, gazing at the factory complex.
EPA Superfund Site
Warning--Hazardous Materials
Present in Soil and Water
NO TRESPASSING
There was no question of waiting for Emergency Service; the victim was about to hang to death. The only issue was how to get inside.
Well, one way was obvious and it would have to do. She would gladly have sacrificed her Torino but the snout of the fifty-year-old muscle car was delicate. The squad cars were mounted with push bumpers--those black battering rams that you saw in high-speed-chase videos.
"Keys," she called to a young patrol officer standing nearby, a stout African American woman. She handed them over at once. People tended to respond quickly to an Amelia Sachs demand.
"Everybody, back."
"What're you...Oh, Detective, no, you aren't. I gotta write it up, you mess up my front end."
"I'll do the footnotes." Sachs dropped into the driver's seat, went for the belt. Backed up. She shouted out the window, "Follow me and spread out and search like hell. Remember, this guy's got minutes."
If he's still alive.
"Hey, Detective. Look!" Another officer was pointing into the complex. At the end of a two-story wing of the factory a haze of white and gray mist formed into liver-colored smoke and spiraled upward fast--pushed hard by the heat from a fire. Intense heat.
"Jesus."
The unsub had tipped to them and set fire to the room where, she guessed, he'd made the video, intent on destroying the evidence.
And that meant he'd set fire to Robert Ellis too, whether or not he'd already died from hanging.
A voice shouted, "I'm calling FD."
Sachs jammed the accelerator to the floor. The Ford Interceptors weren't the gutsiest wheels on the block--punching in at 365 horses--but the hundred-foot takeoff run propelled the bulky vehicle plenty fast enough to pop the chain link like plastic and send the two sides of the gate butterflying into the air.