第 5 页

CHAPTER 7

He sweated.

Palms, scalp, his hair-coated chest.

Damp, despite the autumn chill.

Moving fast, partly to keep from being seen.

Partly because the harmony of his world had been shaken. Like kicking a spinning top.

Like hitting the wrong notes, like losing the perfect rhythm of a metronome.

Stefan was walking down a street in Queens. Manic. Armpits prickling, scalp itching. The sweat ran and ran. He’d just left the transient hotel he’d been living, well, hiding, in, after slipping out of the horrible, silent world where he’d been for years.

He now carted a wheelie suitcase and a computer bag. Not all his possessions, of course. But enough for now. He’d learned that, while the kidnapping had made the press, no one seemed to connect him personally to it or to composing a tune that had a very impressive if unsettling rhythm section.

His muse … She was looking out for him from Olympus, yes. But still the police had come close.

So close!

That red-haired police woman he’d seen on the webcam. If he hadn’t set the thing up or if he’d missed the tone it uttered announcing their presence, he might have been captured by them and Harmony would be forever denied him.

Head down, walking quickly, fighting off a Black Scream – as he felt discord prickle his skin.

No …

He controlled it, barely.

Stefan could not help but think of the music of the spheres …

This philosophical concept moved him to his core. It was a belief that everything in the universe – planets, the sun, comets, other stars – gave off energy in the form of audible tones.

Musica mundanus, the ancients had called it.

Similar was Musica humana, the tones created within the human body.

And finally there was Musica instrumentis. Actual music played on instruments and sung.

When these tones – whether planets, the human heart, a cello performance – were in harmony, all was good. Life, love, relationships, devotion to the God of your choosing.

When the proportions were off, the cacophony was ruinous.

Now the spheres were tottering, and his chance of salvation, of rising into the state of Harmony, pure Harmony, was in jeopardy.

Stifling an urge to cry, Stefan dug into his jacket pocket and pulled a paper towel out. He mopped his face, his neck, and shoved the damp wad away.

Looking around. No eyes focused on him. No red-haired policewomen running toward him, in four-four march time.

But that didn’t mean he was safe. He circled the block twice, on foot, and stopped in the shadows near the stolen car. Finally, he could stand it no longer. He had to get away. He had to be safe.

Pausing at the car, another look around, then he set his suitcase in the backseat and the computer bag on the passenger’s side in the front. He climbed in and started the engine.

The grind, the cough, the purr of cylinders.

He pulled slowly into traffic.

No one followed; no one stopped him.

He thought to Her: I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful. I will.

He had to keep Her happy, pleased with him, of course. He couldn’t afford to offend Euterpe. She was the one guiding him on his journey to Harmony, which, according to the music of the spheres, corresponded to Heaven, the most exalted state one could exist in. Christ had his stations of the cross, on his journey. Stefan had his too.

Euterpe, daughter of Zeus, one of the nine muses. She was, of course, the muse of music, pictured often in a robe and carrying a flute or pan pipes, a handsome face, an intelligent face, as befit the offspring of a god.

He drove around, a half-dozen blocks, until he was positive no one followed.

With his muse in mind, another thought occurred. Stefan, a distracted boy in school, had nonetheless liked mythology. He recalled that Zeus had fathered other children too, and one was Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. He couldn’t remember who her mother might be, but she was different from Euterpe’s; they were half-sisters.

But that didn’t mean the women were in harmony. Oh, not at all. In fact, now just the opposite. They were enemies.

Euterpe, guiding Stefan to Harmony.

Artemis – in the form of the red-haired policewoman – trying to stop them both.

But you won’t, he thought.

And as he drove he forced away a budding Black Scream and concentrated on his next composition. He had a good piece of music in mind for his next hangman’s waltz. Now all he needed was another victim, to provide the perfect bass line, in three-quarter time.

CHAPTER 8

Sachs finished walking the grid and stood back to examine the scene.

The gallows was a jerry-rigged arrangement – the noose affixed to a broom handle jammed into a gap in the cinder blocks of the uranium factory wall. The wooden-box base, which Robert Ellis had been forced to stand on, was old, marked with military stencils – indecipherable numbers and letters – in faded olive-drab paint on the sides. By the time Sachs had inadvertently tackled him, he’d reported, he wasn’t sure he could have stayed upright more than five minutes. He was already growing light-headed from the effort.

She walked outside, where the evidence techs were finishing up with chain-of-custody cards. There wasn’t much to document; the fire’d worked real well.

She asked Robert Ellis, ‘You talk to Sabrina?’

‘No. I haven’t heard back. The time. I don’t know the time in Japan.’ He was still bleary. The medics had pronounced him largely uninjured, as he himself had assured Sachs, but the drugs and presumably the tightened noose around his neck – to elicit gasps for the recording – had muddled his thoughts.

With disbelief in his voice Ellis said, ‘He kept doing it – three times or four maybe.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Pulling the noose, recording me choking. I heard him play it back, over and over. As if the sounds I was making weren’t what he wanted. He was like a musical conductor, you know. Like he could hear in his mind the sound he wanted but he wasn’t getting it. He was so calculating, so cold about it.’

‘Did he say anything?’

‘Not to me. He talked to himself. Just rambling. I couldn’t hear most of it. I heard him say “music” and “harmony” and just weird stuff. I can’t really remember exactly. I feel pretty spacey. Nothing made sense. “Listen, listen, listen. Ah, there it is. Beautiful.” He seemed to be talking to some, I don’t know, imaginary person.’

‘No one else was there?’

‘I couldn’t see – you know, the blindfold. But it was just the two of us, I’m sure. I would’ve heard.’

What are you up to? she wondered to the Composer – it was the name they had selected for the unsub, Rhyme had told her. It seemed to fit a complex, sinister perp better than today’s date.

‘Still no thoughts on why he went after you?’

‘I don’t have any enemies, no exes. I’ve been with my girlfriend for years. I’m not rich, she’s not rich.’

Her phone buzzed. It was the officer who’d driven around the perimeter of the plant and found the witness – a boy – who reported that the Composer was fleeing. She had a brief conversation.

After disconnecting, she closed her eyes and sighed briefly.

She called Rhyme.

‘Sachs, where are you?’

‘I’m almost on my way.’

‘Almost. Why almost?’

‘The scene’s done. I’m just getting the vic’s statement.’

‘Somebody else can do that. I need the evidence.’

‘There’s something you should know.’

He must’ve heard the concern in her tone. Slowly he said, ‘Go on.’

‘One of the respondings was looking for more witnesses near where the unsub escaped. Didn’t find anyone. But she did spot a plastic bag he must’ve dropped while he was running. Inside were two more miniature nooses. Look likes he’s just getting started.’

Rhyme’s eyes scanned the treasures Sachs and the evidence collection techs had brought back.

The ECs left, one of them saying something to Rhyme. A joke. A farewell. A comment about the weather or the cleanliness of the Hewlett-Packard gas chromatograph. Who knew, who cared? He wasn’t paying attention. His nose detected the whiff of burned plastic and hot metal – radiating from the destroyed evidence.

Or the evidence the perp had tried to destroy. In fact, water is a far more efficient contaminant than fire, though flames do remove DNA and fingerprints pretty damn well.

Oh, Mr Composer, you tried. But let’s see how successful you were.

Fred Dellray was gone. He’d been summoned to Federal Plaza unexpectedly – a confidential informant had reported an impending assassination of a US attorney involved in a major drug prosecution.

Rhyme had complained: ‘Impending versus actual, Fred? Come on. Our vic has been one hundred percent certified snatched.’

‘Orders’re orders,’ the agent had replied as he left.

And then, insult to injury, Dellray had just called back saying that it was a false alarm. He could get back within the hour.

‘Fine, fine, fine.’

Lon Sellitto was still here, presently canvassing law enforcement agencies around the country to see if there were any echoes of the Composer’s MO.

None, so far.

Not that Rhyme cared about that.

Evidence. That’s what he wanted.

So they began poring over what had been collected at the factory.

Here, a single Converse Con shoe print. Ten and a half.

Here, two short pale hairs that seemed identical to the one found on Ellis’s cell phone.

Here, four slivers of shiny paper – photo stock, it looked like.

Here, a burned T-shirt, probably the ‘broom’ used to obliterate marks on the floor and wipe fingerprints.

Here, gone almost completely, the dark baseball cap he’d worn. No hair, no sweat.

Here, plastic globs and metal parts – his musical keyboard and an LED light.

Here, a Baggie, one-gallon, containing two more miniature nooses, probably made of cello strings. No fingerprints. Not helpful in any way, except to tell them that he had more victims in mind.

No phone, no computer – those devices we so dearly love … and that betray us and our secrets so nonchalantly.

Though he’d swept, Sachs had collected plenty of dust and splinters of wood, and bits of concrete from the floor around the gallows room. The GC/MS rumbled for some time, again and again burning up samples. The results revealed traces of tobacco, as well as cocaine, heroin and pseudoephedrine – the ingredient in decongestants that was present here because of its second utility: making methamphetamine.

Sachs said, ‘Not a lot of traffic but the place had its crack-house attractions.’

One find, more or less intact, was a scrap of paper:

CASH T

EXCHA

CONVER

TRANSAC

‘Wheel of Fortune,’ Mel Cooper said.

‘What’s that?’

Nobody replied to Rhyme’s question, as they all tried to complete the words, Thom too. Nothing, so they moved on.

The remains of the musical keyboard, presumably the one on which the Composer had recorded his eerie composition, contained a serial number. Sellitto called the manufacturer but the company, in Massachusetts, was presently closed. He’d check again in the morning, though the Composer had been so careful about so many aspects of the kidnapping that he’d surely bought the Casio with cash.

No fingerprints on it. Or anything else.

The noose that had been used to try to murder Robert Ellis was made of two gut instrument strings tied together in a carrick bend knot. This was a common knot, Rhyme knew; knowing how to tie it did not suggest any special nautical or other professional background.

The gut strings, larger versions of the calling card the schoolgirl had found, were for an upright bass. Rhyme had little hope that they’d find a clerk who’d remember a purchaser like the Composer, given their skimpy description of him … and the fact that there were thousands of musicians in the area who’d use such strings.

To break into the factory, the Composer had sliced through the chain at the gate with a bolt cutter and replaced it with his own. Both the lock and chain were generic.

The battery-powered router and Wi-Fi-enabled webcam – which had apparently alerted him to the police’s arrival – were similarly untraceable.

A canvass by dozens of officers found no witnesses to follow up on the boy who’d reported that somebody resembling the Composer had fled the plant around the time of the fire.

After the information went up on the board, Rhyme wheeled in front of it.

Sachs too gazed. She called up a map of the area on one of the big-screen monitors. She tapped the place to the north of the factory, about where he’d escaped, and said absently, ‘Where the hell’re you going?’

Sellitto, also looking over the chart, said, ‘He’s got a car. He can drive home. He can drive to a subway and take the train, leave the car on the street. He can—’

Rhyme had a fast thought. ‘Sachs!’

She, Sellitto and Cooper were looking toward him. They seemed alarmed. Maybe it was his angered expression.

‘What, Rhyme?’

‘What you just asked.’

‘Where he lives.’

‘No, you didn’t ask that. You asked where he was going?’

‘Well, I meant, where’s his home.’

‘Forget that.’ He scanned the chart. ‘Those scraps of paper you found? The photo paper?’

‘Right.’

‘Play jigsaw puzzle with them. See how they fit together.’

After pulling on gloves she opened the plastic evidence envelope and arranged the slips. ‘They make a frame, see? Something was cut out of the middle. A perfect square.’

Rhyme then consulted his computer. He asked, ‘One that measures fifty-one millimeters by fifty-one, by any chance?’

Sachs applied a ruler. She laughed. ‘Exactly.’

Sellitto grunted, ‘How the hell’d you know that, Linc?’

‘Goddamn it.’ He nodded at the burned triangle of paper, containing the mysterious code.

CASH T

EXCHA

CONVER

TRANSAC

More typing. Rhyme reviewed the screen and said, ‘Try this: “Cash Tendered. Exchange Rate. Converted Amount. Transaction Amount.”’ He nodded at the screen. ‘I found a receipt from a currency exchange. That’s what it is. And the square cut out of the glossy paper. It’s the size—’

Sellitto filled in, ‘A passport photo. Oh, hell.’

‘Exactly,’ Rhyme said, exhaling slowly. ‘Call Washington.’

‘DC?’ Cooper asked.

‘Of course DC. I hardly want a cup of Starbucks or a Microsoft Windows upgrade, now, do I? Tell the State Department to alert the embassies that the Composer’s headed out of the country. Dellray too. Get him on the wire to the FBI offices abroad.’ Another scowl. ‘Don’t know what good it’ll do. No solid description or other info to give Passport Control.’ He shook his head in dismay. ‘And if he’s as smart as he seems to be, he’s not wasting any time. He’s probably halfway to London or Rio by now.’

II

IN THE FIELD OF TRUFFLES

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22

CHAPTER 9

Could this be the place, could this be the moment he’d been waiting for?

Hoping for?

Finally, was he about to capture the devil he’d been after for months?