Quite the interesting spring. Helped them with calc, though they were pretty smart, I was surprised, for athletes. Frank and Sam. Prejudice to say, like people say I’m really smart because I’m a beanpole and geekish which I’m not. I’m okay smart and math comes easy. Science. Computers. Not other things, though.
And we are having pizza and soda at Sam’s house and his father comes in and says hi to me and he’s pretty nice. He asks if I like baseball, which I don’t, of course, because my father sits and smokes and watches games hour after hour and doesn’t talk to us. But because our father sits and smokes and watches games hour after hour, especially if it’s St. Louis or Atlanta, I know enough about the game to sound like I’m not an idiot. (and I know how to throw a knuckleball, ha!!! Even if I don’t). And I can talk about some players. Some stats.
Frank comes over and we start talking and Sam says let’s have a graduation party, and at first I think this is a mistake that he’s said this not thinking because I’m here, since I’ve never been invited to any party at the school, but the math club party and the computer club party, but they’re not really parties. Also, I’m a junior. But Frank says that’s cool, a party, and then turns to me and says I’ll be in charge of the music, and that’s it. Which means not only am I invited but I have an important thing to do.
Music could be the most important part. I don’t know—because, yeah, I’ve never been to a party before. But I’m going to do a good job.
I click off the recorder, inspired to get cracking. I sit down at my computer, log into several virtual private networks serially, then head to Bulgaria and one of the Shitloadistans for a proxy.
I sit back and close my eyes. Then, channeled by the People’s Guardian, I begin to type.
Nick Carelli’s mobile hummed.
His lawyer.
When he’d gone into the system, caller ID was in its infancy. Now it was everywhere and, he’d decided, the most important thing invented in the past hundred years.
“Hey, Sam.”
“Nick. How’s it going? You adjusting well?”
“As can be expected.”
“Sure. Well. I’ve got a place for you to check out. I’ve emailed the address and the deal sheet. It’s preliminary so we’ll still have a lot of due diligence to do. The place is out a way so the asking isn’t going to give you a coronary. You get closer to the Heights and hipsters, there’s better revenue but you couldn’t afford it.”
“Great, man. Thanks. Hold on. I’ll check it out now.”
Nick went online and noted the address—solid, working-class and striving neighborhood in BK—and the name of the owner. “Is he there now?” Nick was feeling the electric prods again. Impatience. He recalled Amelia’s slogan: When you move they can’t getcha . . .
“Yeah. He’s there. I just talked to his lawyer.” Then Sam fell silent. “Listen, Nick, are you sure you want to do this?”
“You gave me the lecture before.”
“I did, yes. It would’ve been nice if you’d listened to me.”
“Funny.”
“Restaurants’re one of the biggest money sucks in history. This one, okay, it’s got decent cash flow and a loyal clientele. I know it. I’ve been to it. Been around for twenty years, so it’s got serious goodwill. But still, you’ve never run a company before.”
“I can learn. Maybe I could hire the owner to stick around, be a consultant. He’s got an interest in making sure the place stays open and’s successful.” The proposal was the owner would get the purchase price plus a cut of the action. “He’s gotta have a sentimental attachment to the place. Wouldn’t you think?”
“I’d guess, sure.”
“It’s late in the game for me, Sam. I need to get going with my life. Oh, but the other thing I asked you.”
“I checked and triple-checked. Not a hint of criminal activity. The owner, his family, any of the employees. No records. Clean with the IRS and state too. Passed a couple of audits with flying colors. And I’m working on the liquor waiver.”
“Good. Thanks, Sam. I’m so psyched.”
“Nick. Slow down. You sound like you’re ready to sign the paperwork today. Don’t you at least want to try the lasagna?”
CHAPTER 28
Amelia Sachs returned to the town house with what seemed to Rhyme measly evidence. Two milk crates containing a half-dozen paper and plastic evidence collection bags.
The damn unsub kept burning things up and turning evidence to ash. Water was the worst elemental contaminant of crime scenes; fire was a close number two.
These boxes she handed off to Mel Cooper, who was wearing a lab coat over his corduroy beige slacks and short-sleeve white shirt, as well as surgical cap and gloves. “That’s all?” he asked, looking toward the door, thinking perhaps that other ECTs were bringing in more evidence.
Her grimace said it all. Nothing else would be forthcoming.
“Who was he?” Juliette Archer asked. “The victim?”
Ron Pulaski glanced through his notes: “A fifty-eight-year-old advertising account executive. Pretty senior. Abe Benkoff. He was responsible for some famous TV commercials.” The young officer ran through some of them. Rhyme, never a TV watcher, had not heard of the ads though, of course, he knew the clients: food companies, personal products, cars, airlines. “Fire marshal said they’re a week away from anything specific as to how it happened but off the record: There was a gas leak from a CookSmart range and oven. Six-burner gas stovetop, an electric oven. With the DataWise you can turn the stove on remotely—both the burners and the oven. It’s mostly designed to shut them off if you leave and think you might have left them on. But it works the other way too. The unsub disengaged the pilot light sparkers—those click, click things—and then turned the gas on.
“The marshal said the flow had to be going for close to forty minutes, given the size of the explosion. Then the unsub turned the sparkers back on. The whole place blew. Benkoff was about fifteen feet from the front door. Looked like he was trying to get out. The gas woke him up, they think.”
Archer: “Anyone else in the place?”
“No. He was married but his wife was out of town, business trip. They had two grown children. Nobody else in the building was hurt.”
Sachs began a whiteboard for this crime scene.
Her phone hummed and she took a call. After a brief conversation she hung up. Shrugged to Rhyme. “Another reporter about my statement to the press—about the security patches that CIR uploaded to its clients. The story’s got legs.” She was pleased. Word apparently was spreading about the dangers of products embedded with DataWise5000 controllers. And, according to the reports, people were paying attention.
She added, “Even if companies aren’t intimidated into Chaudhary’s security updates, at least we can hope their customers read the stories and stay offline or unplug their appliances.”
Rhyme’s computer sounded with an incoming news story on an RSS feed. “He’s sent out another chapter of the manifesto.”
Greetings:
Another lesson delivered.
My feeling is that people, begin as innocents. Some philosopher, I don’t know whom, said that way back. One of the famous ones. We are born sweet and pure. We do not have an inbred lust to possess Unnecessary things, to have a better car, a bigger hot tub, a better-definition television set. A MORE EXPENSIVE STOVE!!! We have to be taught that. But, I feel taught is not the right word. The right word is INDOCTRINATED. It’s the product manufacturers, the marketers, the advertisers that browbeat and intimidate us into purchasing bigger and better, suggesting we can’t live without this or that.
Yes, think about it. Think about your Possessions. What do you have that you can’t live without? Precious little. Close your eyes. Walk through your house in your mind. Pick up an object, look it over. Think about where you got it? A gift? From a friend? It’s the FRIENDSHIP that’s important not the token of it. Throw it out. Do this with one thing a day.
And, more important, stop buying things: Buying is an act of desperation and, apart from staples like clothes and simple food an addiction.
You do not NEED a kitchen appliance, that costs so much it could feed a family of four for a year. Well you’ve PAID the price . . . literally.
—The People’s Guardian
“Nut job,” muttered Mel Cooper.
As good a diagnosis as any.
“If he’s guarding the people why is he killing them?”
“He’s only killing the ones who buy or install expensive products,” Rhyme pointed out.
“A distinction that’s lost on me,” Archer said. She scanned the diatribe carefully and said, “If he knows the premise of the philosophy, tabula rasa, he must’ve heard of John Locke. He’s playing down his intelligence again. What look like intentional misspellings. A few unnecessary uppercasings—so to speak.”
Rhyme laughed at her comment; one of those words was “Unnecessary.”
“Colon where a semi would be more appropriate. But using one means he knows how to use the other. Wrong use of ‘whom.’ ”
“Okay,” Rhyme said, not much interested in the profiling. “We’ve established he’s corrupting Ms. Peabody’s English lessons on purpose. Let’s get to the evidence. Where did you find that, Sachs?” It seemed there were two separate locations she’d searched; he could tell this from the separate containers.
“I did a fast grid in Benkoff’s apartment. Since the unsub’s using a remote, he doesn’t need to be inside a victim’s location. From the lists, he knows who has a product with a smart controller. But I took some samples anyway. Just in case he got in to Benkoff’s kitchen and added an accelerant.”
“Ah yes,” Rhyme said. “He might not have trusted that the natural gas would cause enough damage. Mel, check that first.”
The evidence collection bags Sachs pointed out each featured a glassine strip on which was written the room it had been collected in. The contents were several spoonsful of ash.
Cooper began the chromatographic and spectromic analysis. As the machine ran and he noted results, Sachs continued, “But I was thinking of the MO—that he needed to see inside the place. To make sure there was a victim present.”
Archer added, “And remember Rodney’s comment about his being ‘a decent monster’; he might’ve wanted to make sure there were no children, say, who were visiting. Or he doesn’t want to hurt poorer people. The ones who don’t buy the expensive products.”
“Maybe,” Sachs said, though Rhyme could tell she was doubtful. He tended to side with Sachs on this one. Unsub 40 didn’t seem troubled by finely parsed ethical concerns. “I think it was more an issue to make sure he had a victim in his sights. I found the one spot where he could see clearly into the Benkoffs’ apartment. The roof across the street. A resident there saw a tall, slim man come out of the lobby just after the explosion. White male, had a backpack, dressed in overalls like a worker. And a baseball cap. I got some trace from where he probably stood.”
“Access?” Rhyme asked.
“He could’ve taken the fire escape, would have been less visible. But he went for the front door.”
“Lock on that apartment’s door?” Archer asked.
Again, stealing the question from Rhyme.
“Old building. Old lock. Easily jimmied. No broken windows. No tool marks to speak of. Took trace from the lobby but . . .” She shrugged.
Archer said, “Lincoln’s book. Smart perps travel routes where there’s heavy foot traffic, and where, therefore, the likelihood of isolating usable trace diminishes logarithmically. That’s why he entered there.”
Stating the obvious, Rhyme thought, of his own observation. He’d always regretted putting that in the text. “So what do we have,” he asked impatiently, “from the roof?”
“For one thing, a piece of glass.” This was Archer’s observation. She’d wheeled close to the examination table and was staring at a clear plastic evidence bag, which appeared to contain dust only.
“Spread it out, Mel.”
The tech did.
“I still can’t see it,” Rhyme muttered.
“Them,” Archer corrected. “Two, no, three shards.”
“You have microscopic vision?”
Archer laughed. “God gave me good nails and twenty–twenty vision. That’s about it.”
No reference to what He was taking away.
With the help of magnifying goggles, Cooper found and extracted the shards of glass and put them under a microscope. The image was broadcast on the screen. Archer said, “Window glass, wouldn’t you think?”
“That’s right,” Rhyme said. He’d analyzed a thousand samples of glass in his years on crime scene detail—from splinters produced by bullets, falling bodies, rocks and auto crashes to shards intentionally and lovingly turned into knives. The fracture lines and the polished sides of the tiny pieces Sachs had collected left no doubt they were from windows. Not automotive—safety glass was very different—but residential. He mentioned this.
Cooper pointed out. “There, upper right-hand quadrant? Imperfection.”
It seemed to be a small bubble. Rhyme said, “Old. And cheap, I’d say.”
“That’s what I’d say. Seventy-five years? Older maybe.”
Modern window glass manufacturing produced a much closer to flawless.
“Compare them with the control samples. Where are they, Sachs?”
She pointed out several envelopes; they would contain trace samples from parts of the roof that were nowhere near the place the unsub had stood. Cooper went to work comparing the various items microscopically.
“Okay . . . No other bits of glass.”
And there’d been none in Todd Williams’s office building—the unsub had broken in through the back door. And none downstairs here either. Where had he picked it up?
“Anything else, the trace?”
Cooper had to wait to run the samples through the GC/MS. He was still awaiting the results from the ash Sachs had collected. In a few minutes they were finished. He read the compiled data. “No accelerant.”
“So that tells us he most likely didn’t break in and pour gas or kerosene around the place.”
“It wasn’t likely anyway,” Archer said.
“Why do you say that?” Sachs asked
“Gut feel. Almost like he’s proud he’s using the controller as a murder weapon. It would be . . . I don’t know, inelegant to have to add gasoline.”
“Maybe,” Sachs said.
Rhyme agreed with Archer but said nothing.
“Burn the other trace. From his vantage point on the roof.”
For a half hour or so, Cooper ran various samples through the machine, the chromatograph separating the components, the MS identifying them. Rhyme watched impatiently. Finally Cooper listed them:
Diesel fuel, no brand identified. Two soil samples, indigenous to shoreline Connecticut, Hudson River, New Jersey and Westchester County.
“Not Queens with two question marks?” Rhyme said wryly. Archer smiled his way. Sachs noted this, turned back to the whiteboard on which she was writing down their findings.
The tech continued. A number of samples of soft drinks: Sprite, and regular and Diet Coca-Cola, all in various dilutions, which meant they came from different sources—cups that contained ice; the beverage was not drunk directly from can or bottle. White wine, high sugar content. Typical of inexpensive sparkling or still white.
