The Cold Moon (Lincoln Rhyme 7)

"Was."

"Tell us."

"His wife and him came to New York on vacation a couple years ago. He was at a business dinner somewhere and his wife went to a concert by herself. She was walking back to the hotel on this deserted street and she got hit by a car or truck. The driver took off. She screamed for help but nobody came to save her, nobody even called the police or fire department. The doctor said that she probably lived for ten, fifteen minutes after she was hit. And even somebody who wasn't a doctor could've stopped the bleeding, he said. Just a pressure point or something like that. But nobody helped."

"Run all the hospitals for admissions under the name Duncan, eighteen to thirty-six months ago," Rhyme ordered.

But Vincent said, "Don't bother. Last year he broke into the hospital and stole her chart. The police report too. Bribed a clerk or something. He's been planning this ever since."

"But why's he picking these victims?"

"When the police investigated they got the names of ten people who were nearby when she died. Whether they could have saved her or not, I don't know. But Gerald, he convinced himself they could have. He's spent the past year finding out where they live and what their schedules are. He needed to get them alone so they could die slowly. That's the important thing to him. Like his wife died slowly."

"The man on the pier Tuesday? Is he dead?"

"He's gotta be. Duncan made him hold on and then cut his arms and just stood there watching him until he fell into the river. He said he tried to swim for a while but then he just stopped moving and floated under the pier."

"What was his name?"

"I don't remember. Walter somebody. I didn't help him with the first two. I didn't, really." He glanced at Dance with fear in his eyes.

"What else do you know about Duncan?" she asked.

"That's about it. The only thing he really liked to talk about was time."

"Time? What about it?"

"Anything, everything. The history of time, how clocks work, about calendars, how people sense time differently. He'd tell me, like, the term 'speed up' comes from pendulum clocks. You'd move the weight up on the pendulum to make the clock run faster. 'Slow down'--you moved the weight down to slow it. . . . With anybody else it would've been just boring. But the way he talked about it, well, you kind of got caught up in what he was saying."

Cooper looked up from his computer screen. "We've got a couple of replies from the watchmaker associations. No record of a Gerald Duncan . . . Wait, here's Interpol . . . Nothing there either. And I can't find anything in VICAP."

Sellitto's phone rang. He took the call and spoke for a few minutes. He eyed the rapist coolly as he talked. Then he disconnected.

"That was your sister's husband," he said to Vincent.

The man frowned. "Who?"

"Your sister's husband."

Vincent shook his head. "No, you must've talked to the wrong person. My sister's not married."

"Yes, she is."

The rapist's eyes were wide. "Sally Anne's married?"

With a disgusted glance at Vincent, Sellitto said to Rhyme and Dance, "She was too upset to return the call herself. Her husband did. Thirteen years ago he locked her in the basement of their house for a week while their mother and stepfather were on their honeymoon. His own sister. . . . He tied her down and sexually assaulted her repeatedly. He was fifteen, she was thirteen. He did juvie time and was released after counseling. Records were sealed. That's why we had no hits on IAFIS."

"Married," Vincent whispered, ashen-faced.

"She's been treated for depression and eating disorders ever since. He was caught stalking her a dozen times, so she got a restraining order. The only contact between them in the past three years is letters he's been sending."

"He's been threatening her?" Dance asked.

Sellitto muttered, "Nope. They're love letters. He wanted her to move here and live with him."

"Oh, man," muttered the unflappable Mel Cooper.

"Sometimes he'd write recipes in the margins. Sometimes he'd draw porn cartoons. The brother-in-law said if there's anything they can do to make sure he stays in jail forever, they'll do it." Sellitto looked at the two patrol officers standing behind Vincent. "Get him out of here."