The Cold Moon (Lincoln Rhyme 7)

Sachs muted the volume and turned a smug gaze toward Charlotte.

"No," the woman gasped. "Oh, no . . . What--?"

Rhyme said, "Obviously--we figured it out before the bomb went off and evacuated the room."

Charlotte was appalled. "But . . . impossible. No . . . The airports were shut down, the trains--"

"Oh, that," Rhyme said dismissively. "We just needed to buy some time. At first, sure, I thought he was stealing the Delphic Mechanism but then I decided it was just a feint. But that didn't mean he hadn't done something to the NIST clock. So while we were figuring out what he was really up to, we called the mayor and had him order flights and public transportation in the area suspended."

You know what's going to happen if we push that button. . . .

She glanced into the bedroom where her husband had died such a pointless death. Then the ideologue within her kicked in and she said in a flat voice, "You'll never beat us. You may win a battle or two. But we'll take our country back. We'll--"

"Yo, hold that rhetoric, wouldja?" The speaker was a tall, lanky black man, stepping into the room. This was FBI Special Agent Fred Dellray. When he'd heard about the domestic terrorist angle he'd handed off the accounting fraud case that he'd been assisting on ("Was a yawner anyway") and announced that that he was going to be the federal liaison on the HUD bombing.

Dellray was wearing a powder blue suit and a shocking green shirt underneath a brown herringbone overcoat, circa 1975; the agent's taste in couture was as brash as his manner. He looked Charlotte over. "Well, well, well, lookit what we caught ou'selves." The woman gazed back defiantly. He laughed. "A shame you're going to jail for . . . well, forever, and you didn't even do whatcha'll had your heart set on. How's it feel t'be swimmin' laps in the loser pool?"

Dellray's approach to interviewing suspects was a lot different from Kathryn Dance's; Rhyme suspected she wouldn't approve.

Charlotte had been arrested by Sachs on state charges and it was now Dellray's turn to arrest her for the federal crimes--both for this incident and for the UN bombing years ago, her involvement in a federal courthouse shooting in San Francisco and some miscellaneous charges.

Charlotte said she understood her rights and then started another lecture.

Dellray wagged a finger at her. "Gimme a minute, sweetheart." The lean man turned to Rhyme. "So how'd you figure this one out, Lincoln? We heard X, we heard Y, all 'bout some boys in blue taking money they shouldn'ta been doin' and then some bizarre fella leavin' clocks as callin' cards--then next thing we know the airports're closed and there's a priority-one security alert at HUD innerupting my nap."

Rhyme detailed the frantic process of kinesic and forensic work that led them to figure out the Watchmaker's real plan. Kathryn Dance had suggested that he was lying about his mission in New York. So they'd looked into the evidence again. Some of it pointed to the possible theft of a rare artifact in the Metropolitan Museum.

But the more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed. Rhyme figured Duncan had made up the story about the undelivered package to the Met just to get them focused on the museum. Somebody as careful as the Watchmaker wouldn't leave the trail he did. He turned in Vincent, knowing the rapist would give up the church, where he'd left other museum brochures referring to the Mechanism. He mentioned it to Hallerstein and to Vincent as well. No, he was up to something else. But what? Kathryn Dance reviewed the interview tape again, several times, and decided that he might have been lying when he said he picked the supposed victims simply because their locations meant easy getaways.

"Which meant," Rhyme told Dellray, "that he picked them for some other purpose. So, did they have anything in common?"

Rhyme had remembered something Dance learned about the first crime scene. Ari Cobb had said that the SUV was originally parked in the back of the alley but then the Watchmaker returned to the front to leave the body. "Why? One reason was that he needed to put the victim in a particular place. What was it near? The back door to the Housing and Urban Development building."

Rhyme had then gotten the client list from the flooring company where he'd planted the fake fire extinguisher bomb and learned that they'd provided carpeting and tile for the HUD offices.

"I sent our rookie downtown to look around. He found a building across Cedar Street that was being renovated. The crews had tarred the roof a week ago, just before the cold spell. Flakes of tar matched those found on our perp's shoes. The roof was a perfect place to check out HUD."

This also explained why he'd poured sand on the ground at the crime scene and swept it up--to make absolutely certain they didn't find trace that'd help anyone identify him later when he came back to assemble and arm the bombs.

Rhyme also found that the other victims had a connection to the building. Lucy Richter was being recognized there today, and she'd had the specially issued passes and IDs to get into all parts of the building. She also had a classified memo on security and evacuation procedures.

As for Joanne Harper, it turned out that she'd done the flower arrangements for the ceremony--a good way to smuggle something into the building.

"A bomb, I guessed. We got the mayor involved and he called the press, had them hold off on the story that we were evacuating HUD so the perps wouldn't rabbit. But the device blew before the bomb squad could disarm it." Rhyme shook his head. "Just hate it when good evidence blows up. You know how hard it is to lift prints off pieces of metal that've been flying through the air at thirty thousand feet a second?"

"How'dja get Miss Congeniality here?" Dellray asked, nodding at Charlotte.

Rhyme said dismissively, "That was easy. She was careless. If Duncan was fake, then the woman helping him at the first scene in the alley had to be fake too. Our rookie got all the tag numbers of cars in the vicinity of the alley off Cedar. The car the supposed sister was driving was an Avis, rented to Charlotte Allerton. We checked all the hotels in the city until we found her."

Dellray shook his head. "An' what about yo' perp? Mr. Clockmaker?"

"It's 'Watchmaker,'" the criminalist grumbled. "And that's a different story." He explained that Charlotte's daughter, Pam, had heard that he had a place in Brooklyn but she didn't know where it was. "No other leads."

Dellray bent down. "Where in Brooklyn? Need to know. And now."

Charlotte replied defiantly, "You're pathetic! All of you! You're just lackeys for the bureaucracy in Washington. You're selling out the heart of our country and--"

Dellray leaned forward, right into her face. He clicked his tongue. "Uh-uh. No politics, no philosophy . . . All we want're answers to the questions. We all together on that?"