The Broken Window (Lincoln Rhyme 8)

The doorbell rang, and Thom went to answer it.

Rhyme heard some heated words from the front entryway. A man's voice, angry. A shout.

Frowning, he glanced at Ron Pulaski, who had his weapon out of his high-riding holster, and pointed it up, ready to fire. He held it expertly. Amelia Sachs was a good mentor.

"Thom?" Rhyme called.

He didn't answer.

A moment later

a man appeared in the doorway, wearing a baseball cap, jeans and an ugly plaid jacket. He blinked in shock as Pulaski aimed the gun toward him.

"No! Wait!" the man cried, ducking and lifting a hand.

Then Thom, Sachs and Pam entered immediately behind him. The policewoman saw the weapon and said, "No, no, Ron. It's okay. . . . He's Calvin Geddes."

It took Rhyme a moment to recall. Ah, that's right: with the Privacy Now organization, and the source of the lead about Peter Gordon. "What's this all about?"

Sachs said, "He's the one who broke into my place. It wasn't Five Twenty-Two."

Pam nodded, confirming this.

Geddes stepped closer to Rhyme and reached into his jacket pocket and extracted some blue-backed documents. "Pursuant to New York State civil procedure laws, I'm serving you this subpoena in connection with Geddes et al. versus Strategic Systems Datacorp, Inc." He held them out.

"I got one too, Rhyme." Sachs held up her own copy.

"And I'm supposed to do what with those?" Rhyme asked Geddes, who continued to proffer the documents.

The man frowned, then looked down at the wheelchair, aware of Rhyme's condition for the first time. "I, well--"

"He's my attorney-in-fact." Rhyme nodded to Thom, who took the papers.

Geddes began, "I'm--"

"You mind if we read it?" Rhyme asked acerbically, with a nod toward his aide.

Thom did so, aloud. It was a subpoena requesting all the paper and computer files, notes and other information that Rhyme had in his possession that related to SSD, its Compliance Division and evidence of SSD's connections with any governmental body.

"She told me about Compliance." Geddes nodded toward Sachs. "It didn't make any sense at all. Something was fishy about it. No way would Andrew Sterling volunteer to work with the government on privacy issues if he didn't get something big out of the arrangement. He'd fight them tooth and nail. That made me suspicious. Compliance is about something else. I don't know what. But we're going to find out."

He explained that the suit was under federal and state privacy acts and for various civil violations of common law and constitutional rights of privacy.

Rhyme reflected that Geddes and his attorneys would have a pretty pleasant surprise when they had a look at the Compliance dossiers. One of which he just happened to have in a computer not ten feet from where Geddes now stood. And which he would be more than delighted to hand over, given Andrew Sterling's refusal to help find Sachs after she'd disappeared.

He wondered which would be in worse trouble, Washington or SSD, when the press learned of the Compliance operation.

Dead heat, he concluded.

Sachs then said, "Of course, Mr. Geddes here will have to juggle the case with his own trial." Giving him a dark look. She was referring to the break-in at her town house in Brooklyn, whose mission presumably was to find information about SSD. She explained that, ironically, it had been Geddes, not 522, who'd dropped the receipt that had led her to SSD. He regularly hung out at the coffee shop in Midtown, from which he kept up a furtive surveillance of the Gray Rock, noting the comings and goings of Sterling and other employees and customers.

Geddes said fervently, "I'll do whatever's necessary to stop SSD. I don't care what happens to me. I'll happily be the sacrificial lamb if it brings back our individual rights."

Rhyme respected his moral courage but decided he needed more quotable lines.

The activist began to lecture them now--reiterating much of what Sachs had reported earlier--about the arachnid sweep of SSD and other data miners, the death of privacy in the country, the risk to democracy.

"Okay, we've got the paperwork," Rhyme interrupted the tiresome rant. "We'll have a little talk with our own lawyers and, if they say everything's in order, I'm sure you'll be getting a care package by your deadline."