Jeffery Deaver - The burning wire

Dellray believed him. "Gimme the address."

He did, a decrepit street not far away. "It's the basement apartment."

"Okay, s'all I need for now."

"You…"

"I won't tell Daddy anything. Don'tcha worry. 'Less you're fucking with me."

"I'm not, no, Fred, really."

When Dellray was at the door, R.C. called, "It wasn't what you think."

The agent turned.

"It really was 'cause you smelt bad. That's why we weren't going to serve you. Not because you're black."

Five minutes later Dellray was approaching the block R.C. had told him about. He'd debated calling in backup, but decided not to quite yet. Working street required finesse, not sirens and takedown teams. Or Tucker McDaniel. Dellray loped through the streets, dodging the dense crowds. Thinking, as he often did, It's the middle of the day. What the hell do these people do for work? Then he turned two corners and eased into an alley, so he could approach the apartment in question from the back.

He looked quickly up the dim, rot-smelling canyon.

Not far away was a white guy in a cap and baggy shirt, sweeping cobblestones. Dellray counted addresses; he was directly behind the place where R.C. had sent William Brent.

Okay, this's weird, the agent thought. He started forward through the alley. The sweeper turned his mirrored sunglasses his way and then went back to sweeping. Dellray stopped near him, frowning and looking around. Trying to make sense of this.

Finally the sweeper asked, "The fuck're you doing?"

"Well, I'll tell you," Dellray offered. "One thing I'm doing is looking at an NYPD undercover cop who, for some fucked-up reason, is trying to blend by sweeping cobblestones in a 'hood where they stopped sweeping cobblestones, oh, about a hundred and thirty years ago." Dellray displayed his ID.

"Dellray? I heard of you." Then defensively the cop said, "I'm just doing what they told me. It's a stakeout."

"Stakeout? Why? What is this place?"

"You don't know?"

Dellray rolled his eyes.

When the cop told him, Dellray froze. But only momentarily. A few seconds later he was ripping away his smelly undercover costume and dumping it in a waste bin. As he started sprinting for the subway, he noted the cop's startled reaction, and supposed it could have come from one of two things: the striptease act itself, or the fact that underneath the disgusting outfit he was wearing a kelly green velour tracksuit. He supposed it was a little of both.

"We may have good news soon, Lincoln. Arturo Diaz's men have followed Mr. Watchmaker into Gustavo Madero. It's a delegacion in the north of the city-you would say borough, like your Bronx. Much of it is not so nice and Arturo believes that's where the associates helping him are."

"But do you know where he is?"

"They think so. They've found the car he escaped in-they were no more than three or four minutes behind but could not get through the traffic to stop his car. He's been spotted in a large apartment building near the center of the delegacion. It's being sealed off. We will do a complete search. I will call back with more information soon."

Rhyme disconnected the call, and struggled to keep his impatience and concern at bay. He would believe that the Watchmaker had actually been arrested when he saw the man arraigned in a New York court.

He wasn't encouraged when he called Kathryn Dance to tell her the latest and she replied, "Gustavo Madero? It's a lousy neighborhood, Lincoln," she said. "I was down in Mexico City for an extradition. We drove through the area. I was really glad the car didn't break down, even with two armed federal officers next to me. It's a rabbit warren. Easy to hide in. But the good news is that the residents absolutely won't want the police there. If Luna moves a busload of riot cops in, the locals'll give up an American pretty fast."

He said he'd keep her posted and disconnected. The fatigue and fogginess from the dysreflexia attack ebbed in once more and he rested his head on the back of the Storm Arrow.

Come on, stay sharp! he commanded, refusing to accept anything less than 110 percent from himself, just as he did from everybody else. But he wasn't feeling that measure, not at all.

Then he glanced up to see Ron Pulaski at the evidence table and thoughts of the Watchmaker faded. The young officer was moving pretty slowly. Rhyme regarded him with concern. The jolt of the Taser had been pretty powerful, apparently.

But that concern was accompanied by another emotion, one he'd been feeling for the past hour: guilt. It had been exclusively Rhyme's fault that Pulaski-and Sachs too-had come as close as they had to being electrocuted by Galt's trap at the school. Sachs had downplayed the incident. Pulaski too. Laughing, he'd said, "She Tased me, bro," which apparently was some kind of joke, drawing a smile from Mel Cooper, but Rhyme didn't get it. Nor was he in a mood that was at all humorous. He was confused and disoriented… and not just from the medical emergency. He was having trouble shaking his sense of failure from letting down Sachs and the rookie.

He forced himself to focus on the evidence that'd been collected from the school. Some bags of trace, some electronics. And most important, the generator. Lincoln Rhyme loved big, bulky pieces of equipment. To move them took a lot of physical contact and that meant such objects picked up significant prints, fibers, hair, sweat and skin cells, as well as other trace. The generator was attached to a wheeled cart, but it would still have taken some grappling to get it into place.

Ron Pulaski got a phone call. He glanced at Rhyme and then headed into the corner of the room to take it. Despite his groggy demeanor, his face began to brighten. He disconnected and stood for a moment, looking out the window. Though he didn't know the substance of the conversation, Rhyme wasn't surprised to see the young man walk toward him with a confessional cast to his eyes.

"I have to tell you something, Lincoln." His glance took in Lon Sellitto too.

"Yeah?" Rhyme asked distractedly, offering a word that would have earned the young officer a glare, if he'd used it.

"I kind of wasn't honest with you earlier."

"Kind of?"

"Okay, I wasn't."

"What about?"

Scanning the evidence boards and the profile of Ray Galt, he said, "The DNA results? I know I didn't need to get them. I used that as an excuse. I went to see Stan Palmer."

"Who?"

"The man in the hospital, the one I ran into in the alley."

Rhyme was impatient. The evidence beckoned. But this was important, it seemed; he nodded, then asked, "He's okay?"

"They still don't know. But what I'm saying is, first, I'm sorry I didn't tell the truth. I was going to but it just seemed, I don't know, unprofessional."

"It was."

"But there's more. See, when I was at the hospital I asked the nurse for his social security number. And personal information. Guess what? He was a con. Did three years in Attica. Got a long sheet."

"Really?" Sachs asked.

"Yep… I mean, yes. And there's active paper on him."

"He's wanted," Rhyme mused.

"Warrants for what?" Sellitto asked.

"Assault, receiving stolen, burglary."

The rumpled cop barked a laugh. "You backed into a collar. Like, literally." He laughed again and looked at Rhyme, who didn't join in the fun.

The criminalist said, "So that's why you're so chipper?"

"I'm not happy I hurt him. It was still a screw-up."

"But if you had to run over somebody, it's better him than a father of four."

"Well, yeah," Pulaski said.

Rhyme had more to say on the subject, but this wasn't the time or place. "The important thing is you're not distracted anymore, right?"

"No."