Jeffery Deaver - The Broken Window

“We wait,” Rhyme muttered, as if the word were an obscenity.

A wonderful transaction.

I’m satisfied now. Walking down the street, happy, content. Flipping through the images I’ve just slipped into my collection. Images of Myra 9834. The visual ones are stored in my memory. The digital tape recorder has the others.

Walking down the street, watching sixteens around me.

I see them streaming down sidewalks. In cars, buses, taxis, trucks.

I see them through windows, oblivious to me as I study them.

Sixteens…Ah, I’m not the only one who refers to human beings like this, of course. Not at all. It’s a common shorthand in the industry. But I’m probably the only one who prefers to think of people as sixteens, who feels comforted by the thought.

A sixteen-digit number is far more precise and efficient than a name. Names make me edgy. I don’t like that. It’s not good for me, not good for anybody, when I’m edgy. Names…ah, terrible . For instance, the surnames Jones and Brown each account for roughly.6 percent of the population of the United States. Moore is.3 percent, and as for everyone’s favorite, Smith-a whopping 1 percent. Nearly 3,000,000 of them in the country. (And given names, if you’re interested: John? Nope. It comes in number two-3.2 percent. James is the winner at 3.3 percent.)

So think of the implications: I hear someone say, “James Smith.” Well, which James Smith does he mean when there are hundreds of thousands? And those are just the living ones. Tally up all the James Smiths in history.

Oh, my God.

Drives me crazy just to think about.

Edgy…

And the consequences of mistakes can be serious. Say, it’s 1938 Berlin. Is Herr Wilhelm Frankel the Jewish Wilhelm Frankel or the gentile one? Made a big difference and, whatever else you feel about them, those brown-shirted boys were absolute geniuses at tracking identities (and they used computers to do it!).

Names lead to mistakes. Mistakes are noise. Noise is contamination. Contamination must be eliminated.

There could be dozens of Alice Sandersons, but only one Alice 3895, who sacrificed her life that I might own an American Family painting by dear Mr. Prescott.

Myra Weinburgs? Ah, not many, surely. But more than one. Yet only Myra 9834 sacrificed herself so that I might be satisfied.

I’ll bet there are plenty of DeLeon Williams, but only 6832-5794-8891-0923 is going to jail forever for raping and killing her so that I might remain free to do it all over again.

I’m en route to his house at the moment (technically his girlfriend’s, I’ve learned), carrying enough evidence to make sure the poor man is convicted of the rape/murder in about one hour of deliberation.

DeLeon 6832…

I’ve already called 911, a transaction in which I reported an old beige Dodge-his model of car-speeding away from the scene, a man inside, a black man. “I could see his hands! They were all bloody! Oh, get somebody there now! The screaming was terrible.”

What a perfect suspect you’ll be, DeLeon 6832. About half of the perpetrators commit rape under the influence of alcohol or drugs (he drinks beer in moderation now, but was in AA several years ago). The majority of rape victims know their assailant (DeLeon 6832 had once done some carpentry for the grocery store where the late Myra 9834 regularly shopped so it was logical to assume that they knew each other, though they probably didn’t).

Most rapists are thirty or under (the exact age of DeLeon 6832, as it turns out). Unlike drug dealers and users, they don’t have many prior arrests except for domestic abuse-and my boy has a conviction for assaulting a girlfriend; how perfect is that ? Most rapists are from the lower social classes and economically disadvantaged (he’s been out of work for months).

And now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, please note that two days prior to the rape the defendant bought a box of Trojan-Enz condoms, just like the two found near the victim’s body. (As for the two actually used-my own-they’re long gone, of course. That DNA stuff is very dangerous, especially now that New York is collecting samples from all felonies, not just rapes. And in Britain you’ll soon get swabbed when you get a citation because your dog messes the sidewalk or you make a dicey U-turn.)

There’s another fact that the police might take into account if they do their homework. DeLeon 6832 was a combat vet who’d served in Iraq, and there was some question about what happened to his.45-caliber sidearm when he left the service. He had none to turn in. It had been “lost” in combat.

But curiously he bought.45-caliber ammunition a few years ago.

If the police learn this, which they easily can, they might conclude that their suspect is armed. And digging a bit deeper, they’ll find that he was treated at a Veterans Administration hospital-for post-traumatic stress syndrome.

An unstable, armed suspect?

What police officer wouldn’t be inclined to shoot first?

Let’s hope. I’m not always completely confident about the sixteens I pick. You never know about unexpected alibis. Or idiotic juries. Maybe DeLeon 6832’ll end today in a body bag. Why not? Don’t I deserve a little good luck in compensation for the edginess God gave me? It’s not always an easy life, you know.

It should take about a half hour or so on foot to get to his house here in Brooklyn. Still warmly satisfied from my transaction with Myra 9834, I’m enjoying the walk. The backpack rides heavy on my spine. Not only does it contain the evidence to plant and the shoe that left DeLeon 6832’s telltale footprint, but it’s filled with some treasures I’ve found prowling the streets today. In my pocket is, sadly, only a small trophy from Myra 9834, a portion of her fingernail. I’d like something more personal but deaths in Manhattan are a big deal, and missing parts draw a lot of attention.

I pick up my pace a bit, enjoying the triplet beat of the backpack. Enjoying the clear spring Sunday and the memories of my transaction with Myra 9834.

Enjoying the complete comfort of knowing that, though I am probably the most dangerous person in the city of New York, I am also invulnerable, virtually invisible to all the sixteens who would do me harm.

The light caught his attention.

A flash from the street.

Red.

Another flash. Blue.

The phone sagged in DeLeon Williams’s hand. He was calling a friend, trying to find the man he used to work for, the man who skipped town after his carpentry business went under and left only debt behind, including more than $4,000 owed to his most dependable employee, DeLeon Williams.

“Leon,” the guy on the other end of the line was saying, “I myself don’t know where the prick is. He left me holding-”

“Call you back.”

Click.

The big man’s palms were sweating as he glanced through the curtain that he and Janeece had just put up Saturday (Williams feeling bad, bad, bad that she’d had to pay for them-oh, he hated being unemployed). He noticed that the flashes were from the grille lights of two unmarked police cars. A couple of detectives climbed out, unbuttoning their coats, and not because the spring day was so warm. The cars sped off to block the intersections.

They looked around cautiously, then-destroying the last hope that this was some strange coincidence-walked to Williams’s beige Dodge, noted the tag, glanced inside. One spoke into his radio.

Williams’s lids lowered in despair as a disgusted sigh eased from his lungs.

She was at it again.

She…

Last year Williams had been involved with a woman who was not only sexy but smart and kind. Or so it had seemed at first. Not long after they started going out seriously, though, she’d turned into a raging witch. Moody, jealous, vindictive. Unstable…He was with her about four months and they were the worst of his life. And he’d spent much of that time protecting her own children from their mother.