Jeffery Deaver - The Broken Window

“Identity theft?”

“Oh, the mother lode of identity theft. God opened credit cards in my name, ran up huge bills, had the statements sent to different addresses. Never paid them, of course. As soon as I’d get one straightened out he’d do something else. And he kept getting all this information on me. God knew everything! My mother’s maiden name, her birthday, my first dog’s name, my first car-all the things companies want to know for passwords. He got my phone numbers-and my calling card number. He ran up a ten-thousand-dollar phone bill. How? He’d call time and temperature in Moscow or Singapore or Sydney and leave the phone off the hook for hours.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because he’s God. And I’m Job… The son of a bitch bought a house in my name! A whole house! And then defaulted on it. I only found out when a lawyer working for a collection agency tracked me down at my clinic in New York and asked about making payment arrangements for the three hundred and seventy thousand dollars I owed. God also ran up a quarter million in online gambling debts.

“He made bogus insurance claims in my name and my malpractice carrier dropped me. I couldn’t work at my clinic without insurance, and nobody would insure me. We had to sell the house and, of course, every penny went to the debt quote I had run up-which was by then about two million dollars.”

“Two million ?”

Jorgensen closed his eyes briefly. “And then things got worse. My wife was hanging in there throughout all of this. It was hard but she was with me…until God had presents-expensive ones-sent in my name to some former nurses at the clinic, bought with my credit card, and that included invitations and suggestive comments. One of the women left a message at home thanking me and saying she’d love to go away for the weekend. My daughter got it. She was crying uncontrollably when she told my wife. I think she believed I was innocent. But she still left me four months ago and moved in with her sister in Colorado.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Oh, well, thank you very much. But I’m not through yet. Oh, no. Just after my wife left, the arrests started. It seems guns purchased with a credit card and fake driver’s license in my name were used in armed robberies in East New York, New Haven and Yonkers. One clerk was seriously wounded. The New York Bureau of Investigation arrested me. They finally let me go but I’ve still got an arrest on my record. That’ll be there forever. Along with the time the Drug Enforcement Agency arrested me because a check of mine was traced to the purchase of illegally imported prescription drugs.

“Oh, and I was actually in prison for a while-well, not me: somebody that God sold fake credit cards to and a driver’s license in my name. Of course, the prisoner was somebody altogether different. Who knows what his real name is? But as far as the world is concerned, government records show that Robert Samuel Jorgensen, Social Security number nine two three, six seven, four one eight two, formerly of Greenwich, Connecticut, was a prisoner. It’s on my record too. For- ever .”

“You must’ve followed up, called the police.”

He scoffed. “Oh, please. You’re a cop. You know where something like this falls in the priority of police work? Just above jaywalking.”

“Did you learn anything that might help us? Anything about him? Age, race, education, location?”

“No, nothing. Everywhere I looked there was only one person: me. He took me away from myself… Oh, they say there are safeguards, there are protections. Bullshit. Yes, if you lose a credit card, maybe you’re protected to a point. But if somebody wants to destroy your life, there’s nothing you can do about it. People believe what computers tell us. If they say you owe money, you owe money. If it says you’re a bad insurance risk, you’re a bad risk. The report says you have no credit, then you have no credit, even if you’re a multimillionaire. We believe the data ; we don’t care about the truth.

“Ah, want to see what my most recent job was?” He jumped up and opened his closet, displaying a fast food franchise uniform. Jorgensen returned to his desk and set to work on the book again, muttering, “I’ll find you, you fucker.” He glanced up. “And do you want to know the worst part of all?”

She nodded.

“God never lived in the apartments he rented in my name. He never took delivery of the illegal drugs. Or got any of the merchandise he had shipped. The police recovered everything. And he never lived in the beautiful house he bought. Get it? His only point was to torment me. He’s God, I’m Job.”

Sachs noticed a picture on his desk. It was of Jorgensen and a blond woman about his age, their arms around a teenage girl and young boy. The house in the background was very nice. She wondered why 522 would go to all the trouble to destroy a man’s life, if in fact their perp was behind this. Was he testing out techniques to use to get close to victims and to implicate fall guys? Was Robert Jorgensen a guinea pig?

Or was 522 a cruel sociopath? What he’d done to Jorgensen might be called a nonsexual rape.

“I think you should find another place to live, Mr. Jorgensen.”

A resigned smile. “I know. It’s safer that way. Always be harder to find.”

Sachs thought to herself of an expression her father had used. She thought it described her own life view pretty well. “When you move they can’t getcha…”

He nodded at the book. “You know how he found me here? This, I’ve got a feeling. Everything started to go bad just after I bought it. I keep thinking it’s got the answer. I nuked it but that didn’t work-obviously. There’s got to be an answer inside. There’s got to be!”

“What are you looking for exactly?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No.”

“Well, tracking devices, of course. They put them in books. And clothes. Pretty soon they’ll be in almost everything.”

So not germs.

“Microwaves destroy tracking devices?” she asked, playing along.

“Most of them. You can break the antennae too but they’re so small nowadays. Almost microscopic.” Jorgensen fell silent and she realized he was staring at her intently as he considered something. He announced. “You take it.”

“What?”

“The book.” His eyes were dancing madly around the room. “It’s got the answer in it, the answer to everything that’s happened to me… Please! You’re the first one who hasn’t rolled their eyes when I told them my story, the only one who hasn’t looked at me like I’m mad.” He sat forward. “ You want to get him as much as I do. You have all sorts of equipment, I’ll bet. Scanning microscopes, sensors…You can find it! And it’ll lead you to him. Yes!” He thrust it toward her.

“Well, I don’t know what we’re looking for.”

He nodded sympathetically. “Oh, you don’t have to tell me. That’s the problem. They change things all the time. They’re always one step ahead of us. But please…”

They…

She took the book, debating about slipping it into a plastic evidence bag and attaching a chain-of-custody card. She wondered how loud the ridicule would be in Rhyme’s town house. Probably better just to carry it.

He leaned forward and pressed her hand hard. “Thank you.” He was crying again.

“So you’ll move?” she asked.

He said he would and gave her the name of another transient hotel, one down on the Lower East Side. “Don’t write it down. Don’t tell anybody. Don’t mention me on the phone. They’re listening all the time, you know.”

“Call me if anything else comes to mind about…God.” She gave him her card.