Jeffery Deaver - The Broken Window

“Nope. Just him.”

Cooper ran various state and federal database searches and checked some professional organizations. The tech shrugged. “Went to UC-Hastings. No connection with Pennsylvania that I can find. Seems like a loner: Aside from college credentials, his only organization is the National Association of Human Resource Professionals. He was on the technology task force two years ago but hasn’t done much since.

“Okay, here’s what they have on the juvie. He attacked another kid in a detention home… Oh.”

“Oh what?”

“It’s not him. No hyphen. The name’s different. The juvenile was first name Arlonzo, last name Kemper.” He glanced at the chart. “He’s ‘Peter,’ last name ‘Arlonzo-Kemper.’ I typed it in wrong. If I’d included the hyphen, it wouldn’t have shown up at all. Sorry.”

“Not the worst of sins.” Rhyme shrugged. This was a sobering lesson about the nature of data, he reflected. They seemingly had found a suspect and even Cooper’s characterization of him suggested he might be the one- He seems to be a loner -yet the lead was completely wrong, due to the minuscule error of missing a single keystroke. They might have come down hard on the man-and misdirected resources-if Cooper hadn’t realized his mistake.

Sachs sat down beside Rhyme, who, seeing her eyes, asked, “What is it?”

“Funny, but now that I’m back, I feel like some kind of spell’s been broken. I think I want an outside opinion. About SSD. I lost perspective when I was there… It’s a disorienting place.”

“How so?” Sellitto asked.

“You ever been to Vegas?”

Sellitto and his ex had. Rhyme gave a brief laugh. “Las Vegas, where the only question is how much disadvantage you have. And why would I want to give money away?”

Sachs continued, “Well, it was like a casino. The outside doesn’t exist. Small-or no-windows. No watercooler conversation, nobody laughing. Everybody’s completely focused on their jobs. It’s like you’re in a different world.”

“And you want somebody else’s opinion on the place,” Sellitto said.

“Right.”

Rhyme suggested, “Journalist?” Thom’s partner, Peter Hoddins, was a former reporter for The New York Times and was now writing nonfiction books about politics and society. He’d probably know people from the business desk who covered the data-mining industry.

But she shook her head. “No, somebody who’s had firsthand contact with them. A former employee maybe.”

“Good. Lon, can you call somebody at Unemployment?”

“Sure.” Sellitto called the New York State unemployment department. After ten minutes or so of bouncing around from office to office he found the name of a former SSD assistant technical director. He’d worked for the data miner for a number of years but had been fired a year and a half ago. Calvin Geddes was his name and he was in Manhattan. Sellitto got the details and handed the note to Sachs. She called Geddes and arranged to see him in about an hour.

Rhyme had no particular opinion about her mission. In any investigation you need to cover all bases. But leads like Geddes and Pulaski’s checking on alibis were, to Rhyme, like images seen in an opaque window’s reflection-suggestions of the truth but not the truth itself. It was only the hard evidence, scant though it was, that held the real answer to who their killer was. And so he turned back to the clues.

Move…

Arthur Rhyme had given up being scared of the Lats, who were ignoring him anyway. And he knew the big fuck-you black guy wasn’t any threat.

It was the tattooed white guy who bothered him. The tweaker-what meth-heads were apparently called-scared Arthur a lot. Mick was his name. His hands twitched, he scratched his welty skin and his eerie white eyes jumped like bubbles in boiling water. He whispered to himself.

Arthur had tried to avoid the man all yesterday, and last night he’d lain awake and in between bouts of depression spent a lot of time wishing Mick away, hoping that he’d go to trial today and vanish from Arthur’s life forever.

But no such luck. He was back this morning and seemed to be staying close. He continued to glance at Arthur. “You and me,” he once muttered, sending a chill right down to Arthur’s tailbone.

Even the Lats didn’t seem to want to hassle Mick. Maybe you had to follow certain protocols in jail. Some unwritten rules of right and wrong. People like this skinny tattooed druggie might not play by those rules, and everybody here seemed to know it.

Ever’body know ever’thing round here. ’Cept you. You don’ know shit…

Once he laughed, looked at Arthur as if recognizing him and started to rise but then seemed to forget what he’d intended and sat down again, picking at his thumb.

“Yo, Jersey Man.” A voice in his ear. Arthur jumped.

The big black guy had come up behind him. He sat down next to Arthur. The bench creaked.

“Antwon. Antwon Johnson.”

Should he make a fist and tap it? Don’t be a fucking idiot, he told himself and just nodded. “Arthur-”

“I know.” Johnson glanced at Mick and said to Arthur, “That tweaker fucked up. Don’t do that meth shit. Fuck you up forever.” After a moment he said, “So. You a brainy guy?”

“Sort of.”

“The fuck ‘sorta’ mean?”

Don’t play games. “I have a physics degree. And one in chemistry. I went to M.I.T.”

“Mitt?”

“It’s a school.”

“Good one?”

“Pretty good.”

“So you know science shit? Chemistry and physics and everything?”

This line of questioning wasn’t at all like that of the two Lats’, the ones who’d tried to extort him. It seemed like Johnson was really interested. “Some things. Yeah.”

Then the big guy asked, “So you know howta make bombs. One big enough to blow that motherfucking wall down.”

“I…” Heart thudding again, harder than before. “Well-”

Antwon Johnson laughed. “Fuckin’ wit’ you, man.”

“I-”

“Fuckin’. Wit. You.”

“Oh.” Arthur laughed and wondered if his heart would explode right at this moment or would wait till later. He hadn’t gotten all of his father’s genes, but had the faulty cardiac messages been included in the package?

Mick said something to himself and took an intense interest in his right elbow, scratching it raw.

Both Johnson and Arthur watched him.

Tweaker…

Johnson then said, “Yo, yo, Jersey Man, lemme ask you somethin’.”

“Sure.”

“My momma, she religious, you know what I’m saying? And she tellin’ me one time the Bible was right. I mean, all of it was exactly the way that shit was wrote. Okay but listen up: I’m thinking, where’s the dinosaurs in the Bible? God created man and woman and earth and rivers and donkeys and snakes an’ shit. Why don’t it say God created dinosaurs? I mean, I seen their skeletons, you know. So they was real. So whatsa fuckin’ truth, man?”

Arthur Rhyme looked at Mick. Then at the nail pounded in the wall. His palms were sweating and he was thinking that, of all the things that could happen to him in jail, he was going to get killed because he took a scientist’s moral stand against intelligent design.

Oh, what the fuck?

He said, “It would be against all the known laws of science-laws that have been acknowledged by every advanced civilization on earth-for the earth to be only six thousand years old. It would be like you sprouting wings and flying out that window there.”

The man frowned.

I’m dead.

Johnson fixed him with an intense gaze. Then he nodded. “I fuckin’ knew it. Didn’t make no sense at all, six thousand years. Fuck.”