Jeffery Deaver - The Broken Window

She nodded.

“We’d heard rumors that Sterling had abandoned him years ago and the kid tracked him down. But then we also heard that maybe it was another son he abandoned. Maybe by his first wife, or a girlfriend. Something he wanted to keep secret. We thought maybe Gordon was looking for that kind of dirt.

“Anyway, while Sterling and some other people were out there negotiating the purchase of Rocky Mountain, this Gordon guy dies-an accident of some kind, I think. That’s all I heard. I wasn’t there. I was back in the Valley, writing code.”

“And the acquisition went through?”

“Yep. What Andrew wants, Andrew shall have… Now, let me throw out one thought about your killer. Andrew Sterling himself.”

“He has an alibi.”

“Does he? Well, don’t forget he is the king of information. If you control data, you can change data. Did you check out that alibi real carefully?”

“We are right now.”

“Well, even if it’s confirmed, he has men who work for him and would do whatever he wants. I mean anything. Remember, other people do his dirty work.”

“But he’s a multimillionaire. What’s his interest in stealing coins or a painting, then murdering the victim?”

“His interest?” Geddes’s voice rose, as if he were a professor talking to a student who just wasn’t getting the lesson. “His interest is in being the most powerful person in the world. He wants his little collection to include everybody on earth. And he’s particularly interested in law enforcement and government clients. The more crimes that are successfully solved using innerCircle, the more police departments, here and abroad, are going to sign on. Hitler’s first task when he came to power was to consolidate all the police departments in Germany. What was our big problem in Iraq? We disbanded the army and the police-we should have used them. Andrew doesn’t make mistakes like that.”

Geddes laughed. “Think I’m a crank, don’t you? But I live with this stuff all day long. Remember, it’s not paranoia if somebody’s really out there watching everything you do every minute of the day. And that ’s SSD in a nutshell.”

Awaiting Sachs’s return, Lincoln Rhyme listened absently as Lon Sellitto explained that none of the other evidence in the earlier cases-the rape and coin theft-could be located. “That’s fucking weird.”

Rhyme agreed. But his attention veered from the detective’s sour assessment to his cousin’s SSD dossier, sitting beside him on the turning frame. He tried to ignore it.

But the document drew him, needle to magnet. Looking at the stark sheets, black type on white paper, he told himself that, as Sachs had suggested, perhaps something helpful could be found in it. Then he admitted that he was simply curious.

STRATEGIC SYSTEMS DATACORP, INC. INNERCIRCLE ® DOSSIERS

Arthur Robert Rhyme

SSD Subject Number 3480-9021-4966-2083

Lifestyle

· Dossier 1A. Consumer products preferences

· Dossier 1B. Consumer services preferences

· Dossier 1C. Travel

· Dossier 1D. Medical

· Dossier 1E. Leisure-time preferences

Financial/Educational/Professional

· Dossier 2A. Educational history

· Dossier 2B. Employment history, w/income

· Dossier 2C. Credit history/current report and rating

· Dossier 2D. Business products and services preferences

Governmental/Legal

· Dossier 3A. Vital records

· Dossier 3B. Voter registration

· Dossier 3C. Legal history

· Dossier 3D. Criminal history

· Dossier 3E. Compliance

· Dossier 3F. Immigration and naturalization

The information contained herein is the property of Strategic Systems Datacorp, Inc. (SSD). The use hereof is subject to the Licensing Agreement between SSD and Customer, as defined in the Master Client Agreement. © Strategic Systems Datacorp, Inc. All rights reserved.

Instructing the turning frame to flip through the pages, he skimmed the dense document, all thirty pages of it. Some categories were full, some sparse. The voter registration was redacted, and the compliance and portions of the credit history referred to separate files, presumably because of legislation limiting access to such information.

He paused at the extensive lists of the consumer products bought by Arthur and his family (they were described by the creepy phrase “tethered individuals”). There was no doubt that anybody reading the dossier could have learned enough about his buying habits and where he shopped to implicate him in the murder of Alice Sanderson.

Rhyme learned about the country club Arthur belonged to, until he had quit several years ago, presumably because he’d lost his job. He noted the package vacations he’d bought; Rhyme was surprised he’d taken up skiing. Also, he or one of the children might have a weight problem; somebody had joined a dieting program. A health club membership for the entire family too. Rhyme saw a lay-away purchase for some jewelry around Christmastime; a chain jewelry store in a New Jersey mall. Rhyme speculated: small stones socketed in a large setting-a make-do gift, until times were better.

Seeing one reference, he gave a laugh. Like him, Arthur seemed to favor single-malt whisky-Rhyme’s new favorite brand, in fact, Glenmorangie.

His cars were a Prius and a Cherokee.

The criminalist’s smile faded at that reference, though, as he recalled another vehicle. He was picturing Arthur’s red Corvette, the car he’d received from his parents on his seventeenth birthday-the car in which Arthur had driven off to Boston to attend M.I.T.

Rhyme thought back to the boys’ respective departures for college. It was a significant moment for Arthur, and for his father too; Henry Rhyme was ecstatic that his son had been accepted by such a fine school. But the cousins’ plans-rooming together, jousting over girls, outshining the other nerds-didn’t work out. Lincoln wasn’t accepted by M.I.T. but went instead to the University of Illinois-Champagne/Urbana, which offered Lincoln a full scholarship (and had some panache back then because it was located in the town where HAL, the narcissistic computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, was born).

Teddy and Anne were pleased their son was going to a home-state school, as was his uncle; Henry had told his nephew that he hoped the boy would return to Chicago often and continue to help him with his research, possibly even assist in his classes from time to time.

“Sorry you and Arthur won’t be rooming together,” Henry said. “But you’ll see each other summers, holidays. And I’m sure your father and I can swing some trips out to Bean Town for a visit.”

“That might work out,” Lincoln had said.

Keeping to himself that while he was devastated he hadn’t been accepted by M.I.T., there was an upside to the rejection-because he wanted never to see his goddamn cousin ever again.

All because of the red Corvette.

The incident had occurred not long after the Christmas Eve party at which he’d won the concrete piece of history, on a breathlessly cold day in February, which, sun or cloud, is Chicago’s most heartless month. Lincoln was competing in a science fair at Northwestern in Evanston. He asked Adrianna if she wanted to accompany him, thinking that he might go for the marriage proposal afterward.

But she couldn’t make it; she was going shopping with her mother at Marshall Field’s department store in the Loop, lured by a big sale. Lincoln had been disappointed but thought nothing more of it and concentrated on the fair. He won first place in the senior division, then he and his friends packed up their projects and carted everything outside. Fingers blue and breath clouding around them in the painful air, they loaded the gear in the belly of the bus and sprinted for the door.