Jeffery Deaver - The Cold Moon

Sachs said, "It gets trickier."

Rhyme said, "I tracked down Culbert's widow in Duluth. She told me he'd been deaf and mute since birth."

Sachs added, "But Duncan said that Culbert had saved his life in the army. If he was deaf he wouldn't've been in the service."

Rhyme said, "I think Duncan just read about a mugging victim and claimed he was his friend-to give some credibility to his plan to implicate Baker." The criminalist shrugged. "It might not be a problem. After all, we collared a corrupt cop. But it leaves a few questions. Can you look at Duncan's interview tape and tell us what you think?"

"Of course."

Cooper typed on his keyboard.

A moment later a wide-angle video of Gerald Duncan came on the monitor. He was sitting comfortably in an interview room downtown as Lon Sellitto's voice was giving the details: who he was, the date and the case. Then the statement proper began. Duncan recited essentially the same facts that he'd told Rhyme while sitting on the curb outside the last "serial killer" scene.

Dance watched, nodding slowly as she listened to the details of his plan.

When it was finished Cooper hit PAUSE, freeze-framing Duncan's face.

Dance turned to Rhyme. "That's all of it?"

"Yes." He noticed her face had gone still. The criminalist asked, "What do you think?"

She hesitated and then said, "I have to say…My feeling is that it's not just the story about his friend getting killed that's a problem. I think virtually everything he's telling you on that tape is a complete lie."

Silence in Rhyme's town house.

Total silence.

Finally Rhyme looked up from the image of Gerald Duncan, motionless on the screen, and said, "Go on."

"I got his baseline when he was mentioning the details of his plan to get Baker arrested. We know certain aspects of that are true. So when the stress levels change I assume he's being deceptive. I saw major deviations when he's talking about the supposed friend. And I don't think his name's Duncan. Or he lives in the Midwest. Oh, and he couldn't care less about Dennis Baker. He has no emotional interest in the man's arrest. And there's something else."

She glanced at the screen. "Can you cue to the middle? There's a place where he touches his cheek."

Cooper ran the video in reverse.

"There. Play that."

"I'd never hurt anybody. I couldn't do that. I might bend the law a bit… "

Dance shook her head, frowning.

"What?" Sachs asked.

"His eyes…" Dance whispered. "Oh, this's a problem."

"Why?"

"I'm thinking he's dangerous, very dangerous. I spent months studying the interview tapes of Ted Bundy, the serial killer. He was a pure sociopath, meaning he could deceive with virtually no outward signs whatsoever. But the one thing I could detect in Bundy was a faint reaction in his eyes when he claimed he'd never killed anyone. The reaction wasn't a typical deception response; it revealed disappointment and betrayal. He was denying something central to his being." She nodded to the screen. "Exactly what Duncan just did."

"Are you sure?" Sachs asked.

"Not positive, no. But I think we've got to ask him some more questions."

"Whatever he's up to, we better have him moved to level-three detention until we can figure it out."

Since he'd been arrested for only minor, nonviolent crimes Gerald Duncan would be in a low-security holding tank down on Centre Street. Escape from there was unlikely but not impossible. Rhyme ordered his phone to call the supervisor of Detention in downtown Manhattan.

He identified himself and gave instructions to move Duncan to a more secure cell.

The jailer said nothing. Rhyme assumed this was because he didn't want to take orders from a civilian.

The tedium of politics…

He grimaced then glanced at Sachs, meaning that she should authorize the transfer. It was then that the real reason for the supervisor's silence became clear. "Well, Detective Rhyme," the man said uneasily, "he was only here for a few minutes. We never even booked him."

"What?"

"The prosecutor, he cut some deal or another, and released Duncan last night. I thought you knew."

Lon Sellitto was back in Rhyme's lab, pacing angrily.

Duncan's lawyer, it seemed, had met with the assistant district attorney and in exchange for an affidavit admitting guilt, the payment of $100,000 for misuse of police and fire resources, and a written guarantee to testify against Baker, all the criminal charges were dropped, subject to being reinstated if he reneged on the appearance in court as a witness against Baker. He'd never even been printed or booked.

The big, rumpled detective stared at the speakerphone, glowering, hands on his hips, as if the unit itself were the incompetent fool who'd released a potential killer.

The defensiveness in the prosecutor's voice was clear. "It was the only way he'd cooperate," the man said. "He was represented by a lawyer from Reed, Prince. He surrendered his passport. It was all legit. He's agreed not to leave the jurisdiction until Baker's trial. I've got him in a hotel in the city, with an officer guarding him. He's not going anywhere. What's the big deal? I've done this a hundred times."

"What about Westchester?" Rhyme called into the speakerphone. "The stolen corpse?"

"They agreed not to prosecute. I said we'd help them out on a few other cases they needed our cooperation for."

The prosecutor would see this as a gold ring in his career; bringing down a gang of corrupt cops would catapult him to stardom.

Rhyme shook his head, livid. Incompetence and selfish ambition infuriated him. It's hard enough to do this job without interference from politicians. Why the hell hadn't anybody called him first, before releasing Duncan? Even before Kathryn Dance's opinion about the interview tape, there were too many unanswered questions to release the man.

Sellitto barked, "Where is he?"

"Anyway, what proof-?"

"Where the fuck is he?" Sellitto raged.

The prosecutor hesitated and gave them the name of a hotel in Midtown and the mobile number of the officer guarding him.

"I'm on it." Cooper dialed the number.

Sellitto continued. "And who was his lawyer?"

The assistant district attorney gave them this name too. The nervous voice said, "I really don't see what all the fuss-"

Sellitto hung up. He looked at Dance. "I'm about to push some serious buttons. You know what I'm saying?"

She nodded. "We've got fan-hitting shit out in California too. But I'm comfortable with my opinion. Do whatever you can to find him. I mean, everything. I'll give that same opinion to whoever you want me to. Chief of department, mayor, governor."

Rhyme said to Sachs, "See what the lawyer knows about him." She took the name, flipped open her phone. Rhyme knew of Reed, Prince, of course. It was a large, respected firm on lower Broadway. The attorneys there were known for handling high-profile, white-collar criminal defense.

In a grim voice Cooper said, "We've got a problem. That was the officer at the hotel suite, guarding Duncan. He just checked his room. He's gone, Lincoln."

"What?"

"The officer said he went to bed early last night, saying he wasn't feeling well and he wanted to sleep in today. Looks like he picked the lock to the adjacent room. The officer has no idea when it happened. Could've been last night."

Sachs pinched her phone closed. "Reed, Prince doesn't have a lawyer on staff with the name he gave the prosecutor. And Duncan isn't a client."

"Oh, goddamn," Rhyme snapped.

"All right," Sellitto said, "time for the cavalry." He called Bo Haumann at ESU and told them they needed to arrest their suspect yet again. "Only we aren't exactly sure where he is."