Jeffery Deaver - The Cold Moon

Pammy was frowning. "Can I get a new name?"

"A new-?"

"I don't want to be me anymore. And I don't want my mother to talk to me again. And I don't want any of those people she's with to find me."

Sachs preempted whatever the social worker was going to say. "We'll make sure nothing happens to you. That's a promise."

Pammy hugged her.

"So I can see you again?" Sachs asked.

Trying to contain her excitement at this, the girl said, "I guess. If you want."

"How 'bout shopping tomorrow?"

"Okay. Sure."

"Good. It's a date." Sachs had an idea. "Hey, you like dogs?"

"Yeah, some folks I stayed with in Missouri had one. I liked him better than the people."

She called Thom at Rhyme's town house. "Got a question."

"Go ahead."

"Any takers on Jackson yet?"

"Nope. He's still up for adoption."

"Take him off the market," Sachs said. She hung up and looked at Pam. "I've got an early Christmas present for you."

Sometimes even the best-designed watches simply don't work.

The devices really are quite fragile, when you think about it. Five hundred, a thousand minuscule moving parts, nearly microscopic screws and springs and jewels, all precisely assembled, dozens of separate movements working in unison… A hundred things can go wrong. Sometimes the watchmaker miscalculates, sometimes a tiny piece of metal is defective, sometimes the owner winds the mechanism too tight. Sometimes he drops it. Moisture gets under the crystal.

Then again the watch might work perfectly in one environment but not in another. Even the famed Rolex Oyster Perpetual, revolutionary for being the first luxury divers' watch, can't withstand unlimited pressure underwater.

Now, near Central Park, Charles Vespasian Hale sat in his own car, which he'd driven here from San Diego-no trail at all, if you pay cash for gas and avoid toll roads-and wondered what had gone wrong with his plan.

He supposed the answer was the police, specifically Lincoln Rhyme. Hale had done everything he could think of to anticipate his moves. But the former cop managed to end up just a bit ahead of him. Rhyme had done exactly what Hale had been worried about-he'd looked at a few gears and levers and extrapolated from them how Hale's entire timepiece had been constructed.

He'd have plenty of time to consider what went wrong and to try to avoid the same problems in the future. He'd be driving back to California, leaving immediately. He glanced at his face in the rearview mirror. He'd dyed his hair back to its natural color and the pale blue contact lenses were gone, but the collagen, which gave him the thick nose and puffy cheeks and double chin, hadn't bled from his skin yet. And it would takes months before he regained the forty pounds he'd lost for the job and became himself again. He felt pasty and sluggish after all this time in the city and needed to get back to his wilderness and mountains once again.

Yes, he'd failed. But, as he told Vincent Reynolds, that wasn't significant in the great scheme of things. He wasn't concerned about the arrest of Charlotte Allerton. They knew nothing of his real identity (they'd believed all along his real name was Duncan) and their initial contacts had been through extremely discreet individuals.

Moreover, there was actually a positive side to the failure here-Hale had learned something that had changed his life. He'd created the persona of the Watchmaker simply because the character seemed spooky and would snag the attention of a populace and police turned on by made-for-TV criminals.

But as he got into the role, Hale found to his surprise that this character was the embodiment of his true personality. Playing the part was like coming home. He had indeed grown fascinated with watches and clocks and time. (He'd also developed an abiding interest in the Delphic Mechanism; stealing it at some point in the future was a distinct possibility.)

The Watchmaker…

Charles Hale was himself simply a timepiece. You could use a watch for something joyous like checking contractions for the birth of a baby. Or heinous: coordinating the time of a raid to slaughter women and children.

Time transcends morality.

He now looked down at what sat on the seat next to him, the gold Breguet pocket watch. In his gloved hands, he picked it up, wound it slowly-always better to underwind than over--and carefully slipped it between the sheets of bubble wrap in a large white envelope.

Hale sealed the self-adhesive flap and started the car.

There were no clear leads.

Rhyme, Sellitto, Cooper and Pulaski were sitting in the lab on Central Park West, going over the few things found in the perp's Brooklyn safe house.

Amelia Sachs was not present at the moment. She hadn't announced where she was going. But she didn't need to. She'd mentioned to Thom that she'd be nearby, if they needed her-at a meeting on Fifty-seventh and Sixth. Rhyme had checked the phone directory. That was the location of the Argyle Security headquarters.

Rhyme simply couldn't think about that, and he was concentrating on how to continue the search for the Watchmaker, whoever he might be.

Working backward, Rhyme constructed a rough scenario of the events. The ceremony had been announced on October 15, so Carol and Bud had contacted the Watchmaker sometime around then. He'd come to New York around November 1, the date of the lease on the Brooklyn safe house. A few weeks later, Amelia Sachs had taken over the Creeley case and soon after, Baker and Wallace decided to have her killed.

"Then they hooked up with the Watchmaker. What'd he tell us, when we thought he was Duncan? About their meeting?"

Sellitto said, "Just that somebody at the club put them together-the club where Baker put the touch on his friend."

"But he was lying. There was no club… " Rhyme shook his head. "Somebody put them together, somebody who knows the Watchmaker-probably somebody in the area. If we can find them, there could be some solid leads. Is Baker talking?"

"Nope, not a word. Nobody is."

The rookie was shaking his head. "That's going to be a tough one. I mean, how many OC crews are there in the metro area? Take forever to track down the right one. Not like they're going to be volunteering to help us out."

The criminalist frowned. "What're you talking about? What's an organized crime posse got to do with anything?"

"Well, I just assumed somebody with an OC connection was the one who'd put them together."

"Why?"

"Baker wants to have a cop killed, right? But he can't do it in a way that'll make him look suspicious so he has to hire somebody. He goes to some mob connection he has. The mob's not going to clip a cop so he puts Baker in touch with somebody who might: the Watchmaker."

When nobody said anything, Pulaski blushed and looked down. "I don't know. Just a thought."

"And a fucking good one, kid," Sellitto said.

"Really?"

Rhyme nodded. "Not bad…Let's call the OC task force downtown and see if their snitches can tell us anything. Call Dellray too…Now, let's get back to the evidence."

They'd located some friction ridges in the safe house in Brooklyn but none of the fingerprints came back positive from the Bureau's IAFIS system and none matched prints from prior scenes. The lease for the house had been executed under yet another fake name and the man had given a phony prior address. It had been a cash transaction. An exhaustive search of Internet activity in the neighborhood revealed that the man had apparently logged on occasionally through several nearby wireless networks. There were no records of emails, only Web browsing. The site he'd visited most often was a bookstore that sold continuing-education course texts for certain medical specialties.

Sellitto said, "Shit, maybe somebody else's hired him."