Джеффри Дивер - The Midnight Lock

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But the video was, like most nowadays, high-def. The blood was vivid and plentiful, the death yelp — the last sound ever to be uttered by the victim — clear. So the execution had to go altogether.

My job as content moderator is to consider what’s in the best interest of my employer. And that means striking the fine balance between the titillating, shocking and disgusting on the one hand, and the cute, funny and inspiring, on the other. Ultimately, of course, I suspect that when it comes to offense, the wunderkind execs within the Silicon Valley headquarters of ViewNow don’t give two shits about producing upright content; they’re terrified of scaring off advertisers if the vids are too troubling (though I was amused when a banner ad at the bottom of the Los Zetas beheading was for Family Pride Life Insurance).

One more question remains: Should I delete the poster’s account because of his offense?

So far he’s uploaded scenes from the video games Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption , very violent but computer generated. No real San Andreans or Old West settlers were killed in the making of those games.

However, I see his journey. From those games and violent Japanese anime, he’s moved on to posting more real-life scenes of gore and death, lifted from other sites, of people killed in various genocides and mass murders — after the deed is done.

Today’s cartel beheading is the first real-time murder he’s posted.

Will, someday, he decide that this isn’t enough and move from observer to participant?

Lust transports you.

A fact I know very well.

Cancel, or not?

I’m God. I can do what I want.

My finger hovers over the keys.

Ah, let him have his little hobby.

After I close out the beheading video another pops up in its place. A helpful algorithm shot it my way.

It’s the conspiracy theorist going by the name Verum, who posts several times a week. We are on the lookout for politically inflammatory material too, in addition to the blood and sex. And the anonymous Verum certainly walks a fine line.

The figure pixelated past recognition sits at a desk. The room is white and a curtain is drawn over a large window. There are hooks on the walls, where paintings would hang when taping is not in progress.

Verum is obsessed with secrecy.

For good reason.

The deep voice is also distorted and all the eerier for it.

“Friends: I’ve come into possession of a classified report about a program the Hidden have created in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. The K to Twelve Improvement Project is a secret program initiated to map every student in the system by facial recognition. The data will be used to track the whereabouts of the youngsters and their parents and will allow the government to create political, religious and economic profiles far more invasive than anything we’ve ever seen.

“The Hidden will stop at nothing to destroy our privacy! In the comments below this video you’ll find the names and addresses of the superintendents of those schools. Don’t let them get away with using our children as fodder for the War!

“Say your prayers and stay prepared!

“My name is Verum, Latin for ‘true.’ That is what my message is. What you do with it is up to you.”

Below is a URL for a site in the dark web where one can contribute money to fight the Hidden, which Verum passionately attacks but has never quite defined. The ads are targeted: survival gear, weapons, books by other conspiracy theorists.

One could block Verum’s posts for containing purported facts that are “inaccurate” or “cannot be verified.”

Or — ever useful — the community standard thing.

Some of the posts have also incited followers to violence. It’s us versus the Hidden.

I let it stand.

Rising, I walk across my workshop floor, worried and uneven oak one hundred and fifty years old. I get a cold cola.

The space isn’t large. It has a raftered ceiling and brick walls. Wooden posts rise. The windows are covered with steel security panels. This was so that a hundred and twenty years ago no one would break into the Sebastiano Bakery Supply Company and steal equipment. The sheets serve my needs well too. I hardly want intruders, though I’m less worried about thieves than others who might come a’calling.

I keep it well lit because when it’s dark it reminds me of the Consequences Room and that just makes me furious.

I happen to glance at a rough-brick wall into which I’ve pounded tenpenny nails and hung on them my collection of locks. One hundred and forty-two of them. Also mesh bags of keys, of which I own at least a thousand.

No other decorations grace the walls of the workshop because if you have locks and keys why would you need any other art?

Glancing at my phone for the time.

I log off and, in an instant, Los Zetas beheadings and copyright violations and Verum’s anarchical rhetoric are gone.

I have plans to make.

Last night’s Visit to Annabelle Talese’s was a challenge. But nothing compares with tonight’s.

That’s going to require considerably more finesse.

Criminal investigators call potential suspects “people of interest.”

Lincoln Rhyme coined a term that was a forensic scientist’s counterpart: a “substance of interest.” He bestowed this designation on a material when it was the odd thing out, appearing at a crime scene when there was no reason for it to be there.

Hearing Rhyme’s characterization, Ron Pulaski, the young patrol officer who often assisted Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, had said, “Oh, yeah — the kids’ books. What’s out of place in this picture? You know, like a shark nesting in a tree.” He was the father of two.

At first inclined to belittle the simile, Rhyme had reconsidered and said, “Exactly.”

In this instance the substance was NaClO 2, known more commonly by its nickname, sodium chlorite.

The trace had been found at a homicide, the backyard of a modest mansion in a posh neighborhood of Queens. Alekos Gregorios, a well-off owner of a chain of industrial laundromats, had been robbed and stabbed to death. Two detectives from the 112 House on Austin Street — Tye Kelly and Crystal Wilson — were running the case and, confronting delays at NYPD’s main crime lab, had asked Rhyme if he could short-circuit the system and take a look at the evidence. Any opinions would be welcome.

He’d agreed.

Gregorios, a widower, lived alone. His neighbors reported seeing nothing suspicious around the time of death, but his grown son, who’d had dinner with him that evening, told police that his father had had a run-in with a homeless man earlier in the day. The man was tampering with the gate to the enclosed backyard and Gregorios ran him off. The man had threatened Gregorios, who had not taken the mad rant seriously.

The son had only his father’s description: white with wild, unwashed brown hair and wearing a filthy raincoat.

No other details.

New York City’s homeless population hovered around fifty thousand, so canvassing the streets and shelters was not an efficient way to proceed. The detectives hoped Rhyme could narrow down the search.

Enter NaClO 2, the substance of interest, which Rhyme had isolated.

He was presently back in his town house, on Central Park West — the very venue that had been the subject of the debate in the case against Viktor Buryak.

The stately premises dated to the era when Victoria ruled England and Boss Tweed New York, each with unchallenged power over their respective worlds, which were not wholly dissimilar, varying only in geographical reach.