He changed back into clothes he felt more comfortable wearing than the common garments he’d worn when carrying out his plan. The Ferragamo, the Chanel belt, the Kiton shoes. He made no apologies for liking the nicer things in life. He put one hundred percent of himself into everything he did and that had made him a great deal of money over his relatively few years. It was appropriate that he spend his resources in ways that maximized contentment.

This was his philosophy of life.

He left the house, heading west. He noted a funky vegetarian restaurant he would dine in tonight. A glance at the menu told him that he could eat in this restaurant every night for a week and the bill would still be less than that for a recent dinner at L’Etoile, on the Upper East Side. No judgment, just an observation.

He collected his Mercedes and pulled into the street.

A half hour later he found a parking place and climbed from the sleek vehicle. He walked a half block to the residence he sought and climbed the stairs, where he rang the bell, looking up at the security camera just above and to the right of the door. He made sure those inside got a good look at his face.

The door lock clicked.

He stepped into the front entryway. There he paused and offered a nod—and a smile—to Lincoln Rhyme, who wheeled forward and heartily shook his hand.

—

Of all the students in Lincoln Rhyme’s Philosophy of Criminal Apprehension seminar at the college nearby, Valentin Renard was the most brilliant, with honors degrees in economics, psychology, law and history.

He was also the most eclectic.

Young Valentin had studied abroad and traveled extensively; his mother worked for the State Department and his father was a senior Interpol official then prosecutor for the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

After receiving several degrees, he’d settled into a career on Wall Street, where his investment strategies had made him a multimillionaire—enough money to live on for the rest of his life. He now dabbled in charitable foundations—among them, literacy and arranging lectures on art, economics and history for young people. He was quite the accomplished violinist and performed occasionally. His sport was fencing.

What truly fascinated the man, though, was crime.

Rhyme had learned this one night after class when they’d shared a single malt illicitly smuggled into the classroom by the student. Renard had wanted to interview the criminalist about some of his more memorable cases.

It seemed that the young man had no interest in working professionally in law enforcement. No, his passion was somewhat different: he collected crimes, though only those committed by the cleverest and most dangerous perpetrators. Over the years, he had assembled nearly nine hundred binders, filled with notes, transcripts, maps, charts and photographs. Each was devoted to a particularly notable crime, both domestic and foreign. He kept these in a massive library in his apartment, not far from Rhyme’s on the Upper West Side.