Rhyme said, “Media buyer and psychosis don’t fit together felicitously. I’d vote for the perp.”

Cooper took soil samples from an evidence bag marked, Vicinity of the unsub’s shoes. “I’ll GC it too.” And he stepped to the chromatograph.

Dellray’s phone hummed and a long finger stabbed Answer. “Yeah?…No…We’ll take a look-see.”

He said to the room, “Special agent BFF of mine, in Des Moines, was being all diligent. Had just read the NCIC wire when he got a call from some woman. She saw her son watchin’ YouVid, the streaming site? Nasty stuff. Live video of a guy being strangled—in a noose. We oughta see.”

Sachs walked to a laptop, which was connected via a thick, flat HDMI cable to a large monitor against a nearby wall. She typed and called up the site.

The video depicted a man in shadows. It was hard to see for sure, and he was blindfolded, but the face could have been Robert Ellis’s. His head was cocked to the side—because the noose was tugging his neck upward. Ankles bound with duct tape, arms tied or taped behind his back, he stood on a wooden box, about two by two feet.

As horrific as this was, the soundtrack was just as eerie. A snippet of a human gasp had been recorded and used as the downbeat for music being played on an organ or electric keyboard. The tune was familiar, “The Blue Danube.”

You could count out the time—a waltz—as gasp, two, three, gasp, two, three.

“Christ,” Sellitto muttered.

How long, Rhyme wondered, could a man stand like that before collapsing or slipping off, before his legs gave way or he fainted—and fell to the noose’s grip? The short fall would not, like traditional executions, break his neck, but would slowly and agonizingly strangle him to death.

As the video continued, the music began gradually to slow, as did the gasps, still keeping perfect time to the flagging music.

The image of the man began to fade too, growing darker.

At the end of the three-minute running time, the music and desperate gasps faded to silence, the image to black.

Words in blood-red type materialized on the screen—words that because they were otherwise so ordinary became unspeakably cruel.

© The Composer

Chapter 5

Rodney?”

Lincoln Rhyme was talking to their contact at the NYPD Computer Crimes Unit, downtown. One Police Plaza.

Rodney Szarnek was brilliant and quirky (a geek, say no more) but also into the most obnoxious head-banging, heavy-metal rock music from your worst nightmares.

“Rodney, please!” Rhyme shouted into the speakerphone. “Make it vanish.”

“Oh, sorry.”

The music diminished, though it didn’t vanish.

“Rodney, you’re on here with a bunch of people. Speaker. Don’t have time to make introductions.”

“Hi, every—”

“We’ve got an abduction and the perp’s rigged something so the vic only has a little while to live.”

The music shut off completely.

“Tell me.”

“Amelia’s sending you a YouVid link right now. A video of the victim.”

“Is it still up?” he asked.