Rhyme’s eyes scanned the treasures Sachs and the evidence collection techs had brought back.

The ECs left, one of them saying something to Rhyme. A joke. A farewell. A comment about the weather or the cleanliness of the Hewlett-Packard gas chromatograph. Who knew, who cared? He wasn’t paying attention. His nose detected the whiff of burned plastic and hot metal—radiating from the destroyed evidence.

Or the evidence the perp had tried to destroy. In fact, water is a far more efficient contaminant than fire, though flames do remove DNA and fingerprints pretty damn well.

Oh, Mr. Composer, you tried. But let’s see how successful you were.

Fred Dellray was gone. He’d been summoned to Federal Plaza unexpectedly—a confidential informant had reported an impending assassination of a U.S. attorney involved in a major drug prosecution.

Rhyme had complained: “Impending versus actual, Fred? Come on. Our vic has been one hundred percent certified snatched.”

“Orders’re orders,” the agent had replied as he left.

And then, insult to injury, Dellray had just called back saying that it was a false alarm. He could get back within the hour.

“Fine, fine, fine.”

Lon Sellitto was still here, presently canvassing law enforcement agencies around the country to see if there were any echoes of the Composer’s MO.

None, so far.

Not that Rhyme cared about that.

Evidence. That’s what he wanted.

So they began poring over what had been collected at the factory.

Here, a single Converse Con shoe print. Ten and a half.

Here, two short pale hairs that seemed identical to the one found on Ellis’s cell phone.

Here, four slivers of shiny paper—photo stock, it looked like.

Here, a burned T-shirt, probably the “broom” used to obliterate marks on the floor and wipe fingerprints.

Here, gone almost completely, the dark baseball cap he’d worn. No hair, no sweat.

Here, plastic globs and metal parts—his musical keyboard and an LED light.

Here, a Baggie, one-gallon, containing two more miniature nooses, probably made of cello strings. No fingerprints. Not helpful in any way, except to tell them that he had more victims in mind.

No phone, no computer—those devices we so dearly love…and that betray us and our secrets so nonchalantly.

Though he’d swept, Sachs had collected plenty of dust and splinters of wood, and bits of concrete from the floor around the gallows room. The GC/MS rumbled for some time, again and again burning up samples. The results revealed traces of tobacco, as well as cocaine, heroin and pseudoephedrine—the ingredient in decongestants that was present here because of its second utility: making methamphetamine.

Sachs said, “Not a lot of traffic but the place had its crack-house attractions.”

One find, more or less intact, was a scrap of paper:

CASH T

EXCHA

CONVER

TRANSAC

“Wheel of Fortune,” Mel Cooper said.

“What’s that?”

Nobody replied to Rhyme’s question, as they all tried to complete the words, Thom too. Nothing, so they moved on.

The remains of the musical keyboard, presumably the one on which the Composer had recorded his eerie composition, contained a serial number. Sellitto called the manufacturer but the company, in Massachusetts, was presently closed. He’d check again in the morning, though the Composer had been so careful about so many aspects of the kidnapping that he’d surely bought the Casio with cash.