Baker said, “You think of everything, don’t you?”

“What’s so miraculous about timepieces,” Duncan said, gazing at the moon-faced clock, “is that none of them ever has more or fewer parts than is needed to do what the watchmaker intends. Nothing missing, but nothing superfluous.” He added in a soft voice, “It’s pure perfection, wouldn’t you say?”

Amelia Sachs and Ron Pulaski were slogging through the cold streets of lower Manhattan, and she was reflecting that sometimes the biggest hurdles in a case weren’t from the perps but from bystanders, witnesses and victims.

They were following up on one of the clues that had been uncovered in the church, receipts from a parking garage not far from the pier where the first victim had died. But the attendant was unhelpful. Lady, no, he no familiar. Nobody look like him I remember. Ahmed—maybe he saw him. . . . Oh, but he not here today. No, I don’t know his phone number. . . .

And so it went.

Frustrated, Sachs nodded toward a restaurant adjacent to the parking garage. She said, “Maybe he stopped in there. Let’s give it a try.”

Just then her radio crackled. She recognized Sellitto’s voice. “Amelia, you copy?”

She grabbed Pulaski’s arm and turned up the volume, so they both could hear. “Go ahead, K.”

“Where are you?”

“Downtown. The parking garage didn’t pan out. We’re going to canvass a couple of restaurants.”

“Forget it. Get up to Three Two Street and Seven Avenue. Fast. Dennis Baker’s found a lead. Looks like the next vic’s in an office building there.”

“Who is she?”

“We’re not sure exactly. We’ll probably have to sweep the whole place. We’ve got Arson and the bomb squad on the way—she’s the one he’s going to burn to death. Man, I hope we’re in time. Anyway, get up there now.”

“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

The fire department was sending two dozen men and women into the twenty-seven-story midtown building. And Bo Haumann was assembling five ESU entry teams—expanded ones, six cops each, rather than the typical four—to do a floor-by-floor search.

Sachs’s drive here had taken closer to a half hour, thanks to holiday traffic. Not a huge delay but the extra fifteen minutes made a big difference: She’d missed a spot on an entry team. Amelia Sachs was officially a crime scene detective but her heart was also with tactical teams, the ones who went through the perps’ doors first.

If they found the Watchmaker here, it would’ve been her last chance for a take-down before she quit the force. She supposed she’d see some excitement in her new job as security specialist at Argyle, but the local law enforcers would surely get most of the tactical fun.

Sachs and Pulaski now ran from the car to the command post at the back door of the office building.