Rhyme said to Sachs, “See what the lawyer knows about him.” She took the name, flipped open her phone. Rhyme knew of Reed, Prince, of course. It was a large, respected firm on lower Broadway. The attorneys there were known for handling high-profile, white-collar criminal defense.

In a grim voice Cooper said, “We’ve got a problem. That was the officer at the hotel suite, guarding Duncan. He just checked his room. He’s gone, Lincoln.”

“What?”

“The officer said he went to bed early last night, saying he wasn’t feeling well and he wanted to sleep in today. Looks like he picked the lock to the adjacent room. The officer has no idea when it happened. Could’ve been last night.”

Sachs pinched her phone closed. “Reed, Prince doesn’t have a lawyer on staff with the name he gave the prosecutor. And Duncan isn’t a client.”

“Oh, goddamn,” Rhyme snapped.

“All right,” Sellitto said, “time for the cavalry.” He called Bo Haumann at ESU and told them they needed to arrest their suspect yet again. “Only we aren’t exactly sure where he is.”

He gave the tactical officer the few details they had. Haumann’s reaction, which Rhyme didn’t hear, could nonetheless be inferred from Sellitto’s expression. “You don’t need to tell me, Bo.”

Sellitto left a message with the district attorney himself and then called the Big Building to inform the brass about the problem.

“I want more on him,” Rhyme said to Cooper. “We were too fucking complacent. We didn’t ask enough questions.” He glanced at Dance. “Kathryn, I really hate to ask this. . . .”

She was putting away her cell phone. “I’ve already canceled my flight.”

“I’m sorry. It’s not really your case.”

“It’s been my case since I interviewed Cobb on Tuesday,” Dance said, her green eyes cold, her lips drawn.

Cooper was scrolling through the information they’d learned about Gerald Duncan. He made a list of phone numbers and started calling. After several conversations he said, “Listen to this. He’s not Duncan. The Missouri State Police sent a car out to the address on the license. It’s owned by a Gerald Duncan, yeah, but not our Gerald Duncan. The guy who lived there was transferred to Anchorage for his job for six months. The house’s empty and up for rent. Here’s his picture.”

The image was a driver’s license shot of a man very different from the one they’d arrested yesterday.

Rhyme nodded. “Brilliant. He checked the paper for rental listings, found one that’d been on the market for a while and figured it wasn’t going to rent for the next few weeks because of Christmas. Same as the church. And he forged the driver’s license we saw. Passport too. We’ve been underestimating this guy from the beginning.”

Cooper, staring at his computer, called out, “The owner—the real Duncan—had some credit card problems. Identity theft.”

Lincoln Rhyme felt a chill in the center of his being, a place where in theory he could feel nothing. He had a sense that an unseen disaster was unfolding quickly.