“How’s that?” the rookie asked.

“I know you heard I was leaving.”

He nodded.

“But I’ve changed my mind.”

“You’re not quitting?” Pulaski asked.

“No.”

“Hey, not a problem,” Pulaski said. “Wouldn’t mind sharing the job for a little while more, you know.” His relief at not being the only ant under Lincoln Rhyme’s magnifying glass clearly outweighed any disappointment at getting busted back down to assistant.

Sachs tugged a chair around to face Rhyme.

He said, “I thought you were at Argyle.”

“I was. To turn them down.”

“Can I ask why?”

“I got a call. From Suzanne Creeley. Ben Creeley’s wife. She thanked me for believing her, for finding out who’d really killed her husband. She was crying. She told me that she just couldn’t bear the thought that her husband had killed himself. Murder was terrible but a suicide—that would’ve undermined everything they’d had together over the years.”

Sachs shook her head. “A knot in a rope and a broken thumb . . . I realized that that’s what this job is all about, Rhyme. Not the crap I got caught up in, the politics, my father, Baker and Wallace . . . You can’t make it too complicated. Being a cop is about finding the truth behind a knot and a broken thumb. Nothing more than that.”

You and me, Sachs . . .

“So,” she asked, matter-of-fact, as she nodded toward the boards, “our bad boy—anything new on him?”

Rhyme told her about his present, the Breguet, then summarized: “A rock or mountain climber, possibly trained in Europe. He’s spent time in California, near the shore. And he’s been there recently. May live there now. Good education. Uses proper grammar, syntax and punctuation. And I want to go over every gear in the watch again. He’s a watchmaker, right? That means he’s probably taken the back off to poke around inside. If there’s a molecule of trace, I want it.” Rhyme nodded at the man’s note and added, “He admits he was watching Charlotte’s hotel around the time we collared her. I want every vantage point where he might’ve been standing searched. You’re recruited for that one, Ron.”

“Got it.”

“And don’t forget what we know about him. Maybe he’s gone and maybe he isn’t. Make sure your weapon’s in reach. Outside the Tyvek. Remember—”

“Search well but watch my back?” Pulaski asked.

“An A for retention,” the criminalist said. “Now get to work.”

IV

12:48 P.M. MONDAY

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.

—SAINT AUGUSTINE

Chapter 43