No. He’d go someplace else. The man rose and headed out into the chill.

The sound stopped – battery-plucking time. A glance back. Sachs returned to her coffee, to her notes. Oblivious to her impending death.

The Watchmaker turned toward the subway entrance at West Fourth Street. As he walked along the sidewalk in the brisk air an interesting thought occurred to him. Arsenic and antimony were metalloids – substances that shared qualities of both metals and non-metals – but were rigid enough to be crafted into enduring objects.

Would it be possible, he wondered, to make a timepiece out of these poisons?

What a fascinating thought!

And one that, he knew, would occupy his fertile mind for weeks and months to come.

CHAPTER 76

‘Go with it,’ Lincoln Rhyme said. The criminalist was alone in his parlor, talking through the speakerphone as he gazed absently at a website featuring some rather classy antiques and fine arts.

‘Well,’ said the voice, belonging to a captain at the NYPD, presently in police headquarters. The Big Building.

‘Well, what?’ Rhyme snapped. He’d been a captain too; anyway, he never took rank very seriously. Competence and intelligence counted first.

‘It’s a little unorthodox.’

The fuck does that mean? Rhyme thought. On the other hand, he himself had also been a civil servant in a civil-servant world and he knew that it was sometimes necessary to play a game or two. He appreciated the man’s reluctance.

But he couldn’t condone it.

‘I’m aware of that, Captain. But we need to run with the story. There are lives at risk.’

The captain’s first name was unusual. Dagfield.

Who would name somebody that?

‘Well,’ Dag said defensively. ‘It has to be edited and vetted—’

‘I wrote it. It doesn’t need to be edited. And you can vet. Vet it now. We don’t have much time.’

‘You’re not asking me to vet. You’re asking me to run what you’ve sent me, Lincoln.’

‘You’ve looked it over, you’ve read it. That’s vetting. We need to go with it, Dag. Time’s critical. Very critical.’

A sigh. ‘I’ll have to talk to somebody first.’

Rhyme considered tactical options. There weren’t many.

‘Here’s the situation, Dag. I can’t be fired. I’m an independent consultant that defense attorneys around the country want to hire as much as the NYPD does. Probably more and they pay better. If you don’t run that press release exactly, and I mean exactly, the way I sent it to you, I’ll hang out my shingle for the defense and stop working for the NYPD altogether. And when the commissioner hears that I’ll be working against the department, your job’ll be in the private sector and I mean fast food.’

Not really satisfied with that line. Could have been better. But there it was.

‘You’re threatening me?’

Which hardly required a response.

Ten seconds later: ‘Fuck.’