The burning wire

"You ready for the video?" Dance asked.

"Go ahead." Rhyme shifted one of his few working fingers-the index finger of his right hand-and moved the electric wheelchair closer to the screen. He was a C4 quadriplegic, largely paralyzed from the shoulders down.

On one of the several flat-screen monitors in the lab came a grainy night-vision image of an airport. Trash and discarded cartons, cans and drums littered the ground on both sides of the fence in the foreground. A private cargo jet taxied into view and just as it stopped a rear hatch opened and a man dropped out.

"That's him," Dance said softly.

"I can't see clearly," Rhyme said.

"It's definitely Logan," Dance reassured. "They got a partial print-you'll see in a minute."

The man stretched and then oriented himself. He slung a bag over his shoulder and, crouching, ran toward and hid behind a shed. A few minutes later a worker came by, carrying a package the size of two shoe boxes. Logan greeted him, swapped the box for a letter-size envelope. The worker looked around and walked away quickly. A maintenance truck pulled up. Logan climbed into the back and hid under some tarps. The truck disappeared from view.

"The plane?" he asked.

"Continued on to South America on a corporate charter. The pilot and copilot claim they don't know anything about a stowaway. Of course they're lying. But we don't have jurisdiction to question them."

"And the worker?" Sachs asked.

"Federal police picked him up. He was just a minimum-wage airport employee. He claims somebody he didn't know told him he'd be paid a couple of hundred U.S. to deliver the box. The money was in the envelope. That's what they lifted the print from."

"What was in the package?" Rhyme asked.

"He says he doesn't know but he's lying too-I saw the interview video. Our DEA people're interrogating him. I wanted to try to tease some information out of him myself but it'll take too long for me to get the okay."

Rhyme and Sachs shared a look. The "teasing" reference was a bit of modesty on Dance's part. She was a kinesics expert-body language-and one of the top interrogators in the country. But the testy relationship between the sovereign states in question was such that a California cop would have plenty of paperwork to negotiate before she could slip into Mexico for a formal interrogation, whereas the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency already had a sanctioned presence there.

Rhyme asked, "Where was Logan spotted in the capital?"

"A business district. He was trailed to a hotel, but he wasn't staying there. It was for a meeting, Diaz's men think. By the time they'd set up surveillance he was gone. But all the law enforcement agencies and hotels have his picture now." Dance added that Diaz's boss, a very senior police official, would be taking over the investigation. "It's encouraging that they're serious about the case."

Yes, encouraging, Rhyme thought. But he felt frustrated too. To be on the verge of finding the prey and yet to have so little control over the case… He found himself breathing more quickly. He was considering the last time he and the Watchmaker had been up against each other; Logan had out-thought everybody. And easily killed the man he'd been hired to murder. Rhyme had had all the facts at hand to figure out what Logan was up to. Yet he'd misread the strategy completely.

"By the way," he heard Sachs ask Kathryn Dance, "how was that romantic weekend away?" This had to do, it seemed, with Dance's love interest. The single mother of two had been a widow for several years.

"We had a great time," the agent reported.

"Where did you go?"

Rhyme wondered why on earth Sachs was asking about Dance's social life. She ignored his impatient glance.

"Santa Barbara. Stopped at the Hearst Castle… Listen, I'm still waiting for you two to come out here. The children really want to meet you. Wes wrote a paper about forensics for school and mentioned you, Lincoln. His teacher used to live in New York and had read all about you."

"Yes, that'd be nice," Rhyme said, thinking exclusively about Mexico City.

Sachs smiled at the impatience in his voice and told Dance they had to go.

After disco

A male voice intruded, "Well, did you get him?"

"Who?" Rhyme snapped. "And how artful a verb is 'get'?"

Thom Reston, Lincoln Rhyme's caregiver, said, "The Watchmaker."

"No," grumbled Rhyme.

"But you're close, aren't you?" asked the trim man, wearing dark slacks, a businessman's starched yellow shirt and a floral tie.

"Oh, close," Rhyme muttered. "Close. That's very helpful. Next time you're being attacked by a mountain lion, Thom, how would you feel if the park ranger shot really close to it? As opposed to, oh, say, actually hitting it?"

"Aren't mountain lions endangered?" Thom asked, not even bothering with an ironic inflection. He was impervious to Rhyme's edge. He'd worked for the forensic detective for years, longer than many married couples had been together. And the aide was as seasoned as the toughest spouse.

"Ha. Very fu

Sachs walked around behind Rhyme's wheelchair, gripped his shoulders and began an impromptu massage. Sachs was tall and in better shape than most NYPD detectives her age and, though arthritis often plagued her knees and lower extremities, her arms and hands were strong and largely pain-free.

They wore their working clothes: Rhyme was in sweatpants, black, and a knit shirt of dark green. She had shed her navy blue jacket but was wearing matching slacks and a white cotton blouse, one button open at the collar, pearls present. Her Glock was high on her hip in a fast-draw polymer holster, and two magazines sat side by side in holsters of their own, along with a Taser.

Rhyme could feel the pulsing of her fingers; he had perfect sensation above where he'd sustained a nearly fatal spinal cord fracture some years ago, the fourth cervical vertebra. Although at one point he'd considered risky surgery to improve his condition, he'd opted for a different rehabilitative approach. Through an exhausting regimen of exercise and therapy he'd managed to regain some use of his fingers and hand. He could also use his left ring finger, which had for some reason remained intact after the subway beam broke his neck.

He enjoyed the fingers digging into his flesh. It was as if the small percentage of remaining sensation in his body was enhanced. He glanced down at his useless legs. He closed his eyes.

Thom now looked him over carefully. "You all right, Lincoln?"

"All right? Aside from the fact that the perp I've been searching for for years slipped out of our grasp and is now hiding out in the second-largest metropolitan area in this hemisphere, I'm just peachy."

"That's not what I'm talking about. You're not looking too good."

"You're right. Actually I need some medicine."

"Medicine?"

"Whisky. I'd feel better with some whisky."

"No, you wouldn't."

"Well, why don't we try an experiment. Science. Cartesian. Rational. Who can argue with that? I know how I feel now. Then I'll have some whisky and I'll report back to you."

"No. It's too early," Thom said matter-of-factly.

"It's afternoon."

"By a few minutes."

"Goddamn it." Rhyme sounded gruff, as often, but in fact he was losing himself in Sachs's massage. A few strings of red hair had escaped from her ponytail and hung tickling against his cheek. He didn't move away. Since he'd apparently lost the single-malt battle, he was ignoring Thom, but the aide brought his attention around quickly by saying, "When you were on the phone, Lon called."