Page 157 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

Spencer was frowning.

Rhyme told him, “And his handpicked candidate for Albany this coming November is Mayor Tony Harrison.”

And is there anything else I can do for you? Anything at all …

“If you want it, we’ll make it work,” Rhyme continued his sales pitch.

The big man ran his hand through his short hair and Rhyme noted again the scar. And the tat on his bare arm.T.S.He inhaled deeply and was clearly considering the offer hard. Rhyme wondered if it were possible that his daughter somehow figured into the complex of thoughts surging within him now. Maybe he’d hoped she’d follow him onto the force.

He whispered, “Yes, I want it.”

Smiling, Sachs said, “Good. Call Averell. Stay for dinner.”

Spencer and Sachs returned to the town house; Rhyme had noticed Lon Sellitto pulling up in an unmarked vehicle and parking at the curb. A blue-and-white stopped just behind. He and two uniforms climbed out of their vehicles.

Sellitto looked over the crime scene at Douglass’s body and at Sachs’s Torino. Rhyme had called him to tell him about the shooting and that Sachs and Spencer were all right. Sellitto nodded to Rhyme then he and the others turned and crossed the street, walking up to the food truck Aaron Douglass had been using for cover.

What was this about? Long way for Sellitto and the others to come for grilled goat sandwiches.

Sellitto spoke to the vendor, who slumped and grimaced. He turned around and a uniform cuffed him and led him to the backseatof the blue-and-white. Sellitto joined Rhyme. “One of Buryak’s plans was using food truck vendors as spies. Douglass ran them. We’re rolling them up all over town.”

The truck across the street had been there for the past few days. So Buryak’s people had been surveilling him the whole time.

Sellitto nodded and said, “I gotta get downtown. You hear the latest?”

“What’s that?”

“Check it out.” He produced a phone and played a video of a news broadcaster. She was saying, “This clip was just posted on ViewNow and a number of other social networking platforms.”

The scene cut to a video, depicting a pixelated figure in a dark, nondescript room. In a deep, electronically distorted voice, he or she said:“Friends: Verum is a martyr in the fight against the Hidden. But I am here to pick up her cause. I am devoting myself to fighting for you—your lives and your liberty. The Hidden have to know that this is war.

“Say your prayers and stay prepared!

“My name is Vindicta. Latin for ‘revenge.’ That’s your sacred duty. How you pursue it is up to you.”

Rhyme shook his head. So Joanna’s nonsensical fiction persisted and apparently her offspring were taking it very much to heart. And the movement seemed to be growing.

He couldn’t help but wonder too if the network’s broadcasting the clip was itself flaming the fires. The constant battle of the press: Where was the line between informing and inciting?

Sellitto put the phone away. “We’re all on alert. Somebody broke into the National Guard armory. Didn’t get away with anything, but it was troubling enough.” He gave a laugh. “And no, I checked, the Locksmith’s still in custody.”

Sellitto looked at Rhyme. “We might need you.”

“I’ll be here,” he said.

Sellitto climbed into his car, started the engine and pulled into traffic.

On the sidewalk Rhyme swiveled his chair and looked over the street, noting the skill of the crime scene officers as they bagged shell casings, took photos and videos, made measurements of bullet angles and collected Locard’s “dust.” Other officers were canvassing passersby. Rhyme, Sachs and Spencer would be interviewed too, but no hurry on that.

Rhyme’s eyes took in the swell of press and onlookers, moths drawn by the sharp glare of a crime scene: the astronaut-suited techs, the bus, the ambulance, the covered body, the bullet-hole-riddled windshield.

Some gazed with shock, some with fascination, some with glee subdued, some with glee unleashed.

And more than a few of them glanced at Rhyme too.

Immediately after the accident, so many years ago, he’d been aware that people tended to stare when they thought he wasn’t looking, and to avoid him when they thought he was. At first this angered him; he wanted to shout, “I’m just as normal as you are!”

But over the years, Rhyme got over that. He learned that there was no such thing as normal. Who on earth had that perfect physical and mental incarnation that piloted them about flawlessly every minute of every day? Disabled is a continuum. We each have a spot on that vast bandwidth.

It’s what we do with our unique frequency that counts.

Then he chided himself for lapsing into maudlin philosophy, however truly he believed those thoughts to be.

With his left ring finger, he turned the chair about and headed up the ramp to his town house, to join Amelia Sachs and their new friend.