Page 19 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

“Like hacker conventions. Oh, some professional locksmiths show up, but most of the action is with the bad boys and girls. The picking underworld. Open-society activists, WikiLeaks, that sort of crew. They have contests to see who can crack complicated locks before the clock runs out. Even some of the best pickers in the world can’t get through these babies in time. Some can’t even pick ’em at all. And your guy, the Locksmith, couldn’t stand in a New York apartment building for a half hour, working away. He’d have four, five minutes. Tops.” Morgenstern’s voice seemed laced with astonishment. Admiration too, perhaps.

“Now, it gets better. Or worse.” The detective swiped the page and a picture of a wall appeared, with what seemed to be an electronics panel.

“He gets through the deadbolts, and then has five seconds to disable her alarm. Which he does.”

Morgenstern continued, “Maybe he got her code. He could snatch her purse and it’s inside, but that’s unlikely. Let’s assume hehacked it out of service. Her model’s wireless. There’re three ways to take them out. All three involve using an RF—radio frequency—transmitter. One way is brute force, standing outside and transmitting every possible combination of four-digit pins. It takes about an hour and twenty minutes to get from 0000 to 9999. But, of course, that wouldn’t work in a Manhattan apartment. The second way is to hide a recorder nearby and capture the frequency of the disarm code. Then, when you go to break in, you play it back with the transmitter. But that too: hard to hide in an apartment building like hers.

“So, I think what the Locksmith did was the third way: he jammed the system. See, when you open the front door, a sensor mounted in the frame sends an activation transmission to the main box. That starts the five-second clock running; if you don’t enter the right pin in that time, the alarm goes off.

“But what you can dobeforeyou open the door is transmit a constant frequency that jams the link between the door sensor and the box. The ‘door open’ message never gets through to the panel. He probably used a Hack-InRF—that’s the most popular system.”

“And you can just buy them?” Rhyme asked.

“Yep. Or make one, if you’re electronically inclined.” Morgenstern stopped the screen share and his face appeared once more in a larger window. He must’ve had thirty locks on his desk. Was picking a hobby for him? Rhyme wondered.

“Now, something you have to know. We’re pretty sure he’s done this before. Similar MO. Somebody at the Six House got a call. This was in February.”

Rhyme asked, “The Village?”

“Yeah. Greenwich Street. That one, a woman came home and found somebody’d been there. Moved things around. Pulled her bedsheets down. Ate some snack food.”

Rhyme asked, “And they were sure nobody had a key?”

“Correct.”

“Did he take any souvenirs or leave a message?”

“No.”

“Maybe a former romantic interest with a grudge,” Sachs suggested.

“The responding asked but there wasn’t anybody she could think of.”

Sachs asked, “Did the gold shield in that case send in ECTs?”

“No, Crime Scene wasn’t involved. The vic didn’t want to pursue it. And if you’re thinking of running it now, Amelia, the place’s been scrubbed. A while ago. She moved out a week after it happened—out of town in fact, she was so freaked. And it’s New York so there was a new tenant in, in about five seconds, freshly painted walls and steam-cleaned carpet.”

“Were those locks as tough as the ones this morning?” Rhyme asked.

“I don’t know. It was just an incident report, no follow-up, no investigation.” His eyes lowered and he read from a sheet of paper. “Now, the other one, March. Midtown South, off Ninth Avenue. This MO was closer to last night’s. A perp breaks into the vic’s apartment while she’s asleep. Rearranges her things, underwear and stuff. Get this, he made a goddamn sandwich and ate it. Well, ate half of it—to let her know what he’d done. Left the dirty plate on her bedside table.”

Sachs asked, “She slept through it too?”

“She was on some kind of mood drug, she said. And I’ll save you the breath. No ECTs, no investigation. And she was out of the place inthreedays. Only her sister had a set of keys, and they were accounted for. No exes as possible doers either.”

“Notice a trend?” Sellitto asked. “First victim, she wasn’t home. Second, she was but he didn’t play with knives and underwear. Lastnight: he left a newspaper with a possibly threatening message and he’s stepped up to flirting with sharp objects and lingerie.”

Rhyme asked, “You ever hear the nickname ‘the Locksmith’?”

“No, never.”

“That souvenir he left, theDaily Herald,” Sachs asked, “does it mean anything in the lock community?”

“That rag? Can’t imagine what. Maybe he just needed some stationery.”

“Where could we start looking for somebody had these skills?” Lon Sellitto asked Morgenstern.

“It’s a guy in the trade, you’re thinking. But probably not. For one thing, all the commercial locksmiths know they’re the first ones we’d look to when a perp is as sophisticated as this. Also, there’s a thing about tradesmen locksmiths. Pride in profession and that means not using their skills for illegal crap.