Levine, in full nerd mode now, said with a conspiratorial whisper, “Oh, that Cray? The super box I mentioned? I told them we could lease out the time when we weren’t using it, but it was no to that too. A security thing, they said. But anybody could write script to firewall it. I could do that; you could do that. What they didn’t want to do—”

“Was write a check for two hundred and thirty-five K.”

“Exactly right.”

He wore a wedding ring, and she wondered if he inundated his spouse with nonstop tech recitations. Maybe she was a nerd too.

He continued to ramble, she continued to not listen. The time was 8:10.

The Watchmaker’s next deadline loomed.

A minute later, the door leading into the interior of the company opened with an electronic lock click, and a tall, lean man in his mid-thirties stepped out. He was gangly and dressed in orange jeans, a rust-colored T, blue running shoes.

“Detectives Sachs and Levine? Ben Emery.”

They shook hands.

She couldn’t help but notice that Emery’s eyes grew intrigued as they took in her face — then wistful when they arrived at her left hand and the wedding band. He gave the tiniest of shrugs and gestured them back into the bowels of the operation.

The place was cold and dim and filled with workstations dominated by monitors and pale beige boxes, all sprouting a million wires. The purposes of the devices were an utter mystery to her, and she was sure, even if Levine or Emery had explained the point of them, she would have understood nothing.

He led them down long corridors, offering details of what each department did, as if they’d asked. Levine nodded knowingly from time to time and asked enthusiastic questions.

Soon they arrived at a workstation in the back of the facility, that of a large man in a Hawaiian shirt, cargo pants and black flip-flops. He was Stanley Grier and he was the one who would be doing the forensic analysis and cracking the passcode.

She handed him the warrant she’d just gotten from a night-court magistrate. He scanned it, then pulled on latex gloves and took the bag from Sachs, checking the serial number of the computer to make sure the paperwork was in order. He extracted the unit, set it squarely in the center of his immaculate workstation. He put his name and signature on the chain-of-custody card.

“It’s been swept for explosives and radiation,” she said.

“Well, figured that. Okay. I’ll get to work and see what’s what. I’ll make a mirror, but I may have to open it up and pull the hard drive out.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “Though if it comes to trial, you may have to testify that you didn’t disturb any data.”

“Been there, done that,” Grier said.

A coughing fit took her and all three men glanced her way. It seemed that Levine and Emery were concerned for her, while Grier’s frown suggested that exhaled breath and spittle might infect the servers, as if she were spreading digital, not physiological, viruses. She didn’t explain about the toxin but concentrated on controlling the spasms.

“Are you...?” Emery began.

“Fine,” she said, a snipped word, though offered with a smile of thanks. “How long, do you think?” she asked Grier.

“No way of knowing. Was the owner a good guy or a bad one?”

“Bad.”

“Then he probably made the password rigorous.” A frown. “They tend to do that.”

She said, “We need to get the data. And ASAP. The vic — the victim — was working with the man who sabotaged that crane on Eighty-Ninth Street. There might be something in there about where the next attack’s going to be.”

“Well. Shit. That’s at ten, right?”

She nodded.

“I’ll get to it.” He grabbed a handful of cables and began plugging them into the laptop and his own workstation.

Emery saw them out of the building and with a last regretful look at the unavailable Amelia Sachs, he wished them a good day.

Outside, she took a call from Rhyme and nodded toward Levine, who reciprocated, walked to his PD car pool sedan and drove off, headed downtown.

“Rhyme.”

“I didn’t hear, so no miracles?”

“The computer? No. They just got started.”

“You okay to handle something?”

“Yes,” she said firmly.

He said nothing more about her condition. Then in a voice she thought was uncharacteristically mysterious he added, “Just to let you know: it’s a little odd.”

35

A news story.

Lincoln Rhyme had been inspired by a report on cable TV, which Sachs found amusing since he never watched the tube. And with Thom’s help, he’d formulated the “odd” task for her.

She now was playing it out, cruising slowly into a parking garage on the Upper East Side.

A hostile attendant approached, seeing the rattling muscle car, the garage being a fiefdom where renegade wheels were not welcome. Upon viewing the shield and ID, he retreated, though the scowl remained. She wondered if, on exiting, he’d charge her the $28.99 per hour. She guessed he would, her public service notwithstanding.

Rhyme’s theory had to do with who had really hired the Watchmaker for the crane sabotage, now that they believed it had nothing to do with striking a blow for reasonably priced housing.