"Are you sure?" Sachs asked.

"Not positive, no. But I think we've got to ask him some more questions."

"Whatever he's up to, we better have him moved to level-three detention until we can figure it out."

Since he'd been arrested for only minor, nonviolent crimes Gerald Duncan would be in a low-security holding tank down on Centre Street. Escape from there was unlikely but not impossible. Rhyme ordered his phone to call the supervisor of Detention in downtown Manhattan.

He identified himself and gave instructions to move Duncan to a more secure cell.

The jailer said nothing. Rhyme assumed this was because he didn't want to take orders from a civilian.

The tedium of politics…

He grimaced then glanced at Sachs, meaning that she should authorize the transfer. It was then that the real reason for the supervisor's silence became clear. "Well, Detective Rhyme," the man said uneasily, "he was only here for a few minutes. We never even booked him."

"What?"

"The prosecutor, he cut some deal or another, and released Duncan last night. I thought you knew."

Lon Sellitto was back in Rhyme's lab, pacing angrily.

Duncan's lawyer, it seemed, had met with the assistant district attorney and in exchange for an affidavit admitting guilt, the payment of $100,000 for misuse of police and fire resources, and a written guarantee to testify against Baker, all the criminal charges were dropped, subject to being reinstated if he reneged on the appearance in court as a witness against Baker. He'd never even been printed or booked.

The big, rumpled detective stared at the speakerphone, glowering, hands on his hips, as if the unit itself were the incompetent fool who'd released a potential killer.

The defensiveness in the prosecutor's voice was clear. "It was the only way he'd cooperate," the man said. "He was represented by a lawyer from Reed, Prince. He surrendered his passport. It was all legit. He's agreed not to leave the jurisdiction until Baker's trial. I've got him in a hotel in the city, with an officer guarding him. He's not going anywhere. What's the big deal? I've done this a hundred times."

"What about Westchester?" Rhyme called into the speakerphone. "The stolen corpse?"

"They agreed not to prosecute. I said we'd help them out on a few other cases they needed our cooperation for."

The prosecutor would see this as a gold ring in his career; bringing down a gang of corrupt cops would catapult him to stardom.

Rhyme shook his head, livid. Incompetence and selfish ambition infuriated him. It's hard enough to do this job without interference from politicians. Why the hell hadn't anybody called him first, before releasing Duncan? Even before Kathryn Dance's opinion about the interview tape, there were too many unanswered questions to release the man.

Sellitto barked, "Where is he?"

"Anyway, what proof-?"

"Where the fuck is he?" Sellitto raged.

The prosecutor hesitated and gave them the name of a hotel in Midtown and the mobile number of the officer guarding him.

"I'm on it." Cooper dialed the number.

Sellitto continued. "And who was his lawyer?"

The assistant district attorney gave them this name too. The nervous voice said, "I really don't see what all the fuss-"

Sellitto hung up. He looked at Dance. "I'm about to push some serious buttons. You know what I'm saying?"

She nodded. "We've got fan-hitting shit out in California too. But I'm comfortable with my opinion. Do whatever you can to find him. I mean, everything. I'll give that same opinion to whoever you want me to. Chief of department, mayor, governor."

Rhyme said to Sachs, "See what the lawyer knows about him." She took the name, flipped open her phone. Rhyme knew of Reed, Prince, of course. It was a large, respected firm on lower Broadway. The attorneys there were known for handling high-profile, white-collar criminal defense.

In a grim voice Cooper said, "We've got a problem. That was the officer at the hotel suite, guarding Duncan. He just checked his room. He's gone, Lincoln."

"What?"

"The officer said he went to bed early last night, saying he wasn't feeling well and he wanted to sleep in today. Looks like he picked the lock to the adjacent room. The officer has no idea when it happened. Could've been last night."

Sachs pinched her phone closed. "Reed, Prince doesn't have a lawyer on staff with the name he gave the prosecutor. And Duncan isn't a client."

"Oh, goddamn," Rhyme snapped.

"All right," Sellitto said, "time for the cavalry." He called Bo Haumann at ESU and told them they needed to arrest their suspect yet again. "Only we aren't exactly sure where he is."

He gave the tactical officer the few details they had. Haumann's reaction, which Rhyme didn't hear, could nonetheless be inferred from Sellitto's expression. "You don't need to tell me,Bo."

Sellitto left a message with the district attorney himself and then called the Big Building to inform the brass about the problem.

"I want more on him," Rhyme said to Cooper. "We were too fucking complacent. We didn't ask enough questions." He glanced at Dance. "Kathryn, I really hate to ask this… "

She was putting away her cell phone. "I've already canceled my flight."

"I'm sorry. It's not really your case."

"It's been my case since I interviewed Cobb on Tuesday," Dance said, her green eyes cold, her lips drawn.

Cooper was scrolling through the information they'd learned about Gerald Duncan. He made a list of phone numbers and started calling. After several conversations he said, "Listen to this. He's not Duncan. The Missouri State Police sent a car out to the address on the license. It's owned by a Gerald Duncan, yeah, but not our Gerald Duncan. The guy who lived there was transferred to Anchorage for his job for six months. The house's empty and up for rent. Here's his picture."

The image was a driver's license shot of a man very different from the one they'd arrested yesterday.

Rhyme nodded. "Brilliant. He checked the paper for rental listings, found one that'd been on the market for a while and figured it wasn't going to rent for the next few weeks because of Christmas. Same as the church. And he forged the driver's license we saw. Passport too. We've been underestimating this guy from the beginning."

Cooper, staring at his computer, called out, "The owner-the real Duncan-had some credit card problems. Identity theft."

Lincoln Rhyme felt a chill in the center of his being, a place where in theory he could feel nothing. He had a sense that an unseen disaster was unfolding quickly.

Dance was staring at the still image of Duncan's face as intently as Rhyme stared at his evidence charts. She mused, "What's he really up to?"

A question they couldn't begin to answer.

Riding the subway, Charles Vespasian Hale, the man who'd been masquerading as Gerald Duncan, the Watchmaker, checked his wristwatch (his Breguet pocket watch, which he'd grown fond of, wouldn't fit the role he was about to assume).

Everything was right on schedule. He was taking the train from the Brooklyn neighborhood where he had his primary safe house, feeling anticipation and an edginess too, but nonetheless he was as close to harmony as he'd ever been in his life.

Very little of what he'd told Vincent Reynolds about his personal past had been true, of course. It couldn't be. He planned a long career at his profession and he knew that the mealy rapist would spill everything to the cops at the first threat.

Born in Chicago, Hale was the son of a high school Latin teacher (hence the middle name, after a noble Roman emperor) and a woman who was the manager of the petites department at a suburban Sears store. The couple never talked much, didn't do much. Every night after a quiet supper his father would gravitate to his books, his mother to her sewing machine. For familial activity they might settle in two separate chairs in front of the small television set and watch bad sitcoms and predictable cop dramas, which allowed them a unique medium of communication-by commenting on the shows, they expressed to each other the desires and resentments that they'd never have the courage to say directly.