The Broken Window

many efficient ways to get information nowadays—and I’ve heard nothing about any redheaded police officers gunned down by fellow law enforcers in Brooklyn.
    But at the least They’re afraid.
    They’d be edgy now.
    Good. Why should I be the only one?
    As I walk I reflect: How did this happen? How could it possibly have happened?
    This isn’t good, this isn’t good this this . . .
    They seemed to know exactly what I was doing, who my victim was.
    And that I was on the way to DeLeon 6832’s house at just that moment.
    How?
    Running through the data, permutating them, analyzing them. No, I can’t understand how They did it.
    Not yet. Have to think some more.
    I don’t have enough information. How can I draw conclusions if I don’t have the data ? How?
    Ah, slow down, slow down, I tell myself. When sixteens walk quickly they shed data, revealing all sorts ofinformation, at least to those who are smart, who can make good deductions.
    Up and down the gray, urban streets, Sunday no longer beautiful. An ugly day, ruined. The sunlight’s harsh and tainted. The city’s cold, its edges ragged. The sixteens are mocking and snide and pompous.
    I hate them all!
    But keep your head down, pretend to enjoy the day.
    And, most of all, think . Be analytical. How would a computer, confronted with a problem, analyze the data?
    Think. Now, how could They have found out?
    One block, two blocks, three blocks, four . . .
    No answers. Only the conclusion: They’re good. And another question: Who exactly are They? I suppose—
    I’m struck with a terrible thought. Please, no . . . I stop and dig through my backpack. No, no, no, it’s gone! The Post-it, stuck to the evidence bag, and I forgot to pull it off before I threw everything out. The address of my favorite sixteen: 3694-8938-5330-2498, my pet—known to the world as Dr. Robert Jorgensen. I’d just found where he’d fled to, trying to hide, and jotted it on a Post-it. I’m furious I didn’t memorize it and throw away the note.
    I hate myself, hate everything. How could I be so careless?
    I want to cry, to scream.
    My Robert 3694! For two years he’s been my guinea pig, my human experiment. Public records, identity theft, credit cards . . .
    But, most of all, ruining him was a huge high. Orgasmic, indescribable. Like coke or heroin. Taking aperfectly normal, happy family man, a good, caring doctor, and destroying him.
    Well, I can’t take any chances. I have to assume someone will find the note and call him. He’ll flee . . . and I’ll have to let him go.
    Something else has been taken away from me today. I can’t describe how I feel when that happens. It’s pain like fire, it’s fear like blind panic, it’s falling and knowing you’ll collide with the blurring earth at any moment but not . . . quite . . . yet.
    I blunder through the herds of antelope, these sixteens roaming on their day of rest. My happiness is destroyed, my comfort gone. Whereas just hours ago I looked at everyone with benign curiosity or lust, but now I simply want to storm up to someone and slice his pale flesh, thin as tomato skin, with one of my eighty-nine straight razors.
    Maybe my Krusius Brothers model from the late 1800s. It has an extra-long blade, a fine stag’s horn handle and is the pride of my collection.
    •   •   •
    “Evidence, Mel. Let’s look it over.”
    Rhyme was referring to what had been collected in the trash can near DeLeon Williams’s house.
    “Friction ridges?”
    The first items Cooper examined for fingerprints were the plastic bags—the one holding the evidence 522 had presumably intended to plant and the bags inside, containing some still-wet blood and a bloody paper towel. But there were no prints on the plastic—a disappointment, since it preserves them so well. (Often they’re visible, not latent, and can be observed withoutany special chemicals or lighting.) Cooper did find indications that the UNSUB had touched the bags with cotton gloves—the sort experienced criminals prefer to latex gloves, which retain the perp’s prints inside the fingers very efficiently.
    Using various sprays and alternative light sources, Mel Cooper examined the rest of the items and found no prints on these either.
    Rhyme realized that this case, like the others he suspected 522 was behind, was different from most in that it presented two categories of evidence. First, false evidence that the killer intended to plant to implicate DeLeon