The Broken Window

have a phone. He doesn’t trust them. But he knows my number. If we’re lucky he’ll call.”Sachs walked closer to the tiny device. “Mel. Cut the wire off. The antenna.”
    “What?”
    “Jorgensen said now that we’ve got the book, we’re infected too. Cut it off.”
    Cooper shrugged and glanced at Rhyme, who thought the idea was absurd. Still, Amelia Sachs didn’t spook easily. “Sure, go ahead. Just make a notation on the chain-of-custody card. ‘Evidence rendered safe.’ ”
    A phrase usually reserved for bombs and handguns.
    Rhyme then lost interest in the RFID. He looked up. “All right. Until we hear from him, let’s speculate. . . . Come on, folks. Be ballsy. I need some thoughts here! We’ve got a perp who can get his hands on all this goddamn information about people. How? He knows everything the fall guys bought. Fishing line, kitchen knives, shave cream, fertilizer, condoms, duct tape, rope, beer. There’ve been four victims and four fall guys—at least. He can’t follow everybody around, he doesn’t break into their houses.”
    “Maybe he’s a clerk at one of those big discount stores,” Cooper suggested.
    “But DeLeon bought some of the evidence at Home Depot—you can’t buy condoms and snack food there.”
    “Maybe Five Twenty-Two works for a credit card company?” Pulaski suggested. “He can see what people buy that way.”
    “Not bad, rookie, but some of the time the vics must’ve paid cash.”
    It was Thom, surprisingly, who provided one answer. He fished out his keys. “I heard Mel mention thediscount cards earlier.” He displayed several small plastic cards on his key chain. One for A&P, one for Food Emporium. “I swipe the card and get a discount. Even if I pay cash the store still knows what I bought.”
    “Good,” Rhyme said. “But where do we go from there? We’re still looking at dozens of different sources the victims and fall guys shopped at.”
    “Ah.”
    Rhyme looked at Sachs, who was staring at the evidence board with a faint smile on her face. “I think I’ve got it.”
    “What?” Rhyme asked, expecting the clever application of a forensic principle.
    “Shoes,” she said simply. “The answer’s shoes.”

Chapter Fifteen
    “It’s not just about knowing generally what people buy,” Sachs explained. “It’s knowing the specifics about all the vics and the fall guys. Look at three of the crimes. Your cousin’s case, the Myra Weinburg case and the coin theft. Five Twenty-Two not only knew the kind of shoe the fall guys wore. He knew the sizes.”
    Rhyme said, “Good. Let’s find out where DeLeon Williams and Arthur buy their footwear.”
    A fast call to Judy Rhyme and one to Williams revealed that the shoes were bought mail order—one through a catalog, one through a Web site, but both directly from the companies.
    “All right,” Rhyme said, “pick one, give them a call and find out how the shoe business works. Flip a coin.”
    Sure-Track won. And it took only four phone calls to reach somebody connected with the company, the president and CEO, no less.
    Water was sounding in the background, splashing, children laughing, as the man asked uncertainly, “A crime?”
    “Nothing to do with you directly,” Rhyme reassured him. “One of your products is evidence.”
    “But not like that guy who tried to blow up the airplane with a bomb in his shoe?” He stopped talking, as if even bringing this up was a breach of national security.
    Rhyme explained the situation—the killer’s getting personal information about the victims, including specifics about Sure-Track shoes, as well as his cousin’s Altons and the other fall guy’s Bass walkers. “Do you sell through retail locations?”
    “No. Only online.”
    “Do you share information with your competitors? Information about customers?”
    A hesitation.
    “Hello?” Rhyme asked the silence.
    “Oh, we can’t share information. That would be an antitrust violation.”
    “Well, how could somebody have gotten access to information about customers of Sure-Track shoes?”
    “That’s a complicated situation.”
    Rhyme grimaced.
    Sachs said, “Sir, the man we’re after is a killer and rapist. Do you have any thoughts about how he could’ve learned about your customers?”
    “Not really.”
    Lon Sellitto barked, “Then we’ll get a fucking warrant and take your records apart line by line.”
    Not the subtle way Rhyme would have handled it but the sledge-hammer approach