The Broken Window

predict behavior by sifting through mountains of data about customers collected by businesses. Called predictive analytics, this automated crystal ball gazing has become a $2.3 billion industry in the United States and is on track to reach $3 billion by 2008.
    —C HICAGO T RIBUNE

Chapter Eighteen
    They’re pretty big. . . .
    Amelia Sachs sat in Strategic Systems Datacorp’s sky-high lobby and reflected that the shoe company president’s description of SSD’s data mining operation was, well, pretty understated.
    The Midtown building was thirty stories high, a gray spiky monolith, the sides smooth granite flashing with mica. The windows were narrow slits, which was surprising given the stunning views of the city from this location and elevation. She was familiar with the building, dubbed the Gray Rock, but had never known who owned it.
    She and Ron Pulaski—no longer in play clothes but wearing a navy suit and navy uniform, respectively—sat facing a massive wall on which were printed the locations of the SSD offices around the world, among them London, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, Singapore, Beijing, Dubai, Sydney and Tokyo.
    Pretty big . . .
    Above the list of satellite offices was the company logo: the window in the watchtower.
    Her gut twisted slightly as she recalled the windows in the abandoned building across the street fromRobert Jorgensen’s residence hotel. She recalled Lincoln Rhyme’s words about the incident with the federal agent in Brooklyn.
    He knew exactly where you were. Which means he was watching. Be careful, Sachs. . . .
    Looking around the lobby, she saw a half dozen businesspeople waiting here, many of them uneasy, it seemed, and she recalled the shoe company president and his concern about losing SSD’s services. She then saw, almost en masse, their heads swivel, looking past the receptionist. They were watching a short man, youthful, enter the lobby and walk directly toward Sachs and Pulaski over the black-and-white rugs. His posture was perfect and his stride long. The sandy-haired man nodded and smiled, offering a fast greeting—by name—to nearly everybody here.
    A presidential candidate. That was Sachs’s first impression.
    But he didn’t stop until he came to the officers. “Good morning. I’m Andrew Sterling.”
    “Detective Sachs. This is Officer Pulaski.”
    Sterling was shorter than Sachs by several inches but he seemed quite fit and had broad shoulders. His immaculate white shirt featured a starched collar and cuffs. His arms seemed muscular; the jacket was tight-fitting. No jewelry. Crinkles radiated from the corners of his green eyes when that easy smile crossed his face.
    “Let’s go to my office.”
    The head of such a big company . . . yet he’d come to them, rather than having an underling escort them to his throne room.
    Sterling walked easily down the wide, quiet halls. He greeted every employee, sometimes asking questions about their weekends. They ate up his smiles at reports of an enjoyable weekend and his frowns at word of ill relatives or canceled games. There were dozens of them, and he made a personal comment to each.
    “Hello, Tony,” he said to a janitor, who was emptying the contents of shredded documents into a large plastic bag. “Did you see the game?”
    “No, Andrew, I missed it. Had too much to do.”
    “Maybe we should start three-day weekends,” Sterling joked.
    “I’d vote for that, Andrew.”
    And they continued down the hall.
    Sachs didn’t think she knew as many in the NYPD as Sterling said hello to in their five-minute walk.
    The decor of the company was minimal: some small, tasteful photographs and sketches—none in color—overwhelmed by the spotless white walls. The furniture, also black or white, was simple—expensive Ikea. It was a statement of some kind, she guessed, but she found it bleak.
    As they walked, she ran through what she’d learned last night, after saying good night to Pam. The man’s bio, patched together from the Web, was sparse. He was an intensely reclusive man—a Howard Hughes, not a Bill Gates. His early life was a mystery. She’d found no references at all to his childhood, or his parents. A few sketchy pieces in the press had put him on the radar at age seventeen, when he’d had his first jobs, mostly in sales, working door-to-door and telemarketing,moving up to bigger, more expensive products. Finally computers. For a kid with “7/8 of a bachelor’s degree from a night school,”