The Broken Window

maybe Gordon was looking for that kind of dirt.
    “Anyway, while Sterling and some other people were out there negotiating the purchase of Rocky Mountain, this Gordon guy dies—an accident of some kind, I think. That’s all I heard. I wasn’t there. I was back in the Valley, writing code.”
    “And the acquisition went through?”
    “Yep. What Andrew wants, Andrew shall have. . . . Now, let me throw out one thought about your killer. Andrew Sterling himself.”
    “He has an alibi.”
    “Does he? Well, don’t forget he is the king of information. If you control data, you can change data. Did you check out that alibi real carefully?”
    “We are right now.”
    “Well, even if it’s confirmed, he has men who work for him and would do whatever he wants. I mean anything. Remember, other people do his dirty work.”
    “But he’s a multimillionaire. What’s his interest in stealing coins or a painting, then murdering the victim?”
    “His interest?” Geddes’s voice rose, as if he were a professor talking to a student who just wasn’t getting the lesson. “His interest is in being the most powerful person in the world. He wants his little collection to include everybody on earth. And he’s particularly interested in law enforcement and government clients. The more crimes that are successfully solved using innerCircle, the more police departments, here and abroad, are going to sign on. Hitler’s first task when he came to power was to consolidate all the police departments in Germany. What was our big problem in Iraq? We disbanded the army and the police—we should have used them. Andrew doesn’t make mistakes like that.”
    Geddes laughed. “Think I’m a crank, don’t you? But I live with this stuff all day long. Remember, it’s not paranoia if somebody’s really out there watching everything you do every minute of the day. And that’ s SSD in a nutshell.”

Chapter Twenty-four
    Awaiting Sachs’s return, Lincoln Rhyme listened absently as Lon Sellitto explained that none of the other evidence in the earlier cases—the rape and coin theft—could be located. “That’s fucking weird.”
    Rhyme agreed. But his attention veered from the detective’s sour assessment to his cousin’s SSD dossier, sitting beside him on the turning frame. He tried to ignore it.
    But the document drew him, needle to magnet. Looking at the stark sheets, black type on white paper, he told himself that, as Sachs had suggested, perhaps something helpful could be found in it. Then he admitted that he was simply curious.
    STRATEGIC SYSTEMS DATACORP, INC. INNERCIRCLE ® DOSSIERS
    Arthur Robert Rhyme
    SSD Subject Number 3480–9021–4966–2083
    Lifestyle
    Dossier 1A. Consumer products preferences
    Dossier 1B. Consumer services preferences
    Dossier 1C. Travel
    Dossier 1D. Medical
    Dossier 1E. Leisure-time preferences
    Financial/Educational/Professional
    Dossier 2A. Educational history
    Dossier 2B. Employment history, w/ income
    Dossier 2C. Credit history/current report and rating
    Dossier 2D. Business products and services preferences
    Governmental/Legal
    Dossier 3A. Vital records
    Dossier 3B. Voter registration
    Dossier 3C. Legal history
    Dossier 3D. Criminal history
    Dossier 3E. Compliance
    Dossier 3F. Immigration and naturalization
    The information contained herein is the property of Strategic Systems Datacorp, Inc. (SSD). The use hereof is subject to the Licensing Agreement between SSD and Customer, as defined in the Master Client Agreement. © Strategic Systems Datacorp, Inc. All rights reserved.
    Instructing the turning frame to flip through the pages, he skimmed the dense document, all thirty pages of it. Some categories were full, some sparse. The voter registration was redacted, and the compliance and portions of the credit history referred to separatefiles, presumably because of legislation limiting access to such information.
    He paused at the extensive lists of the consumer products bought by Arthur and his family (they were described by the creepy phrase “tethered individuals”). There was no doubt that anybody reading the dossier could have learned enough about his buying habits and where he shopped to implicate him in the murder of Alice Sanderson.
    Rhyme learned about the country club Arthur belonged to, until he had quit several years ago, presumably because he’d lost his job. He noted the package vacations he’d bought; Rhyme was surprised he’d taken up skiing. Also, he or one of the