The Cold Moon

anything.”
    After browsing a number of websites Cooper shook his head. “It’s a popular business. The big groups seem to be the Geneva Association of Watchmakers, Jewelers and Goldsmiths, the Association Interprofessionnelle de la Haute Horlogerie in Switzerland; the American Watchmakers Institute; the Swiss Association of Watch and Jewelry Retailers, also in Switzerland; the British Association of Watch and Clock Collectors; the British Horological Institute; the Employers’ Association of the Swiss Watch Industry; and the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industries . . . but there’re dozens more.”
    “Send them emails,” Sellitto said. “Ask about Duncan. As a watchmaker or collector.”
    “And Interpol,” Rhyme said. Then to Vincent: “How did you meet?”
    The man gave a rambling account about a coincidental, innocent meeting. Kathryn Dance listened and in her calm voice asked a few questions and announced that he was being deceptive. “The deal is you play straight with us,” she said, leaning forward. Her gaze was cool through her predator glasses.
    “Okay, I was just, like, summarizing, you know.”
    “We don’t want summaries,” Rhyme growled. “We want to know how the fuck you met him.”
    The rapist admitted while it was a coincidence, the meeting wasn’t so innocent. He gave the details of their initial contact at a restaurant near where Vincent worked. Duncan was checking out one of the men who’d been killed the previous day and Vincent had his eye on a waitress.
    What a pair, these two, Rhyme reflected.
    Mel Cooper looked up from the computer screen. “Getting some hits here . . . We’ve got sixty-eight Gerald Duncans in fifteen midwestern states. I’m running warrants and VICAP first then cross-referencing approximate ages and professions. You can’t narrow down the location any more?”
    “I would if I could. He never talked about himself.”
    Dance nodded. She believed him.
    Lon Sellitto asked the question that Rhyme had been about to. “We know he’s targeting specific victims, checking ’em out ahead of time. Why? What’s he up to?”
    The rapist answered, “His wife.”
    “He’s married?”
    “Was.”
    “Tell us.”
    “His wife and him came to New York on vacation a couple years ago. He was at a business dinner somewhere and his wife went to a concert by herself. She was walking back to the hotel on this deserted street and she got hit by a car or truck. The driver took off. She screamed for help but nobody came to save her, nobody even called the police or fire department. The doctor said that she probably lived for ten, fifteen minutes after she was hit. And even somebody who wasn’t a doctor could’ve stopped the bleeding, he said. Just a pressure point or something like that. But nobody helped.”
    “Run all the hospitals for admissions under the name Duncan, eighteen to thirty-six months ago,” Rhyme ordered.
    But Vincent said, “Don’t bother. Last year he broke into the hospital and stole her chart. The police report too. Bribed a clerk or something. He’s been planning this ever since.”
    “But why’s he picking these victims?”
    “When the police investigated they got the names of ten people who were nearby when she died. Whether they could have saved her or not, I don’t know. But Gerald, he convinced himself they could have. He’s spent the past year finding out where they live and what their schedules are. He needed to get them alone so they could die slowly. That’s the important thing to him. Like his wife died slowly.”
    “The man on the pier Tuesday? Is he dead?”
    “He’s gotta be. Duncan made him hold on and then cut his arms and just stood there watching him until he fell into the river. He said he tried to swim for a while but then he just stopped moving and floated under the pier.”
    “What was his name?”
    “I don’t remember. Walter somebody. I didn’t help him with the first two. I didn’t, really.” He glanced at Dance with fear in his eyes.
    “What else do you know about Duncan?” she asked.
    “That’s about it. The only thing he really liked to talk about was time.”
    “Time? What about it?”
    “Anything, everything. The history of time, how clocks work, about calendars, how people sense time differently. He’d tell me, like, the term ‘speed up’ comes from pendulum clocks. You’d move the weight up on the pendulum to make the clock run faster. ‘Slow down’—you moved the weight down