The Cold Moon

another—harmless—reason for your behavior. You simply confess to the lesser crime, act contrite and they’re satisfied; you’re off the suspect list.
    At Duncan’s suggestion, Baker asked some officers about Sachs. He heard rumors that she’d been involved with a crooked cop and he’d ginned up an email from someone in the Big Building and used that as a reason to be spying on her. She wasn’t happy, but she didn’t suspect him of anything worse.
    “Here’s the plan,” Duncan now explained, showing him a diagram of an office building in Midtown. “This’s where the last victim works. Her name’s Sarah Stanton. She’s got a cubicle on the second floor. I picked the place because of the layout. It’ll be perfect. I couldn’t put one of the clocks there because the police announced the killer was using them—but I pulled up the time and date window on her computer.”
    “Good touch.”
    Duncan smiled. “I thought so.” The killer’s voice was soft, his words precise, but the tone was filled with the modest pleasure of an artisan showing off a finished piece of furniture or a musical instrument . . . or a watch, Baker reflected.
    Duncan explained that he’d dressed like a workman, waited until Sarahwent out then planted a fire extinguisher, filled with flammable alcohol. In a few minutes Baker was to call Rhyme or Sellitto and report that he’d found evidence of where the extinguisher bomb was planted. The ESU and bomb squad would then speed to the office, Amelia Sachs too.
    “I set the device up so that if she moves the extinguisher a certain way, it’ll spray her with alcohol and ignite. Alcohol burns really fast. It’ll kill or injure her but won’t set fire to the whole office.” The police, he continued, might even disarm the device and save the woman. It wouldn’t matter; all that Duncan cared about was getting Amelia Sachs into the office to search the scene.
    Sarah’s cubicle was at the end of a narrow corridor. Sachs would be searching it alone, as she always did. When she turned her back, Baker, waiting nearby, would shoot her and anybody else present. The weapon he’d use was Duncan’s .32 automatic, loaded with bullets from the same box he’d intentionally left in the SUV for the police to find. After shooting Sachs, Baker would break a nearby window, which was fifteen feet above an alleyway. He’d throw the gun out, making it seem as if the Watchmaker had leapt out the window and escaped, dropping the gun. The unusual murder weapon, linked to the rounds found in the Explorer, would leave no doubt that the Watchmaker was the killer.
    Sachs would be dead and the investigation into the corruption at the 118th Precinct would grind to a halt.
    Duncan said, “Let some other officers get to her body first but it’d be a nice touch if you pushed them aside and tried to resuscitate her.”
    Baker said, “You think of everything, don’t you?”
    “What’s so miraculous about timepieces,” Duncan said, gazing at the moon-faced clock, “is that none of them ever has more or fewer parts than is needed to do what the watchmaker intends. Nothing missing, but nothing superfluous.” He added in a soft voice, “It’s pure perfection, wouldn’t you say?”

    Amelia Sachs and Ron Pulaski were slogging through the cold streets of lower Manhattan, and she was reflecting that sometimes the biggest hurdles in a case weren’t from the perps but from bystanders, witnesses and victims.
    They were following up on one of the clues that had been uncovered in the church, receipts from a parking garage not far from the pier where thefirst victim had died. But the attendant was unhelpful. Lady, no, he no familiar. Nobody look like him I remember. Ahmed—maybe he saw him. . . . Oh, but he not here today. No, I don’t know his phone number. . . .
    And so it went.
    Frustrated, Sachs nodded toward a restaurant adjacent to the parking garage. She said, “Maybe he stopped in there. Let’s give it a try.”
    Just then her radio crackled. She recognized Sellitto’s voice. “Amelia, you copy?”
    She grabbed Pulaski’s arm and turned up the volume, so they both could hear. “Go ahead, K.”
    “Where are you?”
    “Downtown. The parking garage didn’t pan out. We’re going to canvass a couple of restaurants.”
    “Forget it. Get up to Three Two Street and Seven Avenue. Fast. Dennis Baker’s found a lead. Looks like the next vic’s in an office building there.”
    “Who is