The Cold Moon

lately.
    Since seven were missing from the box, and the Autauga MkII pistol holds seven in a full clip, that was Rhyme’s best guess for the weapon, but the Beretta Tomcat, the North American Guardian and the LWS-32 were also chambered for those slugs. The killer could be carrying any of them. (If he was armed at all. Bullets, Rhyme pointed out, suggest but don’t guarantee that the suspect carried or owned a gun.)
    Rhyme noted that the slug was a 71-grain, big enough to do very serious damage if it was fired at close range.
    “On the board, rookie,” Rhyme commanded. Pulaski wrote as dictated.
    The book he’d found in the Explorer was entitled Extreme Interrogation Techniques and had been published by a small company in Utah. The paper, printing job and typography—not to mention the style of writing—were third-rate.
    Written by an anonymous author who claimed he’d been a Special Forces soldier, the book described using torture techniques that would ultimately result in death if the subject didn’t confess—drowning, strangulation, suffocation, freezing in cold water and others. One involved suspending a weight above a subject’s throat. Another, cutting his wrists and letting him bleed until he confessed.
    “Christ,” Dennis Baker said, wincing. “It’s his blueprint. . . . He’s going to kill ten victims like that? Sick.”
    “Trace?” Rhyme asked, concerned more about the forensic implications of the book than the psychological makeup of its purchaser.
    Holding the book over a large sheet of clean newsprint, Cooper opened every page and dusted each one to dislodge trace. Nothing fell out.
    No fingerprints either, of course.
    Cooper learned that the book wasn’t sold through the major Web-based or retail bookstore chains—they refused to carry it. But it was readily available through online auction companies and a number of right-wing, paramilitary organizations, which sold everything you needed to protect yourself from the scourge of minorities, the foreign-born and the U.S. government itself. (In recent years Rhyme had consulted on a number of terrorist investigations; many had been linked to al-Qaeda and other fundamentalist Islamic groups but just as many had involved domestic terrorism—a threat he himself felt was being largely ignored by authorities in this country.)
    A call to the publisher resulted in no cooperation, which didn’t surprise Rhyme. He was told they didn’t sell the book directly to readers and if Rhyme wanted to find out what retail outlets bought the book in quantity a court order would be necessary. It would take weeks to get one.
    “Do you understand,” Dennis Baker snapped into the speakerphone, “that somebody’s using this as a guidebook to torture and kill people?”
    “Well, that’s sort of what it’s for, you know.” The head of the company hung up.
    “Goddamn.”
    Continuing to look over the evidence, they learned that the grit and leaves and cinders that Pulaski had extracted from the grille, the tire treads and sideview mirrors were not distinctive. The trace in the back bed of the SUV revealed sand that matched what the prep had used as the obscuring agent in the Cedar Street alleyway.
    The crumbs were from corn chips, potato chips, pretzels and chocolate candy. Bits of peanut butter crackers too, as well as stains from soda—sugared, not diet. None of this would lead them to a suspect, of course, but it could be another plank in the bridge connecting a perp to the Explorer if they found one.
    The short cotton fibers—flesh-colored—were, as Pulaski suggested, similar to those shed by a generic brand of work gloves sold in thousands of drugstores, garden shops and grocery stores. Apparently they’d meticulously wiped the Explorer after they’d stolen it and worn gloves every time they were inside the vehicle.
    This was a first. And a reminder of the Watchmaker’s deadly brilliance.
    The hair from the headrest was nine inches long and was black with some gray in it. Hair is good evidence since it’s always falling out or is being pulled out in struggles. Generally it offers only class characteristics, though, meaning that a hair found at a scene will provide a circumstantial connection to a suspect who has similar hair, based on the color, texture, length or presence of dye or other chemicals. But hair generally can’t be individuated: that is, it can’t be linked conclusively to the suspect unless the follicle’s attached, allowing