The Stone Monkey

never able to resist delivering a lesson in his craft. “Interesting thing about crime scene work—sometimes what you don’t find at a scene is as important as what you do find. I was looking at our evidence board and I realized that something was missing: Where was the evidence of the trucks for the immigrants? My INS friend told me that ground transport is part of the smuggling contract. But there weren’t any trucks. The only vehicle at the beach was Jerry Tang’s—to pick up the Ghost and his bangshou . Well, why no trucks. Because the Ghost knew the immigrants would never get to shore alive.”
    The line of boarding passengers was shrinking.
    Webley from State leaned down and whispered viciously into Rhyme’s face, “You’re in way over your head here, mister. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
    Rhyme gazed back at him in mock contrition. “Nope, I don’t know a thing. Not about world politics, not about les affaires d’état  . . . . I’m just a simple scientist. My knowledge is woefully limited. To things like, say, fake dynamite.”
    Which shut up Webley from State instantly.
    “This’s where I come in,” Dellray said. “Unfortunately for you folks.”
    Peabody cleared his throat uneasily. “What are you talking about?” he asked—but only because the script called for him to pose the question, the answer to which was the last thing in the world he wanted to hear.
    “The bomb in Fred’s car? Well, the results came back from the lab about the dynamite. Interesting—it wasn’t dynamite at all. It was sawdust mixed with resin. Fake. Used for training. My INS friend told me that Immigration has its own bomb squad and bomb training facility in Manhattan and he stopped by the place this morning. They have dummy explosives on hand to teach rookies recognition and handling. The sticks in Fred’s car match the samples from there. And the numbers on the detonator are similar to some he found in an INS evidence locker—they were confiscated last year when some agents arrested a dozen illegal Russian nationals in Coney Island.”
    Rhyme enjoyed the flicker of horror in Peabody’s eyes. The criminalist was surprised that Webley from State could still manage to look so indignant. “If you’re suggesting that anyone in the federal government would hurt a fellow agent—”
    “Hurt? How could a small detonator hurt anyone? It was just a firecracker, really. No, the important criminal charge I’d think of would be felonious interference with an investigation—because it would seem to me that you might’ve wanted Fred off the case temporarily.”
    “And why?”
    “ ’Cause,” white-suited Dellray took over, stepping forward, driving Webley from State against the wall, “I was makin’ waves. Gettin’ together the SPEC-TAC team. Whowoulda taken the Ghost out no nonsense, not pissin’ around like the INS folk were doing. Hell, I think that’s why I was on the case in the first place. I din’t know beans ’bout human smugglin’. An’ when I arranged for an expert—Dan Wong—to take over the case, next thing we know his butt’s on a plane headin’ west.”
    Rhyme summarized, “Fred had to go—so you could dispose of the Ghost the way you’d planned—catching him alive and getting him safely out of the country as part of a deal between the State Department and Ling in Fujian.” A nod toward the plane. “Just like what’s happened.”
    “I didn’t know anything about killing dissidents,” Peabody blurted. “That was never expressed to me. I swear!”
    “Watch it,” Webley from State muttered threateningly.
    “All they said was that they needed to keep the Justice Department minimized. There were important national security issues at stake. Nobody mentioned business interests, nobody mentioned—”
    “Harold!” Webley from State cracked the whip. Then he turned away from the sweaty bureaucrat to Rhyme and said in a reasonable voice, “Look, if—I’m saying if —any of this is true, you have to realize there’s a lot more to it than just this one man, Lincoln. The Ghost’s cover’s been blown. He’s not going to be sinking any more ships. Nobody’ll hire him as a snakehead after this. But,” the diplomat continued smoothly, “if we send him back, that’ll keep the Chinese happy. Beijing won’t crack down on the provinces and the end result’ll be a better economy for the people there. And with more American influence there’ll be improved human