Jeffery Deaver

Question: In this book, Lincoln Rhyme makes a decision about a new medical procedure he’ll undergo. You have often written about his spinal cord injury and the procedures he goes through to improve his situation and health. Is everything reality based? And if so, how do you keep up with the latest advancements in this field?

Jeffery Deaver: Lincoln is a forensic scientist, of course, and we can emphasize the second word in the description. He is constantly learning about the latest developments in the physical world as they relate both to his job as a crime fighter, and his condition as a quadriplegic. One of the astounding recent developments includes nerve and neuron transfers, which can restore some sensory and motor functions. These are real and, though not for every patient, can make huge differences in lifestyles. Lincoln, naturally, has been exploring if this treatment is something that will help him both as an investigator and as a patient. As for keeping up, well, that’s the work-a-day life of a writer, hours upon hours of research (which we authors love doing, by the way; going down rabbit holes of sources is a great excuse not only to gather information, but to delay sitting down for the arduous task of actually writing the book!).

Q: You introduce a very interesting new character, Detective Desdemona Vale. Who or what was your inspiration for her?

JD: One of the joys of writing is the creation of new characters—and for two reasons. One, we authors are curious about human nature and by “breathing life” into someone, we can explore aspects of people different from those of our existing characters. Two, as a thriller writer, I have to populate my books with appealing individuals whom I can threaten on every level! I want my readers to frantically flip through the pages to see what happens next. Des Vale is a complex woman—a mother and grandmother negotiating a difficult domestic scene and a dogged small-town cop. We’re rooting for her to succeed… and survive to the end of the book. Hm. I wonder if she does…

Q: The book mentions some of the AI systems that police are increasingly using, including a voice-activated LLM (large language model) that Lincoln uses. You don’t shy away from the pros and cons of them. What are your thoughts on these kinds of advancements in policing?

JD: AI and LLMs are here to stay, and any writer of contemporary police procedural fiction must take them into account. Law enforcement has always been on the cutting edge of technology (fingerprints have been in use to identify criminals since the 1880s), and these systems will be more and more integrated into policing with every passing month (well, at this rate, every passing day!). Like the use of autonomous weapons, their application in policing is controversial, as the devices take discernment and judgment away from humans. As ChatGPT and Claude admit, their results can be mistaken. That’s one thing if it occurs in a term paper about William Shakespeare; it’s quite another if the LLM identifies an innocent person as a murderer. By the way, AI also provides wonderful grist for thriller writers. For an example, see the book I just wrote with Isabella Maldonado, Face Last Seen, about how terrifying those autonomous weapons I just mentioned can be.

Q: Another new character introduced is Dr. James Harper, a historian and podcaster. You are a fan of podcasting, and you even share some of your favorite podcasts at the end of the book. Why do you think podcasts are a great way to inform or tell a story?

JD: I do indeed love podcasts. I’ve always listened to them and during the pandemic I spent hours and hours listening to topics like history, true crime, politics, and culture. Since they are so popular now, listened to by tens of millions, I got the idea: what if someone were inspired by a podcast to commit a crime? It was a perfect conceit, as every week there was a new installment on a theme—which is just the idea that the villain in my book seized on to terrorize New York City.

Q: If you had a podcast, what would the subject be?

JD: That’s a good question! I could do one about cooking, about true crime, about fiction, about movies… But since those topics are well covered by the pros, I’d probably stick to: “What Podcasts to Listen to While Walking Your Dogs.”

Q: My last question. There is a smaller storyline in the book about drug addiction, rehab, and the impact it can have on a family. It is very realistic and touching. Why did you decide to include that as part of this story?

JD: I tell my students that they should never get up on a soapbox and preach about political or social issues. (Samuel Goldwyn, the movie producer said, in paraphrase, if you want to send a message, go to Western Union.) But that doesn’t mean we should avoid important issues in our commercial fiction, just the opposite; they add resonance and heft to a book. We do, however, have to integrate them into the story in a dramatic way. Addiction and recovery, and resulting risk of domestic abuse, are situations that many people deal with—I’m sure that readers have far more personal experience with those topics than with serial killers and terrorists, so I wanted to explore the issues of the difficulty of confronting those challenges and the hope of redemption, as much as telling a tale of crime-solving.

Chapter One

Tuesday

Murderers didn’t usually prowl Tony Peretti’s suburban LA neighborhood, so why did a wave of concern course through him at the sight of someone approaching?

By the time Tony had come home late from work, darkness had fallen, casting the figure in shadow and increasing the sense of danger. He stood in his driveway, uncertain what to do.

The street was quiet. Everyone else had gone inside, probably getting ready for bed—he himself had stepped out to wheel the trash to the curb. He tended to forget the chore, as Chelsea good-naturedly reminded him.

Tony’s phone was in his pocket, but—though ever-vigilant and security minded due to the nature of his work—he was reluctant to hit 9-1-1 without an obvious threat. Embarrassment was more likely than becoming a crime victim.

The hairs on the nape of his neck had prickled as he was midway back to his home. Sensing someone watching, he’d whirled around to find a stranger moving in.

Tony darted a quick glance around for something to wield as a weapon. Even if he summoned the police, no responders could get here before the stranger attacked . . . Spotting nothing more dangerous than a trash bin and a sprinkler, he prepared to stand his ground. His career as an engineer at LIBX Technology made him more accustomed to using his brains than his questionable brawn.

Recalling fights he’d seen in movies, he bent his knees and raised his fists, assuming his best approximation of a fighter’s stance.

The man came closer. He held something bulky. What was it?

Tony had opened his mouth, prepared to shout at the stranger to back off, when the warning died on his lips.

The figure had stepped into the glow of the lights over the garage, revealing him to be Douglas Kowalski.

Not a stranger. Not a murderer. A friend.

Doug looked at the boxing stance and chuckled.

Tony nearly sagged with relief. “Didn’t expect to see you, Doug.”

His friend veered onto the sidewalk and headed for the front stoop. Tony could see now that the object the man was carrying was a brown grocery bag, which he set down beside the welcome mat.

Doug glanced his way, raised a finger, then trotted toward a car parked by the curb near the driveway’s entrance.

Tony recalled the last time his friend had dropped by, a month ago. Doug was going through a rough patch with his wife, and he’d needed some Peretti therapy—that is, drinking beer, eating chips and dip, and watching a movie with plenty of blood and guts and machine guns. A few car chases thrown in for good measure. Man stuff.

Doug hadn’t spoken about the home situation. Not part of the bro code. They’d spent a few hours reminiscing about college, trading jabs about sports teams and earning significant calories on snacks and Dos Equis.

Which was probably what was inside the bag.

Smiling, Tony remembered the fly-fishing rod he’d borrowed from Doug two months earlier. If he didn’t grab it now, the rod might stay in his garage forever. Tony walked to the open overhead door.

He hit the light switch and quickly found the rod leaning against the wall. Moments later, he’d made his way across the driveway and onto his front doorstep.

But Doug was nowhere in sight.

Suddenly a muscular arm slid around his throat, jerking him off his feet. His back slammed into the hard chest of a man who had soundlessly crept up behind him.

He tried to call out to Doug, but the crushing pressure against his windpipe stifled all sound. He struggled to twist away when a needle pierced the side of his neck with a hot sting.

He clawed at the forearm locked across his throat as darkness began to close in.

When his head rolled sideways, he caught a glimpse of his attacker’s shirt. The same shirt Doug had been wearing.

Jesus, had his friend snapped?

He slumped, feeling arms catching him. Lowering him to the ground.

What he saw next stole what little of his breath remained.

What . . . ?

An odd contraption a few feet away. Something he’d never seen in real life—just in movies or history books. He tried to bring order to the chaotic thoughts rushing through his brain as the world went black.

Couldn’t be . . .

But, yeah, the hand—Doug’s hand—was picking up what looked just like . . .

Just like a miniature guillotine.

Chapter Two

Wednesday

Agent Carmen Sanchez studied the woman’s face and body language.

The fear, the uncertainty.

Eyes jotting about. The slim woman with straggly blonde hair was wringing her hands. Knuckles red. Cuticles too.

Carmen had spoken with Emma Fuller twice on the phone, but this was their first meeting. They were standing in front of the Federal Infrastructure Agency in LA County, a nondescript headquarters in a deserted, tree-filled lot off a minor Southern Californian highway. Their outfits were both professional. Emma wore a blue skirt suit with a white blouse, while Carmen sported a black pantsuit with a gray crewneck top. Carmen’s jacket, however, was of a different cut. It was shaped to accommodate the bulge of the Glock in its Blackhawk holster on her right hip. She had them tailored. You couldn’t buy such garments off the rack, at least not where she shopped.

Emma’s trembling finger tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Thank you for coming out.” She licked her lips. “You’re the only one taking me seriously.”

“Have you been able to think of any reason someone would do this?” Carmen asked.

Emma shook her head. “I’ve been racking my brain, but I’ve got no clue what this means. That’s what makes the whole thing so creepy.”

They both glanced down at the reason for this morning’s urgent call.

A black butterfly had been stenciled on the concrete walkway.

Federal agents don’t deal with graffiti but, due to the circumstances, Emma had called the FBI, who punted it to DHS, who forwarded it to Carmen’s boss. Supervisory Special Agent Eric Williamson headed a pilot program designed to investigate micro threats—a term he used to describe small incursions that appeared insignificant, but had the potential for outsize impact on national security. His analogy was tiny metal fatigue cracks in jet engine fan blades. Catch and cure them fast, avoiding later catastrophe. When SSA Williamson assigned the case to her, he’d been equal parts skeptical and alarmed at the disturbing progression of what had started as a minor incident.

Carmen knelt to get a closer look. This wasn’t sloppy spray-painted tagging. The precise, crisp edges were perfect, likely from a laser-cut template. Squinting, she watched as a feather blown by a gentle breeze floated to the paint and stuck. Still tacky. The image had been created within the hour.

She let her gaze slowly travel over the walkway. There were no footprints or other signs of the perpetrator, who had painted the image on the sidewalk in front of the parking lot, right behind a sign indicating the space was reserved for the director.

“I’ll call Crime Scene,” Carmen said. “Maybe they can get something.” She didn’t add that she’d wanted to assess the situation before deploying resources. Emma returned to the office to collect copies of the threatening messages.

Her attention was drawn by a black Suburban pulling into the far end of the parking lot. The driver spotted her and steered her way.

The SUV parked about ten feet away, and Carmen joined the mountain of a man as he clambered out to greet her. Ordinarily, she would’ve handled this follow-up herself, but she’d opted to perform a full threat assessment given the suspect’s escalation, so she’d asked Liam Grange to meet her at the scene.

Grange was the tactical team leader for the Long Beach branch of another federal law enforcement agency. He’d recently been detailed to assist her outfit with a small contingent of his operators on an as-needed basis. And she’d decided adding a tac expert’s observations to her own was not a bad idea.

“What’s up, Sanchez?”

“Victim’s the director of the FIA.” She nodded at the signage. “She’s been getting emails on her home computer and on her work box. The messages started off kind of weird. ‘What’re you reading?’ ‘What’s on the agenda for today?’ They got more ominous. ‘You’d better make the right decisions next time.’ The last one was ‘This is your final warning.’”

“Decisions about what?”

“She has no clue. She supervises septic systems and air conditioners.” Carmen stepped a few feet away. “Each email ended with the image of a black butterfly, like that.”

He studied the stencil. “She have any idea what it means?”

“Nope. According to my quick research, butterflies are often symbols of transformation, but a black butterfly could refer to a transition from life to death.”

“No security guards?”

Carmen shook her head. “Too expensive. This place is low priority.”

“And yet someone breaks into a database to find the director’s personal and work email, then hacks the camera system, which should be secure. That’s sophisticated. She up to anything?” He paused a beat. “Claiming it’s some mystery person she made up while she pads government contracts?”

She caught the note of skepticism. “I had my doubts too. But after meeting her in person, I don’t think so.”

“This has stalker vibes. What about an ex?”

Carmen had already gone down that rabbit hole. “She’s not in a relationship and doesn’t use dating apps. Hasn’t had any bad breakups. And she was divorced—amicably—six years ago. No kids, no drama.”

Grange snorted. “No such thing as a drama-free divorce.”

“Sounds like you’ve got some battle scars.”

He gave her a side-eye.

“When we go in, you can get a read on the emails the unsub sent,” Carmen said. “And Jake and I . . .” Her voice faded.

“Jake’s not here,” Grange said quietly.

“Of course,” she said quickly, covering the awkward moment with a forced chuckle. “I know that. It was just . . . habit.”

They had taken a step toward the front entrance when with a massive bang something slammed into the side of the building about six feet away from them. An instant later, the thunderous report of a high-powered rifle split the air.

–

Read more of Face Last Seen when it is released in December.

“Readers will get precisely what they crave: they’ll be kept in suspense, blindsided by unexpected twists, and think they know exactly what’s going on . . . until they realize they don’t. Another brilliantly constructed thriller from a masterful storyteller.”
— Booklist

“This series continues to reign supreme, and Deaver’s creation, Lincoln Rhyme, still fascinates with his superior intellect trapped in a body that cannot move. Like all Deaver novels, the storyline and details are never straightforward, and the twists and turns will keep any reader wondering what’s really happening up to the very last word.”
— Jeff Ayers, First Clue Reviews

“[What] shines is Deaver’s masterful handling of forensics. Both the clues unearthed by Amelia Sachs, Rhyme’s partner and wife, and the patterns that emerge from them are diabolically clever in a way that leaves Deaver’s competitors in the dust.”
— Kirkus

“got to love Jeffery Deaver’s combination of Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs. The brilliant Rhyme, a forensic criminalist who is paralyzed and bedridden and has only his mind that works. Sachs, an intrepid and brave and beautiful detective, is his eyes and ears (and legs) out on assignment. It is touching and clever, as Lincoln teaches Amelia his skills, and she teaches him compassion. Deaver’s newest, The Collateral Heart, is the seventeenth, which proves the endless appeal of this iconic pairing.”
— Hank Phillip Ryan, Criminal Element

Chapter 1

Wouldn’t you know it? The risk that finally caught up with him wasn’t the one he was expecting.

Oh, he knew his life was constantly in danger.

Daily.

Hourly.

Billy Welsh could be moving from car to car during a red light in the middle of Broadway, armed with his squeegee, enduring the wrath of drivers while he hoped for the one, just one, who might nod thanks for the spotless windshield and hand over a single or, man, five dollars . . . when, wham, a texting driver would take him out. Driving at thirty or forty could be plenty lethal.

He could be drawing very bad chalk pictures of cats and superheroes on the sidewalk (that usually got him coins). And some psycho dude would gut him because God had declared Billy was a “Satan-izer.” A term a man had actually used during such an encounter on Fifty-seventh Street.

He could get cut or earn a beatdown simply for selling stuff. The Senegalese bosses could snap because Billy’s selling pencils and kitchenware and shoelaces somehow competed with knockoff Kate Spade purses and fake Tommy Bahama shirts. Billy was skinny and had a tricky heart, which could probably be beaten to silence by a few firm blows.

All risks.

And there were others too.

But, stretching, waking up in this deserted building in Spanish Harlem—east—Billy had to take the chance.

Rent didn’t pay for itself.

A funny expression he used a lot. Funny, since he was homeless.

On this day, already proving hot, he needed money and not for rent.

Something real.

Something important.

Something for which the risk was worth it.

And that meant leaving the security of his home.

The Abernathy and Ca Building.

The old manufacturing place, where the last letters of the second owner’s name, or whatever it might be, had worn away.

Campbell. Canton. California. Carter . . . Cadaver . . . Ha.

Billy liked it here. The crews didn’t come around much, at least not to the second floor, up the narrow stairway. The crazies either.

He could stay in bed, unimpeded, and dwell on his finances and his brief marriage that had been doomed to end from the moment it had begun. But also happier memories like his childhood cat, a TV show where he was almost an extra, and his two Employee of the Month stars.

Gretta, of course, his ex, showed up in the second category sometimes.

Will always did.

And he wondered yet again how his mind had kind of deflated.

The wiring, some doctor had called it. The diagnosis seemed . . . What was the word? Flipper. Flipping. Flippant. That was it. The city hospital ER medico had sent him to Psych, whispering to the nurse, “He’ll be okay, just some fucked-up wiring.”

He decided to risk the Senegalese today and infringe on their territory and stake out his claim as  the Walmart of 125th Street.

Risk . . .

He peed in his bucket. Washed his hands and brushed his teeth with park water from a bottle. Real toothpaste. Then began gathering the merchandise. Statues, a food scale, a set of baby utensils in the shape of SpongeBob (only the unopened ones sold), books, shoe polish, dishes with cartoon characters, dishes with rainbows, dishes with unicorns . . . About twenty-five pounds of merch.

Into the shopping bag they went. Including the gray blanket he had owned for twenty-two years, which he would spread out as his showroom floor.

How much could he make?

His goal was twenty-nine dollars.

Which is what the present cost. The present for his son, whose sixth birthday was on Saturday.

Will lived with his mother. A woman who had not lost her job. And had not gone bankrupt by taking out payday loans. Who had not been evicted in some funky legal maneuver because somebody wanted a five-million-story high-rise on the site of his basement studio.

A pretty woman Gretta was, and one now married to a man with fully functioning  wiring.

Ah, his life would change.

Things would change.

He knew it.

He’d fought his way up before and he would do so again.

But first, priorities: a Disney toy purchased from the real Disney Store in Times Square, not dusty and smeared and bought from a guy like himself, off a two-decade-old, gray blanket spread on the sidewalk. A new toy in a new box.

Billy Welsh, who had been valedictorian in a Midwest middle school, where class ranking didn’t count, and in the bottom third in high school, where it did, picked up the shopping bag and started toward the stairs.

When the unexpected risk caught up to him.

Not crazies, not crews, not bosses—I got Bahama, I got Dolce, I got Spade. . . .

But smoke.

Billy lived up here, higher in the building  because it was safer.

But that also meant it would take a few minutes longer to escape.

If there were, for instance, a fire.

He felt heat and saw sparks in the stairwell nearest him.

No!

He grabbed the bag with his money. He grabbed his drawing chalk and his squeegee but left the sales inventory shopping bag and hurried to the stairwell.

Smoke was everywhere now.

Out, get out.

Coughing.

Sparks and heat, rising fast.

Fire in his beloved Abernathy and Ca home was not supposed to be a risk.

This was not the way he would die. . . .

A cut throat, yeah, or a pounded heart, or the wiring just giving out because it was too much work for his poor, badly wired brain.

But not fire.

Where were the exits?

Only the back door, the one chained but with a gap big enough for an emaciated frame like his to fit through. The front was nailed shut, like the fire exits. One never needed to worry about escaping from a building that no one was supposed to be in, in the first place.

Weird. The smoke didn’t move; it was simply just there, filling the hallway and growing thicker and thicker.

Choking hard.

He glanced out a window. Ground floor ones were boarded over. But here, the second floor? It would mean a thirty-foot jump onto rubble from which rebar rods poked high into the air.

Skewers.

No, he had to get out another way.

Coughing and spitting smoke crud from his mouth. There were flecks of something suspended in the dark cloud. Bits of rubber or plastic. That would be what was burning, he guessed. Some crap on the floor that Mr. Abernathy and Mr. Ca illegally—by today’s standards—had constructed their otherwise fine factory with.

He startled as something hit his foot.

Glancing down. A huge rat was fleeing too.

Think, he told himself.

Which was so hard.

Add facing burning to death to that, his brain began to spin wildly. It wanted to shut down.

Control it!

For a moment, at least he did.

Sirens. So people were on their way.

But they wouldn’t know anyone was here. Maybe, since it was abandoned they would just let it burn. Let the flames do the work that was going to get done anyway—the A and C building wouldn’t last forever. Time to move on.

Get to the roof!

Yes, fire travels upward, but at least there, there would be some fresh air to gulp. They’d see him. And while he’d be fifty feet in the air, those fire people had hooks and ladders or cranes. And they would lift him and his chalk and present-money and squeegee to safety.

Into the stairwell, coughing, choking, spitting . . .

The smoke was not as thick here and he could see above him the door.

Roof Access

Billy staggered up. And gripped the knob. He pulled.

It was locked. He tugged hard. Didn’t budge. He tried again and his sweating hand slipped off the knob. He stumbled and his chalk fell. His bag of money too, mostly coins. They danced and spun down the stairs. . . .

No!

His money . . . Will’s Disney money . . .

Billy Welsh gripped the only tool he had—the squeegee—and brought it down on the knob.

Nothing happened.

Risk . . .

He began pounding once more.

Chapter 2

“How’d it go? I let myself in.”

“I assumed,” Lincoln Rhyme said to Lon Sellitto. “Since voilà. Here you are. How did it go? It went.”

Amelia Sachs, ever less abrupt than her husband, offered, “Went well, Lon. Very well. She’s one of the top neuro specialists in the world.” The tall, lean redhead tugged off her jacket and hung it on a hook. The Glock snapped from the Blackhawk OWB, outside-the-waistband, holster and went onto a shelf. People, she had told Rhyme, just didn’t appreciate how uncomfortable it was to tote around a six-gun. Or, in this case, a seventeen-gun. Rhyme took her word for it, not having carried a weapon on belt or under arm in decades.

Rhyme wheeled his elaborate chair farther into the parlor in the front of his Central Park West town house, a structure dating to Victorian times, a convenient reference point though the queen had little if anything to do with boisterous New York City back in the day.

While Sachs was in work clothes—black slacks and a white blouse, accessorized by the now-empty holster, Rhyme was in what he usually wore. Sweatpants and a pullover black sweater. It had a high collar and his aide, Thom Reston, knowledgeable about fashion as with so many other things, had said he resembled a beatnik.

A frown in response. “A what?”

“Beatnik. A cool guy from the fifties? Poetry, pot, protest. The beat movement? Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg?”

“Ah,” Rhyme said, overly unenthusiastic. “A cultural reference. Therefore why would I know or care?” His philosophy working as a criminalist or, well, his philosophy about everything, was that if a fact did not relate to an immediate problem he was solving, it was as pointless as a spring breeze. The example he cited: he had once deduced that a drummer for a quasi-popular rock group had lied about his whereabouts when his girlfriend had vanished because Rhyme had found that the man’s snare drum’s tension rods had not been tightened, though he claimed he’d been home practicing; one does not play a drum at any time, concert, rehearsal or practice, without tightening the rods.

This was an acceptable application of culture.

Thom had accompanied Rhyme and Sachs, married some years now, to the doctor’s appointment at the superb Langone medical center in Midtown Manhattan. He remained unresponsive to the inquiry by Sellitto, who was presently helping himself to what Rhyme guessed was his second, or third, cup of coffee from the carafe Thom had left out. A cookie too. Rhyme heard the aide’s pastries were superb. He enjoyed the man’s cooking but with no sweet tooth he couldn’t comment on the dolce.

“Lincoln’s a good candidate for procedures. They ran a Britannica’s worth of tests.”

Rhyme grumbled, “It was exhausting.”

His resting state always bordered on curmudgeonly, but he was in fact pleased, if not elated, at what had transpired during the appointment. Handsome by many accounts with a full head of dark hair and prominent nose, Rhyme was a quadriplegic, injured at a crime scene some years ago. Though the injury was classified as “incomplete,” he was still largely paralyzed from the neck down. Twenty-first-century America saw spinal cord injuries galore from military service, automobiles and bicycles and construction work and rock climbing and skateboards and dozens of other sources. Nearly twenty thousand occurred each year. Presently a quarter million people had serious SCIs. The medical community was forever working hard to improve their patients’ condition. While there was no fix yet to allow those with serious conditions like Rhyme’s to walk, advancements were constantly being announced: efforts to rewire nerves and incorporate prosthetics that could be controlled by the patients themselves—either through movement of muscles connected to surviving nerves or, astonishingly, through “thinking” the limbs and appendages into moving, just like those without a disability. Rhyme had regained use of his right arm and hand (joining his left ring finger, which, for some reason, had retained mobility from the beginning).

It was even possible to do what had long been considered way out of reach: restore sensation to parts of the body. Ninety percent of Lincoln Rhyme had been numb since the accident. The advantage was the absence of pain, of course, but anyone craving the pleasure and comfort and contentment of touch will tell you that this was no advantage at all.

Sachs continued, explaining to Sellitto that Dr. Yang used brain–­computer interfacing, spinal cord stimulation and the complex process of what she wryly dubbed “nerve stealing,” actually rerouting nerves to make the nonfunctioning portions of the body work. “She’ll go through the results and let us know.”

Sellitto was nodding. “That’s good, Linc. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”

The detective was a large man, forever battling his weight. Rhyme wasn’t sure why he bothered unless it was a health issue. Then, there was the issue of garments. It seemed he bought clothing that was resistant to an iron’s touch—he was constantly disheveled.

The two men used to be partners, in the days before Rhyme ascended to run the NYPD’s crime scene operation and he sometimes wondered if Sellitto’s look was intentional, calculated to put suspects at ease, give them a sense of confidence and superiority—lowering their defenses, so that he could lunge like a fencer, destroy their phony stories and skewer them into confessing.

Today the rumpled attire was gray—a slightly too large suit, maybe indicia of him dropping a few pounds. The shade was light. Wouldn’t darker be aesthetically safer with wrinkles? A white shirt. He wore a tie too and Rhyme knew it would be a clip-on. His street-fighting days were largely over, but he still followed the practice of some gold shields who wore fake ties so a perp couldn’t grab attached neckwear in a fight.

Thom, slim and dressed in opposition to Sellitto, was in a perfectly pressed pair of Italian slacks and powder-blue dress shirt, smooth as Sheetrock—and a real tie. He poured coffee for the couple. Rhyme could manage holding a mug, but drinking was easier with a straw and tumbler in the cupholder, and he was tired from the battery of tests. He thanked the aide and then turned back to his former partner.

“To what do I owe, et cetera, et cetera,” Rhyme began, in fact quite pleased to see the man. Sellitto was not known for social calls (unpleasant creatures, in Rhyme’s thinking), so the detective’s presence meant a case was in the offing.

A case in turn meant challenges to meet, questions to be answered and, accordingly, boredom to be pinned dead to an examination board like a moth.

And, of course, it meant the noble act of taking a criminal off the street. That too.

Sellitto looked to Sachs and Rhyme. “You ever heard of McGuire OLS?”

Rhyme shook his head. Sachs said, “I haven’t either. And I’m not feeling witty enough to make any cute plays on acronyms.”

Rhyme thought of a couple. He kept quiet.

The detective began, “It’s a New York–based company. In the news a lot recently. You’ve never heard of this, Linc. The letters stand for open language search. There’s this thing called large language models. I can—”

In a slightly louder voice than he’d been using, Rhyme recited, “LLM. What is McGuire OLS?”

Suddenly, bringing blink of surprise to Sellitto’s face and a smile to Sachs’s, a disembodied, male voice from the heavens began to speak: “That’s an excellent question and one I can definitely help you with. McGuire OLS, incorporated as McGuire Open Language Search, Inc., is a large language model service company. It was founded a year ago by Edward McGuire as a spin-off from McGuire Computer Services, of which he is CEO. Their product is OLS, trademarked, a search engine. Large language models are a type of artificial intelligence that have been trained to understand and generate human language or visuals in response to text or other input, through the process of inference. Millions or billions of parameters that make up the models are what lead to the ‘large’ designation.

“Often large language models don’t perform internet searches on their own—but they can help or enhance searches in several ways when interfacing with tools or systems that do have internet access integrated. OLS is considered unique in that its algorithms feature proprietary search refinement criteria. Would you like me to explain further and give examples?”

“No,” Rhyme told it.

“Holy shit,” Sellitto muttered, glancing skyward, where the speakers nestled.

Rhyme had to chuckle. “And the irony is it’s a large language model that’s telling us about another large language model. I wonder if it’s jealous.”

“You actually use that thing?”

“You think, Lon, because I act like Sherlock Holmes, I’m forever trapped in the nineteenth century?”

“Yeah, I kinda do.”

“The only problem is the first damn sentence. Like it’s trying to be my new best friend. Somebody at tech is working on it.”

Rhyme and Sachs had always believed in using the most cutting-edge tools available to forensic scientists and artificial intelligence and large language models were simply examples of these, like electron microscopes and DNA analyzers. The pair didn’t hesitate to use them, though always with a degree of skepticism. Like Wikipedia or a preliminary crime scene report or canvass result, you had to treat them as merely starting points.

Sachs said, “Lon, it’s the NYPD’s LLM system. It’s experimental. But you should try it. I’ll send the link.”

“So, it’ll tell me if it was Petey Soames or Leon Brown who emptied his Glock at OG Van Ness on Fourteenth Street at ten p.m. on Saturday?”

Rhyme considered. “If the input’s right, yes. Data’s everything, Lon.”

A skeptical smile. Then, eyes on the speaker, Sellitto asked, “You call it LLM. No name.”

“It’s a computer, Lon, not a fuzzy dog. So, now we’re all experts at McGuire and his company. Let’s move on. You’re here why?”

“Well, this morning, somebody tried to assassinate McGuire.”

“Where?” Sachs asked.

“Manhattan. Near a customer’s office. Perp followed him. Had been for some days.”

Rhyme: “Method? A firearm?”

A nod. “Handgun. Five rounds, old wheel gun. One bum primer, four misses. From twenty feet. Amateur. Shooter didn’t know what he was doing.”

Rhyme had never been a gun person. He carried a sidearm when he was with the department and he had access to one now, but found guns would get in the way in searching scenes. He knew, though, that revolvers were notoriously inaccurate when you just tugged the trigger repeatedly—double action, as opposed to cocking the hammer back first—single action shooting, as it was known. That undoubtedly was how the assassin, probably in a panicked frenzy, would have fired.

“You said he’d been stalking McGuire. And ‘assassinate.’ So I assume it was something ideological, not road rage or a romantic triangle.”

“Right, the perp was a crank. Thomas Elron Olsen. Thirty-one. He sent dozens of emails a day to the company and McGuire personally and published manifestos.” The detective looked at his phone. “Here’s part of one: ‘You’re destroying the environment with your data farms upstate! And in South America, Central America, Africa and India you rape the land for materials for your chips. Every day the world dies a little more, thanks to you. Your day is coming.’ ”

Rhyme said, “Let me see the post.”

Sellitto displayed the screen.

“Good grammar, punctuation. No fan of the Oxford comma.”

“Professional student. And graduate assistant at Columbia and NYU.”

“And what’s the thing about data farms?” Sachs asked.

Sellitto told Rhyme something he had not known. “There’s a movement that thinks artificial intelligence servers—where they crunch the data—are bad. They use massive amounts of energy—so much so that they contribute to greenhouse gases. They also need huge supplies of water and screw up local communities and wildlife preserves. It’s not proven, but when has that ever stopped anybody? People try to move away from the farms, but nobody’ll buy their houses. And then the equipment gets outdated pretty damn fast. That means the old servers are just e-waste. They have to be dumped but they’re full of heavy metal and toxins and that ruin the land.”

Rhyme cut a glance to Sachs, who lifted an eyebrow. Maybe they’d have to look into their own LLM’s environmental responsibility. He wondered whether the thing would be honest if they posed the question if it was a danger to the environment.

Sellitto continued, “And the second part of Olsen’s rant? The chips? A lot of the raw materials for AI computer chips come from exploited Third World countries. I don’t really know about that either, but whatever, he was upset enough about it to point a .38 Special at somebody and pull the trigger. So.” He dug into another cookie. When the chewing was done: “Why I’m here. You free now to lend a hand?”

He was and said so.

Sellitto sent and received some texts and then gave Sachs information. She sat down at one of the computers where they stood, at sat: in the non-sterile side of the parlor—the lab was on the other, separated by Plexiglas.

After a few minutes, a Zoom call was underway.

“Mr. McGuire,” Sellitto said, speaking to the man filling the high-def monitor on the wall near the trio. He was, literally, larger than life. “This is Captain Rhyme and Detective Sachs.”

Younger than Rhyme would have thought, though he guessed all Silicon Valley–ish people were around the CEO’s age—mid-thirties. A head of tousled dark red hair. He was wearing a T-shirt with the name and faded art of some rock group on it. His background was a tall bookshelf packed with titles that Rhyme could not make out.

“Hello, Detective. Captain Rhyme. I mean, I’ve heard of you, of course.”

He and Sachs nodded in greeting. And Rhyme had the definite impression that the computer man wasn’t pleased to be in the meeting. “I’ve gotta say, like I was telling Detective Sellitto, I really don’t think we need to make that big a deal of it all. I’d like to put it behind me. I’ve got so much work to do.” He did, in fact, seem truly harried: tired, red eyed, wrinkled shirt and a desk piled high with file folders.

Sellitto said, “Still a crime, Mr. McGuire, and we need to follow up.”

“I understand,” he said sourly. “But …”

A man is nearly killed and he doesn’t want an aggressive investigation?

Ah, then Rhyme wondered if there was a logic to his attitude. Maybe the last thing he wanted was to draw the public’s attention to the environmental issues surrounding data farming—which they might not otherwise know about.

An aide walked into the scene—a businessman in the traditional sense, Wall Street, with dark suit and white shirt and tie, trim hair—and whispered something. McGuire nodded. The man vanished. The CEO looked back to the camera.

Sachs asked, “Could you give us the details, please.”

“All right. I was going to a meeting with one of our suppliers, a software security company. It’s in downtown Manhattan, not far from City Hall. I got out of the limo and was about ten feet from the door when this man runs up and fires a pistol at me. Just bang bang bang. A revolver. An old one, I think. Like that guy had in Pulp Fiction.”

He exhaled and his face looked hollow. “Life flashing before your eyes. That kind of thing. I just froze. And it was so friggin’ loud. I mean, I felt that punch in my chest and jaw. That’s why I thought I’d been shot. It was just the muzzle blast or whatever you call it.

“Then it was over. Seconds. His eyes were so . . . He was so angry and it just wasn’t fair. I mean, our data farms are smaller than Anthropic and OpenAI. And we meet all the zoning and environmental regs.”

“What about the mining, the Third World countries?”

“Oh, you saw his email about the chips?” he scoffed. “We source most of it from U.S. mines and if we buy anything from overseas, it’s all open-market negotiations. We pay a shitload of money. There’s no exploitation. I think he’s gone down rabbit holes on the internet. Once a nut gets a bee in their bonnet somebody’s the villain, you can’t stop them.”

It was then that Rhyme’s phone, sitting on the work platform of his chair, hummed. A screen popped up. It was a text from Ron Pulaski, a patrol officer who frequently worked with them. He was a good cop in all aspects of the job, but he truly shone as  a crime scene officer. Rhyme had basically designated him to be his successor.

The message read:

Arson in Spanish Harlem. Thought you’d be interested: perp sent a message, I think. And looks like he might have more fires in mind.

This intrigued Rhyme.

He texted back.

Picture of “message”?

Rhyme looked back at the screen. McGuire was reiterating that he really wanted to treat  the whole thing as a fluke, a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. “I understand you’ve got official stuff you need to do, but it’s a really busy time for us right now.”

Rhyme’s attention wavered once more when he received another photo, sent by Pulaski from the scene in Spanish Harlem. It was of a box, a fireproof one like the kind people store important documents in. It looked relatively new and painted on the top, in the color of dried blood, brown red, or maybe in blood itself, Rhyme reflected, was the numeral 1.

He turned the phone toward Sachs, who frowned as she read the missive. Then glanced at Rhyme before returning to the video call.

And looks like he might have more fires in mind. . . .

Rhyme said, “So you’ve got a BOLO out on Olsen. Any sightings?”

A “be on the lookout” alert was like the old-time all-points bulletin. Rhyme was never sure why the change. He then noted that McGuire was frowning.

So was Lon Sellitto. As if he’d just remembered something, the detective muttered, “Oh, I didn’t say? Olsen’s dead.”

McGuire was saying, “My security man got him. Three shots in the head.”

Rhyme gave an exaggerated frown, directing it toward Sellitto. “Dead. Clearly deceased.”

“Doornail,” Sellitto said.

“Then what exactly would you like me for, if you have the perp discovered, arrested, convicted and executed—all in the space of, what was it, Lon, three minutes?”

McGuire gave an I-told-you-so shrug.

Sellitto muttered defensively to Rhyme and Sachs, “We’re thinking maybe he’s part of a movement. A conspiracy. It oughta be uncovered.”

“But online, right?”

“Mostly, I guess, yeah.”

“And we’re supposed to do what, Lon? Sit here and read emails? There’s no crime scene to search, no PE to analyze—I’m really not at my best without trace, fibers, dirt and fingerprints, now, am I?”

“Well . . .” Sellitto was looking down at his phone.

Rhyme’s mobile hummed with another text. A frown.

It was from the detective, three feet away.

What was this?

He read:

City Hall wants to keep people like McGuire happy—make sure companies headquartered in NYC stay here.

Jesus Christ . . .

Rhyme looked at the Zoom screen. “Mr. McGuire, I think we’re in agreement here, pretty much case closed. If you hear anything from Olsen’s associates or get any other clues about this conspiracy, more threats, give us a call. But we just got an emergency notification for another case. That needs looking into.”

“Absolutely, Captain Rhyme, Detective Sachs. Good luck. And if you ever need any AI work, we’re the best in the business.”

They disconnected.

“Look, Linc, I just do what I’m told.”

“I only have one thing to say, Lon.” He nodded to his phone where the text he’d just received sat. “‘Headquartered’ is not a verb.” He tilted his head toward the phone and said firmly, “Call Ron Pulaski.”

–

Read more of The Collateral Heart when it is released in November.

Listen to an excerpt from the audiobook, read by Aida Reluzco and Andre Santana.

Chapter 1

Saturday, June 20

The man cast his dark eyes approvingly over the bride’s white satin dress.

He thought of it as a blank canvas soon to be painted—with the vermilion hue of blood.

In his thirties and handsome in an action hero sort of way, Damon Garr stood on the back lawn of the Hollywood Crest Inn, facing the 1930s stucco structure, as he studied the newlyweds bidding farewell to the guests at their reception.

The Brock party . . .

The time was close to midnight. The musicians were stowing their instruments after playing the tired repertoire of canned romantic tunes for the five hundredth time this season. And the month was only June. Servers and bus people clattered away the dessert and coffee china.

Concealed by the sumptuous California foliage that blossomed over the property, Damon looked past the waning celebration and watched.

And waited.

His patience finally was rewarded when the couple retreated to a bench in a large, landscaped garden behind the inn to steal some time alone. The brunette bride, around thirty, was a bit older than the blond groom. She appeared slightly tipsy, throwing her head back and laughing too loud at something her brand-new husband said. He himself was not the picture of sobriety either.

But weddings were made for indulgence, were they not?

Damon was dressed for the occasion—dark Italian suit, white shirt, burgundy tie—with perfectly barbered hair and a pear-skin smooth shave.

Inconspicuous, as always, when creating his Tableaux.

No one would have paid him any mind. He seemed like any other guest at the Brock reception, one of the three happening at the venue, which offered unreal views of Los Angeles, far below its perch in the Hollywood Hills. Still, he remained hidden in the vegetation—out of the couple’s sight and, just as important, out of security camera view—and edged close enough to overhear the groom offer to get them each another drink. His bride laughed again, saying she’d already had too much, but he waved away the insincere protest and rose, promising to return shortly with brandies.

Anticipation quickened Damon’s pulse. He’d spent two hours hidden behind plantings, listening to bad music and worse toasts, waiting for an opportunity like this.

Now . . .

He slipped a pair of blue latex gloves from a plastic bag in his back pocket. Snapping them on, he checked the distance between the bench and the bar, calculating how long it would take the groom to reach his destination, via a flagstone path overlooking a large koi pond thirty feet below.

The couple would be separated less than five minutes.

Time to act.

Damon picked up what he’d spotted earlier: a landscaping stone roughly the size of a small cantaloupe. Remaining behind the trees, he swiftly closed the distance to the waiting bride, noting the moonlight glinting off her dark hair. She looked ephemeral, a vision in white.

He clutched the rock tighter.

And walked past her.

The groom’s black tuxedo was hard to see when he moved into the shadows, but his steps were unhurried, and Damon had no trouble catching up to him.

This was the tricky part. Timing, as they say, was everything. Damon darted a glance around the area. No sign of anyone.

He sped up, raised the rock high and brought it down in a sweeping arc onto the top of the groom’s head.

A satisfying snap told him the skull had cracked. The groom crumpled to the ground.

Time for stage two.

After tossing the stone into the koi pond, he squatted to rifle through the unconscious groom’s clothing, found his cell phone and pocketed it.

Still hunkered down, he grasped the groom’s left hand to pull his arm around Damon’s own shoulders. Next, he wrapped his right arm around the groom’s waist and hoisted his limp body upright. Damon trudged with his burden to the iron-pipe railing separating the path from the cliff over the pond. Had he been spotted, it would appear that he was simply helping a drunken reveler too unsteady on his feet to walk.

But another quick look around assured him that there were no witnesses.

He heaved the groom over the guardrail. A moment later, he heard a thud, then a splash. Damon moved to the edge and peered over the precipice. In the moon’s glow, he made out a figure sprawled in the shallow water among the jagged stones.

Luckily the body had landed face down. If the blow and the fall hadn’t killed him, he would soon drown. No extra effort needed on Damon’s part.

Now for the final phase.

He pulled the man’s cell phone from his pocket and checked to see if he’d use plan A or plan B. If it was a model that let you open the camera app without unlocking the unit, he’d take several pictures of the beautiful view, then hit the button to swap lenses, so that it was on selfie mode. If it was locked, he’d leave the phone near the cliff, as if the groom had dropped it and fallen while trying to retrieve it for the selfie.

This was part of the thrill for him. The challenge of planning what he could, but relying on sheer cunning to adapt to unexpected circumstances. He felt it was this skill, constantly honed, that made him successful.

He tapped the screen, which allowed him to access the camera. Plan A then. He got four good pictures, reversed lenses, then tossed the phone over the side. He didn’t throw it hard, making sure it landed on the rocks, not in the water.

Slipping the gloves away, Damon strolled back toward the hotel with unhurried steps.

He didn’t have to wait long—ten minutes—for the sounds of shouting, the pounding of footsteps and the wail of a siren. He joined the throng on the lower-level garden, where the koi pond was located. A shiver of pleasure ran through him when he witnessed the expressions of horror as onlookers watched rescue workers hurry to the body. Within minutes, their urgent movements became methodical. There was no need to rush.

He eavesdropped on two police officers talking nearby. They concluded that the groom had wanted to take a selfie near the edge of the cliff with the moon over the city. The guy clearly had too much to drink and leaned back too far against the guardrail. Such a shame.

Damon stayed long enough to watch the bride, now widow, push past the workers, drop to her knees and embrace the body, blood staining the front of the satin gown precisely as he’d imagined earlier.

Exhilarated, he walked to the parking lot to collect his car, tucked away in a spot not covered by security cameras.

Damon Garr was pleased. If there was any phrase to describe the evening, he decided, it was this: a good start.

–

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