Swiping Hearts
Author: Jeffery Deaver
Date: 2023-09-26T07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Mystery; Short Stories; Mystery Thriller
Description: Forensic detective Lincoln Rhyme investigates his strangest case yet in this diabolical new story. A serial killer in the making? Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are called upon to tackle a crime unlike any they’ve ever faced. An unknown subject is using his formidable skills to work his way into the lives—and hearts—of his victims, all with the goal of utterly destroying them psychologically and emotionally . . . for his pure pleasure. Rhyme recognizes the trademark sadism of a future serial killer, but the man has been meticulously careful—indeed, stopping just short of illegal behavior, ensu
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
Rights: Copyright © 2023 by Gunner Publications, LLC

Also by Jeffery Deaver

Novels

The Colter Shaw Series

Hunting Time

The Final Twist

The Goodbye Man

The Never Game

The Lincoln Rhyme Series

The Watchmaker’s Hand

The Midnight Lock

The Cutting Edge

The Burial Hour

The Steel Kiss

The Skin Collector

The Kill Room

The Burning Wire

The Broken Window

The Cold Moon

The Twelfth Card

The Vanished Man

The Stone Monkey

The Empty Chair

The Coffin Dancer

The Bone Collector

The Kathryn Dance Series

Solitude Creek

XO

Roadside Crosses

The Sleeping Doll

The Rune Series

Hard News

Death of a Blue Movie Star

Manhattan Is My Beat

The John Pellam Series

Hell’s Kitchen

Bloody River Blues

Shallow Graves

Stand-alones

The October List

No Rest for the Dead (Contributor)

Carte Blanche (A James Bond Novel)

Watchlist (Creator/Contributor)

Edge

The Bodies Left Behind

Garden of Beasts

The Blue Nowhere

Speaking in Tongues

The Devil’s Teardrop

A Maiden’s Grave

Praying For Sleep

The Lesson of Her Death

Mistress of Justice

Short Fiction Collections

Trouble in Mind

Triple Threat

More Twisted

Twisted

Short Fiction Individual Stories

Swiping Hearts, a Lincoln Rhyme Story

The Broken Doll, a Four-Story Cycle

The Deadline Clock, a Colter Shaw Story

Scheme

A Perfect Plan, a Lincoln Rhyme Story

Cause of Death

Turning Point

Verona

The Debriefing

Ninth and Nowhere

The Second Hostage, a Colter Shaw Story

Captivated, a Colter Shaw Story

The Victims’ Club

Surprise Ending

Double Cross

Vows, a Lincoln Rhyme Story

The Deliveryman, a Lincoln Rhyme Story

A Textbook Case

Original Audio Works

The Starling Project, a Radio Play

Stay Tuned

The Intruder

Date Night

Editor/Contributor

The Chopin Manuscript (Creator/Contributor)

The Copper Bracelet (Creator/Contributor)

Nothing Good Happens after Midnight (Editor/Contributor)

Ice Cold (Co-Editor/Contributor)

A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime (Editor/Contributor)

Books to Die For (Contributor)

The Best American Mystery Stories 2009 (Editor)

Swiping Hearts

A Lincoln Rhyme Story

Jeffery Deaver

G. P. Putnam’s Sons

New York

G. P. Putnam’s Sons

Publishers Since 1838

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com

Copyright © 2023 by Gunner Publications, LLC

Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

Ebook ISBN: 9780593422151

Cover design: Tal Goretsky

Cover images: (composite) Zsolt Hlinka / Moment / Getty Images; Lorado / Getty Images; Roy Bishop / Arcangel

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Cover

Also by Jeffery Deaver

Title Page

Copyright

SWIPING HEARTS

About the Author

_144972610_

Ah, there.

He watched the woman, around forty, with a pale, sun-shy complexion. Tall and willowy, she wore a taupe sweater, brown skirt and dark red blouse. She was walking along Rivington Street, Lower Manhattan, narrow—the canyon walls here commercial buildings that were darkened now in the early evening.

This was a perfect place for their date.

His gut contracted with anticipation, a twist of pleasure.

Having left a very nice coffee shop two blocks away, he was presently leaning against a brick wall, blending in. This wasn’t difficult, as he fit into this part of town perfectly—a late twenties white man, slim, an unnecessary but ubiquitous stocking cap, which happened to match the shade of the woman’s blouse almost perfectly. His clothing was just what a man who shared the mixed careers of an aspiring musician and a temp proofreader for a law firm would wear: black jeans, wrinkled plaid shirt and black jacket, whose brand name, Members Only, came from a very different era, if not locale.

The sort of man no one would notice.

The woman was doing what anyone did on any city street nowadays: walking and texting, walking and texting.

When she was past him, he counted ten seconds then followed.

He didn’t bother to scan about. He knew there were no video cameras along this stretch of Rivington. A man who planned things meticulously, he also knew the exact spot to approach her: at a driveway leading to the construction site on their right, now quiescent, the workers in bars, at restaurants with friends and family, at home.

Meticulous.

The word certainly applied: he was careful to the extreme in everything he did in his life and career—which, no, was neither music nor proofreading. But that’s not how “meticulous” began etymological life. Its origin was meticulosus, Latin for “fearful.” The evolution was interesting. The word eventually morphed into its present Germanic language spelling and, hundreds of years ago, came to mean “timid,” and then “overly cautious, out of fear.” In the 1900s, the negative blush was stripped away, and it assumed its present nonjudgmental meaning of “extremely careful.”

Which described Ed Gable perfectly—for instance, he had not touched what resided in his backpack with his fingers, only with gloves or knuckles, which left no identifiable prints.

The word “meticulous” also described certain people he admired, and whom he was, not surprisingly, thinking of at this particular moment—among them, Ted Bundy and the BTK Killer.

It gave him a tiny thrill to count himself in their company.

The woman was closer now; he’d picked up the pace.

He glanced at the construction site, presently just a deep pit that would become a high-rise’s foundation. It seemed like a setting from a superhero movie—an entrance to a dark evil empire beneath the surface of the earth.

Unzipping his backpack and reaching inside—knuckles again—he told himself: enough of these distracting thoughts.

It was date time.

“The victim last night? On Rivington?” Amelia Sachs was telling Lincoln Rhyme. “I’ve known her for years.” Her lips were taut.

Rhyme turned toward her in an elaborate motorized wheelchair; he was a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down from an accident while searching a crime scene years ago, though various procedures had restored most movement to his right arm and hand. His handsome face, with its prominent nose and a comma of dark hair defining his forehead, radiated sympathy.

The couple, married several years now, were in the parlor of his town house on Central Park West, a gothic-ish place that could be carbon-dated to the Victorian era, if one were inclined to cast Manhattan property in British Imperial terms.

Sachs looked out the window as a flicker of wings cast a shadow on the bulletproof glass. Peregrine falcons nested on the façade of the building. “It’s odd, Rhyme. What we do all day long? Whatever the case is, there’s always some distance. Some barrier. It’s different when it hits close to home like this.”

That what-they-did part was investigating crime—Sachs as an NYPD detective and Rhyme as a consulting forensic scientist. Regarding her particular observation, though, Rhyme would disagree somewhat. His wife had an indelible empathy for all victims, not just those she might happen to know, like the woman last night. It was one of the qualities that made her such an effective crime scene searcher.

Lincoln Rhyme, on the other hand, was, he’d sometimes joked, a man with a passion for being dispassionate.

It was mid-morning, this late March day, and they were having coffee that Rhyme’s aide, Thom, had delivered a few minutes ago. He’d also brought pastries, which were on a tray beside the wicker chair Sachs sat in, but neither was indulging. They weren’t foodies in the first place and potential investigations tended to usher appetites away.

She went on to describe her friend and their history. Joanna Mills and she had met years ago in the world of fashion. Sachs had been a model, Mills a photographer’s assistant, who went on to become a successful photojournalist. Mills had been married for a few years to a man she’d met when she was in the army and he was working for a government contractor. Not long into the marriage, he began to grow abusive. First, bullying and, finally, physical violence—or, rather, the attempt. Mills had always kept up with her self-defense training.

Love froze into anger then diluted to sadness. Divorce soon followed.

“She was finally getting back into dating when this happened.”

“We’ll need all the details,” Rhyme said.

Just then, the door buzzer sounded and they glanced at the security cam monitor on the wall nearby.

A handsome woman of about forty stood on the porch, upright of posture, looking with cool eyes into the camera.

“We’re about to get them. Here’s Joanna now.”

Joanna Mills was not a victim of the sort of crime Rhyme and Sachs usually investigated.

She had not been injured physically in the least.

Though victim she had been.

“My marriage . . . It wasn’t so great.”

Sachs said, “I told Lincoln some of it.”

She nodded. “I was gun-shy. Didn’t date for a couple of years. But then I said, ‘Hey, girl. You want somebody in your life. Get on with it.’ I went on this app. Hearts, with a cupid’s arrow for the line that crosses the ‘t.’ ” Mills smoothed her black skirt. She wore a white blouse and a black jacket, similar to the sort that Sachs often wore, though Mills’s would not have been tailored to conceal the Glock 17 that Sachs wore high on the hip.

“And I met him.”

A special emphasis on the pronoun, as if she’d just stuck it to a board with a sharp pin.

“Kevin. I liked his picture. He was about my age.

“He was good-looking enough, but the appeal was more his eyes—they seemed kind—and his smile.” The woman’s long face tightened as she frowned. Her brunette hair was pulled back severely and she occasionally tucked a straying wisp into place. Her wrist bore a tattoo, a cartoon character Rhyme didn’t recognize, though, he reflected, there were perhaps none that he could identify. Maybe that mouse.

“He was an executive in Silicon Valley, he said. He wrote well, so I knew he was educated, like he’d said. No terrible personal baggage.” A shrug. “So, I thought, give it a shot. I’m lonely now. What’ve I got to lose? We started messaging through the app and then emailing.” She sipped the coffee Sachs had poured for her, though she didn’t seem to have much taste for it. “It went great. My God, almost perfect. We had all these things in common. We liked the same movies, restaurants, politics, sports. And he was right up front about his past—he told me about an abusive wife—she sounded like a female version of Jim. And she claimed she wanted children but lied about it.”

Now her lips tensed just as Sachs’s had done earlier. “I always wanted them too. He said he’d gone to an in vitro clinic to see about using a surrogate, but he didn’t think he’d have the time to raise a child properly by himself. Damn . . . I’d done the exact same thing. Gone to a clinic.

“We moved to the phone. Of course, in the back of my mind—you know what you hear about on the news—I was thinking maybe it was fake and he’d have a Nigerian accent or Russian or something. But, no, he sounded just like somebody who’d grown up in Mountain View and Palo Alto, like he said.

“We’d talk a couple times a week. Sometimes twice a day. About his siblings, mine. His parents. Good stuff . . . and bad. Nothing terrible, just speed bumps in family relationships. We talked about getting together in person, but he was covering the Pacific Rim territory for his company and traveled all the time. Luckily, that was going to change. He was getting a new job—more money and, better yet, the company had a district office in Manhattan. He’d be coming here once a month. He added in his email, with a smiley face—and a heart—maybe more often now that he had an incentive.

“He was funny and always interested in what I had to say. That’s the thing—he listened.” A look at Sachs, which probably meant: Men aren’t always so good at that, are they?

“Then at last, he said he’d started with the other company and was coming to New York for orientation. He asked if I wanted to have dinner with him—like he was almost nervous about it. I mean, here it was, like we’d been more or less dating for two months, and he was afraid I’d say no. I laughed. I said, ‘We better!’ And he mentioned three or four restaurants that’d have the kind of food we both liked. As if he’d really spent some time researching where to go. We picked one.”

Mills cleared her throat. “Then last night happened.”

Neither Rhyme nor Sachs spoke, though Sachs gave a brief encouraging nod to her friend.

“Last night,” Mills repeated in a whisper, “I was walking home from the Delancey stop, on Rivington, and I hear this voice behind me. I thought it said, ‘Hey, Jo-Jo.’ That was a nickname Kevin gave me. It took me a second to place it—he wasn’t supposed to be in town until today, and why would he be downtown, near my apartment, anyway? I turned and it wasn’t Kevin. It was this man who was younger, maybe thirty. So I decided I must’ve imagined it—I’d been thinking about him so much. But he was smiling and walking right toward me. He stopped and looked me over. And then, ‘Jo-Jo,’ again.

“I was so confused. He got this weird little smile on his face, and then he hit me with it. He told me everything—like he was explaining to a buddy what he’d done at work that day. That casual, that unemotional. He said there was no Kevin. He’d made him up completely. No Silicon Valley, no bad wife, no IVF babies, no movies in common. His parents were dead and he was an only child. Everything he’d said was a lie. A practical joke.” Her voice caught and she repeated in a whisper, “A practical joke . . . And then he handed me an envelope. It was a Valentine’s Day card, not signed. Just a smiley face. ‘For you,’ he said, and just turned around and walked away. I think he was whistling. Not a word from him since then. His phone’s not in service. His email account? Deleted.”

A bit more coffee now. She lowered the mug and stared at the surface, on which concentric rings radiated. Her hands must have been tremoring slightly. Looking up. “This wasn’t a short-term thing. He kept at it for all that time, and I fell for him the way it really happens, little by little.”

Then the emotion vanished and a stoic pall filled her face. “So, that’s my legendary trip into the dating world. Lovely, hm?”

Rhyme asked, “How much did he get away with?”

Mills frowned. “I’m sorry?”

Sachs: “How much did you give him? Or ‘loan’ him? Over a certain amount, it’s grand theft. A felony.”

“Oh, I didn’t give him a penny. He never asked for anything.”

Rhyme and Sachs shared a glance.

“That’s not what it was about. It wasn’t a scam like you hear all the time. He wanted . . . I think he just wanted to destroy me. And watch my reaction when he did it.” She looked off. “His expression, his eyes . . . He couldn’t get enough of watching my reaction. The shock, the pain.”

Rhyme had run into any number of perps you’d call purely evil, from the coldly professional to the clinically sadistic. Behavior like this was a first.

“Did he touch you? Even a tap on the shoulder?” Rhyme asked. He looked toward his wife. “Battery charge.”

But Mills said, “No. He kept his distance.”

“Threaten you at all? Online? Or in person?”

She shook her head.

Sachs asked, “How does the app work? Is it like Tinder?”

“Pretty much. You pick from categories and scroll through them, then swipe.”

She displayed her iPhone screen and made a gesture with her index finger, which was apparently a message to the god of the app that this particular person was worthy of more investigation. Rhyme had never swiped at a screen for any purpose; his communications with his phone were purely verbal commands.

“The categories? Some’re for one-night hookups.” She shrugged and gave a scoffing laugh. “You’d be surprised how big that section is. I was. Not my thing. Then there are sections for people who’re looking for someone to travel with or play games with or get together for dining or wine clubs. Then, the part that’s for people who have an eye toward a relationship. That’s the one I went to.” A pause. Nearly a tear. She controlled it. “He sounded so damn sincere.”

Rhyme was looking at the screen. He noted immediately that the app was cushioned by many warnings, and there were email addresses to contact and numbers to call if you were being abused or thought you were being scammed. One banner read:

Real government officials and debt collectors do not use apps like Hearts for payment.

Mills said, “You know, okay, my heart was broken, and all that gun-shy crap is going to come back. It’ll be a long time before I try something like this again. But I was in the service; I was in combat zones. I can handle a run-in with assholes like him. But there’re people out there who won’t be able to. I have a feeling he’s done this before. And he’ll do it again.”

“Maybe we can find out,” Rhyme said. And instructed his phone to place a call. It was to the Manhattan DA’s Frauds Bureau. In a moment he was on the line with Willison Jones, a senior detective who specialized in scams against the elderly and immigrants. He worked long hours; his caseload was astronomical.

“Lincoln. Been a while.”

“Has indeed.”

“Will, hi, it’s Amelia, you’re on speaker with Lincoln, me and Joanna Mills. We’ve got a situation.”

Rhyme said, “Let us know if you’ve heard of anything like it. Seems like a standard internet scam, lonely hearts. Dating app. But there’s a twist—he doesn’t want any money.”

“Him!”

Which answered the question.

Sachs described Mills’s situation in detail and Jones said, “Same MO, yep. Builds a connection, then, for no reason, just pulls the plug. And does it in person. Goddamn psychological sadist, you ask me. We thought it was part of a bigger plan. Maybe the victims get directed to a private eye who’s working with the unsub. They charge the vic hourly, trying to ‘find’ their lover, and just pocket the money. But none of that. After the last meeting, like yours, Ms. Mills, he just disappeared. Pure ghosting.”

Sachs asked, “The victim profile?”

“Three women, thirty-five to forty-five. Divorced or widowed. One man. Forty-three. All different dating sites. And one of them was Hearts.”

“Officer Jones?”

“Yes, Ms. Mills?”

“Isn’t there anything he can be charged with?”

“I’m afraid not. As long as you’re not under oath, talking to federal investigators or defrauding someone of something of value, you can usually lie till you’re blue in the face. It’s not an offense. Now, there is a tort.”

“That’s a civil thing, not criminal, right?”

“Uh-hm. Like defamation or a car crash, which means you can sue for damages. Here, the claim’d be ‘intentional infliction of emotional distress.’ But I’ve got to tell you, judges don’t like it. Too easy to abuse. Most cases get tossed right up front, and the ones that stick, almost always the defendant’s done something that has actual physical consequences. Like telling somebody he just ate something he’s deathly allergic to and he better stick his finger down his throat to take care of it. What this unsub did doesn’t really fall into that category.”

“Practical joke,” Mills whispered.

Jones clicked his tongue. “You know, sometimes, in my job, there’re defendants you just can’t put the evidence together for a conviction. They walk. But I have this fantasy they suddenly get all guilty over what they did. And it’ll haunt them for the rest of their lives . . . Maybe that’ll be the punishment for your boy here.” He chuckled. “But then, don’t tell anybody, I believed in Santa Claus till I was thirteen. So, I’m sorry—there’s nothing you can do.

“Of course, maybe he’ll just get tired of it and go on to another hobby.”

Hey, KT,

Good news!! I’m sharing it with my SPECIAL YOU first. Before Mom, and sister and even Big Ron. Yep, the Ronster himself! The promotion came through! I’ll be coming to New York in a week to look for a place. Hm, I wonder if there’s a tour guide there who I might lean on for help in finding digs? Anybody whose first name is Kathryn and last name is Travis?

All those months on the road, Tokyo, Taipei, Singapore . . . dreaming of seeing you in person. Those’re all over now!

So, our first date: The Impressionist rooms at the Met, then dinner? Is that place Tavern on the Green still open? In Central Park, right? I remember it from some romantic movie a long time ago. And I always thought if I met Ms. Right, I’d want to go there on our first date.

Kiss Sprinkles on the head for me . . .

Sleep well . . . I’ll see you soon. CAN’T WAIT!!!

—Love, Brad

The problem with Ted Bundy, with Jeffrey Dahmer, with John Wayne Gacy, was that they took lives.

It was a foolish truism—that serial killers kill—yet one with far-reaching implications for the practitioner (well, the victims too, but that was their problem).

Murder, Ed Gable believed, was troublesome for one particular reason—and not that it was treated by the police as a big fucking deal and brought the resources of law enforcement to bear, stifling one’s lethal output. (The Big Four—Luis Garavito, Pedro López, Javed Iqbal and Mikhail Popkov—collectively dispatched more than four hundred victims, eluding cops for years.)

No, the problem was artistic: a few hours of fear and torture, or maybe not even that, and then, bleed-out . . . and blissful sleep.

His goal was to make the pain last much, much longer.

Gable, with black hair gelled-down, clean shaven, as always, was working from home today, a modest apartment with a rich man’s view: the swathe of green that was the Battery and the harbor beyond. He was wearing boxer shorts and a blue T-shirt on his slim frame. Two computers were open. On the right was the one he used for the apps and emails to his dates.

Far from jobs whose practitioners he disguised himself as when hunting, he worked at LeGrande, Simms & Emerson, where he was a star in the arbitrage department. The very word scared people, who believed it was some magic, unfathomable process deep in society’s economic heart that cheated them and put their retirements and mortgages at risk. In fact, arbitrage was mundane in the extreme and economically sound—simply buying something in one market and selling it for profit in another. Gable used software he’d written himself to make such trades in milliseconds. A math genius, he could do this quickly and then return to his true calling, which Jung referred to as the Shadow Self.

After his troublesome teens and boring college years, he began studying the topics of psychopathology, specifically serial killing, in earnest. He knew that within a few years, he would be prodded to act—late twenties are the I-can’t-hold-back-any-longer time. Unlike some poor souls, who struggled to resist the Urge, Gable simply shrugged and went on to confront the two problems his Shadow Self presented as if they were part of a time complexity analysis of the Dijkstra algorithm versus the Bellman-Ford, considering the Theta((|E|+|V|)log|V|) in writing arbitrage code.

Problem One: How to prolong his victims’ pain.

Problem Two: How to avoid that lethal injection thing.

Kidnapping and extended torture were out—how long can you make it last? And eventually, he supposed, the screaming would get to be tiresome. And the cops—and true crime podcasters—would be all over you.

And then, last year, just around the time when he felt he could resist the Urge no longer, inspiration.

In the form, of all things, of a National Public Radio broadcast.

It was about internet scammers—the boiler rooms in Nigeria, Ghana, Korea, and Eastern Europe where men would target the lonely, both male and female, and wheedle money out of them. The subject of the program, a middle-aged woman who’d been taken, had sounded utterly destroyed.

The idea struck him like a jolt of electricity.

He would work his way into people’s lives little by little, making them trust and care about him—and never ask for a penny, which would be a crime. In fact, he might offer cash to them, so there wouldn’t even be a hint of anything legally wrong on his part.

Perfect: The fictional character is in their lives. They know him in detail, they care for him, they love him.

They depend on him.

And then . . .

Wham. He delivers the truth, lapping up their horrified reactions.

Words . . . Those would be his weapons.

Like Popov’s knife or Yang Xinhai’s meat cleaver or Ted Bundy’s bludgeon.

Words . . .

An email popped up on one of the five open windows on his Dell.

He read it, smiled, sat back and typed.

Marla:

Okay, that last email was so hot I needed an oven mitt to hold it! How do you expect a man to get any work done when you send him stuff like that? So here is what I’m thinking—we’ve been writing and talking for what, a month now? But you know the old expression: man does not live by bytes alone. He must have the real thing . . . LOL! So, I told them in Corporate, listen I’m transferring to NY. End of story. They agreed!

I’m in on Tuesday, and you have your orders, woman: I expect you to meet me at the airport wearing nothing . . . nothing but an overcoat (Ha!) Maybe I’ll see if we can get one of those limos with the window between the driver and the back (see, I remember that fantasy of yours!)

Can’t wait to see you in the . . .

You get to fill in that last word!

Love ya,
Tony

“You tried to get his real name from Hearts?”

Joanna Mills nodded. “But it was useless. There’s a report-abuse messaging thing. I never heard back from them and when I called the eight-hundred number I ended up in a call center. Whoever I talked to said that unless somebody was sending child abuse images or making overt threats, it’s not their business. And he said even if they got a court order, they don’t log members’ IPs.”

Sachs scoffed. “So the wives don’t see a reference to Hearts dating service on their internet log. Make for an interesting dinner table discussion that night . . . And we couldn’t get a warrant anyway. He hasn’t done anything illegal.”

Mills shook her head. “Well, thanks for hearing me out. I hoped there was some crime he’d committed, but—”

“Oh, I don’t think we’re ready to let this go quite yet, are we?” An inquiring look at his wife.

“Nup. Not by a long shot.”

“Okay,” Rhyme said slowly, “I want to find him. And it looks like we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way. Sachs?”

She nodded and walked to the shelf where she kept her weapon. She slipped it into her gray, plastic Blackhawk holster, balanced it with two full magazines on her opposite hip, then pulled on her jacket and walked through the door into the hazy morning air.

Every crime, Amelia Sachs reflected, spawns several scenes.

The primary one in this case—the internet and the dating app—was perhaps the most important but was unavailable for the time being. Had their unsub been planning, say, a terror attack, then the NYPD, the Bureau and Homeland Security—even the CIA and other alphabet agencies—would have descended on the Hearts parent company and pried the ID of the fictional Kevin out of them. The we-don’t-log-users line is usually a lie. Everything one did on the internet, Sachs had learned, was logged one way or another.

But for a non-criminal like this unsub, they would have to turn to secondary scenes, one of the most important being where he’d met Joanna Mills on the street to deliver his message and the cruel greeting card.

A smiley face . . .

The founder of modern criminalistics—scientific forensic analysis, that is—was Edmond Locard, a Frenchman plying his trade through the middle of the last century. His theory was that in every crime there was a transfer of physical evidence between the criminal and the victim and the scene itself. The process was inevitable. There was always a transfer, and evidence incriminating enough to prosecute the perp could usually be discovered by a diligent, observant and intelligent investigator.

The word “usually,” though, was the kicker.

Especially in this case, Amelia Sachs thought.

The place on Rivington Street where the two had met might have contained a revealing clue sloughed off the unsub’s shoes or fallen from his body: a strand of hair, a bit of dust, epidermal cells, a tiny morsel of food or dried beverage.

Any one of which might’ve led back to his home or office.

But not here and not today.

Because the rendezvous site had been selected for one reason: it was smack in the middle of a driveway that was hosed down by workers in the adjacent construction site several times a day.

Water destroys evidence far more efficiently than fire.

M. Locard’s bits of vital “dust,” as he called trace evidence, would have to come from the only other common connection between perp and victim.

The infamous greeting card.

In Rhyme’s town house, the front parlor was divided into two portions: One was an area open to the front hall and dining room, with a fireplace, chairs and tables, and the tall easels containing the case whiteboards where profiles of the unsubs and evidentiary findings were jotted down.

Against the far wall was the second portion of the room, a working forensic crime lab that would be the envy of any small- or even medium-size police department. It was divided by a floor-to-ceiling glass wall, meant to prevent adulteration of the evidence by material from the outside (the number one forensic attack by defense attorneys was the claim of contamination of evidence).

It was in here that Amelia Sachs—in a lab jacket, face mask and gloves—was now poring over the red envelope and the card inside.

They had tried to determine where the unsub had bought it but had learned from the card company’s public affairs office that this particular Valentine’s Day missive had sold 4.8 million units in the past year.

Moving on . . .

The pen he’d used for the smiley face contained common Sharpie ink, making the instrument also impossible to source.

After fuming the card and envelope, Sachs announced, “No prints. Wore gloves when he handled it at home and then held it by the edges when he gave it to her. Maybe knuckles.”

This might mean he had a record or had been printed for a government clearance or a concealed carry permit, though all savvy perps wished to keep their prints to themselves, whether or not they were on file. It was simply a trick of the trade.

“Maybe touch DNA, but.” She shrugged.

The last word conveyed the message that unless he was in the CODIS database, which was unlikely, since it was quite small, a chart of his deoxyribonucleic acid would do them no good.

She called out through the sound system, “Other trace includes concrete dust. Matching the samples I got from the construction site. Soot. Dirt, also from the site. Then a stain on the envelope. I’m getting some results.” She was reading the screen of the monitor hooked to the lab’s gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, the workhorse of forensic labs; it isolates and identifies unknown substances collected at the scene.

“Residue of H_2O, caffeine, alkaloids, amino acids, catechin, epicatechin, theobromine and theophylline.”

“Ah, black tea,” Rhyme said. A chemist by training, the criminalist had an encyclopedic knowledge of materials that had ended up in his lab after being collected at a crime scene. He added, “The last two you mentioned are polyphenols that make the leaves bitter. Protection against animals and insects. Isn’t nature amazing?”

Ideal trace evidence is (1) easily identifiable, (2) extremely rare and (3) sold by known or quickly located vendors.

The second one is the most important.

And that was decidedly not black tea.

Useless.

Reading the screen again, Sachs said, “Ah, but there’s more: proteins, lipids and carbohydrates in proportions that suggest nuts. Also sucrose—table sugar—and salt, gums, lecithin and carrageenan.”

“That’s an emulsifier, the last one,” Rhyme said. “Hm. Any lactose?”

“No.”

“So, a milk substitute.”

She looked online. “Consistent with almond milk. I’ll canvass restaurants and coffee bars.”

He nodded.

She began calling the eating and beverage establishments in a five-block area around where he had probably waited for Joanna Mills to exit the subway on her way home. She found only one that served almond milk.

Joe’s Cuppa.

There was one disappointment about the place. The video security cam was down.

But it boasted one advantage that perhaps outweighed that failure.

They had not yet taken out last night’s trash.

“That’s him! Yes. How did you find him?”

Joanna Mills had returned to the parlor. She sat with Rhyme and Sachs, looking at a mug shot from Loudon County, Virginia, where Edward Ray Gable had grown up.

Sachs said, “I went through the garbage of a coffee shop and—”

Mills barked a surprised laugh.

“No, policing is not all glamorous car chases and shoot-outs. And I found a receipt for tea with almond milk. Cuppa Joe.”

“Sure. I know it.”

“According to the timestamp he was there about a half hour before you got off the subway. He had his tea, drew the smiley face on the card and then went to meet you.”

“What was the charge in Virginia?”

Rhyme said gravely, “Arson.”

She frowned, perhaps in response to his concern, which might seem excessive.

He explained, “It wasn’t a classic burn—for revenge or for profit. It was recreational. An abandoned shed. And he was suspected of other incidents, going back a couple of years.”

Sachs said, “Arson like that is part of the Macdonald Triad—behavioral indicators in kids that suggest violence, including serial killing, in adulthood. Setting fires, hurting animals, and wetting the bed.”

“I was falling in love with a serial killer. Lord . . . Has he murdered anybody, do you think?”

Sachs said, “Probably not. Maybe what he’s doing with the dating sites is enough to satisfy him. But the problem with behavior like his is that it escalates. What’s enough for him today might not be next week.”

“So, he’d graduate to the real thing?”

Rhyme’s phone hummed. He nodded to it. “This might be the answer to that question.”

A few years ago, Sachs and Rhyme had run a case in which a serial killer worked for a data-mining corporation. The man had used information the company had on file to get to know potential victims and, having worked his way into their lives, murder them or destroy them psychologically.

Not dissimilar to what their unsub was up to presently.

The company did not hesitate to admit that it scraped every facial image it could from the internet and public records, identified its owner and compiled that person’s economic and demographic and spending profile. The package then got sold to retailers for use in advertising and direct marketing.

The CEO Rhyme and Sachs had worked with was gone and the company was now run by a man named Harmeet Singh, a sharp executive in the IT world turned data-mining expert.

The man was now returning Rhyme’s call.

“Lincoln Rhyme,” he said, with merely a faint Indian accent. “Ah, Lincoln Rhyme . . . The reason you called? I hope it was social. How are my children? Very well thank you. Sika won the spelling bee championship. Only seven years old! Rass is a star striker at ten. And I have taken up cross-country skiing, while my wife continues with her highly successful cooking podcast.”

Then silence.

“You know why I’m calling, Singh.”

“An investigation, of course.” He was dismayed on general principles; commercial companies are forever reluctant to dip their corporate toes into the pool of police work. Public relations blots can ensue.

On the other hand, in that earlier case, Rhyme and Sachs had saved the company from possibly going under, because of the miscreant employee. In a way, you could say Singh owed them his job. Hence, the callback. And the tentatively listening ear.

Rhyme continued, “We’ve only called you once in the past year.”

“Twice.”

“They were part of the same case. That counts as one.”

Another sigh.

“Anyway,” Sachs added, “what we need will be completely legal.”

“So.” Singh brightened. “You have a warrant.”

“We’re calling more as customers,” Rhyme said.

“How’s that?”

“In the market for some of your wares. Buying habits of certain individuals you’ve data mined.”

“We sell that for advertising purposes. What do you want it for?”

“Amelia and I are thinking of opening an internet store. Retail. And I’m interested in a potential buyer . . . I want to know what he’s purchased. Various sites. Am I right in assuming that when people buy online, they can opt out of your selling their data?”

A pause. “That is largely correct.”

“And am I right in assuming the opt-out button is very small and hard to find?”

“Needle, haystack.”

“I’m going to give you a name and address and I would like to know what this man has bought online. Books in particular, but weapons too.”

“We filter out guns.”

“Knives then, spears, bows and arrows.”

“Seriously?”

“And we’re in a hurry, Singh.”

“Oh, all right. Name?”

“Edward Ray Gable. B-L-E.” Rhyme gave the address, then said, “I understand it may take some time, but call us back—”

“I’ve got it.”

“What?”

A pause. “I have his file in front of me. But, oh, shit.”

The three in the parlor shared a glance.

“What is it, Singh?” Rhyme asked.

“Let me just send it to you.”

Sachs gave him an address. They heard the clatter of keys.

“Can I ask? This man, this Gable, he’s a suspect?”

“That’s right.”

“Then catch him as soon as you can,” Singh said in a grave whisper.

“Linc! I was just about to give you a ring. I got a case for you.”

The man on the other end of the line, Lon Sellitto, was a gold shield working in headquarters, the Major Cases Division. He’d been Rhyme’s partner ages ago, when the criminalist was head of NYPD Crime Scene.

“Later, Lon. We’ve got one for you.” As soon as they’d read the list of Gable’s purchases, compiled by Singh’s company, Rhyme had called the detective immediately.

“Whatta you mean?”

Rhyme was not particularly concerned with speakerphone protocol and occasionally, like now, neglected to report on the presence of others in the parlor. Sachs handled the formalities.

Rhyme grimaced at the delay and went on to explain to the detective lieutenant about Ed Gable, his MO and his history.

“Jesus, what a prick. Pardon my French.”

“Well, it gets worse, Lon. I just got a list of his book purchases for the past five years. He’s spent over two thousand dollars on books about serial killers and police manuals on homicide investigation. All of them have chapters on serial perps. Which means they can also tell somebody how to avoid getting caught. And he’s bought serial killer souvenirs and memorabilia.”

“Holy crap. Like bobbleheads?”

Rhyme didn’t know what those were and didn’t bother to ask. “So, Lon . . .”

The detective sighed. “I know what you’re calling about, but I got a question for you first: What’s the overt act?”

Sachs said, “We think he’s got four or five men and women he’s corresponding with. Probably more.”

“He’s just messing with them. It’s terrible, I understand, but there’s nothing I can do. I need that overt act part. And the books? The whole world loves serial killers.”

Rhyme: “He’s going to step across the line and start killing, Lon. You and I’ve both run serial cases. You know it happens.”

“He have weapons?”

“Maybe. We don’t know. Two people, Lon. All I’m asking for. Two. Rookies, even. Surveillance for a month. Make it five p.m. to three a.m. If he goes overt, it won’t be during the day.”

Sellitto barked a laugh. “You’re kidding me, Linc. I don’t have the budget for that. And even then, two guys? Ain’t happening.”

Sachs said, “Lon, he’s ruining these people’s lives, even if he doesn’t step it up.”

“Yeah, well, a lot of people’s lives’re being ruined for reasons that fall inside the New York penal code. They come first. Now, this case I’ve got. It’s big. Human trafficking. You guys love nailing those assholes.”

Rhyme glanced to Sachs, who filled Sellitto’s aspiring pause with: “Sure, Lon. We’ll take it.”

“Man, thanks . . . The job’s simple, piece of cake. There’s an empty shipping container that has some good leads in it. We need to find it.”

Aware of the silence from the pair, Sellitto said, “I’m sorry, Linc. But, hey, your boy so much as touches somebody’s elbow he’s not supposed to I’ll get you your watchers. But until that happens, really, there’s nothing I can do.”

This was the second time in the past few days that Rhyme had heard that line. It happened to be one of his least favorite statements in the English language.

Two weeks later.

Sandra—

I was thinking of you all last night and the ordeal you must be going thru with your aunt’s passing.

I told you how I lost my wife, but I don’t think I told you how I lost my mother under circumstances that sound just like what you’re going through, and at about the same age.

It hurts to the bottom of the soul.

I understand. I’ve been there. And I’ll be there . . . for you. I’ll help you get through this, and you’ll emerge. I’ll help you find that light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

You asked why does God take people from us so unfairly and so early.

Maybe the answer is because it’s His way of revealing that there are others who care about us, others who can love us—I know it’s probably too early to use that word, but my fingers typed it by themselves.

I might as well give you the news I mentioned. I’m writing this from . . . a hotel in Manhattan!

The head of the department left it up to me to plan the research trip to NYU and I said let’s do it now.

And you know why.

Because we’ve texted and emailed for long enough.

I want to meet you in person. It’s time.

I love hearing all about your work in the library, your yoga class, your knitting, your hiking . . .

But you can only learn so much about a person from what they tell you remotely.

You need to experience love in the flesh and blood.

Tonight, maybe?

Stay strong, thinking of you,

Fingers crossed about tonight.

Love,
Thomas

Ted Bundy’s lesson, and one not to be neglected, was to target only those who were alone and vulnerable (and, in his case, brunette).

Ed Gable’s prey—the patrons of Hearts and other dating apps—was made up of the solitary, by definition. Otherwise, why go on the app in the first place?

And his theory was they were usually vulnerable, as well, because of the app: the mechanism of online dating provided armor to protect their hearts, safeguards that didn’t apply when you looked for love in the sometimes brutal real world.

Like slim, dark-haired and bashful-eyed Stephanie Willis.

To whom he was hoping he could turn to relieve the stress of a difficult day. He’d lost sixteen million dollars over the space of one hour at his firm, and the irritation at that loss was like a bite from a pesky mosquito.

He’d decided to pour balm on the persistent itch by meeting the most alone (if there are degrees of aloneness) and most vulnerable woman in his stable.

At forty-two, she’d been a widow for four years, her husband dying after a protracted illness. This gave him a chance to make a what-a-coincidence run. To her, Thomas Biggs was a shy widower, a professor of the humanities. He was just the thing for an introverted writer who blogged about cinema. And then there were the smaller things in common: food, wine, jogging (the specifics of which he knew because he’d spied on her, taking note of her interests).

Shared taste in movies was always good bait to win them over. But he had to navigate that one carefully. In the past, he supposed, a player like him could have followed a girl to Blockbuster to learn her tastes. Now he had to wait until Stephanie commented on a flick she liked and then he’d sound delighted, while flipping through IMDb to learn factoids he could recite (though he’d learned that Sleepless in Seattle and It’s a Wonderful Life were always good default choices).

He rose from his desk and paced, feeling the Urge burn within him.

He inhaled slowly, let his breath out . . .

Would she agree about tonight? He wiped sweaty palms on his trousers.

One of his computer windows flashed with an incoming email.

Ah, yes, it was Stephanie!

Her words indicated she was beside herself with joy that he was actually in town. And none of this: Oh, why didn’t you tell me you were coming?

Alone and vulnerable.

She suggested they meet at a place near where she lived, north of the city: a park she’d go to with her aunt, an overlook in a forest preserve over the Hudson River.

A place that brought her comfort. It had been a tough day, she’d written, but was now better, so much better, because of the thought of having his shoulder to cry on.

Literally.

“Perfect,” he typed.

His screen flashed with another email.

She’d sent a heart emoji.

A cool, windy night in Westchester County, north of the city proper.

The impression some people had was that the Hudson side was somehow spookier, more gothic, but maybe that was the Headless Horseman myth, situated in that portion of the county. No legends of any sort existed along the eastern shore that edged uneventfully up to Connecticut.

Ed Gable circled through the parking lot of an expansive forest preserve. The place wasn’t crowded at all; a half-dozen cars were in the center of the lot. Instinctively he chose a spot far to the side. He climbed out and, dressed in his dark date-night outfit, ascended the few stairs to the overlook.

It was an oak structure about twenty feet deep and forty long. Old—a half-century, he guessed. Three benches sat facing west. There was a young couple at the far end, lost in each other, and Gable wondered, if they got divorced in the next five years, would she go on Hearts or one of the other dating apps to try to regroup? Be quite the coincidence if he saw her picture.

The blonde was beautiful, and he felt a twisting in his belly—his greatest pleasure in life was destroying a date, but that didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy a bit of mattress time occasionally. He was a man after all.

He looked around at the tall dark oak and maple and dead gray pine. The deciduous trees were swaying, branches tapping against one another making soft clicks like children playing knights, sword fighting. Below was a wide band of silver water, mottled dark and made darker by the uneven clouds that hurried by on the persistent breeze, which was approaching a degree of unsettling chill. Across the river, the bluffs were the yellow-white of old scraped bone.

Yes, the west side of the county won the gothic contest, hands down.

A glance at his watch.

Five minutes.

He recalled from their emails that one thing Stephanie prided herself on was her punctuality.

Misrepresentation.

What Detective Lon Sellitto had described as a simple search for a shipping container had turned into something else entirely.

On its face, true: the case wasn’t complicated. A human trafficker—a snakehead—had smuggled into the country a number of teenage girls and women with promises of employment, neglecting to describe to them what their work would actually be.

Authorities in the Bronx got a tip and rescued the passengers, but the trafficker himself escaped. Somehow, by mistake or intent, the container was picked up and it vanished.

One of the women had reported that a major clue was still inside the container: the trafficker’s address book, a golden chalice that everyone in law enforcement—from NYPD to Customs and Border Protection to DHS to the FBI—wanted.

Which meant finding the huge shipping container, which was known, like all of them, as a TEU, twenty-foot-equivalent unit.

Sachs had just hung up with a dockmaster in Brooklyn. She scoffed.

Rhyme looked at her.

“Nothing there. And do you know what he told me? There are seventeen million TEUs in the world. And on any given day, one and a half million are circulating.”

Piece. Of. Cake . . .

Rhyme was inclined to give up, but then recalled the mission was to snag a human trafficker, one of the lower forms of criminals on the scale.

He was about to make a call—to a dock in Jersey—when an email invitation to a Zoom call appeared.

It had been sent by Lon Sellitto.

“Got a call,” he told Sachs. She moved her chair closer to his.

She did the typing and a moment later, the detective’s face, pale under thinning brown-gray hair, appeared. He sat back, revealing a white shirt with the top button undone and his tie pulled down from its original taut knot. Forever rumpled in person, he even appeared this way in his pixilated state. How did he manage that?

“Don’t worry,” Lon said. “It ends well.”

“Never shy from dramatic introductions, do you, Lon.”

“Your Hearts scammer boy? Ed Gable. He’s in White Plains. Detention.”

Well.

“One of those women he was targeting? He arranged to meet her near Tarrytown about six tonight. But it wasn’t to tell her the dating thing was all a lie; he had a knife and duct tape with him. It was going to be an outright abduction and you can guess what he had in mind after that. But it didn’t quite end up like he’d planned. She fought back. Surprised the shit out of him, looks like. Skinny little thing but she went totally ballistic, lost it, and they really went at it. She was in the service, and waled on him pretty good.”

Sachs asked, “How bad’re her injuries?”

“Nothing broken, bruises and blood. She’ll be okay. ’Course, she was hysterical. She went to meet this guy she thought was the love of her life—and she was upset about losing a family member—and here he tries to kidnap her.”

“His response?” Sachs asked.

“Denies it. Totally. He said she attacked him. Like we’ve never heard that before. He was going to say more but then thought better of it and asked for a lawyer and shut up.”

“Who was the vic?”

“Name’s Stephanie Willis. Forty-two. Online publisher, blogger. Widowed a few years ago. Took care of her mother’s sister until she died recently. So, listen, Linc. Captain I know in Westchester County gave me a call. Everything’s pretty clear cut, but they want to make sure it’s a righteous case.”

“Did you really say that, Lon? ‘Righteous’?”

“Everybody’s using it downtown, Linc.” He sounded defensive. “It’s a good word. So, Westchester. They want you to run the forensics. You know, fiber, dirt—”

“I’ve heard of forensics, yes.”

“Ha. Their people can do it—they’re good—but they want the gold standard.”

“I’m not platinum?”

“You’re fucking diamond, Linc. Anyway, you’ve been after this guy, so I told him I was sure you’d say yes. But I’m checking.”

Rhyme noticed Sachs was frowning, her gaze aimed at the ceiling.

“We’ll call you back, Lon.”

The detective offered a grumble from his sizable repertoire and clicked off.

Rhyme lifted an eyebrow to his wife, who was now looking his way.

“You can see the scenario, right, Rhyme?”

“How’s that?”

“Okay. Joanna’s a veteran. So’s Stephanie. She and Joanna’re about the same age. Could be friends. Joanna tells her what happened. They decide it’s time to put an end to Gable’s game. Stephanie joins the app. They scour the listings till they find one that sounds like Gable’s.”

Rhyme offered, “They might have compared language, grammar, punctuation. He’d use a different picture every time.”

“Hm. That’d be a good way to do it, yeah. His writing. Stephanie swipes him, then starts communicating, setting herself up as a victim. Vulnerable, depending on him. Maybe talking about the loss in her life. Her husband, her aunt. He comes back with he’ll be there for her. They’re soul mates.”

Rhyme continued, “Stephanie and Gable agree to meet in person. She suggests a deserted park. He drives up there and she and Joanna spot his car.”

Sachs said, “He gets out and Stephanie goes after him.”

“No,” Rhyme said. “First, she tosses him the bag that has the tape and knife in it—which she and Joanna bought with cash. Now the plastic’s got his prints. Hers too, but that’s because she’ll claim she tried to grab it from him.”

Sachs was nodding. “I can see that, sure. Well, while they’re fighting, the respondings show up.”

“Because Joanna called it in right away.”

Sachs rubbed her index finger and thumb together absently. “They get there and of course believe her, especially after they hear about the app—and that everything he told her’s a lie. He’s collared for assault, battery, attempted kidnapping and murder, probably under Title Eighteen too. Using a computer to facilitate the kidnapping. That’s got to be federal.”

They both fell to silence, their eyes out the window, looking at the sparkling lights of the city beyond the black band of the park.

Sachs said, “I just don’t know, Rhyme. I could go either way. If it’s a setup, she’s taking a hell of a chance. Felonies on a lot of levels.”

“A risk, true.”

Then Sachs turned her full attention to him. “You seem to have some pretty definite ideas about what went down up there.”

“Do I?”

“Did you happen to have a conversation with Joanna, just the two of you?”

“Why would you ask?”

She squinted at him. “I’m always skeptical of suspects who answer interrogation questions with a question.”

He shrugged. “That’s witness stuff, Sachs. Never interested me.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Ah, there you go again. I’ll assume you did talk to her. And what was the topic of your discussion?”

“That makes it sound so formal, Sachs. We just talked about what was going on in general.” He pursed his lips briefly. “She was curious how busy I was, very courteous of her to ask. Very busy, I told her. So busy, in fact, I wouldn’t be taking on any new cases in the foreseeable future. Any at all.”

Sachs laughed out loud. “You knew. You knew what she had planned.”

He scoffed. “We had a social call and during the course of it I told her I was busy. That’s all. That one word. Derived, by the way, from the Old English bisiġ, which means ‘diligently occupied.’ What she made of the fact that I was so swamped I couldn’t run any other investigations, I have no idea.”

Amelia Sachs smiled. “And you didn’t tell me.”

“Tell you what?” A frown, hinting at confusion, now materialized on his face. “That I shared with her that our dance card was booked solid? Why would you be interested in that?”

The answer, of course, was that it was better for Rhyme alone to have made the decision.

Finding vital evidence in a case, Rhyme told his students, is like being a biologist looking for an elusive microscopic creature, hiding from its white-jacketed hunters behind larger creatures and masquerading as other forms of life and inanimate objects.

The hunt could be a difficult, nearly impossible task at times, but once you did trap the thing, you had access to its entire nature—physical, mental, behavioral.

Access to the truth about it . . . Presenting which is the scientist’s duty, of course: to share the findings accurately and completely. Applied to law enforcement, this rule meant that no criminalist would ever stop short of finding and offering the full truth of what had been discovered in a forensic analysis.

Lincoln Rhyme knew that, however good the investigators in Westchester were, he himself was the only one on earth that could discover—and find proof of—what had actually happened in that park in Westchester this evening.

And those truths would have to be shared.

Yet . . .

Policing, which is a job forever plagued by limited resources, requires making choices.

Do I pick this case to investigate or that one?

The choice is mine.

A phrase came back to him.

There’s nothing you can do . . .

Lincoln Rhyme glanced at Sachs. “Do you want to do the honors?”

She called Lon Sellitto back.

“Linc, Amelia. So, I tell Westchester you’re on board?”

“Sorry, Lon,” she said, “we’ll pass. They’ll have to handle the case on their own.”

“But—”

Rhyme said, “Your fault, not ours. There’s a container out there that’s got to get found. And we’ve narrowed down its whereabouts to the entire Jersey coastline. So, we better get to it.”

The couple shared a glance, and Sachs ended the call.

About the Author

Jeffery Deaver is the #1 international bestselling and award-winning author of more than forty novels, ninety short stories, and a nonfiction law book. His books are sold in 150 countries and translated into twenty-five languages. A former journalist, folk singer, and attorney, he was born outside of Chicago and has a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a law degree from Fordham University.

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