He never knew his father, and when he was eleven, his mother had left him one day at home with twenty dollars and never came back. A string of foster homes had followed, and nobody, nobody could tell him what he was missing, why he was always at the mercy of judges and bureaucrats, why he had so little control over his life; not where he would sleep, not when he would eat, not who would have power over him next.
He made it his subject to study men, to watch and try to understand what made them tick. Much of what he learned had disappointed him. Men were vain, proud, ignorant. They let their desires carry them away, ignored risks that were obvious. They did not think, did not plan. They did not know what they really wanted. They let the TV tell them what they should have and hoped that working at their pathetic jobs would make those wishes come true.
He craved control. He wanted to see them dance to his tune the way he had been made to dance to the tune of everyone else.
So he had honed himself to be pure and purposeful, like a sharp knife in a drawer full of ridiculous, ornate, fussy kitchen gadgets. He knew what he wanted, and he worked at getting it with singular purpose.
He adjusts the colors and the dynamic range to compensate for the dim light in the video. He wants there to be no mistake in identifying the man.
He stretches his tired arms and sore neck. For a moment, he wonders if he’ll be better off if he pays to have parts of his body enhanced so he can work for longer, without pain and fatigue. But the momentary fancy passes.
Most people don’t like medically unnecessary enhancements and would only accept them if they’re required for a job. No such sentimental considerations for bodily integrity or “naturalness” constrain the Watcher. He does not like enhancements because he views reliance on them as a sign of weakness. He would defeat his enemies with his mind, and with the aid of planning and foresight. He does not need to depend on machines.
He had learned to steal, and then rob, and eventually how to kill for money. But the money was really secondary, just a means to an end. It was control that he desired. The only man he had killed was a lawyer, someone who lied for a living. Lying had brought him money, and that gave him power, made people bow down to him and smile at him and speak in respectful voices. The Watcher had loved that moment when the man begged him for mercy, when he would have done anything the Watcher wanted. The Watcher had taken what he wanted from the man rightfully, by superiority of intellect and strength. Yet, the Watcher had been caught and gone to jail for it. A system that rewarded liars and punished the Watcher could not in any sense be called just.
He presses “save.” He’s done with this video.
Knowledge of the truth gave him power, and he would make others acknowledge it.
? ? ?
Before Ruth is about to make her next move, Daniel calls, and they meet in her office again.
“I have what you wanted.”
He takes out his laptop and shows her an animation, like a movie.
“They stored videos on the adapter?”
Daniel laughs. “No. The device can’t really ‘see,’ and that would be far too much data. No, the adapter just stored readings, numbers. I made the animation so it’s easier to understand.”
She’s impressed. The young man knows how to give a good presentation.
“The Wi-Fi echoes aren’t captured with enough resolution to give you much detail. But you can get a rough sense of people’s sizes and heights and their movements. This is what I got from the day and hour you specified.”
They watch as a bigger, vaguely humanoid shape appears at Mona’s apartment door, precisely at six, meeting a smaller, vaguely humanoid shape.
“Seems they had an appointment,” Daniel says.
They watch as the smaller shape leads the bigger shape into the bedroom, and then the two embrace. They watch the smaller shape climb into space—presumably onto the bed. They watch the bigger shape climb up after it. They watch the shooting, and then the smaller shape collapses and disappears. They watch the bigger shape lean over, and the smaller shape flickers into existence as it’s moved from time to time.
So there was only one killer, Ruth thinks. And he was a client.
“How tall is he?”
“There’s a scale to the side.”
Ruth watches the animation over and over. The man is six foot two or six foot three, maybe 180 to 200 pounds. She notices that he has a bit of a limp as he walks.
She’s now convinced that Luo was telling the truth. Not many Chinese men are six foot two, and such a man would stick out too much to be a killer for a gang. Every witness would remember him. Mona’s killer had been a client, maybe even a regular. It wasn’t a random robbery but carefully planned.
The man is still out there, and killers that meticulous rarely kill only once.
“Thank you,” she says. “You might be saving another young woman’s life.”
? ? ?
Ruth dials the number for the police department.
“Captain Brennan, please.”
She gives her name, and her call is transferred, and then she hears the gruff, weary voice of her ex-husband. “What can I do for you?”
Once again, she’s glad she has the Regulator. His voice dredges up memories of his raspy morning mumbles, his stentorian laughter, his tender whispers when they were alone, the soundtrack of twenty years of a life spent together, a life that they had both thought would last until one of them died.
“I need a favor.”
He doesn’t answer right away. She wonders if she’s too abrupt—a side effect of leaving the Regulator on all the time. Maybe she should have started with “How’ve you been?”
Finally, he speaks. “What is it?” ?The voice is restrained, but laced with exhausted, desiccated pain.
“I’d like to use your NCIC access.”
Another pause. “Why?”
“I’m working on the Mona Ding case. I think this is a man who’s killed before and will kill again. He’s got a method. I want to see if there are related cases in other cities.”
“That’s out of the question, Ruth. You know that. Besides, there’s no point. We’ve run all the searches we can, and there’s nothing similar. This was a Chinese gang protecting their business, simple as that. Until we have the resources in the Gang Unit to deal with it, I’m sorry, this will have to go cold for a while.”
Ruth hears the unspoken. The Chinese gangs have always preyed on their own. Until they bother the tourists, let’s just leave them alone. She’d heard similar sentiments often enough back when she was on the force. The Regulator could do nothing about certain kinds of prejudice. It’s perfectly rational. And also perfectly wrong.
“I don’t think so. I have an informant who says that the Chinese gangs have nothing to do with it.”
Scott snorts. “Yes, of course you can trust the word of a Chinese snakehead. But there’s also the note and the phone.”
“The note is most likely a forgery. And do you really think this Chinese gang member would be smart enough to realize that the phone records would give him away and then decide that the best place to hide it was around his place of business?”
“Who knows? Criminals are stupid.”
“The man is far too methodical for that. It’s a red herring.”
“You have no evidence.”
“I have a good reconstruction of the crime and a description of the suspect. He’s too tall to be the kind a Chinese gang would use.”
This gets his attention. “From where?”
“A neighbor had a home motion-sensing system that captured wireless echoes into Mona’s apartment. I paid someone to reconstruct it.”
“Will that stand up in court?”
“I doubt it. It will take expert testimony, and you’ll have to get the company to admit that they capture that information. They’ll fight it tooth and nail.”
“Then it’s not much use to me.”
“If you give me a chance to look in the database, maybe I can turn it into something you can use.” She waits a second and presses on, hoping that he’ll be sentimental. “I’ve never asked you for much.”
“This is the first time you’ve ever asked me for something like this.”
“I don’t usually take on cases like this.”