He didn't know if he had any chance of catching her at home during the day, but he had already decided that he had the time to wait for her if she was at work or school. The worst part of it was the two-block walk back to the building after he parked his car. His leg had been feeling better, a bit stronger, so he'd left the crutch. Halfway there he realized that was a mistake, but he was too stubborn to go back and get it. Instead, he stopped at the coffee shop on the ground floor of Ruth Zimmerman's building, sat down, and ordered an expresso.
Gideon sat at a table with the coffee and tried to get a handle on what was going on.
What he had was a maladjusted teenager who grew up to be a mathematical genius. Resistant to authority. Prone to work alone, with her own priorities and her own agenda. Not someone Gideon would've pegged for government work. Julia Zimmerman seemed way too independent minded.
As he sat there, he thought about Kendal. He frowned at his coffee.
Kendal had found out about Zimmerman independently. He said she was working for a group called the International Unification Front. That was almost as hard to believe as Zimmerman working for the NSA.
I should be spending my time investigating the IUF, not Zimmerman. Why am I here?
It was his fault Kendal was shot, and it seemed more and more that all this was an exercise in avoiding responsibility for his brother.
'No, something is rotten here,' Gideon whispered. He knew, and Kendal knew. Right after Kendal was shot, his last words were about a setup. . .
'Blackmail. Theft. Setup. Bait.'
What had he been saying?
What’s the sequence of events here? Zimmerman's working for the NSA doing God-knows-what with
higher mathematics and computers. Around New Year's she bolts, apparently granting her services to the IUF. After that, Colonel Ramon and company swipe a Daedalus. Michael Gribaldi hires the late Davy Jones to boost a truck to transport the stolen computer. Davy tells Lionel about the score, and Lionel rats him out. Ramon and his people are captured with the Daedalus in tow, and the Feds bury the capture so they can set up an ambush at the meeting place. Somehow Davy gets called off the job while Gideon and Rafe walk into a covert antiterrorist military unit that's pretending to be Secret Service.
Lionel, Davy, and Kendal all wind up dead, Congress tries to hide the investigation from the media, and the grand jury decides not to ask any difficult questions.
'Wonder if I missed anything,' Gideon muttered as he frowned at his coffee.
With it all laid out in his head like that, it brought one major question to light. Who tipped off Davy—and presumably the IUF—that the Daedalus pickup was going to be an ambush?
'Fuck,' Gideon said to himself. He was out of his depth here.
There were two types of cops in the world. The first one was the type who got their badge, and did their best to do absolutely nothing for the next twenty years. God forbid they bust someone and have to go appear in court. The second one was obsessed with the bad guys, taking down any scum that's responsible for the evil that he sees on the street every day. The first type are the ones who end up becoming corrupt; the second type are the ones that stress out and go nuts.
Gideon knew what type he was. Couldn't run away. Couldn't ignore it. No matter how outclassed he might be. And while Doctor Zimmerman seemed to be the linchpin to what happened, he couldn't leave her alone.
The coffee was empty. He set it down and left to see if Ruth Zimmerman was home.
As he walked into the apartment's entryway, a black Lincoln Town Car drove by the street outside.
At the end of a narrow hallway stood a large door. It was covered with sheet metal and painted black. Layers of old paint gave the door its own rough topography. The apartment number, '2,' was stenciled on the door in yellow paint. Gideon stood in front of Ruth's door to catch his breath after climbing two flights of stairs.
Next to the door, set in the wall, was a little thumb-turn device that operated the doorbell. Gideon turned it, and felt the resistance of an old clockwork mechanism as the bell rang. For a while there was no answer, then a trap door fell away from a peephole that was drilled in the metal door. Gideon could see a single green eye look at him.
'What? Who're you?'
'My name's Gideon Malcolm, I'm a—'
'What do you want?'
'—detective with the Washington D.C. Police Department.'
'Really?' Gideon saw the eye scan him up and down through the hole. 'Let me see some ID.'
Gideon took out his shield and opened the case in front of the peephole. 'Left, so I can read.'
He shifted it to the left.
'My left, your right.'
He shifted it back.
'That isn't an NYPD badge.'
'I said I was from Washington D.C.'
'Yeah, what're you doing here?'
'I want to ask you some questions about your sister.'
'Been there, done that.' The door on the peephole shut the eye out.
'Shit,' Gideon muttered to himself. He bent over and rang the bell again, twisting the thing several times in a row. 'Ruth Zimmerman,' he called to the door, 'I need to talk to you.'
After a moment, the peephole opened and Ruth said, 'Go away. Can't you take a hint? Get a warrant.'
'I'm not working with the Feds. I'm here on my own.'
'Are you trying to impress me?'
'I'm trying to find out why my brother was killed.'
There was a bit of a pause. Then Ruth asked, 'What was your name again?'
'Gideon Malcolm.'
The peephole door shut again. Gideon sighed and was about to lean on the doorbell again when the door opened a couple of inches. It slid to the side and stopped short on a chain.
'Come over where I can see you,' Ruth said.
Gideon stepped over into the sliver of light that the open door let into the hallway. While Ruth looked him over, he took the opportunity to size her up.
She hadn't inherited her sister's height. She was about a head shorter than Gideon. She had curly hair that was cut short, and Gideon could see traces of paint on it. In fact, there was paint everywhere. There was a smear of yellow on her cheek, violets and indigos stained her hands, and the overalls she wore were a patchwork of browns, whites, and reds. Paint even stained the old copy of USA Today she held in her hands.
She turned it around, and Gideon saw a perfectly clean circle surrounded by a sharp ring of spattered blue paint, as if a paint can was sitting on the paper until just recently.
'That's you?' Ruth asked. 'Isn't it?'
Gideon recognized the picture, him on his doorstep cursing the reporters. Looking at it, he was almost embarrassed to admit it, but he nodded.
'You're the cop the Secret Service shot up.' She looked him up and down. 'You heal quick.'
'Not as quick as I'd like. Can I please talk to you?'
'What's Julie have to do with this?' She waved the paper. 'Or you?'
'I think that ambush was meant for your sister.'
Ruth stared at him. 'That? Her? But why, she works for the government—' She shook her head and muttered, 'Julie, you arrogant bitch!'
'What is it?' Gideon asked.
Ruth kept shaking her head, then she closed the door.
Gideon heard the chain rattle, then the door opened again, all the way. Ruth had crumpled up the old newspaper and tossed it on the floor. She waved him into the apartment. 'Come on. Have a seat if you can find one.'
Gideon walked into the apartment and Ruth slid the door shut behind him.
'This isn't a great place to talk right now, wait here.' She left him standing in the entryway.
Gideon took a few steps into the apartment. It was a huge studio loft. Right now it was lit by plastic-filtered sunlight, the scaffolding outside cutting the light into abstract shadows.
