"Oh, he ain't tellin' anybody anything. 'Cause yesterday he was in the alley behind Galt's and got himself run over by an NYPD patrolman. He's in the hospital, still unconscious."
"Oh my God," Ron Pulaski whispered. "St. Vincent's?"
"Right."
Pulaski said in a weak voice, "That was me who hit him."
"You?" Dellray asked, voice rising.
The officer said, "But, no, it can't be. The guy I hit? His name's Stanley Palmer."
"Yep, yep . . . That's him. 'Palmer' was one of Brent's covers."
"You mean, he didn't have warrants on him? He didn't do time for attempted murder, aggravated assault?"
Dellray shook his head. "The rap sheet was fake, Ron. We put it into the system so anybody who checked'd find out he had a record. The worst we got him for was conspiracy and then I turned him. Brent's a stand-up guy. He snitched for the money mostly. One of the best in the business."
"But what was he doing with groceries? In the alley?"
"Undercover technique a lot of us use. You cart around groceries or shopping bags, you look less suspicious. Baby carriage is the best. With a doll in it, course."
"Oh," Pulaski muttered. "I . . . Oh."
But Rhyme couldn't be concerned about his officer's psyche. Dellray had raised a credible theory that explained the inconsistencies that Rhyme had been sensing in the case all along.
He'd been looking for a wolf, when he should have been hunting a fox.
But could it be? Was somebody else behind the attacks and Galt just a fall guy?
McDaniel looked doubtful. "But there've been witnesses . . ."
His brown eyes locked on his boss's blue ones, Dellray said, "Are they reliable?"
"What do you mean, Fred?" An edge now in the slick ASAC's voice.
"Or were they people who believed it was Galt because we told the media that's who it was? And the media told the world?"
Rhyme added, "You wear safety goggles, you wear a hard hat and a company uniform . . . If you're the same race and same build, and you've got a fake name badge with your own picture on it and Galt's name . . . sure, it could work."
Sachs too was considering the evidence. "The lineman in the tunnel, Joey Barzan, said he identified him because of the name badge. He'd never met Galt. And it was real dark down there."
"And the security chief, Bernie Wahl," Rhyme added, "never saw him when he delivered the second demand note. The perp got him from behind."
Rhyme said, "And Galt was the one he kidnapped and killed. Like your CI found out."
"That's right," Dellray said.
"But the evidence?" McDaniel persisted.
Rhyme stared at the board, shaking his head. "Shit. How could I've missed it?"
"What, Rhyme?"
"The boots in Galt's apartment? A pair of Albertson-Fenwicks."
"But they matched," Pulaski said.
"Of course they matched. But that's not the point, Rookie. The boots were in Galt's apartment. If they were his, they wouldn't've been there; he'd be wearing them! Workers wouldn't have two pairs of new boots. They're expensive and employees usually have to buy their own. . . . No, the real perp found out what kind Galt wore and bought another pair. Same with the bolt cutter and hacksaw. The real perp left them in Galt's apartment to find. The rest of the evidence implicating Galt, like the hair in the coffee shop across from the substation on Fifty-seventh Street? That was planted too.