The Cutting Edge

Sunday, March 14

Chapter 11

His phone was humming. He didn’t recognize the number. But with a sigh and a sinking heart, he answered. “Yes?”

“Mr. Saul Weintraub?”

A hesitation. “Yes. Who’s this, please?”

“NYPD Detective Amelia Sachs.”

“Ah.”

“Sir, did you meet with Jatin Patel on Forty-Seventh Street? Yesterday around eleven a.m.?”

A broch...

This was the last thing he’d wanted. Saul Weintraub had so hoped to stay under the radar. The forty-one-year-old stood in the tiny, musty living room of his house in Queens. A cluttered space, but comfortably so, filled with mismatched hand-me-downs from his parents’ home and pieces he and his wife had bought over the years. He gripped the phone hard. It was his landline. His heart began to beat fast and nausea churned.

“I...” Can’t deny it. “Yes. I did.”

“Do you know about his death?”

“Yes, yes... How did you hear about me?”

“We got your picture from a security camera in Mr. Patel’s building. We had officers on the street asking about you. A jewelry dealer recognized you.”

A broch...

The detective was going to be angry with him for not coming forward. But he just didn’t want to get involved. Too many risks — both for his reputation in the diamond business and physical risks from the psychotic robber who’d killed Patel and that poor couple.

“I don’t know anything. I would have called right away if there was anything I could have said to help. I was gone long before it happened.”

But the topic of intelligence didn’t interest her. “Now, Mr. Weintraub. This is important. We think the man who killed Mr. Patel knows your name.”

“What?”

“We think he hurt Mr. Patel to find out who you were. Have you seen anyone following you or anyone outside your house?”

Hurt? “No, but...”

But he hadn’t looked. Why would he? He now walked to the window and peered out onto the quiet Sunday-morning street. A boy on a bike. Mrs. Cavanaugh, bundled in her beige coat, and that little shit dog of hers.

“I’m sending a car to your house. Just stay inside and keep the door locked. They’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“I will. But... I didn’t see anything at Jatin’s. I really didn’t.”

“We think you may have seen the killer outside, on the street, before he went to Patel’s shop. In any event, it’s possible that he thinks that. We just want to make sure you’re okay. We’ll bring you in to look over some videotape.”

“But how does he know where I live? Jatin didn’t know my home address. I didn’t know him well. I’ve evaluated some of his stones a half-dozen times. That’s our only connection. He’d know my office but not my home.”

“Let’s hope that’s the case. But it might not be too hard to track you down. We’ll just play it cautiously. Don’t you think?”

He sighed. “Sure. I suppose.”

Weintraub shifted his weight from foot to foot. Floorboards creaked beneath the decades-old oriental rug that had been a wedding present from Cousin Morris. He thought briefly about his resolve to lose those fifteen pounds and then realized how trivial that mission seemed now.

The woman said, “The theft was of some very valuable rough diamonds that had just been delivered from Grace-Cabot, the mining company. Did he mention them? Or that anyone might be interested in them?”

“No, he didn’t say anything to me.”

“We can go into this later but I want to ask now: A young Indian man, who might’ve worked with Patel, walked into the robbery, then got away. His initials are VL. Do you have any idea who that might be?”

“I don’t know. Honestly. Like I was saying, I do a job for him every few months.”

“That car should be there soon, Mr. Weintraub. Do you have a family?”

“My wife’s visiting my daughter at college this weekend.”

“I’d make plans to join them or, in any case, leave town for a bit.”

“You think this man is really looking for me?”

“We do, yes.”

“Gotteniu.”

“Keep the door locked.”

They disconnected. In the quiet, Weintraub listened to the radiator sputter and hiss. A gaudy wall clock ticked.

A broch... Hell and damnation.

Weintraub had heard of the crime, of course. But hadn’t gotten many details, as the death had happened on Shabbat and his ability to follow the news was limited. Weintraub was religious and he was, in theory, Orthodox but he played a bit loose with the rule forbidding the thirty-nine types of “creating” — labors — on Shabbat. He hadn’t driven to Jatin Patel’s office but hadn’t walked either (Queens to Manhattan?); he’d taken the subway. A compromise. And at Patel’s, he’d walked up the stairs to the third floor, rather than take the elevator. Watching television was not specifically forbidden, though turning on electricity was and even leaving the set on over Friday night wasn’t good, since watching the nonsense of cable news fell into the prohibition against uvdin d’chol, mundane, weekday activity. He’d turned the set on well after sundown and learned the horrific news.

Now Shabbat was over and he clicked on TV. The screen blossomed... with a commercial. Of course. Nothing about the crime.

He pushed aside heavy, gold-colored drapes and peered outside once more.

No bogeymen. No killers.

Weintraub fetched his overcoat from the rack in the front hall. Ten minutes until the car was here. The area code for the phone of that nice woman officer — nice because she hadn’t yelled at him for his reticence — was Manhattan. Was that where her office was? And after the interview, where would he go then? His wife and daughter were at a college mom-daughter weekend. He could hardly go there. Didn’t want to, truth be told.

Clenching and unclenching his hands, he thought: Ah, how sad! Jatin Patel. Gone. One of the best diamantaires in the world. The gems stolen must have been valuable — he only worked on the best diamonds — but killing for stones? That might happen in Africa, Russia, South America, yes. But not here.

He reflected again that she seemed quite nice, Amanda, no Amelia. He couldn’t remember her last name but recalled it sounded German. It might have been Jewish. He wondered how old she was, if she was married. Weintraub’s twenty-eight-year-old son still had no wife.

He sighed.

His mobile hummed.

Curious. It was the owner of the deli next to his office — about ten blocks away. He and the man were friends but rarely talked via phone.

“Ari. What, is all well?”

“Saul. Just thought you should know. A man was in, having some coffee, and he asked about you. He seemed nice enough. He asked if you were the Weintraub that lived on Ditmars Court. Jenny told him yes. She just told me.”

“When was this?”

“About a half hour ago.”

Weintraub’s thoughts leapt quickly: Patel tells the killer my name and my business address — not knowing my home. The killer starts asking about me around my shop, armed with a list of Saul Weintraubs in and around Long Island City. At the deli he asks the counter girl if the Weintraub who owned the shop is the one who lives on Ditmars Court. He’s a friend, he says. And Jenny says, yes.

Fucking Internet.

A broch...

“I have to go.” He disconnected and summoned the keypad on his phone.

Before he could dial 911, though, a figure stepped forward fast, from behind him, spun him around and ripped the phone from his hand. Weintraub gave a cry of shock and fear. The man’s face was obscured by a ski mask. Weintraub thought: basement window, back bathroom window. He never locked windows the way he should.

“No, no, please! I didn’t say anything to them! I promise. I didn’t see anything, I’m not a threat!” His heart slammed in his chest.

The intruder glanced at the screen and slipped the phone into his pocket.

Weintraub said desperately, “Please. I can get you diamonds, gold. Whatever you want! Please! I have a wife, a daughter. Please.”

The man held up one finger to his own lips, shushing him the way he might a babbling child.

Chapter 12

One of the kur from yesterday morning’s excitement at Jatin Patel’s shop was dead and gone.

Saul Weintraub.

Goodbye. May your Jew God embrace your soul. Or burn you in hell. Or send you wherever. Vladimir Rostov hadn’t been old enough to sample the Soviet Union firsthand but his study of history told him he would have fit right in with USSR state atheism. He didn’t believe in second acts for the soul.

Now, one gone. One more kuritsa to go: the skinny boy. Rostov was impatiently awaiting word from his little sniffy-cryee Persian friend Nashim, who had better be spending the Day of Rest making calls to his Indian counterparts in the diamond world.

Thinking of those daughters of his: Scheherazade and Kitten.

Pretty girls.

Vladimir Rostov was presently refueling. His residence was in Brighton Beach, the Russian enclave of Brooklyn, but he was in neighboring Sheepshead. He was sitting in what had become one of his favorite restaurants in the world. The famed Roll N Roaster, a landmark in Brooklyn. It was a neighborhood “joint” — a term he’d heard somebody use but that he didn’t quite get, English not being his first language. After he looked the word up, though, it made perfect sense. The man felt right at home in a joint. Especially this one, which served up magnificent roast beef sandwiches — with cheese, always cheese — and Coca-Cola better than in Moscow, no doubt on this.

His only regret was that one could not smoke in the Roll N Roaster, which would have made a meal here an exquisite experience.

A mother with two small boys walked past — the kids, like him, were crowned with blond crew cuts and had broad faces. They stared at his meal, maybe marveling at the quantity. Two and a half sandwiches were sitting before him, a mountain of fries.

Since they were near Little Odessa, the Russian émigré community, Rostov said to them, “Zdravstvuyte.”

The boys stared blankly with steel-blue gazes, also matching his. The mother nodded, a faint smile on her overly powdered Slavic face. “Khoroshego dnya.”

Rostov’s eyes dipped from face to crotch then, as she passed, to ass. She wore a short red jacket and tight black skirt — and he watched her hips sway as she walked out. Rostov debated but decided there was no reasonable scenario that would let his momentary fantasy come to life. Forcing himself on a mother with children in tow could have only bad consequences.

In his appetite for women, like in his appetite for beef (and most other things, for that matter, diamonds among them), he walked a tightrope.

Gone to the stone...

Which sounded better in Russian than in English.

He had his parents to thank for the phrase — and the condition itself, which Rostov equated with a form of controlled madness.

It had all begun with his father. One night — not an ounce of vodka in him! — the man had stabbed his wife, Rostov’s mother (though only in the face and only with a screwdriver, so hardly a problem). Then he’d stripped his clothes off and run into a nearby forest, where he spent the night, apparently chasing nocturnal animals and howling. At dawn, he’d used a rock to chip away the ice that had formed around him in the stream he’d fallen asleep in and returned home. After forgiving her for the affair, his father began to methodically negotiate the divorce with his soon-to-be-ex. The discussion included a number of real estate, financial and insurance details — but not a word about where little Vladimir would go; the boy had always been an afterthought, at best.

They decided that he would temporarily live with Uncle Gregor and Aunt Ro.

So the twelve-year-old packed a suitcase, not even a wheelie but one you had to heft, and shopping bag and boarded a plane for the picturesque town of Mirny, Russia.

If ever there was a place for a boy to go to the stone, it was Mirny.

Rostov lifted the rest of the sandwich, chewed it down in just a few bites, then vanquished another. Returning to the laptop, which was online, he scrolled. He lived on the device. He watched porn, played games, sent emails, hacked (he was Russian, of course)... and followed the news.

This is what he was doing presently, while he chewed and chewed and tried not to think about the Slavic mother’s hips. He read several accounts of the incident at poor Mr. Patel’s.

Nothing new. Nothing to concern him. And so far, Saul Weintraub’s killing had not been connected to the events at Patel Designs, not by the press, that is, though the police would know. Weintraub’s murder, in fact, didn’t take up much space, none in the national news. It was the “Massacre on 47th Street” (the New York Post’s term) that captured everyone’s attention.

The suspect was a white male, medium build, in dark clothing, stocking cap.

Hm. Won’t find many of those in New York.

Last sandwich down. Ah...

He turned his attention back to online newspapers and the police’s statements to the public. They gave some details but not too many. Nothing about the second kuritsa, initials VL on Patel’s calendar.

He threw a napkin over his face and stifled a racking bout of coughing. Breathing in, out. Slowly. The urge subsided. He now switched windows to the streaming site of a major cable network and tapped an earbud in, raised the volume. Nothing about the crime for the duration of one Coke and about a dozen fries. Then a segment on the murder and robbery came on, moderated by the network’s “Senior Crime Correspondent,” a job description that amused Rostov no end since she was all of thirty years old.

The blonde (and a very appealing one she was) sat in the studio, remotely interviewing a slim, middle-aged man in a crisp suit jacket, white shirt and tie. His head was adorned with neatly trimmed hair.

“Joining us now is Dr. Arnold Moore, a psychologist at Cumberland University in Ohio specializing in criminal behavior. Welcome, Doctor. Now, according to police, the robber who forced his way into the jewelry store on Forty-Seventh Street yesterday took some diamonds but left hundreds of thousands of dollars’ more. Is it unusual for a robber to leave such valuable loot behind, like that?”

“Thank you, Cindi. So, professional thieves who target high-end jewelry stores and factories like Mr. Patel’s are the best of the best. No one would attempt a brazen robbery like this without maximizing their return. That means taking with them every diamond he could lay his hands on.”

“‘Maximizing return.’ You’re saying, then, that robbery, well, it’s a business?”

Cindi sounded a bit aghast. Rostov liked her boobs, prominent in a yellow dress, though diminished somewhat by a heavy necklace of wooden disks. Why that accessory? he wondered, then turned his attention back.

“Exactly, Cindi. And this wasn’t what you might call a typical ‘transaction.’”

Air quotes around the word, of course. Rostov quite disliked this man.

“That’s why I think we’re dealing with something else here, some other motive.”

“What do you think that could be?” dear Cindi asked.

“I couldn’t speculate. Maybe he had a separate reason to kill the diamond cutter and took some of the gems to make the police think it was just a robbery.”

But isn’t that speculating, Doctor? Rostov thought. Hack.

Cindi jumped in. “Or are you saying maybe the couple was the target? That would be William Sloane and Anna Markam, of Great Neck, New York.”

Pictures of them, smiling, appeared briefly on the screen. Rostov washed a mouthful of fries down with Coke.

“That’s a possibility, Cindi. But from what I’ve heard, there was no motive for their deaths. No criminal connections. It appeared they were just bystanders. But you’re right, the killer may have picked them on purpose.”

Rostov enjoyed the way they kicked back and forth “are you saying” and “you’re right” like soldiers lobbing hand grenades. Wanting to make sure the other was responsible for the irresponsible speculation.

“A young couple like that. Any thoughts on why?”

“They were there to pick up their engagement ring. We don’t know if their killer knew that but then he could have figured it out.”

“He’s targeting engaged couples?”

Hand grenade away.

“All I can say is in my practice I’ve found it’s not uncommon for psychopathic killers to harbor resentment against those who have what they don’t.”

Successfully dodged.

“You’re thinking maybe he was jilted, left at the altar. Or he suffered because his parents had a difficult marriage.”

The doctor smiled patiently. “Well, we’d really have to learn more. But it is clear that this doesn’t fit the mold for professional diamond larceny.”

A commercial popped up. Rostov tapped the newscast off and sent his Dell to sleep.

He mopped up ketchup with the last of the fries, and — some balance still remaining — used his fingers for the rest of the condiment. After licking, he cleaned the digits by dunking them in his water glass and drying them with a napkin. He rose and bought several more sandwiches, these to go — so he could both eat and smoke, like normal people did (his sole gripe with Putin was that he had banned smoking in much of the dear Motherland). Rostov paid and stepped out into the cool gray March morning.

Well, Doctor, you are the fucking clever fellow, aren’t you?

We’d like to come visit, my box cutter and me.

Rostov had an image of the pitch and duration of the squealing sounds the doctor might make when he took the razor blade to the bony man’s fingers or ears. But like the sweaty bout of sex with the mother whose hips swayed à la an amusement park ride, this was pure imagination.

Coughing gently, Rostov walked steadily down the untidy sidewalk, alternating between bits of the heavenly sandwich and drags on his pungent Russian cigarette. Unable to decide which was the more delicious.

Chapter 13

Dismayed at the sight, Amelia Sachs pulled her Torino to the curb on this quiet street in Long Island City, tossed the NYPD sign onto the dash and climbed out.

Four blue-and-whites were there. One unmarked. And an ambulance. Which was now unnecessary, as the polyvinyl tarp covering the body in the front hallway explained.

The body of Saul Weintraub.

Her first thought: What could they have done differently to save his life?

No answers came to her.

The killer would have spent his time since the killing in Midtown tracking down Weintraub. His canvassing had been just a bit better than theirs. The instant they’d learned his name, she’d called. Lock the doors. Don’t let any strangers in. And the local precinct, the 114, had gotten a car there as fast as they could.

That Weintraub himself should have called them the minute he learned of Patel’s death wasn’t a factor. No cop can blame potential witnesses for duck-and-cover.

Her phone hummed. Rhyme.

“I’m here,” she said.

“Got something interesting, Sachs. Text from a burner phone, now dead, of course. It went to a half-dozen TV and radio stations in the area. It’s all over the news. I just sent it.”

She minimized the phone screen and went to texts.

“Jesus, Rhyme. You think it’s Forty-Seven? Or just a copycat?”

“I don’t know. I’m having somebody from downtown, a linguist, look at it. Not that’ll tell us much, I think. My gut says it’s from him. But you know how much I trust that. Well, run the scene there and we’ll talk more when you’re back.”

She started toward the home, a modest row house, painted white, in need of more paint, and windowsills lined with empty brown flower boxes, like droopy lower eyelids. Instinctively, she tapped her Glock — the Gen4 FS — to orient herself to the weapon’s exact position. There was a large crowd. It wasn’t impossible for Unsub 47 to be among them — here to learn of the police’s progress. Sachs eyed those on the street — fifty or sixty people — and the TV stations’ vans. Was the unsub among the spectators? Street Crime officers were canvassing. If anybody seemed suspicious or left quickly, they’d pursue the lead. Still, she suspected that the man’s business was completed and he’d fled after the murder. A shooting this time, she’d learned. No knife work. The victim had, however, been beaten.

“Hey, Amelia.”

She nodded to Ben Kohl, a gold shield out of the 114. He asked, “So how come you guys’re involved?”

Sachs explained to the detective, a lean balding man in his mid-fifties, “A wit in the killing at the diamond shop, Four-Seven Street yesterday.”

“Oh, that. Jesus. How’d the perp find him? They know each other?”

“We don’t know. How’d you hear?”

“Gunshots reported.”

“Anybody see anything? Get a description?”

“Maybe. But nobody’s talking. We’ve been canvassing but we got nothing so far. I mean, we’ll handle it out of our house, you want. But Major Cases want to take it?”

Hope blossomed in his voice.

“If I can borrow some of your people for the canvass. You mind?”

“Mind?” Kohl laughed. “I’m taking the wife out for our anniversary tonight. All yours. I’ll get you three, four uniforms to help out. Just keep our Homicide crew in the loop. This one’ll show up as our stat and we’ll need to report it out. You understand.”

“Sure.”

Sachs walked close to the scene to make sure it remained clear and to await the Crime Scene bus, so she could get to work.

Mikey O’Brien had a plan and he was unwrapping it in his mind right now.

After the wedding they’d stay in the neighborhood for one year. That was it. Three hundred sixty-five days. Less, if possible. But definitely no more than. By then he’d be a senior floor manager (okay, teller) at the bank and be making close to 45K. Emma would be getting thirty from the hospital, more if she worked nights. Enough for a down payment in eastern Nassau somewhere.

Close enough to the in-laws (both sets) to visit. But not too close.

The slim redheaded man, twenty-six, strode with hope and a hint of cockiness down Avenue U. Past the tanning salon, the Progressive Medical Center, the deli, the meat market, the pharmacy. Signs in Greek, signs in Italian.

Nothing wrong with this neighborhood, Gravesend. But, it was a place to leave, not a place to stay.

For him at least. Michael P. O’Brien, future district manager of Brooklyn Federal Bank, had places to go.

Another block and he saw her, waiting on the street corner. After errands this morning they’d planned to rendezvous here then proceed to their apartment (the temporary apartment — one year, no more, he reminded himself firmly).

He smiled at the sight. Emma Sanders, blond, with stunning green eyes, was beautiful, an inch taller than he was, and round where a woman should be round — perfect for having, and making, babies. He smiled to himself as he thought this. There would be three children. Among the names to pick and choose from: Michael III, Edward, Anthony, Meghan, Ellie, Michaela. Emma had signed off on these.

Mikey O’Brien was a happy man.

“Hey, sweet.” They kissed. She smelled of flowers.

He assumed the scent was flowers. That was a subject he wasn’t familiar with — no gardening in his genes. But it seemed to be floral. On the other hand, he was soon to be very familiar with the subject. The groom’s side was helping contribute to the wedding expenses, and his family — that is, Mikey himself — was picking up the florist’s bill.

“How’d it go?” he asked her.

They continued walking in the direction he’d been heading — toward the apartment.

“Oh, honey. She’s great. Totally great. She’s not trying to talk us into anything we don’t want. I thought she was going to and I was going to sic my big, bad Mikey on her. But, uh-uh, she knows the budget—”

Already a shitload of money, Mikey thought but didn’t come close to saying.

“—and is sticking to it. I mean, Nora’s planner talked her into the eight-piece band, remember.”

Friggin’ orchestra.

“But Stacey didn’t push me. She’s cool with a keyboard, guitarist, bass and drums.”

Had he agreed to a four-piece band? Joey got married with a DJ was all. Worked out great.

Again, keeping mum.

In truth, Mikey O’Brien wasn’t even sure why they needed a wedding planner. Wasn’t that something you could figure out yourself? He’d put together bachelor parties. And a wake. They’d all gone fine.

But Emma wanted one — because her sister had had one and Nora, her BFF from the hospital, had had one. So, honey, Mikey, pleeeeease.

Oh, hell, sure. She was so beautiful...

Emma slipped her arm through his and they continued through this interesting neighborhood, where commercial and residential coexisted peacefully. Two blocks farther along, they turned the corner and started toward their apartment. He felt her breast against his biceps.

That low urge unfurled within him, demanding attention, like a horse hoofing the ground.

Maybe just a half hour... the bedroom, the couch? The living room floor? Nope, he said to himself. No time. They had to get ready to meet her parents out on Long Island.

The wind shook branches overhead and speckled the couple with icy water. Mikey brushed it off his shoulders and happened to look back. He noted someone behind, about thirty feet away, in dark coat, gloves and stocking cap. Gravesend, despite the name, wasn’t particularly dangerous. But this was New York. You had to keep an eye out. This guy, though, was by himself, no gang action. He was looking down at the screen of his phone as he walked. Innocent as could be.

Soon they were home. The block was a little scuffed, a little worn, in need of a sidewalk sweeping and repair and couldn’t the damn super at 368 get that moldy green couch off the effing sidewalk until trash day?

But it was a pleasant enough place.

Good for a year.

The plan.

They climbed the five steps to the front door of their building, a dark, scabby four-story walk-up brownstone. Here, they paused, as he fished for keys. He felt Emma tug him closer, with a certain, unmissable message. He turned and they kissed again, lingering. Okay, the horse was done hoofing; he was out, trotting through the fields.

The wedding was two weeks from today. Who — aside from his mother — would note that a baby was born exactly eight months and fifteen days after?

He could handle Mom.

“Hey,” he whispered to her. “What do you think about—”

Then, in an instant, the man behind them, the innocent man, charged forward. He’d pulled the stocking cap into a ski mask. Shit, shit, shit. He held a gun in cloth-gloved hands and was pointing it at Emma’s head. “Scream, and you die.”

Which led, of course, to a scream of sorts.

From Mikey, not his fiancée.

Gasping, he said, “Here, here! Take my wallet. You can have it.”

“Shhh. Shhh. We go inside.” The voice was accented. He couldn’t tell what country or neighborhood he might be from. Like he was covering up his real accent, trying to sound American.

“Honey,” Emma whispered.

“No, no, little chicken!” the man barked and grabbed her arm, which had been lingering behind her back. Her phone fell to the concrete. The gun still aimed their way, he crouched and picked it up. The dialing app was on the screen and she’d punched in 9 and 1 and 1 but had not hit Send. He powered it down.

He leaned close and Mikey smelled garlic and onion and meat on his breath and aftershave on his skin. “You are being smarter, will you?”

Heart racing, as his jaw quivered, Mikey said, “Yes. We will. Now listen, please. I’ll go inside. Let her go.”

The man laughed and he seemed genuinely amused. “Now.”

With shaking hands, Mikey unlocked the front door and they walked inside and up the stairs to their apartment on the second floor.

Chapter 14

Look, please, man. You don’t want to do this.”

“Hm.” The intruder seemed to be sniffing the air as he looked around their small apartment. He turned his eyes to Emma, who sobbed and held the fingers of one hand over her mouth. At first Mikey thought the intruder was looking at his fiancée’s chest or legs but, no, he was concentrating on her hands. No, just one hand. Her left.

What could he possibly want? They had nothing. Less than nothing; they were in debt already from the wedding plans.

He said, “My uncle’s a cop in Syosset. He’s a ball breaker. Just take what you want and walk out the door. I won’t say anything to him.”

“A cop? Your uncle is cop.”

Mikey wished he hadn’t said that. He hoped he wouldn’t pee his pants. He stared at the gun.

“Honey, honey,” Emma gasped.

“It’s okay, sweet.” Then to the intruder: “Come on, man. What do you want? I don’t have money here. We can get you some. A couple thousand.”

Though he knew that wasn’t what this guy wanted. He sure wasn’t going to get a ton of loot from a couple like them, in Gravesend, Brooklyn. What he wanted was to kill Mikey and rape Emma.

But Mikey would make sure that the second part of that wasn’t going to happen, whatever it took. The man had a gun and he looked like he’d have no trouble in the world using it. But he wasn’t huge. Oh, Mikey was probably going to die but he had rage and that fucking Irish madness on his side. The rage that, on the rare times it kicked in, kicked in huge. He’d lunge and grapple and do enough damage so that Emma could get out the window or the front door. And when the bullet got fired into Mikey’s brain or gut or heart, the sound of the shot would scare the man off.

Or, who knew? Maybe he’d take the guy by surprise and get the gun away from him and shoot him in the balls and the elbow and knee and then — after a time — call the police. Keep the agony going, for ten, fifteen minutes.

Mikey shivered with fury. He hadn’t been in a fight for eight years, when he’d beat the crap out of the fucking asshole who’d made fun of Mikey’s kid sister, who had Down syndrome. The guy had outweighed him by thirty pounds but had gone down like a cardboard box. Broken jaw and dislocated shoulder.

Now, move now... Surprise the son of a bitch, while he’s not looking at you!

The man cut his eyes to the left, in an instant, and slammed the gun into Mikey’s cheek. A searing pain, a flash of yellow. He staggered back, tripping over the ottoman that had been his parents’ and that he and his brother had played aircraft carrier on two decades ago.

Emma cried out and ran to him, hugging hard.

“Prick,” she shouted.

“Listen here, little hen,” he muttered at Mikey. “I know what people going to do before they are trying it. I am psychic, don’t you know? You had hero vibrations.”

The intruder rose and pulled a utility knife from his pocket. Emma gasped. The man thumbed the blade out and yanked a lamp cord from the socket and cut it. He shoved Emma to the floor and rolled Mikey onto his belly and bound his hands behind him. He tied Emma’s hands too, though in front of her.

He muscled them each into a sitting position. He himself sat on the ottoman.

“Please, please!” Emma cried. “Take our money and leave!”

His cold blue eyes swept over Mikey and his fiancée. “You.” He pointed the knife at Emma. “Give me hands. Now!”

She looked toward Mikey, who shook his head no. But she offered her hands anyway. Her right was on top

“Why would I want that hand? You stupid hen.”

She began to sob harder.

“Left. I want left hand.”

He took her fingers, staring at her ring.

That’s what he’d been looking at earlier.

Mikey understood. “You’re that killer. You’re that one on the news! The Promisor. You killed that couple, the engaged couple in Midtown! Please, mister. Come on. We didn’t do anything to you.”

“The Promisor,” the man whispered. He seemed to relish the word.

Emma’s head dropped and tears poured, moisture oozed from her nose and mouth.

“You want it, take it,” Emma muttered. “It’s worth a lot.”

“Was worth lot,” he said. He tapped the stone with the back of the knife. His face revealed contempt. “Not worth lot now.”

Mikey now understood that he’d been staking out the wedding planner storefront, waiting for an engaged couple. Like he’d followed that couple into the jewelry store in Midtown yesterday. He’d followed Emma back here. He wanted to kill engaged couples. That’s what the news said.

Mikey began, “Please...”

“Shhh. Tired of you saying that.” He fell silent for a moment. “Do you know what this was?” he asked, his voice low, manic. Holding up her hands and tapping the ring once more. Harder.

Wincing from the impact, Emma gasped, “What... what do you mean?”

This wasn’t the answer he wanted.

He shouted this time. “You are having any idea?”

Emma looked down.

“Billion years... You are listening?”

Mikey whispered quickly, “We’re listening. Yes.”

Emma nodded. Tears still streamed. The assailant continued to hold her hands.

“Billion years ago there is piece of carbon. Like charcoal. Just like charcoal. Nothing. It was nothing. Just pieces of blackness hundred miles underground. Buried there. Ah—” His eyes shone. “But then something miracle happened. Like baby happens. Two thousand degrees centigrade. Huge, huge pressure, hundreds thousands pounds in one inch. And over those billions years, what happens? Most perfect thing in world is created. Diamond. Heart of earth. Diamonds are heart of earth. You know Jesus?”

Emma nodded. “We’re Catholic.”

“Jesus is redeemer,” he said.

“Yes,” Mikey said.

“Diamonds redeem sins of earth.” He eased back, pointing the triangular blade of the knife from one of his captives to the other slowly.

A fucking psycho.

Though he was sitting, with hands tied behind him, Mikey was judging angles. More carefully this time.

The assailant said, “Now, is raped, is destroyed. Heart of earth is piece of crap on your finger.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t... we didn’t mean anything.”

He yanked her hand into a shaft of sunlight. “Do you see?”

There was a burst of colored lights refracted from the stone, like you’d see from a prism.

He whispered, “‘Fire’ it’s called. That fire is God’s anger you have taken miracle and cut it up into little teeth for your finger.”

“I’m so sorry.” Emma undoubtedly was trying to think of something to say to convince him that they were innocent of this crime.

It would do no good. This man was a plane crash, a propane tank explosion, a heart attack. There’d be no reasoning with him.

Then he grew calm and leaned back, looking, it seemed, self-satisfied. “I am just doing mission. Justice to God, justice to earth. Yesterday I saved big diamonds before they was cut. And I kill this terrible man so he could not defile stones anymore. In India — where diamonds first discovered — it was sin to cut them. He should know that. He betrayed his people. He paid for that.”

“You’re hurting me!”

“Oh, poor chickee...” The sarcastic words drooled from his lips. The madman eyed the ring as he caressed her finger. “Tell you story, you lovebirds. I tell you story. After Depression and war, nobody was buying engagement rings. No money, no time for engagements! Just get married, bang the babies out, move to suburbs. Happy, happy. Ach, but De Beers, the diamond company, they had most famous advertising of all time. ‘A Diamond Is Forever.’ And business came back. Everybody bought diamonds! You had to have diamond or your husband was asshole and you got laughed at. And all those stones, beautiful stones, got cut and cut and cut.” His eyes grew angry and a demonic grin spread across his face. “Am thinking something else is forever too.”

He pulled her ring finger straight and pressed the blade against the base.

Oh, Mary, Mother of Jesus... He’s going to cut her finger off before he kills us!

He gripped the knife with his right hand and tightened his hold on Emma’s digit with his left. As he eased forward, though, Emma let out a fierce scream and twisted away. He lost his grip and she fell back. He lunged with the knife and missed her.

It was then that Mikey, braced on the floor, kicked the man with both feet, as hard as he could, using every ounce of energy in his strong legs. The man tumbled off the ottoman and into a bookcase. He hit his head and lay stunned, squinting in pain.

Emma, with her hands in front of her, easily rose to her feet.

“Run! Now, go!” And Mikey struggled to stand.

He meant her alone. His improvised plan was to pile onto the madman and use his teeth to rip flesh or break fingers. He’d die but at least his love would escape.

Emma didn’t hesitate. But she didn’t make for the door. She grabbed Mikey by the shoulder and yanked her fiancé to his feet.

“No!”

“Yes!” she shouted.

Mikey noted that the assailant was wiping tears of pain from his eyes and gripping his battered head. They’d have only a few seconds to escape before the man could focus. Together they sprinted toward the door, Emma in the lead, and she pulled it open fast. Then they pushed into the hall, just as the stunningly loud gunshot sounded behind them and a bullet, missing Mikey’s head by less than a foot, cracked into the wall across the hall.

They fled toward the stairs at the end of the hallway, which would lead them straight down to the entryway and the street.

Of course, if the man followed them into the hall, he’d have a perfect shot into their backs as they descended the stairs. But there was nothing else to do. At least here, at this moment, Mikey thought hysterically, they were less dead than in their apartment.

He positioned himself directly behind Emma as they took the steps two at a time downward to the lobby.

She got to the ground first and leapt to the front door, pulling it open.

Which was when he fell.

On the third step from the bottom, he lost his balance and, not having use of his hands, he went down hard, first on his side, then onto his belly, the wood taking skin from throbbing cheek and chin.

Emma cried, “No, honey!”

“Keep going!” he called.

But once again she ignored him. She stepped forward and crouched to help Mikey up.

Above them, a door slammed and the floor creaked — he knew the exact spot, just outside their apartment, where the loose board made that noise. The sound meant the killer would be approaching the top of the stairs now.

He’d be aiming.

With a fierce lunge, Mikey rose to his full height. He stepped behind her and shouted, “Run!”

He prayed that his body would shield the bullets, stopping them, and give his love — his beautiful girl — a chance to make it, unhurt, into the street.

Chapter 15

The murder of Saul Weintraub had taken place within a four-by-four-foot square of the entrance alcove in his house.

Unsub 47 had come in through an unlocked basement window, walked straight up the stairs, shot Weintraub three times, once to the face and a double-tap to the chest, and then fled through the front door. She knew it had happened this way since the killer had left moist footprints — from the drizzle outside — in a direct path from entry to exit.

Although Weintraub hadn’t been tortured with the knife, he had been beaten — pistol-whipped, it seemed, since there were no blunt objects in his house that might have caused the wounds; nothing Sachs found held blood or tissue. She guessed the blows were to force him to reveal what Weintraub had told the police or who VL was. There was another possibility, too: that the killer had demanded something. Weintraub’s coat lay beside him and one of the pockets was turned out, as if the killer had asked that he produce something.

Or was it simply because Weintraub, in anticipation of walking out to the police car, had pulled his gloves from the pocket? They lay nearby too.

Dressed in her white overalls, booties, hood and cornflower-blue gloves, she walked the grid in the house while two crime scene evidence techs, whom she knew from the main headquarters, ran the secondary scenes — the backyard and alley and the sidewalk on which he’d, possibly, entered and later fled. Sachs was optimistic about finding evidence in the back — near the window where he’d entered — but the odds were slim that she would find any relevant clues on the sidewalk in front of the house; heavy foot traffic would have deposited thousands of bits of trace, dirt, mud, trash, animal crap, pee.

She sent several of the uniforms whom Ben Kohl had assigned to her to canvass for wits and search for evidence for three or four blocks in the direction the unsub had fled. She knew the escape route since a woman, a dog walker, had seen him jogging from Weintraub’s house, just after the shots. He’d pulled off a cap or mask and the woman had seen that he was white with short light-colored hair.

Sachs assembled what she’d found. No single bit of evidence seemed particularly helpful. The shoe prints seemed the same, the fibers too — from the gloves and the ski mask.

Three spent brass shells. Fiocchi 9mm — probably what had been fired in Midtown at the witness, though there he’d collected the spent round. The fact he’d left them here meant he was in a hurry, probably because of the noise of the shots. The brass also had been ejected some distance, the ones she found, under furniture.

A Motorola radio crackled from the belt of an officer nearby. She couldn’t hear the transmission but he sent a reply from his shoulder mike and walked up to Sachs. “Detective? One of the uniforms canvassing? Found something in a storm drain. Two blocks that way.” He pointed in the direction that the perp had fled. “She didn’t want to touch it. Clothing or something.”

Sachs picked up some collection gear and headed along the sidewalk, nodding to the curious and concerned bystanders and deflecting questions. One woman asked, “Was it a hate crime?”

“We’re investigating,” Sachs told her and walked on. After two blocks she slowed, seeing no other cops. Had she misheard? But then she looked down a side street and saw a patrol officer, a Latina in her late twenties, waving. Sachs turned and joined the woman.

“Officer.”

“Detective.” The solidly built woman had a beautiful face, round. And she had applied makeup with care that morning. Sachs was pleased to see that Officer M. López was able to balance her personal inclinations with her profession. This small thing told Sachs she’d have a long career in blue. “I was going south, like you sent us, but thought I’d try this way. It’s a shortcut to the subway, up a block. Nobody heard any tires squealing away after the shots so I thought he might’ve done an MTA.”

Jumping on a Metropolitan Transportation Authority subway car could put distance between a criminal and a crime scene faster than a Ferrari.

López continued, “And since he got spotted by that wit — the woman with the dog — I was thinking, it’d been me, I would’ve lost the jacket. I’ve been checking trash cans and” — she pointed to the grate at her feet — “storm drains. Looks like some clothing in there. Didn’t touch it.”

“Good.” Sachs lay a number next to the grating and photographed it herself with her phone. “Did you—”

“I canvassed apartments. Nobody saw him.”

Sachs smiled in reply. She bent down and flashed her Maglite into the opening. It was a wad of dark cloth and it didn’t appear wet, which meant it hadn’t been there for very long. Drizzle had been the order of the day.

Pulling on gloves, she fished out the garment. It was a wool jacket and fairly new. Unsub 47 had worn a similar one, according to the anonymous 911 report and the video from the store on 47th Street, near Patel’s building.

López added, “Don’t know for certain it’s his. Maybe you can get gunshot residue off the sleeve to make sure.”

Which was on the program. Sachs bagged the jacket and fished in the drain but could find nothing else.

“Which subway?”

López told her and she jotted the numbers of the train lines.

“Thanks, Officer. Good work.”

“I’ll keep on with the canvass.”

“Thanks. I’m sending an ECT crew out. You can help ’em. And I’ll send a note to your file.”

The woman tried not to beam. “’Preciate it.”

Sachs encircled the area with yellow tape. She placed a call to the CSU’s main office, asking for an evidence collection tech she knew. She told the man the location of the storm drain and asked for a more thorough examination. A team would use fiber-optic cameras and lights to peer into the drain and see if the unsub — if it was indeed him — had thrown out the mask or anything else.

She returned to the scene at Saul Weintraub’s home to find that the crowds had largely dissipated. She stripped out of the overalls and gloves and wrote chain-of-custody notations on the cards.

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at the caller ID.

“Rhyme. We’re finished here. I’ll bring the evidence—”

“Sachs.”

The tone of his voice made clear that there was a problem.

“What is it?”

“Have the techs bring the stuff to me. You need to get down to Gravesend.”

“Brooklyn?”

“Yeah. Our unsub’s not wasting any time, Sachs. You’ve got another scene to run.”

Chapter 16

Lincoln Rhyme loved cloth.

When stitched into garments, the complex substance reveals the size of the perp, possibly age and maybe site of storage and, often, the source of purchase. It can shed fibers faster than a golden retriever blows his coat. And even better, cloth captures and retains wonderful trace evidence and in some rare instances fingerprints. Not to mention it can serve as a sponge to soak up and store that most wonderful of substances, deoxyribonucleic acid. Also known as DNA. Three letters that, Rhyme would theatrically tell his criminalistics students, spelled bad news for perps.

Rhyme was presently watching Mel Cooper process the jacket discarded by Unsub 47 in the storm drain in Queens.

They knew the garment was his because it contained traces of gunshot residue that was nearly identical in composition to residue on Weintraub’s body and found at the crime scenes in Patel’s building in the Diamond District. Cooper also discovered traces of the same rock dust near Weintraub’s body that was found at Patel’s: that kimberlite. The substance was proving helpful. The bullet striking the stone had blown a significant amount of rock dust and tiny chips throughout Patel’s shop, some settling on the unsub. It was acting like a marker to link him to locations and contacts.

Locard’s Principle, after Edmond Locard, the French criminalist, holds that in every exchange between criminal and victim, or criminal and crime scene, there is a transfer of matter. (“Every contact leaves a trace.”) If the forensic scientist is diligent enough, and clever enough, he or she can find that substance and determine what it is. That doesn’t mean, of course, that it will lead you to the perp’s door, but it can start you on the path.

This kimberlite, a perfect example of Locard’s matter, had become a helpful partner in their hunt for the unsub.

Rhyme called, “Prints?”

“Negative,” Cooper replied. He’d been over every inch of the jacket with an alternative light source then tried gold and zinc vacuum metal deposition, which can sometimes raise fingerprints on cloth. Well, that was always a long shot with garments.

Rhyme told him, “Get samples to Queens for DNA and TDNA.”

“Already ordered,” Cooper said. There was likely a DNA sample somewhere on the coat. Sweat or spit or tears or — it wasn’t unheard of with outer garments — semen adhere plentifully. If this was the case here, the DNA profile might have a positive hit in the CODIS or an international database and reveal the suspect’s identity. Even if no significant amounts of fluid or tissue were found, though, there would certainly be skin cells, which might be used for a Touch DNA analysis. This technique is less accurate than a full DNA workup — it requires only a half-dozen skin cells — and can result in false positive results. But this would not be for criminal trial, merely direction in getting the unsub’s identity.

Cooper slipped the jacket into an evidence bag and, since he hadn’t done so earlier, added his name to the chain-of-custody card. He left it inside the front door to await pickup by a team from the DNA analysis unit in Queens.

The brand labels had been cut from the jacket — clever. It was roughly a medium size, man’s. The stitching suggested mass manufacturing in a third-world country. Probably sold in a thousand stores around the country. There would be no leads from this angle.

In evidence bags Cooper assembled samples of fibers he’d taken from the jacket, along with fibers found inside the pockets — they were black cotton, very similar to those found at Patel’s, from the gloves, and polyester fibers, from the mask.

Patrolman Ron Pulaski called in. He explained he was still having no luck tracking down the mysterious VL. Rhyme recalled what their insurance investigator had warned of: the reluctance of those in the diamond community to talk to outsiders. As well as a natural tendency not to get involved in a case in which the perp was fast to use a razor knife and gun.

“Keep at it,” he told the Rookie and they disconnected.

VL’s refusal to contact the police was perplexing. Yes, he’d be scared of being targeted by the killer, but generally a witness would come forward immediately and ask for protection — and help catch the perp. It was also curious that no friends or family had contacted the police — surely he’d told someone about his run-in with the perp. He was a young man and must have a family.

Of course, it was possible he’d died of the wounds from the rock fragments. They hadn’t seemed serious but Rhyme had known victims of bad gunshot wounds to walk and act normally for hours before keeling over and dying.

Possible too that the unsub had found him, like he had Weintraub, killed him and disposed of the body. But in either of those cases he would have expected a missing-persons report. And Cooper’s survey of the precincts — admittedly quick — had found none.

The tech was peering into a microscope. “Trace on the jacket: More kimberlite. And some plant material. Two types. One is from leaves and grass similar to the control samples Amelia took from around the storm drain. What you’d expect. But there’s some flecks that’re unique.”

“And they’re what?”

“Hold on.” He was flipping through cellular-level images in the horticultural database that Rhyme had created at the NYPD years ago and that he still helped maintain. He loved plants as forensic markers.

“Something called... Yes, I’m pretty sure it’s something called Coleonema pulchellum. Aka confetti bush. Not indigenous to the area — it comes from Africa — but common here as a deodorizer and in potpourri.”

The perp had been to a gift shop lately, possibly. Or did he live in an apartment where pungent smells were a problem?

“The brass,” Rhyme called.

Cooper, who was certified by the AFTE, the Association of Firearm and Tool Mark Examiners, turned to the two spent 9mm shells that Sachs had collected. The slugs themselves, all of which had lodged in Weintraub’s body, would be sent from the Medical Examiner’s Office, after the autopsy. Given the urgency of the case, the doctor performing the postmortem had photographed one slug and sent the image to Cooper. The preliminary analysis was that it had been fired from the same weapon that was used at the shooting at Patel’s. No surprise since the gunshot residue was almost identical; the powder in all the rounds would have come from the manufacturer’s same lot.

“Prints on the brass?” Rhyme asked.

Cooper shook his head.

No surprise here either.

Cooper then ran through the list of trace and minute substances that Sachs had collected.

“Sawdust, diesel fuel, metals consistent with welding. Heating oil, air-conditioner coolant. Then trichlorobenzene. I don’t know what that is.”

“Used as a pesticide, I think. Or used to be. Nasty stuff. Look it up.”

Cooper read from a government environmental alert: “‘Trichlorobenzene has several uses. It is an intermediate — a building block — to make herbicides, substances that destroy or prevent the growth of weeds. It is also used as a solvent to dissolve waxes, grease, rubber and certain plastics and a dielectric fluid (a liquid that conducts little or no electricity).’ And, yeah, you’re right, used to be used for termite control.”

This trace suggested that their unsub had been in or near a factory, old buildings, a basement, a service station or a construction site. Something to note but there was nothing particularly helpful in these finds to aid them in locating him.

Cooper got a call and had a brief conversation, then walked to the computer just as the screen switched to email. He said, into his phone, “Got it.” He disconnected.

“What’s that?”

“Amelia had an EC team prowl around the storm drain where she found the jacket. They hit gold.”

“And that would be?”

“A MetroCard.”

“Well. But is it his?”

“I’d say yes. It wasn’t there very long,” Cooper said. “Wet but not too wet. Like the jacket.”

In 2003 the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s MetroCard had replaced the token for payment in city buses and subways. Rhyme loved them because each one had a unique identifier, so the point of departure of every subway rider could be established. Couple that with the MTA’s extensive CCTV and facial recognition algorithms and you could occasionally come up with a reasonable estimation of where and when that rider disembarked.

“They’re scanning the data and sending it separately.”

Unsub 47 would not, of course, have used his own credit card for the purchase but — if he’d used the fare card for travel — they might get some good facial images of him swiping it at a station.

Rhyme asked, “Prints, DNA on the card?”

“Negative. Evidence of cloth glove impressions.”

A sigh. “Anything else in the storm drain?”

“Nope.”

Rhyme gazed at the evidence chart. The facts written upon it — and facts that were absent — proved what Rhyme already knew: Unsub 47 was uncommonly clever, never leaving prints, disabling video cameras, ditching his jacket after being spotted, wearing a ski mask or looking away from security cameras, making determined efforts to eliminate witnesses and tidy up after the theft.

But Lincoln Rhyme was used to being challenged by smart perps. He thought about the most brilliant one he’d been up against: Charles Vespasian Hale, known by the nickname “the Watchmaker.” The name came from both his obsession with timepieces and the fact that his crimes were planned with the precision of a clock’s mechanism. The man was a superstore of criminal services, available to anyone who could pay his substantial fee — from terrorist attacks to murder to kidnapping to mundane larceny, and everything in between. (Including jailbreaks, Rhyme reflected, with the pique he always felt when he thought of Hale; the man was still on the lam, having escaped from the prison Rhyme had put him in.)

Rhyme now heard Thom let someone into the town house, and Lon Sellitto ambled into the parlor, shedding his jacket.

“Too effing cold out there. Ridiculous. March. You ever see a March like this?”

Rhyme usually ignored conversations regarding climate. He did this now and briefed the detective on their incremental progress.

Sellitto grimaced. “City Hall won’t be happy. We’ve gotta move faster.”

“Tell Forty-Seven to be more cooperative.”

“Linc. We held off telling that Brit about S and VL. And one of ’em’s dead. Let’s get him canvassing for the protégé. Whatta you think?”

Rhyme shrugged. This was one of the few gestures his body was capable of. “At this point, sure.”

Sellitto called the number on Ackroyd’s card and asked him if he could come in. The detective disconnected. “Be here soon.”

Cooper’s computer sang with the sound of incoming email.

“Transit. The CCTV.”

Rhyme explained to Sellitto about the MetroCard.

“Damn. That’s good.”

The New York City transit system is overseen by two separate police forces. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police takes care of law enforcement for much of the surface transportation in the region, including some outlying counties. The NYPD’s Transit Bureau guards the subways.

The message, from an officer at Transit’s Brooklyn headquarters on Schermerhorn Street, reported that it was a one-ride card, bought with cash. He’d used it two days ago. “He got on the train in Brooklyn, the stop near Cadman Plaza. They don’t know if or where he transferred or got off, but he started out heading toward Manhattan. And those trains would get him to Forty-Second Street pretty fast.”

Sellitto muttered, “Walking distance to Patel’s.”

The day before the killing. Maybe casing it, checking out security.

Cooper read some more. “The RTCC folks say there’s something odd we should look at.”

The NYPD was part of the Domain Awareness System, a surveillance system that included a network of close to seven thousand CCTV cameras throughout the city, about two-thirds of them owned by private companies and individuals, who had given the police access. Scores of detectives staffed camera monitors at the Real Time Crime Center, located at One Police Plaza. The software was so sophisticated that it could automatically flag a “suspicious package” or identify and track potential suspects with as little input as “six-foot, medium build, light-blue jacket.”

The RTCC had pulled the video from the subway station when and before the fare card was swiped.

“Odd?” Rhyme murmured.

Cooper typed and a video appeared on the screen, in color and of pretty good resolution. Medium definition.

“Here’s the rider.” The tech pointed to a figure on the monitor.

He appeared similar to their other image of the unsub, on 47th Street, just after the killings. The jacket appeared identical to the one they’d just analyzed. He wore a black stocking cap that could be a rolled-up ski mask. And, of course, he kept his head down as he swept the fare card through the reader.

“Now here’s the MTA camera facing the street outside the subway entrance. Five minutes earlier, as he’s approaching the station.”

Cooper ran the tape several times.

“What’s he doing?” Sellitto muttered. “I don’t get it.”

Odd...

It appeared that Forty-Seven was approaching the subway in a straight line from across the street but then he stopped abruptly, turned around and walked back toward where he’d just come from. Then he reversed direction once more, continuing into the station.

Rhyme said, “There’s a trash bin there. He turns around to throw something out. What is it? Yellow. He was holding something yellow. And orange. I can see orange too. But what? Again.”

Cooper played the tape once more.

It was Sellitto who said, “Got it.”

“What?” Rhyme asked.

“Look what’s behind him.”

Ah, Rhyme thought, nodding. He too understood. On the other side of the street was a construction site. Several workers wore orange safety vests and yellow hard hats. The same shade as what was in Forty-Seven’s hand.

Sellitto said, “He exits the jobsite, swaps the hard hat for his stocking cap. He’s going to pitch out the hat and vest but can’t find a trash bin in front of the subway. He turns around and finds a bin. Then goes to catch his train.”

“He’s not a worker — he’s in street clothes and nobody on a job would throw out a hard hat.”

“I’d vote he stole the hat and vest to get into the site. Why?”

Rhyme offered, “Meeting somebody who works there. One possibility.”

Sellitto said, “Another one: That station’s near the government buildings, right?”

“Cadman Plaza,” Cooper said. “The streets’re loaded with CCTVs — the police, the federal buildings, courts, administrative offices. To get to the station entrance any other way, aside from the jobsite, he’d have to go past a dozen cameras.”

Sellitto offered, “He lives south of construction site?”

“No, he can’t steal hard hats and trespass,” Rhyme said, “every time he wants to take the train. I’d go with he was meeting somebody in the site. Maybe he was picking up his weapon? Talking to somebody about fencing the rough?”

Although less so than in the past, the New York City’s construction industry was populated with men who had organized crime connections.

Sellitto called the RTCC supervisor and gave him the ID information about the video. He would have officers check street cameras in the surrounding blocks for an hour before the unsub swiped the card. The search criteria would be a man fitting the general description, filtered by “wearing or in possession of yellow hard hat and orange vest.”

As Rhyme watched Mel Cooper add the latest details of the case to a whiteboard, he thought: Why? Why’re you doing this?

“Easy answer,” called a woman’s melodious voice.

Rhyme turned. He hadn’t been aware Amelia Sachs had returned from Brooklyn. Or that he’d just spoken the questions aloud. He asked, “Which is?”

“He’s just plain crazy.”

Chapter 17

He’d spent the night at the airport. LaGuardia — two bus journeys away.

Vimal Lahori had huddled in the backs of both vehicles, wincing as the rough ride punched his wounds.

He’d found a waiting area chair, near the ticket counters, as if planning to check in for an early flight, after a cancellation. He was one of a dozen displaced travelers. No one paid him any mind.

Vimal would have preferred his beloved Port Authority but he suspected that the place would be watched by the police. And there was also the killer, who might continue to be prowling the streets of Midtown. He’d dreamed much, mostly nightmares, though he couldn’t recall the specific images. He’d woken to the memory of Mr. Patel’s feet. Tears had streamed for a few minutes. But then he forced himself to rise and wash up in the bathroom. There, in a stall, he checked the wound once more. It stung and was surrounded by a huge bruise but wasn’t puffy with infection. He clumsily changed the dressing — the wound was hard to reach — and squirted some more of the chill Betadine on it.

Now, after another bus ride, he was moving with his head down along a sidewalk in Flushing, Queens. He found the place he sought, a retail and wholesale jewelry shop on a busy street. He entered N&B Jewelers and walked to the clerk, a young, round South Asian woman.

“Is Mr. Nouri in yet?”

“He’s in a meeting.”

“Could you tell him Vimal Lahori would like to see him?”

She glanced at his rumpled, dusty clothes and made a call. She disconnected. “He’ll be down in five minutes.”

He thanked her and wandered around the store. It had just opened — noon on Sunday — and there were no customers yet, just an armed guard, staring blankly at the ceiling.

Vimal looked at the displays in the windows, behind thick glass. The jewelry pieces Mr. Nouri had placed there were of a number of various styles and sizes and prices, intended to snare potential buyers with many different tastes and budgets.

Some would come to N&B to buy that very special stone. The engagement rock being paramount in this category, of course.

But there are many other markets that De Beers or other mines tapped: the anniversary ring, the daughter-having-a-baby charm, the sweet-sixteen or quinceañera earrings, the prom tiara, the grandmother pin. The diamond industry was constantly coming up with new excuses to sell you its wares — like greeting card companies — and to make sure you felt pretty damn guilty if you lapsed. With weary cynicism, Vimal would look through the direct-mail material Mr. Patel received from branded diamond companies, suggesting to retailers new approaches to reach buyers, like gay engagements. “Old norms are ‘out the window,’” one brochure enthused. “Suggest that both partners can wear diamonds to signify their upcoming union... and double your revenue with each nuptial!”

Or the “Degree Diamond”: “She made you proud with that diploma; show her how much her achievement means to you!”

He’d once joked to Adeela that the industry might soon come up with a “funeral diamond” to be buried with you, though after the events of the past day, that idea was no longer funny.

He saw a door open at the back of the showroom and Dev Nouri walked out. He was a bald, fat man of about fifty-five. A loupe sat on his head — the familiar ten-power magnifier that was standard in the industry. The lens was pointed upward. He waddled forward and they shook hands.

The shop owner looked about with a concerned expression, and Vimal realized that he was maybe worried that the Promisor might have followed him.

Ridiculous. But Vimal too gazed out the window.

He saw no one who might be the killer. But was relieved when Mr. Nouri said, “Let’s go upstairs.”

They walked into a hallway and Mr. Nouri used a thumbprint pad to open a thick steel door. They passed through this and climbed to the second floor, where the dealer’s office and cutting and polishing factory was located. Vimal’s father had once told him that the cutters in Surat, India, made Hondas; Mr. Patel made Rolls-Royces. Mr. Nouri’s stones would be squarely in the BMW category.

They stepped into Mr. Nouri’s cluttered office and sat. “Now, tell me. You were there? When Jatin was killed?”

“I was, yes. Though I got away.”

“How terrible! Jatin’s sister... his children. How sad they must be!”

“Yeah. It’s terrible. Just awful.” Vimal spun Adeela’s cloth bracelet nervously. “Mr. Nouri. I need some help.”

“From me?”

“Yes. My parents and I think it’s best for me to leave the city for a while. They gave me what money they could. But I need some more. I’m hoping you can help me.”

Mr. Nouri did not catch the lie. He was more troubled, it seemed, about impending financial requests. “Me? I don’t have—”

“I’m not asking to borrow. I have something to sell.”

“Inventory from Patel’s?” He looked suspicious.

This was one reason that Vimal had not gone to the police. The rocks were technically Mr. Patel’s. They would have confiscated them as evidence, and he needed them desperately. They might even have arrested him for theft.

But Vimal said, truthfully, “It’s not a customer’s. It was Mr. Patel’s, yes. But he owed me for the month. I’ll never see that money now.” Vimal produced one of the rocks in the bag that he’d been carrying when he was shot. It was the January bird.

“But what is this? Kimberlite?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Nouri took the stone from Vimal’s hand. He flipped down the loupe and studied the stone. “I’ve never seen any.”

Kimberlite was the raw ore from which the majority of diamonds around the world were extracted. The mineral was named after the town of Kimberley in South Africa, where in the late 1800s the famed Star of South Africa, an eighty-four-carat stone, was found embedded in a vein of kimberlite, setting off the world’s first diamond rush.

But diamond rough was usually extracted at the mines, and the kimberlite discarded, so those further down the gem manufacturing chain rarely, if ever, saw the rock that gave birth to the diamonds they worked on.

Up went the loupe. “You want to sell it?”

“Yes. Please.”

“But what would I do with it?”

Vimal held the stone under a lamp. “Look. You can see crystals. They’d be diamonds. Extract them. Then cut and sell those. There could be some big rough inside. Look at that one.” He pointed out a shimmery dot on the side of the stone. “It could be worth thousands.”

Mr. Nouri laughed. “Do you know how diamonds are extracted from kimberlite?”

“I understand it’s complicated.” The rock was first crushed — with enough pressure to break up the kimberlite but not the diamonds. Then the resulting diamond-laden bits were tumbled in water-filled drums and treated with ferrosilicon sand. It was a long process.

“It is. And I don’t have the equipment. Don’t know anyone who does. I’d have to send it to Canada. But no mine would take a small rock like this. They handle tons at a time.”

He was pierced with disappointment and desperation. “But—”

“Vimal, I’m sorry. I could lend you a hundred dollars.”

Vimal closed his eyes briefly. His shoulders slumped. He stared at the stone, turning it over and over in his hand. There were tiny flashes, rough diamonds. He supposed Mr. Nouri was right: The extraction process was only profitable on a mass scale.

“No, I don’t want a loan. Thank you.” He shoved the stone into his pocket.

He started to turn but Mr. Nouri, looking at him with sympathy, said, “Wait. I’ll tell you what. Do a cut for me. I’ll pay you a thousand.”

That wouldn’t go very far in starting a new life. But he was desperate. “Yes, please. But I don’t have much time.”

“This won’t take long. Some people, yes. You? No. Come with me.”

Chapter 18

I thought they were dead, Rhyme.”

“Who?”

Sachs said, “Mikey O’Brien. Emma Sanders.”

“Again, who?”

“The couple in Gravesend.”

“Dead?”

She’d just returned from the two crime scenes: Weintraub’s house in Queens and the attack in Brooklyn. “You said victims.”

“I only heard from the precinct that there was a shooting. Two vics, the captain was telling me. Something about the perp following them from a jewelry store.”

“No, from a wedding planner.”

“Ah.”

Sellitto nodded her way. He was on the phone with the officers canvassing in Gravesend for witnesses who had seen the perp. The detective held the mobile in one hand and a Danish in his other. He’d cut the pastry in half and eaten the first portion, then, it seemed, given in to temptation and started nibbling on the remainder.

Rhyme had little interest in psychological profiling. Sachs, on the other hand, was more a self-proclaimed people cop and felt the mental mechanism of perps was helpful in tracking them down. He didn’t fully agree but he respected her. And was curious about the diagnosis.

Crazy...

She explained to Rhyme and Cooper what the couple had said about their escape, how their hands had been bound but not their legs. Mikey had kicked the perp and they’d fled. He’d fired one shot but missed. By the time he started after them, the woman was outside, screaming. Forty-Seven didn’t stay around and got out the back door.

“It was our boy, for sure?” Rhyme asked.

“Oh, yeah. No doubt about it: Unsub Forty-Seven and the Promisor are one and the same. Just before he tried to cut that girl’s finger off, he explained why he killed the couple at Patel’s.”

Disconnecting his phone, Sellitto looked up. “Got away in Gravesend. Canvass reports nothing.”

Rhyme shrugged at the discouraging news, then told the detective that Sachs had confirmed their unsub was in fact the Promisor.

The doorbell rang and Thom went to get it. He returned with Edward Ackroyd, the insurance adjuster. Thom took his beige overcoat — because the man was Brit, Rhyme thought of it as a greatcoat, though he had no idea if the English used that expression, or ever had. “Tea?” the aide asked.

The man smiled — perhaps at the aide’s assumption of beverage choice — and declined, but asked for coffee.

“Filtered? Cappuccino?”

Ackroyd picked the latter.

The aide hung the man’s coat up and retreated to the kitchen.

“Thanks for coming in,” Sellitto said.

“Of course.”

“Don’t know if you saw the news. Our unsub got to a witness. His name was Saul Weintraub. He was shot and killed.”

“Oh, no.” Ackroyd sighed. “Did he get a chance to say anything before he died?”

Sachs said, “Not much. Just that he didn’t know Patel well. I sent a car to bring him in, interview him some more. But...” Her grim face acknowledged how this plan had so badly failed.

“How did the suspect find him?” Ackroyd wondered.

Sellitto said, “We think he got his name by torturing Patel. But not his address. There are a lot of Saul Weintraubs in the city. He did some detective work and tracked him down. Now there’s a second witness we’re sure he’s after too. His initials, we think, are VL. He’s young, Indian, maybe Patel’s assistant or protégé. We’re hoping you can help us find him. Before the unsub does.”

Sachs said to Cooper, “Call up the picture.”

“Security footage. Just after he got away.”

Ackroyd looked over the fuzzy image from the loading dock, squinting closely. “Early, mid-twenties. Not tall. Five six, eight. Slim. South Asian.”

“I’m thinking,” Rhyme said, “you’ll have to be discreet. Maybe not mention the initials, when you call. Just ask about protégés of Patel.”

The Englishman nodded. “Yes, of course, in case the suspect gets in touch with one of my contacts.”

“Another thing you should know,” Sachs said. “He just assaulted another engaged couple — in Gravesend. A neighborhood of Brooklyn.”

“Good Lord, he did?” Ackroyd asked, clearly surprised. “So soon after Weintraub? Are they dead?”

“No. They survived. Not badly injured.”

“Really?” The Englishman’s face narrowed. “Ah, very good. For them, of course. And for us, as well. What did they have to say?”

Rhyme glanced toward Sachs, who said, “That brings me to my diagnosis: crazy. I think we have his motive. And it has nothing to do with stealing the rough to sell it. He’s saving it.”

Ackroyd nodded. “Saving? Not uncommon. Diamonds are a solid investment and an inflation hedge.”

“No, no. I mean, like saving an endangered species: keeping diamonds out of the hands of the engagement ring mill. He stole the rough to keep it pure. They said he rambled on about how diamonds are the heart of the earth and that cutting them is like raping or murdering them.”

Crazy...

Thom appeared with a cup and Ackroyd took it. He sipped and complimented the aide on the beverage. The man was then shaking his head. “Saving diamonds. ‘Heart of the earth.’ That’s one for the ages. There are certainly some nutters who hoard diamonds but that’s always for the value. They think if there’s a nuclear war or rebellion they’ll have the diamonds to barter. As if after an atomic holocaust the first thing people will want is baubles.”

Sachs added, “And it looks like he was intentionally targeting Patel too. He referred to the ‘Indian’ he killed yesterday. He’d betrayed his people, he said.” Sachs flipped through her notes. “Something about diamonds being sacred.”

“In ancient India, yes, that was true. For them it was a mortal sin to cut diamonds. The Greeks and Romans began cutting them and turning them into jewelry although it wasn’t long until the Indians got on board. As one might expect, the spiritual nature of the stones took second place to commerce and vanity.” Ackroyd seemed to grow thoughtful... and then perplexed. He asked, “Did he give any indication of where the rough was? Where he lived? Anything else about him?”

“Nothing. Just threats and ranting. They gave me some details. He has light-blue eyes. And a foreign accent but it was as though he was trying to obscure it, speaking American-accented English. His grammar was, I’m quoting, ‘messed up.’ He’s a smoker. They could smell it. And he’s got a new, or a second, weapon. A revolver. Mikey knows guns. And I dug the slug out of the wall. Damaged but not bad. It’s a thirty-eight, I’m sure.”

Sellitto said, “He pitched out his jacket after the Weintraub killing. He probably tossed the Glock into a Dumpster somewhere. Or another storm drain.”

“I’ll get an EC team from Queens to check out the other drains,” Sachs said and called Crime Scene headquarters to arrange it.

Sachs and Cooper turned to analyzing the evidence from the Gravesend assault.

The results of the fingerprints were negative. The floors were carpeted, so she hadn’t been able to take electrostatic footprints. Cooper did a gunshot residue profile from furniture near where the unsub had been standing when he fired. Sachs had also collected a few items that were more likely associated with the perp, rather than Mikey or Emma, or recent visitors to the place: black cotton fibers, some scraps of cooked ground beef and two blond hairs. The hairs and swabs of surfaces the unsub had been near were sent to the main lab for DNA testing.

The analysis on the Promisor’s text had come in. It was impossible to trace the call and the burner had been bought with cash. Some fast research had revealed that the first sentence was from a knowledge base like Wikipedia.

Since he had quoted that first sentence, the words and phrasing revealed nothing about him. The rest, presumably generated by their unsub, provided some minor insights, basically what Sachs had discovered: That English was probably not his first language — the sparsity of articles or modifiers (not “buy the ring”) was typical of a number of foreign tongues. The splitting of “everywhere” into two words supported this as well, as did the absence of contractions — as with “I am” and “I will.”

And there was nothing in the NCIC crime database, or any other they had access to, that profiled anyone fitting the behavior of the unsub.

“Promisor,” Ackroyd muttered. He looked as though he wished he’d drawn a more conventional case. Setting down his empty coffee cup, he walked to the rack of coats and pulled his on. “I’ll see if I can find this elusive VL. No one you’ve talked to has any leads at all?”

“Not a one,” Sellitto said.

The Englishman left. Rhyme told Sachs about the fare card and recounted their conclusion that Forty-Seven had been at the jobsite across from the subway two days ago — either taking a shortcut to avoid the cameras in the government buildings at Cadman Plaza or, more likely, meeting somebody there, possibly a worker with an organized crime connection to buy a new gun, the .38.

“I’ll get down there and check it out. Sunday, but they’ll have at least some security there.” Sachs collected her jacket and headed out the door.

After she’d left, Sellitto received a call and had a conversation. He disconnected. “CCTVs from just before our boy took the subway. He was tagged on Hicks Street, near Pierrepont, a couple blocks away. Wearing the hard hat and reflective vest. Just walking. Alone. That’s all they’ve got. But he’s in the system now, tagged to the location. If he shows up again, we’re on the alert.”

Rhyme nodded and wheeled back to the charts. The entries provided some direction, some help. But the prickly dissatisfaction he felt, like a nagging fever, told him that the problem wasn’t that the answers were so elusive; it was that he was beginning to think they weren’t asking the right questions.

It was then that his phone dinged with a text. He looked over the screen.

“Thom?” he shouted.

“I’m right—”

“Bring the van around.”

“Here. The van?”

“Yes. Bring. The. Van. Around.”

Sellitto regarded him. “Got a lead?”

“No. This’s something else.”

Chapter 19

Well, a problem.

Vimal Lahori was sitting across from Mr. Nouri at the diamantaire’s desk, in his upstairs office at N&B Jewelry. His heart was beating hard, his breath coming fast.

He needed the money. But there was a glitch.

He was staring at the diamond that he’d shaken from the stiff folded envelope, the diamond Mr. Nouri was hiring him to cut.

“Something, isn’t it?” the man whispered.

Vimal could only nod. He tipped down the loupe and examined the stone under the sharp light from a gooseneck lamp. Turned it over, and over, and over.

Rough diamonds occur in nature in various forms. The most common shape is octahedron — essentially two four-sided pyramids joined at the base. These are cut into separate pyramids and each one is then bruted — smoothed against another diamond or a laser. These become round brilliants: the most common cut, making up tens of millions of stones in rings, earrings, pins and necklaces around the world. This cut features fifty-seven or occasionally fifty-eight facets; it was created a century ago by Marcel Tolkowsky, one of the most renowned diamantaires who ever lived. He applied geometry to establish the ideal proportions for shaping diamonds.

But occasionally shapes other than octahedrons are found: triangular macles, cubics, tetrahedrons, and complex or irregular shapes. These are used for “fancy” cuts — anything that isn’t a round brilliant. Marquis, heart-shaped, cushion, pear, oval, emerald and the latest in-vogue cut: the princess.

The stone Vimal was to cut was an elongated complex — a round-edged rectangle. It was, like all rough, not transparent but somewhat milky; only through cutting and polishing does a diamond become clear. But it was still possible to grade a diamond at this stage with some accuracy and Vimal knew that when finished it would be colorless G grade clear, rated VS1 — very slight inclusions, which meant that its few imperfections would be invisible to the naked eye. A superb stone.

Vimal glanced at Mr. Nouri and then the plot — a computerized image of the diamond on the monitor next to them, which showed how to most efficiently cut the stone.

Generally a piece of rough is cut into two or three pieces, and algorithms, developed over the years, will produce highly accurate plans for finishing the stones.

Because this diamond was large — seven carats — and of an unusual shape, the plotting software had come up with instructions for cutting it in four places, creating five individual diamonds, each destined for a round brilliant cut. Mr. Nouri had drawn the cuts with red marking pen on the stone itself.

“But you can redraw them,” Mr. Nouri said, offering the marker. “See? This is why I need you, Vimal. There is no room for error. One mistake will cut the value of the finished stones by a quarter. Maybe more. I can’t do it. Nobody who works for me can do it.”

Vimal lifted the stone to his face once more, flipped down the loupe. “A pad. A damp pad.”

Mr. Nouri handed him a gauze square — similar to what Adeela had used to treat his wounds. With the pad Vimal cleaned the red lines off and again studied the stone closely.

Every block of stone, Michelangelo wrote, has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. Vimal believed this, and it applied to diamonds just as it did to marble or granite.

He took up the marker. Though his heart pounded, his hands were as steady as the stone he was drawing upon. Eight fast lines.

“There.”

Mr. Nouri stared. “What is this?”

“That’s the cut.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“This.” He indicated the lines.

“What cut is that? I don’t recognize it.”

“I’m not separating it.”

Mr. Nouri laughed. “Vimal.”

“I’m not.”

The diamantaire grew somber. “But I paid so much for it. I need five stones to recoup the cost.”

“Five brilliants like any other five brilliants. They’ll add nothing to the world.”

“Add to the world,” the man mused sardonically.

“It has to be a parallelogram.”

“A parallelogram?”

“Think of it as a trapezoid, with parallel sides.”

“I know what the shape is. I studied mathematics at university. It simply has no place as a diamond cut. There’s no market for it.”

“You will never see a stone like this again,” Vimal said.

Mr. Nouri’s shrug said, So?

“No, I won’t separate it. I’ll only cut the parallelogram.”

“I’ll find somebody else.”

“Yes, I’m sure you will.”

Vimal set the stone down and rose.

A rueful smile spread across Mr. Nouri’s face. “I will pay you two thousand to separate it like I’d planned.”

“No.”

“Two thousand five hundred.”

Vimal started to turn. Then he stopped and leaned down, his face close to the older man’s. He whispered, “Take a chance.”

And thought: So timid with my father, so bold here.

“What?” Mr. Nouri asked.

“I know your work. I know the work of your son and the other cutters here. You’re all good. You create diamonds that your customers love — the newlyweds and the wives and the husbands and parents and grandparents. You make them happy. And you’ll be able to make them happy again and again — with thousands of other round brilliants. But this once, with this stone, do something different.”

“Business is business, Vimal.”

Yes, it certainly is, the young man thought. “I should go.”

When Vimal was five feet from the door, Mr. Nouri said, “Wait.”

He looked back.

“You think this is best, this cut?”

“It’s the cut this stone deserves, I can’t say anything more than that.”

Mr. Nouri shook his head, as if trying to process this comment. Then he stuck his hand out.

Vimal said, “Still, twenty-five hundred?”

A nod.

The men shook hands.

Vimal asked, “Where can I work?”

Chapter 20

Got your text,” Lincoln Rhyme said.

The man lying in the bed glanced up with a brief but glowing smile. Surprise too.

“Lincoln. You came. I mean in person. I just... Just wanted to chat. Phone call I was thinking.”

“Barry.” Rhyme directed his chair closer.

The complicated bed was in a room deep in the bowels of a complicated hospital complex on the East Side in Midtown. It had taken some minutes to find the place. Much color coding. It didn’t help a lot.

“Thom.”

“Hi.”

Barry Sales shifted a bit, tucked under excessively washed sheets and blankets. He found a wired remote control, pressed a button and rose into a sitting position, thanks to the hydraulic mattress. The man was in his late thirties. His skin was pale, his brown hair thinning.

His eyes game but hollow.

Rhyme wheeled closer yet. Both men nodded a greeting and Rhyme at least couldn’t help but grin at the irony, which Sales acknowledged with a smile of his own. The criminalist wasn’t able to shake Sales’s hand because his only working limb was his right. He couldn’t use his left.

And Sales’s left limb was the only one that remained after a firefight that had nearly killed him.

Rhyme looked around the room. He absolutely did not want to be here. There was not a single memory of medical venues that didn’t trouble, or torment, Lincoln Rhyme since the accident years ago. There’d been accommodation, there’d been a fierce punching down of recollections, there’d been stoic acceptance. But he would have avoided hospitals forever, given the option.

But this wasn’t one.

Sales had been a colleague of his years ago when Rhyme was running the crime scene operation for the NYPD.

Sales had been a star. He’d stay on a scene, walking the grid, for hours after any other forensic cop would’ve released it.

Rhyme hadn’t been happy when Sales had decided to move to general investigative work... but he’d followed the man’s career and learned that, even at a young age, he’d soared to a senior spot in Major Cases and then, after leaving the NYPD, led a suburban police department to distinction.

Rhyme said, “Do they have a bar here?”

“Jesus, Lincoln,” Sales said. “Never change.”

“Theorize after a drink. Analyze sober.”

“Sadly,” Sales said, “the hospital sommelier has the day off.”

“Fire the son of a bitch.” Rhyme nodded to Thom, who produced two bottles of iced tea. That is, they were labeled tea. The contents looked suspiciously more golden, like, say, single-malt whisky. The aide set one bottle on the sideboard and opened the other.

“Hell,” Sales said. “I’m not driving.” Then his voice choked and he struggled to control the tears. “Fuck me. This’s ridiculous.”

“Been there,” Rhyme said.

Thom poured two glasses from the opened bottle and handed them out. He retreated to the corner, sat and checked messages.

The men slugged down some of the whisky and judiciously slipped the glasses out of sight when a cheerful Filipina nurse came in to take some vitals. She left, saying, “Oh-oh, bad boys. Keep those hid.” A grin.

Sales sipped more liquor. Looked at the bottle.

“How’d you do it?”

“A funnel,” Rhyme said.

A moment, a blink. Then Sales laughed.

“You mean, the whole disabled thing,” Rhyme said.

“Yeah, the whole thing.”

“You remember I hated clichés.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“But sometimes they fit. This one does: One step at a time.” Rhyme, a quadriplegic, with a break at the fourth cervical vertebra, had suffered a trauma in a league very different from Sales’s. He’d been paralyzed from the neck down, with a few glitchy, renegade nerves that provided a bit of movement in a finger. Sales had lost his right arm just below the elbow; all else functioned fine.

But funny how subjective tragedy is, of course. Barry Sales’s barometer was measuring his life going forward with what his life had been before the bullets tore through his flesh. Not comparing himself to Rhyme’s trauma.

“And there’ll be people.” Rhyme nodded toward Thom. Who cocked his head, meaning sentimentality wasn’t an option.

“As frustrating and difficult as they can be.”

“Aw, you two, you’re an old married couple.” Sales had been to the town house a few times.

“There’s Joan.”

Sales’s face remained completely still. “I can’t stand to be in the room with her. She tries so hard not to look.” He nodded at where his limb had been. “I tried to make a joke. Could she lend me a hand? She practically had a breakdown.”

“One day at a time. There’ll be people. And it’s a long road. Jesus, Lord, three clichés in a row. I’m not feeling well.”

Sales had tamed the tears. “There’s a good counselor here. Would you recommend somebody after I’m discharged?”

Rhyme said, “I tried that. Didn’t work. They...” He looked at Thom. “What’s the word?”

“Fled.”

Rhyme shrugged.

“But most people benefit. I can get you some names.”

“Thanks.”

But Rhyme sensed the questions about coping with the tragedy were perfunctory, ice breakers. After all, Sales, Rhyme knew, was destined to become just like him, like the vast majority of severely injured patients, spinal cord or otherwise: He’d end up saying to himself, “Fuck it. I’ve got a life to lead.” Rhyme, for instance, had finally chosen to ignore his condition to the extent he could. He was on earth to be a criminalist, end of story. No whining, no fund-raising, no public service ads. No political correctness. If he referred to his condition at all, he would use words like “gimp” or “crip,” and had once delivered a searing glare to someone who had commented condescendingly that Rhyme was a shining example to the “disabled-able” community, a term that, Rhyme hoped, never made into Merriam-Webster.

No, Sales had texted Rhyme, not inquiring about approaches to therapy, but because of a very different agenda.

He brought it up now.

“What do you hear about him?”

There was no doubt who Sales meant.

The shooter.

The man had been collared and was presently on trial.

Sales said, “I get bullshit from my team, and the chief. They say, ‘Oh, the asshole’s going away.’ But they say it like they aren’t sure.”

Rhyme’s rep — now and then — was that he was gruff and impatient, with no tolerance for laziness, and pissy on occasion. But he shot with facts.

“Sorry, Barry. From what I hear it’s not so clear-cut.”

The firefight had been, like most, a paroxysm of confusion. The prosecution was fighting to overcome a vigorous defense. And one that was well funded.

He nodded. “You know, it’d be one thing, facing down somebody. But never seeing the asshole shoot. Never seeing his eyes. Like that time where the perp hung around the scene. The Simpson shooting, years ago. That crazy guy?”

Occasionally a suspect would remain at or near the scene. Sometimes out of curiosity, sometimes out of a desire to get intelligence. Sometimes because they were simply homicidal shits. The perp in the Simpson case hid in a meat freezer after gutting the owner. He stepped out and emptied his gun at a shocked crime scene officer working for Rhyme. All the shots missed, thanks to the fact that the perp’s core temperature probably hovered about seventy degrees — the meat freezer — and his hand was shaking so badly he hit everything but the officer.

The memory brought a smile to both men. Thom too, when Rhyme explained it.

“God, I want this guy to go away.” Sales licked his lips. “Bonnie was here, my sister? I asked her to bring Trudi and George. She said sure. But she didn’t mean sure. She meant she didn’t want them to see Uncle Barry like this. Hell, I wasn’t thinking. I don’t want them to see me like this either. They’ll freak out. I can’t go to their games. I can’t go to their recitals.” He clamped his teeth together.

He inhaled deeply. “I’m pretty tired. Think I better take a nap.”

“I’ll bring the van around front,” Thom said. He took Sales’s email address and told him again that he’d send the names of physical therapists and doctors who specialized in prosthetics.

Rhyme moved forward and tucked the second bottle of Glenmorangie “tea” into the bed, beside Sales’s left arm. He was about to say something else, but the man had closed his eyes and slipped his head back against the pillow. Rhyme glanced at the tear that Sales simply could not keep from escaping, eased the chair in a circle and wheeled from the room.

Chapter 21

Vimal and Dev Nouri walked through a thick door into the factory proper.

Sunday is not the day of rest for most diamond cutters, given the ethnicity and religion of those in the profession, and this was just another workday for N&B. Here, sitting around grinding scaife turntables, were four Indian cutters and one Chinese, all wearing dark slacks and light-colored short-sleeve shirts. They ranged in age from late twenties to fifties and were all men. Vimal knew of only two women diamond cutters in New York. The unfortunate line, which he’d heard far too often, was: Making diamonds is for men; wearing them is for women.

One of the workers was Mr. Nouri’s son, Bassam, about Vimal’s age. The chubby young man’s face registered surprise when he looked up. He set aside his dop stick and rose.

“Vimal! I heard about Mr. Patel! What happened?”

“It was all on the news. That’s pretty much it. A robbery.”

“What’re you doing here?”

Vimal hesitated. “Some work for your father.”

Bassam was clearly confused but Mr. Nouri nodded his son sternly back to his workstation and the man picked up his dop once more, lowered his loupe and started polishing a stone.

Vimal nodded and followed Mr. Nouri to an unoccupied station.

Unlike the office, Mr. Nouri’s workshop was clean and ordered. It was well equipped too. The huge factories in Surat, India, where more than half of the world’s diamonds are cut, have largely moved from manual to computerized systems. The 4P machines automatically performed all four stages of processing: plotting, cutting/cleaving, bruting and faceting, or brillianteering. Mr. Nouri had two of these machines, which looked like any other piece of industrial equipment, blue metal boxes each six feet long, five feet high and wide.

There was, of course, no software to create a parallelogram, nor would Vimal let a computer handle the cut in any event. This would be handwork exclusively.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Mr. Nouri said, but he said it uneasily and with a look at the diamond as if he were saying goodbye to an old friend about to sail alone across the Atlantic.

Vimal nodded, only vaguely aware of the words. He was lost in the contours of the diamond, noting the red lines marking his planned cut.

Shaping this stone would mean both cleaving, cutting with the grain, and sawing, against it. The tool for these tasks was a green laser, guided by a joystick and mouse. While proficient at the old-time techniques of mallet, chisel and saw, Vimal Lahori had no problem with lasers, his theory being that diamantaires had always used state-of-the-art technology — ever since the dawn of diamond cutting.

He now spatulaed a wad of cement onto the end of a dop pipe, which was like a large straw. He pressed the diamond into the adhesive, waited until it dried, then mounted the pipe in the laser unit. He closed the access door, powered up the unit and sat in front of the video screen on which he could see a close-up of the stone. He rested his hand on the mouse-ball controller.

Vimal moved the crosshairs on the video screen to align with the marked lines, and, working with the keyboard and the mouse, he began the process of forming the basic parallelogram shape. Amid a hissing sound and a pulsing thud, like a medical MRI scanner, the beam started the cut. He paused frequently. After about an hour, he removed the partially cut stone, cleaned it and remounted it at a different angle on a new dop pipe. Then cutting once more. Another pause — to wipe his face and dry his hands of sweat — and back to the task. One more remount. And, after a half hour, the initial cleaving and cutting were done. The diamond was in the shape of a parallelogram.

Vimal removed it and cleaned the cement off and examined it through the loupe. Yes, it was good.

Now the brillianteering, cutting the facets into the stone. Vimal’s task, like that of every diamantaire, was to maximize the three essential qualities of diamonds: brilliance (the white flash of light as you look straight down at the stone), fire (the rainbow shades refracted from the sides), and scintillation (the sparkle that flared from the stone when it was moved).

Vimal sat on a stool in front of a polishing station, which was a sturdy table about four feet square and dominated by a scaife — the horizontal cast-iron platter that would spin at three thousand RPMs and against which cutters pressed the diamonds to create the facets. On the wall was a rack containing a number of different dop sticks — armatures on which diamonds were cemented for this grinding process.

Vimal selected a dop and mounted the stone to it. He then started the scaife, about the size of the old LP record turntable his father still had. Oil, impregnated with diamond dust, dripped onto the platter and, resting the dop stick’s two padded legs on the workstation, he pressed the diamond against the scaife for a second or two, lifting it to study the progress through the loupe, and grinding away once more. Slowly the facets emerged, first on the girdle — the side — and then the crown and pavilion, the top and bottom of the stone.

The smell of the warm oil — it was olive oil — wafted around his face. And at the moment, there was not a thing in the universe but this stone. Not Adeela, not his brother Sunny, his mother or father, not poor Mr. Jatin Patel. Not his sculptures at home, The Wave or Hidden.

He was not thinking about killers searching for him.

Only this diamond and its emerging soul occupied him.

Touching the stone to the spinning scaife for a fraction of a second, lifting, examining...

Again, again, again.

The oil dripped, the turntable hissed, minuscule amounts of the stone vanished into oily residue.

The art of diamond cutting is about resisting that addictive urge to overwork a stone. And so — an hour later or twenty hours or ten minutes; he couldn’t say — Vimal Lahori knew the job was done. He shut the scaife off and it spun to silence. He sat back. He gasped, starting with surprise. Four of the other cutters had silently left their stations and had come up behind Vimal to watch him cut the parallelogram. They were huddled close. He had been completely unaware of them.

One, who identified himself as Andy, asked, “Can I?” Holding out his palm.

Vimal gave it to him. Andy flipped the loupe down and examined it. “You added an extra facet on the crown. I would not have thought about that. What is the angle?”

“Seven degrees.”

Andy passed it around. The others laughed and examined it through their loupes. The image of their identical astonished, almost reverent, faces was comical.

“Boil it,” another said.

Vimal carried the stone to the wash station, where he boiled it in acid to remove the cement, oil, dust and other materials adhering to the stone.

This could often be a very tense moment. You might think your gem was cut perfectly — only to find that a bit of cement or oil was concealing a mistake. Vimal never worried about this, though. Oh, in his eight or so years of diamond cutting, he had made mistakes. Had ruined stones (and been screamed at by Mr. Patel or his father). But he knew instantly when a cleaving or sawing or faceting went wrong. There’d been no errors on this stone. It was as perfect as it could be. The worst inclusions had been in the portions removed (and the remaining ones were in the heart of the diamond and invisible to even the best eyes). The facets were sharp and symmetrical. The balance of brilliance and fire and scintillation, faultless.

He picked up the finished stone with tweezers and looked it over once more — this time not to assess, but simply to admire.

Vimal Lahori had discovered, and released, the stone’s soul.

As he studied the finished diamond, noting the flashing of color and white light, he was stabbed by a sudden sorrow that Mr. Patel was not alive to see his work.

Then Mr. Nouri stepped into the workshop — two cutters had gone to get him. The bulbous man, with his graying complexion, smiled at Vimal and took the tweezers from him. He dropped the loupe and examined it. He muttered something in Hindi, it seemed, a language Vimal knew little of. His face registered astonishment.

“You didn’t flatten the culet.” The very bottom of the pavilion. These were often ground flat, which made a sturdier stone, less prone to chipping. A flat culet, though, tended to darken the diamond. (Vimal believed that the famed Koh-i-Noor had been ruined when it was recut in the nineteenth century on orders from Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband; the resulting broad, flat culet imparted a muddiness to the otherwise magnificent stone.)

“No.”

Expecting resistance at his impractical decision.

But Mr. Nouri said, breathlessly, “A brilliant choice. Look at the light. Look at it! The damn customer — whoever they’ll be — will just have to be careful. They’ll live with it.” Squinting. “And an extra facet on the crown.”

“It was necessary.”

“Of course it was. Yes, yes. My goodness, Vimal. What a job you’ve done!”

But Vimal didn’t have interest in, or time for, praise. He had to leave and now.

“I should go. Now, you said, twenty-five hundred.”

“No.”

Vimal stiffened.

“Three thousand.”

They both smiled.

That much money would get him out of the city. If he lived cheaply he could make it stretch until he got a job, something modest, menial — perhaps at a university that had a fine arts program. Even janitorial or in the cafeteria. He felt the first blush of what approached joy that he’d experienced in ages.

The man put the diamond onto its sheet and folded the paper, slipped it into his breast pocket. “I’ll get your money.” He stepped out of the workshop and into his office.

Vimal stepped to the basin in the corner to wash up; scaifing is dirty work. As he walked past the others they were regarding him with variations of admiration or awe. He didn’t like it. Anything that cemented his ties to the diamond-cutting world left a bad taste. He washed his hands and, as the others returned to their workstations, Vimal walked to the doorway and stepped into the office.

Mr. Nouri was putting cash into an envelope. He was offering it to Vimal when the door to the stairwell opened and two figures entered.

Vimal gasped, stabbed by dismay. He was looking at Deepro Lahori. His father. With him was Bassam Nouri; the young, stocky man looked down.

No, no...

“Papa. I...”

Squat, gray-skinned, his father strode forward angrily.

“Deepro,” Mr. Nouri said, frowning, confused.

Papa looked at the envelope. “That’s my son’s money?”

“Yes, but—”

His father snatched it from the man’s hand. “I’ll take care of it for him. He’s not responsible at the moment.” To Vimal he snapped, “You will come home. Now.”

Mr. Nouri was understanding that Vimal had not been completely honest earlier. He said to Vimal, “He didn’t know? You lied?”

“I’m sorry.”

Then Papa walked to the rack of jackets. He reached into the inner pocket of his son’s and lifted out his wallet. That and the envelope holding the cash vanished into his own coat.

Now the answer to the betrayal became clear. Papa nodded to Bassam, a look of thanks. So his father had offered a reward to anyone in the community who saw or heard of Vimal.

Vimal was furious, torn between screaming and sobbing.

He turned his cold eyes toward Bassam, who looked away and muttered, “He’s your father. Respect.”

Vimal wondered how much had been the price on his head. In the mood for blood, Vimal turned suddenly to his father. The man was only an inch taller than his son and was not as broad in the shoulders, nor was he anywhere near as strong. An image of himself pushing his father down, rifling his pocket for his wallet and the cash and sprinting out the door came to him.

But it was a fantasy as insubstantial as diamond dust.

“You’ll come home.”

As if there were any other options.

Vimal walked slowly to the door, his father behind him, saying firmly, “Son, I’m doing this because it’s best for you. You do understand that, I hope.”

Chapter 22

Amelia Sachs was in Cadman Plaza, at the subway station where their unsub had caught the train to Manhattan after ditching his hard hat and safety vest. She had been canvassing shops and restaurants nearby, those with a view of the subway entrance. The hour-long effort had been useless. No one remembered seeing anybody who’d pitched out the gear. This had not been unexpected.

It seemed that the construction site to which Unsub 47 had some connection wasn’t devoted to birthing yet another apartment or office building; it was a high-tech energy project.

She now surveyed the huge jobsite, surrounded by an eight-foot-high plywood wall. Before her was a large sign mounted on two wooden pillars.

Below this was a small billboard, the background off-white with lettering in green script, as if fashioned out of vines. Paintings of leaves and tufts of grass were prominent. It all reeked of eco. The text explained that the earth was itself a huge solar collector, which absorbed energy from the sun and maintained a constant temperature, however cold or hot the surface. That energy could be tapped for use in heating and cooling buildings. The geothermal facility being constructed now would do just that, servicing hundreds of buildings in the area. Pipes would be sunk deep into the earth and a solution would be pumped through them. When it returned to the surface, the liquid would then pass through regulators to generate air-conditioning or heating.

It was basically a massive heat pump, the notice reported, of the sort that environmentally minded residents used in their houses.

Reducing fossil fuel use for heating and cooling... Seemed like a good idea to Sachs.

But not everybody thought so, apparently. Thirty or so protesters stood on the sidewalk holding posters against the drilling. A tall, lean man with frizzy gray hair — and matching beard — seemed to be in charge. From the posters and some lapel pins people wore, she noted that the movement was called One Earth. She wondered what their objections were. Geothermal seemed just another environmentally friendly process. Some of the posters, though, referred to fracking and poisoning the groundwater.

The lean man stepped in front of a flatbed, loaded with girders. He crossed his arms and stood his ground. The rest of the crowd cheered. Every time the truck driver blasted the man with his horn, the protesters exploded with catcalls and applause.

A job for a patrolman, but no patrolman was around.

Sachs walked into the street. “Sir.” She showed her badge. “Could you step out of the street?”

“And if I don’t? Are you going to arrest me?”

This was, of course, the last thing she wanted to do. It would involve a trip to the local precinct, as she no longer carried her citation book. But there was only one answer. “Yes.”

“You’re in their pocket. The city’s kissing their ass.” He nodded at the site.

“Sir, you don’t want to go to jail for this. Step out of the way.”

Without protest he did, and her impression was that he’d planned the tactic as a mosquito bite, a small irritation.

“Could I see some ID?”

He complied. He was Ezekiel Shapiro and lived in upper Manhattan.

She handed it back. “No disrupting traffic. And I hope that can you’ve got in your jacket is for home repair.”

It seemed to be spray paint. She’d noticed where graffiti had been scrubbed off the sign and the walls of the barrier.

“They’re fucking up everything, you know.” He looked at the site with wild eyes. “Everything.” He returned to the crowd and many of the people hugged him as if he’d just faced down an entire army.

Then Mother Earth left her thoughts and she got to work. She pulled a small evidence collection bag, red canvas, from the trunk of the Torino, parked nearby, and walked to the subway entrance where the CCTV had captured the unsub’s image. She turned, recalled the direction of his route, and found the trash bin where he’d disposed of the hard hat and vest. Not empty — that word would never apply to any trash receptacle in New York City — but it was empty enough to see those items weren’t inside.

She then spotted the likely gate he would have taken to leave the construction site. The large mesh panels were open and, as she’d hoped, some workers were here, despite its being Sunday. She showed her shield to a trim, vigilant man in a private security uniform, richly toned with a suntan that testified to the fine vacation he’d just taken. She asked if she could speak to the supervisor. He lifted a walkie-talkie and said a detective with the NYPD wanted to speak to him.

The clattering answer: “Uh, yeah. Hold on. Tell him I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Her.”

“What?”

“It’s a her. She’s a her,” the guard said, casting an awkward look her way.

“Oh. Her. A minute.”

Sachs looked over the site. The project — about three acres square, she guessed — wasn’t like most you see in the city, with the dark-red ironwork of skyscrapers latticing upward. This was more like what she guessed an oil rig operation would be. There were a number of drilling locations that measured about twenty feet wide, fifty long, surrounded by green six-foot-high fences; signs labeled them as Areas 1 through 12. Some of these were crowned with derricks rising about four stories high. Other green-fenced sites seemed closed. Maybe the drilling at those locations was completed.

Though the site wasn’t that populated, it was noisy. The drills were powered by raucous diesel engines and bulldozers rolled about, picking up debris and dropping it into dump trucks, with huge bangs.

The supervisor had said a minute and he was true to his word. A stocky man, in tan Carhartt overalls and orange safety vest, approached. He wore tinted, stylish glasses whose earpieces were attached to a bright-red retainer, and his yellow hard hat jutted forward, high on his head.

Introductions were made and hands shaken and the supervisor — his name was Albert Schoal — glanced out of the gate toward the protesters. “So, what’s it this time?” he yelled over the sound of the machinery.

“I’m sorry?”

“The complaint.”

She lifted a querying eyebrow.

Schoal asked, “Didn’t somebody file a complaint?” His voice was weary. So were his eyes, behind the gray lenses.

“That’s not why I’m here. Why would somebody file a complaint?”

“Oh. Sorry. It’s one of their tactics. Somebody calls nine one one — from a pay phone or throwaway mobile, natch — and says one of my guys was selling dope to somebody. Or exposed himself. Somebody complained that our guys were killing pigeons but nobody gave a you-know-what.”

“Who’s ‘their’? As in ‘their tactics.’”

“Protesters. The group’s called One Earth. They do it to harass us.”

She said, “Shapiro. Yeah, I met him.”

The supervisor sighed. “Ezekiel. What’d he do to earn your attention?”

“Stopped a delivery truck.”

“Oh, that’s one of their favorites. Graffiti too. And false alarms. Even set fire to some trash cans. No damage but it brought the fire department and clogged the street.”

Though Shapiro was some distance away now, Sachs could see that the scrawny man was worked up. He radiated intensity and passion. Arms waving, head raised high, he led his followers in an indecipherable chant.

“What’s their issue?” she asked. “Fracking? I saw a poster.”

A look of disgust crossed Schoal’s face. “Ridiculous. We build near-surface, closed-loop geothermal. We don’t pump anything into the ground. We don’t suck anything out of the ground. The solution’s contained in pipes. It never leaves the system. And the odds of a rupture are as small as a roach’s ass. I sometimes think they don’t have a damn clue what we’re doing. They just need something to protest. Like, oh, it’s Sunday, I’m bored, let’s hug a tree and go make hardworking people’s lives miserable.”

Roach’s ass?

“Anyway, so, if none of ’em made any bullshit reports, what can I do for you, Detective?”

She first asked if Schoal had been working on Friday. She wasn’t going to share any information if there was a chance that he was the person Forty-Seven had met with. But Schoal wasn’t on that day. Thursday and Friday were his “weekend.”

“I’m not so senior.” He said this with a wry grimace. “That’s why I’m working Sundays. Day of Rest. Ha!”

She explained that a suspect in a homicide had, they believed, walked out of the jobsite Friday afternoon, though telling him nothing about the nature of the killings.

“One of our people? Jesus.”

“I doubt it. It looks like he exited, was walking to the subway and remembered he was carrying a hard hat and safety vest. He turned around, threw them out and then got on the train.”

“Yeah, nobody in the business’d throw out a hat. A vest maybe but not a hat. What was he doing here?”

She told him the two theories. Using the site as a shortcut, to avoid the CCTV cameras along Cadman Plaza — all the government buildings. Or meeting somebody in the site, possibly to buy a weapon.

Schoal thought the shortcut idea wouldn’t make sense. The entrance she’d come through and another, a half block away, for trucks, were the only ways to get inside. “You basically come out of the site the same place you walked in.”

As for the second theory, he said, “We screen our people good. For drugs, drinking. I mean, it’s New York City construction. Some of my boys might be connected and might have a gun or two to sell. Can’t use metal detectors when your crew brings twenty pounds of tools with ’em every day.”

She glanced around the site. “You have cameras here?”

“Only the supply storage area and the tool rooms. Where thieves’d be more likely to hit. But they’re on the other side of the yard. He came out here, this gate, they wouldn’ta caught him. So, whatta you want to do, Detective?”

“Canvass your folks, find out if anybody saw him on Friday. I’ve got a rough description.”

“Sure, I’ll help you. Play cop. My brother’s on the force in Boston. South Bay.”

“That’d be great.”

“We’ll suit you up. Reggie?” he called to a worker just passing nearby. “Hard hat and vest for the lady.” He paused. “For the detective. Ain’t the best fashion choice, the vest, but rules is rules.”

She pulled on the orange garment and donned the hat — after banding her hair up in a ponytail. Thought about taking a selfie to send to Rhyme and her mother.

Then decided: Naw.

“How could he’ve gotten past the guard without a pass or credentials?”

Schoal shrugged. “Not that hard. Somebody in a vest and hat, they walk in with a bunch of guys, security wouldn’t notice. That’s not a risk we worry about: It’s the trucks that show up off hours to drive away with your ’dozer or ten thousand bucks’ worth of copper pipe. Sorry I said ‘lady.’”

“I’ve been called worse.” She dug into the evidence bag and handed him a picture from the MTA security camera, which, of course, didn’t show much at all. The dark coat, the dark slacks, dark stocking cap. The text described a white male, average build and about six feet.

“Detective, what’d this guy do exactly?”

Sometimes you were tight-lipped, sometimes you sensed an ally. “He killed a jewelry store owner and two people — a couple — in Midtown yesterday.”

“Fuck me. The Promisor. God. That was terrible. Those kids. Going to get married... and he killed ’em.”

“That’s him.”

“And you think he bought his gun from one of my guys?”

“That’s what we want to find out.”

They began circulating, talking to the workers who’d drawn Sunday duty. The men — and a few women — were more than willing to talk and no one evaded eye contact, any more than normal, or otherwise suggested that he or she was the person Unsub 47 had met with.

After a half hour of no luck they’d been through nearly all the workers on duty and Sachs was thinking she — or Ron Pulaski — would have to return and canvas the rest tomorrow. She didn’t like that they’d have to wait. She was sure that Forty-Seven was still on the trail of VL and continuing his hunt for those who’d committed the terrible sin of adorning their fingers with diamond rings.

But a moment later, a break. A tall African American worker listened to her words and then began nodding almost immediately.

“You know, I did see somebody here about when you were saying, Friday. I thought he was corporate. He wasn’t in a Carhartt or anything, just a black jacket, with hat and vest.”

The worker’s name was Antoine Gibbs.

Schoal said, “The execs from the head office, they come to the site, they don’t wear suits a lot of times.”

Gibbs said, “So this guy, he was talking to somebody else. I guess one of ours — he did have on boots and was wearing Carhartt. They talked, and looked around, and then they walked away, toward Seven. It was kind of odd, suspicious, I guess, but I didn’t think much of it at the time.”

“Seven?” Sachs asked.

Gibbs indicated one of the drilling pens surrounded by the six-foot-high green fence. This one did not have a derrick rising from it. Beside a gate was a sign.

As they walked to the site Sachs asked the tall worker, “Did you see his face?”

“Not clear, no. Sorry. Pretty much the build of the guy was in that picture you showed me. But no face.”

Her eyes were on the battered fence.

“Could they get inside? Maybe they wanted to conduct some business out of sight.”

Gibbs told her, “If he had a key. A lot of guys do.”

“What’s in there?” Nodding at the fence.

Schoal answered. “Shafts and a mud pit.” He could see she didn’t understand and added, “See, geothermal works by pumping fluid from the surface down hundreds, or thousands, of feet, and back up again.”

“I read your billboard.”

“PR guy wrote it but it gives you an okay idea. The first step is we drill shafts — in this case about five to six hundred feet — into bedrock. Then we feed pipe into it. That loop I mentioned, basically two thick hoses joined at the end — called HDPE, high-density polyethylene — so the fluid can circulate. Since geothermal only works when the piping’s in contact with the ground we pour conductive grout down the shaft after the piping’s in place. This one, Area Seven, there’re twenty shafts. We’ve drilled them all but they’re not scheduled for the piping to go in for a couple of weeks — April third. It’s shut down till then.”

She said to the supervisor, “So there’d be nobody working and they could talk in private. Can you open it up for me?”

Schoal asked Gibbs, “Mud pit?”

“Haven’t dredged it out yet.”

He said to Sachs, “Just watch your step. The way drilling works is we pump water down with the drill face, and mud and rock’re pumped back up into what we call a mud pit. Eventually it’s emptied out and the sludge and stone’re taken to dump sites but the one in Seven hasn’t been emptied yet. Nasty stuff.”

Schoal fished a key from his belt and opened the gate. Sachs walked inside, adding, “Can you wait out here?”

He nodded, though he didn’t get why, his expression said.

She told him, “Don’t want to disturb any evidence from where they might’ve been standing.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. Crime scene stuff. We see all those shows, the wife and me. I love ’em. You guys can catch a butterfly that was at the murder scene and there’ll be an image of the killer in the damn thing’s wings. That’s just amazing. You ever do that?”

“Never have.” Sachs reminded herself to share that one with Rhyme.

She donned gloves and put rubber bands on her shoes — to differentiate her footprints from the unsub’s — leaving it to the supervisor to draw his own conclusions about that high-tech forensic tool.

Butterfly wings...

But once inside she noted that this site was useless — more than useless, then smiled at the grammatical contradiction that Rhyme would have loved. Like “extremely unique.”

Or would it be less than useless?

The problem, forensically, was that the ground inside was gravel and rock, which wouldn’t reveal any footprints, so she had no idea where the unsub and the worker might’ve stood — if they’d been here at all.

Still, with gloved hands she scooped up about a half pound of stones from the place where they logically might have been — near the gate — and placed them in a plastic evidence bag.

The center of Area 7 was the mud pit: a trough, running lengthwise from one end of the fence to the other. It was about fifteen feet wide, surrounded by the narrow rocky walkway. It was filled with what Schoal had described: a mucky pool, deep brown and gray, its surface iridescent with oil or other chemicals. A yellow measuring stick, rising from the middle, showed the pit was just over six feet deep. The smell was a powerful mix of damp earth and diesel fuel.

Nasty stuff.

A dozen of the geothermal shafts, twelve inches in diameter, rose from the pool too. They were covered with plastic bags. To one side was a machine that looked like a small, stationary cement mixer, presumably for pouring the grout into the shafts once the piping was fed down them.

The only way to get across the pit was to walk on planks laid over it, between the shafts... and to walk very carefully. They were only about ten inches wide and, because they were eighteen feet long or so, appeared quite springy.

Sachs was wondering if the unsub would have walked over one of them to get to the other side. There was a window cut into the far fence, about head height. It would make sense for the unsub to have walked to it and looked out to see if it was safe to exit. It wouldn’t hurt to get a few samples from the ground beneath the window.

She eyed the precarious wooden plank.

Shaking her head. Sometimes it’s easy. Sometimes it isn’t.

Then smiling to herself and thinking: And when, exactly, has it been easy?

She began across the plank, walking carefully, one foot after the other, as the narrow bridge bounded up and down. On the other side she scooped up stones and dirt from beneath the window and started back.

She was halfway back when the world changed.

The ground around her shook fiercely and she heard a deep rumbling. What the hell was going on? A derrick had fallen, one of the buildings under construction collapsed, a plane had crashed nearby.

A voice from behind her, Schoal’s, in a much higher register than earlier, called out, “Christ Almighty.”

As car alarms began bleating and people screamed, Sachs struggled to stay upright. The plank was bouncing hard and, desperate to keep from falling, she dropped fast and hard on one knee, her bad — well, her worse — one. Fiery pain rose from the limb to her jaw. The plank dipped under her weight, but then rebounded and pitched her off like a swimming pool diving board. Arms flailing, Amelia Sachs fell toward the mud. In the second before she hit she tried frantically to twist upright, to keep her face to the sky so she could breathe after she landed.

But the maneuver didn’t work and she dropped face-first into the brown-and-gray glue, which slowly began to suck her beneath the surface.

Chapter 23

You feel that? That shudder?” Ruth Phillips, putting away groceries in the cupboard, shouted to her husband.

He didn’t answer.

This happened a lot. Not that he was hard of hearing. It was more of an architectural issue.

They were in their bungalow in Brooklyn, on the edge of the Heights. The home was a railroad-style structure, which, she’d learned when they moved in decades ago, you saw much more in the South. Railroad, it was called, because there was a long hallway running from the front door past the living room, the three bedrooms and the dining room to the kitchen, in the back. Like the trains you saw from the old-time movies, with a corridor beside the passenger compartments. Ruth didn’t think any trains still had this feature but there might have been some somewhere. Her only experience with that mode of transport was the LIRR, which they took out to Oyster Bay to see daughter number one.

Arnie was in the living room, which faced the small street, sixty feet away from her.

The far end of the train.

She set the Green Giant canned beans down and repeated the question. Louder.

“What?” he called.

And once more: “You feel that? That shudder or something?”

“Supper? Yeah, what’s for supper?”

She pulled her yellow sweater tighter about her stocky form and stepped outside, onto the back porch. Car accident? Plane crash? She and Arnie had been on the promenade on September 11 and had seen the second plane hit.

She returned to the house and walked halfway up the hall and noted her husband, still parked in front of the TV.

They were both in their early sixties, just edging close to the time when they could start compiling dreams for retirement. Arnie was inclined to a motor home and Ruth wanted a place by a lake, preferably in Wisconsin, to be near daughter number two and her husband. This set of youngsters was the sort who smiled, with cheerful groans, whenever Arnie made a cheese joke. Which was a lot. The shudder a moment ago had brought back the idea of terrorism and Ruth thought once more: Time to start making firm plans for that move.

“Not ‘supper.’ ‘Shudder,’ I said. Like something was shaking. Was there an accident? Didn’t you feel it?”

“Yeah, I did, something. Construction maybe.”

“Sunday?”

Glasses had shivered, windows rattled. She’d felt the rumbling in her feet; she’d pulled on her slippers as soon as they got back from the grocery store and finished carting the bags inside.

“Dunno.” He had the game on. He loved his games.

Arnie said, “So anyway. What is for supper. Since the subject’s come up.”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Oh. Thought you were cooking.”

“Already? No.”

She returned to the kitchen. Ruth’s procedure for stowage was logical. First, freezer items went to roost. Then perishables that could germify — Arnie’s wonderful word — like meat, fish and milk. Then fresh fruits and veggies. Then boxes and finally the long-term stuff. The cheerful Green Giants, in cans, would be the last to get tucked away.

“Then you’re baking?” Arnie was in the corridor now. He’d come her way so they could speak in normal voices. “One of those pies? I was dreamin’ about rhubarb.”

“I’m not baking either.”

“Hm.” Arnie now stepped into the dining room, adjacent to the kitchen. His eyes were not on his bride of forty-three years but on the stove. She noted his expression of curiosity and she frowned. “What is it, hon?”

“The oven’s not on?”

She waved to it. Meaning no.

“I could smell gas. I thought you’d turned it on. And it took a minute for the burner to catch.”

“No, but...” Her voice faded. Ruth too could smell that rotten egg scent.

“Maybe the city’s doing some work and they hit a gas main. That was the shudder. You know, it’s stronger now.”

“Yeah. It is.”

His brows, set high in his well-worn face, knitted close. He brushed at his thinning, curly hair, walked to the front door and looked outside. He called back to her, “No trucks, no accidents.” He added that a few people were outside of their houses, looking around.

Maybe, Ruth thought, there had been a crash and a collision had ruptured a propane truck. But wait, propane didn’t smell like natural gas. Ruth knew this because barbecuing was one of their most enjoyable pastimes in the summer.

She walked to the cellar door and opened it. She was hit with the same stink but ten times stronger. “Honey! Come here!”

Arnie appeared in an instant. He noticed the open door. Sniffed. “My God.”

He peered downstairs and started to reach for the light, then stopped, as she was about to say, No! Arnie glanced at the fire extinguisher sitting next to the stove. It was seven years old.

She said, “We should get out. We should get out now.”

“I’ll call. We have to call. Isn’t there a special number you call for gas leaks? How do we find it?” He reached for the wall phone.

“Gas company?” she asked, incredulous. “Forget it, hon! We’ll call nine one one from outside.” She stepped toward her purse. “Come on! We have to get out.”

“I’ll just—”

From the basement door a tide of flame and smoke exploded outward, enveloping Arnie. As he flung his arms up and covered his face, he was blown against the far wall and landed on the floor, crying out in pain.

No, no, no! Ruth ducked beneath the raging tornado of fire that swirled from the doorway, screaming her husband’s name. She crouched and started toward him.

Suddenly a jolt sent her to her knees and the half of the kitchen floor where she was standing dropped three or four feet — the explosion had taken out the joists. As the smoke and flames and dust swirled about them, she could see Arnie — lying on his side, swiping frantically at his burning clothing. He was above her, on the part of the floor that hadn’t dropped. From the gap between the sections of flooring flowed dense black smoke, tongues of flame and red sparks like stinging bees.

Ruth struggled to her feet on the slanting floor, looking around frantically. They couldn’t use the back door now to escape — with the sunken floor, the exit was too high to reach, and was bathed in flames spiraling up from the basement.

The front. They had to get out the front. But first, Ruth needed to climb up to the level that Arnie lay on.

“Honey, honey!” she called. “The front! Get out the front!” But the words vanished in the roar. She hadn’t known that fire could be so loud.

Dodging the whips of flame, she started to climb up to Arnie, who was choking and writhing in pain. At least, she saw, he’d managed to strip off the burning clothing.

She put her hands on the end of the floorboards at his level and started to boost herself up. “The front door. Let’s—”

But at that moment the portion of the floor she was standing on dropped away completely and Ruth plunged into the basement, landing in a ragdoll pile on the concrete, pelted on head, arms and shoulders by boards, the kitchen table, cookbooks and cans of beans.

Fire was all around her now: storage boxes, Arnie’s magazines, Christmas decorations, the girls’ old clothing, furniture. And flames licked the cans and jars of flammables on Arnie’s workbench — cleaners, paint thinner, turpentine, alcohol. They could be exploding any moment.

Ruth Phillips understood she was about to die.

Thinking of Claire and Sammi. The grandchildren, too. Arnie, of course. The love of her life. Then, now, forever.

She ducked as another joist collapsed and slammed to the floor. It narrowly missed her head.

Choking on the smoke, twisting away from the needle-sharp embers and the fists of heat.

But then, Ruth thought: No.

She wasn’t going to die this way. In pain. Not by fire.

She looked around, as best she could through the fog of boiling smoke. The stairs were gone but in the corner, right under the ledge of the floor that remained, where Arnie lay, was her mother’s old dresser. She crawled to it and climbed on the top. She wasn’t strong enough to do a pull-up and roll onto the floor above her. But she kicked off the slippers, for better grip, stretched her leg high and planted a foot on the mirror on top of the dresser, feeling a thigh muscle drawn to the snapping point.

She ignored the pain.

Flames swelled. A can of turpentine exploded and a swirl of pine-scented fire and smoke ballooned beside her. Ruth turned away, felt the sting of fire on her ankles and arms. But her clothing didn’t ignite.

The fire, she saw, was licking a gallon can of paint thinner.

Now. This is it. Last chance.

Gripping the broken hardwood planks above her, she kicked hard and, in clumsy desperation, clawed her way up, rolling onto the kitchen floor beside Arnie.

“Ruth!” Arnie crawled to her. He was down to his boxer shorts. Half his hair was gone, eyebrows too. And there were burns on his face, neck, chest and right arm but they hadn’t incapacitated him.

“Out! We have to get out! The front!”

Keeping low, for what little air remained in the house, they started down the hall but got only halfway to the front door. Because of the smoke they hadn’t been able to see that the living room and front alcove were a mass of flame too. The bedroom windows weren’t an option either. Those rooms were burning as well.

“Garage,” she cried. It was their last hope.

Gripping each other hard, they pushed forward. Just before the heat and flames drove them back — to a claustrophobic, searing death in the narrow corridor — they reached the garage door. Ruth touched the metal knob and let go immediately.

“It’s hot,” she said.

A pause. They both laughed, a bit hysterical. Because of course it was hot. Everything in the damn house was hot.

She gripped the knob again, twisted it and shoved open the door. They crouched. But there were no flames here, just smoke and fumes roiling into the garage from the vents and up from under the baseboards. They plunged inside. It was hard to see through the eye-stinging clouds but the garage was small and — since it was used for storage only, not parking — they could follow the path to the front between rows of boxes and kitchen appliances and sports equipment from days long ago.

Choking and wiping their streaming eyes, they moved steadily to the front of the structure. She felt light-headed and fell once. Ruth then got a breath of better air, low to the floor, then another and, with Arnie’s help, she rose again.

Arms around each other, husband and wife finally made it to the front of the garage. With another laugh, this one of pure relief, Ruth pressed the button of the door opener.

Chapter 24

Just breathe, Detective.”

She nodded to the city medical tech. And tried to follow his orders. Slowly. Okay... Inhale, exhale. The coughing began in earnest once more.

Not okay.

Hacking, spitting.

Try again. Control it... Concentrating on her lungs, the muscles in her chest. Yes, she controlled it. Breathe in, out. Slowly.

Okay. Controlling it.

No more coughing. Good.

“Sounding great, Detective,” the tech said. He was a cheerful man with curly black hair and skin a mocha shade.

“All good,” she rasped.

Then she puked.

Again, again, again.

Sitting on the back lip of the ambulance, she bent double at the waist and evacuated a mass of the filthy mud soup.

Most had gone into her gut, not her lungs, apparently.

After a moment or two of retching, the feeling subsided.

She took the bottle of water that the EMT offered. Rinsed her mouth and poured it over her face. She couldn’t imagine what she looked like from the neck up. She’d shed her clothes and dressed in a set of Tyvek overalls — she kept a carton in the trunk of her car. It felt like her hair weighed thirty pounds. Her fingernails, always short, ended in goth black crescents.

Beside her sat her Glock, which, before she did anything else, she’d cleaned in a mini field strip, including running a patch soaked with Hoppe’s solvent through the barrel. It had been dangerously clogged.

“What was that shit?” she asked. “That I swallowed?”

She posed this question to Arthur Schoal, the Northeast Geo supervisor, who was beside the ambulance. He was still looking mortified at what had befallen her.

“The mud? Just water, soil, clay, maybe a bit of diesel fuel from the drills. Nothing more toxic than that.”

Yeah, she tasted petroleum. And she thought back to her younger bad-girl days: when you needed gas for your Camaro and you had no money but you did have a length of siphoning hose and the inside knowledge of where some local numbers runner or Mafioso wannabe parked his Caddie.

Another bout of coughing, another slug of water. The regurgitation — one of her absolute least favorite activities — seemed at bay.

The important thing, she told herself, was that her knee was fine, after the slam onto the wobbly plank. She was still mobile and free — largely free — from the arthritic pain that had dogged her for so many years.

She squinted away tears from the puking, and noticed ribbons of mud on Schoal’s clothes.

“You pulled me out?”

“Me and Gibbs. The guy we were talking to.”

“He here?”

“No, he went to call his wife. See if she was okay.”

Okay? she wondered.

“I’ll have to pay you,” she said to Schoal.

The man blinked and nodded, though he’d had no idea what she was talking about.

“For the mud treatment. In a spa they can cost a hundred bucks.”

He laughed.

Sachs did too. And summoned up every ounce of willpower to keep from sobbing.

She’d told the joke not for him but to shove aside the utter horror of being held immobile in the muck, unable to breathe.

It had affected her. Badly. Being held helpless, being sucked down, down, down. She’d almost been buried alive — wet earth or dry, that made no difference. Confinement was her personal hell.

She shivered once more. Recalling a banished memory from years ago. As a girl she’d read a book that she believed was called Stranger than Fiction, about real-life occurrences that were, well, strange. One was about exhuming a coffin, for some reason, only to find fingernail scratches on the inside of the lid. She hadn’t slept for two days after that and when she did she refused to cover up with sheets or blankets.

“Hey, Detective. You okay?”

She controlled the creeping panic attack, like she’d controlled the coughing. But just.

“Yeah, sure.”

Deep breaths, she told herself.

Okay, okay.

She wanted to call Rhyme. No, she didn’t want to. She wanted to drive two hundred miles an hour even if it meant burning out the Torino’s engine. No, she wanted to go home and curl up in bed.

Frozen — hands, feet, arms, belly and neck, all held motionless in the wet, slimy grave.

She shivered. Put. It. Away.

The medical technician said, “Detective, your heart rate...”

Her finger was clipped to one of the heavy-duty machines the EMTs came armed with.

Breathe, breathe, breathe...

“Better.”

“Thanks.” She pulled the clip off, handed it to the tech. “I’m good now.”

He was examining her carefully. And he nodded.

It was then that she noticed that the Northeast Geo workers were talking among themselves, standing in clusters. Their expressions were troubled. And it wasn’t Sachs’s near-death experience that took their attention.

She recalled wondering about the supervisor’s comment that Gibbs, the worker she’d been speaking to, had called his wife to see if she was all right.

Something was going on.

She realized too that there were a dozen sirens in the distance. Ambulance sirens and police sirens.

She remembered the shaking of the ground. And she thought immediately of a terrorist attack. The Twin Towers once again.

“What happened?” Sachs whispered, the tame volume partly from concern, partly because her vocal cords weren’t up to a louder task.

A male voice, not Schoal’s or the EMT’s, said, “Believe it or not: earthquake.”

A slim man approached, pale, about forty. He was in gray slacks and white shirt and blue windbreaker, beneath the requisite orange vest. His paisley tie disappeared against his chest between the second and third buttons from the top of his shirt, probably so it didn’t get caught in machinery gears. His glasses were round.

He looked, Sachs thought, sciencey.

Which made sense because, as it turned out, he was a scientist.

Schoal introduced her to Don McEllis, an inspector with the New York State Division of Mineral Resources within the Department of Environmental Conservation. He was an engineer and a geologist and it was his job, he explained, to supervise the drilling that his organization had approved. Since the Northeast geothermal project dug shafts that were five hundred feet or deeper, the DMR regulated the work; above that depth the Division of Water oversaw the construction.

“Earthquake?”

“Yep.”

Sachs recalled some TV show, or maybe an article, about quakes in the New York area. There’d been several.

“Did it cause any damage?”

McEllis said, “At least one fire. That’s the main danger with earthquakes in first-world nations. Even if a building isn’t designed to be earthquake-proof, most of ’em’ll remain standing. But gas lines can shear. So, fires. San Francisco, nineteen oh six, the city burned, it didn’t collapse.”

“I’m standing up,” she said to the med tech.

He looked at her quizzically. “Okay.”

She’d expected him to say no.

“I am.”

“You can stand up.”

She stood. She was a little woozy but managed to rise without difficulty, though she swayed a bit — mostly from the weight of the mud embedded in her hair.

“How powerful was it?”

“Minor. Three point nine — that’s the Richter scale.” With a scientist’s combination of knowledge and naïveté, he methodically explained that the famous scale everyone knew about was in fact outmoded for measuring most earthquakes; it was used nowadays only for classifying minor tremors. “Anything larger than five is rated according to the MM, or moment magnitude, scale.”

She didn’t want to ask for more information because she knew he would oblige.

But continue he did anyway. “This magnitude is typical of what we see in the Northeast. The faults in the New York area aren’t as active or as well defined as in California, say. Or Mexico or Italy or Afghanistan. That’s the good news: Quakes are very infrequent. But the bad news is the nature of the geology here is that if there were to be a bad earthquake the damage would be much more serious and would travel much farther. Also, our buildings aren’t made to withstand it. San Francisco’s pretty earthquake-proof nowadays. But here? A quake that registered six on the MM scale in New York City — which isn’t all that powerful — could leave ten thousand people dead, twice that buried in the rubble. Whole neighborhoods would have to be shut down because the buildings would be too unstable.”

Buried in the rubble...

Sachs again forced away the arms of panic. Barely.

“Where was the epicenter?” she asked.

“Nearby,” McEllis said. “Very nearby.”

Schoal was staring over Area 7, whose gate was still open. They could see the plastic-bag-covered shafts. The supervisor was somber. Sachs recalled that the protesters were complaining about fracking. Maybe Schoal was thinking, despite his comments earlier, that possibly their drilling had caused the quake.

Or maybe it was just that he’d be concerned the tremor would give the protesters ammunition in attacking the project.

Sachs took another bottle of water from the medic and, with a smile of thanks, tilted her head back so she was staring at the sky. She emptied the bottle into her hair. He fed her four more and by the last one, it felt that most of the mud was gone.

Better. Mud-wise and panic-wise.

She was ready. She called Lincoln Rhyme.

“You hear?”

“About what?”

“The earthquake.”

“What earthquake?”

That answered the question.

“Shook up the city, half hour ago.”

“Really? Hm.” His tone said his mind was elsewhere. “You find anything at the jobsite?”

“I think so. I’ll be back soon. Going to stop by my place.”

“Why?”

“Want to clean up first.”

“Don’t bother with that. Who cares? Just come on in.”

She said nothing for a moment. He must have wondered about the pause. “I won’t be long.”

Sachs disconnected before he could protest further.

Chapter 25

Vimal’s childhood bedroom — also his present bedroom — was small, on the second floor of the modest home in this modest Queens neighborhood, Jackson Heights. This particular area was a largely Indian community.

It was a two-story, single-family brick structure, with small front and backyards, neither of which was any good for football, except to practice footwork.

He’d lived here, within these four very claustrophobic walls, for all of his life. At least he had it to himself now. He’d had to share the space with his brother for a few years until Dada, his grandfather, passed, and Sunny moved into the old man’s room.

Upon returning home from Dev Nouri’s, Vimal had taken a spot bath — washcloths only — not wanting to disturb the wound that Adeela had so carefully dressed. An examination of his torso revealed that she’d done a good job. There was no more bleeding and still no infection. Now, back in his bedroom, he toweled his legs and chest with one hand and, with the other, manned the remote. He was searching the news on the Samsung.

The murder was a prominent story but it was not the lead; that would be the earthquake that had shaken up Brooklyn and much of the rest of the city.

When the anchor got to the deaths of Mr. Patel and the engaged couple, he said there were some new details about the “daring” robbery, though Vimal wasn’t sure how much balls it took to walk into a largely deserted office building, kill three unarmed individuals and run out.

He wrapped the towel around his thin waist and watched the screen. The next bit of news stunned him.

Saul Weintraub, the assayer and evaluator Mr. Patel used from time to time, had been killed, as well. The police believed there was some connection between the four murders.

Vimal closed his eyes briefly in dismay and sat, heavily, on the edge of his bed.

So the killer — the Promisor — believed Mr. Weintraub had seen something Saturday morning, that he was a witness. Vimal recalled that Mr. Patel said he was meeting with the man sometime that weekend.

How had the killer found where Mr. Weintraub lived?

Vimal recalled the newscast of the press conference on Saturday afternoon, the police spokesman’s urging anyone with knowledge of the killing to come forward immediately.

And Vimal’s reading between the lines.

For their own safety...

How safe was he?

Vimal felt pretty secure, thinking again of his minimal connection with Mr. Patel: being paid in cash and keeping nothing personal in the shop to identify him. And trying to track Vimal down by scouring the Diamond District wouldn’t be very productive. Unlike in years past, there were few diamond merchants left in the old, musty office building at 58 West 47th. Only one or two cutters, two jewelry stores. And Vimal was sure that no one in the building or on the street would know who he was. He kept to himself, preferring to get home to his studio at the end of the day. And most of the diamantaires and others in the business who might know him were here in Jackson Heights, miles — and a river — away from the Manhattan Diamond District. Vimal had acquaintances who worked in the galleries of SoHo or NoHo, or were studying art where he so wanted to be: Parsons, or Pratt in Brooklyn. But he wasn’t close to any of them.

His closest friend in the diamond world was another cutter, about his age: Kirtan Boshi — they’d have lunch or drinks together frequently, sometimes double-dating, with Adeela and Kirtan’s girlfriend, an aspiring model. Kirtan worked for a diamantaire but some distance from 47th Street, in a building in the Fashion District; the shop had a name that gave no clue as to the Indian ethnicity of the owner — or that it was a jewelry store.

No, it seemed very unlikely that a killer, however determined, could find him.

Vimal tossed aside the towel, pulled on underwear, blue jeans, T-shirt and sweatshirt, his Nikes.

On TV: back to the earthquake. He couldn’t hear what the commentators were talking about. Two men seemed to be arguing. A crawl said that an environmental group thought that drilling work deep beneath the city might be to blame.

He shut the set off. Vimal Lahori had his own problems.

Filled with resignation, he trooped downstairs. In the living room, Sunny — younger, though taller, than Vimal — looked up from the TV screen and paused the video game. “Yo. Dude.”

The eighteen-year-old’s eyes revealed his concern, even if his low-key greeting and the deflecting grin hadn’t. Sunny was a freshman at Hunter, destined, the boy hoped, for medical school. Vimal believed he would — and should — end up in tech, an opinion he kept to himself.

“You, like, cool?”

“Yeah, fine.”

Awkwardly, the younger brother stood, as if debating whether he should embrace Vimal, who decided the question himself and dropped into the couch before the uneasy moment arrived. Vimal snatched up the controller and resumed the game his brother had been playing.

“Screw you,” Sunny said, laughing hard — too hard.

“You’re only at level seven?”

“I’ve been playing for ten minutes is all. You couldn’t get to seven in a day.”

“I got to eight on Thursday. Four hours.”

“Gimme.”

Vimal held the controller away as his brother grabbed for it. After some tame horse wrestling he handed the device over. Vimal took a second controller and they played jointly. A few more aliens died, another spaceship blew up. Vimal found Sunny looking him over closely.

“What, man? It’s freaking me out.”

“What?”

“That eyeball shit. Stop it.”

Sunny’s character on the screen got vaporized. Not seeming to notice, he asked, “What was it like?”

“Like?”

“Getting shot at?”

Vimal corrected, “It wasn’t getting shot at. It was getting shot.”

“No shit!”

“Yeah. I walked in. There he was. Bang. Loud, like totally loud. Not like on TV. I mean, loud.”

An abrupt voice from behind them. “You’re hurt?” His father had been standing in the hallway, it seemed. He walked into the living room.

Vimal wondered if he’d been hiding, to listen in on his conversation with Sunny. No other reason to be in the hall, except to eavesdrop. Son looked away from Father. “Nothing. I was just, you know. We were just saying stuff.”

“The news never said anybody was shot.”

“Because I wasn’t shot. I was just messing with him.” A nod toward Sunny.

“But something happened,” Papa said sternly.

“The bullet hit some rocks I was carrying. They stung me. That’s all.”

Papa was calling, “Divya! Come here. Come here now!”

Vimal’s slim, soft-spoken forty-three-year-old mother appeared in the doorway, looking affectionately toward her sons and then frowning as she saw her husband’s expression.

“What is it?”

“Vimal was hurt in the robbery. The man shot at him. He didn’t tell me.”

“No! That wasn’t on the news,” Mother said, her brow furrowed. She walked directly to her son.

“The bullet didn’t hit me. I was saying that. Some bits of rock. It was nothing.”

“My. Let me see.”

“It didn’t break the skin. Just some bruises.”

“You will show your mother. You will show her now.” Papa’s voice was a slow simmer.

“Where?” Mother asked, gripping her son’s shoulder gently.

“My side. It’s nothing.” Why had he said anything to his brother?

“Did you go to the hospital?”

“No, Mother. It’s all cool. Really.”

“Enough!” Papa snapped. “Let her look at it!”

Tight-lipped, Vimal turned to her, keeping his back to his father and brother. The woman — a pediatric oncological nurse at Mount Sinai Queens — knelt and lifted his two shirts. Only Vimal could see her blink when she saw the eggplant-purple bruises, the butterfly bandage and the Betadine stains. She carefully examined the wound that the kimberlite splinter had made and probably realized that an ER doctor would have stitched the site. His mother didn’t know about Adeela but she would guess that Vimal’s reluctance to say anything about the treatment meant that he’d sought help from a non-Hindu friend (that he’d gone to a Muslim he was sleeping with wouldn’t enter into any dimension of her thoughts).

Mother looked up. Their eyes met. She lowered his shirt.

“Vimal is fine. Some minor bruises. That’s all. Dinner’s ready. Let’s eat.”

Chapter 26

The Lahori family ate traditionally perhaps three nights a week, and Western the rest. There was no set schedule as to which cuisine would be served by Mother on which days, though when Papa was at bowling — he was in a league and very good — she made her sons dishes like meat loaf or spaghetti or pizza or sometimes soup, salads and sandwiches. Tonight she had made roasted chicken, corn on the cob, creamed spinach dusted with nutmeg. The concession to Indian cuisine was naan bread but that was less sub-Asian than a staple at Food Bazaar and Whole Foods and any Korean deli within walking distance.

Who didn’t like naan?

Mother was a good cook, with an instinct for seasoning. Vimal loved her food.

Tonight, though, it was no surprise to him that he had no appetite.

The last thing he wanted to do was eat — no, the second-to-last thing he wanted to do was eat. Number one on the list was not talk about the robbery. Fortunately, it seemed that Papa sanctioned this protocol. When Mother began to ask about Mr. Patel’s sister and children and funeral and memorial service, her husband waved a hand to silence her. It seemed to Vimal that the trembling in the man’s fingers was worse.

How patient Mother is, Vimal thought, as he had hundreds of times. He wondered if she’d developed this quality from her work. He imagined she would have to be resilient and strong and steady, yet kind, with those under her care, as well as with their parents. And she would have to practice these qualities all day long; doctors came by sporadically, of course; nurses were constants in hospitals.

The conversation skipped about absurdly. Papa asked Sunny about a test in his biology class. He asked Vimal several times how he had cut the parallelogram. Why had he picked that shape? What adjustments had he made to the dop sticks?

Vimal demurred. He said he couldn’t recall. And this was not far from the truth. He was exhausted. And the horror of the past two days had made his heart and mind weary. Every few minutes the image of Mr. Patel’s feet, angling outward and pointed toward the dim ceiling of the shop, flared. Papa segued to Premier League and the UEFA Champions League as if he were out with his friends after a bowling tournament, sitting at Raga’s, over a Kingfisher. The Real Madrid game had been a nail-biter, he told his sons. And in another game, the striker from Man U had twisted and probably broken his ankle. Papa delivered this news, for some reason, with a wink.

Papa reminded Mother to collect a shirt of his from the tailor tomorrow. And complimented her, with sincerity, about the food this evening. He added that it was all right that it needed salt. Better to have to add it later than recook a meal that was oversalted. He smiled approvingly at her resourcefulness.

Vimal sighed. Papa didn’t notice.

When the meal was over and Mother cleared dishes, Papa gave a rare smile and asked an astonishing question: “Scrabble? Do we all want to play Scrabble?”

Vimal stared.

“What?” his father asked.

“I... don’t feel like playing a game.”

“No?”

“Vim?” his brother asked. Because Sunny would have felt Papa wanted him to. Sunny was often like the second wave of invading soldiers.

“Naw, not tonight.”

Papa nodded slowly. “Then what would you like to do?”

Looking into the man’s eyes, Vimal realized that the time had come. He was tired, he hurt, his plans had been blown apart like the stones he’d carried to Mr. Patel’s office.

“I’ll be downstairs in the workshop.” The inflection of this sentence made it a timid question.

Papa slowly nodded. “I’ll meet you.”

“I’ll be a minute. I want a thicker sweater.” Vimal rose and went upstairs. He found what he needed and then walked into the kitchen, to the basement door. He descended the steep stairs and went into the studio.

Here, nervous — actually nauseous — as he waited for his father, he sat on a bench. He was looking over one of his sculptures in progress. He was presently working on pieces in granite, nephrite jade, tiger’s eye, and celestial-blue lapis lazuli. In the corner of the room was a scaife turntable, similar to what he had polished the parallelogram on, and, on the wall, assorted dop sticks. Papa had been a talented, if uninspired, diamantaire himself and after he’d had to retire from the factory where he worked in the Diamond District, he’d continued to handle some jobs from home, here in the basement, for as long as he could. When he finally had gotten out of the cutting business altogether, Vimal had taken over the workshop to use as a sculptor studio.

This was where he could have spent every waking moment.

These rooms had begun life as an in-law quarters. There was a bathroom and a small kitchen with stove and half refrigerator. On the workbench, in what had been the sitting room, were carefully arranged tools and cartons containing rocks. There was a three-quarter-inch D pneumatic tool, hammers, cup chisels, bushing chisels, wedges and shims for cracking stone, ripper points, hand points. A set of diamond-encrusted blades for the rotary saw — similar to what he might have used for the parallelogram had he not opted for the laser. For the comfort of it he picked up his favorite hammer, four pounds, caressed the dented and scarred head.

Against one wall were cartons filled with a thousand Lahori artifacts, many from his father’s family’s harrowing flight from Kashmir to Surat in India and their less dramatic journey to the United States.

When taking a break from working on a piece, Vimal had spent time browsing through these cartons filled with the Lahori clan history, which he suspected his father had stowed there purposefully, to ignite within the boy a love of family tradition. Vimal hadn’t needed any prodding. He was fascinated to see pictures of his grandfather in a diamond factory in Surat. Sweaty, gritty, dark, the cutting room in which Dada sat was filled with maybe sixty or seventy employees, four to a scaife, bending forward with their dop sticks. The man had been in his twenties when the picture was taken and he alone, among the twenty or so looking at the photographer, was grinning. Most of the cutters seemed bewildered that someone wanted to record their monotonous chores.

Dada had eventually become one of the top cutters in Surat and thought he could do even better in New York. He used all the rupees he’d saved to bring his wife, young Deepro and his three brothers and two sisters, to America. The experience had not been a good one. Indians might have ruled the diamond business in Surat but it was the Jews in New York.

Little by little, though, they, and other Hindu cutters, had made inroads.

At his father’s insistence, Vimal had gone to his grandfather’s cutting shop on the top floor of a dimly lit, moldy building on 45th Street and sat beside him for hours watching the old man’s hands, curled around the dop, touching a diamond to the hypnotically spinning wheel.

It was there that the boy decided he was made to change stone into something else.

Though not exactly as his father had in mind.

What would Dada have thought about Vimal’s desire to abandon the world of cutting diamonds and become a sculptor? He had a sense that Grandfather wouldn’t have minded very much. After all, the man had taken a chance — the extraordinary leap of bringing his whole family to a new and possibly hostile country.

Vimal’s mother’s ancestry was less well documented, not because Papa wasn’t inclined to retain a woman’s history (well, not entirely) but because she was sixth-generation American, and the ancestors had come from New Delhi — the forty-million-plus National Capital Region, a very, very different place from Kashmir. Mother was thoroughly Westernized. Her ancestry was potluck, a bit of this, a bit of that. Her family’s roots included mixed marriages, divorces, a gay union or two. All this added up, within her, to an appreciation of — rather than devotion to — Hindu culture, and the assumption of a quiet, though not fundamentally subservient, role in her marriage.

Vimal now turned on his work lamp over the bench. He closely studied the piece he’d been working on. It was simple, carved from a rich piece of off-white marble from Venezuela: a wave of water at its apogee about to crest and fall down upon itself. He’d grown fascinated recently with the idea of representing the texture and motion of non-stone in stone: wood, steam, hair, and — as with this piece — water. He wanted to do water because Michelangelo had skimped on the waves when he’d carved his reclining Poseidon. Vimal hoped to one-up the master.

Wasn’t that an example of a mortal’s hubris, which brought the wrath of the gods down upon him?

Come on, he thought, looking up at the ceiling. Let’s get this over with. His heart was pounding and his knee bobbed from nerves. He found himself playing with his bracelet and then felt stunned he was still wearing it. Had Father seen? He pulled it off and put it in his pocket.

Now he was hearing the footsteps on the stairs and knew it was time to “have words,” as Dada used to say. A delicate euphemism for an argument. The look that passed between his father and himself upstairs made clear that, while a man-to-man talk wasn’t possible, a man-to-son talk was... and it was long overdue.

His father appeared in the studio. He sat on a stool. Vimal set the hammer down.

Papa wasted no time. “You wanted to say something.”

“We dance around the subject.”

Because you lose your temper and can’t stand anyone disagreeing with you. Which, of course, he did not verbalize.

“Subject?”

“Yes, Papa. But we need to address it.”

“What does this mean ‘address’?”

His father had come to America when he was two. He read two American newspapers a day, cover to cover, and got his news from Public Broadcasting, in addition to Indian sources. He knew what the word meant.

Waving a tremoring hand, Papa said, “Tell me. It’s late. I will be helping your brother with his homework. Tell me what you mean.”

The man’s intentional obliqueness angered Vimal. So he said quickly, “All right. Here: I don’t want to spend my life cutting pieces of carbon that bounce around between women’s boobs.”

He regretted the blunt word immediately and feared a fierce reprisal.

But his father just smiled, surprising him. “No? Why not?”

“It doesn’t thrill me, move me.”

Papa jutted out his lower lip. “Your parallelogram cut. It wasn’t like anything Nouri had ever seen. Or me. He sent me a picture of the stone.”

Why had I agreed to the cut?

The worst betrayal today had not been Bassam’s selling him out; it was Vimal’s own lapse. By agreeing to the cut for the money — his thirty pieces of silver — he had bolstered his father’s argument that he was a unique and brilliant diamantaire.

I’m my own Judas. His jaw was clenched. See, diamonds ruin everything.

Papa persisted, “Didn’t that move you?”

“It was technically challenging. I enjoyed the cut, yes. For that reason. I wasn’t, I don’t know, passionate about the cutting.”

“I think you were, son.”

“Whatever you want, Papa, I don’t want to devote my life to jewelry. It’s as simple as that.” This was the most defiant Vimal had ever been.

His father’s eyes went to yet another sculpture. The work was a series of geometric shapes, one morphing into another. He called it Telephone, after the game in which players whisper a phrase to the person beside them and so on, during the course of which the words become something entirely different. The marble piece had won first prize in a competition at the Field Gallery in SoHo. Vimal couldn’t help but reflect that while everyone complimented him on it, no one was interested in buying. It was priced at a thousand dollars, a third of what he’d been paid for the diamond cut today.

Papa continued, “I don’t understand, son.” A nod at The Wave. “You’re an artist. Obviously, you’re talented. You understand stone. Not many people do. That’s so very rare. But why not be an artist who makes—”

“Money?” Vimal surprised himself by actually interrupting.

“—a difference in the world of jewelry.”

Vimal said, “There is no difference to make in that world. It’s the world of cosmetics. Nothing more.”

He’d just insulted his father and grandfather and many blood relations in the Lahori family. But Papa didn’t give any reaction.

“This... plan of yours. Running off. What were you going to do?”

Vimal’s steam was up. He didn’t evade, as he usually did. “Go to California. Get an MFA.” He’d started college at seventeen and graduated early. Learning, like sculpting, came easily to him.

“California? Where?”

“UCLA. San Francisco State.”

“Why there?”

They both knew the answer to that. Twenty-five hundred miles’ distance. But Vimal said, “Fine arts. Good sculpting programs.”

“You’d have to work. It’s expensive there.”

“I intend to work. I’ll find something. Pay for my tuition.”

His father examined the work-in-progress again.

“It’s good.”

Did he mean this? Vimal couldn’t tell from his eyes. He might. But then it might be the way a customer would look over a ring or pendant. The husband or boyfriend’s face would shine in admiration. But the lady with him, the recipient? Her mouth would smile and she would whisper, “Oh, my, lovely.” But her eyes said something different. She’d been expecting more. Flashier. More spectacular.

Or usually what she meant was: bigger.

“Listen to me, son. I can see you’ve thought about this for a long time.” He sighed. “And I see too that I haven’t really listened to you. This terrible crime with Mr. Patel, it’s made me look at things differently. I want to understand it. Will you stay here for a few days — let the police catch that man. Then, well, we can talk. I want to hear more about what you want to do. We can work something out. Really. I promise we can.”

Vimal had never heard his father sound so reasonable; so he too had been shaken, fundamentally, by the crime. Vimal felt that tears might swell. He fought the urge. He embraced his father. “Sure, Papa.”

The older man nodded again at The Wave. “It really does look like water. I don’t know how you’ve done that.” He left, closing the door behind him.

Vimal looked over his sculpture. He pulled on gloves and goggles, powered up the grinder and continued the heavenly task of turning stone to water.

Chapter 27

The Henri Avelon was perfect.

Beautiful. No, breathtaking.

Judith Morgan, soon to be Judith Whelan, had been uncertain about the choice. The bridal boutique, on upper Madison Avenue, offered easily fifty different wedding dresses and so the decision had taken some time. Sean couldn’t help her with this one, of course. No groom was going to see his bride’s wedding dress before the aisle walk. And her mother, a woman who was convinced that price was the best measure of quality, would have bankrupted the family with the dress that she wanted her daughter to wear. Not what Morgan wanted.

The blonde looked at the satin confection in the mirror once more and, while she didn’t smile, was pleased beyond words. She turned slowly, viewed as much of the back as she could and returned to pole position. She’d stayed true to her goal of dropping the thirteen pounds and the dress curved the way it should curve, clung the way it should cling, but had plenty of drape and spare room in reserve.

Eyeing the scallops, the reasonable train (half the length of her sister’s monstrosity), the shimmery cloth and the tulle at the shoulder, she knew she’d made the right decision.

“It’s a winner, my dear,” Frank said and though, sure, he had an interest in selling her the three-thousand-dollar dress, she knew he meant it.

She hugged him. This was the final fitting. Two weeks till launch but she had a business trip to one of her ad agency’s clients starting in a few days and wouldn’t have much time after she got back to handle all the plans that a wedding with 257 guests entailed. The get-the-dress box had to be ticked now.

And it had been.

“When is the crew coming in?” Frank asked.

The bridesmaids. For the matching teal dresses, the matching shoes, the matching panty hose, the matching corsages. Frank was a godsend.

“A few days. Rita’ll call, make an appointment.”

“I’ll get champagne in.”

“I love you, you know,” Morgan said and blew him a kiss.

It was 7 p.m., closing time. When she’d arrived, an hour ago, the shop had been hopping — all the young professional fiancées, busy during the week, had only Saturday and Sunday to select and tailor the dress of a lifetime. Now it was empty except for the two of them, and the tailor in the back.

Frank helped her off the platform where she’d been standing for the final pinning.

As she climbed down, she took one last look in the mirror. And happened to glance at the reflection not of herself but of the front window, opening onto busy Madison Avenue. There was, as always, street traffic on Madison: at the moment, folks headed to dinner, or returning home from a Sunday of shopping, plays, movies and early suppers.

What took Morgan’s attention, though, was a man looking into the window.

She couldn’t see his face clearly; there wasn’t much light on the street any longer and he was backlit from headlights and a streetlamp.

Odd, a man in a dark jacket and stocking cap staring at a window full of wedding dresses.

He moved on. Probably the father of a newly engaged girl, pausing to gaze somberly at yet another expense confronting him after John or Keith or Robert had decided to do the honorable thing.

A few minutes later she was out of the changing room, back in the fatty jeans, which were so delightfully loose around her hips. T-shirt. A reindeer sweater because she was in one of those moods. Judith soon-to-be-Whelan was nothing if not playful. She rolled a scarf around her neck, then pulled on her black cotton jacket and donned supple leather gloves.

She said goodbye to Frank, who was shutting out the lights.

Stepping outside, she turned north toward her apartment.

Thinking about the dress, about the honeymoon. Atlantis in the Bahamas.

Making love while listening to the ocean. Something they’d never done. Ditto, eating conch fritters. Which Morgan knew they served in the Bahamas. She always did her homework.

She stopped at the corner deli, got a bottle of Pinot Grigio and hit the salad bar, throwing into a plastic container lettuce, tomatoes and “fixens” (she’d once heard a customer gripe about the misspelling but, she’d thought: I’m sorry, is there any confusion? And besides, how much Korean do you speak?).

Then back onto the street and to her building. Yes, it was the Upper East Side, but that included a lot of territory that was not Trump-worthy. Her brownstone was a fourth-floor walk-up, in sore need of a power washing and paint job.

She walked to the lobby door and was just unlocking it and stepping in when she heard a rush of footsteps behind her. The man in dark clothing, the same man outside of Frank’s — now with his head encased in a ski mask — pushed her inside.

Her barked scream was silenced by the hand over her mouth. He walked her fast down the corridor to an alcove underneath the stairs, where she and the tenant from the third floor kept their bikes. He swept the bikes aside and shoved her to the floor, a sitting position. He ripped her purse from her shoulder, the deli bag from her hand.

She stared at the pistol.

“Please...” Her voice was quaking.

“Shhh.”

He was, it seemed, listening for voices or footsteps. All was silent — except for the frantic pounding of Morgan’s heart, the raw gasp of her labored breathing.

He put the gun back in his pocket and then righted the bikes and leaned them upright against the wall so that anyone looking through the door wouldn’t see them on their sides and think something was wrong. Her leg protruded into the hall and he kicked it — gently — back under the stairs, so the limb wasn’t visible either. Then he crouched in front of her.

“What do you want? Please...just take whatever you want.”

“Gloves,” he snapped.

“You want my gloves.”

He laughed, sarcastically. Then grew angry. “Why I would want fucking gloves? I want you to take fucking gloves off.”

She did. And as he looked at her left hand she curled her right into a fist and slammed it into his jaw. “You fucker!” She hit him again, aiming low and missing the crotch by a few inches.

He blinked in surprise, not pain. His blue eyes were amused.

Morgan drew her arm back once more but his blow landed first — also to the jaw — and snapped her head into the wall. Her vision grew black and fuzzy for a moment. Then the focus returned.

“No good, lovebird hen.” Crouching over her, he gripped her hair, pulled her close. She smelled cigarette smoke and onions. Doused aftershave. Liquor. It took all her will not to vomit. Then thought maybe that would turn him off and tried to retch.

He shook her by the hair again, fiercely. A whisper: “No, no, no. No doing that. Okay?”

Morgan nodded. She was aware his eyes weren’t scanning her torso as she’d thought they would. His only interest was her fingers. Actually, just the ring finger.

That’s what he wanted. And it was clear to her now. Of course. A girl in a fancy Upper East Side bridal boutique. She’d be engaged...and she’d be wearing one hell of a rock.

Which she was.

Sean worked for Harper Stanley, on the foreign desk. His dad was a founder of Marsh and Royal, a big hedge fund. His mom was a partner at Logan, Sharp and Towne, a Wall Street law firm.

The ring on her finger had cost forty-two thousand dollars. It was anchored by a five-carat brilliant-cut diamond, with a one-carat marquis on either side.

“Take it,” she whispered.

His eyes flicked to hers. “Take what? Your virginity? Ha, that is joke. You smell to me like campus slut. How many men before your fiancé?”

She blinked. “I—”

“Does he know?” He then frowned. “Or you mean take purse, your credit cards? Hm, hm.” Feigning surprise, he said, “Oh, oh, my, you meaning your ring. That piece of stone on sad stub of finger. Does your fiancé like your hands? What’s his name?”

Crying now, Morgan said, “I am not telling you.”

The knife — one of those with the sliding blade — appeared. She screamed, until he brandished it and she fell silent.

The assailant looked at the front door. Listened again. No response. In fact, the building was two-thirds empty at the moment. One couple was on vacation. The gay guy was spending the weekend with his friends in the Hamptons. Two units were unrented.

Morgan was sure that Mr. and Mrs. Kieslowski were in for the night, chewing down Chinese and bingeing on Game of Thrones. They’d be no help.

She stared at the blade.

He’s not getting Sean’s name, she told herself, though also thinking that if he paid Sean a visit her fiancé would wipe up the pavement with this guy. Sean worked out five times a week.

But the man seemed to lose interest in her love life, so intensely was he drawn to the ring. With a grip she had no strength to resist he pulled her hand close to his face.

“How many carats, they tell you? Four and a half?”

She was shivering in terror. The fuck was this all about?

“How many fucking carats?” he raged softly.

“Five.”

Shaking his head. “And how much of it they kill?”

She frowned.

“How much they cut off of stone to make thing on finger of yours?”

“I... I don’t know what you mean. I can get you money. A lot of money. A hundred thousand. Do you want a hundred thousand dollars? No questions asked.”

He wasn’t even listening. “You are happy, slicing diamond up?”

“Please?”

“Shhhh, little hen. Look at you. Cryee little thing.” Then he pushed her away and said, “You were crying when boyfriend bought raped diamond? No crying then. Huh?”

He was fucking insane... Oh, God, now she understood. With a sinking heart, she realized this was him, the Promisor. The man who hated engaged couples. He’d killed the couple in the Diamond District on Saturday. And he’d attacked two more. And now she knew why. For some psychotic reason he was protecting diamonds.

For a moment, anger gripped her. She muttered, “You sick fuck.”

The grip on her hair tightened, pain swelling from her scalp. He pressed the knife against her neck. Judith Morgan went limp, surrendering to tears. She closed her eyes and began reciting a silent prayer, looping and looping through her thoughts. He leaned close, his forehead against hers. “Lovebird, lovebird... I am liking that part of vow, you know. Till death do you part.”

He pressed the knife against her throat.

Oh, Mommy...

Then he paused and a faint laugh slipped from his foul-smelling mouth. The blade lowered. “Have fun idea. Better than cutting... Yes, I am liking this. You treat diamond like shit. Okay, swallow it. That where it end up.”

“What?” she whispered.

He grimaced. “Put fucking ring in mouth and swallow it.”

“But I can’t.”

“Then, die.” He shrugged again and the knife rose to her throat.

“No, no, no! I will. I’ll swallow it. I’ll do it!”

She worked the ring off her finger and gazed down at it. What would happen? Lodge in her windpipe and she’d choke to death? Or if it got down her esophagus would the sharp edges cut the delicate tissue? Could she bleed to death internally?

“Or knife on throat,” he offered cheerfully. “I am not much caring. Choose. But now.”

With a trembling hand, she lifted the ring to her face. The piece seemed huge.

She felt the knife against her neck.

“Okay, okay.”

Quickly she dropped the jewelry into her mouth. She gagged once and the ring nearly fell out but she pushed it to the back of her throat and swallowed hard.

Waves of pain stabbed her chest, neck and head as she worked the muscles over and over and over to get the damn thing down. Tears streamed. The ring made it past her windpipe — she could breathe all right — but then lodged in her esophagus, the sharp sides of the small diamonds slitting the skin. Blood cascaded. She tasted it, and, as some flowed into her windpipe and lungs, her violent coughing fired red droplets from her mouth.

Rasping screams now.

He remained amused. “Ah, little one. You see how it goes. You fuck stone, stone fucks you.”

Judith Morgan was thrashing against the pain and the sensation of drowning — in her own blood. She gripped her throat with both hands, trying to manipulate the ring up and out. It wasn’t going anywhere and the pain only increased. Without a plan, on autopilot, she struggled to her feet then lunged for her purse. He lifted it away and opened it, then removed her cell phone and smashed it on the tile floor. He gave a laugh and strode nonchalantly down the corridor and left by the front door.

Coughing fiercely, consumed by pain from chest to temple, Judith Morgan struggled down the corridor and then up the stairs, heading for the Kieslowski apartment on the second floor.

Praying they had not gone out but were sitting on their lumpy sofa in front of the TV, with takeout, catching up on the twisted plottings of the House Lannister and the House Stark.

Chapter 28

Another attack.

At eight p.m. Rhyme was listening to a detective from the 19, on the Upper East Side.

“Yessir, Captain,” the man told him. “That same perp’s been in the news. Vic’s okay, she’ll live. But — can you believe this one? — he made her swallow her engagement ring. She’s in surgery now.”

“Scene’s secure?”

“Yessir. We’ve called the CS bus from Queens but since you’re the task force on this one, thought you might want to send one of your people.”

“We will. Have the techs wait outside the scene. Address?”

Rhyme memorized it. “Canvass?” he then asked.

“Five blocks all around. And counting. Nothing. And best the vic could say was white male, blue eyes, ski mask, knife and handgun. Or she nodded in response to my questions. Weird accent she couldn’t figure out. All I could get. We only had a few minutes ’fore they got her to the hospital.”

Rhyme thanked him. Then he disconnected and called Ron Pulaski.

“Lincoln.”

“We’ve got another scene. Upper East Side.”

“I heard some squawk on the radio. Was it our boy?”

“Yep.”

“The vic’s okay, I heard.”

“Alive. I don’t know about okay.” What did swallowing a sharp piece of jewelry do to you? Rhyme gave the younger officer the address. “The bus is on its way. I need you to walk the grid and get back here with whatever you can find ASAP. There’ll be uniforms and a detective from the One-Nine there. Find out what hospital the vic’s in and interview her. And take a pad and pen for the vic to write with. She can’t talk.”

“She... what?”

“Move, Rookie.”

They disconnected.

The doorbell to the town house sounded and Thom answered it, returning a moment later with the insurance investigator Edward Ackroyd, who nodded, almost formally, to Rhyme and Cooper.

The aide took the man’s greatcoat — no, Rhyme thought, changing his opinion of the garment once more. It should be called a mackintosh.

“Another cappuccino?” Thom asked.

“Don’t mind if I do, actually.”

“No, no, no,” Rhyme said fast. “A single-malt.”

“Well... now that you mention it, I will do. Save the coffee for another time.”

Thom poured the drinks, pitifully small. Both Rhyme and Ackroyd added just a hint of water to the glass.

“Glenmorangie,” Ackroyd said, after sipping. He pronounced it correctly, emphasis on the second syllable. He held up the glass and eyed the amber liquid as if in a commercial. “Highlands. You know there is a difference in taste between lowland whisky and highland, subtle and I’m not sure I could detect it. However, there are many more highland distilleries than low. Do you know why?”

“No idea.”

“It’s not because of the peat or the process but because the Scottish distilleries kept moving north to escape the English excise tax. Or that’s what I’ve heard.”

Rhyme tucked the trivia away, tilted the glass toward the Englishman and sipped the smoky liquor.

Ackroyd took a seat, with that perfect posture of his, in one of the wicker chairs not far from Rhyme.

He told the Brit about the new attack.

“No! Swallowed her engagement ring? Good heavens. How is she?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“And payback for buying a cut stone? My, this man’s barking mad.” His face seemed bewildered. Then he added, “Now, let me tell you a few things I’ve found. I did hear back from my friend in Amsterdam. You recall?”

The dealer who’d received a call from an anonymous number about selling some rough. A nod.

“The seller in New York, with the fifteen carats? He called Willem back. He’s legitimate. A diamond broker from Jerusalem. He was in New York and bought a phone at the airport. Didn’t want to use the minutes on his personal phone. So, dead end there. Now, I’ve talked to scores of diamantaires and nobody has heard any inkling of selling the Grace-Cabot rough or rumors of a major underground cut going on. It’s absurd but I suppose he really must believe he’s saving the stone from the dire fate of being cut into jewelry.

“But, more to the point: About an hour ago I was making calls to dealers and some other people I know, asking about Patel’s assistant? Well, one of them, in Brooklyn, told me that it was curious: Someone else had called him earlier today, asking about an associate or assistant who worked for Patel. Initials VL. The dealer couldn’t help him and they hung up.”

Rhyme lowered his scotch and looked Ackroyd’s way. “He didn’t identify himself, of course.”

“No. And, naturally, it was from a blocked number. But here’s the important news: The dealer is Russian, and he recognized the caller’s accent. He’s Russian too. And almost certainly born there and learned English at school in Russia. He worked that out from some of the constructions and choices of words. Probably a Muscovite, or nearby. And he’s come here recently. He didn’t know the word ‘borough’ or that Brooklyn and Queens were part of New York City. He thought the city was only Manhattan.”

“Helpful,” Rhyme said. And he had a thought of how to best use the information. An idea occurred. He typed out a text and sent it on its way.

The reply arrived almost immediately, proposing a time for a phone call.

Rhyme texted, K, and then said to Cooper, “Mel, write up what Edward found, on the boards, could you?”

Cooper walked to the evidence board and added the new information about Unsub 47 to the list.

A phone hummed and Rhyme watched Ackroyd as he looked at the screen of his iPhone and frowned. Then he typed something in response. There was apparently another exchange. His frown deepened. He looked off, thoughtfully.

The Englishman was aware of Rhyme’s gaze and smiled. “Not about the case. Bit silly, this. Back in London, I’m on a competitive crossword puzzle team. Have you ever done them?”

Seemed like an utter waste of time but Rhyme said only, “No.”

Ackroyd walked close and held the mobile for Rhyme to see. A look at the screen revealed the familiar grid. Some of the blanks were filled in.

“My husband and I...” A moment’s hesitation, then continuing: “He’s on the faculty at Oxford. He and I and two other professors, from Cambridge, are on the team. We’re the Oxbridge Four. Silly, I was saying. But Terrance — that’s my husband — thinks a puzzle helps you stay on your game. His father was a die-hard fan. He did one a day — often the diagramless ones: without the black square telling where the words start and stop. Terrance’s convinced that they kept Dad sharp till the day he died.”

“You competing now?” Rhyme nodded to the phone.

“Oh, no, we’ll have to wait on the tournaments until I’m back home. They’re held in proper venues. Like chess matches. Supervised. So there’ll be no cheating: dictionaries, the Internet. There’ve been scandals, I will tell you. Quite the controversies.” He regarded the screen. “This’s just a way for us to stay in touch. We compete mostly with cryptic crosswords. You familiar?”

“Not really.”

That is, not at all.

“They’re largely a British creation and have appeared in our newspapers for hundreds of years. The creators — we call them ‘setters’ in cryptic crosswords — have a nearly mythical status. They go by one-word pseudonyms like Scorpion or Nestor — two quite famous ones, by the way. The most famous and the one who wrote the rules on cryptics is Derrick Somerset Macnutt, who went by Ximenes.

“Let me explain how they work — you might enjoy this, Lincoln. Cryptics have a grid, similar to regular crosswords, but the clues are word puzzles you have to solve to get the answer, as opposed to just a straightforward clue like ‘wife of George the Third.’ The best setters create clues which are both bloody complicated and absurdly simple.”

Ackroyd’s enthusiasm radiated from his otherwise staid face.

“Now, the clue’s a puzzle, remember. It contains a definition of the answer and other words or phrases to guide you, including letting you know what kind of puzzle it is: Maybe you have to solve an anagram, find a hidden or reversed word, work out what sound-alike words — homophones — mean.” He laughed. “I’m sure this makes no sense. Let me give you an example. Here’s a classic from the Guardian a few years ago, created by a setter named Shed. I’ll write it down because it’s much easier to find the answer by seeing, rather than hearing.”

Ackroyd jotted:

“Now, the answer will appear on the crossword grid at fifteen down. All right? Good. Let’s get to work. What are we trying to find? See the number eight? That means the answer is an eight-letter word. And the first two words in the clue are the definition of that answer. So, what we need to write on the crossword grid at fifteen down is an eight-letter word meaning ‘very sad.’”

Rhyme had slipped his impatience away and was paying attention. Mel Cooper too had turned and was listening.

Ackroyd continued, “The next word, ‘unfinished,’ modifies the word after it. ‘Unfinished story.’ With cryptics you’re always mistrusting the literal. If the setter says ‘story,’ he means something else, possibly a synonym for ‘story.’” Ackroyd smiled again. “Obviously, I know the answer so I’m short-circuiting the process a bit. I’ll pick the synonym ‘tale.’ And ‘unfinished’ means the last letter is missing. That gives us the letters ‘T-A-L.’ So part of the answer for the clue ‘very sad’ are those letters. You with me?”

“Yes,” Rhyme said, his mind already trying to process the remaining clues.

Cooper said uncertainly, “Uhm, keep going.”

“Let’s go to the last words in the clue, ‘rising smoke.’ That could be any number of things but — trial and error again, and given my foreknowledge — let’s settle on ‘cigar.’ And since this clue is fifteen down, that means ‘rising’ would find the word written backwards: ‘ragic.’ So another part of our answer is the letters ‘R-A-G-I–C.’ Finally—”

Rhyme blurted, “The word ‘about’ means that the letters in one of the clues would be split and put on either side of another clue.”

Cooper said, “If you say so.”

Ackroyd said, with a grin, “No, no, he’s onto it. Brilliant, Lincoln. What’re your thoughts?”

“It’s obvious: Split T-A-L. Put the T before R-A-G-I–C and the A-L after. The answer’s ‘tragical.’”

“Congratulations!” Ackroyd said, beaming. “You’ve never done this before?”

“No.”

The Englishman offered, “Some people think it’s a waste of time.”

Rhyme tried not to smile.

“But I hardly agree. You know the Enigma machine?”

Cooper answered, “Yes, the code device that the mathematicians at Bletchley Park cracked. Alan Turing and crew.”

This sounded somewhat familiar but unless information helped with a present, or future, investigation Rhyme tended not to keep it in storage.

Apparently his blank expression showed. The tech said, “Nazi encryption device during World War Two. The Allies couldn’t crack German messages and tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians died.”

Ackroyd said, “In January nineteen forty-two, the Daily Telegraph had a speed cryptic competition — you had to complete a very complicated puzzle in twelve minutes or under. They published the results, and the War Office took notice. It recruited some of the best competitors to come to Bletchley Park and they helped crack Enigma.” He added, “One thing I love about cryptic puzzles: They can lie and be completely honest at the same time. It’s all about misdirection. Up for one more?”

“Yes,” Rhyme said.

Ackroyd wrote:

Cooper turned back to his equipment. “Think I’ll stick to Sudoku.”

Rhyme stared for a moment. “A four-letter word that’s a location.”

Romania was a nation of which he knew nothing. “There’re thousands of towns and regions and parks in Romania. And someplace rich in oil. Maybe not oil wells. Maybe ports for shipping oil. Maybe banks that specialize in oil industry lending.” He shook his head.

“Remember,” Ackroyd said, “in cryptic puzzles, you’re often looking right at the answer. The problem is that you’re not seeing it.”

But then he did. Rhyme laughed. “Yes, the answer is a location in Romania — but not the country. It’s in ‘Romania,’ the word. The answer’s ‘Oman’: r-O-M-A-N-i-a. The Middle Eastern country with oil reserves.”

“Well done, Lincoln.”

Pleased with himself, he had to admit.

Rhyme noticed motion on the front-door monitor and observed Sachs climbing stairs and pulling her keys from her bag. She’d returned from the jobsite where Unsub 47 had, possibly, met with a worker for reasons as yet undetermined.

The time for diversion was over.

Chapter 29

Rhyme regarded Amelia Sachs carefully as she entered.

Hair damp — she’d taken a shower; the skies were gray but there’d been no rain.

I want to clean up first...

Her eyes were distant. Her thumb worried a finger, then the digits swapped roles. He could see a bloody cuticle.

She nodded a greeting to Ackroyd, who smiled his modest smile in return.

Rhyme told her, “Another one. You hear?”

Sachs asked quickly, “Earthquake?”

“What? No, attack.”

“The Promisor?”

He nodded. And observed that she seemed oddly distracted. Even troubled. He wondered too why it had taken her so damn long to get here.

But he said nothing about it. “Vic’ll live. Made her swallow her ring.”

“Jesus. How is she?”

“I don’t know. Ron’s walking the grid and getting details. He’ll do an interview when she’s out of surgery. The shield I talked to at the One-Nine asked a few questions. Didn’t add anything — same story you heard: protecting diamonds. And the canvass in the neighborhood didn’t turn up anyone. They’re still at it.”

Rhyme glanced to Edward Ackroyd, who told her what he’d found — the Amsterdam dealer lead had not paid off but it was likely that the unsub was Russian and probably had come only recently to the city.

Sachs looked thoughtful. “So, with the kids in Gravesend, he was trying to obscure the accent. Russian. Is that helpful?”

“I’m following up,” Rhyme said, thinking of the text he’d sent.

Sachs grimaced. “I’ve never known a perp to be so damn persistent about taking out witnesses. Hell. Have we had any luck finding the boy?”

“Ron hasn’t. Like with Edward, nobody’s talking to him. Computer Crimes is pulling Patel’s phone records. Let’s hope Patel and VL talked regularly.” Rhyme’s eyes swayed to Sachs. “So, what happened at the jobsite?”

Sachs blinked. “Happened?”

“Yeah. What was Forty-Seven doing there?”

“Oh.” She told them he probably hadn’t used the site as a shortcut. Yes, there were lots of CCTV cameras on the government building side of the construction area but the limited entrances to the site suggested the shortcut theory was unlikely.

Then she explained about her conversation with the foreman of the geothermal operation. She said that, yes, the unsub had been in the construction site and had met with somebody, identity unknown, for reasons unknown. She could get no better description than what they already had. “The scene wasn’t good — gravel and lots of contamination. Found this.” She handed over two small bags of earth and stones to Mel Cooper. “It’s probably from where he was standing but I don’t know for sure.”

The tech took the bags and got to work examining what had been uncovered.

Rhyme noticed that her eyes remained distant, her posture tense. She tugged at her hair, then dug the index finger of her right hand into the thumb of that hand once more. An old habit. She tried to control the self-harm. Sometimes she didn’t care. Amelia Sachs lived on the edge, in many senses.

He noticed her hand drop to her knee. She winced.

“Sachs?” Rhyme asked.

“I fell. That’s all. Nothing.”

No, it wasn’t nothing. Whatever had happened had shaken her. And now she had a brief coughing fit. Cleared her throat. He felt an urge to ask if she was okay but she didn’t like that question any more than he did.

Rhyme said, “Any indication Forty-Seven was picking up that new weapon of his?”

“No, but I didn’t get very far. We’ll have to keep canvassing.” She turned to Cooper. “Speaking of the weapon: Ballistics?”

He explained that the gun used at Gravesend was a .38 special. Probably the Smittie 36 or the Colt Detective. Both, classic snub-nose. Five rounds. Not very accurate and punishing on the shooting hand. But at close range as wicked as any other firearm.

Cooper added, “And I heard from the evidence collection techs out of Queens. No sign of the Glock — or anything else — in the storm drains or Dumpsters near Saul Weintraub’s.”

Sachs shrugged. “I was going back to the construction site tomorrow to keep up the canvassing but there’s a problem. I met a state inspector down there. Works for the Division of Mineral Resources. He said the city’s shutting down construction at the geothermal site until they can see if the drilling’s caused the quake.”

Ackroyd said, “Oh, it’s a geothermal plant they’re building?”

“Right.”

“How deep?”

“I think five, six hundred feet.”

“Yes, I’d guess that could do it. My company used to insure against damage from fracking and high-pressure water mining. Those’ve definitely caused earthquakes and undermined buildings and homes. But we gave up issuing policies. It was costing us too much. And I have heard of geothermal drilling leading to earthquakes too. In one case a school was destroyed in a fire from a broken gas line. Another one, two workers were buried alive.”

Sachs once more dug an index nail into the thumb cuticle. Deep. The flesh went pink. Rhyme believed he now understood what had happened at the geothermal site.

She continued, “Northeast is appealing the shutdown but until that’s resolved, there won’t be any workers on-site. We’ll have to interview them at home.”

“How many?”

“About ninety. I told Lon. He’ll recruit uniforms. Pain in the ass. But there’s no other way.”

Cooper looked up from a computer monitor. “Got the results from the construction site, Amelia. Same mineral trace as at Patel’s and Weintraub’s, so he was definitely there. But nothing new, other than diesel fuel. And mud. Was there a lot of mud down there?”

A pause. “Some. Yeah.”

“Nothing else.”

The door buzzer sounded and Thom let Ron Pulaski into the parlor.

The young officer nodded to those present and introduced himself to Edward Ackroyd; the two had never met. The young officer then handed off to Mel Cooper the evidence bags he’d collected on the Judith Morgan assault on the Upper East Side. The tech got to work, as Pulaski explained to the others what had happened in the latest Promisor assault. Morgan, twenty-six, had been in a bridal boutique, getting some final adjustments to her wedding dress. A man who’d been outside the shop followed her to her apartment and forced her into an alcove on the ground floor.

“He was rambling on and on about how she’d ruined a beautiful diamond by cutting it into a ring. He was going to kill her, she thought. Or cut her ring finger off. But then he changed his mind. He told her that since she’d treated the ring like shit, that’s where it was going to end up.”

Sachs asked, “Did he say anything that’d give us a clue where he lives? Works?”

“No. But said she could smell aftershave, alcohol, cigarette smoke residue, very foul. And onions. He has blue eyes.”

Sachs said, “Same as earlier.”

“And that he was foreign but she couldn’t tell his accent.”

Rhyme told Pulaski they were pretty sure he was Russian and new to the city.

“She thinks the gun was a revolver — I showed her pictures. And the utility knife was gray metal. That’s about it.”

Sachs wrote these finds up on the chart.

Cooper returned to give them the results of the Judith Morgan crime scene search. “Not much. Too many footprints to find anything more about his shoes. Some black cotton fibers — ski mask, I’d guess. General trace but all typical of that neighborhood. No kimberlite this time.”

Sachs sat down in a wicker chair. She tapped her knee with an index finger, as if she were testing a melon. She was staring at the TV screen. The news was on. Though the set was muted, the closed captioning was telling the story in its own form of clumsy English.

That story was about the earthquake.

Sachs was frowning, Rhyme noted, and she whispered, “Oh, no.”

He turned his full attention to the story. The anchor was announcing that one of the two fires believed to have started when the tremor snapped gas lines, had taken two lives.

A couple in their sixties, Arnold and Ruth Phillips, residents of Brooklyn, had died of smoke inhalation. They had escaped the flames and made it to the garage but there was no electricity in the house to power the opener. Weakened by the smoke and injuries, they couldn’t lift the door themselves.

Soon two talking heads were on the split screen, along with a dark-haired male anchor. One of the guests was a middle-aged man in a dark-blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. He was a bit pudgy and his head was crowned with trim black hair. He was Dennis Dwyer, the CEO of Northeast Geo Industries, the company building the plant.

The other interviewee was a twitchy disheveled man in his mid-fifties. He wore a blue work shirt with sleeves rolled up. His gray hair and beard were wild. He was Ezekiel Shapiro. The type on the screen identified him as Director of the One Earth movement.

“I saw him down there today,” Sachs said. “They’ve been harassing the workers. He’s a bit of a—” She turned to Ackroyd. “What did you say? Crazy guy?”

“Nutter.”

“Good word.”

The two men on-screen were engaged in a fierce verbal duel. The wide-eyed and broadly gesticulating Shapiro was positive that the earthquake had resulted from the geothermal drilling. And apart from gas line breakage and the risk of buildings collapsing from quakes during construction, the finished plant could lead to groundwater pollution and other environmental risks. He praised the city for stopping the drilling but criticized the mayor and city council for allowing the project in the first place.

Dwyer, much calmer, said the ban was a huge mistake, asserting that drilling could not cause earthquakes. The New York area was far more seismologically stable than most parts of the country, certainly nothing like California. And Shapiro was misinformed about the geothermal process if he thought there was a risk of contaminating groundwater; the system was self-contained, and even a crack in a pipe would result only in a release of inert solution. Shapiro countered that the technology was still unknown.

The anchor added gasoline to the discussion by inviting a third interviewee. He was an even more perfectly assembled businessman than Dwyer. His name was C. Hanson Collier and he was the CEO of Algonquin Consolidated Power — the big electricity provider in the New York area. You would think he’d be against the geothermal project — it seemed to make Northeast Geo a competitor to Algonquin. But Collier was pro. He was saying that near-surface drilling, like Northeast’s Brooklyn project, was far safer than deep drilling in volcanic regions to tap steam and high-temperature reserves for the generation of electricity. “We have to embrace all forms of energy the earth provides,” he said.

As the debate grew increasingly testy and, to Rhyme, uninteresting, the image on the screen switched to the Northeast Geo construction site in Brooklyn, depicting a number of green-fenced rectangular pens. Apparently these were where the shafts were located.

Sachs took one look and rose. “I’d better go. I need to check on Mom.”

Rose Sachs, who’d had heart surgery recently, was doing fine. Rhyme knew this for a fact since he and the funny, and feisty, woman had had a conversation just a few hours ago. Her reluctance at her daughter’s dating a disabled man had faded years ago and she and Rhyme had become good friends. He couldn’t ask for a better mother-in-law.

But there was more. Rhyme knew that while Sachs might end up at her mother’s house — it was in Brooklyn — she would first take to the road. She was going to jump into her Torino and find an appropriate roadway, out in the burbs, to muscle the car up to eighty or ninety.

This would be in an effort to shed whatever still clung to her from the crime scene. What the shower had not been able to remove: the gut-clenching horror she’d undoubtedly experienced.

If anything could distract her, it was the act of downshifting out of a hairpin, fourth to second, then skidding onto a straightaway and urging the screaming engine to push the needle of the speedometer into three digits.

Rhyme knew and accepted without qualification that she was a risk taker. But speed was a diversion, not a remedy.

“Sachs?” he asked. And he said this in a certain tone, rare for him. She would understand: It was an invitation to talk to him about what had happened at the site. He wasn’t going to offer advice, probably not even solace. Just give her a chance to talk.

But the invitation was declined.

Amelia Sachs said only, “Night. See you in the morning.” She said this to everybody.

Pulaski and Cooper left. Ackroyd pulled his raincoat on. He was hesitating to leave, Rhyme noted.

In a soft voice, the Brit said, “It’s hardly my business. But... is she all right?”

“Not really,” Rhyme said. “She has some issues.” His face wrinkled. “If that isn’t the most useless of assessments. Amelia needs to move, to be free, all the time. I think she was in a cave-in, or got trapped. Wouldn’t be a firefight, wouldn’t be a pursuit, sniper. Anything like that. She lives for moments like those. But being trapped, caught, not moving: That’s hell.”

“I could see her eyes. It must’ve been bad.”

“I think it was.”

“She’ll tell you about it, sooner or later.”

“Probably not. And I know because we’re similar that way.” He gave a smile as he realized he was sharing more of himself than usual. “A magnet. Opposites attract? Well, in most ways, we’re opposite. This, keeping things inside? We’re the same pole.”

Ackroyd laughed. “Just like a scientist to couch matters of the heart in terms of electrical polarity... Well, if there’s anything I can do, please, let me know.”

“Thank you, Edward.”

The man nodded and left the town house. Soon Thom appeared and said, “And time for bed for you, Lincoln. Late.”

Exertion and fatigue could adversely affect someone with quadriplegia, a condition where stress can sometimes play havoc with blood pressure.

Still, he had one more task tonight.

“Five minutes,” he told Thom, who began to protest. Then Rhyme said, “Barry Sales.”

The aide dipped his head. “Sure. I’ll get things ready upstairs.”

Rhyme instructed the phone to dial Sales. He’d been discharged from the hospital and was now at home. Rhyme had a brief conversation with his wife, Joan, who then put Sales on the line. They started chatting immediately and Rhyme supposed that an observer would have been surprised, to put it mildly, to see the criminalist this loquacious. He wasn’t taciturn but he typically had no time for idle conversation.

Tonight, though, idle conversation was the game. His and Sales’s words ranged far and wide. He’d called the rehab specialist Thom had recommended. They hadn’t met yet, but Sales would update Rhyme about the appointment afterward.

Rhyme had to report to Sales that his intelligence revealed that the trial of the man who’d allegedly shot him was moving slowly. Clever lawyering, technicalities, bullying witnesses.

After they disconnected, Rhyme turned briefly to the evidence charts and memorized some of the more enigmatic entries. When this was done he swung around and followed Thom to the elevator. In bed he would use the netherworld, between deciding to sleep and succumbing, to wrestle a little longer with the knottier issues presented by the investigation.

Smiling to himself, he thought suddenly of a line that seemed to define the clues in the Unsub 47 case, words that Edward Ackroyd had spoken earlier, about cryptic crossword puzzles.

They can lie and be completely honest at the same time...

Chapter 30

Listening to the raucous sound from his son’s workroom — the grinding tools shaping the sculpted stone — Deepro Lahori slipped downstairs.

He stood in the hallway outside the studio, in the basement.

It was late — bedtime — but the boy continued to grind away. They had ended their conversation on a somewhat positive note earlier in the evening. But Vimal was, of course, now being passive aggressive — the grinder shouting a message of defiance to his father.

How foolish, this sculpture nonsense. What a waste of time. And of his talent. If it were only a hobby, fine. In fact, sculpting might enhance his son’s skill as a cutter. Better than video games, better than dating girls. But he knew Vimal wanted a career as an artist. Stupid boy. Lahori guessed the percentage of professional artists who made enough money to live on probably hovered around 1 percent. How could he get an Indian woman for a wife, someone who wanted to be taken care of, someone who would show respect only to a man who provided for her?

Apart from the impracticality of devoting his life to sculpture, the truly troubling, truly painful, aspect of his son’s behavior was the insulting rejection of his father’s — and the Lahori family’s — history in the diamond-cutting business. This was a sin, for Vimal was the only one in the family to carry on that tradition. Sunny would have gone into the business — but he had no talent on the scaife; he was embarrassing to watch. Yes, he would be following his mother into health care (though he would be a doctor, of course, not a mere nurse, like Divya). But that was a maternal tradition. Lahori needed a son to follow in his footsteps.

Downstairs, he approached the door of the studio, pausing as the grinder went silent.

Was he finished for the night?

No, the clatter started up again. Which meant Vimal couldn’t hear what was coming next. Lahori took a key from his pocket in a trembling hand and, after some effort, locked the door to the studio. He then placed a security bar, which ran at a forty-five-degree angle from an indentation above the doorknob to a similar hole in the floor. He affixed this too with a key lock. The bar was three-quarter-inch tempered steel, and the manufacturer assured the world, in its advertising, that only a cutting flame of two thousand degrees Celsius would slice through it. (Though, of course, a flexible disk saw embedded with diamonds would do the trick too, he thought. Just for the record.)

Vimal was now in prison. The door was sealed — and, because this had been a diamond workshop years ago, the low window was barred with thick iron rods.

Lahori congratulated himself silently for the ruse of putting his son at ease, agreeing to some “compromise.” Had Vimal been the least suspicious that he’d be locked up here, he never would have gone into the room. The insubordinate boy would have sprinted out the door in an instant and been gone, no matter that he had no money and no ID.

Going to California? A state whose only claim to fame, in Lahori’s opinion, was the billions of dollars in diamond sales from stores like the ones on Rodeo Drive?

He slipped the keys into his pocket.

What a child Vimal was! He could have been one of the greatest diamantaires of the twenty-first century... why, look at the parallelogram cut! Genius, pure genius.

Deepro Lahori had no particular plan, other than to keep Vimal here, locked downstairs, for the next month or so. He was sure the police would catch the killer and the boy would come to his senses. It would be the horror of the robbery, getting shot at, and seeing his mentor die that had upset him so, had unbalanced him. He was, Lahori decided, temporarily insane. A month in captivity would also get his mind off any non-Hindu girls he was vulnerable to.

A touch of guilt. But Lahori reminded himself he was hardly inhumane, certainly not with his son, whom he loved deeply, of course. The boy would find a comfortable sleeping bag in the closet, along with plenty of food and snacks and water and soft drinks. He suspected his son drank so he’d included some lite beer. There was a TV. No Internet or phone of course. The boy might grow even more unstable and call a friend to come break him out. Or the police, claiming he’d been kidnapped.

There would be some tension between them, because of what Lahori had done. But sooner or later the boy would come to understand that his father knew what was right for him. He would thank him, though Lahori honestly did not want thanks, or even an acknowledgment that he was right. He simply wanted the boy to come to the realization that this was the life he was destined for... and to embrace it.

He gripped the bar against the door and tried to shake it. The rod didn’t move a millimeter.

He was satisfied. And at last more or less happy... after these past few days, when events had tried him so sorely. And unfairly.

He climbed the stairs.

Deepro Lahori was in the mood for that game of Scrabble, and he knew his wife and his other son — his good son — would indulge him.