The Steel Kiss

Chapter 47

At 11:30 a.m. the canvass team looking into the unsub’s purchases for his improvised weapons, in the attempt on Rose Sachs’s life, had a hit.

Rhyme was frustrated that it had taken so long but then they’d made the discovery about the garage door opener and the other purchases only late last night, when most of the hardware stores were closed. And few opened early today, Sunday morning.

“Fucking blue laws,” he’d snapped.

Ron Pulaski, apparently on hiatus from the Gutiérrez case, had said, “I don’t think the Puritans’ve pushed through legislation about late opening times for hardware stores on the holy day, Lincoln. Salespeople probably just want to sleep in one day of the week.”

“Well, they shouldn’t do it when I. Need. Answers.”

But then Sachs got a call from one of the officers on the canvass. She sat slightly more upright as she listened. “I’ll put you on speaker.”

A click. “Yes, hello? Jim Cavanaugh. Major Cases Support.”

“Officer,” Rhyme said, “this is Lincoln Rhyme.”

“Detective Sachs told me you’re working the case. An honor, sir.”

“Okay, sure. Well, what do you have?”

“A store on Staten Island.”

So, not Queens. Archer gave Rhyme a wry smile.

With two question marks...

“The manager said a man fitting the description of the unsub comes in two days ago, wanted a garage door opener that would work at a distance of about thirty-five feet, maybe more. Also bought glass, glazing compound, electricians’ tape and some wire. All matching the products you mentioned.”

Here’s hoping... Rhyme asked, “Credit card?”

“Cash.”

Of course.

“Did the manager know anything about him? Name, where he lives?”

“Not that, but he did find out a few things, Captain.”

“ ‘Lincoln’ is fine. Go on.”

“The unsub saw some tools the store had for sale and asked about them. They were specialized ones. Like the kind used for crafts.”

Sachs asked, “Crafts? What sort of crafts?”

“Hobbies. Model airplanes, things like that. Razor knives and saws and very small sanders. He bought a set of miniature clamps. He’d been looking for ones like them. The store he usually shops at didn’t have them in stock.”

“Good. I like ‘usually.’ That means he’s a regular. Did he mention the name?”

“No. Just said it was in Brooklyn.”

Rhyme shouted, “Somebody find me all the crafts stores in Brooklyn. Now!”

“Thanks, Officer.” Sachs disconnected the call.

A moment later a map was on the biggest of the monitors. There were sixteen crafts stores indicated in the borough of Brooklyn.

“Which one?” Rhyme muttered.

Sachs leaned forward, her hand on the back of his chair. She pointed. “That one.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s one subway stop away from the MTA station near the White Castle in Queens, where he always went for lunch after shopping.”

Crafts 4 Everyone didn’t quite live up to its name.

No yarn, no floral art foam, no finger paints.

But if you wanted to build model ships or spacecraft or doll house furniture this was your emporium.

Fragrant with the smell of paint and wood and cleansers, the shop featured jam-packed shelves filled with supplies and tools. More Dremel power tools and balsa wood than Amelia Sachs had ever seen in one place. A lot of Star Wars characters, creatures and vehicles. Star Trek too.

She showed her gold shield to the young man behind the counter, good looking, more like an athlete than a, well, clerk in a nerd store.

“Yes?” His voice did, however, crack.

She explained she was trying to find someone for questioning in connection with a series of crimes. She described the unsub, asked if anyone had recently bought mahogany, walnut, Bond-Strong and Braden Rich-Cote varnish. Craft tools too.

“He’d be smart,” Sachs said. “Well spoken.” Thinking of the unsub’s attempts to obscure his intelligence in his rants against consumerism.

“Well, you know,” the clerk said, swallowed and continued, “there is somebody. But he’s quiet, polite. I can’t imagine he’d do anything wrong.”

“What’s his name?”

“I just know his first name. Vernon.”

“He fits the description?”

“Tall and thin, yeah. Kind of weird.”

“Any credit card receipts?”

“He always pays cash.”

She then asked, “You have any idea where he lives?”

“Manhattan, I think in Chelsea. He mentioned that once.”

“How often does he come in?”

“Every couple of weeks.”

“No phone number he left for special orders?”

“No, sorry... Now you’re asking me, he always seemed kind of paranoid, you know. Like he didn’t want to give away too much.”

She handed him a card and asked him to call her if this Vernon returned. No more 911 intermediaries. She walked around a father and son poring over a carve-your-own-Jedi display and left the store. Sachs dropped into the front passenger seat of the unmarked car that had accompanied her here. The detective from the local precinct, an attractive Latina, asked, “Success?”

“Yes, and no. The perp’s name is Vernon. No other name yet. I want you to stay here on the chance he comes back. The kid — the clerk — was so nervous all Vernon would have to do was look at him and the killer would know something was up.”

“Sure, Amelia.”

She thought now about how to narrow down an address in the relatively large neighborhood of Chelsea. She spun the detective’s computer around and typed real estate databases. No one with a first name Vernon owned property in Chelsea and those two people with that name on deed records were much older than the perp and both were married, a status that seemed extremely unlikely for this type of perp. So, if the kid was right about the name, their perp would be renting.

An idea occurred to her: She ran stats in Chelsea to see about recent crimes. Something interesting turned up. A homicide, just reported yesterday, on West 22nd Street. A man named Edwin Boyle, a printing company employee, had been killed and his body shoved into a storage cabinet in an abandoned warehouse. His wallet and cash were still in his possession. Only his phone was missing. The cause of death was “blunt force trauma.”

She called the Medical Examiner’s Office and got through right away. She identified herself.

“Hi, Detective,” said the woman technician. “What do you need to know?”

“That homicide, Boyle? Yesterday. Chelsea. You have anything more on the blunt force? Type of weapon?”

“Hold on. I’ll check. I didn’t do the PM.” A few moments later she came back on the line. “I have it here. Funny, it’s similar to another PM we handled not long ago. Something you don’t see very often.”

Sachs said, “Murder weapon was a ball-peen hammer?”

The tech barked a laugh. “Sherlock Holmes. How’d you know that?”

“Can’t tell, Detective. He’s got shutters on the bedroom window. Metal, have to be. Can’t read through them. K.”

Near an ESU van parked up the street from the target apartment, Amelia Sachs spoke into her stalk mouthpiece in reply: “Any light getting through?”

The S&S officer was on the roof opposite, his sophisticated equipment aimed at the second-floor, two-bedroom apartment on West 22nd Street. “Negative, Detective. No thermal readings but with the shutters he could have a card game going on there, everybody smoking cigars and I couldn’t tell you. K.”

“Roger.”

The unsub was no longer one. He was an Identified Subject.

Vernon Griffith, thirty-five, was a resident of New York. He’d owned a house on Long Island, which he’d inherited and recently sold. He’d been renting here in Chelsea for about a year. Some juvie offenses for schoolyard fights, but no rap sheet as an adult. And — curiously — no history of social activism, until he started using consumer products a few days ago to murder the good citizens of the city of New York as the People’s Guardian.

Edwin Boyle had been his neighbor until, for reasons yet unknown, Griffith had hammered him to death a few blocks away, in the same inelegant manner as he had Todd Williams.

“We’re locked down. The whole block.”

This from Bo Haumann, head of the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit — the city’s SWAT team. The lean, grizzled man, with an etched face, and Sachs looked over a layout of the apartment building on his laptop. The schematic had come from the Department of Buildings and was old, about ten years, but New York City apartments rarely underwent major internal renovation. Landlords wouldn’t want to pay for that. Only with the gold mine of converting a building to co-ops or condominiums did the owners get out the checkbooks for structural improvement.

“Don’t have much choice.” Haumann said, meaning there was essentially only one strategy for entry to collar Griffith. There was a single entrance into the building from 22nd Street and one door in the back alley. Griffith’s apartment itself had one door, opening onto the living room. There were two bedrooms opposite the entry door and a small kitchen to the right.

Haumann called a half-dozen officers over. Like Sachs they were in tactical outfits — helmets, gloves, Kevlar vests.

Tapping the computer screen, he said, “Three friendlies in the back. Four-man entry through his front door.”

“I’m one of them,” Sachs said.

“Four-person entry through his front door,” Haumann corrected, to smiles. “One breacher, other three in serially. One right, one left, one center, covering.”

The weapons they’d be armed with were the same as the one that had been used to kill Osama bin Laden: H&K 416s. This model was the D14.5RS carbine, the numbers referring to the length, in inches, of the barrel.

They acknowledged the instructions blandly, as if their boss were giving them details of a new coffee break plan at the office. To them this was all in a day’s work. For Sachs, though, she was alive. Completely attuned to the moment. Good at crime scene work, yes — she enjoyed the mind game of tricking evidence to life. But there was nothing like a dynamic entry. It was a high unlike anything else she’d experienced.

“Let’s move,” she said.

Haumann nodded in confirmation, and the teams formed up.

In five minutes they were sprinting along the sidewalk, motioning bystanders to leave the area. With a screw-end lock pop, one officer opened the front door of the building in a single deft pull and Sachs and the other three streamed inside. Through the lobby and corridor to Griffith’s unit.

With hand signals, Sachs stopped the team fast. She pointed to the video camera above the suspect’s door. All four officers moved back, out of view of the lens.

On the radio: “Team B, in position in alley. It’s clear.”

“Roger,” said the Team A leader, a lean, dark-complected man whose name was Heller. He was beside Sachs. “He’s got a camera above the door. We’ll have to go in fast.” The conversation occurred in whispers and was delivered through state-of-the-art headsets and microphones.

Normally they’d move silently up on their rubber-soled boots, then the breaching officer would wait while one cop slid a tiny camera on a cable under the door. But now — with the perp’s surveillance of them a possibility — they’d have to race to the door and move in fast.

Heller pointed to Sachs and to the right. Then to another officer and aimed a thumb to left. Then to himself and moved his hand up and down, like a priest offering a blessing. Meaning he’d take the center.

Sachs, breathing hard, nodded.

The breacher lifted the battering ram — a four-foot piece of iron — from his canvas bag. And at a nod from Heller, all four ran to Griffith’s apartment. The breaching officer slammed the metal hard into the knob and lock plate, and the door crashed inward. He stepped back and unslung his H&K.

The three other officers stepped inside, Sachs and the other flank officer spreading out, sweeping their weapons around the sparsely furnished room.

“Kitchen clear!”

“Living room clear!”

The left bedroom door was partially open. Heller and the other officer moved forward, Sachs covering. They entered the small room. Heller called, “Left bedroom, clear.”

They returned and approached the closed door of the front bedroom, which had both a number-pad lock and a dead bolt.

Heller said, “S and S report. The front bedroom’s sealed. We’re about to enter. Any sign of life? K.”

“Still can’t tell, sir. Too well shielded.”

“K.”

Heller regarded the number lock knob. There would be no element of surprise now, after their noisy entry, so Heller pounded on the door and said, “NYPD. Is anyone in there?”

Nothing.

Again.

Then he motioned over to the officer with a stalk camera. He tried to jimmy it under the door but the gap was too small; the device wouldn’t fit.

This doorway was narrower. Only one officer could go in at a time. Heller pointed to himself and held up a single finger. To Sachs, two. The other officer, three. Then he motioned the breacher forward. The burly cop arrived with his ram and they got ready for the final stage of the entry.

Chapter 48

Weird. I had just been writing in my diary:

The worst day.

That had been in the past, that day. But now, today, was just as bad.

Not worst, no. Because I haven’t been arrested, haven’t been shot to death by Red and the Shoppers.

But pretty fucking bad. I’ve known the People’s Guardian couldn’t go on forever. But I thought I could slip away from the city and remain anonymous. Get on with my life. Now they have my name.

I’m wheeling two suitcases, a backpack holding my most important worldly possessions. Some of my miniatures. The diary. Some photos. Clothes (my size, hard to find). My hammer, my wonderful Japanese razor saw. A few other things.

Lucky, lucky.

Just a half hour ago. Was back home, Chelsea, thinking of my next visit to a Shopper, planning to scald, when I got, imagine this, a call.

“Vernon, listen.” The crackly-voiced kid from Crafts 4 Everyone.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him. Because something was wrong.

“Listen. The police were just here.”

“Police?”

“Asking about things you bought. They found some notes with your name on them. I didn’t say anything.”

The kid was lying. There was no reason there’d be any notes with my name on them. He sold me out.

“They didn’t find your last name. But.”

But, yeah.

“Thanks.” I hung up and began to pack. Had to leave fast. The kid at the crafts store would die and painfully. He was a Shopper, after all. I’d thought he was a friend. But there’s no time to worry about that now.

I finished packing, rigged some surprises for Red and the Shoppers who’d be there soon enough.

Now, head down, slumping to hide the sack-of-bones height, I’m heading downtown with two big suitcases like a tourist from Finland who’s just arrived at the Port Authority and needs a hostel room. Appropriately I find such a place now, well, a cheap hotel, not hostel, and I step inside. Inquire about rates and, when the desk clerk steps away I go to the bell captain and check my bags, telling him my flight’s not till this evening. He cares about the five dollars more than the explanation, and I leave again, carrying only my backpack.

In twenty minutes I’m at my destination, an apartment not dissimilar to mine, which makes me sad. My womb in Chelsea, my fish, my Toy Room. All gone. Everything ruined. My whole life... Red did it, of course. I shiver with fury. At least anybody slipping into the Toy Room will get a lovely surprise. I hope Red’s the first one in.

Now I stare up at the dirty white façade for a moment, then look around. No one to notice me. I hit the intercom button.

The superintendent was in his basement unit, taking care of his own plumbing for a change, a toilet issue, when he heard a thud upstairs.

And then a scrabbling sound.

Sal wasn’t sure what a scrabble actually sounded like — a big crab from a horror film maybe, somebody on all fours scurrying away from a spider. Who knew? But that was the word that came to mind. He returned to fixing the chain to the ball cock and got it snapped into place. Just as he did, there was another thud, more of a crash of things falling, and then voices. Loud.

He rose, wiped his hands and walked to the open back window. The voices, from the apartment directly above his, were more or less distinct.

“I don’t... I don’t... You did that, you did what you’re telling me, Vernon?”

“I had to. Please. We have to go now.”

“Are you... Vernon! Listen to what you’re saying!”

Alicia Morgan, the occupant of 1D, was crying. She was one of the better tenants. Quiet, paid on time. Timid. Something fragile about her. Was this her boyfriend? Sal had never seen her with anybody. What was the fight about? he wondered. She didn’t seem like the sort who would fight with anyone.

Fragile...

The man — “Vernon” apparently — said in a shaky voice, “I shared things with you! Private things! I’ve never done that with anybody.”

“Not this! You didn’t tell me you’d done this, you hurt people!”

“Does it matter?” The man’s voice wasn’t much lower than hers. It sounded weird. But he could hear the anger in it. “It’s for a good cause.”

“Vernon, Jesus... Of course, it matters. How can you—?”

“I thought you’d understand.” Now the voice was sing-song — and all the more threatening for it. “We were alike, you and me. We were so much alike. Or that’s the way you wanted it to seem.”

“We’ve known each other for a month, Vernon. A month. I’ve stayed over once!”

“That’s all I mean to you?” There was a huge crash. “You’re one of them,” the man shouted. “You’re a fucking Shopper. You’re no better than any of them!”

Shopper? Sal wondered. He didn’t get exactly what was going on but he was growing quite concerned with the escalating dispute.

Alicia was sobbing now. “You just told me you’ve killed some people. And you expect me to go away with you?”

Oh, hell... Killed somebody? Sal fished out his mobile.

But before he could hit 911, Alicia screamed — a sound that was cut short in a grunt. Another thud as she, or her body, hit the floor. “No,” came her voice. “Don’t. Vernon, please, don’t! Don’t hurt me!”

Another scream.

Then Sal was moving, grabbing his aluminum baseball bat. He flung open his door and charged up the stairs to Alicia’s apartment. He used his master key to open the door and he shoved inside. The knob smacked the wall so hard, it dug a crater in the plaster.

Panting from the sprint, Sal stared, wide eyed. “Jesus.”

The tenant lay on the floor, a huge man standing over her. Easily six three or four, skinny, sick looking. He’d hit her in the face, which was bleeding from her cheek, swollen badly. Tears poured as she sobbed and held up her hands to protect herself, uselessly, from what he held — a ball-peen hammer, poised over his head about to crack her skull open.

The attacker spun around and at the super with mad, furious eyes “Who’re you? What’re you doing here?”

“Asshole, drop it!” Sal snapped, nodding at the hammer and brandishing the bat. He outweighed the guy by thirty pounds, even if he was six inches shorter.

The assailant squinted and looked from the super to Alicia and then back again. His breath hissed from his throat as he drew back and flung the hammer toward Sal, who dropped to his knees to avoid it. The scrawny man grabbed a backpack and ran to the open rear window, tossed the bag out and jumped out after it.

The breacher picked up the battering ram and Heller again pointed out the order of entry into Griffith’s front bedroom, the one protected by the number lock. They all nodded. Sachs set down the H&K submachine gun and drew her pistol.

The choice of weapons was always the tactical officer’s to make. She felt more comfortable with a handgun in a confined space.

The breacher was drawing back the ram when Sachs held up a hand. “Wait.”

Heller turned.

“I think he’s rigged something. A trap. It’s his style. Use that,” she said, pointing into the breaching officer’s canvas bag. Heller looked down. He nodded, and the officer withdrew the small chain saw.

Sachs pulled a flash bang stun grenade from her pocket. Nodded.

The breacher fired up the tool and sliced a two-by-four-foot hole in the door, kicked in the cut piece. Sachs pitched in the live grenade and, after the stunning explosion — disorienting but not lethal — Heller and Sachs, remaining outside still, went to their knees, pointing their weapons and flashlights inside.

Scanning.

The room was empty of humans.

But it was booby-trapped.

“Ah.” Heller was pointing to a piece of thin wire that was attached to the inside doorknob. If they’d bashed the door in, it would have slackened the wire and released a gallon milk jug, cut in half horizontally, filled with what seemed to be gasoline, spilling the contents onto a hot plate that sat smoking on a workbench by the window, sealed by the thick shutters.

The officers entered and dismantled the device. Then they cleared the room — the connected bathroom too.

Heller radioed Haumann. “Team A. Premises secure. No hostile. Team B, report.”

“Team B leader to Team A leader. No hostiles in back. We’ll sweep the other apartments. K.”

“Roger.”

“Sachs,” she heard through her earpiece. Surprised to hear Rhyme’s calm voice. She hadn’t known he was patched in to the tactical frequency.

“Rhyme. He’s gone. Rabbited. We should’ve thrown the Crafts For Everyone guy in protective detention to keep him from talking. That’s how Griffith got tipped off, I’m sure.”

“The nature of democracy, Sachs. You can’t tie up and gag everybody who ought to be tied up and gagged.”

“Well,” she said, “we’ve got a pristine scene. When he left he didn’t take much. We’ll find something here. We’ll get him.”

“Walk the grid, Sachs, and get back soon.”

Chapter 49

An hour later Sachs was on the doorstep of Vernon Griffith’s apartment, sweating in the Tyvek bodysuit.

Reading aloud from a notebook.

“You still there, Rhyme?”

“Somewhat. It’s a rant. Like the others. The People’s Guardian.”

“It’s his full manifesto. The title’s The Steel Kiss.”

Poetic, she reflected.

She put the book back into an evidence bag. “Got lots of trace. Some paperwork. Lon’s running vitals. Sold his family house in Manhasset and no other residences show up positive at this point. Lon’ll have some people follow the public records.”

“Anybody else’s friction ridges?”

“One more than others. A woman’s, I’d guess. Or a small man’s. But probably a woman’s. I found long blond hairs. Seem to be dyed blond with traces of gray. And the alternative light source? He had a pretty active sex life. I mean, busy boy.”

The ALS imaged bodily fluids that would otherwise have been invisible.

“So, he has a girlfriend.”

“But no evidence that she lived here. No women’s clothing or cosmetics, toiletries.”

“He may be there now,” Rhyme muttered. “Wonder where the hell she is. Get the prints back here ASAP, Sachs, we’ll IAFIS them. I want to move.”

“I’ll be a half hour. I—”

Her phone rang. She recognized the number from NYPD Dispatch. “Detective Sachs.”

“Amelia, it’s Jen Cotter. Wanted you to know, there was a nine one one of an assault in Midtown West. Vic’s hurt but’ll live. Respondings say she’s ID’d her attacker. Vernon Griffith.”

Well. “Who’s the vic?”

“Alicia Morgan, forty-one. Don’t know the exact relationship with the perp but they knew each other.”

“She there, or the hospital?”

“Still there, far as I know. This just happened.”

“The perp?”

“Got away.”

“Give me the address.”

“Four Three Two West Three Nine Street.”

“Tell the respondings I’m on my way. I want to talk to the vic. If they take her to a hospital, let me know which one.”

“Will do.”

Sachs reported the developments to Rhyme and hurried to her car. Fifteen minutes later Sachs and Haumann’s tac teams were parked at the corner of Eighth Avenue and 39th, before a five-story apartment building.

It was unlikely Griffith was anywhere near here but he was obviously unstable, if not psychotic, and he might very well have stayed around after the assault. Hence the firepower.

Two EMTs, a detective and a uniform were standing over a slim woman in her early forties lying on a gurney. Her face was bandaged and bloody. Her eyes were red from crying and she had an expression that Sachs could describe only as sorrowful bewilderment.

“Alicia Morgan?” Sachs asked.

The victim nodded, then winced from the pain.

“I’m Detective Sachs. How’re you feeling?”

The woman stared at her. “I... what?”

Sachs displayed her shield. “How are you?”

Her voice was a whisper. “It hurts. Really hurts, I’m dizzy.”

A glance at one of the EMTs, a solid African American. “He hit her, with his fist, at least once. Pretty bad. Probably a fracture and a concussion. We’ll need X-rays. We’ll take her in now.”

As they wheeled her to the ambulance Sachs asked, “How did you know Vernon?”

“We went out some. Did he really kill those people?”

“He did, yes.”

Alicia cried softly. “He was going to kill me too.”

“Do you know why?”

She started to shake her head and then gasped at the pain. “He just showed up and wanted me to go away with him. He told me he the one who was in the news. Who killed the man in the escalator and burned up that other one in the gas explosion! I thought it was a joke at first. But, no, he meant it. Like it wouldn’t matter to me that he was a killer.” She closed her eyes and winced. Then carefully wiped tears.

“When I said no, I wouldn’t go away, he snapped. He started to beat me, and then got a hammer. He wanted to kill me with it! Sal showed up just in time. He had a baseball bat. He saved my life.”

Sachs noticed some scars on the woman’s neck and her arm was slightly deformed, as if from a bad break. Maybe the victim of an assault some time ago. Domestic abuse? she wondered.

“Does Vernon own or have access to a car?” Griffith didn’t have one registered in New York.

“No, he uses cabs mostly.” Wiping tears again.

“And no idea about places he’d go?”

Her wide eyes stared at Sachs. “He was so nice to me. He was so gentle.” More tears. “I—”

“Alicia, I’m sorry,” Sachs said, pressing. “I need as much information as you can give us. Any other residences or places he’d go?”

“He had a house on Long Island. Manhasset, I think. But I think he sold it. He never mentioned anyplace else. No, I don’t know where he’d go.”

They arrived at the ambulance. “Detective, we better get her in now.”

“Which hospital?”

“We’ll do Bellevue.”

Sachs took out one of her cards, circled her number and added Rhyme’s, as well as his address on the back. She gave it to Alicia. “When you feel up to it we’ll need to talk to you some more.”

“Okay,” she whispered. Breathed deeply. “Sure. Okay.”

The ambulance doors shut and a moment later the vehicle took off through traffic, the siren pulsing urgently.

Sachs walked up to Bo Haumann and reported what she’d learned — which wasn’t much. He in turn told her that canvassing had revealed no sightings. “He had a fifteen minute lead,” the ESU man said. “How far does that buy you in the city?”

“Pretty damn far,” she muttered.

And Sachs walked to the superintendent, Sal, sitting on the stoop, to interview him. He was a good-looking Italian American, thick black hair, solid muscles, clean-shaven. Reporters were shooting pictures and asking him to hold up the baseball bat with which he’d driven off the killer. Sachs could picture the punning headline already: “Hero-super” Bats a Thousand.

Chapter 50

Rhyme watched Amelia Sachs cart in the evidence from Vernon Griffith’s apartment. She had yet to search Alicia Morgan’s and the warehouse where Griffith had bludgeoned to death his neighbor, Boyles, but Rhyme wanted to get started on the clues from what was probably the most fruitful scene that would lead to his whereabouts: his apartment in Chelsea.

She walked to the evidence tables and, pulling on blue gloves, began to organize the evidence she and the ECTs had collected.

Juliette Archer too was here, though Cooper was absent. Rhyme said to Sachs, “Mel’s going to be a couple of hours — some terrorist thing the FBI wanted him to look in on. But we can get started. Any more word on Alicia?”

“She should be released soon. A fractured cheekbone, loose tooth, concussion. She’s shaken up but willing to talk.”

As one would expect when your boyfriend tries to beat you to death with a hammer.

Rhyme examined the evidence collected at Griffith’s apartment. Unlike from the earlier scenes, here was a trove.

“But first, the documentation,” Rhyme said. “Any luck with real property, tickets to anywhere regularly, plane or train?”

Sachs reported that the findings were negative, so far. “I’ve looked over banking and financial information. Alicia said he’d sold the house on Long Island, but there was no record of him buying another place. Banks and credit card companies, insurance, taxes — they all sent statements and correspondence to a P.O. box in Manhattan. He had a business — selling his miniatures and dollhouse furniture. But it was handled out of his apartment, not from an office or workshop.”

Archer noted a slip of paper in a clear plastic envelope. “This could be another potential victim. In Scarsdale.”

The upscale suburb north of New York City was undoubtedly filled with many high-end products equipped with DataWise5000 controllers and owned by the rich consumers that Vernon Griffith despised.

Archer was reading from the note, “ ‘Henderson Comfort-Zone Deluxe water heater.’ ”

And Rhyme cross-referenced the list of products that had DataWise controllers inside; yes, the water heater was one of them.

“Who lives there?”

“No indication from the note. Just have the address at this point. Griffith’s been ID’d so I doubt he’ll go for another attack but, on the other hand, he’s pretty fanatical. So who knows?” Rhyme asked Sachs to call Westchester County and have troopers stake out the house.

“And find out who lives there, Sachs.”

She did so, searching records and DMV. A moment later she had the answer. William Mayer, a hedge fund manager. He was a friend of the governor and there were a few articles about him that hinted at political aspirations.

Archer said, “Water heater? What was he going to do, do you think? Turn the heat up and scald somebody to death in the shower? Todd Williams blogged about something like that, remember? Or maybe build up the pressure and close a valve, so that when somebody goes down to see what’s wrong, it blows up? Gallons of two-hundred-degree water? Jesus.”

She wheeled closer and looked over the half-dozen plastic bags of miniatures. Furniture, baby carriages, a clock, a Victorian house. They were very well made.

Rhyme too studied them. “He’s very good. Let’s see if he took classes anywhere.”

Sachs had thought of this, it seemed. “I’ve got a body at One PP checking out Griffith’s bio in depth. They might turn up a workshop or two he went to. School he studied at recently.” Then Sachs was frowning. She picked up a small toy. “Something familiar about this. What is it?”

Rhyme squinted at the toy. “Looks like a caisson. A wagon artillery soldiers tow along with the cannon. Holds the shells. The song, that line: ‘And the caissons go rolling along.’ ”

Sachs studied it closely. Rhyme said nothing more. He let her thoughts play out on their own. Archer, too, he noted, held back any questions he suspected she had about the train of Sachs’s thought.

Finally Sachs, still studying the caisson, said, “It’s connected to a case. The past couple of months.”

“But not Unsub Forty?”

“No.” It seemed that a thought hovered. And flitted away. A hiss of breath at the frustration. “Might’ve been one of mine, might’ve been another in Major Cases and I saw the file. I’ll check.” In a gloved hand she lifted the delicate creation out of the plastic bag and set it on an examination sheet. With her phone she took a picture and sent it off. “I’ll have somebody in Queens look through the logs of evidence collected in the past few months, see if anything shows up. Let’s hope they do better with that than our missing White Castle napkins.”

She rebagged the toy. “Okay, you two keep going here. I’ll get to Alicia’s now. And the warehouse where he killed Boyle. Walk the grid.” Then she was out the door. A moment later the powerful chug of her Ford’s engine resonated along Central Park West. He believed it shook one of the large plate-glass windows in the parlor. A falcon looked up from its nest on the window ledge, peeved at the sound, which seemed to have disturbed the fledglings.

Rhyme turned once more to the miniatures. He thought: Why would somebody so talented, who could make such beautiful things, who had such skill, turn to homicide?

Archer too, close to Rhyme, was looking over Vernon Griffith’s creations. “So much work. So fastidious.” Silence between them momentarily. She continued her examination, eyes on a tiny chair. Absently Archer said, “I used to knit.”

He wasn’t sure how to respond to that. After a beat: “Sweaters, things like that?”

“Some. More art, hangings. Like tapestries.”

Rhyme was glancing at the photos of Griffith’s apartment. “Landscapes?” he asked.

“No, abstract.”

He observed a softening of her facial muscles. Wistfulness, sadness. He fought to find something to say. He finally settled on: “You could do photography. Everything’s digital now anyway. Just pressing buttons. Or voice-commanding buttons. Half the young people out there are as sedentary as we are.”

“Photography. It’s a thought. I might.”

A moment later Rhyme said, “But you won’t.”

“No,” she said with a smile. “Like if I have to give up drinking I won’t switch to fake wine or beer. I’ll take up tea and cranberry juice. All or nothing. But it’ll be the best tea or cranberry juice I can find.” A pause and she asked, “You ever get impatient?”

He laughed, a sound that contained his stating-the-obvious grunt.

She continued, “It’s like... tell me if this is what’s it’s like: You don’t move, so your body isn’t bleeding off the tension, and it seeps up into your mind.”

“That’s exactly what it’s like.”

“What do you do?” she asked.

“Stay busy. Keep your mind going.” He tilted his head toward her. “Riddles. Make your life about solving riddles.”

A deep breath and a look of pain, then one of panic crossed her face. “I don’t know if I can handle it, Lincoln. I really don’t.” Her voice caught.

Rhyme wondered if she’d start to cry. She wasn’t the sort for whom tears came easily, he guessed. But he knew too that the condition she was facing pushed you to places you couldn’t imagine. He’d had years to build up a sinewy guard around his heart.

New to the game...

He turned swiveled his chair to face her. “Yes. You. Can. I’d tell you if it wasn’t in your core. You know me by now. I don’t sugarcoat. I don’t lie. You can do it.”

Her eyes closed and she inhaled deeply once. Then she was looking at him again, her remarkable blue eyes driving into his, which were far darker. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“You have to. You’re my intern, remember? Now. Let’s get to work,” he said.

The moment passed and together they began to catalog what Sachs had recovered at Griffith’s apartment: hairs, toothbrush (for the DNA), reams of handwritten notes, books, clothing, printouts on hacking and technical details about breaking into secure networks. Even pictures of fish in an aquarium (Sachs had sifted in the sand at the bottom for buried clues — this was a common hiding place — but found none). Many items were from what turned out to be his profession — making and selling the miniatures: stores of wood and metal, tiny hinges, wheels, paint, varnish, pottery. Many, many tools. Had they been sitting on the shelves of Home Depot or Crafts 4 Everyone, they’d be benign; here the blades and hammers took on a sinister air.

The Steel Kiss...

Since the documentation offered no leads to Griffith’s whereabouts Rhyme and Archer concentrated on the trace evidence from his apartment and the Edwin Boyle crime scene, near the dead man’s printing company, to see if they might find hints as to where he’d been before, which might be the place where he was now.

But after a half hour of “dust work,” as Archer rather charmingly dubbed their efforts, referring to Edmond Locard, she wheeled back from the envelopes and bags and slides. She glanced at Griffith’s notebook, the manifesto. He noted she’d braked to a stop and was staring out the window. Finally she turned back to him. “You know, Lincoln, part of me doesn’t believe it.”

“What’s that?”

“Why he’s doing this. He’s against consumerism. But he’s a consumer too. He had to buy all these tools and the supplies for his work. He buys food. He special-orders his shoes for his big feet. He benefits from shopping. And he makes his living selling things. That’s consumerism.” She turned her chair to face him, her beautiful eyes sparkling. “Let’s try an experiment.”

Rhyme looked at the evidence bags.

“No, I don’t mean a physical experiment. A hypothetical. Let’s say there is no evidence in the case. An exception to Locard’s Principle. Imagine a case where there isn’t a single lick of PE. How’s this? A killing on the moon. We’re on earth and we have no access to the evidence at all. We know the victim was murdered up there. There are suspects. But that’s it, no trace, no physical evidence. Where do we go from there? The only approach is to ask, why did the perp kill the victim?”

He smiled. Her premise was absurd, a waste of time. But perhaps he found her enthusiasm charming. “Go on.”

“If this were an epidemiologic investigation, and you and I were presented with unidentified bacteria killing some people but not others, we’d ask: Why? Is it because they’ve been to some country and contracted it? Is it because there’s something about the victims physically that makes them and not others vulnerable to the disease? Have they engaged in certain behaviors that have exposed them to the bacteria? So let’s look at Vernon’s victims. I’m not buying the theory they were targeted because they were rich consumers, buying expensive stoves or microwaves. What else is common among them? Why he killed them might lead to how he knew them might lead to where he met them... and to where he’s sitting right now. You with me?”

The criminalist within him was resistant, but Lincoln Rhyme had to admit the logician was intrigued. “Okay. I’ll play along.”

Chapter 51

Juliette Archer was saying, “Who were the people that Griffith targeted? Other than Amelia’s mother and the drivers of the cars he took control of — those were to stop us from catching him. The victims. Greg Frommer, Abe Benkoff, Joe Heady. And the potential victim in Scarsdale, the hedge fund manager, William Mayer.”

“Well, what about them?” Rhyme was happy to cooperate but he was compelled to add a spoonful of devil’s advocacy into the stew.

“Okay...” Archer wheeled to a spot in front of the charts. “Frommer was a store clerk in Brooklyn and a volunteer at a homeless shelter, among other charities. Benkoff was account manager for an ad agency in New York. Heady is a carpenter for a Broadway theater. Mayer is into finance. None of them seems to know the others. They don’t live near each other.” She shook her head. “No connection.”

“Oh, well, that’s not enough to ask,” he said softly. “You have to go deeper.”

“How do you mean?”

“You’re looking at the surface. Pretend those people you mentioned are bits of trace evidence... No, no,” he chided, seeing her scowl. “You play along with me now. The people aren’t people but bits of trace evidence. On the surface one’s gray metal, one’s brown wood, one’s cloth fiber, one’s a fragment of leaf. What do they have in common?”

Archer considered this: “Nothing.”

“Exactly. But, with evidence, we keep digging. What kind of metal, what sort of wood, what type of fiber, what plant is the leaf from? Where did they come from, what’s the context? You put them altogether and, bang, you’ve got an upholstered lawn chair sitting under a jacaranda tree. Different is suddenly the same.

“You want to analyze the victims, Archer, good, but we need to approach your inquiry the same way. Details! What’re the details? You have present careers. What about the past? Look at the raw data Amelia collected. The charts are only summaries. Residences and careers, anything that seems relevant.”

Archer called up Sachs’s notes and read from the screen.

As she read, Rhyme said, “I can fill in about Greg Frommer. He was a marketing manager for Patterson Systems in New Jersey.”

“What does Patterson do?”

Rhyme recalled what the lawyer had told him. “Fuel injectors. One of the big suppliers.”

She said, “Okay, noted. Now Abe Benkoff?”

“Amelia told me — advertising. Clients were food companies, airlines. I don’t recall.”

Archer read from Sachs’s notes. “He was fifty-eight, advertising account executive. Pretty senior. Clients were Universal Foods, U.S. Auto, Northeast Airlines, Aggregate Computers. He was a New York City resident, lived here all his life. Manhattan.”

Rhyme said, “And Heady, the carpenter?”

Archer read: “He grew up in Michigan and worked in Detroit on an assembly line. Moved here to be closer to his kids and grandkids. Didn’t like retirement so he joined the union and got a job at the theater.” She looked up from the computer screen. “Mayer is a hedge fund manager. Works in Connecticut. Lives in Scarsdale. Wealthy. Can’t find anything about his clients.”

Rhyme said, “Wife.”

“What?”

“Why do we assume that he’s the target? Is he married?”

Archer clicked her tongue. “Damn. Forgive my sexism.” Typing. “Valerie Mayer. She’s a Wall Street trial lawyer.”

“Who are her clients?”

More typing. “No names. But her specialty is representing insurance companies.”

Rhyme, gazing at the screen. He smiled. “We’ll have to wait until we do more research about Valerie, about her clients. But the others — they sure as hell have something in common.”

Archer looked over the chart and Sachs’s notes. “Cars.”

“Ex-actly! Benkoff’s client was U.S. Auto. Heady was on an assembly line and I’ll bet that’s whom he worked for. Did U.S. Auto use Patterson fuel injectors?”

With voice commands, Archer did the search. And, yes, Google dutifully reported that Patterson had been a major supplier of U.S. Auto... until about five years ago.

He whispered, “Around the time Frommer quit the company.”

Archer asked, “And Valerie Mayer?”

The criminalist turned to the microphone near his head: “Call Evers Whitmore.”

The phone responded instantly and after two rings a receptionist answered. “Evers Whitmore, please. Now. It’s urgent.”

“Mr. Whitmore is—”

“Tell him Lincoln Rhyme is calling.”

“He’s actually—”

“That’s Lincoln, first name. Rhyme, second. And, as I said, it’s urgent.”

A pause. “One moment.”

Then the lawyer’s voice was saying, “Mr. Rhyme. How are you? How’s—?”

“Don’t have time. You were telling me about a case, a personal injury case, involving a car company. Some internal memo said that it would be cheaper to pay wrongful death claims than fix some dangerous defect in a car. Was it U.S. Auto? I can’t recall.”

“Yes, you’re correct. It was.”

“Valerie Mayer, a trial lawyer in New York. Did she defend the company?”

“No.”

Hell. There went his theory.

Then Whitmore said, “She represented the insurer who covered U.S. Auto against liability suits.”

“Was Patterson Systems involved?”

“Patterson? You mean the company Mr. Frommer worked for? I don’t know. Hold on a moment.”

Silence. Then the lawyer came back on the line. “Yes, the main suit was against U.S. Auto but Patterson was also a defendant. The claim was that both the automaker and the parts supplier knew about the fuel system defect and decided not to change the injectors and the interface with the motors to make them safer.”

“Mr. Whitmore, Evers, I need everything you can send me about the case.”

A pause. “Well, that is somewhat problematic, Mr. Rhyme. For one thing I didn’t work on the suit so I don’t have any source material. Besides, you don’t have room. Or the time to read everything. There were hundreds of cases revolving around the defect, and they went on for years. There have to be ten million documents, I would estimate. Perhaps more. May I ask why—”

“We think our killer — the one using the DataWise controllers as a murder weapon — was targeting people with connections to U.S. Auto.”

“My. Yes, I see. He was injured in one of the accidents because of the fuel system failure?”

“He’s at large, and I was hoping there might be something in the case files that’ll give us a clue where he’s gone.”

“I’ll tell you what I can do, Mr. Rhyme. I’ll have my paralegal send over whatever I can find in the legal press and I’ll get as many of the publicly filed pleadings and discovery documents as I can. And you should check popular reports too. This story, naturally, made the news.”

“I need them ASAP.”

“I’ll make sure it’s done right away, Mr. Rhyme.”

Chapter 52

Rhyme and Archer were both online reading about the U.S. Auto case as quickly as they could.

Whitmore had been right. There were more than twelve million hits on Google.

A half hour later the emails from Whitmore started arriving. They divided up the court pleadings and supporting documents and began reading these, as well as the popular press accounts of the case. There were, as Whitmore had mentioned, scores of plaintiffs, those injured in accidents and the relatives of those killed when the cars were engulfed in flames because of the defective fuel system. In addition, the incidents spawned more than a hundred business-related lawsuits for lost revenue by the manufacturers and component parts makers. The more troubling accounts — in the sometimes lurid popular media and in the chilly, clinic court documents — were those of lives shattered. He read testimony about horrific pain from burns and collisions after the gas lines ruptures, scanned accident scene pictures of scorched and shattered bodies and photos of dozens of plaintiffs who’d been injured. Some were hospital pictures of their burns and lacerations. Some were of them stoically marching into and from courthouses. He reviewed them carefully, looking for Griffith’s name or likeness, on the chance that he’d been a victim or related to one.

“Any references to a Griffith?” he called to Archer. “I’m not seeing anything yet.”

“Nothing,” Archer replied. “But I’ve read fifty pages out of looks like a hundred thousand.”

“I’m doing a global search for the name. Nothing yet.”

She said, “That works within a document but I don’t know how to search in unopened ones.”

“Maybe Rodney has a program,” he said. Before he could call the computer expert, though, the doorbell buzzed. Rhyme glanced at the monitor. A woman wearing a nondescript rumpled brown jacket and jeans stood at the front door. She also had a bandage on her face.

“Yes?” he called.

“Is this Lincoln Rhymes? With the NYPD?”

Rhyme had no nameplate on the door; why make it easier for your enemies? He didn’t bother to correct the woman. “Who is this?”

“Alicia Morgan. A police officer, Amelia Sachs, asked me to come by and give a statement. About Vernon Griffith?”

Excellent. “Sure. Come on in.”

He commanded the door to unlock and a moment later he heard footsteps approaching. They paused.

“Hello?”

“We’re in here. To the left.”

The woman walked into the parlor and did a double take, seeing two people in elaborate wheelchairs... and scientific equipment worthy of a university research lab. She was petite, attractive, and had short blond hair. Sunglasses partially covered the bruise that peeked from underneath thick bandages. She removed the glasses and Rhyme studied her damaged face.

“I’m Lincoln Rhyme. This is Juliette Archer.”

“Well, hello.”

Archer said, “Thanks for coming by.”

Rhyme’s eyes strayed back to the computer, on which he could see several of the accounts of the cases against U.S. Auto and the fuel injector supplier. He continued to scroll through them.

“How are you?” Archer asked as she too was scanning the woman’s injuries.

“Not too serious.” The woman focused on the room, obviously curious about the wheelchair-bound pair. “Hairline fracture, cheekbone. Concussion.”

Rhyme paused the documents on his monitor and turned to Alicia. “You and Vernon dated?”

She set her purse on the floor and sat in a rattan chair, wincing. There seemed to be a stunned air about her. “That’s right, if you could call it dating. I met him a month or so ago. He was easy to be with. He was quiet and sometimes he would get a little odd. But he was nice to me. Like he never thought anybody would ever go out with him. He’s kind of odd looking, you know. But I never had any idea he be dangerous.” She whispered, eyes wide, “Or kill those people. Officer Sachs told me what he’d done. I couldn’t believe it. He was so talented, making his miniatures. Just...” She shrugged. Then winced. She searched in her pockets and found a bottle of pills. Shook two out. She asked Rhyme, “Do you...?” An awkward moment. “Have an assistant? Could I get some water?”

Before Rhyme could say anything Archer said, “No, he’s away now. But there, there’s a bottle of Deer Park. It’s not opened.” She nodded to a shelf.

“Thanks.” Alicia rose and took what was probably something to combat the pain. She returned to the chair but remained standing, collecting her purse and then slipping the pill bottle into it.

“What happened in your apartment?” Rhyme asked. “Earlier today.”

“He showed up, unexpected. He wanted me to go away with him and confessed what he’d done.” A dismayed whisper. “He actually thought I’d understand. He thought I’d support him.”

Rhyme said, “You were lucky someone was nearby. The superintendent of the building, I think Amelia said.”

Yet, as calm as his words were, Lincoln Rhyme’s mind was racing. He was trying to come up with a strategy that would allow him and Archer to survive the next few minutes.

Because the woman he was smiling at right now was someone whose picture he had just seen earlier ago — in one of the press reports on the U.S. Auto case. It was this page that he n ow found again and paused his scrolling. He glanced at it quickly. The photo depicted a woman in a black dress walking from a courthouse on Long Island. He hadn’t recognized her outside; had he done so, he wouldn’t have let her in. When she’d asked if anybody was here to bring her water, he’d been about to say his aid was in the back room, along with another officer, but Archer had pulled the rug out from under that ploy.

Alicia Morgan had sued U.S. Auto and Patterson Systems for the death of her husband and for her own personal injuries — some burns and deep lacerations when the fuel system of the car her husband was driving caught fire and crashed. Rhyme could now see scars of above the high collar of her blouse.

Rhyme now had a good idea of what had happened: Alicia had hired Vernon Griffith to kill those involved in making, marketing, and selling the defective car, and Valerie Mayer, the lawyer who had defended them. Or, in lieu of payment, maybe Alicia had seduced Griffith into doing so for her; Sachs’s search of the crime scene revealed significant sexual activity. Griffith and Alicia had been surprised when Rhyme and the team had learned his identity, and they’d come up with a new endgame; they’d arranged the “assault” in front of a witness, the superintendent of the building, replete with a broken cheekbone.

And the reason for that?

For one, to remove any suspicion that she was involved.

But then why was she here?

Ah, of course. Alicia had plan of her own. She’d steal any evidence that might implicate her and then kill Rhyme and anyone present, planting other clues that would implicate Vernon in the murders. She’d then meet the man and kill him.

And Alicia Morgan, satisfied in her revenge against the auto company, would be home free.

In her purse would be a gun, he guessed. But now that she’d noted her victims were disabled, she’s probably use one of Griffith’s tools to kill him and Archer.

And Mel Cooper wouldn’t be here for hours. Sachs either. Thom would return in about two hours or so, he guessed. Alicia had plenty of time for murder.

Still, he’d have to try. Rhyme glanced at the clock. “Amelia — Detective Sachs — should be back at any moment. She’s much better at interviewing than I am.”

Alicia gave a very faint reaction. Of course, she’d probably just spoken to Sachs and learned that the woman wouldn’t be back for hours.

Rhyme looked past her and said to Juliette Archer, “You’re looking tired.”

“I... I am?”

“I think you should go in the other room. Try to sleep.” He looked to Alicia. “Ms. Archer’s condition is more serious than mine. I don’t want her to push herself.”

Archer gave a slight nod and manipulated the controller with her finger. The chair turned. “I think I will, if you don’t mind.”

Motoring toward the doorway.

Alicia, though, stood, strode forward and blocked her. The chair stopped fast.

“What... What’re you doing?” Archer asked.

Alicia glanced at Archer as if she were an irritating fly and, grabbing the woman by the collar, pulled her from the chair and let her fall onto the floor. Archer’s head smacked the hardwood.

“No!” Rhyme cried.

Archer said desperately, “I need to be upright! My condition, I—”

Alicia’s response was to deliver a stunning kick to the woman’s head.

Blood pooled on the floor, and, eyes closed, Archer lay still. Rhyme couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not.

Alicia opened her bag, pulled on blue latex gloves and stepped forward fast, ripping the controller from Rhyme’s chair. She walked to the pocket doors to the parlor and closed and locked them.

Rummaging through her bag, she extracted a razor knife — which would, of course, be Vernon’s. It was in a plastic tube and she popped the plastic top off and shook out the tool. Alicia turned the blade Rhyme’s way and stepping closer to the wheelchair.

Chapter 53

I know about you, Alicia. We made the connection between Griffith’s victims and the U.S. Auto case. I saw your picture in one of the stories.”

This gave her pause. She stopped and cocked her head, clearly considering these implications.

He continued, “I figured right away that you and Griffith faked the assault in your apartment. You made sure the super could hear your fight and come and supposedly rescue you. The minute I saw you outside I hit a special phone code. A speed dial for emergencies.”

Alicia looked past Rhyme to the computer. She typed until she found the call log. No outgoings in the past ten minutes and the most recent callee had not been 911 or NYPD Dispatch but Whitmore’s law firm. She redialed it and they heard through the speaker the matter-of-fact receptionist say, “Law office.” Alicia hung up.

Her face relaxed, as she would be concluding that Rhyme had just made the connection and that no one else knew the truth. She looked around the room. Rhyme noted she wore her age well. Pale eyes, freckles. Few wrinkles. Her hair, blond with gray streaks, was voluminous and rich. The scars were prominent but did not diminish her attractiveness. Vernon would be putty in her hands.

“Where’s the evidence you collected at Vernon’s apartment?”

She’d be afraid he’d collected some articles about the U.S. Auto case or that he had some other evidence of what the real motive was, which could ultimately lead to her.

“I tell you, you’ll kill us.”

A wrinkle of brow. “Of course. But I give you my word I’ll leave everyone else alive. Your friend Amelia — Vernon was pretty obsessed with her. I was almost jealous. She’ll be fine, Amelia. And her mother. And the others on your team. But you’re dead. Obviously. Both of you.”

“What you’re asking isn’t that easy. Some of the evidence’s in processing in Queens, the main Crime Scene Unit. And—”

“My other option is to burn this place down. But that’ll attract a lot of attention and I might miss some things. Just tell me.”

Rhyme was silent.

Looking around the parlor: at the file cabinets, boxes of paper and plastic bags, shelves, instruments. She walked to a cabinet, opened it and peered in. Closed the drawer. Tried another. Then she perused the broad, white examination tables, and flipped through the boxes that contained plastic and paper bags of the evidence. She unfurled a garbage bag, the deep green of a body bag from the coroner, and tossed some notebooks and clippings inside.

She continued collecting evidence that seemed likely to have references to her and the litigation and then extracted a paper bag from her purse and began depositing the contents carefully, just as he’d thought: hairs, Griffith’s, of course. A scrap of paper; it undoubtedly held his friction ridge prints. And then — well, she’d certainly thought this out carefully — one of Vernon’s shoes. She didn’t leave it; she left several impressions on the floor near Rhyme’s chair.

Rhyme said, “It’s terrible what happened to you and your husband. But none of this will fix that.”

She snapped, “The cost-benefit analysis. I think of it as the who’s-it-cheaper-to-screw analysis.” When she bent forward at one point to press the shoe to the floor, her blouse fell away and he could see clearly the leathery and discolored scar on her chest.”

“You won your case, the article said.”

Rhyme noted, in a detached state, that several of the evidence bags had come open when she’d tossed them into the garbage bag. Even facing death, Lincoln Rhyme was riled by the contamination.

“I didn’t win. I settled. And I settled before the memo came to light. Michael, my husband, had been drinking before the accident happened. That had nothing to do with the fuel injector hose splitting. But the alcohol would’ve worked against us at trial. And there was evidence that he made my injuries worse — he broke my arm pulling me from the burning car before he died. And my lawyer said they’d spin that... and the drinking. The jury might give us nothing. So I took a settlement.

“But it’s never been about money. It was about two companies who murdered my husband and scarred me forever and never came to justice. Nobody was ever indicted. The company paid out a lot of money to plaintiffs but the executives went home to see their families that night. My husband didn’t. Other husbands and wives and children didn’t either.”

“Greg Frommer quit the company and went on to do volunteer work,” Rhyme said. “He was guilty about what happened with the fuel injectors.”

The sentence tripped leadenly off his tongue and deserved the Oh-please look that Alicia gave him.

“The People’s Guardian. That was all nonsense, right?”

Alicia nodded. “Vernon isn’t the most attractive man in the world. It wasn’t hard to get him to do what I wanted. I needed people responsible for Michael’s death to die the way he and the others had. Because of products. Because of greed. Vernon was happy to go along and we decided to turn it into a political issue as a cover. To keep people from thinking about U.S. Auto and maybe making a connection to me.”

“Why The Steel Kiss, the name for his manifesto?”

“He came up with that. Thinking of his tools, saws and knives and chisels, I think.”

“How did you find him?”

“I’ve been planning this for four years, of course. The hardest part was finding a fall guy. I was one of the parties to a suit against the automaker, so I couldn’t kill anyone myself. But one night I was in Manhattan having dinner, and I happened to see Vernon get in a fight with a man. Some Latino guy. He’d made fun of Vernon — he’s very skinny, you know. Vernon just snapped. Went crazy. He ran and the man chased him. But Vernon had it planned. He spun around and killed the man, used a knife or razor. I’ve never seen anybody more frenzied. Like a shark. Vernon jumped into a gypsy cab and vanished.

“I couldn’t really take in what I’d just seen. A murder right in front of me. I kept thinking about it for days. Finally I realized he was someone who might be able to help me. I checked with the restaurant it seemed he’d been eating in. They didn’t know his name but told me that, yes, he ate there about once a week. I kept coming back and finally saw him.”

“And you seduced him.”

“Yes, I did. Then the next morning I told him I’d seen him kill that Latino. It was a risk but I had my hook in by then. I knew he’d do whatever I wanted. I told him I understood why he’d killed him. He’d been bullied. I told him I’d been bullied too, in a way — the car company taking my husband away from me and ruining my body with the scars from the accident. I wanted to get even.”

“The man who taught Vernon how to hack the DataWise controllers, the blogger he killed, also got him a list of customers who’d bought embedded products. You searched them for the names of people connected to U.S. Auto. Right?”

She nodded. “I couldn’t kill everybody connected to the companies. I just wanted a half dozen or so. Frommer, Benkoff, Heady... that leech of an attorney, Valerie Mayer.”

“So,” Rhyme asked, almost nonchalantly, “how are you going to kill Vernon Griffith?”

She didn’t seem surprised he’d deduced this. “I don’t know yet. Probably have to burn him alive. Make it look like he was creating some booby trap or another. Gasoline. He’s oddly strong for such a skinny man.”

“So you do know where he is?”

“No, after he left my place, he wasn’t sure where he was going. A transient hotel somewhere. He’d be in touch, he said. And he will be.”

Rhyme said, “It was tragic what happened to you and your family. But what does this get you?”

“Justice, comfort.”

“You will be found out.”

“I don’t think so.” A glance at her watch, then Alicia stepped closer to Rhyme and turned the blade up, eyeing his jugular. She had the steady hand of a butcher or surgeon.

Rhyme looked away from the blade, lifted his head and said, “Yes, go ahead. But hard. It has to be hard. You’ll only have one chance.”

Alicia paused. Frowned in confusion.

But Rhyme wasn’t speaking to her. His eyes were focused on Juliette Archer, unsteadily walking up behind the woman, holding an examination lamp, which had a heavy iron base. She nodded, acknowledging Rhyme’s instruction, and swung the fixture, hard indeed, directly into the base of Alicia’s skull.

Chapter 54

The medics reported that the injuries the two women had sustained were not life threatening, though Alicia Morgan’s were more severe by far.

She was presently in the hospital wing of Manhattan’s detention center, close by Central Booking and the courthouse downtown.

Juliette Archer was sitting in one of Rhyme’s rattan chairs in his parlor, her face bandaged, with an impressive bruise peeking out from under the gauze, similar to Alicia’s when she’d arrived. An EMS tech was finishing up his artistry on a second wound to her jaw.

“Is it ready yet?” Rhyme asked Thom, who was reassembling the controller that Alicia had ripped from his wheelchair. “I mean, it’s been ten minutes.”

You ever get impatient...

“I volunteered to get the service people here,” the aide replied languidly. “Do you remember that? But do we think that might’ve taken, oh, until tomorrow?”

“It looks finished to me. Just turn it on. I have phone calls to make.”

At the younger man’s glare, Rhyme fell silent.

Three minutes later he was functional again.

“Seems to be working pretty well.” He tooled around the parlor. “Turns are off slightly.”

“I’ll be in the kitchen.”

“Thank you!” Rhyme called to the aide’s receding back.

Stepping back and eyeing the intern’s face, the EMT said to Archer, “Mostly superficial. Dizzy?”

She rose from the rattan chair where she’d been sitting and paced up and down the parlor. “A little but not any worse than what I usually have.” She returned and lowered herself into her Storm Arrow wheelchair. Then she restrapped her left arm to the rest of the chair by herself.

The tech said, “Okay. Stable. Good. You’re moving pretty good there. Got to say.” He regarded the power chair. He was understandably confused.

Neither Rhyme nor Archer explained to the man how she had come to use as her sole means of conveyance a wheelchair rigged for someone who was a full quad when she in fact was not. Not yet, in any event. As she’d explained to Rhyme in class the first week — and to Thom when she’d started her internship here — she was only partially disabled at this point. Yes, there was a tumor embracing her spinal cord. But the consequences of the condition were not, at this point, complete debilitation. However, she had decided to prepare for the day when, after her surgery, she would most likely be rendered a full quad, C4, just as Rhyme was.

Thom had indeed played the role of caregiver, but only up to a point; she returned to the non-disabled world for bathroom detail at home and at Rhyme’s, and she would dress herself. Rhyme had noted too that her golden bracelet, with the runic characters, might appear on one arm in the morning and the other in the afternoon; she would swap the accessory from time to time if it was irritating her skin. The jewelry had been a present from her son and, accordingly, she insisted on wearing it constantly.

The only other time she had forsaken the playacting was, of course, just moments ago to rise to her unsteady feet and save Rhyme’s and her own life.

After the EMT signed off and left, she piloted closer to Rhyme.

“You didn’t miss a beat,” he said, of her performance in front of Alicia. When he’d mentioned to Alicia Morgan that Archer’s condition was worse than his and suggested she should get some rest, she’d deduced immediately that something was wrong regarding their visitor — since, of course, she had no condition, at least not one as grave as Rhyme had suggested.

Archer nodded. “I was going to call the police as soon as I was out of the parlor.”

Rhyme sighed. “I didn’t think she’d tackle you. I knew she was here to kill me — and anyone else — but I thought we could buy some time.”

Archer added, “I saw where Amelia keeps that guns on your shelf, but I don’t really know how to use one. And, with the tumor, my hands aren’t very steady.”

“And you don’t need to cock a lamp or make sure it’s loaded,” Rhyme conceded.

Archer said, “But we still have one more perp.”

“You like that word, don’t you?”

“Nice feel to it. Perp.” Archer added, “Alicia said she didn’t know where Griffith is. He was going to contact her. I suppose we could monitor her phone.”

Rhyme shook his head. “He’ll use a burner phone. And in a few hours he’ll know she was busted. He’ll go to ground.”

“So where do we look to find him?”

“Where else?” Rhyme asked, nodding toward the evidence boards.

The answer is there...

Chapter 55

He wasn’t going to propose.

Nick Carelli was tempted to, felt that draw, that urge within. Just say it, fast. And, if Ame said no, which of course she would, back off.

But he’d keep at it. If it took a long time then it would take a long time. But one way or the other he’d ease his way back into Amelia’s heart.

Thinking of Freddy’s words:

Find a lady, Nick. Man needs a woman in his life.

Oh, I’m working on that...

Nick was heading home, walking down the tree-lined sidewalk in BK, his gym bag over his shoulder. Odd, but he was pretty close to whistling. He didn’t; actually he didn’t know many people who whistled (though when he was inside he read in the papers about a case Amelia had run in which a professional killer was an accomplished whistler).

The bag contained a small painting, wrapped in gold gift paper. It was a landscape, no, a cityscape it was called, since it showed the Brooklyn Bridge with the early-morning sun making the metal glow and casting shadows toward Manhattan. The artwork, which he’d found in a small gallery on Henry Street, was similar to a painting Amelia had liked when they’d been together. It had been in a Manhattan gallery and they’d discovered it on a cold Sunday after brunch. That one, on the pure-white wall of the pretentious space (SoHo; enough said), was expensive as shit. No way could he afford it. He’d thought about blustering his way into the gallery around closing time, flashing his shield and claiming he had to take it into evidence on suspicion of its being stolen. It would then “disappear” from the evidence room, and it’d be sorry, sorry, to the gallery owner. But Nick couldn’t figure out a way to make it work.

Well, the one in his gym bag was just as nice. Better, actually. Bigger and the colors were brighter.

She’d love it. Yeah, Nick was feeling good.

Whistling...

Jon Perone had left a message that he was getting Nick’s money together, writing up the fake loan documents. Nick would look them over carefully. He had to make sure the deal appeared legitimate, so that anyone close to him — well, mostly his parole office and Amelia — would believe he came by the cash legitimately. He’d convince them. And he knew Ame would accept it. He knew this because he’d seen in her eyes that she wanted to accept it.

Then Vittorio, the restaurant owner, would accept the offer, because Perone and his minder Ralph Seville, the suspender guy, would make sure he did. He’d get the place up and going — red paint, better uniforms — secure a liquor license waiver and rename the joint Carelli’s Café. Nick would slip into legitimacy. His past buried. No one the wiser.

As for his quest to prove his innocence, Nick would just let it peter out. Tell Amelia and her mother and their friends that the leads had dried up, that one witness from back then was dead, that another had Alzheimer’s and couldn’t remember anything. He’d get a long face and look sad that the search wasn’t working. Hell, and I tried so hard...

Ame would take his hand and say it was all right. She knew in her heart he was innocent — and she’d already been hearing the word on the street, thanks to Perone, that Nick hadn’t been guilty after all. He felt bad lying to her — making up that crap about Delgado, who couldn’t have run a ’jacking operation if his life depended on it — but some sacrifices had to be made.

A half block later he thought of Freddy Caruthers again.

Ralph Seville, Perone’s minder, had called Nick and told him that Freddy’s corpse was in Newtown Creek, wrapped in chain link and decorated with thirty-pound barbells. Nick supposed Seville knew what he was doing but he’d picked a hell of a resting place for Freddy. That body of water, separating Brooklyn and Queens, was one of the most polluted in the country and had been the site of the infamous Greenpoint oil spill, worse than that from the Exxon Valdez.

Well, now, shit. A real shame about Freddy. The guilt prodded. And the man a father too.

Twins’re boys. The four- and five-year-old’re girls...

That hurt.

But sorry. There had to be some casualties. Nick was owed. What had happened to him had been so unfair — a little hijacking, a little pistol-whipping (the driver of the tractor-trailer he’d hit had been a complete asshole) and the system had come down on him with both feet, when he’d done pretty much what everybody did. The whole fucking world got away with all kinds of shit. And what was he rewarded with? Years and years of his life stolen.

I’m owed...

Nick waited for a light and then crossed the street. He felt the gym bag, with the cityscape inside, pressing lightly on his back, like a loving arm. He was picturing Amelia, her fashion model’s face, her straight red hair, full lips. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. Remembering her asleep the other night, fingers in a partial fist, breathing shallow and soft.

He turned onto his block and as he did he thought of someone else: Lincoln Rhyme.

Nick had nothing but respect for the man. Hell, if Rhyme’d been running the ’jacking case on the bridge, Nick and the crews he fenced to would’ve been busted months before — and the charges would’ve been a lot worse. You couldn’t help but admire a mind like that.

And Rhyme cared for Amelia. That was good.

Sure, it’d be tough to take her away from him. But, of course, Nick took solace in the fact that she really couldn’t love him. How could you love somebody who was... well, like that. She was with him out of sympathy, had to be, and that was a good thing. Rhyme would have to know that. He’d get over it.

Maybe in the future they could all be friends.

Amelia Sachs had finished walking the grid at Alicia Morgan’s apartment, which had revealed few, if any, clues as to Vernon Griffith’s whereabouts, and she was in a reflective mood, thinking — of all things — about the nature of evil.

So many different faces.

Alicia Morgan was one manifestation. Lincoln Rhyme had called and told her what happened at the town house, how Alicia was mastermind of the product liability killings. That her motive was revenge for a terrible injustice seemed to put the evil she’d perpetrated in a different category from that of, say, a serial rapist or a terrorist.

Then there was yet another evil: Those in the stream of commerce who had decided not to correct a vehicle that they knew might injure or kill. Perhaps greed or perhaps the layers of corporate structure shielded them from conscience, the way an exoskeleton protects the liquid heart of a beetle. And maybe the car and fuel injector executives had truly hoped, or even prayed in their spotless churches on Sunday, that the worst would not come to pass and the passengers who drove about in their gadgety and sleek ticking-time-bomb cars would live long, unhurt lives.

Then there was Vernon Griffith, seduced — literally — by a woman who had preyed on his insecurities.

And what is the worst evil? Amelia Sachs asked herself.

She was sitting on a couch at the moment, leaning back against the well-worn leather. Thinking now: Where are you, Vernon? Hiding out a mile away? Ten thousand?

If anyone could determine his whereabouts it would be herself, Rhyme and Cooper. Oh, and Juliette Archer too. The intern. She was good for a newbie. Her mind was quick and she displayed a detachment that was so like Rhyme’s. And so necessary to this odd world of forensic analysis. Rhyme had been good before his accident, Sachs was sure, though she hadn’t known him then, but she believed that his condition had allowed him truly to soar as a criminalist. Juliette would excel in the field if the surgery she was facing in a few months rendered her a quad, which seemed likely, Rhyme had explained.

You two make a good team...

She looked around this apartment. The place seemed washed out; there were no lights on and the overcast illumination from the street filtered in. This was one interesting aspect of city life — so little direct sunlight. It bled into your home or office, bouncing off windows and walls and signs and storefronts and other façades. For only two or three hours a day were most city spaces illuminated by actual sun, apart from the blessed rich, dwelling at lofty heights. Sachs had imagined a phrase some time ago: Living in reflected light. this seemed to describe the urban experience.

My, aren’t we thoughtful today?

Wonder why...

Just then from the front door came a jangle of keys. One click, then another. In suburbia or rural America one can get away with a single lock. In cities, New York at least, a knob lock and dead bolt are the minimum.

A faint squeak sounded as the door pushed inward. And Sachs drew her Glock smoothly and aimed it, steady, on her target’s chest.

“Amelia.” A shocked whisper.

“Drop the bag, Nick. And get on the floor, facedown. I don’t want either hand out of my sight for one second. Do you understand me?”

Chapter 56

Two Pulaskis sat in a deli in Greenwich Village, not far from the 6th Precinct.

The 6 was Tony Pulaski’s house and the twin brothers came here pretty frequently.

He and Ron were nursing coffee in thick cups. Thick so that if they got banged up, which happened a lot and loudly in the dive of an eating establishment, they wouldn’t chip so much.

Ron’s, however, was missing a heart-shaped chunk from the lip. He minded the sharp edge with every sip.

“So,” Tony was saying, “just to get this straight. You’re running an unauthorized undercover op, using your own buy money, though you’re not buying, or if you are you flush the evidence right after. You have no Major Cases or ESU backup. Is that about it?”

“Pretty much. Oh, and it’s in the worst part of New York. Statistically.”

“Good to add that to the mix,” Tony said.

People would turn their eyes onto the brothers occasionally. They were used to it, being identical twins. Similar uniforms. Tony had a few more decorations. He was older.

By seven minutes.

Amelia Sachs had told Ron to have somebody watching his back when he went in for the meeting with the drug czar Oden, in his quest to find out what the man’s connection was with Baxter and about this new drug Catch. And the only person Pulaski could think of was Tony.

“You’re doing this for Lincoln, then?”

Ron nodded. Didn’t need to repeat what Tony already knew. That after the head injury Ron had suffered he would’ve left the force if Rhyme hadn’t gotten him to stay — by saying bluntly, Get off your ass and get back to work. Rhyme hadn’t played the look-at-me card: me, the gimp, still catching bad guys. He just said, “You’re a good cop, Rookie. And you can be one hell of a good crime scene investigator if you stick to it. You know that people depend on you.”

“Who?” the officer’d asked. “My family? I can get another job.”

Rhyme had twisted his face up, in that way only Lincoln Rhyme could do, when people didn’t get what he was saying. “Who do you think? I’m talking about the vics who’re going to die because you were doing public relations or some shit and not walking the grid at scenes in the field to nail the perp who’s going to kill them in six months. Do I have to spell it out? Get off your ass and get back to work. Last. Word. From. Me.”

So Ron Pulaski had gotten back to work.

“What’s your plan, you meet this Oden? Wait. Isn’t that a god or something? Like in Germany?”

“Norse, I think. Spelled different.”

“Does that mean he’s from Norway. Wouldn’t that be Norwegian?”

“I don’t know.

“Oh. What’s the plan?”

“I’ve got the name of somebody, some kid knows where he hangs.”

“Oden the Norse dealer.”

“Are you listening? I’m serious.”

“Go on,” Tony said and looked serious.

“I meet Oden. I’m going to say I knew Baxter. He was going to hook me up with him, Oden, but then he got busted.”

“Hooked up for what?”

“That’s just to get in the door. Then I’ll make a buy, this Catch stuff. The super drug. I bust him. You come in. Ta-da. We negotiate. He tells us what Baxter did and we let him go. I’m betting Baxter bankrolled him. I tell Lincoln and he realizes Baxter was really a dangerous shit. Not that he deserved to die. But he wasn’t a lamb.”

Tony scowled. “That isn’t much of a plan.”

Ron scowled back. “Any other thoughts? I’m happy to entertain them.”

“Just saying. It’s not much of a plan.”

“So?” Pulaski asked. “You up for it?”

“What the hell,” Tony muttered. “I haven’t risked my job, my pension, my reputation and — what else? — oh, yeah, my life in the last couple days. Why not?”

“What is this?”

Nick was speaking not to Sachs but to her backup, a uniform stepping out of the kitchen, a slim African American borrowed from the 84. The officer stepped forward and frisked Nick carefully. A grimace toward Sachs as he removed a Smittie hammerless.38 from the man’s jacket pocket.

“That. Wait. I can explain.”

Sachs grimaced. The gun alone was enough to put him away for five years. She’d have thought he was smarter than that.

“Cuffs?”

“Yes,” Sachs replied.

“Hey, you don’t need...” Nick’s voice faded.

The patrolman handed the weapon to Sachs then cuffed Nick’s hands behind him and helped him up. She emptied the rounds from the weapon and slipped it into an evidence bag. The cartridges went into another. She set them on a table, well out of Nick’s reach.

“I was going to report it,” Nick blustered, his voice higher, in the register of guilt, as Sachs thought of it. “The piece. I was going to turn it in. I wasn’t carrying.”

Though, yeah, he pretty much was.

“You don’t understand,” he continued. The desperation was thick. “I’ve been on the street, trying to find that man I told you about, who could help me. Could prove I was innocent. I was in Red Hook and this guy comes out of nowhere, pulled that Smittie, going to mug me. I took the piece away from him. I couldn’t toss it away. Some kid might’ve found it.”

Sachs didn’t even bother to run down the lie. “Jon Perone,” she began. And let that sit.

Nick gave absolutely no reaction.

“When you met with Perone we had a team outside his office.”

The man tried to take this in. Then: “Well, yeah, Perone was the one had information about Donnie. He was going to do some digging, find what he needed to prove I wasn’t anywhere near the ’jacking—”

“We turned Ralph Seville, Nick. Perone’s muscle. The one you two sent to kill Freddy Caruthers.”

Mouth open slightly. Eyes zipping throughout his apartment. She thought of the tiny fish in Vernon Griffith’s aquarium.

She added, “Two of our people followed Seville to the mall where you had Freddy waiting. He moved on Freddy, in the garage, and they nailed him. He dimed you all out.”

“But—?”

“Seville told Perone he bodied Freddy. That was the script. Perone doesn’t know we’ve got Seville. Freddy’s in protective custody for the time being.”

Nick’s face remained adamant. “Lying. That son of a bitch is lying. Seville. He’s a prick.”

“Enough,” Sachs whispered. “Enough.”

With that, Nick changed. Instantly. He became a wolf. “How’d you get a team to Perone’s? Bullshit. You’re fucking bluffing.”

She blinked at his fury. His words stabbed like a blade. “We knew you’d be smart, switching cars in a garage or leading us off. The night I stayed here? I got a tracker app on your phone after you fell asleep. We followed you to Perone’s. I couldn’t get a warrant — we couldn’t hear what you and Perone said. But Seville told us you did ’jack the Algonquin truck near the Gowanus back then and you did pistol-whip the driver. Donnie had nothing to do with it. And the reason you wanted the case files: to get your money from whoever’d taken the ’jacked drugs.”

His shoulders slumped in defeat, and he reverted to pathetic. “I go back and I’m dead, Amelia. Either I’ll kill myself or somebody’ll do me.” His voice cracked.

She looked him over, head to knees. “I don’t want you to go back, Nick.”

Relief, like a hurt child collected in his mother’s arms.

“Thank you. You have to understand. What happened a few years ago. I didn’t want to do it. The ’jacking. You know, Mom was sick, Donnie was having problems. All that merch is insured. It wasn’t that big a deal. Really.”

Sachs’s phone buzzed. She regarded the screen, and sent a reply text. A moment later the front door opened and a tall, lean man, dark-skinned, walked inside. He was wearing a brown suit, yellow shirt and bold crimson tie. The colors may have clashed but the garb fit well.

“Well, lookie here. Lookie this. Caughtcha, din’t we?” He ran long fingers over his short salt-and-pepper hair.

Nick grimaced. “Shit.”

Fred Dellray, a senior FBI special agent, was known for several things. One, his love of philosophy, a subject in which he was somewhat famous in academic circles. Two, his outlandish fashion choices. Then there was his unusual vocabulary. Dellray-speak, it was called.

“So, Mr. Nick, you been doing some naughty oops stuff, considerin’ you’re still hot off the presses from prison.”

Nick remained silent.

Dellray turned a chair around and sat, the back between him and Nick, and looked him over, even more intensely than Sachs had done.

“A-melia?”

“Fred?”

“M’I allowed to push the plunger.”

“Do what you need.”

Dellray teepeed his fingers. “By the power vested in her, thanks to the great state of New York, Detective Sachs here will be arresting you for a large number o’ things. Many, many come to my mind, at least, hers too, I’ll betcha. Shhh, shhh, don’t make your mouth go that way, ’bout to form words. I’m speaking. She will be arresting you and then with the agreement of her boss and my boss, way high ups, you will be working for me, call me the great eagle of the federal government.”

“What’re you—”

“Shhh, shhh. You miss that part? You’ll be a CI for me, a con-fidential informant. And oh what a dangle you’ll be. Former cop, former con. The plan is you produce for us. Five years or so, doing just what you’re sposta — which’s what I tellya, and all’s happy, happy. Then off you go to house arrest, and pretty soon you’ll be free to become a Walmart greeter. If they hire former felons. Hm. Have to check that.”

Dellray, a former undercover agent, was now the foremost runner of informants in the Northeast.

“You want Perone.” Nick was nodding.

“Hell-o. But that boy’s suspendered minder, Seville, has burned him nice and toasty already. But he’s jus’ a starter, an appetizer, an aperitivo. We’ll go onward and upward from there. The world awaits. Now I wanta hear, all I wanta hear, is Yessir, I’m on board. I don’t, I’ll be squeezing some parts of your life you don’t want nail marks in. We all together on that?”

A sigh. A nod.

“Delighted. But...” Dellray said, his dark face furiously screwed up. “Can’t hear you and more important, the micro-phones can’t hear you. Of which we got more than the sets o’ the Bachelor and Survivor combined. So?”

“I’ll do it. I agree.”

Sachs pulled out her mobile and called the detective, who was parked outside in an unmarked car. “Need transport down to Central Booking.” She looked at Nick and read him his rights. “Lawyer?”

“No.”

“Good call.”

The detective arrived in the doorway, a solid Latina whom Sachs had known for years. Rita Sanchez. The woman’s nodded to Sachs.

“Rita. Get him downtown. I’ll be there soon to handle the paperwork. Call the U.S. attorney too.”

The woman stared coolly at Nick. She knew the story of their relationship. “Sure, Amelia. I’ll handle it.” Her tone was saying: Jesus, I’m sorry, honey.

“Amelia!” Nick was pausing at the door, Sanchez and the uniform slowing. “I’m... I’m sorry.”

What’s the worst evil?

She looked past him, to the detective, and nodded. Nick was led from the apartment.

“Whatsis?” Fred Dellray asked, nodding at the gym bag Nick had with him.

Sachs unzipped it and extracted a painting. Well. Took a deep breath. The canvas was similar to one that she’d admired years ago. One she’d wanted so very badly but hadn’t been able to afford. Remembered the freezing cold Sunday they’d seen it in the SoHo gallery, after brunch on Broome and West Broadway. Remembered the night, back in their apartment, snow tapping on the window, the radiator clicking, lying beside Nick, thinking about the painting. Sorry she couldn’t buy it but much, much happier she was a cop than someone with a more lucrative job who could’ve plunked down the Visa and bought the canvas on the spot.

“I don’t know,” she said, replacing the painting in the bag. “No idea.”

And, turning away, she wiped one small tear from the corner of her right eye and sat down to write up the rest of the report.

Chapter 57

Ah, Amelia,” Thom said as she walked into the parlor. “Wine?”

“Gotta work.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.” She noted that both Rhyme and Archer had whiskies in their cup holders. “I mean no. I mean, yes, I’ll take one.”

The aide returned a moment later. He glanced at the bottle of scotch nearby. “Wait.”

“Wait,” Rhyme said, attempting to preempt. “What does that mean? I hate it when people say that. ‘Wait.’ Wait what? Stop moving? Stop breathing? Stop their mental processes?”

“Okay, what ‘wait’ means is that somebody has done something unacceptable, something of which I am only now aware and about which I am lodging a protest. You raided the booze.”

Archer laughed. “He commanded me to stand up, walk over there and pour some. No, Lincoln, I’m not taking the fall for you. I’m just a lowly intern, remember?”

Rhyme grumbled, “If you’d given me a decent amount to begin with, there would’ve been no issue.”

Thom snagged the bottle and left the parlor.

“Wait!” Rhyme called. “And that’s the proper use of the word. Even if no one pays it any mind.”

Sachs gave a smile at the exchange and returned to the evidence, pacing as she looked over the packets and regarded the charts. She did this often, the pacing, to bleed off energy. When he was capable of it, Lincoln Rhyme used to do exactly the same when considering an intractable problem with a case.

The doorbell sounded and Rhyme heard Thom’s footsteps zip to the door. The nearly subaudible greeting of the visitor explained to Rhyme who had come a-calling.

“Time to get to work,” Rhyme said.

Sachs nodded to Mel Cooper, who walked into the parlor shucking his jacket. He’d heard about Alicia Morgan and Rhyme now explained about her contamination of the evidence. The tech shrugged. “We’ve been up against worse.” He looked over the evidence from Griffith’s and Morgan’s apartments. “Yes, yes. We’ll find some answers in here.”

Rhyme was pleased to see Cooper’s eyes shine with the intensity of a prospector spotting a thumb-sized nugget.

Sachs was digging latex gloves from her pocket when her phone dinged. An incoming text.

She read the message. She sent back another text and then walked to the computer. A moment later she opened an email. Rhyme saw the official heading. It was an evidence file from NYPD Crime Scene headquarters.

“They found what I was trying to remember — from that earlier case.” She held up the caisson that Vernon Griffith had made. The wheels were identical to those depicted in the picture she’d just received from CSU.

She said, “Alicia said she’d met Vernon when he killed somebody who bullied him.”

“Right.”

“I think the vic was Rinaldo, the drug dealer — the homicide I haven’t made any progress on.”

Archer said, “Yes, the wheels match, toy wheels.”

“That’s right. Also, Rinaldo was slashed to death with what might’ve been one of those.”

She nodded at the razor saws and knives they’d recovered from Griffith’s apartment.

“All right, good,” Rhyme said. “Another scene involving Griffith. Anything about that case that might give us an idea where he’s hiding?”

She ran through what she knew, concluding: “Just that he jumped into a gypsy cab and headed to somewhere in the Village. Nothing more specific than that.”

“Ah,” Rhyme said softly, gazing up at the board. “That puts us in a slightly different position.”

“But the Village,” Archer said, “is huge. If there’s no way to narrow it down...”

“Always question your assumptions.”

Sachs: “Happy to. Which one?”

“That Vernon was referring to Greenwich Village.”

“What other village is there?”

“Middle Village.” He glanced at Archer. “A neighborhood in Queens.”

She nodded. “The one you called — because of the humus and the other trace. And I was skeptical of.”

“Correct.”

“I guess we didn’t need two question marks after all.”

Sachs was looking over an online map of Middle Village. It wasn’t a small area. “Got any idea where exactly he might be?”

“I do,” Rhyme said, looking over the map himself, hearing Juliette Archer’s words.

The answers to riddles are always simple...

“And I can narrow it down.”

“By how much?” Cooper asked.

“About ten square feet.”

St. John Cemetery in Queens is the permanent resting site of a number of notables.

Among them: Mario Cuomo, Geraldine Ferraro, Robert Mapplethorpe and, no less, Charles Atlas. But Amelia Sachs knew it mostly through a quasi-professional connection, you might say. The Catholic cemetery held the bodies of dozens of the most famous gangsters in history. Joe Colombo, Carmine Galante, Carlo Gambino, Vito Genovese, John Gotti, and the quintessential Godfather, Lucky Luciano.

Sachs now parked her Torino at the entrance on Metropolitan Avenue, in Middle Village, pastoral by New York City standards. The main building was a structure that both Bavarians and Elizabethan country folk would have found familiar. Steepled, turreted, with leaded windows and brick walls with white trim.

She climbed out and, from habit, unbuttoned her jacket then touched her Glock grip with open palm just to orient position. If you’d asked her a moment later if she’d done this, she couldn’t have told you.

There were two unmarked cars parked nearby, from the local precinct. They were, she was pleased to note, highly unmarked. No buggy whip antennas or computers occupying the interstitial portion of the front seat. Real license plates, not government or permanents.

A young patrol officer, name of Keller on the breastplate, nodded to her from his vantage point near the entrance.

“Can we walk?” she asked.

“Yes, and it’s better.”

She understood he’d be referring to the fact that any car would arouse attention in the largely open cemetery.

“We should move fast, though. It’ll be dark soon. We’ve got the entrances covered, but...”

They started off, silently, through the entrance and then along the asphalt drive. The spring evening was mild as a greeting card and a number of people were here, leaving flowers. Some were alone, widows and widowers probably. Mostly elderly. There were couples too, flowering their parents’ graves or perhaps their children’s, she guessed.

In five minutes they came to a deserted section of the cemetery. Two ESU officers, compact crew-cut men in tactical gear, looked up. They were taking cover behind a mausoleum.

She nodded. One of the tac cops said, “He got here a half hour ago and he hasn’t budged. We had an undercover move people away. Told them there’s going to be a state funeral later and we wanted to keep the area clear for security.”

Sachs looked past them to a grave about fifty feet away, at the back of a man sitting on a bench near a tombstone.

“If he rabbits,” she asked, “other teams?”

“Oh, we’re covered. There, there and there,” Keller said, pointing. “He’s not going anywhere.”

“No car?”

“No vehicle, Detective.”

“Weapons?”

“Didn’t present.” This from one of the tac officers. His partner shook his head. Added, “But there’s a backpack beside the bench. In reach.”

“He took something out of it. Set it on the tombstone, there, see it? I looked with the binoculars. Seems like it’s a toy. A ship or something. A boat.”

“It’s a miniature,” Sachs said without looking closely. “Not really a toy. Back me up. I’m going to take him.”

Vernon Griffith did not resist.

He would have been a formidable opponent; he was truly skinny but she could see muscles under the close-fitting shirt and he was tall, with a very long reach. And the backpack probably contained another deadly ball-peen or maybe a blade or saw like the ones she’d found in Chelsea.

The Steel Kiss...

He’d been clearly surprised at the officers’ sudden presence and after half rising, dropped down on the bench once more, holding his strikingly long hands up, straight in the air. Keller directed him onto his knees and then the ground, where he was cuffed and frisked. And the backpack searched. No guns, no hammers, nothing that might be used as a weapon.

Sachs guessed that he’d been lost in a meditation about his brother, whose grave he was sitting in front of. Or, if he believed in that sort of thing, maybe Griffith actually thought they were engaging in a conversation.

On the other hand he might simply have been thinking of practical matters. What was to come next. After the events of the past few days he’d have some thinking to do.

Then, helped to his feet and flanked by the ESU officers, he and Sachs walked to the front of the cemetery office. Griffith was deposited on another bench, this one featuring a verdigris dove. They were waiting for a prisoner transport van; Griffith would have been very cramped in the back of one of the unmarkeds. Besides, he had hurt people in such clever and unpleasant ways that you wouldn’t want him behind you in a squad car, much less a Ford Torino, even cuffed.

Sachs sat next to him. She took out her tape recorder, clicked it on, then recited his Miranda rights. Asked if he understood them.

“I do. Sure.”

Griffith had long fingers, to match the feet, whose size they knew, of course. His face was lengthy too but the pale, beardless visage was nondescript. His eyes were hazel.

She continued, “We know that Alicia Morgan hired you to kill certain individuals connected with the U.S. Auto vehicle that was defective and killed her husband. But we’d like to know more. Will you talk to us?”

He nodded.

“Could you state yes, please?”

“Oh, sorry. Yes.”

“Tell me in your words what happened. She’s told my partner some things but not everything. I’d like to hear it from you.”

He nodded and without hesitation explained how Alicia had approached him, after seeing him kill someone on the street. “Someone who was attacking me,” he added emphatically.

She recalled that Rhyme had told her Griffith had goaded Rinaldo to attack. But she nodded encouragingly.

“You said she hired me to kill the Shoppers who’d made and sold the car that killed her husband.”

Shoppers? she wondered.

“But I did it because I wanted to help her. She was burned and cut and, you know, changed forever by what happened. I agreed.”

“She wanted the people she felt were to blame to be killed by a product?”

“Things, yes. Because that’s what killed her husband and injured her.”

“Tell me about Todd Williams.”

He confirmed what they’d guessed. That Williams, a digital activist, was a genius of a hacker and had taught Griffith how to crack the DataWise5000s. And, pretending he worked for an ad agency, he bought the databases of the products containing the controllers and of people or companies who had bought the specific items.

Griffith added that he and Alicia had searched the list of purchasers for anyone employed by U.S. Auto, the fuel injector company, the agency creating their ads or the lawyers defending them. “Greg Frommer, Benkoff, Joe Heady. The woman insurance attorney in Westchester.”

“Afterward, after you’d killed Valerie Mayer, the lawyer, where were you and Alicia supposed to be going?”

“Don’t know. Upstate maybe. Canada’d be better. This all happened so fast. Didn’t plan anything out. How’d you get here?” he asked. “I never told Alicia about my brother.”

Sachs explained, “A case from a while ago. The victim you killed was named Rinaldo.”

“The Shopper.”

Again, that word.

“He was a drug dealer,” Sachs said.

“I know. I read the story after. But still. How?”

“That case was on my docket. One of the pieces of evidence from the scene where you killed him was a wheel from a toy. You had a caisson in your apartment in Chelsea. It had the same wheel.”

Griffith nodded. “I’d made one for Peter, a caisson.” Nodding back toward his brother’s grave. “I had it with me that night at dinner. I left the restaurant and was coming here to put it on his grave.” He shivered with disgust or anger. “He broke it.”

“Rinaldo?”

A nod. “He was walking back to his car and was on his cell phone, wasn’t looking where he was going. Knocked into me and it got crushed, the caisson. I insulted him and he came after me. I killed him.” Griffith shook his head. “But here, how’d you figure here?”

Sachs explained that after they’d connected Vernon and Rinaldo, with Rhyme making the Middle Village leap, it hadn’t taken much to speculate that the evidence from the various scenes — the humus, the large quantities of fertilizer and pesticides or herbicides, along with the phenol, an ingredient in embalming fluid — might mean he’d visited the famed cemetery here.

Within about ten square feet...

A call revealed that Peter Griffith, Vernon’s brother, was interred here. Sachs had called the director and asked if they had records of Vernon visiting grave. He said he didn’t know about visits, but there had been some odd occurrences around the Griffith plot: Someone would leave miniature furniture or toys at the grave site. The director told her the pieces were extremely well made. The man supposed some visitors took them. The ones that were turned in he kept in the office, waiting for someone to claim them. The combination had all the makings of an urban legend: miniatures and a cemetery.

“When he was alive Peter always liked what I made for him. The boy things, of course. Medieval weapons, tables and thrones for castles. Catapults and war towers. Cannon and caissons. He would have liked that boat, the Warren skiff. On his tombstone. Where is it?”

“In an evidence bag.” She felt compelled to add, “It will be well taken care of.”

“You police, you were watching the grave?”

“That’s right.”

Sachs had noted that his brother was only twenty when he passed. She commented on this. Then asked, “What happened to him?”

“Shoppers.”

“You’ve said that. What does that mean?”

Griffith looked at his backpack. “There’s a diary in there? My brother’s diary. He dictated it to an MP3 player. I’ve been transcribing it, thinking I was going to publish it someday. There’s some remarkable things Peter’s said. About life, about relationships, about people.”

Sachs found the leather book. It contained easily five hundred pages.

Griffith continued, “In high school, Manhasset, some of the cool kids made friends with him. He thought they really meant it. But, uh-uh, they just were using him to get even with a girl who wouldn’t have sex with them. They drugged her, convinced Peter it was somebody else, and they got pictures of him with her in bed. You know, you can imagine.”

“They posted them online?”

“No, this was before phone cameras. They took Polaroids and passed them around school.” He nodded toward the battered leather-bound volume. “The last page. The last entry.”

Sachs found it.

“He killed himself?”

“Not technically. Couldn’t be buried here if he had. It’s Catholic. But he drank himself into a stupor and went for a drive on Route Twenty-Five. Hit a hundred. Was twenty years old.”

“And ‘Shoppers’? What does that mean?”

“Peter and me? We’re built different, we look different. It’s Marfan syndrome.”

Sachs wasn’t familiar with it. She assumed the condition was the cause of his height and disproportionately low weight, long hands and feet. To her, the condition wasn’t particularly odd, simply another body type. But bullies in school? Well, they rarely needed much ammunition.

Griffith continued, “We got made fun of a lot. Both of us. Kids’re cruel. You’re pretty. You wouldn’t know that.”

Yes, she would. In her teens Sachs, more boyish than most of the boys, more competitive than any of them, had certainly been bullied. Then bullied too in the fashion industry because she was a woman. And same when she joined the force... and for the same reason.

He said, “Most boys’re bullied in gym class. But for me, it was mechanical arts — shop. It started because I had a crush on this girl, eighth grade. I heard she had this neat dollhouse. So for assignment, while all the other boys were making bookshelves and boot scrapers, I made her a Chippendale desk. Six inches high. Perfect.” His light-colored eyes shone. “It was perfect. The boys gave me crap for that. ‘Skinny Bean’s got a dollhouse. Slim Jim’s a girl.’ ” He shook his head. “I still finished it. Gave it to Sarah and she looked all funny, you know. Like when you do something real nice for somebody and it’s more than they want. Or they don’t want anything at all. Makes ’em feel uncomfortable. She said, ‘Thanks,’ like thanking a waitress. I never talked to her again.”

So, that was it. Not “shoppers” as in those who buy products. As in students in shop class.

“And the people who were responsible for the defective car Alicia and her family were in, you thought of them as Shoppers.”

“They were. Bullies, arrogant. Thinking only about themselves. Selling defective cars and knowing they were dangerous. Making money. That’s all that mattered to them.”

“You must have loved your brother a lot.”

“I kept my old phone with his voice mail messages on it. I listen to them all the time. It’s some comfort.” He turned to her. “Any comfort in this life is good, don’t you think?”

Sachs believed she knew the answer to her next question. “Those boys who posted pictures of your brother and that girl. What happened to them?”

“Oh, that’s why I moved into the apartment in Chelsea. Easier for me to do what I’d decided to — find them and kill them; they worked in the city. One I slashed to death. Sam. The other, Frank? Beat him to death. The bodies’re in a pond near Newark. I can tell you more about those, if you want. She was going to kill me, wasn’t she? Alicia.”

Sachs hesitated.

The story would come out, sooner or later. “Yes, Vernon. I’m sorry.”

Resignation on his face. “I really knew. I mean, deep down, I knew she was using me. Anybody who wants you to kill people, just comes out and asks you, after you’ve slept together.” A shrug. “What did I expect? But sometimes you let yourself be used because... well, just because. You’re lonely or whatever. We all pay for love one way or another.” Another searching gaze of her face. “You’re nice to me. Even after I tried to kill your mother. I don’t think you’re a Shopper after all. I thought you were. But you’re not.” After a moment he continued, “Can I give you something?”

“What?”

“In the backpack. There’s another book.”

She looked inside. Found a slim volume. “This?”

“That’s right.”

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.

She flipped through it, examining the pictures of crime scene miniatures. Sachs had never seen anything like it. Frances Glessner Lee was the creator of the dioramas. Sachs gave a soft laugh, looking at the tiny doll, a corpse, lying in a kitchen.

“You can have it. I’d like you to.”

“We’re not allowed. You understand.”

“Oh. Why not?”

She smiled. “I don’t know. A police rule. But we’re not.”

“Sure. Maybe you could buy one, now that you know about it.”

“I’ll do that, Vernon.”

Two uniformed officers approached. “Detective.”

“Tom,” she responded to the taller of the two.

“Bus’s here.”

She said to Griffith, “We’ll take you to booking. You’re not going to be a problem, are you?”

“No.”

Sachs believed him.

Chapter 58

He in there.”

Ron Pulaski looked from the boy, no more than fifteen, to the building the kid was pointing at. The place was bad, worse than most in East New York. Ron and his children had seen The Hobbit not long ago and at one point the dwarves and Bilbo were heading for a cave. That’s what this place reminded him of. One of those old stone structures, dried blood, brown, and with windows black and sunken as corpse eye sockets. Some broken. Some dotted with bullet holes.

Seemed appropriate, this dim, forbidding place, for Oden to be dealing from. Or where he fabricated his infamous Catch. The drug of drugs.

Or maybe he did that elsewhere and it was here that he tortured rivals and suspected informants.

“He alone?” Ron asked.

“Dunno.” The boy’s wide brown eyes twitched around the street. Ron had dressed down again — as always on the Save-Lincoln-Rhyme operation — but he still looked just like who he was: a white cop in a black ’hood, dressing sorta-kinda undercover. He was forcing himself not to look behind him, into the alley where Tony was waiting with his Glock drawn.

He asked the kid, “Oden? Is he armed?”

“Look, man, just my green. K?”

“I’m paying you one large. Does Oden usually carry?”

“This ain’t my ’hood. I don’t know this Oden, don’t know his crew. All’s I know: Word come from Alpho, at Richie’s, vouching for you, saying you lay down some green, I find this Oden bitch for you. I heard he in there, that building. All I know. I’m saying. You sure you ain’t a cop?”

“Not a cop.”

“Okay. I done what I’m s’posed to. Now: green.”

Pulaski dug into his pocket, wrapped his fingers around a week’s take-home — in fives to make the roll sing.

“Wait.” The kid was speaking urgently.

“Whatta you mean wait?”

“Don’t gimme no cash now.” As if the cop had belched during mass.

Ron sighed. “You just said—”

“Hold on, hold on...”

Looking around.

Ron was too. The hell was this?

Then he spotted three young men, two Latino, one black, walking down the opposite side of the street, smoking, laughing. Their age would make them early college in some places, but here they might still be in high school, if not dropouts.

“Wait, wait... No, no, don’t look at ’em, lookit me.”

Sighing again. “What are you—?

“K. Now. Gimme. The green.”

Ron handed the money over. The boy dug into his pocket and handed him a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

Ron frowned. “What’s in there? I don’t want to score anything. I just want to talk to Oden.”

“What’s in there is cigarettes, man. Just take it. Put it away like there’s three G of rock. Careful. Hide it. Now!”

Ah. Ron understood. The kid wanted to make it seem like he was dealing. Build his street cred. Ron glanced across the street and saw that the three young men had noticed. They gave no reaction and continued on their way.

Ron looked over the building. “Okay. Oden. What unit’s he in?”

“Dunno. Just he in there. I was you, I’d start One A and work yo way up.”

Ron started across the street.

“Yo.”

“What?”

“My ciggies.”

“I just bought ’em.” He crushed the pack and tossed it into the street. “Give it up, they’re not good for you.”

“Fuck that, man.”

After the kid vanished Tony joined him. He was wearing his own brand of undercover garb — black jeans and a T-shirt, a gray leather jacket, Yankees cap swiveled backward. Together they headed toward the mouth of the alley next to the Orc Cave building.

“What goes on in there?”

“No idea. The kid swears Oden’s in there now. Well, he didn’t swear. He thinks he’s in there. And it’s the only lead we’ve got. So here’s hoping.”

“Feels like a meth house.”

Ron hoped it wasn’t. Both meth- and crackheads would get wound up like superheroes. The junk gave them crazy strength and unmeshed their thinking. If Ron and Tony were lucky Oden wasn’t retail; he sold in bulk. Maybe even to Charles Baxter directly, the perp Rhyme had put in Rikers. After all, brokers and Wall Street lawyers had to get smack and C someplace.

Tony said, “If he’s dealing he’s not going to be alone and they’re all gonna have weapons. Did you ask the kid?”

“Yeah, I did. Not helpful.”

Dunno...

“We’ve been here forty minutes. Nobody in or out. I think it’s cool.”

“Oh?” Tony asked. “You don’t maybe think Oden and his three minders, and their AK-Four-Sevens, might’ve got here forty-five minutes ago?”

“Tone.”

“I’m just saying. K. We go.”

Unzipping the jacket to better access his now-holstered Glock, Tony looked over his brother. “Where’s your piece?”

“Ankle.”

“No. In your waistband.”

Pulaski hesitated then tugged up his jean cuff. He lifted the Bodyguard out of the holster and slipped it into the pocket where he kept the rest of the buy money. His brother nodded, a concession that, okay, the tiny.380 would probably fall out of the waistband or slip down to Ron’s crotch.

Tony touched his arm. “Just, one last time. You sure this’s worth it?”

Ron smiled.

And together, they eased up to the front door of Oden’s building. It was unlocked. To be exact, it was no-locked. A gaping hole where a dead bolt had been.

“Which apartment?”

Dunno...

Ron shook his head.

But they didn’t have to look very far. On the second floor, the apartment in the back, 2F, had a handwritten card beneath the buzzer button, in the center of the door, which was red and scuffed.

O’Denne.

Under other circumstances Ron might’ve laughed. An Irish, not a Norse, drug dealer.

Tony stood to the side of the door.

Ron didn’t. When one looks out a peephole and sees nobody in the hall that means the visitors are cops. He put a stony look on his face and hit the bell. He was sweating. But he didn’t wipe the rivulets off. Too late.

Silence for a moment then footsteps from inside.

“Who is it?” came the gruff voice.

“Name is Ron. I was a friend of Baxter’s. Charles Baxter.”

Ron could see shadows moving under the door. Was O’Denne pulling a gun from his pocket and debating just shooting the visitor through the door? It didn’t seem smart to do that in your residence. But Ron realized O’Denne might not be particularly stable and might therefore be unconcerned about wasting an intruder close to home. And as for anyone else nearby, he guessed gunshots were more or less common here and therefore largely ignored.

“What do you want?”

“You know Charles’s dead.”

“What do you want?”

“He told me about you. I want to pick up with you where he left off.”

A click from the other side of the door.

A gun cocking? Or de-cocking?

But the sound turned out to be one of several locks snapping open.

Ron tensed, his hand slipping toward his pistol. Tony had already drawn his Glock.

The door opened and Ron looked inside, scanning the man who stood before him, backlit in light from a cheap lamp with a torn shade.

Ron’s shoulders slumped. All he could think: Oh, man... What do I do now?

Chapter 59

Lincoln Rhyme heard the front door of his town house open and close. Footsteps approached.

“It’s Amelia,” Juliette Archer said. They were in the parlor.

“You can tell from the sound. Good. Yes, your hearing, vision, smell will improve. Some doctors dispute it but I’ve run experiments and I’m convinced it’s true. Taste too, if you don’t kill off your sapictive cells with excessive whisky.”

“The what? Sapictive?”

“Taste receptor cells.”

“Oh. Well, life’s a balance, isn’t it?”

Amelia Sachs walked inside, nodding greetings.

“A confession from Griffith?” he asked.

“More or less.” She sat down and told him a story of two brothers bullied — the younger one to death — and his sibling’s growing instability and desire for revenge. Griffith’s account aligned perfectly with what Alicia Morgan had told them.

“ ‘Shoppers,’ ” Archer mused after hearing the story. “Well, didn’t see that one coming.”

While the mental makeup of a perp was largely irrelevant to Rhyme, he now had to admit to himself that Vernon Griffith was one of the more complex suspects he’d ever been up against.

“Not unsympathetic,” Sachs offered.

Stealing the very words Rhyme had been about to offer.

She explained that there would probably be a plea deal. “He admitted we got him dead to rights. He doesn’t want to fight it.” A smile. “He asked if I thought they’d let him make furniture in prison.”

Rhyme wondered if that was a possibility. It seemed that felons incarcerated for murder might not be allowed access to saws and knives and ball-peen hammers. The man might have to settle for making license plates.

Then he was gazing at the evidence boards, reflecting how the two cases that had seemed so different were in fact as genetically linked as twins. Frommer v. Midwest Conveyance and The People of the State of New York v. Griffith and, now, v. Alicia Morgan.

Sachs “deweaponed” herself (the verb had been in an NYPD memo on firearm safety that she’d shared with Rhyme; they’d had a good laugh). She poured coffee from a service Thom had set up in the corner. She sat. Just as she took her first sip her phone sang out. She read the text and gave a laugh. “CSU in Queens found the missing napkins. The White Castle napkins.”

“I’d forgotten about those,” Archer said.

Rhyme: “I hadn’t, though I had given up on them. And?”

Sachs read: “ ‘Negative for friction ridges, negative for DNA. Positive for confectionary beverage in proportions that suggest source was White Castle restaurant chain.’ ”

“But didn’t the—” Archer began.

“—napkins have White Castle printed on them? Yep, they did.”

Rhyme said, “Nature of our profession — yours now too, Archer. Every day we deal with missing evidence, evidence never properly identified, evidence contaminated. Deductions botched completely. And deductions made that don’t need to be. Missed clues. Happens in epidemiology, I would imagine.”

“Oh, yes. Myopic children, remember?” She told Amelia Sachs the story of the study that incorrectly asserted causation between children’s sleeping with lights on and vision problem.

Nodding, Sachs said, “Heard this story on the radio — people used to believe that maggots spontaneously generated from meat. Don’t remember the details.”

Archer said, “Sure, famous story. Francesco Redi, seventeenth-century scientist, was the one who disproved that. It was because fly eggs were too small to be seen. Father of experimental biology.”

Sachs glanced at the evidence boards, apparently at the section about the civil suit. She asked, “Your case, the original one, Mrs. Frommer’s? Can she recover anything?”

“Very doubtful.” Rhyme explained that the only cause of action would be against Alicia and Griffith for the wrongful death of Greg Frommer. Whitmore was looking into their finances, but neither of them seemed very wealthy.

Archer’s phone rang. She commanded, “Answer.”

“Hey, Jule. Me.”

“Randy. You’re on with Lincoln and Amelia.”

Her brother.

Greetings shot back and forth.

“Be there in ten.”

She said, “We closed the case.”

“Seriously? Well, I’m impressed. Billy’ll love to hear all about it. Between you and me, he loves the idea of Cop Mom. He’s doing a graphic novel. You’re the heroine. But you didn’t hear me say that. It’s going to be a surprise. Okay. I’m in traffic without a hands-free. Don’t tell the police. Ha!”

They disconnected.

Archer was looking not at Rhyme but toward Sachs. “When I signed up for Lincoln’s course, I knew about you, of course, Amelia. Anybody who follows New York crime knows about you. You’re epic, as my son would say. I’d go with ‘famous’ but, well, ‘epic’ seems to fit better. And I knew you worked with Lincoln and that you were his partner but I didn’t know you were that kind of partner too. Seeing you the past few days, I found out.”

“We’ve been together for a long time. Both ways,” Sachs said with a smile.

“I wasn’t sure what to expect. But you’re just like any other couple. Happy, sad, irritated.”

Rhyme chuckled. “We fight, sure. We’ve been having one for the past few weeks.”

Sachs wasn’t smiling when she said, “I’m mad he resigned.”

“And I’m mad she’s mad that I resigned.”

She added, “And mad he stole my lab tech.”

“You got him back in the end,” Rhyme groused.

Archer said, “When I was diagnosed I decided that I’d live alone. Oh, with Billy part of the time, under the custody agreement, and with a caregiver, of course — somebody like Thom. Though I don’t know if I can find somebody like him. He’s a gem.”

Rhyme glanced at the doorway. “None better. But that goes no farther than this room.”

Archer gave a coy smile. “As if he doesn’t know.” She continued, “I decided that I’d never be in a relationship, never even think about that. Get my new profession, one that was fulfilling, challenging. Raise my son as best I could. Have friends who could deal with quadriplegia. Not the life I’d planned on or wanted but a decent life. Then — don’t you love the way fate works? — then I met somebody. It was about three months ago, just after the neurologist confirmed that the disability would probably be as severe as they’d thought. Brad. That was his name. Met him at my son’s birthday party. Single father. An MD. It really clicked between us. I told him right up front about the tumor, the surgery. He’s cardio but knew generally about the condition. He didn’t seem to care and we went out for a while.”

Sachs said, “But you broke it off.”

“I did, yes. I was probably going stone-cold gimp in a year. He was a jogger and a sailor. Now, that is a combination you don’t really find in the same column on Match Dot Com or eHarmony, do you? Brad was pretty upset when I told him. But I knew it was best. For both of us.” She gave a wisp of a laugh. “Can you see where this is going?”

Rhyme didn’t. Not at all. But he noticed Sachs had a faint smile on her face.

Archer continued, “Then I saw you two together. Began to think maybe I’d made a mistake. I called him back last night. We’re going out this weekend. Who knows? Maybe in six months we’ll be engaged. Like you two. Have you set a date yet?”

Sachs shook her head. “Not yet. Soon.”

Archer smiled. “Did he propose romantically?”

“Hardly got down on one knee, now, did I?” Rhyme muttered.

Sachs said, “I think it was, ‘There seems to be no objective or practical reason for not getting married. What’s your input on the subject?’ ”

Archer laughed.

Rhyme frowned. “Nothing funny about that. I gave an accurate assessment of the situation, coupled with a request for further data that might be helpful in reaching a conclusion. Made perfect sense to me.”

Archer was glancing at Sachs’s left hand. “I was noticing your ring. Beautiful.”

Sachs held up her ring finger, displaying the two-carat blue stone. “Lincoln picked it. It’s from Australia.”

“Sapphire?”

“No, a diamond.”

“Not particularly valuable,” Rhyme said analytically. “But rare. A class two-b. I was intrigued by the color. Blue because of scattered boron in the matrix. A semiconductor, by the way. The only diamond that has that characteristic.”

“You having a honeymoon?”

Rhyme said, “I was thinking Nassau. The last time I was in the Bahamas I was almost shot and almost drowned. Both within five minutes. I’d like to go back and have a more peaceful time of it. And there’s friend I’d like to see. His wife makes excellent conch fritters.”

“I expect an invite to the wedding.”

Sachs tilted her head. “There’re some openings for the wedding party.”

“Just ask, I’ll be there.”

The doorbell buzzed. Rhyme glanced at the screen. Archer’s brother had arrived to pick her up. Thom let Randy into the room. He greeted Rhyme and Sachs with a nod and hurried to his sister. “You all right, Jule? Your face!”

“No, no, it’s okay. A little bruised.”

Archer turned her chair to Rhyme. “I’m going out of character again.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

She rose from the chair, walked to Rhyme and put her arms around him, hugged hard. At least, that was his deduction, since he couldn’t feel the pressure. A similar embrace for Sachs, then she dropped back into the Storm Arrow and, with her brother behind, wheeled out.

“Back tomorrow early,” Rhyme called.

He laughed as she lifted her left arm and gave a thumbs-up.

When they’d left Rhyme said, “I talked to your mom. She’s in good spirits. When’s the surgery?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

He observed her wan face, peering out the window. “The other situation?” He was referring to Nick. The other night she’d told him everything about his reappearance — and her suspicion of him, that she’d spent the night at Nick’s to place a tracking app on his phone.

A preface like that, Sachs? Pray continue...

No reaction for a moment. She was immobile, looking out over Central Park.

“Turned out the way I was afraid it would. Worse, actually. He tried to order a hit on somebody.”

Rhyme grimaced and shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Fred’ll run him for a while. We’ll get half-dozen others, high-ups in the OC chain. Then cut him loose.”

“One thing you never told me, Sachs.”

The rattan chair she sat in gave its unique caw as she turned his way. She tilted her head, brushed her hair back. Rhyme liked her wearing it down, rather than in a bun.

“What’s that?”

“Why did you get suspicious of Nick? Everything he told you, how he acted... it sounded credible. To me, at least.”

After a moment she said, “Intuition. How you hate that word, I know. But that’s what it was. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Something was off about him. It was Mom who brought it into focus. Nick said he took the fall for his brother. But she said that if he’d really cared for me, he never would’ve done that. Nick was a decorated cop; he had cred all over downtown. His brother gets busted, he could’ve worked with the DA on sentencing, helped Donnie get into a program in prison. Organized an operation to nail Delgado — that was all a lie, by the way, but I didn’t know it at first. But he wouldn’t have taken the fall.” She smiled, her full lips, free of color, forming a mild crescent. “Didn’t have a splinter of evidence, just a gut feel.”

“No,” Rhyme said. “Not gut. Heart. Sometimes that’s better than evidence.”

She blinked.

“But you didn’t hear me say that, Sachs. You never heard me say that.”

“I better get to Mom.” She kissed his mouth hard. “That woman’s got to get well fast. I miss sleeping here.”

“I miss that too, Sachs. I really do.”

Chapter 60

Rhyme looked up from his monitor, on which he was engaged in a chess match against a smart, but largely unimaginative computer program.

He said to the visitor dawdling in the parlor doorway, “Come on in.” And to the microprocessor: “White queen to e-seven. Check.”

Rhyme let the software cogitate on that move and wheeled away from the work station, facing Ron Pulaski. “Where’ve you been, Rookie? You missed the climax, the crescendo, the denouement of the Griffith case. Here you are, arriving for the coda. How dull.”

“Well, that other case. I was multitasking.”

“Do you know how much I detest that word, Pulaski? Using ‘task’ as a verb is as mortifying as using ‘ask’ as a noun. Unacceptable. And tacking on the prefix ‘multi’ is unnecessary. ‘Tasking,’ if you’re going to accept it as a predicate, includes a single endeavor or a dozen.”

“Lincoln, we live in the era of the—”

“If you say ‘sound bite,’ I will not be happy.”

“—the, uhm, era of the frequent use of a contracted phrase or single word to convey a complex concept. That’s what I was going to say.”

A stifled laugh and he reminded himself not to sell the kid short. Rhyme needed someone to ground him.

But through the repartee Rhyme could see he had something important on his mind. “You heard from Amelia? About Griffith?” Rhyme asked.

A nod. Ron sat in the rattan chair. “Sad character. Sad story.”

“Was, yes. But in the eyes of the law, revenge is no more acceptable as a motive than sexual lust or terrorism. Now I’m tired of being pretentious. Since the case is over, there’s no reason for you to be here. So. What’s up?”

The young officer’s eyes remained on a miniature dresser of Griffith’s. Then he looked at a kitchen table. He studied this until, apparently, it was time to talk.

“The other case.”

“Gutiérrez.”

Pulaski looked at him. “The way you said that, Lincoln. You know it wasn’t Gutiérrez.”

“I made the supposition. Wasn’t hard.”

“Jenny calls me transparent.”

“A bit of that in you, Rookie, yes. Not that it’s bad.”

Pulaski didn’t seem to care if it was good or bad. “The other case?”

“Go on.”

“It was the Baxter case.” Accompanied by an unnecessary glance at the whiteboard in the corner, whose back was turned to them. Like an angry spouse.

This revelation Rhyme had not guessed. Ideas formed, but it was his colleague, not Rhyme, who had center stage.

“I went through the case files. I know it was closed but I went through them anyway. And I found some loose ends.”

Rhyme recalled Archer’s questioning observations: Why the outside storage space that Baxter had neglected to tell investigators about. But again Pulaski was the player at bat. Rhyme asked, “Which were?”

“Well, one was pretty interesting. I looked over the detectives’ notes and got the names of everybody Baxter met with over the past year or so. One in particular seemed interesting. Someone named Oden.”

“Never heard of him.”

“The name was in a transcription of a witness’s statement so they wrote O-D-E-N. Turns out the name was actually O apostrophe D-E-N-N-E.”

“Irish not a misspelled Norse deity,” Rhyme observed.

“I asked around, checked more notes. There wasn’t much. But I did find this O’Denne had some connection to the drug world in Brooklyn. He was behind some kind of new drug people were talking about it on the streets. Synthetic. Seemed like the name was Catch. But detectives on the case never pursued the lead. I guessed it was because Baxter...”

“You can say it, Rookie. Died.”

“That’s right. But I did. I followed up.”

“Unofficially?”

“Sort of.”

“She’s sort of pregnant.”

“Finally got an ID. O’Denne was in East New York. Why would Baxter — a financial bigwig — have anything to do with this gangbanger in East New York? I went to talk to O’Denne and find out—”

“—if Baxter was more than just a scam artist.”

“Exactly. I wanted to prove he was bankrolling this new drug. That he’d actually used the gun you found — that he’d killed people. The evidence was ambiguous, remember, Lincoln. There were questions. Maybe he was dangerous.”

Rhyme said softly, “So then it would have been proper procedure for him to go into Violent Offender Detention.”

Pulaski nodded. “So you wouldn’t’ve been responsible for an innocent man’s death; you’d’ve put a dangerous perp away. And if I could show you that, then you’d give up this bullshit about retirement. Which it really is, Lincoln.”

Rhyme exhaled a faint laugh. “Well, quite the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, Rookie. And what’s the answer?”

“My brother and I tracked down O’Denne. East BK.”

A raised eyebrow.

“He’s a priest, Lincoln.”

“A...”

“Father Francis Xavier O’Denne. He runs a storefront clinic in Brownsville. The drug he was connected with?” He shook his head with a grim smile. “A new form of methadone to treat addicts. And it’s not called ‘Catch.’ That’s the name of Father O’Denne’s clinic. Community Action Treatment Center for Hope.” Pulaski sighed. “And Baxter? He was one of the main benefactors of the place.”

So the gun was Baxter’s father’s, a souvenir from one of the milestones in the man’s life. And the gunshot residue came from a stray twenty-dollar bill, the drugs from that or another bill. The oil from the sporting goods store where he’d bought his son the last present he would ever buy for the boy.

“And, I guess I’ll tell you everything, Lincoln. The center may have to close, if Father O’Denne can’t find somebody else to back it.”

“So, I’m responsible not only for an innocent man’s death but for preventing how many people from getting off the street and into productive lives?”

“Shit. I just wanted to help, Lincoln. Get you back on the job. But... well, that’s what I found.”

That’s the thing about science; you can’t ignore the facts.

Rhyme turned his chair and looked again at the tiny pieces of furniture that Vernon Griffith had so carefully and perfectly created.

“Anyway,” Pulaski said. “I understand now.”

“Understand what?”

“Why you’re doing this. Retiring. If I’d I fucked up, I’d probably do the same thing. Back out. Quit the force. Take up something else.”

Rhyme kept his eyes on Vernon Griffith’s miniatures. He said in a gusty voice, “Bad choice.”

“I... What?”

“Quitting because of a screw-up — a thoroughly bad idea.”

Pulaski’s bows narrowed. “Okay, Lincoln. I don’t get it. What’re you saying?”

“You know who I was talking to an hour ago?”

“No clue.”

“Lon Sellitto. I was asking him if there were any cases he needed some help on.”

“Cases? Criminal?”

“Last time I looked he wasn’t a social worker, Rookie. Of course criminal.” He wheeled around to face the young officer.

“Well, I hope you can understand why I’m a little confused.”

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of narrow minds.”

“I like Emerson too, Lincoln. And I think it was ‘little minds.’ ”

Was it? Probably. Rhyme nodded in concession.

“But that still doesn’t explain why.”

Lincoln Rhyme suspected the answer was this: If you tallied up all the reasons for not pursuing what you know in your heart you’re meant to pursue, you’d be absolutely — he relished the word — paralyzed. Which simply meant that you had to ignore every voice within clamoring for you to quit, to retire, to hesitate or pause or question, whether it was a clue that stymied you or exhaustion tempting you to rest or the stunner that a man lay dead in a grave that you had thoughtlessly dug for him.

But he said, “I don’t have a clue, Rookie. None at all. But there it is. So go clear your calendar. I’ll need you in early tomorrow morning. You and Amelia. We’ve got to finish up the Unsub Forty case and then see what else Lon has on the — forgive me — front burner.”

“Sure, Lincoln. Good.”

As he headed out the door, Pulaski was blushing and the look on his face was best described as beaming.

Which was a form of expression that Rhyme believed no one should ever succumb to.