The Steel Kiss

A pause. Archer said, “He might’ve gone inside there to check out the brand of microwave before the attack. We know he was in the Theater District earlier.”

“I didn’t need to search it.” Sachs, studying the bits of sawdust, answered absently.

Archer looked from Sachs to Rhyme. “Don’t you think… ” she began, implicitly questioning Sachs’s decision.

The detective replied, “The workshop has a two-day-looping security video. Lot of souvenir thieves in theaters in New York. I had the security company review it. The perp wasn’t inside on any of the existing tape…  and the floors’re mopped every night.”

“Oh. I—”

Sachs said, “It was a reasonable question. And in a perfect world with unlimited resources I would have searched it. You play the odds.”

Rhyme would probably have had someone search the scene. But Sachs was right about resources. Besides, he wasn’t taking one woman’s side against the other.

Rhyme: “Mel? What else?”

Cooper found more trace and examined it. “More glass splinters, probably from the same batch as before, and more glazing compound.”

“What’s that? In that bag?” A tiny plastic one.

“A fleck of something… ”

“Let me see.”

Cooper mounted it and projected the image onto the screen. It looked like a tiny opaque fish scale. A piece of the mahogany sawdust was stuck to it. Cooper said, “I can GC it. But there’s not enough to preserve for court.”

Rhyme said, “We’ll have plenty of evidence to make a case against him. But we have to find him first.” A nod toward Mel. “Burn it.”

Cooper ran the sample through the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer. A few moments later he scanned the computer screen. “Ammonium rhodanide and dicyandiamide, urea, collagen.”

Rhyme said, “Glue of some sort. I’ll bet used in woodworking.”

“That’s it,” Cooper said, after running the quantities of the found substances through a database. “Bond-Strong liquid hide glue. Mostly for musical instruments but woodworkers in any field use it.”

Archer leaned forward, stony-faced, staring at the evidence bags. “Instrument making? What do we think?”

Rhyme was doubtful. “That’s a rare hobby or profession. And if so he’d probably be a musician too. But we haven’t found any other trace that suggests that. No resin from strings, no horsehair from violin or cello bows—they shed hairs abundantly, by the way. No tuning gear lubricants. No felt from bridges. No callus skin cells sloughed off—from fretboard or fingerboard use.”

“You’re a musician, Lincoln?” Archer asked. “I mean, were a musician?”

“Never touched an instrument.”

“How do you know all that?”

“It ways to know the tools of the trade of potential perps and potential victims. Minimize the time you need to look up sources. It might make the difference between collaring the unsub and attending his next crime scene. So I’m leaning in favor of furniture making or fine carpentry. But: hobby or profession? Don’t know. And what exactly does he make with his varnish and glue and sandpaper and exotic woods? Keep going, Mel.”

“A bit of vegetation,” he called. “Stem or a leaf.”

Rhyme looked it over. He laughed. “Then sometimes, Archer, despite all your diligent homework, you don’t have a goddamn idea what you’ve found. Send a picture of the cellular structure and color temperature to the Horticultural Society Research Databank.”

Cooper emailed jpgs of the sample to the HSRD. “Should have it back within a day or so,” he said, reading the return email.

“Light a fire,” Rhyme snapped. “Urgent, life or death…  Don’t care about John Doe’s doctoral thesis on Venus flytraps. This has priority.”

Cooper sent a follow-up and then turned back to the bags. “Okay, something else. A fragment of plastic with some printing on it. Too small to make out any letters.”

“Put it up.”

Gazing at the screen, Rhyme could see instantly that it was wire insulation. “Our boy’s done some electrical work. The wire’s cut with a razor knife. Don’t you think, Sachs?”

But she was looking at her phone, reading a text.

Archer said, “So he’s not a pro.”

“Why would you say that?”

“A pro would use a stripping tool, not a knife. Those plier-like things, I’d think.”

“Good. Yes. But let’s say probably not a pro. He might’ve had to leave his regular tool belt at home and found he had only a sharp blade to do some work with. Or, non-pro with two question marks?”

Archer smiled. Cooper started to write. Rhyme said, “That was a joke.”

He regarded the chart. Too many mysteries here. Rhyme decided to get some outside analysis from an expert and had the digitized files and photographs uploaded to a secure server, then sent the link to the man he had in mind. A moment later a text came back.

Yah, yah. Tomorrow.

Amused at the irreverence but irritated that he had to wait, he texted back, “K. I guess.”

He thought: Well, beggars can’t be…  But shot the cliché dead before he completed it. And turned his chair to the parlor doorway as he detected the footfall of Ron Pulaski, who’d just let himself in with a key.