The Steel Kiss

“So. What we have. He’s got this thing for products, for consumer products that we get into our houses and turn on us. Now, my take? He’s agendizing in two ways.”

“What did you say?” Rhyme started, reflexively.

“I’m fucking with you, Linc. Couldn’t resist. Been months without you breaking my balls with a grammar lesson. Pardon my French.” Directed at Archer.

She smiled.

Sellitto continued: “Okay. He’s got two agendas. Using the controller things to make a statement or to target rich people who buy expensive shit or whatever. That’s his weapon of choice. Fucked up but there it is. Agenda two: self-defense. He needs to stop people who’re after him. I.e., us. Well, you. He’s been at the scenes to type in the code to work the controller, right?”

“Right,” Archer said. “You can hack into the cloud server from anywhere in the world. But he seems to want to be close. We think he may have some moral element—making sure he doesn’t hurt kids or maybe poorer folks who don’t spend lots of money on indulgent products.”

“Or,” Sachs said, “he gets turned on by watching.”

“Well, that means he might’ve stayed around to see who was after him. The Evidence Collection Team, you—Amelia and Ron.”

“I was at a scene too,” Rhyme said. “When he destroyed the office of the man who taught him how to hack the controllers.” He grimaced. “And he saw Evers Whitmore there. The lawyer.”

“He on the force?” Sellitto asked.

“No, a lawyer. I was working with him—the civil case, the escalator accident. Before we knew it was a homicide.”

Sellitto sipped coffee, then added another sugar. “Wouldn’t be hard for your unsub to ID him. And you, you’re too public, Linc. Easy to track you down and all your little chickies. I’d get protective details on everybody. I can handle that.”

Rhyme ordered the computer to print out Whitmore’s address and phone. Sellitto reminded that he had Cooper’s and Sachs’s personal information and he’d get a detail to their residences. Archer said it was unlikely she was at risk but Rhyme was emphatic. “I want somebody at your brother’s anyway. Unlikely doesn’t mean impossible. From now on, we all have to assume we’re in his sights.”

* * *

On the agenda for today: The People’s Guardian has more mischief planned.

And a beautiful day for it too.

I’ve spent some time with Alicia, comforting her. She’s off to do some work (she’s a bookkeeper, a sort-of accountant, though I couldn’t tell you where she works or exactly what she does. Fact is, she’s not excited about it and therefore I’m not either. We’re not a typical couple; our lives do not, of course, completely coincide). I’m enjoying first one then a second breakfast sandwich at the window of my place in Chelsea. Tasty, full of salt. My blood pressure is so low that a doctor asked joking during a checkup if I was still alive. I smiled, though it was not really funny coming from a medico. I was inclined to crack his skull but I didn’t.

I chew the second sandwich down fast and get ready to go out.

Not quite ready for PG’s full-on assault, though; I have an errand first.

New outfit today—no cap for a change, my blond crew cut is there for the world to see. A running suit, navy blue, stripes along the legs. My sizable shoes. Nothing to do about them. I need a special size. My feet are long, like my fingers, the way my skinny body is tall. The condition is Marfan syndrome.

Hey, Vern, sack of bones…

Hey, Bean Boy…

Can’t reason with people, can’t say: Wasn’t my choice. Can’t say, God blinked. Or He played a joke. Doesn’t work to point out that Abraham Lincoln was one of us. Doesn’t work to say what’s the big deal?

So you let it go, the taunts. The punches. The pictures slipped in your locker.

Until you choose not to let it go. Red’s partner, this Lincoln Rhyme, his body’s betrayed him and he copes. A productive member of society. Good for him. I’m taking a different path.

Backpack over my shoulder, I head out onto the street, radiant on this glorious spring day. Funny how beauty fills the world when you’re a mission.

So. I go west toward the river and the closer I get to the gray Hudson the farther back in time I go. Chelsea east and central, near me, is apartments and boutiques and chic and New York Times—reviewed restaurants. To the far west it’s industrial—like it was in the 1800s, I imagine. I see the building I’m looking for. I pause, pull on cloth gloves and on the prepaid I make a call.

“Everest Graphics,” a voice answers.

“Yes, Edwin Boyle, please. It’s an emergency.”

“Oh. Hold on.”

Three minutes, three solid minutes, I wait. How long would it be if this weren’t an emergency—which it isn’t but never mind.

“Hello, this is Edwin Boyle. Who’s this?”

“Detective Peter Falk. NYPD.” Not so much into TV, no, but I loved Columbo.

“Oh. What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry to report your apartment’s been broken into.”

“No! What happened? Druggies? Those kids hanging out on the street?”

“We don’t know, sir. We’d like you take a look and tell us what’s missing. How soon can you be here?”