The Steel Kiss

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.”