The Steel Kiss

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.”

* * *