The Steel Kiss

“Well observed, Mr. Rhyme. You should have gone to law school. So, there we have our situation in a nutshell.”

Rhyme said, “In other words, find out how a complex device failed and who’s responsible for that failure without having access to it, the supporting documentation or even photographs or analysis of the accident?”

“And that is well put too.” Whitmore seemed to be debating a matter. He added, “Detective Sachs said you were rather creative when it came to approaching a problem like this.”

How creative could one be without the damn evidence? Absurd, Rhyme thought again. The whole thing was completely…

Then a thought occurred. He turned toward the doorway. “Thom! Thom! Where are you?”

Footsteps and a moment later the aide appeared. “Is everything all right?”

“Fine, fine, fine. Why wouldn’t it be? I just need something.”

“And what’s that?”

“A tape measure. And the sooner the better.”

CHAPTER 7

Ironic.

One Police Plaza is considered to be among the ugliest government structures in New York City, yet it offers some of the finest views in downtown Manhattan: the harbor, the East River, the soaring “Let the River Run” skyline of New York at its most muscular. By contrast, the original police headquarters on Centre Street is arguably the most elegant building south of Houston Street, but, in the day, officers stationed there could look out only on tenements, butchers, fishmongers, prostitutes, ne’er-do-wells and muggers lying in wait (police officers were, at the time, prime targets for thieves, who valued their wool uniforms and brass buttons).

Walking into her office now in the Major Cases Division at One PP, Amelia Sachs was gazing out the speckled windows as she reflected on this fact. Thinking too: She couldn’t have cared less about either the building’s architectural aesthetics or the view. What she objected to was that she plied her investigative skills here and not from Lincoln Rhyme’s town house.

Hell.

Not happy about his resigning from the police consulting business, not happy at all. Personally she missed the stimulation of the give-and-take, the head-butting, the creativity that flourished from the gestalt. Her life had become like studying at an online university: The information was the same but the process of loading it into your brain was diminished.

Cases weren’t progressing. Homicides, in particular, Rhyme’s specialty, were not getting solved. The Rinaldo case, for instance, had been on her docket for about a month and was going nowhere. A killing on the West Side south of Midtown. Echi Rinaldo, a drug dealer in a Latino Harlem crew, had been slashed to death, and slashed vigorously. The street had been filthy, so the inventory of trace was voluminous and therefore not very helpful: cigarette butts, a roach clip with a bit of pot still clinging, food wrappers, coffee cups, a wheel from a child’s toy, beer cans, a condom, scraps of paper, receipts, a hundred other items of effluvia common to New York City streets. None of the fingerprint or footprint evidence she’d found at the scene had panned out.

The only other lead was a witness—the deceased’s son. Well, witness of sorts. The eight-year-old hadn’t seen the killer himself but had only heard the assailant jump into a taxi or gypsy cab and give an address, which included the word “Village.” A male voice. More likely white than black or Latino. Sachs had exhausted her interview skills to get the boy to recall more but he was, understandably, upset, seeing his father stagger from the alley, cascading with blood. A canvass of cabs and gypsy drivers revealed nothing. And Greenwich Village covered dozens of square miles.

But she was convinced that Rhyme could have reviewed the mass of evidence and come to a conclusion about where, in that quaint portion of Manhattan, the perp had most likely gone.

He’d said no. And had reminded coolly that he was no longer in the criminal business.

Sachs smoothed her charcoal-gray skirt, just past the knees. She’d thought she’d selected a lighter-gray blouse, to complement, but had realized on the sidewalk in front of her town house as she left that it was the taupe one. Those were her typical mornings. Much distraction.

She now reviewed emails and phone messages, decided they were neglectable and then headed up the hall, toward the conference room she’d commandeered for the Unsub 40 case.

Thinking again about Rhyme.

Resigned.

Hell…

She glanced up and noted the head of a young detective, walking the opposite way, turn toward her suddenly. She realized she must have uttered the word aloud.

She gave him a smile, to prove she wasn’t deranged, and dodged into her war room, small, set up with two fiberboard tables, twin computers, one desk and a whiteboard on which details of the case were jotted in marker.