The Steel Kiss

“Any minute,” said the young blond officer inside, looking up. He was in dark-blue NYPD uniform, sitting at the far table. Ron Pulaski was not a detective, as were most officers in the Major Cases Division. But he was the cop Amelia Sachs had wanted to work the Unsub 40 case with. They’d run scenes for years, always—until now—from Rhyme’s parlor.

Pulaski nodded at the screen. “They promised.”

Any minute…

“How much did they get?”

“Not sure. I wouldn’t expect his address and phone number. But the ECT said they had some hits. It was a good call, Amelia.”

After the disaster—the word applied in several senses: the victim’s death as well as losing Unsub 40—at the mall in Brooklyn, Sachs had methodically examined the area behind the loading dock and debated where to send the Brooklyn Evidence Collection Teams; you can’t search everywhere. One place that particularly intrigued her was a cheap Mexican restaurant whose back door opened onto a cul-de-sac near the loading dock. It was the only food venue nearby. There were other, faster ways for their unsub to have fled but Sachs concentrated the canvassing there, on the perhaps far-fetched theory that the restaurant would be more likely than other stores to have undocumented employees who’d be less cooperative, not wanting to give their names and addresses as witnesses.

As she’d guessed, no one, from manager to dishwasher, had seen the rather recognizable suspect.

Which didn’t mean he hadn’t been there, however; in the refuse bin for customers the search team had found the Starbucks cup, along with cellophane sandwich wrappers and napkins from the chain, which he’d been seen carrying as he fled.

They’d collected all the trash from that container at La Festiva, which may or may not have been a real Spanish word.

The analysis of this evidence was what they were presently awaiting.

Sachs dropped into the chair she’d wheeled here from her minuscule office. Reflecting that if they had been working out of Rhyme’s parlor, the data would have been in their hands by now. Her phone sang with an email tone. It was good news from the captain at the 84, Madino. He said there was no hurry on her shooting incident report; it was taking some time to get the Borough Shooting Team together. He added that, as she and Rhyme had discussed earlier, a few reporters had called, inquiring about the wisdom of firing a weapon in a crowded mall but Madino deflected them by saying the matter was being investigated according to department procedures and didn’t release her name. None of the journalists followed up.

All good news.

Now Pulaski’s computer offered up a ship’s-bell ding. “Okay, here it is. Evidence analysis.”

As he read, the young man’s hand went to his forehead and rubbed briefly. The scar wasn’t long but it was quite obvious today, from this angle, in this light. In the first case that he’d run with Sachs and Rhyme he’d made a mistake and the perp, a particularly vicious professional killer, had clocked him in the head. The resulting injury, which had affected his brain as well as his pride and appearance, had nearly ended his career. But determination, encouragement from his twin brother (also a cop) and Lincoln Rhyme’s persistence had kept him in blue. He still had moments of uncertainty—head injuries poison self-confidence—but he was one of the smartest and most dogged officers Sachs knew.

He sighed. “Not a whole lot.”

“What is there?”

“Trace from the Starbucks shop itself, nothing. From the Mexican restaurant: DNA from the rim of the Starbucks cup but no CODIS match.”

It’s rarely that easy.

“No friction ridges,” Pulaski said.

“What? He wore gloves in the Starbucks?”

“Looks like he used the napkin to hold the cup. The tech at CSU used vacuum and ninhydrin but only a partial showed up. From the tip. Too narrow for IAFIS.”

The national fingerprint database was comprehensive but could analyze only prints that came from the pads of fingers, not the very end.

But again she wondered: Had the evidence gone to Rhyme for analysis and not to the CSU lab in Queens, would he have been able to raise a fingerprint? The lab facility at headquarters was state-of-the-art but it wasn’t, well, it wasn’t Lincoln Rhyme’s.

“Shoeprint from Starbucks, probably his,” Pulaski read, “since it was superimposed over others and matched one on the loading dock and at the Mexican restaurant. Similar trace found in tread from the dock and restaurant. It’s a size thirteen Reebok. Daily Cushion Two Point Oh. The trace chemical profile’s here.”

She looked at the screen and read out a list of chemicals she’d never heard of. “Which is?”

Pulaski scrolled down. “Probably humus.”

“Dirt?”

The blond officer continued to read the fine print. “Humus is the penultimate degree of decomposition of organic matter.”

She recalled an exchange between Rhyme and Pulaski years ago when the rookie had used “penultimate” to mean “final,” as opposed to the proper meaning—next to last. The memory was more poignant than she wished.