The Steel Kiss

“No. Sorry. I really wish I could help.”

“You’re doing great. Clothes?”

She shook her head. “Other than the jacket and hat, no.”

Sachs asked Rodriguez, “Security video?” Guessing the answer.

“It loops every day.”

Yep, like she’d thought. It would’ve already overwritten any footage of their perp.

Turning back to Charlotte. “You’ve been a big help.” Sachs directed the next comment to both of them. “I need you to tell everybody who works here that we’re looking for this man. If he comes back, call nine one one. And add that he’s suspect in a homicide.”

“Homicide,” Charlotte whispered, looking both horrified and delighted.

“That’s right. I’m Detective Five-Eight-Eight-Five. Sachs.” She handed cards to the manager and to Charlotte. The woman gazed at it as if the tiny bit of cardboard were a huge tip. She wore a wedding band and Sachs supposed she was already relishing the dinner table conversation tonight. Sachs looked from one to the other. “But don’t call me. Call nine one one and mention my name. There’ll be a squad car here faster than I could get here. You’re going to have to act like nothing’s going on. Just serve him like normal, then when he sits down, call us. Okay? Don’t do anything other than that. I can rely on you?”

“Oh, you bet, Detective,” Charlotte said, a private acknowledging a general’s orders.

“I’ll make sure of it,” Rodriguez, the manager, said. “That everybody knows.”

“There are other White Castles in the area. He might go there too. Could you tell the managers the same thing?”

“Sure.”

Sachs looked out of the window, free of grime, and surveyed the wide street. It was lined with shops, restaurants and apartments. Any one of the stores could have sold things that clanked and stowed them in white plastic bags for customers to take home…  or to a murder site.

Rodriguez offered, “Hey, Detective…  Take some sliders. On me.”

“We can’t take complimentary food.”

“But doughnuts… ”

Sachs smiled. “That’s a myth.” She glanced at the grill. “But I’ll pay for one.”

Charlotte frowned. “You better get two. They’re pretty small.”

They were. But they were also damn good. And so was the milk shake. She finished her breakfast/lunch in all of three minutes. And stepped outside.

From her pocket she extracted her cell phone then called Ron Pulaski. There was no answer on the landline at the Unsub 40 war room at One PP. She tried his mobile. Voice mail. She left a message.

Okay, we canvass solo. Sachs started onto the sidewalk, swept by punchy wind from the overcast sky.

Tall man, pale man, skinny man, white bag. He’d been shopping. Start with hardware stores. Sawdust, varnish.

Ball-peen hammers.

Blunt force trauma.

CHAPTER 9

Lincoln Rhyme had forgotten completely that Juliette Archer, his forensic student, was arriving today to begin her informal internship.

She was the visitor who’d come a-calling. Under other circumstances he might have enjoyed her company. But now his immediate thought was how to get rid of her.

Archer directed her Storm Arrow chair around the escalator and into the parlor, braking smartly in front of the lattice of wires covering the floor. She apparently wasn’t used to tooling over snaky cables but then, probably concluding that Rhyme would have driven over them regularly without damage, she did the same.

“Hello, Lincoln.”

“Juliette.”

Thom nodded to her.

“Juliette Archer. I’m a student in Lincoln’s class.”

“I’m his caregiver. Thom Reston.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

A moment later came a second buzzer and Thom went to answer the door. He and a burly man in his thirties entered the parlor. The second visitor was dressed in a business suit, pale-blue shirt and tie. The top button of the shirt was undone and the tie pulled loose. Rhyme never understood that look.

The man nodded a greeting to all but directed his gaze at Archer. “Jule, you didn’t wait. I asked you to wait.”

Archer said, “This is my brother, Randy.” Rhyme recalled she was staying with him and his wife because her loft downtown was being modified to make it more accessible. The couple also happened to live conveniently near John Marshall College.

Randy said, “It’s a steep ramp out front.”

“I’ve done steeper,” she said.

Rhyme knew the tendency of people to mother, or baby, those with severe disabilities. The practice drove him crazy, as it apparently did Archer, as well. He wondered if she’d eventually grow immune to coddling; he never had.

Well, he thought, the brother’s presence settled the matter. No way were two people—amateurs no less—hanging out here while he and Mel Cooper struggled to make a case against the manufacturer or the mall or whoever had been responsible for the death of Sandy Frommer’s husband.

“Present, as promised,” Archer said, eyes taking in the parlor-cum-lab. “Well. Look at this. The equipment, instruments. And a scanning electron microscope? I’m impressed. Power problems?”

Rhyme didn’t answer. Any words might discourage their rapid exit.