The Steel Kiss

“Okay, Mel. Listen. Ron will give you the details. I need some napkins analyzed for friction ridges and DNA. And we need the brand name of some varnish. And the type of wood from sawdust samples.” She added firmly, for Rhyme’s sake, not Cooper’s, “I need somebody really good. As good as you.”

The last was a bit petty, sure. She didn’t care one iota.

“I’ll make a call, Amelia.”

“Thanks. Ron will send you the case number.”

“Sure, of course.”

Then Sachs heard a woman’s low voice: “Is there anything I can do?”

Rhyme was saying, “No, keep going with that analysis.”

Who was that? Sachs wondered.

Then he said, “Sachs, look—”

“I have to go, Rhyme.”

She disconnected. Reflecting that it had been years since she’d hung up on him. She remembered when. During their first case.

At that moment Sachs realized that she’d been so focused on the phone call—and on her anger at Rhyme’s “vacationing” the technician she needed—that she’d lost awareness of her surroundings: a mortal sin for any street cop—especially since she’d seen what might have been a hostile.

Then she heard them. Gritty footsteps coming up behind her, close. Her hand went to her Glock but it was too late to draw the weapon. The assailant was by then only a yard or so away.

CHAPTER 12

So. Didn’t work.” Juliette Archer was speaking of the experiment to pour Coca-Cola into the escalator, mimicking a clumsy shopper, and short-circuit the switch, opening the access panel.

“Yes, it did,” Rhyme said, drawing a frown from her and Cooper. The experiment was successful. “It simply proved a supposition contrary to what we were hoping for: that Midwest Conveyance built an escalator that was not defective in regard to spilled liquids.”

The manufacturer had considered that riders might spill drinks on their upward or downward journey and had protected the electronics and motor with a piece of plastic that turned out to be a runoff shield. The liquids would flow into a receptacle, nowhere near the servo motor that released the pin to open the access panel.

“Onward, upward.”

Rhyme ordered Cooper to continue experimenting: He was to physically strike the switch and servo motor with various objects to simulate mechanical interference: broom handle, hammer.

No response. The deadly access panel would not open.

Archer suggested the tech jump on the panel over and over again. Not a bad thought, and Rhyme told Cooper to do so, though with Thom standing by on the floor below to spot the man if he fell.

No effect. The locking pin wouldn’t retract. The bracket would not shift in position. Nothing they could do would open the door, except pressing the button intended for that purpose, the button tucked safely away in a recessed receptacle, behind a locked cover.

Thinking, thinking…

“Bugs!” Rhyme called.

“You can’t put microphones in the Department of Investigations office, Lincoln,” Cooper said uneasily.

“My mistake. ‘Bugs’ is not correct; that’s a very limited biological order. Hemiptera. Aphid or cicada, for instance. I should have been more accurate. The broader ‘insect,’ of which ‘bug’ is a subcategory. So I want insects. Although a bug would do.”

“Oh.” Cooper was relieved, though obviously confused.

“Good, Lincoln,” Archer said. “A roach could have gotten inside and shorted out the switch or the motor, sure. Midwest Conveyance should have taken that into account and built in screens. They failed to do that, so the escalator’s defective.”

“Thom! Thom, where are you?”

The aide appeared. “More soda?”

“Dead insects.”

“You found a bug in your soda? Impossible.”

“ ‘Bugs’ again,” Rhyme said with a scowl.

After the explanation Thom prowled the town house for critters—he was such a fastidious housekeeper that he had to extend the search to the storage area above the top-floor ceiling and the basement to come up with a few pathetic fly corpses and a desiccated spider.

“No roaches? I’d love a roach.”

“Oh, please, Lincoln.”

“There’s that Chinese place on the cross street…  Could you just find me one or two roaches. Dead is fine.”

With a grimace, Thom went off on his small-game hunt.

But even rehydrated, the various creatures he came back with couldn’t make the switch engage, or short out the servo motor, when they were placed against the contacts in the receptacle containing the plug.

As Cooper and Archer discussed other possible reasons the escalator could be considered legally defective, Rhyme found himself staring at the coatrack on which was hung one of Sachs’s jackets. His mind wandered back to her hard words earlier. What the hell was she so upset about? She had no particular claim on Mel Cooper. And how was he supposed to know she was having trouble with the lab?

Then his anger skidded around to himself for wasting time thinking about the frisson between him and Sachs.

Back to work.