The Steel Kiss

He adjusted the chair slightly. They were now facing each other. “I didn’t make a mistake at all. I was one hundred percent accurate.” He sipped from the tumbler of Glenmorangie that Thom had poured ten minutes before. He nodded toward the liquor and then turned to Archer but again she declined a beverage. He continued, “The suspect—a businessman named Charles Baxter…  You ever hear of him?”

“No.”

“The case was in the news. Baxter defrauded a few rich folks out of about ten million that, frankly, they would hardly’ve noticed. It’s all about the decimal point, of course. Who really cared? But that’s not the prosecutor’s—or my—call. Baxter broke the law and the assistant district attorney brought the case, got me on board to help find the cash and analyze the physical evidence—handwriting, ink, GPS logs that let us follow him to banks, trace evidence from where the meetings took place, false identity documents, soil from where money was buried. It was easy to run. I found plenty of admissible evidence to support grand theft, wire fraud, a few other counts. The ADA was happy. The perp was looking at three to five years, soft time.

“But there were some questions about the evidence that I didn’t find the answers to. Eating at me. I kept analyzing, getting more and more evidence. The prosecutor said don’t bother; she had all she needed for the conviction she was after. But I couldn’t stop.

“I found a very small amount of lubricant in his personal effects, oil that’s used almost exclusively in firearms. And some gunshot residue. And several different kinds of trace that led to a particular location in Long Island City. There was a big self-storage facility in the neighborhood. The detective I was working with found that Baxter had a unit there. Baxter didn’t tell us about it because there was nothing there that had to do with the financial fraud, just personal things. But we got a warrant and found an unregistered handgun. That moved the charge up to a different class of felony and, even though the ADA didn’t want to pursue it—Baxter had no history of violence—she didn’t have any choice. Firearms possession carries a mandatory sentence in New York. DAs have to prosecute it.”

Archer said, “He killed himself. Facing that.”

“No. He went to the violent felons’ wing on Rikers Island, got into a fight and was killed by another prisoner.”

The facts sat between them, in silence, for a moment.

“You did everything right,” Archer said, her voice analytical, not softened to convey reassurance.

“Too right,” Rhyme said.

“But the gun? He shouldn’t have had it.”

“Well, yes and no. True, it was unregistered so it technically fell within the law. But it was his father’s from Vietnam. He’d never shot it, he claimed. Didn’t even know he still had it. It was just stored away with a bunch of memorabilia from the sixties. The gun oil I’d found he said he probably picked up at a sporting goods store buying a present for his son a week before. The gunshot residue could have been transferred from the cash. The same with the drugs. Half the twenties in the New York metro area have traces of cocaine, meth and heroin on them and a lot also have GSR. Gunshot residue. He never tested positive for any controlled substances and he’d never been arrested on any drug charges. Never been arrested before at all.” Rhyme offered what he knew was a rare smile. “Gets worse. One of the reasons for the fraud—his daughter needed a bone marrow transplant.”

“Ah. I’m sorry. But…  You were a cop. Isn’t that the cost of doing business?”

Exactly Amelia Sachs’s argument. She might have used those very words. Rhyme couldn’t remember.

“It is. And am I traumatized and lying—well, sitting—in a therapist’s office? No. But there comes a time when you get off the carousel. Everything comes to an end.”

“You needed to find the solution.”

“Had to have it.”

“I understand that, Lincoln. Epidemiology’s the same. There’s always a question—what’s the virus, where’s it going to hit next, how do you inoculate, who’s susceptible? — and I always had to find the answer.” She’d loved the field of epidemiology, she’d told him when first asking about being his intern. But she could hardly continue to be a field agent. And the office work in that endeavor was far too uniform and boring to hold her attention. Crime scene, even in the lab, she reasoned, would keep her engaged. As with Rhyme, boredom was a demon to Juliette Archer.

She continued, “I got dengue fever once. Pretty serious. I had to find out how the mosquitoes were infecting people in Maine, of all places. You know dengue’s a tropical disease.”

“Don’t know much about it.”

“How on earth could people in New England get dengue? I searched for months. Finally found the answer: a rain forest exhibit in a zoo. I traced the victims back to visits to the place. And, wouldn’t you know, I got bit while I was there.”

Character is fate…