The Steel Kiss

“No hurry, Detective. It takes a while to convene the board, and it looks like you’ve got some other tasks on your plate.” Madino was looking down into the pit once more. “God bless you, Detective. Not a lot of people would’ve gone down there.”

Sachs rechambered the ejected round. Officers from the 84 had cordoned off both of these escalators, so she turned and hurried toward the elevators on her way to the basement, where she’d help search for Unsub 40. But she paused when Buddy Everett approached.

“He’s gone, Amelia. Out of the building.” His dark-red frames both enhanced and jarred.

“How?”

“Loading dock.”

“We had people there, I thought. Rent-a-cops if not ours.”

“He called, the unsub, he shouted from around the corner near the dock, said the perp was in a storage area. Bring their cuffs, Mace or whatever. You know rentals? They love a chance to play real cop. Everybody went running to the storeroom. He strolled right out. Video shows him—new jacket, dark sport coat, fedora—climbing down the dock ladder and running through the truck parking zone.”

“Going where?”

“Narrow-focus camera. No idea.”

She shrugged. “Subways? Buses?”

“Nothing on CCTV. Probably walked or took a cab.”

To one of the eighty-five million places he might go.

“Dark jacket, you said? Sport coat?”

“We canvassed the shops. But nobody saw anybody with his build buy anything. Don’t have his face.”

“Think we can get prints from the ladder? At the dock?”

“Oh, the vid shows he put gloves on before he climbed down.”

Smart. This boy is smart.

“One thing. He was carrying his cup and what seemed like some food wrappers. We looked but he didn’t drop ’em that we could find.”

Starbucks maybe. “I’ll get an ECT on it.”

“Hey, how’d it go with Captain White Tie? Oh, did I say that?”

She smiled. “If you said it I didn’t hear it.”

“He’s already planning how to redecorate his office in the governor’s mansion.”

Explained the posh outfit. Brass with aspirations. Good to have on your side.

God bless you…

“Fine. Looks like he’s backing me up on the weapons issue.”

“He’s a decent guy. Just promise you’ll vote for him.”

“Keep up the canvass,” Sachs told him.

“Will do.”

Sachs was approached by an inspector with the fire department and gave a statement on the escalator accident. Twenty minutes later the Evidence Collection Team assigned to the Unsub 40 case arrived from the NYPD’s massive Crime Scene complex in Queens. She greeted them, two thirty-ish African American techs, man and woman, she worked with from time to time. They wheeled heavy suitcases toward the escalator.

“Uh-uh,” Sachs told them. “That was an accident. The Department of Investigations’ll be coordinating that with the Eight-Four. I need you to walk the grid at Starbucks.”

“What happened there?” the woman officer asked, looking over the coffee shop.

“A serious crime,” her partner offered. “Price of a frappuccino.”

“Our unsub sat down for a late lunch. Some table in the back, you’ll have to ask where. Tall, thin. Green checkered jacket and Atlanta baseball cap. But there won’t be much. He took his cup and wrappers with him.”

“Hate it when they don’t leave their DNA lying around.”

“True, that.”

Sachs said, “But I think he ditched the litter somewhere close.”

“You have any idea where?” the woman asked.

Looking over the staff in Starbucks, Sachs had, in fact, had an inspiration. “Maybe. But it’s not in the mall. I’ll check that out myself. You handle Starbucks.”

“Always loved you, Amelia. You give us the nice and fuzzy and you take the dark ’n’ cold.”

She crouched and pulled a blue Tyvek jumpsuit out of the case one of the ECTs had just opened.

“Standard operating procedure, right, Amelia? Bundle up everything and get it to Lincoln’s town house?”

Sachs’s face was stony as she said, “No, ship everything back to Queens. I’m running the case from downtown.”

The two ECTs regarded each other briefly and then looked back to Sachs. The woman asked, “He’s okay? Rhyme?”

“Oh, you didn’t hear?” Sachs said tersely. “Lincoln’s not working for the NYPD anymore.”

CHAPTER 3

The answer is there.”

A pause as the words echoed off the glossy, scuffed walls, their color academia green. That is, bile.

“The answer. It may be obvious, like a bloody knife emblazoned with the perp’s fingerprints and DNA, inscribed with his initials and a quotation from his favorite poet. Or obscure, nothing more three invisible ligands—and what is a ligand? Anyone?”

“Olfactory molecules, sir.” A shaky male voice.

Lincoln Rhyme continued, “Obscure, I was saying. The answer may be in three olfactory molecules. But it is there. The connection between the killer and killee that can lead us to his door and persuade the jury to relocate him to a new home for twenty to thirty years. Someone give me Locard’s Principle.”