The Steel Kiss

The room was filled with cooking gas! That rotten-egg stink. There was something wrong with the stove. Get the hell out! Call 911. But get out first.

Holding his breath, he instinctively reached for the bedside lamp and clicked it on.

He froze, his fingers gripping the switch Are you out of your mind? But the light didn’t, as he’d thought in a moment of icy panic, set the gas off and blow the apartment to pieces. He didn’t know what might do that but apparently a lightbulb wasn’t sufficient. Hand shaking, he shut the bulb out before it got hotter.

Okay, he thought, stumbling to his feet, the danger’s not explosions—not yet. But you’re going to suffocate if you don’t get out. Now. He pulled his robe on, feeling dizzy. He dropped to his knees and breathed slowly. Still, the stink, sure, but it wasn’t as bad lower, near the floor. Whatever was in natural gas, it seemed to be lighter than air and at the ground level he could breathe all right. He did this several times and then rose.

Clutching his phone, he made his way through the darkened apartment, picking his route thanks to the ample illumination from outside, washing through the ten-foot-high windows, unobstructed by curtains. His wife insisted on this and, though he didn’t care much for the glare and the lack of privacy, he silently thanked her for it now. He was sure that if there’d been curtains he might’ve stumbled in the dark, knocking over a lamp or some furniture, metal against stone…  producing a spark that would ignite the gas.

Benkoff made it down the hall to the living room.

The smell was growing stronger. What the hell had happened? A broken pipe? Just his place or the entire floor? Or the entire building? He remembered the story of an apartment in Brooklyn where a gas main explosion had leveled the five-story structure, killing six people.

His head was growing lighter and lighter. Would he faint before he got to the front door? He had to pass the kitchen, where the gas probably was coming from. The fumes would be greatest there. Maybe he could open one of the windows in the den—he was just outside the doorway—and suck in more air.

No, just keep going. Most important, get out!

And resist making a phone call to the fire department now. The phone might ignite the gas. Just keep going. Fast, fast.

Dizzier, dizzier.

Whatever happened, he was so very glad that Ruth wasn’t home. Pure luck that she’d decided to stay in Connecticut after her business meetings.

Thank you for that, he thought to a generic god. Abe Benkoff hadn’t been to temple in twenty years. A lapse that would end next Friday, he decided—if he got out of here.

Then into the hallway and staggering toward the front door. He stumbled once, dropped the phone, snagged it and began to crawl again. He’d get outside, slam the door, behind him. Hit the fire alarm, warning the other tenants, and dial 911.

Twenty feet, ten.

The fumes weren’t so bad here in the front hallway of the apartment, some distance from the stove. Ten, fifteen feet.

A man of words and numbers, a man at home in the rarified world of offices, Benkoff now became a soldier, thinking only of survival. I’m going to make it. Goddamn it, I am.

CHAPTER 27

Lincoln Rhyme was awakened by his humming phone.

The clock: 6:17 a.m.

“Answer” was the groggy command to the unit. “Yes?” Directed to the caller.

“Rhyme, another one.”

He asked Amelia Sachs, “Unsub Forty?”

“Right.”

“What happened?”

“Murray Hill. Gas explosion. Looks like he sabotaged a stove—one of the products on the list Rodney found.”

“And the vic was on the second list, the purchasers?”

“Right. Put a new kitchen in a couple of years ago. Purchase information was in the data.”

Rhyme pressed his attendant button, to summon Thom.

Sachs continued, “Victim is Abe Benkoff, fifty-eight, advertising executive.” She paused a moment. “Rhyme, he burned to death. Ron’s pulling the vic’s vitals. I’m going to get down there now, run the scene.”

They disconnected. Rhyme called Mel Cooper, summoning him back to the town house in anticipation of analyzing what Sachs would find at Benkoff’s.

Thom arrived for the morning routine and in ten minutes Rhyme was downstairs, in the parlor. He turned his chair at an oblique angle and eased toward the evidence charts, looking over the findings from the past crime scenes, concerned that there might have been something they’d missed—he’d missed—that might have let them anticipate this attack.

Murray Hill…

A fancy stove…

Gas explosion…

It was always a long shot, making an educated guess from the evidence in past crimes as to where the perp might strike in the future. In essence, doing so was dependent on the unsub’s visiting scenes to plan a crime, accidentally picking up evidence there and then depositing it at another scene, where it was discovered. Most serial killers or multiple doers weren’t so helpful.