The Steel Kiss

by Jeffery Deaver

  But she was convinced that Rhyme could have reviewed the mass of evidence and come to a conclusion about where, in that quaint portion of Manhattan, the perp had most likely gone.

  He'd started to help but then said no. And had reminded her coolly that he was no longer in the criminal business.

  Sachs smoothed her charcoal-gray skirt, just past the knees. She'd thought she'd selected a lighter-gray blouse, to complement, but had realized on the sidewalk in front of her town house as she left that it was the taupe one. Those were her typical mornings. Much distraction.

  She now reviewed emails and phone messages, decided they were neglectable and then headed up the hall, toward the conference room she'd commandeered for the Unsub 40 case.

  Thinking again about Rhyme.

  Resigned.

  Hell...

  She glanced up and noted a young detective, walking the opposite way, turn toward her suddenly. She realized she must have uttered the word aloud.

  She gave him a smile, to prove she wasn't deranged, and dodged into her war room, small, set up with two fiberboard tables, twin computers, one desk and a whiteboard on which details of the case were jotted in marker.

  "Any minute," said the young blond officer inside, looking up. He was in dark-blue NYPD uniform, sitting at the far table. Ron Pulaski was not a detective, as were most officers in the Major Cases Division. But he was the cop Amelia Sachs had wanted to work the Unsub 40 case with. They'd run scenes for years, always--until now--from Rhyme's parlor.

  Pulaski nodded at the screen. "They promised."

  Any minute...

  "How much did they get?"

  "Not sure. I wouldn't expect his address and phone number. But the ECT said they had some hits. It was a good call, Amelia."

  After the disaster--the word applied in several senses: the victim's death as well as losing Unsub 40--at the mall in Brooklyn, Sachs had methodically examined the area behind the loading dock and debated where to send the Brooklyn Evidence Collection Teams; you can't search everywhere. One place that particularly intrigued her was a cheap Mexican restaurant whose back door opened onto a cul-de-sac near the loading dock. It was the only food venue nearby. There were other, faster ways for their unsub to have fled but Sachs concentrated the canvassing there, on the perhaps far-fetched theory that the restaurant would be more likely than other venues to have undocumented employees who'd be less cooperative, not wanting to give their names and addresses as witnesses.

  As she'd guessed, no one, from manager to dishwasher, had seen the rather recognizable suspect.

  Which didn't mean he hadn't been there, however; in the refuse bin for customers the search team had found the Starbucks cup, along with cellophane sandwich wrappers and napkins from the chain, which he'd been seen carrying as he fled.

  They'd collected all the trash from that container at La Festiva, which may or may not have been a real Spanish word.

  The analysis of this evidence was what they were presently awaiting.

  Sachs dropped into the chair she'd wheeled here from her minuscule office. Reflecting that if they had been working out of Rhyme's parlor, the data would have been in their hands by now. Her phone sang with an email tone. It was good news from the captain at the 84, Madino. He said there was no hurry on her shooting incident report; it was taking some time to get the Borough Shooting Team together. He added that, as she and Rhyme had discussed earlier, a few reporters had called, inquiring about the wisdom of firing a weapon in a crowded mall but Madino deflected them by saying the matter was being investigated according to department procedures and didn't release her name. None of the journalists followed up.

  All good news.

  Now Pulaski's computer offered up a ship's-bell ding. "Okay, here it is. Evidence analysis."

  As he read, the young man's hand went to his forehead and rubbed briefly. The scar wasn't long but it was quite obvious today, from this angle, in this light. In the first case that he'd run with Sachs and Rhyme he'd made a mistake and the perp, a particularly vicious professional killer, had clocked him in the head. The resulting injury, which had affected his brain as well as his pride and appearance, had nearly ended his career. But determination, encouragement from his twin brother (also a cop) and Lincoln Rhyme's persistence had kept him in blue. He still had moments of uncertainty--head injuries poison self-confidence--but he was one of the smartest and most dogged officers Sachs knew.

  He sighed. "Not a whole lot."

  "What is there?"

  "Trace from the Starbucks shop itself, nothing. From the Mexican restaurant: DNA from the rim of the Starbucks cup but no CODIS match."

  It's rarely that easy.

  "No friction ridges," Pulaski said.

  "What? He wore gloves in the Starbucks?"

  "Looks like he used the napkin to hold the cup. The tech at CSU used vacuum and ninhydrin but only a partial showed up. From the tip. Too narrow for IAFIS."

  The national fingerprint database was comprehensive but only prints that came from the pads of fingers, not the very end, were useable.

  But again she wondered: Had the evidence gone to Rhyme for analysis and not to the CSU lab in Queens, would he have been able to raise a fingerprint? The lab facility at headquarters was state-of-the-art but it wasn't, well, it wasn't Lincoln Rhyme's.

  "Shoeprint from Starbucks, probably his," Pulaski read, "since it was superimposed over others and matched one on the loading dock and at the Mexican restaurant. Similar trace found in tread from the dock and restaurant. It's a size thirteen Reebok. Daily Cushion Two Point Oh. The trace chemical profile's here."

  She looked at the screen and read out a list of chemicals she'd never heard of. "Which is?"

  Pulaski scrolled down. "Probably humus."

  "Dirt?"

  The blond officer continued to read the fine print. "Humus is the penultimate degree of decomposition of organic matter."

  She recalled an exchange between Rhyme and Pulaski years ago when the rookie had used "penultimate" to mean "final," as opposed to the proper meaning--next to last. The memory was more poignant than she wished.

  "So soon-to-be dirt."

  "Pretty much. And it came from somewhere else. It doesn't match any of the control samples that you or the ECT collected in and around the mall, loading dock and restaurant." He continued to read. "Well, not so good here."

  "What's that?"

  "Dinitroaniline."

  "Never heard of it."

  "Number of uses, dyes, pesticides, for instance. But the number one: explosives."

  Sachs pointed to the chart from the murder scene itself, the construction site where Unsub 40 beat Todd Williams to death near the club a couple of weeks ago. "Ammonium nitrate."

  Fertilizer--and the major explosive ingredient in homemade bombs, like the one that destroyed the Oklahoma City federal building in the '90s.

  "So," Pulaski said slowly, "you think there's more to it than a robbery? The unsub was, I don't know, buying bomb ingredients near Forty Degrees North or the construction site and Williams saw it?" He tapped the computer screen. "And look at this." In trace collected near a footprint at the mall loading dock was a small amount of motor oil.

  The second ingredient in a fertilizer bomb.

  Sachs sighed. Were there terrorist dimensions to this unsub? Though the murder had occurred at a jobsite, these chemicals would not have been used for commercial demolition. "Keep going."

  "More phenol. Like we found at the first murder scene."

  "If it's shown up twice it's significant. What's that used for?"

  Pulaski called up a profile of the chemical. "Phenol. A precursor in making plastics, like polycarbonates, resins and nylon. Also in making aspirin, embalming fluid, cosmetics, ingrown toenail cures."

  Forty had big feet. Maybe nail problems.

  "Then this." He was transcribing a long list of other chemicals onto a whiteboard evidence chart.

  "Mouthful," she said.

  "Profiles as makeu
p. Cosmetics. No idea of the brand."

  "Need to know who makes it. Have somebody in HQ track it down."

  Pulaski sent the request.

  Then they returned to the evidence. He said, "Have a tiny shaving of metal. From the footprint in the hallway leading to the loading dock."

  "Let me see it."

  Pulaski called up the photos.

  Hard to make out to the eye--whether naked or stylishly covered with drugstore-bought reading glasses, which Sachs had had to resort to lately.

  She cranked up the magnification and studied the shiny bit. Then turned to the second laptop, typed her way into an NYPD database of metal trace, which, as it turned out, Lincoln Rhyme had established several years earlier.

  Together they scanned the database. "Something similar there," said Pulaski, standing over her shoulder, as he pointed at one of the photos.

  Yes, good. The tiny fleck was from the process of sharpening a knife, scissors or razor.

  "It's steel. He likes a sharp blade." He'd beaten the victim to death outside 40deg North but that didn't mean he wasn't interested in dispatching victims with other weapons as well.

  On the other hand, he might recently have done nothing more than carved up the family's chicken dinner with a knife he'd just dramatically edged first, tableside.

  Pulaski continued, "And some sawdust. Want to see?"

  She looked at the microscopic images. The grains were very fine.

  "From sanding, you think?" she mused. "Not sawing?"

  "I don't know. Makes sense."

  She clicked a finger against a thumbnail. Twice. Tension rippled through her. "The analyst in Queens didn't tell us the type of wood. We need to find that out."

  "I'll request it." Rubbing his forehead with one hand, Pulaski scrolled through more analyses with the other. "Looks like hammers and bombs aren't enough. This guy wants to poison people too? Significant traces of organochlorine and benzoic acid. Toxins. Typical of insecticides but they've been used in homicides. And more chemicals that..." He regarded a database. "... profile as varnish."

  "Sawdust and varnish. He's a carpenter, construction worker? Or somebody putting his bombs in wooden boxes or behind paneled walls."

  But since there'd been no reports of improvised explosive devices in the area, encased in wood or otherwise, Sachs put this possibility low on the likelihood scale.

  "I want the manufacturer," Sachs said. "The varnish. The type of sawdust too."

  Pulaski said nothing.

  She glanced his way and noted that he was looking at his phone. A text.

  "Ron?"

  He started and slipped the phone away. He'd been preoccupied lately. She wondered if there was an illness in the family.

  "Everything okay?"

  "Sure. Fine."

  She repeated, "I want the manufacturer."

  "Of the... oh, the varnish."

  "Of the varnish. And type of wood. And brand of makeup."

  "I'll get on it." He sent another request to the crime lab.

  They turned to the secondary category of evidence--that which might or might not have come from the unsub. The ECTs had collected the entire contents of the bin where they found the Starbucks trash, on the theory that the rubbish from the coffee chain might not have been the only things the perp discarded. There were thirty or forty items: napkins, newspapers, plastic cups, used Kleenex, a porn magazine probably ditched before hubby returned home to the family. Everything had been photographed and logged, but nothing, the analysts in Queens reported, seemed relevant.

  Sachs, however, spent twenty minutes looking at each item, both individual shots of the evidence in the bin and wide-angle images before the contents were collected by the ECTs.

  "Check this out," she said. Pulaski walked closer. She was indicating two napkins from a White Castle fast-food restaurant.

  "Home of the slider." Pulaski added, "What is that, by the way?"

  Sachs shrugged; she knew it was a small hamburger. No idea where the name had come from. One of the earliest fast-food franchises in America, White Castle specialized in burgers and milk shakes.

  "Any friction ridges?"

  Pulaski read the report. "None."

  How hard did they try? she wondered. Recalling that Rhyme's two nemeses were incompetence and laziness, Sachs stared at the napkins. "Odds they came from him?"

  Pulaski enlarged the wide-angle shots. The rumpled White Castle napkins were directly beside the Starbucks discards.

  "Could be. Our boy likes chain food, we know."

  A sigh. "Napkins're one of the best sources for DNA. The analyst could've run them, compared it with Starbucks."

  Lazy, incompetent...

  Then she relented.

  Or was he just overworked? The story of policing.

  Sachs called up the images of the opened napkins. Each contained stains.

  "What do you think?" Sachs asked. "One's brown, the other reddish?"

  "Can't tell. If we had our hands on them ourselves, we could do a color temperature to be sure. At Lincoln's, I mean."

  Tell me about it.

  Sachs said, "I'm thinking, on one napkin, chocolate and strawberry milk shakes. Reasonable deduction. And the other? That stain is definitely chocolate. Another stain too, less viscous, like a soft drink. From two different visits. One, he has two shakes. The other, a shake and a soda."

  "Skinny guy but he can sure pack the calories away."

  "But more important, he likes White Castle. A repeat customer."

  "If we're lucky, he lives nearby. But which one?" Pulaski was online, checking out the restaurant chain in the area. There were several.

  A click in her thoughts: the motor oil.

  "Maybe the oil's a bomb or maybe he goes to the White Castle in Queens," she said. "It's on Astoria Boulevard, Automotive Row. My dad and I used to buy car parts there Saturday morning, then go back home and play amateur mechanics. Maybe he picked up the oil trace getting lunch. Long shot, but I'm going to go talk to the manager there. You call the lab in Queens and have somebody go over those napkins again. Fine-tooth cliche. Friction ridges. DNA too. Maybe he ate with a friend and the buddy's DNA is in CODIS. And stay on the sawdust, I want the type of wood. And keep after them for the manufacturer of the varnish. And I don't want the analysts who did this report. Call Mel."

  Quiet, self-effacing Detective Mel Cooper was the best forensic lab man in the city, perhaps in all of the Northeast. He was also an expert at human identification--friction ridge prints, DNA and forensic reconstruction. He had degrees in math, physics and organic chemistry and was a member of the prestigious International Association for Identification and the International Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts. Rhyme had hired him away from a small-town police department to work the NYPD Crime Scene Unit. Cooper was always a part of the Rhyme team.

  As Sachs pulled on her jacket and checked her weapon, Pulaski made a call to the CSU to request Cooper's assistance.

  She was at the door when he disconnected and said, "Sorry, Amelia. Have to be somebody else."

  "What?"

  "Mel's on vacation. All week."

  She exhaled a fast laugh. In all the years they'd worked together she'd never known the tech to take more than a day off.

  "Find somebody good then," she said, walking briskly into the hallway and thinking: Rhyme retires and everything goes to hell.

  CHAPTER 8

  Is that... That's an escalator. Yes, it is. Well, a portion of one. The top part. Sitting in your hallway. But I guess you know that."

  "Mel. Come on in. We've got work to do."

  Cooper, diminutive, slim and with a perpetual, faint smile on his face, walked into the parlor of Rhyme's town house, shoving his dark-rimmed glasses higher on his nose. He moved silently; he wore his standard footgear, Hush Puppies. The men were alone. Evers Whitmore had returned to his Midtown law firm.

  When no immediate explanation for the partial escalator, which was encased in a scaffolding, was f
orthcoming, he slipped off his brown jacket, hooked it and set down a gym bag. "I wasn't really planning on a vacation, you know."

  Rhyme had suggested--in Lincoln Rhyme's inimitable way--that Cooper take some time off. That is, time off from his official job at Crime Scene headquarters and come in to help on the civil case of Frommer v. Midwest Conveyance.

  "Yes, well. Appreciate it." Rhyme's thanks were subdued, as always. He didn't have much interest in, or skill at, social niceties.

  "Is it... I mean, I thought I should check. Are there any ethical problems with me being here?"

  "No, no, I'm sure there aren't," Rhyme said, eyes on the escalator, which reached to the ceiling. "As long as you don't get paid."

  "Ah. So. I'm volunteering."

  "Just a friend helping in a good cause, Mel. A noble cause. The victim's widow has no money. She has a son. Good boy. Promising." Rhyme assumed this was likely. He didn't know a thing about young Frommer, whose given name he'd forgotten. "If we can't get her a settlement, she'll be living in a garage in Schenectady for the immediate future. Maybe the rest of her life."

  "Nothing so terrible about Schenectady."

  "The operative word is 'garage,' Mel. Besides, it'll be a challenge. You like challenges."

  "To a point."

  "Mel!" Thom said, stepping into the parlor. "What're you doing here?"

  "Abducted."

  "Welcome." Then the aide scowled. "Can you believe it. Look at that." A disappointed nod toward the scaffolding and escalator. "The floors. I hope they're not ruined."

  "They're my floors," Rhyme said.

  "You charge me with keeping them pristine. Then undermine it with two tons of mechanical device." To the forensic tech: "Food, drink?"

  "Tea would be lovely."

  "I've got your favorite."

  Cooper liked Lipton's. He had simple tastes.

  "And how's your girlfriend?"

  Cooper lived with his mother but had a tall, gorgeous Scandinavian paramour, a professor at Columbia. She and Cooper were champion ballroom dancers.

  "She's--"

  "We're just getting to work here," Rhyme interrupted.

  Thom lifted an eyebrow to the tech, ignoring his boss.

  "Fine thanks," Cooper replied. "She's fine. We have the regional tango competition next week."