The Steel Kiss

by Jeffery Deaver

"That asshole you saw walking around?"

  Sachs repeated the description.

  "That's him." The smoker's eyes swiveled momentarily to his boss. He was sheepish. "I didn't call, Iggy. You didn't want nobody to call. I didn't call."

  Shit. Sachs pulled her radio off her belt and summoned her team and Pulaski's to the site ASAP.

  "Any idea where he went?" she asked Cly.

  "Coulda been up. He was near the west elevator." Gesturing at the soaring steelwork of the building.

  "Are there people there to spot him?" Sachs asked. She couldn't see any workers from the ground.

  "We're doing the ironwork," the foreman said, meaning, she supposed, obviously there'd be people there.

  "Call them and find out if he's been spotted."

  Iggy ordered his second-or third-in-command to do so. The man hopped to the task, making calls on his walkie-talkie.

  Sachs asked the foreman, "How could he have gotten out of the site?" The walls were eight-foot plywood, topped with razor wire.

  Iggy rubbed his hard hat as if scratching his head. "Entrances on Forty-Seventh. Or here, but this one, the main one, probably he would've been spotted. And nobody did or they woulda told me."

  She sent two officers in the direction of the 47th Street entrance. And said to Boss Iggy, "Oh, and tell your men not to use the elevators."

  "They can't walk down--"

  "He could have sabotaged them."

  His eyes went wide. "Jesus. For real?"

  Iggy's adjutant ended a transmission and said, "He mighta been up there, one of the lower floors. Tall guy. Nobody was sure he was working for a sub or whatever."

  This seemed like the most likely target: the elevator cars mounted on the outside of a scaffolding track. It wouldn't take much, she guessed, for a DataWise controller to shut down the automatic brakes. Workers would slam to the ground at a hundred miles an hour.

  Iggy called out, "Freeze the elevators. All of them. And tell the guys up there not to use them until they've been checked."

  Good. That would... But then Sachs reflected: Wait. No. Hell, what am I thinking of? No, no, got it wrong. Of course! Remember his MO. He's not going to be sabotaging the jobsite; he's here so he can watch where he's going to attack. He needs the high-rise as a vantage point. Just like he wasn't in Benkoff's apartment; he was across the street. Just like he was in the Starbucks so he could watch the escalator when the access panel opened to swallow up Greg Frommer.

  So. What could he see from the iron skeleton here?

  Then Sachs was aware of silence.

  The screaming table saw in the workshop of the theater across the street had stopped. Sachs turned and hurried to the opening in the fence surrounding the construction site. From there she could see that the carpenter in the set-building workshop was gripping the mean-looking blade with one hand and wielding a socket wrench with another. The saw looked new, state-of-the-art.

  And it was surely embedded with a DataWise5000.

  He was his target! Unsub 40 was waiting till the man had shut the saw off and was changing the blade and then--though the carpenter thought it was safe--the unit would come to life and sever his hand or send the unsecured blade spinning through his belly or groin, or maybe into the street to hit passersby.

  Sachs sprinted across the street, halting traffic with her palm, yelling toward the open theater doors, "Get back from the saw! Get back! It's going to start up!"

  But he couldn't hear through the protective earmuffs.

  Sachs arrived at the doorway of the workshop. "Stop!" No response.

  The saw and the unsub's victim were still forty feet away. She then noted that the power cord to the saw extended from a fixture in the wall right next to her, a few feet away. There was, however, no plug. The cable disappeared into the wall.

  No time. The unsub, somewhere high on the construction site, would have seen her and would be hacking into the saw's controller right now, to turn on the blade and slice away the hand of the oblivious carpenter. To her right was a workbench filled with hand tools, including a large pair of bolt cutters. The handle was wood--a good insulator, right? She wasn't sure when it came to 220 volts, which was what the saw undoubtedly used.

  But no choice.

  She yanked the tool off the rack, fitted the sharp teeth on either side of the power cable and pressed the handles together, closing her eyes as the sparks fired into the air around her.

  CHAPTER 33

  Moving as fast as I can, through the crowded sidewalks, putting distance between me and the theater and those who wanted to stop me, put me in jail, take me away from Alicia. Away from my brother. From my miniatures.

  Shoppers! Goddamn Shoppers.

  And Red, of course.

  The worst Shopper of all. I so regret giving her the benefit of the doubt. I hate her, hate her, hate her now.

  I was, though, I must confess, not surprised, not totally surprised, to see her in the construction site as I stood on the third floor and scanned the kill zone--the workshop behind the theater.

  Still: How? How did she guess about the attack at the theater?

  Not a guess, of course.

  Police are smart nowadays. All that scientific equipment. DNA and fingerprints and everything. Maybe they'd found some evidence I left somewhere, evidence from when I'd been here before, preparing for the attack today. Or maybe I got spotted. Distinctive appearance, one could say. Slim Jim. Sack of bones...

  Hell.

  Moving west now, head down, slouching away some of my height.

  Keep on the disguise? I wonder. I stole a hard hat and Carhartt jacket in the jobsite before I climbed to the third floor to get to business. Don't know if anybody saw Vernon the ironworker. But I decide: better to dump the outfit soon. Maybe a restroom in the subway. No--there'd be security cameras in the stations. The police would be watching them diligently. Go to Macy's, a restroom there, and shove them into a wastebasket.

  A new jacket. Hat of course. A fedora again maybe, hipster. My tight crew cut, blond, is pretty distinctive.

  I'll get back to the Toy Room as soon as I can. The womb. The zipping, colorful fish. I need comfort. Have Alicia come over. If I tell her to come over, she'll come over.

  It's me, Vernon?

  Looking behind. Nobody following. I--

  Uh.

  A pain in my side. I've collided with someone. Panic, at first, thinking it's a cop, cuffs out, about to arrest me. But no. A well-built, handsome man--outfit crying Powerhouse Businessman--was stepping out of a Starbucks and talking into his Bluetooth earpiece.

  He rages at me: "Jesus, you skinny fuck. Watch where you're going."

  I can only stare at his face. Red with anger. "Apoplectic" is the word that blossoms in my head.

  Handsome, he's handsome. Small nose, nice brows, solid physique. He holds his precious Starbucks toward me, not like a toast but like a gun about to fire. "You'd spilled this on me, it would've cost you big time, you Walking Dead asshole. This shirt cost more'n you make in a month. I'm a lawyer." Then talking into his phone as he walked away. "Sorry, honey. Some skinny freak, AIDS patient, thinking he owns the sidewalk. I'm on my way home now. There in twenty."

  My heart is racing as it always does after an encounter with a Shopper. He's ruined my day, ruined my week.

  I want to scream, want to cry.

  I don't bother with the Macy's restroom plan. Strip off the Carhartt, the hard hat. Toss into a bin. The flesh-colored cotton gloves too. Put the St. Louis cap back on. No, pick another, I tell myself. And fish in my backpack for a basic Nike black. On it goes.

  Want to scream, want to cry...

  But, eventually, those feelings go away, as they usually do, leaving in their place another desire.

  To hurt. To hurt oh so badly.

  The sparks had not been that impressive.

  A quarter-inch flash of orange, accompanied by a modest puff of smoke. Had it been a scene in a movie the director surely would have called cut or redo or wha
tever they say and summoned the special effects pyrotechnician to multiply the cascade times ten.

  What did happen, though, was the circuit breaker popped and the workshop, if not the entire theater, went dark. She herself didn't get shocked or receive a single burn from a spark.

  Sachs had then held up her shield and motioned the carpenter, who'd turned and was staring at her in dismay, out of the open doorway. The unsub was still unaccounted for. He pulled off the muffs and started asking questions. She held up a wait-a-minute finger and looked around the workshop carefully. Sachs reminded herself that she'd deduced the theater was probably, but not necessarily, the attack site so she directed the other officers in the search teams to continue the sweep along the street here, particularly in the construction site, where at least they knew he'd been.

  A few minutes later her phone hummed. It was Killow, her rotund, good-natured patrolman friend. "Amelia. I'm in the jobsite. The foreman's assistant found some workers who spotted our boy. He was here--third floor. South side. Somebody saw him leaving. K."

  Third floor, south side. A perfect view of the carpenter and the saw.

  "Got it. Going where?"

  "Hold on." A moment later he came back on. "Four-Seven Street. Wearing brown Carhartt jacket and hard hat. Still canvassing. K."

  "Roger that. Keep me--"

  Ron Pulaski's voice sliced through the airwaves. "Sighting. Somebody spotted him on the corner, Four-Eight and Nine, headed north. We're in pursuit. Nothing further. K."

  "Keep on him, Ron. He'll've dumped the Carhartt and hard hat, I'm sure. Look for tall, look for skinny. He'll have the backpack--it's got his hammer or other weapons and whatever he controls the DataWise with. A phone or tablet."

  "Got it, Amelia. Sure. K."

  Hell. They'd been so goddamn close. So close. She felt her teeth grinding like millstones and found her left index finger probing her left thumb's cuticle. She felt pain, told herself to stop. She didn't stop. Damn nervous habits.

  The carpenter disappeared downstairs. The lights in the theater came back on. And the man returned. She learned his name was Joe Heady. She asked if he'd seen anybody resembling the unsub in or near the theater.

  He thought for a moment. Then: "No, never, ma'am. What's this all about?"

  "There's a killer, somebody who's using products to kill people. He's sabotaged an escalator--"

  "That story on TV?" asked the carpenter.

  "That's right. A stove too. Caused a gas leak and then ignited it."

  "Right. I heard about that. Oh, man."

  "He's found a way to hack into smart controllers and take over the product. He was in the construction site, looking down at you, we think. He was going to turn the saw back on while you were holding it, I think."

  Heady closed his eyes briefly. "That thing had started and my hand was on the blade? Jesus. Two thousand RPM. It cuts through wood like butter. I'd've lost the limb. Probably bled to death. This's all very fucked up, pardon my French."

  "Sure is," said Sachs.

  As she was jotting notes, her phone rang once more. It was Pulaski. She said to Heady, "Excuse me, have to take this." He nodded and walked to the kitchen area of the workshop. She watched him set a packet of instant Starbucks coffee on the counter and heat a mug of water in the microwave. His hands quivered as he performed these simple tasks.

  Pulaski said, "Lost him, Amelia. We've expanded the search up to Five-Two and down to Three-Four. Not a bite so far."

  She sighed. "Keep me posted."

  "Sure, Amelia. K."

  She disconnected and Heady turned to her. "But why me? I mean, is it a labor thing? I was in the Auto Workers, Detroit, for years and I'm union here. But nobody busts unions anymore."

  "It's not you personally. He's a kind of domestic terrorist. He's injuring people who own or're using fancy products to make a statement. He says we're too reliant on them, spending too much money. That's his message. Here at the theater? Who knows? Maybe all the self-indulgence of entertainment in Times Square." She gave a faint smile. "Maybe price of Broadway tickets."

  "Did I say fucked up?" Heady looked at the timer of the microwave counting down. He turned back to Sachs.

  "One thing?"

  "Yes?"

  He glanced at the saw. "You said he hacked into this controller or something?"

  "That's right."

  "Well, the thing is, with the saw, there's just an on/off switch. You can't operate it remotely."

  "But you can upload data for diagnostics, right?"

  "No. There's a chip in it to remember cutting specs. That's all."

  The microwave dinged and Heady walked toward it, reaching for the door lever.

  Sachs frowned.

  No!

  As he opened the microwave's door, she dove forward and tackled him hard. They tumbled to the workshop's concrete floor as the ceramic cup inside the microwave exploded, sending a hundred pieces of shrapnel flying outward amid a searing cloud of steam.

  CHAPTER 34

  You all right, man?" Freddy Caruthers was asking.

  Nick returned to the couch after letting the little guy inside. Looking particularly toady at the moment.

  Judge Judy was on the screen. Nick said, "Wouldn't think I'd watch this, right? But I'm loving all the shows. Discovery Channel, A and E. I went in, there were fifty channels. Now, seven hundred."

  "Only ten're any good. ESPN and HBO. All I watch. Big Bang Theory too. It's funny."

  Nick shook his head. "Don't know it."

  "You didn't answer me."

  "Answer you?"

  "You all right?"

  "Good days, shitty days. Everything in between. This's a less-shitty-than-others one."

  "That'd be a good self-help book. The Less-Shitty-Day-Than-Others Guide to Life."

  Nick laughed hard. And let the subject go. He didn't explain that the shittiest days were the ones when he couldn't let go of the fact that life screwed him over; none of the shit that happened was his fault. Unfair. That was something he'd talked to the prison therapist about a lot. Dr. Sharana. "Life's unfair."

  "Yeah, it can be. Let's talk about how you can deal with it, though."

  He now explained to Freddy, "You never did time. It, what it does, is it resets you. Like you've got a clock in your gut or brain or somewhere and it turns a dial and life stops moving. Then you get out and, man, it's chaos. The traffic, the people moving." He nodded. "Just the TV programs. All those channels, I was saying. Everything. It can be too much. Like a mixture that's too rich in the carb."

  But this gave him a moment's pause, since it put in mind Amelia Sachs, who was an expert at setting carburetors and getting even the most troublesome choke to do what she wanted.

  "A book I read when I was a kid," Freddy was saying.

  "A book?"

  "When I was a kid. Stranger in a Strange Land. This alien comes to earth. Not like he's invading or anything, shooting people with a ray gun. It wasn't that kind of story. Anyway, this alien, he could change his sense of time. You go to the dentist, you speed things up and the visit goes by in seconds. You're making love, you slow it down." Freddy laughed. "I could use that, slow things down, I'm saying. Sometimes."

  "That was in the book?"

  "Not the dentist or the sex. It was a classy book. Science fiction but classy."

  "Stranger--"

  "--in a Strange Land."

  Nick liked the concept. "That's just what it's like, yeah. Everything speeding up now I'm out. Get freaked some. I read a lot inside. But never heard of that one. I'll read it. Want a beer?"

  Freddy was looking around the place. Nick had kept it as organized as his cell. Clean. Polished. Ordered. It was about as sparse as the cell too. He was going to borrow a car and go to Ikea. Inside, he'd dreamed about shopping there. Then Freddy glanced at his watch. "We should leave soon. But sure, one beer." And he looked relieved that it seemed the serious conversation was on hold.

  Nick got a couple of bottles of Budweiser.
He church-keyed them, sat down and handed one over.

  "You have booze inside?" Freddy asked.

  "You could get 'shine. Expensive. Bad, real bad. Probably poison."

  "They call it moonshine?" Freddy asked. This seemed to tickle him.

  "They did where I was. Most cons went for Oxy or Perc. Easy to smuggle in. Or just buy from a guard."

  "Stay away from them both."

  "I hear that. Got beat up once, some bullshit thing. Really hurt, broke a finger. Med center doc said he could get me a couple of pills. I said no. He was surprised. I think he wanted me to pay him."

  Judge Judy was harping about something. Nick shut the show off. "So who is this guy can help me out?" he asked.

  "Name's Stan Von. I don't know him good. But he's vouched for."

  "Von. What is he, German?"

  Thinking of Amelia again.

  "I don't know. Maybe Jewish. Could still be German. Don't know."

  "Where're we meeting him?"

  "Bay Ridge."

  "He's got the names? J and Nanci?"

  "I don't know for sure. But he said what he's got'll point you in the right direction."

  "He's not warranted, right?"

  "Nope. I checked."

  "I can't see him if he is."

  Freddy reassured, "He's clean."

  "And no weapons."

  "I told him. Absolutely."

  Nick remembered life in prison and he remembered life on the streets. "So what's he want out of this?"

  "A meal."

  "A... Is that like code or something?" Thinking: "M" for a thousand bucks. Or "M" for megabytes, as in a shitload of money.

  Freddy shrugged. "Dinner is what it means."

  "That's all?" Nick was surprised. "I was thinking five bills."

  "No, I've done his boss some favors. So, no cash involved. Anyway, some guys, doing something for somebody, they just want a meal. It's more, I don't know, intimate or something." Nick shot him a look and Freddy chuckled. "No, not that kind of intimate. I just mean it's more like a good thing they're doing." The amphibian guy chugged the last suds of his beer. "Or, who knows, maybe he's just hungry."

  "It's not bad. A bit of burn. I was under the line of fire."

  In Rhyme's parlor, Sachs was responding to Rhyme's question about her condition.

  She displayed her left arm, where the steam from the microwave had kissed the skin, which was now slightly reddish. For the treatment--ointment, it seemed--she'd removed her blue-stone ring. She now apparently remembered it, fished the jewelry from her pocket and reseated it gingerly. Flexed her fingers. And nodded. "Fine." The bandage on her forearm was modest.