and the city engineers that he learned that there might be another way to get back into the tunnel and collect what he’d left behind last night. After working his way through the drain and knocking Langley out, he’d managed to get all his gear, obliterate his foot- and fingerprints and slip out of the tunnel without Tonya’s hearing him. On the way back down the sluice he’d disposed of the weapons, ropes and camera by pitching them down fissures in the drain and filling in the spaces with dirt and mud. (He did, of course, keep the videotape of the student he’d last killed; it was one of his better ones.)
Oh, he was a bit sorry he couldn’t be the one to rescue the girl and collect the reward. But, if he had, the press might’ve looked into his life and learned a few interesting things — for instance, the fact that he’d always chosen to live or work near colleges from which coeds had disappeared over the years.
Besides, he’d been honest with Sandra regarding one other thing: That he had values other than making money. The reward meant little. There was indeed, as she’d observed, another side to him, a more important side.
Of course, that creative spirit didn’t involve graphic design; it centered around ropes and knives and beautiful college girls.
“I’ve got to say,” Sandra said, “I’m still not convinced that everything was the way it seemed to be.”
Ron eyed his wife cautiously. “No?” He hoped she wasn’t on to him; he loved her, and he’d prefer not to kill her.
“It was just odd, Langley calling right after the accident. You know, I actually wondered if maybe he was behind the whole thing.”
“No kidding?”
“Yeah, maybe he travels around and booby-traps buildings and oil rigs, then after somebody’s trapped he calls and gets a reward or a fee to rescue the victims.” She gave a soft giggle. “And you know what else I thought?”
“What’s that?”
“That maybe Tonya and Langley were in on it together.”
“Together?” Seeing that his wife’s suspicions were headed in a harmless direction, he could laugh.
“I mean, she and her father were having problems — he wouldn’t pay to fix her car, remember? She might’ve wanted to get even with him. Oh, and did you see that she was a hiking guide on the Appalachian Trail? Maybe she met Langley when he was rescuing somebody at the park. I mean, she wasn’t very badly hurt. Maybe they staged the whole thing together, Tonya and Langley, to split the reward.”
Ron supposed this might make sense to an outside observer. Of course, now that he thought about it, that same observer might also speculate that Sandra
Interesting takes on the incident, thought an amused Ron Badgett, who was, of course, the only one in the world who knew exactly what had happened to the girl.
“Could be,” he said. “But I guess that’s between Gilbert and Langley now.”
Ron steered the car into the driveway and, leaving the engine running, climbed out and opened the door for his wife. “I’m going to head back to the office, see how they’re coming with the basement wall.” The city was paying to have the hole in his cellar repaired.
Sandra kissed him good-bye and said she’d have dinner ready when he got back home.
Ron climbed back into the driver’s seat and drove eagerly to NeDo. In truth, he couldn’t care less about the basement wall. The last daytime classes at City College were over in twenty minutes and he wanted to be at his desk by then, in front of his window, so he could watch the coeds leaving the school on their way home.
Tunnel Girl had been saved; Ron Badgett needed someone new.
LOCARD’S PRINCIPLE
“It’s politically sensitive.”
“Politics.” Lincoln Rhyme offered a distracted grunt to the heavyset, disheveled man who was leaning against a dresser in the bedroom of the criminalist’s Upper West Side town house.
“No, it’s important.”
“And
Detective Lon Sellitto pushed away from the dresser and took the coffee Rhyme’s aide, Thom, offered. He sipped.
“That’s not bad.”
“Thanks,” Thom said.
“No,” Sellitto corrected. “I mean his hand. Look.”
A quadriplegic, injured while running a crime scene some years ago, Rhyme had been undergoing therapy and had regained some slight movement in his right hand. He was immensely proud of the accomplishment but it was against his nature to gloat — about personal achievements, at least; he ignored Sellitto and continued squeezing a soft rubber ball. Yes, some movement in his hand had indeed returned but the feelings were haywire. He felt textures and temperatures that didn’t match the properties of the sponge rubber.
Another grunt. He flicked the ball away with his index finger. “I’m not really crazy about drop-ins, Lon.”
“We got a crunch, Linc.”
A politically sensitive one. Rhyme continued, “Amelia and I’ve got a few other cases going on at the moment, you know.” He sipped the strong coffee through a straw. The tumbler was mounted on the headboard to his right. To his left was a microphone, connected to a voice recognition system that in turn was hooked into an environmental control unit, the central nervous system of his bedroom.
“Like I said, a crunch.”
“Hmm.” More coffee.
Rhyme carefully examined Sellitto — the Major Cases detective with whom he used to work frequently when Rhyme had run NYPD’s crime scene unit. He seemed tired. Rhyme reflected that however early Rhyme had wakened, Sellitto had probably been up several hours before, responding to the 10–29 homicide call.
Sellitto explained that the entrepreneur and philanthropist Ronald Larkin, fifty-five, had just been shot to death in the bedroom of his Upper East Side town house. The first responders found a dead body, a wounded and sobbing wife, very little evidence and no witnesses whatsoever.
Both the feds and the NYPD upper echelons wanted Rhyme and his partner, Amelia Sachs, to work the scene, with Sellitto as lead detective. Rhyme was often the choice for big cases because, despite his reclusive nature, he was well known to the public and his presence suggested the mayor and brass were serious about a collar.
“You know Larkin?”
“Refresh my memory.” Unless facts had to do with his job — consulting forensic scientist, or “criminalist” — Rhyme didn’t pay much attention to trivia.
“Ronald Larkin, come on, Linc. Everybody knows him.”
“Lon, the sooner you tell me, the sooner I’ll be able to say no.”
“He’s been in that kind of mood,” Thom told Sellitto.
“Yeah, for the last twenty years.”
“Onward and upward,” Rhyme said with cheerful impatience, sipping more coffee through the straw.
“Ronald Larkin hit it big in energy. Pipelines, electricity, water, geothermal.”
“He was a good guy,” Thom interjected, feeding Rhyme a breakfast of eggs and a bagel. “Environmentally conscious.”
“Happy day,” Rhyme said sourly.
Sellitto helped himself to a second bagel and continued, “He’d retired last year, turns the company over to somebody else and starts a foundation with his brother. Doing good things in Africa, Asia and Latin America. He lives in LA but he and his wife have a place here. They flew into town last night. Early this morning they’re in bed
