and somebody fires through the window, takes him out.”
“Robbery?”
“Nope.”
Really? Rhyme grew more intrigued. He turned quickly away from the incoming bagel, like a baby avoiding a spoon of mashed carrots.
“Lincoln,” Thom said.
“I’ll eat later. The wife?”
“She got hit but rolled onto the floor, grabbed the phone, called nine-one-one. The shooter didn’t wait around to finish the job.”
“What’d she see?”
“Not much, I don’t think. She’s in the hospital. Haven’t had a chance to talk to her more than a few words. She’s hysterical. They only got married a month ago.”
“Ah, a recent wife…. Even if she was wounded, that doesn’t mean she didn’t
“You know, Linc, I’ve done this before…. I checked already. There’s no motive. She’s got money of her own from Daddy. And she signed a prenup. In the event of his death all she gets is a hundred thousand and can keep the engagement ring. Not worth the needle, you know.”
“That’s the deal he cut with his wife? No wonder he’s rich. You mentioned politically sensitive?”
“Here’s one of the richest men in the country, way involved in the Third World, and he gets offed in our backyard. The mayor’s not happy. The brass isn’t happy.”
“Which means you must be one sad puppy.”
“They want you and Amelia, Linc. Come on, it’s an interesting case. You like challenges.”
After the accident at the subway crime scene that left him disabled, Rhyme’s life became very different from his life before. Back then he would prowl through the playground that is New York City, observing people and where they lived and what they did, collecting samples of soil, building materials, plants, insects, trash, rocks… anything that might help him run a case. His inability to do this now was terribly frustrating. And, always independent, he detested relying on anyone else.
But Lincoln Rhyme had always lived a cerebral life. Before the accident, boredom had been his worst enemy. Now, it was the same. And Sellitto — intentionally, of course — had just teased him with two words that often got his attention.
“So, what do you say, Linc?”
Another pause. He glanced at the half-eaten bagel. He’d lost his appetite altogether. “Let’s get downstairs. See if we can find out a little more about Mr. Larkin’s demise.”
“Good,” said Thom, sounding relieved. He was the one who often took the brunt of Rhyme’s bad moods when he was involved in
The handsome blond aide, far stronger than his slim physique suggested, dressed Rhyme in sweats and executed a sitting transfer to move him from the elaborate motorized bed into an elaborate motorized wheelchair, a sporty red Storm Arrow. Using the one working finger of his left hand, the ring finger, Rhyme maneuvered the chair into the tiny elevator that took him down to the first floor of the Central Park West town house.
Once there, he steered into the parlor, which bore no resemblance to the Victorian sitting room it had once been. The place was now a forensic lab that would rival those in a medium-size town anywhere in America. Computers, microscopes, chemicals, petri dishes, beakers, pipettes, shelves containing books and supplies. Not a square inch was unoccupied, except for the examination tables. Wires like sleeping snakes lay everywhere.
Sellitto clomped down the stairs, finishing the bagel — either his or Rhyme’s.
“I better track down Amelia,” Rhyme said. “Let her know we’ve got a scene to run.”
“Oh, kinda forgot to mention,” Sellitto said as he chewed. “I called her already. She’s probably at the scene by now.”
Amelia Sachs never got over the somber curtain that surrounded the site of a homicide.
She believed this was good, though. To feel the sorrow and the outrage at intentional death pushed her to do the job that much better.
Standing in front of the three-story town house on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the tall, redheaded detective was aware of this pall now, and perhaps felt it a bit more than she normally would have, knowing that Ron Larkin’s death could affect many, many needy people around the world. What would happen to the foundation now that he was gone?
“Sachs? Where are we?” Rhyme’s impatient voice cut through her headset. She turned the volume down.
“Just got here,” she replied, worrying her fingernail. She tended to hurt herself in small, compulsive ways — particularly when she was about to search a scene where a tragedy like this had occurred. She felt the pressure of getting it right. To make sure the killer was identified and collared.
She was in working clothes: not the dark suits she favored as a detective, but the white hooded overalls worn by crime scene searchers, to make certain that they didn’t contaminate the scene with their own hair, sloughed-off epidermal cells and any of the thousands of bits of trace evidence we constantly carry around with us.
“I don’t see anything, Sachs. What’s the problem?”
“There. How’s that?” She clicked a switch on her headset.
“Ah, perfect. Hmm. Did that used to be a geranium?”
Sachs was looking at a planter containing a shriveled plant beside the front door. “You’re talking to the wrong girl, Rhyme. I buy ’em, I plant ’em, I kill ’em.”
“I’m told they need water occasionally.”
Rhyme was in his town house about a mile and a half away, across Central Park, at the moment but was seeing exactly what Sachs saw, thanks to a high-definition video feed, running from a tiny camera mounted on her headset to the CSU’s rapid response vehicle. From there it continued its wireless journey onward, ending up on a flat-screen monitor two feet in front of the criminalist. They’d worked together for years, with Rhyme generally in his lab or bedroom and Sachs working the crime scenes herself, reporting to him via radio. They’d tried video in the past but the resulting image wasn’t clear enough to be helpful; Rhyme had bullied the NYPD into paying some big bucks for an HD system.
They’d tested it before but this was the first time it would be used on a case.
Carrying the basic crime scene equipment, Sachs started forward. She glanced down at the doormat, which contained a lightning bolt above the letters LES, for Larkin Energy Services.
“His logo?”
“I’d guess,” she replied. “You read the article about him, Rhyme?”
“Missed it.”
“He was one of the most popular bosses in the country.”
Rhyme grunted. “All it takes is one disgruntled employee. I always wondered about that word. Is a happy employee ‘gruntled’? Where’s the scene?”
She continued into the town house.
A uniformed officer stood downstairs. He looked up and nodded.
“Where’s his wife?” Sachs asked. She wanted to get the chronology of events.
But the woman, the officer explained, was still at the hospital being treated for a wound. She was expected to be released soon. Two detectives from Major Cases were with her.
“I’ll want to talk to her, Rhyme.”
“We’ll have Lon get her over here after she’s released. Where’s the bedroom. I can’t see it.” His tone suggested he was struggling not to be impatient.
Sachs sometimes thought that his gruffness was a means to shelter himself from the emotional dangers of police work. Sometimes she believed that it was simply his nature to be gruff.
“Bedroom?”
“Upstairs, Detective.” The patrolman nodded.
