More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II

Mel Cooper came out of the lab flexing his hands.

“How’s the mission?” Rhyme asked.

“Do you know how many knots there were?”

“Twenty-four,” Rhyme said. “And I noted the tense of the verb. You’re finished.”

“I think I have carpal tunnel. But we were successful.”

“You find his business card?”

“Maybe something just as good. A husk. A very small husk.”

“Of what?”

“Rice.”

Rhyme nodded, pursing his lips. And Sachs said exactly what he was thinking: “Shipments of food that the foundation sent to Africa? So the shooter might’ve been recruited there.”

“Or by somebody who owns a farm. Or sells rice. The one who sold the rotten shipments maybe.”

“And the marine diesel oil,” Mel Cooper said, nodding at the chart. “Cargo ships.”

Sachs added the entry to their chart.

“Let’s look over the list that Kelsey made for us.”

Sachs taped the page on a whiteboard.

“The usual suspects?” Rhyme snorted a cold laugh. “Typical homicides have, what? Four or five tops? And what pond are we fishing in here?” A nod at the list. “Most of the Third World, half of the Middle East and Europe and a good chunk of the Fortune Five Hundred corporations.”

“And all he was doing,” Sachs said, “was giving away money to people who needed it.”

“Don’t you know that expression?” Sellitto muttered. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

RONALD LARKIN HOMICIDE

• Coir fiber.

• Dirt from garden below the balcony.

• Dark hairs, curly. No bulb attached.

• Bit of rubber, black, possibly from sole of shoe.

• Dirt and sand with traces of marine diesel fuel, saltwater.

• No friction ridges, tread marks, tool marks.

• Lint containing traces of Dianabol steroid. Athlete?

• .32 caliber automatic, sound suppressor, fragmentation bullets.

• CMI grappling hook, wrapped in strips of old flannel shirt.

• Mil-Spec 550 rope, knotted. Black.

• Rice husk, trapped in knot.

Suspect:

• U.S. citizen, other passports?

• trained in Europe.

• mercenary with African, Middle East connections.

• no motive.

• high fee.

• employer unknown.

The young officer wasn’t comfortable.

He was a newly appointed detective, still awaiting rank, and had been given the thankless job of escorting the poor widow back to her town house to collect some clothes, then hand her over to a bodyguard.

Not that she was beating up on him or anything. No, it was just the opposite. She seemed so distant and upset and weepy that he didn’t know what to say to her, how to act. He wished his wife were here; she’d calm the woman down pretty fast. But the detective himself? Nope, wasn’t his strength. He was sympathetic, sure, but he didn’t know how to express it. He’d been on the force only five years, mostly in Patrol, and he’d had very few opportunities to meet grieving relatives. Once, a garbage truck plowed into the side of a parked SUV, killing the woman driver. He’d had to tell the husband what had happened, and it had taken him weeks to get over the look of horror and sorrow in the man’s face.

Now, he was working as a detective in Narcotics. Occasional bodies, occasional widows. None of them grieving like this. A lot didn’t seem to care their husbands were dead.

He watched Kitty Larkin standing in the front doorway of her town house, paralyzed, it seemed.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, then mentally kicked himself.

Duh…

He meant, of course, was there something out of the ordinary about the house, something he should be looking into, calling Lieutenant Sellitto about. His hand strayed to his Glock, which he’d drawn a half dozen times in his career, but never fired.

Kitty shook her head. “No,” she whispered, and seemed to realize that she’d stopped walking. “Sorry.” She continued into the house. “I’ll just be a few minutes. I’ll pack a bag.”

The detective was making a circuit from the front to the back of the house when he saw a black sedan pull up in the street.

An African American woman in a dark suit climbed out and walked up to him. She flashed a badge.

U.S. Department of State.

“I’m taking over security for Mrs. Larkin,” she said with a faint accent the man couldn’t place.

“You’re—”

“Taking over security for Mrs. Larkin,” the woman repeated slowly.

Good, the officer thought, relieved that he wouldn’t have to sit around and watch the woman cry. But then he thought: Hold on.

“Just a second.”

“What do you mean?”

The cop pulled out his phone and called Lieutenant Sellitto.

“Yeah?” the gruff Major Cases cop asked.

“Detective, just wanted to let you know that the bodyguard got here, for the Larkin woman. She’s from the State Department, though, not us.”

“The what?”

“State Department.”

“Yeah? What’s her name?”

The detective asked to see her ID again and she showed it to him. “Norma Sedgwick.”

“Hold on a minute.”

He said to Norma. “Just have to check.”

She didn’t seem mad but her face registered a bit of “whatever.” It seemed like a rookie putdown. Okay, you feddie bitch, you ever get shot at by a crank-crazed eighteen-year-old armed with a SIG- Sauer and a knife? Which is how he’d spent last Monday evening.

He just smiled at her.

On the other end of the line Sellitto’s hand was over the receiver and he was talking with someone else. The detective wondered if it was the legendary Lincoln Rhyme. He knew Sellitto worked with him from time to time. He’d never met Rhyme. There were rumors that he didn’t really exist.

A few minutes later — it seemed like forever — Sellitto came back on the line.

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

Thank you, the detective thought. He could leave Mrs. Larkin and her grief and flee back to the place where he was a lot more comfortable: the drug world of East New York and the South Bronx.

* * *

“Norma, where’re we going?” Kitty, in the backseat, asked the stocky, attractive State Department agent, driving the Lincoln Town Car.