The Steel Kiss Page 2

  Oh, no. Why is life such a chore?

  Two others show up. One white, one black. Both twice my weight.

  I duck back. And then things get worse yet. Behind me, other end of the corridor I've just come down. I hear more voices. Maybe it's Red and some others, making a sweep this way.

  And the only exit, ahead of me, has three rental cops, who live for the day they too have a chance to break bones... or Tase or spray.

  Me, in the middle and nowhere to go.

  CHAPTER 2

  Where?"

  "Still searching, Amelia," Buddy Everett, the patrolman from the 84, told her. "Six teams. Exits're all covered, us or private security. He's got to be here somewhere."

  Wiping away the blood on her boot with a Starbucks napkin. Or trying to, futilely. Her jacket, in a trash bag she'd gotten from the coffee shop too, might not be irreparably ruined but she wasn't inclined to wear a garment that had been saturated with blood. The young patrolman noted the stains on her hands, his eyes troubled. Cops are, of course, human too. Immunity comes eventually but later to some than others, and Buddy Everett was young still.

  Through red-framed glasses, he looked at the open access panel. "And he...?"

  "He didn't make it."

  A nod. Eyes now on the floor, Sachs's bloody boot prints leading away from the escalator.

  "No idea which direction he went?" he asked.

  "None." She sighed. Only a few minutes had elapsed between the time that Unsub 40 might have seen her and fled, and the deployment of the backup officers. But that seemed to be enough to turn him invisible. "All right. I'll be searching with you."

  "They'll need help in the basement. It's a warren down there."

  "Sure. But get bodies canvassing in the street too. If he saw me he had a window to get the hell out of Dodge ASAP."

  "Sure, Amelia."

  The youthful officer with the glasses the shade of cooling blood nodded and headed off.

  "Detective?" A man's voice from behind her.

  She turned to a compact Latino of about fifty, in a striped navy-blue suit and yellow shirt. His tie was spotless white. Don't see that combo often.

  She nodded.

  "Captain Madino."

  She shook his hand. He was surveying her with dark eyes, lids low. Seductive but not sexual; captivating in the way powerful men--some women too--were.

  Madino would be from the 84th Precinct and would have nothing to do with the Unsub 40 case, which was on the Major Cases roster. He was here because of the accident, though the police would probably step out pretty soon, unless there was a finding that there had been criminal negligence in the maintenance of the escalator, which rarely happened. But it still would be Madino's boys and girls who ran the scene.

  "What happened?" he asked her.

  "Fire department could tell you better than I could. I was moving on a homicide suspect. All I know is the escalator malfunctioned somehow and a male, middle-aged, fell into the gears. I got to him, tried to stop the bleeding but there wasn't much to do. He hung in there for a while. But ended up DCDS."

  Deceased, confirmed dead at scene.

  "Emergency switch?"

  "Somebody hit it but that only shuts the stairs off, not the main motor. The gears keep going. Got him around the groin and belly."

  "Man." The captain's lips tightened. He stepped forward to look down into the pit. Madino gave no reaction. He gripped his white tie to make sure it didn't swing forward and get soiled on the railing. Blood had made its way up there too. Unemotional, he turned back to Sachs. "You were down there?"

  "I was."

  "Must have been tough." The sympathy in his eyes seemed genuine. "Tell me about the weapons discharge."

  "The motor," Sachs explained. "There was no cutoff switch that I could find. No wires to cut. I couldn't leave him to find it or climb to the top to tell somebody to kill the juice; I was putting pressure on the wounds. So I parked a round in the coil of the motor itself. Stopped it from cutting him in half. But he was pretty much gone by then. Lost eighty percent of his blood, the EMT said."

  Madino was nodding. "That was a good try, Detective."

  "Didn't work."

  "Not much else you could do." He looked back to the open access panel. "We'll have to convene a Shooting Team but, on this scenario, it'll be a formality. Nothing to worry about."

  "Appreciate that, Captain."

  Despite what one sees on screens large and small, a police officer's firing a weapon is a rare and consequential occurrence. A gun can be discharged only in the event the officer believes his or her life or that of a bystander is endangered or when an armed felon flees. And force can be used only to kill, not wound. A Glock may not be used like a wrench to shut off renegade machinery.

  In the event of a shooting by a cop, on or off duty, a supervisor from the precinct where it happened comes to the scene to secure and inspect the officer's weapon. He then convenes the Patrol Borough Shooting Team--which has to be run by a captain. Since there was no death or injury resulting from the shot, Sachs didn't need to submit to an Intoxilizer test or go on administrative leave for the mandatory three days. And, in the absence of malfeasance, she wasn't required to surrender her weapon. Just offer it to the supervisor to inspect and note the serial number.

  She did this now: deftly dropped the magazine and ejected the chambered round, then collected it from the floor. She offered the weapon to him. He wrote down the serial. Handed the pistol back.

  She added, "I'll do the Firearms Discharge/Assault Report."

  "No hurry, Detective. It takes a while to convene the team, and it looks like you've got some other tasks on your plate." Madino was looking down into the pit once more. "God bless you, Detective. Not a lot of people would've gone down there."

  Sachs rechambered the ejected round. Officers from the 84 had cordoned off both of these escalators, so she turned and hurried toward the elevators on her way to the basement, where she'd help search for Unsub 40. But she paused when Buddy Everett approached.

  "He's gone, Amelia. Out of the building." His dark-red frames both enhanced and jarred.

  "How?"

  "Loading dock."

  "We had people there, I thought. Rent-a-cops if not ours."

  "He called, the unsub, he shouted from around the corner near the dock, said the perp was in a storage area. Bring their cuffs, Mace or whatever. You know rentals? They love a chance to play real cop. Everybody went running to the storeroom. He strolled right out. Video shows him--new jacket, dark sport coat, fedora--climbing down the dock ladder and running through the truck parking zone."

  "Going where?"

  "Narrow-focus camera. No idea."

  She shrugged. "Subways? Buses?"

  "Nothing on CCTV. Probably walked or took a cab."

  To one of the eighty-five million places he might go.

  "Dark jacket, you said? Sport coat?"

  "We canvassed the shops. But nobody saw anybody with his build buy anything. Don't have his face."

  "Think we can get prints from the ladder? At the dock?"

  "Oh, the vid shows he put gloves on before he climbed down."

  Smart. This boy is smart.

  "One thing. He was carrying his cup and what seemed like some food wrappers. We looked but he didn't drop 'em that we could find."

  "I'll get an ECT on it."

  "Hey, how'd it go with Captain White Tie? Oh, did I say that?"

  She smiled. "If you said it I didn't hear it."

  "He's already planning how to redecorate his office in the governor's mansion."

  Explained the posh outfit. Brass with aspirations. Good to have on your side.

  God bless you...

  "Fine. Looks like he's backing me up on the weapons issue."

  "He's a decent guy. Just promise you'll vote for him."

  "Keep up the canvass," Sachs told him.

  "Will do."

  Sachs was approached by an inspector with the fire department and ga
ve a statement on the escalator accident. Twenty minutes later the Evidence Collection Team assigned to the Unsub 40 case arrived from the NYPD's massive Crime Scene complex in Queens. She greeted them, two thirty-ish African American techs, man and woman, she worked with from time to time. They wheeled heavy suitcases toward the escalator.

  "Uh-uh," Sachs told them. "That was an accident. The Department of Investigations'll be coordinating with the Eight-Four. I need you to walk the grid at Starbucks."

  "What happened there?" the woman officer asked, looking over the coffee shop.

  "A serious crime," her partner offered. "Price of a frappuccino."

  "Our unsub sat down for a late lunch. Some table in the back, you'll have to ask where. Tall, thin. Green checkered jacket and Atlanta baseball cap. But there won't be much. He took his cup and wrappers with him."

  "Hate it when they don't leave their DNA lying around."

  "True, that."

  Sachs said, "But I'm hoping he ditched the litter somewhere close."

  "You have any idea where?" the woman asked.

  Looking over the staff in Starbucks, Sachs had, in fact, had an inspiration. "Maybe. But it's not in the mall. I'll check that out myself. You handle Starbucks."

  "Always loved you, Amelia. You give us the warm and fuzzy and you take the dark 'n' cold."

  She crouched and pulled a blue Tyvek jumpsuit out of the case one of the ECTs had just opened.

  "Standard operating procedure, right, Amelia? Bundle up everything and get it to Lincoln's town house?"

  Sachs's face was stony as she said, "No, ship everything back to Queens. I'm running the case from downtown."

  The two ECTs regarded each other briefly and then looked back to Sachs. The woman asked, "He's okay? Rhyme?"

  "Oh, you didn't hear?" Sachs said tersely. "Lincoln's not working for the NYPD anymore."

  CHAPTER 3

  The answer is there."

  A pause as the words echoed off the glossy, scuffed walls, their color academia green. That is, bile.

  "The answer. It may be obvious, like a bloody knife emblazoned with the perp's fingerprints and DNA, inscribed with his initials and a quotation from his favorite poet. Or obscure, nothing more than three invisible ligands--and what is a ligand? Anyone?"

  "Olfactory molecules, sir." A shaky male voice.

  Lincoln Rhyme continued, "Obscure, I was saying. The answer may be in three olfactory molecules. But it is there. The connection between the killer and killee that can lead us to his door and persuade the jury to relocate him to a new home for twenty to thirty years. Someone give me Locard's Principle."

  A woman's voice said firmly from the front row: "With every crime there is a transfer of material between perpetrator and the scene or the victim or most likely both. Edmond Locard, the French criminalist, used the word 'dust' but 'material' is generally accepted. Trace evidence, in other words." The responder tilted her head, tossing aside long chestnut hair framing a heart-shaped face. She added, "Paul Kirk elaborated. 'Physical evidence cannot perjure itself. It cannot be wholly absent. Only human failure to find it, study and understand it can diminish its value.'"

  Lincoln Rhyme nodded. Correct answers might be acknowledged but never praised; that was reserved for an insight that transcended the baseline. He was impressed nonetheless, as he had not yet assigned any readings that discussed the great French criminalist. He gazed out at the faces, as if perplexed. "Did you all write down what Ms. Archer said? It appears some of you did not. I can't fathom why."

  Pens began to skitter, laptop keyboards to click and fingers danced silently over two-dimensional keys of tablets.

  This was only the second class session of Introduction to Crime Scene Analysis and protocols had yet to be established. The students' memories would be supple and in good form but not infallible. Besides, recording on paper or screen means possessing, not just comprehending.

  "The answer is there," Rhyme repeated, well, professorially. "With criminalistics--forensic science--there is not a single crime that cannot be solved. The only question is one of resource, ingenuity and effort. How far are you willing to go to identify the perp? As, yes, Paul Kirk said in the nineteen fifties." He glanced at Juliette Archer. Rhyme had learned the names of only a few students. Archer's had been the first.

  "Captain Rhyme?" From a young man in the back of the classroom, which contained about thirty people, ranging from early twenties to forties, skewed toward the younger. Despite the stylish, spiky hipster hair, the man had police in him. While the college catalog bio--not to mention the tens of thousands of Google references--offered up Rhyme's official rank at the time he'd left the force on disability some years ago, it was unlikely that anyone not connected with the NYPD would use it.

  With a genteel move of his right hand, professor turned his elaborate motorized wheelchair to face student. Rhyme was a quadriplegic, largely paralyzed from the neck down; his left ring finger and, now, after some surgery, right arm and hand were the only southern extremities working. "Yes?"

  "I was thinking. Locard was talking about 'material' or 'dust'?" A glance toward Archer in the front row, far left.

  "Correct."

  "Couldn't there also be a psychological transference?"

  "How do you mean?"

  "Say the perp threatens to torture the victim before he kills him. The victim is discovered with a look of terror on his face. We can infer that the perp was a sadist. You could add that to the psychological profile. Maybe narrow down the field of suspects."

  Proper use of the word infer, Rhyme noted. Often confused with the transitive imply. He said, "A question. Did you enjoy that series of books? Harry Potter? Movies too, right?" As a rule, cultural phenomena didn't interest him much--not unless they might help solve a crime, which happened, more or less, never. But Potter was, after all, Potter.

  The young man squinted his dark eyes. "Yes, sure."

  "You do know that it was fiction, right. That Hogworths doesn't exist?"

  "Hogwarts. And I'm pretty aware of that, yes."

  "And you'll concede that wizards, casting spells, voodoo, ghosts, telekinesis and your theory of the transfer of psychological elements at crime scenes--"

  "Are hogwash, you're saying?"

  Drawing laughs.

  Rhyme's brows V'd, though not at the interruption; he liked insolence and in fact the play on words was rather clever. His was a substantive complaint. "Not at all. I was going to say that each of those theories has yet to be empirically proven. You present me with objective studies, repeatedly duplicating results of your purported psychological transference, which include a valid sampling size and controls, supporting the theory, and I'll consider it valid. I myself wouldn't rely on it. Focusing on more intangible aspects of an investigation distracts from the important task at hand. Which is?"

  "The evidence." Juliette Archer again.

  "Crime scenes change like a dandelion under a sudden breath. Those three ligands are all that remain of a million only a moment earlier. A drop of rain can wash away a speck of the killer's DNA, which destroys any chance of finding him in the CODIS database and learning his name, address, phone number, Social... and shirt size." A look over the room. "Shirt size was a joke." People tended to believe everything that Lincoln Rhyme said.

  The hipster cop nodded but appeared to be unconvinced. Rhyme was impressed. He wondered if the student would in fact look into the subject. Hoped he did. There might actually be something to his theory.

  "We'll speak more about Monsieur Locard's dust--that is, trace evidence--in a few weeks. Today our subject will be making sure that we have dust to analyze. Preserving the crime scene is our topic. You will never have a virgin crime scene. That does not exist. Your job will be to make sure your scenes are the least contaminated they can be. Now, what is the number one contaminant?" Without waiting for a response he continued, "Yes, fellow cops--often, most often, brass. How we keep senior officials, preening for news cams, out of the scene while sim
ultaneously retaining our jobs?"

  The laughter died down and the lecture began.

  Lincoln Rhyme had taught on and off for years. He didn't particularly enjoy teaching but he believed strongly in the efficacy of crime scene work in solving crimes. And he wanted to make sure the standards of forensic scientists were the highest they could be--that was, his standards. Many guilty people were getting off or were being sentenced to punishments far less severe than their crimes dictated. And innocent people were going to jail. He had resolved to do what he could to whip a new generation of criminalists into shape.

  A month ago Rhyme had decided that this would be his new mission. He had cleared his criminal case workload and applied for a job at the John Marshall School for Criminal Justice, a mere two blocks from his Central Park West town house. In fact, he didn't even have to apply. Over drinks one night he'd mused to a district attorney friend that he was thinking of hanging up his guns and teaching. The DA said something to somebody and word got back to John Marshall, where the prosecutor taught part-time, and the dean of the school called soon after. Rhyme supposed that because of his reputation, he was a solid commodity, attracting media and additional students and possibly prompting a spike in tuition income. Rhyme signed on to teach this introductory course and Advanced Chemical and Mechanical Analysis of Substances Frequently Found in Felony Crime Scenes, Including Electron Microscopy. It was indicative of his rep that the latter course filled up nearly as fast as the former.

  Most of the students were in, or destined for, policing work. Local, state or federal. Some would do commercial forensic analysis--working for private eyes, corporations and lawyers. A few were journalists and one a novelist, who wanted to get it right. (Rhyme welcomed his presence; he himself was the subject of a series of novels based on cases he'd run and had written the author on several occasions about misrepresentations of real crime scene work. "Must you sensationalize?")

  After an overview, though a comprehensive one, of crime scene preservation Rhyme noted the time and dismissed the class, and the students filed out. He wheeled to the ramp that led off the low stage.

  By the time he reached the main floor of the lecture hall, all those in class had left, except one.