The Cutting Edge Read online

  A moment later the low bubble of a powerful car’s exhaust thudded through the closed window. Amelia Sachs had arrived. She gave the engine some gas and it then went silent. She walked inside, hung her bomber jacket on a hook and adjusted the belt around her blue jeans, to slip rearward the plastic Glock holster for comfort. She wore a teal high-necked sweater and beneath that, Rhyme had seen this morning as she’d dressed, a black silk T-shirt. They’d listened to the weather report on the radio—today would be unseasonably cold for mid-March, just like the past week. In Washington, DC, they’d witnessed cherry blossoms dying by the thousands.

  Sachs nodded to those assembled. Sellitto waved back and noisily finished his soup.

  Now that most of the team was in place, and fed—Rhyme reflected with amused cynicism—Sellitto briefed them.

  “’Bout an hour ago. Robbery and multiple murder. Midtown North. Third floor of Five-Eight West Four-Seven. Patel Designs, owned by Jatin Patel, fifty-five. He’s one of the deceased. Diamond cutter and he made and sold jewelry. Was pretty famous, what I hear. I’m not a jewelry kind of guy, so who knows? Major Cases drew it, and they drew me. And I’m drawing you.”

  The Major Case Division, overseen by a deputy inspector from the Detective Bureau in One Police Plaza, did not generally run homicides or retail location burglaries.

  Lon Sellitto had noted the glance Rhyme and Sachs shared. He now explained why this case was an exception.

  “The feeling came down from our friends at City Hall that the last thing we need is a violent robbery in the Diamond District. Especially if he’s got more stores in mind. People’ll stop shopping. Bad for tourism, bad for the economy.”

  “The victims probably aren’t too elated either, wouldn’t you say, Lon?”

  “I’m telling you what I was told is all, Linc. Okay?”

  “Proceed away.”

  “Now, one other wrinkle and this we’re keeping a wrap on. The perp tortured Patel. The supervising captain from Midtown North thinks he didn’t want to give up the good stuff—open the safe or whatever. So the killer used a box cutter on him till he talked. It was pretty bad.”

  Some other shit too…

  Rhyme said, “Okay. Let’s get to work. Sachs, the scene. I’ll get Mel Cooper in. You stay put, Pulaski. Keep you in reserve for the time being.”

  Sachs pulled her jacket off the hook, slipped it on, then clipped two spare magazines on her left hip. She headed for the door.

  Thom walked into the parlor and smiled at Sachs. “Oh, Amelia. Didn’t see you come in. You hungry?”

  “I am. Missed breakfast and lunch.”

  “Soup? Perfect for a cold day.”

  She gave him a wry smile. Slamming the Torino Cobra, with its 405-horsepower engine and four-speed manual, through Midtown Manhattan made any beverage, let alone hot soup, problematic.

  She pulled her keys from her pocket. “Maybe later.”

  Chapter 4

  The crime scene at Patel Designs on 47th Street presented Amelia Sachs with three questions.

  One, since the perp had left hundreds of diamonds behind—just sitting in the open safe—what, in fact, had he stolen? If anything.

  Two, why was Patel tortured?

  Three, who had placed the anonymous call to report the crime and give a fairly detailed description of the perp? There was a Part B to this question: Was he still alive? When she’d first arrived at the third-floor shop she’d smelled the air and known immediately a weapon had been fired here. She guessed the witness had walked into the robbery, been shot and fled, stopping at the street pay phone from which he’d called 911.

  The shop was small and the distance from gun to victim would, at most, have been ten or fifteen feet. Hard to miss with a lethal shot at that range. And there were no stray slugs anywhere in the office or the hallway. The witness had almost certainly been hit.

  Sachs, in the crime scene white hooded jumpsuit and booties, stepped around the sizable pool of blood, in the rough shape of Lake Michigan, and laid the numbers for the photographs—the small placards placed where the evidence and significant elements of the crime were located. After shooting the photos, she walked the grid: searching the scene inch by inch. The grid pattern, the only approach she used, as she’d learned from Rhyme, involved walking from one end of the scene to the other, then turning, stepping a foot to the side and returning, the way one mows a lawn. Then you turn perpendicular and search the same scene again, “against the grain,” as Rhyme described it.

  She went through the routine now: gathering trace, taking footprints, searching for friction ridge prints and swabbing where the perp might have left DNA. Standing momentarily with hands on hips, she surveyed the floor plan of the shop, which embraced, she estimated, only about nine hundred square feet. She glanced out the front door, held open by a rubber wedge, noting a man in a jumpsuit similar to hers. She said to him, “Computer’s in the office. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

  The ECT—evidence collection technician—had specialized training in security cameras and storage devices. He’d extract what he could from the hard drive in Patel’s office; a single camera was pointed at the front door from behind the counter. It seemed to be working; a tiny red eye glowed teasingly, and a cable ran from the camera to the man’s desktop computer, which sat next to a large printer and, curiously, an ancient fax machine. The camera wasn’t connected to a central station, only the computer.

  Regarding the security system, though, Sachs was sure that crossing fingers wouldn’t be enough. This perp did not seem like a man to forget about erasing security videos. As every cop knew, however, erasing digital media was never permanent. Lots of incriminating data could be unearthed—if the data had existed in the first place. A big if.

  Sachs now filled out chain-of-custody details on separate cards to be affixed to the evidence itself or the paper or plastic evidence bags it had been stashed in.

  Next. The hard part.

  She had saved the bodies till the last.

  Because, if they didn’t need to be processed first, you just put it off for a little bit longer.

  The image that immediately seized her attention when she’d first entered and that touched her still was the fingers of the couple whose throats had been slashed. The hands had been tied behind them and at some point they’d moved close—most likely just before the end—and interlaced their fingers. Though they had thrashed in pain from the knifing, their fingers remained intertwined. In their death throes they had found some small comfort in the grip. Or she hoped they had. Sachs had been a street cop, then a detective working Major Cases, for years. The heart hardened, as it must, in this line of work. But details like these could still summon an urge to cry, even if no tears swelled. For some cops this never happened. She thought she was a better officer for it.

  The owner of the store, Jatin Patel, had died from a slashed throat too. One difference, though, was the torture. The medical examiner’s office tour doctor, a slim Asian American woman, had pointed out the slices on his hands, ear and face. Pistol-whipping too. The wounds were all premortem.

  Neither Patel nor the couple seemed to have been personally robbed, though Patel had no phone on him or in the shop. At least, the usual take remained: Wallets, purses, jewelry and cash were intact. She photographed the three bodies from all angles, rolled for fibers and other trace and took hair samples for exclusion later. She got fingernail scrapings, though none of the victims had apparently fought the unsub. Alternative light source scans of their skin, near where the lamp cord bound their wrists, revealed no fingerprints. She hadn’t expected any; throughout the scene there were so many cloth glove prints, some in blood, that she knew, almost to a certainty, the unsub wouldn’t have left his own.

  “Sorry,” came the voice from the office.

  Sachs walked to the doorway.

  The evidence collection technician, whose belly tested the zipper of the overalls, said, “No hard drive. I mean, he took it. And no backup.”
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  “He…how’d he get it?”

  “Must’ve had tools with him. Easy—Phillips-head screwdriver is all you need.”

  She thanked him and walked into the corridor, nodding to the ME doc, who’d been waiting patiently and texting.

  “You can take them,” Sachs said.

  The woman nodded and radioed down to the bus. Her technicians would bring gurneys and body bags and transport the corpses to the morgue for full autopsies.

  “Detective?” A young, compact uniform, out of Midtown North, approached from the elevator. He stopped well shy of the door.

  “Scene’s clear, Alvarez. It’s okay. What’ve you got?”

  He and his partner, an African American woman in her late twenties, had divided up and begun canvassing for witnesses and looking for other evidence that the perp might have shed as he’d arrived at or left the scene. A search for wits wouldn’t have been particularly fruitful, Sachs had guessed. Many of the offices in the building weren’t occupied. For Lease signs were everywhere. And today being a weekend—and the Jewish Sabbath—the other businesses on this floor were closed. Alvarez said, “Three offices on the second floor, and two on the floor above us’re open. Two people heard a bang about twelve thirty or twelve forty-five but thought it was a backfire or construction. Nobody else saw or heard anything.”

  That was probably the case, though Sachs was, as always, a bit skeptical. The crime had happened around lunch hour. Employees coming and going might easily have gotten a glimpse of the perp but it was very common for witnesses to grow deaf—and blind—from that malady known as self-preservation.

  “And something here.” Alvarez was pointing into the hall beside the elevator: a security camera mounted to the wall. Sachs hadn’t noted it when she’d first arrived. She squinted, gave a brief laugh. “Painted over?”

  He nodded. “And look at the trail of the spray paint.”

  Sachs didn’t get it at first, then realized what he meant. The perp—presumably the perp—had started spraying paint toward the camera while still behind it, and then hit the lens from directly underneath—to make certain he wasn’t recorded for even a second. Smart.

  Like taking the hard drive.

  “Cameras on the street?”

  Alvarez said, “Maybe good news there. The stores to the right and left of the entrance to this building, they’re copying their .MP4 video files for us. I told ’em to preserve the originals.”

  Copies were fine for the investigation; the original drives would be needed for trial.

  If we get to trial, Sachs thought.

  She turned back to the shop, considering the first of the three questions romping through her mind. Number One: What had he taken? She’d done a thorough search, walking the grid, but, of course, that wouldn’t necessarily give her any insights into what wasn’t present any longer.

  She scanned the place once more. Patel Designs wasn’t a jewelry store like most. There were no display cases for a smash and grab. The operation consisted of three rooms: a front waiting room, an office directly behind and, through a doorway to the left, a workroom filled with equipment, which was used, she guessed, to cut gems and assemble jewelry. This last room was the largest of the three, containing stations for two workers—large turntables, similar to what potters used to turn vases and bowls. Some battered industrial equipment, one piece apparently a small laser. This also served as a storeroom: On shelves and against the wall were piles of empty boxes, shipping and office supplies, cleaning materials. Nothing valuable was kept here, it seemed.

  The front room—and waiting area—was a ten-by-fifteen-foot space, dominated by a wooden counter. It also contained a couch and two mismatched chairs. On the counter rested several foot-square velvet pads for viewing customers’ jewelry, several eye loupes, stacks of paper (all blank). She guessed Patel did only custom work. He would meet with his customers here and bring out pieces they’d ordered from the workshop or the waist-high safe in the office for examination. An Internet search had revealed that the main business of the company was cutting and polishing large diamonds for other jewelry manufacturers.

  Question One…

  What did you walk out of here with?

  She stepped back into the office and looked over the safe and its contents: hundreds of three-by-three-inch white paper squares—folded like Japanese origami. These contained loose diamonds.

  The perp’s glove prints—both in blood and from residue absorbed by cloth fibers—were on the safe and several of the paper squares. But he hadn’t ransacked. She would have thought he either would take all these or, if he wanted something in particular, would have dug through the safe and flung aside the envelopes he didn’t want.

  There was one way to find out. Sachs had collected what business documents she could find. One would probably contain an inventory of the diamonds Patel had in stock. Evidence technicians at Crime Scene headquarters in Queens, those working in the HVE, the high-value evidence room, would compare the inventory against what was in the safe. Eventually they’d discover what was missing.

  It could take months.

  Too long. They needed to know as soon as possible what had been taken, so conversations could start with confidential informants who had stolen-jewelry contacts, known fences and money launderers. With robbery, if you don’t stop the perps in the act, the investigation will invariably be a long slog through the complicated, wide-flung world of moving stolen merchandise.

  But there didn’t seem to be any way to short-circuit the process.

  Except…

  Something was wrong about this. Why leave these stones? What was more important than them?

  Sachs crouched—carefully, her arthritic knee sometimes complained on these damp days—and looked through the safe more carefully. Some of the envelopes contained only one diamond, some dozens. The gems seemed damn nice to her, plenty perp-worthy. But what did she know? She wasn’t a jewelry girl. The only sparkle she wore was her blue diamond engagement ring, which sat modestly beside a thin gold band—now both hidden beneath purple latex.

  She guessed there were several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stones in the safe.

  There for the taking.

  Yet he hadn’t.

  She rose, feeling a trickle of moisture down her temples. The day was cold but the old building’s radiators emitted sweat-lodge heat, which was trapped against her body by the white Tyvek overalls. She remembered the days when one searched a scene wearing only gloves and, sometimes, booties. The protective outfits, a staple of crime scenes around the world, now existed for two reasons: First, because of the risk from dangerous materials at the scene. And, second, defense attorneys. The odds of contaminating a scene by not wearing overalls were extremely small. But a sharp lawyer could derail the prosecution’s case entirely by planting a seed of doubt that it might have happened.

  Okay, if not the safe, then what?

  As the medical examiner techs removed the bodies—the couple first and then Patel—she gazed over the three rooms once more.

  What if, Sachs speculated, it wasn’t a robbery at all, but a hit? Had Patel borrowed money from a loan shark and failed to pay it back? Not likely—he owned a successful business and hardly seemed like the kind of man to contact a local gangbanger for a loan at 30 percent vig, the going rate for interest on street borrowing, and that was per month.

  A romance gone bad? Patel was a widower, she’d learned. And the round, unkempt middle-aged man just didn’t seem like the type to become embroiled in a torrid and dangerous affair. If simply killing him was the motive, why the torture? And, for that matter, why break into the shop? Why not just tap him at home or on the street?

  Her eyes returned to the workroom. Had Patel or an employee been working on a diamond or piece of jewelry that was particularly valuable?

  She walked into the room. The workstations didn’t appear to have been used today; all the equipment was arranged neatly on shelves or racks. However, at one station she noti
ced another of those sheets of paper folded into an envelope for holding diamonds, like those in the safe. This one, however, was empty. Written on it in pen were: GC-1, GC-2, GC-3 and GC-4. The names for the diamonds it had contained, she guessed, since weight in carats was given next to each (they ranged from five to seven point five). There were letters beside each, as well. The designation D, IF was next to three. Beside the last one, smaller, was D, F. Quality ranking, maybe. Also on the sheet was written: Owner: Grace-Cabot Mining, Ltd., Cape Town, South Africa. Beside that was the company’s phone number.

  “Hm,” she muttered aloud when she saw another note, at the bottom. This stated the valuation of each stone. The total worth was sixty-eight million ZAR. She pulled out her phone and Googled, learning that the denomination was, not surprisingly, South African rands.

  What was surprising was the number she came up with when she ran the currency conversion calculator.

  The value in U.S. dollars hovered around five million

  Amelia Sachs believed she had found a pretty likely answer to Question Number One.

  Chapter 5

  To confirm that the pricey diamonds were indeed what had been stolen, Amelia Sachs returned to the safe and looked at every one of the hundreds of small folded squares.

  No envelopes were marked with the letters GC or the company name. A call to Grace-Cabot would confirm that Patel had been in possession of the stones but it was a reasonable assumption that these were what the unsub had taken.

  Had he known the gems were here? Or had he simply picked Patel’s operation at random and demanded to know where the most valuable stones were?

  Only speculation at this point.

  Sachs photographed the Grace-Cabot box and receipt, then bagged them.

  Now, Question Two: the torture.

  Sachs disagreed with Sellitto that Patel had been tortured to give up the combination of the safe or tell where valuable diamonds, like the Grace-Cabot stones, were. In the end, the diamonds were just a commodity. Faced with death, or even the threat of torture, Patel would have given up any or all of his wares. Everything would be insured. No bit of jewelry was worth your life or one second of pain.