ALSO BY JEFFERY DEAVER
Solitude Creek**
The Skin Collector*
The Starling Project, an original radio play
Trouble in Mind, Collected Stories, Volume Three
Ice Cold, Stories of the Cold War (Editor)
Books to Die For (Contributor)
The October List, a Thriller in Reverse
The Kill Room*
XO**/*
XO: The Album (Music CD of original songs)
Carte Blanche, a James Bond Novel
Edge
The Burning Wire*
Best American Mystery Stories 2009 (Editor)
The Watch List (The Copper Bracelet and The Chopin Manuscript) (Contributor)
Roadside Crosses**
The Bodies Left Behind
The Broken Window*
The Sleeping Doll**
More Twisted: Collected Stories, Volume Two
The Cold Moon*/**
The Twelfth Card*
Garden of Beasts
Twisted: Collected Stories
The Vanished Man*
The Stone Monkey*
The Blue Nowhere
The Empty Chair*
Speaking in Tongues
The Devil’s Teardrop
The Coffin Dancer*
The Bone Collector*
A Maiden’s Grave
Praying for Sleep
The Lesson of Her Death
Mistress of Justice
Hard News
Death of a Blue Movie Star
Manhattan Is My Beat
Hell’s Kitchen
Bloody River Blues
Shallow Graves
A Century of Great Suspense Stories (Editor)
A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime (Editor)
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Introduction)
*Featuring Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs
**Featuring Kathryn Dance
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Gunner Publications, LLC
Cover design by name
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First Edition: March 2016
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Deaver, Jeffery, author.
Title: The steel kiss / Jeffery Deaver.
Description: First edition. | New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2016. |
Series: A Lincoln Rhyme novel
Identifiers: LCCN 2015039435| ISBN 9781455536344 (hardcover) | ISBN
9781478906629 (audio download) | ISBN 9781478906612 (audio cd)
Subjects: LCSH: Rhyme, Lincoln (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Police—
New York (State)—New York—Fiction. | Forensic scientists—Fiction. |
Quadriplegics—Fiction. | Serial murder investigation—Fiction. | BISAC:
FICTION / Thrillers. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction | Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3554.E1755 S74 2016 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015039435
ISBNs: 978-1-4555-3634-4 (hardcover), TK? (int’l), TK? (large print), 978-1-4555-3636-8 (ebook)
Printed in the United States of America
RRD-C
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Will and Tina Anderson and the boys . . .
Contents
Cover
Disclaimer
Also by Jeffery Deaver
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Tuesday I: Blunt Force
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Wednesday II: The Intern
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Thursday III: Exploit
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Friday IV: The People’s Guardian
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Saturday V: Check . . .
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Sunday VI: . . . and Mate
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Monday VII: Plan A
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Navigation
Begin Reading
Table of Contents
The Steel
Kiss
The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury,
our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.
—CICERO
TUESDAY I
BLUNT FORCE
CHAPTER 1
Sometimes you catch a break.
Amelia Sachs had been driving her arterial-blood-red Ford Torino along a commercial stretch of Brooklyn’s Henry Street, more or less minding pedestrians and traffic, when she spotted the suspect.
What’re the odds?
She was helped by the fact that Unsub 40 was unusual in appearance. Tall and quite thin, he’d stood out in the crowd a short time ago. Still, that alone would hardly get you noticed in the throng here. But on the night he’d beaten his victim to death, two weeks before, a witness reported that he’d been wearing a pale-green checked sport coat and Braves baseball cap. Sachs had done the requisite—if hopeless—posting of this info on the wire and moved on to other aspects of the investigation . . . and on to other investigations; Major Cases detectives have plenty to look after.
But an hour ago a patrolman from the 84th Precinct, walking a beat near the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, had spotted a possible and called Sachs—the lead gold shield on the case. The murder had been late at night, in a deserted construction site, and the perp apparently hadn’t known he’d been witnessed in the outfit, so he must’ve felt safe donning the garb again. The patrol officer had lost him in the crowds but she’d sped in the direction anyway, calling in backup, even if this part of the city was an urban sprawl populated by ten thousand camouflaging souls. The odds that she’d find Mr. Forty were, she told herself wryly, nonexistent at best.
But, damn, there he was, walking in a long lope. Tall, skinny, green jacket, cap and all, though from behind she couldn’t tell what team was being championed on the headgear.
She skidded the ’60s muscle car to a stop in a bus zone, tossed the NYPD official-business placard onto the dash and eased out of the car, minding the suicidal bicyclist who came within inches of collision. He glanced back, not in recrimination, but, she supposed, to get a better look at the tall, redheaded former fashion model, focus in her eyes and a weapon on her black-jeaned hip.
Onto the sidewalk, following a killer.
This was her first look at the prey. The gangly man moved in lengthy strides, feet long but narrow (in running shoes, she noted: good for sprinting over the damp April concrete—much better than her leather-soled boots). Part of her wished he was more wary—so he would look around and she could get a glimpse of his face. That was still an unknown. But, no, he just plodded along in that weird gait, his long arms at his sides, backpack slung via one strap over his sloping shoulder.
She wondered if the murder weapon was inside: the ball-peen hammer, with its rounded end, meant for smoothing edges of metal and tapping rivets flat. That was the side he’d used for the murder, not the claw on the opposite end. The conclusion as to what had caved in Todd Williams’s skull had come from a database that Lincoln Rhyme had created for the NYPD and the Medical Examiner’s Office, the folder title: Weapon Impact on Human Bodies. Section Three: Blunt Force Trauma.
It was Rhyme’s database but Sachs had been forced to do the analysis herself. Without Rhyme.
A thud in her gut at this thought. Forced herself to move past it.
Picturing the wounds again. Horrific, what the twenty-nine-year-old Manhattanite had suffered, beaten to death and robbed as he approached an after-hours club named, so very meta, 40 Degrees North, a reference, Sachs had learned, to the latitude of the East Village, where it was located.
Now Unsub 40—the club was the source of the nic—was crossing the street, with the light. What an odd build. Well over six feet yet he couldn’t’ve weighed more than 140 or 150.
Sachs saw his destination and alerted Dispatch to tell her backup that the suspect now was entering a five-story shopping center on Henry. She plunged in after him.
With his shadow behind at a discreet distance Mr. Forty moved through the crowds of shoppers. People were always in a state of motion, like humming atoms, in this city, droves of people, all ages, sexes, colors, sizes. New York kept its own clock and, though it was after lunch hour, businesspeople who should have been in the office and students, in school, were here, spending money, eating, milling, browsing, texting and talking.
And complicating Amelia Sachs’s take-down plans considerably.
Forty headed up to the second floor. He continued walking purposefully through the brightly lit mall, which could have been in Paramus, Austin or Portland, it was that generic. The smells were of cooking oil and onions from the food court and perfume from the counters near the open entranceways of the anchor stores. She wondered for a moment what 40 was doing here, what did he want to buy?
Maybe shopping wasn’t his plan at the moment, just sustenance; he walked into a Starbucks.
Sachs eased behind a pillar near the escalator, about twenty feet from the open entryway to the coffee franchise. Careful to remain out of sight. She needed to make sure he didn’t suspect there were eyes on him. He wasn’t presenting as if carrying—there’s a way people tend to walk when they have a gun in their pocket, as any street cop knows, a wariness, a stiffer gait—but that hardly meant he was pistol free. And if he tipped to her and started shooting? Carnage.
Glancing inside the shop quickly, she saw him reach down to the food section and pick up two sandwiches, then apparently order a drink. Or, possibly, two. He paid and stepped out of sight, waiting for his cappuccino or mocha. Something fancy. A filtered coffee would have been handed over right away.
Would he eat in or leave? Two sandwiches. Waiting for someone? Or one for now and one for later?
Sachs debated. Where was the best place to take him? Would it be better outside on the street, in the shop or in the mall itself? Yes, the center and the Starbucks were crowded. But the street more so. No arrest solution was great.
A few minutes later he was still inside. His drink must have been ready by now and he’d made no effort to leave. He was having a late lunch, she supposed. But was he meeting someone?
Making a complicated take-down even more so.
She got a call.
“Amelia, Buddy Everett.”
“Hey,” she said softly to the patrolman out of the 84. They knew each other well.
“We’re outside. Me and Dodd. Another car with three.”
“He’s in Starbucks, second floor.”
It was then that she saw a deliveryman wheel by with some cartons emblazoned with the Starbucks logo, the mermaid. Which meant there was no back entrance to the shop. Forty was trapped in a cul-de-sac. Yes, there were people inside, potential bystanders, but fewer than in the mall or on the street.
She said to Everett, “I want to take him here.”
“Inside, Amelia? Sure.” A pause. “That’s best?”
He’s not getting away, Sachs thought. “Yes. Get up here stat.”
“We’re moving.”
A fast glance inside then back to cover. She still couldn’t see him. He must be sitting in the rear of the place. She eased to the right and then moved closer to the open archway of the coffee shop. If she couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see her.
She and the team would flank—
Just then Sachs gasped at the abrupt, piercing scream close behind her. A horrid wail of a person in pain. So raw, so high, she couldn’t tell male or female.
The sound came from the top of the up escalator, connecting the floor below with this one.
Oh, Jesus . . .
The top panel of the device, which riders stepped onto from the moving stairs, had popped open and a passenger had fallen into the moving works.
“Help me! No! Please please please!” A man’s voice. Then the words coalesced into a scream once more.
Customers and employees gasped and cried out. Those on the steps of the malfunctioning unit, which were still moving up, leapt off or charged back down against the upward motion. The riders on the adjoining escalator, going down, jumped too, maybe thinking it was about to engulf them as well. Several landed in a heap on the floor.
Sachs glanced toward the coffee shop.
No sign of 40. Had he seen her badge, on her belt, or weapon when he, like everyone else, turned to stare at the accident?
She called Everett and told him about the accident and to call it in to Dispatch. Then to cover the exits; Unsub 40 might’ve seen her and now be escaping. She sprinted to the escalator, noting somebody had pressed the emergency button. The stairs slowed and then halted.
“Make it stop, make it stop!” More screams from the person trapped inside.
Sachs stepped into the upper part of the platform and looked into the gaping hole. A middle-aged man—around forty-five or fifty— was trapped in the gears of the motor, which was mounted to the floor about eight feet below the aluminum panel that had popped open. The motor continued to turn, despite someone’s hitting the emergency switch; she supposed that doing so merely disengaged a clutch to the moving stairs. The poor man was caught at the waist. He was on his side, flailing at the mechanism. The gears had dug deep into his body; blood had soaked his clothing and was flowing onto the floor of the escalator pit. He wore a white shirt with a name badge on it, an employee of one of the stores probably.
