Rhyme wasn’t sure what to make of the gift. Until recently his clients had primarily been the NYPD, FBI and other assorted law enforcers, none of whom sent him baked goods in gratitude. “Yes. Well. Thom. Thom!”
The aide appeared a moment later. “Oh, Mr. Whitmore.” The reluctance to use first names seemed to be contagious.
“Mr. Reston. Here’s a loaf of bread,” the lawyer said, handing it over. “From Mrs. Frommer.”
Rhyme said, “Refrigerate it or something.”
“Zucchini bread. Smells good. I’ll serve it.”
“That’s all right. We don’t need any—”
“Of course I will.”
“No, of course you won’t. We’ll save it for later.” Rhyme had an ulterior motive for being contrary. He was thinking that the only way Juliette Archer would be able to eat any of the pastry was to have Thom feed her, and this would make her feel self-conscious. She was using the fingers of her right hand but not her arm. The left, with its intricate bracelet, was, of course, strapped immobile to the wheelchair.
However, Archer, who seemed to get Rhyme’s strategy and not much care for it, said in a firm voice: “Well, I’d like some.”
And Rhyme realized that he’d broken one of his own rules; he’d been coddling her. He said, “Good. I will too. And coffee. Please.”
Thom blinked at the reversal . . . and the politeness.
“I would care for some coffee, as well. Black please.” From Whitmore. “If not inconvenient.”
“Not at all.”
“Any chance of a cappuccino?” Archer asked.
“One of my specialties. And I’ll bring some tea, Mel.” The aide disappeared.
Whitmore walked to the chart. He and the others looked it over.
WRONGFUL DEATH/PAIN AND SUFFERING
CIVIL LAWSUIT
-Location of incident: Heights View Mall, Brooklyn.
-Victim: Greg Frommer, 44, clerk with Pretty Lady Shoes in mall.
-Store clerk, left Patterson Fuel Systems as Director of Marketing. Will attempt to show he would have returned to a similar or other higher-income job.
-COD: Loss of blood, internal organ trauma.
-Cause of action:
-Wrongful death/personal injury tort suit.
-Strict products liability.
-Negligence.
-Breach of implied warranty.
-Damages: compensatory, pain and suffering, possibly punitive. To be determined.
-Possible defendants:
-Midwest Conveyance, Inc. (manufacturer of escalator).
-Owner of property mall is located on (to be identified).
-Developer of mall (to be identified).
-Service maintaining escalator if other than manufacturer (to be identified).
-General and subcontractors installing escalator (to be identified).
-Additional defendants?
-Facts relevant to accident:
-Access panel opened spontaneously, victim fell into gears. Opened about 16 inches.
-Door weighed 42 pounds, sharp teeth on front contributed to death/injury.
-Door secured by latch. On springs. It popped open for unknown reason.
-Switch behind locked panel. On video no one appeared to push switch.
-Reasons for failure?
-switch or servo motor activated spontaneously. Why?
-Shorted out? Other electrical problem?
-Latch failed.
-Metal fatigue—possible, not likely.
-Didn’t seat properly.
-Insects, liquid, mechanical contact? Not likely factors.
-Lightning? Not likely factor.
-No access to Dept. of Investigation or FDNY reports or records at this time.
-No access to failing escalator at this time (under quarantine by DOI).
Archer explained to Whitmore that she’d found no other similar accidents—in escalators made by any company, not just those in the product line of Midwest Conveyance. Then Mel Cooper gave the lawyer the details of their attempts to get the door to pop open spontaneously due to some outside factor or a flaw in the manufacturing of the unit.
“None of the theories of getting the door to open worked on the mock-up,” Rhyme told him.
“It doesn’t look very promising, I must say,” Whitmore offered. His voice sounded no more discouraged at this bad news than it would be enthusiastic had the conclusions gone in their favor. Still, Rhyme knew he would be troubled. Whitmore wouldn’t be a man who took setbacks easily.
Rhyme’s eyes were scanning the scaffolding, up and down. He wheeled closer, staring, staring.
He was vaguely aware of Thom arriving with a tray: the baked goods and beverages. Vaguely aware of conversation among Cooper and Archer and Whitmore. Vaguely aware of the lawyer’s monotonous voice replying to something Archer had asked.
Then silence.
“Lincoln?” Thom’s voice.
“It’s defective,” Rhyme whispered.
“What’s that?” his aide asked.
“It is defective.”
Whitmore said, “Yes, Mr. Rhyme. The problem is we don’t know how it’s defective.”
“Oh, yes we do.”
“Scared me a bit there,” Amelia Sachs snapped, her voice sharp as the wind. “Possibility the perp might’ve been around.” She removed her hand from the grip of her Glock.
The person who’d come up behind her just after her mobile call to Rhyme was Ron Pulaski, not Unsub 40 or any other assailant.
The young officer said, “Sorry. You were on the phone. Didn’t want to interrupt.”
“Well, next time circle wide. Wave. Or something . . . You see anybody looking like our unsub nearby, a few minutes ago?”
“He’s here?”
“Well, he does like his White Castle. And I saw somebody shadowing me. You see anything?” she repeated impatiently.
“Nobody like him. Just a couple kids. Looked like drug trans going down. I headed for ’em but they took off.”
They might’ve been what she’d seen. Dust. Seagull. Gangbangers swapping bills for C.
“Where were you? Tried the office and your mobile.” She noted he’d changed clothes, swapping his uniform for street.
He was looking around too. “After you left I got a call. I had to talk to a CI, Harlem. The Gutiérrez case.”
Took her a moment. Enrico Gutiérrez. Wanted in a homicide—possibly murder, more likely low-grade manslaughter—that had been one of the first cases Pulaski had run, with another detective in Major Cases. One drug dealer had killed another, so there was little energy to close the case. She guessed the confidential informant had stumbled on some leads and called Pulaski. She said, “That old thing? Thought the DA’d given up. Hardly worth the time.”
“Got the word to clean the docket. Didn’t you see the memo?”
Sachs didn’t pay attention to a lot of memos that circulated through One Police Plaza. Public relations, useless information, new procedures that would be rescinded next month. Reinvigorating cases like Gutiérrez’s didn’t make a lot of sense but, on the other hand, it wasn’t for line detectives or patrol officers to question. And if Pulaski wanted to move up in the world of policing, word from on high had to be heeded. And memos taken seriously.
“Okay, Ron. But lean toward Unsub Forty. If our boy’s got fertilizer bombs and poisons he’s playing with, in addition to hammers, this’s our priority. And answer your damn phone.”
“Got it. Sure. I’ll fit in Gutiérrez best I can.”
She explained what Charlotte and the manager at White Castle had said. Then added, “I’ve canvassed most of the stores around here and gotten to half of the streets he’d take to subways, buses or apartment complexes.” She gave him the locations she’d been to and told him to keep going another few blocks. She told him too about the gypsy cab service where the unsub had possibly been spotted. “I want you to follow up with them. We need that driver. Keep up pressure.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“I’ve got to get my mother to an appointment.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Hanging in there. Operation’s in a few days.”
“Give her my best.”
A nod, then she returned to her Torino and fired up the big engine. In twenty minutes she was cruising along the streets of her neighborhood. She felt a comfort as she headed into the pleasant residential ’hood of Carroll Gardens. The place had been much scruffier when she’d grown up here. Now it was the bastion of PWSM. People With Some Money. Not enough to afford this kind of square footage in Manhattan and not willing to flee the city limits. Gentrification didn’t bother Amelia Sachs. She spent plenty of time in the bad parts of town and was glad to return home to a well-tended enclave with gardenias in unmolested flowerpots on the street, families bicycling through the parks and a high saturation of aromatic coffee shops (though she wouldn’t mind banishing hipsters to SoHo and TriBeCa).
Well, look at this: a legitimate parking space. And only a block from her house. She could park practically anywhere if she left her NYPD placard on the dash. But she’d found this wasn’t a wise practice. One morning she’d returned to her car to find Pig spray-painted on the windshield. She didn’t think the word was much in use anymore and pictured the perpetrator as an unfortunate, aging anti-Vietnam-War protestor. Still, the cleaning had cost her four hundred bucks.
Sachs parked and walked along the tree-lined street to her town house, which was classic Brooklyn: brown brick, window frames painted dark green, fronted by a small verdant strip of grass. She let herself in, locked the door behind her and went into the front hallway, stripping off her jacket and unweaving the Glock holster embracing the weapon from her belt. She was a gun person, in her job and as a hobby, a champion in handgun competitions on police and private ranges, but at home, around family, she was discreet about displaying weapons.
She set the Glock in the closet, on a shelf near her jacket, then stepped into the living room. “Hi.” She nodded a smile to her mother, who said goodbye to whomever she was speaking to on the phone and set the handset down.
“Honey.”
Slim, unsmiling Rose Sachs was a contradiction.
This, the woman who would not speak to her daughter for months when she quit her fashion modeling job to go to the police academy.
This, the woman who would not speak to her husband for even longer for believing he’d encouraged that career change (he had not).
This, the woman whose moods would drive father and daughter out into the garage on Saturday mornings and afternoons to work on one of the muscle cars they both loved to soup up and drive.
This, the woman who was there every minute for her husband, Herman, as he faded to cancer and who made sure her daughter never wanted for a single thing, attended every parent-teacher conference, worked two jobs when necessary, overcame her uncertainty about Rhyme’s and her daughter’s relationship and quickly accepted then fully embraced him.
Rose made her decisions in life according to immutable rules of propriety and logic that were often beyond anyone else’s comprehension. Yet you couldn’t help but admire the steel within her.
Rose was contradictory in another way too. Her physical incarnation. On the one side, pale of skin from the weak stream of blood struggling through her damaged vessels, but fiery of eye. Weak yet with a powerful hug and vise grip of a handshake. If she approved of you.
“I was serious, Amie. You don’t have to take me. I’m perfectly capable.”
Yet she wasn’t. And today she seemed particularly frail, short of breath and seemingly incapable of rising from the couch—a victim of the body’s betrayal, which was how Sachs thought of her condition, since she was slim, rarely drank and had never smoked.
“Not a problem. After, we’ll stop at Gristedes. I didn’t have a chance on the way here.”
“I think there are things in the freezer.”
“I need to go anyway.”
Then Rose was peering at her daughter with focused and—yes—piercing eyes. “Is everything all right?”
The woman’s perceptive nature was undiminished by her physical malady.
“Tough case.”
“Your Unsub Forty.”
“That’s right.” And made tougher by the fact that her partner had goddamn stolen the best forensic man in the city out from underneath her—for a civil case, no less, which wasn’t nearly as urgent as hers. It was true that Sandy Frommer’s life and her son’s would be drastically altered without some compensation from the company who’d changed their lives so tragically. But they wouldn’t die, they wouldn’t be living on the street, while Unsub Forty might be planning to kill again. Tonight. Five minutes from now.
And more galling: She was the one who’d convinced him to help the widow, setting him on his typically obsessive-compulsive trail of the defendant who’d been responsible for Greg Frommer’s death.
Your initial reaction is going to be to say no but just hear me out. Deal? . . .
Sachs was examining the contents of the fridge and making a grocery list when the doorbell chimed, the first tone high, the second low.
She glanced at her mother, who shook her head.
Neither was Sachs expecting anyone. She walked toward the front hall, not bothering to collect her weapon, on the theory that most doers don’t ring doorbells. Also: she kept a second Glock, a smaller one, the model 26, in a battered, faded shoe box beside the front door, one round chambered and nine behind it, a second mag nestling nearby. As she approached the door she removed the lid, turned the box to grabbing position.
Sachs looked out through the peephole. And froze to statue.
My God.
She believed a gasp issued from her throat. Her heart was pounding fiercely. A glance down and she replaced the lid on the camouflaged weapon case, then stood completely still for a moment, staring at her hollow eyes in a convex mirror set in a gilt frame on the wall.
Breathing deeply, once twice . . . Okay.
She unlatched the door.
Standing on the small stone porch was a man of about her age. Lean, his handsome face had not seen sun for a long time. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt under a denim jacket. Nick Carelli had been Sachs’s lover before Rhyme. They’d met on the force—both cops, though in different divisions. They’d lived together, they’d even talked about getting married.
Sachs had not seen Nick in years. But she remembered vividly the last time they’d been together in person: a courthouse in Brooklyn. They’d exchanged brief glances and then the bailiffs had led him away, shackled, for transfer to state prison to begin his sentence for robbery and assault.
CHAPTER 13
It is an exciting concept,” said Evers Whitmore in a tone that belied the descriptive participle.
Which didn’t mean he wasn’t truly ecstatic; it was just so very hard to read him.
He was referring to Rhyme’s theory of the escalator’s defect: It didn’t matter whether the access panel opened because of metal fatigue, bad lubrication, a curious roach shorting out the servo motor, even someone’s pushing the switch accidentally. Or an act of God. The defect was in the fundamental design of the unit—that if the door opened for any reason, the motor and gears should have stopped immediately. An automatic cutoff switch would have saved Greg Frommer’s life.
“Had to be cheap to install,” Juliette Archer said.
“I would imagine so,” Whitmore said. Then he tilted his head and looked at the unit in Rhyme’s hallway carefully. “I have another theory. What does the access panel weigh?”
