I hurt for this woman—because of these scars and the scars within, all going back to her husband, years ago, that terrible time. I want to make her whole, make her perfect again, untwist the arm that her husband twisted, unburn her low belly, mend her breast. But all I have are my steel tools and all they could do is the opposite of my good intent: cutting and crushing and snapping flesh.
What I can do, though, is to ignore the troubled skin, which is not at all difficult, and show her—it’s quite obvious now—how much I desire her. And, I think, in this way I can heal the other scars, the ones inside.
I’m devoting a portion of my life to that task. Making her scars vanish.
Alicia looks up at my eyes and comes close to smiling. Then, it’s time, she enwraps her bothered flesh with a sheet stained from us both because it’s what any normal couple would do upon waking. She walks to the shelves, and once more looks over the miniatures I’ve built with my panoply of tools.
I construct almost exclusively furniture. Not toys, not Kids-R-Us plastic or mismatched wood glued together by children in China. But fine-worked, quality pieces, only tiny, tiny, tiny. I spend days on each piece, sometimes weeks. Turning legs on a model maker’s lathe, using the precious razor saw to make even seams, lacquering chests of drawers and desks and headboards with ten coats of varnish, so they are smooth and shiny and dark as a still autumn pond.
Alicia says: “This’s as good as anything you’d find in an artisan’s workshop in High Point. North Carolina, you know. Where they make real furniture. Really, Vernon, amazing.” And I can tell from her face she means it.
“You told me you sold things for a living. eBay and online. I just assumed you bought things and marked them up and sold them.”
“No, I wouldn’t like that. I like making things.”
“You shouldn't call them ‘things.’ They’re more than things. They’re works of art.”
I might be blushing. I don’t know. And for a moment I want to hug her, kiss her, but not in the way I usually grip her and taste her finger or mouth or nipple or groin. Just hold my lips against her temple. This might be what love is but I don’t know about that and I don’t want to think beyond this now.
“It’s quite a workshop.” She’s looking around.
“My Toy Room. That’s what I call it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this is what you do? You were all mysterious.”
“Just . . .” I shrug. The answer of course is Shoppers. The bullies, the rude, the people who humiliate for sport. Vernon Griffith sits in his dark room and makes toys . . . Why bother to get to know him? I need somebody chic or cool or handsome.
I don’t answer.
“Who buys them?”
I can’t help but laugh. “The people who pay the most are the American Girl folks. Mostly they’re lawyers and doctors and CEOs, who’d do anything, spend any amount for their little girls.” I know they don’t appreciate the pieces—even the ones I charge a thousand for—any more than they would a hunk of molded polyurethane. And I doubt they enjoy their children’s faces when they open the package (I suspect the kids’ reaction is a millimeter above indifference). No, what the businessmen enjoy is showing off to neighbors. “Oh, look what I had commissioned for Ashleigh. It’s teak, you know.’ ”
(And I always reflect on the irony of parents’ buying for their adorable little ones a chest of drawers made by the same hands that have cracked skulls or sliced tender throats with a lovely implement.)
“I don’t know,” Alicia says. “I would have. Appreciated them, I mean. Oh, and look. You do historical things too.” She’s looking at a catapult, a siege tower, a medieval banquet table, a torture rack (one of my more popular items, which I find amusing).
“We can thank Game of Thrones for that. And I made a lot of Elvish and Orc things when the Hobbit movies came out. Anything medieval is okay as long as it’s generic. I was going to do Hunger Games but I was worried about trademark and copyright stuff. You have to be careful with Disney too. And Pixar. Oh, you have to see this.”
I find a book on my shelf, hold it up. The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.
“What is this, Vernon?” She sidles close and I feel her body against mine as I flip the pages.
“Woman in Chicago, a millionaire heiress. Long time ago. She died in ’sixty-two. Frances Glessner Lee. Ever heard of her?”
“No.”
“Quite a person. She didn’t do heiress, society stuff. She was fascinated with crime, murder mostly. And had dinner parties, fancy ones, for police investigators. She learned all about solving murders. But she wanted to do more. So she got details on famous murders and made dioramas—you know, like dollhouse rooms—of crime scenes. Every detail was perfect.”
The book is photographs of her miniature scenes. Names like Three Room Dwelling and The Pink Bathroom. Every one features a doll of a corpse where a corpse actually lay, bloodstains where the bloodstains really were.
I think suddenly of Red. What I found out about her, Ms. Shopper Amelia Sachs, is that she specializes in crime scene work. Two thoughts: She would probably appreciate the book.
The other: A miniature diorama in which a doll representing her shapely body lies on the floor of her town house. Skull cracked, red hair redder from the blood.
We laugh at some of the perfect detail Lee included in her work. I put the book away.
“Would you like one?” I ask.
She turns. “One what?”
I nod toward the shelves. “A miniature.”
“I . . . I don’t know. Aren’t those part of your inventory?”
“Yes. But the buyers will wait. What do you want? Any one in particular?”
She leans forward and her eyes settle on a baby carriage.
“It’s so perfect.” She offers her second smile.
There are two perambulators. One made on commission and one I’ve done just because I enjoy making baby carriages. Couldn’t say why. Babies and children do not, never have, never will figure in my life.
She points to the one that’s under commission. The better one. I pick it up and hand it to her. She touches it carefully and repeats, “It’s perfect. Every part. Look at how the wheels turn! It even has springs!”
“Have to keep the baby comfy,” I say.
“Thank you, Vernon.” She kisses my cheek. And turns away, letting the sheet slither to the floor while she lies on the bed, gazing up at me.
I debate. An hour won’t delay me significantly.
Besides, it seems humane to give the person I’m going to kill today a little more time on God’s earth.
“I want that damn thing out of here,” Rhyme was grumbling to Thom, nodding toward the escalator.
“Your Exhibit A? What am I supposed to do? It’s five tons of industrial machinery.”
Rhyme was truly irritated by the device’s presence. A reminder that what, yes, might very well have been Exhibit A was going to be no such thing.
Thom was looking for the paperwork that came with the unit. “Call Whitmore. Mister Whitmore. He arranged it.”
“I did call. He didn’t get back to me.”
“Well, Lincoln, don’t you think it might be best to let him handle it? Or do you really want me to look up ‘partial escalator removal services’ on Craigslist?”
“What’s Craigslist?”
“We’ll wait for the lawyer to contact the company. At least his people knew what they were doing. The floors aren’t actually scratched at all. Surprise to me.”
The doorbell rang and Rhyme was pleased to see that Juliette Archer had arrived. He noted that she was alone, no brother in tow. He suspected she’d insisted he drop her off on the sidewalk to negotiate the “intimidating” ramp on her own. No babying allowed.
He wondered what assignment to give her. There wasn’t anything that got his heart racing. Academic research for a school of criminalistics in Munich, a position paper on mass spectrometry for publication here in a scientific journal he contributed to, a proposal about extracting trace evidence from smoke.
“Morning,” she said, wheeling into the parlor. Smiling to Thom.
“Welcome back,” the aide said.
Rhyme offered, “Do you speak German, by any chance?”
“No, afraid not.”
“Ah, well. I’ll find something else to occupy your time. I think there are a few projects that aren’t too boring.”
“Well, boring or not, I’m happy to work on anything you have. And forgive the dangling modifier there.”
He gave a chuckle. True, she’d just said that whether or not she was boring, she’d be happy to work on any project. Grammar, punctuation and syntax could be formidable opponents.
“Breakfast, Juliette?” Thom asked.
“I’ve eaten already. Thanks.”
“Lincoln? What’s it going to be?”
Rhyme was wheeling closer to the escalator unit. “I don’t think any one piece would weigh more than a hundred pounds. Anybody could take it apart. But I suppose we should wait for—” His voice braked to a stop.
Thom was asking something once again.
Rhyme didn’t hear a word.
“Lincoln? . . . What . . . Well, that’s a fierce gaze. I was only asking what you wanted for breakfast.”
He ignored the aide and wheeled closer yet to the scaffolding and examined the deadly access panel and, below it, the switch and servo motor operating the latch.
“What is the number one rule in engineering?” he whispered.
“I have no idea. What do you want for breakfast?”
He continued, rhetorically, “The answer is efficiency. Designs should have no more components—”
Archer finished his sentence, more or less: “—than are necessary to perform the intended function.”
“Exactly!”
Thom said, “Fine, fine. Now. Pancakes, bagel, yogurt? All of the above?”
“Goddamn it.” Though directed at himself, not his aide.
“What is it, Lincoln?” Archer asked.
He’d made a mistake. And nothing infuriated Lincoln Rhyme more than that. He pivoted and sped his chair forward to the nearest computer, on which he summoned the close-up pictures that Mel Cooper had taken of the interior of the escalator. Yes, he was right.
How the hell had he missed it?
In fact, he hadn’t missed the critical fact at all. He’d noted, but unforgivably had not focused on, the very words he’d thought to himself:
The switch wire ended in a plug inserted into one of the outlets on the side of the servo unit inside . . .
One of the outlets.
He explained now to Archer: “Look at the servo motor operating the latch. Right side.”
“Ah,” she said, a hint of disgust in her voice, as well. “It has two outlets.”
“Right.”
“We saw that. We looked right at it.” Archer was shaking her head.
Rhyme scowled. “We sure did.”
There was no reason to have a second outlet in the motor unless something—another switch, presumably—was plugged into it.
Of course, this was true of the mock-up in front of them. What of the escalator actually involved in the accident? He posed this question to Archer.
She pointed out that Amelia Sachs had taken some pictures of that one, unofficially.
“Good.” He called them up.
Thom tried again, “Lincoln? Breakfast.”
“Later.”
“Now.”
“Anything. I don’t care.” He and Archer stared at the pictures. But they didn’t answer the question; the angles were wrong and there was too much blood inside the pit where the tragedy had occurred to see clearly.
“I wonder—a second switch,” Rhyme said in a soft voice.
Archer said, “Which malfunctioned. And, if we’re lucky, it’s made by a company other than Midwest Conveyance. A company with a lot of assets.”
He continued, “Where would it be? The other switch? Anything in the documentation?”
Nothing, she reported, after scrolling through what she’d downloaded. “How can we find out?”
“Here’s a thought. The mall in Brooklyn, where the accident happened? All the escalators would be the same, right?”
“I’d assume so.”
“How’s this? Whitmore hires a private eye—he must have a dozen he uses. The PI jams something into one of the escalator steps. Shuts it down.” Rhyme nodded. He liked this idea. “They’ll get a repair crew in right away. Whitmore’s man could stay close and take pictures inside when they get it open.”
Thom, who’d overheard, was frowning. “Seriously, Lincoln? You don’t think that crosses some line?”
Rhyme scowled. “What I’m thinking about is Sandy Frommer and her son.”
Juliette Archer said, “Before you do that, can I try something?”
He quite liked the idea of sabotage. But he said, “What do you suggest?”
“Hello?”
“Is this Attorney Holbrook?”
“Yes, who’s this?” the voice resonated from the speaker of Rhyme’s landline.
“My name is Juliette Archer. I work with the men you were Skyping with yesterday. Evers Whitmore. And Lincoln Rhyme.”
A moment of silence as the man recalled. “Oh, the case. The lawyer and the consultant. About the personal injury suit. Greg Frommer.”
“That’s right.”
“Yes, I think somebody mentioned your name. You’re a consultant too?”
Rhyme watched her face, narrow, her blue eyes focused on the floor. She was concentrating, and hard.
“I am.”
The man muttered, “Well, we’re still bankrupt. Nothing’s changed. Like I said, you want to file a motion to lift the stay, go ahead. The trustee’ll fight it, I doubt you’ll win, but feel free.”
“No, I’m calling about something else.” Archer had the same edgy tone in her voice that Rhyme recalled from when he’d sent her away from his town house, arriving for the first day of internship.
He wondered where she was going.
“And what’s that?” Holbrook asked.
“You were courteous enough to suggest we might pursue other defendants, though none of those worked out.”
The in-house counsel sounded wary as he said, “No, I didn’t think that seemed likely. After all, Midwest Conveyance was the company that was responsible. I admitted that. And I’m sorry we aren’t able to help your client, the widow.”
“Didn’t seem likely,” she echoed. “Still, you never suggested the one company that might be a viable defendant.”
Silence.
“You know whom I’m talking about, don’t you?”
“What’s your point, Ms. Archer?”
“That you didn’t tell us about the second switch that opens the access panel.”
“Second switch?” His tone suggested he was stalling.
“That’s my question, Mr. Holbrook. Who makes it? How does it work? We need to know.”
“I really can’t help you, Ms. Archer. I should go.”
“Did you know that Lincoln Rhyme, the other consultant on this case, has worked most frequently with the NYPD and—”
“We’re not in that jurisdiction.”
“And, I was going to say, with the FBI too.”
“There are no state or federal crimes involved here. There are confidentiality agreements that preclude me from talking about companies we’re in a contractual relationship with.”
“You’ve just confirmed that there is a second switch that could open the access panel.”
“I . . . Well. I’m terminating this conversation. I’m going to hang up now and—”
“—and after you do, I’m calling Sandy Frommer and suggesting she and her lawyer hold a press conference about Midwest’s lack of cooperation in finding who really was responsible for her husband’s death. I’ll suggest they use the phrase ‘cover-up.’ I’m guessing that wouldn’t play well in bankruptcy court, especially among creditors who’d love to get their hands on the personal assets of the executives of the company.”
