Rhyme exhaled a faint laugh. “Well, quite the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, Rookie. And what’s the answer?”
“My brother and I tracked down O’Denne. East BK.”
A raised eyebrow.
“He’s a priest, Lincoln.”
“A . . .”
“Father Francis Xavier O’Denne. He runs a storefront clinic in Brownsville. The drug he was connected with?” He shook his head with a grim smile. “A new form of methadone to treat addicts. And it’s not called ‘Catch.’ That’s the name of Father O’Denne’s clinic. Community Action Treatment Center for Hope.” Pulaski sighed. “And Baxter? He was one of the main benefactors of the place.”
So the gun was Baxter’s father’s, a souvenir from one of the milestones in the man’s life. And the gunshot residue came from a stray twenty-dollar bill, the drugs from that or another bill. The oil from the sporting goods store where he’d bought his son the last present he would ever buy for the boy.
“And, I guess I’ll tell you everything, Lincoln. The center may have to close, if Father O’Denne can’t find somebody else to back it.”
“So, I’m responsible not only for an innocent man’s death but for preventing how many people from getting off the street and into productive lives?”
“Shit. I just wanted to help, Lincoln. Get you back on the job. But . . . well, that’s what I found.”
That’s the thing about science; you can’t ignore the facts.
Rhyme turned his chair and looked again at the tiny pieces of furniture that Vernon Griffith had so carefully and perfectly created.
“Anyway,” Pulaski said. “I understand now.”
“Understand what?”
“Why you’re doing this. Retiring. If I’d I fucked up, I’d probably do the same thing. Back out. Quit the force. Take up something else.”
Rhyme kept his eyes on Vernon Griffith’s miniatures. He said in a gusty voice, “Bad choice.”
“I . . . What?”
“Quitting because of a screw-up—a thoroughly bad idea.”
Pulaski’s bows narrowed. “Okay, Lincoln. I don’t get it. What’re you saying?”
“You know who I was talking to an hour ago?”
“No clue.”
“Lon Sellitto. I was asking him if there were any cases he needed some help on.”
“Cases? Criminal?”
“Last time I looked he wasn’t a social worker, Rookie. Of course criminal.” He wheeled around to face the young officer.
“Well, I hope you can understand why I’m a little confused.”
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of narrow minds.”
“I like Emerson too, Lincoln. And I think it was ‘little minds.’ ”
Was it? Probably. Rhyme nodded in concession.
“But that still doesn’t explain why.”
Lincoln Rhyme suspected the answer was this: If you tallied up all the reasons for not pursuing what you know in your heart you’re meant to pursue, you’d be absolutely—he relished the word—paralyzed. Which simply meant that you had to ignore every voice within clamoring for you to quit, to retire, to hesitate or pause or question, whether it was a clue that stymied you or exhaustion tempting you to rest or the stunner that a man lay dead in a grave that you had thoughtlessly dug for him.
But he said, “I don’t have a clue, Rookie. None at all. But there it is. So go clear your calendar. I’ll need you in early tomorrow morning. You and Amelia. We’ve got to finish up the Unsub Forty case and then see what else Lon has on the—forgive me—front burner.”
“Sure, Lincoln. Good.”
As he headed out the door, Pulaski was blushing and the look on his face was best described as beaming.
Which was a form of expression that Rhyme believed no one should ever succumb to.
MONDAY VII
PLAN A
CHAPTER 61
The door buzzer sounded and Rhyme glanced at the screen. Lon Sellitto and his cane.
Thom walked to the entry hall and let the detective in. He noted that Sellitto stayed on course toward Rhyme, not diverting to the tray of cookies that Thom had made earlier, the air still redolent of hot butter and cinnamon. But the glance toward the pastry revealed regret; maybe he’d gained a pound or two in the past few days and the old Lon Sellitto—Let the Dieting Begin—was back.
“Hey.” A nod to Thom, then moving stiffly to the chair, the shoes tapping, the cane silent on its worn rubber tip. “Linc, Amelia.”
Sachs nodded. She’d come here to drop off the evidence from the early part of the Unsub 40 case—that had been stored in Queens. She’d been concerned that, like the White Castle napkins, some of it might go missing. So she had personally collected the evidence early this morning and delivered it to Rhyme’s.
Her stay here wouldn’t be long; she was taking Rose to the hospital for her surgery in a few hours.
“Nothing?” Thom asked the detective. “Coffee?”
“Nup.” Looking up, avoiding their eyes.
Hm. Rhyme scanned the man’s face. Something was up.
“That escalator. You oughta leave it, Linc. Good conversation starter.”
And good conversation deflector, Rhyme thought. He was impatient. There was evidence to organize. He was meeting with the prosecutor in the cases against Griffith and Morgan, and Mel Cooper would be arriving soon.
“What’s up, Lon?”
“Okay, gotta tell you.”
Rhyme looked toward him. But Sellitto’s eyes were on Sachs.
She finished assembling the evidence and then peeled off the tight latex gloves. Blew on her fingers. For years Rhyme had not experienced the relief that a small act like that brought, after hours of being gloved, but he remembered the sensation clearly.
“Go ahead, Lon.” Amelia Sachs wanted her news straight and fast—bad news, at least. He reflected that she never seemed to have much use for the good.
“You’ve been suspended.”
“What?”
“The fuck is this about?” Rhyme snapped.
“A problem at One PP.”
Sachs was closing her eyes. “I leaked the story, right? About the smart controllers? And didn’t tell the brass. But I had to, Lon.”
Rhyme said, “This is bullshit. She probably saved lives. Companies shut down their servers and Griffith wasn’t able to hack in.”
Sellitto’s doughy face registered confusion. “What’re you talking about?”
Sachs explained about her clandestine meeting with the reporter, who broke the story that some companies were hesitant, for financial reasons, to go offline to upgrade their cloud servers with the new CIR security updates.
Sellitto gave a sour look. “Whatever. But that ain’t it. Sorry, Amelia. It’s Madino.”
Rhyme recalled. The captain from the 84th Precinct, who’d convened the Shooting Team after Sachs had shot a round into the escalator motor to save Greg Frommer’s life.
“Turns out there were some reporters got on the case.”
“And he told me they went away.”
“Well, they didn’t go very far. It’s a big deal now, police firing weapons.”
“At unarmed kids, yeah,” Rhyme snapped. “Not at industrial machinery.”
Sellitto held up two palms. “Please, Linc. I’m the messenger is all.”
Rhyme recalled his exchange with Sachs a few days ago.
As long as there’re no reporters trying to make their careers with stories on cops shooting guns in malls, I’ll be cool.
I don’t think that’s much of a journalistic subspecialty . . .
It had seemed funny at the time.
Sachs said, “Go on.”
“The reporters, they kept at him about what happened, who was involved. They threatened to go over his head.”
She smirked. “And he was afraid that’d jeopardize his plush new office in One PP if he didn’t throw me to the wolves.”
“In a nutshell, yep.”
“Bottom line?” she muttered.
“Three months, no pay. Sorry, Amelia. I gotta do the weapon and shield thing. Just like the fucking movies.” He appeared genuinely disgusted by the whole affair.
A sigh, then she handed them over. “I’ll fight it. Talk to the PBA lawyer.”
“You can. Sure.” His tone was like quicksand.
She eyed him closely. “But?”
“My advice. Take the wrist slap and move on. Madino could make it bad for you.”
“I’ll make it bad for him.”
Silence for a moment. Then the reality of NYPD politics—well, every governmental body’s politics—appeared to seep in, and a look of resignation stilled her face.
Sellitto continued, “Everybody’ll forget about it in a few months. You’ll be back on track. You fight, it’ll drag out. Make more press. They do not want that. Could sideline you for a long time. You know how the system works, Amelia.”
Rhyme said contemptuously, “This is bullshit, Lon.”
“I know it, you know it, they know it. The difference is they don’t care.”
She said, “But we’ve got the Griffith/Morgan case to wrap up.”
“Effective immediately.”
She pulled off her lab jacket, swapped it for her sport coat, the dark-gray one, cut to accommodate both her figure and her Glock 17. A tricky job of tailoring, Rhyme had always thought.
Her voice contained a shrug, as she said, “Not the worst timing, I guess. Gives me a chance to take better care of Mom over the next couple of weeks. Maybe it’s a blessing.”
But it wasn’t, of course. And Rhyme could easily see she didn’t feel that way at all. She was facing an empty, and edgy, quarter year and mad as hell about it. He was certain of this because it was how he would have felt under these circumstances. Working is what we’re made for—dogs, horses, humans. Take that away and we’re diminished, sometimes irreversibly.
“I have to get her to the hospital now.” She strode out and left the town house.
Rhyme heard the front door shut and not long after that the big engine of her Torino fire up. He wasn’t surprised that the acceleration was modest. For Amelia Sachs, unleashing her vehicle’s horses was done out of joy, never anger.
CHAPTER 62
At first Lincoln Rhyme didn’t recognize the man who stepped into his parlor.
He glanced at Thom, irritated. Why no warning that a stranger had arrived?
But in a few seconds he realized: This was Evers Whitmore, Esq., the stiff, understated attorney with the precise handwriting and more precise mannerisms.
The reason for the missed identification was that the man was incognito: wearing gray wool slacks, a blue plaid shirt sans tie, and a green sweater (he should have tipped immediately; the sweater was a cardigan, all three buttons done in the best style of a 1950s sitcom father, patiently enduring his children’s mischievous but benign antics). On the man’s head was a Titleist golf cap, bright green and yellow
“Mr. Rhyme.”
“Mr. Whitmore.” Rhyme had, as he put it to himself, given up on given names.
The lawyer was aware of Rhyme’s scan of his outfit. “I’m coaching a soccer game in an hour. My sons.”
“Oh, you have a family. I didn’t know.”
“I choose not to wear my wedding ring most of the time because it tends to give away a fact about me to opposing counsel. I myself would not use another attorney’s personal information tactically but there are some who don’t feel the same. As I’m sure will be no surprise to you.”
“You said sons?”
“I also have daughters. Three of each.”
Well.
“The boys are triplets, and they’re all on the same soccer team. It tends to confound the opponents.” A smile. Was this his first? In any event, it was small and brief.
Whitmore looked around. “And Detective Sachs?”
“At the hospital. Her mother’s having surgery. Bypass.”
“My. Any word?”
Rhyme shook his head. “But she’s a feisty one. If that’s indicative of a good prognosis.”
The literal-minded attorney didn’t seem to comprehend. “When you talk to Detective Sachs, wish her my best. And to her mother, as well.”
“I will.”
“I understand that you had a run-in with the suspect. A firsthand run-in.”
“That’s right. I wasn’t injured. Juliette Archer was, but it’s not serious.”
Without unbuttoning his sweater, the man sat pristinely in a chair and hoisted his briefcase to his lap. A double click of the spring clasps and then he lifted the lid.
“I’m afraid I have bad news. I’m sorry to report that I’ve had my investigator take a thorough look at the finances of both Alicia Morgan and Vernon Griffith. She had a savings account worth about forty thousand dollars and he had about one hundred and fifty-seven thousand in assets, plus a retirement plan—but that’s protected against creditors.”
“So a total of about two hundred thousand.”
“I’ll pursue it but, if there are other plaintiffs, and there will be, I assure you, that will have to be divided among all the other survivors and family members. Abe Benkoff’s wife. Todd Williams’s survivors. Even the carpenter who was injured at the Broadway theater.”
“And the people ruined forever because they can’t take escalators,” Rhyme added, referring to the bandwagon clients Juliette Archer had initially mentioned and that Whitmore had assured them will be standing in line, hat in hand.
The lawyer continued, “And there’ll be my contingent fee. Mrs. Frommer will collect perhaps twenty thousand at most.”
The check to be delivered to a garage in Schenectady.
Whitmore was setting documents on a nearby rattan coffee table, probably his investigator’s financial analysis of the two perpetrators, carefully ordered. Rhyme didn’t know why he was delivering them. He believed the lawyer’s PI had done his homework and that the results were accurate. There was no need for proof.
“So,” Whitmore said, ordering the paperwork even more precisely. “We’ll have to go with Plan A.”
“Plan A.”
The team hadn’t established any alphabetized contingencies that Rhyme was aware of, but after the Midwest Conveyance bankruptcy and the absence of any culpability by CIR Microsystems, he’d assumed that the only recourse was to target the conspirators’ own assets, a strategy that was now defunct.
Rhyme mentioned this. And Whitmore regarded him through a thin gauzy veil of confusion. “No, Mr. Rhyme. That was Plan B. Our first approach—product liability against the manufacturer—has always been viable. Here.” He pushed forward one of the documents he’d just off-loaded and Rhyme wheeled closer to the table to read it. He saw it was not, in fact, a financial analysis.
SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
COUNTY OF KINGS
—————————————————————————— x
SANDRA MARGARET FROMMER,
Plaintiff,
COMPLAINT
- vs. - Index No.:
CIR MICROSYSTEMS, INC.,
Defendant.
—————————————————————————— x
TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE
STATE OF NEW YORK
The complaint of the Plaintiff, SANDY MARGARET FROMMER, respectfully shows and alleges as follows:
With his right hand Rhyme clumsily flipped through the lengthy complaint. There was a second batch of documents, similar, in the name of her son, for wrongful death, and a third in the name of Greg Frommer himself for the pain and suffering in his last fifteen minutes on earth. And many, many adjunct documents.
The demand for judgment—the ad damnum clause—was for fifty million dollars.
Rhyme looked up from the documents. “But . . . I assumed there was no suit against the controller manufacturer. I thought the DataWise wasn’t defective.”
“Why would you think that?”
