The Steel Kiss by Jeffery Deaver

  Archer noted a slip of paper in a clear plastic envelope. "This could be another potential victim. In Scarsdale."

  The upscale suburb north of New York City was undoubtedly filled with many high-end products equipped with DataWise5000 controllers and owned by the rich consumers that Vernon Griffith despised.

  Archer was reading from the note, "'Henderson Comfort-Zone Deluxe water heater.'"

  And Rhyme cross-referenced the list of products that had DataWise controllers inside; yes, the water heater was one of them.

  "Who lives there?"

  "No indication from the note. Just have the address at this point. Griffith's been ID'd so I doubt he'll go for another attack but, on the other hand, he's pretty fanatical. So who knows?" Rhyme asked Sachs to call Westchester County and have troopers stake out the house.

  "And find out who lives there, Sachs."

  She did so, searching records and DMV. A moment later she had the answer. William Mayer, a hedge fund manager. He was a friend of the governor and there were a few articles about him that hinted at political aspirations.

  Archer said, "Water heater? What was he going to do, do you think? Turn the heat up and scald somebody to death in the shower? Todd Williams blogged about something like that, remember? Or maybe build up the pressure and close a valve, so that when somebody goes down to see what's wrong, it blows up? Gallons of two-hundred-degree water? Jesus."

  She wheeled closer and looked over the half-dozen plastic bags of miniatures. Furniture, baby carriages, a clock, a Victorian house. They were very well made.

  Rhyme too studied them. "He's very good. Let's see if he took classes anywhere."

  Sachs had thought of this, it seemed. "I've got a body at One PP checking out Griffith's bio in depth. They might turn up a workshop or two he went to. School he studied at recently." Then Sachs was frowning. She picked up a small toy. "Something familiar about this. What is it?"

  Rhyme squinted at the toy. "Looks like a caisson. A wagon artillery soldiers tow along with the cannon. Holds the shells. The song, that line: 'And the caissons go rolling along.'"

  Sachs studied it closely. Rhyme said nothing more. He let her thoughts play out on their own. Archer, too, he noted, held back any questions.

  Finally Sachs, still studying the caisson, said, "It's connected to a case. The past couple of months."

  "But not Unsub Forty?"

  "No." It seemed that a thought hovered. And flitted away. A hiss of breath at the frustration. "Might've been one of mine, might've been another in Major Cases and I saw the file. I'll check." In a gloved hand she lifted the delicate creation out of the plastic bag and set it on an examination sheet. With her phone she took a picture and sent it off. "I'll have somebody in Queens look through the logs of evidence collected in the past few months, see if anything shows up. Let's hope they do better with that than our missing White Castle napkins."

  She rebagged the toy. "Okay, you two keep going here. I'll get to Alicia's now. And the warehouse where he killed Boyle. Walk the grid." Then she was out the door. A moment later the powerful chug of her Ford's engine resonated along Central Park West. He believed it shook one of the large plate-glass windows in the parlor. A falcon looked up from its nest on the window ledge, peeved at the sound, which seemed to have disturbed the fledglings.

  Rhyme turned once more to the miniatures. He thought: Why would somebody so talented, who could make such beautiful things, who had such skill, turn to homicide?

  Archer too, close to Rhyme, was looking over Vernon Griffith's creations. "So much work. So fastidious." Silence between them momentarily. She continued her examination, eyes on a tiny chair. Absently Archer said, "I used to knit."

  He wasn't sure how to respond to that. After a beat: "Sweaters, things like that?"

  "Some. More art, hangings. Like tapestries."

  Rhyme was glancing at the photos of Griffith's apartment. "Landscapes?" he asked.

  "No, abstract."

  He observed a softening of her facial muscles. Wistfulness, sadness. He fought to find something to say. He finally settled on: "You could do photography. Everything's digital now anyway. Just pressing buttons. Or voice-commanding buttons. Half the young people out there are as sedentary as we are."

  "Photography. It's a thought. I might."

  A moment later Rhyme said, "But you won't."

  "No," she said with a smile. "Like if I have to give up drinking I won't switch to fake wine or beer. I'll take up tea and cranberry juice. All or nothing. But it'll be the best tea or cranberry juice I can find." A pause and she asked, "You ever get impatient?"

  He laughed, a sound that contained his stating-the-obvious grunt.

  She continued, "It's like... tell me if this is what's it's like: You don't move, so your body isn't bleeding off the tension, and it seeps up into your mind."

  "That's exactly what it's like."

  "What do you do?" she asked.

  "Stay busy. Keep the mind going." He tilted his head toward her. "Riddles. Make your life about solving riddles."

  A deep breath and a look of pain, then one of panic crossed her face. "I don't know if I can handle it, Lincoln. I really don't." Her voice caught.

  Rhyme wondered if she'd start to cry. She wasn't the sort for whom tears came easily, he guessed. But he knew too that the condition she was facing pushed you to places you couldn't imagine. He'd had years to build up a sinewy guard around his heart.

  New to the game...

  He swiveled his chair to face her. "Yes. You. Can. I'd tell you if it wasn't in your core. You know me by now. I don't sugarcoat. I don't lie. You can do it."

  Her eyes closed and she inhaled deeply once. Then she was looking at him again, her remarkable blue eyes driving into his, which were far darker. "I'll take your word for it."

  "You have to. You're my intern, remember? Everything I say is gold. Now let's get to work."

  The moment passed and together they began to catalog what Sachs had recovered at Griffith's apartment: hairs, toothbrush (for the DNA), reams of handwritten notes, books, clothing, printouts on hacking and technical details about breaking into secure networks. Even pictures of fish in an aquarium (Sachs had sifted in the sand at the bottom for buried clues--this was a common hiding place--but found none). Many items were from what turned out to be his profession--making and selling the miniatures: stores of wood and metal, tiny hinges, wheels, paint, varnish, pottery. Many, many tools. Had they been sitting on the shelves of Home Depot or Crafts 4 Everyone, they'd be benign; here the blades and hammers took on a sinister air.

  The Steel Kiss...

  Since the documentation offered no leads to Griffith's whereabouts Rhyme and Archer concentrated on the trace evidence from his apartment.

  But after a half hour of "dust work," as Archer rather charmingly dubbed their efforts, referring to Edmond Locard, she wheeled back from the envelopes and bags and slides. She glanced at Griffith's notebook, the manifesto. Then was staring out the window. Finally she turned back to him. "You know, Lincoln, part of me doesn't believe it."

  "What's that?"

  "Why he's doing this. He's against consumerism. But he's a consumer too. He had to buy all these tools and the supplies for his work. He buys food. He special-orders his shoes for his big feet. He benefits from shopping. And he makes his living selling things. That's consumerism." She turned her chair to face him, her beautiful eyes sparkling. "Let's try an experiment."

  Rhyme looked at the evidence bags.

  "No, I don't mean a physical experiment. A hypothetical. Let's say there is no evidence in the case. An exception to Locard's Principle. Imagine a case where there isn't a single lick of PE. How's this? A killing on the moon. We're on earth and we have no access to the evidence at all. We know the victim was murdered up there. There are suspects. But that's it, no trace, no physical evidence. Where do we go from there? The only approach is to ask, why did the perp kill the victim?"

  He smiled. Her premise was absurd, a wast
e of time. But perhaps he found her enthusiasm charming. "Go on."

  "If this were an epidemiologic investigation, and you and I were presented with unidentified bacteria killing some people but not others, we'd ask: Why? Is it because they've been to some country and contracted it? Is it because there's something about the victims physically that makes them and not others vulnerable to the disease? Have they engaged in certain behaviors that have exposed them to the bacteria? So let's look at Vernon's victims. I'm not buying the theory they were targeted because they were rich consumers, buying expensive stoves or microwaves. What else is common among them? Why he killed them might lead to how he knew them might lead to where he met them... and to where he's sitting right now. You with me?"

  The criminalist within him was resistant, but Lincoln Rhyme had to admit the logician was intrigued. "Okay. I'll play along."

  CHAPTER 51

  Juliette Archer was saying, "Who were the people that Griffith targeted? Other than Amelia's mother and the drivers of the cars he took control of--those were to stop us from catching him. The main victims. Greg Frommer, Abe Benkoff, Joe Heady. And the potential victim in Scarsdale, the hedge fund manager, William Mayer."

  "Well, what about them?" Rhyme was happy to cooperate but he was compelled to add a spoonful of devil's advocacy into the stew.

  "Okay..." Archer wheeled to a spot in front of the charts. "Frommer was a store clerk in Brooklyn and a volunteer at a homeless shelter, among other charities. Benkoff was account manager for an ad agency in New York. Heady is a carpenter for a Broadway theater. Mayer is into finance. None of them seems to know the others. They don't live near each other." She shook her head. "No connection."

  "Oh, well, that's not enough to ask," he said softly. "You have to go deeper."

  "How do you mean?"

  "You're looking at the surface. Pretend those people you mentioned are bits of trace evidence... No, no," he chided, seeing her scowl. "You play along with me now. The people aren't people but bits of trace evidence. On the surface one's gray metal, one's brown wood, one's cloth fiber, one's a fragment of leaf. What do they have in common?"

  Archer considered this: "Nothing."

  "Exactly. But, with evidence, we keep digging. What kind of metal, what sort of wood, what type of fiber, what plant is the leaf from? Where did they come from, what's the context? You put them altogether and, bang, you've got an upholstered lawn chair sitting under a jacaranda tree. Different is suddenly the same.

  "You want to analyze the victims, Archer, good, but we need to approach your inquiry the same way. Details! What're the details? You have present careers. What about the past? Look at the raw data Amelia collected. The charts are only summaries. Residences and careers, anything that seems relevant."

  Archer called up Sachs's notes and read from the screen.

  As she did, Rhyme said, "I can fill in about Greg Frommer. He was a marketing manager for Patterson Systems in New Jersey."

  "What does Patterson do?"

  Rhyme recalled what the lawyer had told him. "Fuel injectors. One of the big suppliers."

  She said, "Okay, noted. Now Abe Benkoff?"

  "Amelia told me--advertising. Clients were food companies, airlines. I don't recall."

  Archer read from Sachs's and Pulaski's notes. "He was fifty-eight, advertising account executive. Pretty senior. Clients were Universal Foods, U.S. Auto, Northeast Airlines, Aggregate Computers. He was a New York City resident, lived here all his life. Manhattan."

  Rhyme said, "And Heady, the carpenter?"

  Archer read: "He grew up in Michigan and worked in Detroit on an assembly line. Moved here to be closer to his kids and grandkids. Didn't like retirement so he joined the union and got a job at the theater." She looked up from the computer screen. "Mayer is a hedge fund manager. Works in Connecticut. Lives in Scarsdale. Wealthy. Can't find anything about his clients."

  Rhyme said, "Wife."

  "What?"

  "Why do we assume that he's the target? Is he married?"

  Archer clicked her tongue. "Damn. Forgive my sexism." Typing. "Valerie Mayer. She's a Wall Street trial lawyer."

  "Who are her clients?"

  More typing. "No names. But her specialty is representing insurance companies."

  Rhyme, gazing at the screen. He smiled. "We'll have to wait until we do more research about Valerie, about her clients. But the others--they sure as hell have something in common."

  Archer looked over the chart and notes. "Cars."

  "Exactly! Benkoff's client was U.S. Auto. Heady was on an assembly line and I'll bet that's whom he worked for. Did U.S. Auto use Patterson fuel injectors?"

  With voice commands, Archer did the search. And, yes, Google dutifully reported that Patterson had been a major supplier of U.S. Auto... until about five years ago.

  He whispered, "Around the time Frommer quit the company."

  Archer asked, "And Valerie Mayer?"

  The criminalist turned to the microphone near his head: "Call Evers Whitmore."

  The phone responded instantly and after two rings a receptionist answered. "Evers Whitmore, please. Now. It's urgent."

  "Mr. Whitmore is--"

  "Tell him Lincoln Rhyme is calling."

  "He's actually--"

  "That's Lincoln, first name. Rhyme, second. And, as I said, it's urgent."

  A pause. "One moment."

  Then the lawyer's voice was saying, "Mr. Rhyme. How are you? How's--?"

  "Don't have time. You were telling me about a case, a personal injury case, involving a car company. Some internal memo said that it would be cheaper to pay wrongful death claims than fix some dangerous defect in a car. Was it U.S. Auto? I can't recall."

  "Yes, you're correct. It was."

  "Valerie Mayer, a trial lawyer in New York. Did she defend the company?"

  "No."

  Hell. There went his theory.

  Then Whitmore said, "She represented the insurer who covered U.S. Auto against liability suits."

  "Was Patterson Systems involved?"

  "Patterson? You mean the company Mr. Frommer worked for? I don't know. Hold on a moment."

  Silence. Then the lawyer came back on the line. "Yes, the main suit was against U.S. Auto but Patterson was also a defendant. The claim was that both the automaker and the parts supplier knew about the fuel system defect and decided not to change the injectors and the interface with the motors to make them safer."

  "Mr. Whitmore, Evers, I need everything you can send me about the case."

  A pause. "Well, that is somewhat problematic, Mr. Rhyme. For one thing I didn't work on the suit so I don't have any source material. Besides, you don't have room. Or the time to read everything. There were hundreds of cases revolving around the defect, and they went on for years. There have to be ten million documents, I would estimate. Perhaps more. May I ask why--"

  "We think our killer--the one using the DataWise controllers as a murder weapon--was targeting people with connections to U.S. Auto."

  "My. Yes, I see. He was injured in one of the accidents because of the fuel system failure?"

  "We think it's likely he's at large, and I was hoping there might be something in the case files that'll give us a clue where he's gone."

  "I'll tell you what I can do, Mr. Rhyme. I'll have my paralegal send over whatever I can find in the legal press and I'll get as many of the publicly filed pleadings and discovery documents as I can. And you should check popular reports too. This story, naturally, made the news."

  "I need them ASAP."

  "I'll make sure it's done right away, Mr. Rhyme."

  CHAPTER 52

  Rhyme and Archer were both online reading about the U.S. Auto case as quickly as they could.

  Whitmore had been right. There were more than twelve million hits on Google.

  A half hour later the emails from Whitmore started arriving. They divided up the court pleadings and supporting documents and began reading these, as well as the press accounts of the ca
se. There were, as Whitmore had mentioned, scores of plaintiffs, those injured in accidents and the relatives of those killed when the cars were engulfed in flames because of the defective fuel system. In addition, the incidents spawned more than a hundred business-related lawsuits for lost revenue by the manufacturers and component parts makers. The more troubling accounts--in the sometimes lurid popular media and in the chillingly clinical court documents--were those of lives shattered. He read testimony about horrific pain from burns and collisions after the gas line ruptures, scanned accident scene pictures of scorched and shattered bodies and photos of dozens of plaintiffs who'd been injured. Some were hospital pictures of their burns and lacerations. Some were of them stoically marching into and from courthouses. He reviewed them carefully, looking for Griffith's name or likeness, on the chance that he'd been a victim or related to one.

  "Any references to a Griffith?" he called to Archer. "I'm not seeing anything yet."

  "Nothing," Archer replied. "But I've read fifty pages out of looks like a hundred thousand."

  "I'm doing a global search for the name. Nothing yet."

  She said, "That works within a document but I don't know how to search in unopened ones."

  "Maybe Rodney has a program," he said. Before he could call the computer expert, though, the doorbell buzzed. Rhyme glanced at the monitor. A woman wearing a nondescript rumpled brown jacket and jeans stood at the front door. She had a bandage on her face.

  "Yes?" he called.

  "Is this Lincoln Rhymes? With the NYPD?"

  Rhyme had no nameplate on the door; why make it easier for your enemies? He didn't bother to correct the woman. "Who is this?"

  "Alicia Morgan. A police officer, Amelia Sachs, asked me to come by and give a statement. About Vernon Griffith?"

  Excellent. "Sure. Come on in."

  He commanded the door to unlock and a moment later he heard footsteps approaching. They paused.

  "Hello?"

  "We're in here. To the left."

  The woman walked into the parlor and did a double take, seeing two people in elaborate wheelchairs... and scientific equipment worthy of a university research lab. She was petite, attractive, and had short blond hair. Sunglasses partially covered the bruise that peeked from underneath thick bandages. She removed the glasses and Rhyme studied her damaged face.