Джеффри Дивер - The Cutting Edge

The owner of the store, Jatin Patel, had died from a slashed throat too. One difference, though, was the torture. The medical examiner’s office tour doctor, a slim Asian American woman, had pointed out the slices on his hands, ear and face. Pistol-whipping too. The wounds were all premortem.

Neither Patel nor the couple seemed to have been personally robbed, though Patel had no phone on him or in the shop. At least, the usual take remained: Wallets, purses, jewelry and cash were intact. She photographed the three bodies from all angles, rolled for fibers and other trace and took hair samples for exclusion later. She got fingernail scrapings, though none of the victims had apparently fought the unsub. Alternative light source scans of their skin, near where the lamp cord bound their wrists, revealed no fingerprints. She hadn’t expected any; throughout the scene there were so many cloth glove prints, some in blood, that she knew, almost to a certainty, the unsub wouldn’t have left his own.

“Sorry,” came the voice from the office.

Sachs walked to the doorway.

The evidence collection technician, whose belly tested the zipper of the overalls, said, “No hard drive. I mean, he took it. And no backup.”

“He... how’d he get it?”

“Must’ve had tools with him. Easy — Phillips-head screwdriver is all you need.”

She thanked him and walked into the corridor, nodding to the ME doc, who’d been waiting patiently and texting.

“You can take them,” Sachs said.

The woman nodded and radioed down to the bus. Her technicians would bring gurneys and body bags and transport the corpses to the morgue for full autopsies.

“Detective?” A young, compact uniform, out of Midtown North, approached from the elevator. He stopped well shy of the door.

“Scene’s clear, Alvarez. It’s okay. What’ve you got?”

He and his partner, an African American woman in her late twenties, had divided up and begun canvassing for witnesses and looking for other evidence that the perp might have shed as he’d arrived at or left the scene. A search for wits wouldn’t have been particularly fruitful, Sachs had guessed. Many of the offices in the building weren’t occupied. For Lease signs were everywhere. And today being a weekend — and the Jewish Sabbath — the other businesses on this floor were closed. Alvarez said, “Three offices on the second floor, and two on the floor above us’re open. Two people heard a bang about twelve thirty or twelve forty-five but thought it was a backfire or construction. Nobody else saw or heard anything.”

That was probably the case, though Sachs was, as always, a bit skeptical. The crime had happened around lunch hour. Employees coming and going might easily have gotten a glimpse of the perp but it was very common for witnesses to grow deaf — and blind — from that malady known as self-preservation.

“And something here.” Alvarez was pointing into the hall beside the elevator: a security camera mounted to the wall. Sachs hadn’t noted it when she’d first arrived. She squinted, gave a brief laugh. “Painted over?”

He nodded. “And look at the trail of the spray paint.”

Sachs didn’t get it at first, then realized what he meant. The perp — presumably the perp — had started spraying paint toward the camera while still behind it, and then hit the lens from directly underneath — to make certain he wasn’t recorded for even a second. Smart.

Like taking the hard drive.

“Cameras on the street?”

Alvarez said, “Maybe good news there. The stores to the right and left of the entrance to this building, they’re copying their.MP4 video files for us. I told ’em to preserve the originals.”

Copies were fine for the investigation; the original drives would be needed for trial.

If we get to trial, Sachs thought.

She turned back to the shop, considering the first of the three questions romping through her mind. Number One: What had he taken? She’d done a thorough search, walking the grid, but, of course, that wouldn’t necessarily give her any insights into what wasn’t present any longer.

She scanned the place once more. Patel Designs wasn’t a jewelry store like most. There were no display cases for a smash and grab. The operation consisted of three rooms: a front waiting room, an office directly behind and, through a doorway to the left, a workroom filled with equipment, which was used, she guessed, to cut gems and assemble jewelry. This last room was the largest of the three, containing stations for two workers — large turntables, similar to what potters used to turn vases and bowls. Some battered industrial equipment, one piece apparently a small laser. This also served as a storeroom: On shelves and against the wall were piles of empty boxes, shipping and office supplies, cleaning materials. Nothing valuable was kept here, it seemed.

The front room — and waiting area — was a ten-by-fifteen-foot space, dominated by a wooden counter. It also contained a couch and two mismatched chairs. On the counter rested several foot-square velvet pads for viewing customers’ jewelry, several eye loupes, stacks of paper (all blank). She guessed Patel did only custom work. He would meet with his customers here and bring out pieces they’d ordered from the workshop or the waist-high safe in the office for examination. An Internet search had revealed that the main business of the company was cutting and polishing large diamonds for other jewelry manufacturers.

Question One...

What did you walk out of here with?

She stepped back into the office and looked over the safe and its contents: hundreds of three-by-three-inch white paper squares — folded like Japanese origami. These contained loose diamonds.

The perp’s glove prints — both in blood and from residue absorbed by cloth fibers — were on the safe and several of the paper squares. But he hadn’t ransacked. She would have thought he either would take all these or, if he wanted something in particular, would have dug through the safe and flung aside the envelopes he didn’t want.

There was one way to find out. Sachs had collected what business documents she could find. One would probably contain an inventory of the diamonds Patel had in stock. Evidence technicians at Crime Scene headquarters in Queens, those working in the HVE, the high-value evidence room, would compare the inventory against what was in the safe. Eventually they’d discover what was missing.

It could take months.

Too long. They needed to know as soon as possible what had been taken, so conversations could start with confidential informants who had stolen-jewelry contacts, known fences and money launderers. With robbery, if you don’t stop the perps in the act, the investigation will invariably be a long slog through the complicated, wide-flung world of moving stolen merchandise.

But there didn’t seem to be any way to short-circuit the process.

Except...

Something was wrong about this. Why leave these stones? What was more important than them?

Sachs crouched — carefully, her arthritic knee sometimes complained on these damp days — and looked through the safe more carefully. Some of the envelopes contained only one diamond, some dozens. The gems seemed damn nice to her, plenty perp-worthy. But what did she know? She wasn’t a jewelry girl. The only sparkle she wore was her blue diamond engagement ring, which sat modestly beside a thin gold band — now both hidden beneath purple latex.

She guessed there were several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stones in the safe.

There for the taking.

Yet he hadn’t.

She rose, feeling a trickle of moisture down her temples. The day was cold but the old building’s radiators emitted sweat-lodge heat, which was trapped against her body by the white Tyvek overalls. She remembered the days when one searched a scene wearing only gloves and, sometimes, booties. The protective outfits, a staple of crime scenes around the world, now existed for two reasons: First, because of the risk from dangerous materials at the scene. And, second, defense attorneys. The odds of contaminating a scene by not wearing overalls were extremely small. But a sharp lawyer could derail the prosecution’s case entirely by planting a seed of doubt that it might have happened.