Jeffery Deaver - The Steel Kiss

“Now, to our case: The first question is, Whom do we sue? Was there a design or manufacturing flaw in the Midwest Conveyance escalator itself? Or was it in good working order and the mall management company, a cleaning crew or a separate maintenance company was negligent in repairing or maintaining it? Did a worker not latch it closed last time it was opened? Did someone manually open the panel while Mr. Frommer was on it? Did the general contractor who built the mall render the unit dangerous? The subcontractor who installed the escalator? What about component parts manufacturers? What about the mall cleaning staff? Were they working for an independent contractor or employees of the mall? This is where you come in.”

Rhyme was already thinking of how to proceed. “First, I’ll need to have someone inspect the escalator, the controls, the crime scene photos, trace, and—”

“Ah. Now, I must tell you our situation has a slight wrinkle. Well, several wrinkles.”

Rhyme’s brow rose.

Whitmore continued, “Any accident involving an escalator, elevator, moving sidewalk, et cetera, is investigated by the Department of Buildings and the Department of Investigation.”

Rhyme was familiar with the DOI. One of the oldest law enforcement agencies in the country — going back to the early nineteenth century — the division was charged with overseeing government employees, agencies and anyone who contracted or worked with the city. Because he himself was rendered a quad while investigating a crime scene in a subway construction site, the DOI was involved with the investigation into how that accident happened.

Whitmore continued, “We can use the findings in our suit, but—”

“It’ll take months to get their report.”

“Exactly the problem, Mr. Rhyme. Six months, a year more likely. Yes. And we can’t wait that long. Mrs. Frommer will be homeless by then.”

“Wrinkle one. And two?”

“Access to the escalator. It’s being, removed and impounded in a city warehouse, pending investigation by the DOI and DOB.”

Hell, already major evidence contamination, Rhyme thought instinctively.

“Get a subpoena,” he said. This was obvious.

“I can’t at this point. As soon as I file suit — that’ll be within the next few days — I can serve a duces tecum. But a judge will quash it. We won’t get access until DOI and DOB have finished their investigation.”

This was absurd. It was the evidence, possibly the only evidence, in the case and he couldn’t get his hands on it?

Then he remembered: Of course, it’s a civil, not a criminal, matter.

“We can also subpoena design, manufacturing, installation and maintenance records from the possible defendants: the mall, the manufacturer — Midwest Conveyance — the cleaning company, anyone else with any connection to the unit. Those we might get copies of but it’ll be a fight. And the motions’ll go back and forth for months before they’re released. Finally, the last wrinkle. I mentioned that Mr. Frommer wasn’t working full-time any longer?”

“I recall. A midlife crisis or some such.”

“That’s correct. He quit a high-pressure corporate position. Lately he worked jobs that he didn’t have to take home at night — deliveryman, telemarketer, order taker in a fast-food restaurant, a shoe salesman at the mall. Most of his time was spent volunteering for charities. Literacy, homelessness, hunger. So for the past few years he’s had minimal income. One of the hardest parts of our case will be convincing a jury that he would have gotten back into the workforce in a job like the one he had.”

“What did he used to do?”

“Before he quit he was director of marketing. Patterson Systems in New Jersey. I looked it up. Very successful company. Number one fuel injector maker in America. And he made solid six figures. Last year his income was forty-three thousand. The jury awards wrongful death damages based on earnings. The defendants’ attorneys will hammer home that, even if their clients are liable, the damages were minimal since he was making basically minimum wage.

“I will be trying to prove that Mr. Frommer was going through a phase. That he was going to get back into a high-paying job. Now, I may not succeed at that. So this is your second task. If you can make the case that the defendant, whoever it or they turn out to be, engaged in wanton or reckless behavior in building the escalator or a component part, or in failing to maintain the device, then we’ll—”

“—add a punitive damage claim. And the jury, which feels bad that they can’t award the widow much by way of future earnings, will compensate with a big punitive award.”

“Well observed, Mr. Rhyme. You should have gone to law school. So, there we have our situation in a nutshell.”

Rhyme said, “In other words, find out how a complex device failed and who’s responsible for that failure without having access to it, the supporting documentation or even photographs or analysis of the accident?”

“And that is well put too.” Whitmore seemed to be debating a matter. He added, “Detective Sachs said you were rather creative when it came to approaching a problem like this.”

How creative could one be without the damn evidence? Absurd, Rhyme thought again. The whole thing was completely...

Then a thought occurred. He turned toward the doorway. “Thom! Thom! Where are you?”

Footsteps and a moment later the aide appeared. “Is everything all right?”

“Fine, fine, fine. Why wouldn’t it be? I just need something.”

“And what’s that?”

“A tape measure. And the sooner the better.”

Ironic.

One Police Plaza is considered to be among the ugliest government structures in New York City, yet it offers some of the finest views in downtown Manhattan: the harbor, the East River, the soaring “Let the River Run” skyline of New York at its most muscular. By contrast, the original police headquarters on Centre Street is arguably the most elegant building south of Houston Street, but, in the day, officers stationed there could look out only on tenements, butchers, fishmongers, prostitutes, ne’er-do-wells and muggers lying in wait (police officers were, at the time, prime targets for thieves, who valued their wool uniforms and brass buttons).

Walking into her office now in the Major Cases Division at One PP, Amelia Sachs was gazing out the speckled windows as she reflected on this fact. Thinking too: She couldn’t have cared less about either the building’s architectural aesthetics or the view. What she objected to was that she plied her investigative skills here and not from Lincoln Rhyme’s town house.

Hell.

Not happy about his resigning from the police consulting business, not happy at all. Personally she missed the stimulation of the give-and-take, the head-butting, the creativity that flourished from the gestalt. Her life had become like studying at an online university: The information was the same but the process of loading it into your brain was diminished.

Cases weren’t progressing. Homicides, in particular, Rhyme’s specialty, were not getting solved. The Rinaldo case, for instance, had been on her docket for about a month and was going nowhere. A killing on the West Side south of Midtown. Echi Rinaldo, a drug dealer in a Latino Harlem crew, had been slashed to death, and slashed vigorously. The street had been filthy, so the inventory of trace was voluminous and therefore not very helpful: cigarette butts, a roach clip with a bit of pot still clinging, food wrappers, coffee cups, a wheel from a child’s toy, beer cans, a condom, scraps of paper, receipts, a hundred other items of effluvia common to New York City streets. None of the fingerprint or footprint evidence she’d found at the scene had panned out.