Jeffery Deaver: The Steel Kiss

With a genteel move of his right hand, professor turned his elaborate motorized wheelchair to face student. Rhyme was quadriplegic, largely paralyzed from the neck down; his left ring finger and, now, after some surgery, right arm and hand were the only southern extremities working. “Yes?”

“I was thinking. Locard was talking about ‘material’ or ‘dust’?” A glance toward Archer in the front row, far left.

“Correct.”

“Couldn’t there also be a psychological transference?”

“How do you mean?”

“Say the perp threatens to torture the victim before he kills him. The victim is discovered with a look of terror on his face. We can infer that the perp was a sadist. You could add that to the psychological profile. Maybe narrow down the field of suspects.”

Proper use of the word infer , Rhyme noted. Often confused with the transitive imply . He said, “A question. Did you enjoy that series of books? Harry Potter? Movies too, right?” As a rule, cultural phenomena didn’t interest him much — not unless they might help solve a crime, which happened, more or less, never. But Potter was, after all, Potter.

The young man squinted his dark eyes. “Yes, sure.”

“You do know that it was fiction, right. That Hogworths doesn’t exist?”

“Hogwarts. And I’m pretty aware of that, yes.”

“And you’ll concede that wizards, casting spells, voodoo, ghosts, telekinesis and your theory of the transfer of psychological elements at crime scenes—”

“Are hog wash , you’re saying?”

Drawing laughs.

Rhyme’s brows V’d, though not at the interruption; he liked insolence and in fact the play on words was rather clever. His was a substantive complaint. “Not at all. I was going to say that each of those theories has yet to be empirically proven. You present me with objective studies, repeatedly duplicating results of your purported psychological transference, which include a valid sampling size and controls, supporting the theory, and I’ll consider it valid. I myself wouldn’t rely on it. Focusing on more intangible aspects of an investigation distracts from the important task at hand. Which is?”

“The evidence.” Juliette Archer again.

“Crime scenes change like a dandelion under a sudden breath. Those three ligands are all that remain of a million only a moment earlier. A drop of rain can wash away a speck of the killer’s DNA, which destroys any chance of finding him in the CODIS database and learning his name, address, phone number, Social... and shirt size.” A look over the room. “Shirt size was a joke.” People tended to believe everything that Lincoln Rhyme said.

The hipster cop nodded but appeared to be unconvinced. Rhyme was impressed. He wondered if the student would in fact look into the subject. Hoped he did. There might actually be something to his theory.

“We’ll speak more about Monsieur Locard’s dust — that is, trace evidence — in a few weeks. Today our subject will be making sure that we have dust to analyze. Preserving the crime scene is our topic. You will never have a virgin crime scene. That does not exist. Your job will be to make sure your scenes are the least contaminated they can be. Now, what is the number one contaminant?” Without waiting for a response he continued, “Yes, fellow cops — often, most often, brass. How we keep senior officials, preening for news cams, out of the scene while simultaneously keeping our jobs?”

The laughter died down and the lecture began.

Lincoln Rhyme had taught on and off for years. He didn’t particularly enjoy teaching but he believed strongly in the efficacy of crime scene work in solving crimes. And he wanted to make sure the standards of forensic scientists were the highest they could be — that was, his standards. Many guilty people were getting off or were being sentenced to punishments far less severe than their crimes dictated. And innocent people were going to jail. He had resolved to do what he could to whip a new generation of criminalists into shape.

A month ago Rhyme had decided that this would be his new mission. He had cleared his criminal case workload and applied for a job at the John Marshall School for Criminal Justice, a mere two blocks from his Central Park West town house. In fact, he didn’t even have to apply. Over drinks one night he’d mused to a district attorney he was working with that he was thinking of hanging up his guns and teaching. The DA said something to somebody and word got back to John Marshall, where the prosecutor taught part-time, and the dean of the school called soon after. Rhyme supposed that because of his reputation, he was a solid commodity, attracting positive press, prestige and possibly prompting a spike in tuition income. Rhyme signed on to teach this introductory course and Advanced Chemical and Mechanical Analysis of Substances Frequently Found in Felony Crime Scenes, Including Electron Microscopy. It was indicative of his rep that the latter course filled up nearly as fast as the former.

Most of the students were in, or destined for, policing work. Local, state or federal. Some would do commercial forensic analysis — working for private eyes, corporations and lawyers. A few were journalists and one a novelist, who wanted to get it right. (Rhyme welcomed his presence; he himself was the subject of a series of novels based on cases he’d run and had written the author on several occasions about misrepresentations of real crime scene work. “Must you sensationalize?”)

After an overview, though a comprehensive one, of crime scene preservation Rhyme noted the time and dismissed the class, and the students filed out. He wheeled to the ramp that led off the low stage.

But the time he reached the main floor of the lecture hall, all those in class had left, except one.

Juliette Archer remained in the first row. The woman, in her mid-thirties, had eyes that were quite remarkable. Rhyme had been struck by them when he’d seen her for the first time, in class last week. There are no blue pigments in the human iris or aqueous humor; that shade comes from the amount of melanin in the epithelium, combined with the Rayleigh scattering effect. Archer’s were rich cerulean.

He wheeled up to her. “Locard. You did some supplemental reading. My book. That was the language you paraphrased.” He hadn’t assigned his own textbook to the class.

“Needed some reading material to go with my wine and dinner the other day.”

“Ah.”

She said, “Well?”

No need to expand on the question. It simply reiterated an inquiry from last week... as well as several phone messages in the interim.

Her radiant eyes remained steadily on his.

He said, “I’m not sure it would be that good an idea.”

“Not a good idea?”

“Not helpful, I mean. For you.”

“I disagree.”

She certainly didn’t hem or haw. Archer let the silence unspool. Then smiled a lipstick-free smile. “You checked me out, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“You thought I was a spy? Working my way into your good graces, stealing case secrets or something?”

Had occurred to him. Then he shrugged, a gesture he was capable of, despite his condition. “Just curious.” Rhyme had in fact learned a number of things about Juliette Archer. Master’s degrees in public health and biological science. She’d been a field epidemiologist for the Transmittable Diseases Unit of the New York Institutes of Health in Westchester. She now wanted a career change to go into criminal forensic science. Her home was presently downtown, the loft district, SoHo. Her son, eleven, was a star soccer player. She herself had gotten some favorable notices for her modern dance performances in Manhattan and Westchester. She’d lived in Bedford, New York, before her divorce.