Jeffery Deaver: The Steel Kiss

I’m thinking of the two sandwiches I had at Starbucks earlier, particularly enjoyed the smoked ham. Recalling the scream, looking out. See Red scanning the coffee shop, not turning toward the scream, like any normal human being would.

Shopper... Spitting out the word, in my mind at least.

Furious at her.

So. I need some comfort. I collect my backpack from its perch by the front door and carry it across the room. I punch numbers into the lock for the Toy Room. I installed the lock myself, which is probably not allowed in a rental. They don’t let you do much when you rent. But I pay on time so no one comes to look. Besides I need the Toy Room locked, so it’s locked. All the time.

I undo a strong dead bolt. And then I’m inside. The Toy Room is dim except for the bright halogens over the battered table that holds my treasures. The beams of light dance blindingly off the metal edges and blades, mostly shiny steel. The Toy Room is quiet. I soundproofed it well, carefully cutting and fitting sheets of wood and acoustic material over walls and mounting shutters on the window. One could scream oneself hoarse in here and not be heard outside.

I take the bone cracker, the ball-peen hammer, from my backpack and clean and oil it and put it into its place on the workbench shelf. Then a new acquisition, a razor saw, serrated. I unbox it and test the edge with my finger. Whisk, whisk... It was made in Japan. My mother told me once that it used to be considered a bad thing, when she was growing up, to have a product made in Japan. How times have changed. Oh, my, this is really quite the clever device. A saw made from a long straight razor. Test the edge again, and, well, see: I’ve just removed a layer of epidermis.

This, which already has become my new favorite implement, I place in a location of honor on the shelf. I have the absurd thought that the other implements will be jealous and sad. I’m funny that way. But when your life has been thrown off kilter by Shoppers, you breathe life into inanimate things. Is that so odd, though? They’re more dependable than people.

I look at the blade once more. A reflected flash from the light smacks my eye and the room tilts as the pupil shrinks. The sensation is eerie but not unpleasant.

I have a sudden impulse to bring Alicia here. Almost a need. I picture the light reflecting off the steel onto her skin, like it’s doing on mine. I really don’t know her well at all, but I think I will, bring her here, I mean. A low feeling in my gut is telling me to.

Breathing faster now.

Should I do that? Bring her here tonight?

That churning in my groin tells me yes. And I can picture her skin reflected in the metal shapes on the workbench, polished to mirror.

I reflect: It will have to be done.

Just do it now. Get it over with...

Yes, no?

I’m frozen.

The buzzer sounds. I leave the Toy Room and go to the front door.

Then have a fast thought, a terrible thought.

What if it’s not Alicia but Red?

No, no. Could that have happened? Red has such sharp eyes, which means a sharp brain. And she did find me at the mall.

Get my bone cracker from the shelf and walk to the door.

I push the intercom button. And pause. “Hello?”

“Vernon. It’s me?” Alicia ends many sentences with question marks. She is such a bundle of uncertainty.

Relaxing, I put the hammer down and hit the door release button and a few minutes later I see Alicia’s face framed in the video screen, looking up at the tiny security camera above the doorjamb. She enters and we step into the living room. I smell her odd perfume, which has to me a faint scent of sweet onions. I’m sure it’s not. But that’s my impression.

She avoids my eyes. I tower over her; she’s tiny and slim but not as bean as me. “Hey.”

“Hi.”

We embrace, an interesting word, and I always thought it meant you brace yourself to touch somebody you don’t want to touch. Like my mother near the end. My father, always. The word doesn’t mean that, sure, but it’s what I think.

Alicia shucks her jacket. Hangs it up herself. She’s not comfortable with people doing things for her. She’s around forty, some years older than me. She’s in a blue dress, which has a high neck and long sleeves. She rarely wears polish on her nails. She never does. She’s comfortable with that image: schoolteacherish. I don’t care. It’s not her fashion choices that draw me to her. She was a schoolteacher when she was married.

“Dinner?” I ask.

“No?” Again, a question, when what she means is: No. Worried that one wrong word, one wrong punctuation mark will ruin the evening.

“You’re not hungry?”

She glances toward the second bedroom. “Just... Is it all right? Can we make love, please?”

And funny, even though this is actually a question, I know she isn’t asking at all. It’s a statement. From her, almost a demand.

I take her hand and we walk through the living room, toward the far wall. To the right is the Toy Room. The left, the back bedroom, the door open and the disheveled bed illuminated by a soft glow of night-light.

I pause for just a moment. She looks up at me, curious, but would never dream of asking, Is something wrong?

I make a decision and turn toward the left, leading her after me.

What happened?” Lincoln Rhyme asked. “The scene in Brooklyn?”

This was his way of tapping the maple tree. Sachs was not normally forthcoming with details, or even clues, about what was troubling her — just like him. Nor was either of them inclined to say, “So what’s wrong?” But camouflaging the question about her state of mind under the netting of specifics concerning, say, a crime scene sometimes did the trick.

“Kind of a mess.” And fell silent.

Well, gave it a shot.

They were in the parlor of his town house on Central Park West. She dropped her purse and briefcase onto a rattan chair. “Going to wash up.” She strode up the hall to the ground-floor bathroom. He heard pleasantries exchanged between Sachs and Rhyme’s aide, Thom Reston, preparing dinner.

The smells of cooking wafted. Rhyme detected poaching fish, capers, carrots with thyme. A touch of cumin, probably in the rice. Yes, his olfactory senses — those clever ligands — were, he believed, enhanced following the crime scene accident years ago that had severed his spine and rendered him a C4 quad. However, this was an easy deduction; Thom tended to make this particular meal once a week. Not a foodie, by any means, Rhyme nonetheless enjoyed the dish. Provided it was accompanied by a crisp Chablis. Which it would be.

Sachs returned and Rhyme persisted. “Your unsub? How are you identifying him, again? I forgot.” He was sure she’d told him. But unless a fact directly touched a project Rhyme was involved with, it tended to dissipate like vapor.

“Unsub Forty. After that club near where he killed the vic.” She seemed surprised he hadn’t remembered.

“He rabbited.”

“Yep. Vanished. It was chaos, because of the escalator thing.”

He noted that Sachs didn’t unholster her Glock and place it on the shelf near the front doorway into the hall. This meant she wouldn’t be staying tonight. She had her own town house, in Brooklyn, and divided her time between there and here. Or she had until recently. For the past few weeks, she’d stayed here only twice.

Another observation: Her clothing was pristine, not evidencing the dirt and blood that had to have resulted from her descent into the pit to try to rescue the accident victim. Since the unsub’s escape — and the escalator incident — had been in Brooklyn, she would have gone home to bathe and change.

Therefore, since she was planning on leaving again, why had she driven back here from that borough to Manhattan?