Jeffery Deaver: The Steel Kiss

Maybe for dinner? He was hoping so.

Thom stepped into the parlor from the hallway. “Here you go.” He handed her a glass of white wine.

“Thanks.” She sipped.

Rhyme’s aide was trim and as good looking as a Nautica model, today dressed in dark slacks, white shirt and subdued burgundy-and-pink tie. He dressed better than any other caregiver Rhyme had ever had, and if the outfit seemed a bit impractical, the important part was attended to: His shoes were solid and rubber-soled — to safely transfer the solidly built Rhyme between bed and wheelchair. And an accessory: Peeking from his rear pocket was a fringe of cornflower-blue latex gloves for the piss ’n’ shit detail.

He said to Sachs, “You sure you can’t stay for dinner?”

“No, thanks. I have other plans.”

Which answered that question, though the lack of elaboration only added to the mystery of her presence here now.

Rhyme cleared his throat. He glanced at his empty tumbler, sitting mouth level on the side of the wheelchair (the cup holder was its first accessory).

“You’ve had two,” Thom told him.

“I’ve had one, which you divided into two. Actually I’ve had less than one if I saw the quantity correctly.” Sometimes he fought with the aide on this, and a dozen other, subjects but today Rhyme wasn’t in a truly petulant mood; he was pleased at how class had gone. On the other hand, he was troubled, as well. What was up with Sachs? But, then too, he simply wanted more goddamn scotch.

He almost added that it had been one hell of a day. But that wouldn’t have been the truth. It had been a pleasant day, a calm day. Unlike the many times when he was half crazed from the pursuit of a killer or terrorist, before he’d quit the police consulting business.

“Please and thank you?”

Thom looked at him suspiciously. He hesitated then poured from the bottle of Glenmorangie, which, damn it, the man kept on a shelf out of reach, as if Rhyme were a toddler fascinated by a colorful tin of drain cleaner.

“Dinner in a half hour,” Thom said and vanished back to his simmering turbot.

Sachs sipped wine, looking over the forensic lab equipment and supplies packed into the Victorian parlor: computers, a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, ballistics examination units, density gradient measurers, friction ridge imaging hoods, alternative light sources, a scanning electron microscope. With these, and the dozens of examination tables and hundreds of tools, the parlor was a forensic lab that would be the envy of many a small- or even medium-sized police department. Much of it was now covered with plastic tarps or cotton sheets, as unemployed as their owner. Rhyme still consulted some on non-criminal matters, in addition to teaching, but most of his work involved writing for academia and professional journals.

Her eyes, he saw, went to a dim corner where sat a half-dozen whiteboards on which they used to write down evidence gathered from scenes by Sachs and Rhyme’s former protégé, Patrolman Ron Pulaski. The threesome, along with another officer from CSU headquarters, would stand, and sit, before the boards and kick about ideas as to the perp’s identity and whereabouts. The boards now faced away, toward the wall, as if resenting that Rhyme no longer had any use for them.

After a moment Sachs said, “I went to see the widow.”

“Widow?”

“Sandy Frommer. The wife of the victim.”

It took him a moment to realize she wasn’t speaking of the person killed by Unsub 40, but the man who’d died in the escalator accident.

“You have to deliver the news?” Forensic cops, like Rhyme, rarely if ever are charged with the difficult task of explaining that a loved one is no longer of this earth.

“No. Just... Greg, the vic, wanted me to tell her he loved her and his son. When he was dying. I agreed.”

“Good of you.”

A shrug. “The son’s twelve. Bryan.”

Rhyme didn’t ask how they were doing. Verbal empties, questions like that.

Clutching her wine in both hands, Sachs walked to an unsterile table, leaned against it. Returned his gaze. “I was close. Almost had him, Unsub Forty, I mean. But then the accident, the escalator. I had to choose.” Sipping wine.

“The right thing, Sachs. Of course. You had to do it.”

“It was just a coincidence I tipped to him — there was no time, zero time to put together a full take-down team.” She closed her eyes. A slow shake of the head. “A crowded mall. Just couldn’t get it together.”

Sachs was her own harshest critic and Rhyme knew the difficult circumstances of the impromptu operation might dull the sting for some people but, with Sachs, they did not. He had evidence of this now: Sachs’s hand disappeared into her hair and she scratched her scalp. Then she seemed to sense she was doing so and stopped. Started again a moment later. She was a woman of great dynamics, some light, some dark. They came as a package.

“Forensics?” he asked. “On your unsub?”

“Not much at Starbucks, where he was sitting. The unsub heard Greg Frommer’s scream and, like everybody else, looked toward it. I was in his line of sight. I guess he saw my piece or the shield on my belt. Knew what was going down. Or suspected. So he left fast, took everything with him. Got some trace at the table but he’d been there only for a few minutes.”

“Exit route?” Rhyme was no longer working for the NYPD, but obvious questions naturally flowed.

“Loading dock. Ron, some ECTs and some uniforms from the Eight-Four are on it, canvassing, and may have a secondary to search. We’ll see. Oh, and I got a shooting team convened in my honor.”

“Why?”

“I blew away a motor.”

“You...?”

“You didn’t see the news?”

“No.”

“The vic wasn’t stuck in the steps of the escalator. He fell through onto the gears of the drive motor. No cutoff switch there. I shot out the coils of the motor. It was too late.”

Rhyme considered this. “No one was injured by the shot so they wouldn’t put you on administrative. You’ll get a no-action letter in a week or so.”

“Hope so. Captain from the Eight-Four’s on my side. As long as there’re no reporters trying to make their careers with stories on cops shooting guns in malls, I’ll be cool.”

“I don’t think that’s much of a journalistic subspecialty,” Rhyme said wryly.

“Well, Madino, the captain, he managed to purgatory the situation for a while.”

“Love the word,” Rhyme told her. “You end-ran it.” Pleased with his own verbing.

She smiled.

Rhyme liked that. She hadn’t been smiling a lot lately.

She returned to the rattan chair near Rhyme and sat. The furniture made its distinctive mew, a sound Rhyme had never heard duplicated elsewhere.

“You’re thinking,” she said slowly, “if I changed clothes at my house, which I did, and if I’m not staying here tonight, which I’m not...” She cocked her head. “Why’d I make the trip?”

“Exactly.”

She set down her half-finished wine. “I came by to ask you something. I need a favor. Your initial reaction is going to be to say no but just hear me out. Deal?”

I wasn’t brave enough.

Not tonight.

I didn’t take Alicia to the Toy Room.

I debated, but no.

She’s left — she’s never stayed over — and I’m in bed, 11 p.m. or so. I don’t know. Thinking of the bedroom earlier: unzipping Alicia’s blue dress, the teacher’s dress, the zipper at the back. Modest. Bra was complicated, not to undo, but the structure. You would think she wouldn’t like the lights on, wouldn’t really want to look at me, want me to look at her, but Alicia isn’t comfortable in darkness. I think it’s because she’s wary of me. I can’t blame her.