Jeffery Deaver - The Devil's Teardrop

At the puppies.

The Digger looks away from him.

"If anybody looks at your face, kill them. Remember that."

I remember.

But he can't help looking at the boy. The boy smiles. The Digger doesn't smile. (He recognizes a smile but he doesn't know what it is exactly.)

The boy, with his brown eyes and the little bit of a smile on his face, is fascinated with the bag and the puppies. Their happy ribbons. Like the ribbons the fat New Year's babies wear. Green and gold ribbons on the bag. The Digger looks at the bag too.

"Honey, come on," a woman calls. She's standing beside a pot of poinsettias, as red as the rose Pamela wore on her dress at Christmas last year.

The boy glances once again at the Digger's face. The Digger knows he should look away but he just stares back. Then the boy walks to the crowd of people around tables filled with little dots of food. Lots of crackers and cheese and shrimps and carrots.

No soup, the Digger notices.

The boy walks up to a girl who is probably his sister. She's about thirteen.

The Digger looks at his watch. Twenty minutes to four. He takes the cell phone out of his pocket and carefully punches the buttons to call his voice mail. He listens. "You have no new messages." He shuts the phone off.

He lifts the bag onto his lap and looks out over the crowd. The boy is in a blue blazer and his sister is wearing a pink dress. It has a sash on it.

The Digger clutches the puppy bag.

Eighteen minutes.

The boy is standing at the food table. The girl is talking to an older woman.

More people enter the hotel. They walk right past the Digger, with his bag and his nice newspaper that shows the weather all across the nation.

But no one notices him.

The phone in the document lab began ringing.

As always, when a telephone chirped and he was someplace without the Whos, Parker felt an instant of low-voltage panic though if one of the children had had an accident Mrs. Cavanaugh would of course have called his cell phone and not the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

He glanced at the caller ID box and saw a New York number. He snagged the receiver. "Lincoln. Its Parker. We've got fifteen minutes. Any clues?"

The criminalist's voice was troubled. "Oh, not much, Parker. Speaker me… Don't you linguists hate it when people verb nouns?"

Parker hit the button.

"Somebody grab a pen," Rhyme called. "I'll tell you what I've got. Are you ready? Are you ready?"

"We're ready, Lincoln," Parker said.

"The most prominent trace embedded in the letter is granite dust."

"Granite," Cage echoed.

"There's evidence of shaving and chiseling on the stone. And some polishing too."

"What do you think it's from?" Parker asked.

"I don't know. How would I know? I don't know Washington. I know New York."

"And if it were in New York?" Lukas asked.

Rhyme rattled off, "New building construction, old building renovation or demolition, bathroom, kitchen and threshold manufacturers, tombstone makers, sculptors' studios, landscapers… The list's endless. You need somebody who knows the lay of the land there. Understand? That's not you, is it, Parker?"

"Nope. I-"

The criminalist interrupted him. "-know documents. You know unsubs too. But not geography."

"That's true."

Parker glanced at Lukas. She was gazing at the clock. She looked back at him with a face devoid of emotion. Cage had mastered the shrug; Lukas's waiting state was the stony mask.

Rhyme continued. "There're also traces of red clay and dust from old brick. Then there's sulfur. And a lot of carbon-ash and soot, consistent with cooking meat or burning trash that has meat in it. Now-the data from the envelope showed a little of the same trace substances I found on the letter. But also something more-significant amounts of salt water, kerosene, refined oil, crude oil, butter-"

"Butter?" Lukas asked.

"That's what I said," Rhyme groused. He added sourly, "Don't know the brand. And there's some organic material not inconsistent with mollusks. So, all the evidence points to Baltimore."

"Baltimore?" Hardy asked.

From Lukas: "How do you figure that?"

"The seawater, kerosene, fuel oil and crude oil mean it's a port. Right, right? What else could it be? Well, the port nearest to D.C. that does major crude oil transfer is Baltimore. And Thom tells me-my man knows food-that there are tons of seafood restaurants right on the harbor. Berthas. He keeps talking about Berthas Mussels."

"Baltimore," Lukas muttered. "So he wrote the note at home, had dinner on the waterfront the night before. He came to D.C. to drop it off at City Hall. Then-"

"No, no, no," Rhyme said.

"What?" Lukas asked.

Parker, the puzzle master, said, "The evidence is fake. He staged it, didn't he, Lincoln?"

"Just like a Broadway play," Rhyme said, sounding pleased Parker had caught on.

"How do you figure?" Cage asked.

"There's a detective I've been working with-Roland Bell. N.Y.P.D. Good man. He's from North Carolina. He's got this expression. 'Seems a little kind of too quick and too easy.' Well, all that trace… There's too much of those elements. Way too much. The unsub got his hands on some trace and impregnated the envelope. Just to send us off track."

"And the trace on the letter?" Hardy asked.

"Oh, no, that's legit. The amount of material in the fibers was consistent with ambient substances. No, no, the letter'll tell us where he lived. But the envelope… ah, the envelope tells us something else."

Parker said, "That there was more to him than meets the eye."

"Exactly," the criminalist confirmed.

Parker summarized. "So, where he lived there's the granite, clay dust, brick dust, sulfur, soot and ash from cooking or burning meat."

"All that dust-might be a demolition site," Cage said.

"That seems the most likely," Hardy said.

"Likely? How could it be likely?" Rhyme asked. "It's a possibility. But then isn't everything a possibility until one alternative's proven true? Think about that…" Rhyme's voice faded slightly as he spoke to someone in the room with him, "No, Amelia, I'm not being pompous. I'm being accurate… Thom! Thom! Some more single-malt. Please."

"Mr. Rhyme," Lukas said, "Lincoln… This is all good and we appreciate it. But we've got ten minutes until the shooter's next attack. You have any thoughts about which hotel the unsub might've picked?"

Rhyme answered with a gravity that chilled Parker. "I'm afraid I don't," he said. "You're on your own there."

"All right."

Parker said, "Thank you, Lincoln."

"Good luck to all of you. Good luck." With a click the criminalist disconnected the phone.

Parker looked over the notes. Granite dust… sulfur… Oh, they were wonderful clues, solid clues. But the team didn't have nearly enough time to follow up on them. Not before 4 P.M. Maybe not even before eight.

He pictured the shooter standing in a crowd of people, his gun ready. About to pull the trigger. How many would die this time?

How many families?

How many children like LaVelle Williams?

Children like Robby and Stephie?

Everyone in the half-darkened lab remained silent, as if paralyzed by their inability to see through the shroud obscuring the truth.

Parker glanced at the note again and had a feeling that it was mocking him.

Then Lukas's phone rang. She listened and her mouth blossomed into the first genuine smile Parker had seen on her face that day.

"Got him!" she announced.

"What?" Parker asked.

"Two of Jerry's boys just found some rounds of the black-painted shells under a chair at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown. Every available agent and cop're on their way there."

"Is it crowded?"