Jeffery Deaver - The Broken Window

“He rabbited, I heard.”

Rhyme spat out, “Gone completely.”

The floor creaked under the big man’s weight as he ambled to the evidence charts and looked them over. “That’s what you’re calling him? Five Twenty-Two?”

“May twenty-second. What happened with the Russian case?”

Sellitto didn’t answer. “Mr. Five Twenty-Two leave anything behind?”

“We’re about to find out. He ditched a bag of evidence he was going to plant. It’s on its way.”

“That was courteous.”

“Iced tea, coffee?”

“Yeah,” the detective muttered to Thom. “Thanks. Coffee. You have skim milk?”

“Two percent.”

“Good. And any of those cookies from last time? The chocolate chip ones?”

“Just oatmeal.”

“Those’re good too.”

“Mel?” Thom asked. “You want something?”

“If I eat or drink near an examining table, I get yelled at.”

Rhyme snapped, “It’s hardly my fault if defense lawyers have this thing about excluding contaminated evidence. I didn’t make the rules.”

Sellitto observed, “See your mood hasn’t improved. What’s going on in London?”

“Now that ’s a subject I don’t want to talk about.”

“Well, just to improve your spirits we got another problem.”

“Malloy?”

“Yep. He heard Amelia was running a scene and I okayed an ESU action. He got all happy thinking it was the Dienko case, then all sad when he found out it wasn’t. He asked if it was connected with you. I’ll take a fist on the chin for you, Linc, but not a bullet. I dimed you out… Oh, thanks.” Nodding as Thom brought him the refreshments. The aide set a similar offering on a table not far from Cooper, who pulled on latex gloves and started on a cookie.

“Some scotch, if you please,” Rhyme said quickly.

“No.” Thom was gone.

Scowling, Rhyme said, “I figured Malloy’d bust us as soon as ESU was involved. But we need brass on our side now that it’s a hot case. What do we do?”

“Better think of something fast ’cause he wants us to call. Like a half hour ago.” He sipped more coffee and, with some reluctance, set down the remaining quarter of his cookie with the apparent resolve not to finish it.

“Well, I need the brass on board. We’ve got to have people out there looking for this guy.”

“Then let’s call. You ready?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Sellitto dialed a number. Hit SPEAKER.

“Lower the volume,” Rhyme said. “I suspect this could be loud.”

“Malloy here.” Rhyme could hear the sounds of the wind, voices and the clink of dishes or glassware. Maybe he was at an outdoor café.

“Captain, you’re on speaker with Lincoln Rhyme and me.”

“Okay, what the hell is going on? You could’ve told me that the ESU operation was what Lincoln called me about earlier. Did you know I deferred the decision about any operation till tomorrow?”

“No, he didn’t,” Rhyme said.

The detective blurted, “Yeah, but I knew enough to figure it out.”

“I’m touched you’re both taking the heat for each other but the question is why didn’t you tell me?”

Sellitto said, “’Cause we had a good chance to collar a rapist-murderer. I decided we couldn’t afford any delays.”

“I’m not a child, Lieutenant. You make your case to me and I’ll make the judgment. That’s how it’s supposed to work.”

“Sorry, Captain. It seemed like the right decision at the time.”

Silence. Then: “But he got away.”

“Yes, he did,” Rhyme said.

“How?”

“We got a team together as fast as we could but the cover wasn’t the best. The UNSUB was closer than we thought. He saw an unmarked or one of the team, I guess. He took off. But he ditched some evidence that could be helpful.”

“Which is on its way to the lab in Queens? Or to you?”

Rhyme glanced at Sellitto. People rise in rank in institutions like the NYPD based on experience, drive and quick minds. Malloy was a good half-step ahead of them.

“I’ve asked for it to come here, Joe,” Rhyme said.

No silence this time. The sound from the speaker was a resigned sigh. “Lincoln, you understand the problem, don’t you?”

Conflict of interest, Rhyme thought.

“There’s a clear conflict of interest with you as an advisor to the department and trying to exonerate your cousin. And beyond that, the implication is that there’s been a wrongful arrest.”

“But that’s exactly what happened. And two wrongful convictions .” Rhyme reminded Malloy about the rape and coin-theft cases that Flintlock had told them about. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if this’s happened other times too… You know Locard’s Principle, Joe?”

“That was in your book, the one from the academy, right?”

The French criminalist Edmond Locard stated that whenever a crime occurs there’s always a transfer of evidence between the perpetrator and the crime scene or the victim. He was referring specifically to dust but the rule applies to many substances and types of evidence. The connection may be difficult to find but it exists.

“Locard’s Principle guides what we do, Joe. But here’s a perp who’s using it as a weapon . It’s his M.O. He kills and gets away because somebody else is convicted of the crime. He knows exactly when to strike, what kind of evidence to plant and when to plant it. The crime-scene teams, the detectives, the lab people, the prosecutors and judges…he’s used everybody, made them accomplices. This has nothing to do with my cousin, Joe. This has to do with stopping a very dangerous man.”

A sighless silence now.

“Okay, I’ll sanction it.”

Sellitto was lifting an eyebrow.

“With caveats. You keep me informed of every development in the case. I mean everything.”

“Sure.”

“And, Lon, you try not being straight with me again and I’ll transfer you to Budgets. Understand me?”

“Yeah, Captain. Absolutely.”

“And since you’re at Lincoln’s, Lon, I assume you want a reassignment from the Vladimir Dienko case.”

“Petey Jimenez’s up to speed. He’s done more of the legwork than I have and he’s set up the stings personally.”

“And Dellray’s running the snitches, right? And the federal jurisdiction?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay, you’re off it. Temporarily . Open a file on this UNSUB-I mean, send out a memo about the file you’ve already started on the sly. And listen to me: I’m not raising any issues of innocent people being convicted wrongly. Not raising it with anybody. And you’re not going to either. That issue is not on the table. The only crime you’re running is a single rape-murder that occurred this afternoon. Period. As part of his M.O. this UNSUB might have tried to shift the blame to somebody else but that’s all you can say and only if the subject comes up. Don’t raise the issue yourself and, for God’s sake, don’t say anything to the press.”

“I don’t talk to the press,” Rhyme said. Who did, if they could avoid it? “But we’ll need to look into the other cases to get an idea of how he operates.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t,” the captain said, firm but not strident. “Keep me posted.” He hung up.

“Well, we got ourselves a case,” Sellitto said, surrendering to the abandoned quarter of a cookie and washing it down with the coffee.

Standing on the curb with three other men in street clothes, Amelia Sachs was talking to the compact man who’d ripped open the door of her Camaro and leveled his weapon at her. He’d turned out not to be 522 but a federal agent who worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration.