Jeffery Deaver - The Broken Window

The dial tone filled the speakers, followed by beep beep beep . This irritated Rhyme more than a nonperforming phone would have. Why hadn’t Inspector Longhurst called? “Command,” he snapped. “Disconnect.”

“Seems to be fine.” Thom placed a coffee mug in the cup holder of Rhyme’s wheelchair and the criminalist sipped the strong brew through a straw. He looked at a bottle of Glenmorangie eighteen-year-old single-malt whisky on a shelf-it was nearby but, of course, always just out of Rhyme’s reach.

“It’s morning,” Thom said.

“Obviously it’s morning. I can see it’s morning. I don’t want any…It’s just…” He’d been waiting for a reason to ride the young man on the issue. “I seem to recall being cut off rather early last night. Two tumblers. Virtually nothing.”

“It was three.”

“If you were to add up the contents, the cubic centimeters, I’m speaking of, it was the same as two small ones.” Pettiness, like liquor, could be intoxicating in its own right.

“Well, no scotch in the morning.”

“It helps me think more clearly.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“It does. And more creatively.”

“Doesn’t do that either.”

Thom was wearing a perfectly ironed shirt, tie and slacks. His clothes were less wrinkled than they used to be. Much of the job of a quadriplegic’s caregiver is physical. But Rhyme’s new chair, an Invacare TDX, for “total driving experience,” could fold out into a virtual bed, and had made Thom’s job much easier. The chair could even climb low stairs and speed along as fast as a middle-aged jogger.

“I’m saying I want some scotch. There. I’ve articulated my desire. How’s that?”

“No.”

Rhyme scoffed and stared at the phone again. “If he gets away…” His voice faded. “Well, aren’t you going to do what everybody does?”

“What do you mean, Lincoln?” The slim young man had been working with Rhyme for years. He’d been fired on occasion and had quit too. But here he still was. A testament to the perseverance, or perverseness, of both principals.

“I say, ‘If he gets away,’ and you say, ‘Oh, but he won’t. Don’t worry.’ And I’m supposed to be reassured. People do that, you know: They give reassurance when they have no idea what they’re talking about.”

“But I didn’t say that. Are we having an argument about something I didn’t say but could have? Isn’t that like a wife being mad at her husband because she saw a pretty woman on the street and thought he would have stared at her if he’d been there?”

“I don’t know what it’s like,” Rhyme said absently, his mind mostly on the plan in Britain to capture Logan. Were there holes in it? How was security? Could he trust the informants not to leak information the killer might pick up on?

The phone rang and a caller-ID box opened on the flat-screen monitor near Rhyme. He was disappointed to see the number wasn’t a London exchange but closer to home-in the Big Building, cop-speak for One Police Plaza in downtown Manhattan.

“Command, answer phone.” Click. Then: “What?”

From five miles away a voice muttered, “Bad mood?”

“No word from England yet.”

“What’re you, on call or something?” Detective Lon Sellitto asked.

“Logan’s disappeared. He could make a move at any time.”

“Like having a baby,” Sellitto said.

“If you say so. What do you need? I don’t want to keep the line tied up.”

“All that fancy equipment and you don’t have call waiting?”

“Lon.”

“Okay. Something you oughta know about. There was a burglary-murder a week ago Thursday. Vic was a woman lived in the Village. Alice Sanderson. Perp stabbed her to death and stole some painting. We got the doer.”

Why was he calling about this? A mundane crime and the perp in custody. “Evidence problem?”

“Nope.”

“So I’d be interested why ?”

“The supervising detective just got a call a half hour ago?”

“The chase, Lon. The chase.” Rhyme was staring at the whiteboard that detailed the plan to catch the killer in England. The scheme was elaborate.

And fragile.

Sellitto brought him out of his reflection. “Look, I’m sorry, Linc, but I gotta tell you, the perp’s your cousin, Arthur Rhyme. It’s murder one. He’s looking at twenty-five years, and the D.A. says it’s an airtight case.”

“It’s been quite a while.”

Judy Rhyme sat in the lab. Hands together, face ashen, she fiercely avoided looking at anything except the criminalist’s eyes.

Two responses to his physical condition infuriated Rhyme: when visitors struggled agonizingly to pretend his disability didn’t exist, and when they considered it a reason to be his best friend, joking and slinging around tough talk as if they’d been through the war together. Judy fell into the first category, measuring her words carefully before she set them delicately in front of Rhyme. Still, she was family, of sorts, and he remained patient as he tried to keep from glancing at the telephone.

“A long time,” the criminalist agreed.

Thom was picking up the social details to which Rhyme was forever oblivious. He’d offered Judy coffee, which now sat untouched, a prop, on the table in front of her. Rhyme had glanced at the whisky once more, a longing peek that Thom had no trouble ignoring.

The attractive, dark-haired woman seemed in better shape, solid and more athletic, than the last time he’d seen her-about two years before his accident. Judy risked a look at the criminalist’s face. “I’m sorry we never got here. Really. I wanted to.”

Meaning not a social visit before he was injured but a sympathy call after. Survivors of catastrophes can read what is unsaid in conversations as clearly as the words themselves.

“You got the flowers?”

Back then, after the accident, Rhyme had been dazed-medication, physical trauma, and the psychological wrestling match with the inconceivable: the fact that he would never walk again. He didn’t remember any flowers from them but he was sure the family had sent them. A lot of people had. Flowers are easy, visits are hard. “Yes. Thanks.”

Silence. An involuntary, lightning-fast glance at his legs. People think if you can’t walk there’s something wrong with your legs. No, they’re fine. The problem was telling them what to do.

“You’re looking good,” she said.

Rhyme didn’t know whether he did or not. Never really considered it.

“And you’re divorced, I heard.”

“That’s right.”

“I’m sorry.”

Why? he wondered. But that was a cynical thought and he gave a nod, acknowledging her sympathy.

“What’s Blaine up to?”

“She’s out on Long Island. Remarried. We don’t stay in touch much. Without kids, that usually happens.”

“I enjoyed that time in Boston, when you two came up for the long weekend.” A smile that wasn’t really a smile. Painted on, a mask.

“It was nice, yes.”

A weekend in New England. Shopping, a drive south to Cape Cod, a picnic by the water. Rhyme remembered thinking how lovely the place was. Seeing the green rocks by the shore, he’d had a brainstorm and decided to start a collection of algae from around the New York City area for the NYPD crime lab database. He’d spent a week driving around the metro area, taking samples.

And, on the trip to see Arthur and Judy, he and Blaine hadn’t fought once. Even the drive home, with a stop at a Connecticut inn, was nice. He remembered making love on the back deck of their room, the smell of honeysuckle overwhelming.

That visit was the last contact with his cousin in person. They’d had one other brief conversation but only via the phone. Then came the accident, and silence.