Jeffery Deaver - The Broken Window

Deputy Mayor Ron Scott reassures the public that the city is safe and everything is being done to protect them. The press conference ends abruptly.

We go back to the regular news, if you can call it that. Tainted veggies in Texas, a woman on a hood of a truck caught in a Missouri flood. The President has a cold.

I shut off the set and sit in my dim Closet, wondering how best to process this new transaction.

An idea occurs to me. It’s so obvious, though, that I’m skeptical. But, surprise, it takes only three phone calls-to hotels close to One Police Plaza-to find the one where Dr. Carlton Soames is registered.

Amelia Sachs arrived early.

But Lincoln Rhyme had been awake earlier, unable to sleep soundly because of the plans unfolding presently, both here and in England. He’d had dreams about his cousin Arthur and his uncle Henry.

Sachs joined him in the exercise room, where Thom was getting Rhyme back into the TDX wheelchair after he’d done five miles on the Electrologic stationary bicycle, part of his regular exercise scheme to improve his condition and to keep his muscles toned for the day when they might once again begin to replace the mechanical systems that now ran his life. Sachs took over, while the aide went downstairs to fix breakfast. It was a hallmark of their relationship that Rhyme had long ago lost any qualms about her helping him with his morning routine, which many people would find unpleasant.

Sachs had spent the night at her place in Brooklyn, so now he updated her on the 522 situation. But she was distracted, he could see. When he asked why, she exhaled slowly and told him, “It’s Pam.” And she explained that Pam’s boyfriend had turned out to be her former teacher. And a married one, at that.

“No…” Rhyme winced. “I’m sorry. The poor kid.” His initial reaction was to threaten this Stuart into getting the hell out of the picture. “You’ve got a shield, Sachs. Flash it. He’ll head for the hills. Or I’ll give him a call if you want.”

Sachs, however, didn’t think that was the right way to handle the matter. “I’m afraid if I’m too pushy or I report him, I’ll lose her. If I don’t do anything, she’s in for a lot of grief. God, what if she wants to have his baby?” She dug a nail into her thumb. Stopped herself. “It’d be different if I’d been her mother all along. I’d know how to handle it.”

“Would you?” Rhyme asked.

She considered this, then conceded with a smile, “Okay, maybe not…This parent stuff. Kids ought to come with an owner’s manual.”

In the bedroom, they had breakfast, which Sachs fed to Rhyme. Like the parlor and the lab downstairs, the bedroom was far homier than it had been when Sachs first saw it, years ago. Back then the place had been stark, the only decorations art posters, tacked up backward and used as impromptu whiteboards for the first case they’d worked on together. Now those posters had been turned around and others added: of paintings that Rhyme enjoyed-impressionistic landscapes and moody urban scenes by artists like George Inness and Edward Hopper. Then she sat back, next to his wheelchair, and took his right hand, the one in which he’d recently regained some control and touch. He could feel her fingertips, though the sensation was odd, a step or two removed from the pressure he’d sense on his neck or face where the nerves worked normally. It was as if her hand were water trickling onto his skin. He willed his fingers to close on hers. And felt the pressure of her response. Silence. But he sensed, through her posture, that she wanted to talk about Pam, and he said nothing, waiting for her to continue. He watched the peregrine falcons on the ledge, aware, taut, the female larger. The pair were muscular bundles of readiness. Falcons hunt by day, and there were fledglings to feed.

“Rhyme?”

“What?” he asked.

“You still haven’t called him, have you?”

“Who?”

“Your cousin.”

Ah, not Pam’s situation. That she’d been thinking of Arthur Rhyme had never occurred to him. “No. I haven’t.”

“You know something else? I didn’t even know you had a cousin.”

“Never mentioned him?”

“No. You talked about your uncle Henry and aunt Paula. But not Arthur. Why not?”

“We work too hard. No time for chitchat.” He smiled. She didn’t.

Should he tell her? Rhyme debated. His first reaction was not to. Because the explanation reeked of self-pity. And that was poison to Lincoln Rhyme. Still, she deserved to know something. That’s what happens in love. In the shaded portions where the two spheres of different lives meet, certain fundamentals-moods, loves, fears, angers-can’t be hidden. That’s the contract.

And so he told her now.

About Adrianna and Arthur, about the bitterly cold day of the science fair and the lies later, the embarrassing forensic examination of the Corvette and even the potential engagement present-a chunk of atomic-age concrete. Sachs nodded and Rhyme laughed to himself. Because he knew she’d be thinking: What was the big deal? A bit of teenage love, a little duplicity, a little heartbreak. Pretty small caliber in the arsenal of personal offenses. How did something so pedestrian ruin such a deep friendship?

You two were like brothers…

“But didn’t Judy say you and Blaine used to visit them years later? That sounds like everything got patched up.”

“Oh, yep. We did. I mean, it was only a high school crush. Adrianna was pretty…a tall redhead, as a matter of fact.”

Sachs laughed.

“But hardly worth destroying a friendship over.”

“So there’s more to the story, isn’t there?”

Rhyme said nothing at first. Then: “Not long before my accident, I went to Boston.” He sipped some coffee through a straw. “I was speaking at an international conference on forensic science. I’d finished the presentation and was in the bar afterward. A woman came up to me. She was a retired professor from M.I.T. She’d been struck by my last name, and said that she’d had a student from the Midwest in her class years ago. His name was Arthur Rhyme. Was he any relation?

“My cousin, I told her. She went on to tell me what an interesting thing Arthur had done. He’d submitted a scientific paper with his application in lieu of an essay. It was brilliant, she said. Original, well researched, rigorous-oh, if you want to compliment scientists, Sachs, say that their research is ‘rigorous.’” He fell silent briefly. “Anyway, she encouraged him to flesh it out and publish it in a journal. But Arthur never pursued it. She hadn’t stayed in touch with him and wondered if he’d done any research in the area since.

“I was curious. I asked her what the subject was. She actually remembered the title. ‘The Biologic Effects of Certain Nanoparticulate Materials’…Oh, and by the way, Sachs, I wrote it.”

“You?”

“It was a paper I’d written for a science fair project. Came in second in the state. It was some pretty original work, I will admit.”

“Arthur stole it?”

“Yep.” Even now, after all these years, the anger rippled within him. “But it gets worse.”

“Go on.”

“After the conference I couldn’t get what she’d told me out of my head. I contacted M.I.T.’s admissions. They kept all the applications on microfiche. They sent me a copy of mine. Something was wrong. My application was what I’d sent them, my signature. But everything sent by the school, from the counselor’s office, had been altered. Art got a hold of my high school transcript and changed it. He gave me B’s instead of the A’s I really had. He’d forged new letters of recommendation, which were lukewarm. He made them sound like form letters. They were probably the ones he ’d gotten from his teachers. My uncle Henry’s recommendation wasn’t included in my packet.”