Джеффри Дивер - The Midnight Lock

“I’m sure you know quite a bit about computers and the internet,” Sachs said.

“Not a lot. Enough to make the vids and post them is all.”

“I’m thinking we could contact all the platforms you post on and talk to security there. That’d give us the IPs of everybody who’s watched you. Might get us some names to work with.”

Now, Talese gave an ever-so-faint smile. “Detective, the thing is, I post on five different platforms and the analytics show I have a total of, um, about two hundred and thirty thousand subscribers and fans. And you can triple that to get the number of people who just hit the site to watch me and never subscribe.”

Well, that answered that.

“Anyone in the building who might be an issue?”

A shrug. “I don’t know most of my neighbors. It’s New York, right?”

“Have you noticed anybody following you or watching you over the past few weeks?”

“No.”

“And as far as you know, he only took the knife and your underwear?”

“I think that’s it. No jewelry, checkbooks, computer, TV. What a normal thief would take.”

Sachs closed the notebook and shut off the recorder.

Talese stared at the façade of the building. “I’m going to stay with my mother. Long Island. Until I sell it and buy something new. Can I pack a suitcase?”

“Of course.”

“Will you come with me?”

Sachs smiled. “Sure.”

They climbed from the car and Talese stood with her hands on her hips, staring up at the tall building once again.

“He did take something else, Detective.”

Sachs looked her way.

Annabelle Talese’s voice dropped to a whisper. “He stole my home. I loved it so much, and he took it away from me.”

Rhyme glanced up as Amelia Sachs entered.

He was in the hallway and he looked outside, past her, noting the remnants of construction work on the street.

These samples of sand came from a work site on the west side of Central Park West, in the three hundred block...

His heart accelerated some, wondering what the verdict against Viktor Buryak would be. It was so important. Lives depended on it.

Sachs had just returned from walking the grid at Annabelle Talese’s apartment, which was located about five blocks from Rhyme’s town house on the Upper West Side.

She was carrying a milk carton, in which she’d put the evidence bags of what she’d collected. There didn’t seem to be much, he was disappointed to see.

“Amelia!” Mel Cooper, Rhyme’s primary lab man, was an NYPD detective. He was slight and balding. His shoes vied with his thick-framed eyeglasses to be the less stylish accessory, though Rhyme had seen pictures of him tuxed-up in a ballroom dancing competition with his gorgeous Scandinavian girlfriend, and he cut quite the figure. He was presently gloved and was dressing in a mask, lab coat, booties and bonnet.

“I’ll take that, thank you,” said Cooper, lifting the crate away from her. He stepped into the sterile portion of the lab.

“Ron’s canvassing,” Rhyme told her.

Ron Pulaski, the earnest young patrol officer, had become an expert at crime scene work thanks to Rhyme and a solid interviewer thanks to her.

“Benny gave him a list of locksmiths in the city, and he got some himself off the internet. Quite a few, as it turns out. He’s talking to them all.” Pulaski was conducting a phone canvass to see if the locksmiths had any thoughts about who the perp might be, given his level of skill. Phone calls weren’t as efficient as in-person interviews, but Rhyme didn’t feel they had much time. Instinct told him that the Locksmith would move on another victim soon.

“Got the name of the locksmith that installed Annabelle’s locks.” She explained she’d texted it to Pulaski.

Rhyme said, “He’s also checking out locksmith conventions — what Benny was telling us about.”

But, he added, there were none in the Northeast, either presently or in the near future, though Benny had told him that the organizers often didn’t advertise the events to the general public and word of the gatherings spread only on the dark web.

Lon Sellitto was canvassing too, in a variation of Pulaski’s hunt. As he’d promised, Benny Morgenstern had given the lieutenant a list of locksmiths who’d been arrested for using their skills illegally or suspected of doing so. Sellitto was presently tracking them down for interviews — either as suspects themselves or to see if they had an idea about who the Locksmith might be.

So far, neither patrol officer nor detective had had any success.

In the sterile portion of the lab, Cooper was setting out the items Sachs had brought from Talese’s apartment.

Lincoln Rhyme missed much about the able-bodied life. There was the contented stroll for bagels Sunday morning with your partner — at 11 a.m. after waking late. There was attending plays without half the audience staring at your elaborate contraption of a wheelchair. There was pursuing and eliminating a strafing fly.

But Rhyme missed two things most dearly. The first was meandering on foot through this magnificent playground of a city, New York, and learning what he could about its people, its geography, its economy, its foliage, its underbelly. Doing so informed his work as a criminalist and helped him match evidence to place, and place to perp.

And the second absence that tugged at his heart? Slipping on the Tyvek jumpsuit, donning gloves and picking up and examining the evidence to trick from it the truth about what had happened at the scene.

“Let’s move here, okay?” Rhyme grumbled. The Locksmith was presently getting farther and farther from the Talese scene. And, possibly, getting closer and closer to another intrusion, where perhaps his goal would be different, and rather than stealing a knife he would use it.

Then too there was always the possibility that the victim might awaken and scream and fight back — a possibility that the Locksmith surely had considered; he’d be fully prepared to take a life to save himself.

Cooper first photographed the torn-out page 3 from the tabloid the Daily Herald , from February 17 of this year. He shot the back of the sheet too and loaded the images onto the high-def screens.

On the front, which had been signed by the Locksmith, apparently in Talese’s lipstick, were five articles, with these headlines:

The back of the page was ads. Get-rich-quick schemes, real estate ventures that smelled of scams, dating and massage services. Sex trade lite.

Sachs said, “None of the articles mean anything to Annabelle.”

Rhyme skimmed them. “Not exactly hard news, is it?”

She shrugged. “Maybe he just needed something to write on. He brought it with him. She said she doesn’t buy the paper.”

Cooper chuckled. “Nobody who reads the Herald admits they read the Herald .”

Rhyme said, “Let’s call the newspaper, legal department, and see if they have any thoughts. Since he posted the picture, they might already be aware of it.”

She looked up the company’s number on her phone and called. The company’s general counsel was on conference calls but his assistant assured Sachs he would call back. She left her and Sellitto’s numbers.

Cooper was examining evidence under a blue-glowing alternative light source.