Джеффри Дивер - The Midnight Lock

“What exactly do you do?”

“I’m CEO of a nonprofit I created. We use drones to look for environmental violations.”

“I never heard about it.”

“I use a different name. Mother’s maiden name.”

“What does it do?”

“There’re rewards offered by the EPA and local environmental organizations. We create databases of violators and make it public on our servers. I studied all of those things Joanna mentioned, yes. Wasn’t dabbling. They’re part of the job.”

“And it does well?”

“Not great, not by your standards. But we did about fifty million last year.”

“My Lord.” After a moment Whittaker frowned. “When you went missing, why didn’t anyone from the company contact me? They’d know I’m your father.”

“I spend most of my time in the field, running the drones. I’m gone for weeks at a time.”

Kitt finished the beer and opened another. “Your articles and op-ed pages came down in favor of big oil and gas, anti-environmentalist. I didn’t think you’d want to have anything to do with me... Hey...”

Whittaker had set down his wine and was hugging his son fiercely. After a moment the son reciprocated the embrace.

Kitt asked a question out of the blue: “Will you miss the paper and the TV station when they’re gone?”

“Not at all. I can’t wait to get the foundation started.” He eyed his son closely and told him in detail what it would be doing. The young man seemed to approve.

Then Whittaker offered a coy, hopeful smile.

“What?”

Whittaker asked, “Well, I’m just thinking... How’d you like a slot on the board?”

A moment of consideration, then: “I would. I’d like that very much.”

“Say, you hungry? Do you want some food? We can stay in. Better not to go out, or even order takeaway. Damn reporters. But Isla keeps the place pretty well stocked.”

Whittaker walked into the kitchen and his son followed.

The father looked into the Sub-Zero, while the son watched, apparently amused, as if Whittaker had never gazed into a refrigerator before. Which was not far off the mark. “Omelette. It’s really the only thing I can cook.”

“That sounds good to me.”

Whittaker opened a good Rhône, a Châteauneuf-du-Pape, House of the Pope, and poured two glasses of the spicy wine.

He began cracking eggs into a bowl and then coaxing out the few bits of shell that had gotten in. It was a tricky job. Kitt made toast, buttered the slices with a rasp of blade and put them on a serving plate.

Soon the shell-free eggs sizzled and spattered in the skillet, and Averell Whittaker’s son walked to the buffet in the dining room to hunt for placemats and silverware for the table.

Defensive wounds.

Or, more accurately, the lack of defensive wounds.

There were only three knife slashes in the body of Alekos Gregorios — the man slashed to death in the backyard of his large Queens home.

Rhyme had earlier noted the wounds but, as he’d been asked only to analyze some trace evidence, hadn’t paid much attention to them. Then Richard Beaufort had inadvertently ignited Rhyme’s interest when he flashed his picture of the brag board.

The Locksmith was still at large, but once a mystery arose in an investigation, even one that was technically closed, Lincoln Rhyme could not let it go. He now gazed up at the whiteboard devoted to the case and considered the question.

Yes, one reason for the lack of defensive cuts could be that the killer had surprised him, as Rhyme had earlier speculated. But, after more thought, he asked himself: How could a stumbling, incoherent homeless man like Xavier get close enough to murder someone with three strokes of a knife and the victim not hold his hands up, fighting to grab the blade?

It was possible, certainly, but a more likely explanation was that Gregorios knew the killer, who was physically close to him, probably because they were having a conversation. Then, in a flash, out came the knife and the slaughter began.

Known to the victim.

Could be a friend, neighbor... or a family member.

Well, they had the name of one such person who’d seen the victim that day. His son. They’d had dinner at about six — at which time father had reported to son about the encounter with the homeless man.

Or, more accurately, the son had told the police that’s what his father had said.

What if the man’s son, whose first name was Yannis, had been lying, setting up the homeless man?

Had the son returned later, met his father in the garden and stabbed him? Then taken his wallet and dabbed his slacks with Miracle Sav medicine, a unique and therefore damning bit of evidence? And then planted the evidence in the homeless shelter, turning Michael Xavier into a fall guy for the killing?

Rhyme thought for a moment. “Mel?”

The detective glanced his way from the sterile portion of the lab.

“I need you to do something. It’s a little... odd.”

“Odder than conducting a postmortem on a fly?”

“Only a bit.”

“Detective Tye Kelly?”

“That’s right.”

“Hey, this’s Detective Mel Cooper. I’m out of the Queens lab.”

“Okay.”

“I worked with Lincoln Rhyme.”

“What’s the story about that, somebody at OnePP sidelining him? That sucks.”

“Sure does. He did some work on the Gregarios case, right?”

“Yeah, he helped us close it.”

“About that. I was looking over the file, just happened to see it, and I was having some doubts.”

Kelly chuckled. “You’re not sure about something Lincoln Rhyme concluded about a case? You really want to go there?”

They were on speaker and Cooper and Rhyme shared a glance. Cooper, it seemed, was struggling to keep a straight face.

“Hear me out.” He recited what Rhyme had told him about the lack of defensive wounds and the theory that the son had set up the homeless man.

“But we checked out Yannis — that’s the Greek version of John, by the way. I never knew that. Got him on security video nearby, getting out of his car around five thirty, walking toward his father’s house, then walking back around seven and leaving.”

Rhyme was thinking. He scrawled a note and pushed it in front of Cooper, who read and nodded.

“Detective,” he said, “where did he park?”

A pause. Computer keys typed. “It was the Arbor Vale Convenience Mall, about a block away from his dad’s house.”

“His father had a driveway, didn’t he?” Cooper was catching on. Rhyme hadn’t needed to prompt.

“Yeah, he did, but the son said he wanted to stop into a grocery store and pick up something for dinner.”

“Did he?”

“Yeah.”

Rhyme wrote and Cooper delivered the lines.

“Seems a little odd he just left the car there and walked.”

“I guess, maybe. One-way streets. Probably faster to hoof it.”

Cooper read another of Rhyme’s notes.

Kelly asked, “You there, Detective?”

“Yes. But you could also argue that he left it there to leave some proof of when he arrived and when he left. The video, you know.”

“Give you that.”

Another note.

“You have the whole night’s video from the mall?”

“Yeah, we were looking for a homeless guy around the time of the killing, after what the son told us. But we didn’t see anyone in the mall tape.”

Rhyme jotted.

“Where was the camera?” Cooper asked.

“Across the street, pointed at the stores.”

“Can you call it up?”

“Where’s this going?”

Cooper improvised. “Just a few loose ends.”

“All right.” Kelly typed.

Rhyme wrote out his theory. Cooper shook his head and laughed.