Джеффри Дивер - The Midnight Lock

I open the door, step inside.

A slow, deep breath... but the tense five seconds come and go; the radio jammer has worked its magic. The alarm remains silent as I ease the door shut.

There’s no click this time. No risk of another 2019.

I take the knife from my pocket and open it, making sure that this act too remains completely silent.

Lincoln Rhyme was in an alien space.

His kitchen.

He had never cared much for cooking. He certainly didn’t mind a good meal now and then, but to him food was largely fuel. If anything interested him, it was the chemistry of the process. Thom, an expert with whisk and blade and flame, had told him how yolks thicken and yeast inflates and oil and liquid — chemical enemies — become allies when headed for a salad.

He had suggested that his aide might want to write a book about the science of cooking. Thom had replied it was about a hundred years too late.

His phone hummed.

“Sachs.”

“I’m downtown,” she was saying through the speaker. “The war room. We’ve had over three hundred calls about my broadcast.”

He wouldn’t’ve expected that many.

“Anything useful?”

“Some possible spottings. Mostly people on Argyle Street, near the Sebastiano Company.”

“And?”

“Still checking them out. We looked over the security videos around Joanna’s apartment but if the Locksmith was ever there, he managed to avoid the cameras. There was a blind spot at the service entrance.” She chuckled. “One caller said she knows the Locksmith’s an alien. And I don’t mean immigration-wise.”

“They do come out of the woodwork.”

She grew serious. “Have you heard about the Verum situation?”

“No. I’m in the dark, being a member of the Hidden.”

“Seems like Joanna — well, her alter ego — has thousands of followers. They’re not happy their beloved leader’s in jail. Lot of online traffic, threats. Some riots. No kidding.”

“This case’s been one for the books, Sachs. When’ll you be home?”

“Late. Two, three. Sooner if we get a lead and nail him.”

“Optimist... ’Night.”

He disconnected and looked around him.

The kitchen was paneled and windowed like any from a hundred and fifty years ago, but the many devices arrayed and installed here were state of the art — not unlike his parlor, forty feet away.

He noted oddly shaped knives and ladles and spatulas. There was a round wooden cylinder with inch and centimeter markings burnt into it. Ah, a rolling pin.

He was not here, however, to ponder the mysteries of turning flora and fauna into edibles. Whisky was his mission, a quite nice Glenmorangie, the eighteen-year-old version. He lifted down the bottle and wedged it between his legs, then sliced through the paper seal with a short, sharp knife. The cork stopper proved a bit more challenging but in thirty seconds it was out. He poured a glass and he didn’t spill a drop.

He set the bottle back on the counter and took a small sip.

Heavenly.

Driving via left ring finger, he turned the chair and motored into the hallway. He passed through the doorway into the dining room, a formal place with elaborate crown molding and a table that sat eight. The legs ended in lion paws gripping a ball — a flourish that Rhyme had always found ironic, since his own toes could grip nothing and probably never would. It was one of the many observations that had so pained him in the first months of his altered condition and that he now considered with amusement, if at all.

How perspectives change...

He and Amelia had had a very pleasant meal here just before the Buryak case and the Locksmith investigation roared to life.

With the chair moving nearly silently over the smooth oak floors, Rhyme steered into the hallway and then turned right through the open doorway of the larger of the two front parlors, the one that contained the lab.

There he braked to a stop and lowered the glass from which he was about to take a sip.

Wearing a deliveryman’s brown uniform, a man of medium build, and with dark hair, stood with his arms crossed. He was looking at one of the whiteboards, the one that detailed evidence of the Alekos Gregorios murder case.

The intruder held a knife in his right hand. The pale-yellow color told Rhyme it was brass and it appeared homemade. He now guessed that the tiny filings of the metal Amelia had discovered at the scene came possibly not from making keys, but from sharpening the blade.

The man turned.

Lincoln Rhyme squinted as he stared at the man’s face. He was rarely caught off guard, but he certainly was now.

Oh, he could hardly be surprised that the man in the overalls, who’d broken through his locks and security system so efficiently and quietly, was the Locksmith.

But what he would never have guessed was that the man’s true identity — verified by a fast glimpse at the DMV picture on the board — was Yannis Gregorios, the man who had slashed his father to death in the backyard of the family’s unpretentious mansion in a lovely neighborhood of Queens.

Before he said anything I was aware that Lincoln Rhyme had entered the room.

It’s curious how this happens. Something about soundwaves maybe ricocheting and being absorbed differently when the dynamic form of a human being invades a space, all the more so when that person is in a complicated, motorized conveyance.

I tell him, “Don’t bother to call anyone.” I nod toward the RF box. “Radio frequency? It’s jamming all the circuits. I turned it on when I heard you hang up with Amelia.”

Lincoln’s finger is in fact on a keypad. But the green light on my box means that the former cop and I are as isolated as one can be in Manhattan.

I turn back to the whiteboard on which he can see my picture and the picture of my father. His photo was taken by a crime scene technician and adequately captured the rictus of pain that preceded the peace of death.

So Lincoln considers me a suspect. I wonder why.

My picture is from the DMV. Not surprising that the police would have scoured the crime scene, my father’s house, and discovered no suitable pictures of me. He had none.

Your son’s a pervert...

“You didn’t believe Xavier was the one?”

Unfazed, Rhyme said, “It wasn’t my case so I didn’t focus on it until I thought about the lack of defensive wounds. That somebody he knew might’ve done it. You’d been there earlier, maybe you came back. And were having a conversation with him. Then...” He nods at the knife.

I hear Joanna’s voice:

Why did you want to kill me?

I needed to...

Like the kid posting the Los Zetas beheading, I had to have more and more and more...

Hence, my Visit to apartment 2019, the first time to use the knife.

And we saw how that turned out.

No. Absolutely not. You can’t hurt a soul...

But the urge didn’t leave.

And so I paid a visit to my father.

You need to talk to him about it. Tell him how the cellar affected you. It could be that he’ll beg for forgiveness. You’ll reconcile...

And that’s just what I did. I met with him for dinner and talked about the imprisonment.

He said it made a man out of me.

I said, well, it certainly made me who I am.

I thanked him for dinner, left and returned a few hours later and, with three strokes, killed him.

He did beg, yes. Though for his life, not forgiveness.

Now, Lincoln studies me. It’s an intense and chilling experience. The dark eyes probe. “I know you’re good at what you do,” he tells me and seems to mean it. “But here, how did you...”

Lincoln’s voice fades and he gives a dour laugh with a glance at the front door. “The video that Amelia made! You got the make of the lock and picked it!”