Джеффри Дивер - The Midnight Lock

She seemed perplexed, as if she’d been asked that old saw about how many angels fit on the head of a pin, or however it went. “Once, I think. No, that was something else.”

Sellitto asked, “How’d the trial go?”

Rhyme grumbled, “No earthly idea. It’s in the jury’s hands now.” His voice conveyed the message that he didn’t want to think about, much less discuss, the trial. He said, “‘Odd’? You said, ‘odd.’” The criminalist’s heart was beginning to thud a bit faster — as always, the messenger was his temple. Lincoln Rhyme lived for “odd,” along with “unusual” and “challenging.” “Inexplicable” too. A case where Thug A shoots Thug B, who’s then caught with the murder weapon ten minutes later, did not intrigue. His worst enemy was not a psychotic killer but boredom. Before the accident, and after, to be bored was to die a little.

Amelia Sachs was also eyeing the visitor with some anticipation, it appeared. She was assigned to Major Cases — where Sellitto was a supervising lieutenant. She could catch a job for anybody at MC who needed her but she worked most frequently for Sellitto — and she always did when Rhyme was brought on as consultant.

The detective was then speaking to the person on the other end of the line. “Yessir... We’re on it... Okay... Well.” He paced up to the immaculate glass wall that separated the non-sterile part of the parlor from the lab. He rapped on the glass absently. He nodded, as one will do when concluding a conversation, even when the person he was speaking with was off camera, miles away. “Yessir.” The phone vanished into the pocket of his brown suit. The man had other colors in his wardrobe but when he thought of Sellitto, Rhyme thought of brown.

Thom appeared, with another steaming mug. “Here you go, Lon. How’ve you been? How’s Rachel? You ever get that dog you were talking about?”

“Don’t interrupt him, Thom. He’s here to tell us an interesting tale, aren’t you, Lon? About something odd .”

“You make the best coffee.”

“Thank you.”

“Molasses in the cookies?”

“Not too much. It can overwhelm.”

“Interruption, I was saying,” Rhyme said in a slow, cool voice.

Sellitto said, “Rachel bakes. She made scones the other day. Which I’m not even sure what that is. Kinda dry. Good with butter. Okay, okay, Linc. A couple uniforms from the Twenty House get a call.”

The precinct, a 1960s-era structure with a white stone façade, always in need of scrubbing, was within walking — or rolling — distance of the town house and Rhyme had been there on investigations more than a few times in the past years.

“Case like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

And Lon Sellitto had witnessed a great deal of mayhem over his years as an NYPD beat cop then detective.

“So. Here’s the sit.”

“The what?” Sachs asked.

“The situation. Everybody’s using ‘sit’ in OnePP.”

At another time Rhyme would have lectured his former partner about the sanctity of language, suggesting that dismembering a word spoke volumes about the intelligence and vanity of the dismemberer — nor was he particularly happy at the curious renaming of One Police Plaza. But he let it go.

“Victim was a woman named Annabelle Talese. Twenty-seven, marketing manager for a fashion company and an influencer.”

“What’s an influencer?” Rhyme asked.

“Do you not watch any television, Linc? Surf the web? Or listen to podcasts?”

“What’s a podcast?... That I’m joking about. But influencer?”

Sachs said, “Somebody who talks about a product online. I use this mascara for my morning routine. I like this line of sweaters from ABC knitwear. They get paid by the manufacturer, or they make money from advertising. Influencers’re pretty or handsome. At least, that helps. Unboxing videos’re part of it too. Pam told me about them.”

The young woman, whom Sachs had taken under her wing after saving her from terrorists, was presently studying criminalistics in Chicago.

Rhyme looked at her, querying.

“Somebody buys a product and then videos themselves taking it out of the box and setting it up.”

“Will wonders never cease,” Rhyme said and glanced at Sellitto with a can-we-move-it-along expression.

“A perp breaks into her place in the middle of the night.”

“Homicide?” Rhyme asked.

“No.”

“Sexual battery?” from Sachs.

“Probably not.”

Rhyme and Sachs shared a glance. It was she who said, “‘Probably’?”

“Here’s part of the ‘odd.’” Sellitto took a long drink of coffee, which apparently authorized him to chew down another cookie. “Might have touched her, but she couldn’t tell. Basically what he does is he moves things around in her apartment. Personal things, clothes, hygiene stuff, sits beside the bed and eats one of these.” He pointed at the pastry.

“Jesus,” Thom said.

“I’ll say. Kid was petrified. Thought he might still be in the apartment after she woke up.”

“Why?”

“That’s the other part of ‘odd.’ The door was locked, both the knob and two deadbolts, so she figured he had to be there. Only he wasn’t.”

“So,” Sachs said. “He had a key.”

“No, he didn’t. She’s sure of that. He picked the locks to get in. And used his tools to lock up after he left. What kind of burglar does that?”

Sachs asked, “And she’s positive there’s no spare key?”

“She was going to give a set to her mother but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. A responding said she admitted she’d been drinking the night before. But nothing more than on a typical gals’ night out. Can I say ‘gal’?”

“Lon,” Rhyme said impatiently.

“Anyway, her word, not mine. Then they wondered if she’d moved things herself — you know, staging it to blame an ex or the landlord. But she didn’t point any fingers, so that theory’s shot. And anyway, they said she was really freaked. Genuinely. She thought it might be a ghost but decided that, quote, ‘wasn’t real likely.’”

Sachs sat down in front of a computer and went online. After she did some keyboarding, a video began to play. It depicted an attractive woman, blond, in a low-cut sweater, sitting at her kitchen table in a bright and neatly ordered dwelling — it smacked of your average New York City apartment. She was smiling broadly at the camera. She was holding up some makeup accessory with affection.

Influencing, apparently.

Sachs froze the image and studied the woman closely. “Annabelle,” she whispered.

This was her way, Rhyme understood. Sachs wanted to know the victims in the cases she was running, wanted to know their histories, their loves, their fears, as many details of their lives as she could absorb — and wanted to know too, in the case of murder, what the last few minutes of those lives had entailed. This bonding with the victim, she believed, made her a better investigator, and the process started with knowing the name.

Though Rhyme was no less sympathetic to the victims’ fates than Sachs, such details did not interest, much less motivate, him.

There were people cops and there were science cops, and the two of them were respective examples of each. This created occasional tension. But, on the whole, it could be argued that this very contrast was what made them click so well.

“So, breaking and entering,” Rhyme said, eyes off the computer and on the ceiling. “Moving things around. A chance for prints, DNA, footprints. Anything else?”

“Well, stole a knife and a pair of panties.”

“Hm.” The suggestion of sex and violence was always troubling, even if he had not, at this point, acted on it.