The Kill Room

He fantasized. Not about the sex but about faking the attack, which he was looking at like a recipe. Pla

He didn’t have time to go to an adult bookstore with video booths or a porn theater and scoop up a bit of somebody’s DNA to swab on her. But he had stolen some stained and torn underwear, teenager’s size, from the trash behind a tenement not far away. Fibers from this garment he’d work under her fingernails and hope the teen had been masturbating at some point in the past few days. Likely.

This would be enough evidence.

He dipped his tongue into the coffee. Enjoyed the intense sensation throughout his mouth; it’s a myth that different tastes are experienced in different parts of the tongue: salt, sour, sweet, bitter. Another sip. Swa

He was ru

Across the street the ADA had appeared from around the corner. She was in a navy blue suit and white blouse. In her small pudgy hands were an old fashioned attaché case, brown and battered, and a large litigation bag. He wondered if either was a present from her father or mother, both of whom were attorneys too, Swa

Doin’ good deeds, helping society, Swa

Laurel was walking with eyes cast downward and laboring under the weight of the litigation bag. Though her face was a cryptic mask, she now gave off a slight hint of depression, the way Italian parsley in soup suggests but doesn’t state. Unlike bold cilantro.

The source of the somber mood was no doubt the foundering Moreno case. Swa

Wasn’t me. No way. I don’t know, man, I don’t know where it came from, really…

Except, of course, she wouldn’t be handling any such cases.

Wouldn’t be doing anything at all after tonight. Would be cold and still as a slab of loin.

Nance Laurel found her keys and unlocked the front door, stepped inside.

Swa

He lifted the small, thick cup to his nose, inhaled and slipped his tongue into the warm liquid once more.

CHAPTER 73

“What do we know about the last of our ten little Indians?” Lincoln Rhyme asked absently.

The setback about Moreno’s citizenship had defeated Nance Laurel but it had only stoked his hunt lust. “I don’t care what Albany wants, Sachs, I want our unsub. Five Sixteen’s too dangerous to stay free. What do we know?” He looked over the evidence whiteboards. “All right, we know Five Sixteen was in the Bahamas around the time of the shooting. We know that he killed the student prostitute A

“What?”

“The other driver, the one that Moreno usually used? Did you ever get in touch with him?”

“No. Never called back.”

This happened frequently when the police phoned, asking for a return call.

Usually this was out of reluctance to get involved.

Sometimes there were other reasons.

She tried the driver once more and shook her head. She placed another call – to Elite Limos, Rhyme deduced. She asked if they had heard from their employee. A brief conversation and she hung up.

“Never called in after he went to see a sick relative.”

“Don’t trust it. We may have a third  victim of our unsub. Find out where he lives, Pulaski. Get a team from the closest precinct to his house and see what’s there.”

The young officer pulled out his mobile and called Dispatch.

Rhyme wheeled back and forth in front of the charts. He didn’t believe he’d ever had a case like this, where the evidence was so fragmentary and sparse.

Bits, scraps, observations, 180 degree changes in direction.

Nothing else…

Hell.

Rhyme steered toward the shelf with the whiskey bottles. He lifted the Glenmorangie and awkwardly poured another hit, then seated the cap on his tumbler and sipped.

“What’re you doing?” Thom asked from the doorway.

“What am I doing, what am I doing? Now, that’s an odd question. Usually the interrogatory ‘what’ introduces a sentence in which the inquirer is unable to make any deductions about a situation.” A substantial sip. “I think you’ve wasted a perfectly good sentence, Thom. It’s pretty clear what I’m doing.”

“You’ve already had too much.”

“That’s a declarative sentence and it makes much more sense. It’s valid. I disagree with it but it’s logically valid.”

“Lincoln!” Thom strode forward.

Rhyme glared. “Don’t even think–”

“Wait,” Sachs said.

Rhyme assumed she was taking Thom’s side in the alcohol dispute but when he wheeled around he found her eyes were not on him or the aide but on the whiteboards. She walked forward and Rhyme noticed that she wasn’t wincing or limping. She was spry and balanced. Her eyes narrowed. This was her predatory gaze. It made the tall woman frightening and, to Rhyme, appealing.

He set the whiskey down. His eyes rose to the boards and sca

“No, Rhyme,” she whispered. “It’s something else. Something else entirely.”

CHAPTER 74

Nancya

Hand me downs. A lot of those here. Laurel was tapped by a memory: Her father surreptitiously fishing in the sofa’s crevices for coins that had fallen from the pockets of visitors. She’d been eight or so and he’d made a joke of it, a game, when she’d walked into the room unexpectedly.

Except it wasn’t a game, and she knew it. Even children can be ashamed of their parents.

Still tasting the smoky scotch, she looked around this home. Her home. Hers alone. In a reflective mood. Despite, or maybe because of, the threadbare, recycled accoutrements, the sense of the place was comfort, even on a pitiful day like this one. She’d worked hard to make it that way. The walls, coated with dozens of layers of paint, going back to Teddy Roosevelt’s era, were a cream shade. For decorations: a silk flower arrangement from a Chelsea crafts fair, an autumn wreath from the Union Square farmers’ market, art too. She had paintings and sketches, some original and some prints, all of scenes that had resonated with her personally, horses, farms, rocky streams, still lifes. No idea why they appealed. But she’d known instantly that they did and she’d bought them if there was any way she could spare the cash. Some alpaca yarn hangings, colorful rectangles. Laurel had taken up knitting a few years ago but couldn’t find the time or the inclination to complete the scarves for friends’ nieces.