"But my deepest appreciation goes to the man who risked his life to save my little girl. And as a token of that appreciation I want to give him this." The businessman held up a framed, three-foot-long mock-up of a check for $500,000. "Which represents the sum I've ordered deposited into his account."
More raucous applause; large sums of money, just like rescued youngsters, are guaranteed crowd-pleasers.
Gilbert added, "Please join me in thanking . . . Mr. Greg Langley."
A brace on his neck, a bandage on his hand, the rescue specialist walked slowly to the podium, limping. He seemed agitated, though Ron guessed it had less to do with the pain from the injuries than his impatience with hokeyness like this. He took the big check and passed it quickly to his assistant.
Tonya's father continued, "What he did took great personal courage and sacrifice. Even after being buried in a cave-in and nearly killed, Mr. Langley continued to crawl to the tunnel where our Tonya was trapped and got her to safety. You'll have the gratitude of our family forever."
The crowd seemed to want a speech but all Langley said was an impatient "Thanks a lot." He waved and left fast--on to more rescues and more rewards, Ron assumed. He felt a burst of regret he'd only brained the guy when he'd simulated the cave-in and hadn't caused more serious damage; he definitely deserved a broken wrist or jawbone.
As they drove home, Sandra was clearly pleased the girl had been rescued but she said with some genuine sympathy in her voice, "Sorry you missed out on the reward, honey."
What he'd told his wife was that the drain was so clogged with roots and mud that he'd only gotten halfway to the tunnel.
She added, "I know you're disappointed you didn't get what you'd wanted. But at least the girl's safe . . . and so are you. That's the important thing."
He kissed her hair.
Thinking: Ah, but you're wrong, dear. I got exactly what I wanted.
Though he could hardly share this thought with her. Just like there was a lot about him he couldn't share: Such as why he'd picked the old coffee warehouse in the first place: because it had windows facing the main door of City College--providing a perfect view for watching the girls leave, making it easy to pick who'd be his victims. This is what he'd meant when he'd told her the place suited his personality; it had nothing to do with having an artsy office in a vibrant redevelopment. He needed a new hunting ground after the secretarial school across from his old office had closed--the school from which he'd kidnaped two coeds within the past year and videotaped their leisurely murders. (Ironically Ron Badgett himself was one of the reasons that violent crime had increased lately in the old city center.)
A few weeks ago, just after he'd moved to the new building, Ron had spotted gorgeous Tonya Gilbert leaving class. He couldn't stop thinking about the clinging pink tank top she wore, her long hair flying in the breeze, her slim legs--couldn't stop picturing her tied down in a cellar, Ron slipping the garrote around her beautiful neck.
Deciding that Tonya'd be his first victim in NeDo, he'd followed her for several days and learned she always took a shortcut from the school down the alley beside his office and continued through the courtyard of the deserted building behind it. Ron had planned the abduction carefully. He'd found that an old tunnel went right underneath her route and had laid a trap--removing a grate and covering it with thin Sheetrock, painted to look like concrete. When she'd walked over it last night, she'd fallen through and dropped twenty feet to the floor of the tunnel. He'd climbed down to her, made sure she was unconscious, shut off her cell phone and threw it down a drainpipe (he'd been troubled to learn from helpful Chief Knoblock that cell phones still have a signal when they're off; he'd have to remember that in the future).
Leaving her in the tunnel, he'd returned to the surface to seal up the open grate with plywood. But as he was hammering the grate back into place he must've hit a weakened beam. It collapsed and, as he'd scrabbled to safety, half the building came down. There was no way to get back inside from there. Worse, one of the sub-basement walls had collapsed too, exposing the tunnel where the girl lay.
Tonya was still unconscious and wouldn't know what Ron had done, nor could she identify him. But rescue workers would undoubtedly find the workroom off the adjacent tunnel where he had his knives and ropes and video camera, all of which bore his fingerprints. There was also a videotape in the camera that he sure as hell didn't want the police to see. He'd tried to climb back down to get his things but the building was far too unstable. He was looking for another route down when the first fire trucks arrived--somebody must have heard the collapse and called 9-1-1--and Ron had fled.
He'd returned back home, desperately trying to figure out how to return for the damning evidence. While Sandra slept, he'd stayed transfixed to the TV all night, watching the coverage about Tunnel Girl, praying that they wouldn't get into the tunnel before he had a chance, somehow, to beat them to it. Praying too that she wouldn't die--his only hope to get to the workroom was to pretend he was trying to rescue her himself.
Then, after a tortured, sleepless night, the police arrived at his doorstep (his alarm at seeing Detective Perillo had nothing to do with the possibility of a fire-damaged office, of course).
Despite this scare, though, it worked out for the best that they'd asked for his help; it was through Knoblock and the city engineers that he learned that there might be another way to get back into the tunnel and collect what he'd left behind last night. After working his way through the drain and knocking Langley out, he'd managed to get all his gear, obliterate his foot-and fingerprints and slip out of the tunnel without Tonya's hearing him. On the way back down the sluice he'd disposed of the weapons, ropes and camera by pitching them down fissures in the drain and filling in the spaces with dirt and mud. (He did, of course, keep the videotape of the student he'd last killed; it was one of his better ones.)
Oh, he was a bit sorry he couldn't be the one to rescue the girl and collect the reward. But, if he had, the press might've looked into his life and learned a few interesting things--for instance, the fact that he'd always chosen to live or work near colleges from which coeds had disappeared over the years.
Besides, he'd been honest with Sandra regarding one other thing: That he had values other than making money. The reward meant little. There was indeed, as she'd observed, another side to him, a more important side.
I need to follow my creative spirit. I have to be true to myself. . . .
Of course, that creative spirit didn't involve graphic design; it centered around ropes and knives and beautiful college girls.
"I've got to say," Sandra said, "I'm still not convinced that everything was the way it seemed to be."
Ron eyed his wife cautiously. "No?" He hoped she wasn't on to him; he loved her, and he'd prefer not to kill her.
"It was just odd, Langley calling right after the accident. You know, I actually wondered if maybe he was behind the whole thing."
"No kidding?"
"Yeah, maybe he travels around and booby-traps buildings and oil rigs, then after somebody's trapped he calls and gets a reward or a fee to rescue the victims." She gave a soft giggle. "And you know what else I thought?"
"What's that?"
"That maybe Tonya and Langley were in on it together."
"Together?" Seeing that his wife's suspicions were headed in a harmless direction, he could laugh.
"I mean, she and her father were having problems--he wouldn't pay to fix her car, remember? She might've wanted to get even with him. Oh, and did you see that she was a hiking guide on the Appalachian Trail? Maybe she met Langley when he was rescuing somebody at the park. I mean, she wasn't very badly hurt. Maybe they staged the whole thing together, Tonya and Langley, to split the reward."
Ron supposed this might make sense to an outside observer. Of course, now that he thought about it, that same observer might also speculate that Sandra herself could've been in collusion with Langley, whom she might've met through her work for an oil company an
d, as an engineer, rigged a trap for the girl after she'd noticed the building during Ron's move.
Interesting takes on the incident, thought an amused Ron Badgett, who was, of course, the only one in the world who knew exactly what had happened to the girl.
"Could be," he said. "But I guess that's between Gilbert and Langley now."
Ron steered the car into the driveway and, leaving the engine running, climbed out and opened the door for his wife. "I'm going to head back to the office, see how they're coming with the basement wall." The city was paying to have the hole in his cellar repaired.
Sandra kissed him good-bye and said she'd have dinner ready when he got back home.
Ron climbed back into the driver's seat and drove eagerly to NeDo. In truth, he couldn't care less about the basement wall. The last daytime classes at City College were over in twenty minutes and he wanted to be at his desk by then, in front of his window, so he could watch the coeds leaving the school on their way home.
Tunnel Girl had been saved; Ron Badgett needed someone new.
LOCARD'S PRINCIPLE
It's politically sensitive."
"Politics." Lincoln Rhyme offered a distracted grunt to the heavyset, disheveled man who was leaning against a dresser in the bedroom of the criminalist's Upper West Side town house.
"No, it's important."
"And sensitive," Rhyme echoed. He wasn't pleased with visitors in general; was much less pleased with visitors at eight-thirty in the morning.
Detective Lon Sellitto pushed away from the dresser and took the coffee Rhyme's aide, Thom, offered. He sipped.
"That's not bad."
"Thanks," Thom said.
"No," Sellitto corrected. "I mean his hand. Look."
A quadriplegic, injured while running a crime scene some years ago, Rhyme had been undergoing therapy and had regained some slight movement in his right hand. He was immensely proud of the accomplishment but it was against his nature to gloat--about personal achievements, at least; he ignored Sellitto and continued squeezing a soft rubber ball. Yes, some movement in his hand had indeed returned but the feelings were haywire. He felt textures and temperatures that didn't match the properties of the sponge rubber.
Another grunt. He flicked the ball away with his index finger. "I'm not really crazy about drop-ins, Lon."
"We got a crunch, Linc."
A politically sensitive one. Rhyme continued, "Amelia and I've got a few other cases going on at the moment, you know." He sipped the strong coffee through a straw. The tumbler was mounted on the headboard to his right. To his left was a microphone, connected to a voice recognition system that in turn was hooked into an environmental control unit, the central nervous system of his bedroom.
"Like I said, a crunch."
"Hmm." More coffee.
Rhyme carefully examined Sellitto--the Major Cases detective with whom he used to work frequently when Rhyme had run NYPD's crime scene unit. He seemed tired. Rhyme reflected that however early Rhyme had wakened, Sellitto had probably been up several hours before, responding to the 10-29 homicide call.
Sellitto explained that the entrepreneur and philanthropist Ronald Larkin, fifty-five, had just been shot to death in the bedroom of his Upper East Side town house. The first responders found a dead body, a wounded and sobbing wife, very little evidence and no witnesses whatsoever.
Both the feds and the NYPD upper echelons wanted Rhyme and his partner, Amelia Sachs, to work the scene, with Sellitto as lead detective. Rhyme was often the choice for big cases because, despite his reclusive nature, he was well known to the public and his presence suggested the mayor and brass were serious about a collar.
"You know Larkin?"
"Refresh my memory." Unless facts had to do with his job--consulting forensic scientist, or "criminalist"--Rhyme didn't pay much attention to trivia.
"Ronald Larkin, come on, Linc. Everybody knows him."
"Lon, the sooner you tell me, the sooner I'll be able to say no."
"He's been in that kind of mood," Thom told Sellitto.
"Yeah, for the last twenty years."
"Onward and upward," Rhyme said with cheerful impatience, sipping more coffee through the straw.
"Ronald Larkin hit it big in energy. Pipelines, electricity, water, geothermal."
"He was a good guy," Thom interjected, feeding Rhyme a breakfast of eggs and a bagel. "Environmentally conscious."
"Happy day," Rhyme said sourly.
Sellitto helped himself to a second bagel and continued, "He'd retired last year, turns the company over to somebody else and starts a foundation with his brother. Doing good things in Africa, Asia and Latin America. He lives in LA but he and his wife have a place here. They flew into town last night. Early this morning they're in bed and somebody fires through the window, takes him out."
"Robbery?"
"Nope."
Really? Rhyme grew more intrigued. He turned quickly away from the incoming bagel, like a baby avoiding a spoon of mashed carrots.
"Lincoln," Thom said.
"I'll eat later. The wife?"
"She got hit but rolled onto the floor, grabbed the phone, called nine-one-one. The shooter didn't wait around to finish the job."
"What'd she see?"
"Not much, I don't think. She's in the hospital. Haven't had a chance to talk to her more than a few words. She's hysterical. They only got married a month ago."
"Ah, a recent wife . . . . Even if she was wounded, that doesn't mean she didn't hire somebody to kill hubby and hurt her a little in the process."
"You know, Linc, I've done this before . . . . I checked already. There's no motive. She's got money of her own from Daddy. And she signed a prenup. In the event of his death all she gets is a hundred thousand and can keep the engagement ring. Not worth the needle, you know."
"That's the deal he cut with his wife? No wonder he's rich. You mentioned politically sensitive?"
"Here's one of the richest men in the country, way involved in the Third World, and he gets offed in our backyard. The mayor's not happy. The brass isn't happy."
"Which means you must be one sad puppy."
"They want you and Amelia, Linc. Come on, it's an interesting case. You like challenges."
After the accident at the subway crime scene that left him disabled, Rhyme's life became very different from his life before. Back then he would prowl through the playground that is New York City, observing people and where they lived and what they did, collecting samples of soil, building materials, plants, insects, trash, rocks . . . anything that might help him run a case. His inability to do this now was terribly frustrating. And, always independent, he detested relying on anyone else.
But Lincoln Rhyme had always lived a cerebral life. Before the accident, boredom had been his worst enemy. Now, it was the same. And Sellitto--intentionally, of course--had just teased him with two words that often got his attention.
Interesting . . . challenge . . .
"So, what do you say, Linc?"
Another pause. He glanced at the half-eaten bagel. He'd lost his appetite altogether. "Let's get downstairs. See if we can find out a little more about Mr. Larkin's demise."
"Good," said Thom, sounding relieved. He was the one who often took the brunt of Rhyme's bad moods when he was involved in uninteresting, unchallenging cases, as had been the situation lately.
The handsome blond aide, far stronger than his slim physique suggested, dressed Rhyme in sweats and executed a sitting transfer to move him from the elaborate motorized bed into an elaborate motorized wheelchair, a sporty red Storm Arrow. Using the one working finger of his left hand, the ring finger, Rhyme maneuvered the chair into the tiny elevator that took him down to the first floor of the Central Park West town house.
Once there, he steered into the parlor, which bore no resemblance to the Victorian sitting room it had once been. The place was now a forensic lab that would rival those in a medium-size town anywhere in America. Computers, microscopes, chemical
s, petri dishes, beakers, pipettes, shelves containing books and supplies. Not a square inch was unoccupied, except for the examination tables. Wires like sleeping snakes lay everywhere.
Sellitto clomped down the stairs, finishing the bagel--either his or Rhyme's.
"I better track down Amelia," Rhyme said. "Let her know we've got a scene to run."
"Oh, kinda forgot to mention," Sellitto said as he chewed. "I called her already. She's probably at the scene by now."
Amelia Sachs never got over the somber curtain that surrounded the site of a homicide.
She believed this was good, though. To feel the sorrow and the outrage at intentional death pushed her to do the job that much better.
Standing in front of the three-story town house on Manhattan's Upper East Side, the tall, redheaded detective was aware of this pall now, and perhaps felt it a bit more than she normally would have, knowing that Ron Larkin's death could affect many, many needy people around the world. What would happen to the foundation now that he was gone?
"Sachs? Where are we?" Rhyme's impatient voice cut through her headset. She turned the volume down.
"Just got here," she replied, worrying her fingernail. She tended to hurt herself in small, compulsive ways--particularly when she was about to search a scene where a tragedy like this had occurred. She felt the pressure of getting it right. To make sure the killer was identified and collared.
She was in working clothes: not the dark suits she favored as a detective, but the white hooded overalls worn by crime scene searchers, to make certain that they didn't contaminate the scene with their own hair, sloughed-off epidermal cells and any of the thousands of bits of trace evidence we constantly carry around with us.
"I don't see anything, Sachs. What's the problem?"
"There. How's that?" She clicked a switch on her headset.
"Ah, perfect. Hmm. Did that used to be a geranium?"
Sachs was looking at a planter containing a shriveled plant beside the front door. "You're talking to the wrong girl, Rhyme. I buy 'em, I plant 'em, I kill 'em."
"I'm told they need water occasionally."
Rhyme was in his town house about a mile and a half away, across Central Park, at the moment but was seeing exactly what Sachs saw, thanks to a high-definition video feed, running from a tiny camera mounted on her headset to the CSU's rapid response vehicle. From there it continued its wireless journey onward, ending up on a flat-screen monitor two feet in front of the criminalist. They'd worked together for years, with Rhyme generally in his lab or bedroom and Sachs working the crime scenes herself, reporting to him via radio. They'd tried video in the past but the resulting image wasn't clear enough to be helpful; Rhyme had bullied the NYPD into paying some big bucks for an HD system.