The Steel Kiss

  Typing and typing hard. My fingers are long and big, my hands are strong. I break keyboards once every six months or more. And that's not even when I'm angry.

  Type, read, jot notes.

  More and more about Red. Cases she's closed. Shooting competitions she's won (I'm keeping that in mind, believe me).

  Now I am growing angry... Yes, you can buy White Castle burgers at grocery stores. I will do that. But it's not the same as going into the place, the tile, the smell of grease and onions. I remember going to one near where we grew up. A cousin, Lindy, was visiting from Seattle. Middle schooler, like me. I'd never been out with girl before and I pretended she wasn't a relative and I imagined kissing her and her kissing me. Went to lunch at White Castle. Gave her a present, for her shiny blond hair, to keep it dry: a clear plastic rain scarf, all folded up tight like a road map in a little pouch, deep blue and embroidered in a Chinese design. Lindy laughed. Kissed my cheek.

  A good day.

  That was White Castle to me. And Red has taken it away.

  Mad, mad...

  I come to a decision. But then: It's not a decision if you don't decide. I have no choice in the matter. As if on cue, the door buzzer blares. I jump at the sound. Save the file on the computer, slip the hard copies away. I click the intercom.

  "Vernon, it's me?" Alicia says/asks.

  "Come on up."

  "You're sure it's okay?"

  My heart is slamming, at the prospect of what's coming. For some reason I glance back at the Toy Room door. I say into the intercom box, "Yes."

  Two minutes, here she is, outside the door. I check the camera. She's alone (not brought here at gunpoint by Red, which I actually imagine happening). I let her in and close and lock the door. I think involuntarily of a stone closing onto a crypt.

  No turning back.

  "Are you hungry?" I ask.

  "Not really."

  I was, not any longer. Considering what's about to happen.

  I start to reach for her jacket, then remember, and let her hang it up. Tonight she's in her thick schoolteacher blouse, high neck. She looks at the darting fish.

  Red and black and silver.

  The question is a knob, throbbing prominently in my brain, right where I would crack the bone of someone I wanted to kill.

  Do I really want to do this?

  My anger at Red oozes out to my skin and burns.

  Yes, I do.

  "What?" Alicia asks, looking at me with that wariness in her eyes. Must have said the word aloud.

  "Come with me."

  "Uhm. Are you all right, Vernon?"

  "Fine," I whisper. "This way."

  We walk to the door of the Toy Room. She looks at the complicated lock. I know she's seen it. And is curious. What would he want to hide? she'd be wondering. What's in the den, the lair, the crypt? Of course she doesn't say a word.

  "Close your eyes."

  A hesitation now.

  I ask, "Do you trust me?"

  She doesn't. But what can she do? She closes her eyes. I grip her hand. Mine is trembling. She hesitates and then grips back. Sweat mixes.

  Then I'm guiding her through the door, the halogens shooting off the steel blades and blinding me. Not her. True to her word, Alicia keeps her eyes closed.

  Lincoln Rhyme, lying in bed, near midnight, hoping for sleep.

  He'd spent the last hour reflecting on Frommer v. Midwest Conveyance. Whitmore had called and in his somber, well, dull, cadence reported that he'd discovered no other potential defendants. Attorney Holbrook was right. The cleaning crews could not possibly have done anything to cause the access panel to open, and the attorney's private eye had tracked down the crew that had dismantled the escalator for the Department of Investigations. The worker had confirmed that the door covering the access panel switch had indeed been closed and locked, confirming what Sachs had said: that no one could, accidentally or on purpose, have opened the panel and caused the accident.

  So the case was officially dead.

  Now Rhyme's thoughts eased to Amelia Sachs.

  He was particularly aware of her absence tonight. He could not, of course, feel much of her body beside him when she was here, but he found comfort in her regular breathing, the layered smells of shampoo and soap (she was not a perfumista). Now he sensed an edge to the silence in the room, somehow accentuated by the aroma of inanimate cleansers and furniture polish and paper from the rows of books against the wall nearby.

  Thinking back to their harsh words earlier, his and Sachs's.

  They had always argued. But this had been different. He could tell from her tone. Yet he didn't understand why. Cooper was truly gifted. But the New York Police Department Crime Scene Unit was filled with brilliant evidence collection technicians and analysts, with expertise in hundreds of fields, from handwriting to ballistics to chemistry to remains reconstruction... She could have had any one of them. And, hell, Sachs herself was an expert at forensic analysis. She might prefer somebody to man the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer or scanning electron microscope, but Rhyme himself didn't run those. He left that to the technical people.

  Maybe there was something else on her mind. Her mother, he supposed. Rose's operation would be weighing on her. A triple heart bypass in an elderly woman? The medical world was nothing short of miraculous, of course. But considering the massively complex and vulnerable machine within our skin, well, you couldn't help but think every one of our hours was borrowed.

  Since Frommer v. Midwest Conveyance no longer existed, tomorrow Mel Cooper would be back in the CSU fold. And she could use him to her heart's content.

  Sleep crowded in, and Rhyme now found himself thinking of Juliette Archer, wondering about her life in the future. She seemed to have what it took to be a solid forensic scientist but at the moment his musings were about something else: her coping with disability. She still had not fully accepted her condition. She would have a long and dark way to go before she did. If, in fact, she chose to do so. Rhyme recalled his own early battle, which culminated in a fierce debate about assisted suicide. He'd faced that choice and chosen to remain among the living. Archer was nowhere near that confrontation yet.

  How would she choose?

  And what, Rhyme wondered, would he think about her decision? Would he support it or argue against finality?

  But any debate within her was years off; most likely he wouldn't even know her then. These ruminations, grim though they were, had the effect of lulling him to sleep.

  It was perhaps ten minutes later that he started awake, his head rising as he heard, in his thoughts, Archer's low, alto voice. What one thing do we find at the beginning of eternity and the end of time and space?

  Rhyme laughed out loud.

  The letter "e."

  THURSDAY III

  EXPLOIT

  CHAPTER 16

  Morning, a Chelsea morning. Chelsea light streams through the open shutters.

  I'm in the Toy Room, transcribing the diary once again. Sister Mary Frances's diligence is revealed in the perfectly scripted words I form on the thick paper.

  We played Alien Quest today. Long time, the three of us. Sam and Frank and me. The popular boys and me! Sam's dad has money. He sells things, medical stuff I don't know what it is but the company pays well and even gives him a car! So Sam has all the games and all the platforms.

  Funny, even before I ran into them that day outside of Cindy's house, coming home a different route, the safe route, they never gave me any shit. But that didn't mean they'd be interested in hanging out. But they ARE. They're A Team, ha, don't mean on teams even though they are. Mean the top crowd, the clique crowd, the A Team crowd. Handsome, cool, they could have any girl, any time. But they want to hang with me.

  It's Tye Butler, Dano, their friends, sort of goth sort of redneck, yeah even in Manhasset, Long Island. It's THEM who push and gawk and say, Bean Pole and Dick Freak. Stuff like that. Sam heard about Butler saying something and he went to find him and said, Leave G
riffith alone. And Butler did.

  Don't see them real often. Sam and Frank. The teams, the girls. But that's what makes it real. They're like, Hey, Griffith, what's going on? And it's epic cause they use my last name, what the in people do. Hey, Griffith, you want a Coke? Then we go separate ways for a few days or a week.

  Can't talk to them serious. Of course. I'd like to, talk about being/feeling different. Can't talk to anybody, really. Dad, yeah right. In between games. Which is never. Mom, sometimes. But she doesn't get it. She has baking and her friends and her crafts and her food and after six thirty, forget it. My brother's okay but off doing other things.

  But talking to Sam and Frank?

  I decided no. Might break something is how I feel.

  I put the diary and the recorder away. I stretch and stand up and walk to the futon, look down, scanning Alicia's body. Pale, really pale. Mouth kind of open, eyes kind of shut.

  Pretty, even in the messy clothes, the twisted sheets.

  Beside the bed is a band saw, which is really quite a wicked piece of machinery. If they had one during the Middle Ages, imagine how many people would have renounced the devil. Slice, slice, off with a finger.

  Off with whatever.

  A voice makes me jump. "Vernon."

  I turn. Alicia is stirring. Blinking against the halogen lights.

  She sits up, blinking and stretching too. "Morning," she says, shy and cautious.

  This is a word she's never said to me before. A first, staying over.

  A first, her seeing the Toy Room. Which no one else has ever done--and which I thought would never, ever happen.

  Letting someone into my sanctuary, letting someone see the real me was hard to do, so very hard. I could never explain it right but it was like risking everything to let her in. One-night stands, fucking to exhaustion, that's easy. But, like, taking a woman to a gallery exhibition showing paintings you're hopelessly passionate about--that's a chance that's so risky. What if she laughs, what if she looks bored, what if she decides you miss her mark completely?

  And wants to go away.

  But last night, walking into the Toy Room and, on my command, opening her eyes, Alicia was as delighted as I've ever seen her. She gazed over the workbench, the saws, the tools, the hammers, the chisels. My new implement, the razor with the tiny teeth, my favorite. My child. I loved seeing her pale brow and cheeks, lit by the blue-white reflections shooting from all the steel surfaces.

  But what really entranced her was what I constructed with those tools.

  "You made these?" she asked last night.

  "Did," I told her uncertainly.

  "Oh, Vernon. They're works of art."

  And, hearing that, my life was about as perfect as it could be.

  A good day...

  But just after that, last night, we grew very, very busy and, after, fell fast asleep. Now, this morning, she wants to see more of my handiwork.

  Before I can turn away or hand her a robe she's out of bed, and Alicia does in her way what I have done by sharing the room with her. Because now, in the light, she remains naked and I can see her scars clearly. This is the first time she's allowed me to view them full. The high-necked dress or blouse covers them when she's clothed. The thick sheltering bra and high panties when she's half naked. And when we're in bed, the lights are always low to nonexistent. Now, though, here's every inch of her body to see in sun-splayed clarity: the slashed breast and thigh, the burned groin, the patch where her arm bone poked through her pale skin after being so fiercely bent.

  I hurt for this woman--because of these scars and the scars within, all going back to her husband, years ago, that terrible time. I want to make her whole, make her perfect again, untwist the arm that her husband twisted, unburn her low belly, mend her breast. But all I have are my steel tools and they're only good for the opposite: cutting and crushing and snapping flesh.

  What I can do, though, is to ignore the troubled skin, which is not at all difficult, and show her--it's quite obvious now--how much I desire her. And, I think, here is yet another way I can help heal the other scars, the ones inside.

  Alicia looks up at my eyes and comes close to smiling. Then she enwraps her bothered flesh with a sheet stained from us both because it's what any normal couple would do upon waking. She walks to the shelves, and once more looks over the miniatures I've built with my panoply of tools.

  I construct almost exclusively furniture. Not toys, not Kids-R-Us plastic or mismatched wood glued together by children in China. But fine-worked, quality pieces, only tiny, tiny, tiny. I spend days on each piece, sometimes weeks. Turning legs on a model maker's lathe, using a fine razor saw to make even seams, lacquering chests of drawers and desks and headboards with ten coats of varnish, so they are smooth and rich and dark as a still autumn pond.

  Alicia says: "This's as good as anything you'd find in an artisan's workshop in High Point. North Carolina, you know. Where they make real furniture. Vernon, amazing." And I can tell from her face she means it.

  "You told me you sold things for a living. eBay and online. I just assumed you bought things and marked them up and sold them."

  "No, I wouldn't like that. I like making things."

  "You shouldn't call them 'things.' They're more than things. They're works of art," she repeats.

  I might be blushing. I don't know. And for a moment I want to hug her, kiss her, but not in the way I usually grip her and taste her finger or mouth or nipple or groin. Just hold my lips against her temple. This might be what love is but I don't know about that and I don't want to think beyond this now.

  "It's quite a workshop." She's looking around.

  "My Toy Room. That's what I call it."

  "Why didn't you tell me this is what you do? You were all mysterious."

  "Just..." I shrug. The answer of course is Shoppers. The bullies, the rude, the people who humiliate for sport. Vernon Griffith sits in his dark room and makes toys... Why bother to get to know a freak like him? I need somebody chic or cool or handsome.

  I don't answer.

  "Who buys them?"

  I can't help but laugh. "The people who pay the most are the American Girl folks. Mostly they're lawyers and doctors and CEOs, who'd do anything, spend any amount for their little girls." I know they don't appreciate the pieces--even the ones I charge a thousand for--any more than they would a hunk of molded polyurethane. And I doubt they enjoy their children's faces when they open the package (though I suspect the kids' reaction is a millimeter above indifference). No, what the businessmen enjoy is showing off to neighbors. "Oh, look what I had commissioned for Ashleigh. It's teak, you know."

  (And I always reflect on the irony of parents' buying for their adorable little ones a chest of drawers made by the same hands that have cracked skulls or sliced tender throats with a lovely implement.) Most buyers, however, love what I sell; the reviews are always stellar.

  "Oh, and look. You do historical things too." She's looking at a catapult, a siege tower, a medieval banquet table, a torture rack (one of my more popular items, which I find amusing).

  "We can thank Game of Thrones for that. And I made a lot of Elvish and Orc things when the Hobbit movies came out. Anything medieval is okay as long as it's generic. I was going to do Hunger Games but I was worried about trademark and copyright problems. You have to be careful with Disney too. And Pixar. Oh, you have to see this."

  I find a book on my shelf, hold it up. The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.

  "What is this, Vernon?" She sidles close and I feel her body against mine as I flip the pages.

  "Woman in Chicago, a millionaire heiress. Long time ago. She died in 'sixty-two. Frances Glessner Lee. Ever heard of her?"

  "No."

  "Quite a person. She didn't do heiress, society stuff. She was fascinated with crime, murder mostly. And had dinner parties, fancy ones, for police investigators. She learned all about solving murders. But she wanted to do more. So she got details on famous murders and made dior
amas--you know, like dollhouse rooms--of crime scenes. Every detail was perfect."

  The book is photographs of her miniature sets. Names like Three Room Dwelling and The Pink Bathroom. Every one features a doll of a corpse where a corpse actually lay, bloodstains where the bloodstains really were.

  I think suddenly of Red. What I found out about her, Ms. Shopper Amelia Sachs, is that she specializes in crime scene work. Two thoughts: She would probably appreciate the book.

  The other: A miniature diorama in which a doll representing her shapely body lies on the floor of her bedroom. Skull cracked, red hair redder from the blood.

  We laugh at some of the perfect detail Lee included in her work. I put the book away.

  "Would you like one?" I ask.

  She turns. "One what?"

  I nod toward the shelves. "A miniature."

  "I... I don't know. Aren't those part of your inventory?"

  "Yes. But the buyers will wait. What do you want? Any one in particular?"

  She leans forward and her eyes settle on a baby carriage.

  "It's so perfect." She offers her second smile.

  There are two perambulators. One made on commission and one I've done just because I enjoy making baby carriages. Couldn't say why. Babies and children do not, never have, never will figure in my life.

  She points to the one that's under commission. The better one. I pick it up and hand it to her. She touches it carefully and repeats, "It's perfect. Every part. Look at how the wheels turn! It even has springs!"

  "Have to keep the baby comfy," I say.

  "Thank you, Vernon." She kisses my cheek. And turns away, letting the sheet slither to the floor while she lies down on the bed, gazing up at me.

  I debate. An hour won't delay me significantly.

  Besides, it seems humane to give the person I'm going to kill today a little more time on God's earth.

  "I want that damn thing out of here," Rhyme was grumbling to Thom, nodding toward the escalator.

  "Your Exhibit A? What am I supposed to do? It's five tons of industrial machinery."

  Rhyme was truly irritated by the device's presence. A reminder that what, yes, might very well have been Exhibit A was going to be no such thing.