The Steel Kiss

"I did, yes. It would've been nice if you'd listened to me."

  "Funny."

  "Restaurants're one of the biggest money sucks in history. This one, okay, it's got decent cash flow and a loyal clientele. I know it. I've been to it. Been around for twenty years, so it's got serious goodwill. But still, you've never run a company before."

  "I can learn. Maybe I could hire the owner to stick around, be a consultant. He's got an interest in making sure the place stays open and's successful." The proposal was the owner would get the purchase price plus a cut of the action. "He's gotta have a sentimental attachment to the place. Wouldn't you think?"

  "I'd guess, sure."

  "It's late in the game for me, Sam. I need to get going with my life. Oh, but the other thing I asked you."

  "I checked and triple-checked. Not a hint of criminal activity. The owner, his family, any of the employees. No records. Clean with the IRS and state too. Passed a couple of audits with flying colors. And I'm working on the liquor waiver."

  "Good. Thanks, Sam. I'm so psyched."

  "Nick. Slow down. You sound like you're ready to sign the paperwork today. Don't you at least want to try the lasagna?"

  CHAPTER 28

  Amelia Sachs returned to the town house with what seemed to Rhyme measly evidence. Two milk crates containing a half-dozen paper and plastic evidence collection bags.

  The damn unsub kept burning things up and turning evidence to ash. Water was the worst elemental contaminant of crime scenes; fire was a close number two.

  These boxes she handed off to Mel Cooper, who was wearing a lab coat over his corduroy beige slacks and short-sleeve white shirt, as well as surgical cap and gloves. "That's all?" he asked, looking toward the door, thinking perhaps that other ECTs were bringing in more evidence.

  Her grimace said it all. Nothing else would be forthcoming.

  "Who was he?" Juliette Archer asked. "The victim?"

  Ron Pulaski glanced through his notes: "A fifty-eight-year-old advertising account executive. Pretty senior. Abe Benkoff. He was responsible for some famous TV commercials." The young officer ran through some of them. Rhyme, never a TV watcher, had not heard of the ads, though, of course, he knew the clients: food companies, personal products, cars, airlines. "Fire marshal said they're a week away from anything specific as to how it happened but off the record: There was a gas leak from a CookSmart range and oven. Six-burner gas stovetop, an electric oven. With the DataWise you can turn the stove on remotely--both the burners and the oven. It's mostly designed to shut them off if you leave and think you might have left them on. But it works the other way too. The unsub, it seemed, disengaged the pilot light sparkers--those click, click things--and then turned the gas on.

  "The marshal said the flow had to be going for close to forty minutes, given the size of the explosion. Then the unsub turned the sparkers back on. The whole place blew. Benkoff was about six feet from the front door. Looked like he was trying to get out. The gas woke him up, they think."

  Archer: "Anyone else in the place?"

  "No. He was married but his wife was out of town, business trip. They had two grown children. Nobody else in the building was hurt."

  Sachs began a whiteboard for this crime scene.

  Her phone hummed and she took a call. After a brief conversation she hung up. Shrugged to Rhyme. "Another reporter about my statement to the press--about the security patches that CIR uploaded to its clients. The story's got legs." She was pleased. Her journalistic anonymity had vanished and she was now the go-to cop for reporters writing about the dangers of smart controllers. Word apparently was spreading about the dangers of products embedded with DataWise5000 controllers. And, according to the reports, people were paying attention.

  She added, "Even if companies aren't intimidated into Chaudhary's security updates, at least we can hope their customers read the stories and stay offline or unplug their appliances."

  Rhyme's computer sounded with an incoming news story on an RSS feed. "He's sent out another chapter of the manifesto."

  Greetings:

  Another lesson delivered.

  My feeling is that people, begin as innocents. Some philosopher, I don't know whom, said that way back. One of the famous ones. We are born sweet and pure: We do not have an inbred lust to possess Unnecessary things, to have a better car, a bigger hot tub, a better-definition television set. A MORE EXPENSIVE STOVE!!! We have to be taught that. But, I feel taught is not the right word. The right word is INDOCTRINATED. It's the product manufacturers, the marketers the advertisers that browbeat and intimadate us into purchasing bigger and better, suggesting we can't live without this or that.

  Yes, think about it. Think about your Possesions. What do you have that you can't live without? Precious little. Close your eyes. Walk through your house in your mind. Pick up an object, look it over. Think about where you got it? A gift? From a friend? It's the FRIENDSHIP that's important not the token of it. Throw it out. Do this with one thing a day.

  And, more important, stop buying things: Buying is an act of desparation and, apart from staples like clothes and simple food an addiction.

  You do not NEED a kitchen appliance, that costs so much it could feed a family of four for a year. Well you've PAID the price... literally.

  --The People's Guardian

  "Nut job," muttered Mel Cooper.

  As good a diagnosis as any.

  "If he's guarding the people why is he killing them?"

  "He's only killing the ones with expensive products," Rhyme pointed out.

  "A distinction that's lost on me," Archer said. She scanned the diatribe carefully and said, "If he knows the premise of the philosophy, tabula rasa, he must've heard of John Locke. He's playing down his intelligence again. What look like intentional misspellings. A few unnecessary uppercasings--so to speak."

  Rhyme laughed at her comment; one of those words was "Unnecessary."

  "Colon where a semi would be more appropriate. But using one means he knows how to use the other. Wrong use of 'whom.'"

  "Okay," Rhyme said, not much interested in the profiling. "We've established he's corrupting Ms. Peabody's English lessons on purpose. Let's get to the evidence. Where did you find that, Sachs?" It seemed there were two separate locations she'd searched; he could tell this from the separate containers.

  "I did a fast grid in Benkoff's apartment. Since the unsub's using a remote, he doesn't need to be inside a victim's location. From the lists, he knows who has a product with a smart controller. But I took some samples anyway. Just in case he got in to Benkoff's kitchen and added an accelerant."

  "Ah, yes," Rhyme said. "He might not have trusted that the natural gas would cause enough damage. Mel, check that first."

  The evidence collection bags Sachs pointed out each featured a glassine strip on which was written the room it had been collected in. The contents were several spoonsful of ash.

  Cooper began the chromatographic and spectromic analysis. As the machine ran and he noted results, Sachs continued, "But I was thinking of the MO--that he needed to see inside the place. To make sure there was a victim present."

  Archer added, "And remember Rodney's comment about his being 'a decent monster'; he might've wanted to make sure there were no children, say, who were visiting. Or he doesn't want to hurt poorer people. The ones who don't buy the expensive products."

  "Maybe," Sachs said, though Rhyme could tell she was doubtful. He tended to side with Sachs on this one. Unsub 40 didn't seem troubled by finely parsed ethical concerns. "I think it was more an issue to make sure he had a victim in his sights. I found the one spot where he could see clearly into the Benkoffs' apartment. The roof across the street. A resident there saw a tall, slim man come out of the lobby just after the explosion. White male, had a backpack, dressed in overalls like a worker. And a baseball cap. I got some trace from where he probably stood."

  "Access?" Rhyme asked.

  "He could've taken the fire escape, would have been less visible. But
he went for the front door."

  "Lock on that apartment's door?" Archer asked.

  Again, stealing the question from Rhyme.

  "Old building. Old lock. Easily jimmied. No broken windows. No tool marks to speak of. Took trace from the lobby but..." She shrugged.

  Archer said, "Lincoln's book. Smart perps travel routes where there's heavy foot traffic, and where, therefore, the likelihood of isolating usable trace diminishes logarithmically. That's why he entered there."

  Stating the obvious, Rhyme thought, of his own observation. He'd always regretted putting that in the text. "So what do we have," he asked impatiently, "from the roof?"

  "For one thing, a piece of glass." This was Archer's observation. She'd wheeled close to the examination table and was staring at a clear plastic evidence bag, which appeared to contain dust only.

  "Spread it out, Mel."

  The tech did.

  "I still can't see it," Rhyme muttered.

  "Them," Archer corrected. "Two, no, three shards."

  "You have microscopic vision?"

  Archer laughed. "God gave me good nails and twenty-twenty vision. That's about it."

  No reference to what He was taking away.

  With the help of magnifying goggles, Cooper found and extracted the shards of glass and put them under a microscope. The image was broadcast on the screen. Archer said, "Window glass, wouldn't you think?"

  "That's right," Rhyme said. He'd analyzed a thousand samples of glass in his years on crime scene detail--from splinters produced by bullets, falling bodies, rocks and auto crashes to shards intentionally and lovingly turned into knives. The fracture lines and the polished sides of the tiny pieces Sachs had collected left no doubt they were from windows. Not automotive--safety glass was very different--but residential. He mentioned this.

  Cooper pointed out. "There, upper right-hand quadrant? Imperfection."

  It seemed to be a small bubble. Rhyme said, "Old. And cheap, I'd say."

  "That's what I'd guess. Seventy-five years? Older maybe."

  Modern window glass was much closer to flawless.

  "Compare them with the control samples. Where are they, Sachs?"

  She pointed out several envelopes; they would contain trace samples from parts of the roof that were nowhere near the place the unsub had stood. Cooper went to work comparing the various items microscopically.

  "Okay... No other bits of glass."

  And there'd been none in Todd Williams's office building--the unsub had broken in through the back door. And none downstairs here either. Where had he picked it up?

  "Anything else, the trace?"

  Cooper had to wait to run the samples through the GC/MS. He was still awaiting the results from the ash Sachs had collected. In a few minutes they were finished. He read the compiled data. "No accelerant."

  "So that tells us he most likely didn't break in and pour gas or kerosene around the place."

  "It wasn't likely anyway," Archer said.

  "Why do you say that?" Sachs asked.

  "Gut feel. Almost like he's proud he's using the controller as a murder weapon. It would be... I don't know, inelegant to have to add gasoline."

  "Maybe," Sachs said.

  Rhyme agreed with Archer but said nothing.

  "Burn the other trace. From his vantage point on the roof."

  For a half hour or so, Cooper ran various samples through the machine, the chromatograph separating the components, the MS identifying them. Rhyme watched impatiently. Finally Cooper listed them: Diesel fuel, no brand identified. Two soil samples, indigenous to shoreline Connecticut, Hudson River, New Jersey and Westchester County.

  "Not Queens with two question marks?" Rhyme said wryly. Archer smiled his way. Sachs noted this, turned back to the whiteboard on which she was writing down their findings.

  The tech continued. A number of samples of soft drinks: Sprite, and regular and Diet Coca-Cola, all in various dilutions, which meant they came from cups that contained ice; the beverage was not drunk directly from can or bottle. White wine, high sugar content. Typical of inexpensive sparkling or still white.

  Silence flowed into the parlor, broken only by the tap of the gas chromatograph cooling. The device worked by subjecting its samples to temperatures that were about fifty degrees Celsius higher than the boiling point of the least volatile element of the sample. An inferno, in other words.

  Sachs fielded a call. She stepped aside to take it. In a corner of the parlor, she stood with head down. Eventually she nodded and relief was obvious in her face. She disconnected. "The Borough Shooting Team was convened." Rhyme recalled--the incident review after she parked a slug in the escalator motor to try to save Greg Frommer's life. "Madino--the captain--says it's a good panel. Uniforms and shields from the street. I'll write up the FD/AR and that'll be it, he said."

  Rhyme was pleased for her. The NYPD had so many regulations and formalities that they could overwhelm an officer just trying to do the job.

  Cooper said, "Something else here. Traces of rubber, ammonia and the fiber, probably from paper--a paper towel." He then ran through a lengthy laundry list of trace chemicals.

  "Glazing compound," Rhyme said absently.

  "You knew that?" the intern asked, staring at the mouthful of substances, three lines long.

  He explained. There'd been a case years ago in which a wife had slashed her husband's jugular with the sharp edge of a pane of glass she'd worked out of the rec room window. As he slept she drew the glass over his jugular and he bled out quickly. She'd cleaned the glass and replaced it in the window, glazing the pane back in place. (Her bizarre strategy was that no murder weapon, that is, knife or other blade, could be traced back to her. Not true, of course, since she neglected to clean from her blouse the traces of glazing compound she'd used on the window after the murder. It took officers all of five minutes to find the pane; a luminol test confirmed the presence of blood.) Sachs took another call. A cryptic reaction. Eyes flitting from window to floor to rococo ceiling. What was this about? he wondered.

  She disconnected and grimaced. She walked to Rhyme. "I'm sorry. My mother."

  "She's all right?"

  "Fine. But they moved up a test." Her face remained troubled. He knew she was torn between the case and her only close family member.

  "Sachs, go," he said.

  "I--"

  "Go. You have to."

  Without a word, Sachs headed out of the parlor.

  Rhyme stared after her then turned slowly, the motor of his chair uttering a soft whine, and gazed at the challenging whiteboards.

  CRIME SCENE: 390 E. 35TH STREET, MANHATTAN (SITE OF ARSON)

  - Offense: Arson/homicide.

  - Victim: Abraham Benkoff, 58, account director advertising agency, well known.

  - COD: Burns/hemorrhaging.

  - Means of death:

  - Gas leak from CookSmart Deluxe range, equipped with DataWise5000 controller.

  - No accelerant.

  - Additional elements of profile of suspect: - Dark clothes, baseball cap.

  - Observing scene to make sure only adult victim killed?

  - Another message from the People's Guardian.

  - Again playing down intelligence.

  CRIME SCENE: 388 E. 35TH STREET, MANHATTAN (SITE OF UNSUB'S SURVEILLANCE)

  - Evidence:

  - Shards of glass. Window glass, old.

  - Xylene, toluene, iron oxide, amorphous silica, dioctyl phthalate and talc (glazing compound).

  - His profession? Probably not.

  - Paper towel fibers.

  - Ammonia.

  - Rubber fragments.

  - Diesel fuel.

  - Two soil samples, indigenous to shoreline.

  - Connecticut or Westchester County or New Jersey.

  - Soda, differing dilutions, several sources.

  - White wine, high sugar content. Typical of inexpensive sparkling white wine.

  Archer too was studying the writing carefully. "Mor
e questions than answers," she muttered.

  Welcome to the world of forensics, Lincoln Rhyme thought.

  CHAPTER 29

  Sweeney Todd, now, that was a challenge.

  Joe Heady, a carpenter at the Whitmore Theater in Times Square, was thinking of the successful revival of the Sondheim play a year ago. He and the other set builders and gaffers had had to create a working barber's chair--well, working to the extent that it would drop open on command, allowing the customer to slide into the pit below after the Demon Barber of Fleet Street had sliced open his throat.

  They'd worked for months to get the chair to function seamlessly--and to create a wonderfully gothic Dickensian set.

  But the set for this job? Damn child's play. Downright boring.

  Heady lugged some two-by-four pieces of common-grade pine into the set construction workshop behind the theater on 46th Street and dumped them on the concrete floor. For this play his job was to build a large maze, the sort that a rat--make that a two-foot holographic projection rat--would poke through at various points in the story, which was about some family gathering and arguing and a bunch of other crap. Not a single cut throat for the entire two hours and change. Having read the script, Heady decided a little literal blood would have helped.

  But a maze was what the set designer wanted and a maze she was going to get.

  A big man, with bushy black-and-gray hair, Heady arranged the pieces of wood in the order in which he'd cut them and then stiffly rose. Actually grunting. Sixty-one years old, he'd given retirement a shot; he and the wife had moved here after his thirty-six years on the assembly line in Detroit. Living closer to the kids and grandkids in Jersey was great. Up to a point. But Heady wasn't ready to hang up his tools yet, and his son-in-law hooked him up with this job. Heady was basically a machinist--the Detroit thing--but handy is handy, and the theater hired him on the spot for set-building carpentry. He loved the work. Only problem: The wood weighed a lot more than it did twenty years ago. Funny how that happens.

  He spread the plans for the maze on a table nearby, then plucked a steel tape measure off his belt and a pencil--an old-time pencil, which he sharpened with a locking-blade knife--from his pocket and set them beside the plans. Pulling on his reading glasses, he reviewed the schematics.

  This was one of the nicer theaters on Broadway and definitely one of the best set-building workshops in Manhattan. It was large, sixty by sixty feet, with the south wall stocked with more wood than most lumberyards had in inventory. Against the west wall were the bins of hardware (nails, nuts, bolts, springs, screws, washers, you name it), hand and power tools, workbenches, paint and a small kitchen area. In the middle, mounted to the floor, were the big power tools.