"I'm Lincoln Rhyme. This is Juliette Archer."
"Well, hello."
Archer said, "Thanks for coming by."
Rhyme's eyes strayed back to the computer, on which he could see several of the accounts of the cases against U.S. Auto and the fuel injector supplier. He continued to scroll through them.
"How are you?" Archer asked as she was scanning the woman's injuries.
"Not too serious." The woman focused on the wheelchair-bound pair. "Hairline fracture, cheekbone. Concussion."
Rhyme paused the documents on his monitor and turned to Alicia. "You and Vernon dated?"
She set her purse on the floor and sat in a rattan chair, wincing. There seemed to be a stunned air about her. "That's right, if you could call it dating. I met him a month or so ago. He was easy to be with. He was quiet and sometimes he would get a little odd. But he was nice to me. Like he never thought anybody would ever go out with him. He's kind of odd looking, you know. But I never had any idea he'd be dangerous." She whispered, eyes wide, "Or would kill those people. Officer Sachs told me what he'd done. I couldn't believe it. He was so talented, making his miniatures. Just..." She shrugged. Then winced. She searched in her pockets and found a bottle of pills. Shook two out. She asked Rhyme, "Do you...?" An awkward moment. "Have an assistant? Could I get some water?"
Before Rhyme could say anything Archer said, "No, he's away now. But there, there's a bottle of Deer Park. It's not opened." She nodded to a shelf.
"Thanks." Alicia rose and took what would be something to combat the pain. She returned to the chair but remained standing, collecting her purse and then slipping the pill bottle into it.
"What happened in your apartment?" Rhyme asked. "Earlier today."
"He showed up, unexpected. He wanted me to go away with him and confessed what he'd done." A dismayed whisper. "He actually thought I'd understand. He thought I'd support him."
Rhyme said, "You were lucky someone was nearby. The superintendent of the building, I think Amelia said."
Yet, as calm as his words were, Lincoln Rhyme's mind was racing. He was trying to come up with a strategy that would allow him and Archer to survive the next few minutes.
Because the woman he was smiling at right now was someone whose picture he had just seen--in one of the press reports on the U.S. Auto case. It was this page that he now found again and paused his scrolling. He glanced at it quickly. The photo depicted a woman in a black dress walking from a courthouse on Long Island. He hadn't recognized her outside the town house; had he done so, he wouldn't have let her in. When she'd asked if anybody was here to bring her water, he'd been about to say his aide was in the back room, along with another officer, but Archer had pulled the rug out from under that ploy.
Alicia Morgan had sued U.S. Auto and Patterson Systems for the death of her husband and for her own personal injuries--some burns and deep lacerations--when the fuel system of the car her husband was driving caught fire, causing the car to crash. Rhyme could see scars above the high collar of her blouse.
He now had a good idea of what had happened: Alicia had hired Vernon Griffith to kill those involved in making, marketing, and selling the defective car, and Valerie Mayer, the lawyer who had defended them. Or, in lieu of payment, maybe Alicia had seduced Griffith into doing so for her; Sachs's search of the crime scene revealed significant sexual activity. Griffith and Alicia had been surprised when Rhyme and the team had learned his identity, and they'd come up with a new endgame; they'd arranged the "assault" in front of a witness, the superintendent of the building.
And the reason for that?
For one, to remove any suspicion that she was involved.
But then why was she here?
Ah, of course. Alicia had plan of her own. She'd steal any evidence that might implicate her and then kill Rhyme and anyone present, planting other clues that would implicate Vernon in the murders. She'd then meet the man and kill him.
And Alicia Morgan, satisfied in her revenge against the auto company, would be home free.
In her purse would be a gun, he guessed. But now that she'd noted her victims were disabled, she'd probably use one of Griffith's tools to kill him and Archer. Tidier for the case against him.
And Mel Cooper wouldn't be here for hours. Sachs either. Thom would return in about two hours or so, he guessed. Alicia had plenty of time for murder.
Still, he'd have to try. Rhyme glanced at the clock. "Amelia--Detective Sachs--should be back at any moment. She's much better at interviewing than I am."
Alicia gave a very faint reaction. Of course, she'd probably just spoken to Sachs and learned that the woman wouldn't be back for hours.
Rhyme looked past her and said to Juliette Archer, "You're looking tired."
"I... I am?"
"I think you should go in the other room. Try to sleep." He looked to Alicia. "Ms. Archer's condition is more serious than mine. I don't want her to push herself."
Archer gave a slight nod and manipulated the controller with her finger. The chair turned. "I think I will, if you don't mind."
Motoring toward the doorway.
Alicia, though, stood, strode forward and blocked her. The chair stopped fast.
"What... What're you doing?" Archer asked.
Alicia glanced at Archer as if she were an irritating fly and, grabbing the woman by the collar, pulled her from the chair and let her fall onto the floor. Archer's head smacked the hardwood.
"No!" Rhyme cried.
Archer said desperately, "I need to be upright! My condition, I--"
Alicia's response was to deliver a stunning kick to the woman's head.
Blood pooled on the floor, and, eyes closed, Archer lay still. Rhyme couldn't tell if she was breathing or not.
Alicia opened her bag, pulled on blue latex gloves and stepped forward fast, ripping the controller from Rhyme's chair. She walked to the pocket doors to the parlor and closed and locked them.
Rummaging through her bag, she extracted a razor knife--which would, of course, be Vernon's. It was in a plastic tube and she popped the plastic top off and shook out the tool. Alicia turned the blade Rhyme's way and stepped closer to the wheelchair.
CHAPTER 53
I know about you, Alicia. We made the connection between Griffith's victims and the U.S. Auto case. I saw your picture in one of the stories."
This gave her pause. She stopped and cocked her head, clearly considering these implications.
He continued, "I figured right away that you and Griffith faked the assault in your apartment. You made sure the super could hear your fight and come and supposedly rescue you. The minute I saw you outside I hit a special phone code. A speed dial for emergencies."
Alicia looked past Rhyme to the computer. She typed until she found the call log. No outgoings in the past ten minutes and the most recent callee had not been 911 or NYPD Dispatch but Whitmore's law firm. She redialed it and they heard through the speaker the matter-of-fact receptionist say, "Law office." Alicia hung up.
Her face relaxed, as she would be concluding that Rhyme had just now made the connection and that no one else knew the truth. She looked around the room. Rhyme noted she wore her age well. Pale eyes, freckles. Few wrinkles. Her hair, blond with gray streaks, was voluminous and rich. The scars were prominent but did not diminish her attractiveness. Vernon would be putty in her hands.
"Where's the evidence you collected at Vernon's apartment?"
She'd be afraid he'd collected some articles about the U.S. Auto case or that he had some other evidence of what the real motive was, which could ultimately lead to her.
"I tell you, you'll kill us."
A wrinkle of brow. "Of course. But I give you my word I'll leave everyone else alive. Your friend Amelia--Vernon was pretty obsessed with her. I was almost jealous. She'll be fine, Amelia. And her mother. And the others on your team. But you're dead. Obviously. Both of you."
"What you're asking isn't that easy. Some of the evidence's in processing in Qu
eens, the main Crime Scene Unit. And--"
"My other option is to burn this place down. But that'll attract a lot of attention and I might miss some things. Just tell me."
Rhyme was silent.
Alicia looked around the parlor: at the file cabinets, boxes of paper and plastic bags, shelves, instruments. She walked to a cabinet, opened it and peered in. Closed the drawer. Tried another. Then she perused the broad, white examination tables, and flipped through the boxes that contained plastic and paper bags of the evidence. She unfurled a garbage bag, the deep green of a body bag from the coroner, and tossed some notebooks and clippings inside.
She continued collecting evidence that seemed likely to have references to her and the litigation and then extracted a paper bag from her purse and began depositing the contents carefully, just as he'd thought: hairs, Griffith's, of course. A scrap of paper; it undoubtedly held his friction ridge prints. And then--well, she'd certainly thought this out carefully--one of Vernon's shoes. She didn't leave it; she left several impressions on the floor near Rhyme's chair.
Rhyme said, "It's terrible what happened to you and your husband. But none of this will fix that."
She snapped, "The cost-benefit analysis. I think of it as the who's-it-cheaper-to-screw analysis." When she bent forward at one point to press the shoe to the floor, her blouse fell away and he could see clearly the leathery and discolored scar on her chest.
"You won your case, the article said."
Rhyme noted, in a detached state, that several of the evidence bags had come open when she'd tossed them into the garbage bag. Even facing death, Lincoln Rhyme was riled by the contamination.
"I didn't win. I settled. And I settled before the memo came to light. Michael, my husband, had been drinking before the accident happened. That had nothing to do with the fuel injector hose splitting. But the alcohol would've worked against us at trial. And there was evidence that he made my injuries worse--he broke my arm pulling me from the burning car before he died. And my lawyer said they'd spin that... and the drinking. The jury might give us nothing. So I took a settlement.
"But it's never been about money. It was about two companies who murdered my husband and scarred me forever and never came to justice. Nobody was ever indicted. The company paid out a lot of money to plaintiffs but the executives went home to see their families that night. My husband didn't. Other husbands and wives and children didn't either."
"Greg Frommer quit the company and went on to do volunteer work," Rhyme said. "He felt guilty about what happened with the fuel injectors."
The sentence tripped leadenly off his tongue and deserved the Oh-please look that Alicia gave him.
"The People's Guardian. That was all nonsense, right?"
Alicia nodded. "Vernon isn't the most attractive man in the world. It wasn't hard to get him to do what I wanted. I needed people responsible for Michael's death to die the way he and the others had. Because of products. Because of greed. Vernon was happy to go along and we decided to turn it into a political issue as a cover. To keep people from thinking about U.S. Auto and maybe making a connection to me."
"Why The Steel Kiss, the name for his manifesto?"
"He came up with that. Thinking of his tools, saws and knives and chisels, I think."
"How did you find him?"
"I've been planning this for years, of course. The hardest part was finding a fall guy. I was one of the parties to a suit against the automaker, so I couldn't kill anyone myself. But one night I was in Manhattan having dinner, and I happened to see Vernon get in a fight with a man. Some Latino guy. He'd made fun of Vernon--he's very skinny, you know. Vernon just snapped. Went crazy. He ran and the man chased him. But Vernon had it planned. He spun around and killed the man, used a knife or razor. I've never seen anybody more frenzied. Like a shark. Vernon jumped into a gypsy cab and vanished.
"I couldn't really take in what I'd just seen. A murder right in front of me. I kept thinking about it for days. Finally I realized he was someone who might be able to help me. I checked with the restaurant it seemed he'd been eating in. They didn't know his name but told me that, yes, he ate there about once a week. I kept coming back and finally saw him."
"And you seduced him."
"Yes, I did. Then the next morning I told him I'd seen him kill that Latino. It was a risk but I had my hook in by then. I knew he'd do whatever I wanted. I told him I understood why he'd killed him. He'd been bullied. I told him I'd been bullied too, in a way--the car company taking my husband away from me and ruining my body with the scars from the accident. I wanted to get even."
"The man who taught Vernon how to hack the DataWise controllers, the blogger he killed, also got him a list of customers who'd bought embedded products. You searched them for the names of people connected to U.S. Auto. Right?"
She nodded. "I couldn't kill everybody connected to the companies. I just wanted a half dozen or so. Frommer, Benkoff, Heady... that leech of an attorney, Valerie Mayer."
"So," Rhyme asked, almost nonchalantly, "how are you going to kill Vernon Griffith?"
She didn't seem surprised he'd deduced this. "I don't know yet. Probably have to burn him alive. Make it look like he was creating some booby trap or another. Gasoline. He's oddly strong for such a skinny man."
"So you do know where he is?"
"No, after he left my place, he wasn't sure where he was going. A transient hotel somewhere. He'd be in touch, he said. And he will be."
Rhyme said, "It was tragic what happened to you and your family. But what does this get you?"
"Justice, comfort."
"You will be found out."
"I don't think so." A glance at her watch, then Alicia stepped closer to Rhyme and turned the blade up, eyeing his jugular. She had the steady hand of a butcher or surgeon.
Rhyme looked away from the blade, lifted his head and said, "Yes, go ahead. But hard. It has to be hard. You'll only have one chance."
Alicia paused. Frowned in confusion.
But Rhyme wasn't speaking to her. His eyes were focused on Juliette Archer, unsteadily walking up behind the woman, holding an examination lamp, which had a heavy iron base. She nodded, acknowledging Rhyme's instruction, and swung the fixture, hard indeed, directly into the base of Alicia's skull.
CHAPTER 54
The medics reported that the injuries the two women had sustained were not life threatening, though Alicia Morgan's were more severe by far.
She was presently in the hospital wing of Manhattan's detention center, close by Central Booking and the courthouse downtown.
Juliette Archer was sitting in one of Rhyme's rattan chairs in his parlor, her face bandaged, with an impressive bruise spreading out from under the gauze, similar to Alicia's when she'd arrived. An EMS tech was finishing up his artistry on a second wound to her jaw.
"Is it ready yet?" Rhyme asked Thom, who was reassembling the controller that Alicia had ripped from his wheelchair. "I mean, it's been ten minutes."
You ever get impatient...
"I volunteered to get the service people here," the aide replied languidly. "Do you remember that? But do we think that might've taken, oh, until tomorrow?"
"It looks finished to me. Just turn it on. I have phone calls to make."
At the younger man's glare, Rhyme fell silent.
Three minutes later he was functional again.
"Seems to be working pretty well." He tooled around the parlor. "Turns are off slightly."
"I'll be in the kitchen."
"Thank you!" Rhyme called to the aide's receding back.
Stepping back and eyeing the intern's face, the EMT said to Archer, "Mostly superficial. Dizzy?"
She rose from the rattan chair where she'd been sitting and paced up and down the parlor. "A little but not any worse than what I usually have." She returned and lowered herself into her Storm Arrow wheelchair. Then she restrapped her left arm to the rest of the chair by herself.
The tech said, "Okay. Stable. Good. You'r
e moving pretty good there. Got to say." He regarded the power chair. He was understandably confused.
Neither Rhyme nor Archer explained to the man how she had come to use as her sole means of conveyance a wheelchair rigged for someone who was a full quad when she in fact was not. Not yet, in any event. As she'd explained to Rhyme after class the first week--and to Thom when she'd started her internship here--she was only partially disabled at this point. Yes, there was a tumor embracing her spinal cord. But the consequences of the condition were not complete debilitation. However, she had decided to prepare for the day when, after her surgery, she would most likely be rendered a full quad.
Thom had indeed played the role of caregiver, but only up to a point; she returned to the non-disabled world for bathroom detail at home and at Rhyme's, and she would dress herself. Rhyme had noted too that her golden bracelet, with the runic characters, might appear on one arm in the morning and the other in the afternoon; she would swap the accessory from time to time if it was irritating her skin. The jewelry had been a present from her son and, accordingly, she insisted on wearing it constantly.
The only other time she had forsaken the playacting was, of course, just moments ago to rise to her unsteady feet and save Rhyme's and her own life.
After the EMT signed off and left, she piloted closer to Rhyme.
"You didn't miss a beat," he said, of her performance. When he'd mentioned to Alicia Morgan that Archer's condition was worse than his and suggested she should get some rest, she'd deduced immediately that something was wrong regarding their visitor--since, of course, she had no condition, at least not one as grave as Rhyme had suggested.
Archer nodded. "I was going to call the police as soon as I was out of the parlor."
Rhyme sighed. "I didn't think she'd tackle you. I knew she was here to kill me--and anyone else--but I thought we could buy some time."
Archer added, "I saw where Amelia keeps that gun on your shelf, but I don't really know how to use one. And, with the tumor, my hands aren't very steady."