The Steel Kiss

  "He killed himself?"

  "Not technically. Couldn't be buried here if he had. It's Catholic. But he drank himself into a stupor and went for a drive on Route Twenty-Five. Hit a hundred. Was twenty years old."

  "And 'Shoppers'? What does that mean?"

  "Peter and me? We're built different, we look different. It's Marfan syndrome."

  Sachs wasn't familiar with it. She assumed the condition was the cause of his height and disproportionately low weight, long hands and feet. To her, the condition wasn't particularly odd, simply another body type. But bullies in school? Well, they rarely needed much ammunition.

  Griffith continued, "We got made fun of a lot. Both of us. Kids're cruel. You're pretty. You wouldn't know that."

  Yes, she would. In her teens Sachs, more boyish than most of the boys, more competitive than any of them, had certainly been bullied. Then bullied too in the fashion industry because she was a woman. And the same when she joined the force... and for the same reason.

  He said, "Most boys're bullied in gym class. But for me, it was mechanical arts--shop. It started because I had a crush on this girl, eighth grade. I heard she had this neat dollhouse. So for assignment, while all the other boys were making bookshelves and boot scrapers, I made her a Chippendale desk. Six inches high. Perfect." His light-colored eyes shone. "It was perfect. The boys gave me crap for that. 'Skinny Bean's got a dollhouse. Slim Jim's a girl.'" He shook his head. "I still finished it. Gave it to Sarah and she looked all funny, you know. Like when you do something real nice for somebody and it's more than they want. Or they don't want anything at all. Makes them feel uncomfortable. She said, 'Thanks,' like thanking a waitress. I never talked to her again."

  So, that was it. Not "shoppers" as in those who buy products. As in students in shop class.

  "And the people who were responsible for the defective car Alicia and her family were in, you thought of them as Shoppers."

  "They were. Bullies, arrogant. Thinking only about themselves. Selling defective cars and knowing they were dangerous. Making money. That's all that mattered to them."

  "You must have loved your brother a lot."

  "I kept my old phone with his voice mail messages on it. I listen to them all the time. It's some comfort." He turned to her. "Any comfort in this life is good, don't you think?"

  Sachs believed she knew the answer to her next question. "Those boys who took pictures of your brother and that girl. What happened to them?"

  "Oh, that's why I moved into the apartment in Chelsea. Easier for me to do what I'd decided to--find them and kill them; they worked in the city. One I slashed to death. Sam. The other, Frank? Beat him to death. The bodies're in a pond near Newark. I can tell you more about those, if you want. She was going to kill me, wasn't she? Alicia."

  Sachs hesitated.

  The story would come out, sooner or later. "Yes, Vernon. I'm sorry."

  Resignation on his face. "I knew. I mean, deep down, I knew she was using me. Anybody who wants you to kill people, just comes out and asks you, after you've slept together." A shrug. "What did I expect? But sometimes you let yourself be used because... well, just because. You're lonely or whatever. We all pay for love one way or another." Another searching gaze of her face. "You're nice to me. Even after I tried to kill your mother. I don't think you're a Shopper after all. I thought you were. But you're not." After a moment he continued, "Can I give you something?"

  "What?"

  "In the backpack. There's another book."

  She looked inside. Found a slim volume. "This?"

  "That's right."

  The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.

  She flipped through it, examining the pictures of crime scene miniatures. Sachs had never seen anything like it. Frances Glessner Lee was the creator of the dioramas. Sachs gave a soft laugh, looking at the tiny doll, a corpse, lying in a kitchen.

  "You can have it. I'd like you to."

  "We're not allowed. You understand."

  "Oh. Why not?"

  She smiled. "I don't know. A police rule. But we're not."

  "Sure. Maybe you could buy one, now that you know about it."

  "I'll do that, Vernon."

  Two uniformed officers approached. "Detective."

  "Tom," she responded to the taller of the two.

  "Bus's here."

  She said to Griffith, "We'll take you to booking. You're not going to be a problem, are you?"

  "No."

  Sachs believed him.

  CHAPTER 58

  He in there."

  Ron Pulaski looked from the boy, no more than fifteen, to the building the kid was pointing at. The place was bad, worse than most in East New York. Ron and his children had seen The Hobbit not long ago and at one point the dwarves and Bilbo were heading for a cave. That's what this place reminded him of. One of those old stone structures, dried-blood brown, and with windows black and sunken as corpse eye sockets. Some broken. Some dotted with bullet holes.

  Seemed appropriate, this dim, forbidding place, for Oden to be dealing from. Or where he fabricated his infamous Catch. The drug of drugs.

  Or maybe he did that elsewhere and it was here that he tortured rivals and suspected informants.

  "He alone?" Ron asked.

  "Dunno." The boy's wide brown eyes twitched around the street. Ron had dressed down again--as always on the Save-Lincoln-Rhyme operation--but he still looked just like who he was: a white cop in a black 'hood, dressing sorta-kinda undercover. He was forcing himself not to peer behind him, into the alley where Tony was waiting with his Glock drawn.

  He asked the kid, "Oden? Is he armed?"

  "Look, man, just my green. K?"

  "I'm paying you one large. Does Oden usually carry?"

  "This ain't my 'hood. I don't know this Oden, don't know his crew. All's I know: Word come from Alpho, at Richie's, vouching for you, saying you lay down some green, I find this Oden bitch for you. I heard he in there, that building. All I know. I'm saying. You sure you ain't a cop?"

  "Not a cop."

  "Okay. I done what I'm s'posed to. Now: green."

  Pulaski dug into his pocket, wrapped his fingers around a week's take-home--in fives to make the roll sing.

  "Wait." The kid was speaking urgently.

  "Whatta you mean wait?"

  "Don't gimme no cash now." As if the cop had belched during mass.

  Ron sighed. "You just said--"

  "Hold on, hold on..."

  Looking around.

  Ron was too. The hell was this?

  Then he spotted three young men, two Latino, one black, walking down the opposite side of the street, smoking, laughing. Their age would make them early college in some places, but here they might still be in high school, if not dropouts.

  "Wait, wait... No, no, don't look at 'em, lookit me."

  Sighing again. "What are you--?"

  "K. Now. Gimme. The green."

  Ron handed the money over. The boy dug into his pocket and handed him a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

  Ron frowned. "What's in there? I don't want to score anything. I just want to talk to Oden."

  "What's in there is cigarettes, man. Just take it. Put it away like there's three G of rock. Careful. Hide it. Now!"

  Ah. Ron understood. The kid wanted to make it seem like he was dealing. Build his street cred. Ron glanced across the street and saw that the three young men had noticed. They gave no reaction and continued on their way.

  Ron looked over the building. "Okay. Oden. What unit's he in?"

  "Dunno. Just he in there. I was you, I'd start One A and work yo way up."

  Ron started across the street.

  "Yo."

  "What?"

  "My ciggies."

  "I just bought 'em." He crushed the pack and tossed it into the street. "Give it up, they're not good for you."

  "Fuck that, man."

  After the kid vanished Tony joined him. He was wearing his own brand of undercover garb--black jeans an
d a T-shirt, a gray leather jacket, Yankees cap swiveled backward. Together they headed toward the mouth of the alley next to the Orc Cave building.

  "What goes on in there?"

  "No idea. The kid swears Oden's in there now. Well, he didn't swear. He thinks he's in there. And it's the only lead we've got. So here's hoping."

  "Feels like a meth house."

  Ron hoped it wasn't. Both meth-and crackheads could get wound up like superheroes. The junk gave them crazy strength and unmeshed their thinking. If Ron and Tony were lucky Oden wasn't retail; he sold in bulk. Maybe even to Charles Baxter directly, the perp Rhyme had put in Rikers. After all, brokers and Wall Street lawyers had to get smack and C someplace.

  Tony said, "If he's dealing he's not going to be alone and they're all gonna have weapons. Did you ask the kid?"

  "Yeah, I did. Not helpful."

  Dunno...

  "We've been here forty minutes. Nobody in or out. I think it's cool."

  "Oh?" Tony asked. "You don't maybe think Oden and his three minders, and their AK-Four-Sevens, might've got here forty-five minutes ago?"

  "Tone."

  "I'm just saying. K. We go."

  Unzipping the jacket to better access his now-holstered Glock, Tony looked over his brother. "Where's your piece?"

  "Ankle."

  "No. In your waistband."

  Pulaski hesitated then tugged up his jean cuff. He lifted the Bodyguard out of the holster and slipped it into the pocket where he kept the rest of the buy money. His brother nodded, a concession that, okay, the tiny .380 would probably fall out of the waistband or slip down to Ron's crotch.

  Tony touched his arm. "Just, one last time. You sure this's worth it?"

  Ron smiled.

  And together, they eased up to the front door of Oden's building. It was unlocked. To be exact, it was no-locked. A gaping hole where a dead bolt had been.

  "Which apartment?"

  Dunno...

  Ron shook his head.

  But they didn't have to look very far. On the second floor, the apartment in the back, 2F, had a handwritten card beneath the buzzer button, in the center of the door, which was red and scuffed.

  O'Denne.

  Under other circumstances Ron might've laughed. An Irish, not a Norse, drug dealer.

  Tony stood to the side of the door.

  Ron didn't. When one looks out a peephole and sees nobody in the hall that means the visitors are cops. He put a stony look on his face and hit the bell. He was sweating. But he didn't wipe the rivulets off. Too late.

  Silence for a moment then footsteps from inside.

  "Who is it?" came the gruff voice.

  "Name is Ron. I was a friend of Baxter's. Charles Baxter."

  Ron could see shadows moving under the door. Was O'Denne pulling a gun from his pocket and debating just shooting the visitor through the door? It didn't seem smart to do that in your residence. But Ron realized O'Denne might not be particularly stable and might therefore be unconcerned about wasting an intruder close to home. And as for anyone else nearby, he guessed gunshots were more or less common here and therefore largely ignored.

  "What do you want?"

  "You know Charles's dead."

  "What do you want?"

  "He told me about you. I want to pick up with you where he left off."

  A click from the other side of the door.

  A gun cocking? Or de-cocking?

  But the sound turned out to be one of several locks snapping open.

  Ron tensed, his hand slipping toward his pistol. Tony raised his Glock.

  The door opened and Ron looked inside, scanning the man who stood before him, backlit in light from a cheap lamp with a torn shade.

  Ron's shoulders slumped. All he could think: Oh, man... What do I do now?

  CHAPTER 59

  Lincoln Rhyme heard the front door of his town house open and close. Footsteps approached.

  "It's Amelia," Juliette Archer said. They were in the parlor.

  "You can tell from the sound. Good. Yes, your hearing, vision, smell will improve. Some doctors dispute it but I've run experiments and I'm convinced it's true. Taste too, if you don't kill off your sapictive cells with excessive whisky."

  "The what? Sapictive?"

  "Taste receptor cells."

  "Oh. Well, life's a balance, isn't it?"

  Amelia Sachs walked inside, nodding greetings.

  "A confession from Griffith?" he asked.

  "More or less." She sat down and told him a story of two brothers bullied--the younger one to death--and his sibling's growing instability and desire for revenge. Griffith's account aligned perfectly with what Alicia Morgan had told them.

  "'Shoppers,'" Archer mused after hearing the story. "Well, didn't see that one coming."

  While the mental makeup of a perp was largely irrelevant to Rhyme, he now had to admit to himself that Vernon Griffith was one of the more complex suspects he'd ever been up against.

  "Not unsympathetic," Sachs offered.

  Stealing the very words Rhyme had been about to offer.

  She explained that there would probably be a plea deal. "He admitted we got him dead to rights. He doesn't want to fight it." A smile. "He asked if I thought they'd let him make furniture in prison."

  Rhyme wondered if that was a possibility. It seemed that felons incarcerated for murder might not be allowed access to saws and ball-peen hammers. The man might have to settle for making license plates.

  Then he was gazing at the evidence boards, reflecting how the two cases that had seemed so different were in fact as genetically linked as twins. Frommer v. Midwest Conveyance and The People of the State of New York v. Griffith and, now, v. Alicia Morgan.

  Sachs "deweaponed" herself (the verb had been in an NYPD memo on firearm safety that she'd shared with Rhyme; they'd had a good laugh). She poured coffee from a service Thom had set up in the corner. She sat. Just as she took her first sip her phone sang out. She read the text and gave a laugh. "CSU in Queens found the missing napkins. The White Castle napkins."

  "I'd forgotten about those," Archer said.

  Rhyme: "I hadn't, though I had given up on them. And?"

  Sachs read: "'Negative for friction ridges, negative for DNA. Positive for confectionary milk-based beverage in proportions that suggest source was White Castle restaurant chain.'"

  "But didn't the--" Archer began.

  "--napkins have White Castle printed on them? Yep, they did."

  Rhyme said, "Nature of our profession--yours now too, Archer. Every day we deal with missing evidence, evidence never properly identified, evidence contaminated. Deductions botched completely. And deductions made that don't need to be. Missed clues. Happens in epidemiology, I would imagine."

  "Oh, yes. Myopic children, remember?" She told Amelia Sachs the story of the study that incorrectly asserted causation between children's sleeping with lights on and vision problem.

  Nodding, Sachs said, "Heard this story on the radio--people used to believe that maggots spontaneously generated from meat. Don't remember the details."

  Archer said, "Sure, Francesco Redi, seventeenth-century scientist, was the one who disproved that. It was because fly eggs were too small to be seen. Father of experimental biology."

  Sachs glanced at the evidence boards, apparently at the section about the civil suit. She asked, "Your case, the original one, Mrs. Frommer's? Can she recover anything?"

  "Very doubtful." Rhyme explained that the only cause of action would be against Alicia and Griffith for the wrongful death of Greg Frommer. Whitmore was looking into their finances, but neither of them seemed very wealthy.

  Archer's phone rang. She commanded, "Answer."

  "Hey, Jule. Me."

  "Randy. You're on with Lincoln and Amelia."

  Her brother.

  Greetings shot back and forth.

  "Be there in ten."

  She said, "We closed the case."

  "Seriously? Well, I'm impressed. Billy'll lov
e to hear all about it. Between you and me, he loves the idea of Cop Mom. He's doing a graphic novel. You're the heroine. But you didn't hear me say that. It's going to be a surprise. Okay. I'm in traffic without a hands-free. Don't tell the police. Ha!"

  They disconnected.

  Archer was looking not at Rhyme but toward Sachs. "When I signed up for Lincoln's course, I knew about you, of course, Amelia. Anybody who follows New York crime knows about you. You're epic, as my son would say. I'd go with 'famous' but, well, 'epic' seems to fit better. And I knew you worked with Lincoln and that you were his partner but I didn't know you were that kind of partner too. Seeing you the past few days, I found out."

  "We've been together for a long time. Both ways," Sachs said with a smile.

  "I wasn't sure what to expect. But you're just like any other couple. Happy, sad, irritated."

  Rhyme chuckled. "We fight, sure. We've been having one for the past few weeks."

  Sachs wasn't smiling when she said, "I'm mad he resigned."

  "And I'm mad she's mad that I resigned."

  She added, "And mad he stole my lab tech."

  "You got him back in the end," Rhyme groused.

  Archer said, "When I was diagnosed I decided that I'd live alone. Oh, with Billy part of the time, under the custody agreement, and with a caregiver, of course--somebody like Thom. Though I don't know if I can find somebody like him. He's a gem."

  Rhyme glanced at the doorway. "None better. But that goes no farther than this room."

  Archer gave a coy smile. "As if he doesn't know." She continued, "I decided that I'd never be in a relationship, never even think about that. Get my new profession, one that was fulfilling, challenging. Raise my son as best I could. Have friends who could deal with quadriplegia. Not the life I'd planned on or wanted but a decent life. Then--don't you love the way fate works?--then I met somebody. It was about three months ago, just after the neurologist confirmed that the disability would probably be as severe as they'd thought. Brad. That was his name. Met him at my son's birthday party. Single father. An MD. It really clicked between us. I told him right up front about the tumor, the surgery. He's cardio but knew generally about the condition. He didn't seem to care and we went out for a while."

  Sachs said, "But you broke it off."

  "I did, yes. I was probably going stone-cold gimp in a year. He was a jogger and a sailor. Now, that is a combination you don't really find in the same column on Match Dot Com or eHarmony, do you? Brad was pretty upset when I told him. But I knew it was best. For both of us." She gave a wisp of a laugh. "Can you see where this is going?"