Page 109 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

Suicide.

A sip of the caramel-colored bourbon. Spencer said, “I’ve beensomewhathonest with you and Amelia. Not completely honest. Yeah, Navy SEAL. Decorated. A detective in Albany. Decorated. Funny when you use that word. What does ‘decorated’ mean? You were an NYPD captain, right?”

Rhyme nodded.

“So at dress events you got to wear a lot of cabbage on your chest.”

“Somecabbage.”

“That’s what it is. That’sallit is.” After a lengthy pause. “Let me tell you about Freddy Geiger. How’s that for a name?”

“Memorable.”

Spencer was now focused on the rim of his glass. “We have a big problem in Albany with meth, fent, oxy. Also sniffing gasoline and paint thinner. Geiger stepped into the market. He wanted to class up the city.” A dark laugh. “His product was heroin.

“We had a credible tip about a deal going down, quarter million worth of H. Maybe that’s small change here, in the city, but that was a lot for the Five One Eight. I was the lead gold shield. It was a hard takedown. All went to hell.

“Make a long story short, our intel didn’t tell us Geiger’s brother and his wife were in town from Buffalo. They took off and my partner and I went after them, chased ’em to this abandoned mill—the Bechtel Building reminded me of it. We went in after them.” He shook his head. “Should’ve sealed it and waited, but we didn’t. We walked into an ambush. My partner took a load of buckshot in the chest. He had a plate but he went down and the wife tried for a kill shot, missed, and I took her out. Two shots in the back of her head. Her husband turned the scattergun my way and I took him out too.” A grimace. “No choice.”

“Tough.”

A slow nod.

“Then came the bad part.” He offered a sour laugh.

He had Rhyme’s full attention.

“Waiting for the rest of the team to get there, I looked outside. I saw a kid hiding in the bushes. I was afraid he’d rabbit so I circled around, solo, and came up behind him.”

“Your SEAL training. It helped.”

“I’m good at that, yeah. Got behind him, took him down and zipped him. Then I saw he was doing something funny. Looking atme, then into the bushes. It was a backpack he’d dumped. Cash. Three hundred K, give or take.”

Spencer took another sip, then the whisky seemed to turn on him. His face tightened and he put the glass on the floor beside the chair. “Do you get as bored with confessions as I do?”

“They can be excruciating. This one isn’t—if that’s what it is.”

“No surprise endings here, Lincoln. I cut his restraints and he took off. I hid the backpack on another part of the property and got back to my team. I picked it up the next day. The crown molding’s nice here.” The security man was looking up.

Rhyme glanced too. It was an elaborate zigzag pattern. If anyone had asked him to describe it without looking, he could not have.

“My daughter, Trudie, was diagnosed with an orphan disease. You heard of that?”

Ah, the tat:T.S.

“No.”

“It means an illness that affects less than two hundred thousand people in the country. Very rare.” He gave a soft laugh. “Trudie was proud that it was exotic. She said, ‘Don’t give me no stinkin’ ordinary disease like everybody else gets.’ Well, because there’s a small market for orphan pharmaceuticals, the companies can’t spread development costs around. So a year’s treatment for some of the diseases is off the charts. Some are seven hundred K a year.

“Trudie’s wasn’t that high but it was a hell of a lot more than insurance and what I could scrape together from friends and family—and refinancing. Then came Geiger’s money. From heaven. It covered the treatment—and helped with her lifestyle. She was active, athletic. We’d bike together and rock climb. The disease caused muscle atrophy. But we could afford good PT.”

“You laundered the money?”

“Eight banks, invested in a couple of quote ‘businesses.’” Spencerrocked his neck from side to side. He winced, this man who had just climbed a hundred feet straight up into the air.

“I mentioned no surprise endings.”

“The skel you let go got busted for something else and dimed you out.”