Page 12 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

No other decorations grace the walls of the workshop because if you have locks and keys why would you need any other art?

Glancing at my phone for the time.

I log off and, in an instant, Los Zetas beheadings and copyright violations and Verum’s anarchical rhetoric are gone.

I have plans to make.

Last night’s Visit to Annabelle Talese’s was a challenge. But nothing compares with tonight’s.

That’s going to require considerably more finesse.

6

Criminal investigators call potential suspects “people of interest.”

Lincoln Rhyme coined a term that was a forensic scientist’s counterpart: a “substance of interest.” He bestowed this designation on a material when it was the odd thing out, appearing at a crime scene when there was no reason for it to be there.

Hearing Rhyme’s characterization, Ron Pulaski, the young patrol officer who often assisted Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, had said, “Oh, yeah—the kids’ books. What’s out of place in this picture? You know, like a shark nesting in a tree.” He was the father of two.

At first inclined to belittle the simile, Rhyme had reconsidered and said, “Exactly.”

In this instance the substance was NaClO2, known more commonly by its nickname, sodium chlorite.

The trace had been found at a homicide, the backyard of a modest mansion in a posh neighborhood of Queens. Alekos Gregorios, a well-off owner of a chain of industrial laundromats, had been robbed and stabbed to death. Two detectives from the 112 House onAustin Street—Tye Kelly and Crystal Wilson—were running the case and, confronting delays at NYPD’s main crime lab, had asked Rhyme if he could short-circuit the system and take a look at the evidence. Any opinions would be welcome.

He’d agreed.

Gregorios, a widower, lived alone. His neighbors reported seeing nothing suspicious around the time of death, but his grown son, who’d had dinner with him that evening, told police that his father had had a run-in with a homeless man earlier in the day. The man was tampering with the gate to the enclosed backyard and Gregorios ran him off. The man had threatened Gregorios, who had not taken the mad rant seriously.

The son had only his father’s description: white with wild, unwashed brown hair and wearing a filthy raincoat.

No other details.

New York City’s homeless population hovered around fifty thousand, so canvassing the streets and shelters was not an efficient way to proceed. The detectives hoped Rhyme could narrow down the search.

Enter NaClO2, the substance of interest, which Rhyme had isolated.

He was presently back in his town house, on Central Park West—the very venue that had been the subject of the debate in the case against Viktor Buryak.

The stately premises dated to the era when Victoria ruled England and Boss Tweed New York, each with unchallenged power over their respective worlds, which were not wholly dissimilar, varying only in geographical reach.

Other than the paneled walls, rich oak floors and plastered ceiling, the parlor looked nothing like it would have a century and a half ago. While a portion was a contemporary sitting room with chairsand tables and bookshelves, the rest was what he’d described to attorney Coughlin: a well-equipped forensic lab, the sort that any smallor even medium-sized police department or sheriff’s office might envy. Ringing the workstations were spark emission and fluorescence spectrometers, evidence-drying cabinets, a fingerprint fuming chamber, hyperspectral image analyzer, automated DNA sequencer, blood chemistry analyzer, liquid and gas chromatographs and a freezer no different from what one might find in the kitchen.

Tucked into a corner were the microscopes—binocular, compound and confocal and scanning electron—and the scores of hand-held instruments that are a forensic scientist’s tools of the trade.

The lab had a decidedly industrial feel to it, but to Lincoln Rhyme one word and one word only applied: “homey.”

For a moment his mind wandered back to the trial and he wondered how the jury deliberations were going at that moment.

He himself had never served on a jury before. Criminalists consulting for the NYPD and FBI last about sixty seconds in voir dire.

Rhyme now studied the dry marker whiteboard on which certain details of the Gregorios killing were notated. Since Rhyme was merely an advisor, only the basics were jotted down or taped up, not all the minutiae of the case: a brief description of the suspect; the time of death (9 p.m. or so); security camera status (present in the vicinity but not aimed at the scene); the killer’s mismatched shoes (not unusual among the homeless); and a stark photo of the three knife wounds in the victim’s torso. The absence of other wounds suggested that the killer had hidden on the property and surprised Gregorios. In some states, like California, this would be called “lying in wait,” and made the crime a capital offense. In New York the penal code made no reference to lying in wait, but the suspect’s behavior would help the prosecutor prove intent.

The photos vividly revealed the eviscerated body and the Rorschach stain of blood on the broad path of white and beige pebbles.

Then there was the trace.

On his pants pocket—the hip, where presumably he’d kept his wallet—an evidence collection tech had lifted a sample, which contained NaClO2, along with citric acid and cherry syrup.