Page 131 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

“Seems a little odd he just left the car there and walked.”

“I guess, maybe. One-way streets. Probably faster to hoof it.”

Cooper read another of Rhyme’s notes.

Kelly asked, “You there, Detective?”

“Yes. But you could also argue that he left it there to leave some proof of when he arrived and when he left. The video, you know.”

“Give you that.”

Another note.

“You have the whole night’s video from the mall?”

“Yeah, we were looking for a homeless guy around the time of the killing, after what the son told us. But we didn’t see anyone in the mall tape.”

Rhyme jotted.

“Where was the camera?” Cooper asked.

“Across the street, pointed at the stores.”

“Can you call it up?”

“Where’s this going?”

Cooper improvised. “Just a few loose ends.”

“All right.” Kelly typed.

Rhyme wrote out his theory. Cooper shook his head and laughed.

“What’s that?” Kelly asked.

“Buddy here just showed me a present he got his girlfriend.” A chuckle. “Only I don’t know whether it’s more for her or for him.”

“One ofthosepresents, yeah. All right, I’ve got the video.”

“Run it from a half hour before the killing to a half hour after. Scrub it. But look at what’s in front of the camera. Look at what’s reflected back toward it, in the windows of the vehicles driving past.”

“Reflected,” Kelly said absently. “Okay, I’m not seeing much, just the street at the base of the pole the security camera’s mounted—Christ.”

Again, the two men in Rhyme’s town house glanced each other’s way.

Cooper said, “Is it Yannis’s car pulling up, and him getting out?”

“It fucking well is. I can see him in some bus window’s reflections. Eight forty-eight. About ten minutes before his father died.”

Cooper gave him Rhyme’s explanation. “Yannis couldn’t park in his father’s driveway when he came back to kill him. Neighbors would see. He knew he could park on the street near the mall but wanted to be out of sight of the camera. The only place he could do that was directly underneath it.

“Later the son got into the shelter and planted the evidence implicating Xavier. I checked security and it’s basically nonexistent. Anybody could walk in and out.”

It had been Ron Pulaski who’d determined this.

“Damn. It’s a whole new case. My partner and me’ll jump on it …” There was some typing. “Okay, just got Yannis’s DMV picture. We’ll do some canvassing, check into his history with his father.”

Cooper read what would be the final note. “You want to send me the full file, I’ll take a look at the rest of the evidence. See if I can help shore up anything.”