Page 16 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

The detective was then speaking to the person on the other end of the line. “Yessir … We’re on it … Okay … Well.” He paced up to the immaculate glass wall that separated the non-sterile part of the parlor from the lab. He rapped on the glass absently. He nodded, as one will do when concluding a conversation, even when the person he was speaking with was off camera, miles away. “Yessir.” The phone vanished into the pocket of his brown suit. The man had other colors in his wardrobe but when he thought of Sellitto, Rhyme thought of brown.

Thom appeared, with another steaming mug. “Here you go, Lon. How’ve you been? How’s Rachel? You ever get that dog you were talking about?”

“Don’t interrupt him, Thom. He’s here to tell us an interesting tale, aren’t you, Lon? About somethingodd.”

“You make the best coffee.”

“Thank you.”

“Molasses in the cookies?”

“Not too much. It can overwhelm.”

“Interruption, I was saying,” Rhyme said in a slow, cool voice.

Sellitto said, “Rachel bakes. She made scones the other day. Which I’m not even sure what that is. Kinda dry. Good with butter. Okay, okay, Linc. A couple uniforms from the Twenty House get a call.”

The precinct, a 1960s-era structure with a white stone façade, always in need of scrubbing, was within walking—or rolling—distance of the town house and Rhyme had been there on investigations more than a few times in the past years.

“Case like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

And Lon Sellitto had witnessed a great deal of mayhem over his years as an NYPD beat cop then detective.

“So. Here’s the sit.”

“The what?” Sachs asked.

“The situation. Everybody’s using ‘sit’ in OnePP.”

At another time Rhyme would have lectured his former partner about the sanctity of language, suggesting that dismembering a word spoke volumes about the intelligence and vanity of the dismemberer—nor was he particularly happy at the curious renaming of One Police Plaza. But he let it go.

“Victim was a woman named Annabelle Talese. Twenty-seven, marketing manager for a fashion company and an influencer.”

“What’s an influencer?” Rhyme asked.

“Do you not watchanytelevision, Linc? Surf the web? Or listen to podcasts?”

“What’s a podcast? … That I’m joking about. But influencer?”

Sachs said, “Somebody who talks about a product online. I use this mascara for my morning routine. I like this line of sweaters from ABC knitwear. They get paid by the manufacturer, or they make money from advertising. Influencers’re pretty or handsome. At least, that helps. Unboxing videos’re part of it too. Pam told me about them.”

The young woman, whom Sachs had taken under her wing after saving her from terrorists, was presently studying criminalistics in Chicago.

Rhyme looked at her, querying.

“Somebody buys a product and then videos themselves taking it out of the box and setting it up.”

“Will wonders never cease,” Rhyme said and glanced at Sellitto with a can-we-move-it-along expression.

“A perp breaks into her place in the middle of the night.”

“Homicide?” Rhyme asked.

“No.”

“Sexual battery?” from Sachs.

“Probably not.”