Page 58 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

If you need to crack a vehicle lock, you can often use a jiggler, also called a tryout key. They look sort of like standard pin tumbler keys but are flat. My set includes fifteen on a ring. They’re in my jacket pocket right now and I’m fingering them as I approach the car.

And, oh, yes, Officer, I’m carrying lock-picking tools with illegal intent … just for the record.

It’s quicker to use a rake and tension tool in a car lock—faster yet to yank the cylinder out with a dent puller—but neither would work here. With a jiggler, you insert it and, just like the name, work itback and forth with one hand, like you’re using the proper key. If somebody was watching you, they might wonder what you’re up to, but if you pretend to be making a phone call and absently playing with the key, you can get away with it.

Out comes my cell phone in one hand and the jiggler keys in the other. I look around. The street isn’t deserted but it’s not crowded either, and even more important, I know the owner of the car is busy elsewhere.

The door opens with the second jiggler. There’s no bar on the steering wheel, which I find odd. A car like this one would be easily stolen. That’s the thing about locks and security devices. Anybody can get burglarized; you’ll never be able to keep yourself completely secure. You just need to make your car or apartment a little bit harder to burgle than your neighbors’.

I suspect there’s a cutoff switch to the ignition hidden somewhere under the dash. Maybe two. Might even be radio controlled.

No matter. I’m not here to steal the car; I’m presently driving a very nice luxury set of wheels myself.

All I care about is one thing. And it takes me just a few minutes to locate what I seek. I find it not in the glove box but rubber banded to the back of the driver’s sun visor. I memorize what I’ve found, and in ten seconds the door is closed, relocked and I’m walking down the street, reciting the address.

Oh, this is very good news.

Since Lincoln Rhyme, I’ve read, lives on the Upper West Side, and the address I just memorized is in Brooklyn, this means that even though she’s his wife, Crime Scene Girl Amelia must spend some nights by herself.

The fantasy I conjured earlier has a basis in reality.

She has a bedroom all her own.

31

As they stood in the decrepit, half-collapsed manufacturing room of the Bechtel Building, Sachs handed the man back his driver’s license and employee ID card.

Lyle P. Spencer, forty-two, was the security director for Whittaker Media Group, the publisher of theDaily Herald. Not being able to see her clearly, just someone in street clothes, he’d thought she might have been a dealer or an addict.

“Or the Locksmith.” His voice was a resonant baritone.

“Locksmith?” she asked.

He asked, “You have proof it’s a man?”

Interesting thought. Assumptions.

“Size eleven man’s shoe. But in answer to your question. No, we don’t.”

“I was just trying to get out of the place, the door behind you. And call the police from the street. Tell them there was an intruder here.”

“The pipe?” A glance at the floor.

“In case it came to that.”

She asked why not a firearm.

“Don’t own one.”

“You’re security. But no carry ticket?” It’s almost impossible to get a conceal carry permit in the city, but there’s an exception for those who need a weapon in their line of work.

“I run the New York security operation. I don’t get into the field much.”

Spencer added that if he happened to do so—like now—he wore personal protection gear, which was plenty for him.

Sachs reflected that his size alone would be a deterrent. His arms, chest and legs were massive.

“You realize you’re violating a crime scene.”