Page 82 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

She snapped her fingers. “Key-making machine.”

“He might work at a home improvement or hardware store. That’s one lead but we don’t have the manpower to survey them all. We’ll keep it in mind if we find something to narrow down the geographic field. But another lead is that he might privately own one himself. Are they rare, Sachs? Are they expensive? Let’s hope so. I want to know how many key-machine manufacturers there are and what their records of private sales are like.”

She called Lon Sellitto back with this request, and, after a conversation, she disconnected. Rhyme knew that the detective would assign canvassers right away.

He turned back to the chart.

The Locksmith was intelligent, given to planning, careful, and he was aware of, and he studied, his pursuers.

Rhyme thought again of the Watchmaker. The Locksmith was truly his heir … But then he corrected the notion, which suggested that their present perp had somehow replaced the earlier. But that wasn’t the case at all. Oh, yes, the Watchmaker might have met his fate in one of his enterprises gone wrong. Rhyme, however, couldn’t believe that. He had a feeling that the man was very much alive … and very much involved in other plots.

He wondered again if one of which might have to do with the intelligence from the UK, relayed to Rhyme by the FBI. The gist was that unknown Person X had hired unknown Person Y to kill Person Z.

Person Z’s identity was quite well known, according to the report. Lincoln Rhyme himself.

Sachs, reading a text, said, “Bad news about the key-cutting machine.”

“You can buy them for a thousand dollars and they’re sold at dozens of retail locations so he could pay with nice tidy untraceable cash,” Rhyme guessed.

“More or less.”

“Hell.”

Sachs scrolled through her phone and apparently found a number. She placed a call. And hit the Speaker button. Rhyme heard it ringing.

“Hello?”

“Lyle?”

“Amelia,” Spencer said.

“I’m here with Lincoln and Mel Cooper.”

“Any breaks in the case?”

“Nothing much. None of the complaints Legal found panned out. The lead detective’s focusing on the Apollos, but nothing solid. I’m calling to see if anybody’s heard anything from Whittaker’s son.”

“I’m with Mr. Whittaker and his niece right now.”

They heard him pose the question. And the answers from both Whittaker and Joanna and her fiancé, Martin Kemp, were negative.

“I’d like to take a look at his apartment. Does anybody there have a key?”

No one in the family did.

“The building have a super?” Sachs asked.

Joanna said, “Yes. Lives there.”

Sachs told them, “I can get a warrant for a welfare check. Spencer, you free tomorrow morning?”

“What time’s good?”

“Make it nine.”

“See you then.”

They disconnected.