The Cutting Edge

by Jeffery Deaver

  Sachs encircled the area with yellow tape. She placed a call to the CSU’s main office, asking for an evidence collection tech she knew. She told the man the location of the storm drain and asked for a more thorough examination. A team would use fiber-optic cameras and lights to peer into the drain and see if the unsub—if it was indeed him—had thrown out the mask or anything else.

  She returned to the scene at Saul Weintraub’s home to find that the crowds had largely dissipated. She stripped out of the overalls and gloves and wrote chain-of-custody notations on the cards.

  Her phone buzzed. She glanced at the caller ID.

  “Rhyme. We’re finished here. I’ll bring the evidence—”

  “Sachs.”

  The tone of his voice made clear that there was a problem.

  “What is it?”

  “Have the techs bring the stuff to me. You need to get down to Gravesend.”

  “Brooklyn?”

  “Yeah. Our unsub’s not wasting any time, Sachs. You’ve got another scene to run.”

  Chapter 16

  Lincoln Rhyme loved cloth.

  When stitched into garments, the complex substance reveals the size of the perp, possibly age and maybe site of storage and, often, the source of purchase. It can shed fibers faster than a golden retriever blows his coat. And even better, cloth captures and retains wonderful trace evidence and in some rare instances fingerprints. Not to mention it can serve as a sponge to soak up and store that most wonderful of substances, deoxyribonucleic acid. Also known as DNA. Three letters that, Rhyme would theatrically tell his criminalistics students, spelled bad news for perps.

  Rhyme was presently watching Mel Cooper process the jacket discarded by Unsub 47 in the storm drain in Queens.

  They knew the garment was his because it contained traces of gunshot residue that was nearly identical in composition to residue on Weintraub’s body and found at the crime scenes in Patel’s building in the Diamond District. Cooper also discovered traces of the same rock dust near Weintraub’s body that was found at Patel’s: that kimberlite. The substance was proving helpful. The bullet striking the stone had blown a significant amount of rock dust and tiny chips throughout Patel’s shop, some settling on the unsub. It was acting like a marker to link him to locations and contacts.

  Locard’s Principle, after Edmond Locard, the French criminalist, holds that in every exchange between criminal and victim, or criminal and crime scene, there is a transfer of matter. (“Every contact leaves a trace.”) If the forensic scientist is diligent enough, and clever enough, he or she can find that substance and determine what it is. That doesn’t mean, of course, that it will lead you to the perp’s door, but it can start you on the path.

  This kimberlite, a perfect example of Locard’s matter, had become a helpful partner in their hunt for the unsub.

  Rhyme called, “Prints?”

  “Negative,” Cooper replied. He’d been over every inch of the jacket with an alternative light source then tried gold and zinc vacuum metal deposition, which can sometimes raise fingerprints on cloth. Well, that was always a long shot with garments.

  Rhyme told him, “Get samples to Queens for DNA and TDNA.”

  “Already ordered,” Cooper said. There was likely a DNA sample somewhere on the coat. Sweat or spit or tears or—it wasn’t unheard of with outer garments—semen adhere plentifully. If this was the case here, the DNA profile might have a positive hit in the CODIS or an international database and reveal the suspect’s identity. Even if no significant amounts of fluid or tissue were found, though, there would certainly be skin cells, which might be used for a Touch DNA analysis. This technique is less accurate than a full DNA workup—it requires only a half-dozen skin cells—and can result in false positive results. But this would not be for criminal trial, merely direction in getting the unsub’s identity.

  Cooper slipped the jacket into an evidence bag and, since he hadn’t done so earlier, added his name to the chain-of-custody card. He left it inside the front door to await pickup by a team from the DNA analysis unit in Queens.

  The brand labels had been cut from the jacket—clever. It was roughly a medium size, man’s. The stitching suggested mass manufacturing in a third-world country. Probably sold in a thousand stores around the country. There would be no leads from this angle.

  In evidence bags Cooper assembled samples of fibers he’d taken from the jacket, along with fibers found inside the pockets—they were black cotton, very similar to those found at Patel’s, from the gloves, and polyester fibers, from the mask.

  Patrolman Ron Pulaski called in. He explained he was still having no luck tracking down the mysterious VL. Rhyme recalled what their insurance investigator had warned of: the reluctance of those in the diamond community to talk to outsiders. As well as a natural tendency not to get involved in a case in which the perp was fast to use a razor knife and gun.

  “Keep at it,” he told the Rookie and they disconnected.

  VL’s refusal to contact the police was perplexing. Yes, he’d be scared of being targeted by the killer, but generally a witness would come forward immediately and ask for protection—and help catch the perp. It was also curious that no friends or family had contacted the police—surely he’d told someone about his run-in with the perp. He was a young man and must have a family.

  Of course, it was possible he’d died of the wounds from the rock fragments. They hadn’t seemed serious but Rhyme had known victims of bad gunshot wounds to walk and act normally for hours before keeling over and dying.

  Possible too that the unsub had found him, like he had Weintraub, killed him and disposed of the body. But in either of those cases he would have expected a missing-persons report. And Cooper’s survey of the precincts—admittedly quick—had found none.

  The tech was peering into a microscope. “Trace on the jacket: More kimberlite. And some plant material. Two types. One is from leaves and grass similar to the control samples Amelia took from around the storm drain. What you’d expect. But there’s some flecks that’re unique.”

  “And they’re what?”

  “Hold on.” He was flipping through cellular-level images in the horticultural database that Rhyme had created at the NYPD years ago and that he still helped maintain. He loved plants as forensic markers.

  “Something called…Yes, I’m pretty sure it’s something called Coleonema pulchellum. Aka confetti bush. Not indigenous to the area—it comes from Africa—but common here as a deodorizer and in potpourri.”

  The perp had been to a gift shop lately, possibly. Or did he live in an apartment where pungent smells were a problem?

  “The brass,” Rhyme called.

  Cooper, who was certified by the AFTE, the Association of Firearm and Tool Mark Examiners, turned to the two spent 9mm shells that Sachs had collected. The slugs themselves, all of which had lodged in Weintraub’s body, would be sent from the Medical Examiner’s Office, after the autopsy. Given the urgency of the case, the doctor performing the postmortem had photographed one slug and sent the image to Cooper. The preliminary analysis was that it had been fired from the same weapon that was used at the shooting at Patel’s. No surprise since the gunshot residue was almost identical; the powder in all the rounds would have come from the manufacturer’s same lot.

  “Prints on the brass?” Rhyme asked.

  Cooper shook his head.

  No surprise here either.

  Cooper then ran through the list of trace and minute substances that Sachs had collected.

  “Sawdust, diesel fuel, metals consistent with welding. Heating oil, air-conditioner coolant. Then trichlorobenzene. I don’t know what that is.”

  “Used as a pesticide, I think. Or used to be. Nasty stuff. Look it up.”

  Cooper read from a government environmental alert: “‘Trichlorobenzene has several uses. It is an intermediate—a building block—to make herbicides, substances that destroy or prevent the growth of weeds. It is also used as a solvent to dissolve waxes,
grease, rubber and certain plastics and a dielectric fluid (a liquid that conducts little or no electricity).’ And, yeah, you’re right, used to be used for termite control.”

  This trace suggested that their unsub had been in or near a factory, old buildings, a basement, a service station or a construction site. Something to note but there was nothing particularly helpful in these finds to aid them in locating him.

  Cooper got a call and had a brief conversation, then walked to the computer just as the screen switched to email. He said, into his phone, “Got it.” He disconnected.

  “What’s that?”

  “Amelia had an EC team prowl around the storm drain where she found the jacket. They hit gold.”

  “And that would be?”

  “A MetroCard.”

  “Well. But is it his?”

  “I’d say yes. It wasn’t there very long,” Cooper said. “Wet but not too wet. Like the jacket.”

  In 2003 the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s MetroCard had replaced the token for payment in city buses and subways. Rhyme loved them because each one had a unique identifier, so the point of departure of every subway rider could be established. Couple that with the MTA’s extensive CCTV and facial recognition algorithms and you could occasionally come up with a reasonable estimation of where and when that rider disembarked.

  “They’re scanning the data and sending it separately.”

  Unsub 47 would not, of course, have used his own credit card for the purchase but—if he’d used the fare card for travel—they might get some good facial images of him swiping it at a station.

  Rhyme asked, “Prints, DNA on the card?”

  “Negative. Evidence of cloth glove impressions.”

  A sigh. “Anything else in the storm drain?”

  “Nope.”

  Rhyme gazed at the evidence chart. The facts written upon it—and facts that were absent—proved what Rhyme already knew: Unsub 47 was uncommonly clever, never leaving prints, disabling video cameras, ditching his jacket after being spotted, wearing a ski mask or looking away from security cameras, making determined efforts to eliminate witnesses and tidy up after the theft.

  But Lincoln Rhyme was used to being challenged by smart perps. He thought about the most brilliant one he’d been up against: Charles Vespasian Hale, known by the nickname “the Watchmaker.” The name came from both his obsession with timepieces and the fact that his crimes were planned with the precision of a clock’s mechanism. The man was a superstore of criminal services, available to anyone who could pay his substantial fee—from terrorist attacks to murder to kidnapping to mundane larceny, and everything in between. (Including jailbreaks, Rhyme reflected, with the pique he always felt when he thought of Hale; the man was still on the lam, having escaped from the prison Rhyme had put him in.)

  Rhyme now heard Thom let someone into the town house, and Lon Sellitto ambled into the parlor, shedding his jacket.

  “Too effing cold out there. Ridiculous. March. You ever see a March like this?”

  Rhyme usually ignored conversations regarding climate. He did this now and briefed the detective on their incremental progress.

  Sellitto grimaced. “City Hall won’t be happy. We’ve gotta move faster.”

  “Tell Forty-Seven to be more cooperative.”

  “Linc. We held off telling that Brit about S and VL. And one of ’em’s dead. Let’s get him canvassing for the protégé. Whatta you think?”

  Rhyme shrugged. This was one of the few gestures his body was capable of. “At this point, sure.”

  Sellitto called the number on Ackroyd’s card and asked him if he could come in. The detective disconnected. “Be here soon.”

  Cooper’s computer sang with the sound of incoming email.

  “Transit. The CCTV.”

  Rhyme explained to Sellitto about the MetroCard.

  “Damn. That’s good.”

  The New York City transit system is overseen by two separate police forces. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police takes care of law enforcement for much of the surface transportation in the region, including some outlying counties. The NYPD’s Transit Bureau guards the subways.

  The message, from an officer at Transit’s Brooklyn headquarters on Schermerhorn Street, reported that it was a one-ride card, bought with cash. He’d used it two days ago. “He got on the train in Brooklyn, the stop near Cadman Plaza. They don’t know if or where he transferred or got off, but he started out heading toward Manhattan. And those trains would get him to Forty-Second Street pretty fast.”

  Sellitto muttered, “Walking distance to Patel’s.”

  The day before the killing. Maybe casing it, checking out security.

  Cooper read some more. “The RTCC folks say there’s something odd we should look at.”

  The NYPD was part of the Domain Awareness System, a surveillance system that included a network of close to seven thousand CCTV cameras throughout the city, about two-thirds of them owned by private companies and individuals, who had given the police access. Scores of detectives staffed camera monitors at the Real Time Crime Center, located at One Police Plaza. The software was so sophisticated that it could automatically flag a “suspicious package” or identify and track potential suspects with as little input as “six-foot, medium build, light-blue jacket.”

  The RTCC had pulled the video from the subway station when and before the fare card was swiped.

  “Odd?” Rhyme murmured.

  Cooper typed and a video appeared on the screen, in color and of pretty good resolution. Medium definition.

  “Here’s the rider.” The tech pointed to a figure on the monitor.

  He appeared similar to their other image of the unsub, on 47th Street, just after the killings. The jacket appeared identical to the one they’d just analyzed. He wore a black stocking cap that could be a rolled-up ski mask. And, of course, he kept his head down as he swept the fare card through the reader.

  “Now here’s the MTA camera facing the street outside the subway entrance. Five minutes earlier, as he’s approaching the station.”

  Cooper ran the tape several times.

  “What’s he doing?” Sellitto muttered. “I don’t get it.”

  Odd…

  It appeared that Forty-Seven was approaching the subway in a straight line from across the street but then he stopped abruptly, turned around and walked back toward where he’d just come from. Then he reversed direction once more, continuing into the station.

  Rhyme said, “There’s a trash bin there. He turns around to throw something out. What is it? Yellow. He was holding something yellow. And orange. I can see orange too. But what? Again.”

  Cooper played the tape once more.

  It was Sellitto who said, “Got it.”

  “What?” Rhyme asked.

  “Look what’s behind him.”

  Ah, Rhyme thought, nodding. He too understood. On the other side of the street was a construction site. Several workers wore orange safety vests and yellow hard hats. The same shade as what was in Forty-Seven’s hand.

  Sellitto said, “He exits the jobsite, swaps the hard hat for his stocking cap. He’s going to pitch out the hat and vest but can’t find a trash bin in front of the subway. He turns around and finds a bin. Then goes to catch his train.”

  “He’s not a worker—he’s in street clothes and nobody on a job would throw out a hard hat.”

  “I’d vote he stole the hat and vest to get into the site. Why?”

  Rhyme offered, “Meeting somebody who works there. One possibility.”

  Sellitto said, “Another one: That station’s near the government buildings, right?”

  “Cadman Plaza,” Cooper said. “The streets’re loaded with CCTVs—the police, the federal buildings, courts, administrative offices. To get to the station entrance any other way, aside from the jobsite, he’d have to go past a dozen cameras.”

  Sellitto offered, “He lives south of construction site?”

  “No
, he can’t steal hard hats and trespass,” Rhyme said, “every time he wants to take the train. I’d go with he was meeting somebody in the site. Maybe he was picking up his weapon? Talking to somebody about fencing the rough?”

  Although less so than in the past, the New York City’s construction industry was populated with men who had organized crime connections.

  Sellitto called the RTCC supervisor and gave him the ID information about the video. He would have officers check street cameras in the surrounding blocks for an hour before the unsub swiped the card. The search criteria would be a man fitting the general description, filtered by “wearing or in possession of yellow hard hat and orange vest.”

  As Rhyme watched Mel Cooper add the latest details of the case to a whiteboard, he thought: Why? Why’re you doing this?

  “Easy answer,” called a woman’s melodious voice.

  Rhyme turned. He hadn’t been aware Amelia Sachs had returned from Brooklyn. Or that he’d just spoken the questions aloud. He asked, “Which is?”

  “He’s just plain crazy.”

  Chapter 17

  He’d spent the night at the airport. LaGuardia—two bus journeys away.

  Vimal Lahori had huddled in the backs of both vehicles, wincing as the rough ride punched his wounds.

  He’d found a waiting area chair, near the ticket counters, as if planning to check in for an early flight, after a cancellation. He was one of a dozen displaced travelers. No one paid him any mind.

  Vimal would have preferred his beloved Port Authority but he suspected that the place would be watched by the police. And there was also the killer, who might continue to be prowling the streets of Midtown. He’d dreamed much, mostly nightmares, though he couldn’t recall the specific images. He’d woken to the memory of Mr. Patel’s feet. Tears had streamed for a few minutes. But then he forced himself to rise and wash up in the bathroom. There, in a stall, he checked the wound once more. It stung and was surrounded by a huge bruise but wasn’t puffy with infection. He clumsily changed the dressing—the wound was hard to reach—and squirted some more of the chill Betadine on it.