The Cutting Edge

by Jeffery Deaver

She hugged him. This was the final fitting. Two weeks till launch but she had a business trip to one of her ad agency’s clients starting in a few days and wouldn’t have much time after she got back to handle all the plans that a wedding with 257 guests entailed. The get-the-dress box had to be ticked now.

  And it had been.

  “When is the crew coming in?” Frank asked.

  The bridesmaids. For the matching teal dresses, the matching shoes, the matching panty hose, the matching corsages. Frank was a godsend.

  “A few days. Rita’ll call, make an appointment.”

  “I’ll get champagne in.”

  “I love you, you know,” Morgan said and blew him a kiss.

  It was 7 p.m., closing time. When she’d arrived, an hour ago, the shop had been hopping—all the young professional fiancées, busy during the week, had only Saturday and Sunday to select and tailor the dress of a lifetime. Now it was empty except for the two of them, and the tailor in the back.

  Frank helped her off the platform where she’d been standing for the final pinning.

  As she climbed down, she took one last look in the mirror. And happened to glance at the reflection not of herself but of the front window, opening onto busy Madison Avenue. There was, as always, street traffic on Madison: at the moment, folks headed to dinner, or returning home from a Sunday of shopping, plays, movies and early suppers.

  What took Morgan’s attention, though, was a man looking into the window.

  She couldn’t see his face clearly; there wasn’t much light on the street any longer and he was backlit from headlights and a streetlamp.

  Odd, a man in a dark jacket and stocking cap staring at a window full of wedding dresses.

  He moved on. Probably the father of a newly engaged girl, pausing to gaze somberly at yet another expense confronting him after John or Keith or Robert had decided to do the honorable thing.

  A few minutes later she was out of the changing room, back in the fatty jeans, which were so delightfully loose around her hips. T-shirt. A reindeer sweater because she was in one of those moods. Judith soon-to-be-Whelan was nothing if not playful. She rolled a scarf around her neck, then pulled on her black cotton jacket and donned supple leather gloves.

  She said goodbye to Frank, who was shutting out the lights.

  Stepping outside, she turned north toward her apartment.

  Thinking about the dress, about the honeymoon. Atlantis in the Bahamas.

  Making love while listening to the ocean. Something they’d never done. Ditto, eating conch fritters. Which Morgan knew they served in the Bahamas. She always did her homework.

  She stopped at the corner deli, got a bottle of Pinot Grigio and hit the salad bar, throwing into a plastic container lettuce, tomatoes and “fixens” (she’d once heard a customer gripe about the misspelling but, she’d thought: I’m sorry, is there any confusion? And besides, how much Korean do you speak?).

  Then back onto the street and to her building. Yes, it was the Upper East Side, but that included a lot of territory that was not Trump-worthy. Her brownstone was a fourth-floor walk-up, in sore need of a power washing and paint job.

  She walked to the lobby door and was just unlocking it and stepping in when she heard a rush of footsteps behind her. The man in dark clothing, the same man outside of Frank’s—now with his head encased in a ski mask—pushed her inside.

  Her barked scream was silenced by the hand over her mouth. He walked her fast down the corridor to an alcove underneath the stairs, where she and the tenant from the third floor kept their bikes. He swept the bikes aside and shoved her to the floor, a sitting position. He ripped her purse from her shoulder, the deli bag from her hand.

  She stared at the pistol.

  “Please…” Her voice was quaking.

  “Shhh.”

  He was, it seemed, listening for voices or footsteps. All was silent—except for the frantic pounding of Morgan’s heart, the raw gasp of her labored breathing.

  He put the gun back in his pocket and then righted the bikes and leaned them upright against the wall so that anyone looking through the door wouldn’t see them on their sides and think something was wrong. Her leg protruded into the hall and he kicked it—gently—back under the stairs, so the limb wasn’t visible either. Then he crouched in front of her.

  “What do you want? Please…just take whatever you want.”

  “Gloves,” he snapped.

  “You want my gloves.”

  He laughed, sarcastically. Then grew angry. “Why I would want fucking gloves? I want you to take fucking gloves off.”

  She did. And as he looked at her left hand she curled her right into a fist and slammed it into his jaw. “You fucker!” She hit him again, aiming low and missing the crotch by a few inches.

  He blinked in surprise, not pain. His blue eyes were amused.

  Morgan drew her arm back once more but his blow landed first—also to the jaw—and snapped her head into the wall. Her vision grew black and fuzzy for a moment. Then the focus returned.

  “No good, lovebird hen.” Crouching over her, he gripped her hair, pulled her close. She smelled cigarette smoke and onions. Doused aftershave. Liquor. It took all her will not to vomit. Then thought maybe that would turn him off and tried to retch.

  He shook her by the hair again, fiercely. A whisper: “No, no, no. No doing that. Okay?”

  Morgan nodded. She was aware his eyes weren’t scanning her torso as she’d thought they would. His only interest was her fingers. Actually, just the ring finger.

  That’s what he wanted. And it was clear to her now. Of course. A girl in a fancy Upper East Side bridal boutique. She’d be engaged…and she’d be wearing one hell of a rock.

  Which she was.

  Sean worked for Harper Stanley, on the foreign desk. His dad was a founder of Marsh and Royal, a big hedge fund. His mom was a partner at Logan, Sharp and Towne, a Wall Street law firm.

  The ring on her finger had cost forty-two thousand dollars. It was anchored by a five-carat brilliant-cut diamond, with a one-carat marquis on either side.

  “Take it,” she whispered.

  His eyes flicked to hers. “Take what? Your virginity? Ha, that is joke. You smell to me like campus slut. How many men before your fiancé?”

  She blinked. “I—”

  “Does he know?” He then frowned. “Or you mean take purse, your credit cards? Hm, hm.” Feigning surprise, he said, “Oh, oh, my, you meaning your ring. That piece of stone on sad stub of finger. Does your fiancé like your hands? What’s his name?”

  Crying now, Morgan said, “I am not telling you.”

  The knife—one of those with the sliding blade—appeared. She screamed, until he brandished it and she fell silent.

  The assailant looked at the front door. Listened again. No response. In fact, the building was two-thirds empty at the moment. One couple was on vacation. The gay guy was spending the weekend with his friends in the Hamptons. Two units were unrented.

  Morgan was sure that Mr. and Mrs. Kieslowski were in for the night, chewing down Chinese and bingeing on Game of Thrones. They’d be no help.

  She stared at the blade.

  He’s not getting Sean’s name, she told herself, though also thinking that if he paid Sean a visit her fiancé would wipe up the pavement with this guy. Sean worked out five times a week.

  But the man seemed to lose interest in her love life, so intensely was he drawn to the ring. With a grip she had no strength to resist he pulled her hand close to his face.

  “How many carats, they tell you? Four and a half?”

  She was shivering in terror. The fuck was this all about?

  “How many fucking carats?” he raged softly.

  “Five.”

  Shaking his head. “And how much of it they kill?”

  She frowned.

  “How much they cut off of stone to make thing on finger of yours?”

  “I…I don’t know what you mean. I can get you money. A lot of money. A
hundred thousand. Do you want a hundred thousand dollars? No questions asked.”

  He wasn’t even listening. “You are happy, slicing diamond up?”

  “Please?”

  “Shhhh, little hen. Look at you. Cryee little thing.” Then he pushed her away and said, “You were crying when boyfriend bought raped diamond? No crying then. Huh?”

  He was fucking insane…Oh, God, now she understood. With a sinking heart, she realized this was him, the Promisor. The man who hated engaged couples. He’d killed the couple in the Diamond District on Saturday. And he’d attacked two more. And now she knew why. For some psychotic reason he was protecting diamonds.

  For a moment, anger gripped her. She muttered, “You sick fuck.”

  The grip on her hair tightened, pain swelling from her scalp. He pressed the knife against her neck. Judith Morgan went limp, surrendering to tears. She closed her eyes and began reciting a silent prayer, looping and looping through her thoughts. He leaned close, his forehead against hers. “Lovebird, lovebird…I am liking that part of vow, you know. Till death do you part.”

  He pressed the knife against her throat.

  Oh, Mommy…

  Then he paused and a faint laugh slipped from his foul-smelling mouth. The blade lowered. “Have fun idea. Better than cutting…Yes, I am liking this. You treat diamond like shit. Okay, swallow it. That where it end up.”

  “What?” she whispered.

  He grimaced. “Put fucking ring in mouth and swallow it.”

  “But I can’t.”

  “Then, die.” He shrugged again and the knife rose to her throat.

  “No, no, no! I will. I’ll swallow it. I’ll do it!”

  She worked the ring off her finger and gazed down at it. What would happen? Lodge in her windpipe and she’d choke to death? Or if it got down her esophagus would the sharp edges cut the delicate tissue? Could she bleed to death internally?

  “Or knife on throat,” he offered cheerfully. “I am not much caring. Choose. But now.”

  With a trembling hand, she lifted the ring to her face. The piece seemed huge.

  She felt the knife against her neck.

  “Okay, okay.”

  Quickly she dropped the jewelry into her mouth. She gagged once and the ring nearly fell out but she pushed it to the back of her throat and swallowed hard.

  Waves of pain stabbed her chest, neck and head as she worked the muscles over and over and over to get the damn thing down. Tears streamed. The ring made it past her windpipe—she could breathe all right—but then lodged in her esophagus, the sharp sides of the small diamonds slitting the skin. Blood cascaded. She tasted it, and, as some flowed into her windpipe and lungs, her violent coughing fired red droplets from her mouth.

  Rasping screams now.

  He remained amused. “Ah, little one. You see how it goes. You fuck stone, stone fucks you.”

  Judith Morgan was thrashing against the pain and the sensation of drowning—in her own blood. She gripped her throat with both hands, trying to manipulate the ring up and out. It wasn’t going anywhere and the pain only increased. Without a plan, on autopilot, she struggled to her feet then lunged for her purse. He lifted it away and opened it, then removed her cell phone and smashed it on the tile floor. He gave a laugh and strode nonchalantly down the corridor and left by the front door.

  Coughing fiercely, consumed by pain from chest to temple, Judith Morgan struggled down the corridor and then up the stairs, heading for the Kieslowski apartment on the second floor.

  Praying they had not gone out but were sitting on their lumpy sofa in front of the TV, with takeout, catching up on the twisted plottings of the House Lannister and the House Stark.

  Chapter 28

  Another attack.

  At eight p.m. Rhyme was listening to a detective from the 19, on the Upper East Side.

  “Yessir, Captain,” the man told him. “That same perp’s been in the news. Vic’s okay, she’ll live. But—can you believe this one?—he made her swallow her engagement ring. She’s in surgery now.”

  “Scene’s secure?”

  “Yessir. We’ve called the CS bus from Queens but since you’re the task force on this one, thought you might want to send one of your people.”

  “We will. Have the techs wait outside the scene. Address?”

  Rhyme memorized it. “Canvass?” he then asked.

  “Five blocks all around. And counting. Nothing. And best the vic could say was white male, blue eyes, ski mask, knife and handgun. Or she nodded in response to my questions. Weird accent she couldn’t figure out. All I could get. We only had a few minutes ’fore they got her to the hospital.”

  Rhyme thanked him. Then he disconnected and called Ron Pulaski.

  “Lincoln.”

  “We’ve got another scene. Upper East Side.”

  “I heard some squawk on the radio. Was it our boy?”

  “Yep.”

  “The vic’s okay, I heard.”

  “Alive. I don’t know about okay.” What did swallowing a sharp piece of jewelry do to you? Rhyme gave the younger officer the address. “The bus is on its way. I need you to walk the grid and get back here with whatever you can find ASAP. There’ll be uniforms and a detective from the One-Nine there. Find out what hospital the vic’s in and interview her. And take a pad and pen for the vic to write with. She can’t talk.”

  “She…what?”

  “Move, Rookie.”

  They disconnected.

  The doorbell to the town house sounded and Thom answered it, returning a moment later with the insurance investigator Edward Ackroyd, who nodded, almost formally, to Rhyme and Cooper.

  The aide took the man’s greatcoat—no, Rhyme thought, changing his opinion of the garment once more. It should be called a mackintosh.

  “Another cappuccino?” Thom asked.

  “Don’t mind if I do, actually.”

  “No, no, no,” Rhyme said fast. “A single-malt.”

  “Well…now that you mention it, I will do. Save the coffee for another time.”

  Thom poured the drinks, pitifully small. Both Rhyme and Ackroyd added just a hint of water to the glass.

  “Glenmorangie,” Ackroyd said, after sipping. He pronounced it correctly, emphasis on the second syllable. He held up the glass and eyed the amber liquid as if in a commercial. “Highlands. You know there is a difference in taste between lowland whisky and highland, subtle and I’m not sure I could detect it. However, there are many more highland distilleries than low. Do you know why?”

  “No idea.”

  “It’s not because of the peat or the process but because the Scottish distilleries kept moving north to escape the English excise tax. Or that’s what I’ve heard.”

  Rhyme tucked the trivia away, tilted the glass toward the Englishman and sipped the smoky liquor.

  Ackroyd took a seat, with that perfect posture of his, in one of the wicker chairs not far from Rhyme.

  He told the Brit about the new attack.

  “No! Swallowed her engagement ring? Good heavens. How is she?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “And payback for buying a cut stone? My, this man’s barking mad.” His face seemed bewildered. Then he added, “Now, let me tell you a few things I’ve found. I did hear back from my friend in Amsterdam. You recall?”

  The dealer who’d received a call from an anonymous number about selling some rough. A nod.

  “The seller in New York, with the fifteen carats? He called Willem back. He’s legitimate. A diamond broker from Jerusalem. He was in New York and bought a phone at the airport. Didn’t want to use the minutes on his personal phone. So, dead end there. Now, I’ve talked to scores of diamantaires and nobody has heard any inkling of selling the Grace-Cabot rough or rumors of a major underground cut going on. It’s absurd but I suppose he really must believe he’s saving the stone from the dire fate of being cut into jewelry.

  “But, more to the point: About an hour ago I was making calls to deale
rs and some other people I know, asking about Patel’s assistant? Well, one of them, in Brooklyn, told me that it was curious: Someone else had called him earlier today, asking about an associate or assistant who worked for Patel. Initials VL. The dealer couldn’t help him and they hung up.”

  Rhyme lowered his scotch and looked Ackroyd’s way. “He didn’t identify himself, of course.”

  “No. And, naturally, it was from a blocked number. But here’s the important news: The dealer is Russian, and he recognized the caller’s accent. He’s Russian too. And almost certainly born there and learned English at school in Russia. He worked that out from some of the constructions and choices of words. Probably a Muscovite, or nearby. And he’s come here recently. He didn’t know the word ‘borough’ or that Brooklyn and Queens were part of New York City. He thought the city was only Manhattan.”

  “Helpful,” Rhyme said. And he had a thought of how to best use the information. An idea occurred. He typed out a text and sent it on its way.

  The reply arrived almost immediately, proposing a time for a phone call.

  Rhyme texted, K, and then said to Cooper, “Mel, write up what Edward found, on the boards, could you?”

  Cooper walked to the evidence board and added the new information about Unsub 47 to the list.

  A phone hummed and Rhyme watched Ackroyd as he looked at the screen of his iPhone and frowned. Then he typed something in response. There was apparently another exchange. His frown deepened. He looked off, thoughtfully.

  The Englishman was aware of Rhyme’s gaze and smiled. “Not about the case. Bit silly, this. Back in London, I’m on a competitive crossword puzzle team. Have you ever done them?”

  Seemed like an utter waste of time but Rhyme said only, “No.”

  Ackroyd walked close and held the mobile for Rhyme to see. A look at the screen revealed the familiar grid. Some of the blanks were filled in.

  “My husband and I…” A moment’s hesitation, then continuing: “He’s on the faculty at Oxford. He and I and two other professors, from Cambridge, are on the team. We’re the Oxbridge Four. Silly, I was saying. But Terrance—that’s my husband—thinks a puzzle helps you stay on your game. His father was a die-hard fan. He did one a day—often the diagramless ones: without the black square telling where the words start and stop. Terrance’s convinced that they kept Dad sharp till the day he died.”