The Cutting Edge

by Jeffery Deaver

  “Yes, I saw in your emails.”

  Krueger gave him a sour look.

  “So this guy, where he is?”

  “Dead. He told me most of the shafts are drilled. There won’t be that much kimberlite dug up anymore. I can find it and get rid of it. The big problem is the boy, Vimal. On Saturday, those samples he was carrying with him? He didn’t get them at the drilling site—I’d cleared it by then. Either somebody else gave them to him—maybe another assayer, like Weintraub—or he got them at another location. We have to find him. Get him to tell us where the samples came from and if anybody else knows.”

  The last of Krueger’s appetite vanished at the sight of Rostov’s enthusiastically digging between his teeth with a fingernail to excavate bits of food. “So?”

  Krueger leaned forward. “Here’s my thought. This Amelia? She knows where Vimal is. We’ll get her to tell us. We can’t kill her—she’s police. That’s too much.”

  Rostov asked, “But hurt, okay?”

  “Hurting is fine.”

  Rostov’s face brightened. “Yes, yes, I will say. I am not so happy with her. I had little kuritsa Vimal very close. And she fucked me up. How we get to her?”

  “I told her and the other cops there’s a dealer in Manhattan who’s got good information. I’ll tell Amelia he’ll agree to meet her, only her, in private. We’ll find a quiet shop somewhere—not one in the Diamond District. We go there first, you and me, kill the dealer. You take his place, and when she comes in, you do what you want to find out where Vimal is and how we can get to him. We take care of the problem and you and I go home, get our bonuses.”

  Rostov gave an exaggerated frown. “Bonus? You fucker, Guatemalan bastards pay bonus?”

  “Doesn’t Dobprom?”

  Rostov laughed sourly. Then he leaned forward and rested a creepy hand on Krueger’s forearm. “This Amelia, this kuritsa…You have seen ring she wears? Is diamond, no?” His eyes were narrow and his voice suggested this was a very important question. “Not fucking sapphire?”

  He said, “Yes. Diamond.”

  Rostov asked, “What is grade?”

  The Gemological Institute of America graded diamonds according to the four C’s: carat weight, color, cut and clarity. Krueger told Rostov, “I haven’t seen it up close but I’d say two carats, a blue, brilliant, and I’m guessing a VV1 or -2.”

  Which meant it wasn’t flawless but only had very slight inclusions, invisible to the naked eye. A respectable stone.

  “Why are you asking?” Krueger wondered, though he supposed he had an idea of what the madman had in mind.

  “We need to hurt her and I need a souvenir.” He eyed Krueger narrowly. “You are not minding that?”

  “All I care about is you finding Vimal. Whatever you want to do short of killing her, that’s up to you.”

  Chapter 53

  Rhyme was looking around the town house, aware that Sellitto and Sachs were elsewhere. That was curious. They hadn’t left—their coats were hung on a nearby rack.

  He wanted them here, to keep examining the evidence charts, to see if the notations might reveal any more clues about the whereabouts of their Russian unsub or the next bomb. The whiteboards, decorated with careful jottings, remained silent and far more cryptic, and coy, than usual.

  As he was about to summon his wife and the detective back to the parlor, there came a pounding on the door.

  Rhyme and Ron Pulaski looked at the security camera monitor: four men, in suits. One was holding something up to the video camera. It seemed to be an ID card.

  Rhyme squinted.

  FBI.

  Ah, got it.

  Sachs, Sellitto and Thom all appeared quickly from the back of the town house. Rhyme noted their expressions. And he thought: They knew about El Halcón.

  “The hell’s going on, Lincoln?” Mel Cooper asked.

  “I’m not completely sure but I think the Rookie and I’re about to be arrested.”

  “What?” Pulaski barked.

  “Well, open the door, Thom. We hardly want them to kick it in, now, do we?”

  The four people stepped quickly into the lobby and then the parlor. Three were FBI agents and were properly diverse, like the actors in an ad for a consulting company: white woman and a black and Asian man. They were humorless but that was a plus quality in a lot of professions, law enforcement ranking high among those. They would know that there was likely no threat from the occupants but their quick eyes took in everyone, assessing risks.

  The fourth of the foursome was Henry Bishop, the lean federal prosecutor from the Eastern District. He towered over everyone in the room.

  “Lincoln Rhyme.” The special agent speaking to him was an athletic-looking young man named Eric Fallow.

  To him, Rhyme said, “Can’t raise my hands. Sorry.”

  Neither the agent, nor anyone else in the room, gave a reaction to the joke.

  Bishop said to Fallow, “I’ll speak to Mr. Rhyme. You secure Officer Pulaski.”

  Fallow stepped to the younger man. “Officer, just keep your hands where we can see them. I’m going to take control of your weapon.”

  Pulaski faced him. “Hell you are. What’s this about?”

  Though his perplexed expression rang false. He knew exactly what it was about.

  “Linc,” Sellitto said, then fell silent. He and Sachs had probably been briefed by Dellray—if he was indeed the one who’d delivered the news about Rhyme’s assignment for El Halcón—to play dumb. Rhyme looked to Sachs, but she was avoiding his eyes.

  Understandably.

  The other two agents stepped forward. One took Pulaski’s Glock.

  Fallow said, “Hands behind your back please.”

  “That’s really not necessary,” Rhyme said in a voice that was perhaps a bit too singsongy. The patina was mockery. Which was a tad unfair.

  Fallow cuffed Pulaski anyway.

  “Answer me, Bishop. What’s going on?” Sellitto had recovered and was offering a credible performance of surprise.

  “Really,” Rhyme said. “Unnecessary.”

  Bishop said, “Mr. Rhyme, you and Officer Pulaski are in a great deal of trouble. We’re placing you both under arrest for felony obstruction of justice and conspiracy, unauthorized use of evidentiary information.”

  The Rookie’s eyes turned slowly to Rhyme.

  How much trouble can you get into when your mission is a higher cause…?

  The prosecutor continued, “You’ve been helpful in the past, Lincoln. I admit it.”

  Only helpful? Rhyme reflected sourly.

  “And that will be taken into account in the future, when we come to plea discussions. But now, Agent Fallow, read Officer Pulaski and Mr. Rhyme their rights.”

  Sellitto gave up. “Is it true, Linc?” A sheen of dismay on his face.

  Rhyme noted too Sachs’s tight lips. The look in her eyes.

  And he decided it was time.

  “All right, everyone. All right. Henry—can I call you Henry?” Rhyme asked this.

  Bishop was taken aback. “Uhm. Hank, generally.”

  “Okay, Hank. The fact is, I was just about to send you a memo on our situation. It’s nearly finished.”

  The prosecutor’s eyes wavered not a bit but Rhyme believed some surprise shone through. He nodded at the computer screen, on which there was, in fact, a lengthy email addressed to Bishop’s office. Bishop didn’t follow the lead but remained fixed on Rhyme, who said, “The Nassau County supervising detective who was shot at the El Halcón takedown on Long Island?”

  Bishop said, “Sure. Barry Sales. He’ll be a witness for us in a few days.”

  “Barry was my colleague years ago. One of the best crime scene cops I ever worked with.” Rhyme paused. “When I heard about the shooting, I wanted to volunteer to consult for the prosecution, handle the evidence. I wanted to make sure that whoever was behind it, we’d marshal an ironclad case against him. And I wanted to handle the evidence in the case.”

  �
��Yes, I remember,” Bishop said. “You were number one on the list for expert forensic witnesses.”

  “But I had to be in DC on other business. A regret, but there was nothing to do about it. Then, a few days ago, El Halcón’s lawyer calls me. He wants to hire me to prove that someone on the arrest team planted evidence incriminating El Halcón.”

  Bishop blurted, “Well, that’s just bull—”

  “Hank. Please?”

  With a grimacing expression on his face, the man lifted a go-ahead palm toward Rhyme.

  Rhyme continued, “You’re aware of the weaknesses in your case?”

  The tall man shifted uneasily. “It’s not clear-cut, no.”

  “First, they’re claiming that El Halcón was in the bathroom the whole time, hiding. Second, that the gunshot residue was planted. He never fired Cody’s gun.” Rhyme nodded at the computer. “I’ve just proved that those are both wrong. I refute their theories entirely. The bathroom? There’s a distinctive cleanser residue on the floor that El Halcón claims he was lying on. Officer Pulaski walked the grid there and took samples. I know the adhesive property of the chlorine ingredient of that particular cleanser. If El Halcón was in the bathroom, matching molecules would have shown up on his clothing or shoes. There were none.”

  Bishop’s eyes slipped toward Fallow, who, as lead investigator, should have made this discovery himself. The agent’s face remained utterly expressionless.

  “As for proving he fired the gun at the officers, true, El Halcón’s fingerprints weren’t on the weapon. But your contention is that El Halcón unbuttoned his shirt cuff and pulled the sleeve down and held the gun that way? That explains the absence of prints on the gun but the presence of gunshot residue.”

  Bishop nodded. “Theory, yes. But I’m hoping the jury will infer that that’s how he held the gun when he was shooting.”

  Rhyme stifled a scowl. “They don’t need to infer it. I proved he was holding the gun in his sleeve.”

  Bishop blinked. “How?”

  “The gun was a Glock twenty-two, firing Luger nine-millimeter rounds. The impulse recoil velocity would be seventeen point five five feet per second and the recoil energy would be six point eight four foot-pounds. That’s plenty of power to compress the fibers in the loose-knit cotton shirt El Halcón was wearing. The lab took microscopic pictures to show visual traces of the gunshot residue. I just looked over them and saw what the recoil had done to the fibers. Only shooting a firearm would create that compression pattern. It’s all in the memo I wrote. The jury will have to infer that it was the bullet El Halcón fired that hit Barry, but that’s a logical conclusion, since the timing strongly suggests that Cody was dead by the time Barry was shot.”

  Bishop was momentarily speechless.

  “I, well, good, Lincoln. Thank you.” Then he frowned. “But why didn’t you tell me ahead of time?”

  “What if there was a grain of truth to their claim?” Rhyme shot back. “What if somebody had tainted the evidence? If so, I was going to find out who and how bad it was and let you know. Or, frankly, if you’d been the one who’d done the tainting, I would have called the attorney general in Washington.”

  Drawing a smile from Sellitto.

  “So you pretended to sign on to help El Halcón to shore up our case?”

  “Not really. That was just serendipitous. Obviously there was another reason.”

  “Which was?”

  “To find Mr. X, of course.” Rhyme scowled. “At which I wasn’t very successful.”

  “Mr. X?” Bishop squinted. His lips tightened for a moment. “Oh. You mean El Halcón’s U.S. partner?”

  Obviously…

  “He might not have been at the shoot-out but he’s behind the whole operation.”

  Fallow nodded. “We’re sure his company owns the warehouse complex, but we couldn’t trace it.”

  “And he’s as responsible for Barry Sales’s injury as El Halcón. But I couldn’t find any connection.”

  Bishop sighed. The frustration was evident in his face as he said, “We’ve done everything. We’ve looked everywhere. Every document, followed every lead. Nothing.”

  Fallow added, “CIs, surveillance. I even called the CIA and NSA about overseas communications. Whoever this guy is, he’s a ghost.”

  Rhyme said, “I hoped there’d be some bit of evidence, some reference in the notes that led me to the U.S. partner.” A shrug. “But nothing.”

  “Well, you nailed down the case against El Halcón, Lincoln. Thank you for that.”

  Bishop gave what Rhyme supposed was an uncharacteristic smile. He said, “So how’re you going to handle the money, fee he paid you?”

  Rhyme said, “Oh, I put it in an irrevocable trust for Barry. Anonymous. He won’t know who it came from.”

  Sellitto laughed. “Don’t you think Carreras-López ain’t gonna be too happy about that? Whatta you think he’s going to do?”

  Rhyme shrugged. “He’s a lawyer. Let him sue me.”

  Bishop nodded to Fallow and glanced at Pulaski’s wrists. The agent uncuffed him and, without saying anything further, the foursome left.

  Rhyme watched them leave. Pulaski or Cooper said something. He didn’t hear. He was preoccupied with a single thought. An image, actually. Of Barry Sales, his friend.

  He thought once more about the word he’d uttered when Carreras-López had first come to him, a word that the defense lawyer undoubtedly took in a very different context from that which Rhyme had had in mind when he uttered it: Justice.

  Rhyme glanced toward Sachs, who was still avoiding his eyes. Then he heard her phone hum.

  She glanced at it. “Edward Ackroyd.” She answered and had a brief conversation. He could tell from the way her eyes narrowed—just slightly—that the news was important.

  When she disconnected, she said, “That dealer? The one who put Edward onto Shapiro? He’s agreed to talk to us. But only plainclothes, no uniforms. He’s worried about customers seeing cops. Edward suggested me and he agreed.”

  Then she walked to Rhyme and bent close. Only he could hear her say, “Not completely forthcoming, hm?”

  She’d be referring to the clandestine operation involving El Halcón’s lawyer. Reflecting on it, he wasn’t in fact sure why he hadn’t said anything. Maybe he wanted to keep her at arms’ length in case something went south. Condescending of him, he now understood.

  His lips grew taut. He held her eye. “No. I wasn’t. I should’ve been.”

  She smiled. “I mean both of us. I didn’t tell you about what happened at the drilling site. You didn’t tell me about your little investigation.”

  He said, “After all these years, we’re still kind of new to it, Sachs. I won’t make that mistake again.”

  “I won’t either.” She kissed him hard and then headed for the door. “I’ll call in from downtown.”

  Chapter 54

  Amelia Sachs felt every cobblestone in her back as the old Ford rocked over the worn streets of the Lower East Side. The fall at the construction site—the initial tumble onto the plank, not the cushioning, though horrifying, mud—had twisted her spine in some elaborate way.

  Another thud.

  Ah, that one hurt bad.

  There was some asphalt but a lot of stone, brick and road repair steel plates.

  The Torino Cobra is a car made for smooth.

  Sachs had always had a soft spot in her heart for the neighborhood—abbreviated by some as the LES, which she could never accept. Far too precious and hipster a moniker, the antithesis of the place. It had a more colorful and varied history than any other part of Manhattan: In the late nineteenth century, the place became the home of Germans, Russians, Poles, Ukrainians and other European immigrants. The teeming neighborhood, filled with dark and claustrophobic tenements and chaotic pushcart-cluttered streets, gave birth to entertainers like James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and the Gershwins. Film companies like Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and 20th Century Fox could trace their ancestry to t
he Lower East Side.

  The neighborhood became the first truly integrated enclave in New York City after the Second World War, when black and Puerto Rican families joined the white longtimers and everyone lived in relative harmony.

  The Lower East Side was also the site of the city’s worst tragedy until September 11. The General Slocum, a ship chartered to take thirteen hundred German Americans to a church event, caught fire in the East River. More than a thousand passengers perished, and the sorrow that spread like plague through the community spawned a migration. Virtually every resident of Little Germany on the Lower East Side moved several miles north and resettled in Yorkville.

  Discovery Channel stuff aside, Amelia Sachs had a special connection with the area. It was here, many years ago, that she had made her first felony bust—stopping an armed robbery in progress while off duty. She’d been on a Sunday brunch date, and she and—what was his name? Fred. No, Frank. She and Frank were walking back from a numbingly massive meal at Katz’s Deli when her companion had stopped abruptly. He’d pointed with an uneasy finger. “Hey. Does that guy, see him? Does he have a gun?”

  Then Sachs’s doggy bag was tumbling to the sidewalk, her Glock was in her hand and Frank was being shoved unceremoniously to safety behind a Dumpster. She charged forward, crying to passersby, “Get down, get down, police!” Then things turned ugly. She traded a few rounds with the crackhead, who’d had the doubly bad judgment to stick up a wholesale lamp store (a window sign read, Credit Cards Only) and to point his weapon her way. NYPD procedure dictated that if an officer shoots, he or she should shoot to kill, but Sachs hadn’t been prepared to make an existential decision under those circumstances. She’d sent a slug into his hand, removing the weapon and any future threat. An easy shot for her and, far better, less paperwork than with a fatality. Chatting manically the entire time, Frank had walked her to the subway and never asked her out again.

  She now turned off this very same High Noon street—the Bowery—and made her way through the labyrinth until she came to a shadowy canyon. Those same tenements that had survived for 150 years still rose five stories toward the rectangle of, today, gray sky. The tall buildings bristled with fire escapes. One featured a real, old-fashioned laundry line, on which ghosts of shirts and jeans and skirts fluttered. Maybe to lessen, in a small, small way, a carbon footprint.