The Cutting Edge

by Jeffery Deaver

  The street was mostly residential, but there were some ground-floor retail stores. A dry cleaner. A “vintage” (that is, used) clothing shop. A secondhand bookstore, specializing largely in the occult.

  And Blaustein’s Jewelry.

  She parked half on the sidewalk, tossed the NYPD placard on the dash and climbed out. The cool day kept people home and the absence of much to do on this street kept the sightseers elsewhere. The sidewalk was deserted.

  She walked to the front of the store. There was a Closed sign on the door, but Edward Ackroyd had told her that Abe Blaustein was expecting her. She peered inside. The showroom, filled with display cases, was empty and dark but there was a light in the back and she saw some motion there. A man in a dusty black suit and wearing a yarmulke glanced up and waved her in.

  The door wasn’t locked and she pushed inside.

  Sachs got no more than three feet. She tripped over something she hadn’t seen and fell forward, landing hard on the old, oak floor with a grunt of pain.

  Just as she was noting with shock the thick wire strung at ankle level, the man charged forward and dropped onto her back, his knee knocking the air from her lungs, filling her with nausea. Pain consumed her and she cried out. The yarmulke was gone and he’d donned the familiar ski mask.

  As she reached for her weapon, he fished it from her holster and pocketed it, along with her phone. His hands were encased in cloth gloves. Then he snapped her own cuffs around her wrists, behind her. And, unnecessarily, slammed a fist into her lower back. She cried out as a new agony radiated through her body, next door to the pain from the fall against the plank at the jobsite.

  The man paused, as he had a coughing fit. She felt his breath and spittle on her neck. The smell was of liquor and garlic and copious, sweet aftershave.

  She was aware of the assailant leaning close. She tensed, waiting for his fist again. But, no, this was weird. He was only rubbing the third finger of her left hand, as if he was studying her wedding or engagement ring.

  She began, “People know I’m here. This is a bad idea—”

  “Shhh, little kuritsa,” came the Russian-accented voice. “Shhh.”

  She then was half carried, half dragged into the back of the shop. He deposited her hard on the carpeted floor of the office, right next to the still, pale body of a man, surely Abraham Blaustein, the owner. From his pocket, the Russian extracted a utility knife and worked the thumb button, to slide out a shiny razor blade.

  And she recalled what Lincoln Rhyme had said.

  I won’t make that mistake again…

  The last words he would ever speak to her.

  Chapter 55

  Poor Abe,” the Russian was muttering.

  He was looking through her wallet, her shoulder bag, clumsily because of the gloves. None of the contents seemed to interest him. He tossed everything aside.

  “Poor kuritsa. Abe-ra-ham. Poor Jew. Did stupid things, talking about Ezekiel Shapiro and me.” He clicked his tongue. “I saw him talking to asshole insurance man. Was stupid, don’t you think he was stupid?”

  He crouched beside her. “Now, now. I am needing some things. I need to know where to find boy, Vimal? You know him, yes, you do. And insurance man. Abraham told me—after we play a few games.” A nod at the knife. “He told me he was talking to this Edward. You tell me where Vimal and this Edward’s last name and where to find them…and all good. All good for you.”

  A trap, of course. The unsub had forced Blaustein to call Ackroyd and arrange a meeting with the police. But not just anyone. The unsub wanted her. She knew where Vimal Lahori was.

  The pain assaulted from all directions, her ribs, her head—and her wrists. She realized she’d never been cuffed before and the steel was tight against bone and skin. Sachs was helpless. Still stunned and in searing pain from the crippling drop of his knee into her back. It had emptied her lungs. She still was struggling for breath.

  Fainting…

  No, can’t faint.

  Not acceptable.

  He had, it seemed, realized just then that he was still in disguise. He brusquely pulled Blaustein’s jacket off and tossed it aside.

  “Jew jacket.” He coughed briefly. Wiped his mouth and looked at the napkin. “Good, good. All good.”

  She looked past the disgust and tried to analyze her situation. She could smell liquor but he didn’t seem drunk. Not drunk enough to be careless. How much time did she need to buy? Long enough for Rhyme to call her phone to ask what she had found? Without an answer, he’d get uniforms here in three or four minutes. The precinct wasn’t that far away.

  But that would be a very long three or four minutes.

  He leaned close. “Now, you…”

  He looked again at her ID.

  “You, Policewoman A-melia. You are helpful girl. You can help me. Good for you. You help me and you go free.”

  “What’s your name?” she ventured.

  “Shhh, kuritsa.”

  “There’s another gas bomb, we know. Maybe more. Tell me where they are.”

  This gave him pause. His blue eyes kept slipping in and out of focus. Not from drugs, though. His mind was manic. Yes, he was a mercenary and a hired killer. But the Promisor and his crazy mission were not complete fictions. Her initial diagnosis held.

  He’s just plain crazy…

  She continued, “We’ll work with the DA. And the State Department. We’ll cut you some kind of deal.”

  “State Department. Why, look at you! A little trussed-up kuritsa, ready for the pot, and still scratching at chickenfeed, looking for helpful things. Am I a national? Am I a Russki? What does Homeland Security know about me? Clever. Now, I like you, kuritsa. Things won’t go painful, you help me.”

  With her breath coming more consistently now, she was aware that the pain from the fall and his blows was dissolving.

  Thinking: Steady. A plan. Have to buy time.

  Time…

  “We have information about you. You’re from Moscow. The Dobyns passport. The others, from Barcelona and Dubai.”

  He froze. It was as if he’d been slapped.

  She said evenly, “It’s only a question of time till they find you. Your description, it’s gone to a watchlist. You’ll never get out of the country.”

  He recovered, nodding broadly. “Yes, yes, but maybe I have own way of getting out. Or maybe I stay in nice country here and drive for Uber! Now my question. There is boy I need to find. And insurance asshole. Edward. You will tell me.”

  “We can work with—”

  He rose suddenly, his eyes completely mad. He drew his foot back and swung an oxford shoe hard into her side. The kick didn’t break a rib but it reignited the pain on all fronts. She cried out once more and tears flowed. He once again crouched near and lowered his lips to her ear. When he spoke his voice was raw with anger. “No talk but to answer question.”

  She fell silent.

  “Okay?”

  She nodded.

  Nothing more to do. Sachs closed her eyes. Her thought was: At least he’s leaving a trove of evidence.

  Amelia Sachs knew she was going to die.

  She thought first of her father, Herman Sachs, a decorated NYPD officer.

  Then of Rhyme, naturally. Their lives had coursed parallel for so many years.

  I won’t make that mistake again…

  Then of her mother, of Pam—the young woman whose life she’d saved and who had become something of a daughter to her. Presently studying in San Francisco.

  The Russian now rolled her completely facedown, kicked her feet apart. Her cheek rubbed against the gritty floor. He gripped her cuffed left hand, pulled it up, agonizingly, and again caressed her ring finger. He was apparently examining the blue diamond in the engagement ring Rhyme had bought her.

  Could she bargain his interest into some time? She began to speak. “Listen to—”

  “Shh, shh. What I tell you?” He rubbed the blade against her ring finger. “Okay, kuritsa. Now. What I am s
aying is question. That boy. That Vimal boy. Stupid little kuritsa. I need to talk to him. Have little talk. You need tell me where he is. And insurance man.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “I won’t hurt him. No, no! Don’t want to hurt him. Just talk. Chat.”

  “Surrender now. It’ll be a lot better for you.”

  He laughed. “You are some other thing else! Now Vimal. Tell me how I pay visit.”

  With one hand he pulled her ring finger taut, moved the razor knife closer yet, she could feel.

  She struggled, with all her strength, to keep her fingers curled but he was far too strong. He straddled her, pressed all his weight down on her hips. She was frozen in place.

  A sting on her finger.

  Jesus, he’s cutting it off! He’s going to cut it off!

  She seated her teeth, thinking, How’s this for irony? He’s about to remove my left ring finger—the same one that, after Lincoln’s accident, had been the only digit of his that continued to function.

  “Vimal?”

  “No.”

  She felt him tense as he was about to start cutting.

  Sachs inhaled. Squeezed her eyes shut. How bad would the pain be?

  Then the Russian stiffened. His grip relaxed. He seemed to be looking up. He began to stand, the knife rising from her finger. He gasped.

  The air pressure from the gunshot, painfully close, slapped her body. The Russian dropped immediately, falling backward onto her legs.

  Then the man was being hauled off her and she was rolling onto her back, looking up into the horrified face of Edward Ackroyd. He stared at his own hand, holding a Glock. Not hers. He dropped the gun on the desk as if it were red-hot and lifted her away from the Russian’s body.

  His lips were moving. She wondered for a moment why he’d lost his voice. Then realized that she had been temporarily deafened by the shot.

  He was, she guessed, asking if she was all right.

  So this was the question she answered, with “Yes, yes, okay.”

  Though his hearing too was useless and he responded, manically, with words that seemed to be, “What, what, what?”

  Chapter 56

  Outside the jewelry store, in the shadows of buildings erected two centuries past, Sachs sat on the ledge of the ambulance. She’d refused a gurney.

  The medical tech announced that there was no serious harm; she had suffered no broken ribs—from the Russian’s knee or his shoe—but there would be contusions. A slight cut from the knife resided at the base of the fourth metacarpal of her left hand—the ring finger—where the amputation had been about to commence. A bit of Betadine and a bandage were the only fixes needed.

  Edward Ackroyd stood beside her, subdued. His faint smile was back but was understandably hollow. Which also described his hazel eyes. He explained that he’d decided to come to the dealer’s to meet with her and Abraham Blaustein to see if he could help. He peered in and couldn’t see anyone so he’d entered. Then to his shock he’d seen a man straddling her and bending forward with a razor knife. He had noted too a pistol in the pocket of a black jacket on the counter—the Russian’s; he’d taken it off to dress in Blaustein’s garment.

  When the man saw him and rose, lifting the knife, he pulled the trigger.

  “I didn’t think. I just shot. That’s all. I just…All those years on the Metropolitan Police. Never fired a gun. Never carried a gun.” His shoulders were slumped. Manically, he flicked a forefinger against a thumb.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  Though she knew it wasn’t. The first one stayed with you. Forever. However necessary, however instinctive, that first fatal shot was etched indelibly into your mind and heart and soul.

  Several times Ackroyd had asked the medical crew and the responding officers if the Russian was in fact dead, clearly hoping he’d just wounded the man. One look at the result of the hollow-point slug, though, left no doubt.

  Sachs said, “Edward, thank you.” An inadequate expression, of course. But what possibly would suffice?

  Sachs was, however, of mixed feelings about the incident. Her digits were intact, her life was spared. But not only had Unsub 47 died but so had the easiest—and perhaps only—chance to find out where the last gas bomb devices had been planted. As the medical examiner tour doctor was finishing the preliminary examination, Sachs dressed in CSU overalls and bent to the corpse to see what, in death, it might tell her.

  * * *

  “Know this is a hassle, sir. But, between you and I, I wouldn’t worry about it overly.”

  Andrew Krueger nodded and tried to bring a bit of uncertain concern to the equation. “I…just don’t know what to say.”

  The detective was a large African American, driving his unmarked police car to a precinct house that he had assured Krueger was not too far away. Krueger was in the front seat of the Chrysler. He wasn’t under arrest. The detective himself had made the determination that the shooting was justified and he would “go to bat for you, Mr. Ackroyd.”

  Still, there were formalities. He would have to make a statement, there’d be an investigation, and all the findings would go to an assistant district attorney, who would make the final determination about his fate.

  “One chance in a million it’ll become a case. I’d bet my pension not. No ADA’s going to screw up his reputation by bringing a charge on this one. Besides, you’ve got a ringer.”

  “A what?”

  “Oh, means like a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  Krueger still didn’t get it. “Sorry?”

  “Don’t you have Monopoly in England?”

  “Unfair business arrangements?”

  The detective seemed amused. “Never mind. Just that Amelia—Detective Sachs—you saving her hide? She’s a big deal in the department. That’ll count for more than beans.”

  They drove in silence for a time.

  He continued, “Happened to me. I’ve done it. Once. Twenty-four years on the force I never fired my weapon. Then, just eighteen months ago…” His voice faded away. “Domestic call. The guy was nuts, you know, off his meds. He was going to shoot his mother, and my partner and me were talking him down. But then he swung the weapon on Jerry. No choice.” A pause for the length of one block. “It wasn’t loaded. His weapon. But…well, you’ll get over it. I did.”

  Or not.

  “Thanks for that,” Krueger said with as much sincerity as he could dredge up. “I’m not sure that I’ll ever be the same.”

  This, from a man who had murdered at least thirteen people—though only three with firearms.

  He was recalling Rostov’s expression when he’d seen the gun pointed at his head. Shock, then an instant of understanding, knowing that he’d been set up. Krueger had fired fast, before the Russian could call out his name and tip Sachs off that they knew each other. Aiming right at the temple.

  Vladimir Rostov’s death had been inevitable.

  And planned out for some time. Krueger had decided to kill him as soon as he’d figured out that the Russian had hacked his phone and was in New York, playing the role of the “Promisor.” He’d known by then that Rhyme and Amelia were brilliant and he needed to give them both a mastermind—the fanatical Ezekiel Shapiro—and his hired-gun eco-terrorist, Vladimir Rostov.

  Krueger’s strategy was to walk into Blaustein’s and kill Rostov with Krueger’s own unregistered Glock—the one that he’d used to shoot at Vimal and to kill Saul Weintraub. In the confusion after the shooting at Blaustein’s, he’d planted 9mm rounds in Rostov’s jacket to better link the man to the shootings at Patel’s and Weintraub’s. Krueger had also pocketed Rostov’s mobile and the keys to his motel and the Toyota.

  The minute Krueger’s interview with the police was done, which he didn’t think would take very long, he would hurry to Rostov’s room, scrub it of evidence, then ditch the Russian’s burner phones, computer and car.

  The police car now arrived at the precinct house and Krueger climbed out. The detective d
irected him toward the front door.

  “This way, Mr. Ackroyd. Now, just to let you know. You’re not being arrested. No fingerprinting or pictures. Any of that. It’ll just be an interview is all.”

  “Thanks, Officer. I truly appreciate your words of reassurance. What happened, well, it was pretty upsetting.” He thought about wiping faux tears from his eyes but decided that would be out of character.

  Chapter 57

  Amelia Sachs returned to Rhyme’s town house with several things.

  The first was a collection of evidence from Vladimir Rostov’s hotel in Brighton Beach and the dealer’s store where she’d nearly lost a finger to the crazy Russian’s knife.

  The second was a New York state mining inspector.

  Rhyme glanced toward the man they’d spoken to before, Don McEllis, without much interest and reseated his gaze on the evidence cartons that Sachs was carting in. She noticed the direction of his eyes and said, “Not going to be easy, Rhyme.”

  Referring to their urgent mission: finding out where the next gas bombs had been set.

  “I’m hoping McEllis can help.”

  He was a slim, earnest-looking man—okay, “dowdy” came to mind—who was here, Sachs explained, to look over the maps and the details of the prior fires and see if he could help them narrow down the search for the devices.

  Sachs said, “I’m thinking that he’d plant them close to fault lines in the area, if he wanted the quakes to look authentic. If so, maybe Don can point them out.”

  The detective shrugged. He didn’t seem enthusiastic. His phone hummed. “City Hall. Jesus.” He took the call and stepped aside.

  McEllis asked to use one of the computers to load some geological maps of the area. Cooper directed him to one. He wanted to see too where the previous gas bombs had been set, and Sachs pushed toward him the whiteboard on which was taped a map of the city. The fires were marked in red and they made a rough ellipse around what was the epicenter: the geothermal drilling site near Cadman Plaza. McEllis called up the geological diagrams of the area and began poring over them.