The Cutting Edge

by Jeffery Deaver

  She heard voices calling from the open window, behind her. Ignored them.

  No backing out now.

  Blue Bloods…

  She swung the light from right to left and, yes! There it was! A small white plastic box taped to the gas line. Beneath it a half-inch hole gaped and gas hissed out.

  She lunged forward, scrabbling over the mountain of furniture and boxes. She had no real plan, other than to rip the box from the line. Maybe then spit on the leads. Pull the battery out, if there was a battery. She’d sprint for the window, throw it out.

  Now with the images of different faces in her head—her late husband and the most recent addition: twin grandsons—Carmella Romero ripped the device from the line and sprinted toward the stairway.

  Only seconds later, as she was looking down at the device, noting it had no switch, it uttered a snap, almost silent, and a flash of blue flame filled her vision.

  Chapter 66

  Amelia Sachs sped the Torino Cobra around the corner to Front Street.

  She braked to a stop quickly, as the entire avenue was packed with fire and other emergency vehicles.

  Climbing out, she hurried to the ambulance where a solid woman, Latina, in a uniform, sat on a gurney.

  “Agent Romero?” Sachs asked.

  The woman, being tended by a male NYC medical technician, squinted.

  “Yes?”

  Sachs identified herself and asked, “How are you?”

  Traffic Enforcement Agent Carmella Romero, in turn, asked the medical tech, “How am I?”

  The wiry man, name of Spiros, said, “Oh, fundamentally fine. The eyebrows? Well, you’re gonna need makeup. And a bit of heat rash, you could call it. Bactine. But that’s all you need. Hands? Well, that’s another matter. Nothing serious and you won’t feel it yet—I’ve got it numbed. You were a man, you’d lose some or all of the hair and the smell’d be with you for a bit. Look at me. Ape hair. What my wife says.”

  Romero turned to Sachs. “I guess that’s how I am.”

  Spiros said, “But consider yourself lucky.”

  “I do, sir.”

  Though, Sachs had learned, there hadn’t been much luck involved. When the lehabah detonated, the building, along with the dozen people still inside, had been saved by Romero. She’d gotten the device away from the basement, which was filled with gas, and into the stairway before it blew. The fiery blast that injured her was from the initiator, a mechanical sparking device, igniting the remaining chemical that was meant to melt the gas line. It was highly flammable. She was far enough away so that the gas in the basement had not blown.

  “I’ve told your supervisor, Agent Romero. There’ll be a citation.”

  She blinked, apparently dismayed.

  A double-take. Then Sachs smiled. “Oh, no, not your kind of citation. Parking. I mean, you’ll be decorated. It’ll come from the commissioner himself.”

  Her eyes lit up at this and it seemed that here was some kind of an inside joke about the NYPD commissioner of police that Sachs wasn’t getting.

  The crime scene bus pulled up and Sachs rose—a bit stiffly.

  She waved to the van and the driver, an Asian American evidence collection tech Sachs had worked with before, nodded to her and drove close.

  “Oh, Detective?”

  She turned to Romero.

  “Had a little problem,” the traffic enforcement agent said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Only way to get the people’s attention? I had to knee a few cars. Get the alarms going.”

  “That was smart.”

  “I suppose. But I kicked this Lexus. And the owner, he’s not too happy about it. He’s going to sue me. He said personally. Should I get myself a lawyer? Can he do that?”

  “Where is he?”

  Romero pointed to a man in his thirties, in a business suit, cropped Wall Street hair and round glasses. His long face had a smirky, put-upon smile and he seemed to be delivering a condescending lecture to a patrol officer, stabbing a finger toward the uniform’s chest.

  Amelia Sachs smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ll go have a talk with him.”

  “Are you sure, Detective?”

  “Oh, it’ll be my pleasure.”

  * * *

  Vimal Lahori was thinking that the old-time car he was riding in gave off a much more powerful scent of gasoline and exhaust and oil than modern vehicles. Of course, these aromas might have been due to the fact that it was being driven flat-out by a wild woman.

  “You all right?” Detective Sachs asked him.

  “I’m. Well. Yes.” He gripped the seat belt of the old-time car in one hand and the armrest in the other.

  She smiled and slowed a bit.

  “Force of habit,” she muttered.

  After she had saved his life and shot that terrible man, the one who had killed Mr. Patel, Detective Sachs had told him that they’d found a phone on the body. It was suspicious. It had been used to call Russia after the Russian killer had died. Was there another person involved? She and Mr. Rhyme had not thought so, but better to be smart, so Vimal had stayed at the precinct house in Brooklyn until some computer expert at the NYPD found that the phone was a trick, to divert suspicion away from Andrew Krueger. Vimal was free to go and he had asked if Detective Sachs could drive him home.

  She’d said she’d be delighted to.

  She now made the turn and pulled up in front of the young man’s house in Queens. Even before he climbed out, the front door of the house flew open and his mother and Sunny were hurrying through the misty day toward him.

  He said to the detective, “Can you wait here for a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  He met the family halfway up the walk and they embraced. The brothers awkwardly at first, then Vimal ruffled Sunny’s hair and they started pushing and wrestling, laughing hard.

  “You aren’t hurt?” his mother asked, looking him over with the eye of a diagnostician.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Dude, another gunfight? You’re like dangerous to be around. It was on the news.”

  No more than ten minutes after Detective Sachs had shot the killer, a dozen news vans had appeared, magically, at the dumping site.

  Sunny said, “Kakima called—all the way from the NCR! You were on the news over there!”

  The National Capital Region—New Delhi. Which meant tens of millions of people might’ve seen him.

  Auntie was seventy-eight years old and spent more time online than any teenager Vimal knew.

  His mother hugged him once more and walked to the maroon Ford. She bent down and spoke with Detective Sachs, undoubtedly thanking her for saving her son’s life.

  Sunny was asking if he’d seen the man get shot. Then “Was it right in front of you?”

  “Later, man. I’ve got to get something in the house.”

  Vimal noticed the family car was gone. His father would be elsewhere. Thank goodness. He had no interest in seeing the man. Now. Or ever.

  He walked inside and down to the studio. He noted that the bars had been replaced, which made sense, since this was New York City, and one could never have too much security. But the locks and hasps had been removed from the door, as had the fixture for the iron bar. The food and cartons of beverages were gone.

  The studio was no longer Alcatraz.

  Vimal walked to the closet and found what he sought, wrapped it in a sheet of newspaper. And returned to the front yard.

  He told his mother and brother that he’d be inside in a moment and walked to the passenger side of the detective’s car and sat back in the passenger seat. “I’ve got something for you. And that man you work with, Mr. Rhyme.”

  “Vimal. You don’t need to do that.”

  “No. I want to. One of my sculptures.”

  He unwrapped the object and set it on the dashboard. It was the four-sided pyramid he’d carved last year and been thinking of in the moments before he’d believed he was going to die. The piece was seven inches
high and the base seven inches, as well. Sachs leaned forward and looked at it, then stroked the dark-green granite sides. “Smooth.”

  “Yes. Smooth. And straight.”

  “They are.”

  Michelangelo believed you needed to master the basic inanimate shapes before you could render a living form in stone.

  Vimal said, “It’s inspired by diamonds. Most diamonds are found in nature as octahedrons. Two pyramids joined at the base.”

  She said, “Then they’re cleaved into two pieces for cutting. Usually for round brilliants.”

  He laughed. “Ah, you’ve had quite the education about our business.” He too leaned forward and touched it with a finger. “It won first prize at a juried arts competition at Brooklyn last year, first at a competition in Manhattan and second in the New England Sculpting Show.”

  Which, he reflected, his father had not allowed him to enter. A friend had entered it for him.

  “First prize,” she said, clearly trying to sound impressed—while studying the mundane geometric shape.

  Vimal said playfully, “Not bad for a paperweight, hm?”

  Looking at him with a wry smile, Sachs said, “There’s more to it, I’ve got a feeling. Do I push a secret button and it opens up?”

  “Not quite but you’re close. Look at the underside.”

  She lifted the sculpture and turned it over. She gasped. Inside was a carved-out impression of a human heart—not a Hallmark card version but an anatomically correct heart, with exact reproductions of veins and arteries and chambers.

  It had taken eighteen months to craft the piece, working with the smallest of tools. It was, you might say, a negative sculpture: the empty space, not the stone, was the organ.

  How did I do, Signore Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni?

  “It’s called Hidden.

  “Vimal, I don’t know what to say. It’s astonishing. Your talent…” She set it back on the dash then leaned forward and hugged him. His face burned with a blush and he awkwardly pressed his palms into her back.

  Then he climbed out of the car and walked back to the house, where some, though not all, of his family waited.

  Chapter 67

  At 9 p.m. Lincoln Rhyme decided: Time for a drink.

  With an unsteady but determined hand, he poured several fingers of Glenmorangie scotch, the bourbon cask variety, into a Waterford glass, which contained a few drops of water. This, he believed, opened up the whisky.

  The Waterford represented a victory for him. Though he’d never in his life been inclined to luxurious items like this, he’d been determined to graduate from unbreakable plastic tumblers—which he, as a quad, had used for years—to something elegant. Had his grip failed, $137 would have shattered on the floor.

  But he’d mastered the vessel. And was convinced, without objective proof, that the whisky tasted better from crystal.

  Sachs was upstairs, showering. Thom was in the kitchen, whipping up something for dinner. Rhyme deduced it involved garlic and some licorice-oriented herb or spice. Perhaps fennel. No gourmand, nor even much of a diner, Rhyme nonetheless found it helpful to know foods. A few years ago he’d run up against a hired killer whose hobby was cooking, and ingredients for various dishes provided important clues in his capture. (The killer’s avocation was not only a source of great pleasure for him but also gave him the chance to put his extremely expensive—and sharp—knives to work on the job. Witnesses tended to tell everything he wanted to know in the face of a razor-sharp Japanese filleting knife.)

  Heavy glass in one hand, Rhyme used a finger of his other to maneuver to the front of the Unsub 47 evidence charts.

  He was certainly grateful that both Rostov and Krueger were out of the picture and that none of the officers running the case had been injured seriously. The mayor had called to express his thanks. Dwyer, the head of the geothermal operation, had too. But the case wasn’t completely over, from his perspective. There were some loose ends. For instance: the disappearance of the Northeast Geo worker who’d helped Krueger plant the C4 charges in the drilling shafts. He was surely dead but Rhyme would devote whatever time and effort were necessary to locating the body, for the sake of his family.

  Justice…

  The South African Police were apparently more than eager to pursue the employees in Krueger’s “security” company. They rounded up some lower-level administrative people and located Terrance DeVoer and his wife, in Lesotho, the landlocked country surrounded by South Africa. Not a wise choice of escape route for a fugitive, considering he’d be on airline watchlists and, if he wished to drive, he would have to return to the very country that had warrants out for his arrest.

  DeVoer would be handed over to the SAP in a day or so.

  As to the diamond mines behind the plot, the NYPD foreign liaison division and the FBI, working with State, had contacted them both. Dobprom hadn’t replied and Rhyme had been told not to expect a response. The Guatemalan mine that had hired Krueger, New World Mining, had at least returned phone calls but vehemently denied any involvement in the incident.

  This portion—the Russian and Central American legs—of the investigation had stalled.

  Rhyme was, however, determined to unstall it.

  Another, more pressing, issue was whether there was in fact another device. Just because three kilos of C4 had been delivered didn’t mean there were only three bombs in the Northeast Geo shafts. Maybe Krueger had divided the plastic into four or five lumps and planted other gas line bombs. The police were still canvassing possible targets along the fault line in the vicinity of Northeast Geo, and FDNY was still staged in the area, awaiting another tremor, which would signal possible fires. The Bomb Squad and ESU, working with Northeast Geo, were finally beginning their careful excavation of the shafts.

  Loose ends.

  Now, as he looked up at the charts, yet one more question arose in his thoughts, and he instructed the phone to make a call.

  “Hey, Linc. What’s up?” Lon Sellitto sounded impatient.

  “Just some follow-up on the case. When you came to see me the other day about that gas device that didn’t go off, the one in that woman’s basement? Claire Porter?”

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  “Had you been to the scene before you came over here? Think carefully. It’s important.”

  “What’s to think? The answer is no. I was downtown and somebody called me. I never was at the scene. Why?”

  “Loose ends.”

  “Whatever. Anything else? We’re watching Walking Dead.”

  “What?”

  “Night, Linc.”

  Other questions floated to the surface.

  But then he turned to the entryway to the parlor and the idea of trying to answer them was put on hold momentarily, while he focused on the immediate item on the agenda for this evening.

  Dinner with his bride.

  Amelia Sachs was walking into the room now. She was wearing a long, green dress, low-cut and sleeveless.

  “You look beautiful,” he said.

  She smiled. Then, it seemed, she couldn’t help but reply with “And you look thoughtful.”

  “Nothing that can’t wait for a bit. Thom! Time for dinner! Could we get the wine open, please and thank you?”

  His eyes drifted back to Sachs. He really did like that dress.

  Wednesday, March 17

  V

  Brillianteering

  Chapter 68

  As placid as ever, the Mexican attorney Antonio Carreras-López tugged at his vest and looked over at his client, sitting opposite him.

  Eduardo Capilla—El Halcón, the Hawk—was the least avian-looking criminal who ever existed. (A more appropriate nickname for him would be La Tortuga.) Fat, balding, squint-eyed, with a broad, upturned nose. Still, he was one of the most dangerous men on earth. His hands and feet were shackled, and those shackles affixed to steel rings in the floor.

  The interview room was in the federal courthouse for the Eastern Dist
rict of New York, Cadman Plaza. The building was modern and stylish and only a little scuffed. Plenty of suspects from mean streets had passed through here but, as their offenses were federal, they tended to scrub up better than their counterparts in state court.

  Both men here were in suits—even the defendant, as was customary, since a prisoner in a jumpsuit might prejudice the jury to think guilt and taint the Sixth Amendment’s right to a fair and impartial trial.

  The U.S. Constitution, the Mexican lawyer had reflected on occasion, was just so quaint, so charming…

  Outside the room were two guards—both dedicated to making sure El Halcón didn’t fly the coop, a witticism that Carreras-López couldn’t resist.

  Carreras-López’s pen made whispering noises on the yellow pad before him. One would think that the notes he was jotting had to do with the appalling information that federal prosecutor Henry Bishop had just presented: that a new analysis of the evidence had proven, to a certainty, that his client was not hiding in the bathroom at the time of the shoot-out but was, in fact, armed and firing at the police.

  That son of a bitch, Lincoln Rhyme, had set him up.

  This was, of course, an irony in itself, because Carreras-López had himself contacted Rhyme with the express purpose of setting him up. The lawyer had come up with the absurd argument about tainted evidence solely to give himself a chance to meet Rhyme and look into to his eyes. Carreras-López was a master of assessing men, and could tell in an instant if Rhyme suspected the plot had nothing to do with any diamond lodes in Brooklyn, but was about something else altogether, directly involving El Halcón. But no, the criminalist might be brilliant at analyzing fingerprints and trace evidence, but he was completely oblivious about what was really going on.

  Which was that within the hour, El Halcón would be free. The plan to break him out of the courthouse here and spirit him away to a compound in Venezuela was proceeding perfectly.

  There is a rumor that there is no extradition treaty between the United States and that troubled South American nation. That’s not correct. The 1922 treaty between the two nations remains in effect, though the extraditable offenses are a bit bizarre—bigamy, for instance. There are rules about shipping fugitive murderers and drug dealers back to the U.S. but, of course, they are enforced only if the foreign authorities want to enforce them. And, depending on where the decimal point falls, the Venezuelans’ motivation for enforcement can be a bit limp.