Roadside Crosses: A Kathryn Dance Novel (56 page)

“A business district. He was trailed to a hotel, but he wasn’t staying there. It was for a meeting, Diaz’s men think. But by the time they’d set up surveillance he was gone. But all the law enforcement agencies and hotels have his picture now.” Dance added that Diaz’s boss, a very senior police official, would be taking over the investigation. “It’s encouraging that they’re taking it all pretty seriously.”

Yes, encouraging, Rhyme thought. But frustrating too. To be on the verge of finding the prey and yet have so little control over the case. . . . He found himself breathing more quickly. He was considering the last time he and the Watchmaker had been up against each other; Logan had outthought everybody. And easily killed the man he’d been hired to murder. Rhyme had had all the facts at hand to figure out what Logan was up to. Yet he’d misread the strategy completely.

“By the way,” he heard Sachs ask Kathryn Dance, “how was that romantic weekend away?” This had to do, it seemed, with Dance’s new love interest. The single mother of two had been a widow for several years.

“We had a great time,” the agent reported.

“Where did you go?”

Rhyme wondered why on earth Sachs was asking about Dance’s social life? She ignored his impatient glance.

“Santa Barbara. Stopped at Hearst Castle on the way. . . . Listen, I’m still waiting for you two to come out here. The children really want to meet you. Wes wrote
a paper about forensics for school and mentioned you, Lincoln. His teacher used to live in New York and had read all about you.”

“Yes, that’d be nice,” Rhyme said, thinking exclusively about Mexico City.

Sachs smiled at the impatience in his voice and told Dance they had to go.

After disconnecting, she wiped some sweat from Rhyme’s forehead—he hadn’t been aware of the moisture—and they sat silent for a moment, looking out the window at the blur of a peregrine falcon sweeping into view. It veered up to its nest on Rhyme’s second floor. Though not uncommon in major cities—plenty of fat, tasty pigeons for meals—these birds of prey usually nested higher. But for some reason several generations of the birds had called Rhyme’s town house home. He liked their presence. They were smart, fascinating to watch and were the perfect visitors, not demanding anything from him.

A male voice intruded. “Well, did you get him?”

“Who?” Rhyme snapped. “And how artful a verb is ‘get’?”

Thom Reston, Lincoln Rhyme’s caregiver, said, “The Watchmaker.”

“No,” grumbled Rhyme.

“But you’re close, aren’t you?” asked the trim man, wearing dark slacks, a businessman’s starched yellow shirt and a floral tie.

“Oh, close,” Rhyme muttered. “
Close
. That’s very helpful. Next time you’re being attacked by a mountain lion, Thom, how would you feel if the park ranger shot really
close
to it? As opposed to, oh, say, actually
hitting
it?”

“Aren’t mountain lions endangered?” Thom asked, not even bothering with an ironic inflection. He was impervious to Rhyme’s edge. He’d worked for the forensic detective for years, longer than many married couples had been together. And the aide was as seasoned as the toughest spouse.

“Ha. Very funny. Endangered.”

Sachs walked around behind Rhyme’s wheelchair and gripped his shoulders, massaged. Sachs was tall and in better shape than most NYPD detectives her age and, though arthritis often plagued her knees and lower extremities, her arms and hands were strong and largely pain-free.

They wore their work clothes: Rhyme was in black sweat pants and a knit shirt of dark green. Sachs had shed her navy blue jacket but was wearing matching slacks and a white cotton blouse, one button open at the collar, pearls present. Her Glock was high on her hip in a fast-draw polymer holster, and two magazines sat side by side in holsters of their own, along with a Taser.

Rhyme could feel the pulsing of her fingers; he had perfect sensation above his upper chest—the level where he’d sustained a nearly fatal spinal cord fracture some years ago, the fourth cervical vertebra. Although at one point he’d considered risky surgery to improve his condition, he’d opted for a different rehabilitative approach. Through an exhausting regimen of exercise and therapy he’d managed to regain some use of his fingers and hand. He could also use his left ring finger, which had for some reason remained intact after the subway beam broke his neck.

He now enjoyed
her
fingers digging into his flesh. It was as if the small percentage of remaining sensation in his body was enhanced. He glanced down at the useless legs. He closed his eyes.

Thom now looked him over carefully. “You all right, Lincoln?”

“All right? Aside from the fact that the perp I’ve been searching for for years slipped out of our grasp and is now hiding out in the second largest metropolitan area in this hemisphere, I’m just peachy.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. You’re not looking too good.”

“You’re right. Actually I need some medicine.”

“Medicine?”

“Whisky. I’d feel better with some whisky.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“Well, why don’t we try an experiment. Science. Cartesian. Rational. Who can argue with that? I know how I feel now. Then I’ll have some whisky and I’ll tell you how I feel after. I’ll report back to you.”

“No. It’s too early,” Thom said matter-of-factly.

“It’s afternoon.”

“By a few minutes.”

“Goddamn it.” Rhyme sounded gruff, but in fact he was losing himself in Sachs’s massage. A few strings of red hair had escaped from her ponytail and hung tickling against his cheek. He didn’t move away. Since he’d apparently lost the single-malt battle, he was ignoring Thom, but the aide brought his attention around quickly by saying, “When you were on the phone, Lon called.”

“He did? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You said you didn’t want to be disturbed while you were talking with Kathryn.”

“Well, tell me now.”

“He’ll call back. Something about a case. A problem.”

“Really?” The Watchmaker receded somewhat at this news. Rhyme understood that there was another source of his bad mood: boredom. He’d just finished analyzing the evidence for a complicated organized crime case and was facing several weeks with nothing to do. So he was buoyed by the thought of another job. Like Sachs’s craving speed, Rhyme needed problems, challenges, input. One of the difficulties with a severe disability that few people focus on is the absence of anything new. The same settings, the same people, the same activities . . . and the same platitudes, the same empty reassurances, the same reports from unemotional doctors.

What had saved his life after his injury—literally, since
he’d been considering assisted suicide—was his tentative steps back into his prior passion: using science to solve crimes.

You could never be bored when you confronted mystery.

Thom persisted, “Are you sure you’re up for it? You’re looking a little pale.”

“Haven’t been to the beach lately, you know.”

“All right. Just checking.”

Then Rhyme’s phone blared and Detective Lieutenant Lon Sellitto’s number showed up on caller ID.

Rhyme used a working finger on his right hand to answer.

“Lon.”

“Linc, listen, here’s the thing.” He was harried and, to judge from the surround-sound acoustics piping through the speaker, apparently driving somewhere quickly. “We may have a terrorist situation going on.”

“Situation? That’s not very specific.”

“Okay, how’s this? Somebody fucked with the power company, shot a five-thousand-degree spark at a Metro bus and shut down the electric grid for six square blocks south of Lincoln Center. That specific enough for you?”

A
LSO BY
J
EFFERY
D
EAVER

Carte Blanche

Edge

The Burning Wire*

Best American Mystery Stories 2009
(Editor)

The Watch List
(
The Copper Bracelet
and

The Chopin Manuscript
) (Contributor)

Roadside Crosses**

The Bodies Left Behind

The Broken Window*

The Sleeping Doll**

More Twisted: Collected Stories, Volume Two

The Cold Moon*/**

The Twelfth Card*

Garden of Beasts

Twisted: Collected Stories

The Vanished Man*

The Stone Monkey*

The Blue Nowhere

The Empty Chair*

Speaking in Tongues

The Devil’s Teardrop

The Coffin Dancer*

The Bone Collector*

A Maiden’s Grave

Praying for Sleep

The Lesson of Her Death

Mistress of Justice

Hard News

Death of a Blue Movie Star

Manhattan Is My Beat

Hell’s Kitchen

Bloody River Blues

Shallow Graves

A Century of Great Suspense Stories
(Editor)

A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime
(Editor)

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
(Introduction)

*Featuring Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs

**Featuring Kathryn Dance