“You learn that in school?”
“Discovery Channel, I think. The Civil War surgeons.”
Adeela set the gauze aside, picked up the bottle of disinfectant—it was called Betadine, he noticed—and squirted some of the cold liquid on the wound. She pressed more gauze on the site and held it there for a minute. Vimal felt an absurd urge to ask how her family was doing and how did her physiology test go?
“Light again,” she said, positioning his hand.
She pulled out some butterfly bandages and secured them over the wound. “Pain? On a scale of one to ten?” she asked.
“Three and seven-sixteenths. I’ve always wanted to say that.”
“Here.” Tight-lipped, she handed him a bottle of Tylenol and a Dannon water. He took two of the pills and drank half the water.
“That’s the only one that made it under the skin. Just bruises and cuts and scrapes, the rest of them.” She then probed his ribs. This too hurt but, again, it wasn’t bad. “Nothing broken.”
Trying to ignore the throbbing pain, Vimal picked up the splinter and examined it. The shard wasn’t big—about a half inch long and very thin. He put it in his pocket.
“Souvenir?”
He said nothing but pulled his two shirts down.
“Here,” Adeela said, handing him the brown Betadine bottle. “It’ll stain but I don’t think that’s your biggest worry. Oh. And the sweatshirt.” She took from her bag an NYU purple pullover. Large. Not hers. Maybe she’d bought it for her father. Vimal had asked her for a change of clothing too. His light-gray Keep Weird one was dotted with dried blood. He could have bought one but he needed to conserve his money.
Silence flowed between them as they watched a woman walking three French bulldogs on three leashes. They danced in excited harmony and the owner continually swapped the leads from hand to hand to keep them from tangling.
At any other time they would have laughed. Now Vimal and Adeela stared numbly.
She took his hand and leaned her head against his.
“You’re not going home, are you?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then, what?”
“Stay out of sight for a while.”
She gave a cool laugh. “I was going to say, like a witness in a gangster movie. But that’s not like it. That is it. But where, Vim?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
He was, of course, very sure but he didn’t want to talk about that just yet. There would be a time. Now he wanted to get inside somewhere. The temperature was growing colder and he was exhausted.
He released her hand. They rose. He put his arm around her, pulling her close and ignoring the pain from his side. “I’ll call you soon. Look, whatever happens, nothing’s going to affect us.” He smiled. “Hell, you’ve got exams. You won’t have any time for me anyway.”
She wasn’t amused, he could tell, and he regretted the lame banter. Still, she kissed him hard. They hadn’t gotten to the “love” word yet, but he knew it was now about to be uttered. She was leaning close and putting her lips against his ear. She whispered, “Go to the police. They’ll protect you from him.”
She slung her bag over her shoulder and turned, walking in that slow, sensuous stride of hers, toward the West 4th Street subway station, leaving Vimal Lahori to reflect that the police probably could protect him from the killer.
But that was hardly enough.
Chapter 10
At 8 p.m. Lincoln Rhyme wheeled closer to one of the high-def screens in his parlor. “Run them.”
Mel Cooper typed and a video appeared.
The footage was from a camera focused on an underground loading dock behind the building where Patel’s office was located. The ramp from the dock exited onto 46th Street.
At 12:37 that afternoon, according to the time stamp, that door pushed open and a man with thick dark hair, head down and wearing a dark jacket, was seen walking quickly down the stairs and up the ramp onto the street. His face was not clearly visible but appeared to be Indian—which was logical if he was, in fact, an associate of Patel. He was slim, and short in stature, to judge by a Dumpster he passed. His age was impossible to determine for certain but the impression was that he was young, possibly twenties.
“He’s hurt,” Sachs said.
He was clutching his midsection. The freeze frame showed a hint of something light-colored between his fingers, maybe the paper bag that had been shot. Cooper hit Play and the young man moved on, out of the scene.
The tech said, “And here’s the second.”
This tape was of 47th Street, a camera in the window of a jewelry store next to Patel’s building. At 12:51, a man in a short black or navy-blue jacket and dark baggy slacks and stocking cap passed the store. It was impossible to see his face; he was looking away. His left hand held a briefcase; his right was in his pocket.
“Holding a weapon?”
“Could be,” Sachs answered Rhyme.
“And one more,” Cooper said. “Two doors west on Forty-Seven. One minute later.”
The same man had been caught on another jewelry store’s camera. His head down and turned away again, he was on his mobile phone.
Sellitto muttered, “Son of a bitch knew he was on Candid Camera. Looking away.”
Sachs said, “Run it again. Zoom on the phone.”
Cooper did this, to no avail. They could make out no details. “Check for pings from the cell towers?”
“The Theater District and Times Square on a matinee day?” Sellitto shot him a wry look. “Drum up fifty officers to check out records and dedicate a week to it, hey, I’m on board with that.”
“Just a thought.”
“We know that the wit’s young, male, black hair. Dark-complexioned, probably Indian. Jacket, black or navy. Slacks dark.”
She continued, “And he’s mobile. Whatever damage the rock fragments did, it didn’t seem that serious.”
“Our mysterious VL?” Sellitto asked.
“Could be,” she replied.
Could be. Maybe. Not necessarily.
The doorbell rang and Rhyme looked at the intercom.
He and Sachs glanced each other’s way. She said, “Insurance man?”
She’d called the New York representative of the insurance company covering the gems. The cool-hearted Llewellyn Croft had already sent the company a notice of loss and the claims investigator had offered to come over tonight, even though the hour was late.
A five-million-dollar potential loss is a good motivator, Rhyme supposed.
“Let him in,” he instructed Thom.
A moment later the aide directed the man into the parlor. He nodded greetings and blinked in double take as he examined the forensic equipment. “My,” he said under his breath.
The name was Edward Ackroyd. He was senior claims examiner with Milbank Assurance, on Broad Street, which was in lower Manhattan.
The man exuded medium. Average height, average weight, average amount of neatly trimmed, toffee-colored hair. Even his eyes were hazel, a shade that managed to be both unusual and undistinguished. Appropriately, he was somewhere in the middle of middle age.
“What an abject tragedy this is,” the man said in an accent that might trip from the tongue of a BBC announcer, Rhyme imagined. “Jatin Patel…murdered. And that couple too. Their whole future ahead of them. Destroyed.”
At least Ackroyd’s first reaction was loss of life, rather than of the gems.
Thom took Ackroyd’s beige overcoat. The man wore a gray suit, with a vest, rare in the United States nowadays. His shirt was starched, and his tie appeared to be as well, though that had to be Rhyme’s imagination. Given the nice garb, and the hour, maybe he’d been interrupted at a fancy dinner or a night at the theater. He wore a wedding ring.
Introductions were made. He gave only a minor reaction to Rhyme’s condition—he was more surprised by the full-sized gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer in the corner—and when Rhyme offered his working hand, the right, Ackroyd gripped it, though carefully.
“Have a seat?” Sachs offered.