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.