He mentioned the phone that Sellitto had told Rhyme about, the one that the kidnapper had possibly flung out the window of his car, to keep from being traced, as he sped away from the scene with the victim in the trunk.
“Our tech brain boys were all super ’cited ’bout trying to crack it—always a challenge those Apple folk give us. It’s like playing Angry Birds to our team. When, lo and behold, there’s no password! This day and age! They’re prowling through the call logs, when, what happens, it rings. It’s some business-soundin’ fella waiting for Phone-Boy to show up for breakfast, grapefruit getting hot, oatmeal cold.”
“Fred?”
“My, we are impatient this morning. Phone belongs to one Robert Ellis, head of a teensy start-up—my own description—in San Jose. In town lookin’ for seed money. No record, pays his taxes. Profile’s as booooring as a corset salesman’s. And when I’m saying start-up don’t be thinkin’ Facebook, Crap-Chat, anything sexy and lucrative. His spec-i-al-i-ty’s media buying. So it’s not looking like a competitor snatched him.”
“Associates or family hear from the taker? About ransom?” Sellitto asked.
“Nup. Phone logs show calls to a mobile registered to a woman lives at the same address he does. So, status o’ girlfriend’s a solid guess. But the provider says her phone’s, of all things, way, way over in Japan. Presumably in the company of said lady, one Ms. Sabrina Dillon. My ASAC called her but hasn’t heard back. Other numbers aren’t remarkable. Just a guy in town for business. Doesn’t seem to have much else in the way of family we could find.”
“Domestic issues?” Mel Cooper asked. He was a lab specialist, yes, but also an NYPD detective who’d worked cases for years.
Dellray: “Nothin’ on the radar. Though, even if so, I’m thinking a bit of cheatin’ nookie doesn’t really make you trunk-worthy.”
“True,” Sellitto said.
Rhyme said, “No OC connection.”
“Uh-uh. Boy is not a gangbanger, ’less they’re teaching that now at UCLA. His alma mater.”
Sellitto said, “So, we’re leaning toward some crazy.”
There was the noose, after all…
“May be agreeing with you there, Lon,” Dellray said.
“Speculation,” Rhyme grumbled. “We’re wasting time.”
Where the hell were Sachs and the evidence collection teams?
Cooper’s computer made a cheerful noise and he looked it over.
“From your evidence folks, Fred.”
Rhyme wheeled forward. The federal crime scene unit—the Physical Evidence Response Team—had analyzed the phone carefully and found no fingerprints. The perp had wiped it before pitching it out of the car.
But the techs had found some trace—smudges of dirt and, wedged invisibly into the OtterBox cover, a short, light-colored hair. Human. There was no bulb attached, so no DNA analysis was possible. It was dry and appeared to have been dyed platinum blond.
“Picture of Ellis?”
A few minutes later Cooper downloaded an image from California DMV.
A nondescript man of thirty-five. Lean face. His hair was brown.
Whose head had the paler hair come from?
The kidnapper himself?
The aforementioned Sabrina?
The door opened and Rhyme could tell that Amelia Sachs had returned. Her footfalls were distinctive. Before she even breached the doorway, he was calling, “Sachs! Let’s take a look.”
She entered through the archway, nodded a greeting to all. Then handed over the milk crate, containing evidence bags, to Cooper, who set them aside. He now dressed in full protective gear—booties, gloves, bonnet and splash guard, which mutually protected examiner and evidence.
He set the items out on examination tables, which were in a separate part of the parlor, away from where the others, dressed in street clothing, clustered, to avoid contamination.
The pickings were sparse. Rhyme knew this, as he’d been “with” Sachs, via video feed, as she’d walked the grid at the scene. All she’d found was the noose, random trace from where the abduction had occurred and shoe print and tire mark evidence.
But even the tiniest of substances can, in theory, lead directly to your perp’s front door.
“So?” Sellitto asked. “What’d the munchkin say?”
Sachs: “I’d trade the girl—Morgynn—for two of her mothers. She’ll be in politics someday. Maybe a cop. She wanted to hold my gun. Anyway, the unsub was a heavyset white male, long dark hair, full beard, wearing dark casual clothes and dark baseball cap, long bill. A little taller than me. Same age as her tennis coach, Mr. Billings, who is—I checked—thirty-one. She didn’t know the kind of car except it wasn’t a Tesla, which her father drives—and tells everybody he drives. Morgynn didn’t catch any distinguishings, but he was wearing blue gloves.”
“Damn,” Rhyme muttered. “Anything else?”
“No, but this was a first. Her mother, Claire, asked if I—or somebody I knew on the force—would want to moonlight as a waitperson at a party tonight.”
“What’s she paying?” Sellitto asked.
In no mood for humor, Rhyme said, “First, the noose. Any prints?”
Cooper tested the cord in the fuming tent to raise invisible fingerprints and said, “A few slivers. Nothing to work with.”
“What’s it made out of?” Dellray asked.
“I’m checking now.” Cooper looked at the material closely under a microscope—set on relatively low magnification. He then consulted a visual database.
“I can run the chromatograph but I’m sure it’s proteins—collagen, keratin and fibroin. I’d say catgut.”
Sellitto wrinkled his nose. “That’s disgusting.”
Thom was laughing. “No cats involved.”
Cooper said, “That’s right. It’s called catgut but it’s from sheep or goat intestines.”
Sellitto said, “Why’s that any less disgusting?”
The tech was online. He continued, “Gut was used as surgical sutures. Now the only use is musical-instrument strings. Steel and synthetic materials’re more frequent nowadays, but”—he gave a shrug—“catgut is still common. Could’ve come from a hundred stores, concert halls and schools around the area. The length of this one? Probably from a cello.”
“And the noose?” Dellray asked. “Isn’t it s’posed to have thirteen coils? For bad luck?”
Rhyme didn’t know about catgut, and little about musical instruments, but he was familiar with nooses. It was properly called a hangman’s knot. It was not meant to tighten, like a slipknot, and choke. Death was from a snapped neck, which led to suffocation, yes, though not because the throat was closed but because signals from brain to lungs shut down. The wide knot, expertly positioned behind the left ear of the condemned, cracked the spine not far above where Rhyme’s had broken.
Answering Dellray, he said, “Some had thirteen coils. Most hangmen used eight back in the day. That worked just as well. Okay, what else?”
Sachs had used a gelatin lifter and an electrostatic device to capture the shoe prints that were probably the unsub’s, based on the girl’s account of where he had stood and walked.