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.
“So you pretended to sign on to help El Halcón to shore up our case?”
“Not really. That was just serendipitous. Obviously there was another reason.”
“Which was?”
“To find Mr. X, of course.” Rhyme scowled. “At which I wasn’t very successful.”
“Mr. X?” Bishop squinted. His lips tightened for a moment. “Oh. You mean El Halcón’s U.S. partner?”
Obviously...
“He might not have been at the shoot-out but he’s behind the whole operation.”
Fallow nodded. “We’re sure his company owns the warehouse complex, but we couldn’t trace it.”
“And he’s as responsible for Barry Sales’s injury as El Halcón. But I couldn’t find any connection.”
Bishop sighed. The frustration was evident in his face as he said, “We’ve done everything. We’ve looked everywhere. Every document, followed every lead. Nothing.”
Fallow added, “CIs, surveillance. I even called the CIA and NSA about overseas communications. Whoever this guy is, he’s a ghost.”
Rhyme said, “I hoped there’d be some bit of evidence, some reference in the notes that led me to the U.S. partner.” A shrug. “But nothing.”
“Well, you nailed down the case against El Halcón, Lincoln. Thank you for that.”
Bishop gave what Rhyme supposed was an uncharacteristic smile. He said, “So how’re you going to handle the money, fee he paid you?”
Rhyme said, “Oh, I put it in an irrevocable trust for Barry. Anonymous. He won’t know who it came from.”
Sellitto laughed. “Don’t you think Carreras-López ain’t gonna be too happy about that? Whatta you think he’s going to do?”
Rhyme shrugged. “He’s a lawyer. Let him sue me.”
Bishop nodded to Fallow and glanced at Pulaski’s wrists. The agent uncuffed him and, without saying anything further, the foursome left.
Rhyme watched them leave. Pulaski or Cooper said something. He didn’t hear. He was preoccupied with a single thought. An image, actually. Of Barry Sales, his friend.
He thought once more about the word he’d uttered when Carreras-López had first come to him, a word that the defense lawyer undoubtedly took in a very different context from that which Rhyme had had in mind when he uttered it: Justice.
Rhyme glanced toward Sachs, who was still avoiding his eyes. Then he heard her phone hum.
She glanced at it. “Edward Ackroyd.” She answered and had a brief conversation. He could tell from the way her eyes narrowed — just slightly — that the news was important.
When she disconnected, she said, “That dealer? The one who put Edward onto Shapiro? He’s agreed to talk to us. But only plainclothes, no uniforms. He’s worried about customers seeing cops. Edward suggested me and he agreed.”
Then she walked to Rhyme and bent close. Only he could hear her say, “Not completely forthcoming, hm?”
She’d be referring to the clandestine operation involving El Halcón’s lawyer. Reflecting on it, he wasn’t in fact sure why he hadn’t said anything. Maybe he wanted to keep her at arms’ length in case something went south. Condescending of him, he now understood.
His lips grew taut. He held her eye. “No. I wasn’t. I should’ve been.”
She smiled. “I mean both of us. I didn’t tell you about what happened at the drilling site. You didn’t tell me about your little investigation.”
He said, “After all these years, we’re still kind of new to it, Sachs. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“I won’t either.” She kissed him hard and then headed for the door. “I’ll call in from downtown.”
Chapter 54
Amelia Sachs felt every cobblestone in her back as the old Ford rocked over the worn streets of the Lower East Side. The fall at the construction site — the initial tumble onto the plank, not the cushioning, though horrifying, mud — had twisted her spine in some elaborate way.