This would be enough evidence.
He dipped his tongue into the coffee. Enjoyed the intense sensation throughout his mouth; it’s a myth that different tastes are experienced in different parts of the tongue: salt, sour, sweet, bitter. Another sip. Swann cooked with coffee sometimes — he’d made a Mexican mole-type sauce for pork with 80 percent cacao and espresso. He’d been tempted to submit it for a contest then decided it wasn’t a good idea for him to be too public.
He was running through the plan for Nance Laurel again when he spotted her.
Across the street the ADA had appeared from around the corner. She was in a navy-blue suit and white blouse. In her small pudgy hands were an old-fashioned attaché case, brown and battered, and a large litigation bag. He wondered if either was a present from her father or mother, both of whom were attorneys too, Swann had learned. They were in the low-rent district of the profession. Her mother, public defender. Her father, poverty law.
Doin’ good deeds, helping society, Swann reflected. Just like their stocky little girl.
Laurel was walking with eyes cast downward and laboring under the weight of the litigation bag. Though her face was a cryptic mask, she now gave off a slight hint of depression, the way Italian parsley in soup suggests but doesn’t state. Unlike bold cilantro.
The source of the somber mood was no doubt the foundering Moreno case. Swann nearly felt bad for her. The prosecution would have been the jewel in her crown but now she was back to a life of sending José, Shariq, Billy and Roy into the system for crack and rapes and guns.
Wasn’t me. No way. I don’t know, man, I don’t know where it came from, really…
Except, of course, she wouldn’t be handling any such cases.
Wouldn’t be doing anything at all after tonight. Would be cold and still as a slab of loin.
Nance Laurel found her keys and unlocked the front door, stepped inside.
Swann would give it ten, fifteen minutes. Time for her to let her guard down.
He lifted the small, thick cup to his nose, inhaled and slipped his tongue into the warm liquid once more.
CHAPTER 73
“What do we know about the last of our ten little Indians?” Lincoln Rhyme asked absently.
The setback about Moreno’s citizenship had defeated Nance Laurel but it had only stoked his hunt lust. “I don’t care what Albany wants, Sachs, I want our unsub. Five Sixteen’s too dangerous to stay free. What do we know?” He looked over the evidence whiteboards. “All right, we know Five Sixteen was in the Bahamas around the time of the shooting. We know that he killed the student-prostitute Annette Bodel. We know that he set the bomb to eliminate leads to the whistleblower. We know he killed Lydia Foster. We know he was following our Sachs around town. What can we make of that?…Sachs!”
“What?”
“The other driver, the one that Moreno usually used? Did you ever get in touch with him?”
“No. Never called back.”
This happened frequently when the police phoned, asking for a return call.
Usually this was out of reluctance to get involved.
Sometimes there were other reasons.
She tried the driver once more and shook her head. She placed another call — to Elite Limos, Rhyme deduced. She asked if they had heard from their employee. A brief conversation and she hung up.
“Never called in after he went to see a sick relative.”
“Don’t trust it. We may have a third victim of our unsub. Find out where he lives, Pulaski. Get a team from the closest precinct to his house and see what’s there.”
The young officer pulled out his mobile and called Dispatch.
Rhyme wheeled back and forth in front of the charts. He didn’t believe he’d ever had a case like this, where the evidence was so fragmentary and sparse.
Bits, scraps, observations, 180-degree changes in direction.
Nothing else…
Hell.
Rhyme steered toward the shelf with the whiskey bottles. He lifted the Glenmorangie and awkwardly poured another hit, then seated the cap on his tumbler and sipped.
“What’re you doing?” Thom asked from the doorway.
“What am I doing, what am I doing? Now, that’s an odd question. Usually the interrogatory ‘what’ introduces a sentence in which the inquirer is unable to make any deductions about a situation.” A substantial sip. “I think you’ve wasted a perfectly good sentence, Thom. It’s pretty clear what I’m doing.”
“You’ve already had too much.”
“That’s a declarative sentence and it makes much more sense. It’s valid. I disagree with it but it’s logically valid.”
“Lincoln!” Thom strode forward.
Rhyme glared. “Don’t even think—”
“Wait,” Sachs said.
Rhyme assumed she was taking Thom’s side in the alcohol dispute but when he wheeled around he found her eyes were not on him or the aide but on the whiteboards. She walked forward and Rhyme noticed that she wasn’t wincing or limping. She was spry and balanced. Her eyes narrowed. This was her predatory gaze. It made the tall woman frightening and, to Rhyme, appealing.
He set the whiskey down. His eyes rose to the boards and scanned like radar. Were there some facts he’d missed? Had she made a deduction that had eluded him? “Do you see something about Five Sixteen?”
“No, Rhyme,” she whispered. “It’s something else. Something else entirely.”
CHAPTER 74
Nancyann Olivia Laurel was sitting on a couch in her Brooklyn Heights apartment, a brown JCPenney slipcover over blue upholstery that had been worn smooth by her family and their friends years and years ago.
Hand-me-downs. A lot of those here. Laurel was tapped by a memory: Her father surreptitiously fishing in the sofa’s crevices for coins that had fallen from the pockets of visitors. She’d been eight or so and he’d made a joke of it, a game, when she’d walked into the room unexpectedly.
Except it wasn’t a game, and she knew it. Even children can be ashamed of their parents.
Still tasting the smoky scotch, she looked around this home. Her home. Hers alone. In a reflective mood. Despite, or maybe because of, the threadbare, recycled accoutrements, the sense of the place was comfort, even on a pitiful day like this one. She’d worked hard to make it that way. The walls, coated with dozens of layers of paint, going back to Teddy Roosevelt’s era, were a cream shade. For decorations: a silk flower arrangement from a Chelsea crafts fair, an autumn wreath from the Union Square farmers’ market, art too. She had paintings and sketches, some original and some prints, all of scenes that had resonated with her personally, horses, farms, rocky streams, still lifes. No idea why they appealed. But she’d known instantly that they did and she’d bought them if there was any way she could spare the cash. Some alpaca yarn hangings, colorful rectangles. Laurel had taken up knitting a few years ago but couldn’t find the time or the inclination to complete the scarves for friends’ nieces.
What now? she thought.
What now…
The teakettle’s whistle was blowing. Had been blowing. Shrill. She was suddenly aware of it. She went into the small space and put a rose hip bag in the mug — navy blue on the outside, white in, matching her outfit, she realized. She should change.
Later.
Laurel stared at the kettle for a full minute. Shut off the heat but did not pour the boiling liquid. She returned to the couch.
What now?
This was the worst of all possible outcomes. If she’d won the convictions of Metzger and Barry Shales, well, that would have made her world. It would have made her life. There was no way to describe the importance that this case had taken on for her. She remembered in law school being mesmerized by the stories of the greats of the legal system in America — the lawyers, prosecutors and judges. Clarence Darrow, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, Benjamin Cardozo, Earl Warren…so many, many others. Louis D. Brandeis she thought of often.