The door opens with the second jiggler. There’s no bar on the steering wheel, which I find odd. A car like this one would be easily stolen. That’s the thing about locks and security devices. Anybody can get burglarized; you’ll never be able to keep yourself completely secure. You just need to make your car or apartment a little bit harder to burgle than your neighbors’.
I suspect there’s a cutoff switch to the ignition hidden somewhere under the dash. Maybe two. Might even be radio controlled.
No matter. I’m not here to steal the car; I’m presently driving a very nice luxury set of wheels myself.
All I care about is one thing. And it takes me just a few minutes to locate what I seek. I find it not in the glove box but rubber banded to the back of the driver’s sun visor. I memorize what I’ve found, and in ten seconds the door is closed, relocked and I’m walking down the street, reciting the address.
Oh, this is very good news.
Since Lincoln Rhyme, I’ve read, lives on the Upper West Side, and the address I just memorized is in Brooklyn, this means that even though she’s his wife, Crime Scene Girl Amelia must spend some nights by herself.
The fantasy I conjured earlier has a basis in reality.
She has a bedroom all her own.
31
As they stood in the decrepit, half-collapsed manufacturing room of the Bechtel Building, Sachs handed the man back his driver’s license and employee ID card.
Lyle P. Spencer, forty-two, was the security director for Whittaker Media Group, the publisher of the Daily Herald. Not being able to see her clearly, just someone in street clothes, he’d thought she might have been a dealer or an addict.
“Or the Locksmith.” His voice was a resonant baritone.
“Locksmith?” she asked.
He asked, “You have proof it’s a man?”
Interesting thought. Assumptions.
“Size eleven man’s shoe. But in answer to your question. No, we don’t.”
“I was just trying to get out of the place, the door behind you. And call the police from the street. Tell them there was an intruder here.”
“The pipe?” A glance at the floor.
“In case it came to that.”
She asked why not a firearm.
“Don’t own one.”
“You’re security. But no carry ticket?” It’s almost impossible to get a conceal carry permit in the city, but there’s an exception for those who need a weapon in their line of work.
“I run the New York security operation. I don’t get into the field much.”
Spencer added that if he happened to do so — like now — he wore personal protection gear, which was plenty for him.
Sachs reflected that his size alone would be a deterrent. His arms, chest and legs were massive.
“You realize you’re violating a crime scene.”
The man shrugged. “Technically, being within a defined crime scene isn’t an offense. Guilty of civil trespass, yes, but the complaining witness is the owner of the place and he’s busy with bankruptcy, it looks like. The only crime you’d be interested in is tampering with evidence, which is to alter, destroy, conceal or remove it with the purpose of hiding the truth or making it unavailable for a proceeding or investigation.”
The recitation told her a great deal about Lyle P. Spencer.
“We’ll move on,” she said. “Why’re you here?”
Spencer explained that when his boss heard that somebody’d left Heralds at both of the intrusions, he wanted him to investigate. “His — for the time being I’ll go with male — his MO, from what I’ve heard, paints him an organized offender. That means he would have surveilled the building before the intrusions. I couldn’t find any sites he might’ve done that from for the first incident, on the West Side. Annabelle Talese’s.”
“He was probably in a deli across the street, but it’d been scrubbed by the time I figured that out.”
He nodded, then looked around. “But this was a perfect spot to stage for the intrusion last night.”
“We found brick dust at the prior scene. That’s what got us here.”
“Sure. Picked it up in his shoe and left it at the first scene, and you narrowed it down to the Bechtel Building. Smart.” He seemed impressed. “And he came back.”
“The candy wrapper. You noticed that?” Sachs asked.
“No crime scene officer’d miss it first time around. If it was his, he probably was here to watch the operation, check out who was after him.”
“Why I’m here now. Where were you L.E.?”
“Albany. Patrol after the navy, then got my gold shield. But, with a family, I decided private security made sense. I basically doubled my income and haven’t been shot at.” He glanced at the Glock on her hip.
“Military police?”
“No. I was special ops, a SEAL.”
“You searched the entire place?”
“Ground floor. No way to get upstairs, not safely, but that would be true for him too. I didn’t see any other footprints or evidence, other than the wrapper.”
“Does Mr. Whittaker have any thoughts on who the Locksmith might be?”
“We’ve talked about it and, no, he doesn’t.”
Sachs said, “We’ve been in touch with your legal department. They’re pulling together a list of threats and complaints.”
“I know. Doug Hubert’s people’re doing it. They’ll be thorough.”
Sachs said, “Can you get me in to see Averell Whittaker himself?”
“I can. Yes.”
They completed a walk-around and she saw no suggestion the Locksmith had been anywhere else but in the front. Spencer had been careful to stick to the gravel, avoiding the flat portions of the floor, thick with telltale reddish brick dust.
She’d been watching his eyes and noted his alert body language when a rat nosed out of a pile of rocks, regarded the two visitors and retreated slowly, with apparent irritation.
They returned to the front of the building and she stepped outside — away from the cringey sense that the whole place was about to come down and bury them alive.
She said, “Oh, here’s something else I have to ask.”
Spencer preempted. “What time was the break-in? Early, wasn’t it?”
“Around four a.m.”
“I have an apartment in Whittaker Tower.” He withdrew a notebook and pen and jotted a name and phone number. He tore off the sheet and handed it to her. “That’s the head of building security. He’ll show you RFID entry records and video. I got home at one a.m. and left for work at six.”
She pocketed the sheet.
As if he couldn’t resist, he said to her, “Now what was your question?”
32
“Well. This is a set of wheels.”
Lyle Spencer was sitting shotgun in her red Ford Torino Cobra. They were on their way to Rhyme’s to drop off the evidence that Sachs had collected at the Bechtel Building, and then they would go on to lofty Whittaker Tower to meet with the head of the media empire.
“What’s under the hood?” Lyle asked.
“A four-oh-five.”
“Beautiful.”
“You know cars.”
“Follow Formula One.” His tone was: But then again, who doesn’t? “Used to do some showroom stock when I was upstate. I’m guessing you know what that is.”
Amelia Sachs only smiled.
Stock cars come in a number of different categories and are raced in many types of circuits. Originally “stock” meant just that — the car came from the dealer’s stock of inventory and wasn’t modified in any way. Then the various racing organizations — NASCAR being the biggest — allowed modifications. “Showroom stock” or “production stock” required that the car be nearly identical to what a consumer could buy, with only a few safety modifications, like a roll cage.