The Cold Moon (Lincoln Rhyme 7)

"If you're honest with us we'll believe you. Go on."

"It was about ten-thirty, a little after. After I got out of the . . . girl's car I started to walk to the subway. You're right. I stopped and pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. I turned it on to check messages. That's when the money fell out, I guess. It was at the alley. I glanced down it and saw some taillights at the end."

"What kind of car?" Sachs asked.

"I didn't see the car, just taillights. I swear."

Dance believed this. She nodded to Sachs.

"Wait," Rhyme said abruptly. "The end of the alley?"

So the criminalist had been listening after all.

"Right. All the way at the end. Then the reverse lights came on and it started backing toward me. The driver was moving pretty fast so I kept walking. Then I heard the squeal of brakes and he stopped and shut the engine off. He was still in the alley. I kept on walking. I heard the door slam and this noise. Like a big piece of metal falling to the ground. That was it. I didn't see anybody. I was past the alley at that point. Really."

Rhyme glanced at Dance, who nodded that he was telling the truth.

"Describe the girl you were with," Dennis Baker said. "I want to talk to her too."

Cobb said quickly, "Thirties, African-American, short curly hair. Her car was a Honda, I think. I didn't see the license plate. She was pretty." He added this as some pathetic justification.

"Name?"

Cobb sighed. "Tiffanee. With two e's. Not a y."

Rhyme gave a faint laugh. "Call Vice, ask about girls working regularly on Cedar," he ordered his slim, balding assistant.

Dance asked a few more questions, then nodded, glanced at Lon Sellitto and said, "I think Mr. Cobb here has told us as much as he knows." She looked at the businessman and said sincerely, "Thanks for your cooperation."

He blinked, unsure what to make of her comment. But Kathryn Dance wasn't being sarcastic. She never took personally the words or glares (occasionally even spittle or flung objects) from the subjects. A kinesic interviewer has to remember that the enemy is never the subject himself but simply the barriers to truth that he raises, sometimes not even intentionally.

Sellitto, Baker and Sachs debated for a few minutes and decided to release the businessman without charging him. The skittish man left, with a look at Dance that she was very familiar with: part awe, part disgust, part pure hatred.

After he'd left, Rhyme, who was looking at a diagram of the scene of the killing in the alley, said, "This's curious. For some reason the perp decided he didn't want the vic at the end of the alley, so he backed up and picked the spot about fifteen feet from the sidewalk. . . . Interesting fact. But is it useful?"

Sachs nodded. "You know, it might be. The far end of the alley didn't get any snow, it looked like. They might not've used salt there. We could lift some footprints or tire treads."

Rhyme made a call--with an impressive voice recognition program--and sent some officers back to the scene. They called back a short time later and reported that they had found fresh tire treads at the end of the alley, along with a brown fiber, which seemed to match the ones on the victim's shoe and wristwatch. They uploaded the digital pictures of the fiber and treads and gave the wheelbase dimensions.

Despite her lack of interest in forensics, Dance found herself intrigued by this choreography. Rhyme and Sachs were a particularly insightful team. She couldn't help but be impressed when ten minutes later, the technical man, Mel Cooper, looked up from a computer screen and said, "With the wheelbase and those particular brown fibers, it's probably a Ford Explorer, either two or three years old."

"Odds are it's the older one," Rhyme said.

Why did he say that? Dance wondered.

Sachs saw the frown on her face and answered, "The brakes squealed."

Ah.

Sellitto turned to Dance. "That was good, Kathryn. You nailed him."

Sachs asked, "How'd you do it?"

She explained the process she'd used. "I went fishing. I reviewed everything he'd told us--the afterwork bar, the subway, the cash and money clip, the alleyway, the chronology of events and the geography. I checked out his kinesic reaction to each response. The cash was a particularly sensitive subject. What was he doing with the money that he shouldn't've been? An extrove

rted, narcissistic businessman like him? I figured it was either drugs or sex. But a Wall Street broker's not buying street drugs; he'd have a connection. That left hookers. Simple."

"That's slick, don't you think, Lincoln?" Cooper asked.