The Stone Monkey (Lincoln Rhyme 4)

"I'm so

rry," she repeated.

"Throw out that top sheet of newsprint," Rhyme said evenly. "Let's move on."

As the tech tore off the sheet of paper his computer beeped. "Incoming." He read the screen. "Okay, we've got the blood types back. All samples're from the same person--presumably from the injured woman. It's type AB negative and the Barr Body test confirms that it's a woman's blood."

"Up on the wall, Thom," Rhyme called. And the aide wrote.

Before he was finished Mel Cooper's computer summoned them again. "It's the AFIS search results."

They were discouraged to find that the search of the fingerprints Sachs had collected came back negative. But as he examined the prints, which were digitized and sitting on the screen in front of them, Rhyme observed something unusual about the clearest prints they'd lifted--from the pipe used to break into the van. They knew these were the prints of Sam Chang because they matched a few lifted from the outboard motor and Li had confirmed that Chang had piloted the raft to shore. "Look at those lines," he said.

"Whatcha see, Lincoln?" Dellray asked.

Rhyme said nothing to the agent but, wheeling close to the screen, ordered, "Command, cursor down . . . stop. Cursor left . . . stop." The arrow of the cursor on the screen stopped on a line--an indentation on the pad of the index finger of Chang's right hand. There were similar ones on his middle finger and his thumb--as if Chang had been tightly gripping a thin cord.

"What is that?" Rhyme wondered aloud.

"Callus? A scar?" Eddie Deng offered.

Mel Cooper offered, "Never seen that before."

"Maybe it's a cut or wound of some kind."

"Maybe a rope burn," Sachs suggested.

"No, that'd be a blister. It must be a wound of some kind. Did you see any scars on Chang's hands?" Rhyme asked Li.

"No. I not see."

Indentations, calluses and scars on fingers and palms can be revealing about the professions or hobbies of the people who leave the prints--or on the actual fingers themselves in the case of suspects or victims. These are less useful nowadays where the only physical skill required by so many professions is keyboarding or jotting notes. Still, people who are in the manual trades, for instance, or who play certain sports frequently develop distinctive markings on their hands.

Rhyme had no idea what this pattern meant but some additional information might reveal that. He instructed Thom to write the observation down on the board. He then took a call from Special Agent Tobe Geller, one of the FBI's computer and electronics gurus, presently assigned to the Manhattan office. He'd completed his analysis of the Ghost's cell phone, which Sachs had found in the second raft at Easton Beach. The criminalist transferred the call to the speakerphone and a moment later Geller's animated voice said, "Now, let me tell you, this is an excessively interesting phone."

Rhyme didn't know the young man well but he remembered curly hair, an easy disposition and a consuming passion for anything containing microchips.

"Howsat?" Dellray asked.

"First of all, don't get your hopes up. It's virtually untraceable. We call 'em 'hot phones.' The memory chip's been deactivated so that the phone doesn't record the last call dialed or incoming calls--the log features are out completely. And it's a satellite phone--you can call anywhere in the world and you don't need to go through local service providers. The signals are relayed through a government network in Fuzhou. The Ghost or somebody working for him hacked into the system to activate it."

Dellray snapped, "Well, let's juss call somebody in the People's fuckin' Republic and tell 'em this bad guy's using their system."

"We tried that. But the Chinese position is that nobody can hack their phone system so we must be mistaken. Thank you for your interest."

"Even if it means helpin' collar the Ghost?"

Geller said, "I mentioned Kwan Ang by name. They still weren't interested. Meaning they were probably paid off."

Guanxi . . .

Rhyme thanked the young agent and they hung up. Score one for the Ghost, the criminalist thought angrily.

They were somewhat more successful with the firearms database. Mel Cooper found that the shell casings matched one of two weapons, both of them dating back nearly fifty years: a Russian Tokarev 7.62mm automatic was one type. "But," Cooper continued, "I'm betting he was using the Model 51, a Chinese version of the Tokarev. Virtually the same gun."

"Yeah, yeah," Sonny Li said. "Gotta be 51, I'm saying. I had Tokarev but lost it in ocean. More peoples in China got 51's."

"Ammunition?" Rhyme asked. "He might need to replenish it here somewhere." He was thinking that if the ammo was rare they might stake out the most likely places the Ghost would go to purchase more.