"Looks like it. Let's run some through the GC/MS."
The gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer would determine exactly what the substance was. Soon the results came back--magnesium and silicate.
"That's talc, right?"
"Yep."
The criminalist knew that talcum powder was commonly used by some people as a deodorant, by workers who wore tight-fitting rubber gloves for protection and by those who engaged in certain sexual practices using latex clothing. "Go online and find out everything you can about talc and magnesium silicate."
"Will do."
As Cooper was typing madly, Rhyme's phone rang. Thom answered it and put the call on the speaker.
"Hello?" he asked.
"Mr . . . . Rhymes please."
"Rhyme is the name, yes. Who's this?"
"Dr. Arthur Winslow at Huntington Medical Center."
"Yes, Doctor?"
"There's a patient here, a Chinese man. His name is Sen. He was medevaced to us after the Coast Guard rescued him from a sunken ship off the North Shore."
Not exactly the Coast Guard, Rhyme thought. But he said, "Go ahead."
"We were told to contact you with any news about him."
"That's right."
"Well, I think there's something you ought to know."
"And what would that be?" Rhyme asked slowly, though his meaning was really: Get to the point.
*
He sipped the bitter coffee even though he hated it.
Seventeen-year-old William Chang sat in the back of the Starbucks not far from the family's apartment in Brooklyn. He wanted Po-nee tea--made the way his mother prepared it, brewed in an old iron pot--but he kept drinking the coffee as if he were addicted to the muddy, sour drink. Because that is what the pompadoured ba-tu across from him was now sipping; for William to drink tea would seem like a weakness.
Wearing the same black leather jacket he'd been in yesterday, the kid--who'd identified himself only as Chen--finished his conversation on a tiny Nokia phone and clipped the unit back onto his belt. He made a point of checking the time on his gold Rolex.
"What happened to the gun we sold you yesterday?" he asked in English.
"My father found it."
"Asshole." He leaned forward ominously. "You didn't tell him where you got it?"
"No."
"If you told anyone about us we'll kill you."
William Chang, hardened by his life as a dissident's son, knew not to give an inch with people like this. "I didn't fucking tell anybody anything. But I need another gun."
"He'll find that one too."
"No, he won't. I'll keep it with me. He won't frisk me."