Earlier today, upon hearing that the case was over, Rhyme indulged himself with an encouraging thought: that he was relieved of the burden of mentoring his student. Yet now he wasn't as buoyed by that idea as he initially had been. He found himself saying to her, "There are a few things you could help with, if you're interested, a couple of other projects I'm working on. Not as intriguing as a case. Research. Esoteric elements of forensics. Academia. But still."
She maneuvered her chair to face him and her countenance suggested she was surprised. "You didn't think I was going to leave, did you?"
"No. I was just saying." An expression he detested when coming from someone else's lips and he liked it no more now that he'd uttered it.
"Or you were hoping?" Her smile was coy.
"Your presence was helpful."
His highest compliment, though she wouldn't know that.
"It's unfair what happened. No money, no recourse for Sandy Frommer."
Rhyme said, "But that's your situation." A nod at the wheelchair. Because her disability stemmed from the tumor, not an accident, she had no one to recover settlement money from. "I was lucky. I got a large settlement from the construction company that built the scaffolding the pipe fell from."
"Pipe? Is that what happened?"
He laughed. "I was playing rookie. At the time I was head of the Crime Scene Unit but I couldn't keep from searching a scene myself. A killer was murdering police officers. I had to get down in the site and dig for evidence. I was sure I could find the clue that would lead to him, and no one else could. A good example of the adage: One's character is one's fate."
"Heraclitus," she said, her eyes amused. "They'd be so proud, the good sisters of Immaculata, my remembering something they taught me. Of course, fate sometimes has nothing to do with who you are and what you do. Two assassination attempts on Hitler. They both were perfectly planned and they both failed. There's fate for you. No design, no justice. Sometimes you get the golden apple. Sometimes you're screwed. Either way..."
"... you cope."
Archer nodded.
"Something I've been wondering."
"Yes, it's true," Rhyme announced in a bold voice. "A ninhydrin solution can indeed be prepared in a mixture of non-polar solvents. 'The exhibit is immersed in the working solution and allowed to develop in dark, humid conditions for two to three days, avoiding high temperatures.' That's a quotation from the Department of Justice's fingerprint manual. I tested it. They're accurate."
She fell silent as she looked around the lab, congested with equipment and tools and instruments. Finally: "You're avoiding the question that's coming, aren't you?"
"Why I quit working for the police."
Archer smiled. "Answer or not. Just curious."
He gestured with his working hand toward one of the whiteboards in the far corner of the room, snubbing them with their backs. He said, "That was a case about a month ago. There's a notation at the bottom of the board. Suspect deceased. Prosecution terminated."
"That's why you quit?"
"Yes."
"So you made a mistake and somebody died."
Inflection is everything. Archer's comment ended in a lazy question mark; she might have been asking legitimately if this was the case. Or she might have been dismissing what happened and chiding him for backing away from a profession in which death was a natural part of the process: A human's ceasing to exist is, of course, the prime mover of a homicide case. A corollary is the possible death of the suspect during apprehension... or, occasionally, a lethal injection gurney.
But Rhyme gave a shallow laugh. "No. In fact, the opposite happened."
"Opposite?"
He adjusted the chair slightly. They were now facing each other. "I didn't make a mistake at all. I was one hundred percent accurate." He sipped from the tumbler of Glenmorangie that Thom had poured ten minutes before. He nodded toward the liquor and then turned to Archer but again she declined a beverage. He continued, "The suspect--a businessman from Garden City named Charles Baxter... You ever hear of him?"
"No."
"The case was in the news. Baxter defrauded some rich folks out of about ten million that, frankly, they would hardly've noticed. It's all about the decimal point, of course. Who really cared? But that's not the prosecutor's--or my--call. Baxter broke the law and the assistant district attorney brought the case, got me on board to help find the cash and analyze the physical evidence--handwriting, ink, GPS logs
that let us follow him to banks, trace evidence from where the meetings took place, false identity documents, soil from where money was buried. It was easy to run. I found plenty of admissible evidence to support grand theft, wire fraud, a few other counts. The ADA was happy. The perp was looking at three to five years.
"But there were some questions about the evidence that I didn't find the answers to. Eating at me. I kept analyzing, getting more and more evidence. The prosecutor said don't bother; she had all she needed for the conviction she was after. But I couldn't stop.