The Steel Kiss (Lincoln Rhyme 12)
Page 200
A nod. Ron sat in the rattan chair. "Sad character. Sad story."
"Was, yes. But in the eyes of the law, revenge is no more acceptable as a motive than sexual lust or terrorism. Now I'm tired of being pretentious. Since the case is over, there's no reason for you to be here. So. What's up?"
The young officer's eyes remained on a miniature dresser of Griffith's. Then he looked at a kitchen table. He studied this until, apparently, it was time to talk.
"The other case."
"Gutierrez."
Pulaski looked at him. "The way you said that, Lincoln. You know it wasn't Gutierrez."
"I made the supposition. Wasn't hard."
"Jenny calls me transparent."
"A bit of that in you, Rookie, yes. Not that it's bad."
Pulaski didn't seem to care if it was good or bad. "The other case?"
"Go on."
"It was the Baxter case." Accompanied by an unnecessary glance at the whiteboard in the corner, whose back was turned to them.
This revelation Rhyme had not guessed. Ideas formed, but it was his colleague, not Rhyme, who had center stage.
"I went through the case files. I know it was closed but I went through them anyway. And I found some loose ends."
Rhyme recalled Archer's questioning observations: Why the outside storage space that Baxter had neglected to tell investigators about?
Rhyme asked, "Which were?"
"Well, one was pretty interesting. I looked over the detectives' notes and got the names of everybody Baxter met with over the past year or so. One in particular seemed interesting. Someone named Oden."
"Never heard of him."
"The name was in a transcription of a witness's statement so they wrote O-D-E-N. Turns out the name was actually O apostrophe D-E-N-N-E."
"Irish, not a misspelled Norse deity," Rhyme observed.
/> "I asked around, checked more notes. There wasn't much. But I did find this O'Denne had some connection to the drug world in Brooklyn. He was behind some kind of new drug people were talking about on the streets. Synthetic. Seemed like the name was Catch. But detectives on the case never pursued the lead. I guessed it was because Baxter..."
"You can say it, Rookie. Died."
"That's right. But I did. I followed up."
"Unofficially?"
"Sort of."
"She's sort of pregnant."
"Finally got an ID. O'Denne was in East New York. Why would Baxter--a financial bigwig--have anything to do with this gangbanger in East New York? I went to talk to O'Denne and find out--"
"--if Baxter was more than just a scam artist."
"Exactly. I wanted to prove he was bankrolling this new drug. That he'd actually used the gun you found--that he'd killed people. The evidence was ambiguous, remember, Lincoln. There were questions. Maybe he was dangerous."
Rhyme said softly, "So then it would have been proper procedure for him to go into Violent Offender Detention."