The Kill Room (Lincoln Rhyme 10)

Then she and Cooper turned to the Lydia Foster scene.

"First," the tech said, nodding at the photos of her body, "the knife wounds. They look unusual, very narrow. But there's no database to let us know."

The United States, home of the National Rifle Association, was the gunshot capital of the world. Death by knife was common in the United Kingdom and other countries with strict gun control laws but in America, with the ubiquity of guns, knives were relatively rare weapons in homicides. So no law enforcement agency had compiled a knife wound computer image database, at least none that Sachs and Rhyme knew about.

Even though she was sure he'd worn gloves, Sachs had still lifted prints from around--and on--Lydia Foster's corpse. You never knew if a perp might have taken his gloves off at some point. But as with Java Hut, these came back from the automated database negative.

"Didn't expect anything different," she muttered. "But I found a hair that didn't match the samplars. There, in the envelope." Sachs handed it to the tech. "Brown and short. Might be the perp's. Remember Corporal Poitier said the man checking out Moreno's suite the day before the killing had short brown hair. Oh, the follicle's attached."

"Good. I'll get it to CODIS."

The nationwide DNA database was expanding at an exponential rate. Whoever the hair belonged to might be in the system; if so, they'd have his identity and, possibly, his present whereabouts soon.

Sachs began looking through the rest of the evidence. Though the killer had taken every single document, computer and media storage device that might have mentioned Robert Moreno, she had found something that might be relevant. A Starbucks receipt. The date and time printed at the top indicated the afternoon of May 1. Sachs recalled that this was probably when Moreno had his private meeting, the one Lydia had not attended. It might be possible to identify the office where the activist went.

Tomorrow she'd go to the location--a building on Chambers Street.

Sachs and Cooper went through the rest of the trace from Lydia's apartment but weren't able to isolate very much. Cooper ran a sample through the gas chromatograph and looked up toward the women. "Got something here. A plant. It's Glycyrrhiza glabra--a legume, sort of like a bean or pea. Basically, it's licorice."

Sachs said, "Anise or fennel?"

"No, no relation, though the tastes are similar."

Nance Laurel looked mystified. "You didn't look anything up. Cynarine, Glycyrrhiza...I'm sorry, but how do you know all this?"

Cooper shoved his black glasses higher on his nose and said, as if it were obvious, "I work for Lincoln Rhyme."

CHAPTER 45

FINALLY A BREAK: They caught the shooter's real name.

Captain Myers's Special Services surveillance team had followed the sniper from NIOS headquarters to his home. He'd gotten off in Carroll Gardens and walked to a house that was owned by Barry and Margaret Shales. A motor vehicle search had returned a picture of Shales. It was clearly the same man whom Sachs had been following that afternoon and taken a picture of with her mobile phone's camera.

Barry Shales was thirty-nine. Former military--retiring as a captain in the air force and decorated several times. The man was now working civilian as an "intelligence specialist" with NIOS. He and his wife--a teacher--had two children, boys in elementary school. Shales was active in his Presbyterian church and volunteered at the boys' schools, a reading tutor.

Learning this bio, Sachs was troubled. Most of the perps she and Rhyme pursued were hardened criminals, serial offenders, organized crime bosses, psychotics, terrorists. But this case was different. Shales was probably a devoted civil servant, probably a decent husband and father. Just doing his duty, even if it happened to involve shooting terrorists in cold blood. Upon his arrest and conviction, a family would be destroyed. Metzger might have been using NIOS for his own delusional approach in safeguarding the country and using a specialist for clean-up. But Shales? He might have been just following orders.

Still, even if he hadn't been the one who'd tortured and killed Lydia Foster, he was part of the organization that possibly had.

Sachs called Lon Sellitto and

told him of their discovery. Then she placed a call to Information Services, requesting every fact they could dig up on Barry Shales--most important where he'd been and what he was doing on May 9, the day of the shooting.

The lab phone rang and Sachs, noting the caller ID, hit speaker. "Fred."

She wasn't worried that Unsub 516 was tapping this particular phone line; Rodney Szarnek had sent over a device he called a "tap-trap," which could detect anyone's listening in. The monitor showed that the conversation was private.

"Amelia. Is it true what I'm hearing? Your friend and mine is sunning himself in the Caribbean."

His astonishment was so exaggerated that Sachs had to smile. Cooper did too. Nance Laurel did not.

"He sure is, Fred."

"Why oh why do my assignments take me to the prime vacation spots of the South Bronx and Newark? While Mr. Lincoln Rhyme's on a beach, courtesy of the city of New York? Where's the fairness in that? Is he enjoying those sissy drinks with umbrellas and plastic sea horses?"

"I think he's paying for it himself, Fred. And how do you know they serve drinks down there with plastic sea horses?"

"Busted," the agent admitted. "The coconut ones, they're my personal favorites. Now, how's the case goin'? That homicide on Third Avenue, that was related? Lydia Foster. Saw it on the wire."