The Broken Window (Lincoln Rhyme 8)

"Obviously it's morning. I can see it's morning. I don't want any . . . It's just . . ." He'd been waiting for a reason to ride the young man on the issue. "I seem to recall being cut off rather early last night. Two tumblers. Virtually nothing."

"It was three."

"If you were to add up the contents, the cubic centimeters, I'm speaking of, it was the same as two small ones." Pettiness, like liquor, could be intoxicating in its own right.

"Well, no scotch in the morning."

"It helps me think more clearly."

"No, it doesn't."

"It does. And more creatively."

"Doesn't do that either."

Thom was wearing a perfectly ironed shirt, tie and slacks. His clothes were less wrinkled than they used to be. Much of the job of a quadriplegic's caregiver is physical. But Rhyme's new chair, an Invacare TDX, for "total driving experience," could fold out into a virtual bed, and had made Thom's job much easier. The chair could even climb low stairs and speed along as fast as a middle-aged jogger.

"I'm saying I want some scotch. There. I've articulated my desire. How's that?"

"No."

Rhyme scoffed and stared at the phone again. "If he gets away . . ." His voice faded. "Well, aren't you going to do what everybody does?"

"What do you mean, Lincoln?" The slim young man had been working with Rhyme for years. He'd been fired on occasion and had quit too. But here he still was. A testament to the perseverance, or perverseness, of both principals.

"I say, 'If he gets away,' and you say, 'Oh, but he won't. Don't worry.' And I'm supposed to be reassured. People do that, you know: They give reassurance when they have no idea what they're talking about."

"But I didn't say that. Are we having an argument about something I didn't say but could have? Isn't that like a wife being mad at her husband because she saw a pretty woman on the street and thought he would have stared at her if he'd been there?"

"I don't know what it's like," Rhyme said absently, his mind mostly on the plan in Britain to capture Logan. Were there holes in it? How was security? Could he trust the informants not to leak information the killer might pick up on?

The phone rang and a caller-ID box opened on the flat-screen monitor near Rhyme. He was disappointed to see the number wasn't a London exchange but closer to home--in the Big Building, cop-speak for One Police Plaza in downtown Manhattan.

"Command, answer phone." Click. Then: "What?"

From five miles away a voice muttered, "Bad mood?"

"No word from England yet."

"What're you, on call or something?" Detective Lon Sellitto asked.

"Logan's disappeared. He could make a move at any time."

"Like having a baby," Sellitto said.

"If you say so. What do you need? I don't want to keep the line tied up."

"All that fancy equipment and you don't have call waiting?"

"Lon."

"Okay. Something you oughta know about. There was a burglary-murder a week ago Thursday. Vic was a woman lived in the Village. Alice Sanderson. Perp stabbed her to death and stole some painting. We got the doer."

Why was he calling about this? A mundane crime and the perp in custody. "Evidence problem?"

"Nope."

"So I'd be interested why?"