The Broken Window (Lincoln Rhyme 8)

"Buy a dictionary, rookie."

The officer sighed and said patiently, "Whatever it means, Lincoln, it's probably not a word I'll ever want to use."

Everybody in the room laughed, Rhyme included. "Touche. What I mean is we've coincidentally stumbled on something very interesting, if you will, Mel. NYPD has files on the SSD servers, through PublicSure. Well, Cassel's been downloading information about the investigation, selling it to the defendants and erasing all traces of it."

"Oh, I can see him doing it," Sachs said. "Don't you think, Ron?"

"Don't doubt it for a minute." The young officer added, "Wait . . . Cassel was the one who gave us the CD of the customers' names--he's the one who fingered Robert Carpenter."

"Of course," Rhyme said, nodding. "He changed the data to implicate Carpenter. He needed to point the investigation away from SSD. Not because of the Five Twenty-Two case. But because he didn't want anybody looking over the files and finding that he'd been selling police records. And who better to give to the wolves than somebody who'd tried to become a competitor?"

Sellitto asked Szarnek, "Anybody else involved from SSD?"

"Not from what I found. Just Cassel."

Rhyme then looked at Pulaski, who was staring at the evidence board. His eyes displayed the same hard edge Rhyme had seen earlier that day.

"Hey, rookie? You want it?"

"Want what?"

"The case against Cassel?"

The young officer considered this. But then his shoulders slumped and, laughing, he said, "No, I don't think so."

"You can handle it."

"I know I can. I just . . . I mean, when I run my first case solo I want to make sure I'm doing it for the right reasons."

"Well said, rookie," Sellitto muttered, lifting his coffee mug toward the young man. "Maybe there's hope for you after all. . . . All right. If I'm suspended at least I can finish up that work around the house that Rachel's been nagging me to do." The big detective grabbed a stale cookie and ambled out the door. " 'Night, everybody."

Szarnek assembled his files and disks and placed them on a table. Thom signed the chain-of-custody card as the criminalist's attorney-in-fact. The techie left, reminding Rhyme, "And when you're ready to join the twenty-first century, Detective, give me a call." A nod at the computers.

Rhyme's phone rang--it was a call for Sachs, whose dismembered mobile wouldn't be operative any time soon. Rhyme deduced from the conversation that the caller was in the precinct house in Brooklyn and that her car had been located at a pound not far away.

She made plans with Pam to drive to the place tomorrow morning in the girl's car, which had been found in a garage behind Peter Gordon's town house. Sachs went upstairs to get ready for bed, and Cooper and Pulaski left.

Rhyme was writing a memo for the deputy mayor, Ron Scott, describing 522's M.O. and suggesting they look for other instances in which he'd committed crimes and framed somebody for them. There'd be other evidence in the hoarder's town house, of course, but he couldn't imagine the amount of work involved in searching that crime scene.

He finished the e-mail, sent it on its way and was speculating what Andrew Sterling's reaction might be to one of his underlings' selling data on the side, when his phone rang. An unknown number on caller ID.

"Command, answer phone."

Click.

"Hello?"

"Lincoln. It's Judy Rhyme."

"Well, hello, Judy."

"Oh, I don't know if you heard. They dropped the charges. He's out."

"Already? I knew it was in the works. I thought it might take a little longer."

"I don't know what to say, Lincoln. I guess, I mean: thank you."

"Sure."