The Kill Room (Lincoln Rhyme 10)

Suites 1200-1208 -

"Almost there."

They turned the corner. And stopped abruptly.

"Wait," Poitier muttered. "What's this?"

Rhyme was looking at the double doors to suite 1200, the Kill Room--the crime scene that had presumably been marked with police tape and strident warnings not to trespass, duly sealed.

But was no longer.

The doors were wide open and a workman in stained white overalls stood in the middle of the room, with a paint roller, putting what seemed to be the final coat on the wall above the fireplace. The floors of the room were bare wood. The carpet had been removed. And everything else--the bloody sofa, the shards of glass--was gone.

CHAPTER 49

JACOB SWANN WAS EATING a very well-crafted omelet at a diner on the Upper West Side, near Central Park West.

He was in jeans, a windbreaker (black, today), running shoes and white T-shirt. His backpack was at his side. This was a neighborhood in which many people worked jobs where suits and ties weren't required and regular hours weren't the norm--performing arts, museums, galleries. Food service too, of course. Swann blended right in.

The coffee he was sipping was hot and not bitter. The toast thick and buttered before meeting the heating element--the only way to do it. And the omelet? Better than well crafted, he decided. Damn good.

Eggs are the trickiest of ingredients and can make a dish sublime or turn it into a complete rout if you're careless or conditions betray: toughening or curdling or collapsing. A bit of yolk in the whites you're trying to meringue and your baked Alaska is fucked. And there's always the chance of unpleasant bacteria reproducing eagerly in God's perfect oval (gestating is what shells are made for, after all).

But these eggs had been whisked just right--casually and without a whisper of liquid--and then cooked over high heat, the fresh-chopped tarragon, chive and dill sprinkled in at just the right moment, not too soon. The completed mezzaluna-shaped dish was yellow, brown and white, crisp outside, gently curded within.

Despite the food, though, Swann was growing a bit impatient with Amelia Sachs.

She had been inside Lincoln Rhyme's town house now for hours. She'd finessed the phone call issue, switching prepaid mobiles every few hours, it seemed--everybody on the team was using them now--and she had a wiretap alert on the landline into the town house, which there was no way to defeat without physically breaking into the central switch.

But with her being the lead investigator she'd have to emerge sooner or later.

He reflected on her partner, Rhyme. Now, that was a setback. It had cost his organization nearly two thousand dollars to eliminate the man, his male nurse and another cop. But his contacts down there from the dock crowd had blown the attempt. They'd asked if Swann wanted them to try again but he'd told them to get the hell off the island. It would be very difficult to trace them back to Swann and his boss but it could be done.

He was sure there'd be another opportunity to take care of Rhyme. The man certainly couldn't move very fast to get away from the Kai Shun. Swann had looked up Rhyme's condition, quadriplegia, and discovered that the criminalist had no feeling whatsoever in most of his body. Swann was intrigued with the idea of the man's just sitting still and watching someone flay his skin off--and slowly bleed to death--while feeling no pain.

What an interesting idea: butchering a creature while it was alive.

Curious. He'd have to--

Ah, but here is our beautiful Amelia.

She wasn't coming from the direction he'd expected her--the L-shaped cul-de-sac for deliveries behind the town house, near where her Ford Torino was parked. She'd apparently left via the front door, which faced Central Park West. She was now walking west along the crosstown street's sidewalk, across from the diner.

He'd hoped to get her in the cul-de-sac; there were too many pedestrians, stragglers on their way to work, here at the moment. But finding her alone would be only a matter of time.

Swann casually wiped the utensils and coffee mug, smearing prints. He paid by slipping a ten and a five under the plate, rather than taking the check to the cashier. He'd gotten these bills in change from a hotel concierge across town; cash from an ATM is frighteningly traceable, so he'd engaged in a little micro money laundering, leaving a generous but not overly so tip.

Now he was out the door, climbing into his Nissan.

He observed Sachs through the windshield. Vigilant, she looked around carefully, though not toward him--only at those places where an attacker might come from. Interesting too: She looked up, scanning.

Don't worry, Swann thought to her. That's not where the bullet's going to come from.

As she fished for car keys her jacket slipped away from her hip and he noted she wore a Glock.

He started his car at the same time she did hers, to cover the sound of his ignition.

As Sachs's Torino sped away from the curb, Swann followed.