The Steel Kiss (Lincoln Rhyme 12)

Tall man, pale man, skinny man, white bag. He'd been shopping. Start with hardware stores. Sawdust, varnish.

Ball-peen hammers.

Blunt force trauma.

CHAPTER 9

Lincoln Rhyme had forgotten completely that Juliette Archer, his forensic student, was arriving today to begin her informal internship.

She was the visitor who'd come a-calling. Under other circumstances he might have enjoyed her company. But now his immediate thought was how to get rid of her.

Archer directed her Storm Arrow chair around the escalator and into the parlor, braking smartly in front of the lattice of wires covering the floor. She apparently wasn't used to tooling over snaky cables but then, probably concluding that Rhyme would have driven over them regularly without damage, she did the same.

"Hello, Lincoln."

"Juliette."

Thom nodded to her.

"Juliette Archer. I'm a student in Lincoln's class."

"I'm his caregiver. Thom Reston."

"Pleased to meet you."

A moment later came a second buzzer and Thom went to answer the door again. He and a burly man in his thirties entered the parlor. The second visitor was dressed in a business suit, pale-blue shirt and tie. The top button of the shirt was undone and the tie pulled loose. Rhyme never understood that look.

The man nodded a greeting to all but directed his gaze at Archer. "Jule, you didn't wait. I asked you to wait."

Archer said, "This is my brother, Randy." Rhyme recalled she was staying with him and his wife because her loft downtown was being modified to make it more accessible. The couple also happened to live conveniently near John Marshall College.

Randy said, "It's a steep ramp out front."

"I've done steeper," she said.

Rhyme knew the tendency of people to mother, or baby, those with severe disabilities. The practice drove him crazy, as it apparently did Archer, as well. He wondered if she'd eventually grow immune to coddling; he never had.

Well, he thought, the brother's presence settled the matter. No way were two people--amateurs no less--hanging out here while he and Mel Cooper struggled to make a case against the manufacturer or the mall or whoever had been responsible for the death of Sandy Frommer's husband.

"Present, as promised," Archer said, eyes taking in the parlor-cum-lab. "Well. Look at this. The equipment, instruments. And a scanning electron microscope? I'm impressed. Power problems?"

Rhyme didn't answer. Any words might discourage their rapid exit.

Mel Cooper swung from scaffolding to floor, looking toward Archer. She blinked as the beam of his flashlight stabbed her eyes.

"Oh, so sorry. Mel Cooper." A nod, rather than an offered hand, considering the wheelchair situation.

Archer introduced her brother and then, returning her attention to Cooper, said, "Oh, Detective Cooper. Lincoln said some nice things about you. He holds you up as a shining example of a forensic lab--"

"Okay," Rhyme said quickly, ignoring the inquiring but pleased glance from Cooper. "We're in the midst of something here."

She eased forward, looking over other equipment. "When I was doing epidemiology, we used a GC/MS sometimes. Different model. But still. Voice-activated?"

"Uhm. Well. No. Mel or Amelia usually run it. But--"

"Oh, there's a voice system that works well. RTJ Instrumentation. Based in Akron."

"Is there?"