The Steel Kiss (Lincoln Rhyme 12)

Whitmore said, "My paralegal has sent me a text. Probably similar to yours, Detective Sachs. A posting on several newspapers' online editions in the op-ed sections, claiming credit for the escalator death."

"It's up here," Cooper said. They all turned toward the display.

You're lust for things, for objects, for trinkets will be the death of you all! You've abandoned true values and in doing that lost your precious 'control', that happens when you don't use your data wisely. You have rejected the love of families and friends for the addiction of belongings. You must own more and more and more until, soon, your possessions will possess YOU and, with a cold, steel kiss, send you to hell.

--The People's Guardian

Rhyme mentioned that the unsub's email to Todd Williams was signed P. G.

"Legit?" Cooper asked.

Curiously many people took credit for crimes that they had nothing to do with.

"No, I'm sure it's from him," Rhyme said.

"How do you--?" Archer started. Then: "Sure, the word 'control.' It's in quotation marks. And the reference to 'wise' and 'data.'"

"Exactly. Hacking the DataWise isn't public information; only our unsub would know about it. And some of the same intentional grammatical mistakes, the Y-O-U-R-E. And the incorrect use of 'that' for 'which.'"

Sachs said, "Let's find out if he's done this before..." She went online and began a search. A few minutes later, "Nothing in NCIC." The National Crime Information Center compiles warrants and profile information on tens of thousands of suspects throughout the United States and some foreign nations. Sachs added that the popular press had reported no activist groups mounting attacks that were in any way similar to what Unsub 40 had done. Nor were there any references to "the People's Guardian."

Juliette Archer, Rhyme realized, had wheeled away from the others and was looking over a computer screen. She called, "I've got it."

"What?" Rhyme asked bluntly, irritated that there were no new leads in a case in which the unsub was possibly targeting more victims right at the moment.

"The controller company. CIR Micro?" She returned to the others and nodded at the screen she'd just called up. "That's the CEO's direct line, Vinay Chaudhary."

"How'd you get that?" Sachs asked, seemingly irritated that the NYPD assistance she'd requested hadn't been as fast as an amateur.

"Just

a little detective work," Archer answered.

"Let's talk to him," Rhyme said.

Sachs typed the number into her phone and apparently got Chaudhary's assistant, from what Rhyme could deduce. After an explanation, Sachs's body language, registering surprise, suggested she was on with the CEO himself. It appeared he wasn't resistant to talking with them, though--she explained after disconnecting--he wasn't free just now. He could speak to them in about forty-five minutes.

Presumably, after he had his lawyers assembled around him, like settlers circling the wagons when hostiles appeared on the bluffs over their heads.

CHAPTER 22

Whatta we got, Sarge?" The question slipped smoothly through the officer's headset.

The DSS tactical surveillance van, plumbing today, was parked directly across from the bar and NYPD Sergeant Joe Reilly had good eyes on the inside of the dive. He replied, "Both of 'em, sitting, hanging. Drinkin' beers. No cares in the world." A paunchy, gray-haired officer in Narcotics, Reilly had been a supervisor with the Drug Street Sweep program since it had been started years ago; back then radios crackled like wadded-up waxed paper. Amazing they could coordinate the busts at all. Now it was all high-def digital, as if the tactical team officer he was speaking with was only feet away, not up the street in this scruffy Brooklyn 'hood.

Reilly wasn't alone in the van. Beside him, operating the camera controls, was a prim and proper stocky young African American officer, a whiz with the electronic eyes and ears, though she wore too much perfume for the sergeant's taste.

"Any weapons?" the voice in his ear asked. The undercover tac team was a half block away from Richie's bar in Bedford-Stuyvesant and they damn well better've ordered the calzone Reilly had told them to get for him. And no spinach. Ham and Swiss. Period. Soda. Diet.

Reilly peered at the screen image of the two beer drinkers under surveillance. The woman officer shook her head. Reilly said, "Negative presenting."

Which didn't mean the two men they were watching weren't armed to the teeth.

"Just the two of them?"

Woulda said three, it'd been three. Four, four.

"Yeah." Reilly stretched. Hoped this wasn't a damn waste of time. There'd been good intel that a senior asshole from one of the Dominican Republic crews was meeting a local punk in Richie's. Maybe transferring something big. But the DR guy was late and the punk--skinny, twitchy--was just hanging with some unknown, a white male, youngish, acting kind of twitchy himself.