The Cutting Edge (Lincoln Rhyme #14)(105)

And he decided it was time.

“All right, everyone. All right. Henry—can I call you Henry?” Rhyme asked this.

Bishop was taken aback. “Uhm. Hank, generally.”

“Okay, Hank. The fact is, I was just about to send you a memo on our situation. It’s nearly finished.”

The prosecutor’s eyes wavered not a bit but Rhyme believed some surprise shone through. He nodded at the computer screen, on which there was, in fact, a lengthy email addressed to Bishop’s office. Bishop didn’t follow the lead but remained fixed on Rhyme, who said, “The Nassau County supervising detective who was shot at the El Halcón takedown on Long Island?”

Bishop said, “Sure. Barry Sales. He’ll be a witness for us in a few days.”

“Barry was my colleague years ago. One of the best crime scene cops I ever worked with.” Rhyme paused. “When I heard about the shooting, I wanted to volunteer to consult for the prosecution, handle the evidence. I wanted to make sure that whoever was behind it, we’d marshal an ironclad case against him. And I wanted to handle the evidence in the case.”

“Yes, I remember,” Bishop said. “You were number one on the list for expert forensic witnesses.”

“But I had to be in DC on other business. A regret, but there was nothing to do about it. Then, a few days ago, El Halcón’s lawyer calls me. He wants to hire me to prove that someone on the arrest team planted evidence incriminating El Halcón.”

Bishop blurted, “Well, that’s just bull—”

“Hank. Please?”

With a grimacing expression on his face, the man lifted a go-ahead palm toward Rhyme.

Rhyme continued, “You’re aware of the weaknesses in your case?”

The tall man shifted uneasily. “It’s not clear-cut, no.”

“First, they’re claiming that El Halcón was in the bathroom the whole time, hiding. Second, that the gunshot residue was planted. He never fired Cody’s gun.” Rhyme nodded at the computer. “I’ve just proved that those are both wrong. I refute their theories entirely. The bathroom? There’s a distinctive cleanser residue on the floor that El Halcón claims he was lying on. Officer Pulaski walked the grid there and took samples. I know the adhesive property of the chlorine ingredient of that particular cleanser. If El Halcón was in the bathroom, matching molecules would have shown up on his clothing or shoes. There were none.”

Bishop’s eyes slipped toward Fallow, who, as lead investigator, should have made this discovery himself. The agent’s face remained utterly expressionless.

“As for proving he fired the gun at the officers, true, El Halcón’s fingerprints weren’t on the weapon. But your contention is that El Halcón unbuttoned his shirt cuff and pulled the sleeve down and held the gun that way? That explains the absence of prints on the gun but the presence of gunshot residue.”

Bishop nodded. “Theory, yes. But I’m hoping the jury will infer that that’s how he held the gun when he was shooting.”

Rhyme stifled a scowl. “They don’t need to infer it. I proved he was holding the gun in his sleeve.”

Bishop blinked. “How?”

“The gun was a Glock twenty-two, firing Luger nine-millimeter rounds. The impulse recoil velocity would be seventeen point five five feet per second and the recoil energy would be six point eight four foot-pounds. That’s plenty of power to compress the fibers in the loose-knit cotton shirt El Halcón was wearing. The lab took microscopic pictures to show visual traces of the gunshot residue. I just looked over them and saw what the recoil had done to the fibers. Only shooting a firearm would create that compression pattern. It’s all in the memo I wrote. The jury will have to infer that it was the bullet El Halcón fired that hit Barry, but that’s a logical conclusion, since the timing strongly suggests that Cody was dead by the time Barry was shot.”

Bishop was momentarily speechless.

“I, well, good, Lincoln. Thank you.” Then he frowned. “But why didn’t you tell me ahead of time?”

“What if there was a grain of truth to their claim?” Rhyme shot back. “What if somebody had tainted the evidence? If so, I was going to find out who and how bad it was and let you know. Or, frankly, if you’d been the one who’d done the tainting, I would have called the attorney general in Washington.”

Drawing a smile from Sellitto.

“So you pretended to sign on to help El Halcón to shore up our case?”

“Not really. That was just serendipitous. Obviously there was another reason.”

“Which was?”

“To find Mr. X, of course.” Rhyme scowled. “At which I wasn’t very successful.”

“Mr. X?” Bishop squinted. His lips tightened for a moment. “Oh. You mean El Halcón’s U.S. partner?”

Obviously…

“He might not have been at the shoot-out but he’s behind the whole operation.”

Fallow nodded. “We’re sure his company owns the warehouse complex, but we couldn’t trace it.”

“And he’s as responsible for Barry Sales’s injury as El Halcón. But I couldn’t find any connection.”

Bishop sighed. The frustration was evident in his face as he said, “We’ve done everything. We’ve looked everywhere. Every document, followed every lead. Nothing.”