The Cutting Edge (Lincoln Rhyme #14)(47)

“How could he’ve gotten past the guard without a pass or credentials?”

Schoal shrugged. “Not that hard. Somebody in a vest and hat, they walk in with a bunch of guys, security wouldn’t notice. That’s not a risk we worry about: It’s the trucks that show up off hours to drive away with your ’dozer or ten thousand bucks’ worth of copper pipe. Sorry I said ‘lady.’”

“I’ve been called worse.” She dug into the evidence bag and handed him a picture from the MTA security camera, which, of course, didn’t show much at all. The dark coat, the dark slacks, dark stocking cap. The text described a white male, average build and about six feet.

“Detective, what’d this guy do exactly?”

Sometimes you were tight-lipped, sometimes you sensed an ally. “He killed a jewelry store owner and two people—a couple—in Midtown yesterday.”

“Fuck me. The Promisor. God. That was terrible. Those kids. Going to get married…and he killed ’em.”

“That’s him.”

“And you think he bought his gun from one of my guys?”

“That’s what we want to find out.”

They began circulating, talking to the workers who’d drawn Sunday duty. The men—and a few women—were more than willing to talk and no one evaded eye contact, any more than normal, or otherwise suggested that he or she was the person Unsub 47 had met with.

After a half hour of no luck they’d been through nearly all the workers on duty and Sachs was thinking she—or Ron Pulaski—would have to return and canvas the rest tomorrow. She didn’t like that they’d have to wait. She was sure that Forty-Seven was still on the trail of VL and continuing his hunt for those who’d committed the terrible sin of adorning their fingers with diamond rings.

But a moment later, a break. A tall African American worker listened to her words and then began nodding almost immediately.

“You know, I did see somebody here about when you were saying, Friday. I thought he was corporate. He wasn’t in a Carhartt or anything, just a black jacket, with hat and vest.”

The worker’s name was Antoine Gibbs.

Schoal said, “The execs from the head office, they come to the site, they don’t wear suits a lot of times.”

Gibbs said, “So this guy, he was talking to somebody else. I guess one of ours—he did have on boots and was wearing Carhartt. They talked, and looked around, and then they walked away, toward Seven. It was kind of odd, suspicious, I guess, but I didn’t think much of it at the time.”

“Seven?” Sachs asked.

Gibbs indicated one of the drilling pens surrounded by the six-foot-high green fence. This one did not have a derrick rising from it. Beside a gate was a sign.

Area 7

Drilling: 3/8–3/10

HDPE: 4/3

Grouting: 4/4



As they walked to the site Sachs asked the tall worker, “Did you see his face?”

“Not clear, no. Sorry. Pretty much the build of the guy was in that picture you showed me. But no face.”

Her eyes were on the battered fence.

“Could they get inside? Maybe they wanted to conduct some business out of sight.”

Gibbs told her, “If he had a key. A lot of guys do.”

“What’s in there?” Nodding at the fence.

Schoal answered. “Shafts and a mud pit.” He could see she didn’t understand and added, “See, geothermal works by pumping fluid from the surface down hundreds, or thousands, of feet, and back up again.”

“I read your billboard.”

“PR guy wrote it but it gives you an okay idea. The first step is we drill shafts—in this case about five to six hundred feet—into bedrock. Then we feed pipe into it. That loop I mentioned, basically two thick hoses joined at the end—called HDPE, high-density polyethylene—so the fluid can circulate. Since geothermal only works when the piping’s in contact with the ground we pour conductive grout down the shaft after the piping’s in place. This one, Area Seven, there’re twenty shafts. We’ve drilled them all but they’re not scheduled for the piping to go in for a couple of weeks—April third. It’s shut down till then.”

She said to the supervisor, “So there’d be nobody working and they could talk in private. Can you open it up for me?”

Schoal asked Gibbs, “Mud pit?”

“Haven’t dredged it out yet.”

He said to Sachs, “Just watch your step. The way drilling works is we pump water down with the drill face, and mud and rock’re pumped back up into what we call a mud pit. Eventually it’s emptied out and the sludge and stone’re taken to dump sites but the one in Seven hasn’t been emptied yet. Nasty stuff.”

Schoal fished a key from his belt and opened the gate. Sachs walked inside, adding, “Can you wait out here?”

He nodded, though he didn’t get why, his expression said.

She told him, “Don’t want to disturb any evidence from where they might’ve been standing.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. Crime scene stuff. We see all those shows, the wife and me. I love ’em. You guys can catch a butterfly that was at the murder scene and there’ll be an image of the killer in the damn thing’s wings. That’s just amazing. You ever do that?”