The Cutting Edge (Lincoln Rhyme #14)(84)

He nodded when smiled at, and answered questions like “What’s wrong?” and “Is there a problem?” with a noncommittal “Won’t keep you long, folks.”

But darn. He didn’t spot the boy. There were a couple of darker-skinned men but they were all much older and seemed Latino, not Indian.

He returned to the front of the bus and called that detective in New York.

“’Lo?” Lon Sellitto asked.

Unprofessional. But then again these were New Yorkers he was dealing with, whole different kettle of fish.

But by way of object lesson he said, “Sir, this is Trooper J. T. Boyle again. I’m on board the bus and’ve taken a look at all passengers. I don’t see him.”

“Did you—”

“Checked the john too, yessir.”

“—ask the driver if anybody got off at any stop?”

Boyle hesitated. He turned to the driver and asked if anybody’d gotten off at any stop.

“No, sir.”

“No, Detective, nobody got off,” Boyle said, then added, “Detective. Can you call it?”

“What?”

“Can you call the boy’s phone?”

“Oh. Hm. Good plan. Hold on.”

There were some clicks and then Sellitto said, “I’ve got that detective at Computer Crimes who’s been tracking it. Trooper? You’re on with Detective Szarnek.”

“Hey,” came the voice. Boyle heard rock-and-roll music.

These New York folks simply were not to be believed.

“Detective…” He didn’t try the name. “This is Trooper J. T. Boyle, state police.”

“Hi, Trooper.”

“Uhm, hi. Could you call the phone?”

“Sure. I’ll activate it.”

A moment later, the default ringtone of an iPhone bleated. The sound was coming from a row three back from the front. Boyle walked forward to find a passenger reaching into the side compartment of her bag, a frown on her face, and pulling the phone out, staring at it.

“Miss, am I right in figuring that’s not your phone?”

She looked up at him. Her face, surrounded by blue and green hair, was pretty, though in the trooper’s opinion spoiled by the nose studs and the ring in her eyebrow. She said, “No, sir. And I have no idea how it got here.”

*



Ron Pulaski entered the lab and Rhyme knew immediately two things: He’d had some success and he was as uneasy as hell about it.

“Rookie?”

He nodded, broadly and furtively, if doing both simultaneously were possible. He would have made an absolutely terrible spy.

“The den,” Rhyme said. He glanced back.

What would they say if they knew…?

The men crossed the hall and stepped, and wheeled, inside.

“What do you have?”

“I’m not feeling great about this, Lincoln.”

“Ah, it’s all good.”

“‘All good.’ You know, that sort of rates with that other phrase, ‘No worries.’ You notice people say them when all is not good and when there is something to worry about. I mean, you didn’t just break the law.”

Pulaski had been out to the warehouse where the shoot-out had occurred involving Eduardo Capilla—El Halcón.

“I doubt you did either.”

“Doubt? The place was sealed. You know it was sealed.”

“It’s a crime scene. I would assume it was sealed. Nobody was there, though?”

“No. Just the tape. And the notice that said not to enter. Oh, it also shared that entering was a federal offense.”

“Oh, you don’t take those things seriously, do you, Rookie?”

“Those things? Federal offenses. Of all the things I take seriously, federal offenses hover near the top.”

Rhyme was amused. He’s sounding more and more like me.

“Let’s get going. Where are we?”

From his bag Pulaski extracted a sheaf of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch pages. “The ballistic and trace analysis from the prosecution and defense reports. Scene photos, diagrams.”

“Good. Spread them out.”

He did, filling the old, walnut coffee table, whose legs ended in carved claws. Rhyme studied them. He then said, “And samples from Long Island?”

In the interest of keeping the El Halcón mission on the down-low, Rhyme had retained a private forensic lab to analyze the new trace Pulaski had collected from the warehouse and had dropped off there earlier. Pulaski opened an envelope from the service and displayed the results.

“Turn the pages, if you would be so kind, Rookie.”

“Oh, sorry.”

Rhyme read the dense type.

“Now the files from PERT.”

“Not enough that I break into a crime scene. You’ve got me stealing from the FBI headquarters.”

“You didn’t steal a thing, Pulaski. Don’t exaggerate. You took pictures. That’s all.”

“Sounds like a fellow saying he only borrowed that watch from the jewelry counter at Macy’s. I’m just saying.”

The box delivered to his door by the lawyer’s driver wouldn’t have all of the crime scene and agents’ reports, merely what was going to be presented at trial. Rhyme needed to see everything.