The Cutting Edge (Lincoln Rhyme #14)(85)

From another envelope Pulaski pulled out a dozen more sheets of paper. He’d printed out the images taken at the FBI’s evidence room on his phone’s camera. He set these too in front of Rhyme and, like flipping pages of the score for a pianist, he lifted a page away once Rhyme had finished reading it, exposing the one below.

All right. Good. Taken together, all the paperwork detailed many things that he was interested in: the gunshot residue and other trace found on El Halcón’s hands and clothing, the trace on the floor of the warehouse, the location of the many bullets that had been fired—in the walls and ceiling and floor and the victims’ bodies. The data confirmed that El Halcón’s prints were not on the weapon in question, as Carreras-López had said, though his cuff contained gunshot residue—just where the drug lord had said the arresting officer had smeared a rag or piece of cloth containing the GSR.

Rhyme read everything again.

“What is it, Lincoln?”

Was he being that transparent? He was dismayed by what he’d found.

A failing like this? At least he could be grateful for El Halcón’s attorney—for coming to him and raising the falsified-evidence question. If not for the round, mild-spoken Mexican, the damage would never have come to light.

Pulaski persisted, “Is there a problem?”

“No, no. You’re a godsend, Rookie.”

“You’re being sarcastic.”

“No, I mean it. My delivery doesn’t always match my intent. That’s a quality for us all to guard against.”

“All right. Acknowledged. But come on, tell me. Am I going to get into trouble for this?”

“How much trouble can you get into when your mission is a higher cause?”

Pulaski pulled a tight grimace. “You know, Lincoln, my father always said you can never trust anybody when they answer a question with a question.”





Chapter 42



Hank, there’s a problem.”

The man uttering these words, a slim, baby-cheeked young assistant prosecutor, had not sounded too alarmed when he’d uttered the “P” word. Henry Bishop, the senior federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of New York, remained in high spirits. The case against El Halcón was proceeding well. The groundwork had been laid, and they were just getting to the rock-solid forensics that the experts would present.

Bishop himself was slim, though at six feet, five inches, he appeared far more willowy than he really was. The blond, clean-shaven man worked out daily, and beneath his Brooks Brothers suits lurked muscle. He ticked off a notation on a list—on which many more notations required death by ticking—and looked up. “Yes?”

Larry Dobbs—whom Bishop thought of as First Assistant—continued, “I just got a call from somebody at PERT.”

The FBI’s physical evidence response team.

To Dobbs, Bishop said in a cool voice, “Let’s be clearer. Can you do that?”

“Sure.”

“Good. Now. Specifics.” Bishop was sitting in his office, overlooking the borough of Brooklyn. He noted a haze of smoke on the horizon. From the fire after that earthquake, which had not been far away. He’d felt the tremor in his office.

The young, buttoned-up assistant prosecutor said, “NYPD officer, a uniform, had some questions about the case.”

“Our case?”

“Right,” Dobbs confirmed.

“Well, say, the El Halcón case.”

“Sorry, Hank. The El Halcón case.”

“Not ‘the case.’ There’re a lot of ‘the cases.’”

Dobbs, standing across the bulky desk, said, “El Halcón.”

Bishop mused, “So New York City cop. Questions. Hm.”

The El Halcón investigation involved federal crimes and state crimes but New York had deferred to the feds. Yes, after Bishop got his convictions of El Halcón, the man would also be charged under the state penal code. But that prosecution would be icing on the cake and largely irrelevant, since the Mexican would never get out of federal prison to serve time in the state pen. So why would NYPD get involved? El Halcón had no city nexus.

Dobbs said, “The uniform comes into PERT. He knows all the codes, knows the case numbers, knows the people, knows the filing system. He asks to see the evidence logs. The gatekeeper lets him see everything. ’Cause he was in uniform and he knew everything about the case.”

“You said ‘gatekeeper.’ The way you phrased it, using that word. Assigning blame, are we?”

Dobbs swayed back and forth slowly. Skinny, a live wire of energy. “Occurred to me. Evidence room supervisor lets in a patrol officer whose name isn’t on the official roster and turns over records.” Dobbs added, “Tsk-tsk.”

The man actually said that? Bishop then asked, “Who was running the room? A special agent?”

“No. A civilian with Justice.”

“Oh, good. Heads can roll. And they will. But please. Keep up the narrative.”

“Anyway, the uniform said it was an allied case.”

“Allied case, NYPD? Makes no sense. Nassau County maybe. But not New York City. No NYPD jurisdiction on this one, period. What did he say?”

Dobbs offered, “He didn’t. Just asked for the files. Asked to take copies but the gatekeeper wouldn’t let him. It’s pretty likely, though, the uniform took cell phone shots.”