The Cutting Edge (Lincoln Rhyme #14)(9)
The front room—and waiting area—was a ten-by-fifteen-foot space, dominated by a wooden counter. It also contained a couch and two mismatched chairs. On the counter rested several foot-square velvet pads for viewing customers’ jewelry, several eye loupes, stacks of paper (all blank). She guessed Patel did only custom work. He would meet with his customers here and bring out pieces they’d ordered from the workshop or the waist-high safe in the office for examination. An Internet search had revealed that the main business of the company was cutting and polishing large diamonds for other jewelry manufacturers.
Question One…
What did you walk out of here with?
She stepped back into the office and looked over the safe and its contents: hundreds of three-by-three-inch white paper squares—folded like Japanese origami. These contained loose diamonds.
The perp’s glove prints—both in blood and from residue absorbed by cloth fibers—were on the safe and several of the paper squares. But he hadn’t ransacked. She would have thought he either would take all these or, if he wanted something in particular, would have dug through the safe and flung aside the envelopes he didn’t want.
There was one way to find out. Sachs had collected what business documents she could find. One would probably contain an inventory of the diamonds Patel had in stock. Evidence technicians at Crime Scene headquarters in Queens, those working in the HVE, the high-value evidence room, would compare the inventory against what was in the safe. Eventually they’d discover what was missing.
It could take months.
Too long. They needed to know as soon as possible what had been taken, so conversations could start with confidential informants who had stolen-jewelry contacts, known fences and money launderers. With robbery, if you don’t stop the perps in the act, the investigation will invariably be a long slog through the complicated, wide-flung world of moving stolen merchandise.
But there didn’t seem to be any way to short-circuit the process.
Except…
Something was wrong about this. Why leave these stones? What was more important than them?
Sachs crouched—carefully, her arthritic knee sometimes complained on these damp days—and looked through the safe more carefully. Some of the envelopes contained only one diamond, some dozens. The gems seemed damn nice to her, plenty perp-worthy. But what did she know? She wasn’t a jewelry girl. The only sparkle she wore was her blue diamond engagement ring, which sat modestly beside a thin gold band—now both hidden beneath purple latex.
She guessed there were several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stones in the safe.
There for the taking.
Yet he hadn’t.
She rose, feeling a trickle of moisture down her temples. The day was cold but the old building’s radiators emitted sweat-lodge heat, which was trapped against her body by the white Tyvek overalls. She remembered the days when one searched a scene wearing only gloves and, sometimes, booties. The protective outfits, a staple of crime scenes around the world, now existed for two reasons: First, because of the risk from dangerous materials at the scene. And, second, defense attorneys. The odds of contaminating a scene by not wearing overalls were extremely small. But a sharp lawyer could derail the prosecution’s case entirely by planting a seed of doubt that it might have happened.
Okay, if not the safe, then what?
As the medical examiner techs removed the bodies—the couple first and then Patel—she gazed over the three rooms once more.
What if, Sachs speculated, it wasn’t a robbery at all, but a hit? Had Patel borrowed money from a loan shark and failed to pay it back? Not likely—he owned a successful business and hardly seemed like the kind of man to contact a local gangbanger for a loan at 30 percent vig, the going rate for interest on street borrowing, and that was per month.
A romance gone bad? Patel was a widower, she’d learned. And the round, unkempt middle-aged man just didn’t seem like the type to become embroiled in a torrid and dangerous affair. If simply killing him was the motive, why the torture? And, for that matter, why break into the shop? Why not just tap him at home or on the street?
Her eyes returned to the workroom. Had Patel or an employee been working on a diamond or piece of jewelry that was particularly valuable?
She walked into the room. The workstations didn’t appear to have been used today; all the equipment was arranged neatly on shelves or racks. However, at one station she noticed another of those sheets of paper folded into an envelope for holding diamonds, like those in the safe. This one, however, was empty. Written on it in pen were: GC-1, GC-2, GC-3 and GC-4. The names for the diamonds it had contained, she guessed, since weight in carats was given next to each (they ranged from five to seven point five). There were letters beside each, as well. The designation D, IF was next to three. Beside the last one, smaller, was D, F. Quality ranking, maybe. Also on the sheet was written: Owner: Grace-Cabot Mining, Ltd., Cape Town, South Africa. Beside that was the company’s phone number.
“Hm,” she muttered aloud when she saw another note, at the bottom. This stated the valuation of each stone. The total worth was sixty-eight million ZAR. She pulled out her phone and Googled, learning that the denomination was, not surprisingly, South African rands.
What was surprising was the number she came up with when she ran the currency conversion calculator.
The value in U.S. dollars hovered around five million