A Textbook Case

know,” Sachs replied.
    An hour later, she’d finished bundling up the last of the evidence collection bags and jars and boxes for transport to the evidence storage facility in Queens.
    “We’ll definitely need to air the place out,” Rhyme muttered. “Smells like an alleyway in here.”
    Sachs agreed. She flung open the windows and poured them each a Glenmorangie scotch. She dropped into the rattan chair beside Rhyme’s Storm Arrow. His drink was in a tumbler, sprouting a straw. She placed it in a cup holder near his mouth. He had good movement of his right arm and hand, thanks to the surgery, but he was still learning the subtleties of control and didn’t want to risk spilling valuable single-malt.
    “So,” she said, regarding him with a gleam in her eye.
    “You’re looking coy, Sachs.”
    “Well, I was just thinking. Are you finally going to admit that there’s more to policing than physical evidence?”
    Rhyme thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so.”
    She laughed. “Rhyme, we closed this one because of deductions from witness statements and observations… and a little profiling. Evidence didn’t have anything to do with it.”
    “Ah,” Rhyme said, “but there’s a flaw in your logic, Sachs.”
    “Which is?”
    “Those deductions and observations all came from the fact that somebody bought a textbook of mine, correct?”
    “True.”
    “And what was the book about?”
    She shrugged. “Evidence.”
    “Ergo, physical evidence was the basis for closing the case.”
    “You’re not going to concede this one, are you, Rhyme?”
    “Do I ever?” he asked and, placing his hand on hers, enjoyed a long sip of the smoky liquor.

Please read on for a preview of
    THE KILL ROOM
    the new Lincoln Rhyme novel
    On sale June 4, 2013.

Chapter 1
    The flash of light troubled him.
    A glint, white or pale yellow, in the distance.
    From the water? From the strip of land across the peaceful turquoise bay?
    But here, there could be no danger. Here, he was in a beautiful and isolated resort. Here, he was out of the glare of media and the gaze of enemies.
    Roberto Moreno squinted out the window. He was merely in his late thirties but his eyes were not good and he pushed the frames higher on his nose and scanned the vista—the garden outside the suite’s window, the narrow white beach, the pulsing blue-green sea. Beautiful, isolated… and protected. No vessels bobbed within sight. And even if an enemy with a rifle could have learned he was here and made his way unseen through the industrial plants on that spit of land a mile away across the water, the distance and the pollution clouding the view would have made a shot impossible.
    No more flashes, no more glints.
    You’re safe. Of course you are.
    But still Moreno remained wary. Like Martin Luther King, like Gandhi, he was always at risk. This was the way of his life. He wasn’t afraid of death. But he was afraid of dying before his work was done. And at this young age he still had much to do. For instance, the event he’d just finished organizing an hour or so ago—a significant one, sure to get a lot of people’s attention—was merely one of a dozen planned for the next year.
    And beyond, an abundant future loomed.
    Dressed in a modest tan suit, a white shirt and royal blue tie—oh, so Caribbean—the stocky man now filled two cups from the coffeepot that room service had just delivered and returned to the couch. He handed one to the reporter, who was setting up a tape recorder.
    “Señor de la Rua. Some milk? Sugar?”
    “No, thank you.”
    They were speaking in Spanish, in which Moreno was fluent. He hated English and only spoke it when he needed to. He’d never quite shucked the New Jersey accent when he was speaking in his native tongue, “hehr” for “her,” “mirrah” for “mirror,” “gun” for “gone.” The tones of his own voice took him right back to his early days in the States—his father working long hours and living life sober, his mother spending long hours not. Bleak landscapes, bullies from a nearby high school. Until salvation: the family’s move to a place far kinder than South Hills, a place where even the language was softer and more elegant.
    The reporter said, “But call me Eduardo. Please.”
    “And I’m Roberto.”
    The name was really “Robert” but that smacked of lawyers on Wall Street and politicians in Washington and generals on the battlefields sowing foreign ground with the bodies of the