More Twisted

rescuing somebody at the park. I mean, she wasn’t very badly hurt. Maybe they staged the whole thing together, Tonya and Langley, to split the reward.”
    Ron supposed this might make sense to an outside observer. Of course, now that he thought about it, that same observer might also speculate that Sandra herself could’ve been in collusion with Langley, whom she might’ve met through her work for an oil company and, as an engineer, rigged a trap for the girl after she’d noticed the building during Ron’s move.
    Interesting takes on the incident, thought an amused Ron Badgett, who was, of course, the only one in the world who knew exactly what had happened to the girl.
    “Could be,” he said. “But I guess that’s between Gilbert and Langley now.”
    Ron steered the car into the driveway and, leaving the engine running, climbed out and opened the door for his wife. “I’m going to head back to the office, see howthey’re coming with the basement wall.” The city was paying to have the hole in his cellar repaired.
    Sandra kissed him good-bye and said she’d have dinner ready when he got back home.
    Ron climbed back into the driver’s seat and drove eagerly to NeDo. In truth, he couldn’t care less about the basement wall. The last daytime classes at City College were over in twenty minutes and he wanted to be at his desk by then, in front of his window, so he could watch the coeds leaving the school on their way home.
    Tunnel Girl had been saved; Ron Badgett needed someone new.

L OCARD’S P RINCIPLE

    I t’s politically sensitive.”
    “Politics.” Lincoln Rhyme offered a distracted grunt to the heavyset, disheveled man who was leaning against a dresser in the bedroom of the criminalist’s Upper West Side town house.
    “No, it’s important.”
    “And sensitive, ” Rhyme echoed. He wasn’t pleased with visitors in general; was much less pleased with visitors at eight-thirty in the morning.
    Detective Lon Sellitto pushed away from the dresser and took the coffee Rhyme’s aide, Thom, offered. He sipped.
    “That’s not bad.”
    “Thanks,” Thom said.
    “No,” Sellitto corrected. “I mean his hand. Look.”
    A quadriplegic, injured while running a crime scene some years ago, Rhyme had been undergoing therapy and had regained some slight movement in his right hand. He was immensely proud of the accomplishment but it was against his nature to gloat—about personal achievements, at least; he ignored Sellitto and continued squeezing a soft rubber ball. Yes, some movement in hishand had indeed returned but the feelings were haywire. He felt textures and temperatures that didn’t match the properties of the sponge rubber.
    Another grunt. He flicked the ball away with his index finger. “I’m not really crazy about drop-ins, Lon.”
    “We got a crunch, Linc.”
    A politically sensitive one. Rhyme continued, “Amelia and I’ve got a few other cases going on at the moment, you know.” He sipped the strong coffee through a straw. The tumbler was mounted on the headboard to his right. To his left was a microphone, connected to a voice recognition system that in turn was hooked into an environmental control unit, the central nervous system of his bedroom.
    “Like I said, a crunch.”
    “Hmm.” More coffee.
    Rhyme carefully examined Sellitto—the Major Cases detective with whom he used to work frequently when Rhyme had run NYPD’s crime scene unit. He seemed tired. Rhyme reflected that however early Rhyme had wakened, Sellitto had probably been up several hours before, responding to the 10–29 homicide call.
    Sellitto explained that the entrepreneur and philanthropist Ronald Larkin, fifty-five, had just been shot to death in the bedroom of his Upper East Side town house. The first responders found a dead body, a wounded and sobbing wife, very little evidence and no witnesses whatsoever.
    Both the feds and the NYPD upper echelons wanted Rhyme and his partner, Amelia Sachs, to work the scene, with Sellitto as lead detective. Rhyme was oftenthe choice for big cases because, despite his reclusive nature, he was well known to the public and his presence suggested the mayor and brass were serious about a collar.
    “You know Larkin?”
    “Refresh my memory.” Unless facts had to do with his job—consulting forensic scientist, or “criminalist”—Rhyme didn’t pay much attention to trivia.
    “Ronald Larkin, come on, Linc. Everybody knows him.”
    “Lon, the sooner you tell me, the