More Twisted

dealt with many types of criminals in his career but he’d found the mercenaries to be, on the whole, far more dangerous than your average street thug, even those in the mob. They often felt a moral justification in killing, were extremely smart and often had a worldwide network of contacts. Unlike a punk in Tony Soprano’s crew, they knew how to slip across borders and disappear into jurisdictions where you’d never find them.
    “Any thoughts on who hired him?”
    “Nup, not a skinny li’l fact on that one.”
    “Working with backup?”
    “Dunno. But lots of ’em do.”
    “Why was Larkin hit?” Rhyme asked into the speakerphone.
    “Ah, that’d be the other un -known . . . .” He apparently turned aside to say something to his snitch, who replied in a fast, eager-to-please voice, though Rhyme couldn’tmake out his words. Dellray came back on. “Sorry, Lincoln. No reasons my good friend here heard about. And I know he’d share with me. ’Cause that’s the kinda friend he aspires to be. Wish I had more for you, Lincoln. I’ll keep lookin’.”
    “Appreciate it, Fred.” They hung up.
    He turned to the man sitting on a stool next to him and nodded a greeting.
    Mel Cooper had arrived when Rhyme was on the phone with Dellray. He was a slightly built, balding man somewhere in his thirties, precise of movement (he was a champion ballroom dancer). Cooper was a forensic lab technician, based in the Crime Scene headquarters in Queens. Rhyme, who’d hired the tech at the NYPD years ago, occasionally still shanghaied him to work on cases here in the town house. He now shoved his thick glasses up on his nose. They discussed the mercenary angle, though Rhyme could see that the news didn’t mean much to him. Cooper preferred dealing with the information provided by microscopes, density gradient units and computers to that offered by human beings.
    A prejudice that Rhyme largely shared.
    A few minutes later the criminalist heard the front door open and Amelia Sachs’s confident stride on the marble. Then silence as she hit the carpet and finally a different sound on the wood floor.
    She stepped inside, bearing two cartons of evidence.
    A smiling greeting to Mel Cooper, then she kissed Rhyme and set the cartons down on an examining table.
    Cooper and Sachs both pulled on powder-free latex gloves.
    And they got to work.
    “Weapon first,” Rhyme said.
    They pieced together the bullets and learned that they were .32 caliber, probably fired from an automatic—Sachs found bits of fireproof fiber that would have come from a sound suppressor, and silencers are not effective with revolvers, only auto-loaders or single-shot weapons. Rhyme noted again the killer’s professional quality that Dellray had alluded to, since he’d taken the time to pick up the spent shell casings from the balcony; automatics eject the used brass.
    Unfortunately the bullets were too shattered to reveal anything about the lands and grooves—the rifling in the barrel—which could in turn help identify the type of pistol the killer had used. The medical examiner might find some intact slugs during the autopsy, but Rhyme doubted it; bone will easily shatter fragile bullets like these.
    “Friction ridges?” The technical term for fingerprints.
    “Zip. Some latex glove marks on the window. Looks like he wiped some dirt away to get a better shot.”
    Rhyme grunted in frustration. “Shoe tread marks?”
    “None on the balcony. And in the garden at the foot of the rope? He obliterated his prints before he left.”
    The grappling hook was a CMI brand with epoxy-coated tines. They’d been wrapped in strips of gray and blue flannel, cut, as Sachs speculated, from an old shirt—no identifying label, of course.
    Pro -fessional . . .
    The knotted rope was Mil-Spec 550 chute cord, black, with a nylon braided shroud over seven inner lines.
    Cooper, who’d gone online to get a profile of the rope,looked up from the computer and reported, “Sold all over the country. And it’s cheap. He’d’ve paid cash for it.”
    It was far better to have expensive evidence, bought with traceable credit cards.
    Sachs handed a small plastic envelope to Mel Cooper. “I found this near the grappling hook.”
    “What is it?” he asked, looking at the small fleck inside.
    “Lint, I think. Might be from his pockets. I figured he pulled out his weapon as soon as he climbed over the railing.”
    “I’ll burn a sample,” Cooper said and turned to a