More Twisted

open them up.”
    “You mean me, right?” Cooper said.
    “I’d love to help, Mel. But . . .” Rhyme gave a smile.
    The tech picked up the rope in his gloved hands. He started to untie a knot. “Like iron.”
    “So much the better for us. Whatever’s inside has been trapped nice and tight since he tied them.”
    “ If there’s anything there at all,” Cooper said. “This could be a total waste of time.”
    “I like that, Mel. It sums up the whole business of crime scene work, wouldn’t you say?”

    When Rhyme had lived alone, the front parlor of his town house—across the hall from the lab—had been used as a storeroom. But now that Sachs was living here part of the time she and Thom had redecorated, turned it into a comfortable living room.
    There were contemporary Asian paintings and silk screens, from NoHo and East Village galleries, a large portrait of Houdini (a present from a woman they’dworked with on a case some years ago), a Blue Dog print, two large flower arrangements and comfortable furniture imported all the way from New Jersey.
    On the mantel rested pictures of Sachs’s father and mother and of her as a teenage girl, peeking out from under the hood of a ’68 Dodge Charger she and her father worked on for months before finally admitting to themselves that the patient was terminal.
    And her history wasn’t the only one represented in the parlor.
    She’d sent Thom on a mission into the basement of the town house where he’d rummaged through boxes and returned with framed decorations and citations from Rhyme’s days with the NYPD. Personal photographs, as well. Several of them showed Rhyme during his Illinois childhood, with his parents and other relatives. One was of the boy and his folks in front of their house, beside a large blue sedan. The parents smiled at the camera. Lincoln was smiling as well, but his was a different expression—one of curiosity—and the eyes were looking to the side at something off camera.
    One snapshot depicted a slim, intense, teenage Lincoln. He was wearing a school track uniform.
    Thom now opened the front door and ushered three people into the room: Lon Sellitto, as well as a portly sixtyish man in a gray suit and minister’s collar and, gripping his arm, a woman with pale skin and eyes as red as her hair. She had no reaction to the wheelchair.
    “Mrs. Larkin,” the criminalist said. “I’m Lincoln Rhyme. This is Amelia Sachs.”
    “Call me Kitty, please.” She nodded a greeting.
    “John Markel,” the reverend said and shook Sachs’s hand, gave a sallow smile to Rhyme.
    He explained that his diocese, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, operated several charities in the Sudan and Liberia and ran a school in the Congo. “Ron and I have worked together for years. We were going to have lunch today, about our work over there.” He sighed and shook his head. “Then I heard the news.”
    He’d hurried to the hospital to be with Kitty and then said he’d accompany her here.
    “You don’t have to stay, John,” the widow said. “But thank you for coming.”
    “Edith and I want you to spend the night with us. We don’t want you alone,” the man said.
    “Oh, thank you, John, but I should be with Ron’s brother and his family. And his son too.”
    “I understand. But if you need anything, please call.”
    She nodded and embraced him.
    Before he left, Sachs asked the minister if he had any ideas about who the killer might be. The question caught him off guard. “Killing someone like Ron Larkin? It’s inexplicable. I’d have no idea who’d want him dead.”
    Thom saw the minister out, and Kitty sat on a couch. The aide returned a moment later with a tray of coffee. Kitty took a cup but didn’t sip any. She let it sit between her clasped hands.
    Sachs nodded at the large bandage on her forearm. “Are you all right?”
    “Yes,” she said, as if the only pain came from speaking. She stared at her arm. “The doctor said it was part of one of the bullets. It broke apart.” She looked up. “It mighthave been from the one that killed Ron. I don’t know what to think about that.”
    Rhyme deferred to Sachs, who had more people skills than he, and the detective asked her about the shooting.
    Kitty and her husband had been traveling around the country to meet with the heads of companies and other not-for-profits. Last night they’d flown in from Atlanta, where they’d been meeting with one of the suppliers the charity was purchasing