The Broken Window

other devices.”
    As they returned to Sterling’s office John told her that to his knowledge nobody had ever broken into SSD. Still, O’Day regularly had them run drills to preventsecurity intrusions. Like most of the guards, John didn’t carry a gun but Sterling had a policy that at least two armed guards be present twenty-four hours a day.
    Back in the CEO’s office, she found Pulaski sitting on a huge leather sofa near Martin’s desk. Though not a small man, he seemed dwarfed, a student who’d been sent to the principal’s office. In her absence, the young officer had taken the initiative to check on the Compliance Department head, Samuel Brockton—Whitcomb’s boss, who had all-access rights. He was staying in Washington, D.C.; hotel records showed he’d been at brunch in the dining room at the time of the killing yesterday. She noted this, then glanced over the all-access permission list.
    Andrew Sterling, President, Chief Executive Officer
    Sean Cassel, Director of Sales and Marketing
    Wayne Gillespie, Director of Technical Operations
    Samuel Brockton, Director, Compliance Department
    Alibi—hotel records confirm presence in Washington
    Peter Arlonzo-Kemper, Director of Human Resources
    Steven Shraeder, Technical Service and Support Manager, day shift
    Faruk Mameda, Technical Service and Support Manager, night shift
    She said to Sterling, “I’d like to interview them as soon as possible.”
    The CEO called his assistant and learned that, other than Brockton, everyone was in town, though Shraeder was handling a hardware crisis in the Intake Center and Mameda would not be coming in until three that afternoon. He instructed Martin to have them come upstairs for interviews. He’d find a vacant conference room.
    Sterling told the intercom to disconnect and said, “All right, Detective. It’s up to you now. Go clear our name . . . or find your killer.”

Chapter Twenty
    Rodney Szarnek had their mousetrap in place and the young shaggy-haired officer was happily trying to hack into SSD’s main servers. His knee bobbed and he whistled from time to time, which irritated Rhyme, but he let the kid alone. The criminalist had been known to talk to himself when searching crime scenes and considering possible approaches to a case.
    Takes all kinds . . .
    The doorbell rang; it was an officer from the CS lab in Queens with a present, some evidence from one of the earlier crimes: the murder weapon, a knife, used in the coin theft and killing. The rest of the physical evidence was “in storage somewhere.” A request had been made but no one could say when, or if, it could be located.
    Rhyme had Cooper sign the chain-of-custody form—even after trial, protocols must be followed.
    “That’s strange: Most of the other evidence is missing,” Rhyme remarked though he realized that, being a weapon, the knife would have been retained in a locked facility in the lab’s inventory, rather than archived with nonlethal evidence.
    Rhyme glanced at the chart about the crime. “They found some of that dust in the knife handle. Let’s see if we can figure out what it is. But, first, what’s the story on the knife itself?”
    Cooper ran the manufacturer’s information through the NYPD weapons database. “Made in China, sold in bulk to thousands of retail outlets. Cheap, so we can assume he paid cash for it.”
    “Well, hadn’t expected much. Let’s move on to the dust.”
    Cooper donned gloves and opened the bag. He carefully brushed the handle of the knife, whose blade was dark brown with the victim’s blood, and it shed traces of white dust onto the examination paper.
    Dust fascinated Rhyme. In forensics the term refers to solid particles less than five hundred micrometers in size and made up of fibers from clothing and upholstery, dander from human and animal skin, fragments of plants and insects, bits of dried excrement, dirt, and any number of chemicals. Some types are aerosol, others settle quickly on surfaces. Dust can cause health problems—like black lung—and be dangerously explosive (flour dust in grain elevators, for instance) and can even affect the climate.
    Forensically, thanks to static electricity and other adhesive properties, dust is often transferred from perpetrator to crime scene and vice versa, which makes it extremely helpful to police. When Rhyme was running the Crime Scene division of the NYPD he’d created a large database of dust, gathered from all five boroughs of the city