The Kill Room

of somebody’s DNA to swab on her. But he had stolen some stained and torn underwear, teenager’s size, from the trash behind a tenement not far away. Fibers from this garment he’d work under her fingernails and hope the teen had been masturbating at some point in the past few days. Likely.
    This would be enough evidence.
    He dipped his tongue into the coffee. Enjoyed the intense sensation throughout his mouth; it’s a myth that different tastes are experienced in different parts of the tongue: salt, sour, sweet, bitter. Another sip. Swann cooked with coffee sometimes—he’d made a Mexican mole -type sauce for pork with 80 percent cacao and espresso. He’d been tempted to submit it for a contest then decided it wasn’t a good idea for him to be too public.
    He was running through the plan for Nance Laurel again when he spotted her.
    Across the street the ADA had appeared from around the corner. She was in a navy-blue suit and white blouse. In her small pudgy hands were an old-fashioned attaché case, brown and battered, and a large litigation bag. He wondered if either was a present from her father or mother, both of whom were attorneys too, Swann had learned. They were in the low-rent district of the profession. Her mother, public defender. Her father, poverty law.
    Doin’ good deeds, helping society, Swann reflected. Just like their stocky little girl.
    Laurel was walking with eyes cast downward and laboring under the weight of the litigation bag. Though her face was a cryptic mask, she now gave off a slight hint of depression, the way Italian parsley in soup suggests but doesn’t state. Unlike bold cilantro.
    The source of the somber mood was no doubt the foundering Moreno case. Swann nearly felt bad for her. The prosecution would have been the jewel in her crown but now she was back to a life of sending José, Shariq, Billy and Roy into the system for crack and rapes and guns.
    Wasn’t me. No way. I don’t know, man, I don’t know where it came from, really…
    Except, of course, she wouldn’t be handling any such cases.
    Wouldn’t be doing anything at all after tonight. Would be cold and still as a slab of loin.
    Nance Laurel found her keys and unlocked the front door, stepped inside.
    Swann would give it ten, fifteen minutes. Time for her to let her guard down.
    He lifted the small, thick cup to his nose, inhaled and slipped his tongue into the warm liquid once more.

CHAPTER 73
    W HAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT the last of our ten little Indians?” Lincoln Rhyme asked absently.
    The setback about Moreno’s citizenship had defeated Nance Laurel but it had only stoked his hunt lust. “I don’t care what Albany wants, Sachs, I want our unsub. Five Sixteen’s too dangerous to stay free. What do we know?” He looked over the evidence whiteboards. “All right, we know Five Sixteen was in the Bahamas around the time of the shooting. We know that he killed the student-prostitute Annette Bodel. We know that he set the bomb to eliminate leads to the whistleblower. We know he killed Lydia Foster. We know he was following our Sachs around town. What can we make of that?…Sachs!”
    “What?”
    “The other driver, the one that Moreno usually used? Did you ever get in touch with him?”
    “No. Never called back.”
    This happened frequently when the police phoned, asking for a return call.
    Usually this was out of reluctance to get involved.
    Sometimes there were other reasons.
    She tried the driver once more and shook her head. She placed another call—to Elite Limos, Rhyme deduced. She asked if they had heard from their employee. A brief conversation and she hung up.
    “Never called in after he went to see a sick relative.”
    “Don’t trust it. We may have a third victim of our unsub. Find out where he lives, Pulaski. Get a team from the closest precinct to his house and see what’s there.”
    The young officer pulled out his mobile and called Dispatch.
    Rhyme wheeled back and forth in front of the charts. He didn’t believe he’d ever had a case like this, where the evidence was so fragmentary and sparse.
    Bits, scraps, observations, 180-degree changes in direction.
    Nothing else…
    Hell.
    Rhyme steered toward the shelf with the whiskey bottles. He lifted the Glenmorangie and awkwardly poured another hit, then seated the cap on his tumbler and sipped.
    “What’re you doing?” Thom asked from the doorway.
    “What am I doing, what am I doing? Now, that’s an odd question. Usually the