Page 143 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

Wearing a deliveryman’s brown uniform, a man of medium build, and with dark hair, stood with his arms crossed. He was looking at one of the whiteboards, the one that detailed evidence of the Alekos Gregorios murder case.

The intruder held a knife in his right hand. The pale-yellow color told Rhyme it was brass and it appeared homemade. He now guessed that the tiny filings of the metal Amelia had discovered at the scene came possibly not from making keys, but from sharpening the blade.

The man turned.

Lincoln Rhyme squinted as he stared at the man’s face. He was rarely caught off guard, but he certainly was now.

Oh, he could hardly be surprised that the man in the overalls, who’d broken through his locks and security system so efficiently and quietly, was the Locksmith.

But what he would never have guessed was that the man’s true identity—verified by a fast glimpse at the DMV picture on the board—was Yannis Gregorios, the man who had slashed his father to death in the backyard of the family’s unpretentious mansion in a lovely neighborhood of Queens.

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Before he said anything I was aware that Lincoln Rhyme had entered the room.

It’s curious how this happens. Something about soundwaves maybe ricocheting and being absorbed differently when the dynamic form of a human being invades a space, all the more so when that person is in a complicated, motorized conveyance.

I tell him, “Don’t bother to call anyone.” I nod toward the RF box. “Radio frequency? It’s jamming all the circuits. I turned it on when I heard you hang up with Amelia.”

Lincoln’s finger is in fact on a keypad. But the green light on my box means that the former cop and I are as isolated as one can be in Manhattan.

I turn back to the whiteboard on which he can see my picture and the picture of my father. His photo was taken by a crime scene technician and adequately captured the rictus of pain that preceded the peace of death.

So Lincoln considers me a suspect. I wonder why.

My picture is from the DMV. Not surprising that the police would have scoured the crime scene, my father’s house, and discovered no suitable pictures of me. He had none.

Your son’s a pervert …

“You didn’t believe Xavier was the one?”

Unfazed, Rhyme said, “It wasn’t my case so I didn’t focus on it until I thought about the lack of defensive wounds. That somebody he knew might’ve done it. You’d been there earlier, maybe you came back. And were having a conversation with him. Then …” He nods at the knife.

I hear Joanna’s voice:

Why did you want to kill me?

I needed to …

Like the kid posting the Los Zetas beheading, I had to have more and more and more …

Hence, my Visit to apartment 2019, the first time to use the knife.

And we saw how that turned out.

No. Absolutely not. You can’t hurt a soul …

But the urge didn’t leave.

And so I paid a visit to my father.

You need to talk to him about it. Tell him how the cellar affected you. It could be that he’ll beg for forgiveness. You’ll reconcile …

And that’s just what I did. I met with him for dinner and talked about the imprisonment.

He said it made a man out of me.

I said, well, it certainly made me who I am.

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