Page 27 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

“Human.”

“TSD?”

The time since deposition—how long has passed since blood was spilled—could be determined by Raman spectroscopy. The technique, relatively new in the armory of forensic scientists, works by hitting a sample with a laser beam and measuring the intensity ofthe scattered light. Rhyme particularly liked the technique as it was nondestructive and the sample could later be tested for DNA.

Cooper ran a sample and read the results, in the form of a chart.

“It’s five, six days old, more or less.”

Rhyme’s eyes swiveled to Sachs’s. Her face was troubled. She said, “Maybe he cut himself accidentally … Or maybe he’s already started using a knife.”

Cooper then ran the DNA and sent the results to the CODIS database. They soon received the message that there were no matches.

Closing his eyes again, Rhyme let his head loll back against the padded rest. He thought past the blood. He would assume that the Locksmith was in fact dangerous, if not deadly. His sole concern now was finding him. What did the evidence have to say about that?

Soap.

Brick.

Tiny shards of porcelain.

Copper wire.

Rhyme’s phone buzzed, and he answered.

The caller was Assistant District Attorney Sellars, the prosecutor in thePeople of the State of New York v. Viktor Buryak.

“Lincoln. The jury came back with a verdict.”

“And?”

“They found him not guilty. All counts.”

15

Not good enough.

It’s taken me fifty-nine seconds to pick the SecurPoint 85.

Way too long.

Carrie Noelle’s apartment door is held fast by two locks, as are most residences in New York. The simple one in the knob and the SecurPoint.

They are both pin tumblers, one of the oldest designs in history. The man who earned the patent for the design in the U.S. was the famous Linus Yale Sr. The lock he created and his son’s refinement of it are basically the same as are in use today, even after a hundred and fifty years.

In these locks there’s a rotating plug into which the key is inserted (through the “keyway,” not “keyhole”). The plug and the surrounding casing each have corresponding holes drilled into them and inside the holes are spring-loaded pins, which keep the plug from turning and opening the deadbolt or latch. The serrated ridges on the key push the pins up to the shear line, which frees the plug to turn.

To pick a pin tumbler, the process is simple: You insert a tension wrench into the keyway and twist the plug, which puts pressure against the pins and keeps them from springing back into the secure position. Then you use a thin rake—which looks like a dentist’s pick—to push the pins upward until they’re above the shear line.

Ah, but the SecurPoint …

It’s similar to the famed Medeco. The ends of the pins within the lock are cleverly chiseled and, even more challenging, they rotate, so the tip of the rake must not only catch the sharp end of each pin but must twist it to free the plug and allow it to open. (When a Medeco executive patented the design, in the 1960s, he offered fifty thousand dollars to anyone who could pick it—a popular promotional gambit of lock makers. At the time, only one person in the world was able to do so—an NYPD detective, as a matter of fact.)

Cracking the SecurPoint in fifty-nine seconds?

That’s probably a world record. But it’s still too long.

Tonight, for my Visit, I need it to be thirty or under.

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