Page 83 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

She shook her head. “Hope nothing’s happened to him. They had a fight and his father wanted to reconcile, then he goes missing.”

“What did they fight about?” Rhyme asked absently.

“Seems he didn’t like his father’s muckraking and running amedia empire that was light on women on executive row and heavy on them in short skirts in front of the camera. Well, you saw the complaints.” She nodded at the file folder the WMG legal department had provided.

But Whittaker Media’s policies and practices didn’t interest Rhyme much. He was gazing at the chart, gazing at the crime scene photos on the monitor, gazing at the evidence bags in the sterile portion of the lab, lined up in a way that for some reason suggested to Lincoln Rhyme cattle at a slaughterhouse.

Something had to be there.

Something …

His eyes then turned toward the photographs, once more, in particular the ones she had taken at the Bechtel Building crime scene.

“Mel,” Rhyme called sharply. “I’ve got a job for you.”

“What?”

“An autopsy.”

Cooper paused and cleared his throat. “Well, Lincoln, I don’t do postmortems.” The tech was uneasy.

“You need to rise to the occasion,” Rhyme said solemnly. “Just this once.”

44

I’m in my workshop.

And staring at my Tower of London keychain, a prized possession.

The Tower has always been special for me because of the Ceremony of the Keys:

In the Tower, every night at 9:53, the chief yeoman warder—a Beefeater—locks the outer and tower gates, then marches to the Bloody Tower. A sentry challenges him and he tells the sentry he’s got the Queen’s keys and is allowed to pass. The ceremony ends at exactly 10 p.m. In hundreds of years it’s never been canceled.

I am lying on the firm futon, thinking of Taylor Soames.

And her pain.

Oh, not physical.

No, a subtler kind.

And much more enduring. You gut someone with a brass knife and the agony is fleeting.

What I did was much more satisfying.

After I dropped them off at her building Taylor would have trekked upstairs with her Roonie, euphoric at the wonderful turn of events.

So damn hard to meet decent men in this city, but she’d pulled it off!

Ben Nelson ticked all the right boxes. Divorced five years, so the domestic drama was largely a thing of the past. He had a daughter close in age to that of her own child. A gentleman. No beer gut. A pelt of natural hair—to which I’d added a little gray makeup, because I know she likes that in a man. Resources (the Brooks Brothers suit—and any woman who says she doesn’t want a man with money? Liar!). Humor. And, on first blush, not a perv. I didn’t examine boob or leg. Well, once—the former—but she was looking away and didn’t catch me. We’re all human.

And chivalrous. Walking them back home, protecting them from that stalker! And even carrying slim Roonie’s backpack.

Ben was just the man for the job.

But soon that anticipatory joy would begin to evaporate.

I wouldn’t call—and my burner is already battery-less and destined for landfill, so when she works up the courage to phone me, nothing. She’ll try to recall the name of my employer. Good luck with that. Even I can’t remember the name I made up.

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