Sellitto sipped coffee and pestered a Danish, two bites only. He was perpetually dieting.

Rhyme and the detective had worked together years ago, as partners, and it had largely been Lon Sellitto who’d pushed Rhyme back to work after the accident, not by coddling or cajoling but by forcing him to get off his ass and start solving crimes again. (More accurately, in Rhyme’s case, to stay  on his ass and get back to work.) But despite their history Sellitto never came by just to hang out. The detective first class was assigned to Major Cases, working out of the Big Building – One Police Plaza – and he was usually the lead detective on the cases for which Rhyme was hired to consult. His presence now was a harbinger.

“So.” Rhyme looked him over. “Do you have something good for me, Lon? An engaging crime? Intriguing? ”

Sellitto sipped and nibbled. “All I know is I got a call from on top asking if you were free. I told ’em you were finishing up Williams. Then I was told to get here ASAP, meet somebody. They’re on their way.”

“‘Somebody’? ‘They’?” Rhyme asked acidly. “That’s as specific as the ‘something’ detaining my doctor. Seems infectious. Like the flu.”

“Hey, Linc. All I know.”

Rhyme cast a wry look toward Sachs. “I notice that no one called me  about this. Did anybody call you, Sachs?”

“Not a jingle.”

Sellitto said, “Oh, that’s ’causa the other thing.”

“What other thing?”

“Whatever’s going on, it’s a secret. And it’s gotta stay that way.”

Which was, Rhyme decided, at least a step toward intriguing.

Rhyme was looking up at the two visitors, as different as could be, now stepping into his parlor.

One was a man in his fifties, with a military bearing, wearing an untailored suit – the shoulders were the giveaway – in navy blue, bordering on black. He had a jowly, clean shaven face, tanned skin and trim hair, marine style. Has to be brass, Rhyme thought.

The other was a woman hovering around the early thirties. She was approaching stocky, though not overweight, not yet. Her blond, lusterless hair was in an anachronistic flip, stiffly sprayed, and Rhyme noted that her pale complexion derived from a mask of liberally applied flesh toned makeup. He didn’t see any acne or other pocks and assumed the pancake was a fashion choice. There was no shadow or liner around her gun muzzle black eyes, all the more stark given the cream shade of the face in which they were set. Her thin lips were colorless too and dry. Rhyme assessed that this was not a mouth that broke into a smile very often.

She would pick something to look at – equipment, the window, Rhyme – and turn a sandblast gaze on it until she had stripped it down to understanding or rendered it irrelevant. Her suit was dark gray, also not expensive, and all three plastic buttons were snugly fixed. The dark disks seemed slightly uneven and he wondered if she’d found a perfect fitting suit with unfortunate accents and replaced them herself. The low black shoes were unevenly worn and had been doctored recently with liquid scuff cover up.

Got it, Rhyme thought. He believed he knew her employer. And was all the more curious.

Sellitto said of the man, “Linc, this is Bill Myers.”

The visitor nodded. “Captain, an honor to meet you.” He used Rhyme’s last title with the NYPD, from when he’d retired on disability some years ago. This confirmed Myers’s job; Rhyme had been right, brass. And pretty senior.

Rhyme motored the electric wheelchair forward and thrust his hand out. The brass noted the jerky motion, hesitated then gripped it. Rhyme noticed something too: Sachs stiffen slightly. She didn’t like it when he used the limb and digits like this, unnecessarily, for social niceties. But Lincoln Rhyme couldn’t help himself. The past decade had been an effort to rectify what fate had done to him. He was proud of his few victories and exploited them.

Besides, what was the point of a toy if you never played with it?

Myers introduced the other mysterious “somebody.” Her name was Nance Laurel.

“Lincoln,” he said. Another handshake, seemingly firmer than Myers’s, though Rhyme, of course, couldn’t tell. Sensation did not accompany movement.

Laurel’s sharp gaze took in Rhyme’s thick brown hair, his fleshy nose, his keen dark eyes. She said nothing other than “Hello.”

“So,” he said. “You’re an ADA.”

Assistant district attorney.

She gave no physical reaction to his deduction, which was partly a guess. A hesitation, then: “Yes, I am.” Her voice was crisp, sibilant emphasized.

Sellitto then introduced Myers and Laurel to Sachs. The brass took in the policewoman as if he was very aware of her rep too. Rhyme noticed that Sachs winced a bit as she walked forward to shake hands. She corrected her gait as she returned to the chair. He alone, he believed, saw her subtly pop a couple of Advil into her mouth and swallow dry. However much the pain she never took anything stronger.

Myers too, it turned out, was a captain by rank and ran a branch of the department that Rhyme had not heard of, new apparently. The Special Services Division. His confident demeanor and cagey eyes suggested to Rhyme that he and his outfit were quite powerful within the NYPD. Possibly he was a player with an eye on a future in city government.

Rhyme himself had never had an interest in the gamesmanship of institutions like the NYPD, much less what lay beyond, Albany or Washington. All that interested him at the moment was the man’s presence. The appearance of a senior cop with mysterious departmental lineage alongside the focused terrier of an ADA suggested an assignment that would keep at bay the dreaded boredom that, since the accident, had become his worst enemy.

He felt the throbbing of anticipation, his heart, but via his temples, not his insensate chest.

Bill Myers deferred to Nance Laurel, saying, “I’ll let her unpack the situation.”

Rhyme tried to catch Sellitto’s eye with a wry glance but the man deflected it. “Unpack.” Rhyme disliked such stilted, coined terms, which bureaucrats and journalists seeded into their dialogue. “Game changer” was another recent one. “Kabuki” too. They were like bright red streaks in the hair of middle aged women or tattoos on cheeks.

Another pause and Laurel said, “Captain–”

“Lincoln. I’m decommissioned.”

Pause. “Lincoln, yes. I’m prosecuting a case and because of certain unusual issues it was suggested that you might be in a position to run the investigation. You and Detective Sachs. I understand you work together frequently.”

“That’s right.” He wondered if ADA Laurel ever loosened up. Doubted it.

“I’ll explain,” she continued. “Last Tuesday, May ninth, a U.S. citizen was murdered in a luxury hotel in the Bahamas. The local police there are investigating the crime but I have reason to believe that the shooter’s American and is back in this country. Probably the New York area.”

She paused before nearly every sentence. Was she picking thoroughbred words? Or assessing liabilities if the wrong one left the gate?

“Now, I’m not going with a murder charge against the perps. It’s difficult to make a case in state court for a crime that occurs in a different country. That could  be done but it would take too long.” Now a denser hesitation. “And it’s important to move quickly.”

Why? Rhyme wondered.

Intriguing…

Laurel continued, “I’m seeking other, independent charges in New York.”

“Conspiracy,” Rhyme said, his instantaneous deduction. “Good, good. I like that. On the basis that the murder was planned here.”

“Exactly,” Laurel offered. “The killing was ordered by a New York resident in the city. That’s why I have jurisdiction.”

Like all cops, or former cops, Rhyme knew the law as well as most lawyers did. He recalled the relevant New York Penal Code provision: Somebody is guilty of conspiracy when – with intent that conduct constituting a crime be performed – he or she agrees with one or more persons to engage in or cause the performance of such conduct. He added, “And you can bring the case here even if the killing took place outside the state because the underlying conduct – murder – is a crime in New York.”