Rhymes With Prey by Jeffery Deaver Page B

pushed several of Lucas’s buttons. Given all of that, their relationship had been testy, maybe because of Lucas’s initial attitude toward Lincoln and his disability.
    Lincoln was in his Storm-Arrow wheelchair, peering at a high-def video screen. Without looking at them, he said, “You got nothing.”
    â€œNot entirely true,” Lucas said. “All three of them were dressed carelessly.”
    Lincoln turned his head and squinted at him. “Why is that important?”
    Lucas shrugged. “Anyone who dresses carelessly bears watching, in my estimation,” he said. He was wearing a Ralph Lauren Purple Label summer-weight wool suit in medium blue, a white dress shirt with one of the more muted Hermès ties, and bespoke shoes from a London shoemaker.
    Amelia made a rude noise, and Lucas grinned at her, or at least showed his teeth.
    â€œEasy,” Lily said. To Lincoln: “You’re basically right. We gotnothing. We weren’t exactly stonewalled, we were know-nothinged. Like it was all a big puzzle, and why were we there?”
    â€œWere they acting?” Lincoln asked.
    â€œHard to tell,” Lucas said. “Most detectives are good liars. But if somebody put a gun to my head, I’d say no, they weren’t acting. They didn’t know what we were talking about.”
    â€œMmm, I like that concept,” Amelia said.
    â€œWhat?” Lucas asked. “Lying?”
    â€œNo. Putting a gun to your head.”
    Lily rolled her eyes. “Amelia.”
    â€œJust having fun, Lily,” Amelia said. “You know I love Lucas like a brother.”
    â€œAnd I hope it stays that way,” Lincoln grumped. “Anyway . . . while you were out touring the city, we’ve made some significant progress here. There were some anomalies in the autopsy photos that I thought worth revisiting. The bodies were found nude, of course, and so dirt and sand had been comprehensively impressed in the victims’ skins, along with grains of concrete. However, in examining the photos, I noticed that in several of these flecks, we were getting more light return than you might expect from grains of sand or soil or concrete. The photos were taken with flash, of course, a very intense light. The enhanced light return would not have been especially noticeable under the lights of an autopsy table. I sent Amelia to investigate.”
    â€œI found that all four victims had tiny bits of metal ingrained in their skin. The cut surfaces were shiny, which is why Lincoln was able to see them in the high-res photos,” Amelia said. “There weren’t many of them, but some in each. I recovered them—”
    â€œAnd brought them here,” Lincoln said. “They were uniform in size, and smaller than the average brown sugar ant. We ran them through the GDS 400A Glow Discharge Spectrometer, a HewlettPackard Gas Chromatograph, and a JEOL SEM-scanning electron microscope. Those’re instruments for determining the composition of a liquid, gas, or solid—”
    â€œI know what they are; I’m a cop, not a fucking moron,” Lucas said.
    Lincoln continued without acknowledging the interruption. “And found that they were flecks of bronze.”
    Lily said, “Bronze. That’s good, right? We need a bronze-working shop.”
    Amelia said, “It’s good in a way. The fact is, bronze has become pretty much a specialty metal—it’s used to make bells, cymbals, some ship propellers, Olympic medals, and bronze wool replaces steel wool for some woodworking applications. It’s used in high-end weather stripping for doors.”
    Lincoln, impatient, said, “Yes, yes, yes. But the flecks are not bronze wool, and they are rounded, with no flat sides, as you would get from weather stripping, and so on. Nor do they appear to be millings, which you would get with propellers and cymbals and such, because the grain size is too