Two of them . . .

One was heavy. One not.

A fast knock on the open door and they entered.

“Lincoln.”

Rhyme grunted.

Lon Sellitto was a detective first grade, NYPD, and the one responsible for the giant steps. Padding along beside him was his slimmer, younger partner, Jerry Banks, spiffy in his pork gray suit of fine plaid. He’d doused his cowlick with spray—Rhyme could smell propane, isobutane, and vinyl acetate—but the charming spike still stuck up like Dagwood’s.

The rotund man looked around the second-floor bedroom, which measured twenty by twenty. Not a picture on the wall. “What’s different, Linc? About the place?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, hey, I know—it’s clean,” Banks said, then stopped abruptly as he ran into his faux pas.

“Clean, sure,” said Thom, immaculate in ironed tan slacks, white shirt, and the flowery tie that Rhyme thought was pointlessly gaudy though he himself had bought it, mail order, for the man. The aide had been with Rhyme for several years now—and though he’d been fired by Rhyme twice, and quit once, the criminalist had rehired the unflappable nurse/assistant an equal number of times. Thom knew enough about quadriplegia to be a doctor and had learned enough forensics from Lincoln Rhyme to be a detective. But he was content to be what the insurance company called a “caregiver,” though both Rhyme and Thom disparaged the term. Rhyme called him, variously, his “mother hen” or “nemesis,” both of which delighted the aide no end. He now maneuvered around the visitors. “He didn’t like it but I hired Molly Maids and got the place scrubbed down. Practically needed to be fumigated. He wouldn’t talk to me for a whole day afterwards.”

“It didn’t need to be cleaned. I can’t find anything.”

“But then he doesn’t have to find anything, does he?” Thom countered. “That’s what I’m for.”

No mood for banter. “Well?” Rhyme cast his handsome face toward Sellitto. “What?”

“Got a case. Thought you might wanta help.”

“I’m busy.”

“What’s all that?” Banks asked, motioning toward a new computer sitting beside Rhyme’s bed.

“Oh,” Thom said with infuriating cheer, “he’s state of the art now. Show them, Lincoln. Show them.”

“I don’t want to show them.”

More thunder but not a drop of rain. Nature, as often, was teasing today.

Thom persisted. “Show them how it works.”

“Don’t want to.”

“He’s just embarrassed.”

“Thom,” Rhyme muttered.

But the young aide was as oblivious to threats as he was to recrimination. He tugged his hideous, or stylish, silk tie. “I don’t know why he’s behaving this way. He seemed very proud of the whole setup the other day.”

“Did not.”

Thom continued. “That box there”—he pointed to a beige contraption—“that goes to the computer.”

“Whoa, two hundred megahertz?” Banks asked, nodding at the computer. To escape Rhyme’s scowl he’d grabbed the question like an owl snagging a frog.

“Yep,” Thom said.

But Lincoln Rhyme was not interested in computers. At the moment Lincoln Rhyme was interested only in microscopic rings of sculpted calamari and the sand they nestled in.