Rhyme exhaled in exasperation. “Oh, sure. We’ve got so much time for socializing. I could take him on a tour of the Big Apple. You know, haven’t been to the Statue of Liberty in…ever. And I intend to keep it that way.”

Thom laughed, irritating Rhyme all the more.

The criminalist called up the autopsy pictures and scrolled through them. “A shard from the jugular, carotid or femoral would be best,” he mused. “Those would be the fatal ones.” But an initial review didn’t show any obvious splinters of glass jutting from the pale corpse of Eduardo de la Rua.

“I’ll give Mychal a call in the morning. It’s late now. Don’t want to interfere with his moonlighting job.”

Rhyme could have called now but he wanted to speak to the corporal in private. The fact was that he had been considering inviting Poitier to New York at some point in the near future and this would be a good excuse to do so.

And, he reflected with some irony, yes, he did intend to show Poitier around town. The Statue of Liberty, however, would not be on the tour.

Chapter 77

CHAPTER 77

JACOB SWANN WONDERED what had happened.

His plans for Nance Laurel had been interrupted by the arrival of an unmarked police car in front of her apartment in Brooklyn—just as Swann had been about to rise and go visit the ADA, to play out his revenge scenario.

The plainclothes detective had whisked her out quickly—so fast that it was clear something significant was going on. Did it relate to the Moreno case, which supposedly was a case no longer? Or something else?

He was now in his Nissan, headed back home. The answer to the mystery arrived in the form of a text from headquarters. Shit. Shreve Metzger had reported that the case was back on but with a curious variation: Barry Shales had been arrested for the killing not of Robert Moreno but of Eduardo de la Rua, the reporter who’d been interviewing him at the time the bullet had blown the hotel window into a million little shards of glass.

Because de la Rua was a U.S. citizen—¡Hola, Puerto Rico!—Ms. Nance Laurel had been reinstated on the case.

Metzger had not been charged but it was possible that he would be soon, accused of at least one or two felony counts; the point of Shales’s arrest, of course, was to pressure the drone pilot to give up his boss.

How easy was it to kill someone in detention? Swann wondered. Not that easy, he suspected, at least not without some inside help, which would be extremely expensive.

Swann was told additional services would be needed. He was to await instructions. Tomorrow promised to be a busy day but since the hour was late he doubted any of those directives would involve his going out again tonight.

This was good.