The Steel Kiss

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Sometimes you catch a break.

Amelia Sachs had been driving her arterial-blood-red Ford Torino along a commercial stretch of Brooklyn’s Henry Street, more or less minding pedestrians and traffic, when she spotted the suspect.

What’re the odds?

She was helped by the fact that Unsub 40 was unusual in appearance. Tall and quite thin, he’d stood out in the crowd a short time ago. Still, that alone would hardly get you noticed in the throng here. But on the night he’d beaten his victim to death, two weeks before, a witness reported that he’d been wearing a pale-green checked sport coat and Braves baseball cap. Sachs had done the requisite — if hopeless — posting of this info on the wire and moved on to other aspects of the investigation... and on to other investigations; Major Cases detectives have plenty to look after.

But an hour ago a patrolman from the 84th Precinct, walking a beat near the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, had spotted a possible and called Sachs — the lead gold shield on the case. The murder had been late at night, in a deserted construction site, and the perp apparently hadn’t known he’d been witnessed in the outfit, so he must’ve felt safe donning the garb again. The patrol officer had lost him in the crowds but she’d sped in the direction anyway, calling in backup, even if this part of the city was an urban sprawl populated by ten thousand camouflaging souls. The odds that she’d find Mr. Forty were, she told herself wryly, nonexistent at best.

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