The Deadline Clock by Jeffery Deaver

Author:Jeffery Deaver [Deaver, Jeffery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, Crime, Mystery & Detective, General
ISBN: 9780593422144
Google: p6hXEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B09PQCFSB2
Publisher: ‎G.P. Putnam's Sons
Published: 2022-09-27T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

Shaw didn’t buy the bakery lead.

Smelling chocolate yet not the distinctive scent of bread baking or dough rising from yeast? He wondered why Oberon had even pursued it.

Shaw concluded it was ninety percent likely that she smelled something similar to chocolate.

The online research he’d done after interviewing Abby Morgenstern revealed that another material imparts a smell similar to chocolate: electrical and metal parts, notably generators, motors and wires, when hot. One anecdote he read was about a car owner who took his vehicle to the dealer to see if the maintenance crew could find the chocolate bar he was convinced one of his boys had dropped into the heating vent. The first thing the mechanics did was shut the engine off and replace the alternator. The scent of Hershey’s warned of a car soon to be engulfed in flame.

Was Shaw’s theory far-fetched?

As his survivalist father had taught him, decision making is all about weighing options. When confronted with a choice, you analyze all potential courses, assign percentage likelihood of success with the best knowledge you have and then go with the highest number.

Never buck the odds.

The hot-metal-as-chocolate-bar theory he put at about fifty-five percent.

But as he had no other leads at the moment, that number might as well have been one hundred.

Whether he could find the site in time was another matter.

The first neighborhood Sam Goodway sent him to had been industrial, but most of it was presently under the wrecker’s ball. The only scents he could detect were dust and diesel exhaust.

The second area, about a half mile away, was primarily warehouses and a trash collection site, which on this warm day killed the possibility of detecting anything other than rotting food.

These two locations had used up an hour of his time.

A glance at his phone.

The Deadline Clock would show Ellie Kohl had two hours and fifty-two minutes to live.

The third area Goodway had suggested, about a mile away from the prior two, was a warren of redevelopment: residential, retail and industrial.

He was motoring along one of the main streets when he braked fast to a stop, drawing an irate horn from a driver who’d been tailgating.

Shaw had driven through air that was redolent of cocoa. Gunning the engine he skidded in a fast U, shot forward then slowed, trolling for the scent. Cruising in second gear he inhaled deeply.

No luck.

At the next intersection he braked to a stop and looked for someone smoking a cigarette. He spotted two—they were businessmen—standing in front of an office building. Shaw noted the smoke was blowing to his left. He dropped into gear and turned in the opposite direction.

The streets here were covered with ancient asphalt, much of it worn through to reveal cobblestones, which might have been Abby Morgenstern’s “rough” street in front of where she was held. The pavers were both helpful for the investigation and perilous to drive on, as the already smooth surface of the stone was made all the slicker by the coating of oil and transmission fluid.

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