A Textbook Case

7

“I think I’ve got it,” Rhyme said, looking over the list of book sales.

Lon Sellitto had joined them and had an arrest team ready to go, if Rhyme’s textbook theory panned out.

The criminalist continued, “A week after the special aired, somebody named James Ferguson, 734 East Sixty-eighth Street, bought a copy of my book. He’s not law enforcement. He ticked the box that said it was for professional research.”

“Ferguson,” Sachs said, “sounds familiar.”

Sellitto said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah! I interviewed him. He’s Simone Randall’s — the second vic’s — boss. He dropped her off in a cab about a half hour before she was attacked.”

“Data mine him, Mel. I want to know if he belongs to a health club. And, Sachs, find out the club that first victim belonged to.”

Sellitto nodded. “Right, good call. The vic’s boyfriend said she dated somebody from the club once, I think.”

In five minutes they had the answer. Both Ferguson and Jane Levine belonged to Lower Manhattan Health and Tennis.

“So, he’s our boy. Classic serial doer. Let’s find him, pick him up,” Sellitto said and reached for his phone.

“Hold on, Lon,” Rhyme said. “It’s not as simple as that.”

And Rhyme did something he never thought he’d ever do: started reading the witness statements, ignoring the evidence charts completely.

I’m dying, Vicki Sellick thought.

Why… why?

But she had no idea who was behind this and so she didn’t know why.

All she knew was that the asshole who’d slugged her over the head and tied her up here was trooping through the townhouse. She heard drawers opening, she heard doors closing.

Robbery?

She didn’t have anything here of any real value…

She stanched the tears. The duct tape was snug on her mouth and if she cried any harder she’d clog her nose and suffocate.

She was lying in her big, Victorian, claw-foot bathtub, hands bound behind her, feet, also taped, dangling over the end. The lights were out and the blinds closed. It was virtually black.

Vicki screamed through the tape. A pathetic sound nobody could have heard. She was on the top floor of her townhouse. She had it to herself, and the nearest neighbor, even if she was home, was two stories below.

Then silence for a moment. Then a faint sound.

What’s that? Was—?

She gasped as the door swept open and she felt a presence. The intruder, a pure shadow, moved in, paused… and turned the water on.

No! Vicki tried to struggle her way out but the angle and immobility from the tape made that impossible. Her attacker left, closing the door.

The icy water continued to rise.

This time Amelia Sachs was first on the scene.

And she was momentarily alone. Backup would be here soon but Rhyme had decided there was no time to wait; the perp — no longer an unsub at this point — had gone over a borderline and was moving faster. Rhyme said they had to assume another victim was about to die.

She skidded to a stop up the street from Vicki Sellick’s townhouse and sprinted to the front door fast, not even feeling the twinges of arthritis. There was no question of warrants or fair warning. Time was too critical. With the butt of her Glock she shattered the window of the front door, opened it and charged inside.

The weapon before her, she ran to the top-floor apartment and kicked the door in, searching quickly. She found the victim in the bathtub — like the Prius, an innocent object rigged to kill.

She looked down. The water was nearly at Vicki’s face and her frantic thrashing was making it worse; waves splashing up her nose. She was choking and coughing, her face bright red.

Sachs grabbed the woman’s blouse and pulled up hard from the water, then ripped the tape from her mouth.

“Thank you, thank you!” she sputtered. “But be careful! He might be here.”

Out came the switchblade again and after a few seconds of careful surgery the woman’s feet and hands were free. Sachs wrapped a towel around her shoulders.

“Where?”

“I heard him two minutes ago, downstairs! I didn’t get a look. He hit me from behind.”

Then a crash of glass from the hallway, near the rear of the building, a window breaking. “What’s back there?”

“Fire escape to the alley.”

Sachs ran to the window and saw the shadow of a figure, standing uncertainly looking left and right. She told Vicki to lock the bathroom door, the backup would be there any minute — she heard the sirens approaching. Then she sped down the stairs to the second floor. She, too, went through the shattered window, after checking fast for presenting threats.

The shadow was gone.

She clambered fast down the stairs. Then stopped. A brief sigh. Like most of them in the city, the fire escape didn’t go all the way to the ground and she had to drop four or so feet to the cobblestoned alley, wincing in pain as she landed.

But she stayed upright and turned toward the darker part of the alley.

She got ten feet before the shadow reemerged — behind her.

She froze.

The young crime scene officer, Marko, was squinting her way. His weapon was in his hand.

He lifted it toward Sachs, shaking his crew-cut head. On his face was a faint but definite smile — though a cold one. Of victory. Probably the expression on the face of sniper just before he takes his shot to kill an enemy general.