A Textbook Case

4

Amelia Sachs skidded her maroon 1970 Ford Torino Cobra, heir to the Fairlane, to a stop at the curb in this idyllic section of Greenwich Village.

There were six blue-and-whites, mostly from the nearby Sixth Precinct, and about fifteen uniforms canvassing house to house.

In the long-odds search for Unsub 26’s next victim.

She leaped out, wincing slightly at the arthritic pang. “Hi, how’re we doing?” she asked one of the detectives she knew, a tall African-American named Ronald Simpson, just ending a radio transmission.

“Amelia. We’re deploying. We make it forty-eight locations in the perimeter that you and Detective Rhyme gave us. If we don’t find anything, we’ll expand it.”

“Sachs!” Rhyme’s voice burst through her headset. No video camera — just a standard-issue Motorola with an earpiece and stalk mike. It was voice activated. Sachs needed both hands free to drive; she’d hit close to eighty on the way down here from Rhyme’s townhouse. The Torino boasted 405 bhp and with an impressive 447 foot pounds of torque. And Amelia Sachs made use of every bit of those specs.

“I’m here, Rhyme. With Ron Simpson from the Sixth.” She relayed the information the man had given her.

“Forty-eight? Hell.”

They’d hoped the two-block area would include a lot fewer apartment buildings to search than that.

But at least it was something. And it could be a lot worse. In looking for a way to narrow down the hunt for Unsub 26 or his next victim, Rhyme had come up with an interesting strategy.

Theorizing that the soil/vegetation and cleaning materials evidence held valuable leads, the question became how to analyze them quickly, given the sheer number of samples?

Hence, the call to Marko.

Who had connections in the forensic science department at the police academy. Rhyme had asked the young man to get his professors’ okay to enlist the rookies to help, with Marko supervising. Although there were hundreds of samples, because so many students were helping, each one had no more than five or ten. They were to look for the smallest samples, on the assumption that the largest quantities were materials that the unsub had intentionally flooded the scene with.

For hours there’d been no discoveries. But an hour ago Marko had called the townhouse.

“Detective Rhyme, sir?”

Rhyme didn’t bother to correct him on the appellation. “Go on.”

“We might’ve found something. We did what you said and prioritized everything according to quantity, then concentrated on the smallest trace. The least common was some vegetation that contained traces of urushiol.”

“The toxin in poison ivy or sumac,” Rhyme had blurted.

Sachs had wondered, as she often did, How does he know that?

“Yessir. And it’s in poison oak, too.”

“No, forget that. You don’t see it much in Manhattan. We’ll stick with ivy and sumac.”

Marko had added that that vegetation was attached to bits of flower petals. They’d absorbed small amounts of glyphosate—”

“An herbicide used to kill poison ivy and sumac.”

“Yessir,” Marko said again. “So the perp might’ve spent time in a flower garden that was recently treated for the toxic plants.”

He added another discovery: “They also found trace fragments of bovine bone dust in the soil attached to the vegetation.”

“West Village,” Rhyme had pronounced. “Runoff, rains, rats… they carry all sorts of goodies from the meat-packing district, including beef bone dust.”

He’d had Sellitto start a hunt in city parks in the western part of Greenwich Village, any that had flower gardens. “But only the ones that’d been recently treated for poisonous plants.”

And the results of that search led here, to where Sachs was now standing, on West Tenth Street. The small park, about three blocks from the meat-packing district, was surrounded by three-, four- and five-story townhouses and brownstones, nearly all of them apartments.

Rhyme had explained their find to Sellitto, who’d ordered the sweep in the area, telling the patrol officers to pay attention to laundry rooms, kitchens and storerooms, since the other category of evidence in play was domestic cleaning supplies.

“Long shot,” the detective had muttered.

“It’s the only shot we’ve got.”

It was now 10:30 p.m. and the officers had been canvassing for half an hour.

Many citizens were reluctant to open their doors, even for police, or someone claiming to be police. Language was always a barrier and, even once they were admitted, the officers often had to try to survey individual units, since some buildings did not have communal laundry rooms.

Sachs watched a team storm into a brownstone. She stared; was this the site?

They came out a few minutes later, shaking their heads.

“Anything?” Rhyme asked her urgently.

“No.”

Sachs’s fingers disappeared into her mass of hair and dug obsessively into her scalp. Stop it, she told herself.

Deal with the tension.

She dug some more.

The lead would only be helpful if it led to another crime in progress. If the trace led to Unsub 26’s apartment and the police knocked on the door, he might open it, smile and say, “No sir, I never heard of a Jane Levine. You have a nice night now.”

Sachs looked past the flashing lights and saw Marko, in jeans and a dress shirt, running shows. He caught her eye, gave a brief nod of recognition and then turned back to the scene, as if studying it intently for future reference. He was holding a scene suit bag. Let’s hope he gets a chance to use it, she thought.

Then her radio crackled, a woman’s voice. “Portable seven-six-six-three. I’ve got something.”

“Go ahead,” Sachs said, identifying herself as a detective.

The patrol officer explained she was at an address a block away, on West Tenth. “We’ve got an incendiary IED and victim nearby, immobilized. We need the Bomb Squad.”

“I’m on my way,” Sachs told her and began to run. Then into her mouthpiece radio: “Got a hit, Rhyme,” she told him and, struggling to ignore the pain in her knees, sprinted faster. Marko was following, as were several other officers.

“Tell me,” Rhyme said.

“I’ll know soon,” she gasped, her feet thudding on the concrete.

She was at the building in two minutes. Sellitto joined her. They met the patrol officer who’d called it in, a round Latina, on the stairs in front. The woman was visibly shaken.

“Vic down in the laundry room. There’s gas fumes all over the place. I was going for her, but I was afraid I’d set off the device.”

“What kind of gas?” Rhyme asked, having heard her through Sachs’s microphone.

She repeated the question for the patrolwoman.

“Gasoline. He—”

“I’m going in,” Sachs said.

“Sachs, wait—”

“It could blow at any minute,” the patrolwoman said. “I’d wait for the Bomb Squad.”

Sellitto said, “I’ve called them. They’ll be here in five minutes.” The squad was based in the Sixth Precinct.

But five minutes was too long. Sachs said, “I’m taking off the headset, Rhyme. I don’t know if it could spark or not, but I’m not taking the chance.”

“Sachs, wait—”

“I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“Amelia,” Sellitto began.

She ignored him, too. She was debating the Tyvek suit. At the moment she had to assume the vic was still alive and could be burned to death at any minute. Forget the suit. There was no time to wait. She said to Sellitto, “If anything happens.” She glanced toward Marko, who was running toward the brownstone. “Have him run the scene. He’s good.”

“Amelia,” Sellitto barked. “Let the Bomb Squad handle it.”

“Can’t, Lon. We’re out of time.”

Sachs looked down at her clothes. A wool jacket. Did that create more static sparks than any other cloth? Or less? She didn’t know but took it off anyway. “Where’s the vic?” she asked the Latina officer.

“In the back there’s a stairway. The laundry room’s in the basement off the hallway to the right. But—”

Sachs sprinted into the building, calling, “Everybody back fifty feet.”

Then she was in the dim recesses of the old building and starting down the stairs, which, unlike those at the other scene, were relatively clean, though the bulbs in the stairwell overheads were broken as well.

Her hand on her Glock, she surveyed the narrow corridor, off which were two doors: one, the laundry room where the victim was, and the other straight ahead, leading to a storeroom or the alley behind the building, Sachs guessed.

Normally she would have cleared the entire basement first, but the smell of gasoline was overwhelming — and the risk of fire imminent. She had to move fast.

Into the laundry room quickly, swinging her weapon back and forth. In the back, ducttaped to a water pipe, was a woman in her thirties, wearing sweats, the shoulders of which were covered with blood, from some wound to her head. Strands of her dark blond hair were clotted crimson. Her face was red from crying and her eyes wide with terror.

Unsub 26 had planned another prolonged killing. In this case, terror first and then pain… of dying from being burned to death.

On a high shelf against the wall, over her, was a plastic pail. A hole had been cut in the side and gasoline trickled out, running down the wall and pooling on the floor. The puddle was making its way to the door. And was just about to reach the hot water heater. Sachs noted it was a gas model, which meant that it had a pilot light. Any minute the gas would flow beneath it and the fumes would ignite. The resulting fireball would ignite everything and melt the plastic pail; the five or so gallons of inflamed gasoline would flow throughout the room.

She eased forward slowly. Shuffle or not? Would that create a static spark? She couldn’t worry about it. She hurried to the water heater. Surveying the system, she reached up carefully and slowly. The taped woman shook her head and gave an unearthly scream. But Sachs ignored her and pulled the gas cutoff lever down.

There was a hiss and a quiet plop.

The pilot was out.

Sachs thought about removing the bucket of gas, but it was big and heavy. Moving it would surely spill some of the liquid, which might slosh onto a part of the water heater that was hot enough to ignite it.

The immediate threat was gone.

Still, though, the victim’s head was shaking madly. Her eyes were wide and from her throat came high-pitched sounds, half screams, half words.

With her switchblade Sachs carefully cut the tape binding the woman to the pipe. She turned her around to look at the nasty wound on her head, looking around for something to stop the bleeding.

Another keening sound of desperation from the victim’s throat. Her head waved more frantically yet.

Ah, maybe she was suffocating.

Sachs carefully eased the duct tape off her mouth and set it aside to be collected later for evidence. The victim sucked in air desperately, starting off a jag of coughing. Finally she managed, “We have to leave! Fire!”

“It’s okay, the pilot light—”

“Not that. There!” she pointed.

The pendulum of Sachs’s gaze swung to the left.

What was that?

A flicker of unsteady shadow.

She dropped to her knees. Behind the washing machine was a Starbucks Frappuccino bottle with a rag stuffed in the neck. It, too, was filled with gasoline and the improvised wick was burning. The gasoline flowing down the wall was just starting to pool around it.

A Molotov cocktail.

Oh, hell, the pilot light wasn’t the igniter. This bottle was.

Sachs grabbed the woman by the shoulders. They rushed the door.

And then, the explosion.