The Steel Kiss

Chapter 1

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.

But, damn, there he was, walking in a long lope. Tall, skinny, green jacket, cap and all, though from behind she couldn’t tell what team was being championed on the headgear.

She skidded the ’60s muscle car to a stop in a bus zone, tossed the NYPD official-business placard onto the dash and eased out of the car, minding the suicidal bicyclist who came within inches of collision. He glanced back, not in recrimination, but, she supposed, to get a better look at the tall, redheaded former fashion model, focus in her eyes and a weapon on her black-jeaned hip.

Onto the sidewalk, following a killer.

This was her first look at the prey. The gangly man moved in lengthy strides, feet long but narrow (in running shoes, she noted: good for sprinting over the damp April concrete — much better than her leather-soled boots). Part of her wished he was more wary — so he would look around and she could get a glimpse of his face. That was still an unknown. But, no, he just plodded along in that weird gait, his long arms at his sides, backpack slung via one strap over his sloping shoulder.

She wondered if the murder weapon was inside: the ball-peen hammer, with its rounded end, meant for smoothing edges of metal and tapping rivets flat. That was the side he’d used for the murder, not the claw on the opposite end. The conclusion as to what had caved in Todd Williams’s skull had come from a database that Lincoln Rhyme had created for the NYPD and the Medical Examiner’s Office, the folder title: Weapon Impact on Human Bodies. Section Three: Blunt Force Trauma.

It was Rhyme’s database but Sachs had been forced to do the analysis herself. Without Rhyme.

A thud in her gut at this thought. Forced herself to move past it.

Picturing the wounds again. Horrific, what the twenty-nine-year-old Manhattanite had suffered, beaten to death and robbed as he approached an after-hours club named, so very meta, 40 Degrees North, a reference, Sachs had learned, to the latitude of the East Village, where it was located.

Now Unsub 40 — the club was the source of the nic — was crossing the street, with the light. What an odd build. Well over six feet yet he couldn’t’ve weighed more than 140 or 150.

Sachs saw his destination and alerted Dispatch to tell her backup that the suspect now was entering a five-story shopping center on Henry. She plunged in after him.

With his shadow behind at a discreet distance Mr. Forty moved through the crowds of shoppers. People were always in a state of motion, like humming atoms, in this city, droves of people, all ages, sexes, colors, sizes. New York kept its own clock and, though it was after lunch hour, businesspeople who should have been in the office and students, in school, were here, spending money, eating, milling, browsing, texting and talking.

And complicating Amelia Sachs’s take-down plans considerably.

Forty headed up to the second floor. He continued walking purposefully through the brightly lit mall, which could have been in Paramus, Austin or Portland, it was that generic. The smells were of cooking oil and onions from the food court and perfume from the counters near the open entranceways of the anchor stores. She wondered for a moment what 40 was doing here, what did he want to buy?

Maybe shopping wasn’t his plan at the moment, just sustenance; he walked into a Starbucks.

Sachs eased behind a pillar near the escalator, about twenty feet from the open entryway to the coffee franchise. Careful to remain out of sight. She needed to make sure he didn’t suspect there were eyes on him. He wasn’t presenting as if carrying — there’s a way people tend to walk when they have a gun in their pocket, as any street cop knows, a wariness, a stiffer gait — but that hardly meant he was pistol free. And if he tipped to her and started shooting? Carnage.

Glancing inside the shop quickly, she saw him reach down to the food section and pick up two sandwiches, then apparently order a drink. Or, possibly, two. He paid and stepped out of sight, waiting for his cappuccino or mocha. Something fancy. A filtered coffee would have been handed over right away.

Would he eat in or leave? Two sandwiches. Waiting for someone? Or one for now and one for later?

Sachs debated. Where was the best place to take him? Would it be better outside on the street, in the shop or in the mall itself? Yes, the center and the Starbucks were crowded. But the street more so. No arrest solution was great.

A few minutes later he was still inside. His drink must have been ready by now and he’d made no effort to leave. He was having a late lunch, she supposed. But was he meeting someone?

Making a complicated take-down even more so.

She got a call.

“Amelia, Buddy Everett.”

“Hey,” she said softly to the patrolman out of the 84. They knew each other well.

“We’re outside. Me and Dodd. Another car with three.”

“He’s in Starbucks, second floor.”

It was then that she saw a deliveryman wheel by with some cartons emblazoned with the Starbucks logo, the mermaid. Which meant there was no back entrance to the shop. Forty was trapped in a cul-de-sac. Yes, there were people inside, potential bystanders, but fewer than in the mall or on the street.

She said to Everett, “I want to take him here.”

“Inside, Amelia? Sure.” A pause. “That’s best?”

He’s not getting away, Sachs thought. “Yes. Get up here stat.”

“We’re moving.”

A fast glance inside then back to cover. She still couldn’t see him. He must be sitting in the rear of the place. She eased to the right and then moved closer to the open archway of the coffee shop. If she couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see her.

She and the team would flank—

Just then Sachs gasped at the abrupt, piercing scream close behind her. A horrid wail of a person in pain. So raw, so high, she couldn’t tell male or female.

The sound came from the top of the up escalator, connecting the floor below with this one.

Oh, Jesus...

The top panel of the device, which riders stepped onto from the moving stairs, had popped open and a passenger had fallen into the moving works.

“Help me! No! Please please please!” A man’s voice. Then the words coalesced into a scream once more.

Customers and employees gasped and cried out. Those on the steps of the malfunctioning unit, which were still moving up, leapt off or charged back down against the upward motion. The riders on the adjoining escalator, going down, jumped too, maybe thinking it was about to engulf them as well. Several landed in a heap on the floor.

Sachs glanced toward the coffee shop.

No sign of 40. Had he seen her badge, on her belt, or weapon when he, like everyone else, turned to stare at the accident?

She called Everett and told him about the accident and to call it in to Dispatch. Then to cover the exits; Unsub 40 might’ve seen her and now be escaping. She sprinted to the escalator, noting somebody had pressed the emergency button. The stairs slowed and then halted.

“Make it stop, make it stop!” More screams from the person trapped inside.

Sachs stepped into the upper part of the platform and looked into the gaping hole. A middle-aged man — around forty-five or fifty — was trapped in the gears of the motor, which was mounted to the floor about eight feet below the aluminum panel that had popped open. The motor continued to turn, despite someone’s hitting the emergency switch; she supposed that doing so merely disengaged a clutch to the moving stairs. The poor man was caught at the waist. He was on his side, flailing at the mechanism. The gears had dug deep into his body; blood had soaked his clothing and was flowing onto the floor of the escalator pit. He wore a white shirt with a name badge on it, an employee of one of the stores probably.

Sachs looked at the crowd. There were employees here, a few security people, but no one was doing anything to help. Stricken faces. Some were calling 911, it seemed, but most were taking cell phone pics and video.

She called down to him, “We’ve got rescue on the way. I’m NYPD. I’m coming down there.”

“God, it hurts!” More screaming. She felt the vibration in her chest.

That bleeding had to stop, she assessed. And you’re the only one who’s going to do it. Just go.

She muscled the hinged panel farther open. Amelia Sachs wore little jewelry. But she slipped her one accessory — a ring with a blue stone — from her finger, afraid it would catch her hand in the gears. Though his body was jamming one set of them, a second — operating the down escalator — churned away. Ignoring her claustrophobia, but barely, Sachs started into the narrow pit. There was a ladder for workers to use — but it consisted of narrow metal bars, which were slick with the man’s blood; apparently he’d been slashed when he first tumbled inside by the sharp edge of the access panel. She gripped the hand- and footholds of the ladder hard; if she’d fallen she’d land on top of the man and, directly beside him, a second set of grinding gears. Once, her feet went out from under her and her arm muscles cramped to keep her from falling. A booted foot brushed the working gears, which dug a trough in the heel and tugged at her jean cuff. She yanked her leg away.

Then down to the floor... Hold on, hold on. Saying, or thinking, this to both him and herself.

The poor man’s screams weren’t diminishing. His ashen face was a knot, the skin shiny with sweat.

“Please, oh God, oh God...”

She jockeyed carefully around the second set of gears, slipping twice on the blood. Once his leg lashed out involuntarily, caught her solidly on the hip, and she fell forward toward the revolving teeth.

She managed to stop herself just before her face brushed the metal. Slipped again. Caught herself. “I’m a police officer,” she repeated. “Medics’ll be here any minute.”

“It’s bad, it’s bad. It hurts so much. Oh, so much.”

Lifting her head, she shouted, “Somebody from maintenance, somebody from management! Shut this damn thing off! Not the stairs, the motor! Cut the power!”

Where the hell’s the fire department? Sachs surveyed the injury. She had no idea what to do. She pulled her jacket off and pressed it against the shredded flesh of his belly and groin. It did little to stanch the blood.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he whimpered.

Looking for wires to cut — she carried her very illegal but very sharp switchblade knife in her back pocket — but there were no visible cables. How can you make a machine like this and not have an off switch? Jesus. Furious at the incompetence.

“My wife,” the man whispered.

“Shhh,” Sachs soothed. “It’ll be all right.” Though she knew it wouldn’t be all right. His body was a bloody mess. Even if he survived, he’d never be the same.

“My wife. She’s... Will you go see her? My son. Tell them I love them.”

“You’re going to tell ’em that yourself, Greg.” Reading the name badge.

“You’re a cop.” Gasping.

“That’s right. And there’ll be medics here—”

“Give me your gun.”

“Give you—”

More screaming. Tears down his face.

“Please, give me your gun! How do I shoot it? Tell me!”

“I can’t do that, Greg,” she whispered. She put her hand on his arm. With her other palm she wiped the pouring sweat from his face.

“It hurts so much... I can’t take it.” A scream louder than the others. “I want it to be over with!”

She had never seen such a hopeless look in anyone’s eyes.

“Please, for Chrissake, your gun!”

Amelia Sachs reached down and drew her Glock from her belt.

A cop.

Not good. Not good.

That tall woman. Black jeans. Pretty face. And, oh, the red hair...

A cop.

I’ve left her behind at the escalator and am moving through the crowds at the mall.

She didn’t know I’d seen her, I think, but I had. Oh, yeah. Seen her nice and clear. The scream of the man disappearing into the jaws of that machine had prodded everybody to look toward the sound. Not her, though. She was turning to look for me in the friendly Starbucks.

I saw the gun on her hip, the badge on her hip. Not private, not rental. A real cop. A Blue Bloods cop. She—

Well. What was that?

A gunshot. I’m not much on firearms but I’ve shot a pistol some. No doubt that was a handgun.

Puzzling. Yeah, yeah, something’s weird. was the police girl — Red I’m calling her, after the hair — planning to arrest somebody else? Hard to say. She could be after me for lots of the mischief I’ve been up to. Possibly the bodies I left in that sludgy pond near Newark some time ago, weighted down with barbells like the sort pudgy people buy, use six and a half times and never again. No word in the press about that incident but, well, it was New Jersey. Body-land, that place is. Another corpse? Not worth reporting; the Mets won by seven! So. Or she might be hunting for me for the run-in not long after that on a dim street in Manhattan, swish goes the throat. Or maybe that construction site behind club 40°, where I left such a pretty package of, once again, snapped head bone.

Did somebody recognize me at one of those places, cutting or cracking?

Could be. I’m, well, distinctive looking, height and weight.

I just assume it’s me she wants. I need to get away and that means keeping my head down, that means slouching. It’s easier to shrink three inches than grow.

But the shot? What was that about? Was she after someone even more dangerous than me? I’ll check the news later.

People are everywhere now, moving fast. Most are not looking at tall me, skinny me, me of the long feet and fingers. They just want out, fleeing the screams and gunshot. Stores are emptying, food court emptying. Afraid of terrorists, afraid of crazy men dressed in camo, stabbing, slashing, shooting up the world in anger or thanks to loose-wired brains. ISIS. Al-Qaeda. Militias. Everyone’s on edge.

I’m turning here, slipping through socks and underwear, men’s.

Henry Street, Exit Four, is right ahead of me. Should I get out that way?

Better pause. I take in a deep breath. Let’s not go too fast here. First, I should lose the green jacket and cap. Buy something new. I duck into a cheap store to pay cash for some China-made Italian blue blazer. Thirty-five long, which is lucky. That size is hard to find. Hipster fedora hat. A Middle Eastern kid rings the sale up while texting. Rude. My desire is to crack a bone in his head. At least he’s not looking at me. That’s good. Put the old jacket in my backpack, the green plaid one. The jacket is from my brother, so I’m not throwing it out. The sports cap goes inside too.

The Chinese Italian hipster leaves the store and goes back into the mall. So, which way to escape? Henry Street?

No. Not smart. There’ll be plenty of cops outside.

I’m looking around. Everywhere, everywhere. Ah, a service door. There’ll be a loading dock, I’m sure.

I push through the doorway like I belong here, knuckles not palm (prints, of course), past a sign saying Employees Only. Except not now.

Thinking: What lucky timing, the escalator, Red next to it when the screams began. Lucky me.

Head down, I keep walking steadily. Nobody stops me in the corridor.

Ah, here’s a cotton jacket on a peg. I unpin the employee name badge and repin the shiny rectangle on my chest. I’m now Courteous Team Member Mario. I don’t look much like a Mario but it’ll have to do.

Just now two workers, young men, one brown, one white, come through a door ahead of me. I nod at them. They nod back.

Hope one isn’t Mario. Or his best friend. If so, I’ll have to reach into my backpack and we know that means: cracking bones from on high. I pass them.

Good.

Or not good: A voice shoots my way: “Yo?”

“Yeah?” I ask, hand near the hammer.

“What’s going on out there?”

“Robbery, I think. That jewelry store. Maybe.”

“Fuckers never had security there. I coulda told ’em.”

His co-worker: “Only had cheap crap. Zircons, shit like that. Who’d get his ass shot for a zircon?”

I see a sign for Deliveries and dutifully follow the arrow.

I hear voices ahead, stop and look around the corner. One little black guard, skinny as me, a twig, is all. I could break him easily with the hammer. Make his face crack into ten pieces. And then—

Oh, no. Why is life such a chore?

Two others show up. One white, one black. Both twice my weight.

I duck back. And then things get worse. Behind me, other end of the corridor I’ve just come down. I hear more voices. Maybe it’s Red and some others, making a sweep this way.

And the only exit, ahead of me, has four rental cops, who live for the day they too have a chance to break bones... or Tase or spray.

Me, in the middle and nowhere to go.

Chapter 2

Where?”

“Still searching, Amelia,” Buddy Everett, the patrolman from the 84, told her. “Six teams. Exits’re all covered, us or private security. He’s got to be here somewhere.”

Wiping away the blood on her boot with a Starbucks napkin. Or trying to, futilely. Her jacket, in a trash bag she’d gotten from the coffee shop too, might not be irreparably ruined but she wasn’t inclined to wear a garment that had been saturated with blood. The young patrolman noted the stains on her hands, his eyes troubled. Didn’t say anything. Cops are, of course, human too. Immunity comes eventually but later to some than others, and Buddy Everett was young still.

Through red-framed glasses, he looked at the open access panel. “And he...?”

“He didn’t make it.”

A nod. Eyes now on the floor, Sachs’s bloody boot prints leading away from the escalator.

“No idea which direction he went?” he asked.

“None.” She sighed. Only a few minutes had elapsed between the time that Unsub 40 might have seen her and fled, and the deployment of the backup officers. But that seemed to be enough to turn him invisible. “All right. I’ll be searching with you.”

“They’ll need help in the basement. It’s a warren down there.”

“Sure. But get bodies canvassing in the street too. If he saw me he had a window to get the hell out of Dodge ASAP.”

“Sure, Amelia.”

The youthful officer with the glasses the shade of cooling blood nodded and headed off.

“Detective?” A man’s voice from behind her.

She turned to a compact Latino of about fifty, in a striped navy-blue suit and yellow shirt. His tie was spotless white. Don’t see that combo often.

She nodded.

“Captain Madino.”

She shook his hand. He was surveying her with dark eyes, lids low. Seductive but not sexual; captivating in the way powerful men — some women too — were.

Madino would be from the 84th Precinct and would have nothing to do with the Unsub 40 case, which was on the Major Cases roster. He was here because of the accident, though the police would probably step out pretty soon, unless there was a finding that there had been criminal negligence in the maintenance of the escalator, which rarely happened. But it still would be Madino’s boys and girls who ran the scene.

“What happened?” he asked her.

“Fire department could tell you better than I could. I was moving on a homicide suspect. All I know is the escalator malfunctioned somehow and a male, middle-aged, fell into the gears. I got to him, tried to stop the bleeding but there wasn’t much to do. He hung in there for a while. But ended up DCDS.”

Deceased, confirmed dead at scene.

“Emergency switch?”

“Somebody hit it but that only shuts the stairs off, not the main motor. The gears keep going. Got him around the groin and belly.”

“Man.” The captain’s lips tightened. He stepped forward to look down into the pit. Madino gave no reaction. He gripped his white tie to make sure it didn’t swing forward and get soiled on the railing. Blood had made its way up there too. Unemotional, he turned back to Sachs. “You were down there?”

“I was.”

“Must have been tough.”

She decided that her initial impression of him was wrong. The sympathy in his eyes seemed genuine.

“Tell me about the weapons discharge.”

“The motor,” Sachs explained. “There was no cutoff switch that I could find. No wires to cut. I couldn’t leave him to find it or climb to the top to tell somebody to kill the juice; I was putting pressure on the wounds. So I parked a round in the coil of the motor itself. Stopped it from cutting him in half. But he was pretty much gone by then. Lost eighty percent of his blood, the EMT said.”

Madino was nodding. “That was a good try, Detective.”

“Didn’t work.”

“Not much else you could do.” He looked back to the open access panel. “We’ll have to convene a Shooting Team but, on this scenario, it’ll be a formality. Nothing to worry about.”

“Appreciate that, Captain.”

Despite what one sees on screens large and small, a police officer’s firing a weapon is a rare and consequential occurrence. A gun can be discharged only in the event the officer believes his or her life or that of a bystander is endangered or when an armed felon flees. And force can be used only to kill, not wound. A Glock may not be used like a wrench to shut off renegade machinery (or to open doors — tactical officers use special shotguns to take out hinges, not doorknobs or locks).

In the event of a shooting by a cop, on or off duty, a supervisor from the precinct where it happened comes to the scene to secure and inspect the officer’s weapon. He then convenes the Patrol Borough Shooting Team — which has to be run by a captain. Since there was no death or injury resulting from the shot, Sachs didn’t need to submit to an Intoxilizer test or go on administrative leave for the mandatory three days. And, in the absence of malfeasance, she wasn’t required to surrender her weapon. Just offer it to the supervisor to inspect and note the serial number.

She did this now: deftly dropped the magazine and ejected the chambered round, then collected it from the floor. She offered the weapon to him. He wrote down the serial. Handed the pistol back.

She added, “I’ll do the Firearms Discharge/Assault Report.”

“No hurry, Detective. It takes a while to convene the board, and it looks like you’ve got some other tasks on your plate.” Madino was looking down into the pit once more. “God bless you, Detective. Not a lot of people would’ve gone down there.”

Sachs rechambered the ejected round. Officers from the 84 had cordoned off both of these escalators, so she turned and hurried toward the elevators on her way to the basement, where she’d help search for Unsub 40. But she paused when Buddy Everett approached.

“He’s gone, Amelia. Out of the building.” His dark-red frames both enhanced and jarred.

“How?”

“Loading dock.”

“We had people there, I thought. Rent-a-cops if not ours.”

“He called, the unsub, he shouted from around the corner near the dock, said the perp was in a storage area. Bring their cuffs, Mace or whatever. You know rentals? They love a chance to play real cop. Everybody went running to the storeroom. He strolled right out. Video shows him — new jacket, dark sport coat, fedora — climbing down the dock ladder and running through the truck parking zone.”

“Going where?”

“Narrow-focus camera. No idea.”

She shrugged. “Subways? Buses?”

“Nothing on CCTV. Probably walked or took a cab.”

To one of the eighty-five million places he might go.

“Dark jacket, you said? Sport coat?”

“We canvassed the shops. But nobody saw anybody with his build buy anything. Don’t have his face.”

“Think we can get prints from the ladder? At the dock?”

“Oh, the vid shows he put gloves on before he climbed down.”

Smart. This boy is smart.

“One thing. He was carrying his cup and what seemed like some food wrappers. We looked but he didn’t drop ’em that we could find.”

Starbucks maybe. “I’ll get an ECT on it.”

“Hey, how’d it go with Captain White Tie? Oh, did I say that?”

She smiled. “If you said it I didn’t hear it.”

“He’s already planning how to redecorate his office in the governor’s mansion.”

Explained the posh outfit. Brass with aspirations. Good to have on your side.

God bless you...

“Fine. Looks like he’s backing me up on the weapons issue.”

“He’s a decent guy. Just promise you’ll vote for him.”

“Keep up the canvass,” Sachs told him.

“Will do.”

Sachs was approached by an inspector with the fire department and gave a statement on the escalator accident. Twenty minutes later the Evidence Collection Team assigned to the Unsub 40 case arrived from the NYPD’s massive Crime Scene complex in Queens. She greeted them, two thirty-ish African American techs, man and woman, she worked with from time to time. They wheeled heavy suitcases toward the escalator.

“Uh-uh,” Sachs told them. “That was an accident. The Department of Investigations’ll be coordinating that with the Eight-Four. I need you to walk the grid at Starbucks.”

“What happened there?” the woman officer asked, looking over the coffee shop.

“A serious crime,” her partner offered. “Price of a frappuccino.”

“Our unsub sat down for a late lunch. Some table in the back, you’ll have to ask where. Tall, thin. Green checkered jacket and Atlanta baseball cap. But there won’t be much. He took his cup and wrappers with him.”

“Hate it when they don’t leave their DNA lying around.”

“True, that.”

Sachs said, “But I think he ditched the litter somewhere close.”

“You have any idea where?” the woman asked.

Looking over the staff in Starbucks, Sachs had, in fact, had an inspiration. “Maybe. But it’s not in the mall. I’ll check that out myself. You handle Starbucks.”

“Always loved you, Amelia. You give us the nice and fuzzy and you take the dark ’n’ cold.”

She crouched and pulled a blue Tyvek jumpsuit out of the case one of the ECTs had just opened.

“Standard operating procedure, right, Amelia? Bundle up everything and get it to Lincoln’s town house?”

Sachs’s face was stony as she said, “No, ship everything back to Queens. I’m running the case from downtown.”

The two ECTs regarded each other briefly and then looked back to Sachs. The woman asked, “He’s okay? Rhyme?”

“Oh, you didn’t hear?” Sachs said tersely. “Lincoln’s not working for the NYPD anymore.”

Chapter 3

The answer is there.”

A pause as the words echoed off the glossy, scuffed walls, their color academia green. That is, bile.

“The answer. It may be obvious, like a bloody knife emblazoned with the perp’s fingerprints and DNA, inscribed with his initials and a quotation from his favorite poet. Or obscure, nothing more three invisible ligands — and what is a ligand? Anyone?”

“Olfactory molecules, sir.” A shaky male voice.

Lincoln Rhyme continued, “Obscure, I was saying. The answer may be in three olfactory molecules. But it is there. The connection between the killer and killee that can lead us to his door and persuade the jury to relocate him to a new home for twenty to thirty years. Someone give me Locard’s Principle.”

A woman’s voice said firmly from the front row: “With every crime there is a transfer of material between perpetrator and the scene or the victim or most likely both. Edmond Locard, the French criminalist, used the word ‘dust’ but ‘material’ is generally accepted. Trace evidence, in other words.” The responder tossed aside long chestnut hair framing a heart-shaped face. She added, “Paul Kirk elaborated. ‘Physical evidence cannot perjure itself. It cannot be wholly absent. Only human failure to find it, study and understand it can diminish its value.’ ”

Lincoln Rhyme nodded. Correct answers might be acknowledged but never praised; that was reserved for an insight that transcended the baseline. He was impressed nonetheless, as he had not yet assigned any readings that discussed the great French criminalist. He gazed out at the faces, as if perplexed. “Did you all write down what Ms. Archer said? It appears some of you did not. I can’t fathom why.”

Pens began to skitter, laptop keyboards to click and fingers danced silently over two-dimensional keys of tablets.

This was only the second class session of Introduction to Crime Scene Analysis and protocols had yet to be established. The students’ memories would be supple and in good form but not infallible. Besides, recording on paper or screen means possessing, not just comprehending.

“The answer is there,” Rhyme repeated, well, professorially. “With criminalistics — forensic science — there is not a single crime that cannot be solved. The only question is one of resource, ingenuity and effort. How far are you willing to go to identify the perp? As, yes, Paul Kirk said in the nineteen fifties.” He glanced at Juliette Archer. Rhyme had learned the names of only a few students. Archer’s had been the first.

“Captain Rhyme?” From a young man in the back of the classroom, which contained about thirty people, ranging from early twenties to forties, skewed toward the younger. Despite the stylish, spiky hipster hair, the man had police in him. While the college catalog bio — not to mention the tens of thousands of Google references — offered up Rhyme’s official rank at the time he’d left the force on disability some years ago, it was unlikely that anyone unconnected to the NYPD would use it.

With a genteel move of his right hand, professor turned his elaborate motorized wheelchair to face student. Rhyme was quadriplegic, largely paralyzed from the neck down; his left ring finger and, now, after some surgery, right arm and hand were the only southern extremities working. “Yes?”

“I was thinking. Locard was talking about ‘material’ or ‘dust’?” A glance toward Archer in the front row, far left.

“Correct.”

“Couldn’t there also be a psychological transference?”

“How do you mean?”

“Say the perp threatens to torture the victim before he kills him. The victim is discovered with a look of terror on his face. We can infer that the perp was a sadist. You could add that to the psychological profile. Maybe narrow down the field of suspects.”

Proper use of the word infer, Rhyme noted. Often confused with the transitive imply. He said, “A question. Did you enjoy that series of books? Harry Potter? Movies too, right?” As a rule, cultural phenomena didn’t interest him much — not unless they might help solve a crime, which happened, more or less, never. But Potter was, after all, Potter.

The young man squinted his dark eyes. “Yes, sure.”

“You do know that it was fiction, right. That Hogworths doesn’t exist?”

“Hogwarts. And I’m pretty aware of that, yes.”

“And you’ll concede that wizards, casting spells, voodoo, ghosts, telekinesis and your theory of the transfer of psychological elements at crime scenes—”

“Are hogwash, you’re saying?”

Drawing laughs.

Rhyme’s brows V’d, though not at the interruption; he liked insolence and in fact the play on words was rather clever. His was a substantive complaint. “Not at all. I was going to say that each of those theories has yet to be empirically proven. You present me with objective studies, repeatedly duplicating results of your purported psychological transference, which include a valid sampling size and controls, supporting the theory, and I’ll consider it valid. I myself wouldn’t rely on it. Focusing on more intangible aspects of an investigation distracts from the important task at hand. Which is?”

“The evidence.” Juliette Archer again.

“Crime scenes change like a dandelion under a sudden breath. Those three ligands are all that remain of a million only a moment earlier. A drop of rain can wash away a speck of the killer’s DNA, which destroys any chance of finding him in the CODIS database and learning his name, address, phone number, Social... and shirt size.” A look over the room. “Shirt size was a joke.” People tended to believe everything that Lincoln Rhyme said.

The hipster cop nodded but appeared to be unconvinced. Rhyme was impressed. He wondered if the student would in fact look into the subject. Hoped he did. There might actually be something to his theory.

“We’ll speak more about Monsieur Locard’s dust — that is, trace evidence — in a few weeks. Today our subject will be making sure that we have dust to analyze. Preserving the crime scene is our topic. You will never have a virgin crime scene. That does not exist. Your job will be to make sure your scenes are the least contaminated they can be. Now, what is the number one contaminant?” Without waiting for a response he continued, “Yes, fellow cops — often, most often, brass. How we keep senior officials, preening for news cams, out of the scene while simultaneously keeping our jobs?”

The laughter died down and the lecture began.

Lincoln Rhyme had taught on and off for years. He didn’t particularly enjoy teaching but he believed strongly in the efficacy of crime scene work in solving crimes. And he wanted to make sure the standards of forensic scientists were the highest they could be — that was, his standards. Many guilty people were getting off or were being sentenced to punishments far less severe than their crimes dictated. And innocent people were going to jail. He had resolved to do what he could to whip a new generation of criminalists into shape.

A month ago Rhyme had decided that this would be his new mission. He had cleared his criminal case workload and applied for a job at the John Marshall School for Criminal Justice, a mere two blocks from his Central Park West town house. In fact, he didn’t even have to apply. Over drinks one night he’d mused to a district attorney he was working with that he was thinking of hanging up his guns and teaching. The DA said something to somebody and word got back to John Marshall, where the prosecutor taught part-time, and the dean of the school called soon after. Rhyme supposed that because of his reputation, he was a solid commodity, attracting positive press, prestige and possibly prompting a spike in tuition income. Rhyme signed on to teach this introductory course and Advanced Chemical and Mechanical Analysis of Substances Frequently Found in Felony Crime Scenes, Including Electron Microscopy. It was indicative of his rep that the latter course filled up nearly as fast as the former.

Most of the students were in, or destined for, policing work. Local, state or federal. Some would do commercial forensic analysis — working for private eyes, corporations and lawyers. A few were journalists and one a novelist, who wanted to get it right. (Rhyme welcomed his presence; he himself was the subject of a series of novels based on cases he’d run and had written the author on several occasions about misrepresentations of real crime scene work. “Must you sensationalize?”)

After an overview, though a comprehensive one, of crime scene preservation Rhyme noted the time and dismissed the class, and the students filed out. He wheeled to the ramp that led off the low stage.

But the time he reached the main floor of the lecture hall, all those in class had left, except one.

Juliette Archer remained in the first row. The woman, in her mid-thirties, had eyes that were quite remarkable. Rhyme had been struck by them when he’d seen her for the first time, in class last week. There are no blue pigments in the human iris or aqueous humor; that shade comes from the amount of melanin in the epithelium, combined with the Rayleigh scattering effect. Archer’s were rich cerulean.

He wheeled up to her. “Locard. You did some supplemental reading. My book. That was the language you paraphrased.” He hadn’t assigned his own textbook to the class.

“Needed some reading material to go with my wine and dinner the other day.”

“Ah.”

She said, “Well?”

No need to expand on the question. It simply reiterated an inquiry from last week... as well as several phone messages in the interim.

Her radiant eyes remained steadily on his.

He said, “I’m not sure it would be that good an idea.”

“Not a good idea?”

“Not helpful, I mean. For you.”

“I disagree.”

She certainly didn’t hem or haw. Archer let the silence unspool. Then smiled a lipstick-free smile. “You checked me out, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“You thought I was a spy? Working my way into your good graces, stealing case secrets or something?”

Had occurred to him. Then he shrugged, a gesture he was capable of, despite his condition. “Just curious.” Rhyme had in fact learned a number of things about Juliette Archer. Master’s degrees in public health and biological science. She’d been a field epidemiologist for the Transmittable Diseases Unit of the New York Institutes of Health in Westchester. She now wanted a career change to go into criminal forensic science. Her home was presently downtown, the loft district, SoHo. Her son, eleven, was a star soccer player. She herself had gotten some favorable notices for her modern dance performances in Manhattan and Westchester. She’d lived in Bedford, New York, before her divorce.

No, not a spy.

She continued to gaze into his eyes.

On impulse — exceedingly rare for him — he said, “All right.”

A formal smile. “Thank you. I can start now.”

A pause, “Tomorrow.”

Archer seemed amused and cocked her head playfully. As if she might easily have negotiated and won a change in the sign-on date but didn’t feel like pushing the matter.

“You need the address?” Rhyme asked.

“I have it.”

In lieu of shaking hands they both nodded, sealing the agreement. Archer smiled and then her right index finger moved to the touchpad of her own wheelchair, a silver Storm Arrow, the same model Rhyme had used until a few years ago. “I’ll see you then.” She turned the unit and eased up the aisle and out the doorway.

Chapter 4

The detached house was dark-red brick. The color close to that of Patrolman Buddy Everett’s glasses frames, the color of dried blood, viscera. You couldn’t help but think that. Under the circumstances.

Amelia Sachs was lingering, her eyes taking in the warm illumination from inside, which flickered occasionally as the many visitors here floated between lamp and window. The effect could be like a strobe; the house was small and the guests many.

Death brings out even the most tenuous connections.

Lingering.

In her years as a police officer Sachs had delivered news of loss to dozens of family members. She was competent at it, vamping on the lines they were taught by the psychologists at the academy. (“I’m very sorry for your loss.” “Do you have someone you can turn to for support?” With a script like that, you had to improvise.)

But tonight was different. Because Sachs didn’t believe she’d ever been present at the exact moment when a victim’s electrons departed cells, or, if you were of a different ilk, the spirit abandoned the corpus. She’d had her hands on Greg Frommer’s arm at the moment of death. And as much as she did not want to make this trip, the pact had been sealed. She wouldn’t break it.

She slid her holster east of her hip, out of sight. It seemed a decent thing to do, though she had no explanation why. The other concession to this mission was to make a stop at her apartment, also in Brooklyn, not terribly far, to shower and change clothes. It would have taken luminol and an alternative light source wand to find a lick of blood anywhere on her person.

Up the stairs and ringing the bell.

The door was opened by a tall man in a Hawaiian shirt and orange shorts. Fifties or so. Of course, this was not the funeral; that would be later. Tonight the gathering was the quick descent of friends and relatives to support, to bring food, to distract from the grief and to focus it.

“Hi,” he said. His eyes were as red as the lei around the neck of the parrot on his belly. Frommer’s brother? The resemblance was jarring.

“I’m Amelia Sachs. With the NYPD. Is Mrs. Frommer able to speak with me for a moment or two?” She said this kindly, her voice cleansed of officialdom.

“I’m sure. Please come in.”

The house contained little furniture and the pieces were mismatched and threadbare. The few pictures on the walls might have come from Walmart or Target. Frommer, she’d learned, had been a salesclerk at a shoe store in the mall, working for minimum pay. The TV was small and the cable box basic. No video game console, though she saw they had at least one child — a skateboard, battered and wrapped in duct tape, sat against a far corner. Some Japanese manga comics were stacked on the floor beside a scabby end table.

“I’m Greg’s cousin, Bob.”

“I’m so sorry about what happened.” Sometimes you fell into rote.

“We couldn’t believe it. The wife and I live in Schenectady. We got here as fast as we could.” He said again, “We couldn’t believe it. To... well, die in an accident like that.” Despite the tropical costume, Bob grew imposing. “Somebody’s going to pay for this. That never should’ve happened. Somebody’s going to pay.”

A few people of the other visitors nodded at her, eyeing her clothing, picked out carefully. Calf-length skirt in dark green, black jacket and blouse. She was dressed funereally, though not by design. This was Sachs’s typical uniform. Dark offers a more uncooperative target profile than light.

“I’ll get Sandy.”

“Thanks.”

Across the room was a boy of about twelve, flanked by a man and two women in their fifties, Sachs estimated. The boy’s round, freckled face was red from crying and his hair tousled badly. She wondered if he’d been lying in bed, paralyzed at the news of his father’s death, before family arrived.

“Yes, hello?”

Sachs turned. The slim blond woman was very pale of face, a stark and unsettling contrast with the bold red of her lids and the skin around her eyes. Adding to the eeriness were her striking green irises. Her sundress, in dark blue, was wrinkled and though her shoes were close in style they were from different pairs.

“I’m Amelia Sachs, with the police department.”

No shield display. No need.

Sachs asked if they could have a word in private.

Odd how much easier it was to level your Glock at a stoned perp leveling his at you forty paces away, or downshift from fourth to second while turning at fifty, the tachometer redlined, to make sure some son of a bitch didn’t get away.

Steel yourself. You can do this.

Sandy Frommer directed Sachs toward the back of the house and they walked through the living room into a tiny den that, she saw once they entered, was the boy’s room — the superhero posters and comics, the jeans and sweats in piles, the disheveled bed were evidence of that.

Sachs closed the door. Sandy remained standing and regarded the visitor warily.

“I happened to be on the scene when your husband died. I was with him.”

“Oh. My.” Her look of disorientation swelled momentarily. She focused on Sachs again. “A policeman came to the door to tell me. A nice man. He wasn’t at the mall when it happened. Somebody had called him. He was from the local precinct. An Asian man? Officer, I mean.”

Sachs shook her head.

“It was bad, wasn’t it?”

“It was, yes.” She couldn’t deflate what had happened. The story had already made the news. The accounts were sanitized but Sandy would eventually see medical reports and would learn exactly what Greg Frommer went through in his last minutes on earth. “But I just wanted you to know I was with him. I held his hand and he prayed. And he asked me to come see you and tell you he loved you and your son.”

As if suddenly on a vital mission, Sandy walked to her son’s desk, on which sat an old-model desktop computer. Beside it were two cans of soda, one crushed. A bag of chips, flattened. Barbecue. She picked up the cans and set them in the trash. “I was supposed to renew my driver’s license. I only have two days. I didn’t get around to it. I work for a maid service. We’re busy all the time. My license expires in two days.”

So, her birthday soon.

“Is there someone here who could help you get to DMV?”

Sandy found another artifact — an iced tea bottle. It was empty and that too went into the trash. “You didn’t have to come. Some people wouldn’t have.” Every word seemed to hurt her. “Thank you.” The otherworldly eyes turned to Sachs briefly then dropped to the floor. She tossed the sweats into the laundry. She reached into her jean pocket and withdrew a tissue, dabbed her nose. Sachs noted that the jeans were Armani, but were quite faded and worn — and not in the factory-washed way of new garments (Sachs, former fashion model, had little regard for such useless trends). They’d either been bought secondhand or, Sachs’s guess, dated to an earlier, and more comfortable, era in the family’s life.

This might have been the case; she noted a framed picture on the boy’s desk — the young man and his father a few years ago standing beside a private plane. Before them was fishing gear. Canadian or Alaskan mountains crested in the distance. Another, of the family in box seats at what seemed to be the Indie 500.

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No, Officer. Or Detective? Or—?”

“Amelia.”

“Amelia. That’s a nice name.”

“Is your son coping?”

“Bryan... I don’t know how he’ll do. He’s angry now, I think. Or numb. We’re both numb.”

“How old? Twelve?”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s been a tough few years. And that’s a hard age.” A tremble of lip. And then a harsh: “Who’s responsible for it? How could something like that happen?”

“I don’t know. It will be investigated by the city. They do a good job.”

“We put our faith in things like that. Elevators, buildings, planes, subways! Whoever makes them has to make them safe. How can we know if they’re dangerous? We have to rely!”

Sachs touched her shoulder, pressed. Wondering if the woman was going to dissolve into tears. But Sandy regained composure quickly. “Thank you for coming to tell me that. A lot of people wouldn’t.” It seemed she’d forgotten she’d said this earlier.

“Again. If you need anything.” Sachs placed one of her cards in her hand. They didn’t teach this at the academy and, in truth, she didn’t know what she could do to help the woman. Sachs was running on instinct.

The card disappeared into the jeans that had originally cost three figures.

“I’ll be going now.”

“Oh, yes. Thank you again.”

Sandy picked up her son’s dirty dishes and preceded Sachs out of the doorway.

Near the front hall Sachs once more approached Frommer’s cousin, Bob. She asked, “How do you think she’s doing?”

“Well as can be expected. We’ll do what we can, the wife and me. But we’ve got three kids of our own. I could fit out the garage, I was thinking. I’m handy. The oldest boy too.”

“How do you mean?”

“Our garage. It’s freestanding, you know. Two-car. Heated ’cause I have my workbench out there.”

“They’d come live with you?”

“With somebody and I don’t know who else it’d be.”

“Schenectady?”

Bob nodded.

“They don’t own this place? Rent?”

“Right.” A whisper. “And they’re behind a couple of months.”

“He didn’t have life insurance?”

A grimace. “No. He surrendered it. Needed the money. See, Greg decided he wanted to give back. Quit his job a few years ago and started doing a lot of charity stuff. Midlife crisis or whatever. Working part-time at the mall, so he’d be free to volunteer in soup kitchens and shelters. Good for him, I guess. But it’s been tough on Sandy and Bry.”

Sachs said good night and walked to the door.

Bob saw her out and said, “Oh, but don’t get the wrong idea.”

She turned, lifting an eyebrow.

“Don’t think Sandy regretted it. She stuck by him through it all. Never complained. And, man, did they love each other.”

I’m walking toward my apartment in Chelsea, my womb. My space, good space.

And looking behind me, of course.

No cops are following. No Red, the police girl.

After the scare at the mall, I walked miles and miles through Brooklyn, to a different subway line. I stopped once more for yet another new jacket and new head thing — baseball cap but a tan one. My hair is just blond and short, thinning, but best to keep it covered, I think, when I’m out.

Why give the Shoppers anything to work with?

I’m calming now, finally, heart not racing at every sight of a police car.

It’s taking forever to get home. Chelsea’s a long, long way from Brooklyn. Wonder why it’s called that. Chelsea. I think I heard it was named after some place in England. Sounds English. They have a sports team there named that, I think. Or maybe it’s just someone’s name.

The street, my street, 22nd Street, is noisy but my windows are thick. Womb-like, I was saying. The roof has a deck and I like it up there. Nobody from the building goes, not that I’ve seen. I sit there sometimes and wish I smoked because sitting on an urban outcropping, smoking and watching the city, seems like the essential experience of New York old and New York new.

From the roof you can see the back of the Chelsea Hotel. Famous people stay there but “stay” as in live there. Musicians and actors and artists. I sit in my lawn chair, watch the pigeons and clouds and airplanes and the vista and listen for music from the musicians living in the hotel but I never hear any.

Now I’m at the front door. Another glance behind. No cops. No Red.

Through the doorway and down the corridors of my building. The color of the paint on the walls is dark blue and... hospitalian, I think of the shade. My word. Just occurred to me. I’ll tell my brother when I see him next. Peter would appreciate that. The lighting in the hallways is bad and the walls smell like they’re made of old meat. Never thought I’d feel comfortable in a place like this, after growing up in green and lush suburbia. This apartment was meant to be temporary but it has grown on me. And, I’ve learned, the city itself is good for me. I don’t get noticed so much. It’s important for me not to get noticed. Given everything.

So, comfortable Chelsea.

Womb...

Inside, I put my lights on and lock the door. I look for intrusion but no one’s intruded. I’m paranoid, some would say, but with my life it’s not really paranoia, now, is it? I sprinkle fish flakes on the fishes’ sky in the tank. This always seems wrong, this diet. But I eat meat and a lot of it. I’m meat too. So what’s the difference? Besides, they enjoy it and I enjoy the mini frenzy. They are gold and black and red and dart like pure impulse.

I go to the bathroom and take a shower, to wash off the worry from the mall. And the sweat too. Even on a cold spring day like this, I am damp with escape sweat.

I put the news on. Yes, after a thousand commercials, a story fades onto the screen about the incident at the shopping center in Brooklyn. The escalator malfunction, the man killed so horribly. And the gunshot! Well, that explains it. A police officer tried to stop the motor and rescue the victim by shooting it out. Didn’t work. Was it Red who fired the futile bullet? If so, I give her credit for ingenuity.

I see a message on the answering machine — yes, old-fashioned.

“Vernon. Hi. Had to work late.”

Feel that tightness in my gut. She going to cancel? But then I learn it’s all right:

“So I’ll be closer to eight. If that’s okay.”

Her tone is flat but then it always is. She’s not a woman with spring in her voice. She has never laughed that I’ve seen.

“If I don’t hear from you, I’ll just come over. If that’s too late, it’s okay. Just call me.”

Alicia’s that way. Afraid something will break if she causes any disturbance, asks too much, disagrees even if to anyone else it’s not disagreement but just asking a question. Or wondering.

I can do anything to her. Anything.

Which I like, I must say. It makes me feel powerful. Makes me feel good. People have done things to me that aren’t so nice. This seems only fair.

I look out the window for Red or any other cops. None.

Paranoia...

I check the fridge and pantry for dinner things. Soup, egg rolls, chili without beans, whole chicken, tortillas. Lots of sauces and dips. Cheese.

Skinny bean, Slim Jim. Yeah, that’s me.

But I eat like a stevedore.

I’m thinking of the two sandwiches I had at Starbucks earlier, particularly enjoyed the smoked ham. Recalling the scream, looking out. See Red scanning the coffee shop, not turning toward the scream, like any normal human being would.

Shopper... Spitting out the word, in my mind at least.

Furious at her.

So. I need some comfort. I collect my backpack from its perch by the front door and carry it across the room. I punch numbers into the lock for the Toy Room. I installed the lock myself, which is probably not allowed in a rental. They don’t let you do much when you rent. But I pay on time so no one comes to look. Besides I need the Toy Room locked, so it’s locked. All the time.

I undo a strong dead bolt. And then I’m inside. The Toy Room is dim except for the bright halogens over the battered table that holds my treasures. The beams of light dance blindingly off the metal edges and blades, mostly shiny steel. The Toy Room is quiet. I soundproofed it well, carefully cutting and fitting sheets of wood and acoustic material over walls and mounting shutters on the window. One could scream oneself hoarse in here and not be heard outside.

I take the bone cracker, the ball-peen hammer, from my backpack and clean and oil it and put it into its place on the workbench shelf. Then a new acquisition, a razor saw, serrated. I unbox it and test the edge with my finger. Whisk, whisk... It was made in Japan. My mother told me once that it used to be considered a bad thing, when she was growing up, to have a product made in Japan. How times have changed. Oh, my, this is really quite the clever device. A saw made from a long straight razor. Test the edge again, and, well, see: I’ve just removed a layer of epidermis.

This, which already has become my new favorite implement, I place in a location of honor on the shelf. I have the absurd thought that the other implements will be jealous and sad. I’m funny that way. But when your life has been thrown off kilter by Shoppers, you breathe life into inanimate things. Is that so odd, though? They’re more dependable than people.

I look at the blade once more. A reflected flash from the light smacks my eye and the room tilts as the pupil shrinks. The sensation is eerie but not unpleasant.

I have a sudden impulse to bring Alicia here. Almost a need. I picture the light reflecting off the steel onto her skin, like it’s doing on mine. I really don’t know her well at all, but I think I will, bring her here, I mean. A low feeling in my gut is telling me to.

Breathing faster now.

Should I do that? Bring her here tonight?

That churning in my groin tells me yes. And I can picture her skin reflected in the metal shapes on the workbench, polished to mirror.

I reflect: It will have to be done.

Just do it now. Get it over with...

Yes, no?

I’m frozen.

The buzzer sounds. I leave the Toy Room and go to the front door.

Then have a fast thought, a terrible thought.

What if it’s not Alicia but Red?

No, no. Could that have happened? Red has such sharp eyes, which means a sharp brain. And she did find me at the mall.

Get my bone cracker from the shelf and walk to the door.

I push the intercom button. And pause. “Hello?”

“Vernon. It’s me?” Alicia ends many sentences with question marks. She is such a bundle of uncertainty.

Relaxing, I put the hammer down and hit the door release button and a few minutes later I see Alicia’s face framed in the video screen, looking up at the tiny security camera above the doorjamb. She enters and we step into the living room. I smell her odd perfume, which has to me a faint scent of sweet onions. I’m sure it’s not. But that’s my impression.

She avoids my eyes. I tower over her; she’s tiny and slim but not as bean as me. “Hey.”

“Hi.”

We embrace, an interesting word, and I always thought it meant you brace yourself to touch somebody you don’t want to touch. Like my mother near the end. My father, always. The word doesn’t mean that, sure, but it’s what I think.

Alicia shucks her jacket. Hangs it up herself. She’s not comfortable with people doing things for her. She’s around forty, some years older than me. She’s in a blue dress, which has a high neck and long sleeves. She rarely wears polish on her nails. She never does. She’s comfortable with that image: schoolteacherish. I don’t care. It’s not her fashion choices that draw me to her. She was a schoolteacher when she was married.

“Dinner?” I ask.

“No?” Again, a question, when what she means is: No. Worried that one wrong word, one wrong punctuation mark will ruin the evening.

“You’re not hungry?”

She glances toward the second bedroom. “Just... Is it all right? Can we make love, please?”

And funny, even though this is actually a question, I know she isn’t asking at all. It’s a statement. From her, almost a demand.

I take her hand and we walk through the living room, toward the far wall. To the right is the Toy Room. The left, the back bedroom, the door open and the disheveled bed illuminated by a soft glow of night-light.

I pause for just a moment. She looks up at me, curious, but would never dream of asking, Is something wrong?

I make a decision and turn toward the left, leading her after me.

Chapter 5

What happened?” Lincoln Rhyme asked. “The scene in Brooklyn?”

This was his way of tapping the maple tree. Sachs was not normally forthcoming with details, or even clues, about what was troubling her — just like him. Nor was either of them inclined to say, “So what’s wrong?” But camouflaging the question about her state of mind under the netting of specifics concerning, say, a crime scene sometimes did the trick.

“Kind of a mess.” And fell silent.

Well, gave it a shot.

They were in the parlor of his town house on Central Park West. She dropped her purse and briefcase onto a rattan chair. “Going to wash up.” She strode up the hall to the ground-floor bathroom. He heard pleasantries exchanged between Sachs and Rhyme’s aide, Thom Reston, preparing dinner.

The smells of cooking wafted. Rhyme detected poaching fish, capers, carrots with thyme. A touch of cumin, probably in the rice. Yes, his olfactory senses — those clever ligands — were, he believed, enhanced following the crime scene accident years ago that had severed his spine and rendered him a C4 quad. However, this was an easy deduction; Thom tended to make this particular meal once a week. Not a foodie, by any means, Rhyme nonetheless enjoyed the dish. Provided it was accompanied by a crisp Chablis. Which it would be.

Sachs returned and Rhyme persisted. “Your unsub? How are you identifying him, again? I forgot.” He was sure she’d told him. But unless a fact directly touched a project Rhyme was involved with, it tended to dissipate like vapor.

“Unsub Forty. After that club near where he killed the vic.” She seemed surprised he hadn’t remembered.

“He rabbited.”

“Yep. Vanished. It was chaos, because of the escalator thing.”

He noted that Sachs didn’t unholster her Glock and place it on the shelf near the front doorway into the hall. This meant she wouldn’t be staying tonight. She had her own town house, in Brooklyn, and divided her time between there and here. Or she had until recently. For the past few weeks, she’d stayed here only twice.

Another observation: Her clothing was pristine, not evidencing the dirt and blood that had to have resulted from her descent into the pit to try to rescue the accident victim. Since the unsub’s escape — and the escalator incident — had been in Brooklyn, she would have gone home to bathe and change.

Therefore, since she was planning on leaving again, why had she driven back here from that borough to Manhattan?

Maybe for dinner? He was hoping so.

Thom stepped into the parlor from the hallway. “Here you go.” He handed her a glass of white wine.

“Thanks.” She sipped.

Rhyme’s aide was trim and as good looking as a Nautica model, today dressed in dark slacks, white shirt and subdued burgundy-and-pink tie. He dressed better than any other caregiver Rhyme had ever had, and if the outfit seemed a bit impractical, the important part was attended to: His shoes were solid and rubber-soled — to safely transfer the solidly built Rhyme between bed and wheelchair. And an accessory: Peeking from his rear pocket was a fringe of cornflower-blue latex gloves for the piss ’n’ shit detail.

He said to Sachs, “You sure you can’t stay for dinner?”

“No, thanks. I have other plans.”

Which answered that question, though the lack of elaboration only added to the mystery of her presence here now.

Rhyme cleared his throat. He glanced at his empty tumbler, sitting mouth level on the side of the wheelchair (the cup holder was its first accessory).

“You’ve had two,” Thom told him.

“I’ve had one, which you divided into two. Actually I’ve had less than one if I saw the quantity correctly.” Sometimes he fought with the aide on this, and a dozen other, subjects but today Rhyme wasn’t in a truly petulant mood; he was pleased at how class had gone. On the other hand, he was troubled, as well. What was up with Sachs? But, then too, he simply wanted more goddamn scotch.

He almost added that it had been one hell of a day. But that wouldn’t have been the truth. It had been a pleasant day, a calm day. Unlike the many times when he was half crazed from the pursuit of a killer or terrorist, before he’d quit the police consulting business.

“Please and thank you?”

Thom looked at him suspiciously. He hesitated then poured from the bottle of Glenmorangie, which, damn it, the man kept on a shelf out of reach, as if Rhyme were a toddler fascinated by a colorful tin of drain cleaner.

“Dinner in a half hour,” Thom said and vanished back to his simmering turbot.

Sachs sipped wine, looking over the forensic lab equipment and supplies packed into the Victorian parlor: computers, a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, ballistics examination units, density gradient measurers, friction ridge imaging hoods, alternative light sources, a scanning electron microscope. With these, and the dozens of examination tables and hundreds of tools, the parlor was a forensic lab that would be the envy of many a small- or even medium-sized police department. Much of it was now covered with plastic tarps or cotton sheets, as unemployed as their owner. Rhyme still consulted some on non-criminal matters, in addition to teaching, but most of his work involved writing for academia and professional journals.

Her eyes, he saw, went to a dim corner where sat a half-dozen whiteboards on which they used to write down evidence gathered from scenes by Sachs and Rhyme’s former protégé, Patrolman Ron Pulaski. The threesome, along with another officer from CSU headquarters, would stand, and sit, before the boards and kick about ideas as to the perp’s identity and whereabouts. The boards now faced away, toward the wall, as if resenting that Rhyme no longer had any use for them.

After a moment Sachs said, “I went to see the widow.”

“Widow?”

“Sandy Frommer. The wife of the victim.”

It took him a moment to realize she wasn’t speaking of the person killed by Unsub 40, but the man who’d died in the escalator accident.

“You have to deliver the news?” Forensic cops, like Rhyme, rarely if ever are charged with the difficult task of explaining that a loved one is no longer of this earth.

“No. Just... Greg, the vic, wanted me to tell her he loved her and his son. When he was dying. I agreed.”

“Good of you.”

A shrug. “The son’s twelve. Bryan.”

Rhyme didn’t ask how they were doing. Verbal empties, questions like that.

Clutching her wine in both hands, Sachs walked to an unsterile table, leaned against it. Returned his gaze. “I was close. Almost had him, Unsub Forty, I mean. But then the accident, the escalator. I had to choose.” Sipping wine.

“The right thing, Sachs. Of course. You had to do it.”

“It was just a coincidence I tipped to him — there was no time, zero time to put together a full take-down team.” She closed her eyes. A slow shake of the head. “A crowded mall. Just couldn’t get it together.”

Sachs was her own harshest critic and Rhyme knew the difficult circumstances of the impromptu operation might dull the sting for some people but, with Sachs, they did not. He had evidence of this now: Sachs’s hand disappeared into her hair and she scratched her scalp. Then she seemed to sense she was doing so and stopped. Started again a moment later. She was a woman of great dynamics, some light, some dark. They came as a package.

“Forensics?” he asked. “On your unsub?”

“Not much at Starbucks, where he was sitting. The unsub heard Greg Frommer’s scream and, like everybody else, looked toward it. I was in his line of sight. I guess he saw my piece or the shield on my belt. Knew what was going down. Or suspected. So he left fast, took everything with him. Got some trace at the table but he’d been there only for a few minutes.”

“Exit route?” Rhyme was no longer working for the NYPD, but obvious questions naturally flowed.

“Loading dock. Ron, some ECTs and some uniforms from the Eight-Four are on it, canvassing, and may have a secondary to search. We’ll see. Oh, and I got a shooting team convened in my honor.”

“Why?”

“I blew away a motor.”

“You...?”

“You didn’t see the news?”

“No.”

“The vic wasn’t stuck in the steps of the escalator. He fell through onto the gears of the drive motor. No cutoff switch there. I shot out the coils of the motor. It was too late.”

Rhyme considered this. “No one was injured by the shot so they wouldn’t put you on administrative. You’ll get a no-action letter in a week or so.”

“Hope so. Captain from the Eight-Four’s on my side. As long as there’re no reporters trying to make their careers with stories on cops shooting guns in malls, I’ll be cool.”

“I don’t think that’s much of a journalistic subspecialty,” Rhyme said wryly.

“Well, Madino, the captain, he managed to purgatory the situation for a while.”

“Love the word,” Rhyme told her. “You end-ran it.” Pleased with his own verbing.

She smiled.

Rhyme liked that. She hadn’t been smiling a lot lately.

She returned to the rattan chair near Rhyme and sat. The furniture made its distinctive mew, a sound Rhyme had never heard duplicated elsewhere.

“You’re thinking,” she said slowly, “if I changed clothes at my house, which I did, and if I’m not staying here tonight, which I’m not...” She cocked her head. “Why’d I make the trip?”

“Exactly.”

She set down her half-finished wine. “I came by to ask you something. I need a favor. Your initial reaction is going to be to say no but just hear me out. Deal?”

I wasn’t brave enough.

Not tonight.

I didn’t take Alicia to the Toy Room.

I debated, but no.

She’s left — she’s never stayed over — and I’m in bed, 11 p.m. or so. I don’t know. Thinking of the bedroom earlier: unzipping Alicia’s blue dress, the teacher’s dress, the zipper at the back. Modest. Bra was complicated, not to undo, but the structure. You would think she wouldn’t like the lights on, wouldn’t really want to look at me, want me to look at her, but Alicia isn’t comfortable in darkness. I think it’s because she’s wary of me. I can’t blame her.

Then my clothes were off too, my clothes like queen sheets on a twin bed. Her tiny hands moved fast as hungry hummingbirds. Truly deft. And we played our game. Love that. Just love it. Though I have to be careful. If I don’t think of something else, it’s over too soon. Trot out thoughts and memories: A steel chisel I bought last week, considering what it would do to bone. Dinner at my favorite take-out place. The screams of the victim recently in the construction site near 40° North, as the ball-peen hammer came down on his skull. (I take this as proof I’m not truly a monster. Picturing the blood, the snap, doesn’t make me finish faster but dulls me a bit.)

Then Alicia and I found the pulse and all was well... until, damn it, the image of that police girl came to mind. Red. I pictured looking toward the screams from the escalator, seeing her, badge and gun and all, as she was looking toward me. Shadowed eyes, red hair flying. Looking away from the bloody escalator and the screams, looking for me, me, me. But, odd, though she gave me a terrible scare at the mall, though she’s as bad as the worst Shopper ever, picturing her as I pulsed atop tiny Alicia didn’t slow me down. Just the opposite.

Stop it! Go away!

My God, did I say that aloud? I wondered.

Glanced at Alicia. No. She was lost in whatever place she goes to at times like this.

But Red didn’t go away.

And it was over. Snap. Alicia seemed surprised a little at the speed. Not that she seemed to care. Sex feeds women many different courses, like tapas, where a man wants a single entrée to wolf down and wolf fast.

After, we dozed and I awoke thinking I was still empty somehow and thought about the Toy Room, taking her there.

Yes? I’d wondered. No?

Then I told her to leave.

Goodbye, goodbye.

Nothing more than those words.

And she left.

Now I find my phone, listen to a voice mail message from my brother. “Yo. Next Sunday. Anjelika or Film Forum? David Lynch or The Man Who Fell to Earth? Your call. Ha, no actually it’s my call. ’Cause it’s me who dialed you!”

Love to hear his voice. Like mine, yet not like mine.

I then wonder what to do with my wakefulness. There are plenty of plans I have to consider for tomorrow. But instead I fumble through the bedside table drawer. Find the diary and continue writing passages. I’m transcribing, actually, from the MP3 player. It’s always easier to talk, let the thoughts fly like bats at dusk, going where they will. Then write it down later.

These passages from the difficult days, the high school days. Who isn’t glad to have left those times behind? I write in pretty good script. The nuns. They weren’t bad, most of them. But when they insisted, you listened, you practiced, you pleased them.

I pause the recorder and sip some water. Then ease down beside Alicia, still in bed. I used to think I would date a blind woman. Tried it out, but couldn’t find one. They don’t use personals. Maybe it’s too risky. Blind women wouldn’t care about too tall, too skinny, long face, long fingers, long feet. Skinny worm freak. Skinny bean boy. Slim Jim. So, a blind woman was my plan. But didn’t work out. I meet somebody occasionally. It works okay for what it is. Then it ends.

It always ends. It will end with Alicia too.

I think of the Toy Room.

Then I’m back to the diary, transcribing again, ten minutes, twenty.

The ups and downs of life, recorded forever. Just like my mementos on the shelves in the Toy Room: I remember the joy or sadness or anger surrounding each one.

Today was a good day.