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“- not motives.” Amelia Sachs finished the sentence.
“Why’d he start going after us directly?” Banks asked, nodding at Sachs.
“We found his hidey-hole and saved the little girl. I don’t think he expected us so soon. Maybe he just got pissed. Lon, we need twenty-four-hour babysitters for all of us. He could’ve just taken off after we saved the kid but he stuck around to do some damage. You and Jerry, me, Cooper, Hauma
“I better get over there,” Sachs said.
“No,” Rhyme said.
“I have to work the scene.”
“You have to get some rest,” he ordered. “That’s what you have to do, Sachs. You don’t mind my saying, you look lousy.”
“Yeah, officer,” Sellitto said. “ ‘S’an order. I told you to stand down for the rest of the day. We’ve got two hundred searchers looking for him. And Fred Dellray’s got another hundred and twenty feebies.”
“I got a crime scene in my own backyard and you’re not go
“That’s it,” Rhyme said, “in a nutshell.”
Sellitto walked to the doorway. “Any problems with that, officer?”
“Nosir.”
“Come on, Banks, we got work to do. You need a lift, Sachs? Or’re they still trusting you with vehicles?”
“No thanks, got wheels downstairs,” she said.
The two detectives left. Rhyme heard their voices echoing through the empty hall. Then the door closed and they were gone.
Rhyme realized the glaring overhead lights were on. He clicked through several commands and dimmed them.
Sachs stretched.
“Well,” she said, just as Rhyme said, “So.”
She glanced at the clock. “It’s late.”
“Sure is.”
Rising, she walked to the table where her purse rested. She picked it up. Clicked it open, found her compact and examined her cut lip in the mirror.
“It doesn’t look too bad,” Rhyme said.
“Frankenstein,” she said, prodding. “Why don’t they use flesh-colored stitches?” She put the mirror away, slung the purse over her shoulder. “You moved the bed,” she noticed. It was closer to the window.
“Thom did. I can look at the park. If I want to.”
“Well, that’s good.”
She walked to the window. Looked down.
Oh, for Christ’s sake, Rhyme thought to himself. Do it. What can happen? He blurted quickly, “You want to stay here? I mean, it’s getting late. And Latents’ll be dusting your place for hours.”
He felt a mad bolt of anticipation deep within him. Well, kill that, he thought, furious with himself. Until her face blossomed into a smile. “I’d like that.”
“Good.” His jaw shivered from the adrenaline. “Wonderful. Thom!”
Listening to music, drinking some Scotch. Maybe he’d tell her more about famous crime scenes. The historian in him was also curious about her father, about police work in the ’60s and ’70s. About the infamous Midtown South Precinct in the old days.
Rhyme shouted, “Thom! Get some sheets. And a blanket. Thom! I don’t know what the hell he’s doing. Thom!”
Sachs started to say something but the aide appeared in the doorway and said testily, “One rude shout would’ve been enough, you know, Lincoln.”
“Amelia’s staying over again. Could you get some blankets and pillows for the couch?”
“No, not the couch again,” she said. “It’s like sleeping on rocks.”
Rhyme was stabbed with a splinter of rejection. Thinking ruefully to himself: Been a few years since he’d felt that emotion. Resigned, he nonetheless smiled and said, “There’s a bedroom downstairs. Thom can make it up for you.”
But Sachs set down her purse. “That’s okay, Thom. You don’t have to.”
“It’s no bother.”
“It’s all right. Good night, Thom.” She walked to the door.
“Well, I -”
She smiled.
“But -” he began, looking from her to Rhyme, who frowned, shook his head.
“Good night, Thom,” she said firmly. “Watch your feet.” And closed the door slowly, as he stepped back out of the way into the hall. It closed with a loud click.
Sachs kicked off her shoes, pulled off the sweats and T-shirt. She wore a lace bra and baggy cotton panties. She climbed into the Clinitron beside Rhyme, showing every bit of the authority beautiful women wield when it comes to climbing into bed with a man.
She wriggled down into the pellets and laughed. “This is one hell of a bed,” she said, stretching like a cat. Eyes closed, Sachs asked, “You don’t mind, do you?”
“I don’t mind at all.”
“Rhyme?”
“What?”
“Tell me more about your book, okay? Some more crime scenes?”
He started to describe a clever serial killer in Queens but in less than one minute she was asleep.
Rhyme glanced down and noted her breast against his chest, her knee resting on his thigh. A woman’s hair was banked against his face for the first time in years. It tickled. He’d forgotten that this happened. For someone who lived so in the past, with such a good memory, he was surprised to find he couldn’t exactly remember when he’d experienced this sensation last. What he could recall was an amalgam of evenings with Elaine, he supposed, before the accident. He did remember that he’d decided to endure the tickle, not push the strands away, so he wouldn’t disturb his wife.
Now, of course, he couldn’t brush away Sachs’s hair if God Himself had asked. But he wouldn’t think of moving it aside. Just the opposite; he wanted to prolong the sensation until the end of the universe.
THIRTY-FIVE
THE NEXT MORNING LINCOLN RHYME was alone again.
Thom had gone shopping and Mel Cooper was at the IRD lab downtown. Vince Peretti had completed the CS work at the mansion on East Van Brevoort and at Sachs’s. They’d found woefully few clues though Rhyme put the lack of PE down to the unsub’s ingenuity, not Peretti’s derivative talents.
Rhyme was awaiting the crime scene report. But both Dobyns and Sellitto believed that 823 had gone to ground – temporarily at least. There’d been no more attacks on the police and no other victims had been kidnapped in the past twelve hours.
Sachs’s minder – a large Patrol officer from MTS – had accompanied her to an appointment with an ear, nose and throat man at a hospital in Brooklyn; the dirt had done quite a number on her throat. Rhyme himself had a bodyguard too – a uniform from the Twentieth Precinct, stationed in front of his townhouse – a friendly cop he’d known for years and with whom Rhyme enjoyed a ru
Rhyme was in a great mood. He called downstairs on the intercom. “I’m expecting a doctor in a couple of hours. You can let him up.”
The cop said he would.
Dr. William Berger had assured Rhyme that today he’d be on time.
Rhyme leaned back in the pillow and realized he wasn’t completely alone. On the windowsill, the falcons paced. Rarely skittish, they seemed uneasy. Another low front was approaching. Rhyme’s window revealed a calm sky but he trusted the birds; they were infallible barometers.
UNSUB 823 (page 1 of 5)
Appearance
•Caucasian male, slight build
•Dark clothing
•Old gloves, reddish kidskin
Residence
•Prob. has safe house
•Located near: B’way &82nd,
•ShopRite Greenwich & Bank,
Vehicle
•Yellow Cab
•Recent model sedan
Other
•knows CS proc.
•possibly has record
•knows FR prints
•gun =.32 Colt
•Ties vics w/ unusual knots
UNSUB 823 (page 2 of 5)
Appearance
•Aftershave; to cover up other scent?
•Ski mask? Navy blue?