Saturday, 4:00 p.m., to Saturday, 10:15 p.m. 2 page

“I just thought—”

Peretti smiled. Because Sachs was a beautiful woman—her “foundering” before attending the academy had involved steady assignments for the Chantelle Modeling Agency on Madison Avenue—the cop chose to forgive her.

“Patrolwoman Sachs”—he glanced at the name tag on her chest, flattened chastely by the American Body Armor vest—“an object lesson. Crime scene work is a balance. It’d be nice if we could cordon off the whole city after every homicide and detain about three million people. But we can’t do that. I say this constructively. For your edification.”

“Actually, sir,” she said brusquely, “I’m transferring out of Patrol. Effective as of noon today.”

He nodded, smiled cheerfully. “Then, enough said. But for the record, it was your decision to stop the train and close the street.”

“Yessir, it was,” she said smartly. “No mistake about that.”

He jotted this into a black watchbook with slashing strokes of his sweaty pen.

Oh, please ...

“Now, remove those garbage cans. You direct traffic until the street’s clear again. You hear me?”

Without a yessir or nosir or any other acknowledgment she wandered to Eleventh Avenue and slowly began removing the garbage cans. Every single driver who passed her scowled or muttered something. Sachs glanced at her watch.

An hour to go.

I can live with it.

TWO

WITH A TERSE FLUTTER OF WINGS the peregrine dropped onto the window ledge. The light outside, mid-morning, was brilliant and the air looked fiercely hot.

“There you are,” the man whispered. Then cocked his head at the sound of the buzzer of the door downstairs.

“Is that him?” he shouted toward the stairs. “Is it?”

Lincoln Rhyme heard nothing in response and turned back to the window. The bird’s head swiveled, a fast, jerky movement that the falcon nevertheless made elegant. Rhyme observed that its talons were bloody. A piece of yellow flesh dangled from the black nutshell beak. It extended a short neck and eased to the nest in movements reminiscent not of a bird’s but a snake’s. The falcon dropped the meat into the upturned mouth of the fuzzy blue hatchling. I’m looking, Rhyme thought, at the only living creature in New York City with no predator. Except maybe God Himself.

He heard the footsteps come up the stairs slowly.

“Was that him?” he asked Thom.

The young man answered, “No.”

“Who was it? The doorbell rang, didn’t it?”

Thom’s eyes went to the window. “The bird’s back. Look, bloodstains on your windowsill. Can you see them?”

The female falcon inched into view. Blue-gray like a fish, iridescent. Her head scanned the sky.

“They’re always together. Do they mate for life?” Thom wondered aloud. “Like geese?”

Rhyme’s eyes returned to Thom, who was bent forward at his trim, youthful waist, gazing at the nest through the spattered window.

“Who was it?” Rhyme repeated. The young man was stalling now and it irritated Rhyme.

“A visitor.”

“A visitor? Ha.” Rhyme snorted. He tried to recall when his last visitor had been here. It must have been three months ago. Who’d it been? That reporter maybe or some distant cousin. Well, Peter Taylor, one of Rhyme’s spinal cord specialists. And Blaine had been here several times. But she of course was not a vis-i-tor.

“It’s freezing,” Thom complained. His reaction was to open the window. Immediate gratification. Youth.

“Don’t open the window,” Rhyme ordered. “And tell me who the hell’s here.”

“It’s freezing.”

“You’ll disturb the bird. You can turn the air conditioner down. I’ll turn it down.”

“We were here first,” Thom said, further lifting the huge pane of window. “The birds moved in with full knowledge of you.” The falcons glanced toward the noise, glaring. But then they always glared. They remained on the ledge, lording over their domain of anemic ginkgo trees and alternate-side-of-the-street parkers.

Rhyme repeated. “Who is it?”

“Lon Sellitto.”

“Lon?”

What was he doing here?

Thom examined the room. “The place is a mess.”

Rhyme didn’t like the fuss of cleaning. He didn’t like the bustle, the noise of the vacuum—which he found particularly irritating. He was content here, as it was. This room, which he called his office, was on the second floor of his gothic townhouse on the Upper West Side of the city, overlooking Central Park. The room was large, twenty-by-twenty, and virtually every one of those feet was occupied. Sometimes he closed his eyes, playing a game, and tried to detect the smell of the different objects in the room here. The thousands of books and magazines, the Tower of Pisa stacks of photocopies, the hot transistors of the TV, the dust-frosted lightbulbs, the cork bulletin boards. Vinyl, peroxide, latex, upholstery.

Three different kinds of single-malt Scotch.

Falcon shit.

“I don’t want to see him. Tell him I’m busy.”

“And a young cop. Ernie Banks. No, he was a baseball player, right? You really should let me clean. You never notice how filthy someplace is till people come to call.”

“Come to call? My, that sounds quaint. Victorian. How does this sound? Tell ’em to get the hell out. How’s that for fin-de-siècle etiquette?”

A mess ...

Thom was speaking of the room but Rhyme supposed he meant his boss too.

Rhyme’s hair was black and thick as a twenty-year-old’s—though he was twice that age—but the strands were wild and bushy, desperately in need of a wash and cut. His face sprouted a dirty-looking three days’ growth of black beard and he’d wakened with an incessant tickle in his ear, which meant that those hairs needed trimming as well. Rhyme’s nails were long, finger and toe, and he’d been wearing the same clothes for a week—polka-dotted pajamas, god-awful ugly. His eyes were narrow, deep brown, and set in a face that Blaine had told him on a number of occasions, passionate and otherwise, was handsome.

“They want to talk to you,” Thom continued. “They say it’s very important.”

“Well, bully for them.”

“You haven’t seen Lon for nearly a year.”

“Why does that mean I want to see him now? Have you scared off the bird? I’ll be pissed if you have.”

“It’s important, Lincoln.”

“Very important, I recall you saying. Where’s that doctor? He might’ve called. I was dozing earlier. And you were out.”

“You’ve been awake since six a.m.”

“No.” He paused. “I woke up, yes. But then I dozed off. I was sound asleep. Did you check messages?”

Thom said, “Yes. Nothing from him.”

“He said he’d be here midmorning.”

“And it’s just past eleven. Maybe we’ll hold off notifying air-sea rescue. What do you say?”

“Have you been on the phone?” Rhyme asked abruptly. “Maybe he tried to call while you were on.”

“I was talking to—”

“Did I say anything?” Rhyme asked. “Now you’re angry. I didn’t say you shouldn’t be making phone calls. You can do that. You’ve always been able to do that. My point is just that he might’ve called while you were on the line.”

“No, your point this morning is to be a shit.”

“There you go. You know, they have this thing—call waiting. You can get two calls at once. I wish we had that. What does my old friend Lon want? And his friend the baseball player?”

“Ask them.”

“I’m asking you.”

“They want to see you. That’s all I know.”

“About something vay-ree im-por-tant.”

“Lincoln.” Thom sighed. The good-looking young man ran his hand through his blond hair. He wore tan slacks and a white shirt, with a blue floral tie, immaculately knotted. When he’d hired Thom a year ago Rhyme had said he could wear jeans and T-shirts if he wanted. But he’d been dressed impeccably every day since. Rhyme didn’t know why it contributed to the decision to keep the young man on, but it had. None of Thom’s predecessors had lasted more than six weeks. The number of those who quit was exactly equal to the firees.

“All right, what did you tell them?”

“I told them to give me a few minutes to make sure you were decent then they could come up. Briefly.”

“You did that. Without asking me. Thank you very much.”

Thom retreated a few steps and called down the narrow stairway to the first floor, “Come on, gentlemen.”

“They told you something, didn’t they?” Rhyme said. “You’re holding out on me.”

Thom didn’t answer and Rhyme watched the two men approach. As they entered the room Rhyme spoke first. He said to Thom, “Close the curtain. You’ve already upset the birds way too much.”

Which really meant only that he’d had enough of the sputtering sunlight.

Mute.

With the foul, sticky tape on her mouth she couldn’t speak a word and that made her feel more helpless than the metal handcuffs tight on her wrists. Than the grip of his short, strong fingers on her biceps.

The taxi driver, still in his ski mask, led her down the grimy, wet corridor, past rows of ducts and piping. They were in the basement of an office building. She had no idea where.

If I could talk to him ...

T.J. Colfax was a player, the bitch of Morgan Stanley’s third floor. A negotiator.

Money? You want money? I’ll get you money, lots of it, boy. Bushels. She thought this a dozen times, trying to catch his eye, as if she could actually force the words into his thoughts.

Pleeeeeeeease, she begged silently, and began thinking about the mechanics of cashing in her 401(k) and giving him her retirement fund. Oh, please ...

She remembered last night: The man turning back from the fireworks, dragging them from the cab, handcuffing them. He’d thrown them into the trunk and they’d begun driving again. First over rough cobblestones and broken asphalt then smooth roads then rough again. She heard the whir of wheels on a bridge. More turns, more rough roads. Finally, the cab stopped and the driver got out and seemed to open a gate or some doors. He drove into a garage, she thought. All the sounds of the city were cut off and the car’s bubbling exhaust rose in volume, reverberating off close walls.

Then the cab trunk opened and the man pulled her out. He yanked the diamond ring off her finger and pocketed it. Then he led her past walls of spooky faces, faded paintings of blank eyes staring at her, a butcher, a devil, three sorrowful children—painted on the crumbling plaster. Dragged her down into a moldy basement and dumped her on the floor. He clopped upstairs, leaving her in the dark, surrounded by a sickening smell—rotting flesh, garbage. There she’d lain for hours, sleeping a little, crying a lot. She’d wakened abruptly at a loud sound. A sharp explosion. Nearby. Then more troubled sleep.

A half hour ago he’d come for her again. Led her to the trunk and they’d driven for another twenty minutes. Here. Wherever here was.

They now walked into a dim basement room. In the center was a thick black pipe; he handcuffed her to it then gripped her feet and pulled them out straight in front of her, propping her in a sitting position. He crouched and tied her legs together with thin rope—it took several minutes; he was wearing leather gloves. Then he rose and gazed at her for a long moment, bent down and tore her blouse open. He walked around behind her and she gasped, feeling his hands on her shoulders, probing, squeezing her shoulder blades.

Crying, pleading through the tape.

Knowing what was coming.

The hands moved down, along her arms, and then under them and around the front of her body. But he didn’t touch her breasts. No, as the hands spidered across her skin they seemed to be searching for her ribs. He prodded them and stroked. T.J. shivered and tried to pull away. He gripped her tight and caressed some more, pressing hard, feeling the give of the bone.

He stood. She heard receding footsteps. For a long moment there was silence except for the groans of air conditioners and elevators. Then she barked a frightened grunt at a sound right behind her. A repetitive noise. Wsssh. Wsssh. Very familiar but something she couldn’t place. She tried to turn to see what he was doing but couldn’t. What was it? Listening to the rhythmic sound, over and over and over. It took her right back to her mother’s house.

Wsssh. Wsssh.

Saturday morning in the small bungalow in Bedford, Tennessee. It was the only day her mother didn’t work and she devoted most of it to housecleaning. T.J. would wake up to a hot sun and stumble downstairs to help her. Wsssh. As she cried at this memory she listened to the sound and wondered why on earth he was sweeping the floor and with such careful, precise strokes of the broom.

He saw surprise and discomfort on their faces.

Something you don’t find very often with New York City homicide cops.

Lon Sellitto and young Banks (Jerry, not Ernie) sat where Rhyme gestured with his bush-crowned head: twin dusty, uncomfortable rattan chairs.

Rhyme had changed considerably since Sellitto had last been here and the detective didn’t hide his shock very well. Banks had no benchmark against which to judge what he was seeing but he was shocked nonetheless. The sloppy room, the vagrant gazing at them suspiciously. The smell too certainly—the visceral aroma surrounding the creature Lincoln Rhyme now was.

He immensely regretted letting them up.

“Why didn’t you call first, Lon?”

“You would’ve told us not to come.”

True.

Thom crested the stairs and Rhyme preempted him. “No, Thom, we won’t be needing you.” He’d remembered that the young man always asked guests if they wanted something to drink or eat.

Such a goddamn Martha Stewart.

Silence for a moment. Large, rumpled Sellitto—a twenty-year vet—glanced down into a box beside the bed and started to speak. Whatever he’d been about to say was cut off by the sight of disposable adult diapers.

Jerry Banks said, “I read your book, sir.” The young cop had a bad hand when it came to shaving, lots of nicks. And what a charming cowlick in his hair! My good Lord, he can’t be more than twelve. The more worn the world gets, Rhyme reflected, the younger its inhabitants seem to be.

“Which one?”

“Well, your crime scene manual, of course. But I meant the picture book. The one a couple years ago.”

“There were words too. It was mostly words, in fact. Did you read them?”

“Oh, well, sure,” Banks’ said quickly.

A huge stack of remaindered volumes of The Scenes of the Crime sat against one wall of his room.

“I didn’t know you and Lon were friends,” Banks added.

“Ah, Lon didn’t trot out the yearbook? Show you the pictures? Strip his sleeve and show his scars and say these wounds I had with Lincoln Rhyme?”

Sellitto wasn’t smiling. Well, I can give him even less to smile about if he likes. The senior detective was digging through his attaché case. And what does he have in there?

“How long were you partnered?” Banks asked, making conversation.

“There’s a verb for you,” Rhyme said. And looked at the clock.

“We weren’t partners,” Sellitto said. “I was Homicide, he was head of IRD.”

“Oh,” Banks said, even more impressed. Running the Central Investigation and Resource Division was one of the most prestigious jobs in the department.

“Yeah,” Rhyme said, looking out the window, as if his doctor might be arriving via falcon. “The two musketeers.”

In a patient voice, which infuriated Rhyme, Sellitto said, “Seven years, off and on, we worked together.”

“And good years they were,” Rhyme intoned.

Thom scowled but Sellitto missed the irony. Or more likely ignored it. He said, “We have a problem, Lincoln. We need some help.”

Snap. The stack of papers landed on the bedside table.

“Some help?” The laugh exploded from the narrow nose Elaine had always suspected was the product of a surgeon’s vision though it was not. She also thought his lips were too perfect (Add a scar, she’d once joked and during one of their fights she nearly had). And why, he wondered, does her voluptuous apparition keep rising today? He’d wakened thinking about his ex and had felt compelled to write her a letter, which was on the computer screen at that moment. He now saved the document on the disk. Silence filled the room as he entered the commands with a single finger.

“Lincoln?” Sellitto asked.

“Yessir. Some help. From me. I heard.”

Banks kept an inappropriate smile on his face while he shuffled his butt uneasily in the chair.

“I’ve got an appointment in, well, any minute now,” Rhyme said.

“An appointment.”

“A doctor.”

“Really?” Banks asked, probably to murder the silence that loomed again.

Sellitto, not sure where the conversation was going, asked, “And how’ve you been?”

Banks and Sellitto hadn’t asked about his health when they’d arrived. It was a question people tended to avoid when they saw Lincoln Rhyme. The answer risked being a very complicated, and almost certainly an unpleasant, one.

He said simply, “I’ve been fine, thanks. And you? Betty?”

“We’re divorced,” Sellitto said quickly.

“Really?”

“She got the house and I got half a kid.” The chunky cop said this with forced cheer, as if he’d used the line before, and Rhyme supposed there was a painful story behind the breakup. One he had no desire to hear. Still, he wasn’t surprised that the marriage had tanked. Sellitto was a workhorse. He was one of the hundred or so first-grade detectives on the force and had been for years—he got the grade when they were handed out for merit not just time served. He’d worked close to eighty hours a week. Rhyme hadn’t even known he was married for the first few months they’d worked together.

“Where you living now?” Rhyme asked, hoping a nice social conversation would tucker them out and send them on their way.

“Brooklyn. The Heights. I walk to work sometimes. You know those diets I was always on? The trick’s not dieting. It’s exercise.”

He didn’t look any fatter or thinner than the Lon Sellitto of three and a half years ago. Or the Sellitto of fifteen years ago for that matter.

“So,” collegiate Banks said, “a doctor, you were saying. For a ...”

“A new form of treatment?” Rhyme finished the dwindling question. “Exactly.”

“Good luck.”

“Thank you so much.”

It was 11:36 a.m. Well past midmorning. Tardiness is inexcusable in a man of medicine.

He watched Banks’s eyes twice scan his legs. He caught the pimply boy a second time and wasn’t surprised to see the detective blush.

“So,” Rhyme said. “I’m afraid I don’t really have time to help you.”

“But he’s not here yet, right, the doctor?” asked Lon Sellitto in the same bulletproof tone he’d used to puncture homicide suspects’ cover stories.

Thom appeared at the doorway with a coffeepot.

Prick, Rhyme mouthed.

“Lincoln forgot to offer you gentlemen something.”

“Thom treats me like a child.”

“If the bootie fits,” the aide retorted.

“All right,” Rhyme snapped. “Have some coffee. I’ll have some mother’s milk.”

“Too early,” Thom said. “The bar isn’t open.” And weathered Rhyme’s glowering face quite well.

Again Banks’s eyes browsed Rhyme’s body. Maybe he’d been expecting just skin and bones. But the atrophying had stopped not long after the accident and his first physical therapists had exhausted him with exercise. Thom too, who may have been a prick at times and an old mother hen at others, was a damn good PT. He put Rhyme through passive ROM exercises every day. Taking meticulous notes on the goniometry—measurements of the range of motion that he applied to each joint in Rhyme’s body. Carefully checking the spasticity as he kept the arms and legs in a constant cycle of abduction and adduction. ROM work wasn’t a miracle but it built up some tone, cut down on debilitating contractures and kept the blood flowing. For someone whose muscular activities had been limited to his shoulders, head and left ring finger for three and a half years, Lincoln Rhyme wasn’t in such bad shape.

The young detective looked away from the complicated black ECU control sitting by Rhyme’s finger, hardwired to another controller, sprouting conduit and cables, which ran to the computer and a wall panel.

A quad’s life is wires, a therapist had told Rhyme a long time ago. The rich ones, at least. The lucky ones.

Sellitto said, “There was a murder early this morning on the West Side.”

“We’ve had reports of some homeless men and women disappearing over the past month,” Banks said. “At first we thought it might be one of them. But it wasn’t,” he added dramatically. “The vic was one of those people last night.”

Rhyme trained a blank expression on the young man with the dotted face. “Those people?”

“He doesn’t watch the news,” Thom said. “If you’re talking about the kidnapping he hasn’t heard.”

“You don’t watch the news?” Sellitto laughed. “You’re the SOB read four papers a day and recorded the local news to watch when he got home. Blaine told me you called her Katie Couric one night when you were making love.”

“I only read literature now,” Rhyme said pompously, and falsely.

Thom added, “ ‘Literature is news that stays news.’ ”

Rhyme ignored him.

Sellitto said, “Man and woman coming back from business on the Coast. Got into a Yellow Cab at JFK. Never made it home.”

“There was a report about eleven-thirty. This cab was driving down the BQE in Queens. White male and female passenger in the back seat. Looked like they were trying to break a window out. Pounding on the glass. Nobody got tags or medallion.”

“This witness—who saw the cab. Any look at the driver?”

“No.”

“The woman passenger?”

“No sign of her.”

Eleven forty-one. Rhyme was furious with Dr. William Berger. “Nasty business,” he muttered absently.

Sellitto exhaled long and loud.

“Go on, go on,” Rhyme said.

“He was wearing her ring,” Banks said.

“Who was wearing what?”

“The vic. They found this morning. He was wearing the woman’s ring. The other passenger’s.”

“You’re sure it was hers?”

“Had her initials inside.”

“So you’ve got an unsub,” Rhyme continued, “who wants you to know he’s got the woman and she’s still alive.”

“What’s an unsub?” Thom asked.

When Rhyme ignored him Sellitto said, “Unknown subject.”

“But you know how he got it to fit?” Banks asked, a little wide-eyed for Rhyme’s taste. “Her ring?”

“I give up.”

“Cut the skin off the guy’s finger. All of it. Down to the bone.”

Rhyme gave a faint smile. “Ah, he’s a smart one, isn’t he?”

“Why’s that smart?”

“To make sure nobody came by and took the ring. It was bloody, right?”

“A mess.”

“Hard to see the ring in the first place. Then AIDS, hepatitis. Even if somebody noticed, a lot of folks’d take a pass on that trophy. What’s her name, Lon?”

The older detective nodded to his partner, who flipped open his watchbook.

“Tammie Jean Colfax. She goes by T.J. Twenty-eight. Works for Morgan Stanley.”

Rhyme observed that Banks too wore a ring. A school j ring of some sort. The boy was too polished to be just ! a high-school and academy grad. No whiff of army about him. Wouldn’t be surprised if the jewelry bore the name Yale. A homicide detective? What was the world coming to?

The young cop cupped his coffee in hands that shook sporadically. With a minuscule gesture of his own ring finger on the Everest & Jennings ECU panel, to which his left hand was strapped, Rhyme clicked through several settings, turning the AC down. He tended not to waste controls on things like heating and air-conditioning; he reserved it for necessities like lights, the computer and his page-turning frame. But when the room got too cold his nose ran. And that’s fucking torture for a quad.

“No ransom note?” Rhyme asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re the case officer?” Rhyme asked Sellitto.

“Under Jim Polling. Yeah. And we want you to review the CS report.”

Another laugh. “Me? I haven’t looked at a crime scene report in three years. What could I possibly tell you?”

“You could tell us tons, Linc.”

“Who’s head of IRD now?”

“Vince Peretti.”

“The congressman’s boy,” Rhyme recalled. “Have him review it.”

A moment’s hesitation. “We’d rather have you.”

“Who’s we?”

“The chief. Yours truly.”

“And how,” Rhyme asked, smiling like a schoolgirl, “does Captain Peretti feel about this vote of no confidence?”

Sellitto stood and paced through the room, glancing down at the stacks of magazines. Forensic Science Review. Harding & Boyle Scientific Equipment Company catalog. The New Scotland Yard Forensic Investigation Annual. American College of Forensic Examiners Journal. Report of the American Society of Crime Lab Directors. CRC Press Forensics. Journal of the International Institute of Forensic Science.

“Look at them,” Rhyme said. “The subscriptions lapsed ages ago. And they’re all dusty.”

“Everything in here’s fucking dusty, Linc. Why don’t you get off your lazy ass and clean this pigsty up?”

Banks looked horrified. Rhyme squelched the burst of laughter that felt alien inside him. His guard had slipped and irritation had dissolved into amusement. He momentarily regretted that he and Sellitto had drifted apart. Then he shot the feeling dead. He grumbled, “I can’t help you. Sorry.”

“We’ve got the peace conference starting on Monday. We—”

“What conference?”

“At the UN. Ambassadors, heads of state. There’ll be ten thousand dignitaries in town. You heard about that thing in London two days ago?”

“Thing?” Rhyme repeated caustically.

“Somebody tried to bomb the hotel where UNESCO was meeting. The mayor’s scared shitless somebody’s going to move on the conference here. He doesn’t want ugly Post headlines.”

“There’s also the little problem,” Rhyme said astringently, “that Miss Tammie Jean might not be enjoying her trip home either.”

“Jerry, tell him some details. Whet his appetite.”

Banks turned his attention from Rhyme’s legs to his bed, which was—Rhyme readily admitted—by far the more interesting of the two. Especially the control panel. It looked like something off the space shuttle and cost just about as much. “Ten hours after they’re snatched we find the male passenger—John Ulbrecht—shot and buried alive in the Amtrak roadbed near Thirty-seventh and Eleventh. Well, we find him dead. He’d been buried alive. Bullet was a .32.” Banks looked up and added, “The Honda Accord of slugs.”

Meaning there’d be no wily deductions about the unsub from exotic weaponry. This Banks seems smart, Rhyme thought, and all he suffers from is youth, which he might or might not outgrow. Lincoln Rhyme believed he himself had never been young.

“Rifling on the slug?” Rhyme asked.

“Six lands and grooves, left twist.”

“So he’s got himself a Colt,” Rhyme said and glanced over the crime scene diagram again.

“You said ‘he,’ ” the young detective continued. “Actually it’s ‘they.’ ”

“What?”

“Unsubs. There’re two of them. There were two sets of footprints between the grave and the base of an iron ladder leading up to the street,” Banks said, pointing to the CS diagram.

“Any prints on the ladder?”

“None. It was wiped. Did a good job of it. The footprints go to the grave and back to the ladder. Anyway, there had to be two of ’em to schlepp the vic. He weighed over two hundred pounds. One man couldn’t’ve done it.”

“Keep going.”

“They got him to the grave, dropped him in, shot him and buried him, went back to the ladder, climbed it and vanished.”

“Shot him in the grave?” Rhyme inquired.

“Yep. There was no blood trail anywhere around the ladder or the path to the grave.”

Rhyme found himself mildly interested. But he said, “What do you need me for?”

Sellitto grinned ragged yellow teeth. “We got ourselves a mystery, Linc. A buncha PE that doesn’t make any fucking sense at all.”

“So?” It was a rare crime scene when every bit of physical evidence made sense.

“Naw, this is real weird. Read the report. Please. I’ll put it here. How’s this thing work?” Sellitto looked at Thom, who fitted the report in the page-turning frame.

“I don’t have time, Lon,” Rhyme protested.

“That’s quite a contraption,” Banks offered, looking at the frame. Rhyme didn’t respond. He glanced at the first page then read it carefully. Moved his ring finger a precise millimeter to the left. A rubber wand turned the page.

Reading. Thinking: Well, this is odd.

“Who was in charge of the scene?”

“Peretti himself. When he heard the vic was one of the taxi people he came down and took over.”

Rhyme continued to read. For a minute the unimaginative words of cop writing held his interest. Then the doorbell rang and his heart galloped with a great shudder. His eyes slipped to Thom. They were cold and made clear that the time for banter was over. Thom nodded and went downstairs immediately.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 645