It was a pistol. A Glock. Very much like Amelia Sachs's. Poitier verified it was loaded and pulled the slide to chamber a round. With a Glock there is no safety catch, you simply have to pull the trigger to fire it.
Rhyme stared at the pistol, glanced at Thom and then took the weapon in his right hand. He had never cared for firearms. The opportunity to use them--in his specialty of forensics, at least--was next to never, and he was always worried that he'd have to draw and use his gun. The reluctance stemmed not from fear of killing an attacker but from what even a single shot could do to contaminate a crime scene. Smoke, blast pressure, gunshot residue, vapors...
That was no less true here but curiously he was now struck by the sense of power the weapon gave him.
In contrast with the utter helplessness that had enwrapped his life since the accident.
"Yes," he said.
Though he couldn't feel it in his fingers, the Glock seemed to burn its way into his skin, to become a part of his new arm. He aimed it carefully out the window at the water, recalling his firearms training. Assume every weapon is loaded and ready to fire, never point a weapon at anything you aren't prepared to send a bullet into, never shoot unless you see exactly what is behind your target, never put your finger on the trigger until you're prepared to shoot.
A scientist, Rhyme was actually a pretty good shot, using physics in calculating how to get the bullet to its desired destination.
"Yes," he said again and slipped the gun into the inside pocket of his jacket.
They got out of the van and surveyed the area: pipes and gutters directing runoff into the ocean, dozens of piles of sludge rising like huge ant hills and cinder blocks and car parts and appliances and rusted industrial machinery littering the ground.
No Swimming...
No kidding.
Thom said, "The haze is bad and the inn's so far away. How could he see well enough to get a clear target?"
Poitier said, "A special scope, I decided. Adaptive optics, lasers."
Rhyme was amused. Apparently the corporal had done more research about the case than he'd let on--or than Assistant Commissioner McPherson would have been happy with.
"Could have been a clearer day too."
"Never very clear here," Poitier said, waving his arm at a low chimney rising above the tire plant. It spewed bile-green and beige smoke.
Then, surrounded by the nauseating smell of rotten eggs and hot rubber from the pollution, they made their way closer to the shore. Rhyme studied the ground for the best place to set up a sniper's nest--good cover and an indentation that would allow support on which to rest the rifle. A half dozen sites would have worked.
No one interfered with the search; they were largely alone. A pickup eased up and parked just across the road. The driver, in a sweat-stained gray shirt, speaking into his cell phone, walked to the back of his truck and began tossing trash bags into a ditch beside the road. The concept of littering as a crime seemed not to exist in the Bahamas. Rhyme could also hear some laughing and shouts from the other side of the fence surrounding the metal fabrication plant but otherwise they had the place to themselves.
Looking for the nest, Thom, Poitier and Rhyme walked, and wheeled, through the weeds and patches of dirt and sand, the Storm Arrow doing a fair job of finding purchase in the uneven terrain. Poitier and Thom could get closer to the edge and he told them what to look for: cut-back brush, indentations, foot or boot prints leading to a flat area. "And look at the patches of sand." Even a spent cartridge leaves a distinctive mark.
"He's got to be a pro," Rhyme explained. "He'd've had a tripod or sandbags to rest the gun on but he might've used rocks too and left them set up. Look for stones out of place, maybe one balanced on another. At that distance, the rifle would have to be absolutely steady."
Rhyme squinted--the pollution and the wind stung his eyes. "I would love some brass," he said. But he doubted the sniper would have left any empty cartridges behind; pros always collected them because they contained a wealth of information about the weapon and the shooter. He peered into the water, though, wondering if a spent shell had been ejected there. The sea was black and he assumed very deep.
"A diver'd be good."
"Our official divers wouldn't be available, Captain," Poitier said regretfully. "Since this, of course, isn't even an investigation."
"Just an island tour."
"Yes, exactly."
Rhyme wheeled close to the edge and looked down.
"Careful there," Thom called.
"But," Poitier said, "I dive. I could come back and see if there is anything down there. Borrow some of the underwater lights from our waterside station."
"You would do that, Corporal?"
He too peered into the water. "Yes. Tomorrow, I--"
What happened next happened fast.
Finger-snap fast.
At the sound of clattering suspension and a hissing, badly firing engine, Rhyme, Thom and Poitier turned to look at the dirt road they'd just driven down. They saw the gold Mercury bounding directly toward them, now with only two occupants in it.
And Rhyme understood. He glanced back, seeing the man in the gray T-shirt, the litterer from the pickup truck, race across the narrow road and tackle Poitier as he was drawing his gun. The weapon went flying. The assailant rose fast and kicked the gasping corporal in the side and head, hard.
"No!" Rhyme cried.
The Mercury squealed to a stop and two of the men they'd seen following earlier leapt out--the one with the dreads in the sleeveless yellow shirt and his partner, shorter, wearing the green T. The man in green ripped Thom's phone from his hand and doubled him over with a blow to the belly.
"Don't!" Rhyme shouted--a cry as involuntary as it was pointless.
The man in the gray T-shirt said to his partners, "Okay, you see anyone else?"
"No."
Of course, that's why he was on the phone. He hadn't come here to pitch out trash at all. He'd followed them and used the phone to let the others know their victims had arrived at the killing site.
Poitier gasped for breath, clutching his side.
Rhyme said firmly, "We're police officers from the United States. We work with the FBI. Don't make this worse on yourself. Just leave now."
It was as if he hadn't spoken.
The man in gray walked toward Poitier's pistol, lying in the dust ten feet away.
"Stop," Rhyme commanded.
The man did. He blinked at the criminalist. The other attackers froze. They were looking at the Glock in Rhyme's hand. The pistol was unsteady, for sure, but from this distance he could easily send a bullet into the torso of the assailant.
The man lifted his hands slightly, rising. Eyes on the pistol. Back to Rhyme. "Okay, okay, mister. Don't do with that."
"All of you, step back and lie down on the ground, facedown."
The two who'd been in the car turned their eyes on the man in gray.
Nobody moved.
"I'm not going to tell you again." Rhyme wondered what the recoil would do to his hand. He supposed there might be some damage to the tendons. But all he needed after the shot was to keep the weapon in his grip. The others would flee after he'd killed their leader.
Thinking of the Special Task Order. No due process, no trial. Self-defense. Taking a life before your enemy did.
"You gonna shoot me, sir?" The man was studying him, suddenly defiant.
Rhyme rarely had a chance to meet adversaries face-to-face. They were usually long gone from the crime scene by the time he saw them, which was usually in court where he was an expert witness for the prosecution. Still, he had no trouble staring down the man in gray.
His partner, the one in yellow, the one with the impressive muscles, stepped forward but stopped fast when Rhyme spun the gun toward him.
"Hokay, easy, mon, easy." Hands raised.
Rhyme aimed again at the leader, whose eyes were fixed on the weapon, his hands up. He smiled. "Are you? Are you going to shoot me,
sir? I'm not so sure you are." He stepped forward a few feet. Paused. And then walked directly toward Rhyme.
There was nothing more to say.
Rhyme tensed, hoping the recoil wouldn't damage the results of the delicate surgery, hoping he could keep the weapon in his hand. He sent the command to close his index finger.
But nothing happened.
Glocks--dependable, Austrian-made pistols--have a trigger pull of only a few pounds pressure.
Yet Rhyme couldn't muster that, couldn't deliver enough strength to save the life of his aide and the police officer who'd risked his job to help him.
The man in gray continued forward, perhaps assuming Rhyme lacked the fortitude to shoot, even as he tried desperately to pull the trigger. Even more insulting, the man didn't approach from the side, he kept on a steady path toward the muzzle that hovered in his direction.
The man closed his muscular hand around the gun and easily yanked it from Rhyme's.
"You know, you a freak, mon." He braced himself, put his foot in the middle of Rhyme's chest and pushed hard.
The Storm Arrow rolled back two feet and went off the rocky edge. With a huge splash, Rhyme and the chair tumbled into the water. He took a deep breath and went under.
The water was not as deep as he'd thought, the darkness was due to the pollution, the chemicals and waste. The chair dropped ten feet or so and came to rest on the bottom.
Head throbbing, lungs in agony as his breath depleted, Rhyme twisted his head as far as he could and with his mouth gripped the strap of the canvas bag hanging from the back of the chair. He tugged this forward and it floated to just within his reach. He managed to wrap his arm around it for stability and undid the zipper with his teeth, then lowered his head and fished for the portable ventilator's mouthpiece. He gripped it hard and worked it between his lips.
His eyes were on fire, stinging from the pollutants in the water, and he squinted but kept them open as he searched for the switch to the ventilator.
Finally, there. That's it.
He clicked it on.
Lights glowed. The machine hummed and he inhaled a bit of wonderful, sweet oxygen.
Another.
But there was no third. Apparently the water had worked its way through the housing and short-circuited the unit.
The ventilator went dark. The air stopped.
At that moment he heard another sound, muffled through the water, but distinct: Two sounds, actually.
Gunshots.
Spelling the deaths of his friends: one he'd known seemingly forever and one he'd grown close to in just the past few hours.
Rhyme's next breath was of water.
He thought of Amelia Sachs and his body relaxed.
CHAPTER 42
N O.
OH, NO.
At close to 5 p.m. she parked in front of Lydia Foster's apartment building on Third Avenue.
Sachs couldn't get too close; police cars and ambulances blocked the street.
Logic told her that the reason for the vehicles couldn't be the death of the interpreter. Sachs had been following the sniper for the past hour and a half. He was still in his office downtown. She hadn't left until Myers's Special Services surveillance team showed up. Besides, how could the sniper have learned the interpreter's name and address? She'd been careful to call from landlines and prepaid mobiles.
That's what logic reported.
Yet instinct told her something very different, that Lydia was dead and Sachs was to blame. Because she'd never considered what she realized was the truth: They had two perps. One was the man she'd been following through the streets of downtown New York--the sniper, she knew, because of the voiceprint match--and the other, Lydia Foster's killer, an unsub, unidentified subject. He was somebody else altogether, maybe the shooter's partner, a spotter, as many snipers used. Or a separate contractor, a specialist, hired by Shreve Metzger to clean up after the assassination.
She parked fast, tossed the NYPD placard on the dash and stepped out of the car, hurrying toward the nondescript apartment building, the pale facade marred by off-white water stains as if the air-conditioning units had been crying.
Ducking under the police tape, she hurried up to a detective, who was prepping a canvass team. The slim African American recognized her, though she didn't know him, and he nodded a greeting. "Detective."
"Was it Lydia Foster?" Wondering why she bothered to ask.
"Right. This involves a case you're running?"
"Yeah. Lon Sellitto's the lead, Bill Myers's overseeing it. I'm doing the legwork."
"It's all yours, then."
"What happened?"
She noticed the man was shaken up, eyes twitching away from hers as he fiddled with a pen.
He swallowed and said, "Scene was pretty bad, I gotta tell you. She was tortured. Then he stabbed her. Never seen anything like that."
"Torture?" she asked in a whisper.
"Sliced the skin off her fingers. Slow."
Jesus...
"How did he get in?"
"Some reason, she let him in. No signs of breakin."
Dismayed, Sachs now understood. The unsub had tapped a line--probably the landline she'd used near Java Hut--and learned about the interpreter. He'd fronted he was a cop, flashing a fake badge, saying he worked with Sachs; he'd know her name by now.
That conversation between Sachs and Sellitto was Lydia Foster's own personal Special Task Order.
She felt a burst of breathtaking anger toward the killer. What he'd done to Lydia--the pain he'd inflicted--had been unnecessary. To get information from a civilian you needed only to threaten. Physical torture was always pointless.
Unless you enjoyed it.
Unless you got pleasure in wielding a knife, slicing precisely, skillfully.
"Why'd you get the call?" she asked.
"Fucker cut her so much, she bled through the ceiling. Neighbors downstairs saw blood on the wall. Called nine one one." The detective continued, "The place was ransacked. I don't know what he was looking for but he went through everything she had. There wasn't a single drawer untouched. No computer or cell phone either. He took it all."
The files on the Moreno interpreting assignment, probably already shredded or burned.
"CS on the way?"
"I called a team from Queens. They'll be here any minute."
Sachs had a set of basic crime scene gear in the trunk of the Torino. She returned to the vehicle and began to pull on the powder-blue overalls and booties and shower cap. She'd get started now. Every minute that passed degraded evidence.
And every minute that passed let the monster who'd done this get farther and farther away.
*
WALKING THE GRID.
Garbed like a surgeon, Amelia Sachs was moving through Lydia Foster's apartment in the classic crime scene search pattern, the grid: one pace at a time from wall to wall, turn, step aside slightly and return. And when that was done you covered the same ground in the same way, only perpendicular to your earlier search.
This was the most time-consuming method of searching a scene but also the most thorough. This was how Rhyme had searched his scenes and it was the way he insisted those working for him did too.
The search is perhaps the most important part of a crime scene investigation. Photos and videos and sketches are important. Entrance and exit routes, locations of shell casings, fingerprints, smears of semen, blood spatter. But finding crucial trace is what crime scene work is all about. Merci, M. Locard. When you walk the grid you need to open up your whole body to the place, smelling, listening, touching and, of course, looking. Scanning relentlessly.
This is what Amelia Sachs now did.
She didn't think she was a natural at forensic analysis. She was no scientist. Her mind didn't make those breathtaking deductions that came so quickly to Rhyme. But one thing that did work to her advantage was her empathy.
When they'd first started working together, Rhyme had apparently spotted within her a ski
ll he himself did not have: the ability to get into the mind of the perpetrator. When she walked the grid she found she was actually able to mentally become the killer or rapist or kidnapper or thief. This could be a harrowing, exhausting endeavor. But when it worked, the process meant she would think of places in the scene to examine that a typical searcher might not, hiding places, improbable entrance and escape routes, vantage points.
It was there that she would discover evidence that would otherwise have remained hidden forever.
The techs from Crime Scene in Queens arrived. But, as before, she was handling the preliminary work alone. You'd think more people made for a better search but that was true only in an expansive area like those involving mass shootings. In a typical scene a single searcher is less distracted--and is also aware that there's no one else to catch what he misses, so he concentrates that much harder.
And one truth about crime scene work: You've only got one chance to find the critical clue; you can't go back and try again.
As she walked through the apartment where Lydia Foster's corpse sat, head back and bloody, tied to a chair, Sachs felt an urge to speak to Rhyme to tell him what she was seeing and smelling and thinking. And once again, as when walking the grid at Java Hut, the emptiness at being unable to hear his voice chilled her heart. Rhyme was only a thousand miles away but she felt as if he'd ceased to exist.
Involuntarily she thought again of the surgery scheduled for later in the month. Didn't want to consider it, but couldn't help herself.
What if he didn't survive?
Both Sachs and Rhyme lived on the edge--her lifestyle of speed and danger, his physical condition. Possibly, probably, this element of risk made life together more intense, their connection closer. And she accepted this most of the time. But now, with him away and her searching a particularly difficult scene involving a perp all too aware of her, she couldn't help but think that they were always just a gunshot or heartbeat away from being alone forever.
Forget this, Sachs thought harshly. Possibly said it aloud. She didn't know. Get to work.
She found, though, that her empathy wasn't kicking in, not on this scene. As she moved through the rooms, she felt blocked. Maybe like a writer or artist who couldn't quite channel a muse. The ideas wouldn't come. For one thing, she didn't know who the hell the killer was. The latest information was confusing. The man who'd done this wasn't the sniper, but, most likely, another of Metzger's specialists. Yet who?