Judges of hell . . .
The cop could faintly see the Ghost, also on his hands and knees, gasping and coughing, holding his throat with one hand as his other patted the ground for a weapon.
An image came into Li's mind: His stern father reprimanding him for some foolish comment.
Then another one: The bodies of the Ghost's victims in Li's town in China, lying bloody on the sidewalk in front of the cafe.
And he pictured another terrible sight, one that had not yet happened: Hongse dead, lying in darkness. Loaban too, his face as still in death as his body had been in life.
Sonny Li rolled to his knees and began crawling toward his enemy.
*
The crime scene bus left twenty-foot skid marks on the Chinatown street, which was slick with runoff from the melting ice from bins at a nearby fish market.
Amelia Sachs, her face grim, jumped out, accompanied by INS agent Alan Coe and Eddie Deng. They ran through the pungent alleyway toward the cluster of uniformed officers from the Fifth Precinct. The men and women stood casually, looking as matter-of-fact as police always did at crime scenes.
Even scenes of homicides.
Sachs slowed and gazed down at the body.
Sonny Li was lying on his stomach on the filthy cobblestones. Eyes partially open, palms flat beside him, level with his shoulders, as if he were about to start a series of push-ups.
Sachs paused, filled with the desire to drop to her knees and grip the man's hand. She'd walked the grid many times in the years she'd worked with Rhyme, but this was her first scene involving a fellow cop--fellow cop and, she could now say, friend.
A friend too of Rhyme's.
Still, she resisted the temptation toward sentiment. This was, after all, a crime scene no different from any other and, as Lincoln Rhyme often pointed out, one of the worst contaminants at scenes was careless cops.
Look past it, ignore who the victim is. Remember Rhyme's advice: Give up the dead.
Well, that'd be damn tough to do. For both of them. But for Lincoln Rhyme especially. Sachs had noticed that in the past two days Rhyme had formed an improbable bond with this man, as close as he'd come to a friendship since she'd known him. She was now aware of the painful silence of a thousand conversations never to occur, of a thousand laughs never to be shared.
But then she thought of someone else: Po-Yee, soon to be another victim of the man who'd committed this crime, if they didn't find him. And so Sachs put the pain away, the same way she closed and locked the storage box in which her Colt .45 competition shooting pistol rested.
"We did what you wanted," said another officer, a detective in a gray suit. "Nobody got closer'n this. Only the EMS tech was in." A nod toward the body. "He's DCDS."
Cop initials perfunctorily signifying the category of lifelessness: deceased confirmed dead at the scene.
Agent Coe walked slowly up to her. "I'm sorry," the agent said, running his hand through his scarlet hair. There seemed to be little genuine sadness in his voice, however.
"Yeah."
"He was a good man."
"Yes, he was." She said this bitterly, thinking: And he was a hell of a better cop than you are. If you hadn't fucked up yesterday we'd've gotten the Ghost. Sonny would still be alive and Po-Yee and the Changs would be safe.
She motioned to the cops. "I've got to run the scene. Could I have everybody out of here?"
Oh, man, she thought, dismayed at what she now had to do--though she was anticipating not the difficult and sad task of searching the scene but something far more arduous.
She pulled her headset on and plugged it into her radio.
Okay. Just go ahead. Do it.
She made the call to Central and was patched through to the phone.
A click.
"Yes?" Rhyme asked.
She said, "I'm here."
A pause then: "And?"
She sensed him trying to keep hope out of his voice.
"He's dead."
The criminalist gave no response for a moment. "I see."
"I'm sorry, Lincoln," she said softly.
Another pause and he said, "No first names, Sachs. Bad luck, remember?" His voice nearly caught. "All right. Get going. Run the scene. Time's running out for the Changs."
"Sure, Rhyme. I'm on it."
She quickly dressed in the Tyvek suit and went about processing the scene. Sachs did the fingernail scrapings, the substance samples, the ballistics, the footprints, the shell casings, the slugs. She took the pictures, she lifted prints.
But she felt she was just going through the motions. Come on, she snapped at herself. You're acting like you're some damn rookie. We don't have time to just collect evidence. Think about Po-Yee, think about the Changs. Give Rhyme something he can work with. Think!
She turned back to the body and processed it more carefully, considering everything that she found, demanding in her mind that every bit of evidence explain itself, offer an explanation of where it had come from, what it might mean.
One of the uniformed officers walked up to her but seeing her stony face he retreated quickly.
A half hour later she'd finished bagging everything, written her name on the chain of custody cards and assembled the evidence.
She made another call to the criminalist.
"Go ahead," Rhyme said grimly. How it hurt to hear the pain in his voice. For years she'd heard so much flat emotion, so much lethargy, so much resignation. That had been tough but it didn't compare to the pain now in Rhyme's voice.
"He was shot three times in the chest but we've got four casings. One casing's from a Model 51, probably the one we saw before. The others are .45. He was killed with that one, it looks like. Then I found the Walther that Sonny was carrying. There was trace on his leg--yellow paper flecks and some kind of dried plant material. And there was a pile of the same material on the cobblestones."
"What's your scenario, Sachs?"
"I think Sonny spots the Ghost leaving a store, carrying something in a yellow bag. Sonny follows him. He collars him in the alley here and gets the Ghost's new gun, the .45. He assumes that's his only weapon. Sonny relaxes and tells the Ghost to get onto the ground. But the Ghost pulls out his backup--the Model 51--and shoots through the bag, spattering the plant material and flecks of paper on Sonny. The bullet misses but the Ghost jumps him. There's a fight. The Ghost gets the .45 and kills Sonny."
"Because," Rhyme said, "the yellow paper and the plant material were on Sonny's legs--meaning the Ghost had the Model 51 in an ankle holster and fired low. The gunshot residue was high on his body--from the .45."
"That's what it looks like."
"And how do we use that scenario?"
"Wherever the Ghost bought that stuff that was in the bag, a clerk might know him and have an idea where he lives."
"You want to canvass all the stores near there to see who has yellow bags?"
"No, that'd take too long. It'd be better to find out what the plant material is first."
"Bring it in, Sachs. Mel'll run it through the chromatograph."
"No, I've got a better idea," she said. A glance at Sonny Li's body. She forced herself to look away. "It's probably Chinese herbs or spices. I'm going to stop by John Sung's apartment with a sample of it. He should be able to tell me right away what it is. He only lives a few blocks from here."
V
All in Good Time
Wednesday, the Hour of the Rooster, 6:45 P.M., to Monday, the Hour of the Monkey, 3 P.M.
To effect capture . . . the opponent's men must be entirely encircled without any adjacent places vacant . . . . Exactly as in war, when a post is surrounded, the soldiers are taken prisoner by the enemy.
--The Game of Wei-Chi
Chapter Forty-one
He stared out the window at the gray dusk, premature because of the lingering storm. His head drooped forward, heavy, heavy, immobile. This wasn't from damaged fibers of nerve but from sorrow. Rhyme was thinking of Sonny Li.
; When he'd run the forensic unit he'd had the chance to hire dozens, probably hundreds of employees and to finagle--or bully--onto his staff men and women from other assignments because he knew they were damn good cops. He couldn't tell exactly what appealed to him about these people. Oh, sure, they had the textbook qualifications: persistence, intelligence, patience, stamina, keen powers of observation, empathy.
Yet there was another quality. Something that Rhyme, for all his rational self, couldn't define, though he recognized it immediately. There was no better way to say it than the desire--even the joy--of pursuing a prey at all costs. Whatever else Sonny Li's failings--his cigarettes at crime scenes, his reliance on omens and the woo-woo factor, he had this essential aspect. The lone cop had traveled literally to the ends of the earth to collar his suspect. Rhyme would've traded a hundred eager rookies and a hundred cynical veterans for one cop like Sonny Li: a small man who wanted nothing more than to offer to the citizens on his beat some retribution for the harms done to them, some justice, some comfort in the aftermath of evil. And for his reward Li was content to enjoy a good hunt, a challenge and, perhaps, just a little respect from those he cared about.
He glanced at the book he'd inscribed to Li.
To my friend . . .
"Okay, Mel," he said evenly. "Let's put this one together. What've we got?"
Mel Cooper was hunched over the plastic bags the patrolman had raced here from the crime scene in Chinatown. "Footprints."
"We sure it was the Ghost?" Rhyme asked.
"Yep," Cooper confirmed. "They're identical." Looking at the electrostatic prints that Sachs had taken.
Rhyme agreed they were the same.
"Now the slugs." He was examining the two bullets, one flattened, one intact, both bloody. "Check the lands and grooves."
This referred to the angular marks left in the soft lead bullet by the rifling in the barrel of the gun--the spiral grooves that spin the slug to make it go faster and more accurately. By examining the number of grooves and the degree of the twist, a ballistics expert can often determine the type of gun the shooter used.
Cooper, wearing latex gloves, measured the undamaged slug and the marks cut in the side from the rifling. "It's a forty-five ACP. Octagonal profile on the lands and grooves, right-hand twist. I'm guessing one complete twist every fifteen, sixteen inches. I'll look that up and--"
"Don't bother," Rhyme said shortly. "It's a Glock." The unsexy but dependable Austrian pistols were increasingly popular throughout the world, among criminals and police alike. "What's the wear on the barrel?"
"Sharp profile."
"So it's new. Probably the G36." He was surprised. This compact but extremely powerful handgun was expensive and wasn't widely available yet. In the United States you found it mostly among federal agents.
Useful, useful? he wondered.
Not yet. All it told them was the type of gun, not where the weapon or the ammunition had been purchased. Still, it was evidence and it belonged on the board.
"Thom . . . Thom!" Rhyme shouted. "We need you!"
The aide appeared immediately. "There're other things I need--"
"No," Rhyme said. "There aren't other things. Write."
The aide must have sensed Rhyme's despondency over the death of Sonny Li and said nothing in response to the sharp command. He picked up the marker and walked to the whiteboard.
Cooper then opened Li's clothes over a large sheet of clean, blank newsprint. He dusted the items of clothing with a brush and examined the trace that had fallen onto the paper. "Dirt, flecks of paint, the yellow paper particles that probably were from the bag and the dried plant material--spices or herbs--that Amelia mentioned," Cooper said.
"She's checking out the plant stuff right now. Just bag them and put them aside for the time being." Rhyme, who over the years had grown immune to the horror of crime scenes, nonetheless felt a pang as he looked at the dark blood on Li's clothing. The same clothing he'd worn in this very room not long ago.
Zaijian, Sonny. Goodbye.
"Fingernail scrapings," Cooper announced, examining the label on another plastic bag. He mounted the trace on a slide in the compound microscope.
"Project it, Mel," Rhyme said and turned to the computer screen. A moment later a clear image appeared on the large flat screen. What do we have here, Sonny? You fought with the Ghost, you grabbed him. Was there anything on his clothes or shoes that was transferred to you?
And if so, will it send us to his front door?
"Tobacco," the criminalist said, laughing sadly, thinking of the cop's addiction to cigarettes. "What else do we see? What are those minerals there? What do you think, Mel? Silicates?"
"Looks like it. Let's run some through the GC/MS."
The gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer would determine exactly what the substance was. Soon the results came back--magnesium and silicate.
"That's talc, right?"
"Yep."
The criminalist knew that talcum powder was commonly used by some people as a deodorant, by workers who wore tight-fitting rubber gloves for protection and by those who engaged in certain sexual practices using latex clothing. "Go online and find out everything you can about talc and magnesium silicate."
"Will do."
As Cooper was typing madly, Rhyme's phone rang. Thom answered it and put the call on the speaker.
"Hello?" he asked.
"Mr . . . . Rhymes please."
"Rhyme is the name, yes. Who's this?"
"Dr. Arthur Winslow at Huntington Medical Center."
"Yes, Doctor?"
"There's a patient here, a Chinese man. His name is Sen. He was medevaced to us after the Coast Guard rescued him from a sunken ship off the North Shore."
Not exactly the Coast Guard, Rhyme thought. But he said, "Go ahead."
"We were told to contact you with any news about him."
"That's right."
"Well, I think there's something you ought to know."
"And what would that be?" Rhyme asked slowly, though his meaning was really: Get to the point.
*
He sipped the bitter coffee even though he hated it.
Seventeen-year-old William Chang sat in the back of the Starbucks not far from the family's apartment in Brooklyn. He wanted Po-nee tea--made the way his mother prepared it, brewed in an old iron pot--but he kept drinking the coffee as if he were addicted to the muddy, sour drink. Because that is what the pompadoured ba-tu across from him was now sipping; for William to drink tea would seem like a weakness.
Wearing the same black leather jacket he'd been in yesterday, the kid--who'd identified himself only as Chen--finished his conversation on a tiny Nokia phone and clipped the unit back onto his belt. He made a point of checking the time on his gold Rolex.
"What happened to the gun we sold you yesterday?" he asked in English.
"My father found it."
"Asshole." He leaned forward ominously. "You didn't tell him where you got it?"
"No."
"If you told anyone about us we'll kill you."
William Chang, hardened by his life as a dissident's son, knew not to give an inch with people like this. "I didn't fucking tell anybody anything. But I need another gun."
"He'll find that one too."
"No, he won't. I'll keep it with me. He won't frisk me."
Chen eyed a long-haired Chinese girl nearby. When he saw she was reading what seemed to be a college textbook he lost interest. He looked William up and down and then asked, "Hey, you want a DVD player? A Toshiba. It's sweet. Two hundred. A flat-screen TV? Eight hundred."
"I want a gun. That's all I want."
"And why don't you get some better clothes. You look like shit."
"I'll get clothes later."
"Hugo Boss, Armani. I can get you whatever you want . . . . " Sipping the coffee, he studied William closely. "Or you can come with us some night. We're going to a warehouse in Queens next week. They're getting a shipment in. Can you drive?"
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"Yeah, I can drive." William looked out the front window. He saw no sign of his father.
The ba-tu asked, "You got balls, don't you?"
"I guess."
"Your triad hijack anything in Fujian?"
William didn't exactly have a triad, just some friends who would occasionally steal cars and shoplift liquor and cigarettes from time to time.
"Hell, we hit dozens of places."
"What was your job?"
"Lookout, getaway."
Chen thought for a moment then asked, "Okay, we're inside a warehouse and you're on guard, you know. You see a security guard coming toward us. What would you do? Would you kill him?"
"What is this, a fucking test?"
"Just answer. You have the balls to kill him?"
"Sure. But I wouldn't."
"Why not?"
William sneered. "Because only an idiot would get executed over some clothes."
"Who said clothes?"
"You did," William replied. "Armani, Boss."
"Well, there's a guard. Answer me. What the fuck would you do?"
"I'd come up behind him, take his gun away and I'd keep him on his belly till you had all the clothes in the getaway wheels. Then I'd piss on him."
Chen frowned. "Piss on him? Why?"
"Because the first thing he'd do was go change his clothes--before he called the police. So the cops wouldn't think he'd peed his pants. That'd give us time to get away. And he never got hurt so the cops couldn't get us for assault."
This is what William had heard that some gang by the waterfront near Fuzhou had done once.
Chen wouldn't allow himself to be impressed. But he said, "You'll come to Queens with us. I'll meet you here tomorrow night. I'll bring some people."
"I'll see. I have to get back now. My father'll notice I'm gone." He took a wad of dollars from his pocket, flashed it at the ba-tu. "What do you have?"
"I sold you the only good one I had," Chen said. "That chrome baby."
"It was a piece of shit. I want a real gun."
"You do have balls. But you got a mouth too. You better watch it. All I've got is a Colt .38. Take it or leave it."
"Loaded?"
Chen fiddled with the gun inside the bag.
"Three rounds."
"That's all?" William asked.
"Like I said--take it or leave it."
"How much?"
"Five hundred."
William laughed harshly. "Three or I walk."
Chen hesitated then nodded. "Only 'cause I like you."