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Approximately six feet, plus or minus.

Dark beard and hair, long.

Weight: stocky.

Wearing long-billed cap, dark.

Dark clothing, casual.

Shoes:

Likely Converse Cons, color unknown, size 10½.

Driving dark sedan, no tag, no make, no year.

• Profile:

Motive unknown.

• Evidence:

Victim’s phone.

No unusual calls/calling patterns.

Short hair, dyed blond. No DNA.

No prints.

Noose.

Traditional hangman’s knot.

Catgut, cello length.

♦ Too common to source.

Dark cotton fiber.

From hood, used to subdue victim?

Chloroform.

Olanzapine, antipsychotic drug.

YouVid video:

White male (probably vic), noose around neck.

‘Blue Danube’ playing, in time to gasps (vic’s?).

‘© The Composer’ appeared at end.

Faded to black and silence; indication of impending death?

Checking location where it was uploaded.

Rodney Szarnek, from Computer Crimes, called back. On the other end of the line was, thank you, only the geeky voice, no raw, wah-wah guitar licks. ‘Lincoln?’

‘You have a location?’

‘New York metro area.’

Something I don’t know, please.

‘I know you’re disappointed. But I can narrow it down. Maybe four, five hours.’

‘Too long, Rodney.’

‘I’m just saying. He’s used proxies. That’s the bad news. The good is that he doesn’t really know what he’s doing. He’s logged onto some free VPNs, which—’

‘No time for Greek,’ Rhyme grumbled.

‘It’s amateur stuff. I’m working with YouVid and we can crack it but—’

‘Four hours.’

‘Less, I’m hoping.’

‘Me too.’ Rhyme disconnected.

‘Have something else here, Lincoln.’ Mel Cooper was at the Hewlett-Packard gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer.

‘The footprint trace? Something he stepped in?’

‘Right. We have more olanzapine, the antipsychotic. But something else. Weird.’

‘Weird is not a chemical property, Mel. Nor is it particularly fucking helpful.’

Cooper said, ‘Uranyl nitrate.’

‘Jesus,’ Rhyme whispered.

Dellray frowned and asked, ‘What, Linc? That’s some pretty bad shit, I’m hearing?’

Rhyme was resting the back of his skull against the headrest of his wheelchair, staring at the ceiling. He was vaguely aware of the question.

Sellitto now: ‘Uranus nitrate. Is it dangerous?’

‘Uranyl,’ Rhyme corrected impatiently. ‘Obviously it’s dangerous. What would you call uranium salt dissolved in nitric acid?’

‘Linc,’ Sellitto said patiently.

‘It’s radioactive, produces renal failure and acute tubular necrosis. It’s also explosive and highly unstable. But my exclamation was positive, Lon. I’m delighted that our perp may have trod in this stuff.’

Dellray said, ‘’Cause it’s highly and extremely and deliciously rare.’

‘Bingo, Fred.’

Rhyme explained that the substance had been used to create weapons-grade uranium for the Manhattan Project – the effort to make the first atomic bomb in World War II. While the project’s engineering headquarters had been based, temporarily, in Manhattan, hence the name, most of the work in constructing the bombs had occurred elsewhere, notably Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Richland, in Washington State.

‘But there was some actual construction and assembly in the New York area. A company in Bushwick, Brooklyn, made uranyl nitrate. They couldn’t produce enough, though, and gave up the contract. The company’s long gone but the site still has residual radiation.’

‘How do you—’ Sellitto began.

Rhyme said smoothly, ‘EPA waste sites. Wonderful, Lon. Don’t you study them? You don’t collect them?’

A sigh. ‘Linc.’

‘I do. They tell us such wonderful things about our neighborhoods.’

‘Where is it?’ Cooper asked.

‘Well, I don’t have the address memorized. It’s an EPA waste site, designated as such. Bushwick, Brooklyn. How many could there be? Look it up!’

Only a moment later Cooper said, ‘Wyckoff, not far from Covert Street.’

‘Near Knollwood Park Cemetery,’ said Sachs, a Brooklyner born and bred. She stripped off her lab jacket and gloves and started out of the parlor, calling, ‘Lon, get a tac team together. I’ll meet them there.’

CHAPTER 6

Stefan froze at the sound.

A sound nearly as troubling as a Black Scream, though it was soft, meek: a beep on his mobile phone.

It told him that someone had entered the factory complex. An app was connected via Wi-Fi to a cheap security camera, mounted at the facility’s entrance.

Oh, no, he thought. I’m sorry! He silently pleaded to Her not to be angry.

A glance into the next room, where Robert Ellis was balancing so precariously on the wooden crate. Then back to his phone. The webcam – high-def and color – showed a red sports car, one of those from the sixties or seventies, parked at the entrance, and a woman was climbing out. He saw a badge on the redhead’s hip. Behind her, police cars were pulling up fast.

His jaw quivered. How had they gotten here, and so quickly?

He closed his eyes, at the throbbing, the ocean roar, in his head.

Not a Black Scream, not now. Please!

Move! You have to move.

He looked over his gear. None of this could be found. Stefan had been careful, but connections could be made, evidence could be discovered, and he absolutely could not afford to be stopped.

He could not, under any circumstances, disappoint Her.

I’m sorry, he repeated. But Euterpe, of course, did not reply.

Stefan stuffed his computer into his backpack, and from the canvas sports bag he’d brought he extracted two other items. A quart jar of gasoline. And a cigarette lighter.

Stefan loved fire. Absolutely loved it. Not the jerky dance of orange and black flames, not the caress of heat. No, what he loved was, not surprisingly, the sound.

His only regret was that he would not be around to hear the crackle and moan as fire turned what is into what is not.

Sachs ran to the twelve-foot-high chain link, the six uniforms behind her.

The gate was secured with a chain and an imposing padlock.

‘Anybody got a breaching tool, bolt cutters?’

But these were patrol officers. They stopped speeders, defused domestics, helped out motorists, restrained mad dogs, busted street buys. Breaching tools were not among their issue gear.

She stood with her hands on her hips, gazing at the factory complex.

EPA Superfund Site

Warning – Hazardous Materials

Present in Soil and Water

NO TRESPASSING

There was no question of waiting for Emergency Service; the victim was about to hang to death. The only issue was how to get inside.

Well, one way was obvious and it would have to do. She would gladly have sacrificed her Torino but the snout of the fifty-year-old muscle car was delicate. The squad cars were mounted with push bumpers – those black battering rams that you saw in high-speed-chase videos.

‘Keys,’ she called to a young patrol officer standing nearby, a stout African American woman. She handed them over at once. People tended to respond quickly to an Amelia Sachs demand.

‘Everybody, back.’

‘What’re you … Oh, Detective, no, you aren’t. I gotta write it up, you mess up my front end.’

‘I’ll do the footnotes.’ Sachs dropped into the driver’s seat, went for the belt. Backed up. She shouted out the window, ‘Follow me and spread out and search like hell. Remember, this guy’s got minutes.’

If he’s still alive.

‘Hey, Detective. Look!’ Another officer was pointing into the complex. At the end of a two-story wing of the factory a haze of white and gray mist formed into liver-colored smoke and spiraled upward fast – pushed hard by the heat from a fire. Intense heat.

‘Jesus.’

The unsub had tipped to them and set fire to the room where, she guessed, he’d made the video, intent on destroying the evidence.

And that meant he’d set fire to Robert Ellis too, whether or not he’d already died from hanging.

A voice shouted, ‘I’m calling FD.’

Sachs jammed the accelerator to the floor. The Ford Interceptors weren’t the gutsiest wheels on the block – punching in at 365 horses – but the hundred-foot takeoff run propelled the bulky vehicle plenty fast enough to pop the chain link like plastic and send the two sides of the gate butterflying into the air.

She continued on, the six cylinders exhaling fiercely.

The other cars were directly behind her.

In less than a minute she was at the building that was burning. There was no indication of fire in the front; the smoke was billowing from the back, though it would also be filling the interior, which Sachs and the others now had to hurry through, if they wanted to save the victim.

They had no masks or oxygen but Sachs hardly thought about that. She grabbed a Maglite from the purloined car. Drawing her Glock, she nodded to two other officers – one a short, handsome Latino man, the other a blond woman, hair in a severe ponytail.

‘We can’t wait. You two, with me. We go in, smoke or no.’

‘Sure, Detective.’ The woman nodded.

Sachs, the de facto commander, turned to the others. ‘Alonzo and Wilkes’re going up the middle with me. I want three of you around back, flanking the unsub. And somebody take wheels and circle the perimeter. He can’t’ve gotten very far. Any vehicle, anybody, assume it’s hostile.’

The others left.

The blond officer, Wilkes, covered Alonzo and Sachs as they shouldered their way through the door – thank God, unlocked. She dropped to a crouch inside, sweeping with light and muzzle. Wilkes followed.

It occurred to her just as she breached the portal that the perp was probably certifiably crazy and might have decided to hang around and kill some blue, in a suicidal fit.

But no gunshots.

Listening.

No sounds.

Was Ellis dead? If so, she hoped he’d died from the hanging, not the flames.

The three now started jogging through the corridor, Sachs trying to stay oriented and keeping in mind – in general – where the smoke had been coming from. The factory was decrepit and it stank of mold. Near the entrance, the walls were decorated with graffiti, and there was a collection of used condoms, spent matches, needles and cigarette butts on the floor. Not a lot, though, and Sachs supposed that even the most desperate johns and addicts knew what a toxic-waste Superfund site was and that there were healthier places to shoot up or get a blow job.

Signs above or beside the doors: Machine Operations. Fissile Research. Radiation Badge Testing Center – Do Not Pass Checkpoint B Without Test.

‘Funny, Detective,’ the man beside her said, gasping from the jog.

‘What’s that, Alonzo?’

‘No smoke here.’

True. Odd.

The black column had been quite thick, rising into the sky from a source very close. But there was no smoke directly around them.

Hell, she thought. This was a facility that had fabricated radioactive materials. Maybe at the end of this corridor they would find a thick, and impenetrable, security door, keeping the smoke out – but barring their way, as well.

They came to an L in the hallway, and paused at the juncture but only for a moment. Sachs crouched and went low, sweeping her gun forward.

Wilkes covered her again, with Alonzo going wide.

Nothing but emptiness.

Her radio crackled. ‘Patrol Four Eight Seven Eight. Gap in the fence in the back, K. A local outside said he saw white male, heavyset, beard, exit five minutes ago, running. Bag or backpack. Didn’t see where he went or if he had wheels.’

‘K,’ Sachs whispered. ‘Call it in to the local precinct and ESU. Anyone in the back of the building? Source of fire?’

No one answered. But another officer radioed that the fire department had just arrived and were through the chain link.

Sachs and her colleagues continued up the dogleg of a corridor. Keep going, keep going, she told herself, breathing hard.

They were almost to the back of the wing. Ahead of them was a door. It wasn’t as intimidating or impenetrable as she’d expected: just a standard wooden one and actually slightly ajar. Yet still there was no smoke, which meant there had to be another room, on the other side of this portal, sealed up, where the victim would be.

Sprinting now, Sachs ran through the doorway, pushing forward fast to find the chamber that was in flames.

And, with a breathtaking thud, she slammed directly into Robert Ellis, knocking him off the wooden box. He screamed in terror.

‘Jesus Lord,’ she cried. Then to her backup: ‘In here, fast!’

She clutched Ellis around the waist and lifted hard to keep the pressure of the noose off his neck. Damn, he was heavy.

While Wilkes covered them once more – there was no certainty that the fleeing man was the perp or, if he was, that he was operating alone – Sachs and the other officer lifted Ellis up; Alonzo worked the noose off and pulled the blindfold from his eyes, which scanned the room frantically, like a terrified animal’s. They eased him to the floor.

Ellis was choking and sobbing. ‘Thank you, thank you! God, I was going to die!’

She looked around her. No fire. Here or in an adjacent room. What the hell was going on?

‘You wounded, hurt?’ She helped him ease to the floor.

‘He was going to hang me! Christ. Who is he?’ His voice was groggy.

She repeated the question.

‘I don’t know. Not bad, I guess. My throat hurts. He dragged me around with a fucking noose around my neck. But I’m all right.’

‘Do you know where he went?’

‘No. I couldn’t see. He was in the other room, I think. That’s what it sounded like. I was blindfolded most of the time.’

Her radio clattered. ‘Portable Seven Three Eight One. Detective Sachs, K?’ A woman’s voice.

‘Go ahead.’

‘We’re in the back of the building. The fire’s here. It’s in an oil drum. Looks like he set it to burn up the evidence. Electronic stuff, papers, cloth. Gone.’

Pulling on gloves, Sachs removed the duct tape binding Ellis’s hands and feet. ‘Can you walk, Mr Ellis? I want to clear the room here and search it.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ He was unsteady, his legs not working right, but together she and Alonzo helped him outside the building to the empty lot where the fire had been extinguished.

She glanced into the drum. Shit. The clues were ash, scorched metal and plastic globs. So this perp, the Composer, might be insane but he’d had the foresight to try to destroy the evidence.

Madness and brilliance were a very bad combination in a suspect.

She sat Ellis down on what looked like a large spool for cable. Two med techs turned the corner and she waved them over.

With bewildered eyes, Ellis scanned the scene, which seemed like a set of a bad dystopian movie. He asked, ‘Detective?’

‘Yes?’

Muttering, Ellis said, ‘I was just walking down the street and next thing I knew he had this thing over my head and I was passing out. What does he want? Is he a terrorist? ISIS or something?’

‘I wish I could tell you, Mr Ellis. Fact is, we have no idea.’