Another whisper to Whitmore: “He’s close. Move, fast.”
They started up the street, along the front of the office building.
When they arrived at the corner and hurried past it, both men froze.
Staring directly into the muzzle of a pistol.
“Oh, my,” Whitmore gasped.
Lincoln Rhyme’s response was more subdued. “Sachs. What the hell are you doing here?”
CHAPTER 20
Rhyme watched his partner examining him and Whitmore with a perplexed frown for mere seconds before she slipped the blocky Austrian pistol back into the plastic holster with a definitive click.
The frown vanished and she turned to her right and called, “Ron! Clear!”
Footsteps from around the corner. Rhyme watched Pulaski approach, also holstering his weapon. “Lincoln!” A curious glance at the lawyer.
Rhyme introduced them.
Pulaski blurted to Rhyme, “What’re you doing here?”
“Just asking the same question, Rookie.”
And the answer was soon clear, once he and Sachs explained what had brought them to the building on Ridge Street in lower Manhattan, on their respective missions. The victim of the unsub whom Sachs had been on the trail of for the past several weeks, Todd Williams, was in fact the man who’d posted the blog about the dangers of DataWise5000 controllers. Since Rhyme was no longer doing criminal work she’d never had reason to mention Williams’s name, merely giving him the gist of the Unsub 40 case.
Sachs explained that she and Pulaski had run down a lead: The unsub had taken a car service from Queens to this area and the driver had seen him go through the back door of this building about four hours before Williams’s death.
Rhyme said, “Williams published a blog piece about the risks of a particular kind of Wi-Fi smart controller—the same type that we think malfunctioned in the escalator and probably caused the access panel to open. Since the widow can’t sue the escalator manufacturer—they’re in bankruptcy—we’re considering a suit against the controller company. We were hoping Williams could be an expert witness, or at least tell us more about how the controllers could fail. But now . . .”
Sachs asked, “You thinking what I am?”
“Yep. Your unsub reads Todd’s blog about the controller, thinks it might be a nifty murder weapon—for whatever reason. Contacts Todd, arranges to meet him here. Learns what he needs to so he can hack into the controller.”
Sachs continued the likely narrative: “Then suggests they go to the club, Forty Degrees North. But before they get there, he pulls Todd into the construction site and beats him to death with his hammer. Makes it look like a robbery. He killed him there, rather than here, to keep the investigation focused away from Williams’s office.”
Whitmore said, “I don’t quite follow this, Mr. Rhyme.”
Rhyme said, “Amelia was after the perp at the mall in Brooklyn. She assumed it was a coincidence that the escalator collapsed while she was there.”
Sachs added, “But it wasn’t. Unsub Forty knew how to hack the controller and opened the door intentionally.”
“To cause a distraction and escape?” Pulaski asked. “When he saw you were after him?”
Rhyme’s face tightened at the young man’s flawed thinking. “How would he know there was a DataWise controller in the escalator?”
Blushing, the young man said, “Sure, sure. Wasn’t thinking. He’d have had it planned out ahead of time. He was at the mall—to kill either somebody at random or Frommer in particular—by popping open the access panel.”
Pulaski’s Motorola crackled. He stepped aside to take the transmission.
Sachs explained to Rhyme and Whitmore, “The unsub was spotted here about twenty minutes ago. We called in backup. That’s why the weapons; we thought you might be him when we heard you on the other side of the building.”
The young officer rejoined them. “One car patrolling the neighborhood, other’s pulling up here. No sign of him yet.”
Rhyme said, “Any chance he’s in the building?”
“Homeless guy said he was standing at that intersection,” Sachs said, nodding. “He probably would have seen him if the unsub’d come this way.”
Whitmore asked, “But I’m curious. Why would he come back here?”
Rhyme said, “He might live nearby.” The area was mostly commercial but there were pockets of tenements and newer—that is, seventy-five- or eighty-year-old—apartments.
“Or he’s worried he didn’t cover his tracks well enough and came back to look for evidence. He saw us and took off.” She looked over the building. “See if it’s been broken into, Ron.”
He circled the structure and returned. “Windows’re intact. But the back door might’ve been jimmied. Scratch marks.”
Rhyme couldn’t feel the thud in his insensate chest but he knew this occurred . . . from the rapid pulse in his forehead. “You said to look for evidence, Sachs. He could also—”
“Have come here to destroy it!” She spun toward the building.
It was at just that moment that there came a muffled whump from within the building. Whatever kind of incendiary device Unsub 40 had planted, it must have been quite large. Within seconds, smoke and flames began spiraling out of the ground-floor windows, which had shattered from the heat.
Rhyme caught a mouthful of smoke and ash and, coughing hard, he struggled to maneuver backward in his chair. Evers Whitmore helped him do so, kicking away a trash basket that was blocking the criminalist’s escape. Ron Pulaski called Dispatch to send the FDNY.
And Amelia Sachs ran to the front door of the building, picked up a loose cobblestone and used it to smash through the glass of the door. She turned to Rhyme and shouted, “What floor is the blogger’s office on?”
“Sachs, no!”
“What floor?”
“The top,” he replied, still coughing hard.
She turned and leapt inside, barely avoiding the points of glass that ringed the open doorway like shark’s teeth.
She’s going in?
Well. Good fortune for me.
My police girl, Red, the thief of White Castle, has no idea that it’s five full gallons of low-octane gas pooling in flame in the basement. An ocean of flame. The building, dry as a California pine, won’t last long.
Will she? Will she last very long?
I was going right back home, to Chelsea, and an Internet café, to send out a few emails. But I decided to stay. I’m looking out a hall window, fifth floor, of an abandoned tenement across the street and a few doors down. Bad for living in, good for spying. I crouch, shrinking, to watch what’s unfolding below me.
Can’t see me here, none of them can.
Pretty sure.
No, no one’s looking up. Police cars are cruising but looking on the streets and sidewalks only. They’re thinking I’ve gone. Because who would wait around?
Well, I would. To see who exactly it is after me. And to see who will crisp to death, or suffocate, thanks to the gift I left. Smoke from the building is thick already. And thickening more. How can Red breathe? How can she see?
Sirens, I can hear them. Fire engine intersection horns, blaring. I love the sound, trumpeting pain and sorrow.
If it goes as planned, all the tidbits of evidence I left behind in Todd’s office, careless me, will be melted to nothing. I know from Frances Lee’s crime scene dollhouses how telling evidence can be—why, look how Red put an end to my precious sliders.
Burning it is best.
Burn to ash, to dust, to greasy plastic smoke.
And Red?
Myself, I never much cared for burning bones. It’s not satisfying. Cracking them is better. But however she goes is good. Hair burned off, skin, fat, then the bones, fine. As long as she goes. A little pain wouldn’t be a bad thing either.
Smoke is curling up like a huge black pig’s tail. Help will be here soon. But the fire is progressing nicely.
I’m not close to the raging inferno but not too far either. Maybe I’ll hear her screams.
Unlikely—but one can always hope.
CHAPTER 21
Smoke is wet, smoke is scaly, smoke is a creature that slides into your body and strangles from within.
Amelia Sachs was squinting through the white then brown then black clouds as she charged up the stairs to the top floor of the building dying of fire in its low heart.
She had to get inside the blogger’s office. If the unsub had gone to such lengths to destroy the place, that meant there was evidence inside. Something that would lead to him or to future victims.
Go, she told herself, retched, spat, then said the command out loud.
The door was locked, of course—which was why he’d started the fire in the basement, more accessible than the room he needed to destroy. She tested the door with her shoulder. No, breaking in wasn’t going to happen. You can breach a door with crowbars, battering rams and special shotgun slugs (aiming for the hinges only; you can’t shoot out a lock). But you can’t kick in most wooden doors.
So she’d float like an angel. As smoke ganged around her, heat too, she stumbled to the window in the hallway and kicked this one out too. Unlike the door downstairs, which left jagged shards, the window here vanished into cascading splinters, opening a star-shaped entrance into the void. Cool air rushed past her. She inhaled deeply, relieved at the oxygen, but—from the suddenly increasing roar behind her—she realized she’d just fed the inferno, as well.
She looked out and down, Not a wide sidewalk of a ledge, but sufficient. And the window into the blogger’s office was a mere five or six feet away from the open rectangle Sachs now climbed into. She was luxuriating in the clean air, sucking it voluptuously into her stinging lungs. She glanced down to the ground. Nobody beneath her. This was the back of the building, opposite from where Rhyme and the others were waiting and, she hoped, the fire department was arriving to squelch the flames.
Yes, she heard sirens. But silently commanded them: Get closer, if you don’t mind.
Looking behind her. The billows of smoke were growing denser. All black now, not timid white or ambivalent brown.
Coughing and retching. God, her chest hurt.
So, onto the ledge.
Sachs’s animal fear was claustrophobia, not heights, yet she was in no hurry to tumble fifty feet to slick cobblestones. The ledge was a good eight inches, and she had to traverse only two yards to get to the Williams’s office. Better without shoes but she’d have to break that window too to get inside and litter the floor with razors. Keep the footware.
Go. No time.
Her phone was ringing.
Not hardly answering at the moment. . . .
Onto the ledge, gripping the window frame, and turning to face the building’s exterior wall. She then eased to her right, weight on her toes, fingers digging into the seams between the soot-stained stones. Cramps radiated through her wrists.
From within the building a groan. Something structural was failing.
How bad an idea was this?
Not a question to be asking at the moment.
One yard, then the second, and she arrived at Williams’s window. Inside there was a faint patina of smoke but visibility seemed good. Placing her hands on the side of the frame, gripping hard, she eased back her knee and kicked. The pane shattered into a thousand pieces, littering the floor in the tiny, dim office.
Getting inside, however, was trickier than she’d thought. A center-of-gravity issue. Lowering her head and shoulders to duck in sent her rear into the void and that started to tilt her backward.
Nope . . .
At least her hands had good purchase on the frame—the parts where no glass remained. Try sideways. Angling to her right, easing her left leg in and then shifting her weight to that limb. Sachs reached inside, seeking something to grip. A metal square, a file cabinet, she guessed. Smooth, no handle. She could feel only the side of the furniture. But recalling a Discovery Channel or some such show about rock climbing, she pictured free climbers working their fingers into the tiniest of crevices and supporting their full weight. She moved her hand to the back of the cabinet, wedged fingers between metal and the wall and started to shift her weight inside.
Tipping point.
A few inches, balanced.
Push. Now.
Sachs tumbled inside, falling on the glass-encrusted floor.
No cuts. Well, none serious. She felt a bit of sting in her knee—the joint that had tormented with arthritic pain, until the surgery. Now the ache was back, thanks to the fall. But she rose and tested. The mechanism functioned. She glanced at the smoke rolling inside from under the door. The whole office now felt hot. Could the flames have risen this fast and be roasting the oak under her feet?
She coughed hard. Found an unopened bottle of Deer Park, unscrewed the cap and chugged. Spat again
Scanning fast, Sachs noted three file cabinets, shelves filled with paper in all forms: magazines, newspapers, printouts, pamphlets. All extremely combustible, she noted. Riffling, she saw they were mostly generic articles about the dangers of data mining, government intrusion into privacy, identity theft. She didn’t immediately see anything related to the controllers Rhyme and Whitmore had been talking about or anything else that might have motivated their unsub to murder Williams.
In the corner, flames teased their way out from under a baseboard. And ignited a bookshelf. Across the room, another tongue of fire lapped at a cardboard box and, with no delay at all, set it on fire.
The building groaned again and the door began to sweat varnish.
Gasped at another sound: The window opposite the one she’d climbed through, the front of the building, crashed inward. In a lick of a second her Glock was out, though the draw was mere instinct; she knew the intruder wasn’t a threat but was in fact what she’d counted on for salvation all along. Sachs nodded to the New York City firefighter, perched nonchalantly on a ladder, connected to a truck forty some odd feet below.
The woman guided the top of the ladder to a hover about two feet from the windowsill. She called, “Building’s gonna drop, Detective. You leave now.”
If she’d had an hour she might have parsed the documents and found something relevant that might lead to the unsub’s motive, victims past and victims future, his identity. She did the only thing available, though. Grabbed the laptop computer, ripped out the power cord and with no time to unscrew the wires connecting it to the monitor sliced the unit free with her switchblade.
“Leave that,” the FDNY firefighter said through her mask.
“Can’t,” Sachs said and hurried to the window.
“Need both your hands!” Shouting was required now. The building moaned as its bones snapped.
But Sachs kept her arm around the computer and clambered out onto the ladder, gripping with her right hand only. Her legs scissored around the edge and another rung. Every muscle in her body, it seemed, was cramping. But still she held on.
The operator below maneuvered them away from the building. The office room Sachs had been in just seconds before was suddenly awash with flame.
“Thanks!” Sachs called. The woman was either deaf to her words because of the roar or was pissed that Sachs had ignored her warning. There was no response.
