"Four seventeen," she said.
The line went dead.
He was in trouble. Jeffrey was in trouble. Jeffrey needed her. She couldn't turn him away. She wouldn't turn him away. She loved him.
It was a little after nine. Mac rubbed his eyes, touched his face. He needed a shave. The lights flickered in the lab and made a crackling sound before returning to full strength.
The storm was over, at least for now, but the standing water in streets, gutters and basements was shorting out electrical circuits. Subways stalled. Dirty rain gurgled up from sewers, and the rats, sniffing at the now-clear air, were rushing more boldly along the sides of buildings in search of food.
Stella had called, told him the firemen had gotten Hawkes out safely. The force of Mac's relief had been strong and it made everything a little easier to deal with on this wet and dismal day.
Mac leaned over the table again and reached for a dropper. He put the dropper into a solution he had prepared with the shavings from the knife tip that had been taken from the body of Timothy Byrold.
He walked across the room and placed the specimen into a spectrograph. Less than a minute later he had the information he needed. He couldn't tell the age of the stainless steel, not with certainty, nor could he be sure of the exact corrosion rate because of the dozen factors that affected corrosion. What he could tell was the level of corrosion and the composition of the samples of stainless steel Sid Hammerbeck had taken from the wounds of the victims. If he found the knife the minute flecks of metal had come from, it would be easy to match them. The composition of the stainless steel and the level of corrosion would match the sample to the knife like a fingerprint. In addition, the microscopic ridges of the knife would match the ridges made by the knife when it struck the bone of each victim.
And Mac was about to seek that match now.
The knife that cut off the toe of the boy in Queens lay on the lab table. The hospital had turned the knife over to the police. The knife was an Army Ranger knife, not all that unusual. But what was unusual was that it was scalpel sharp, which accounted for its going cleanly through the boy's toe. The Queens detective who had taken the knife remembered the bulletin, marked urgent, about three sexually mutilated victims who had been murdered with sharp, stainless steel. The detective had dropped the knife in an evidence bag and sent it to the CSI lab in Manhattan.
Now it lay next to Mac Taylor, who had found enough blood on the blade to make a type match to Byrold. There was even more blood from another source. Mac assumed it was the injured boy. He called the hospital in Queens to check on his type, was told it was a match, and that the boy's toe had been successfully reattached.
"Kid says he wants the knife," the nurse Mac talked to said. "Says he found it and it's his."
"Tell him it's evidence in a murder case," said Mac.
Mac was definitely tired, but there was no going home. Nothing waited for him there but troubled sleep. Out there a man named Keith Yunkin who walked with a limp and had murdered three people was seeking a fourth victim before midnight, before the anniversary of his brother's death was over.
Mac checked the preliminary autopsy reports on the three murder-mutilations. The data on the cleanest wounds, the initial ones under the victims' armpits, did not match. He checked again. The difference was small, but it was there. Mac was sure they were accurate. Sid wouldn't make a mistake like this, not even a small one.
He picked up the phone and called the medical examiner's cell phone.
"Sid?"
"Mac."
"Where are you?"
"With friends," said Sid. "Colleagues who have a few beers and stronger fare and share tales of the dead."
He wasn't drunk, but he had managed to take the edge off.
"The three you did today- "
"Excluding the teacher with the punctuation marks in his neck and eye?"
"The other three," said Mac.
Someone called Sid's name. Sid covered the phone and Mac could hear him say, "I'll be right there."
"Could all three have been killed by different weapons?" asked Mac.
"Interesting question," said Sid. "There was a slight difference in the shearing from the wounds under the arms. I attributed that to- "
"He could have sharpened the knife after each murder," Mac supplied.
"Right," said Sid. "Or the tissue of each victim could have accounted for a difference in shearing, but…now that you mention it. I think I'll go back and take another look at the departed."
"It can wait till tomorrow," said Mac.
"I can't," said Sid.
He hung up and Mac sat back.
A clean, new, scalpel-sharpened knife for each victim. Ritual execution? No ripping. Methodical. Not simple revenge. He's ridding the world of sexual predators. And there's no reason to think he'll stop at four or stop at the end of today.
11
THE MAN SAT AT THE BACK of the subway car, his lips moving, making no sound. He wore a poncho and hood. The hood was drawn forward. His face wasn't visible. His hands were plunged into his pockets.
There weren't many people on the train, not at this hour, not heading back into the city, not on a system that had been damaged by stalling and flooding.
What few people were on the train sat away from the hooded man who held one leg out awkwardly, bouncing nervously. They were New Yorkers. They were familiar with the crazies who talked to themselves and to people and creatures who were not there. As long as they didn't talk to you, you could live with it.
The hooded man's voice could now be heard but only when the train came to a stop at a station. What he said made no sense, though the word "kill" was heard by some.
Two people got off at the next stop even though it wasn't theirs. They would wait for the next train, though it might take an hour, and hope that those aboard it were reasonably sane and safe.
On the train, the man in the hood grew more restless and angry at whatever ghost or demon with which he argued.
Edward Bender, tired before he even began his night shift at the Colston Hotel, was getting increasingly aggravated by the mumbling man, but he wasn't sure what he could do about it.
Suddenly the hooded man rose with a roar and started down the aisle, moving awkwardly. A heavy white woman cried out something in a language Edward didn't understand.
The hooded man had a knife in his hand. It didn't have a long blade, but the blade did glisten in the flickering subway light. The train swayed and the hooded man started up the aisle. Edward rose, threw his magazine on the seat. The hooded man was as tall as Edward and younger, but Edward no longer gave a shit.
Passengers were cringing against the windows, covering their faces with their arms or closed umbrellas.
"Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?" the hooded man asked Edward. The man was no more than a few yards from Edward, who said nothing. The man's right arm rose, clutching the knife. He lunged forward at Edward and fell to the floor. Edward stomped on his hand. The knife slid down the aisle.
"Oh, thank God," someone said.
Edward looked at the man seated on the aisle. The man's leg was still in the aisle. He had tripped the hooded man and possibly saved the life of Edward Bender.
"Thanks," said Edward, a foot on the neck of the hooded man who screamed, "We've all had enough. The deluge. No time for an ark."
"I'll stop the train at the next station," Edward said. "You find a cop."
Keith Yunkin, who had tripped the hooded man, nodded, got up and moved to the door just as the train pulled into the station. He stepped out onto the platform.
It would take him a little longer to get to Ellen Janecek, but he had a few hours. It would be enough.
He moved toward the exit. He had no intention of finding a policeman and he hoped that no policeman would find him.