Residence
Prob. has safe house
Vehicle
Yellow Cab
Other
knows CS proc.
•possibly has record
•knows FR prints
•gun =.32 Colt
Coming home three hours later, pork-less, Amie would sneak up the stairs to be confronted by a mother frantic and angry, who – to her daughter’s amusement – would lecture her about the risks of getting pregnant and how that would ruin her chances to use her beautiful face to make a million dollars at modeling. And when finally the woman learned that her daughter wasn’t sleeping around but was merely driving a hundred mph on Long Island highways, she grew frantic and angry and would lecture the girl about smashing up her beautiful face and ruining her chances to make a million dollars at modeling.
Things grew even worse when she got her driver’s license.
Sachs now sliced between two double-parked trucks, hoping that neither a passenger nor a driver would open his door. In a Doppler whisper she was past them.
When you move they can’t getcha…
Lon Sellitto kneaded his rotund face with blunt fingertips and paid no attention to the Indy 500 driving. He talked with his partner about the case like an accountant discussing a balance sheet. As for Banks, though, he was no longer stealing infatuated glances at Sachs’s eyes and lips and had taken to checking the speedometer every minute or so.
They skidded in a frantic turn past the Brooklyn Bridge. She thought again of the woman captive, picturing T.J.’s long, elegant nails, while she tapped her own picked fingers on the wheel. She saw again in her mind the image that refused to go away: the white birch branch of a hand, sticking up out of the moist grave. The single bloody bone.
“He’s kind of loony,” she blurted suddenly, to change the direction of her thoughts.
“Who?” Sellitto asked.
“Rhyme.”
Banks added, “Ask me, he looks like Howard Hughes’s kid brother.”
“Yeah, well, that surprised me,” the older detective admitted. “Wasn’t looking too good. Used to be a handsome guy. But, well, you know. After what he’s been through. How come if you drive like this, Sachs, you’re a portable?”
“Where I got assigned. They didn’t ask, they told me.” Just like you did, she reflected. “Was he really as good as that?”
“Rhyme? Better. Most CSU guys in New York handle two hundred bodies a year. Tops. Rhyme did double that. Even when he was running IRD. Take Peretti, he’s a good man but he gets out once every two weeks or so and only on media cases. You’re not hearing this from me, officer.”
“Nosir.”
“But Rhyme’d run the scenes himself. And when he wasn’t running scenes he’d be out walking around.”
“Doing what?”
“Just walking around. Looking at stuff. He walked miles. All over the city. Buying things, picking up things, collecting things.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Evidence standards. Dirt, food, magazines, hubcaps, shoes, medical books, drugs, plants… You name it, he’d find it and catalog it. You know – so when some PE came in he’d have a better idea where the perp might’ve been or what he’d been doing. You’d page him and he’d be in Harlem or the Lower East Side or Hell’s Kitchen.”
“Police in his blood?”
“Naw. Father was some kind of scientist at a national laboratory or something.”
“Is that what Rhyme studied? Science?”
“Yeah. Went to school at Champaign-Urbana, got a coupla fancy degrees. Chemistry and history. Which I have no idea why. His folks’re gone since I knew him, that’d be, hell, coming on fifteen years now. And he doesn’t have any brothers or sisters. He grew up in Illinois. That’s why the name, Lincoln.”
She wanted to ask if he was, or had been, married but didn’t. She settled for: “Is he really that much of a…”
“You can say it, officer.”
“A shit?”
Banks laughed.
Sellitto said, “My ma had this expression. She said somebody was ‘of a mind.’ Well, that describes Rhyme. He’s of a mind. One time this dumb-ass tech sprayed luminol – that’s a blood reagent – on a fingerprint, instead of ninhydrin. Ruined the print. Rhyme fired him on the spot. Another time a cop took a leak at a scene and flushed the toilet. Man, Rhyme went ballistic, told him to get his ass down to the basement and bring back whatever was in the sewer trap.” Sellitto laughed. “The cop, he had rank, he said, ‘I’m not doing that, I’m a lieutenant.’ And Rhyme said, ‘Got news. You’re a plumber now.’ I could go on and on. Fuck, officer, you doing eighty?”
They streaked past the Big Building and she thought, achingly, That’s where I oughta be right now. Meeting fellow information officers, sitting through the training session, soaking up the air-conditioning.
She steered expertly around a taxi that was oozing through a red light.
Jesus, this is hot. Dust hot, stink hot, gas hot. The ugly hours of the city. Tempers spurted like gray water shooting from hydrants up in Harlem. Two Christmases ago, she and her boyfriend had an abbreviated holiday celebration – from 11:00 p.m. to midnight, the only mutual free time their watches allowed – in the four-degree night. She and Nick, sitting at Rockefeller Center, outside, near the skating rink, drinking coffee and brandy. They’d agreed they’d rather have a week of cold than a single hot August day.
Finally, streaking down Pearl she spotted Haumann’s command post. Leaving eight-foot skid marks, Sachs put the RRV into a slot between his car and an EMS bus.
“Damn, you drive good.” Sellitto climbed out. For some reason Sachs was delighted to notice Jerry Banks’s sweaty fingerprints remained prominently on the window when he pushed the rear door open.
EMS officers and Patrol uniforms were everywhere, fifty or sixty of them. And more were on their way. It seemed as if the entire attention of Police Plaza was focused on downtown New York. Sachs found herself thinking idly that if anybody wanted to try an assassination or to take over Gracie Mansion or a consulate, this’d be the time to do it.
Haumann trotted up to the station wagon. He said to Sellitto, “We’re doing door-to-door, seeing about construction along Pearl. Nobody knows anything about asbestos work and nobody’s heard any calls for help.”
Sachs started to climb out but Haumann said, “No, officer. Your orders’re to stay here with the CS vehicle.”
She got out anyway.
“Yessir. Who exactly said that?”
“Detective Rhyme. I just talked to him. You’re supposed to call in to Central when you’re at the CP.”
Haumann was walking away. Sellitto and Banks hurried toward the command post.
“Detective Sellitto,” Sachs called.
He turned. She said, “Excuse me, detective. The thing is, who’s my watch commander? Who’m I reporting to?”
He said shortly, “You’re reporting to Rhyme.”
She laughed. “But I can’t be reporting to him.”
Sellitto gazed at her blankly.
“I mean, aren’t there liability issues or something? Jurisdiction? He’s a civilian. I need somebody, a shield, to report to.”
Sellitto said evenly, “Officer, listen up. We’re all reporting to Lincoln Rhyme. I don’t care whether he’s a civilian or he’s the chief or he’s the fucking Caped Crusader. Got that?”
“But -”
“You wanna complain, do it in writing and do it tomorrow.”
And he was gone. Sachs stared after him for a moment then returned to the front seat of the wagon and called in to Central that she was 10-84 at the scene. Awaiting instructions.
She laughed grimly as the woman reported, “Ten-four, Portable 5885. Be advised. Detective Rhyme will be in touch shortly, K.”
Detective Rhyme.