She was hesitating. He knew he was near her heart.
She turned angrily to Berger, gripped him by the cuffs. “Come on.” Pushed through the door.
Rhyme called, “You know what I’m saying, don’t you?”
Again she stopped.
“Sometimes… things happen, Sachs. Sometimes you just can’t be what you ought to be, you can’t have what you ought to have. And life changes. Maybe just a little, maybe a lot. And at some point it just isn’t worth the fight to try to fix what went wrong.”
He watched them standing, motionless, in the doorway. The room was utterly silent. She turned and looked back at him.
“Death cures loneliness,” Rhyme continued. “It cures tension. It cures the itch.” Just like she’d glanced at his legs earlier he now gave a fast look at her torn fingers.
She released Berger’s cuffs and walked to the window. Tears glistened on her cheeks in the yellow radiance from the streetlights outside.
“Sachs, I’m tired,” he said earnestly. “I can’t tell you how tired I am. You know how hard life is to start with. Pile on a whole mountainful of… burdens. Washing, eating, crapping, making phone calls, buttoning shirts, scratching your nose… Then pile on a thousand more. And more after that.”
He fell silent. After a long moment she said, “I’ll make a deal with you.”
“What’s that?”
She nodded toward the poster. “Eight twenty-three’s got that mother and her little girl… Help us save them. Just them. If you do that I’ll give him an hour alone with you.” She glanced at Berger. “Provided he gets the hell out of town afterwards.”
Rhyme shook his head. “Sachs, if I have a stroke, if I can’t communicate…”
“If that happens,” she said evenly, “even if you can’t say a word, the deal still holds. I’ll make sure you have one hour together.” She crossed her arms, spread her feet again, in what was now Rhyme’s favorite image of Amelia Sachs. He wished he could’ve seen her on the railroad tracks that morning, stopping the train. She said, “That’s the best I’ll do.”
A moment passed. Rhyme nodded. “Okay. It’s a deal.” To Berger he said, “Monday?”
“Okay, Lincoln. Fair enough.” Berger, still shaken, watched Sachs cautiously as she unlocked the cuffs. Afraid, it seemed, that she might change her mind. When he was free he walked quickly to the door. He realized he was still holding the vertebra and returned, set it – almost reverently – next to Rhyme on the crime scene report for the first murder that morning.
“Happier’n hogs in red Virginia mud,” Sachs remarked, slouching in the squeaky rattan chair. Meaning Sellitto and Polling, after she’d told them that Rhyme had agreed to remain on the case for another day.
“Polling particularly,” she said. “I thought the little guy was going to hug me. Don’t tell him I called him that. How are you feeling? You look better.” She sipped some Scotch and set the glass back on the bedside table, beside Rhyme’s tumbler.
“Not bad.”
Thom was changing the bedclothes. “You were sweating like a fountain,” he said.
“But only above my neck,” Rhyme pointed out. “Sweating, I mean.”
“That right?” Sachs asked.
“Yep. That’s how it works. Thermostat’s busted below that. I never need any axial deodorant.”
“Axial?”
“Pit,” Rhyme snorted. “Armpit. My first aide never said armpit. He’d say, ‘I’m going to elevate you by your axials, Lincoln.’ Oh, and: ‘If you feel like regurgitating go right ahead, Lincoln.’ He called himself a ‘caregiver.’ The word was actually on his résumé. I have no idea why I hired him. We’re very superstitious, Sachs. We think calling something by a different name is going to change it. Unsub. Perpetrator. But that aide, he was just a nurse who was up to his own armpits in piss ’n’ puke. Right, Thom? Nothing to be ashamed of. It’s an honorable profession. Messy but honorable.”
“I thrive on mess. That’s why I work for you.”
“What’re you, Thom? An aide or a caregiver?”
“I’m a saint.”
“Ha, fast with the comebacks. And fast with the needle too. He brought me back from the dead. Done it more than once.”
Rhyme was suddenly pierced with a fear that Sachs had seen him naked. Eyes fixed firmly on the unsub profile, he asked, “Say, do I owe you some thanks too, Sachs? Did you play Clara Barton here?” He uneasily waited for her answer, didn’t know how he could look at her again if she had.
“Nup,” Thom answered. “Saved you all by my lonesome. Didn’t want any of these sensitive souls repulsed by the sight of your baggy rear end.”
Thank you, Thom, he thought. Then barked, “Now go away. We have to talk about the case. Sachs and me.”
“You need some sleep.”
“Of course I do. But we still need to talk about the case. Good night, good night.”
After Thom left, Sachs poured some Macallan in a glass. She lowered her head and inhaled the smoky vapors.
“Who snitched?” Rhyme asked. “Pete?”
“Who?” she asked.
“Dr. Taylor, the SCI man.”
She hesitated long enough for him to know that Taylor was the one. She said finally, “He cares about you.”
“Of course he does. That’s the problem – I want him to care a little less. Does he know about Berger?”
“He suspects.”
Rhyme grimaced. “Look, tell him that Berger’s just an old friend. He… what?”
Sachs exhaled slowly, as if shooting cigarette smoke through her pursed lips. “You not only want me to let you kill yourself you want me to lie to the one person who could talk you out of it.”
“He couldn’t talk me out of it,” Rhyme responded.
“Then why do you want me to lie?”
He laughed. “Let’s just keep Dr. Taylor in the dark for a few more days.”
“All right,” she said. “Jesus, you’re a tough person to deal with.”
He examined her closely. “Why don’t you tell me about it.”
“About what?”
“Who’s the dead? That you haven’t given up?”
“There’s plenty of them.”
“Such as?”
“Read the newspaper.”
“Come on, Sachs.”
She shook her head, stared down at her Scotch with a faint smile on her lips. “No, I don’t think so.”
He put her silence down to reluctance about having an intimate conversation with someone she’d known only for one day. Which seemed ironic, considering she sat next to a dozen catheters, a tube of K-Y jelly and a box of Depends. Still he wasn’t going to push it and said nothing more. So he was surprised when she suddenly looked up and blurted, “It’s just… It’s just… Oh, hell.” And as the sobbing began she lifted her hands to her face, spilling a good two inches of Scotland ’s best all over the parquet.
TWENTY-SIX
“I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M TELLING YOU THIS.” She sat huddled in the deep chair, legs drawn up, issue shoes kicked off. The tears were gone though her face was as ruddy as her hair.
“Go on,” he encouraged.
“That guy I told you about? We were going to get an apartment together.”
“Oh, with the collie. You didn’t say it was a guy. Your boyfriend?”
The secret lover? Rhyme wondered.
“He was my boyfriend.”
“I was thinking maybe it was your father you’d lost.”
“Naw. Pop did pass away – three years ago. Cancer. But we knew it was coming. If that prepares you for it I guess we were prepared. But Nick…”
“He was killed?” Rhyme asked softly.
But she didn’t answer. “Nick Carelli. One of us. A cop. Detective, third. Worked Street Crimes.”