“The mayor?”
“Well, deputy mayor.”
“And you held ’em all off?”
“Nobody got into that scene except Latents and Photography. Of course my payback was spending six months printing floaters. But we nailed the perp with some trace and a print off one of those Polaroids – happened to be the same snap the Post used on page one, as a matter of fact. Just like what you did yesterday morning, Sachs. Closing off the tracks and Eleventh Avenue.”
“I didn’t think about it,” she said. “I just did it. Why’re you looking at me that way?”
“Come on, Sachs. You know where you ought to be. On the street. Patrol, Major Crimes, IRD, doesn’t matter… But Public Affairs? You’ll rot there. It’s a good job for some people but not you. Don’t give up so fast.”
“Oh, and you’re not giving up? What about Berger?”
“Things’re a little different with me.”
Her glance questioned, They are? And she went prowling for a Kleenex. When she returned to the chair she asked, “You don’t carry any corpses around with you?”
“I have in my day. They’re all buried now.”
“Tell me.”
“Really, there’s nothing -”
“Not true. I can tell. Come on – I showed you mine.”
He felt an odd chill. He knew it wasn’t dysreflexia. His smile faded.
“Rhyme, go on,” she persisted. “I’d like to hear.”
“Well, there was a case a few years ago,” he said, “I made a mistake. A bad mistake.”
“Tell me.” She poured them each another finger of the Scotch.
“It was a domestic murder-suicide call. Husband and wife in a Chinatown apartment. He shot her, killed himself. I didn’t have much time for the scene; I worked it fast. And I committed a classic error – I’d made up my mind about what I was going to find before I started looking. I found some fibers that I couldn’t place but I assumed that the husband and wife’d tracked them in. I found the bullet fragments but didn’t check them against the gun we found at the scene. I noticed the blowback pattern but didn’t grid it to double-check the exact position of the gun. I did the search, signed off and went back to the office.”
“What happened?”
“The scene had been staged. It was really a burglary-murder. And the perp had never left the apartment.”
“What? He was still there?”
“After I left he crawled out from under the bed and started shooting. He killed one forensic tech and wounded an assistant ME. He got out on the street and there was a shootout with a couple of portables who’d heard the 10-13. The perp was shot up – he died later – but he killed one of the cops and wounded the other. He also shot up a family that’d just come out of a Chinese restaurant across the street. Used one of the kids as a shield.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Colin Stanton was the father’s name. He wasn’t hurt at all and he’d been an army medic – EMS said he probably could’ve saved his wife or one or both of the kids if he’d tried to stop the bleeding but he panicked and froze. He just stood there, watching them all die in front of him.”
“Jesus, Rhyme. But it wasn’t your fault. You -”
“Let me finish. That wasn’t the end of it.”
“No?”
“The husband went back home – upstate New York. Had a breakdown and went into a mental hospital for a while. He tried to kill himself. They put him under a suicide watch. First he tried to cut his wrist with a piece of paper – a magazine cover. Then he sneaked into the library and found a water glass in the librarian’s bathroom, shattered it and slashed his wrists. They stitched him up okay and kept him in the mental hospital for another year or so. Finally they released him. A month or so after he was out he tried again. Used a knife.” Rhyme added coolly, “That time it worked.”
He’d learned about Stanton’s death in an obituary faxed from the Albany County coroner to NYPD Public Affairs. Someone there had sent it to Rhyme via interoffice mail with a Post-It attached: FYI – thought you’d be interested, the officer had written.
“There was an IA investigation. Professional incompetence. They slapped my wrist. I think they should’ve fired me.”
She sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. “And you’re telling me you don’t feel guilty about that?”
“Not anymore.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I served my time, Sachs. I lived with those bodies for a while. But I gave ’ em up. If I hadn’t, how could I have kept on working?”
After a long moment she said, “When I was eighteen I got a ticket. Speeding. I was doing ninety in a forty zone.”
“Well.”
“Dad said he’d front me the money for the fine but I’d have to pay him back. With interest. But you know what else he told me? He said he would’ve tanned my hide for running a red light or reckless driving. But going fast he understood. He told me, ‘I know how you feel, honey. When you move they can’t getcha.’ ” Sachs said to Rhyme, “If I couldn’t drive, if I couldn’t move, then maybe I’d do it too. Kill myself.”
“I used to walk everywhere,” Rhyme said. “I never did drive much. Haven’t owned a car in twenty years. What kind do you have?”
“Nothing a snooty Manhattanite like you’d drive. A Chevy. Camaro. It was my father’s.”
“Who gave you the drill press? For working on cars, I assume?”
She nodded. “And a torque wrench. And spark-gap set. And my first set of ratcheting sockets – my thirteenth-birthday present.” Laughing softly. “That Chevy, it’s a wobbly-knob car. You know what that is? An American car. The radio and vents and light switches are all loose and cheesy. But the suspension’s like a rock, it’s light as an egg crate and I’ll take on a BMW any day.”
“And I’ll bet you have.”
“Once or twice.”
“Cars are status in the crip world,” Rhyme explained. “We’d sit – or lie – around the ward in rehab and talk about what we could get out of our insurance companies. Wheelchair vans were the top of the heap. Next are hand-control cars. Which wouldn’t do me any good of course.” He squinted, testing his supple memory. “I haven’t been in a car in years. I can’t remember the last time.”
“Got an idea,” Sachs said suddenly. “Before your friend – Dr. Berger – comes back, let me take you for a ride. Or is that a problem? Sitting up? You were saying that wheelchairs don’t work for you.”
“Well, no, wheelchairs’re a problem. But a car? I think that’d be okay.” He laughed. “A hundred and sixty-eight? Miles per hour?”
“That was a special day,” Sachs said, nodding at the memory. “Good conditions. And no highway patrol.”
The phone buzzed and Rhyme answered it himself. It was Lon Sellitto.
“We got S &S on all the target churches in Harlem. Dellray’s in charge of that – man’s become a true believer, Lincoln. You wouldn’t recognize him. Oh, and I’ve got thirty portables and a ton of UN security cruising for any other churches we might’ve missed. If he doesn’t show up, we’re going to do a sweep of all of them at seven-thirty. Just in case he snuck in without us seeing him. I think we’re going to nail him, Linc,” the detective said, suspiciously enthusiastic for a New York City homicide cop.
“Okay, Lon, I’ll send Amelia up to your CP around eight.”
They hung up.
Thom knocked on the door before coming into the room.
As if he’d catch us in a compromising position, Rhyme laughed to himself.
“No more excuses,” he said testily. “Bed. Now.”
It was after 3:00 a.m. and Rhyme had left exhaustion far behind long ago. He was floating somewhere else. Above his body. He wondered if he’d start to hallucinate.
“Yes, Mother,” he said. “Officer Sachs’s staying over, Thom. Could you get her a blanket, please?”