Thom walked along beside it but Lincoln Rhyme himself was driving – in control, she observed wryly – via a straw that he held in his mouth. His movements were oddly graceful. Rhyme pulled up to her and stopped.
“All right, I lied,” he said abruptly.
She exhaled a sigh. “About your back? When you said you couldn’t use a wheelchair.”
“I’m confessing I lied. You’re going to be mad, Amelia. So be mad and get it over with.”
“You ever notice when you’re in a good mood you call me Sachs, when you’re in a bad mood, you call me Amelia?”
“I’m not in a bad mood,” he snapped.
“He really isn’t,” Thom agreed. “He just hates to get caught at anything.” The aide nodded toward the impressive wheelchair. She glanced at the side. It was made by the Action Company, a Storm Arrow model. “He had this in the closet downstairs all the while he spun his pathetic little tale of woe. Oh, I let him have it for that.”
“No annotations, Thom, thank you. I’m apologizing, all right? I. Am. Sorry.”
“He’s had it for years,” Thom continued. “Learned the sip-’n’-puff cold. That’s the straw control. He’s really very good at it. By the way, he always calls me Thom. I never get preferential last-name treatment.”
“I got tired of being stared at,” Rhyme said matter-of-factly. “So I stopped going for joyrides.” Then glanced at her torn lip. “Hurt?”
She touched her mouth, which was bent into a grin. “Stings like hell.”
Rhyme glanced sideways. “And what happened to you, Banks? Shaving your forehead now?”
“Walked into a fire truck.” The young man grinned and touched the bandage again.
“Rhyme,” Sachs began, smiling no longer. “There’s nothing here. He’s got the little girl and I couldn’t get to the planted PE in time.”
“Ah, Sachs, there’s always something. Have faith in the teachings of Monsieur Locard.”
“I saw them burn up, the clues. And if there was anything left at all, it’s all buried under tons of debris.”
“Then we’ll look for the clues he didn’t mean to leave. We’ll do this scene together, Sachs. You and me. Come on.”
He gave two short breaths into the straw and started forward. They’d got ten feet nearer the church when she said suddenly, “Wait.”
He braked to a stop.
“You’re getting careless, Rhyme. Get some rubber bands on those wheels. Wouldn’t want to confuse your prints with the unsub’s.”
“Where do we start?”
“We need a sample of the ash,” Rhyme said. “There were some clean paint cans in the back of the wagon. See if you can find one.”
She collected a can from the remains of the RRV.
“You know where the fire started?” Rhyme asked.
“Pretty much.”
“Take a sample of ash – a pint or two – as close to the point of origin as you can get.”
“Right,” she said, climbing up on a five-foot-high wall of brick – all that remained of the north side of the church. She peered down into the smoky pit at her feet.
A fire marshal called, “Hey, officer, we haven’t secured the area yet. It’s dangerous.”
“Not as dangerous as the last time I was there,” she answered. And holding the handle of the can in her teeth started down the wall.
Lincoln Rhyme watched her but he was really seeing himself, three and a half years ago, pull his suit jacket off and climb down into the construction site at the subway entrance near City Hall. “Sachs,” Rhyme called. She turned. “Be careful. I saw what was left of the RRV. I don’t want to lose you twice in one day.”
She nodded and then disappeared over the edge of the wall.
After a few minutes Rhyme barked to Banks, “Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“What I’m saying is, could you go check on her?”
“Oh, sure.” He walked to the wall, looked over.
“Well?” Rhyme asked.
“It’s a mess.”
“Of course it’s a mess. Do you see her?”
“No.”
“Sachs?” Rhyme shouted.
There was a long groan of wood then a crash. Dust rose.
“Sachs? Amelia?”
No answer.
Just as he was about to send ESU in after her they heard her voice. “Incoming.”
“Jerry?” Rhyme called.
“Ready,” the young detective called.
The can came flying up out of the basement. Banks caught it one-handed. Sachs climbed out of the basement, wiping her hands on her slacks, wincing.
“Okay?”
She nodded.
“Now, let’s work the alley,” Rhyme ordered. “There’s traffic at all hours around here so he’d want the car off the street while he got her inside. That’s where he parked. Used that door right there.”
“How do you know?”
“There’re two ways to open locked doors – without explosives, that is. Locks and hinges. This one’d be dead-bolted from the inside so he took the pins out of the hinges. See, he didn’t bother to put them in very far again when he left.”
They started at the door and worked their way to the back of the grim canyon, the smoldering building on their right. They moved a foot at a time, Sachs training the PoliLight on the cobblestones. “I want tire treads,” Rhyme announced. “I want to know where his trunk was.”
“Here,” she said, examining the ground. “Treads. But I don’t know whether these’re the front or the rear tires. He might’ve backed in.”
“Are they clear or fuzzy? The treadmarks?”
“A little fuzzy.”
“Then those’re the front.” He laughed at her bewildered expression. “You’re the automotive expert, Sachs. Next time you get in a car and start it see if you don’t spin the wheel a little before you start moving. To see if the tires are pointed straight. The front treads’re always fuzzier than the rear. Now, the stolen car was a ’97 Ford Taurus. It measures 197.5 stem to stern, wheelbase 108.5. Approximately 45 inches from the center of the rear tire to the trunk. Measure that and vacuum.”
“Come on, Rhyme. How’d you know that?”
“Looked it up this morning. You do the vic’s clothing?”
“Yep. Nails and hair too. And, Rhyme, get this: the little girl’s name is Pam but he called her Maggie. Just like he did with the German girl – he called her Hanna, remember?”
“You mean his other persona did,” Rhyme said. “I wonder who the characters are in his little play.”
“I’m going to vacuum around the door too,” she announced. Rhyme watched her – face cut and hair uneven, singed short in spots. She vacuumed the base of the door and just as he was about to remind her that crime scenes were three-dimensional she ran the vacuum up and around the jamb.
“He probably looked inside before he took her in,” she said and began vacuuming the windowsills too.
Which would have been Rhyme’s next order.
He listened to the whine of the Dustbuster. But second by second he was fading away. Into the past, some hours before.
“I’m -” Sachs began.
“Shhh,” he said.
Like the walks he now took, like the concerts he now attended, like so many of the conversations he had, Rhyme was slipping deeper and deeper into his consciousness. And when he got to a particular place – even he had no idea where – he found he wasn’t alone. He was picturing a short man wearing gloves, dark sports clothes, a ski mask. Climbing out of the silver Ford Taurus sedan, which smelled of cleanser and new car. The woman – Carole Ganz – was in the trunk, her child captive in an old building made of pink marble and expensive brick. He saw the man dragging the woman from the car.
Almost a memory, it was that clear.
Popping the hinges, pulling open the door, dragging her inside, tying her up. He started to leave but paused. He walked to a place where he could look back and see Carole clearly. Just like he’d stared down at the man he’d buried at the railroad tracks yesterday morning.