“The mother,” Rhyme and Sachs said simultaneously.
“Yeah. The woman you saved in the church. Only Ganz’s an alias. Her real name’s Charlotte Willoughby. She was married to a Ron Willoughby. Ring a bell?”
Rhyme said it didn’t.
“It was in the news a couple years ago. He was an Army sergeant assigned to a UN peacekeeping force in Burma.”
“Keep going,” the criminalist said.
“Willoughby didn’t want to go – thought an American soldier shouldn’t be wearing a UN uniform and taking orders from anybody except the U.S. Army. It’s a big right-wing issue nowadays. But he went anyway. Wasn’t there a week before he’s blown away by some little punk in Rangoon. Got shot in the back. Became a conservative martyr. Anti-Terror says his widow got recruited by an extremist group out in the Chicago burbs. Some U of C grads gone underground. Edward and Katherine Stone.”
Banks took over the narrative. “The explosive was in a package of kid’s modeling clay, along with some other toys. We think she was going to take the little girl with her so security at the banquet-hall entrance wouldn’t think anything of the clay. But with Pammy in the hospital she didn’t have her cover story so she gave up on the hall and just planted it in the storeroom. Did enough damage as it was.”
“Rabitted?”
“Yep. Not a trace.”
“What about the little girl,” Sachs asked, “Pammy?”
“Gone. The woman checked her out of the hospital around the time of the bang. No sign of either of them.”
Rhyme asked, “The cell?”
“The group in Chicago? They’re gone too. Had a safe house in Wisconsin but it’s been hosed. We don’t know where they are.”
“So that was the rumor Dellray’s snitch heard.” Rhyme laughed. “Carole was the one coming into the airport. Had nothing to do with Unsub 823.”
He found Banks and Sellitto staring at him.
Oh, the old silent trick again.
“Forget it, Lon.” Rhyme said, all too aware of the glass sitting inches from him, radiating a welcoming heat. “Impossible.”
The older detective plucked his sweaty shirt away from his body, cringing. “God damn cold in here, Lincoln. Jesus. Look, just think about it. What’sa harm?”
“I can’t help you.”
Sellitto said, “There was a note. Carole wrote it and sent it to the secretary-general by interoffice envelope. Harping on world government, taking away American liberties. Some shit like that. Claimed credit for the UNESCO bombing in London too and said there’d be more. We’ve gotta get ’em, Linc.”
Feeling his oats, scarface Banks said, “The secretary-general and the mayor both’ve asked for you. SAC Perkins too. And there’ll be a call from the White House, you need any more persuading. We sure hope you don’t, detective.”
Rhyme didn’t comment on the error regarding his rank.
“They’ve got the Bureau’s PERT team ready to go. Fred Dellray’s running the case and he asked – respectfully, yeah, he used that very word – he asked respectfully if you’d do the forensic work. And it’s a virgin scene, except for getting the bodies and the wounded out.”
“Then it’s not virgin,” Rhyme snapped. “It’s extremely contaminated.”
“All the more reason we need you,” Banks ventured, adding “sir” to defuse Rhyme’s glare.
Rhyme sighed, looked at the glass and the straw. Peace was so close to him just now. And pain too. Infinite sums of both.
He closed his eyes. Not a sound in the room.
Sellitto added, “It was just the woman herself, hey, wouldn’t be that big a deal. But she’s got her daughter with her, Lincoln. Underground, with a little girl? You know what that kid’s life’s going to be like?”
I’ll get you for that too, Lon.
Rhyme nestled his head into the opulent pillow. Finally his eyes sprang open. He said, “There’d be some conditions.”
“Name it, Linc.”
“First of all,” he said. “I don’t work alone.”
Rhyme looked toward Amelia Sachs.
She hesitated for a moment then smiled and stood, lifted the glass of tainted brandy out from under the straw. She opened the window wide and flung the tawny liquid into the ripe, hot air above the alley next to the townhouse, while, just feet away, the falcon looked up, glaring angrily at the motion of her arm, cocked his gray head, then turned back to feed his hungry youngster.
Appendix
Excerpts from: Glossary of Terms, Lincoln Rhyme, Physical Evidence, 4th ed. (New York: Forensic Press, 1994). Reprinted with permission.
Alternative light source (ALS): Any of several types of high-intensity lamps of varying wavelength and light color, used to visualize latent friction-ridge prints, and certain types of trace and biological evidence.
Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS): One of several computerized systems for the scanning and storage of friction-ridge prints.
Birefringence: The difference between two measures of refraction displayed by certain crystalline substances. Useful in identifying sand, fibers, and dirt.
Chain of custody (COC): A record of every person who has had possession of a piece of evidence from the moment of its collection at a crime scene to its introduction at trial.
COD: Cause of death.
Control samples: Physical evidence collected at a crime scene from known sources, used for comparison with evidence from an unknown source. For example, the victim’s own blood and hair constitutes a control sample.
DCDS: Deceased, confirmed dead at scene.
Density-gradient testing (D-G): A technique for comparing soil samples to determine if they come from the same location. The test involves suspending dirt samples in tubes filled with liquids that have different density values.
DNA typing: Analyzing and charting the genetic structure within the cells of certain types of biological evidence (for example, blood, semen, hair) for the purpose of comparison with control samples from a known suspect. The process involves the isolation and comparison of fragments of DNA – deoxyribonucleic acid – the basic building block of the chromosome. Some types of DNA typing produce a mere likelihood that the evidence came from a suspect; other types are virtually conclusive, with the odds in the hundreds of millions that the evidence was from a particular individual. Also called “genetic typing,” or – erroneously – “DNA fingerprinting” or “genetic fingerprinting.”
Forensic anthropologist: A skeletal-remains expert who aids crime scene investigators in evaluating and identifying remains and excavating grave sites.
Forensic odontologist: A dental expert who aids crime scene investigators in identifying victims through examination of dental remains and analyzing bite-mark evidence.
Friction ridges: The raised lines of skin on fingers, palms, and the soles of feet, whose patterns are unique to each individual. Prints of friction ridges at crime scenes can be classified as (1) plastic (left in an impressionable substance such as putty); (2) evident (left by skin coated with a foreign substance like dust or blood); (3) latent (left by skin contaminated with bodily secretions such as grease or sweat and largely invisible).