Sachs turned up the volume to the headset.
‘I’m below the manhole, Rhyme.’ She explained where it was and that this was likely how he’d gotten in, because there was significant moisture on the ground; the manhole cover had probably been removed in the past hour or so, she estimated. ‘It’s muddy here.’ A sigh. ‘But there’re no prints. Naturally. Let’s have Lon canvass the stores and apartments around the neighborhood, see if anybody saw the perp.’
‘I’ll call him. And get any security CCTVs too.’ Rhyme was skeptical about witnesses. He believed that in most cases they were more trouble than they were worth. They misobserved, they had bad memories — intentionally and otherwise — and they were afraid to get involved. A digital image was far more trustworthy. This was not necessarily Sachs’s opinion.
She swabbed the rungs as she climbed the ladder, depositing the adhesive cloth in plastic evidence collection bags.
At the top she rolled the underside of the manhole cover, then lifted a small alternative light source unit to check for fingerprints on the surface. ALS’s are lamps that use colors of the spectrum of visible light (like blue or green) combined with filters to make apparent evidence that’s impossible to see under regular bulbs or in daylight. ALS sources also include invisible light, like ultraviolet, which makes certain substances glow.
The scan, of course, revealed no prints or other evidence from their unsub. She tested the manhole cover’s weight; she could budge it but just barely. She supposed it weighed close to a hundred pounds. Hard to push open but not impossible for a strong individual.
She heard traffic overhead, the shushhh sound of tires cutting through the wet sleet. She was shining the light straight up, looking into the hole through which a worker would feed the hook to remove the cover. Wondering about marks that might lead them to a particular brand of tool the perp had used. Nothing.
It was then that an eye appeared through the hole.
Jesus … Sachs gasped.
Inches away, on the street above her, someone was crouching and looking through the pry hole, down at her. For a moment nothing happened; then the eye narrowed, as if the person — a man, she sensed — squinted slightly. Maybe smiling, maybe troubled, maybe curious about why a flashlight beam was firing out of a manhole cover in SoHo.
She spun away, thinking he’d seat a pistol muzzle in the hole and start shooting. The Maglite plummeted as she grabbed the top rung with both hands to keep from falling.
‘Rhyme!’
‘What? What’s going on? You’re moving fast.’
‘There’s somebody on top of the manhole. Did you call Lon?’
‘Just. You think it’s the perp?’
‘Could be. Call Dispatch! Get somebody to Elizabeth Street now!’
‘I’m calling, Sachs.’
She pressed her hand against the bottom of the manhole and pushed. Once. Twice. All her strength.
The slab of iron rose a fraction of an inch. But no more.
Rhyme said, ‘I got Lon. He’s sending uniforms. Some ESU too. They’re on their way, getting close.’
‘I think he’s gone. I tried to open the cover, Rhyme. I couldn’t. Goddamn it. I couldn’t. I was looking right at him. Had to be the perp. Who else’d kneel down in the middle of the street on a day like this and look through a manhole cover?’
She tried once more, thinking maybe he’d been squatting on it and that’s what had prevented her from pushing it up. But, no, it was impossible to move with her one free hand.
Shit.
‘Sachs?’
‘Go ahead.’
Rhyme said, ‘An officer saw somebody at the manhole in a short dark-gray coat, stocking cap. He took off running. Disappeared into the crowd on Broadway. White male. Slim or medium build.’
‘Damn it!’ she muttered. ‘It was him! Why run otherwise? Have somebody pop the cover, Rhyme!’
‘Look, there’re plenty of people after him. Keep walking the grid. That’s our priority.’
Heart racing, she shoved a palm into the manhole cover once more. Convinced, unreasonably, that if she could get to the surface she could find him, even if the others couldn’t.
She pictured his eye. She saw the narrowing lid.
She believed the perp was laughing at her, taunting her because she hadn’t been able to open the cover.
What color was the iris? she wondered. Green, gray, hazel? She hadn’t thought to register the color. This lapse infuriated her.
‘One thing occurs to me.’ Rhyme brought her back to earth.
‘What’s that?’
‘We know that’s how he got into the tunnel — through the manhole. And that means he’d’ve rigged a work zone. He’d have cones and tape or a barricade of some kind. And that might show up on video.’
‘Or a witness might’ve seen.’
‘Well. Yes, maybe. For what that’s worth.’
Sachs climbed back down the ladder and returned to the victim. She had done a fast sex-crime exam of Chloe’s body but now wanded it with the ALS to look for traces of the three S’s present in most sexual assault cases — semen, sweat and saliva.
Negative on that but it was clear he’d probed her skin with his gloved fingers — or at least the abdomen, arms, neck and face. No other parts of the body appeared to have been touched.
She used the light on the rest of the scene — from the manhole to the breadbasket — and found nothing.
All that remained for her was removing the flashlight that the unsub had left as a beacon.
‘Sachs,’ Rhyme called.
‘Yeah?’
‘Why don’t we have city workers pop the manhole and you come out that way? You’ll have to search that area on the street anyway. We know that’s how he got in — and he was there about five minutes ago. Could have some trace.’
But she knew he was suggesting this so she could avoid the smaller of the two tunnels.
The circular coffin …
Sachs glanced at the black maw. It seemed even smaller now. ‘It’s a thought, Rhyme. But I think I’ll go out the way I came in.’
She’d beaten the fear once; she wasn’t going to let it win now.
Using a rough ledge on the brick wall to support her weight, she stepped up and boosted herself to within reach of the unsub’s flashlight. She took the surgical scissors from her pocket and cut the tape.
Pulling it down, she dislodged a handful of grayish powder, which she suddenly realized the perp had set as a trap for the crime scene officers. That’s why he’d left the light! The material poured straight into her eyes and, desperately brushing it away, she dislodged the N95 respirator and inhaled a good amount of the toxin.
‘No!’
Choking, choking, drowning on the stinging powder. Instantly the fierce burn began. She fell to the ground and stumbled back, nearly tripping over Chloe’s body.
Rhyme’s voice was in her ear. ‘Sachs! What was that? I couldn’t see.’
She struggled to inhale, to clear the poison from her lungs. The barbed hooks scorched her windpipe and eyes and nose. She ripped off the face mask, spitting, aware that she was contaminating the scene but she was unable to stop.
Rhyme was shouting. It was hard for her to hear but she believed he was calling, probably into his phone, ‘Medics down there! Now!’ And ‘I don’t care.’ And ‘Poison control. Fast.’
But then she heard nothing more than the choking that consumed her.
CHAPTER 7
Making his way back to his workshop off Canal Street, west of Chinatown, Billy Haven was thinking of Lovely Girl again, after the memories of her face, her voice, her touch had arisen so persistently during the modding session with Little Miss Pretentious, Chloe.