‘Rust.’
‘That’s what they said.’
Pulling the duct tape off an old metal armature to which the unsub had attached the flashlight had dislodged a handful of the stuff, which had poured into Sachs’s face.
As a criminalist, Rhyme was familiar with Fe2O3, more commonly known as iron (III) oxide. Rust is a wonderful trace element since it has adhesive properties and transfers readily from perp to victim and vice versa quite readily. It can be toxic but only in massive quantities — more than 2500 mg/m^3. It’s presence seemed to Rhyme didn’t smell weaponized. He instructed Pulaski to call the city works department to find out if ferric oxide dust was common in the tunnels.
‘Yep,’ the young officer reported after he’d hung up. ‘The city’s been installing pipes throughout Manhattan — because of the new water tunnel. Some of the fixtures they’re cutting away are a hundred and fifty years old. End up with a lot of dust. All their workers’re wearing face masks, it’s so bad.’
So the unsub had just happened to pick one of those fixtures to mount the flashlight to.
Sachs coughed some more, drank another gulp or two of water. ‘I’m pissed off I got careless.’
‘And, Sachs, we were waiting for a phone call.’
‘I tried. The lines were out. One of the EMS techs said it was an Internet problem that’s also screwing up the phone switches. Been happening for the past couple of days. Some dispute between the hardwire cable companies and the new fiber-optic ones. Turf wars. Even talking sabotage.’
Rhyme’s look said, Who cares?
With another faint, alto cough Sachs suited up for the lab and walked to the evidence cartons.
‘Let’s get our charts going.’ Rhyme nodded at the cluster of large whiteboards, standing about like herons on their stalky legs. They used these to list the evidence in a case. Only one was filled: the case of the recent mugging turned homicide near City Hall. The man who’d shaved so carefully for his date before stepping out into the street to be robbed and killed.
Sachs moved that board to the corner and pulled a clean one front and center. She took an erasable marker and asked, ‘What do we call him?’
‘November fifth’s today’s date. Let’s stick with our tradition. Unknown Subject Eleven-Five.’
Sachs coughed once, nodded, then wrote in her precise script:
237 Elizabeth Street
Victim: Chloe Moore
Rhyme glanced at the white space. ‘Now let’s start filling it in.’
CHAPTER 9
Before they could get to the evidence, though, the doorbell hummed once more.
With the familiar howl of wind and Gatling gun of falling ice, the door opened and closed. Lon Sellitto walked into the parlor, stomping his feet and missing the rug.
‘Getting worse. Man. What a mess.’
Rhyme ignored the AccuWeather. ‘The security videos?’
Referring to any surveillance cameras on Elizabeth Street, near the manhole that the perp had used to gain access to the murder site. And where he had apparently been spying on Sachs.
‘Zip.’
Rhyme grimaced.
‘But there was a witness.’
Another sour look from Rhyme.
‘I don’t blame you, Linc. But it’s all we got. Guy coming home from his shift saw somebody beside the manhole about ten minutes before nine one one got the call.’
‘Home from his shift,’ Rhyme said cynically. ‘So your wit was tired.’
‘Yeah, and a fucking tired witness who sees the perp is better than a fresh one who doesn’t.’
‘In which case he wouldn’t be a witness,’ Rhyme replied. A glance at the evidence board. Then: ‘The manhole was open?’
‘Right. Orange cones and warning tape around it.’
Rhyme said, ‘Like I thought. So he pops the cover with a hook, sets up the cones, climbs down, kills the vic and leaves.’ He turned to Sachs. ‘Moisture at the bottom of the ladder, you said. So he kept it open the whole time. What happened to the cones and tape?’
‘None there,’ Sachs said. ‘Not when I came out.’
‘He’s not going to be leaving them lying around nearby. Too smart for that. Lon, what’d your wit say about him, the perp?’
‘White male, stocking cap, thigh-length dark coat. Black or dark backpack. Didn’t see a lot of the face. Pretty much the same descrip of the guy by the manhole when Amelia was running the scene underneath.’
The one peering at Sachs. Who’d escaped into the crowds on Broadway.
‘What about the evidence on the street?’
‘In that storm?’ Sachs replied.
Weather was one of the classic contaminators of evidence and one of the most pernicious. And at the scene near the manhole, there’d been another problem: The emergency workers’ footprints and gear would have destroyed any remaining evidence as they raced to get Sachs into the ambulance after the apparent poisoning from the trap that wasn’t.
‘So we’ll write off that portion of the scene and concentrate on underground. First, the basement of the boutique?’
Jean Eagleston and her partner had photographed and searched the basement and the small utility room that opened onto it but they’d found very little. Mel Cooper examined the trace they’d collected. He reported, ‘Matches the samples from the cellar. Nothing helpful there.’
‘All right. The big question: What’s the tox screen result? COD?’
They were starting with the assumption that the cause of death was poison but that wouldn’t be known until the medical examiner completed the analysis. Sachs had called and harangued the chief examiner to send over a preliminary report ASAP. They needed both the toxin and whatever sedative, as seemed likely, the perp had injected into Chloe to subdue her. Sachs had sealed the urgency by pointing out that they believed this murder was the start of a serial killing spree. The ME, she reported, had sounded as burdened as doctors generally do, especially city employee doctors, but he’d promised to move the Chloe Moore case to the front of the queue.
Again piqued by impatience, Rhyme said, ‘Sachs, you swabbed the site of the tattoo?’
‘Sure.’
‘Run that, Mel, and let’s see if we can get a head start on the poison.’
‘Will do.’ The tool Cooper used for this analysis was the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer — two large, joined instruments sitting in the corner of the parlor. The gas chromatography portion of the equipment analyzes an unknown sample of trace by separating out each chemical it contains based on its volatility — that is, how long it takes to evaporate. The GC separates the component parts; the second device, the mass spectrometer, identifies the substances by comparing their unique structure with a database of known chemicals.
Running the noisy, hot machine — the samples are, in effect, burned — Cooper soon got results.
‘Cicutoxin.’
The NYPD had an extensive toxin database, which Rhyme had used occasionally when he’d been head of Investigation Resources — the old name for Crime Scene — though murder by poison was uncommon then and even more so now. Cooper scrolled through the entry for this substance. He paraphrased: ‘Comes from the water hemlock plant. Attacks the central nervous system. She’d have experienced severe nausea, vomiting, we can see frothing too. Muscle twitching.’ He looked up. ‘It’s one of the most deadly plants in North America.’
He nodded at the machine. ‘And it’s been distilled. No instances of that level of concentration ever recorded. Usually takes some time to die after it’s been administered. At these levels? She’d be dead in a half hour, little longer, maybe.’