The Broken Window (43 page)

people at the shooting zone.”

“Exactly.”

So Richard Logan had ordered the papers, and paid a large price for them, to keep the team focused on Birmingham, while he hurried to London to complete his mission to kill the Reverend Goodlight.

“What do Danny Krueger’s people say?”

“That a boat will be waiting on the south coast to spirit him away to France.”

Spirit him away.
Rhyme loved it. Cops don’t talk that way over here.

He thought again about the safe house near Manchester. And the break-in at Goodlight’s NGO in London. Was there anything Rhyme might’ve seen if he had walked the grid at either of those locales via the high-definition video? Some tiny clue that they’d missed that might give them a clearer idea of exactly where and when the killer was going to strike? If so, the evidence was gone now. He’d just have to hope they’d made the right deductions.

“What do you have in place?”

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“Ten officers around the shooting zone. All plainclothed or in camouflage.” She added that Danny Krueger, along with the French security man and another tactical team, were making themselves “subtly visible” in Birmingham. Longhurst had also added an extra protection detail where the reverend was actually hiding; they had no evidence that the killer had learned the location but she didn’t want to take any chances.

“We’ll know something soon, Detective.”

Just as they disconnected, his computer dinged.

“mr Rhyme?”

The words appeared on the screen in front of him. A small window had opened. It was a webcam view of Amelia Sachs’s living room. He could see Pam at the keyboard, instant messaging him.

He spoke to her through his voice-recognition system.
“Hello Pam owe are you dew in?”

Goddamn computer. Maybe he should have their digital guru, Rodney Szarnek, install a new system.

But she deduced the message just fine.

“Good,”
she typed.
“How R U?”

“I am good.”

“Amelia there?”

“No. She is how on a case.”

“
:-(
Bummer. Want 2 talk 2 her. Called but not picking up.”

“Any thing eye can dew—”

Damn. He sighed and tried again.
“Anything we can do here?”

“No thx.”
A pause and he saw her glance at her cell phone. She looked back at the computer. Typed,

“
Rachel calling. Back in minute.”

She left the webcam on but turned away, speaking into her mobile. She lugged a massive book bag onto her lap and dug through it, opened a text and found some notes inside. She read them aloud, it seemed.

Rhyme was about to turn to the whiteboards when he glanced at the webcam window.

Something had changed.

He frowned and maneuvered his chair closer, alarmed.

Someone else seemed to be in Sachs’s town house. Could it be? It was hard to tell for certain but as he squinted he saw that, yes, a man was there, hiding in a dark hallway, only twenty feet or so from Pam.

Rhyme squinted, moving his head as far forward as he could. An intruder, his face hidden by a hat. And
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he was holding something. Was it a gun? A knife?

“Thom!”

The aide wasn’t within earshot. Of course, he was taking the trash out.

“Command, dial Sachs, home.”

Thank God the ECU did exactly as instructed.

He could see Pam glance at the phone beside the computer. But she ignored the ringing; the house wasn’t hers—she’d let voice mail take a message. She continued speaking into her mobile.

The man leaned out of the hallway, his face, obscured by the brim of his hat, aimed directly at her.

“Command, instant message!”

The box popped up on the screen.

“Command, type: ‘Pam exclamation point.’ Command, send.”

“Pamex lamentation point.”

Fuck!

“Command, type, ‘Pam danger leave now.’ Command, send.”

This message went through pretty much unchanged.

Pam, read it, please! Rhyme begged silently. Look at the screen!

But the girl was lost in her conversation. Her face was no longer so carefree. The discussion had turned serious.

Rhyme called 911, and the operator assured him that a police car would be at the town house in five minutes. But the intruder was only seconds away from Pam, who was completely unaware of him.

Rhyme knew it was 522, of course. He’d tortured Malloy to get information about all of them. Amelia Sachs was the first on the list to die. Only it wouldn’t be Sachs. It would be this innocent girl.

His heart was pounding, a sensation registering as a fierce, throbbing headache. He tried the phone again. Four rings. “
Hi, this is Amelia. Please leave your message at the tone.”

He tried again. “Command, type, ‘Pam call me period. Lincoln period.’”

And what would he tell her to do if he got through? Sachs had weapons in the place but he didn’t know where she kept them. Pam was an athletic girl, and the intruder didn’t seem much larger than she was.

But he’d have a weapon. And, given where he was, he could get a garrote around her neck or a knife into her back before she was even aware of his presence.

And it would happen before his eyes.

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Then at last she was swiveling toward the computer. She’d see the message.

Good, keep turning.

Rhyme saw a shadow on the floor across the room. Was the killer moving in closer?

Still talking on her phone, Pam moved toward the computer but she was looking at the keyboard, not the screen.

Look up! Rhyme urged silently.

Please! Read the goddamn message!

But like all kids today, Pam didn’t need to look at the screen to make sure she’d typed correctly. With her cell held tight between cheek and shoulder, she glanced fast at the keyboard as she stabbed the letters with quick strokes.

“gotta go. bye mr Rhyme. C U
:-)”

The screen went black.

Amelia Sachs was uncomfortable in the crime-scene Tyvek jumpsuit, with surgeon’s hat and booties.

Claustrophobic, nauseous from inhaling the bitter scent of damp paper and blood and sweat in the warehouse.

She hadn’t known Captain Joseph Malloy well. But he was, as Lon Sellitto had announced, “one of ours.” And she was appalled at what 522 had done to him, to extract the information he wanted. She was nearly finished running the scene and carried the evidence-collection bags outside, infinitely grateful for the air here, even though it reeked of diesel fumes.

She kept hearing the voice of her father. As a young girl she’d glanced into her parents’ bedroom and found him in his dress patrolman’s uniform, wiping tears. This had shaken her; she’d never seen him cry.

He’d gestured her inside. Hermann Sachs always played straight with his daughter and he’d sat her down on a bedside chair and explained that a friend of his, a fellow officer, had been shot and killed while stopping a robbery.

“Amie, in this business, everybody’s family. You probably spend more time with the guys you work with than you do with your own wife and kids. Every time somebody in blue dies, you die a little bit too.

Doesn’t matter, patrol or brass, they’re all family and it’s the same pain when you lose somebody.”

And she now felt the pain he’d been speaking of. Felt it very deeply.

“I’m finished,” she said to the crime-scene crew, who were standing beside their rapid response van.

She’d searched the scene alone but the officers from Queens had videotaped and photographed it and walked the grid at the secondary scenes—the likely entrance and exit routes.

Nodding to the tour doctor and her associates from the M.E.’s office, Sachs said, “Okay, you can get him to the morgue.”

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The men, in their thick green gloves and jumpsuits, walked inside. Assembling the evidence in the milk crates for transport to Rhyme’s lab, Sachs paused.

Someone was watching her.

She’d heard a tink of metal on metal or concrete or glass from up a deserted alleyway. A fast look, and she believed she saw a figure hiding near a deserted factory’s loading dock, which had collapsed years ago.

Search carefully, but watch your back…

She remembered the scene at the cemetery, the killer, wearing the swiped police hat, watching her. Felt the same uneasiness she had there. She left the evidence bags and walked down the alley, hand on her pistol. She saw no one.

Paranoia.

“Detective?” one of the techs called.

She kept going. Was there a face behind that filthy window?

“Detective,” he persisted.

“I’ll be right there.” A little irritation in her voice.

The crime-scene tech said, “Sorry, it’s a call. From Detective Rhyme.”

She always shut her phone off when she got to a scene to avoid distractions.

“Tell him I’ll call him right back.”

“Detective, he says it’s about somebody named Pam. There’s been an incident at your town house.

You’re needed right away.”

Amelia Sachs ran inside fast, oblivious to the pain in her knees.

Past the police at the door, not even nodding to them. “Where?”

One officer pointed toward the living room.

Sachs hurried into the room… and found Pam on the couch. The girl looked up, her face pale.

The policewoman sat beside her. “You’re all right?”

“I’m fine. A little freaked out is all.”

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“Nothing hurt? I can hug you?”

Pam laughed and Sachs flung her arms around the girl. “What happened?”

“Somebody broke in. He was here while I was. Mr. Rhyme could see him behind me on the webcam.

He kept calling and on the, like, fifth ring or something, I picked up and he told me to start screaming and get out.”

“And you did?”

“Not really. I kind of ran into the kitchen and got a knife. I was pretty pissed. He took off.”

Sachs glanced at a detective from the local Brooklyn precinct, a squat African-American man, who said in a deep baritone, “He was gone when we got here. Neighbors didn’t see anything.”

So it
had
been her imagination at the warehouse crime scene where Joe Malloy was killed. Or maybe some kid or wino curious about what the cops were doing. After killing Malloy, 522 had come to her place—to look for files or evidence or to finish the job he’d started: kill her.

Sachs walked through the town house with the detective and Pam. The desk had been ransacked but nothing seemed to be missing.

“I thought maybe it was Stuart.” Pam took a breath. “I kind of broke up with him.”

“You did?”

A nod.

“Good for you… But it wasn’t him?”

“No. The guy here was wearing different clothes and wasn’t built like Stuart. And, yeah, he’s a son of a bitch but he’s not going to break into somebody else’s town house.”

“You get a look at him?”

“Naw. He turned and ran before I could see him real clearly.” She’d noticed only his outfit.

The detective explained that Pam had described the burglar as a male, white or light-skinned black or Latino, medium build, wearing blue jeans and a dark blue plaid sports jacket. He’d called Rhyme too, after he’d learned of the webcam, but the criminalist hadn’t seen anything more than a vague form in the hallway.

They found the window through which he’d broken in. Sachs had an alarm system but Pam had shut it off when she’d arrived.

She looked around the place. The anger and dismay she’d felt at Malloy’s horrible death faded, replaced by the same uneasiness, and vulnerability, that she’d been aware of at the cemetery, at the warehouse where Malloy had died, at SSD… in fact,
everywhere
since they’d started the pursuit of 522. Like at the scene near DeLeon’s house: Was he watching her now?

She saw motion outside the window, a flash of light… Was it from the blowing leaves in front of nearby
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windows reflecting the pale sunlight?

Or was it 522?

“Amelia?” Pam asked in a soft voice, looking around uneasily herself. “Everything okay?”

This brought Sachs back to reality. Get to work. And fast. The killer had been here—and not that long ago. Goddamnit, find out something useful. “Sure, honey. It’s fine.”

A patrol officer from the precinct asked, “Detective, you want somebody from Crime Scene to look it over?”

“That’s okay,” she said with a glance to Pam and a tight smile. “I’ll handle it.”

Sachs got her portable crime-scene kit from the trunk of her car, and she and Pam searched together.

Well, Sachs did the searching but Pam, standing clear of the perimeter, described exactly where the killer had been. Though her voice was unsteady, the girl was coolly efficient.

I kind of ran into the kitchen and got a knife.

Since Pam was here, Sachs asked a patrol officer to stand guard in the garden—where the killer had escaped. This didn’t allay her concern completely, though, not with 522’s uncanny ability to spy on his victims, to learn all about them, to get close. She wanted to search the scene and get Pam away as soon as she could.

With the teenager directing her, Sachs searched the places he’d stepped. But she found no evidence in the town house. The killer had either used gloves when he’d broken in or hadn’t touched any receptive surfaces, and the adhesive rollers revealed no signs of foreign trace.

“Where did he go outside?” Sachs asked.

“I’ll show you.” Pam glanced at Sachs’s face, which was apparently revealing her reluctance to expose the girl to more danger. “It’d be better than me just telling you.”

Sachs nodded and they walked into the garden. She looked around carefully. She asked the patrol officer, “See anything?”

“Nope. But I’ve gotta say, when you think somebody’s watching you, you see somebody watching you.”

“I hear that.”

He jerked a thumb toward a row of dark windows across the alley, then toward some thick azaleas and boxwood bushes. “I checked them out. Nothing. But I’ll keep on it.”

“Thanks.”