The Cold Moon (6 page)

"I'll call somebody today... Thank you, Detective. It means a lot that you believe me. About Ben not killing himself."

After they hung up, Sachs filled out a request for analysis of the ash, mud and other evidence at the Creeleys' house and packed these materials separately from the Watchmaker evidence. She then completed the chain-of-custody cards and helped Simpson and Rettig pack up the van. It took two of them to wrap the heavy metal bar in plastic and stow it.

She was just swinging shut the van's door when she glanced up, across the street. The cold had driven off most of the spectators but she noted a man standing with a
Post
in front of an old building being renovated on Cedar Street, near Chase Plaza.

That's not right, Sachs thought. Nobody stands on the street corner and reads a newspaper in this weather. If you're worried about the stock market or curious about a recent disaster, you flip through quickly, find out how much money you lost or how far the church bus plummeted and then keep on walking.

But you don't just stand in the windy street for Page Six gossip.

She couldn't see the man clearly — he was partially hidden behind the newspaper and a pile of debris from the construction site. But one thing was obvious: his boots. They'd have a traction tread, which could have left the distinctive impressions she found in the snow at the mouth of the alley.

Sachs debated. Most of the other officers had left. Simpson and Rettig were armed but not tactically trained and the suspect was on the other side of a three-foot-high metal barricade set up for an upcoming parade. He could escape easily if she approached him from where she was now, across the street. She'd have to handle the take-down more subtly.

She walked up to Pulaski, whispered, "There's somebody at your six o'clock. I want to talk to him. Guy with the paper."

"The perp?" he asked.

"Don't know. Maybe. Here's what we're going to do. I'm getting into the RRV with the CS team. They're going to drop me at the corner to the east. Can you drive a manual?"

"Sure."

She gave him the keys to her bright red Camaro. "You drive
west
on Cedar toward Broadway, maybe forty feet. Stop fast, get out and vault the barricade, come back this way."

"Flush him."

"Right. If he's just out reading the paper, we'll have a talk, check his ID and get back to work. If not, I'm guessing he'll turn and run right into my arms. You come up behind and cover me."

"Got it."

Sachs made a show of taking a last look around the scene and then climbed into the big brown RRV van. She leaned forward. "We've got a problem."

Nancy Simpson and Frank Rettig glanced toward her. Simpson unzipped her jacket and put her hand on the grip of her pistol.

"No, don't need that. I'll tell you what's going down." She explained the situation then said to Simpson, who was behind the wheel, "Head east. At the light make a left. Just slow up. I'll jump out."

Pulaski climbed into the Camaro, fired it up and couldn't resist pumping the gas to get a sexy whine out of the Tubi exhausts.

Rettig asked, "You don't want us to stop?"

"No, just slow up. I want the suspect to be sure I'm leaving."

"Okay," Simpson said. "You got it."

The RRV headed east. In the sideview mirror Sachs saw Pulaski start forward — easy, she told him silently; it was a monster engine and the clutch gripped like Velcro. But he controlled the horses and rolled forward smoothly, the opposite direction from the van.

At the intersection of Cedar and Nassau the RRV turned and Sachs opened the door. "Keep going. Don't slow up."

Simpson did a great job keeping the van steady. "Good luck," the crime scene officer called.

Sachs leapt out.

Whoa, a little faster than she'd planned. She nearly stumbled, caught herself and thanked the Department of Sanitation for the generous sprinkling of salt on the icy street. She started along the sidewalk, coming up behind the man with the newspaper. He didn't see her.

A block away, then a half block. She opened her jacket and gripped the Glock that rode high on her belt. About fifty feet past the suspect, Pulaski suddenly pulled to the curb, climbed out and — without the guy's noticing — easily jumped over the barricade. They had him sandwiched in, separated by a barrier on one side and the building being renovated on the other.

A good plan.

Except for one glitch.

Across the street from Sachs were two armed guards, stationed in front of the Housing and Urban Development building. They'd been helping with the crime scene and one of them glanced at Sachs. He waved to her, calling, "Forget something, Detective?"

Shit. The man with the newspaper whirled around and saw her.

He dropped the paper, jumped the barrier and sprinted as fast as he could down the middle of the street toward Broadway, catching Pulaski on the other side of the metal fence. The rookie tried to leap it, caught his foot and went down hard in the street. Sachs paused but saw he wasn't badly hurt and she continued after the suspect. Pulaski rolled to his feet and together they sprinted after the man, who had a thirty-foot head start and was increasing his lead.

She grabbed her walkie-talkie and pressed
TRANSMIT
. "Detective Five Eight Eight Five," she gasped. "In foot pursuit of a suspect in that homicide near Cedar Street. Suspect is heading west on Cedar, wait, now south on Broadway. Need backup."

"Roger, Five Eight Eight Five. Directing units to your location."

Several other RMPs — radio mobile patrols, squad cars — responded that they were nearby and en route to cut off the suspect's escape.

As Sachs and Pulaski approached Battery Park, the man suddenly stopped, nearly stumbling. He glanced to his right — at the subway.

No, not the train, she thought. Too many bystanders in close proximity.

Don't do it...

Another glance over his shoulder and he plunged down the stairs.

She stopped, calling to Pulaski, "Go after him." A deep breath. "If he shoots, check your backdrop real carefully. Let him go rather than fire if there's any doubt at all."

His face uneasy, the rookie nodded. Sachs knew he'd never been in a firefight. He called, "Where're you —"

"Just go!" she shouted.

The rookie took a breath and started sprinting again. Sachs ran to the subway entrance and watched Pulaski descend three steps at a time. Then she crossed the street and trotted a half block south. She drew her gun and stepped behind a newsstand.

Counting down... four... three... two...

One.

She stepped out, turning to the subway exit, just as the suspect sprinted up the stairs. She trained the gun on him. "Don't move."

Passersby were screaming and dropping to the ground. The suspect's reaction, though, was simply disgust, presumably that his trick hadn't worked. Sachs had thought he might be coming this way. The surprise in his eyes when he saw the subway could've been phony, she'd decided. It told her that maybe he'd been making for the station all along — as a possible feint. He raised his hands lethargically.

"On the ground, face down."

"Come on. I —"

"Now!" she snapped.

He glanced at her gun and then complied. Winded from the run, her joints in pain, she dropped a knee into the middle of his back to cuff him. He winced. Sachs didn't care. She was just in one of those moods.

"They got a suspect. At the scene."

Lincoln Rhyme and the man who delivered this interesting news were sitting in his lab. Dennis Baker, fortyish, compact and handsome, was a supervisory lieutenant in Major Cases — Sellitto's division — and had been ordered by City Hall to make sure the Watchmaker was stopped as fast as possible. He'd been one of those who'd "insisted" that Sellitto get Rhyme and Sachs on the case.

Rhyme lifted an eyebrow. Suspect? Criminals often did return to the scene of the crime, for various reasons, and Rhyme wondered if Sachs had actually collared the killer.

Baker turned back to his cell phone, listening and nodding. The lieutenant — who bore an uncanny resemblance to the actor George Clooney — had that focused, humorless quality that makes for an excellent police administrator but a tedious drinking buddy.

"He's a good guy to have on your side," Sellitto had said of Baker just before the man arrived from One Police Plaza.

"Fine, but is he going to meddle?" Rhyme had asked the rumpled detective.

"Not so's you'd notice."

"Meaning?"

"He wants a big win under his belt and he thinks you can deliver it. He'll give you all the slack — and support — you need."

Which was good, because they were down some manpower. There was another NYPD detective who often worked with them, Roland Bell, a transplant from the South. The detective had an easy-going manner, very different from Rhyme's, though an equally methodical nature. Bell was on vacation with his two sons down in North Carolina, visiting his girlfriend, a local sheriff in the Tarheel State.

They also often worked with an FBI agent, renowned for his antiterrorism and undercover work, Fred Dellray. Murders of this sort aren't usually federal crimes but Dellray often helped Sellitto and Rhyme on homicides and would make the resources of the Bureau available without the typical red tape. But the Feds had their hands full with several massive Enron-style corporate fraud investigations that were just getting under way. Dellray was stuck on one of these.

Hence, Baker's presence — not to mention his influence at the Big Building — was a godsend. Sellitto now disconnected his cell phone call and explained that Sachs was interviewing the suspect at the moment, though he wasn't being very cooperative.

Sellitto was sitting next to Mel Cooper, the slightly built, ballroom-dancing forensic technician that Rhyme insisted on using. Cooper suffered for his brilliance as a crime scene lab man; Rhyme called him at all hours to run the technical side of his cases. He'd hesitated a bit when Rhyme called him at the lab in Queens that morning, explaining that he'd planned to take his girlfriend and his mother to Florida for the weekend.

Rhyme's response was, "All the more incentive to get here as soon as possible, wouldn't you say?"

"I'll be there in a half hour." He was now at an examination table in the lab, awaiting the evidence. With a latex-gloved hand, he fed some biscuits to Jackson; the dog was curled up at his feet.

"If there's any canine hair contamination," Rhyme grumbled, "I won't be happy."

"He's pretty cute," Cooper said, swapping gloves.

The criminalist grunted. "Cute" was not a word that figured in the Lincoln Rhyme dictionary.

Sellitto's phone rang again and he took the call, then disconnected. "The vic at the pier — Coast Guard and our divers haven't found any bodies yet. Still checking missing persons reports."

Just then Crime Scene arrived and Thom helped an officer cart in the evidence from the scenes Sachs had just run.

About time...

Baker and Cooper lugged in a heavy, plastic-wrapped metal bar.

The murder weapon in the alleyway killing.

The CS officer handed over chain-of-custody cards, which Cooper signed. The man said good-bye but Rhyme didn't acknowledge him. The criminalist was looking at the evidence. This was the moment that he lived for. After the spinal cord accident, his passion — really an addiction — for the sport of going one-on-one with perps continued undiminished, and the evidence from crimes was the field on which this game was played.

He felt eager anticipation.

And guilt too.

Because he wouldn't be filled with this exhilaration if not for someone else's loss: the victim on the pier and Theodore Adams, their families and friends. Oh, he felt sympathy for their sorrow, sure. But he was able to wrap up the sense of tragedy and put it somewhere. Some people called him cold, insensitive, and he supposed he was. But those who excel in a field do so because a number of disparate traits happen to come together within them. And Rhyme's sharp mind and relentless drive and impatience happened to coincide with the emotional distance that is a necessary attribute of the best criminalists.

He was squinting, gazing at the boxes, when Ron Pulaski arrived. Rhyme had first met him when the young man had been on the force only a short time. Although that was a year earlier — and Pulaski was a family man with two children — Rhyme couldn't stop thinking of him as the "rookie." Some nicknames you just can't shake.

Rhyme announced, "I know Amelia has somebody in custody but in case it isn't the perp, I don't want to lose time." He turned to Pulaski. "Give me the lay of the land. First scene, the pier."

"All right," he began uneasily. "The pier is located approximately at Twenty-second Street in the Hudson River. It extends into the river fifty-two feet at a height of eighteen feet above the surface of the water. The murder —"

"So they've recovered the body?"

"I don't think so."

"Then you meant
apparent
murder?"

"Right. Yessir. The apparent murder occurred at the far end of the pier, that is, the west end, sometime between six last night and six this morning. The dock was closed then."

There was very little evidence: just the fingernail, probably a man's, the blood, which Mel Cooper tested and found to be human and type AB positive, which meant that both A and B antigens — proteins — were present in the victim's plasma, and neither anti-A nor anti-B antigens were. In addition a separate protein, Rh, was present. The combination of AB antigens and Rh positive made the victim's the third-rarest blood type, accounting for about 3.5 percent of the population. Further tests confirmed that the victim was a male.

In addition, they concluded that he was probably older and had coronary problems since he was taking an anticoagulant — a blood thinner. There were no traces of other drugs or indications of infection or disease in the blood.

There were no fingerprints, trace or footprints at the scene and no tire tread marks nearby, other than those left by employees' vehicles.

Sachs had collected a piece of the chain link and Cooper examined the cut edges, learning that the perp had used what seemed to be standard wire cutters to get through the fence. The team could match these marks with those made by a tool if they found one but there was no way to trace the cutter back to its source by the impressions alone.