“I guess, but no rape, no assault. He doesn’t kill anybody.”
“So. Robbery?”
“No. He fucks with their minds.”
Going to all that effort and risk... and not making money? Insane.
“Why?”
“No idea.” Douglass shrugged. “I spent the morning following her — Amelia. Oh, here’s her picture, by the way. I took it at the scene.”
“Attractive.”
Douglass shrugged. He had never mentioned women, or men, in his life. Maybe sex didn’t interest him. He was one of the few men over whom Buryak did not have the leverage of a vulnerable family.
But Douglass had another secret that kept him in line.
“Her name’s Amelia, like I said. Detective. Works crime scenes, mostly. So I followed her to see if she was running something to do with us, with you.”
“Did she make you?”
“No, she might’ve seen the Caddie, so I swapped out for my SUV.”
“Then the big question I must ask: Is Rhyme — and her, too, I
guess — looking into me?”
“I think so. Here’s what I found. Amelia went back to his town house, where he works. He’s got a lab—”
“Yes, yes, I know it well,” Buryak said darkly. “The three hundred block of Central Park West.”
Douglass cocked his head. Then, when Buryak said nothing more, continued, “Only there was something odd. There was a cruiser parked up the block.”
“A Land Cruiser? What is that, Toyota?”
“No, I mean, a police cruiser. Two guys inside, was all I could see. After a while, this guy leaves Rhyme’s apartment and Amelia comes out and waves the guys in. They grab some crates from the trunk.”
“Crates?”
“It was NYPD evidence inside. I could see the bags. Chain-of-custody cards.”
“Why do you think it’s about me?”
Douglass looked at him, as if Buryak had missed something. “You did hear, didn’t you?... Oh, no, sure. You don’t watch the news.”
Buryak was impassioned about the commodity he sold: factual information, hard, verifiable data. Not speculation, not rumor, not guesses.
Media...
Douglass continued, “Rhyme got fired. He’s not working for the department anymore.”
“Because—”
“He screwed up at your trial, and that fucked with the mayor’s ratings. So whatever they’re up to, it can’t be an official NYPD case. You were right, I think — about what your research picked up in the prosecutor’s office. He’s gunning for you.”
“He is an arrogant prick. And now he’s lost his job. All the more reason to bring me down.”
Brick approached. Buryak bent to pull her onto his lap, but she walked away. He remembered that villain from the James Bond movies, holding the cat. The cat just sat there and took the creepy stroking. It wasn’t a Maine Coon; they had minds of their own. You could pet them if they wanted to be petted. Otherwise, forget it.
Buryak sipped tea. When Douglass had first started working for him, he’d been offered a beverage. He declined. On the second visit, he did the same. Buryak had stopped offering.
Buryak said, “That trial made me quite tense. I wish I could just get a little peace. Maria has a masseuse she goes to, Palm Beach, when she is upset. Ah, what I wouldn’t give for a little peace...”
The man had mastered the language of speaking as if a prosecutor was listening to every word.
Aaron Douglass had, in turn, mastered understanding the language of Buryak. It was like a code, perfectly clear when you had the key.
Now, Buryak was sending an unequivocal message to Douglass, who easily translated: Find muscle, somebody good and discreet, and make sure that person “corrects” the situation with this Rhyme and his wife, all the while keeping Buryak insulated.
“There’s a masseur I use sometimes,” Douglass said. “He’s very good. And I know he’s available. I’ll call him now.”
“A massage, yes, yes.” Buryak stretched and rose. He glanced at the cats. “Better feed my livestock now. Do you have pets, Aaron?”
A very brief hesitation.
Was he thinking of the wisdom of giving away some personal information?
“No.”
“Ah, they can add a great deal to your life.”
“I’ll remember that.”
28
As Sachs piloted the Torino to a curb on East 97th Street she was aware of flash of white: a Lexus SUV turned quickly west on a cross street and drove out of sight.
She believed she’d seen it earlier, close to Rhyme’s town house. Had this vehicle been following her? She’d had her eye out for the gray Cadillac, which she hadn’t seen, but she now wondered if she was being double-teamed.
By whom? And why?
Nothing to do about it. Except stay aware.
She parked up the street from the Bechtel Building and tossed the NYPD official business placard on the dash, then stepped out. Sticking to shadows and looking around frequently for gray sedans or white SUVs — and any other pedestrian surveillance — she made her way to the building. A few doors down, she paused and studied it carefully, with an eye out for threats.
Human threats, she meant. The building itself — oh, it was a given that the place was a death trap. The stone façade, three stories tall, was pitted and soot stained, and the crowning cornice piece into which was carved Bechtel was cracked horizontally. It seemed that not much beyond a gust of wind could topple the broken portion and send it crashing to earth. The glass was missing from most windows. A portion of the north wall had collapsed into a vacant lot, and sizable chunks of ceiling and walls had come down inside.
She saw no movement.
Sachs radioed Dispatch and reported, “Detective Five Eight Eight Five. I’m ten-twenty at Four Nine Nine East Nine Seven. K.”
“Roger, Five Eight Eight Five.”
Then she clicked her Motorola to mute; inopportune crackles had betrayed any number of officers.
The front double door, scrawled over with graffiti, was nailed shut, but one could gain entry from the lot — the route the Locksmith would have taken to get inside and surveil Carrie Noelle’s building.
She ducked under a large, rusty sign.
She made her way through the chain-link fence gate, in a contortionist’s maneuver that sent a pang through her arthritic bones. Some medical procedures had helped but certain maneuvers reminded painfully of the temperament of her joints.
Sachs was prepared to collect evidence if the Locksmith had returned, but she was not in Tyvek overalls. Hardly wise to wear a white outfit when there was a possibility her prey was still inside the dark rooms. Her concession to forensic propriety was the black latex gloves she wore, hair tucked up under a baseball cap and rubber bands around her boot soles — to differentiate her feet from the perp’s. If a long strand of red hair contaminated the evidence, it could be easily excluded. The same with a fiber from her jacket.
Once inside, she paused at a collapsed wall and a pile of rubble.
Listening.
A drip of water, a faint creak that she put down to settling structure.
No breathing, no footsteps.
She pulled her short Maglite from her jacket pocket and clicked it on, holding the black tube in her left hand, so her right was free to draw. The beam swept over the first-floor lobby. Nothing appeared to have come down since she’d been here a few hours ago. Making minimal noise, she returned to the window where the Locksmith had stood to view Carrie’s building.
A tile sign on an intact wall told her that the Bechtels had made home appliances a century ago. Now the structure was used for something quite different: Needles and crack pipes littered the floor, and some cardboard cartons had been broken down into homeless mattresses. Wads of filthy cloth were piled up against some of these. Empty malt liquor and booze bottles too. Vodka seemed to give the most kick for the buck.