Releasing his grip with his right, he took the chest rope and tossed as hard as he could into the window.
“Got it!”
“How’s that, Trudes?”
“Knew you could do it, Dad.”
“Pull!”
“Watch out for the broken glass on the window frame,” Ron called.
Least of my worries.
The kid might have been skinny but he was strong. Soon Spencer could grip the windowsill with his gloved hands.
“Again.”
Summiting was the tensest moment of a climb.
Spencer tugged himself upward as Ron pulled fiercely.
Then he was tumbling on top of the officer.
“We’ve only got minutes. We need to move.”
He turned on the oxygen and slapped the mask on Pulaski’s face. The officer inhaled deeply and his color returned. After thirty seconds, Pulaski handed it back and Spencer too inhaled the sweet nothing.
He mounted the gray and red Sterling FCX around Pulaski’s waist, then showed him how the lever worked to release tension on the rope and lower himself slowly.
“You cool with it?” The smoke was getting worse even in the time Spencer had been here. Sparks and heat flowed from the stairwell.
He nodded.
Spencer put on the mask and inhaled deeply, blinked away the tears from the smoke. He saw a crowbar on the floor and he used it to crush the rest of the broken glass on the bottom of the frame. He then clamped the hook of the FCX to the radiator and helped Pulaski into the window, and, gripping the man’s belt tightly, eased him around so that the front of his body was facing the building. “I’ve got you. Okay...” He saw that the device was properly rigged. And let go of the belt. “You’re free. Easy with the lever. Down you go.”
“Hey, look, Lyle... I don’t know what to say. I—”
“Later. Now get the hell out of here.”
51
I park the glistening black Audi A6 at the curb and climb out, cautious. Looking around.
Police.
Fire.
Responding to what I’m responsible for.
The conflagration within the Sandleman Building.
It’s not burning as fast as I’d hoped but it’s fast enough. Flames are crawling up the core and I’m sure no one will get to Dev Swensen’s shop in time to save anything incriminating against me.
But I’m not here because of the building.
I have another mission.
To take some photographs.
I need a set of keys. Many people are sooooo careless, and leave them in glove compartments, in cup holders, tucked above sun visors.
Or, in this instance, in the ignition itself.
Shame on you, driver. What’s the good of locks if you leave the keys within the fox’s grasp.
Of course, he’s not a complete fool. He’s kept the engine running for the air-conditioning and taken a second set with him to lock the door.
I look up and down the street.
I’m invisible. Who wouldn’t be when there’s a burning high-rise and a thousand flashing lights? Crouching, I open the door with the jiggler. I pluck the keys out and I take dozens of pictures from all angles. People think you make a wax impression of a key — they’ve seen that on TV. In fact, that works only for the most rudimentary skeleton keys. For pin and tumbler, you need high megapixel pictures.
To augment my efforts, I take a sixty-second video.
I have enough.
I slide them back into the ignition, start the engine, lock the door with the button inside and ease it shut.
In sixty seconds I’ve fired up the Audi and am headed away from the excitement. As much as I’d love to watch the building come down, I have some pressing errands.
Ron Pulaski was safely down, being given oxygen and water.
But there was no sign of Lyle Spencer, still on the twelfth floor. The fire was rising and the smoke was growing black and thicker.
“What’s he doing?” Rhyme muttered.
Sachs said, “Jesus. The flames’ll be at his floor any time now.”
Two minutes passed.
Three.
Five.
“Call him.”
As she lifted her phone, it hummed with an incoming call. “It’s him.” She put it on speaker. “Lyle. Are you all right?”
“I broke through the door Ron was trying to get into.” He paused, presumably for oxygen. “The lock shop — it’s burning. Only had time to scoop up some dust and dirt from in front of a workstation. Got it in a bag. I’ll pitch it down.”
“Get out, Lyle,” Rhyme said. “The flames’re one floor below you.”
Spencer disconnected without responding that he’d heard.
Rhyme saw him appear in the window and toss a weighted paper bag out. It sailed to the street and landed near one of the firemen who picked it up and, seeing Sachs wave, brought it to them.
She put it in an evidence bag. She noted the fireman’s name, Rhyme saw, but tucked the bag away; they’d do chain-of-custody later.
Sachs said, “Why isn’t he coming down? Is he still looking for something?”
Is he still alive?
They stared at the window.
Come on, Lyle.
Inside the building, the ninth or tenth floor collapsed with a mammoth roar, firing smoke and embers from windows. The building groaned.
It was then that Spencer appeared in the window. He seemed to be breathing into the mask deeply, filling his lungs. Then, curiously, he lifted his head and was gazing out over the city, like a tourist on the Empire State Building’s observation platform. His body language was serene.
Spencer looked down at the assembly of fire trucks.
Rhyme said, “Send him a text. We need him down now. And repeat ‘Need.’”
Sachs looked at her husband and then sent the message.
They could see him fish his phone from his pocket and look at it for a long moment. Then he slid it back.
Again studying the cityscape.
And down at the roof of the one-story building a hundred feet below.
Another floor collapsed. The building seemed to rock.
At last Spencer bent down and hooked the escape rig to something inside the hallway. He doffed the mask and tank — to lose the weight for the journey downward, Rhyme supposed — and then turned and scooted himself over the sill then ledge.
While Ron Pulaski had descended in a jerking fashion, Lyle Spencer returned to earth with balletic elegance, as casually as another man might cross the street, assured by a radiant green light that his passage was safe.
52
“Well, it’s Lincoln Rhyme.”
Turning the chair, he found himself looking at two men approaching. They appeared troubled, but Rhyme’s impression was that they were affecting that expression artificially.
Maybe they thought he was here in an official capacity.
The speaker was big, tanned Richard Beaufort. Rhyme now realized he looked like some star he’d seen on a TV show — about police, as a matter of fact. Also present was Abe Potter, the mayor’s aide, a slim, balding man with dark tufts of straight hair above each ear. He resembled no one memorable.
Sachs glared toward them, but Rhyme said, “It’s okay,” and drove to meet them.
“Detective Beaufort... Congratulations.”
“On...?” The officer frowned.
“Your assignment to the mayor’s office security. I assume it’s new. You said you were working follow-up on the Buryak case just the other day, out of the One One Two House.” Rhyme remembered Sachs told him Beaufort had been transferred some time ago.
“Well, I have several assignments.” He rubbed his fingers together, a sign of stress probably. Once again Rhyme thought of Sachs’s edginess, though in her case it didn’t arise because she lied.