“You’re crazy.” This was from somebody else in the crowd.
“I heard that online,” the woman countered angrily. “It’s a trusted source!”
Douglass left them to have it out — or not — and stepped to a vantage point where he could see both Rhyme and Sachs. They were near an FDNY command post. There was a cluster of firefighters and police — some uniforms and some detectives. He then circled the scene, spotting her distinctive car parked not far away, on a side street. Douglass watched Rhyme have a conversation with two men in suits, who left when a third man showed up. Finally Rhyme returned to Amelia and the mountain climber — the man who’d accompanied her from Whittaker Tower when he and Arnie were at the maple-flavored tempeh burger food truck.
The big man had just rescued someone from the building.
A spectacular feat.
The man was massaging his shoulder and taking occasional whiffs of oxygen.
Douglass noted with interest that Rhyme’s wheelchair had climbed right over thick fire department hoses. It was quite a piece of machinery.
He texted Arnie.
Where are you?
The reply:
Three minutes.
He walked slowly around the neighborhood and side streets, studying the layout. He thought, Yeah, it could work.
Soon Arnie pulled up to the intersection Douglass had sent him. He was in a battered Econoline van. He parked and nodded.
Douglass looked over the beat-up vehicle, perfect for transporting meth or disposing bodies or delivering flowers. Whatever it was ordinarily used for, the important thing is that it was nondescript and looked like a thousand others on the streets of the city — just the sort of vehicle to use when you ran down a policewoman.
And, as Arnie had recommended, it was nondescript white.
“Good,” Douglass said, nodding at the wheels.
“I figured this’d be best.” The small, wiry man looked over at the rescue workers, all the cars and trucks, the millions of lights.
He continued, “That’s them. The ones we saw when we was at the food truck. She’s hot.”
Echoing Viktor Buryak’s more elegant observation about the policewoman.
“The fuck’s that got to do with anything?”
“Yeah, but,” Arnie said, going nowhere after that.
Douglass pointed. “There’s her car. We’ll wait until they head back to it and the Sprinter. That’s Rhyme’s. I need them together.”
“Can he drive?”
“No. The guy with him. He’s his aide or something.”
“Does it have a ramp?”
“Let’s focus, here, Arnie.”
“Sure. When they’re headed back to the car and the van.”
Douglass was now pointing to the middle of the block. “That’s a good spot. When she’s right about there.”
“By the containers and trash.”
“That’s right.” He thought for a moment. “How fast should you go to hurt somebody bad but not kill them?”
Arnie considered this.
“I’d say forty.”
“Too fast. Thirty.”
Amelia Sachs looked once more at the ropes dangling from the rappel window, now filled with flames. First one cord then the other fell to the roof of the building before, their ends burning.
“Don’t know I could have done that, Rhyme.”
Her essential fear was claustrophobia and she had no particular concern about heights, other than the usual. But still.
The criminalist said nothing but his eyes too strayed to the window.
“What’d they say?” she asked.
“Beaufort and Potter? Wanted a public apology because I wrote a memo for the Gregorios case.”
“Seriously?” Her lips tightened in disgust.
“It’s gone away. But they’re persistent. Oh, and Brett Evans wants me to move to Trenton or Newark. Or some such. It’s a curious time, Sachs...” His voice lowered. “So, Kitt’s the one?” he asked.
She nodded. “All the bad blood within the family, I told you — hating his father’s brand of journalism. Always an activist, they said. Did Izzy drop off the evidence at your place?”
“Mel divided it in half, and she went on to Queens. He’s working on it now.”
“I’ll get back there,” she said and turned, heading for her car.
Rhyme accompanied her, wheeling at her pace. Her Torino was parked at the end of the block.
As there was no traffic, they remained in the middle of the street; Manhattan sidewalks were difficult for Rhyme’s chair. They were narrow, cluttered with refuse bins and frequently cracked and uneven.
“You seem doubtful that Kitt’s doing it to make a political statement.”
“That’s part of it in a way. But you ask me, it’s something else, deeper, between father and son. Remember what he wrote? ‘Reckoning’?”
After a moment, she gave a laugh. He looked her way.
“His cousin or her fiancé said Kitt’s problem was he dabbled, jumped from job to job. Looks like he finally found the one thing he’s good at. Lock picking and home invasion. He’s not bad at arson either.”
They were going west, against traffic, so there was no need to worry about approaching vehicles behind them. Still, Amelia Sachs had been a street cop, patrolling places like the Deuce — West 42nd Street — before it became the Disneyland that it was today. And so situational awareness ranked high among her innate survival skills. She glanced about frequently, eyes constantly moving. Instinct.
Now, they came to an intersection and she looked down a side street.
And froze.
“What is it?”
“Block away, a gray Cadillac.”
She reminded Rhyme about the possible surveillance at the Carrie Noelle scene.
“It wasn’t here an hour ago. And this isn’t a new-Cadillac kind of street.”
“No.”
They heard a sound behind them, a vehicle. A battered white van started their way.
Rhyme asked, “At Carrie’s? You make the driver?”
“Never got a good look. Male. Hat, maybe. That’s it.” She unbuttoned her jacket, so her Glock was exposed. She scanned both sides of the street, over and between the cars that lined the curb. “Something feels wrong here. Rhyme, move to the curb.”
He did.
Sachs stepped into the middle of the cobblestoned street, crouching slightly, like a soldier looking for a sniper nest or a hidey-hole from which an attacker might emerge.
54
Lincoln Rhyme, his chair banked against the curb, between two cars, watched Amelia Sachs, moving slowly toward the entrance to a narrow alley.
But apparently she saw no sign of any threat from there or any of the windows facing the street.
Then Rhyme focused on the approaching white Econoline.
Was that the threat?
“Sachs! The van!”
She turned as it grew closer. Her hand started to draw her Glock.
Just then the vehicle eased to a stop. The doors opened and two men got out. One was large, tall, in his forties. He wore a black beret. The Caddie driver? Rhyme wondered. She’d mentioned a hat.
The other was smaller — age impossible to tell.
“Detective Sachs, Captain Rhyme,” the taller one said. He stepped forward. Sachs kept her hand gripping her weapon.
They approached, both keeping their hands visible. In his right he was displaying something. What was it? A wallet?
No, a badge holder, with an ID on one side and an NYPD gold shield on the other. “I’m Aaron Douglass, Organized Crime squad.”
He stopped but Sachs gestured them forward. Rhyme joined them too.
They looked closely at the ID, which seemed legit. Then they simultaneously took in the smaller man.