‘Where is he?’ She looked past the uniform but then she realized that, of course, the Underground Man would have taken Seth to the basement.
The officer confirmed that he was in the cellar. ‘The medics, coupla detectives from the Eight Four.’ He shook his head. ‘They’re doing the best they can. But.’
Sachs tossed her hair off her shoulder. Wished she’d banded it up outside. No time then, no time now. She turned and headed back into the corridor, which smelled of onion and mold and some powerful cleaner. It turned her stomach. She found herself walking slowly. The sight of death or gore didn’t bother her; you don’t sign on to crime scene work if that troubles you. But the looming thought of a somber call to Pam was a sea anchor.
Or given that the perp’s weapon of choice was toxins, even a non-fatal injury could be devastating: blindness, nerve or brain damage, kidney failure.
She found the door to the cellar and started down the rickety stairs. Overhead bulbs lit the way, bare and glaring. The basement was well underground, with slits of greasy windows at ceiling level. The large expanse, which smelled astringently of furnace fuel and mildew, was mostly open but there were several smaller areas with doorless entryways, maybe storerooms at one time. It was into one of these that the perp had dragged Seth. She could see the backs of one detective and one uniform in the room, both looking down.
Her heart thudded as she also noted a medical tech standing with crossed arms outside the doorway, peering in. His face, a mask.
He looked at her blankly and nodded, then glanced back into the storeroom.
Alarmed, Sachs stepped forward, peered in and stopped.
Seth McGuinn, shirtless, lay on the damp floor, hands under him — probably cuffed like the other victims. His eyes were closed and his face was as gray as the ancient paint on the troubled cellar walls.
CHAPTER 42
‘Amelia. They don’t know,’ said one of the uniformed officers, standing near Seth. His name was Flaherty and she knew the big, redheaded officer from the Eight Four.
Two other medics were working on Seth, clearing an airway, checking vitals. She could see on the portable monitor that, at least, his heart was beating, if weakly.
‘Did the perp tattoo him?’ She couldn’t see his abdomen from here.
Flaherty said, ‘No.’
Sachs said to the medics, ‘Might be propofol. That’s what he’s been using. To knock them out.’
‘A sedative’s consistent with this condition. He’s not convulsing and there are no gastrointestinal reactions and his vitals are stable so I’d guess it’s not a toxin.’
Sachs moved to the side and noted a red spot on Seth’s neck — where 11-5 had used the hypodermic. ‘There. See the injection site?’
‘Right.’
‘He’s done that in all the prior cases. Is he—’
A moan. Shivering suddenly, Seth opened his eyes. Blinked in confusion. Then alarm flooded his face; he would be first wondering, then recalling, how he’d ended up here.
‘I … What’s going—’
‘It’s okay, sir,’ one of the medics said.
‘You’re all right; you’re safe,’ Flaherty said.
‘Amelia!’ Urgent, though groggy.
‘How’re you feeling?’
‘Did he poison me?’
‘Doesn’t look like it.’
One of the medics asked a series of questions about possible symptoms. They jotted the young man’s responses. The EMT said, ‘All right, sir. We’ll have the lab run your blood but it’s looking like he just got some sedative into you. We’ll get you into the ER and run a few more tests, but I think you’re good.’
Sachs: ‘Can I ask him a few questions?’
‘Sure.’
Sachs donned gloves, helped him sit up and removed the handcuffs. Wincing, Seth lowered his arms and rubbed his wrists. ‘Man, that hurts.’
‘Can you walk?’ The scene down here was already badly contaminated, but she wanted to preserve as much as she could. ‘I’d like to get you upstairs into the hallway.’
‘I guess. Maybe with some help.’
She eased him up. With her arm around his waist, he staggered through the basement and up the stairs. In the front hallway they sat on the stairs leading to the second story.
The front door opened once more and Sachs greeted the Crime Scene team from Queens. The detective running the detail was an attractive young officer named Cheyenne Edwards, one of the stars of the department. Her specialty was chemical analysis. If a perp had a molecule of controlled substance or gunshot residue on his body, Edwards could find it. She also had a rep, as in reputation, as in gold.
As in don’t fuck with her.
Once, she and her partner had been confronted by a perp who’d returned to a scene to collect the loot he’d left behind. The killer, surprised by the cops, had turned his weapon first on the older, broad-shouldered CS officer, assuming the pretty young woman would be less of a threat — only to find out the hard way that this wasn’t quite the case. Edwards had reached into her pocket, where her Taurus .38 backup rested, and fired through the cloth, parking three slugs in his chest. (‘Looks like, we just solved the case,’ she’d noted but continued to search the scene expertly, because that was just what you did.)
‘Chey, you run the scene, okay?’ Sachs asked.
‘You got it.’
Then to Seth: ‘So, tell me what happened.’
The man told Sachs about the initial assault, which they’d heard part of on the phone. A man in mask and gloves had broken the patio door and lunged as Seth stood in the living room. They’d fought but, gripping Seth around the chest with one arm, the perp had jabbed a needle into his neck. He passed out and came to in the basement. The man was getting a portable tattoo gun from a backpack.
Sachs displayed a picture of an American Eagle tattoo machine.
‘Yeah, that looks like what he had. He was pissed off I’d come to and gave me another shot. But then he suddenly stopped. He kind of cocked his head. I saw he had an earbud in. It was like somebody warned him.’
Sachs grimaced. ‘There’s no evidence he’s working with anybody. It was probably a police scanner.’
Costing all of $59.99. And if you act now, you get a list of frequencies of your favorite police department.
‘He just shoved his stuff into his backpack and ran. I passed out again.’
She asked for a description and learned what she expected: ‘White male around thirty, I’d guess. What I could see of his hair it was dark, round face. Light eyes. Blue or gray. Kind of weird, that color. But I really couldn’t see much. He had this yellowish see-through mask on.’ His voice was soft. ‘Scared the hell out of me. And this tattoo. On his … yeah, his left arm. Red. A snake with legs.’
‘A centipede?’
‘Could be. A human face. Way creepy.’ He closed his eyes for a minute, actually shivered.
Sachs showed him the Identi-Kit picture that the near-victim Harriet Stanton had done at the hospital. Seth looked at it but just shook his head. ‘Could be — the face was round like that. The eyes’re the same. But I just can’t be sure. I’m trying to think about what he was wearing. I really can’t remember. Something dark, I think. But it could’ve been orange tie-dye, for all I know. Seeing that mask and the tattoo, I was really freaked out.’
‘Wonder why?’ Sachs offered with a droll smile.
‘I better call my parents. They might hear about this. I want to tell them I’m okay.’
‘Sure.’
While Seth did this, dialing with shaking hands, Sachs called Rhyme. She gave him the details. ‘Cheyenne’s running the scene.’