"Let's go," he said to the girl.
The defiance faded but she said, "I'm not leaving them." Nodding toward the women.
"You tell me right now what's this about," her great-aunt said, eyeing Bell angrily.
"It's a police matter. Somebody might be trying to hurt Geneva. I want you to leave. Is there a friend's apartment here you can stay in for a spell?"
"But--"
"Gonna have to insist here, ladies. Is there? Tell me quick."
They glanced at each other with frightened eyes and nodded. "Ann-Marie's, I guess," the aunt said. "Up the hall."
Bell walked to the doorway and looked out. The empty corridor yawned at him.
"Okay, now. Go."
The older women moved quickly down the hall. Bell saw them knock on a door. It opened and there were some hushed voices, then the face of an elderly black woman looked out. The women vanished inside, the door closed and the sound of chains and locks followed. The detective and the girl hurried down the stairs, with Bell pausing at every landing to make sure the lower level was cleared, his large, black automatic in hand.
Geneva said nothing. Her jaw was set; fury had blossomed inside her once again.
They paused in the lobby. The detective directed Geneva into the shadows behind him. He shouted, "Luis?"
"This level's clear, boss, for now at least," the cop called in a harsh whisper from halfway up the dim corridor that led to the back door.
Barbe's calm voice said, "Pulaski's still alive. I found him holding his gun--he got off one round. That was the shot we heard. No sign he hit anything."
"What's he say?"
"He's unconscious."
So maybe the guy's rabbited, Bell thought.
Or maybe he planned something else. Was it safer to wait here for backup? That was the logical answer. The real issue, though: Was it the right answer to the question of what Unsub 109 had in mind?
Bell made a decision.
"Luis, I'm taking her out of here. Now. Need your help."
"With you, boss."
*
Thompson Boyd was once again in the burnt-out building across the street from the tenement Geneva Settle and the cops had gone into.
So far, his plan was working.
After beaning the cop, he'd ejected a shell from the man's Glock. This he'd rubber-banded to a lit cigarette--a fuse, in effect--and set the homemade firecracker in the alley. He'd placed the gun in the unconscious cop's hand.
He'd stripped off the mask, slipped through another alley, east of the building, into the street. When the cigarette burned down and detonated the bullet, and the two plainclothes cops disappeared, he'd run to the Crown Victoria. He had a slim jim to pop the door but hadn't needed it; the car had been unlocked. From the shopping bag he took several of the items he'd prepared last night, then assembled and hid them under the driver's seat and carefully closed the car door.
The improvised device was quite simple: a low, wide jar of sulfuric acid, in which rested a short glass candleholder. And sitting on top of that was a foil ball containing several tablespoons of finely ground cyanide powder. Any motion of the car would roll the ball into the acid, which would melt the foil and dissolve the poison. The lethal gas would spread upward and overcome the occupants before they had time to open a door or window. They'd be dead--or brain dead--soon after.
He peeked out through the crack between the billboard and what was left of the building's front wall. On the porch was the brown-haired detective who seemed to be in charge of the guard detail. Beside him was the male plainclothes cop and between them the girl.
The trio paused on the porch as the detective scanned the street, the rooftops, cars, alleys.
A gun was in his right hand. Keys in his other. They were going to make a run for the deadly car.
Perfect.
Thompson Boyd turned and left the building quickly. He had to put some distance between himself and this place. Other cops were already on their way; sirens were growing louder. As he slipped out of the back of the building he heard the detective's car start. The squeal of tires followed.
Breathe deep, he thought to the occupants of the car. He thought this for two reasons: First, of course, he wanted this hard job over with. But he also sent the message to them for another reason: Dying by cyanide can be extremely unpleasant. Wishing them a speedy, painless death was what a person with feeling would think, a person who was no longer numb.
Grape, cherry, milk . . .
Breathe deep.
*
Sensing the wild rattle of the engine--it shook her hands and legs and back--Amelia Sachs sped toward Spanish Harlem. She was doing sixty before she shifted into third gear.
She'd been at Rhyme's when they got the report: Pulaski was down, and the killer had managed to get some sort of device into Roland Bell's car. She'd run downstairs, fired up her red 1969 Camaro and hurried toward the scene of the attack in East Harlem.
Roaring through green lights, slowing to thirty or so at the reds--check left, check right, downshift, punch it!
Ten minutes later she skidded onto East 123rd Street, going against traffic, missing a delivery truck by inches. Ahead of her she could see the flashing lights of the ambulances and three squad cars from the local house. Also: a dozen uniforms and a handful of ESU troops, working their way along the sidewalks. They moved cautiously, as if they were soldiers under fire.
Watch your backs . . . .
She brought the Chevy to a tire-smoking stop and jumped out, glancing at the nearby alleyways and vacant windows for any sign of the killer and his needle gun. Jogging into the alley, flashing her shield, she could see medics working on Pulaski. He was on his back and they'd cleared an airway--at least he was alive. But there was a lot of blood and his face was hugely swollen. She'd hoped he'd be able to tell them something but he was unconscious.
It looked like the kid had been surprised by his attacker, who'd lain in wait as he'd walked down the alley. The rookie had been too close to the side of the building. There would've been no warning when the man attacked. You always walked down the center of sidewalks and alleys so nobody could jump out and surprise you.
You didn't know . . . .
She wondered if he'd live to learn this lesson.
"How's he doing?"
The medic didn't look up. "No guess. We're lucky he's still with us." Then to his partner: "Okay, let's move him out. Now."
As they got Pulaski onto a backboard and hustled him toward the ambulance, Sachs cleared everybody away from the scene to preserve whatever evidence might be there. Then she returned to the mouth of the alley and dressed in the white Tyvek suit.
Just as she zipped it up a sergeant from the local house walked up to her. "You're Sachs, right?"
She nodded. "Any sign of the perp?"
"Nothing. You going to run the scenes?"
"Yep."
"You want to see Detective Bell's car?"
"Sure."
She started forward.
"Wait," the man said. He handed her a face mask.
"That bad?"
He pulled his own on. Through the thick rubber she heard his troubled voice say, "Follow me."
Chapter Twenty-One
With ESU backing them up, two Bomb Squad Unit cops from the Sixth Precinct were crouched in the backseat of Roland Bell's Crown Victoria. They weren't wearing bomb suits but were in full biohazard outfits.
Wearing the thinner, white suit, Amelia Sachs stood back ten yards.
"What've you got, Sachs?" Rhyme called into the microphone. She jumped. Then turned the volume down. The line from her radio was plugged into the gas mask.
"I haven't gotten close yet; they're still removing the device. It's cyanide and acid."
"Probably the sulfuric we found traces of on the desk," he said.
Slowly, the team removed the glass-and-foil device. They sealed up the pieces in special hazardous materials containers.
Another transmission--from on
e of the Bomb Squad officers: "Detective Sachs, we've rendered it safe. You can run the car, you want. But keep the mask on inside. There's no gas but the acid fumes could be dangerous."
"Right. Thanks." She started forward.
Rhyme's voice crackled again. "Hold on a minute . . . . " He came back on. "They're safe, Sachs. They're at the precinct."
"Good."
The "they" were the intended victims of the poison left in the Crown Victoria, Roland Bell and Geneva Settle. They'd come very close to dying. But, as they'd prepared to rush out of the great-aunt's apartment to the car, Bell had realized that something about the crime scene of Pulaski's assault seemed odd. Barbe Lynch had found the rookie holding his weapon. But this unsub was too smart to leave a gun in the hand of a downed cop, even if he was unconscious. No, he'd at least pitch it away, if he didn't want to take it with him. Bell had concluded that somehow the unsub himself had fired the shot and left the gun behind to make them think that the rookie had fired. The purpose? To draw the officers away from the front of the apartment.
And why? The answer was obvious: so that they'd leave the cars unguarded.
The Crown Vic had been unlocked, which meant the unsub might have slipped an explosive device inside. So he'd taken the keys to the locked Chevy that Martinez and Lynch had driven here and used that vehicle to speed Geneva out of danger, warning everyone to stay clear of the unmarked Ford until the Bomb Squad had a chance to go over it. Using fiberoptic cameras they searched under and inside the Crown Vic and found the device under the driver's seat.
Sachs now ran the scenes: the car, the approach to it and the alley where Pulaski had been attacked. She didn't find much other than prints of Bass walking shoes, which confirmed the attacker had been Unsub 109, and another device, a homemade one: a bullet from Pulaski's service automatic had been rubber-banded to a lit cigarette. The unsub had left it burning in the alley and snuck around toward the front of the building. When it went off, the "gunshot" had drawn the officers to the back, giving him a chance to plant the device in Bell's car.
Damn, that's slick, she thought with dark admiration.
There was no sign that his partner, the black man in the combat jacket, had been--or still was--nearby.
Donning the mask again, she carefully examined the glass parts of the poison device itself, but they yielded no prints or other clues, which surprised nobody. Maybe the cyanide or acid would tell them something. Discouraged, she reported her results to Rhyme.
He asked, "And what did you search?"
"Well, the car and the alleyway around Pulaski. And then the entrance and exit routes into and out of the alley, the street where he approached the Crown Vic--both directions."
Silence for a moment, as Rhyme considered this.
She felt uneasy. Was she missing something? "What're you thinking, Rhyme?"
"You searched by the book, Sachs. Those were the right places. But did you take in the totality of the scene?"
"Chapter Two of your book."
"Good. At least somebody's read it. But did you do what I say?"
Although time was always of the essence when searching a crime scene, one of the practices Rhyme insisted on was taking a few moments to get a sense of the entire scene in light of the particular crime. The example he cited in his forensic science textbook was an actual murder in Greenwich Village. The primary crime scene was where the strangled victim was found, his apartment. The secondary was the fire escape by which the killer had gotten away. It was the third scene, though, an unlikely one, at which Rhyme had found the matches bearing the killer's fingerprints: a gay bar three blocks away. No one would've thought to search the bar, except that Rhyme found some gay porno tapes in the victim's apartment; a canvass of the nearest gay bar turned up a bartender who identified the victim and recalled him sharing a drink with a man earlier that night. The lab raised latents from the book of matches resting on the bar near where the two men had sat; the prints led them to the murderer.
"Let's keep thinking, Sachs. He sets up this plan--improvised but elaborate--to distract our people and get the device into a car. That meant he had to know where all the players were, what they were doing and how he could make enough time to set the device. Which tells us what?"
Sachs was already scanning the street. "He was watching."
"Yes, indeed, Sachs. Good. And where might he have been doing that from?"
"Across the street'd have the best visibility. But there're dozens of buildings he could've been in. I have no idea which one."
"True. But Harlem's a neighborhood, right?"
"I . . . "
"Understand what I'm saying?"
"Not exactly."
"Families, Sachs. Families live there, extended families living together, not yuppie singles. A home invasion wouldn't go unnoticed. Neither would somebody skulking about in lobbies or alleys. Good word, isn't that? Skulking. Says it all."
"Your point, Rhyme?" His good mood had returned but she was irritated that he was more interested in the puzzle of the case than he was about, say, Pulaski's chances for recovery or that Roland Bell and Geneva Settle had nearly been killed.
"Not an apartment. Not a rooftop--Roland's people always look there. There'll be someplace else he was watching from, Sachs. Where do you think it might be?"
Scanning the street again . . . "There's a billboard on an abandoned building. It's full of graffiti and handbills--real busy, you know, hard to spot anybody looking out from behind it. I'm going to see."
Checking carefully for signs that the unsub was nearby, and finding none, she crossed the street and walked to the back of the old building--a burnt-out store, it seemed. Climbing through the back window, she saw that the floor was dusty--the perfect surface for footprints and, sure enough, she spotted Unsub 109's Bass walker shoes right away. Still, she slipped rubber bands around the booties of the Tyvek overalls--a trick Rhyme invented to make certain that an officer exploring the crime scene didn't confuse his or her own prints with those of the suspect. The detective started into the room, her Glock in hand.
Following the unsub's prints to the front, she paused from time to time, listening for noises. Sachs heard a skitter or two but, no stranger to the sound track of seamier New York, she knew immediately that the intruder was a rat.
In the front she looked out through a gap in the plywood panels of the billboard where he'd stood and noticed that, yes, it provided a perfect view of the street. She collected some basic forensic equipment then returned and hit the walls with ultraviolet spray. Sachs turned the alternative light source wand on them.
But the only marks she found were latex glove prints.
She told Rhyme what she'd found and then said, "I'll collect trace from where he stood but I don't see very much. He's just not leaving anything."
"Too professional," Rhyme said, sighing. "Every time we outsmart him, he's already outsmarted us. Well, bring in what you've got, Sachs. We'll look it over."
*
As they waited for Sachs to return, Rhyme and Sellitto made a decision: While they believed that Unsub 109 had fled the area around the apartment they still arranged to have Geneva's great-aunt, Lilly Hall, and her friend moved to a hotel room for the time being.
As for Pulaski, he was in intensive care, still unconscious from the beating. The doctors couldn't say whether he'd live or not. In Rhyme's lab, Sellitto slammed his phone shut angrily after getting this news. "He was a fucking rookie. I had no business recruiting him for Bell's team. I should've gone myself."
A curious thing to say. "Lon," Rhyme said, "you've got rank. You graduated from guard detail, when? Twenty years ago?"
But the big cop wouldn't be consoled. "Put him in over his head. Stupid of me. Goddamn."
Once again the hand rubbed at the hotspot on his cheek. The detective was edgy and looked particularly rumpled today. He usually wore pretty much what he wore now: light shirt and dark suit. Rhyme wondered, though, if these were the same clothes he'd had on yester
day. It seemed so. Yes, there was a dot of blood from the library shooting on the jacket sleeve--as if he were wearing the clothing as penance.
The doorbell rang.
Thom returned a moment later with a tall, lanky man. Pale skin, bad posture, unruly beard and brown, curly hair. He was dressed in a tan corduroy jacket and brown slacks. Birkenstocks.
His eyes scanned the laboratory then glanced at Rhyme and looked him over. Unsmiling, he asked, "Is Geneva Settle here?"
"Who're you?" Sellitto asked.
"I'm Wesley Goades."
Ah, the legal Terminator--who was not fictional, Rhyme was somewhat surprised to find. Sellitto checked his ID and nodded.
The man's long fingers continually adjusted thick wire-rimmed glasses or tugged absently at his long beard and he never looked anyone in the eye for more than a half second. The constant ocular jitters reminded Rhyme of Geneva's friend, the gum-snapping Lakeesha Scott.
He offered a card to Thom, who showed it to Rhyme. Goades was director of the Central Harlem Legal Services Corporation and was affiliated with the American Civil Liberties Union. The fine print at the bottom said that he was licensed to practice law in New York state, the federal district courts in New York and Washington, D.C., and before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Maybe his days representing capitalist insurance companies had turned him to the other side.
In response to the querying glances from Rhyme and Sellitto, he said, "I've been out of town. I got the message that Geneva called my office yesterday. Something about her being a witness. I just wanted to check on her."
"She's fine," Rhyme said. "There've been some attempts on her life but we have a full-time guard on her."
"She's being held here? Against her will?"
"Not held, no," the criminalist said firmly. "She's staying in her home."
"With her parents?"
"An uncle."
"What's this all about?" the unsmiling lawyer asked, his eyes flitting from face to face, taking in the evidence boards, the equipment, the wires.
Rhyme was, as always, reluctant to discuss an active case with a stranger, but the lawyer might have some helpful information. "We think somebody's worried about what Geneva's been researching for a project for school. About an ancestor of hers. Did she ever mention anything to you?"
"Oh, something about a former slave?"
"That's it."
The Twelfth Card Page 23