Rhyme wished Kathryn Dance was here to interrogate the woman, though he guessed it would take a long time to pry information from her. He eased forward in the wheelchair and said in a whisper, so Pam couldn’t hear, “If you help us out I can make sure you see your daughter from time to time when you’re in prison. If you don’t cooperate, I will guarantee that you never see her again as long as you live.”
Charlotte glanced into the hallway, where Pam sat on a chair, defiantly clutching her Harry Potter. The dark-haired girl was pretty, with fragile features, but very slim. She wore faded jeans and a dark blue sweatshirt. The skin around her eyes was dark. She clicked her fingernails together compulsively. The girl seemed needy in a hundred different ways.
Charlotte turned back to Rhyme. “Then I’ll never see her again,” she said calmly.
Dellray blinked at this, his usually unrevealing face tightening in revulsion.
Rhyme himself could think of nothing more to say to the woman.
It was then that Ron Pulaski came running into the room. He paused to catch his breath.
“What?” Rhyme asked.
It took a moment for him to be able to answer. Finally, he said, “The phones . . . The Watchmaker . . .”
“Out with it, Ron.”
“Sorry . . .” A deep breath. “We couldn’t trace his mobile but a hotel clerk saw her, Charlotte, making calls around midnight every night over the past four or five days. I called the phone company. I got the number she called. They traced it. It’s to a pay phone in Brooklyn. At this intersection.” He handed the slip of paper to Sellitto, who relayed it to Bo Haumann and ESU.
“Good job,” Sellitto said to Pulaski. He called the deputy inspector of the precinct where the phone was located. Officers would start a canvass of the neighborhood as soon as Mel Cooper emailed pictures of the composite to the DI.
Rhyme supposed that the Watchmaker might not live near the phone—it wouldn’t have surprised the criminalist—but a mere thirty minutes later they had a positive identification from a patrol officer, who found several neighbors who recognized the man.
Sellitto took the number and alerted Bo Haumann.
Sachs announced, “I’ll call in from the scene.”
“Hold on,” Rhyme said, glancing at her. “Why don’t you sit this one out. Let Bo handle it.”
“What?”
“They’ll have a full tactical force.”
Rhyme was thinking of the superstition that cops on short time were more likely to get killed or injured than others. Rhyme didn’t believe in superstitions. That didn’t matter. He didn’t want her to go.
Amelia Sachs would be thinking the same thing, perhaps; she was debating, it seemed. Then he saw her looking into the hallway at Pam Willoughby. She turned back to the criminalist. Their eyes met. He gave a faint smile and nodded.
She grabbed her leather jacket and headed for the door.
In a quiet neighborhood in Brooklyn a dozen tactical officers moved slowly along the sidewalk, another six creeping through an alley behind a shabby detached house.
This was a neighborhood of modest houses in small yards, presently filled with Christmas decorations. The minuscule size of the lots had no effect on the owners’ ability to populate the land with as many Santas, reindeer and elves as possible.
Sachs was walking down the sidewalk slowly at the head of the takedown team. She was on the radio with Rhyme. “We’re here,” she said softly.
“What’s the story?”
“We’ve cleared the houses on either side and behind. There’s nobody opposite.” A community vegetable garden was across the street. A ragged scarecrow sat in the middle of the tiny lot. Across his chest was a swirl of graffiti.
“Pretty good site for a takedown. We’re—hold on, Rhyme.” A light had gone on in one of the front rooms. The cops around her stopped and crouched. She whispered, “He’s still here. . . . I’m signing off.”
“Go get him, Sachs.” She heard an unusual determination in his voice. She knew he was upset that the man had escaped. Saving the people at the HUD building and capturing Charlotte were fine. But Rhyme wasn’t happy unless all the perps ended up in cuffs.
But he wasn’t as determined as Amelia Sachs. She wanted to give Rhyme the Watchmaker—as a present to mark their last case together.
She changed radio frequencies and said into her stalk mike, “Detective Five Eight Eight Five to ESU One.”
Bo Haumann, at a staging area a block away, came on the radio. “Go ahead, K.”
“He’s here. Just saw a light go on in the front room.”
“Roger, B Team, you copy?”
These were the officers behind the bungalow. “B Team leader to ESU One. Roger that. We’re—hold on. Okay, he’s upstairs now. Just saw the light go on up there. Looks like the back bedroom.”
“Don’t assume he’s alone,” Sachs said. “There could be somebody else from Charlotte’s outfit with him. Or he might’ve picked up another partner.”
“Roger that, Detective,” Haumann said in his gravelly voice. “S and S, what can you tell us?”
The Search and Surveillance teams were just getting into position on the roof of the apartment building behind and in the garden across the street from the Watchmaker’s safe house, on which they were training their instruments.
“S and S One to ESU One. All the shades’re drawn. Can’t get a look at all. We’ve got heat in the back of the house. But he’s not walking around. There’s a light on in the attic but we can’t see in—no windows, just louvers, K.”
“Same here—S and S Two. No visual. Heat upstairs, nothing on the ground floor. Heard a click or two a second ago, K.”
“Weapon?”
“Could be. Or maybe just appliances or the furnace, K.”
The ESU officer next to Sachs deployed his officers with hand signals. He, Sachs and two others clustered at the front door, another team of four right behind them. One held the battering ram. The other three covered the windows on the ground and the second floors.
“B Team to One. We’re in position. Got a ladder next to the lit room in the back, K.”
“A Team, in position,” another ESU officer radioed in a whisper.
“We’re no-knock,” Haumann told the teams. “On my count of three, flashbangs into the rooms that have the lights on. Throw ’em hard to get through the shades. On one, simultaneous dynamic entry front and back. B Team, split up, cover the ground floor and basement. A Team, go straight upstairs. Remember, this guy knows how to make IEDs. Look for devices.”
“B Team, copy.”
“A, copy.”
Despite the freezing air Sachs’s palms were sweating inside the tight Nomex gloves. She pulled the right one away and blew into it. Did the same with the left. Then she cinched up the body armor and unsnapped the cover of her spare ammo clip carrier. The other officers had machine guns but Sachs never went for that. She preferred the elegance of a single well-placed round to a spray of lead.
Sachs and the three officers on the primary entry team nodded at one another.
Haumann’s raspy voice began the count. “Six . . . five . . . four . . . three . . .”
The sound of breaking glass filled the crisp air as officers flung the grenades through the windows.
Haumann, continuing calmly: “Two . . . one.”
The sharp crack of the flashbangs shook the windows and bursts of white light filled the house momentarily. The burly officer with the battering ram slammed it into the front door. It crashed open without resistance and in a few seconds the officers were spreading out in the sparsely furnished house.
Flashlight in one hand, gun in the other, Sachs stayed with her team as they worked their way up the stairs.
She began hearing the voices of the other officers calling in as they cleared the basement and the rooms on the ground floor.
One upstairs bedroom was empty, the second, as well.
Then all the rooms were declared clear.
&nbs
p; “Where the hell is he?” Sachs muttered.
“Always an adventure, huh?” somebody asked.
“Invisible fucking perp,” came another voice.
Then in her earpiece she heard: “S and S One. Light in the attic just went out. He’s up there.”
In the small bedroom toward the back they found a trapdoor in the ceiling, a thick string hanging from it. A pull-down stair. An officer shut out the light in this room so it would be harder to target them. They stood back and pointed their guns at the door as Sachs gripped the string and pulled hard. It creaked downward, revealing a folding ladder.
The team leader shouted, “You, in the attic. Come down now. . . . Do you hear me? This is your last chance.”
Nothing.
He said, “Flashbang.”
An officer pulled one off his belt and nodded.
The team leader put his hand on the ladder but Sachs shook her head. “I’ll take him.”
“Are you sure you want to?”
Sachs nodded. “Only, let me borrow a helmet.”
She took one and strapped it on.
“We’re set, Detective.”
“Let’s do it.” Sachs climbed up near the top—then took the flashbang. She pulled the pin and closed her eyes so the flash from the grenade wouldn’t blind her and also to acclimate her eyes to the darkness of the attic.
Okay, here we go.
She pitched the grenade into the attic and lowered her head.
Three seconds later it detonated and Sachs, opening her eyes, charged the rest of the way up the ladder into the small area, filled with a haze of smoke and the smell of explosive residue from the flashbang. She rolled away from the opening, clicking on her flashlight and sweeping it in a circle as she moved to a post, the only cover she could find.
Nothing to the right, nothing center, nothing—
It was then that she fell off the face of the earth.
The floor wasn’t wood at all, like it seemed, but cardboard over insulating crud. Her right leg crashed through the Sheetrock of the bedroom ceiling, gripping her, immobile. She cried out in pain.
“Detective!” somebody called.
Sachs lifted the light and the gun in the only direction she could see—straight in front of her. The killer wasn’t there.
Which meant he was behind her.
It was at that moment that the overhead light clicked on, almost directly above her, making her a perfect target.
She struggled to turn around, awaiting the sharp crack of a gun, the numb slam of the bullet into her head or neck or back.
Sachs thought of her father.
She thought of Lincoln Rhyme.
You and me, Sachs . . .
Then she decided no way was she going out without getting a piece of him. She took the pistol in her teeth and used both hands to wrench herself around and find a target.
She heard boots on the ladder as an ESU officer charged up to help her. Of course, that’s what the Watchmaker was waiting for—a chance to kill more of the officers. He was using her as bait to draw other cops to their deaths and hoped to escape in the chaos.
“Look out!” she called, gripping her pistol in her hand. “He’s—”
“Where is he?” the A Team leader asked. The man was crouching at the top of the stairs. He hadn’t heard her—or hadn’t listened—and had sped up the ladder, followed by two other officers. They were scanning the room—including the area behind Sachs.
Her heart pounding furiously, she struggled to look over her shoulder. She asked, “You don’t see him? He’s gotta be there.”
“Zip.”
He and another officer bent down, gripped her body armor and pulled her out of the Sheetrock. Crouching, she spun around.
The room was empty.
“How’d he get out?” the ESU officer muttered. “No doors or windows.”
Sachs noticed something across the room. She gave a sour laugh. “He was never here at all. Not up here, not downstairs. He probably took off hours ago.”
“But the lights. Somebody was turning them on and off.”
“Nope. Take a look.” She pointed to a small beige box connected to the fusebox. “He wanted to make us think he was still here. Give him a better chance to get away.”
“What is it?”
“What else? It’s a timer.”
Chapter 41
Sachs finished searching the scene at the house in Brooklyn and sent what little evidence she could find to Rhyme’s.
She stripped off her Tyvek outfit and pulled her jacket on, then hurried through the cutting chill to Sellitto’s car. In the back sat Pam Willoughby, clutching her Harry Potter book and sipping hot chocolate, which the big detective had scrounged for her. He was still in the perp’s safe house, finishing up the paperwork. Sachs climbed in, sat beside her. At Kathryn Dance’s suggestion, they’d brought the girl here to examine the place and the Watchmaker’s possessions in hopes that something might trigger a memory. But the man hadn’t left much behind and in any event nothing Pammy saw gave her any more insights about him.
Smiling, Sachs looked the girl over, remembering that strange expression of hope when she’d seen her in the rental car at the first scene. The policewoman said, “I’ve thought about you a lot over the years.”
“Me too,” the girl said, looking down into her cup.
“Where did you go after New York?”
“We went back to Missouri and hid out in the woods. Mom left me with other people a lot. Mostly I just stayed by myself and read. I didn’t get along very good with anybody. They were crappy to me. If you didn’t think the way they did—which was pretty messed up—they totally dissed you.
“A lot of them were home-schooling people. But I really wanted to go to public school and I made a big deal out of it. Bud didn’t want me to but Mom finally agreed. But she said if I told anybody about her, what she’d done, I’d go to jail too as an assistant . . . no, an accomplice. And men would do stuff to me there. You know what I’m talking about.”
“Oh, honey.” Sachs squeezed her hand. Amelia Sachs wanted children badly and knew that, one way or another, they were in her future. She was appalled that a mother had put her child through this.
“And sometimes, when it got real bad, I’d think about you and pretend you were my mother. I didn’t know your name. Maybe I heard it back then but I couldn’t remember. So I gave you another one: Artemis. From this book I read about mythology. She was the goddess of the hunt. Because you killed that mad dog—the one that was attacking me.” She looked down. “It’s a stupid name.”
“No, no, it’s a wonderful name. I love it. . . . You recognized me in the alleyway Tuesday, didn’t you? When you were in the car?”
“Yeah. I think you were meant to be there—to save me again. Don’t you think things like that happen?”
No, Sachs didn’t. But she said, “Life works in funny ways sometimes.”
A city car pulled up and a social worker Sachs knew climbed out and joined them.
“Whoa.” The woman, a pretty African-American, rubbed her hands together in front of the heater vent. “It’s not even winter yet officially. This isn’t fair.” She’d been making arrangements for the girl and she now explained, “We’ve found a couple real nice foster families. There’s one in Riverdale I’ve known for years. You’ll stay there for the next few days while we see if we can track down some of your relatives.”
Pammy was frowning. “Can I get a new name?”
“A new—?”
“I don’t want to be me anymore. And I don’t want my mother to talk to me again. And I don’t want any of those people she’s with to find me.”
Sachs preempted whatever the social worker was going to say. “We’ll make sure nothing happens to you. That’s a promise.”
Pammy hugged her.
“So I can see you again?” Sachs asked.
Trying to contain her excitement at this, the girl said, “I guess. If you want.”
“How ’bout shopping tomorrow?”
“Okay. Sure.”
“Good. It’s a date.” Sachs had an idea. “Hey, you like dogs?”
“Yeah, some folks I stayed with in Missouri had one. I liked him better than the people.”
She called Thom at Rhyme’s town house. “Got a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Any takers on Jackson yet?”
“Nope. He’s still up for adoption.”
“Take him off the market,” Sachs said. She hung up and looked at Pam. “I’ve got an early Christmas present for you.”
Sometimes even the best-designed watches simply don’t work.
The devices really are quite fragile, when you think about it. Five hundred, a thousand minuscule moving parts, nearly microscopic screws and springs and jewels, all precisely assembled, dozens of separate movements working in unison. . . . A hundred things can go wrong. Sometimes the watchmaker miscalculates, sometimes a tiny piece of metal is defective, sometimes the owner winds the mechanism too tight. Sometimes he drops it. Moisture gets under the crystal.
Then again the watch might work perfectly in one environment but not in another. Even the famed Rolex Oyster Perpetual, revolutionary for being the first luxury divers’ watch, can’t withstand unlimited pressure underwater.
Now, near Central Park, Charles Vespasian Hale sat in his own car, which he’d driven here from San Diego—no trail at all, if you pay cash for gas and avoid toll roads—and wondered what had gone wrong with his plan.
He supposed the answer was the police, specifically Lincoln Rhyme. Hale had done everything he could think of to anticipate his moves. But the former cop managed to end up just a bit ahead of him. Rhyme had done exactly what Hale had been worried about—he’d looked at a few gears and levers and extrapolated from them how Hale’s entire timepiece had been constructed.
He’d have plenty of time to consider what went wrong and to try to avoid the same problems in the future. He’d be driving back to California, leaving immediately. He glanced at his face in the rearview mirror. He’d dyed his hair back to its natural color and the pale blue contact lenses were gone, but the collagen, which gave him the thick nose and puffy cheeks and double chin, hadn’t bled from his skin yet. And it would takes months before he regained the forty pounds he’d lost for the job and became himself again. He felt pasty and sluggish after all this time in the city and needed to get back to his wilderness and mountains once again.
Kathryn Dance Ebook Boxed Set : Roadside Crosses, Sleeping Doll, Cold Moon (9781451674217) Page 130