“Nothing a snooty Manhattanite like you’d drive. A Chevy. Camaro. It was my father’s.”

“Who gave you the drill press? For working on cars, I assume?”

She nodded. “And a torque wrench. And spark-gap set. And my first set of ratcheting sockets – my thirteenth-birthday present.” Laughing softly. “That Chevy, it’s a wobbly-knob car. You know what that is? An American car. The radio and vents and light switches are all loose and cheesy. But the suspension’s like a rock, it’s light as an egg crate and I’ll take on a BMW any day.”

“And I’ll bet you have.”

“Once or twice.”

“Cars are status in the crip world,” Rhyme explained. “We’d sit – or lie – around the ward in rehab and talk about what we could get out of our insurance companies. Wheelchair vans were the top of the heap. Next are hand-control cars. Which wouldn’t do me any good of course.” He squinted, testing his supple memory. “I haven’t been in a car in years. I can’t remember the last time.”

“Got an idea,” Sachs said suddenly. “Before your friend – Dr. Berger – comes back, let me take you for a ride. Or is that a problem? Sitting up? You were saying that wheelchairs don’t work for you.”

“Well, no, wheelchairs’re a problem. But a car? I think that’d be okay.” He laughed. “A hundred and sixty-eight? Miles per hour?”

“That was a special day,” Sachs said, nodding at the memory. “Good conditions. And no highway patrol.”

The phone buzzed and Rhyme answered it himself. It was Lon Sellitto.

“We got S &S on all the target churches in Harlem. Dellray’s in charge of that – man’s become a true believer, Lincoln. You wouldn’t recognize him. Oh, and I’ve got thirty portables and a ton of UN security cruising for any other churches we might’ve missed. If he doesn’t show up, we’re going to do a sweep of all of them at seven-thirty. Just in case he snuck in without us seeing him. I think we’re going to nail him, Linc,” the detective said, suspiciously enthusiastic for a New York City homicide cop.

“Okay, Lon, I’ll send Amelia up to your CP around eight.”

They hung up.

Thom knocked on the door before coming into the room.

As if he’d catch us in a compromising position, Rhyme laughed to himself.

“No more excuses,” he said testily. “Bed. Now.”

It was after 3:00 a.m. and Rhyme had left exhaustion far behind long ago. He was floating somewhere else. Above his body. He wondered if he’d start to hallucinate.

“Yes, Mother,” he said. “Officer Sachs’s staying over, Thom. Could you get her a blanket, please?”

“What did you say?” Thom turned to face him.

“A blanket.”

“No, after that,” the aide said. “That word?”

“I don’t know. ‘Please’?”

Thom’s eyes went wide with alarm. “Are you all right? You want me to get Pete Taylor back here? The head of Columbia-Presbyterian? The surgeon general?”

“See how this son of a bitch torments me?” Rhyme said to Sachs. “He never knows how close he comes to getting fired.”

“A wake-up call for when?”

“Six-thirty should be fine,” Rhyme said.

When he was gone, Rhyme asked, “Hey, Sachs, you like music?”

“Love it.”

“What kind?”

“Oldies, doo-wop, Motown… How ’bout you? You seem like a classical kind of guy.”

“See that closet there?”

“This one?”

“No, no, the other one. To the right. Open it up.”

She did and gasped in amazement. The closet was a small room filled with close to a thousand CDs.

“It’s like Tower Records.”

“That stereo, see it on the shelf?”

She ran her hand over the dusty black Harmon Kardon.

“It cost more than my first car,” Rhyme said. “I don’t use it anymore.”

“Why not?”

He didn’t answer but said instead, “Put something on. Is it plugged in? It is? Good. Pick something.”

A moment later she stepped out of the closet and walked over to the couch as Levi Stubbs and the Four Tops started singing about love.

It had been a year since there’d been a note of music in this room, Rhyme estimated. Silently he tried to answer Sachs’s question about why he’d stopped listening. He couldn’t.

Sachs lifted files and books off the couch. Lay back on it and thumbed through a copy of Scenes of the Crime.

“Can I have one?” she asked.

“Take ten.”

“Will you…” Her voice braked to a halt.

“Sign it for you?” He laughed. She joined him. “How ’bout if I put my thumbprint on it? Graphoanalysts’ll never give you more than an eighty-five percent probability of a handwriting match. But a thumbprint? Any friction-ridge expert’ll certify it’s mine.”

He watched her read the first chapter. Her eyes drooped. She closed the book.

“Will you do something for me?” she asked.

“What?”

“Read to me. Something from the book. When Nick and I were together…” Her voice faded.

“What?”

“When we were together, a lot of times Nick’d read out loud before we went to sleep. Books, the paper, magazines… It’s one of the things I miss the most.”

“I’m a terrible reader,” Rhyme confessed. “I sound like I’m reciting crime scene reports. But I’ve got this memory… It’s pretty good. How ’bout if I just tell you about some scenes?”

“Would you?” She turned her back, pulled her navy blouse off and unstrapped the thin American Body Armor vest, tossed it aside. Beneath it she wore a mesh T-shirt and under that a sports bra. She pulled the blouse back on and lay on the couch, pulling the blanket over her, and curled up on her side, closed her eyes.

With the environmental control unit Rhyme dimmed the lights.

“I always found the sites of death fascinating,” he began. “They’re like shrines. We’re a lot more interested in where people bought the big one than where they were born. Take John Kennedy. A thousand people a day visit the Texas Book Depository in Dallas. How many you think make pilgrimages to some obstetrics ward in Boston?”

Rhyme nestled his head in the luxurious softness of the pillow. “Is this boring you?”

“No,” she said. “Please don’t stop.”

“You know what I’ve always wondered about, Sachs?”

“Tell me.”

“It’s fascinated me for years – Calvary. Two thousand years ago. Now, there’s a crime scene I’d like to’ve worked. I know what you’re going to say: But we know the perps. Well, do we? All we really know is what the witnesses tell us. Remember what I say – never trust a wit. Maybe those Bible accounts aren’t what happened at all. Where’s the proof? The PE. The nails, blood, sweat, the spear, the cross, the vinegar. Sandal prints and friction ridges.”

Rhyme turned his head slightly to the left and he continued to talk about crime scenes and evidence until Sachs’s chest rose and fell steadily and faint strands of her fiery red hair blew back and forth under her shallow breath. With his left index finger he flipped through the ECU control and shut off the light. He too was soon asleep.

A faint light of dawn was in the sky.

Awakening, Carole Ganz could see it through the chicken- wire- impregnated glass above her head. Pammy. Oh, baby… Then she thought of Ron. And all her possessions sitting in that terrible basement. The money, the yellow knapsack…

Mostly, though, she was thinking about Pammy.

Something had wakened her from a light, troubled sleep. What was it?

The pain from her wrist? It throbbed horribly. She adjusted herself slightly. She -

The tubular howl of a pipe organ and a rising chorus of voices filled the room again.

That’s what had wakened her. Music. A crashing wave of music. The church wasn’t abandoned. There were people around! She laughed to herself. Somebody would -

And that was when she remembered the bomb.

Carole peered around the filing cabinet. It was still there, teetering on the edge of the table. It had the crude look of real bombs and murder weapons – not the slick, shiny gadgets you see in movies. Sloppy tape, badly stripped wires, dirty gasoline… Maybe it’s a dud, she thought. In the daylight it didn’t look so dangerous.