“No, Detective Sachs,” he answered. “Sure haven’t.”
“Thanks.”
She finished with the evidence, then released the scene to the medical examiner tour doctor.
Returning to her car, she opened the trunk and began stripping off the white jumpsuit. She was chatting with the other officers from the CS main headquarters in Queens. They too had changed out of their own overalls. One frowned and was looking around for something he’d misplaced.
“Lose something?” she asked.
The man frowned. “Yeah. It was right here. My hat.”
Sachs froze. “What?”
“It’s missing.”
Shit. She tossed the jumpsuit into the trunk and jogged fast to the sergeant from the local precinct, who was the immediate supervisor here. “Did you have anybody secure the loading dock?” she asked breathlessly.
“Over there? Naw. I didn’t bother. We had the whole area sealed and-”
Goddamnit.
Turning, she sprinted to the loading dock, her Glock in hand. She shouted to the officers nearby, “He was here! By the crematorium. Move!”
Sachs paused at the old redbrick structure, noticing the open gate leading out to the street. A fast search of the grounds revealed no sign of 522. She continued on to the street and looked out fast, left and right. Traffic, curious onlookers-dozens of them-but the suspect was gone.
Sachs returned to the loading dock and wasn’t surprised to find the police officer’s hat lying nearby. It sat next to a sign, Leave Caskets Here. She collected the hat, slipped it into an evidence bag and returned to the other officers. Sachs and a local precinct sergeant sent officers around the neighborhood to see if anybody had spotted him. Then she returned to her car. Of course, he’d be far away by now but still she couldn’t shake the raw uneasiness-which was due mostly to the fact that he hadn’t tried to escape when he saw her walking toward the crematorium but casually stood his ground.
Though what chilled her the most was the memory of his casual voice-referring to her by name.
“Are they going to do it?” Rhyme snapped as Lon Sellitto walked through the door from his mission downtown with Captain Malloy and the deputy mayor, Ron Scott, about what Rhyme was calling the “Expert Plan.”
“They’re not happy. It’s expensive and they-”
“Bull…shit. Get somebody on the phone.”
“Hold on, hold on. They’ll do it. They’re making the arrangements. I’m just saying they’re grumbling about it.”
“You should have told me up front they agreed. I don’t care how much they grumble.”
“Joe Malloy’ll give me a call with the details.”
At around 9:30 P.M. the door opened and Amelia Sachs entered, carrying the evidence she’d collected at the groundskeeper’s murder scene.
“He was there,” she said.
Rhyme didn’t understand her.
“Five Twenty-Two. At the cemetery. He was watching us.”
“No shit,” Sellitto said.
“He was gone by the time I realized it.” She held up a patrolman’s hat and explained that he’d been watching her in disguise.
“The fuck he’d do that for?”
“Information,” Rhyme said softly. “The more he knows, the more powerful he is, the more vulnerable we become…”
“You canvass?” Sellitto asked.
“A team from the precinct did. Nobody saw anything.”
“He knows everything. We know zilch.”
She unpacked the crate as Rhyme’s eyes took in each evidence-collection bag she lifted out. “They struggled. Could be some good transfer trace.”
“Let’s hope.”
“I talked to Abrera, the janitor. He said that for the past month, he’s noticed some strange things. His time sheets were changed, there were deposits into his checking account he didn’t make.”
Cooper suggested, “Like Jorgensen-identity theft?”
“No, no,” Rhyme said. “I’ll bet Five Twenty-Two was grooming him to take the fall. Maybe a suicide. Plant a note on him…It was his wife and child’s grave?”
“That’s right.”
“Sure. He’s despondent. Going to kill himself. Confesses to all the crimes in a suicide note. We close the case. But the groundskeeper interrupts him in the act. And now Five Twenty-Two’s up a creek. He can’t try this again; we’ll be expecting a fake suicide now. He’ll have to try something else. But what?”
Cooper had started going over the evidence. “No hairs in the hat, no trace at all…But you know what I’ve got? A bit of adhesive. Generic though. Can’t source it.”
“He removed the trace with tape or a roller before he left the hat,” Rhyme said, grimacing. Nothing 522 did would surprise him anymore.
Cooper then announced, “From the other scene-by the grave-I’ve got a fiber. It’s similar to the rope used in the earlier crime.”
“Good. What’s in it?”
Cooper prepared the sample and tested it. A short time later he announced, “Okay, got two things. The most common is naphthalene in an inert crystal medium.”
“Mothballs,” Rhyme announced. The substance had figured in a poisoning case years ago. “But they’d be old ones.” He explained that naphthalene had largely been abandoned in favor of safer materials. “Or,” he added, “from out of the country. Fewer safety codes on consumer products in a lot of places.”
“Then something else.” Cooper gestured at the computer screen. The substance it revealed was Na(C6H11NHSO2O). “And it’s bound with lecithin, carnauba wax, citrus acid.”
“What the hell’s that?” Rhyme blurted.
Another database was consulted. “Sodium cyclamate.”
“Oh, artificial sweetener, right?”
“That’s it,” Cooper said, reading. “Banned by the FDA thirty years ago. The ban’s still under challenge but no products have been made with it since the seventies.”
Then Rhyme’s mind made a few leaps, mimicking his eyes as they jumped from item to item on the evidence boards. “Old cardboard. Mold. Desiccated tobacco. The doll’s hair? Old soda? And boxes of mothballs? What the hell does it add up to? Does he live near an antiques store? Over one?”
They continued the analysis: minute traces of phosphorus sesquisulfide, the main ingredient in safety matches; more Trade Center dust; and leaves from a dieffenbachia, also called leopard lily. It was a common houseplant.
Other evidence included paper fibers from yellow legal pads, probably two different ones because of the color variations in the dyes. But they weren’t distinctive enough to trace to a source. Also, more of the spicy substance that Rhyme had found in the knife used to murder the coin collector. This time they had enough to properly examine the grains and the color. “It’s cayenne pepper,” Cooper announced.
Sellitto mumbled, “Used to be you could pin somebody to a Latin neighborhood with that. Now, you can get salsa and hot sauce everywhere. Whole Foods to 7-Elevens.”
The only other clue was a shoeprint in the dirt of a recently dug grave near the site of the killing. Sachs deduced it was 522’s because it appeared to have been left by someone running from that area toward the exit.
Comparing the electrostatic print with the database of shoe treadmarks revealed that 522’s shoes were well-worn size-11 Skechers, a practical, though not particularly stylish, model often worn by workers and hikers.
While Sachs took a phone call, Rhyme told Thom to write the details on the chart as he dictated. Rhyme stared at the information-much more than when they’d started. Yet it was leading them nowhere.
UNSUB 522 PROFILE
· Male
· Possibly smokes or lives/works with someone who does, or near source of tobacco
· Has children or lives/works near them or near source of toys
· Interest in art, coins?
· Probably white or light-skinned ethnic
· Medium build
· Strong-able to strangle victims
· Access to voice-disguise equipment
· Possibly computer literate; knows OurWorld. Other social-networking sites?