The man fell silent but seemed even more furious. Sellitto was hoping he didn’t have another coronary.

‘What was this earlier assault?’ Harriet asked hesitantly. Her voice left no doubt what she was asking.

‘Not sexual assault. Homicide.’

She was breathing rapidly now and under the heavy makeup her face seemed to grow paler. ‘A, like a serial killer?’ What was left of the tissue disintegrated further.

‘Again, we don’t know. Could you describe him?’

‘I’ll try. I only saw him for a few seconds before he pulled a mask down, grabbed me and turned me around.’

Sellitto had been interviewing witnesses for decades and knew that even the best intentioned remembered little or accidentally supplemented accurate observations with mistaken ones. Still, Harriet was pretty specific. She described a white man around thirty wearing a dark jacket, probably leather, gloves, a black or navy blue wool cap, dark slacks or jeans. He was slim of build but had a round face – it struck her as Russian in appearance.

‘My husband and I went to Saint Petersburg a few years ago and we noticed that was typical of how young men look. Round heads, round faces.’

Matthew pointed out in a sneering tone, ‘Crime there too but only pickpockets. They don’t sneak up on you in hospitals.’

‘Higher standards, yeah,’ Sellitto replied. Then: ‘Or the guy’s appearance: maybe Slavic in general? Eastern European?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose so. We’ve only been to Russia. Oh, and his eyes were light blue. Very light.’

‘Scars?’

‘I didn’t see any. I think he had a tattoo. One of his arms. Red. But I couldn’t see much of it. He had the coat on.’

‘Hair?’

Harriet’s eyes scanned the floor. ‘He pulled that hat down pretty quick. I just couldn’t tell you for sure.’

‘Did he say anything to you?’

‘Just whispered to stop struggling or he’d hurt me. I didn’t hear an accent.’

And that was it.

Age, build, eye color and a round head. Russian or Slavic. Clothing.

Sellitto radioed to Bo Haumann, the head of NYPD Emergency Service, and the officer in charge of the manhunt. He gave the description and the latest information.

‘Roger that, Lon. We’ve sealed the office building. Don’t think he got out but I’ve got some teams canvassing the streets nearby. K.’

‘I’ll get back to you, Bo.’ Sellitto didn’t bother with radio code propriety. Never did. It wasn’t that rank had privilege; tenure did.

He turned back to Harriet Stanton and her husband, who was still glowering. Heart attack? He looked pretty spare. And had an outdoor weathered face, so he probably got a fair amount of exercise. Maybe being in a bad mood was a risk factor for coronaries. Sellitto felt bad for Harriet, who seemed like a nice enough lady.

Since there didn’t seem to be any connection between the unsub and the first victim, the same was probably true now; he was hunting randomly. Still, Sellitto asked if she’d ever seen him before, or had any awareness of being followed prior to her visit to the hospital. Or if she and her husband were wealthy or involved in anything that might make them a target of criminals.

The last query seemed to amuse Harriet. No, she explained, they were just working class tourists – whose vacation to New York had been ruined.

Sellitto took her number and the name of the hotel where they were staying and wished her husband a fast recovery.

Harriet thanked him. Matthew nodded gruffly, grabbed the TV’s remote control and upped the volume on the History Channel.

Then the would be victim vanished from Sellitto’s thoughts as his radio crackled to life.

‘All units, report of assault on sixth floor of physicians’ office building, where search operation for unsub is under way. Next to Upper Manhattan Medical Center. There’s been chemical weapon release, substance unknown. Only personnel with bio chem masks are to remain in the building.’

Sellitto’s thoughts tumbled. ‘Son of a bitch.’

Gasping, he ran up the hallway and out of the hospital, into the circular drive. He looked up at the office building, which was to his left. He began jogging toward it, pulling his radio from his belt. He made a call.

‘Bo?’ He was breathless. ‘Bo?’ he tried again.

‘That you, Lon? Over.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just heard. The assault. What happened?’

The former drill sergeant said crisply, ‘I’m getting secondhand reports. Looks like the perp tried to steal some scrubs in a doctor’s office on the sixth floor. An orderly spotted him and he ran. But not before he opened a bottle and spilled something on the floor.’

‘Maybe formaldehyde, like with Amelia.’

‘No, he said it was bad. People puking, passing out. Fumes everywhere. Definitely toxic.’

Sellitto considered this. Finally he asked, ‘Do you know what office? That he dumped the poison in?’

‘I can find out. I’m on the first floor, near the directory. I’ll see.’ A moment later he came back on. ‘There’s only one doctor on six. He has the whole floor.’

Sellitto asked, ‘Is he a plastic surgeon?’

‘Wait. You’re right. How’d you know?’

‘Because our boy wrapped his face in bandages and is strolling down the fire stairs right now with all the other patients you’re evacuating.’

A pause. Haumann said, ‘Hell. Okay, we’ll marshal ’em in the lobby, get IDs. Nobody with a Band Aid on is getting out the front door. Good call, Lon. We’re lucky, we’ll have him in ten minutes.’

Rhyme was wheeling back and forth, back and forth, in front of the high definition monitor. It was around forty minutes after the report had come in about the perp releasing the poison gas in the sixth floor suite in the doctors’ office building.

On the screen was an image of the front of the building and, beyond that, the hospital itself.

Courtesy of an Emergency Service Unit video cam.

The buzzer sounded and Thom went to answer. The door clicked, the wind howled.

Then a familiar clomp of footsteps, which told Rhyme that Lon Sellitto had arrived.

Ah …

The detective turned the corner. Stopped. His face was a grimace.

‘Now,’ Rhyme said, his voice infused with sharp humor. ‘I’m just curious–’

‘All right, Linc,’ Sellitto said, stripping off the wet Burberry. ‘It was–’

‘Curious, I was saying. Did it occur to anyone ? Any single  one? Did it occur to any person on the face of the earth that it wasn’t an orderly reporting the poison gas? That it was the unsub himself  who called in a fake report? So that everyone would start checking out patients with bandages on their faces?’

‘Linc–’

‘And no one would start checking out anyone in a dental face guard, like tattoo artists would wear, and coveralls, strolling casually out the front door like an emergency worker.’

‘I know that now, Linc.’

‘So I guess it didn’t occur to anyone at the time. It’s only–’

‘You made your fucking point.’

‘–now that we can figure out–’

‘You can be a real prick sometimes, Linc. You know that.’

Rhyme did know that and he didn’t care. ‘And the manhunt around Marble Hill?’

‘Checkpoints at main streets, officers at every bus stop and subway station in the area.’

‘Looking for …?’ Rhyme asked.

‘Any white male around thirty with a pulse.’

Rhyme’s computer dinged, and he called up the email. It was Jean Eagleston again, the Crime Scene officer. She was the one who’d done an Identi Kit composite rendering of the man, based on Harriet Stanton’s observation. It depicted an unsmiling young man with Slavic features, a prominent forehead and brows close together. The unsub’s pale eyes gave him a startling, eerie visage.

Rhyme didn’t believe that good or evil could be objectively reflected in appearance. But his gut told him this was the face of a truly dangerous person.