“What is it?”

“The scene was hot, after all.”

“He was there?”

“Yep. Never left. Or doubled back.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t me he was after.”

“What happened?”

“Got up close, into an alley. Fired four shots. He wounded a bystander…and he killed a witness. His name was Don Barry. He was in charge of the library at the museum. He took three rounds in the heart. Died instantly.”

“You’re sure the shooter’s the same?”

“Yep. The shoe prints I found from his shooting position match the ones in the library. Lon was just starting to interview him. He was standing right in front of him when it happened.”

“He get a look at the doer?”

“Nope. Nobody did. He was hiding behind a Dumpster. Couple of the uniforms on the scene went to work on the woman to save her. She had a major bleeder. He got away in the crowd. Just disappeared.”

“Somebody take care of the details?”

Calling the next of kin. Details.

“Lon was going to make the calls but he had phone problems or something. There was a sergeant on the scene. He did it.”

“All right, Sachs, come on back with what you’ve found… Command, disconnect.” He looked up and found the two girls staring at him.

He explained, “It looks like the man who attacked you didn’t leave, after all. Or he came back. He killed the head librarian and -”

“Mr. Barry?” A gasp from Geneva Settle. She stopped moving, simply froze.

“That’s right.”

“Shit,” Lakeesha whispered. She closed her eyes and shivered.

A moment later Geneva’s mouth tightened and she looked down. She set the cocoa on a table. “No, no…”

“I’m sorry,” Rhyme said. “Was he a friend of yours?”

She shook her head. “Not really. He was just helping me with my paper.” Geneva sat forward in her chair. “But it doesn’t matter if he was a friend or not. He’s dead – that’s so terrible.” She whispered angrily, “Why? Why did he do it?”

“He was a witness, I’d guess. He could identify the man who attacked you.”

“So he’s dead because of me.”

Rhyme muttered some words to her, no, how could it be her fault? She didn’t plan on being attacked. It was just bad luck for Barry. Wrong time, wrong place.

But the reassurance had no effect on the girl. Her face grew taut, her eyes cold. Rhyme didn’t have a clue what to do next. It wasn’t enough that he had to endure the presence of teenagers – now he had to comfort them, get their minds off this tragedy. He wheeled closer to the girls and pushed his patience to its limit by making small talk.

An endless twenty minutes later, Sachs and Sellitto arrived at Rhyme’s, accompanied by a young, blond patrol officer named Pulaski.

Sellitto explained that he’d requisitioned the kid to cart the evidence back to Rhyme’s and help with the investigation. Clearly a rookie, he had “eager” written on his smooth forehead. He’d obviously been briefed about the criminalist’s disability; he was overly oblivious to the fact that the man was paralyzed. Rhyme hated these fake reactions. He infinitely preferred Lakeesha’s brashness.

Just, you know, damn…

The two detectives greeted the girls. Pulaski looked them over sympathetically and asked in a kid-friendly voice how they were doing. Rhyme noted a nicked wedding ring on his finger and deduced a high school marriage; only having children of your own could produce this kind of look.

Lakeesha answered, “Messed up is what I be. Buggin’…Some asshole tryin’ to bust up my girlfriend. Whatta you think?”

Geneva said she was doing all right.

“I understand you’re staying with a relative?” Sachs asked.

“My uncle. He’s living at our place till my folks get back from London.”

Rhyme happened to look at Lon Sellitto. Something was wrong. He’d changed dramatically in the past two hours. The boisterous mood had vanished. His eyes were spooked and he was fidgety. Rhyme noticed too that his fingers repeatedly touched a particular spot on his cheek. He’d rubbed it red.

“Get dinged by some lead?” Rhyme asked, recalling that the detective had been right next to the librarian when the perp had shot him. Maybe Sellitto had been hit by a bullet fragment or bit of stone if a slug had passed through Barry and struck a building.

“What?” Then Sellitto realized he’d been rubbing his skin and dropped his hand. He said in a soft voice, so the girls couldn’t hear, “I was pretty close to the vic. Got spattered by some blood. That’s all. Nothing.”

But a moment later he absently started the rubbing again.

The gesture reminded Rhyme of Sachs, who had the habit of scratching her scalp and worrying her nails. The compulsion came and went, linked somehow to her drive, her ambition, the indefinable churning inside most cops. Police officers hurt themselves in a hundred different ways. The harm ranged from the minor inflictions of Sachs’s, to destroying marriages and children’s spirits with harsh words, to closing your lips around the tangy barrel of your service pistol. He’d never seen it in Lon Sellitto, though.

Geneva asked Sachs, “There was no mistake?”

“Mistake?”

“About Dr. Barry.”

“I’m sorry, no. He’s dead.”

The girl was motionless. Rhyme could feel her sorrow.

Anger too. Her eyes were black dots of fury. Then she looked at her watch, said to Rhyme, “Those tests I mentioned?”

“Well, let’s just get some questions out of the way and then we’ll see. Sachs?”

With the evidence now set out on the examining table and chain of custody cards completed, Sachs pulled up a chair beside Rhyme and interviewed the girls. She asked Geneva exactly what had happened. The girl explained she’d been looking up an article in an old magazine when somebody came into the library. She’d heard hesitant footsteps. Then a laugh. The voice of a man ending a conversation and the snap of a closing cell phone.

The girl squinted. “Hey, you know, maybe what you could do is check out all the mobile companies in town. See who was on the phone then.”

Rhyme gave a laugh. “That’s a good thought. But at any given moment in Manhattan there’re about fifty thousand cell phone calls in progress. Besides, I doubt he was really on the phone.”

“He was frontin’? How you know that?” Lakeesha asked, furtively slipping two sticks of gum into her mouth.

“I don’t know it. I suspect it. Like the laughing. He was probably doing it to make Geneva drop her guard. You tend not to notice people on cell phones. And you rarely think of them as being a threat.”

Geneva was nodding. “Yeah. I was kinda freaked when he first came into the library. But when I heard him on the phone, well, I thought it’s rude to be talking on a phone in a library but I wasn’t scared anymore.”

“What happened then?” Sachs asked.

She explained that she’d heard a second click – she thought it sounded like a gun – and saw a man in a ski mask. She then told how she’d dismantled the mannequin and dressed it in her own clothes.

“That phat,” Lakeesha offered proudly. “My sista here, she smart.”

She sure is, Rhyme thought.

“I hid in the stacks till he walked to the microfiche reader then I ran for the fire door.”

“You didn’t see anything else about him?” Sachs asked.

“No.”

“What color was the mask?”

“Dark. I don’t know exactly.”

“Other clothes?”

“I didn’t see anything else really. Not that I remember. I was pretty freaked.”

“I’m sure you were,” Sachs said. “When you were hiding in the stacks, were you looking in his direction? So you’d know when to run?”

Geneva frowned for a moment. “Well, yeah, that’s right, I was looking. I forgot about that. I watched through the bottom shelves so I could run when he got close to my chair.”

“So maybe you saw a little more of him then.”