Trouble in Mind: The Collected Stories - 3 Read online

  The shadow was gone.

  She clambered fast down the stairs. Then stopped. A brief sigh. Like most of them in the city, the fire escape didn't go all the way to the ground and she had to drop four or so feet to the cobblestoned alley, wincing in pain as she landed.

  But she stayed upright and turned toward the darker part of the alley.

  She got ten feet before the shadow reemerged--behind her.

  She froze.

  The young Crime Scene officer, Marko, was squinting her way. His weapon was in his hand.

  He lifted it toward Sachs, shaking his crew-cut head. On his face was a faint but definite smile--though a cold one. Of victory. Probably the expression on the face of a sniper just before he takes his shot to kill an enemy general.

  8

  SURPRISINGLY SILENTLY for such a stocky man, Marko moved closer and pointed to his lips, shaking his head, meaning that she keep still.

  Sachs didn't move a muscle.

  Then he pointed behind her. And suddenly he shouted, "You! Under the blankets. There're two police officers here. We're armed. Let me see your hands."

  Sachs looked to her left. She noted a homeless nest--blankets, piles of clothing, food cartons, grocery cart, empties, books and magazines. At first she didn't see anyone. But then she spotted a human form huddling in a gamy bedspread. A woman. She glanced at Marko, who nodded, and she, too, trained her weapon on the person, though she didn't have any idea what was going on.

  "Let me see your hands!" he shouted.

  And slowly the middle-aged figure rose, a look of fury and hatred on her face. Sachs moved forward and cuffed the suspect, who raged, "You don't understand. You don't have any idea what he did to me. He ruined my life!"

  "Yes, ma'am," Marko said and glanced at Sachs, who read the woman her rights. Then eased her to a sitting position as she continued her rant, while the two officers searched the nest.

  "How'd you make her?" Sachs asked. "The profile Rhyme had for the perp was middle-class, lived in a nice place on the Upper West Side."

  Marko nodded. "Homeless lady clothes, but not homeless lady shoes."

  Sachs looked. True, a torn and dirty dress. But nice Joan & Davids on her feet. Also, her face was clean and she wore makeup.

  "Good catch."

  "Thank you, ma'am."

  "'Amelia' is fine."

  "Sure."

  They collected the woman's purse--and a few other items. Notably, a pistol, with which she presumably would have shot Sachs in the back if Marko hadn't gotten to the scene as quickly as he had.

  Good catch...

  They also found a well-thumbed book, sprouting Post-it notes.

  A Comprehensive Guide to Evidence Collection and Analysis.

  Lincoln Rhyme's textbook.

  *

  THE PERP WAS James Ferguson's ex-wife.

  In this case, Lincoln Rhyme allowed, this one case, motive was a pretty good clue and led them to the suspect: revenge.

  Ferguson, along with Sachs, Sellitto and Marko, sat in Rhyme's townhouse, filling in the details of what Rhyme had deduced an hour ago. He explained that he'd gotten divorced from his wife, Linda, about a year ago. She'd grown increasingly abusive and unstable, paranoid. She'd known his career was important to him before they got married but she'd still resented the long hours and his obsession with his TV production projects. She was also sure he was having affairs with his assistants.

  He laughed bitterly. "Twelve-hour days don't leave a lot of time or energy for that sort of thing."

  After the divorce her mental and emotional condition grew worse, he added, though it never occurred to him that she'd grow violent.

  But she sure had. Coming up with a bizarre plan to get even with Ferguson by stalking and killing some of the women Ferguson dated or knew. She dressed like a homeless woman, so she wouldn't be noticed, camping out near her intended victims' apartments to get details about their lives. Then she'd attempted to murder them using as a template Rhyme's book, both to cover up any clues to her personally and also to shift the focus to Ferguson, since there was a record he'd bought a copy of the textbook.

  The last step, tonight, would be to plant evidence implicating her ex-husband in Vicki Sellick's apartment. A whole chapter in Rhyme's book was about intentionally seeding evidence at a scene to establish guilt.

  Rhyme glanced at his textbook, sitting in an evidence collection bag. "Why did you happen to buy it?"

  Ferguson explained that as a documentary TV producer he watched as many competitors' programs as he could. "I saw the episode on A&E about that murder in Florida, where you were talking about evidence. I thought it was brilliant. I thought maybe my company could do something along those lines. So I ordered your book. But I never got around to doing the show. I went on to other things."

  "And your wife knew about the book?" Sellitto asked.

  "I guess I mentioned the project to her and that I was reading it. She's been in my apartment off and on over the past year. She must've stolen it sometime when she was over." He regarded Rhyme. "But why didn't you think I was the one, like she planned?"

  Rhyme said, "I did at first. But then I decided it wouldn't've been smart for somebody to use a book that could be traced to them as a template for murder. But it'd be very smart for someone else to use that book. And whoever put this together was brilliant."

  "He profiled you," Sachs said with a smile.

  Rhyme grimaced.

  Sellitto had then spoken to Ferguson and learned of the nasty divorce, which gave them the idea that his ex might be behind it. They learned, too, that he'd just dropped off Vicki Sellick, the woman he was dating, at her apartment.

  They'd tried to call the woman but, when she hadn't picked up, Sachs and the team had sped there to see if she was in fact under attack.

  "She was nuts," Ferguson muttered. "Insane."

  "Ah, madness and brilliance--they're not mutually exclusive," Rhyme replied. "I think we can agree on that."

  Then Marko rubbed his close-cropped head and laughed. "I'm sort of surprised you didn't suspect me. I mean, think about it. I was first on the scene at the Twenty-sixth Street homicide, I knew forensics, I'd taken your course and you could assume I'd read your book."

  Rhyme grunted. "Well, sorry to say, kid, but you were a suspect. The first one."

  "Me?"

  "Sure. For the reasons you just mentioned."

  Sellitto said, "But Linc had me check you out. You were in the lab in Queens, working late, when the first vic was killed."

  "We had to check. No offense," Rhyme said.

  "It's cool, sir...Lincoln."

  "All right," Sellitto muttered. "I got paperwork to do." He left with Ferguson, who would go downtown to dictate his statement. Marko, too, left for the night.

  "That his first name or last?" Rhyme asked.

  "Don't know," Sachs replied.

  An hour later, she'd finished bundling up the last of the evidence collection bags and jars and boxes for transport to the evidence storage facility in Queens.

  "We'll definitely need to air the place out," Rhyme muttered. "Smells like an alleyway in here."

  Sachs agreed. She flung open the windows and poured them each a Glenmorangie Scotch. She dropped into the rattan chair beside Rhyme's Storm Arrow. His drink was in a tumbler, sprouting a straw. She placed it in a cup holder near his mouth. He had good movement of his right arm and hand, thanks to the surgery, but he was still learning the subtleties of control and didn't want to risk spilling valuable single-malt.

  "So," she said, regarding him with a gleam in her eye.

  "You're looking coy, Sachs."

  "Well, I was just thinking. Are you finally going to admit that there's more to policing than physical evidence?"

  Rhyme thought for a moment. "No, I don't think so."

  She laughed. "Rhyme, we closed this one because of deductions from witness statements and observations...and a little profiling. Evidence didn't have anything to do with it."
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br />   "Ah," Rhyme said, "but there's a flaw in your logic, Sachs."

  "Which is?"

  "Those deductions and observations all came from the fact that somebody bought a textbook of mine, correct?"

  "True."

  "And what was the book about?"

  She shrugged. "Evidence."

  "Ergo, physical evidence was the basis for closing the case."

  "You're not going to concede this one, are you, Rhyme?"

  "Do I ever?" he asked and, placing his hand on hers, enjoyed a long sip of the smoky liquor.

  PARADICE

  a John Pellam story

  ON ONE SIDE WAS ROCK, dark as old bone. On the other a drop of a hundred feet.

  And in front, a Ford pickup, one of those fancy models, a pleasant navy-blue shade. It cruised down the steep grade, moving slow. The driver and passenger enjoying the Colorado scenery.

  Those were his choices: Rock. Air. Pickup.

  Which really wasn't much of a choice at all as a means to die.

  John Pellam jammed his left boot on the emergency brake again. It dropped another notch toward the floor. The pads ground fiercely and slowed the big camper not at all. He was going close to sixty.

  He downshifted. Low gear screamed and the box threatened to tear apart. Don't lose the gears, he told himself. Popped the lever back up to D.

  Sixty mph...seventy...

  Air. Rock.

  Seventy-five.

  Pickup.

  Choose one, Pellam thought. His foot cramped as he instinctively shoved the useless brake pedal to the floor again. Five minutes ago he'd been easing the chugging camper over Clement Pass, near Walsenburg, three hours south of Denver, admiring the stern, impressive scenery this cool spring morning. There'd been a soft hiss, his foot had gone to the floor and the Winnebago had started its free fall.

  From the tinny boom box on the passenger seat Kathy Mattea sang "Who Turned Out the Light?"

  Pellam squinted as he bore down on the pickup, honking the horn, flashing his lights to warn the driver out of the way. He caught a glimpse of sunglasses in the Ford's rearview mirror. The driver, wearing a brown cowboy hat, spun around quickly to see how close the camper really was. Then turned back, hands clasped at ten to two on the wheel.

  Air, pickup...

  Pellam picked mountain. He eased to the right, thinking maybe he could brush against the rock and brush and pine, slow down enough so that when he went head-on into a tree it wouldn't kill him. Maybe.

  But just as he swerved, the driver of the truck instinctively steered in the same direction--to the right, to escape onto the shoulder. Pellam sucked in an "Oh, hell" and spun the wheel to the left.

  So did the driver of the Ford. Like one of those little dances people do trying to get out of each other's way as they approach on the sidewalk. Both vehicles swung back to the right then to the left once more as the camper bore down on the blue pickup. Pellam chose to stay in the left lane, on the edge of the cliff. The pickup veered back to the right. But it was too late; the camper struck its rear end--red and clear plastic shrapnel scattered over the asphalt--and hooked on to the pickup's trailer hitch.

  The impact goosed the speed up to eighty.

  Pellam looked over the roof of the Ford. He had a fine view of where the road disappeared in a curve a half mile ahead. If they didn't slow by then the two vehicles were going to sail into space in the finest tradition of hackneyed car chase scenes.

  Oh, hell. That wasn't all: a new risk, a bicyclist. A woman, it seemed, on a mountain bike. She had one of those pistachio-shell-shaped helmets, in black, and a heavy backpack.

  She had no clue they were bearing down on her.

  For a moment the pickup wiggled out of control then straightened its course. The driver seemed to be looking back at Pellam more than ahead. He didn't see the bike.

  Seventy miles an hour. A quarter mile from the curve.

  And a hundred feet from the bicyclist.

  "Look out!" Pellam shouted. Pointlessly.

  The driver of the pickup began to brake. The Ford vibrated powerfully. They slowed a few miles per hour.

  Maybe the curve wasn't that sharp. He squinted at a yellow warning sign.

  The diagram showed a 180-degree switchback. A smaller sign commanded that thou shalt take the turn at ten miles an hour.

  But they'd be on the cyclist in seconds. Without a clue they were speeding toward her, she was coasting and weaving around in the right lane, avoiding rocks. And about to get crushed to death. Some riders had tiny rearview mirrors attached to their helmets. She didn't.

  "Look!" Pellam shouted again and gestured.

  Whether the driver saw the gesture or not Pellam couldn't say. But the passenger did and pointed.

  The pickup swerved to the left. Another squeal of brakes. The camper rode up higher on the hitch. It was like a fishhook. As they raced past the bicyclist, her mouth open in shock, she wove to the side, the far right, and managed to skid to a stop.

  That was one tragedy averted. But the other loomed.

  They were a thousand feet from the switchback.

  Pellam felt the vibrations again, from the brakes. They slowed to sixty-five then sixty. Downshift.

  Five hundred feet.

  They'd slowed to fifty.

  Danger Sharp Curve.

  Down to forty-five leisurely miles an hour.

  The switchback loomed. Straight ahead, past the curve, Pellam could see nothing. No trees. No mountains. Just a huge empty space. The tourist marker at Clement Pass said the area boasted some of the most spectacular vertical drops in Colorado.

  Forty miles an hour. Thirty-nine.

  Maybe we'll just bring this one off.

  But then the grade dropped, an acute angle, and the wedded vehicles began accelerating. Fifty, fifty-five.

  Pellam took off his Ray-Bans. Swept the pens and beer bottles off the dash. Knocked the boom box to the floor. Kathy continued to sing. The song "Grand Canyon" was coming up soon.

  A hundred feet from the switchback.

  With a huge scream the pickup's nose dropped. The driver had locked the brakes in a last desperate attempt to stop. Blue smoke swirled as the truck fishtailed and the rear of the camper swung to the left. But the driver was good. He turned into the skid far enough to control it but not so much that he lost control. They straightened out and kept slowing.

  They were fifty feet from the edge of the switchback. The speed had dropped to fifty.

  Forty-five...

  But it wasn't enough.

  Pellam threw his arms over his face, sank down into the seat.

  The pickup sliced through the pointless wooden guardrail and sailed over the edge of the road, the camper just behind.

  There was a loud thump as the undercarriage of the Ford uprooted a skinny tree and then a soft jolt. Pellam opened his eyes to find the vehicles rolling down a gentle ten-foot incline, smooth as a driveway, into the parking lot of the Overlook Diner, sitting in the middle of a spacious area on an outcropping of rock high above the valley floor.

  With a resounding snap the camper's front bumper broke loose and fell beneath the front tires, slicing through and flattening them, a hard jolt that launched the boom box and possibly a beer bottle or two into Pellam's ear and temple.

  He winced at the pain. The truck rolled leisurely through the lot and steered out of the way of the Winnebago, which hobbled on, slowing, toward the rear of the diner.

  Pellam's laughter at the peaceful conclusion to the near-tragedy vanished as the camper's nose headed directly for a large propane tank.

  Shit...

  Hitting the useless brakes again, couldn't help himself, he squinted. But the dead tires slowed the camper significantly and the result of the collision was a quiet thonk, not the fireball that was the requisite conclusion of car chases in the sort of movies Pellam preferred not to work on.

  He lowered his head and inhaled deeply for a moment. Not praying. Just lowered his head. He climbed out and s
tretched. John Pellam was lean of face and frame and tall, with not-quite-trimmed dark hair. In his denim jacket, Noconas, well-traveled jeans and a black wrinkled dress shirt converted to casual wear, he resembled a cowboy, or at least was mistaken for one in places like this, though not in the low-rent district of Beverly Hills--yes, they exist--that was his mailing address. The cowboy aura he tended to perpetuate not for image but for sentiment; the story went that he was actually related to a figure from the Old West, Wild Bill Hickok.

  Pellam walked stiffly toward the pickup, noting the damage wasn't terrible. Scraped paint and hitch, broken brake-and taillight.

  The driver, too, shut off the engine and eased the door open.

  Pellam approached. "Look, mister, I'm really sorry. The brakes..."

  The Stetson came off swiftly, unleashing a cascade of long chestnut hair. The woman was in her mid-thirties, petite, about five two or so. With a heart-shaped face, red lips, brows thick and dark, which, for some reason, made them wildly sensual.

  The passenger-side door opened and a young man--well built in a gangly sort of way, with an anemic goatee and short ruddy hair--climbed out. A cautious smile on his face. He looked as if he wanted to apologize for the accident, though passengers were probably not the first suspects traffic officers looked at.

  Pellam continued toward the driver.

  She took off her own Ray-Bans.

  He was thinking that her eyes were the palest, most piercing gray he'd ever seen when she drew back and decked him with a solid right to the jaw.

  *

  A COLD COLORADO DESERT WIND had come up and they were all inside the diner, the cast now including the town sheriff, fiftyish and twice Pellam's weight. His name was partially H. Werther, according to his name plate. He stood near the counter, talking to the cowgirl.

  Pellam was sitting at a table while a medic who smelled of chewing tobacco worked on his jaw. Pellam was mad at himself. He'd been in more fights than he could--or cared to--count. He'd seen the squint in her eyes as he stepped close and had an idea that it was an about-to-swing squint. And all the while Pellam kept grinning like a freshman on a first date and thinking, Now, those are some extraordinary eyes.

  For Christsake, you might've ducked at least.