A Textbook Case Read online

What was that?

  A flicker of unsteady shadow.

  She dropped to her knees. Behind the washing machine was a Starbucks Frappuccino bottle with a rag stuffed in the neck. It, too, was filled with gasoline and the improvised wick was burning. The gasoline flowing down the wall was just starting to pool around it.

  A Molotov cocktail.

  Oh, hell, the pilot light wasn't the igniter. This bottle was.

  Sachs grabbed the woman by the shoulders. They rushed the door.

  And then, the explosion.

  5

  "Sachs!" Lincoln Rhyme was calling into his headset microphone. He was in his parlor lab, surrounded by the thousands of evidence containers. He hadn't moved much; it was difficult to maneuver.

  He glanced at Thom, who was also on the phone, trying to reach someone at the command post for an update. Neither Sellitto nor Detective Ron Simpson was answering.

  The report from the scene was that there'd been a huge explosion in the basement of the townhouse that Sachs had been searching. The tenants and their pets had been saved--as had the bulk of the building; the fire was mostly out. But Sachs and the intended victim, both of whom were in the laundry room, where the device was set, were unaccounted for.

  Rhyme was furious with her for not waiting for the Bomb Squad.

  "It's their fucking job," he muttered, drawing a quizzical glance from his aide, who would, of course, have no idea whom he was fighting with.

  He made a mobile call. But Lon Sellitto didn't pick up.

  "Goddamn it!"

  Police and fire reports tumbled their way.

  Oh, Jesus Christ...

  And then, at last, "Rhyme..."

  "Sachs! Where are you? What happened?"

  "Wait one--"

  "I don't want to wait one anything. What the hell happened?" He nodded at Thom, who hung up his own on-hold call.

  "We're fine. The vic and I got out the back. We just made it to the corridor before it blew."

  She went on to describe what he'd rigged.

  "I wanted to collect some of the evidence, Rhyme. Anything. This time there wasn't any contamination. But I didn't have the chance."

  "You're all right?"

  "Yeah, dizzy from the fumes, smoke."

  "The vic?"

  "Same, dizzy, she's on oxygen. She breathed 'em for longer than I did."

  "She see anything?"

  Sachs explained that, as in the homicide on Twenty-sixth Street, the perp had hit her from behind and duct-taped her, then rigged the bomb.

  "Same thing, Rhyme. It was slow. Like he wanted her to think about the death she was facing. Lon's interviewing her."

  "Come on back here right away, Sachs. We just handed our unsub his first defeat and he's probably not very happy about it. And that young guy, Marko? Is he there?"

  "He came over from the academy. He and I're going to walk the grid. Not that there's much to collect."

  "Well, tell him he did a competent job," Rhyme said and disconnected.

  Though it sounded like damning with faint praise, in fact, coming from Lincoln Rhyme, it was a stellar compliment.

  # # #

  At midnight, Sachs, Sellitto and Cooper were in the parlor.

  The opposite of the earlier scene, the site of the attempt on Tenth Street had yielded Evidence Lite; Sachs could carry all of it herself in one milk carton.

  Sellitto had interviewed the victim, Simone Randall, at length. Like Jane Levine at the first crime scene, she had no enemies, certainly none who'd do something like this. She worked as an assistant in the entertainment field. She and her boss had just gotten back from a meeting on the West Coast. Simone had no clue why someone would do this to her and hadn't seen any threats when she'd arrived. She told Sachs about the other people on the street as she'd gotten out of the taxi: two guys making out and a homeless woman. Patrol officers canvassed but didn't come up with anybody. He also contacted Simone's boss, who'd dropped her off in front of her apartment, but he hadn't seen anything either, except the three people that Simone had mentioned.

  The victim added that she thought she'd seen somebody watching the building with binoculars off and on for the past month, from the garden in the city park across the street, but he might just have been bird-watching.

  "Where our unsub picked up his vegetative evidence and soil," Rhyme noted.

  But Simone had not seen the person clearly.

  Sellitto said, "That's it. Zip. Zilch."

  "Hell," Rhyme muttered, wheeling back and beaching his chair on a pile of evidence envelopes containing plastic utensils. With the bits of food and drink beginning to decay, the parlor was taking on an unhealthy smell.

  He didn't know when a case had frustrated him so much.

  Thom surveyed his boss and said, "I'm going to want you to get some sleep."

  "Fine," Rhyme snapped, "if you're 'going to' want that, it means you don't want it yet."

  "Lincoln." Thom was placid but firm, in his caregiver/mother-hen mode. The criminalist didn't feel like arguing. Besides, Thom was usually right about Rhyme's physical state, even if the criminalist didn't want to admit it. The life expectancy for those with his level of quadriplegia can be less than that of the general population, and Rhyme had Thom to thank for the fact he was still on earth... and relatively healthy.

  And he was exhausted.

  "Twenty minutes, please."

  " 'Please,' " Thom said with mock shock. "That didn't sound sincere."

  It wasn't.

  Though as things turned out, even twenty minutes was too much.

  There virtually was no evidence, nothing to analyze, no conclusions to be drawn.

  And yet the unsub had been just as clever as at the earlier scene.

  The fire meant there was nothing left to trace back to his home, place of work or future attacks. The fire had turned nearly everything to ash and the water from the fire department had blended clues with extraneous materials and produced a useless black sludge. He was sure, too, that the few recognizable remnants--the Frappuccino bottle, the duct tape, the matches--would have come from the trash.

  Even an analysis of the accelerant gasoline revealed it was an unbranded generic--and could have been bought in any of five hundred stations in the area.

  Ah, fire, Rhyme reflected cynically.

  As he'd written in his textbook:

  Arson is one of the best ways to destroy trace evidence, friction ridge prints and shoe and boot prints. Investigators have to rely on evidence from entrance and exit routes and chemical analysis of the accelerant and ignition device for clues.

  As for the things that might have helped--footprints along the perp's entrance and exit routes? And tool marks where he'd picked the locks? Of course, he'd worn booties and gloves--and had figured that any telltale clues would be destroyed by the firemen charging into the building, swinging axes and knocking down doors.

  Which, of course, was exactly what happened.

  Thom said, "Lincoln."

  The grace period was up. It was time for bed.

  Maybe something would occur to him in the morning.

  6

  But the dawn arrived with no brilliant insights regarding Unsub 26.

  And none at midmorning... nor late afternoon.

  They were no longer able to enlist the numbers-crunching forces from the police academy, to review the massive amounts of evidence from the scene on Twenty-sixth Street, though the head of the Crime Scene Unit agreed to dedicate some extra technicians. Marko had taken the bulk of the collected materials from Rhyme's to the labs in Queens.

  But the hours rolled by and all the updates included variations on: "There's just too much evidence."

  Clues had never failed Rhyme so badly as in this case. He'd built his whole professional life on finding the truth because of physical evidence. In fact, he was contemptuous of other forms of investigation. Witnesses lied, motives were fishy, vivid memories were completely wrong.

  Locard's Principle...

/>   At 6:00 p.m. Mel Cooper, Sachs and Rhyme were still laboring away, doing what they could with the several hundred samples that remained here in his parlor but not making any headway.

  There's just too much...

  Rhyme reached for one of the hair sample bags. "Let's keep going with follicles and CODIS." The consolidated database that contained DNA samples from tens of thousands of perpetrators.

  But he set it down and wheeled back from a work table. His expression must have been particularly troubled. Sachs, too, stopped her analysis of a sheet of paper, walked behind him and massaged his shoulders, which were tense as stone.

  It felt nice...

  But didn't take away the frustration.

  Rhyme gazed at the largely useless evidence, trying desperately to think of a different approach. It was clear that the classic textbook procedure for running a case forensically wasn't going to work.

  What else could he--?

  Textbook.

  "Sachs!"

  "What?" She stopped the massage and walked around in front of him.

  "Textbook. Think about what I've been saying for the past couple of days. My textbook."

  The evidence chart reads like the table of contents in my goddamn book....

  Sachs was nodding. "It's like everything he knows about evidence and crime scenes, he learned from your book."

  He pointed to the chart. "There's a separate chapter for each of those categories of evidence collection and analysis. And I wrote sections about contamination, having too much evidence, and arson as a means to obliterate it. Somebody who bought or borrowed my text is the perp."

  "How many copies did you sell?" Cooper asked. He knew the book well; he was one of the dedicatees.

  "About twenty thousand."

  "Not very helpful then."

  Rhyme considered this. "I'm not so sure. People aren't going to curl up with it on cold winter nights like they would with Harry Potter or one of those vampire books now, are they? The vast bulk of sales would be to law enforcement. But let's put them aside for the time being--it's too obvious, too traceable. Somebody with a forensic specialty'd be the first people we'd look at."

  "We'll drop everything and get in touch with publishers and retailers."

  "How do we factor out law enforcement sales?" Cooper asked.

  "Anybody with the government got a discount, so let's get a list of any customer who paid full price."

  Sachs pointed out, "But like you just said, it could have been borrowed. It could've been bought with cash in a store, could've been stolen."

  "Maybe, but not many retail outlets carried it. Most sales were online. As for borrowing it, just because something is unlikely is no reason not to pursue it. I don't think we have much choice, anyway."

  "Time frame for the sales?" Cooper wondered.

  "I'd go back a year. The sales spiked after that documentary I did on A&E; a lot of people saw it, Googled me and bought the book." Rhyme's head was forward and he felt exhilarated. He was on the hunt and he knew his heart was pounding hard--felt the sensation in his neck and head, of course, not in his numb chest.

  "Besides, I'd think emotionally you don't buy a book to help you plan a killing and then wait two years. This perp's moving fast."

  "You're sounding quite psychological, Rhyme," Sachs said, laughing. "That almost sounds like you're profiling him."

  A pseudoscience, he felt. But he replied with a shrug, "Who said forensic scientists can't be aware of human nature? That's all. Let's get to work. Who coughed up a hundred and twenty dollars for my words of wisdom, plus shipping and handling?"

  In three hours they had a rough list from the publishers, online retailers and professional bookstores. Sixty-four people in the New York area had bought the textbook in the past year, paying full price.

  "Ouch," Cooper muttered. "Sixty-four? That's a brick wall."

  "Not at all," Rhyme whispered, looking over the list. "I'd say it's merely a speed bump."

  # # #

  Okay, he was a catch.

  Vicki Sellick probably wouldn't've thought of him that way by herself. But Joan and Alaki from work had met them for a drink earlier that night and both gave her subtle raised-eyebrows approval ratings. Joanie had whispered, "Go, girl! You hooked a good one."

  Oh, stop...

  But, yeah, Vicki now thought, she had.

  Her date was courteous, handsome, had a great job and on the two times that he'd stayed over their time together had been... well, fantastic. They made a solid couple, politically in tune (centrist Democrats), athletic, lovers of the out of doors. They'd both been through tough divorces. True, he worked long hours, but so did she, a Wall Street lawyer. And he was older--in his mid-fifties, but looked much younger. Besides, Vicki, thirty-seven, had stopped using age as a definitive criterion for potential partners some years ago, one of her better decisions in the crazy world of dating.

  He now steered his Jaguar to the curb in front of her apartment and, without hesitation, took her in his arms, kissing her firmly.

  She had wondered if tonight would be the third time he stayed and it probably would have been, except that he had a 6:00 a.m. flight tomorrow on business. His assistant was out of commission for some reason or another so he had to get ready for the meeting all by himself.

  But there was nothing wrong with taking things slowly.

  She kissed him back even harder.

  "I'm back in two days," he whispered. "See you then?"

  "You're on." Another kiss sealed the deal.

  "I'll walk you up," he said, nodding at her townhouse.

  But she had to pick up some milk and a few things at the deli up the street, so they kissed a while more.

  She whispered, " 'Night, James. Call me if you can."

  "Oh, you'll hear from me," he said softly, nuzzling her ear. She climbed out of the sports car and he sped off.

  Ten minutes later, plastic bags in hand, she returned to her townhouse, a real find she'd been in for some years. She'd lucked into a duplex on the top floors of the four-story building and scraped together enough money to buy it instantly. The living space was a refuge from the chaos and demands of Wall Street law.

  Up the stairs to the second floor, then the third.

  Hm, the hallway light was out here. Odd, the maintenance in the building was great. Odd. It seemed the light bulb had fallen out and shattered. As she walked up to the fourth floor, where the entrance to her unit was, she fished in her pocket for her phone, thinking about calling him.

  No, she'd wait. Get inside, take a shower, have a final glass of wine. She left the phone where it was and got her keys. Maybe--

  Then the world went black and an explosion of pain soared through her head and as she pitched forward she felt the keys being lifted from her fingers.

  7

  "I think I've got it," Rhyme said, looking over the list of book sales.

  Lon Sellitto had joined them and had an arrest team ready to go, if Rhyme's textbook theory panned out.

  The criminalist continued, "A week after the special aired, somebody named James Ferguson, 734 East Sixty-eighth Street, bought a copy of my book. He's not law enforcement. He ticked the box that said it was for professional research."

  "Ferguson," Sachs said, "sounds familiar."

  Sellitto said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah! I interviewed him. He's Simone Randall's--the second vic's--boss. He dropped her off in a cab about a half hour before she was attacked."

  "Data mine him, Mel. I want to know if he belongs to a health club. And, Sachs, find out the club that first victim belonged to."

  Sellitto nodded. "Right, good call. The vic's boyfriend said she dated somebody from the club once, I think."

  In five minutes they had the answer. Both Ferguson and Jane Levine belonged to Lower Manhattan Health and Tennis.

  "So, he's our boy. Classic serial doer. Let's find him, pick him up," Sellitto said and reached for his phone.

  "Hold on, Lon," Rhyme said. "It's not as simple as t
hat."

  And Rhyme did something he never thought he'd ever do: started reading the witness statements, ignoring the evidence charts completely.

  # # #

  I'm dying, Vicki Sellick thought.

  Why... why?

  But she had no idea who was behind this and so she didn't know why.

  All she knew was that the asshole who'd slugged her over the head and tied her up here was trooping through the townhouse. She heard drawers opening, she heard doors closing.

  Robbery?

  She didn't have anything here of any real value...

  She stanched the tears. The duct tape was snug on her mouth and if she cried any harder she'd clog her nose and suffocate.

  She was lying in her big, Victorian, claw-foot bathtub, hands bound behind her, feet, also taped, dangling over the end. The lights were out and the blinds closed. It was virtually black.

  Vicki screamed through the tape. A pathetic sound nobody could have heard. She was on the top floor of her townhouse. She had it to herself, and the nearest neighbor, even if she was home, was two stories below.

  Then silence for a moment. Then a faint sound.

  What's that? Was--?

  She gasped as the door swept open and she felt a presence. The intruder, a pure shadow, moved in, paused... and turned the water on.

  No! Vicki tried to struggle her way out but the angle and immobility from the tape made that impossible. Her attacker left, closing the door.

  The icy water continued to rise.

  # # #

  This time Amelia Sachs was first on the scene.

  And she was momentarily alone. Backup would be here soon but Rhyme had decided there was no time to wait; the perp--no longer an unsub at this point--had gone over a borderline and was moving faster. Rhyme said they had to assume another victim was about to die.

  She skidded to a stop up the street from Vicki Sellick's townhouse and sprinted to the front door fast, not even feeling the twinges of arthritis. There was no question of warrants or fair warning. Time was too critical. With the butt of her Glock she shattered the window of the front door, opened it and charged inside.

  The weapon before her, she ran to the top-floor apartment and kicked the door in, searching quickly. She found the victim in the bathtub--like the Prius, an innocent object rigged to kill.

  She looked down. The water was nearly at Vicki's face and her frantic thrashing was making it worse; waves splashing up her nose. She was choking and coughing, her face bright red.