A Textbook Case (lincoln rhyme) Page 5

  “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 that.”

  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.

  Sachs grabbed the woman’s blouse and pulled up hard from the water, then ripped the tape from her mouth.

  “Thank you, thank you!” she sputtered. “But be careful! He might be here.”

  Out came the switchblade again and after a few seconds of careful surgery the woman’s feet and hands were free. Sachs wrapped a towel around her shoulders.

  “Where?”

  “I heard him two minutes ago, downstairs! I didn’t get a look. He hit me from behind.”

  Then a crash of glass from the hallway, near the rear of the building, a window breaking. “What’s back there?”

  “Fire escape to the alley.”

  Sachs ran to the window and saw the shadow of a figure, standing uncertainly looking left and right. She told Vicki to lock the bathroom door, the backup would be there any minute — she heard the sirens approaching. Then she sped down the stairs to the second floor. She, too, went through the shattered window, after checking fast for presenting threats.

  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 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 and David’s 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 h
er 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 murdered 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.”

  “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.

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