A Textbook Case Read online

  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 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 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.

  Please read on for a preview of

  THE KILL ROOM

  the new Lincoln Rhyme novel

  On sale June 4, 2013.

  Chapter 1

  The flash of light troubled him.

  A glint, white or pale yellow, in the distance.

  From the water? From the strip of land across the peaceful turquoise bay?

  But here, there could be no danger. Here, he was in a beautiful and isolated resort. Here, he was out of the glare of media and the gaze of enemies.

  Roberto Moreno squinted out the window. He was merely in his late thirties but his eyes were not good and he pushed the frames higher on his nose and scanned the vista--the garden outside the suite's window, the narrow white beach, the pulsing blue-green sea. Beautiful, isolated... and protected. No vessels bobbed within sight. And even if an enemy with a rifle could have learned he was here and made his way unseen through the industrial plants on that spit of land a mile away across the water, the distance and the pollution clouding the view would have made a shot impossible.

  No more flashes, no more glints.

  You're safe. Of course you are.

  But still Moreno remained wary. Like Martin Luther King, like Gandhi, he was always at risk. This was the way of his life. He wasn't afraid of death. But he was afraid of dying before his work was done. And at this young age he still had much to do. For instance, the event he'd just finished organizing an hour or so ago--a significant one, sure to get a lot of people's attention--was merely one of a dozen planned for the next year.

  And beyond, an abundant future loomed.

  Dressed in a modest tan suit, a white shirt and royal blue tie--oh, so Caribbean--the stocky man now filled two cups from the coffeepot that room service had just delivered and returned to the couch. He handed one to the reporter, who was setting up a tape recorder.

  "Senor de la Rua. Some milk? Sugar?"

  "No, thank you."

  They were speaking in Spanish, in which Moreno was fluent. He hated English and only spoke it when he needed to. He'd never quite shucked the New Jersey accent when he was speaking in his native tongue, "hehr" for "her," "mirrah" for "mirror," "gun" for "gone." The tones of his own voice took him right back to his early days in the States--his father working long hours and living life sober, his mother spending long hours not. Bleak landscapes, bullies from a nearby high school. Until salvation: the family's move to a place far kinder than South Hills, a place where even the language was softer and more elegant.

  The reporter said, "But call me Eduardo. Please."

  "And I'm Roberto."

  The name was really "Robert" but that smacked of lawyers on Wall Street and politicians in Washington and generals on the battlefields sowing foreign ground with the bodies of the locals like cheap seeds.

  Hence, Roberto.

  "You live in Argentina," Moreno said to the journalist, who was a slight man, balding and dressed in a tie-less blue shirt and threadbare black suit. "Buenos Aires?"

  "That's right."

  "Do you know about the name of the city?"

  De la Rua said no; he wasn't a native.

  "The meaning is 'good air,' of course," Moreno said. He read extensively--several books a week, much of it Latin American literature and history. "But the air referred to was in Sardinia, Italy, not Argentina. So called after a settlement on top of a hill in Cagliari. The settlement was above the, let us say, pungent smells of the old city and was accordingly named Buen Ayre. The Spanish explorer who discovered what became Buenos Aires named it after that settlement. Of course that was the first settlement of the city. They were wiped out by the natives, who didn't enjoy the exploitation by Europe."

  De la Rua said, "Even your anecdotes have a decidedly anti-colonial flavor."

  Moreno laughed. But the humor vanished and he looked quickly out the window again.

  That damn glint of light. Still, though, he could see nothing but trees and plants in the garden and that hazy line of land a mile away. The inn was on the largely deserted southwest coast of New Providence, the island in the Bahamas where Nassau was located. The grounds were fenced and guarded. And the garden was reserved for this suite alone and protected by a high fence to the north and south, with the beach to the west.

  No one was there. No one could be there.

  A bird, perhaps. A flutter of leaf.

  Simon had checked the grounds not long ago. Moreno glanced at him now, a large, quiet Brazilian, dark-complected, wearing a nice suit--Moreno's guard dressed better than he did, though not flashy. Simon, in his thirties, looked appropriately dangerous, as one would expect, and want, in this profession but he wasn't a thug. He'd been an officer in the army, before going civilian as a security expert.

  He was also very good at his job. Simon's head swiveled; he'd become aware of his boss's gaze and immediately stepped to the window, looking out.

  "Just a flash of light," Moreno explained.

  The bodyguard suggested drawing the shades.

  "I think not."

  Moreno had decided that Eduardo de la Rua, who'd flown here coach class at his own expense from the city of good air, deserved to enjoy the beautiful view. He wouldn't get to experience much luxury, as a hardworking journalist known for reporting the truth, rather than producing puff pieces for corporate officials and politicians. Moreno also decided to take the man to a very nice meal at the South Cove Inn's fine restaurant for lunch.

  Simon gazed outside once more, returned to his chair and picked up a magazine.

  De la Rua clicked on the tape recorder. "Now, may I?"

  "Please." Moreno turned his full attention to the journalist.

  "Mr. Moreno, your Local Empowerment Movement has just opened an office in Argentina, the first in the country. Could you tell me how you conceived the idea? And what your group does?"

  Moreno had given this lecture dozens of times. It varied, based on the particular journalist or audience, but the core was simple: to encourage indigenous people to reject U.S. government and corporate influence by becoming self-sufficient, notably through microlending, microagriculture and microbusiness.

  He now told the reporter, "We resist American corporate development. And the government's aid and social programs, whose purpose, after all, is simply to addict us to their values. We are not viewed as human beings; we are viewed as a source of cheap labor and a market for American goods. Do you see the vicious cycle? Our people are exploited in American-owned factories and then seduced
into buying products from those same companies."

  The journalist said, "I've written much about business investment in Argentina and other South American countries. And I know about your movement, which also makes such investments. One could argue you rail against capitalism yet you embrace it."

  Moreno brushed his longish hair, black and prematurely gray. "No, I rail against the misuse of capitalism--the American misuse of capitalism in particular. I am using business as a weapon. Only fools rely on ideology exclusively for change. Ideas are the rudder. Money is the propeller."

  The reporter smiled. "I will use that as my lead. Now, some people say, I've read some people say you are a revolutionary."

  "Ha, I'm a loudmouth, that's all I am!" The smile faded. "But mark my words, while the world is focusing on the Middle East, everyone has missed the birth of a far more powerful force: Latin America. That's what I represent. The new order. We can't be ignored any longer."

  Roberto Moreno rose and stepped to the window.

  Crowning the garden was a poisonwood tree, about forty feet tall. He stayed in this suite often and he liked the tree very much. Indeed, he felt a camaraderie with it. Poisonwoods are formidable, resourceful and starkly beautiful. They are also, as the name suggests, toxic. The pollen or smoke from burning the wood and leaves could slip into the lungs, searing with agony. And yet the tree nourishes the beautiful Bahamian swallowtail butterfly, and white-crowned pigeons live off the fruit.

  I am like this tree, Moreno thought. A good image for the article perhaps. I'll mention this too--

  The glint again.

  In a tiny splinter of a second: A flicker of movement disturbed the tree's sparse leaves, and the tall window in front of him exploded. Glass turned to a million crystals of blowing snow, fire blossomed in his chest.

  Moreno found himself lying on the couch, which had been five feet behind him.

  But... but what happened here? What is this? I'm fainting, I'm fainting.

  I can't breathe.

  He stared at the tree, now clearer, so much clearer, without the window glass filtering the view. The branches waved in the sweet wind off the water. Leaves swelling, receding. It was breathing for him. Because he couldn't, not with his chest on fire. Not with the pain.

  Shouts, cries for help around him.

  Blood, blood everywhere.

  Sun setting, sky going darker and darker. But isn't it morning? Moreno had images of his wife, his teenage son and daughter. His thoughts dissolved until he was aware of only one thing: the tree.