The Steel Kiss

A leading question. Sachs hadn’t told her that he’d done that. Nor had she shared with her mother that she’d engaged in the legal, but morally murky, effort to download and give him his case files. She’d told her only that he claimed he was innocent, that Sachs believed him and that he was working to prove it.

“Isn’t there a procedure—lawyers, review boards—for vindicating yourself?”

Sachs addressed what her mother was really asking: “Mom. Nick’ll get on with his life. I’ll get on with mine. That’s the end of it. I probably won’t ever see him again.”

Rose Sachs smiled. “I see. Could I please have some more tea?”

Sachs stepped into the kitchen and returned a moment later with a fresh mug. Just as she handed it to her mother, her phone hummed. She pulled it from her pocket, regarded caller ID and answered, “Rhyme.”

“We have a positive hit, Sachs. Real time. Unsub Forty’s in Times Square. Maybe going after a target right now. Get moving. I’ll tell you more on the way.”

CHAPTER 31

Sachs was speeding toward Times Square. In Manhattan on the FDR expressway, racing north.

The traffic wasn’t terrible…  but the drivers were.

They wove; her Torino wove. The consequences of an error in this mutual ballet would have been steel on steel at a speed differential of about forty miles per hour. Potentially bloody and fracturing, if not fatal.

A phone call. She hit the speaker button. “Go ahead.”

“Here’s what we’ve got, Sachs. Are you there? What was that? That noise?”

“Downshift.”

The sound had been like a jet engine reversing on landing.

Lincoln Rhyme continued, “Here’s what we’ve got. Was looking over the trace. You found makeup at one of the scenes. We isolated the brand. StarBlend theatrical makeup. And geologic soil from Connecticut, Long Island, Harlem and New Jersey, all from two of the unsub’s footprints. Diesel fuel. Soda in cups and cheap wine or champagne.”

“Tourists in the Theater District: buses from out of town and intermission drinks!”

“Ex-actly. Either he lives or works in Times Square, likes plays…  or was planning another attack there when he picked up the trace.”

“What’s the hit?”

“As soon as Archer and I figured that out—”

“Archer?”

“Juliette. The intern.”

“Oh.” The wheelchair woman with the beautiful eyes—and God-given nails. Referring to her by last name had confused Sachs.

Traffic cleared and she was cruising again.

“As soon as we figured out it was the Theater District I called COC.”

In the Community Observation Center of the NYPD, based in a cavernous, windowless room at One PP, dozens of officers scanned monitors fed by two hundred thousand CCTVs around the city. There were too many screens to monitor the entire city for a suspect, and algorithms weren’t helpful when you had no facial recognition points on your unsub—just “tall and skinny and probably wearing a baseball cap and carrying a backpack.”

But, Rhyme explained, with the evidence pointing to a fairly small area, highly concentrated with security cameras, an officer had focused on the Times Square district and spotted someone who profiled as Unsub 40 ten minutes ago.

“Where exactly?”

“Broadway and Forty-Two, going north. They lost him in a store at Four-Five Street, west. May have gone out the back entrance. Cameras’re sporadic west of Broadway. Haven’t picked him up again.”

Sachs skidded around a gas tanker changing lanes unexpectedly and righted the Torino. O-kayyy. The adrenaline bled out.

Rhyme was continuing, “Mel called Midtown North. Half-dozen bodies are on their way to the intersection. ESU too.” Rhyme was unable to deploy troops, but Mel Cooper, a detective, had the authority to do so, even if his specialty was forensic science. “And Pulaski’s on his way to Twelve and Forty-Four with a team.”

The MTN team would sweep west with Sachs; Ron Pulaski’s would head east, a pincer movement.

“From the evidence—any other idea where he might be headed? Specifically?”

No response.

He was talking to somebody else. Probably Cooper.

No, Sachs heard a woman’s voice. Juliette Archer.

Then there was a pause.

Sachs asked, “Rhyme?”

“What?”

“I was asking, anything from the evidence to narrow down where he is or where he’s headed?”

“Some things we haven’t been able to place. The broken glass, the glazing compound. Paper towels. That could be from anywhere. The humus is from Queens, or originated in Queens.” She wondered about the emphasis on the word. He continued, “We’ve got fertilizer and herbicides, too, but you don’t see rolling pastures on Broadway in Midtown. I don’t mind speculating but I’m not guessing. No, we’ll have to leave it up to a manhunt at this point.”

“Keep looking,” she said. “I’ll call you when I’m on scene.”

Sachs disconnected before he could respond and then veered off the highway and sped west onto surface streets.

Intersections…  damn intersections.

Slamming down clutch and brake, squinting against the blue flashing light on the dash.

Sachs would hit the horn with one hand, downshift with the other, then grab the wheel rim again with both.