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.