Sachs gasped. “Oh, Jesus, Rhyme. Oh, no…”

2

At 4:00 p.m. Amelia Sachs walked into Lincoln Rhyme’s townhouse on Central Park West.

Rhyme found himself glaring toward her—partly because of the powerful autumn light streaming in from the open door behind her, partly because of his impatience.

The crime scene search had taken forever, six and a half hours to be precise, the longest for a single scene he could remember.

Sachs had told him that the young officer who’d been first response reported it was the worst scene he’d ever come across. Partly, he meant that the victim had died a horrific, sadistic death. But equally he was referring to the complete contamination of the scene.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Sachs had told Rhyme through the microphone. And gazing at the high-def screen, he had to admit that he hadn’t either. Every square inch of the area—from the ramp to the garage floor to the victim’s car and surrounding area—was obliterated, covered with trash. And painted, powdered, coated with liquids, dusted with dirt and powders.

It was actually hard to locate the victim herself for all the mess.

Rhyme now piloted his red Storm Arrow wheelchair to the front door, through which Sachs was carrying a large carton filled with evidence collection bags. She explained that the first responder, a crime scene officer named Marko, and she had sped here in their private vehicles—his an SUV. Rhyme noted that the vehicle was loaded to the gunwales with cartons of evidence. Young man, picking up a massive carton, had a military air about him. He did a double-take when he saw Rhyme. He nodded.

Rhyme ignored him, focusing on the astonishing quantity of evidence. Sachs’s ancient Ford was filled, too. He didn’t see how she’d been able to drive it.

“Christ,” he muttered.

Lincoln Rhyme had a handsome face, hair a bit long for NYPD regulation but that mattered not at all since he was no longer NYPD. His nose was prominent, his lips full, though they grew thin quickly, like irises dilating in light, when he was displeased, which occurred with some frequency, given his impatience and pole-vault high standards for crime scene work. A pink scar was visible at the base of his throat; it resembled a bullet wound but in fact it was from the ventilator tube, which had kept him alive after the accident.

A breath of autumn wind blew through the open door and a comma of black hair tickled his forehead. He clumsily lifted his right hand to brush it away, a gesture that would have been impossible several years ago, when he’d been completely paralyzed below the neck. Those little things—the inability to scratch an itch, the impossibility of feeding oneself, the incessant nag of the condition—were what wore you down, more than the broader consequences of cataclysmic injury. At the moment, his left arm was bandaged to his body; he’d had additional surgery to give that limb the same awkward, but miraculous, skill of the right.