“I’ll do the footnotes.” Sachs dropped into the driver’s seat, went for the belt. Backed up. She shouted out the window, “Follow me and spread out and search like hell. Remember, this guy’s got minutes.”

If he’s still alive.

“Hey, Detective. Look!” Another officer was pointing into the complex. At the end of a two-story wing of the factory a haze of white and gray mist formed into liver-colored smoke and spiraled upward fast—pushed hard by the heat from a fire. Intense heat.

“Jesus.”

The unsub had tipped to them and set fire to the room where, she guessed, he’d made the video, intent on destroying the evidence.

And that meant he’d set fire to Robert Ellis too, whether or not he’d already died from hanging.

A voice shouted, “I’m calling FD.”

Sachs jammed the accelerator to the floor. The Ford Interceptors weren’t the gutsiest wheels on the block—punching in at 365 horses—but the hundred-foot takeoff run propelled the bulky vehicle plenty fast enough to pop the chain link like plastic and send the two sides of the gate butterflying into the air.

She continued on, the six cylinders exhaling fiercely.

The other cars were directly behind her.

In less than a minute she was at the building that was burning. There was no indication of fire in the front; the smoke was billowing from the back, though it would also be filling the interior, which Sachs and the others now had to hurry through, if they wanted to save the victim.

They had no masks or oxygen but Sachs hardly thought about that. She grabbed a Maglite from the purloined car. Drawing her Glock, she nodded to two other officers—one a short, handsome Latino man, the other a blond woman, hair in a severe ponytail.

“We can’t wait. You two, with me. We go in, smoke or no.”

“Sure, Detective.” The woman nodded.

Sachs, the de facto commander, turned to the others. “Alonzo and Wilkes’re going up the middle with me. I want three of you around back, flanking the unsub. And somebody take wheels and circle the perimeter. He can’t’ve gotten very far. Any vehicle, anybody, assume it’s hostile.”

The others left.

The blond officer, Wilkes, covered Alonzo and Sachs as they shouldered their way through the door—thank God, unlocked. She dropped to a crouch inside, sweeping with light and muzzle. Wilkes followed.

It occurred to her just as she breached the portal that the perp was probably certifiably crazy and might have decided to hang around and kill some blue, in a suicidal fit.

But no gunshots.

Listening.

No sounds.

Was Ellis dead? If so, she hoped he’d died from the hanging, not the flames.

The three now started jogging through the corridor, Sachs trying to stay oriented and keeping in mind—in general—where the smoke had been coming from. The factory was decrepit and it stank of mold. Near the entrance, the walls were decorated with graffiti, and there was a collection of used condoms, spent matches, needles and cigarette butts on the floor. Not a lot, though, and Sachs supposed that even the most desperate johns and addicts knew what a toxic-waste Superfund site was and that there were healthier places to shoot up or get a blow job.