Though he really hoped he could convince her about Greenland.

“Well, tell her to shop later. I need her to run a scene. We’ve got a situation.”

A ping resounded within Rhyme the way a submarine’s sonar detects something unexpected off the port bow.

He texted Sachs and received no response. “Maybe on the stand, testifying. Tell me more.”

Thom appeared in the doorway—Rhyme hadn’t realized he’d left. The aide said, “Lon, coffee? Cookies? I’ve been baking. I’ve got a couple of different kinds. One is—”

“Yes, yes, yes.” It was Rhyme answering. “Bring him something. Make a decision yourself. I want to hear his story.”

Situation…

“Proceed,” he told Sellitto.

“Anything chocolate,” Sellitto called to Thom’s back.

“Easily arranged.”

“Kidnapping, Linc. Upper East Side. Apparently one adult male snatched another.”

“Apparently? What requires interpretation?”

“The only wit was nine years old.”

“Ah.”

“Perp grabs vic, tosses him into a car trunk. Takes off.”

“The girl is sure about this? Not a figment of her overactive little imagination, stoked by watching too much television, ruining her thumbs on video games, reading too many Hello Pony stories?”

“Hello Kitty. Ponies are a different book.”

“Did Mommy or Daddy confirm?”

“Morgynn, the girl, was the only one who saw. But I think it’s legit. She found a calling card he’d left behind.” Sellitto held up his phone and displayed a photo.

At first Rhyme couldn’t make out the image. It was a picture of a dark shape, thin, lying on a sidewalk.

“It’s a—”

Rhyme interrupted. “Noose.”

“Yep.”

“Made out of?”

“Not sure. Girl said he set it on the spot where he got the vic. She picked it up but the responding set it back in the same place he’d left it, more or less.”

“Great. I’ve never worked a scene contaminated by a nine-year-old.”

“Relax, Linc. All she did was pick it up. And the responding wore gloves. Scene’s secure, waiting for somebody to run it. Somebody, as in Amelia.”

The noose was made out of dark material, which was stiff, since segments were not flush with the pavement, as would be the case with more limp fibers. From the size of the poured-concrete sidewalk panel, the noose was about twelve to fourteen inches long in total, the neck hoop about a third of that.

“The wit’s still on scene. With Mommy. Who isn’t very happy.”

Neither was Rhyme. All they had to go on was a nine-year-old schoolgirl with the observational skills and perception of a…well, nine-year-old schoolgirl.

“The vic? Rich, politically active, connected with OC, record?”

Sellitto said, “No ID yet. Nobody reported missing. A few minutes after the snatch somebody saw a phone fly outta a car—dark sedan, nothing more. Third Avenue. Dellray’s boys’re running it. We find out who, we find out why. Business deal gone bad, vic has information somebody wants, or the old standby. For-profit ransom.”

“Or it’s a psycho. There was the noose, after all.”

“Yeah,” Sellitto said, “and the vic just happened to be WTWP.”