“This area’s sealed off.”

“I can help. I took the forensics course. Mostly I’m highway detail but I’ve got major crimes experience. You have some hair. Bet you’ve heard that before.”

“I really will have to ask you—”

“Jim Everts.”

Don’t go into first-name territory; it sticks like flypaper. “I’m Officer Sachs.”

“Big hubbub, this. A bomb. Messy.”

“See, Jim, this tape here’s to keep people out of the scene. Now, you gonna be helpful and step back behind it?”

“Wait. You mean officers too?”

“That I do, yes.”

“You mean me too?”

“Exactly.”

There were five classic crime scene contaminators: weather, relatives of the victim, suspects, souvenir collectors, and—the all-time worst—fellow cops.

“I won’t touch a thing. Cross my heart. Just be a pleasure to watch you work, honey.”

“Sachs,” Rhyme whispered, “tell him to get the fuck out of your crime scene.”

“Jim, get the fuck out of my crime scene.”

“Or you’ll report him.”

“Or I’ll report you.”

“Oooo, gonna be that way, is it?” He held his hands up in surrender. The last of the flirt drained from his slick grin.

“Get going, Sachs.”

The trooper ambled away slowly enough to drag some of his pride with him. He looked back once but a scathing retort eluded him.

Amelia Sachs began to walk the grid.

There were several different ways to search crime scenes. A strip search—walking in a serpentine pattern—was usually used for outdoor scenes because it covered the most ground quickly. But Rhyme wouldn’t hear of that. He used the grid pattern—covering the entire area back and forth in one direction, walking one foot at a time, then turning perpendicular and walking back and forth the other way. When he was running IRD, “walking the grid” became synonymous with searching a crime scene, and heaven help any cops Rhyme caught taking shortcuts or daydreaming when they were on the grid.

Sachs now spent an hour moving back and forth. While the spray truck might’ve eliminated prints and trace evidence, it wouldn’t destroy anything larger that the Dancer might’ve dropped, nor would it ruin footprints or body impressions left in the mud beside the taxiway.

But she found nothing.

“Hell, Rhyme, not a thing.”

“Ah, Sachs, I’ll bet there is. I’ll bet there’s plenty. Just takes a little bit more effort than most scenes. The Dancer’s not like other perps, remember.”

Oh, that again.

“Sachs.” His voice low and seductive. She felt a shiver. “Get into him,” Rhyme whispered. “You know what I mean.”

She knew exactly what he meant. Hated the thought. But, oh, yes, Sachs knew. The best criminalists were able to find a place in their minds where the line between hunter and hunted was virtually nonexistent. They moved through the crime scene not as cops tracking down clues but as the perp himself, feeling his desires, lusts, fears. Rhyme had this talent. And though she tried to deny it, Sachs did too. (She’d searched a scene a month ago—a father had murdered his wife and child—and managed to find the murder weapon when no one else had. After the case she hadn’t been able to work for a week and had been plagued by flashbacks that she’d been the one who stabbed the victims to death. Saw their faces, heard their screams.)