He swallowed and said, “Scene was pretty bad, I gotta tell you. She was tortured. Then he stabbed her. Never seen anything like that.”

“Torture?” she asked in a whisper.

“Sliced the skin off her fingers. Slow.”

Jesus…

“How did he get in?”

“Some reason, she let him in. No signs of break-in.”

Dismayed, Sachs now understood. The unsub had tapped a line—probably the landline she’d used near Java Hut—and learned about the interpreter. He’d fronted he was a cop, flashing a fake badge, saying he worked with Sachs; he’d know her name by now.

That conversation between Sachs and Sellitto was Lydia Foster’s own personal Special Task Order.

She felt a burst of breathtaking anger toward the killer. What he’d done to Lydia—the pain he’d inflicted—had been unnecessary. To get information from a civilian you needed only to threaten. Physical torture was always pointless.

Unless you enjoyed it.

Unless you got pleasure in wielding a knife, slicing precisely, skillfully.

“Why’d you get the call?” she asked.

“Fucker cut her so much, she bled through the ceiling. Neighbors downstairs saw blood on the wall. Called nine one one.” The detective continued, “The place was ransacked. I don’t know what he was looking for but he went through everything she had. There wasn’t a single drawer untouched. No computer or cell phone either. He took it all.”

The files on the Moreno interpreting assignment, probably already shredded or burned.

“CS on the way?”

“I called a team from Queens. They’ll be here any minute.”

Sachs had a set of basic crime scene gear in the trunk of the Torino. She returned to the vehicle and began to pull on the powder-blue overalls and booties and shower cap. She’d get started now. Every minute that passed degraded evidence.

And every minute that passed let the monster who’d done this get farther and farther away.

* * *

WALKING THE GRID.

Garbed like a surgeon, Amelia Sachs was moving through Lydia Foster’s apartment in the classic crime scene search pattern, the grid: one pace at a time from wall to wall, turn, step aside slightly and return. And when that was done you covered the same ground in the same way, only perpendicular to your earlier search.

This was the most time-consuming method of searching a scene but also the most thorough. This was how Rhyme had searched his scenes and it was the way he insisted those working for him did too.

The search is perhaps the most important part of a crime scene investigation. Photos and videos and sketches are important. Entrance and exit routes, locations of shell casings, fingerprints, smears of semen, blood spatter. But finding crucial trace is what crime scene work is all about. Merci, M. Locard. When you walk the grid you need to open up your whole body to the place, smelling, listening, touching and, of course, looking. Scanning relentlessly.