He was thinking furiously. The building was ten or eleven stories tall. Did it have external fire escapes? Probably not. You didn’t see those much anymore. There were probably fireproof stairwells, leading to unmarked doors opening onto alleyways. The cops would be stationed there, of course. Guns out, waiting for the perp.

Then he noticed a sign for a doctor’s office on the sixth floor.

Billy Haven thought for a moment.

Good, he concluded, and turned away from the directory as the first cops stepped into the lobby.

Thou shalt always be ready to improvise …

CHAPTER 23

Lon Sellitto jogged into the main hallway of Upper Manhattan Medical Center. The elevator seemed sluggish – four people waited. Impatient patients, he joked to himself – and so he descended the stairs to the basement level, where Amelia Sachs had stopped the unsub from another attack. Stopped him with seconds to spare, it seemed. If Rhyme and Pulaski hadn’t figured out the target location the perp had been checking out earlier, they’d be running a homicide now, not conducting a manhunt.

His gold shield, on a lanyard, bounced on his substantial belly. His Burberry over his arm, Sellitto was moving fast and he was out of breath.

Fucking diets. Was there any one that worked?

Also, gotta work out more.

Think about it later.

Downstairs he entered the cardiac care unit and walked a good fifty yards before he found the room he sought. Outside were two uniforms, male, one Latino, one black. In the room, he observed a white-haired man in bed, lean, with a wrinkled – and unhappy – face. Sitting in the chair beside him was a handsome woman in her early fifties, he guessed. She was in a conservative navy suit and nearly opaque stockings, a bright scarf. Her long face was hollow and her green eyes zipped around the room uneasily. Then she glanced at Sellitto in the corridor and went back to perusing the patient. Her ruddy hands were kneading a tissue to shreds. A young blond man – resembling her slightly, son probably – sat on the other side of the bed.

Sellitto nodded to the uniforms and they stepped away from the door.

The detective asked in a low voice, ‘So. Detective Sachs?’

‘She stayed with the guard, the hospital guard, till the emergency room guys got there. Now? She’s sweeping the hallway and room where the perp attacked them, her and the guard, I mean. She already ran the scene where he was going after the vic, the woman.’ A nod toward the hospital room. Name badge: Juarez.

‘It was poison?’

‘Naw.’

‘Naw?’ Sellitto mocked.

The kid didn’t get he was being challenged and continued, ‘Naw. The perp threw this jar from a storeroom or something at her and the guard. Broke. He’s the one got hit with whatever crap was inside. He’d been on the force. Retired from the Nineteenth.’

‘Detective Sachs wasn’t hurt,’ his partner added. Williams.