Rhyme was wheeling back and forth, back and forth, in front of the high-definition monitor. It was around forty minutes after the report had come in about the perp releasing the poison gas in the sixth-floor suite in the doctors’ office building.

On the screen was an image of the front of the building and, beyond that, the hospital itself.

Courtesy of an Emergency Service Unit video cam.

The buzzer sounded and Thom went to answer. The door clicked, the wind howled.

Then a familiar clomp of footsteps, which told Rhyme that Lon Sellitto had arrived.

Ah …

The detective turned the corner. Stopped. His face was a grimace.

‘Now,’ Rhyme said, his voice infused with sharp humor. ‘I’m just curious—’

‘All right, Linc,’ Sellitto said, stripping off the wet Burberry. ‘It was—’

‘Curious, I was saying. Did it occur to anyone? Any single one? Did it occur to any person on the face of the earth that it wasn’t an orderly reporting the poison gas? That it was the unsub himself who called in a fake report? So that everyone would start checking out patients with bandages on their faces?’

‘Linc—’

‘And no one would start checking out anyone in a dental face guard, like tattoo artists would wear, and coveralls, strolling casually out the front door like an emergency worker.’

‘I know that now, Linc.’

‘So I guess it didn’t occur to anyone at the time. It’s only—’

‘You made your fucking point.’

‘—now that we can figure out—’

‘You can be a real prick sometimes, Linc. You know that.’

Rhyme did know that and he didn’t care. ‘And the manhunt around Marble Hill?’

‘Checkpoints at main streets, officers at every bus stop and subway station in the area.’

‘Looking for …?’ Rhyme asked.

‘Any white male around thirty with a pulse.’

Rhyme’s computer dinged, and he called up the email. It was Jean Eagleston again, the Crime Scene officer. She was the one who’d done an Identi-Kit composite rendering of the man, based on Harriet Stanton’s observation. It depicted an unsmiling young man with Slavic features, a prominent forehead and brows close together. The unsub’s pale eyes gave him a startling, eerie visage.

Rhyme didn’t believe that good or evil could be objectively reflected in appearance. But his gut told him this was the face of a truly dangerous person.

A second high-def monitor nearby fluttered to life and there was Amelia Sachs, peering his way.

‘You there, Rhyme?’

‘Yes, yes, Sachs. Go ahead.’ This was the computer they used for face-to-face videoconferencing with law enforcers in other cities, for occasional interrogation of suspects and for Skyping with the children of Rhyme’s closest relative – his cousin who lived in New Jersey – well, Sachs primarily, who read them stories and told jokes. Sachs and Pam would also Skype, sometimes spending hours, chatting away.

He wondered if now, after their fight, that wouldn’t be happening anymore.