Jeffery Deaver - The Broken Window

Nodding to the tour doctor and her associates from the M.E.’s office, Sachs said, “Okay, you can get him to the morgue.”

The men, in their thick green gloves and jumpsuits, walked inside. Assembling the evidence in the milk crates for transport to Rhyme’s lab, Sachs paused.

Someone was watching her.

She’d heard a tink of metal on metal or concrete or glass from up a deserted alleyway. A fast look, and she believed she saw a figure hiding near a deserted factory’s loading dock, which had collapsed years ago.

Search carefully, but watch your back…

She remembered the scene at the cemetery, the killer, wearing the swiped police hat, watching her. Felt the same uneasiness she had there. She left the evidence bags and walked down the alley, hand on her pistol. She saw no one.

Paranoia.

“Detective?” one of the techs called.

She kept going. Was there a face behind that filthy window?

“Detective,” he persisted.

“I’ll be right there.” A little irritation in her voice.

The crime-scene tech said, “Sorry, it’s a call. From Detective Rhyme.”

She always shut her phone off when she got to a scene to avoid distractions.

“Tell him I’ll call him right back.”

“Detective, he says it’s about somebody named Pam. There’s been an incident at your town house. You’re needed right away.”

Amelia Sachs ran inside fast, oblivious to the pain in her knees.

Past the police at the door, not even nodding to them. “Where?”

One officer pointed toward the living room.

Sachs hurried into the room…and found Pam on the couch. The girl looked up, her face pale.

The policewoman sat beside her. “You’re all right?”

“I’m fine. A little freaked out is all.”

“Nothing hurt? I can hug you?”

Pam laughed and Sachs flung her arms around the girl. “What happened?”

“Somebody broke in. He was here while I was. Mr. Rhyme could see him behind me on the webcam. He kept calling and on the, like, fifth ring or something, I picked up and he told me to start screaming and get out.”

“And you did?”

“Not really. I kind of ran into the kitchen and got a knife. I was pretty pissed. He took off.”

Sachs glanced at a detective from the local Brooklyn precinct, a squat African-American man, who said in a deep baritone, “He was gone when we got here. Neighbors didn’t see anything.”

So it had been her imagination at the warehouse crime scene where Joe Malloy was killed. Or maybe some kid or wino curious about what the cops were doing. After killing Malloy, 522 had come to her place-to look for files or evidence or to finish the job he’d started: kill her.

Sachs walked through the town house with the detective and Pam. The desk had been ransacked but nothing seemed to be missing.

“I thought maybe it was Stuart.” Pam took a breath. “I kind of broke up with him.”

“You did?”

A nod.

“Good for you… But it wasn’t him?”

“No. The guy here was wearing different clothes and wasn’t built like Stuart. And, yeah, he’s a son of a bitch but he’s not going to break into somebody else’s town house.”

“You get a look at him?”

“Naw. He turned and ran before I could see him real clearly.” She’d noticed only his outfit.

The detective explained that Pam had described the burglar as a male, white or light-skinned black or Latino, medium build, wearing blue jeans and a dark blue plaid sports jacket. He’d called Rhyme too, after he’d learned of the webcam, but the criminalist hadn’t seen anything more than a vague form in the hallway.

They found the window through which he’d broken in. Sachs had an alarm system but Pam had shut it off when she’d arrived.

She looked around the place. The anger and dismay she’d felt at Malloy’s horrible death faded, replaced by the same uneasiness, and vulnerability, that she’d been aware of at the cemetery, at the warehouse where Malloy had died, at SSD…in fact, everywhere since they’d started the pursuit of 522. Like at the scene near DeLeon’s house: Was he watching her now?

She saw motion outside the window, a flash of light… Was it from the blowing leaves in front of nearby windows reflecting the pale sunlight?

Or was it 522?

“Amelia?” Pam asked in a soft voice, looking around uneasily herself. “Everything okay?”

This brought Sachs back to reality. Get to work. And fast. The killer had been here-and not that long ago. Goddamnit, find out something useful. “Sure, honey. It’s fine.”

A patrol officer from the precinct asked, “Detective, you want somebody from Crime Scene to look it over?”

“That’s okay,” she said with a glance to Pam and a tight smile. “I’ll handle it.”

Sachs got her portable crime-scene kit from the trunk of her car, and she and Pam searched together.

Well, Sachs did the searching but Pam, standing clear of the perimeter, described exactly where the killer had been. Though her voice was unsteady, the girl was coolly efficient.

I kind of ran into the kitchen and got a knife.

Since Pam was here, Sachs asked a patrol officer to stand guard in the garden-where the killer had escaped. This didn’t allay her concern completely, though, not with 522’s uncanny ability to spy on his victims, to learn all about them, to get close. She wanted to search the scene and get Pam away as soon as she could.

With the teenager directing her, Sachs searched the places he’d stepped. But she found no evidence in the town house. The killer had either used gloves when he’d broken in or hadn’t touched any receptive surfaces, and the adhesive rollers revealed no signs of foreign trace.

“Where did he go outside?” Sachs asked.

“I’ll show you.” Pam glanced at Sachs’s face, which was apparently revealing her reluctance to expose the girl to more danger. “It’d be better than me just telling you.”

Sachs nodded and they walked into the garden. She looked around carefully. She asked the patrol officer, “See anything?”

“Nope. But I’ve gotta say, when you think somebody’s watching you, you see somebody watching you.”

“I hear that.”

He jerked a thumb toward a row of dark windows across the alley, then toward some thick azaleas and boxwood bushes. “I checked them out. Nothing. But I’ll keep on it.”

“Thanks.”

Pam directed Sachs to the path 522 had taken to escape and Sachs began walking the grid.

“Amelia?”

“What?”

“I was kind of a shit, you know. What I said to you yesterday. I felt, like, all desperate or something. Panicked…I guess what I’m saying is, I’m sorry.”

“You were the picture of restraint.”

“I didn’t feel very restrained.”

“Love makes us weird, honey.”

Pam laughed.

“We’ll talk about it later. Maybe tonight, depending on how the case goes. We’ll get dinner.”

“Okay, sure.”

Sachs continued her examination, struggling to put aside her uneasiness, the sense that 522 was still here. But despite her effort the search wasn’t very fruitful. The ground was mostly gravel and she found no footprints, except one near the gate through which he’d escaped from her yard into the alley. The only mark was the toe of a shoe-he’d been sprinting-and useless forensically. She found no fresh tire treadmarks.

But, returning to her yard, she saw a flash of white in the ivy and periwinkle covering the ground-exactly in the position where it would have landed after falling from 522’s pocket as he’d vaulted the locked gate.

“You found something?”

“Maybe.” With tweezers, Sachs picked up a small piece of paper. Returning to the town house, she set up a portable examining table and processed the rectangle. She sprayed ninhydrin on it, then, after donning goggles, hit it with an alternative light source. She was disappointed that no prints were revealed.