Jeffery Deaver - The Stone Monkey

My father, Herman, she thought, is already inscribed on the dead side.

Where does my name fall in the register? she wondered.

And the names of people I'm now close to? The people yet to be?

Thinking of life and death…

"Ah, Ms. Sachs. Here you are."

"Hello, Doctor."

"I've just been meeting with Lincoln Rhyme's physician."

"Yes?"

"I've got to talk to you about something."

"You're looking like it's bad news, Doctor."

"Uhm, Officer," Deng interrupted her thoughts. "I think that's a red light ahead of us."

"Got it," she said and slowed to thirty to sweep through the intersection.

"Gan," Li whispered. Then offered what Sachs had guessed was the translation: "Fuck."

Three minutes later the crime scene bus skidded to a stop in front of an alley surrounded by a small crowd of onlookers, kept back by a spider strand of yellow police tape and a half-dozen uniformed officers from the Patrol division. The front door to what seemed to be a small warehouse was open. Sachs climbed out, followed by Deng, who called, "Hey, Detective," to a blond man in a suit. He nodded and Deng introduced her to a homicide detective from the Fifth Precinct.

"You're running the scene?" he asked.

Sachs nodded. "What is this place?"

"Warehouse. Owner's clean, looks like. We've contacted him and he doesn't know anything except that the victim – name was Jerry Tang – worked here. Eight arrests, two convictions. Mostly he boosts wheels and drives getaway. Does – did – some muscle work."

He nodded at the silver BMW four-by-four in the alley. An X5. This was the SUV that Tang had driven out to Long Island to pick up the Ghost this morning. There was a bullet hole in the back door from the Ghost's gunshot as Tang had fled, abandoning him.

A patrol officer responding to some screams had noticed a late-model BMW four-by-four next to the building where the commotion had come from. Then he'd seen the bullet hole in the back and, with his partner, they'd entered the warehouse.

And found what was left of Jerry Tang. He'd been tortured with a knife or razor – skin was missing, including his eyelids – then killed.

Rhyme, she knew, hated to be one-upped by other law enforcers almost as much as he hated being one-upped by perpetrators and when it turned out that Sonny Li, the crow detective, had been right – that the Ghost's first mission was to kill the man who'd abandoned him – the criminalist's mood darkened even more. It hadn't helped, of course, that Li'd said, "Hey, should have listen to me, Loaban. Should have listen."

The detective from the Fifth now continued, "We've got two canvassers from downtown, checking out wits. Oh, there they are now."

Sachs nodded to two detectives she'd worked with before. Bedding and Saul were no longer needed to track down registered owners of BMW X5's and were back at their usual assignment: post-crime canvassing, "spadework," as it was called. They were known for their consummate skill in double-teaming witnesses. Despite their different heights, builds and complexions (one had freckles), their identical sandy hair and their demeanor resulted in their nickname: the Twins. They were also known as the Hardy Boys.

"Got here twenty minutes after the first sighting," said either Bedding or Saul. The tall one.

"Was a teenage girl on her way home from drama club at school. Heard a scream in the building. But didn't report it till she got home. She was -"

"- afraid, you know. Can't blame her, considering what the respondings found at the scene inside. I'd be too."

"Afraid, he means. Blood everywhere. And body parts."

Sachs winced, but not from the gore; it was only because she was lifting her knees to pull on the white Tyvek crime scene suit and her arthritic joints protested painfully.

"We've talked to about eight people in the building -" Bedding or Saul said.

"- and around it. This is even more a case of the deaf and dumbs than usual."

"Yeah, most people here got the blinds too."

"We think they heard it was the Ghost who worked on Tang and that scared everybody off. Nobody'll help. The most anybody'll tell us is that two or -"

"- three or four -"

"- people, presumably men, kicked in the door to the warehouse there."

"And there was major screaming for ten minutes. Then two gunshots. Then it got quiet."

"The girl's mother called nine-one-one."

"But everybody was gone by the time Patrol got here."

Sachs looked up and down the alleyway and the street in front of the warehouse. As she'd feared, the rain had destroyed any hope of finding tread marks of whatever kind of car the Ghost and his assistants had been driving.

"Who's been inside?" she asked the blond detective from the Fifth Precinct.

"Only one uniform – to see if the vic was alive. We heard from upstairs you wanted it virgin so we didn't even let the tour doc from the Medical Examiner's office go in."

"Good," she said. "I want the patrol officer who was inside."

"I'll track 'em down."

A moment later he returned with a uniformed patrolwoman. "I was first officer. You wanted to see me?"

"Just your shoe."

"Well, okay." The woman slipped it off and handed it to Sachs, who shot a picture of the tread and noted the size of the sole so that she could differentiate it from the prints of the Ghost and his accomplices.

She then put rubber bands around her own shoes to distinguish her footprints. Looking up, she noticed Sonny Li standing in the doorway of the warehouse. "Excuse me," she said testily, "you mind standing back?"

"Sure, sure, Hongse. That big room. Man, lot to look at. But you know Confucius, right?"

"Not really," she said, concentrating on the scene.

"He write, 'Longest journey must begin with first step.' I think he write that. Maybe somebody else. I read Mickey Spillane more than Confucius."

"Could you wait over there, Officer Li?"

"Call me Sonny, I'm saying."

He stepped aside and Sachs walked into the warehouse. The headset went on and she clicked the Motorola handy-talkie to life.

"Crime Scene Five Eight Eight Five to Central. Need a patch to a landline, K?"

"Roger, Five Eight Eight Five. What's the number, K?"

She gave them Lincoln Rhyrne's phone number and a moment later she heard his voice. "Sachs, where are you? At the scene yet? We've got to move on this."

As always – and inexplicably – his feisty impatience reassured her. She scanned the carnage. "Jesus, Rhyme, this's a mess."

"Tell me," he said. "Give me the blueprint first."

"Warehouse and office combined. Thirty by fifty feet, more or less, office area about ten by twenty. A few desks and -"

"Few? Two or eighteen?"

Rhyme was hell on anyone guilty of sloppy observation.

"Sorry," she said. "Four metal desks, eight chairs, no, nine – one's overturned."

The one that Tang had been tied to when the Ghost had tortured and killed him.

"Rows of metal shelves, stacked with cardboard boxes, food inside. Canned goods and cellophane packages. Restaurant supplies."

"Okay, Thom's ready to start writing. You are ready, aren't you, Thom? Write big, so I can see it. Those words over there, I can't make them out. Redo them… All right, all right… Please redo them." He then said, "Start on the grid, Sachs."

She began to search the scene, thinking: A first step… the longest journey.

But twenty minutes of one-step-at-a-time searching revealed virtually nothing useful. She found two shell casings, which appeared to be the same as those from the Ghost's gun at the beach. But there was nothing that would lead them directly to where he might be hiding out in New York. No cigarettes, no matchbooks, no fingerprints – the assailants had worn leather gloves.