Jeffery Deaver - The Vanished Man

Marlow slumped slightly in his chair. "Jesus, Officer, sure. You have to know I feel bad about this. Say what you want. And you don't have to sit at attention. We're not the army, you know."

Sachs cleared her throat. "If he tries for suspension, sir, my next call'll be to the PBA lawyers. I'll light this one up. I'll take it as far as I have to."

And she would. Though she knew how non-rank cops who fought discrimination or suspensions through the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association were unofficially red-flagged. Many of them found their careers permanently sidetracked even if they won technical victories.

Marlow held her steady gaze as he said, "Noted, Officer."

So it was knuckle time.

Her father's expression. About being a cop.

Amie, you have to understand: sometimes it's a rush, sometimes you get to make a difference, sometimes it's boring. And sometimes, not too often, thank God, it's knuckle time. Fist to fist. You're all by your lonesome, with nobody to help you. And I don't mean just the perps. Sometimes it'll be you against your boss. Sometimes against their bosses. Could be you against your buddies too. You gonna be a cop, you got to be ready to go it alone. There's no getting around it.

"Well, for the time being you're still on active duty."

"Yessir. When will I know?"

"A day or two."

Walking toward the door.

She stopped, turned back. "Sir?"

Marlow glanced up as if he was surprised she was still there.

"Ramos was in the middle of my crime scene. If it'd been you there, or the mayor, or the president himself, I would've done exactly the same thing."

"That's why you're your father's daughter, Officer, and why he'd be proud of you." Marlow lifted his phone off the cradle. "We'll hope for the best."

Thom let Lon Sellitto into the front hallway, where Lincoln Rhyme sat in his candy-apple red chair, grumbling at construction workers to mind the woodwork as they carted refuse downstairs from the repair work currently going on in his fire-damaged bedroom.

Passing by on his way to the kitchen to fix lunch, Thom grumbled back, "Leave 'em alone, Lincoln. You couldn't care less about the woodwork."

"It's the principle," the criminalist replied tautly. "It's my woodwork and their clumsiness."

"He's always this way when a case's over," the aide said to Sellitto. "Have you got some really thorny robbery or murder for him? A good pacifier?"

"I don't need a pacifier," Rhyme snapped as the aide vanished. "I need people to be careful with the walls!"

Sellitto said, "Hey, Linc. We've got to talk."

The criminalist noted the tone – and the look in Sellitto's eyes. They'd been working together for years and he could read every emotion the cop broadcast, especially when he was troubled. What now? he wondered.

"Just heard from the head of Patrol. It's about Amelia." Sellitto cleared his throat.

Rhyme's heart undoubtedly gave an extra slam in his chest. He never felt it, of course, though he did sense a surge of blood in his neck and head and face.

Thinking: Bullet, car crash.

He said evenly in a low voice, "Go on."

"She washed out. The sergeant's exam."

"What?"

"Yup."

Rhyme's hot relief turned instantly to sorrow for her. The detective continued, "It's not official yet. But I know."

"Where'd you hear?"

"Cop radar. A fucking bird. I don't know. Sachs's a star. When something like this happens, word gets out."

"What about her score on the exam?"

" Despite her score on the exam."

Rhyme wheeled into the lab. The detective, looking particularly rumpled today, followed.

The explanation was pure Sachs, it turned out. She'd ordered somebody out of an active crime scene and, when he wouldn't leave, had him cuffed. "Bad for her, the guy turned out to be Victor Ramos."

"The congressman." Lincoln Rhyme had virtually no interest in local government but he knew about Ramos: an opportunistic politico who'd abandoned his Latino constituents in Spanish Harlem until recently, now that the politically correct climate – and size of the electorate – meant he could push for Albany or a spot in Washington. "Can they wash her out?"

"Come on, Linc, they can do what they fucking want. They're even talking suspension."

"She can fight it. She will fight it."

"And you know what happens to street cops who take on brass. Odds're, even if she wins, they'll send her to East New York. Hell, even worse, they'll send her to a desk in East New York."

"Fuck," the criminalist spat out.

Sellitto paced around the room, stepping over cables and glancing at the Conjurer case whiteboards. The detective dropped into a chair that creaked under his weight. He kneaded a roll of fat around his waistband; the Conjurer case had seriously sidetracked his diet. "One thing," he said softly, a whiff of conspiracy in his voice.

"Yeah?"

"There's this guy I know. He was the one cleaned up the Eighteen."

"When all that crack and smack kept disappearing from the evidence locker? A few years ago?"

"Yeah. That was it. He's got serious wire all over the Big Building. The commissioner'll listen to him and he'll listen to me . He owes me." Then he waved his arm toward the Conjurer case evidence boards. "And, fuck, lookit what we just did. We nailed one hell of a doer. Lemme give him a call. Pull some strings for her."

And Rhyme's eyes too took in the charts, then the equipment, the examining tables, books – all devoted to the science of analyzing the evidence that Sachs had teased or muscled out of crime scenes over the past few years they'd been together.

"I don't know," he said.

"Whatsa problem?"

"If she made sergeant that way, well, she wouldn't be the one making it."

The detective replied, "You know what this promotion means to her, Linc."

Yeah, he did.

"Look, all we're doing is playing by Ramos's rules. He wants to take it down a notch we'll do the same. Make it a, you know, even playing field." Sellitto liked his idea. He added, "Amelia'll never find out. I'll tell my guy to keep the lid on it. He'll do it."

You know what this promotion means to her…

"So what do you think?" the detective asked.

Rhyme said nothing for a moment, looking for the answer in the silent forensic equipment surrounding him and then in the green mist of spring buds crowning the trees in Central Park.

• • •

The scuffs on the woodwork had been scrubbed away and all traces of the fire in the bedroom had been "vanished," as Thom had put it, rather cleverly, Rhyme thought. A rich scent of smoke lingered but that reminded Lincoln Rhyme of good scotch and was therefore not a problem at all.

Now, midnight, the room dark, Rhyme lay in his Flexicair bed, staring out the window. Outside was a flutter of motion as a falcon, one of God's most fluid creatures, landed on the ledge. Depending on the light, and their degree of alertness, the birds seemed to shrink or grow in size. Tonight they seemed larger than in the daylight, their forms magnificent. Menacing too; they weren't pleased with the noises radiating from the Cirque Fantastique in Central Park.

Well, Rhyme wasn't very happy about them either. He'd dozed off ten minutes ago only to be awakened by a loud burst of applause from the tent.

"They should have a curfew on that. Rhyme grumbled to Sachs, lying beside him in bed.

"I could shoot out their generator," she replied, her voice clear. She apparently hadn't gotten to sleep at all. Her head was on the pillow next to his, lips against his neck, on which he could feel the faint tickle of her hair and the smooth cool plane of her skin. Also: her breasts against his chest, belly to hip, leg over leg. He knew this only by observation, of course; there was no sensate proof of the contact. He relished that closeness all the same.