Jeffery Deaver - The Cold Moon

He stopped talking. He was looking in the rearview mirror.

"What?"

"Cops. A police car came out of a side street. It started to turn one way but then turned toward us."

Vincent looked over his shoulder. He could see the white car with a light bar on top about a block behind them. It seemed to be accelerating quickly.

"I think he's after us."

Duncan turned quickly down a narrow street and sped up. At the next intersection he turned south. "What do you see?"

"I don't think… Wait. There he is. He's after us. Definitely."

"That street there-up a block. On the right. You know it? Does it go through to the West Side Highway?"

"Yeah. Take it." Vincent felt his palms sweating.

Duncan turned and sped down the one-way street, then turned left onto the highway, heading south.

"In front of us? What's that? Flashing lights?"

"Yep." Vincent could clearly see them. Heading their way. His voice rose. "What're we going to do?"

"Whatever we have to," Duncan said, calmly turning the wheel precisely and making an impossible turn seem effortless.

Lincoln Rhyme struggled to tune out the droning of Sellitto on his cell phone. He also tuned out the rookie, Ron Pulaski, making calls about Baltimore mobsters.

Tuning it all out so he could let something else into his thoughts.

He wasn't sure what. A vague memory kept nagging.

A person's name, an incident, a place. He couldn't say. But it was something he knew was important, vital.

What?

He closed his eyes and swerved close to the thought. But it got away.

Ephemeral, like the puff balls he would chase when he was a boy in the Midwest, outside of Chicago, running through fields, running, running. Lincoln Rhyme had loved to run, loved to catch puff balls and the whirlygig seeds that spiraled from trees like descending helicopters. Loved to chase dragonflies and moths and bees.

To study them, to learn about them. Lincoln Rhyme was born with a fierce curiosity, a scientist even then.

Running…breathless.

And now the immobilized man was also running, trying to grasp a different sort of elusive seed. And even though the pursuit was in his mind only, it was no less strenuous and intense than the footraces of his youth.

There…there…

Almost have it.

No, not quite.

Hell.

Don't think, don't force. Let it in.

His mind sped through memories whole and memories fragmented, the way his feet would pound over fragrant grass and hot earth, through rustling reeds and cornfields, under massive thunderheads boiling up miles high and white in the blue sky.

A thousand images from homicides, and kidnappings and larcenies, crime scene photos, department memos and reports, evidence inventories, the art captured in microscope eyepieces, the mountain peaks and valleys on the screen of a gas chromatograph. Like so many whirlygigs and puff balls and grasshoppers and katydids and robin feathers.

Okay, close…close…

Then his eyes opened.

"Luponte," he whispered.

Satisfaction filled the body that could feel no sensation.

Rhyme wasn't sure but he believed there was something significant about the name Luponte.

"I need a file." Rhyme glanced at Sellitto, who was now sitting at a computer monitor, examining the screen. "A file!"

The big detective looked over at him. "Are you talking to me?"

"Yes, I'm talking to you."

Sellitto chuckled. "A file? Do I have it?"

"No. I need you to find it."

"About what? A case?"

"I think so. I don't know when. All I know is the name Luponte figures." He spelled it. "Was a while ago."

"The perp?"

"Maybe. Or maybe a witness, maybe an arresting or a supervisor. Or even brass. I don't know."

Luponte…

Sellitto said, "You're looking like the cat that got the cream."

Rhyme frowned. "Is that an expression?"

"I don't know. I just like the sound of it. Okay, the Luponte file. I'll make some calls. Is it important?"

"With a psychotic killer out there, Lon, do you think I'm going to have you waste time finding me something that's not important?"

A fax arrived.

"Our ASTER thermal images?" Rhyme asked eagerly.

"No. It's for Amelia," Cooper said. "Where is she?"

"Upstairs."

Rhyme was about to call her but just then she walked into the lab. Her face was dry and no longer red, her eyes clear. She rarely wore makeup but he wondered if she'd made an exception to hide the fact she'd been crying.

"For you," Cooper told her, looking over the fax. "Secondary analysis of the ash from what's-his-name's place."

"Creeley."

The tech said, "The lab finally imaged the logo that was on the spreadsheet. It's from software that's used in corporate accounting. Nothing unusual. It's sold to thousands of CPAs around the country."

She shrugged, taking the sheet and reading. "And Queens had a forensic accountant look over the recovered entries. It's just standard payroll and compensation figures for executives in some company. Nothing unusual about it." She shook her head. "Doesn't seem important. I'm guessing whoever broke in just burned whatever they could find to make sure they destroyed everything connecting them to Creeley."

Rhyme looked at her troubled eyes. He said, "It's also common practice to burn materials that have nothing to do with the case just to lead investigators off."

Sachs nodded. "Yeah, sure. Good point, Rhyme. Thanks."

Her phone rang.

The policewoman listened, frowning. "Where?" she asked. "Okay." She jotted some notes. "I'll be right there." She said to Pulaski, "May have a lead to the Sarkowski file. I'll check it out."

Uneasily he asked, "You want me to go with you?"

Calmer now, she smiled, though Rhyme could see it was forced. "No, you stay here, Ron. Thanks."

She grabbed her jacket and, without saying anything else, hurried out.

As the front door clicked shut behind her, Sellitto's phone rang. He tensed as he listened. Then he looked up, announced, "Get this. There was a hit on the EVL. Tan Explorer, two white males inside. Evading an RMP. They're in pursuit." He listened some more. "Got it." He hung up. "They followed it to that big garage on the river at Houston by the West Side Highway. Exits're sealed. This could be it."

Rhyme ordered his radio to pick up the scrambled transmissions, and everyone in the lab stared at the small black plastic speakers. Two patrol officers reported that the Explorer had been spotted on the second floor but was abandoned. There was no sign of the men who'd been inside.

"I know the garage," Sellitto said. "It's a sieve. They could've gotten out anywhere."

Bo Haumann and a lieutenant reported that they had squads combing the streets around the garage, but there was no sign yet of the Watchmaker or his partner.

Sellitto shook his head in frustration. "At least we've got their wheels. It'll tell us plenty. We should get Amelia back to run the scene."

Rhyme debated. He'd been anticipating that the conflict between the two cases might come to a head, though he'd never thought it would happen this fast.

Sure, they should get her back.

But the criminalist decided not to. He knew her perhaps even better than he knew himself and he understood that she needed to run with the St. James case.

There's nothing worse than a crooked cop…

He'd do this for her.

"No. Let her go."

"But, Linc-"

"We'll find somebody else."

The tense silence, which seemed to go on forever, was broken with: "I'll do it, sir."

Rhyme glanced to his right.

"You, Ron?"

"Yessir. I can handle it."

"I don't think so."

The rookie looked him in the eye and recited, "'It's important to note that the location where the victim's corpse is actually found is often the least important of the many crime scenes created when a homicide occurs-since it is there that conscientious perpetrators will cleanse the scene of trace and plant false evidence to lead off investigators. The more important-'"