Jeffery Deaver - The Cold Moon

Rhyme's head tilted. "Ron? What's going on?"

Still no response.

He was about to order the unit to change frequency to tell Haumann to check on the rookie when the radio finally crackled to life.

He heard Ron Pulaski's panicked voice. "…needs assistance! Ten-thirteen, ten…I-"

A 10-13 was the most urgent of all radio codes, an officer in distress call.

Rhyme, shouting, "Answer me, Ron! Are you there?"

"I can't-"

A grunt.

The radio went dead.

Jesus.

"Mel, call Haumann for me!"

The tech hit some buttons. "You're on," Cooper shouted, pointed to Rhyme's headset.

"Bo, Rhyme. Pulaski's in trouble. Called in a ten-thirteen on my line. Did you hear?"

"Negative. But we'll move on it."

"He was going to run the stairwell closest to the Explorer."

"Roger."

Now that he was on the main frequency, Rhyme could hear all the transmissions. Haumann was directing several tactical support teams and calling for a medical unit. He ordered his men to spread out in the garage and cover the exits.

Rhyme pressed his head back into the headrest of his chair, furious.

He was mad at Sachs for abandoning His Case for the Other Case and forcing Pulaski to take the assignment. He was mad at himself for letting an inexperienced rookie search a potentially hot scene alone.

"Linc, we're on the way. We can't see him." It was Sellitto's voice.

"Well, don't goddamn tell me what you haven't found."

More voices.

"Nothing on this level."

"There's the SUV."

"Where is he?"

"Somebody over there, our nine o'clock?"

"Negative. That's a friendly."

"More lights! We need more lights!"

Moment of silence passed. Hours, it felt.

What was going on?

Goddamn it, somebody let me know!

But there was no response to this tacit demand. He went back to Pulaski's frequency.

"Ron?"

All he heard was a series of clicks, as if somebody whose throat had been cut was trying to communicate, though he no longer had a voice.

"Hey, Amie. Gotta talk."

"Sure."

Sachs was driving to Hell's Kitchen in Midtown Manhattan, on her quest for the Frank Sarkowski homicide file. But she wasn't thinking about that. She was thinking of the clocks at the crime scenes. Thinking of time moving forward and time standing still. Thinking of the periods when we want time to race ahead and save us from the pain we're experiencing. But it never does. It's at these moments that time slows interminably, sometimes even stops like the heart of a death-row prisoner at the moment of execution.

"Gotta talk."

Amelia Sachs was recalling a conversation from years earlier.

Nick says, "It's pretty serious." The two lovers are in Sachs's Brooklyn apartment. She's a rookie, in her uniform, her shoes polished to black mirrors. (Her father's advice: "Shined shoes get you more respect than an ironed uniform, honey. Remember that." And she had.)

Dark-haired, handsome, bulging-muscle Nick (he too could've been a model) is also a cop. More senior. Even more of a cowboy than Sachs is now. She sits on the coffee table, a nice one, teak, bought a year ago with the last of the fashion modeling money.

Nick was on an undercover assignment tonight. He's in a sleeveless T-shirt and jeans and wearing his little gun-a revolver-on his hip. He needs a shave, though Sachs likes him scruffy. The plans for this evening were: He'd come home and they'd have a late supper. She's got wine, candles, salad and salmon, all laid out, all homey.

On the other hand, Nick hasn't been home nights for a while. So maybe they'll eat dinner later.

Maybe they won't eat at all.

But now something's wrong. Something pretty serious.

Well, he's standing in front of her, he's not dead or wounded, shot down on an undercover set-the most dangerous assignment in copdom. He was going after crews jacking trucks. A lot of money was involved and that meant a lot of guns. Three of Nick's close buddies have been with him tonight. She wonders, her heart sinking, if one of them was killed. She knows them all.

Or is it something else?

Is he breaking up with me?

Lousy, lousy…but at least it's better than somebody getting capped in a shootout with a crew from East New York.

"Go on," she says.

"Look, Amie." It's her father's nickname for her. They are the only two men in the world she lets call her by the name. "The thing is-"

"Just tell me," she says. Amelia Sachs delivers news straight. She expects the same.

"You're going to hear it soon. I wanted to tell you first. I'm in trouble."

She believes she understands. Nick's a cowboy, always ready to pull out his MP-5 machine gun and exchange lead with a perp. Sachs, a better shot, at least with a pistol, is slow to squeeze the trigger. (Her father again: "You can't take back bullets." ) She supposes that there's been a firefight and that Nick has killed someone-maybe even an innocent. Okay. He'll be suspended until the shooting review board meets to decide if it was justifiable.

Her heart goes out to him and she's about to say that she'd be there for him, no matter what, we'll get through it, when he adds, "I got busted."

"You-"

"Sammy and me…Frank R too…the heists-the truck-jackings. We got nailed. In a big way." His voice is shaking. She's never known him to cry but it sounds like he's a few seconds away from bawling his eyes out.

"You're on the bag?" she gasps.

He stares at her green carpet. Finally a whisper: "Yeah…" Though now he's started the confession, he doesn't need to pull back. "But it's worse."

Worse? What could possibly be worse?

"We were the doers. We jacked the trucks ourselves."

"You mean, tonight, you…" Her voice has stopped working.

"Oh, Amie, not just tonight. For a year. The whole fucking year. We had guys in warehouses tell us about shipments. We'd pull the trucks over and…Well, you get it. You don't need to know the details." He rubs his haggard face. "We just heard-they've issued warrants for us. Somebody dimed us out. They got us cold. Oh, man, did they get us."

She's thinking back to the nights he was out on a set, working undercover to collar hijackers. At least once a week.

"I got sucked in. I didn't have any choice… "

She doesn't need to respond to this, to say, yes, yes, yes, my God, we always have choices. Amelia Sachs doesn't offer excuses herself and she's deaf to them from others. He understands this about her, of course, it's part of their love.

It was part of their love.

And he stops trying. "I fucked up, Amie. I fucked up. I just came by to tell you."

"You going to surrender?"

"I guess. I don't know what I'm going to do. Fuck."

Numb, there's nothing she can think of to say, not a single thing. She's thinking of their times together-the hours on the range, wasting pounds of ammo; in bars on Broadway, slogging down frozen daiquiris; lying in front of the old fireplace in her Brooklyn apartment.

"They'll look into my life with a microscope, Amie. I'll tell 'em you're clean. I'll try to keep you out of it. But they'll ask you a lot of questions."

She wants to ask why he did it. What reason could he possibly have? Nick'd grown up in Brooklyn, a typical good-looking, street-smart neighborhood kid. He'd run with a bad crowd for a while but had some sense smacked into him by his father and gave that up. Why had he slipped back? Was it the thrill? Was it the money? (That was something else he'd hidden from her, she realized now; where'd he been socking it away?)

Why?

But she doesn't have the chance.