Jeffery Deaver - The Cold Moon

Five agonizing minutes later Duncan returned, holding a wrinkled newspaper.

"I'm sorry," Vincent said.

"It's all right. It's okay." Duncan's voice was soft. Inside the paper was the bloody box cutter. He wiped the blade with the paper and retracted the razor blade. He threw away the bloody paper and gloves. He put a new pair on. He insisted they carry two or three pairs with them at all times.

Duncan said, "The body's in a Dumpster. I covered it up with trash. If we're lucky it'll be in a landfill or out to sea before somebody notices the blood."

"Are you all right?" Vincent thought there was a red mark on Duncan's cheek.

The man shrugged. "I got careless. He fought back. I had to slash his eyes. Remember that. If somebody resists, slash their eyes. That stops them resisting right away and you can control them however you want."

Slash their eyes…

Vincent nodded slowly.

Duncan asked, "You'll be more careful?"

"Oh, yes. Promise. Really."

"Now go check on the flower girl and meet me at the museum at quarter past four."

"Okay, sure."

Duncan turned his light blue eyes on Vincent. He gave a rare smile.

"Don't be upset. There was a problem. It's been taken care of. In the great scheme of things, it was nothing."

The body of Teddy Adams was gone, the grieving relatives too.

Lon Sellitto had just left for Rhyme's and the scene was officially released. Ron Pulaski, Nancy Simpson and Frank Rettig were removing the crime scene tape.

Still stung by the look of desperate hope in the face of Adams's young niece, Amelia Sachs had gone over the scene yet again with even more diligence than usual. She checked other doorways and possible entrance and escape routes the perp might've used. But she found nothing else. She didn't remember the last time a complicated crime like this had yielded so little evidence.

After packing up her equipment she mentally shifted back to the Benjamin Creeley case and called the man's wife, Suzanne, to tell her that several men had broken into their Westchester house.

"I didn't know that. Do have any idea what they stole?"

Sachs had met the woman several times. She was very thin-she jogged daily-and had short frosted hair, a pretty face. "It didn't look like much was missing." She decided to say nothing about the neighbor boy; she figured she'd scared him into going straight.

Sachs asked if anyone would have been burning something in the fireplace, and Suzanne replied that no one had even been to the house recently.

"What do you think was going on?"

"I don't know. But it's making the suicide look more doubtful. Oh, by the way, you need a new lock on your back door."

"I'll call somebody today… Thank you, Detective. It means a lot that you believe me. About Ben not killing himself."

After they hung up, Sachs filled out a request for analysis of the ash, mud and other evidence at the Creeleys' house and packed these materials separately from the Watchmaker evidence. She then completed the chain-of-custody cards and helped Simpson and Rettig pack up the van. It took two of them to wrap the heavy metal bar in plastic and stow it.

She was just swinging shut the van's door when she glanced up, across the street. The cold had driven off most of the spectators but she noted a man standing with a Post in front of an old building being renovated on Cedar Street, near Chase Plaza.

That's not right, Sachs thought. Nobody stands on the street corner and reads a newspaper in this weather. If you're worried about the stock market or curious about a recent disaster, you flip through quickly, find out how much money you lost or how far the church bus plummeted and then keep on walking.

But you don't just stand in the windy street for Page Six gossip.

She couldn't see the man clearly-he was partially hidden behind the newspaper and a pile of debris from the construction site. But one thing was obvious: his boots. They'd have a traction tread, which could have left the distinctive impressions she found in the snow at the mouth of the alley.

Sachs debated. Most of the other officers had left. Simpson and Rettig were armed but not tactically trained and the suspect was on the other side of a three-foot-high metal barricade set up for an upcoming parade. He could escape easily if she approached him from where she was now, across the street. She'd have to handle the take-down more subtly.

She walked up to Pulaski, whispered, "There's somebody at your six o'clock. I want to talk to him. Guy with the paper."

"The perp?" he asked.

"Don't know. Maybe. Here's what we're going to do. I'm getting into the RRV with the CS team. They're going to drop me at the corner to the east. Can you drive a manual?"

"Sure."

She gave him the keys to her bright red Camaro. "You drive west on Cedar toward Broadway, maybe forty feet. Stop fast, get out and vault the barricade, come back this way."

"Flush him."

"Right. If he's just out reading the paper, we'll have a talk, check his ID and get back to work. If not, I'm guessing he'll turn and run right into my arms. You come up behind and cover me."

"Got it."

Sachs made a show of taking a last look around the scene and then climbed into the big brown RRV van. She leaned forward. "We've got a problem."

Nancy Simpson and Frank Rettig glanced toward her. Simpson unzipped her jacket and put her hand on the grip of her pistol.

"No, don't need that. I'll tell you what's going down." She explained the situation then said to Simpson, who was behind the wheel, "Head east. At the light make a left. Just slow up. I'll jump out."

Pulaski climbed into the Camaro, fired it up and couldn't resist pumping the gas to get a sexy whine out of the Tubi exhausts.

Rettig asked, "You don't want us to stop?"

"No, just slow up. I want the suspect to be sure I'm leaving."

"Okay," Simpson said. "You got it."

The RRV headed east. In the sideview mirror Sachs saw Pulaski start forward-easy, she told him silently; it was a monster engine and the clutch gripped like Velcro. But he controlled the horses and rolled forward smoothly, the opposite direction from the van.

At the intersection of Cedar and Nassau the RRV turned and Sachs opened the door. "Keep going. Don't slow up."

Simpson did a great job keeping the van steady. "Good luck," the crime scene officer called.

Sachs leapt out.

Whoa, a little faster than she'd planned. She nearly stumbled, caught herself and thanked the Department of Sanitation for the generous sprinkling of salt on the icy street. She started along the sidewalk, coming up behind the man with the newspaper. He didn't see her.

A block away, then a half block. She opened her jacket and gripped the Glock that rode high on her belt. About fifty feet past the suspect, Pulaski suddenly pulled to the curb, climbed out and-without the guy's noticing-easily jumped over the barricade. They had him sandwiched in, separated by a barrier on one side and the building being renovated on the other.

A good plan.

Except for one glitch.

Across the street from Sachs were two armed guards, stationed in front of the Housing and Urban Development building. They'd been helping with the crime scene and one of them glanced at Sachs. He waved to her, calling, "Forget something, Detective?"

Shit. The man with the newspaper whirled around and saw her.

He dropped the paper, jumped the barrier and sprinted as fast as he could down the middle of the street toward Broadway, catching Pulaski on the other side of the metal fence. The rookie tried to leap it, caught his foot and went down hard in the street. Sachs paused but saw he wasn't badly hurt and she continued after the suspect. Pulaski rolled to his feet and together they sprinted after the man, who had a thirty-foot head start and was increasing his lead.