Jeffery Deaver - The Cold Moon

Yes, the system would keep going… But it was impossibly hard toimagine that system without Amelia Sachs.

Well, fuck the goddamn sentiment, Rhyme said to himself, and get back to work. He glanced at the evidence board. The Watchmaker's out there somewhere; I'm going to find him. He is…not…getting…away.

"What?" Pulaski asked.

"I didn't say anything," Rhyme snapped.

"Yeah, you did. I just…"He fell silent under Rhyme's withering glare.

Returning to his tasks, Pulaski asked, "The notes I found in Baker's office? They're on cheap paper. Should I use ninhydrin to raise the latents?"

Rhyme started to respond.

A woman's voice said, "No. First you try iodine fuming. Then ninhydrin, then silver nitrate. You have to do it in that order."

Rhyme looked up to see Sachs in the doorway. He slapped a benign look on his face. Putting on a good front, he praised himself. Being generous. Being mature.

She continued, "If not, the chemicals can react and you can ruin the prints."

Well, this is awkward, the criminalist thought angrily. He stared at the evidence boards as the silence between them roared like the December wind outside.

She said, "I'm sorry."

Unusual to hear those words from her; the woman apologized about as often as Lincoln Rhyme did. Which was close to never.

Rhyme didn't respond. He kept his eyes on the charts.

"Really, I'm sorry."

Irritated at the greeting card sentiment, he glanced sideways, frowning, barely able to control his anger.

But he saw that she wasn't speaking to him.

Her eyes were fixed on Pulaski. "I'll make it up to you somehow. You can run the next scene. I'll be copilot. Or the next couple of scenes."

"How's that?" the rookie asked.

"I know you heard I was leaving."

He nodded.

"But I've changed my mind."

"You're not quitting?" Pulaski asked.

"No."

"Hey, not a problem," Pulaski said. "Wouldn't mind sharing the job for a little while more, you know." His relief at not being the only ant under Lincoln Rhyme's magnifying glass clearly outweighed any disappointment at getting busted back down to assistant.

Sachs tugged a chair around to face Rhyme.

He said, "I thought you were at Argyle."

"I was. To turn them down."

"Can I ask why?"

"I got a call. From Suzanne Creeley. Ben Creeley's wife. She thanked me for believing her, for finding out who'd really killed her husband. She was crying. She told me that she just couldn't bear the thought that her husband had killed himself. Murder was terrible but a suicide-that would've undermined everything they'd had together over the years."

Sachs shook her head. "A knot in a rope and a broken thumb…I realized that that's what this job is all about, Rhyme. Not the crap I got caught up in, the politics, my father, Baker and Wallace…You can't make it too complicated. Being a cop is about finding the truth behind a knot and a broken thumb. Nothing more than that."

You and me, Sachs…

"So," she asked, matter-of-fact, as she nodded toward the boards, "our bad boy-anything new on him?"

Rhyme told her about his present, the Breguet, then summarized: "A rock or mountain climber, possibly trained in Europe. He's spent time in California, near the shore. And he's been there recently. May live there now. Good education. Uses proper grammar, syntax and punctuation. And I want to go over every gear in the watch again. He's a watch maker, right? That means he's probably taken the back off to poke around inside. If there's a molecule of trace, I want it." Rhyme nodded at the man's note and added, "He admits he was watching Charlotte's hotel around the time we collared her. I want every vantage point where he might've been standing searched. You're recruited for that one, Ron."

"Got it."

"And don't forget what we know about him. Maybe he's gone and maybe he isn't. Make sure your weapon's in reach. Outside the Tyvek. Remember-"

"Search well but watch my back?" Pulaski asked.

"An A for retention," the criminalist said. "Now get to work."

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.

– SAINT AUGUSTINE

The December day wasn't particularly cold but the ancient furnace in Rhyme's town house was on the fritz and everyone in his ground floor lab huddled in thick jackets. Clouds of steam blew from their mouths with every exhalation, and extremities were bright red. Amelia Sachs wore two sweaters and Pulaski was in a padded green jacket from which dangled Killington ski lift tickets like a veteran soldier's campaign medals.

A skier cop, Rhyme reflected. That seemed odd, though he couldn't say why exactly. Maybe something about the dangers of hurtling down a mountain with a hair-trigger 9-millimeter pistol under your bunny suit.

"Where's the furnace repair guy?" Rhyme snapped to his aide.

"He said he'll be here between one and five." Thom was wearing a tweed jacket, which Rhyme had given him last Christmas, and a dark purple cashmere scarf, which had been one of Sachs's presents.

"Ah, between one and five. One and five. Tell you what. Call him back and-"

"That's what he told-"

"No, listen. Call him back and tell him we got a report there's a crazed killer loose in his neighborhood and we'll be there to catch him between one and five. See how he likes them apples."

"Lincoln," the patient aide said. "I don't-"

"Does he know what we do here? Does he know that we serve and protect? Call him and tell him that."

Pulaski noted that Thom wasn't reaching for the phone. He asked, "Uhm, you want me to? Call, I mean?"

Ah, the sincerity of youth…

Thom replied to the young officer, "Don't pay him any attention. He's like a dog jumping up on you. Ignore him and he'll stop."

"A dog?" Rhyme asked. " I'm a dog. That's a bit ironic, isn't it, Thom? Since here you are biting the hand that feeds you." Pleased with the retort, he added, "Tell the repairman I think I'm suffering from hypothermia. I really think I am, by the way."

"So you can feel-" the rookie asked, his question braking to a halt.

"Yes, I goddamn well can feel uncomfortable, Pulaski."

"Sorry, wasn't thinking."

"Hey," Thom said, laughing. "Congratulations!"

"What's that?" the rookie asked.

"You've graduated to last-name basis. He's beginning to think of you as a step above a slug… That's how he refers to the people he really likes. I, for instance, am merely Thom. Forever Thom."

"But," Sachs said to the rookie, "tell him you're sorry again and you'll be demoted."

The doorbell sounded a moment later and first-name Thom went to answer it.

Rhyme glanced at the clock. The time was 1:02. Could it be that a repairman was actually prompt?

But, of course, this wasn't the case. It was Lon Sellitto, who walked inside, started to take his coat off, then changed his mind. He glanced at his breath billowing from his mouth. "Jesus, Linc, with what the city coughs up for you, you can afford to pay your heating bill, you know. Is that coffee? Is it hot?"

Thom poured him a cup and Sellitto clutched it in one hand as he opened his briefcase with the other. "Finally got it." He nodded at what he now extracted, an old Redweld folder disfigured with faded ink and pencil notations, many of the entries crossed out, evidence of years of frugal municipal government reuse.

"The Luponte file?" Rhyme asked.

"That's it."