Jeffery Deaver: The Burial Hour

‘Hello Kitty. Ponies are a different book.’

‘Did Mommy or Daddy confirm?’

‘Morgynn, the girl, was the only one who saw. But I think it’s legit. She found a calling card he’d left behind.’ Sellitto held up his phone and displayed a photo.

At first Rhyme couldn’t make out the image. It was a picture of a dark shape, thin, lying on a sidewalk.

‘It’s a—’

Rhyme interrupted. ‘Noose.’

‘Yep.’

‘Made out of?’

‘Not sure. Girl said he set it on the spot where he got the vic. She picked it up but the responding set it back in the same place he’d left it, more or less.’

‘Great. I’ve never worked a scene contaminated by a nine-year-old.’

‘Relax, Linc. All she did was pick it up. And the responding wore gloves. Scene’s secure, waiting for somebody to run it. Somebody, as in Amelia.’

The noose was made out of dark material, which was stiff, since segments were not flush with the pavement, as would be the case with more limp fibers. From the size of the poured-concrete sidewalk panel, the noose was about twelve to fourteen inches long in total, the neck hoop about a third of that.

‘The wit’s still on scene. With Mommy. Who isn’t very happy.’

Neither was Rhyme. All they had to go on was a nine-year-old schoolgirl with the observational skills and perception of a... well, nine-year-old schoolgirl.

‘The vic? Rich, politically active, connected with OC, record?’

Sellitto said, ‘No ID yet. Nobody reported missing. A few minutes after the snatch somebody saw a phone fly outta a car — dark sedan, nothing more. Third Avenue. Dellray’s boys’re running it. We find out who, we find out why. Business deal gone bad, vic has information somebody wants, or the old standby. For-profit ransom.’

‘Or it’s a psycho. There was the noose, after all.’

‘Yeah,’ Sellitto said, ‘and the vic just happened to be WTWP.’

‘What?’

‘Wrong time, wrong place.’

Rhyme scowled once more. ‘Lon?’

‘It’s going around the department.’

‘Flu viruses — not viri, by the way — go around the department. Idiotic expressions do not. Or should not, at least.’

Sellitto used the cane to rise to his feet and aimed his bulky form toward the tray of cookies that Thom was setting down, like a Realtor seducing prospective buyers at a condominium open house. The detective ate one, then two, then another, nodded approval. He poured himself a cup of coffee from a silver pitcher and spilled in artificial sweetener, his concession to the battle against calories being to sacrifice refined sugar for pastry.

‘Good,’ he announced through a mouthful of cookie. ‘You want one? Some coffee?’

The criminalist’s eyes swiveled instinctively toward the Glenmorangie, sitting golden and alluring on the high shelf.

But Lincoln Rhyme decided: No. He wanted his faculties about him. He had a feeling that the girl’s observations were all too accurate, that the kidnapping had occurred just as she had described it and that the macabre calling card was a taunting message of a death soon to be.

And perhaps more after that.

He texted Amelia Sachs once again.

A plop, as water fell from ceiling to floor.

Ten feet.

Every four seconds.

Plop, plop, plop.

The resulting sound wasn’t a splash. The floor of this old, old factory, now abandoned, was scarred from the passage of metal and wooden objects, and the water didn’t accumulate in pools but eased away in crevices and cuts, as patterned as an old man’s face.

Plop, plop.

Moans, too, as the chill autumn breeze slipped over the mouths of ducts, pipes and vents, the way you’d blow across a bottle neck to make a hooing sound. Didn’t see that much anymore, no, you didn’t. Because kids used to do it mostly with soda bottles, which were now plastic, not glass. Plastic didn’t work very well. Beer bottles you could use but adults didn’t get any pleasure out of the hooo-hoooing sounds.

Stefan had once written a piece of music to be played on Mountain Dew bottles, each filled with a different amount of water to produce a chromatic scale of twelve notes. He had been six years old.

The tones the factory now made were a C sharp, an F, a G. There was no rhythm, as the wind was irregular. Also:

Distant traffic, a constant.

More-distant exhalations of jet airplanes.

Not distant at all: a rat skittering.

And, of course, the most captivating sound of all: the rasping breath of the man sitting in a chair in the corner of this dim storage room. Hands bound. Feet bound. Around his neck, a noose. The string Stefan had left on the sidewalk as a grisly announcement of the kidnapping was a cello string; this noose was made of two longer strings, bound together to extend the length — they were the lowest and thickest strings of an upright double bass, one of those instruments that made the happy transition from classical music to jazz. Made of mutton serosa — the lining of a sheep’s intestine — these were the most expensive musical strings on the market. Each had cost $140. They produced the richest tone, and there were world-class violinists, cellists and bass players who would never think of playing a baroque piece on anything but this. Gut strings were far more temperamental than metal or nylon strings and might go out of tune at the slightest change in temperature or humidity.

For Stefan’s immediate purpose, though, the strings’ intolerance of humidity was irrelevant; for hanging someone, they worked just great.

The loop hung loosely around the man’s neck and the tail rested on the floor.

Stefan shivered from excitement, the way any pilgrim would at the beginning of his quest. He shivered from the chill too, even though he was an insulated man — in all senses: heavy-set with long, dense curly dark hair dropping well past his ears, and full beard, and a silken pelt of chest and arm hair. And he was swathed in protective clothing too: a white sleeveless undershirt beneath a heavy dark-gray work shirt, a black waterproof jacket and dungarees, also dark gray. They were like cargo pants but not cargo pants because the place where he’d been living until recently did not permit anyone to have pockets. Stefan was thirty years old but appeared younger, thanks to the smooth, baby-fat skin.

The room these two men were in was deep within the sprawling place. He’d set it up yesterday, moving in a table and chairs he’d found in other parts of the factory. A small battery-powered light. His musical, recording and video equipment too.

The watch on his wrist revealed the time to be 10:15 a.m. He should get started. He’d been careful but you never knew about the police. Had that little girl seen more than it seemed she had? The license plate was smeared with mud but someone might have noted the first two letters. Maybe enough to track the vehicle to the long-term parking lot at JFK airport, where it had been until yesterday. Using algorithms, using deductions, using interview skills... they might put an identification together.

Can’t have that now, can we? Have to be careful.

I am, don’t worry.

Stefan believed he might have spoken these words aloud. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if he thought his messages to Her or spoke them. Wasn’t sure if Her responses were real or not, either.

He laid the equipment out in front of him, examining keyboards and computer, cords and plugs. Switches clicked on. Hard drives hummed, adding sound.

Plop.

Moan.

Hum.

Good.

Ah, and the rat, too.

Skitter.

As long as there were sounds, distracting sounds, seductive sounds, Stefan had a good chance of keeping the Black Screams away.