Jeffery Deaver: The Burial Hour

With disbelief in his voice Ellis said, ‘He kept doing it — three times or four maybe.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Pulling the noose, recording me choking. I heard him play it back, over and over. As if the sounds I was making weren’t what he wanted. He was like a musical conductor, you know. Like he could hear in his mind the sound he wanted but he wasn’t getting it. He was so calculating, so cold about it.’

‘Did he say anything?’

‘Not to me. He talked to himself. Just rambling. I couldn’t hear most of it. I heard him say “music” and “harmony” and just weird stuff. I can’t really remember exactly. I feel pretty spacey. Nothing made sense. “Listen, listen, listen. Ah, there it is. Beautiful.” He seemed to be talking to some, I don’t know, imaginary person.’

‘No one else was there?’

‘I couldn’t see — you know, the blindfold. But it was just the two of us, I’m sure. I would’ve heard.’

What are you up to? she wondered to the Composer — it was the name they had selected for the unsub, Rhyme had told her. It seemed to fit a complex, sinister perp better than today’s date.

‘Still no thoughts on why he went after you?’

‘I don’t have any enemies, no exes. I’ve been with my girlfriend for years. I’m not rich, she’s not rich.’

Her phone buzzed. It was the officer who’d driven around the perimeter of the plant and found the witness — a boy — who reported that the Composer was fleeing. She had a brief conversation.

After disconnecting, she closed her eyes and sighed briefly.

She called Rhyme.

‘Sachs, where are you?’

‘I’m almost on my way.’

‘ Almost. Why almost ?’

‘The scene’s done. I’m just getting the vic’s statement.’

‘Somebody else can do that. I need the evidence.’

‘There’s something you should know.’

He must’ve heard the concern in her tone. Slowly he said, ‘Go on.’

‘One of the respondings was looking for more witnesses near where the unsub escaped. Didn’t find anyone. But she did spot a plastic bag he must’ve dropped while he was running. Inside were two more miniature nooses. Look likes he’s just getting started.’

Rhyme’s eyes scanned the treasures Sachs and the evidence collection techs had brought back.

The ECs left, one of them saying something to Rhyme. A joke. A farewell. A comment about the weather or the cleanliness of the Hewlett-Packard gas chromatograph. Who knew, who cared? He wasn’t paying attention. His nose detected the whiff of burned plastic and hot metal — radiating from the destroyed evidence.

Or the evidence the perp had tried to destroy. In fact, water is a far more efficient contaminant than fire, though flames do remove DNA and fingerprints pretty damn well.

Oh, Mr Composer, you tried. But let’s see how successful you were.

Fred Dellray was gone. He’d been summoned to Federal Plaza unexpectedly — a confidential informant had reported an impending assassination of a US attorney involved in a major drug prosecution.

Rhyme had complained: ‘ Impending versus actual , Fred? Come on. Our vic has been one hundred percent certified snatched.’

‘Orders’re orders,’ the agent had replied as he left.

And then, insult to injury, Dellray had just called back saying that it was a false alarm. He could get back within the hour.

‘Fine, fine, fine.’

Lon Sellitto was still here, presently canvassing law enforcement agencies around the country to see if there were any echoes of the Composer’s MO.

None, so far.

Not that Rhyme cared about that.

Evidence. That’s what he wanted.

So they began poring over what had been collected at the factory.

Here, a single Converse Con shoe print. Ten and a half.

Here, two short pale hairs that seemed identical to the one found on Ellis’s cell phone.

Here, four slivers of shiny paper — photo stock, it looked like.

Here, a burned T-shirt, probably the ‘broom’ used to obliterate marks on the floor and wipe fingerprints.

Here, gone almost completely, the dark baseball cap he’d worn. No hair, no sweat.

Here, plastic globs and metal parts — his musical keyboard and an LED light.

Here, a Baggie, one-gallon, containing two more miniature nooses, probably made of cello strings. No fingerprints. Not helpful in any way, except to tell them that he had more victims in mind.

No phone, no computer — those devices we so dearly love... and that betray us and our secrets so nonchalantly.

Though he’d swept, Sachs had collected plenty of dust and splinters of wood, and bits of concrete from the floor around the gallows room. The GC/MS rumbled for some time, again and again burning up samples. The results revealed traces of tobacco, as well as cocaine, heroin and pseudoephedrine — the ingredient in decongestants that was present here because of its second utility: making methamphetamine.

Sachs said, ‘Not a lot of traffic but the place had its crack-house attractions.’

One find, more or less intact, was a scrap of paper:

‘ Wheel of Fortune ,’ Mel Cooper said.

‘What’s that?’

Nobody replied to Rhyme’s question, as they all tried to complete the words, Thom too. Nothing, so they moved on.

The remains of the musical keyboard, presumably the one on which the Composer had recorded his eerie composition, contained a serial number. Sellitto called the manufacturer but the company, in Massachusetts, was presently closed. He’d check again in the morning, though the Composer had been so careful about so many aspects of the kidnapping that he’d surely bought the Casio with cash.

No fingerprints on it. Or anything else.

The noose that had been used to try to murder Robert Ellis was made of two gut instrument strings tied together in a carrick bend knot. This was a common knot, Rhyme knew; knowing how to tie it did not suggest any special nautical or other professional background.

The gut strings, larger versions of the calling card the schoolgirl had found, were for an upright bass. Rhyme had little hope that they’d find a clerk who’d remember a purchaser like the Composer, given their skimpy description of him... and the fact that there were thousands of musicians in the area who’d use such strings.

To break into the factory, the Composer had sliced through the chain at the gate with a bolt cutter and replaced it with his own. Both the lock and chain were generic.

The battery-powered router and Wi-Fi-enabled webcam — which had apparently alerted him to the police’s arrival — were similarly untraceable.

A canvass by dozens of officers found no witnesses to follow up on the boy who’d reported that somebody resembling the Composer had fled the plant around the time of the fire.

After the information went up on the board, Rhyme wheeled in front of it.

Sachs too gazed. She called up a map of the area on one of the big-screen monitors. She tapped the place to the north of the factory, about where he’d escaped, and said absently, ‘Where the hell’re you going?’

Sellitto, also looking over the chart, said, ‘He’s got a car. He can drive home. He can drive to a subway and take the train, leave the car on the street. He can—’

Rhyme had a fast thought. ‘Sachs!’

She, Sellitto and Cooper were looking toward him. They seemed alarmed. Maybe it was his angered expression.

‘What, Rhyme?’

‘What you just asked.’

‘Where he lives.’

‘No, you didn’t ask that. You asked where he was going?’