The Cold Moon (4 page)

Her back to Pulaski, Sachs nodded. But she really wasn't paying much attention to this information; it wasn't useful to her at the moment. She was about to search the scene and was trying to clear her thoughts of distractions. Despite the fact that by definition crime scene work involves inanimate objects, there's a curious intimacy to the job; to be effective, CS cops have to mentally and emotionally
become
the perps. The whole horrific scenario plays itself out in their imaginations: what the killer was thinking, where he stood when he lifted the gun or club or knife, how he adjusted his stance, whether he lingered to watch the victim's death throes or fled immediately, what caught his attention at the scene, what tempted and repulsed him, what was his escape route. This wasn't psychological profiling — that occasionally helpful, media-chic portrait-painting of suspects; this was the art of mining the huge clutter at crime scenes for those few important nuggets that could lead to a suspect's door.

Sachs was now doing this, becoming someone else — the killer who'd engineered this terrible end to another human being.

Eyes scanning the scene, up and down, sideways: the cobblestones, the walls, the body, the iron weight...

I'm him... I'm him... What do I have in mind? Why did I want to kill these vics? Why in these ways? Why on the pier, why here?

But the cause of death was so unusual, the killer's mind so removed from hers, that she had no answers to these questions, not yet. She pulled on her headset. "Rhyme, you there?"

"And where else would I be?" he asked, sounding amused. "I've been waiting. Where are you? The second scene?"

"Yes."

"What are you seeing, Sachs?"

I'm him...

"Alleyway, Rhyme," she said into the stalk mike. "It's a cul-de-sac for deliveries. It doesn't go through. The vic's close to the street."

"How close?"

"Fifteen feet out of a hundred-foot alley."

"How'd he get there?"

"No sign of tread marks but he was definitely dragged to the place he was killed; there's salt and crud on the bottom of his jacket and pants."

"Are there doors near the body?"

"Yes. He's pretty much in front of one."

"Did he work in the building?"

"No. I've got his business cards. He's a freelance writer. His work address is the same as his apartment."

"He might've had a client there or in one of the other buildings."

"Lon's checking now."

"Good. The door that's closest? Would that've been someplace the perp could have waited for him?"

"Yeah," she replied.

"Have a guard open it up and I want you to search what's on the other side."

Lon Sellitto called from the perimeter of the scene, "No witnesses. Everybody's fucking blind. Oh, and deaf too... And there must be forty or fifty different offices in the buildings around the alley. If anybody knew him, it may take a while to find out."

Sachs relayed the criminalist's request to open the back door near the body.

"You got it." Sellitto headed off on this mission, blowing warming breath into his cupped hands.

Sachs videotaped and photographed the scene. She looked for and found no evidence of sexual activity involving the body or nearby. She then began walking the grid — walking over every square inch of the scene twice, looking for physical evidence. Unlike many crime scene professionals, Rhyme insisted on a single searcher — except in the case of mass disasters, of course — and Sachs always walked the grid alone.

But whoever'd committed the crime had been very careful not to leave anything obvious behind, except the note and the clock, the metal bar, the duct tape and rope.

She told him this.

"Not really in their nature to make it easy for us, is it, Sachs?"

His cheerful mood grated;
he
wasn't right next to a victim who'd died this fucking lousy death. She ignored the comment and continued working the scene: performing a basic processing of the corpse so it could be released to the medical examiner, collecting his effects, dusting for fingerprints and doing electrostatic prints of shoe treads, collecting trace with an adhesive roller, like the sort used for removing pet hairs.

It was likely that the perp had driven here, given the weight of the bar, but there were no tread marks. The center of the alley was covered with rock salt to melt the ice, and the grains prevented good contact with the cobblestones.

Then she squinted. "Rhyme, something odd here. Around the body, for probably three feet around it, there's something on the ground."

"What do you think it is?"

Sachs bent down and with a magnifier examined what seemed to be fine sand. She mentioned this to Rhyme.

"Was it for the ice?"

"No. It's only around him. And there's none anywhere else in the alley. They're using salt for the snow and ice." Then she stepped back. "But there's only a fine residue left. It's like... yes, Rhyme. He swept up. With a broom."

"Swept?"

"I can see the straw marks. It's like he scattered handfuls of sand on the scene and then swept it up... But maybe he didn't do it. There wasn't anything like this at the first scene, on the pier."

"Is there any sand on the victim or the bar?"

"I don't know... Wait, there is."

"So he did it
after
the killing," Rhyme said. "It's probably an obscuring agent."

Diligent perps would sometimes use a powdery or granular material of some kind — sand, kitty litter or even flour — to spread on the ground after committing a crime. They'd then sweep or vacuum up the material, taking most of the trace particles with it.

"But why?" Rhyme mused.

Sachs stared at the body, stared at the cobblestone alley.

I'm him...

Why would I sweep?

Perps often wipe fingerprints and take the obvious evidence with them but it's very rare when someone goes to the trouble of using an obscuring agent. She closed her eyes and, as hard as it was, pictured herself standing over the young man, who was struggling to keep the bar off his throat.

"Maybe he spilled something."

But Rhyme said, "Doesn't seem likely. He wouldn't be that careless."

She continued to think: I'm careful, sure. But why would I sweep?

I'm him...

"Why?" Rhyme whispered.

"He —"

"Not
he,
" the criminalist corrected. "You're him, Sachs. Remember. You."

"
I'm
a perfectionist. I want to get rid of as much evidence as possible."

"True, but what you gain by sweeping up," Rhyme said, "you lose by staying on the scene longer. I think there has to be another reason."

Going deeper, feeling herself lifting the bar, putting the rope in the man's hands, staring down at his struggling face, his bulging eyes. I put the clock next to his head. It's ticking, ticking... I watch him die.

I leave no evidence, I sweep up...

"Think, Sachs. What's he up to?"

I'm him...

Then she blurted, "I'm coming back, Rhyme."

"What?"

"I'm coming back to the scene. I mean,
he's
coming back. That's why he swept up. Because he absolutely didn't want to leave anything that'd give us a description of him: no fibers, hairs, shoe prints, dirt in his soles. He's not afraid we'll use it to track him to his hidey-hole — he's too good to be leaving trace like that. No, he's afraid we'll find something that'll help us recognize him when he comes back."

"Okay, that could be it. Maybe he's a voyeur, likes to watch people die, likes to watch cops at work. Or maybe he wants to see who's hunting for him... so he can start a hunt of his own."

Sachs felt a trickle of fear down her back. She looked around her. There was, as usual, a small crowd of gawkers standing across the street. Was the killer among them, watching her right now?

Then Rhyme added, "Or maybe he's already been back. He came by earlier this morning to see that the vic was really dead. Which means —"

"That he might've left some evidence somewhere else, outside the scene. On the sidewalk, the street."

"Exactly."

Sachs slipped under the tape out of the designated crime scene and looked over the street. Then the sidewalk in front of the building. There she found a half dozen shoe prints in the snow. She had no way of knowing if any of them were the Watchmaker's but several — made by wide, waffle-stomper boots — suggested that somebody, a man probably, had stood in the mouth of the alley for a few minutes, shifting weight from foot to foot. She looked around and decided there was no reason for anybody to be standing there — no pay phones, mailboxes or windows were nearby.

"Got some unusual boot prints here in the mouth of the alley, by the curb on Cedar Street," she told Rhyme. "Large." She searched this area too, digging into a snowbank. "Got something else."

"What?"

"A gold metal money clip." Her fingers stinging from the cold through the latex gloves, she counted the cash inside. "It's got three hundred forty in new twenties. Right next to the boot prints."

"Did the vic have any money on him?"

"Sixty bucks, also pretty fresh."

"Maybe the perp boosted the clip and then dropped it getting away."

She placed it in an evidence bag, then finished searching other portions of the scene, finding nothing else.

The back door of the office building opened. Sellitto and a uniformed guard from the security staff of the building were there. They stood back as Sachs processed the door itself — finding and photographing what she described to Rhyme as a million fingerprints (he only chuckled) and the dim lobby on the other side. She didn't find anything obviously relevant to the murder.

Suddenly a woman's panicky voice cut through the cold air. "Oh, my God, no!"

A stocky brunette in her thirties ran up to the yellow tape, where she was stopped by a patrol officer. Her hands were at her face and she was sobbing. Sellitto stepped forward. Sachs joined them. "Do you know him, ma'am?" the big detective asked.

"What happened, what happened? No... oh, God..."

"Do you know him?" the detective repeated.

Wracked with crying, the woman turned away from the terrible sight. "My brother... No, is he — oh, God, no, he can't be..." She sank to her knees on the ice.

This would be the woman who'd reported her brother missing last night, Sachs understood.

Lon Sellitto had the personality of a pitbull when it came to suspects. But with victims and their relatives he showed a surprising tenderness. In a soft voice, thickened by a Brooklyn drawl, he said, "I'm so sorry. He's gone, yes." He helped her up and she leaned against the wall of the alley.

"Who did it? Why?" Her voice rose to a screech as she stared at the terrible tableau of her brother's death. "Who'd do something like this? Who?"

"We don't know, ma'am," Sachs said. "I'm sorry. But we'll find him. I promise you."

Gasping for breath, she turned. "Don't let my daughter see, please."

Sachs looked past her to a car, parked half on the curb, where she'd left it in her panic. In the passenger seat was a teenage girl, who was staring at Sachs with a frown, her head cocked. The detective stepped in front of the body, blocking the girl's view of her uncle.

The sister, whose name was Barbara Eckhart, had jumped from her car without her coat and was huddling against the cold. Sachs led her through the open door into the service lobby that she'd just run. The hysterical woman asked to use the restroom and when she emerged she was still shaken and pale, though the crying was under control.

Barbara had no idea what the killer's motive might be. Her brother, a bachelor, worked for himself, a freelance advertising copywriter. He was well liked and had no enemies that she knew of. He wasn't involved in any romantic triangles — no jealous husbands — and had never done drugs or anything else illegal. He'd moved to the city two years earlier.

That he had no apparent OC connection troubled Sachs; it moved the psycho factor into first place, far more dangerous to the public than a mob pro.

Sachs explained how the body would be processed. It would be released by the medical examiner to the next of kin within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Barbara's face grew stony. "Why did he kill Teddy like that? What was he thinking?"

But that was a question for which Amelia Sachs had no answer.

Watching the woman return to her car, Sellitto helping her, Sachs couldn't take her eyes off the daughter, who was staring back at the policewoman. The look was hard to bear. The girl must know by now that this man was in fact her uncle and he was dead, but Sachs could see what seemed to be a small bit of hope in the girl's face.

Hope, about to be destroyed.

Hungry.

Vincent Reynolds lay on his musty bed in their temporary home, which was, of all things, a former church, and felt his soul's hunger, silently mimicking the grumbling of his bulging belly.

This old Catholic structure, in a deserted area of Manhattan near the Hudson River, was their base of operation for the killings. Gerald Duncan was from out of town and Vincent's apartment was in New Jersey. Vincent had said they could stay at his place but Duncan had said, no, they could hardly do that. They should have no contact whatsoever with their real residences. He'd sounded sort of like he was lecturing. But not in a bad way. It was like a father instructing his son.

"A church?" Vincent had asked. "Why?"

"Because it's been on the market for fourteen and a half months. Not a hot property. And nobody's going to be showing it this time of year." A fast look at Vincent. "Don't worry. It's desanctified."

"It is?" asked Vincent, who figured that he'd committed enough sins to be guaranteed a direct route to hell, if there was one; trespassing in a church, sanctified or de-, was the very least of his offenses.

The real estate agent kept the doors locked, of course, but a watchmaker's skills are essentially those of a locksmith (the first clock makers, Duncan had explained, were locksmiths) and the man easily picked one of the back door locks then fitted it with a padlock of his own, so they could come and go, unseen by anyone on the street or sidewalk. He changed the lock on the front door too and left a bit of wax on it so they'd know if anybody tried to get in when they were away.