Except that he wasn't.

She blinked the moisture from her eyes, then wiped them fiercely with her sleeve.

Empty. The cul-de-sac was empty. Five sixteen was gone.

Struggling to her feet, she holstered her weapon and ma.s.saged her knee. She limped to the street and conducted a canva.s.s of those on the sidewalk. But no one had paid any attention to light-colored cars, no one had seen a compact man with brown hair and military bearing acting strangely, no one had seen any weapons.

Standing with hands on hips, looking west then east. All was peaceful, all was normal. A typical day on the Upper West Side.

Sachs returned to the cul-de-sac, fighting the limp. Man, that hurt. She collected the Chinese and tossed it into a Dumpster.

In New York City alleyways the five-second rule about dropped food does not apply.

CHAPTER 54.

YOU WERE RIGHT, CAPTAIN," Mychal Poitier called from the second-story porch outside Annette Bodel's apartment in Na.s.sau. "The side window has been jimmied. Barry Shales or your unsub broke in here, either before or after he killed her."

Rhyme gazed up, squinting into the brilliant sky. He couldn't see the corporal, just the silhouette of a palm waving lethargically near the roof of the building in which prost.i.tute-student Annette had lived.

This was the other crime scene he'd referred to. He'd known that Annette's killer had to come here to find any information she might have had about him and his visit to South Cove last week. Poitier and his men had been here before-after she was reported missing-but merely to see if she, or her body, was present. The door locks had not been disturbed and the officers hadn't investigated further.

"Probably afterward," Rhyme called. Part of the questions during Annette's torture would have been about address books and computer files that might have referenced him. Diaries too, of course. All of that would be gone but, he hoped, some trace of the unsub remained.

A small cl.u.s.ter of locals, faces tanned and faces black, were nearby, checking out the entourage. Rhyme supposed their words ought to be delivered more discreetly but twenty-five vertical feet separated him from Poitier and so there was no choice but to shout.

"Don't go inside, Corporal. Ron will handle it." He turned. "Rookie, how we doing?"

"Almost ready, Lincoln." He was suiting up in RBPF crime scene coveralls and a.s.sembling the basic collection equipment.

Rhyme didn't even consider running this scene himself, though he'd earlier been tempted. There was no elevator in the building and it would be nearly impossible to carry the heavy wheelchair up the narrow rickety stairs. Besides, Pulaski was good. Nearly as good as Amelia Sachs.

The officer now paused in front of Rhyme as if expecting a briefing. But the criminalist offered simply, "It's your scene. You know what to do."

A nod from the young man and up the stairs he trotted.

IT TOOK ABOUT AN HOUR for him to walk the grid.

When Pulaski emerged, with a half dozen collection bags, he asked Rhyme and Poitier if they wanted to review the evidence now. Rhyme debated but in the end he decided to take everything back to New York and do the a.n.a.lysis there.

Part of this was the familiarity of working with Mel Cooper.

Part was that he missed Sachs, a fact he wouldn't share with another human being...except her.

"What are our travel options?" he asked Thom.

He checked his phone. "If we can get to the airport in a half hour, we can make the next flight."

Rhyme glanced at the corporal.

"We're twenty minutes at the most," Poitier said.

"Even in the infamous Bahamian traffic?" Rhyme asked wryly.

"I have red lights."

Pulaski headed toward the van, still in coveralls, booties and shower cap.

"Get into street clothes, rookie. I think you'd upset the pa.s.sengers, dressed like that."

"Oh, right."

The flashing lights did help and soon they were at the terminal. They exited the van and, while Pulaski saw to the luggage and Thom arranged for the vehicle to be collected, Rhyme remained next to Poitier. The area was bustling with tourists and locals, and the air filled with dust and the endless bangs and catcalls of construction. And that constant perfume, trash fire smoke.

Rhyme began to speak, then found words had abandoned him. He forced them into line. "I'm sorry about what happened at the sniper nest, Corporal. The a.s.sistant commissioner was right. I nearly got you killed."

Poitier laughed. "We aren't in a business like librarians or dental workers, Captain. Not all of us go home every night."

"Still, I wasn't as competent as I should have been." These words seared him. "I should have antic.i.p.ated the attack."

"I have not been a real police officer for very long, Captain, but I think it's safe to say that it would be impossible to antic.i.p.ate everything that could happen in this profession. It's really quite mad, what we do. Little pay, danger, politics at the top, chaos on the streets."

"You'll do well as a detective, Corporal."

"I hope so. I certainly feel more at home here than in Business Inspections and Licensing."

A flashing light caught Rhyme's eye and he could hear a siren as well. A police car was speeding into the airport, weaving through traffic.

"Ah, the last of the evidence," Poitier said. "I was worried it wouldn't arrive in time."

What evidence could it be? Rhyme wondered. They had everything that existed from the Moreno sniper shooting, as well as from Annette Bodel's apartment. The divers had given up searching for Barry Shales's spent cartridges.

The corporal waved the car over.

The young constable who'd met them at the South Cove Inn was behind the wheel. Holding an evidence bag, he got out and saluted, the gesture aimed halfway between the two men he faced.

Rhyme resisted a ridiculous urge to salute back.

Poitier took the bag and thanked the officer. Another tap of stiff fingers to his forehead and the constable returned to the car, speeding away and clicking on the siren and lights once more, though his mission had been accomplished.

"What's that?"

"Can't you tell?" Poitier asked. "I remember in your book you instruct officers to always smell the air when they're running the crime scene."

Frowning, Rhyme leaned down and inhaled.

The fragrant aroma of fried conch rose from the bag.

CHAPTER 55.

SUSSS, SUSSS...

In his kitchen Jacob Swann sipped a Vermentino, a light pleasant Italian wine, in this case from Liguria. He returned to honing his knife, a Kai Shun, though not the slicer. This was an eight-and-a-half-inch Deba model for chopping and for removing large pieces of meat intact.

Susss, susss, susss...

He stroked from side to side, on the Arkansas whetstone, his personal style for sharpening. Never in a circle.

The hour was around 8 p.m. Jazz played on his turntable. Larry Coryell, the guitarist. He excelled at standards, his own compositions and even cla.s.sical. "Pavane for a Dead Princess" was an unmatched interpretation.

Ap.r.o.ned, Swann stood at the butcher-block island. Not long ago he'd received a text from headquarters complimenting him on his work today, confirming that he'd made the right decision to delay the attack on Sachs. Shreve Metzger had provided yet more info but there was nothing more to do at the moment. He could stand down for the evening. And he was taking advantage of that.

The lights were low, the shades and curtains drawn.

There was, in a way, a sense of romance in the air. Swann looked at the woman sitting nearby. Her hair was down, she wore one of his T-shirts, black, and plaid boxers, also his. He believed he could smell a floral scent, laced with spice. Smell and flavor are inextricably linked. Swann never cooked anything of importance when he had a cold or a sinus infection. Why waste the effort? Eating at a time like that meant the food was simply fuel.

A sin.

The woman, whose name was Carol Fiori-odd moniker for a Brit-looked back. She was crying softly.

Occasionally she'd make the uhn uhn uhn sound, like earlier. Carol was the jogger who had approached him in the alleyway earlier and ruined his chance to disable Amelia Sachs. A throat-punch and into the trunk she'd gone. He'd driven off quickly, returning home. He'd get the detective later.

Once back in Brooklyn, he'd dragged Carol into the house. While she initially said she was traveling with "friends," she was actually single and touring the United States on her own for a month, thinking of writing an article about her adventures.

Alone...

He'd been debating what to do with his trophy.

Now he knew.

Yes, no?

Yes.

She'd given up staring at him pleadingly and whispering pleadingly and now turned her damp eyes to the Deba as he sharpened susss, susss. She shook her head occasionally. Swann had bound her wrists and legs to a very nice and comfortable Mission-style chair, la Lydia Foster.

"Please," she mouthed, her eyes on the blade. So the pleading wasn't quite abandoned.

He examined the knife himself, tested the edge carefully with his thumb. It gave just the right resistance; perfect sharpness. He sipped more wine and then began to remove ingredients from the refrigerator.

When Jacob Swann was a boy, long before college, long before the military, long before his career after the military, he came to appreciate the value of meals. The only moments when he could count on spending time with his mother and father involved preparing and eating supper.

Bulky Andrew Swann was not stern or abusive, simply distant and forever lost in his schemes, obligations and distractions, which derived mostly from his job in the gambling world of Atlantic City. Young Jacob never knew exactly what his father did-given his own present career, Andrew might have been on the enforcement side of things. That genetic stuff. But the one thing that Jacob and his mother knew about the man was that he liked to eat and that you could get his attention and hold it through food.

Marianne was not a natural cook, probably had hated it. She'd begun to work on her skills only after she and Andrew started dating. Jacob had overheard her tell a woman friend about one of the first meals she'd served.

"Whatsis?" Andrew had demanded.

"Hamburger Helper and lima beans and-"

"You told me you could cook."

"But I did." She'd waved at the frying pan.

Andrew had tossed down his napkin and left the table, casino bound.

So she'd bought a Betty Crocker cookbook the next day and started to work.

In the afternoons in their tract house, young Jacob would watch her feverishly frica.s.seeing a chicken or pan-sauteing cod. She fought the food, she wrestled. She didn't learn first principles and rules (it's all about chemistry and physics, after all). Instead she attacked each recipe as if she'd never seen a steak or a piece of flounder or pile of cool flour. Her sauces were lumpy and bizarrely seasoned and always oversalted-though not to Andrew, so perhaps they weren't over, at all.

Unlike her son, Marianne stressed mightily before and during the preparation of each meal and invariably had more than one gla.s.s of wine. A bit of whiskey too. Or whatever was in the cabinet.

But she worked hard and managed to produce meals functional enough to hold Andrew's presence for an hour or so. Inevitably, though, with a clink of dessert fork on china, a last gulp of coffee-Andrew didn't sip-he would rise and vanish. To the bas.e.m.e.nt to work on his secret business projects, to a local bar, back to the casino. To f.u.c.k a neighbor, Jacob speculated, when he learned about f.u.c.king.

After school or weekends, if he wasn't slamming his wrestling match opponents into the mat or competing on the rifle team at school, Jacob would hang out in the kitchen, flipping through cookbooks, sitting near his mother as she laid waste the kitchen, with dribbles of milk and tomato sauce everywhere, shrapnel of poppy seeds, the detritus of herbs, flour, cornstarch, viscera. The spatter of blood too.

Sometimes she'd get overwhelmed and ask him to help by removing gristle and boning meat and slicing scaloppine. Marianne seemed to think that a boy would be more inclined to use a knife than an egg beater.

"Look at that, honey. Good job. You're my little butcher man!"

He found himself taking over more and more and instinctively repairing the stew, chopping more finely, offing the heat at the right moment before a disastrous boil. His mother patted his cheek and poured more wine.

Now Swann looked at the woman strapped to his chair.

He continued to be angry that she'd ruined his plans that afternoon.

She continued to cry.

He returned to preparing his three-course dinner for tonight. The starter would be asparagus steamed in a water-vermouth mixture, infused with a fresh bay leaf and a pinch of sage. The spears would rest on a bed of mche and be dotted with homemade hollandaise sauce-that verb being key, "dotted," since anytime yolk meets b.u.t.ter, you can easily overdo. The trick about asparagus, of course, is timing. The Romans had a cliche-doing something in the duration it took to cook asparagus meant doing it quickly.

Swann sipped the wine and prepared the steamer liquid. He then trimmed the herbs from his window box.

When his mother left them-wine plus eighty-two mph without a seat belt-sixteen-year-old Jacob took over the cooking.

Just the two of them, dad and son.