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"You know? How?"
"I just looked at the evidence and drew some conclusions."
"Is that why you've been on my case all day? You knew I was faking?"
"I've been on your case," he said, "because you're better than you think you are."
She gave him a screwy look.
"Ah, Sachs, you remind me of me."
"I do?"
"Let me tell you a story. I'd been on crime scene detail maybe a year when we got a call from Homicide there was a guy found dead in an alley in Greenwich Village. All the sergeants were out and so I got elected to run the scene. I was twenty-six years old, remember. I go up there and check it out and it turns out the dead guy's the head of the City Health and Human Services. Now, what's he got all around him but a load of Polaroids? You should've seen some of those snaps--he'd been to one of those S&M clubs off Washington Street. Oh, and I forgot to mention, when they found him he was dressed in a stunning little black minidress and fishnet stockings.
"So, I secure the scene. All of a sudden a captain shows up and starts to cross the tape. I know he's planning to have those pictures disappear on the way to the evidence room but I was so naive I didn't care much about the pictures--I was just worried about somebody walking through the scene."
"P is for Protect the crime scene."
Rhyme chuckled. "So I didn't let him in. While he was standing at the tape screaming at me a dep com tried an end run. I told him no. He started screaming at me. The scene stays virgin till IRD's through with it, I told them. Guess who finally showed up?"
"The mayor?"
"Well, deputy mayor."
"And you held 'em all off?"
"Nobody got into that scene except Latents and Photography. Of course my payback was spending six months printing floaters. But we nailed the perp with some trace and a print off one of those Polaroids--happened to be the same snap the Post used on page one, as a matter of fact. Just like what you did yesterday morning, Sachs. Closing off the tracks and Eleventh Avenue."
"I didn't think about it," she said. "I just did it. Why're you looking at me that way?"
"Come on, Sachs. You know where you ought to be. On the street. Patrol, Major Crimes, IRD, doesn't matter . . . But Public Affairs? You'll rot there. It's a good job for some people but not you. Don't give up so fast."
"Oh, and you're not giving up? What about Berger?"
"Things're a little different with me."
Her glance questioned, They are? And she went prowling for a Kleenex. When she returned to the chair she asked, "You don't carry any corpses around with you?"
"I have in my day. They're all buried now."
"Tell me."
"Really, there's nothing--"
"Not true. I can tell. Come on--I showed you mine."
He felt an odd chill. He knew it wasn't dysreflexia. His smile faded.
"Rhyme, go on," she persisted. "I'd like to hear."
"Well, there was a case a few years ago," he said, "I made a mistake. A bad mistake."
"Tell me." She poured them each another finger of the Scotch.
"It was a domestic murder-suicide call. Husband and wife in a Chinatown apartment. He shot her, killed himself. I didn't have much time for the scene; I worked it fast. And I committed a classic error--I'd made up my mind about what I was going to find before I started looking. I found some fibers that I couldn't place but I assumed that the husband and wife'd tracked them in. I found the bullet fragments but didn't check them against the gun we found at the scene. I noticed the blowback pattern but didn't grid it to double-check the exact position of the gun. I did the search, signed off and went back to the office."
"What happened?"
