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She'd also bought some ice, at Rhyme's request. He'd remembered what Berger had explained about the heat in the bag. She lifted the cap off the Courvoisier and poured herself a glass and filled his tumbler, arranged the straw toward his mouth.
"Where's Thom?" she asked him.
"Out."
"Does he know?"
"Yes."
They sipped the brandy.
"Do you want me to say anything to your wife?"
Rhyme considered it for a long moment, thinking: We have years to converse with someone, to blurt and rant, to explain our desires and anger and regrets--and oh how we squander those moments. Here he'd known Amelia Sachs all of three days and they'd bared their hearts far more than he and Blaine had done in nearly a decade.
"No," he said. "I've e-mailed her." A chuckle. "That's a comment on our times, I'd say."
More brandy, the astringent bite on his palate was dissipating. Growing smoother, duller, lighter.
Sachs leaned over the bed and tapped her glass to his.
"I have some money," Rhyme began. "I'm giving a lot of it to Blaine and to Thom. I--"
But she shushed him with a kiss to the forehead and shook her head.
A soft clatter of pebbles as she spilled the tiny Seconals into her hand.
Rhyme instinctively thought: The Dillie-Koppanyi color test reagent. Add 1 percent cobalt acetate in methanol to the suspect material followed by 5 percent isopropylamine in methanol. If the substance is a barbiturate the reagent turns a beautiful violet-blue color.
"How should we do it?" she asked, gazing at the pills. "I really don't know."
"Mix them in the booze," he suggested.
She dropped them in his tumbler. They dissolved quickly.
How fragile they were. Like the dreams they induce.
She stirred the mixture with the straw. He glanced at her wounded nails but even that he couldn't be sorrowful for. This was his night and it was a night of joy.
Lincoln Rhyme had a sudden recollection of childhood in suburban Illinois. He never drank his milk and to get him to do so his mother bought straws coated on the inside with flavoring. Strawberry, chocolate. He hadn't thought about them until just this moment. It was a great invention, he remembered. He always looked forward to his afternoon milk.
Sachs pushed the straw close to his mouth. He took it between his lips. She put her hand on his arm.
Light or dark, music or silence, dreams or the meditation of dreamless sleep? What will I find?
He began to sip. The taste was really no different from straight liquor. A little more bitter maybe. It was like--
From downstairs came a huge pounding on the door. Hands and feet both, it seemed. Voices shouting too.
He lifted his lips away from the straw. Glanced into the dim stairwell.
She looked at him, frowning.
"Go see," he said to her.
She disappeared down the stairs and a moment later returned, looking unhappy. Lon Sellitto and Jerry Banks followed. Rhyme noticed that the young detective had done another butcher job on his face with a razor. He'd really have to get that under control.
Sellitto glanced at the bottle and the bag. His eyes swayed toward Sachs but she crossed her arms and held her own, silently ordering him to leave. This was not an issue of rank, the look told the detective, and what was happening here was none of his business. Sellitto's eyes acknowledged the message but he wasn't about to go anywhere just yet.
