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"But why that thought? Dogs, pets. Why?"
"I don't know why."
Silence.
Finally she said, "I suppose seeing her tied up there . . . And I was thinking how he stood to the side to watch her. Just standing between the oil tanks. It was like he was watching an animal in a pen."
Rhyme glanced at the sine waves on the GC-MS computer screen.
Animals . . .
Nitrogen . . .
"Shit!" Rhyme blurted.
Heads turned toward him.
"It's shit." Staring at the screen.
"Yes, of course!" Cooper said, replastering his strands of hair. "All the nitrogen. It's manure. And it's old manure at that."
Suddenly Lincoln Rhyme had one of those moments he'd reflected on earlier. The thought just burst into his mind. The image was of lambs.
Sellitto asked, "Lincoln, you okay?"
A lamb, sauntering down the street.
It was like he was watching an animal . . .
"Thom," Sellitto was saying, "is he all right?"
. . . in a pen.
Rhyme could picture the carefree animal. A bell around its neck, a dozen others behind.
"Lincoln," Thom said urgently. "You're sweating. Are you all right?"
"Shhhhh," the criminalist ordered.
He felt the tickle running down his face. Inspiration and heart failure; the symptoms are oddly similar. Think, think . . .
Bones, wooden posts and manure . . .
"Yes!" he whispered. A Judas lamb, leading the flock to slaughter.
"Stockyards," Rhyme announced to the room. "She's being held in a stockyard."
THIRTEEN
There are no stockyards in Manhattan."
"The past, Lon," Rhyme reminded him. "Old things turn him on. Get his juices flowing. We should think of old stockyards. The older the better."
In researching his book, Rhyme had read about a murder that gentleman mobster Owney Madden was accused of committing: gunning down a rival bootlegger outside his Hell's Kitchen townhouse. Madden was never convicted--not for this particular murder, at any rate. He took the stand and, in his melodious British-accented voice, lectured the courtroom about betrayal. "This entire case has been trumped up by my rivals, who are speaking lies about me. Your honor, do you know what they remind me of? In my neighborhood, in Hell's Kitchen, the flocks of lambs were led through the streets from the stockyards to the slaughterhouses on Forty-second Street. And you know who led them? Not a dog, not a man. But one of theirs. A Judas lamb with a bell around its neck. He'd lead the flock up that ramp. But then he'd stop and the rest of them would go on inside. I'm an innocent lamb and those witnesses against me, they're the Judases."
Rhyme continued. "Call the library, Banks. They must have a historian."
The young detective flipped open his cellular phone and called. His voice dropped a tone or two as he spoke. After he explained what they needed he stopped speaking and gazed at the map of the city.
