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She looked up again quickly. No one. But she felt uneasy. Her eyes strayed to the front door, which she never used. Boxes were stacked up in front of it. It was locked . . . or was it?
Joanne squinted but with the glare from the bright sun she couldn't tell. She walked around the worktable to check.
She tested the latch. Yes, it was locked. Joanne looked up, and gasped.
A few feet from her, on the sidewalk outside, was a huge man, staring at her. Tall and fat, he was leaning forward and staring through the window of the workshop, shielding his eyes. He was wearing old-fashioned aviator sunglasses with mirrored lenses, a baseball cap and a cream-colored parka. Because of the glare, and the grime on the windows, he couldn't see that she was right in front of him.
Joanne froze. People sometimes peeked in, curious about the place, but there was an intensity about his posture, the way he hovered, that bothered her a lot. The front door wasn't special glass; anyone with a hammer or brick could break in. And with the sparse foot traffic in this part of SoHo an assault here might go completely unnoticed.
She backed up.
Perhaps his eyes grew accustomed to the light or he found a bit of clean window and noticed her. He jerked back, surprised. He seemed to debate something. Then he turned and disappeared.
Stepping forward, Joanne pressed her face against the window, but she couldn't see where he'd gone. There was something way creepy about him--the way he'd just stood there, hunched over, head cocked, hands stuffed into his pockets, staring through those weird sunglasses.
Joanne wheeled the vases to the side and glanced outside again. No sign of the man. Still, she gave in to the temptation to leave and go to the retail store, check the morning's receipts and chat with her clerks until Kevin arrived. She put on her coat, hesitated and left via the service door. She looked up the street. No sign of him. She started toward Broadway, west, the direction the big man had gone. She ste
pped into a thick beam of perfectly clear sunlight, which seemed nearly hot. The brilliance blinded her and she squinted, alarmed that she couldn't see clearly. Joanne paused, not wanting to walk past the alley up the street. Had the man gone in there? Was he hiding, waiting for her?
She decided to walk east, the opposite direction, and loop around to Broadway on Prince Street. It was more deserted that way, but at least she wouldn't have to walk past any alleys. She pulled her coat tighter around her and hurried up the street, head down. Soon the image of the fat man had slipped from her mind and she was thinking once again about Kevin.
Dennis Baker went downtown to report on their progress, and the rest of the team continued to examine the evidence.
The fax phone rang and Rhyme looked at the unit eagerly in hopes it was something helpful. But the pages were for Amelia Sachs. Rhyme was watching her face closely as she read them. He knew the look. Like a dog after a fox.
"What, Sachs?"
She shook her head. "The analysis of the evidence from Ben Creeley's place in Westchester. No IAFIS hits on the prints but there were leather texture marks on some of the fireplace tools and on Creeley's desk. Who opens desk drawers wearing gloves?"
There was, of course, no database of glove marks but if Sachs could find a pair in a suspect's possession that matched this pattern, that would be solid circumstantial evidence placing him at the scene, nearly as good as a clear friction-ridge print.
She continued to read. "And the mud I found in front of the fireplace? It doesn't match the soil in Creeley's yard. Higher acid content and some pollutants. Like from an industrial site." Sachs continued. "There were also some traces of burned cocaine in the fireplace." She looked at Rhyme and gave a wry smile. "A bummer if my first murder vic turns out to be not so innocent."
Rhyme shrugged. "Nun or dope dealer, Sachs, murder's still murder. What else do you have?"
"The ash I found in the fireplace--the lab couldn't recover much but they found these." She held up a photo of financial records, like a spreadsheet or ledger, which seemed to show entries totaling millions of dollars. "They found part of a logo or something on it. The techs're still checking it out. And they'll send the entries to a forensic accountant, see if he can make any sense of it. And they also found part of his calendar. Stuff about getting his car oil changed, a haircut appointment--hardly the agenda for the week you're going to kill yourself, by the way. . . . Then the day before he died he went to the St. James Tavern." She tapped a sheet--the recovered page from his calendar.
A note from Nancy Simpson explained about the place. "Bar on East Ninth Street. Sleazy neighborhood. Why'd a rich accountant go there? Seems funny."
"Not necessarily."
She glanced Rhyme's way then walked to the corner of the room. He got the message and followed in the red Storm Arrow wheelchair.
Sachs crouched down beside him. He wondered if she'd take his hand (since some sensation had returned to his right fingers and wrist, holding hands had taken on great importance to them both). But there was a very thin line between their personal and their business lives and she now remained purely professional.
"Rhyme," she whispered.
"I know what--"
"Let me finish."
He grunted.
"I have to follow up on this."
"Priorities. Your case is colder than the Watchmaker, Sachs. Whatever happened to Creeley, even if he was murdered, the perp's probably not a multiple doer. The Watchmaker is. He has to be our priority. Whatever evidence there is about Creeley'll still be there after we nail our boy."
She was shaking her head. "I don't think so, Rhyme. I've pushed the button. I've started asking questions. You know how that works. Word's starting to spread about the case. Evidence and suspects could be disappearing right now."
