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“That day will come, Sachs. That day will come.”
She hoped so.
Though she could not push from her mind the last stanza of the poem.
And leaves behind the unfulfilled
To dwell on ways to make amends.
They disconnected.
Ron Pulaski had been on his phone, and he now disconnected. “I just called for a CS bus. I’ll get started on the spiral.”
“The what?”
“Oh, I’m searching in spirals now. Not grids.”
Interesting idea. She’d watch him and maybe try it herself on her next scene.
The ESU team leader approached. The compact, crew-cut army vet was grimacing. “Sorry, Detective. No sign of her on the streets. And I checked the cemetery office. The CCTV was running when we got here, but somehow it got fried ten minutes ago. All the data’s wiped.”
No surprise there.
“Just no clue where she’s gone.”
Pulaski gave a fast laugh. “Oh, we’ve got plenty of clues. Where the homeless guy was when the two of them talked, the gun, the poem. The approaches to and from the grave. The grave itself. The wheel. Surveillance footage outside the cemetery.”
“Still doesn’t seem like much,” the ESU man said.
“It doesn’t need to be. It just needs to point ussomewhere.” Pulaski pulled on booties over his shoes and new latex gloves. “And we’ll go from there.”
75.
“LINCOLN. THE NEWS.”
Thom’s voice was calling from the kitchen, where he was fixing dinner. Rhyme didn’t know what was on the menu, but it smelled good. He usually thought of food as fuel—his reverence was reserved for beverages—but occasionally he enjoyed a fine meal. And his caregiver was just the man for creating one.
Rhyme called in response: “Why?”
“I heard his name mentioned.”
“Eight million people in the city, Thom. Can we narrow, some?”
“Just put it on.”
“News,” Rhyme murmured, clicking the remote, “is apprentice history …” The screen came to life. “It’s an ad! Cosmetics, long hair and slow motion. Useless. No shampoo will give anyone that hair who didn’t have that hair before the shampoo.”
“Well,” Thom offered, sighing, “either wait without complaining or change the channel.”
He changed the channel.
A blond anchorwoman, her highly made-up face as serious ascould be, was saying“… has denied the allegations. But supporters and donors are already distancing themselves from the representative.”
A picture appeared, a postage-sized one in the lower righthand corner of the cluttered screen, the man Lyle Spencer had spoken to about the Kommunalka Project.
Representative Stephen Cody.
The crawl read:
