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Montez was needed at another scene. Sachs thanked her. The women embraced, and with farewell nods to the others, the ECT left the town house.
Sachs seemed to have had enough of sitting. She rose, wrapped the tube around the oxygen tank and was going to set it aside. But with some irritation she hesitated, unraveled the tube and took more breaths through the mask.
“Jesus, Amelia,” Sellitto said, “lie down for a bit.”
“Later,” she said absently.
And again ignored Rhyme’s look of concern.
She turned to Mel Cooper, who had taken the collected samples and was setting them out on a workspace in the sterile portion of the lab.
“That jar.” She nodded toward it again. “The fire marshal said to use neoprene gloves, an apron and a respirator.”
Rhyme noticed her hollow eyes staring at the photos on thelarge monitor above the evidence boards: images of the victim in the basement, the melting skin, the bubbling of tissue and blood.
Then she turned away and back with them, in the lab. Fully back.
Cooper found the appropriate PPE and donned it over his lab jacket and slacks.
Another brief bout of shallow coughing from Sachs, a wince at the pain, then: “There just wasn’t much to collect, Rhyme. Sonja found boot prints at the base of the tower, where the ladder started. It was the only way up. But they matched the operator’s. I had the morgue send a picture. Our unsub must’ve worn booties at the crane and then pulled them off when he walked back into the site so his boots’d look like everyone else’s.
“How he did it was he got a device on the counterweights trolley rail. Can’t really tell what it was. The stuff dissolved it almost completely.”
She explained that the substance, whatever it was, had begun to dissolve the concrete of the weights itself. “Made them lighter and the crane began to tip forward. The operator did what he could, but finally two of the weights dropped free, and that was it.” Her voice sounded husky and tired, and she paused for more oxygen. She coughed hard several times and wiped her mouth with a tissue, then glanced unobtrusively at it. Rhyme could see no blood, but his view was masked; he wondered if she could.
She repeated what she’d told him earlier—about all the workers in gloves and boots. Dressing like them, the unsub might as well have been invisible.
Murder in a construction site …
“The precinct’s got a dozen uniforms out canvassing stores and offices nearby. See if anybody got a look of someone carting a box into the site.”
Rhyme grimaced. Videos and witnesses, yet only enough evidence to fit into—not even fill—two small milk crates.
Ridiculous.
Sellitto looked toward Cooper, who was running samples through his equipment. “You found out what that shit is yet, Mel?”
Eyes on the crime scene images, Rhyme gave a brief laugh of surprise. “Well, weknowwhat it is. The only question is can we find out where the unsub got it.”
“You know just by looking at the pictures?” Sellitto asked.
“Of course. That, and Amelia’s symptoms.”
“And?”
“Take radioactive toxins and botulinum out of the equation, and it’s the most dangerous substance on earth.”
10.
“HEY,” SAID ANDY GILLIGANin greeting.
Charles Hale nodded and through the curtain in the door window scanned Hamilton Court once more.
The cop snapped, “I looked. Nobody was following. I know what I’m doing. Not my first circus.”
Wasn’t the expression “rodeo”?
Hale closed and locked the door, then put the gun back into the compartment, feeling no urge to explain his caution or to comment on the fact that Gilligan himself had been clutching a firearm as he approached the trailer.
