A Textbook Case

1
    “The worst I’ve ever seen,” he whispered.
    She listened to the young man’s words and decided that was a bit ironic, since he couldn’t have been more than mid-twenties. How many crime scenes could he have run?
    But she noted, too, that his round, handsome face, crested by a crew-cut scalp, was genuinely troubled. He had a military air about him and didn’t seem the sort to get flustered.
    Something particularly troubling was down there—in the pit of the underground garage they stood in front of, delineated by yellow fluttering tape, the pit where the woman had been murdered early that morning.
    Amelia Sachs was gearing up at the staging area outside the bland apartment building in this equally style-challenged neighborhood of Manhattan, East Twenty-sixth Street. Here were residential low rises from the 1950s and ‘60s, some brownstones, restaurants that had been born Italian twenty years ago and had converted to Middle Eastern. For greenery, short, anemic trees, striving grass, tiny shrubs in huge concrete planters.
    Sachs ripped open the plastic bag containing the disposable scene suit: white Tyvek coveralls, booties, head cap, cuffed nitrile gloves.
    “You’ll want the Ninety-five, too,” the young officer told her. His name was Marko, maybe first, probably last. Sachs hadn’t bothered to find out.
    “Chemical problem? Bio?” Nodding toward the pit.
    The N95 was a particulate respirator that filtered out a lot of the bad crap you found at some crime scenes. The dangerous ones.
    “Just, you’ll want it.”
    She didn’t like the respirators and usually wore a simple surgical mask. But if Marko told her there was a problem inside, she’d go with it.
    Worst I’ve ever seen…
    Sachs continued to pull on the protective gear. She was claustrophobic and didn’t like the layers of swaddling that crime scene searchers had to put up with, but were necessary to protect them from dangerous substances at the scene but more important protect the
scene
from contaminants police might throw off—their hairs, fibers, flecks of skin and other assorted trace they might cart about with them. (One man had nearly been arrested because a tomato seed had linked him to a murder—until it was discovered that the seed came from the shoe of a crime scene officer, who’d neglected to wear booties… and who was soon, thanks to Lincoln Rhyme, a
former
crime scene officer.)
    Several other cars arrived, including that of the Major Cases detective lieutenant, Lon Sellitto, an unmarked Crown Victoria. The car was spotless and still dripping from the car wash. Sellitto, on the other hand, was typically disheveled. He wore an unpressed white shirt, skewed tie and a rumpled suit, though fortunately in wrinkle-concealing navy blue (Sachs recalled that he’d worn seersucker once and never again; even he had thought he looked like tousled bed sheets). Sachs had given up trying to guess Sellitto’s age. He was in that timeless mid-fifties that all detectives first class on the NYPD seem to fall into.
    He was also an institution and he caught a few awed looks from the uniforms now as he pushed his way through the crowd of gawkers and with some difficulty, considering his weight, ducked under the yellow tape.
    He joined Sachs and Marko, who wasn’t particularly awed but clearly respectful.
    “Detective.”
    Sellitto didn’t have any idea who he was but nodded back. He said to Sachs, “How is he?”
    Which would mean only one “he.”
    “Fine. Been back for two days. Actually wanted to come to the scene.”
    Lincoln Rhyme, the former head of the NYPD crime scene operation and now a forensic consultant, had been undergoing a series of medical procedures to improve his condition—he was a quadriplegic, largely paralyzed from the neck down because of an accident while searching a scene years ago.
    Sellitto said a sincere “No shit. Wanted to come. God bless him.”
    Sachs gave the man a wry look. She was considerably younger and a more junior detective. But she didn’t let a lot pass—from anyone. Sellitto caught the glance. “Did that sound condescending?”
    She lifted an eyebrow, meaning, “Yep. And if Rhyme heard you say it, the reply would not be pretty.”
    “Well, fuck. Good for him anyway.” He focused on the off-white apartment, the water stains on the walls, the mismatched windows, the dented air conditioners underneath them, the sad grass, sick or dying from city dogs more than from the cool air. Still,