The Broken Window

her destination, not far away. Mindful of what had happened to the Camaro, and not wanting to jeopardize Pam’s car too—if 522 had been behind the repossession, as she suspected—Sachs cruised around the block until she found the rarestof all phenomena in Manhattan: a legal, unoccupied parking space.
    How ’bout that?
    Maybe it was a good sign.
    •   •   •
    “Why are you doing this?” Ron Pulaski whispered to Mark Whitcomb as they stood in a deserted Queens alleyway.
    But the killer ignored him. “Listen to me.”
    “We were friends, I thought.”
    “Well, everybody thinks a lot of things that turn out not to be true. That’s life.” Whitcomb cleared his throat. He seemed edgy, uncomfortable. Pulaski remembered Sachs saying that the killer was feeling the pressure of their pursuit, which made him careless. It also made him more dangerous.
    Pulaski was breathing hard.
    Whitcomb looked around again, fast, then back at the young officer. He kept the gun steady and it was clear he knew how to use it. “Are you fucking listening to me?”
    “Goddamnit. I’m listening.”
    “I don’t want this investigation to go any further. It’s time for it to stop.”
    “Stop? I’m in Patrol. How can I stop anything?”
    “I was telling you: Sabotage it. Lose some evidence. Send people in the wrong direction.”
    “I won’t do that,” the young officer muttered defiantly.
    Whitcomb shook his head, looking almost disgusted. “Yes, you will. You can make this easy or hard, Ron.”
    “What about my wife? Can you get her out of there?”
    “I can do anything I want.”
    The man who knows everything . . .
    The young officer closed his eyes, grinding his teeth together the way he’d done as a kid. He looked at the building where Jenny was being held.
    Jenny, the woman who looked just like Myra Weinburg.
    Ron Pulaski now resigned himself to what he had to do. It was terrible, it was foolish, but he had no choice. He was cornered.
    His head down, he muttered, “Okay.”
    “You’ll do it?”
    “I said I would,” he snapped.
    “That’s smart, Ron. Very smart.”
    “But I want you to promise”—Pulaski hesitated for a fraction of a second, glancing behind Whitcomb and then back—“that she and the baby’ll be out today.”
    Whitcomb caught the glance and quickly looked behind him. As he did, the muzzle of his gun moved slightly off target.
    Pulaski decided he’d played it just right, and he struck fast. With his left hand the young officer shoved the gun farther away and lifted his leg, pulling a small revolver from an ankle holster. Amelia Sachs had instructed him always to have one with him.
    The killer cursed and tried to back up but Pulaski kept a death grip on his shooting hand and he swung the pistol into Whitcomb’s face hard, snapping cartilage.
    The man gave a muffled scream, blood streaming. The Compliance officer went down and Pulaski managed to rip his pistol out of his fingers but he couldn’t keep a grip on it himself. Whitcomb’s black weaponwent cartwheeling to the ground as the men locked together in a clumsy wrestling match. The gun clunked to the asphalt without discharging and Whitcomb, wide-eyed with panic and fury, shoved Pulaski into the wall and grabbed for his hand.
    “No, no!”
    Whitcomb snapped forward with a head butt and Pulaski, recalling the terror of the club hitting him in the forehead years ago, recoiled instinctively. Which gave Whitcomb just the chance he needed to shove Pulaski’s backup toward the sky, and with his other hand draw the Glock, aiming it at the young officer’s head.
    Leaving him with only enough time to issue a sound bite of prayer and to fix on an image of his wife and children, a vivid portrait to carry with him to heaven.
    •   •   •
    Finally the electricity came back on, and Cooper and Rhyme quickly got back to work on the evidence from the Joe Malloy killing. They were alone in the lab; Lon Sellitto was downtown, trying to get his suspension overturned.
    The pictures of the scene were unrevealing and the physical evidence wasn’t extremely helpful. The shoeprint was clearly 522’s, the same as they’d found earlier. The fragments of leaves were from houseplants: ficus and Aglaonema, or Chinese evergreen. The trace was unsourceable soil, more of the Trade Towers dust, and a white powder that turned out to be Coffee-mate. The duct tape was generic; no source could be located.
    Rhyme was surprised at the amount of