The Cold Moon

deliveries. It doesn’t go through. The vic’s close to the street.”
    “How close?”
    “Fifteen feet out of a hundred-foot alley.”
    “How’d he get there?”
    “No sign of tread marks but he was definitely dragged to the place he was killed; there’s salt and crud on the bottom of his jacket and pants.”
    “Are there doors near the body?”
    “Yes. He’s pretty much in front of one.”
    “Did he work in the building?”
    “No. I’ve got his business cards. He’s a freelance writer. His work address is the same as his apartment.”
    “He might’ve had a client there or in one of the other buildings.”
    “Lon’s checking now.”
    “Good. The door that’s closest? Would that’ve been someplace the perp could have waited for him?”
    “Yeah,” she replied.
    “Have a guard open it up and I want you to search what’s on the other side.”
    Lon Sellitto called from the perimeter of the scene, “No witnesses. Everybody’s fucking blind. Oh, and deaf too . . . And there must be forty orfifty different offices in the buildings around the alley. If anybody knew him, it may take a while to find out.”
    Sachs relayed the criminalist’s request to open the back door near the body.
    “You got it.” Sellitto headed off on this mission, blowing warming breath into his cupped hands.
    Sachs videotaped and photographed the scene. She looked for and found no evidence of sexual activity involving the body or nearby. She then began walking the grid—walking over every square inch of the scene twice, looking for physical evidence. Unlike many crime scene professionals, Rhyme insisted on a single searcher—except in the case of mass disasters, of course—and Sachs always walked the grid alone.
    But whoever’d committed the crime had been very careful not to leave anything obvious behind, except the note and the clock, the metal bar, the duct tape and rope.
    She told him this.
    “Not really in their nature to make it easy for us, is it, Sachs?”
    His cheerful mood grated; he wasn’t right next to a victim who’d died this fucking lousy death. She ignored the comment and continued working the scene: performing a basic processing of the corpse so it could be released to the medical examiner, collecting his effects, dusting for fingerprints and doing electrostatic prints of shoe treads, collecting trace with an adhesive roller, like the sort used for removing pet hairs.
    It was likely that the perp had driven here, given the weight of the bar, but there were no tread marks. The center of the alley was covered with rock salt to melt the ice, and the grains prevented good contact with the cobblestones.
    Then she squinted. “Rhyme, something odd here. Around the body, for probably three feet around it, there’s something on the ground.”
    “What do you think it is?”
    Sachs bent down and with a magnifier examined what seemed to be fine sand. She mentioned this to Rhyme.
    “Was it for the ice?”
    “No. It’s only around him. And there’s none anywhere else in the alley. They’re using salt for the snow and ice.” Then she stepped back. “But there’s only a fine residue left. It’s like . . . yes, Rhyme. He swept up. With a broom.”
    “Swept?”
    “I can see the straw marks. It’s like he scattered handfuls of sand on the scene and then swept it up. . . . But maybe he didn’t do it. There wasn’t anything like this at the first scene, on the pier.”
    “Is there any sand on the victim or the bar?”
    “I don’t know. . . . Wait, there is.”
    “So he did it after the killing,” Rhyme said. “It’s probably an obscuring agent.”
    Diligent perps would sometimes use a powdery or granular material of some kind—sand, kitty litter or even flour—to spread on the ground after committing a crime. They’d then sweep or vacuum up the material, taking most of the trace particles with it.
    “But why?” Rhyme mused.
    Sachs stared at the body, stared at the cobblestone alley.
    I’m him. . . .
    Why would I sweep?
    Perps often wipe fingerprints and take the obvious evidence with them but it’s very rare when someone goes to the trouble of using an obscuring agent. She closed her eyes and, as hard as it was, pictured herself standing over the young man, who was struggling to keep the bar off his throat.
    “Maybe he spilled something.”
    But Rhyme said, “Doesn’t seem likely. He wouldn’t be that careless.”
    She continued to think: I’m careful, sure. But why