The Cold Moon

would I sweep?
    I’m him. . . .
    “Why?” Rhyme whispered.
    “He—”
    “Not he, ” the criminalist corrected. “You’re him, Sachs. Remember. You.”
    “ I’m a perfectionist. I want to get rid of as much evidence as possible.”
    “True, but what you gain by sweeping up,” Rhyme said, “you lose by staying on the scene longer. I think there has to be another reason.”
    Going deeper, feeling herself lifting the bar, putting the rope in the man’s hands, staring down at his struggling face, his bulging eyes. I put the clock next to his head. It’s ticking, ticking. . . . I watch him die.
    I leave no evidence, I sweep up . . .
    “Think, Sachs. What’s he up to?”
    I’m him. . . .
    Then she blurted, “I’m coming back, Rhyme.”
    “What?”
    “I’m coming back to the scene. I mean, he’s coming back. That’s why he swept up. Because he absolutely didn’t want to leave anything that’d give us a description of him: no fibers, hairs, shoe prints, dirt in his soles. He’s not afraid we’ll use it to track him to his hidey-hole—he’s too good to be leaving trace like that. No, he’s afraid we’ll find something that’ll help us recognize him when he comes back.”
    “Okay, that could be it. Maybe he’s a voyeur, likes to watch people die, likes to watch cops at work. Or maybe he wants to see who’s hunting for him . . . so he can start a hunt of his own.”
    Sachs felt a trickle of fear down her back. She looked around her. There was, as usual, a small crowd of gawkers standing across the street. Was the killer among them, watching her right now?
    Then Rhyme added, “Or maybe he’s already been back. He came by earlier this morning to see that the vic was really dead. Which means—”
    “That he might’ve left some evidence somewhere else, outside the scene. On the sidewalk, the street.”
    “Exactly.”
    Sachs slipped under the tape out of the designated crime scene and looked over the street. Then the sidewalk in front of the building. There she found a half dozen shoe prints in the snow. She had no way of knowing if any of them were the Watchmaker’s but several—made by wide, waffle-stomper boots—suggested that somebody, a man probably, had stood in the mouth of the alley for a few minutes, shifting weight from foot to foot. She looked around and decided there was no reason for anybody to be standing there—no pay phones, mailboxes or windows were nearby.
    “Got some unusual boot prints here in the mouth of the alley, by the curb on Cedar Street,” she told Rhyme. “Large.” She searched this area too, digging into a snowbank. “Got something else.”
    “What?”
    “A gold metal money clip.” Her fingers stinging from the cold through the latex gloves, she counted the cash inside. “It’s got three hundred forty in new twenties. Right next to the boot prints.”
    “Did the vic have any money on him?”
    “Sixty bucks, also pretty fresh.”
    “Maybe the perp boosted the clip and then dropped it getting away.”
    She placed it in an evidence bag, then finished searching other portions of the scene, finding nothing else.
    The back door of the office building opened. Sellitto and a uniformedguard from the security staff of the building were there. They stood back as Sachs processed the door itself—finding and photographing what she described to Rhyme as a million fingerprints (he only chuckled) and the dim lobby on the other side. She didn’t find anything obviously relevant to the murder.
    Suddenly a woman’s panicky voice cut through the cold air. “Oh, my God, no!”
    A stocky brunette in her thirties ran up to the yellow tape, where she was stopped by a patrol officer. Her hands were at her face and she was sobbing. Sellitto stepped forward. Sachs joined them. “Do you know him, ma’am?” the big detective asked.
    “What happened, what happened? No . . . oh, God . . .”
    “Do you know him?” the detective repeated.
    Wracked with crying, the woman turned away from the terrible sight. “My brother . . . No, is he—oh, God, no, he can’t be . . .” She sank to her knees on the ice.
    This would be the woman who’d reported her brother missing last night, Sachs understood.
    Lon Sellitto had the personality of a pitbull when it came to suspects. But with victims and their relatives he showed a surprising tenderness. In a soft voice, thickened by a Brooklyn drawl, he said, “I’m so sorry. He’s gone, yes.” He