The Cold Moon

touch them! . . .
    The policeman looked into an office near Sarah’s workstation.
    “Oh, Officer? You want an extinguisher?” she asked. “I’ve got one right here.”
    And she pulled the heavy red cylinder off the floor.
    “No!” cried the man and he leaped toward her.

    Sachs winced as the transmission crackled loudly through her earpiece.
    “Fire and containment team, second floor, southeast corner office. K. Lanam Flooring and Interiors. Now! Move, move, move!”
    A dozen firefighters and officers from the bomb squad shouldered their equipment and sprinted fast toward the rear door.
    “Status?” Haumann shouted into his microphone.
    All they could hear were harried voices over the raw howl of the fire alarm.
    “Do you have detonation?” the head of ESU repeated urgently.
    “I don’t see smoke,” Pulaski said.
    Dennis Baker stared up at the second floor. He shook his head.
    “If it’s alcohol,” one of the fire chiefs said, “there won’t be smoke until the secondary materials ignite.” He added evenly, “Or her hair and skin.”
    Sachs continued to scan the windows, clenching her fists. Was the woman dying in agony now? With police officers or firemen alongside her?
    “Come on,” Baker whispered.
    Then a voice clattered through the radio: “We’ve got the device. . . . We’ve . . . Yeah, we’ve got it. It didn’t detonate.”
    Sachs closed her eyes.
    “Thank God,” Baker said.
    People were streaming out of the office building now, under the gaze of ESU and patrol officers who were looking for Duncan, comparing the composite pictures with the faces of the workers.
    An officer led a woman up to Sachs, Baker and Pulaski, just as Sellitto joined them.
    The potential victim, Sarah Stanton, explained that she’d found a fire extinguisher under her desk; it hadn’t been there earlier and she hadn’t seen who’d left it. Somebody in the office remembered seeing a workman in a uniform nearby but couldn’t remember details and didn’t recognize the composite or recall where he’d gone.
    “Status of the device?” Haumann called.
    An officer radioed, “Didn’t see a timer but the pressure gauge on the top was blank. That could be the detonator. And I can smell alcohol. Bomb squad’s got it in a containment vessel. They’re taking it up to Rodman’s Neck. We’re still sweeping for the perp.”
    “Any sign of him?” Baker asked.
    “Negative. There’re two fire stairwells and the elevators. He could’ve gotten out that way. And we’ve got four or five other companies on that floor. He might’ve gotten into one of them. We’ll search ’em in a minute or two, as soon as we get an all-clear for devices.”
    Ten minutes later officers reported that there were no other bombs in the building.
    Sachs interviewed Sarah, then called Rhyme and told him the status of the case so far. The woman didn’t know the other victims and had never heard of Gerald Duncan. She was very upset that the man’s wife might’ve been killed outside her apartment, though she remembered nothing of any fatal accidents in the area.
    Finally Haumann told them that all of his officers had finished the sweep; the Watchmaker had escaped.
    “Hell,” Dennis Baker muttered. “We were so close.”
    Discouraged, Rhyme said, “Well, walk the grid and tell me what you find.”
    They signed off. Haumann sent two teams to stake out the warehousethat Duncan had used as a staging site in case the killer returned there and Sachs dressed in the white Tyvek bodysuit and grabbed a metal suitcase containing basic evidence collection and preservation equipment.
    “I’ll help,” Pulaski said, also dressing in the white overalls.
    She handed him the suitcase and she picked up another one.
    On the second floor, she paused and surveyed the hallway. After photographing it Sachs entered Lanam Flooring and proceeded to Sarah Stanton’s workstation.
    She and Pulaski set up the suitcases and extracted the basic evidence collection equipment: bags, tubes, swabs, adhesive rollers for trace, electrostatic footprint sheets and latent-print chemicals and equipment.
    “What can I do?” Pulaski asked. “You want me to search the stairwells?”
    She debated. They’d have to be searched eventually but she decided that it would be better to run them herself; they were the most logical entry and exit routes for the Watchmaker and she wanted to make certain that no evidence was missed. Sachs surveyed the layout of Sarah’s