The Cold Moon

Creeley.”
    Rhyme looked at her troubled eyes. He said, “It’s also common practice to burn materials that have nothing to do with the case just to lead investigators off.”
    Sachs nodded. “Yeah, sure. Good point, Rhyme. Thanks.”
    Her phone rang.
    The policewoman listened, frowning. “Where?” she asked. “Okay.” She jotted some notes. “I’ll be right there.” She said to Pulaski, “May have a lead to the Sarkowski file. I’ll check it out.”
    Uneasily he asked, “You want me to go with you?”
    Calmer now, she smiled, though Rhyme could see it was forced. “No, you stay here, Ron. Thanks.”
    She grabbed her jacket and, without saying anything else, hurried out.
    As the front door clicked shut behind her, Sellitto’s phone rang. He tensed as he listened. Then he looked up, announced, “Get this. There was a hit on the EVL. Tan Explorer, two white males inside. Evading an RMP. They’re in pursuit.” He listened some more. “Got it.” He hung up. “They followed it to that big garage on the river at Houston by the West Side Highway. Exits’re sealed. This could be it.”
    Rhyme ordered his radio to pick up the scrambled transmissions, and everyone in the lab stared at the small black plastic speakers. Two patrol officers reported that the Explorer had been spotted on the second floor but was abandoned. There was no sign of the men who’d been inside.
    “I know the garage,” Sellitto said. “It’s a sieve. They could’ve gotten out anywhere.”
    Bo Haumann and a lieutenant reported that they had squads combing the streets around the garage, but there was no sign yet of the Watchmaker or his partner.
    Sellitto shook his head in frustration. “At least we’ve got their wheels. It’ll tell us plenty. We should get Amelia back to run the scene.”
    Rhyme debated. He’d been anticipating that the conflict between the two cases might come to a head, though he’d never thought it would happen this fast.
    Sure, they should get her back.
    But the criminalist decided not to. He knew her perhaps even better than he knew himself and he understood that she needed to run with the St. James case.
    There’s nothing worse than a crooked cop. . . .
    He’d do this for her.
    “No. Let her go.”
    “But, Linc—”
    “We’ll find somebody else.”
    The tense silence, which seemed to go on forever, was broken with: “I’ll do it, sir.”
    Rhyme glanced to his right.
    “You, Ron?”
    “Yessir. I can handle it.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    The rookie looked him in the eye and recited, “‘It’s important to note that the location where the victim’s corpse is actually found is often the least important of the many crime scenes created when a homicide occurs—since it is there that conscientious perpetrators will cleanse the scene of trace and plant false evidence to lead off investigators. The more important—’”
    “That’s—”
    “Your textbook, sir. I’ve read it. A couple of times, actually.”
    “You memorized it?”
    “Just the important parts.”
    “What’s not important?”
    “I meant I memorized the specific rules.”
    Rhyme debated. He was young, inexperienced. But he at least knew the players and he had a sharp eye. “All right, Ron. But you don’t take a single step into the scene unless we’re online with each other.”
    “That’s fine, sir.”
    “Oh, it’s fine ?” Rhyme asked wryly. “Thanks for your approval, rookie. Now, get going.”

    They were out of breath from the run.
    Duncan and Vincent, both carrying large canvas bags containing the contents of the Band-Aid-mobile, slowed to a walk at a park near the Hudson River. They were two blocks from the garage where they’d abandoned the SUV in their flight from the cops.
    So wearing the gloves—which Vincent had first thought of as way too paranoid—had paid off after all.
    Vincent looked back. “They’re not following. They didn’t see us.”
    Duncan leaned against a sapling, hawked and spit into the grass. Vincent pressed his chest, which ached from the run. Steam flowed from their mouths and noses. The killer still wasn’t angry but was even more curious than before. “The Explorer too. They knew about the car. I don’t understand it. How did they know? And who’s after us? . . . That red-haired policewoman I saw on Cedar Street—maybe it’s she.”
    She . . .
    Then Duncan looked down at his side and frowned. The canvas bag was open. “Oh, no,” he