The Cold Moon

no receipt inside, no library marks. And whosever it is, he’s been reading it a lot.”
    “Well said, Ron. You’re not assuming it’s the perps’. Keep an open mind. Always keep an open mind.”
    It wasn’t much praise but the young man enjoyed it.
    Pulaski then rolled up trace from the floor and vacuumed it out from the space between and underneath the seats.
    “I think I’ve got everything.”
    “Glove compartment.”
    “Checked it. Empty.”
    “Pedals?”
    “Scraped them. Not much trace.”
    Rhyme asked, “Headrests?”
    “Oh, didn’t get those.”
    “Could be hair or lotion transfer.”
    “People wear hats,” Pulaski pointed out.
    Rhyme shot back, “On the remote chance that the Watchmaker isn’t a Sikh, nun, astronaut, sponge diver or somebody else with a head completely covered, humor me and check the headrests.”
    “Will do.”
    A moment later Pulaski found himself looking at a strand of gray-and-black hair. He confessed this to Rhyme. The criminalist didn’t play I-told-you-so. “Good,” he said. “Seal it in plastic. Now fingerprints. I’m dying to find out who our Watchmaker really is.”
    Pulaski, sweating even in the freezing, damp air, labored for ten minutes with a Magna Brush, powders and sprays, alternative light sources and goggles.
    When Rhyme asked impatiently, “How’s it going?” the rookie had to admit, “Actually, there are none.”
    “You mean no whole prints. That’s okay. Partials’ll do.”
    “No, I mean there’re none, sir. Anywhere. In the entire car.”
    “Impossible.”
    From Rhyme’s book Pulaski remembered that there were three types of prints—plastic, which are three-dimensional impressions, such as those in mud or clay; visible, which you can see with the naked eye; and latent, visible only with special equipment. You rarely find plastic prints, and visible are rare, but latents are common everywhere.
    Except in the Watchmaker’s Explorer.
    “Smears?”
    “No.”
    “This is crazy. They wouldn’t’ve had time to clean-wipe an entire car in five minutes. Do the outside, everything. Especially near the doors and the gas tank lid.”
    With unsteady hands, Pulaski kept searching. Had he handled the Magna Brush clumsily? Had he sprayed the chemicals on the wrong way? Was he wearing the wrong goggles?
    The terrible head injury he’d suffered not long ago was having lingering effects, including post-traumatic stress and panic attacks. He also suffered from a condition he’d explained to Jenny as “this real complicated, technical medical thing—fuzzy thinking.” It haunted him that, after the accident, he just wasn’t the same, that he was somehow damaged goods, no longer as smart as his brother, though they’d once had the same IQ. He particularly worried that he wasn’t as smart as the perps he was going up against in his jobs for Lincoln Rhyme.
    But then he thought to himself: Time-out. You’re thinking it’s your screwup. Goddamn, you were top 5 percent at the academy. You know what you’re doing. You work twice as hard as most cops. He said, “I’m positive, Detective. Somehow they’ve managed not to leave any prints. . . . Wait, hold on.”
    “I’m not going anywhere, Ron.”
    Pulaski put on magnifying goggles. “Okay, got something. I’m looking at cotton fibers. Beige ones. Sort of flesh-colored.”
    “Sort of,” Rhyme chided.
    “Flesh-colored. From gloves, I’m betting.”
    “So he and his assistant are careful and smart.” There was an uneasiness in Rhyme’s voice that troubled Pulaski. He didn’t like the idea that Lincoln Rhyme was uncomfortable. A chill trickled down his spine. He remembered the scraping sound. The clicking.
    Tick, tock . . .
    “Anything in the tire treads and the grille? On the sideview mirror?”
    He searched there. “Mostly slush and soil.”
    “Take samples.”
    After he’d done this, Pulaski said, “Finished.”
    “Snapshots and video—you know how?”
    He did. Pulaski had been the photographer at his brother’s wedding.
    “Then process the probable escape routes.”
    Pulaski looked around him again. Was that another scraping, a footstep? Water was dripping. It too sounded like the ticking of a clock, which set him even more on edge. He started on the grid again, back and forth as he made his way toward the exit, looking up as well as down, the way Rhyme had written in his book.
    A crime scene is three-dimensional. . . .
    “Nothing so far.”
    Another grunt from