The Cold Moon

past him, opened the curtains. She looked out the window, into Central Park.
    The slim young man sensed immediately that something was up. “I’ll go make coffee. Or toast. Or something.” He vanished, closing the door behind him.
    So what was this? Rhyme wondered unhappily. He’d had more than enough personal issues recently than he wanted to deal with.
    Her eyes were still looking over the painful brightness of the park. He asked, “So what was this errand that was so important?”
    “I stopped by Argyle Security.”
    Rhyme blinked and looked at her face closely. “They’re the ones thatcalled after you got written up in the Times, when we closed that case about the illusionist.”
    “Right.”
    Argyle was an international company that specialized in safeguarding corporate executives and negotiating the release of kidnapped employees—a popular crime in some foreign countries. They’d offered Sachs a job making twice what she did as a cop. And promised her a carry permit—a license for a concealed weapon—in most jurisdictions, unusual for security companies. That and the promise to send her to exotic and dangerous locations caught her interest, though she’d turned them down immediately.
    “What’s this all about?”
    “I’m quitting, Rhyme.”
    “Quitting the force? Are you serious?”
    She nodded. “I’ve pretty much decided. I want to go in a different direction. I can do good things there too. Protecting families, guarding kids. They do a lot of antiterrorist work.”
    Now he too stared out the window at the stark, bald trees of Central Park. He thought about his conversation with Kathryn Dance the previous day, about his early days of therapy. One doctor, a sharp, young man with the NYPD, Terry Dobyns, had told him, “Nothing lasts forever.” He’d meant this about the depression he’d been experiencing.
    Now the sentence meant something very different and he couldn’t get the words out of his mind.
    Nothing lasts forever. . . .
    “Ah.”
    “I think I have to, Rhyme. I have to.”
    “Because of your father?”
    She nodded, dug her finger into her hair, scratched. Winced at that pain, or at some other.
    “This’s crazy, Sachs.”
    “I don’t think I can do it anymore. Be a cop.”
    “It’s pretty fast, don’t you think?”
    “I’ve thought about it all night. I’ve never thought about anything so much in my life.”
    “Well, keep thinking. You can’t make decisions like this after you get some bad news.”
    “Bad news ? Everything I thought about Dad was a lie.”
    “Not everything,” Rhyme countered. “One part of his life.”
    “But the most important part. That’s who he was first, Rhyme. A cop.”
    “It was a long time ago. The Sixteenth Avenue Club was closed up when you were a baby.”
    “That makes him less corrupt?”
    Rhyme said nothing.
    “You want me to explain it, Rhyme? Like evidence? Add a few drops of reagent and look at the results? I can’t. All I know is I have a really bad taste in my mouth. This’s affected how I look at the whole job.”
    He said kindly, “It’s gotta be tough. But whatever happened to him doesn’t touch you. All that matters is you’re a good cop, and a lot fewer cases’ll be closed if you leave.”
    “I’ll only close cases if my heart’s in it. And it’s not. Something’s gone.” She added, “Pulaski’s coming along great. He’s better now than I was when I started working with you.”
    “He’s better because you’ve been training him.”
    “Don’t do that.”
    “What?”
    “Butter me up, drop those little comments. That’s what my mother used to do with my father. You don’t want me to leave, I understand, but don’t play that kind of card.”
    But he had to play the card. And any other he could think of. After the accident Rhyme had wrestled with suicide on a number of occasions. And though he’d come close he always rejected the choice. What Amelia Sachs was now considering was psychic suicide. If she quit the force he knew that she’d be killing her soul.
    “But Argyle? It’s not for you.” He shook his head. “Nobody takes corporate security seriously, even—especially—the clients.”
    “No, their assignments’re good. And they send you back to school. You learn foreign languages. . . . They even have a forensics department. And the money’s good.”
    He laughed. “Since when has this ever been about money? . . . Give it some time, Sachs. What’s the hurry?”
    She