The Kill Room

first,” Poitier said. He reached into his backpack and extracted something then offered it to Rhyme. “Do you want this?”
    It was a pistol. A Glock. Very much like Amelia Sachs’s. Poitier verified it was loaded and pulled the slide to chamber a round. With a Glock there is no safety catch, you simply have to pull the trigger to fire it.
    Rhyme stared at the pistol, glanced at Thom and then took the weapon in his right hand. He had never cared for firearms. The opportunity to use them—in his specialty of forensics, at least—was next to never, and he was always worried that he’d have to draw and use his gun. The reluctance stemmed not from fear of killing an attacker but from what even a single shot could do to contaminate a crime scene. Smoke, blast pressure, gunshot residue, vapors…
    That was no less true here but curiously he was now struck by the sense of power the weapon gave him.
    In contrast with the utter helplessness that had enwrapped his life since the accident.
    “Yes,” he said.
    Though he couldn’t feel it in his fingers, the Glock seemed to burn its way into his skin, to become a part of his new arm. He aimed it carefully out the window at the water, recalling his firearms training. Assume every weapon is loaded and ready to fire, never point a weapon at anything you aren’t prepared to send a bullet into, never shoot unless you see exactly what is behind your target, never put your finger on the trigger until you’re prepared to shoot.
    A scientist, Rhyme was actually a pretty good shot, using physics in calculating how to get the bullet to its desired destination.
    “Yes,” he said again and slipped the gun into the inside pocket of his jacket.
    They got out of the van and surveyed the area: pipes and gutters directing runoff into the ocean, dozens of piles of sludge rising like huge ant hills and cinder blocks and car parts and appliances and rusted industrial machinery littering the ground.
    No Swimming…
    No kidding.
    Thom said, “The haze is bad and the inn’s so far away. How could he see well enough to get a clear target?”
    Poitier said, “A special scope, I decided. Adaptive optics, lasers.”
    Rhyme was amused. Apparently the corporal had done more research about the case than he’d let on—or than Assistant Commissioner McPherson would have been happy with.
    “Could have been a clearer day too.”
    “Never very clear here,” Poitier said, waving his arm at a low chimney rising above the tire plant. It spewed bile-green and beige smoke.
    Then, surrounded by the nauseating smell of rotten eggs and hot rubber from the pollution, they made their way closer to the shore. Rhyme studied the ground for the best place to set up a sniper’s nest—good cover and an indentation that would allow support on which to rest the rifle. A half dozen sites would have worked.
    No one interfered with the search; they were largely alone. A pickup eased up and parked just across the road. The driver, in a sweat-stained gray shirt, speaking into his cell phone, walked to the back of his truck and began tossing trash bags into a ditch beside the road. The concept of littering as a crime seemed not to exist in the Bahamas. Rhyme could also hear some laughing and shouts from the other side of the fence surrounding the metal fabrication plant but otherwise they had the place to themselves.
    Looking for the nest, Thom, Poitier and Rhyme walked, and wheeled, through the weeds and patches of dirt and sand, the Storm Arrow doing a fair job of finding purchase in the uneven terrain. Poitier and Thom could get closer to the edge and he told them what to look for: cut-back brush, indentations, foot or boot prints leading to a flat area. “And look at the patches of sand.” Even a spent cartridge leaves a distinctive mark.
    “He’s got to be a pro,” Rhyme explained. “He’d’ve had a tripod or sandbags to rest the gun on but he might’ve used rocks too and left them set up. Look for stones out of place, maybe one balanced on another. At that distance, the rifle would have to be absolutely steady.”
    Rhyme squinted—the pollution and the wind stung his eyes. “I would love some brass,” he said. But he doubted the sniper would have left any empty cartridges behind; pros always collected them because they contained a wealth of information about the weapon and the shooter. He peered into the water, though, wondering if a spent shell had been ejected there. The sea was black and he