The Stone Monkey

same material on the cobblestones.”
    “What’s your scenario, Sachs?”
    “I think Sonny spots the Ghost leaving a store, carrying something in a yellow bag. Sonny follows him. He collars him in the alley here and gets the Ghost’s new gun, the .45. He assumes that’s his only weapon. Sonny relaxes and tells the Ghost to get onto the ground. But the Ghost pulls out his backup—the Model 51—and shoots through the bag, spattering the plant material and flecks of paper on Sonny. The bullet misses but the Ghost jumps him. There’s a fight. The Ghost gets the .45 and kills Sonny.”
    “Because,” Rhyme said, “the yellow paper and the plant material were on Sonny’s legs—meaning the Ghost had the Model 51 in an ankle holster and fired low. The gunshot residue was high on his body—from the .45.”
    “That’s what it looks like.”
    “And how do we use that scenario?”
    “Wherever the Ghost bought that stuff that was in the bag, a clerk might know him and have an idea where he lives.”
    “You want to canvass all the stores near there to see who has yellow bags?”
    “No, that’d take too long. It’d be better to find out what the plant material is first.”
    “Bring it in, Sachs. Mel’ll run it through the chromatograph.”
    “No, I’ve got a better idea,” she said. A glance at Sonny Li’s body. She forced herself to look away. “It’s probably Chinese herbs or spices. I’m going to stop by John Sung’s apartment with a sample of it. He should be able to tell me right away what it is. He only lives a few blocks from here.”

V
    All in Good Time

    Wednesday, the Hour of the Rooster, 6:45 P.M .,
    to Monday, the Hour of the Monkey, 3 P.M .
    To effect capture . . . the opponent’s men must be entirely encircled without any adjacent places vacant . . . . Exactly as in war, when a post is surrounded, the soldiers are taken prisoner by the enemy.
    —The Game of Wei-Chi

Chapter Forty-one
    He stared out the window at the gray dusk, premature because of the lingering storm. His head drooped forward, heavy, heavy, immobile. This wasn’t from damaged fibers of nerve but from sorrow. Rhyme was thinking of Sonny Li.
    When he’d run the forensic unit he’d had the chance to hire dozens, probably hundreds of employees and to finagle—or bully—onto his staff men and women from other assignments because he knew they were damn good cops. He couldn’t tell exactly what appealed to him about these people. Oh, sure, they had the textbook qualifications: persistence, intelligence, patience, stamina, keen powers of observation, empathy.
    Yet there was another quality. Something that Rhyme, for all his rational self, couldn’t define, though he recognized it immediately. There was no better way to say it than the desire—even the joy—of pursuing a prey at all costs. Whatever else Sonny Li’s failings—his cigarettes at crime scenes, his reliance on omens and the woo-woo factor, he had this essential aspect. The lone cop had traveled literally to the ends of the earth to collar his suspect. Rhyme would’ve traded a hundred eager rookies and a hundred cynical veterans for one cop like Sonny Li: a small man who wanted nothing more than to offer to the citizens on his beat some retribution for the harms done to them, some justice,some comfort in the aftermath of evil. And for his reward Li was content to enjoy a good hunt, a challenge and, perhaps, just a little respect from those he cared about.
    He glanced at the book he’d inscribed to Li.
    To my friend . . .
    “Okay, Mel,” he said evenly. “Let’s put this one together. What’ve we got?”
    Mel Cooper was hunched over the plastic bags the patrolman had raced here from the crime scene in Chinatown. “Footprints.”
    “We sure it was the Ghost?” Rhyme asked.
    “Yep,” Cooper confirmed. “They’re identical.” Looking at the electrostatic prints that Sachs had taken.
    Rhyme agreed they were the same.
    “Now the slugs.” He was examining the two bullets, one flattened, one intact, both bloody. “Check the lands and grooves.”
    This referred to the angular marks left in the soft lead bullet by the rifling in the barrel of the gun—the spiral grooves that spin the slug to make it go faster and more accurately. By examining the number of grooves and the degree of the twist, a ballistics expert can often determine the type of gun the shooter used.
    Cooper, wearing latex gloves, measured the undamaged slug and the marks