The Stone Monkey

possible. We can’t go back into the ocean. We can’t walk. We need a ride.”
    “And how would you get one?” he asked.
    “I don’t know,” she said, feeling the frustration of being close to an answer yet having it evade her.
    “Any houses inland?” he asked.
    “No.”
    “Any trucks at the gas station?”
    “Yes, but the troopers asked the attendants. None of ’em’re missing.”
    “Anything else?”
    Sachs scanned the street. “Nothing.”
    “There can’t be nothing, Sachs,” he scolded. “These people’re running for their lives. They escaped somehow. The answer’s there. What else do you see?”
    She sighed and began reciting, “I see a stack of discarded tires, I see a sailboat upside down, I see a carton of empties—Sam Adams beer. In front of the church there’s a wheelbarrow—”
    “Church?” Rhyme pounced. “You didn’t mention a church before.”
    “It’s Tuesday morning, Rhyme. The place is closed and ESU cleared it.”
    “Get over there, Sachs. Now!”
    Stiffly she began to walk toward the place but had no clue what she might find that would be helpful.
    Rhyme explained, “Didn’t you do vacation Bible school, Sachs? Ritz crackers, Hawaiian Punch and Jesus on summer afternoons? No potluck picnics? No youth group conventions?”
    “Once or twice. But I spent most of my Sundays rebuilding carburetors.”
    “How do you think churches get the younguns to and from their little theological diversions? Minivans, Sachs. Minivans—with room for a dozen people.”
    “Could be,” she added skeptically.
    “And maybe not,” Rhyme conceded. “But the immigrants didn’t sprout wings and fly, did they? So let’s check out the more likely possibilities.”
    And, as so often happened, he was right.
    She walked around to the back of the church and examined the muddy ground: footprints, tiny cubes of broken safety glass, the pipe used to shatter the window, the tread marks of a van.
    “Got it, Rhyme. A bunch of fresh prints. Damn, that’s smart. . . . They walked on rocks, grass and weeds. To avoid the mud so they wouldn’t leave prints. And it looks like they got into the van and it drove away through a field before it turned onto the road. So nobody’d see it on the main street.”
    Rhyme ordered, “Get the scoop on the van from the minister.”
    Sachs asked a trooper to call the minister of the church. A few minutes later the details came back—it was a white Dodge, five years old, with the name of the church on the side. She took down the tag number thenrelayed this to Rhyme, who said he would in turn put out another vehicle locator request, in addition to the one on the Honda, and tell the Port Authority police to pass the word to the toll takers at the bridges and tunnels, on the assumption that the immigrants were headed for Chinatown in Manhattan.
    She walked the grid carefully behind the church but found nothing else. “I don’t think there’s much more we can do here, Rhyme. I’m going to log the evidence in and get back.” She disconnected the call.
    Returning to the crime scene bus, she packed away the Tyvek suit then logged in what she’d found and attached the chain of custody cards that must accompany every item collected at a crime scene. She told the techs to get everything to Rhyme’s town house ASAP. Though it seemed hopeless she wanted to make another sweep for survivors. Her knees were on fire—the chronic arthritis inherited from her grandfather. The disease often bothered her but now, alone, she allowed herself the luxury of moving slowly; whenever she was among fellow officers she tried hard not to show the pain. She was afraid that if the brass got wind of her condition they’d desk her for disability.
    After fifteen minutes, though, of not finding any sign of more immigrants, she started toward her Camaro, which was the only vehicle left on this portion of the beach. She was alone; the ESU officer who’d accompanied her here had opted for a safer ride back to the city.
    The fog was lighter now. A half mile away, on the other side of the town, Sachs could just make out two Suffolk County rescue trucks and an unmarked Ford sedan parked nearby. She believed it was an INS vehicle.
    Sachs dropped stiffly into the front seat of her Camaro,found a piece of paper and began to write out notes of what she’d observed at the scene to present to Rhyme and the team back at his town house. The wind buffeted the light car and the rain pelted the