The Stone Monkey

said, wheeling back and forth in front of them.
    “I’m counting nine,” Dellray said. “Why you sayin’ ten, Amelia?”
    “Because,” Rhyme said, “there’s a baby, right?”
    Sachs nodded. “Right. Under the shelter I found some patterns in the sand I couldn’t identify, looked like something had been dragged but there were no footprints in front of it—only behind. I figured it was a crawling child.”
    “Okay,” Rhyme said, studying the sizes of the shoes, “looks like we’ve got seven adults and/or older teens, two young children and one infant. One of the adults could be elderly—he’s shuffling. I say ‘he’ because of the shoe size. And somebody’s injured—probably a woman, to judge from the size of her shoes. The man next to her is helping her.”
    Sachs added, “There were bloodstains on the beach and in the van.”
    “Samples of the blood?” Cooper asked.
    “There wasn’t much on the raft or the beach—the rain had washed most of it away. I got three samples from thesand. And plenty in the van, still wet.” She found a plastic bag containing some vials. Handed it to him.
    The tech prepared samples for typing and filled out a form. He called in an expedited request for typing and gendering into the serology lab at the Medical Examiner’s office and arranged for a uniformed officer to take the samples downtown.
    Sachs continued her scenario. “Now, the Ghost—in a second launch—landed about two hundred yards east of where the immigrants did.”
    Her fingers disappeared into her abundant red hair and worried the flesh of her scalp. Sachs would often injure herself in minor ways like this. A beautiful woman, a former fashion model, she often had stubby, sometimes bloody fingernails. Rhyme had given up trying to figure out where this painful compulsion came from but, oddly, he envied her. The same cryptic tensions drove him as well. The difference was that he didn’t have her safety valve of fidgety motion to bleed off the stress.
    He silently sent out a plea to Dr. Weaver, his neurosurgeon: Do something for me. Release me just a little from this terrible confinement. Please . . . Then he slammed the door on these personal thoughts, angry with himself, and turned his attention back to Sachs.
    “Then,” she continued with a splinter of emotion in her voice, “then he started tracking down the immigrants and killing them. He found two who’d fallen off the raft and killed them. Shot them in the back. He wounded one. The fourth immigrant’s still missing.”
    “Where’s the wounded one?” Coe asked.
    “They were taking him to a trauma center then to the INS Manhattan detention facility. He said he doesn’t know where the Ghost or the immigrants might’ve been goingonce they got here.” Sachs again consulted her soggy handwritten notes. “Now there was a vehicle on the road near the beach but it left—fast, spun the wheels and skidded to make a turn. I think the Ghost took a shot at it. So we may have a witness, if we can track down the make and model. I got dimensions of the wheelbase and—”
    “Wait,” Rhyme interrupted. “What was it near? The car?”
    “Near?” she asked. “Nothing. It was just parked by the roadside.”
    The criminalist frowned. “Why would somebody park there on a stormy day before dawn?”
    “Drivin’ by and saw the rafts?” Dellray suggested.
    “No,” Rhyme said. “In that case he would’ve gone for help or called. And there weren’t any nine-one-ones reporting anything. No, I think the driver was there to pick up the Ghost but when it turned out the snakehead wasn’t in any hurry to leave, he took off.”
    “So he got abandoned,” Sellitto observed.
    Rhyme nodded.
    Sachs handed a sheet of paper to Mel Cooper. “Dimensions of the wheelbase. And here are pictures of the tread marks.”
    The tech scanned the marks into the computer and then sent the image, along with the dimensions, to the NYPD’s VI—Vehicle Identifier—database. “Shouldn’t be long,” Cooper’s calm voice reported.
    Young detective Eddie Deng asked, “What about the other trucks?”
    “What other trucks?” Sachs asked.
    Coe filled in. “The terms of a smuggling contract include land transport too. There should’ve been some trucks to take the immigrants back to the city.”
    Sachs shook her head. “I didn’t see any sign of them.But when he sank the ship the Ghost probably called the driver and had them go back to the city.” She