The driver cupped his hands against the glare from the streetlights and looked at them closely.
A sudden crack resonated through the air, and T.J. flinched. John gave a short scream.
In the distance, behind the driver, the sky filled with red and blue fiery streaks. More pops and whistles. He turned and gazed up as a huge, orange spider spread over the city.
Fireworks, T.J. recalled reading in the Times. A present from the mayor and the UN secretary-general for the conference delegates, welcoming them to the greatest city on earth.
The driver turned back to the cab. With a loud snap he pulled up on the latch and slowly opened the door.
The call was anonymous. As usual.
So there was no way of checking back to see which vacant lot the RP meant. Central had radioed, "He said Thirty-seven near Eleven. That's all."
Reporting parties weren't known for Triple A directions to crime scenes.
Already sweating though it was just nine in the morning, Amelia Sachs pushed through a stand of tall grass. She was walking the strip search--what the Crime Scene people called it--an S-shaped pattern. Nothing. She bent her head to the speaker/mike pinned to her navy-blue uniform blouse.
"Portable 5885. Can't find anything, Central. You have a further-to?"
Through crisp static the dispatcher replied, "Nothing more on location, 5885. But one thing . . . the RP said he hoped the vic was dead. K."
"Say again, Central."
"The RP said he hoped the victim was dead. For his sake. K."
"K."
Hoped the vic was dead?
Sachs struggled over a wilted chain-link and searched another empty lot. Nothing.
She wanted to quit. Call in a 10-90, unfounded report, and go back to the Deuce, which was her regular beat. Her knees hurt and she was hot as stew in this lousy August weather. She wanted to slip into the Port Authority, hang with the kids and have a tall can of Arizona iced tea. Then, at 11:30--just a couple of hours away--she'd clean out her locker at Midtown South and head downtown for the training session.
But she didn't--couldn't--blow off the call. She kept going: along the hot sidewalk, through the gap between two abandoned tenements, through another vegetation-filled field.
Her long index finger pushed into her flattop uniform cap, through the layers of long red hair piled high on her head. She scratched compulsively then reached up underneath the cap and scratched some more. Sweat ran down her forehead and tickled and she dug into her eyebrow too.
Thinking: My last two hours on the street. I can live with it.
As Sachs stepped farther into the brush she felt the first uneasiness of the morning.
Somebody's watching me.
The hot wind rustled the dry brush and cars and trucks sped noisily to and from the Lincoln Tunnel. She thought what Patrol officers often did: This city is so damn loud somebody could come up right behind me, knife-range away, and I'd never know it.
Or line up iron sights on my back . . .
She spun around quickly.
Nothing but leaves and rusting machinery and trash.
Climbing a pile of stones, wincing. Amelia Sachs, thirty-one--a mere thirty-one, her mother would say--was plagued by arthritis. Inherited from her grandfather as clearly as she'd received her mother's willowy build and her father's good looks and career (the red hair was anybody's guess). Another jolt of pain as she eased through a tall curtain of dying bushes. She was fortunate to stop herself one pace from a sheer thirty-foot drop.
Below her was a gloomy canyon--cut deep into the bedrock of the West Side. Through it ran the Amtrak roadbed for trains bound north.
She squinted, looking at the floor of the canyon, not far from the railroad bed.
What is that?