"--but I betcha this's one unsub who ain't putting cars in lots," the detective continued. "Or getting parking tickets."
Rhyme nodded his agreement and asked, "The building at Pearl Street?"
One, or both, of the twins said, "That's next on our list. We're on our way."
Rhyme caught Sachs checking her watch, which sat on her white wrist near her ruddy fingers. He instructed Thom to add these new characteristics of the unsub to the profile chart.
"You want to interview that guy?" Banks asked. "The one by the railroad?"
"No. I don't trust witnesses," Rhyme said bombastically. "I want to get back to work." He glanced at Mel Cooper. "Hairs, blood, bone, and a sliver of wood. The bone first," Rhyme instructed.
Morgen . . .
Young Monelle Gerger opened her eyes and slowly sat up in the sagging bed. In her two years in east Greenwich Village she'd never gotten used to morning.
Her round, twenty-one-year-old body eased forward and she got a blast of unrelenting August sunlight in her bleary eyes. "Mein Gott . . ."
She'd left the club at five, home at six, made love with
Brian until seven . . .
What time was it now?
Early morning, she was sure.
She squinted at the clock. Oh. Four-thirty in the afternoon.
Not so fruh morgens after all.
Coffee or laundry?
It was around this time of day that she'd wander over to Dojo's for a veggie-burger breakfast and three cups of their tough coffee. There she'd meet people she knew, clubbies like herself--downtown people.
But she'd let a lot of things go lately, the domestic things. And so now she pulled on two baggy T-shirts to hide her chubby figure and jeans, hung five or six chains around her neck and grabbed the laundry basket, tossed the Wisk onto it.
Monelle undid the three dead bolts barring the door. She hefted the laundry basket and walked down the dark staircase of the residence hall. At the basement level she paused.
Irgendwas stimmt hier nicht.
Feeling uneasy, Monelle looked around the deserted stairway, the murky corridors.
What's different?
The light, that's it! The bulbs in the hall're burned out. No--she looked closely--they were missing. Fucking kids'll steal anything. She'd moved in here, the Deutsche Haus--because it was supposedly a haven for German artists and musicians. It turned out to be just another filthy, way-overpriced East Village walkup, like all the other tenements around here. The only difference was that she could bitch to the manager in her native tongue.
She continued through the basement door into the incinerator room, which was so dark she had to grope her way along the wall to make sure she didn't trip over the junk on the floor.
Pushing open the door, she stepped into the corridor that led to the laundry room.
A shuffling. A skitter.
She turned quickly and saw nothing but motionless shadows. All she heard was the sound of traffic, the groans of an old, old building.
Through the dimness. Past stacks of boxes and discarded chairs and tables. Under wires caked with greasy dust. Monelle continued toward the laundry room. No bulbs here either. She was uneasy, recalling something that hadn't occurred to her for years. Walking with her father down a narrow alley off Lange Strasse, near the Obermain Brucke, on their way to the zoo. She must have been five or six. Her father had suddenly gripped her by the shoulder and pointed to the bridge and told her matter-of-factly that a hungry troll lived underneath it. When they crossed it on their way home, he warned, they'd have to walk quickly. She now felt a ripple of panic rise up her spine to her crew-cut blond hair.
Stupid. Trolls . . .
She continued down the dank corridor, listening to the humming of some electrical equipment. Far off she heard a song by the feuding brothers in Oasis.