The Twelfth Card (Lincoln Rhyme 6)

He'd heard the transmission that the warehouse was clear, but he wondered if ESU had actually gotten into all the nooks and crannies. After all, everybody'd missed the unsub that morning at the museum. He'd easily gotten within pistol range.

Tap, tap, tap.

That one window, far right, second floor . . . It seemed to Sellitto that it had quivered once or twice.

Maybe just the wind. But maybe the motion was from somebody trying to open it.

Or aiming through it.

Tap.

He shivered and stepped back.

"Hey," he called to an ESU officer, who'd just come out of the herbal importer's. "Take a look--you see anything in that window?"

"Where?"

"That one." Sellitto leaned out of cover just a bit and pointed to the black glass square.

"Naw. But the place's cleared. Didn't you hear?"

Sellitto leaned out from cover a bit farther, hearing tap, tap, tap, seeing brown eyes going lifeless. He squinted and, shivering, looked the window over carefully. Then in his periphery he suddenly saw motion to his left and heard the squeal of a door opening. A flash of light as the cold sun reflected off something metallic.

It's him!

"God," Sellitto whispered. He went for his gun, crouching and spinning toward the glint. But instead of following procedures when speed-drawing a weapon and keeping his index finger outside the trigger guard, he yanked the Colt from his holster in a panic.

Which is why the gun discharged an instant later, sending the slug directly toward the spot where Amelia Sachs was emerging from the basement door to the warehouse.

Chapter Fourteen

Standing at the corner of Canal and Sixth, a dozen blocks from his safe house, Thompson Boyd waited for the light to change. He caught his breath and wiped his damp face.

He wasn't shaken, he wasn't freaked out--the breathlessness and sweat were from the sprint to safety--but he was curious how they'd found him. He was always so careful with his contacts and the phones he used, and always checking to see if he was being followed, that he guessed it had to be through physical evidence. Made sense--because he was pretty sure that the woman in white, walking through the museum library scene like a sidewinder snake, had been in the hallway outside the apartment on Elizabeth Street. What had he left behind at the museum? Something in the rape bag? Some bits of trace from his shoes or clothes?

They were the best investigators he'd ever encountered. He'd have to keep that in mind.

Gazing at the traffic, he reflected on the escape. When he'd seen the officers coming up the stairs, he'd quickly placed the book and the purchases from the hardware store into the shopping bag, grabbed his attache case and gun, then clicked on the switch that turned the doorknob live. He'd kicked through the wall and escaped into the warehouse next door, climbed to its roof and then hurried south to the end of the block. Climbing down a fire escape, he'd turned west and started sprinting, taking the course he'd charted out and practiced dozens of times.

Now, at Canal and Sixth, he was lost in a crowd waiting for the light to change, hearing the sirens of the police cars joining in the search for him. His face was emotionless, his hands didn't shake, he wasn't angry, he wasn't panicked. This was the way he had to be. He'd seen it over and over again--dozens of professional killers he'd known had been caught because they panicked, lost their cool in front of the police and broke down under routine questioning. That, or they got rattled during the job, leaving evidence or living witnesses. Emotion--love, anger, fear--makes you sloppy. You had to be cool, distant.

Numb . . .

Thompson gripped his pistol, hidden in his raincoat pocket, as he watched several squad cars speed up Sixth Avenue. The vehicles skidded around the corner and turned east on Canal. They were pulling out all the stops looking for him. Not surprising, Thompson knew. New York's finest would frown on a perp electrocuting one of their own (though in Thompson's opinion it was the cop's own fault for being careless).

Then a faint tone of concern sounded in his brain as he watched another squad car skid to a stop three blocks away. Officers got out and began interviewing people on the street. Then another rolled to a stop only two hundred feet from where he now stood. And they were moving this way. His car was parked near Hudson, about five minutes away. He had to get to it now. But still the stoplight remained red.

More sirens filled the air.

This was becoming a problem.

Thompson looked at the crowd around him, most of them peering east, intent on the police cars and the officers. He needed some distraction, some cover to get across the street. Just something . . . didn't have to be flamboyant. Just enough to deflect people's attention for a time. A fire in a trash bin, a car alarm, the sound of breaking glass . . . Any other ideas? Glancing south, to his left, Thompson noticed a large commuter bus headed up Sixth Avenue. It was approaching the intersection where the cluster of pedestrians stood. Set fire to the trash bin, or this? Thompson Boyd decided. He eased closer to the curb, behind an Asian girl, slim, in her twenties. All it took was an easy push in her lower back to send her into the bus's path. Twisting in panic, gasping, she slid off the curb.

"She fell!" Thompson cried in a drawl-free shout. "Get her!"

Her wail was cut off as the right sideview mirror of the bus struck her shoulder and head and flung her body, tumbling, along the sidewalk. Blood spattered the window and those standing nearby. The brakes screamed. So did several of the women in the crowd.

The bus skidded to a stop in the middle of Canal, blocking traffic, where it would have to remain until the accident investigation. A fire in a trash basket, a breaking bottle, a car alarm--they might've worked. But he'd decided that killing the girl was more efficient.