The Cold Moon (Lincoln Rhyme 7)

"What?"

"A gold metal money clip." Her fingers stinging from the cold through the latex gloves, she counted the cash inside. "It's got three hundred forty in new twenties. Right next to the boot prints."

"Did the vic have any money on him?"

"Sixty bucks, also pretty fresh."

"Maybe the perp boosted the clip and then dropped it getting away."

She placed it in an evidence bag, then finished searching other portions of the scene, finding nothing else.

The back door of the office building opened. Sellitto and a uniformed guard from the security staff of the building were there. They stood back as Sachs processed the door itself--finding and photographing what she described to Rhyme as a million fingerprints (he only chuckled) and the dim lobby on the other side. She didn't find anything obviously relevant to the murder.

Suddenly a woman's panicky voice cut through the cold air. "Oh, my God, no!"

A stocky brunette in her thirties ran up to the yellow tape, where she was stopped by a patrol officer. Her hands were at her face and she was sobbing. Sellitto stepped forward. Sachs joined them. "Do you know him, ma'am?" the big detective asked.

"What happened, what happened? No . . . oh, God . . ."

"Do you know him?" the detective repeated.

Wracked with crying, the woman turned away from the terrible sight. "My brother . . . No, is he--oh, God, no, he can't be . . ." She sank to her knees on the ice.

This would be the woman who'd reported her brother missing last night, Sachs understood.

Lon Sellitto had the personality of a pitbull when it came to suspects. But with victims and their relatives he showed a surprising tenderness. In a soft voice, thickened by a Brooklyn drawl, he said, "I'm so sorry. He's gone, yes." He helped her up and she leaned against the wall of the alley.

"Who did it? Why?" Her voice rose to a screech as she stared at the terrible tableau of her brother's death. "Who'd do something like this? Who?"

"We don't know, ma'am," Sachs said. "I'm sorry. But we'll find him. I promise you."

Gasping for breath, she turned. "Don't let my daughter see, please."

Sachs looked past her to a car, parked half on the curb, where she'd left it in her panic. In the passenger seat was a teenage girl, who was staring at Sachs with a frown, her head cocked. The detective stepped in front of the body, blocking the girl's view of her uncle.

The sister, whose name was Barbara Eckhart, had jumped from her car without her coat and was huddling against the cold. Sachs led her through the open door into the service lobby that she'd just run. The hysterical woman asked to use the restroom and when she emerged she was still shaken and pale, though the crying was under control.

Barbara had no idea what the killer's motive might be. Her brother, a bachelor, worked for himself, a freelance advertising copywriter. He was well liked and had no enemies that she knew of. He wasn't involved in any romantic triangles--no jealous husbands--and had never done drugs or anything else illegal. He'd moved to the city two years earlier.

That he had no apparent OC connection troubled Sachs; it moved the psycho factor into first place, far more dangerous to the public than a mob pro.

Sachs explained how the body would be processed. It would be released by the medical examiner to the next of kin within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Barbara's face grew stony. "Why did he kill Teddy like that? What was he thinking?"

But that was a question for which Amelia Sachs had no answer.

Watching the woman return to her car, Sellitto helping her, Sachs couldn't take her eyes off the daughter, who was staring back at the policewoman. The look was hard to bear. The girl must know by now that this man was in fact her uncle and he was dead, but Sachs could see what seemed to be a small bit of hope in the girl's face.

Hope, about to be destroyed.

Hungry.

Vincent Reynolds lay on his musty bed in their temporary home, which was, of all things, a former church, and felt his soul's hunger, silently mimicking the grumbling of his bulging belly.

This old Catholic structure, in a deserted area of Manhattan near the Hudson River, was their base of operation for the killings. Gerald Duncan was from out of town and Vincent's apartment was in New Jersey. Vincent had said they could stay at his place but Duncan had said, no, they could hardly do that. They should have no contact whatsoever with their real residences. He'd sounded sort of like he was lecturing. But not in a bad way. It was like a fat

her instructing his son.

"A church?" Vincent had asked. "Why?"