9:02 A.M. WEDNESDAY
Time is the fire in which we burn.
--DELMORE SCHWARTZ
Chapter 23
Lincoln Rhyme had been awake for more than an hour. A young officer from the Coast Guard had delivered a jacket found floating in New York Harbor, a man's size 44. It was, the captain of the boat deduced, probably the missing victim's; both sleeves were covered in blood, the cuffs slashed.
The jacket was a Macy's house brand and contained no other trace or evidence that could lead back to the owner.
He was now alone in the bedroom with Thom, who'd just finished Rhyme's morning routine--his physical therapy exercises and what the aide delicately called "hygienic duties." (Rhyme referred to them as the "piss 'n' shit detail," though usually only when easy-to-shock visitors were present.) Amelia Sachs now walked up the stairs and joined him. She dropped her jacket in a chair, walked past him, opened the curtains. She looked out the window, into Central Park.
The slim young man sensed immediately that something was up. "I'll go make coffee. Or toast. Or something." He vanished, closing the door behind him.
So what was this? Rhyme wondered unhappily. He'd had more than enough personal issues recently than he wanted to deal with.
Her eyes were still looking over the painful brightness of the park. He asked, "So what was this errand that was so important?"
"I stopped by Argyle Security."
Rhyme blinked and looked at her face closely. "They're the ones that called after you got written up in the Times, when we closed that case about the illusionist."
"Right."
Argyle was an international company that specialized in safeguarding corporate executives and negotiating the release of kidnapped employees--a popular crime in some foreign countries. They'd offered Sachs a job making twice what she did as a cop. And promised her a carry permit--a license for a concealed weapon--in most jurisdictions, unusual for security companies. That and the promise to send her to exotic and dangerous locations caught her interest, though she'd turned them down immediately.
"What's this all about?"
"I'm quitting, Rhyme."
"Quitting the force? Are you serious?"
She nodded. "I've pretty much decided. I want to go in a different direction. I can do good things there too. Protecting families, guarding kids. They do a lot of antiterrorist work."
Now he too stared out the window at the stark, bald trees of Central Park. He thought about his conversation with Kathryn Dance the previous day, about his early days of therapy. One doctor, a sharp, young man with the NYPD, Terry Dobyns, had told him, "Nothing lasts forever." He'd meant this about the depression he'd been experiencing.
Now the sentence meant something very different and he couldn't get the words out of his mind.
Nothing lasts forever. . . .
"Ah."
"I think I have to, Rhyme. I have to."
"Because of your father?"
She nodded, dug her finger into her hair, scratched. Winced at that pain, or at some other.
"This's crazy, Sachs."
"I don't think I can do it anymore. Be a cop."
"It's pretty fast, don't you think?"
"I've thought about it all night. I've never thought about anything so much in my life."
"Well, keep thinking. You can't make decisions like this after you get some bad news."