"Thanks for what you did. You saved lives. You saved my life." The girl gazed at Sachs with a curious look then glanced down. The detective handed her the Harry Potter book she'd found in the bedroom and Sachs asked if the girl knew anything about the man calling himself Gerald Duncan.
"He was creepy. Like, way weird. He'd just look at you like you were a rock or a car or a table. Not a person."
"You have any idea where he is?"
She shook her head. "All I know is I heard Mom say he was renting a place in Brooklyn somewhere. I don't know where. He wouldn't say. But he's coming by later to pick up some money."
Sachs pulled Pulaski aside and asked him to check all the calls to and from Charlotte's and Bud's mobile phones, as well as the calls from the hotel room phone.
"How 'bout the lobby phone too? The pay phone, I mean. And the ones on the street nearby."
She lifted an eyebrow. "Good idea."
The rookie headed off on his mission. Sachs got a soda and gave it to the girl. She opened the can and drank down half of it fast. She was looking at Sachs in a strange way. Then she gave a laugh.
Sachs asked, "What?"
"You really don't remember me, do you? I met you before."
"Near the alley on Tuesday. Sure."
"No, no. Like, a long time before that."
Sachs squinted. She recalled that she had felt some sense of familiarity when she'd seen the girl in the car at the first crime scene in the alley. And she felt it even more strongly now. But she couldn't place where she might've seen the girl prior to Tuesday. "I'm afraid I don't remember."
"You saved my life. I was a little girl."
"A long time . . ." Then Amelia Sachs squinted, turned toward the mother and studied Charlotte more closely. "Oh, my God," she gasped.
Chapter 40
Inside the shabby hotel room, Lincoln Rhyme shook his head in disbelief as Sachs told him what she'd just learned: that they had known Charlotte some years ago when she'd come to New York using the pseudonym Carol Ganz. She and her daughter, whose name was Pammy, had been victims in the first case Sachs and Rhyme had worked together--the very one he'd been thinking of earlier, the kidnapper obsessed with human bones, a perp as clever and ruthless as the Watchmaker.
To pursue him, Rhyme had recruited Sachs to be his eyes and ears and legs at the crime scenes and together they'd managed to rescue both the woman and her daughter--only to learn that Carol was really Charlotte Willoughby. She was part of a right-wing militia movement, which abhorred the federal government and its involvement in world affairs. After their rescue and reunion, the woman managed to slip a bomb into the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan. The explosion killed six people.
Rhyme and Sachs had taken up the case but Charlotte and the girl disappeared into the movement's underground, probably in the Midwest or West, and eventually the trail went cold.
From time to time they would check out FBI, VICAP and local police reports with a militia or right-wing political angle but no leads to Charlotte or Pammy panned out. Sachs's concern for the little girl never diminished, though, and sometimes, lying in bed with Rhyme at night, she'd wonder out loud how the girl was doing, if it was too late to save her. Sachs, who'd always wanted children, was horrified at the kind of life her mother was presumably forcing the girl to live--hiding out, having few friends her age, never going to a regular school--all in the name of some hateful cause.
And now Charlotte--with her new husband, Bud Allerton--had returned to the city on yet another mission of terrorism, and Rhyme and Sachs had become entwined in their lives once again.
Charlotte now glared at Rhyme, her eyes filled with both tears and hatred. "You murdered Bud! You goddamn fascists! You killed him." The prisoner then gave a cold laugh. "But we won! How many did we kill tonight? Fifty people. Seventy-five? And how many senior people in the Pentagon?"
Sachs leaned close to her face. "Did you know there'd be children in that conference room? Husbands and wives of the soldiers? Their parents? Grandparents? Did you know that?"
"Of course we knew it," Charlotte said.
"They were just sacrifices too, is that right?"
"For the greater good," Charlotte replied.
Which was maybe a slogan she and her group recited at the beginning of their rallies, or whatever meetings they had.
Rhyme caught Sachs's eye. He said, "Maybe we should show her the carnage."
Sachs nodded and clicked on the TV.
An anchorwoman was on the screen. " . . . one minor injury. A bomb squad officer who was driving a remote-control robot in an attempt to defuse the bombs was wounded slightly by shrapnel. He's been treated and released. Property damage was estimated at five hundred thousand dollars. Despite initial reports, neither al-Qaeda nor any other Islamic terrorist group has been implicated in the bombing. According to a New York Police Department spokeswoman, a domestic terrorist organization was responsible. Again, if you're just joining us, two bombs exploded around noon today in the office of Housing and Urban Development in lower Manhattan but there were no fatalities and only one minor injury. An undersecretary of state and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were among the intended victims. . . ."