The Vanished Man (Lincoln Rhyme 5)

Five minutes later Thom let Sellitto back into the bedroom. "Coffee?"

"Yeah. Could use some. Too fucking early to work on a Saturday."

The aide left.

"So, how do I look, Linc?" asked the pirouetting middle-aged detective, whose gray suit was typical of his wardrobe--made apparently from permanently wrinkled cloth.

"A fashion show?" Rhyme asked.

Coincidence?

Then his mind slipped back to the CD. How the hell does somebody play the trumpet so smoothly? How can you get that kind of sound from a metal instrument?

The detective continued: "I lost sixteen pounds. Rachel has me on a diet. Fat's the problem. You cut out fat, you'd be amazed how much weight you can lose."

"Fat, yes. I think we knew that, Lon. So . . . ?" Meaning, get to the point.

"Gotta bizarre case. Found a body a half hour ago at a music school up the street from here. I'm case officer and we could use some help."

Music school. And I'm listening to music. That's a piss-poor coincidence.

Sellitto ran through some of the facts: student killed, the perp was nearly collared but he got away through some kind of trapdoor that nobody could find.

Music was mathematical. That much Rhyme, a scientist, could understand. It was logical, it was perfectly structured. It was also, he reflected, infinite. An unlimited number of tunes could be written. You could never be bored writing music. He wondered how one went about it. Rhyme believed he had no creativity. He'd taken piano lessons when he was eleven or twelve but, even though he'd developed an enduring crush on Miss Osborne, the lessons themselves were a write-off. His fondest memories of the instrument were taking stroboscopic pictures of the resonating strings for a science-fair project.

"You with me, Linc?"

"A case, you were saying. Bizarre."

Sellitto gave more of the details, slowly corralling Rhyme's attention. "There's got to be some way outta the hall. But nobody from the school or our team can find it."

"How's the scene?"

"Still pretty virgin. Can we get Amelia to run it?"

Rhyme glanced at the clock. "She's tied up for another twenty minutes or so."

"That's not a problem," Sellitto said, patting his stomach as if he were searching for the lost weight. "I'll page her."

"Let's not distract her just yet."

"Why, what's she doing?"

"Oh, something dangerous," Rhyme said, concentrating once more on the silken voice of the trumpet. "What else?"

*

She smelled the wet brick of the tenement wall against her face.

Her palms sweated and, beneath the fiery red hair shoved up under her dusty issue hat, her scalp itched fiercely. Still, she remained completely motionless as a uniformed officer slipped up close beside her and planted his face against the brick too.

"Okay, here's the situation," the man said, nodding toward their right. He explained that just around the corner of the tenement was a vacant lot, in the middle of which was a getaway car that'd crashed a few minutes ago after a high-speed pursuit.

"Drivable?" Amelia Sachs asked.

"No. Hit a Dumpster and's out of commission. Three perps. They bailed but we got one in custody. One's in the car with some kind of Jesus-long hunting rifle. He wounded a patrolman."

"Condition?"