"He will bail," Sachs said. "But he's going to get some distance first." She nodded to the evidence crates. "Get all this to Rhyme," she called and ten seconds later she was in the seat of her Camaro and had the big engine rattling. She snapped the race-car harness on and pulled the canvas straps snug.
"Amelia, wait!" Bell called. "ESU is on the way."
But the squeal of rubber and the cloud of blue smoke the Goodyears left behind were her only response to Bell's words.
*
Skidding onto Central Park West, heading north, Sachs concentrated on avoiding pedestrians, poky cars, bicyclists and Rollerbladers.
Baby strollers too. They were everywhere. Man, why weren't these kids home taking naps?
She pitched the blue flasher onto the dash and plugged it into the cigarette lighter outlet. The brilliant light began rotating and as she hurtled forward she found herself slapping the horn in time to the flash.
A streak of gray in front of her.
Shit. . . . As she braked hard to avoid the U-turner the Camaro ended up a scant foot from the side of a car that was worth twice her annual income. Then she crunched the accelerator again and the General Motors horses responded instantly. She managed to keep the needle under fifty until the traffic thinned out, around Ninetieth Street, and then she went to the floor.
In a few seconds she hit seventy.
A clatter through the headset of her Motorola, which lay on the front passenger seat. She grabbed it with one hand and pulled it on.
" 'Lo?" she called, dispensing with any pretense of requisite police radio codes.
"Amelia? Roland here," Bell called. He'd also given up on standard communication protocols.
"Go ahead."
"We've got cars on the way."
"Where is he?" she asked, shouting over the roar of the engine.
"Hold on. . . . Okay, he drove out of the park on Central Park North. Sideswiped a truck and kept going."
"Headed where?"
"That was . . . It was less'n a minute ago. He's going north."
"Got it."
Heading north in Harlem? Sachs considered. There were several routes out of the city from that area of town but she doubted that he'd take any of them; they all involved bridges and most were via controlled-access highways, where he'd easily be trapped.
More likely he'd abandon the sedan in a relatively quiet neighborhood and carjack a new one.
A new voice resounded in her headset. "Sachs, we've got him!"
"Where, Rhyme?"
He'd turned westbound on 125th Street, the criminalist explained. "Near Fifth Avenue."
"I'm just about at One-two-five and Adam Clayton Powell. I'll try to block him. But get me some backup," she called.
"We're on it, Sachs. Just how fast are you going?"
"I'm not really looking at the speedometer."
"Probably just as well. Keep your eyes on the road."
Sachs honked her way into the busy intersection at 125th Street. She parked crosswise, blocking the westbound lanes. She jumped out of her car, her Glock in her hand. Several cars were stopped in the eastbound lanes. Sachs shouted to the drivers, "Out! Police action. Get out of those cars and get under cover." The drivers--a deliveryman and a woman in a McDonald's uniform--instantly did as they were told.