ulating organs wherever they were needed. Delivery was guaranteed. Rain, snow, wind shear, conditions at minimum--as long as the airport was open and it was legal to fly, Hudson Air would deliver the cargo on time.
The first month was to be a trial period. If it worked out they'd get an eighteen-month contract that would be the backbone for the Company's survival.
Apparently Ron had charmed the client into giving them another chance, but if Foxtrot Bravo wasn't ready for tomorrow's flight . . . Percey didn't even want to think about that possibility.
As she rode in the police car through Central Park Percey Clay looked over the early spring growth. Ed had loved the park and had run here frequently. He'd do two laps around the reservoir and return home looking bedraggled, his grayish hair hanging in strands around his face. And me? Percey laughed sadly to herself now. He'd find her sitting at home, poring over a nav log or an advanced turbofan repair manual, maybe smoking, maybe drinking a Wild Turkey. And, grinning, Ed would poke her in the ribs with a strong finger and ask if she could do anything else unhealthy at the same time. And while they laughed, he'd sneak a couple of swigs of the bourbon.
Remembering then how he'd bend down and kiss her shoulder. When they made love it was that juncture where he'd rest his face, bent forward, locked against her skin, and Percey Clay believed that there, where her neck flared onto her delicate shoulders, if only there, she was a beautiful woman.
Ed . . .
All the stars of evening . . .
Tears again filling her eyes, she glanced up into the gray sky. Ominous. She estimated the ceiling at one five hundred feet, winds 090 at fifteen knots. Wind shear conditions. She shifted in the seat. Brit Hale's strong fingers were encircling her forearm. Jerry Banks was chatting about something. She wasn't listening.
Percey Clay came to a decision. She unfolded the cell phone again.
. . . Chapter Eight
Hour 3 of 45
The siren wailed.
Lincoln Rhyme expected to hear the Doppler effect as the emergency vehicle cruised past. But right outside his front door the siren gave a brief chirrup and went silent. A moment later Thom let a young man into the first-floor lab. Crowned with a spiffy crew cut, the Illinois state trooper wore a blue uniform, which had probably been immaculate when he put it on yesterday but was now wrinkled and streaked with soot and dirt. He'd run an electric razor over his face but had made only faint inroads into the dark beard that contrasted with his thin yellow hair. He was carrying two large canvas satchels and a brown folder, and Rhyme was happier to see him than he'd been to see anybody in the past week.
"The bomb!" he shouted. "Here's the bomb!"
The officer, surprised at the odd collection of law enforcers, must have wondered what hit him as Cooper scooped the bags away from him and Sellitto scrawled a signature on the receipt and chain-of-custody card and shoved them back into his hand. "Thanks so long see ya," the detective exhaled, turning back to the evidence table.
Thom smiled politely to the trooper and let him out of the room.
Rhyme called, "Let's go, Sachs. You're just standing around! What've we got?"
She offered a cold smile and walked over to Cooper's table, where the tech was carefully laying out the contents of the bags.
What was her problem today? An hour was plenty of time to search a scene, if that's what she was upset about. Well, he liked her feisty. He himself was always at his best that way. "Okay, Thom, help us out here. The blackboard. We need to list the evidence. Make us some charts. 'CS-One.' The first heading."
"C, uhm, S?"
"'Crime scene,'" the criminalist snapped. "What else would it be? 'CS-One, Chicago.'"
In a recent case, Rhyme had used the back of a limp Metropolitan Museum poster as an evidence profiling chart. He now was state of the art--several large chalkboards were mounted to the wall, redolent with scents that took him back to humid spring school days in the Midwest, living for science class and despising spelling and English.
The aide, casting an exasperated glance toward his boss, picked up the chalk, brushed some dust from his perfect tie and knife-crease slacks, and wrote.
"What do we have, Mel? Sachs, help him."
They began unloading the plastic bags and plastic jars of ash and bits of metal and fiber and wads of plastic. They assembled contents in porcelain trays. The crash site searchers--if they were on a par with the men and women Rhyme had trained--would have used roller-mounted magnets, large vacuum cleaners, and a series of fine mesh screens to locate debris from the blast.
Rhyme, expert in most areas of forensics, was an authority on bombs. He'd had no particular interest in the subject until the Dancer left his tiny package in the wastebasket of the Wall Street office where Rhyme's two techs were killed. After that Rhyme had taken it on himself to learn everything he could about explosives. He'd studied with the FBI's Explosives Unit, one of the smallest--but most elite--in the federal lab, composed of fourteen agent-examiners and technicians. They didn't find IEDs--improvised explosive devices, the law enforcement term for bombs--and they didn't render them safe. Their job was to analyze bombs and bomb crime scenes and to trace and categorize the makers and their students (bomb manufacture was considered an art in certain circles and apprentices worked hard to learn the techniques of famous bomb makers).
Sachs was poking over the bags. "Doesn't a bomb destroy itself?"
"Nothing's ever completely destroyed, Sachs. Remember that." Though as he wheeled closer and examined the bags, he admitted, "This was a bad one. See those fragments? That pile of aluminum on the left? The metal's shattered, not bent. That means the device had a high brisance--"
"High . . . ?" Sellitto asked.
"Brisance." Rhyme explained: "Detonation rate. But even so, sixty to ninety percent of a bomb survives the blast. Well, not the explosive, of course. Though there's always enough residue to type it. Oh, we've got plenty to work with here."