Archer seemed amused and cocked her head playfully. As if she might easily have negotiated and won a change in the sign-on date but didn't feel like pushing the matter.
"You need the address?" Rhyme asked.
"I have it."
In lieu of shaking hands they both nodded, sealing the agreement. Archer smiled and then her right index finger moved to the touchpad of her own wheelchair, a silver Storm Arrow, the same model Rhyme had used until a few years ago. "I'll see you then." She turned the unit and eased up the aisle and out the doorway.
CHAPTER 4
The detached house was dark-red brick. The color close to that of Patrolman Buddy Everett's glasses frames, the color of dried blood, viscera. You couldn't help but think that. Under the circumstances.
Amelia Sachs was lingering, her eyes taking in the warm illumination from inside, which flickered occasionally as the many visitors here floated between lamp and window. The effect could be like a strobe; the house was small and the guests many.
Death summons together those with even the most tenuous connections.
Lingering.
In her years as a police officer Sachs had delivered news of loss to dozens of family members. She was competent at it, vamping on the lines they were taught by the psychologists at the academy. ("I'm very sorry for your loss." "Do you have someone you can turn to for support?" With a script like that, you had to improvise.)
But tonight was different. Because Sachs didn't believe she'd ever been present at the exact moment when a victim's electrons departed cells, or, if you were of a different ilk, the spirit abandoned the corpus. She'd had her hands on Greg Frommer's arm at the moment of death. And as much as she did not want to make this trip, the pact had been sealed. She wouldn't break it.
She slid her holster east of her hip, out of sight. It seemed a decent thing to do, though she had no explanation why. The other concession to this mission had been to make a stop at her apartment, also in Brooklyn, not terribly far, to shower and change clothes. It would have taken luminol and an alternative light source wand to find a speck of blood anywhere on her person.
Up the stairs and ringing the bell.
The door was opened by a tall man in a Hawaiian shirt and orange shorts. Fifties or so. Of course, this was not the funeral; that would be later. Tonight the gathering was the quick descent of friends and relatives to support, to bring food, to both distract from the grief and to focus it.
"Hi," he said. His eyes were as red as the lei around the neck of the parrot on his belly. Frommer's brother? The resemblance was jarring.
"I'm Amelia Sachs. With the NYPD. Is Mrs. Frommer able to speak with me for a moment or two?" She said this kindly, her voice cleansed of officialdom.
"I'm sure. Please come in."
The house contained little furniture and the pieces were mismatched and threadbare. The few pictures on the walls might have come from Walmart or Target. Frommer, she'd learned, had been a salesclerk at a shoe store in the mall, working for minimum pay. The TV was small and the cable box basic. No video game console, though she saw they had at least one child--a skateboard, battered and wrapped in duct tape, sat against a far corner. Some Japanese manga comics were stacked on the floor beside a scabby end table.
"I'm Greg's cousin, Bob."
"I'm so sorry about what happened." Sometimes you fell into rote.
"We couldn't believe it. The wife and I live in Schenectady. We got here as fast as we could." He said again, "We couldn't believe it. To... well, die in an accident like that." Despite the tropical costume, Bob grew imposing. "Somebody's going to pay for this. That never should've happened."
A few people of the other visitors nodded at her, eyeing her clothing, picked out carefully. Calf-length skirt in dark green, black jacket and blouse. She was dressed funereally, though not by design. This was Sachs's typical uniform. Dark offers a more uncooperative target profile than light.
"I'll get Sandy."
"Thanks."
Across the room was a boy of about twelve, flanked by a man and two women in their fifties, Sachs estimated. The boy's round, freckled face was red from crying and his hair tousled badly. She wondered if he'd been lying in bed, paralyzed at the news of his father's death, before family arrived.
"Yes, hello?"
Sachs turned. The slim blond woman was very pale of face, a stark and unsettling contrast with the bold red of her lids and the skin below her eyes. Adding to the eeriness were her striking green irises. Her sundress, in dark blue, was wrinkled and though her shoes were close in style they were from different pairs.
"I'm Amelia Sachs, with the police department."
No shield display. No need.
Sachs asked if they could have a word in private.