Sachs returned and Rhyme persisted. "Your unsub? How are you identifying him, again? I forgot." He was sure she'd told him. But unless a fact directly touched a project Rhyme was involved with, it tended to dissipate like vapor.
"Unsub Forty. After that club near where he killed the vic." She seemed surprised he hadn't remembered.
"He rabbited."
"Yep. Vanished. It was chaos, because of the escalator thing."
He noted that Sachs didn't unholster her Glock and place it on the shelf near the front doorway into the hall. This meant she wouldn't be staying tonight. She had her own town house, in Brooklyn, and divided her time between there and here. Or she had until recently. For the past few weeks, she'd stayed here only twice.
Another observation: Her clothing was pristine, not evidencing the dirt and blood that had to have resulted from her descent into the pit to try to rescue the accident victim. Since the unsub's escape--and the escalator incident--had been in Brooklyn, she would have gone home to bathe and change.
Therefore, since she was planning on leaving again, why had she driven back here from that borough to Manhattan?
Maybe for dinner? He was hoping so.
Thom stepped into the parlor from the hallway. "Here you go." He handed her a glass of white wine.
"Thanks." She sipped.
Rhyme's aide was trim and as good-looking as a Nautica model, today dressed in dark slacks, white shirt and subdued burgundy-and-pink tie. He dressed better than any other caregiver Rhyme had ever had, and if the outfit seemed a bit impractical, the important part was attended to: His shoes were solid and rubber-soled--to safely transfer the solidly built Rhyme between bed and wheelchair. And an accessory: Peeking from his rear pocket was a fringe of cornflower-blue latex gloves for the piss 'n' shit detail.
He said to Sachs, "You sure you can't stay for dinner?"
"No, thanks. I have other plans."
Which answered that question, though the lack of elaboration only added to the mystery of her presence here now.
Rhyme cleared his throat. He glanced at his empty tumbler, sitting mouth level on the side of the wheelchair (the cup holder was its first accessory).
"You've had two," Thom told him.
"I've had one, which you divided into two. Actually I've had less than one if I saw the quantity correctly." Sometimes he fought with the aide on this, and a dozen other, subjects but today Rhyme wasn't in a truly petulant mood; he was pleased at how class had gone. On the other hand, he was troubled, as well. What was up with Sachs? But, let us not parse too finely, mostly he just wanted more goddamn scotch.
He almost added that it had been one hell of a day. But that wouldn't have been the truth. It had been a pleasant day, a calm day. Unlike the many times when he was half crazed from the pursuit of a killer or terrorist, before he'd quit the police consulting business.
"Please and thank you?"
Thom looked at him suspiciously. He hesitated then poured from the bottle of Glenmorangie, which, damn it, the man kept on a shelf out of reach, as if Rhyme were a toddler fascinated by a colorful tin of drain cleaner.
"Dinner in a half hour," Thom said and vanished back to his simmering turbot.
Sachs sipped wine, looking ov
er the forensic lab equipment and supplies packed into the Victorian parlor: computers, a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, ballistics examination units, density gradient measurers, friction ridge imaging hoods, alternative light sources, a scanning electron microscope. With these, and the dozens of examination tables and hundreds of tools, the parlor was a forensic lab that would be the envy of many a small-or even medium-sized police department. Much of it was now covered with plastic tarps or cotton sheets, as unemployed as their owner. Rhyme still consulted some on non-criminal matters, in addition to teaching, but most of his work involved writing for academia and professional journals.
Her eyes, he saw, went to a dim corner where sat a half-dozen whiteboards on which they used to write down evidence gathered from scenes by Sachs and Rhyme's former protege, Patrolman Ron Pulaski. The threesome, along with another officer from CSU headquarters, would stand, and sit, before the boards and kick about ideas as to the perp's identity and whereabouts. The boards now faced away, toward the wall, as if resenting that Rhyme no longer had any use for them.
After a moment Sachs said, "I went to see the widow."
"Widow?"
"Sandy Frommer. The wife of the victim."
It took him a moment to realize she wasn't speaking of the person killed by Unsub 40, but the man who'd died in the escalator accident.
"You have to deliver the news?" Forensic cops, like Rhyme, rarely if ever are charged with the difficult task of explaining that a loved one is no longer of this earth.
"No. Just... Greg, the vic, wanted me to tell her he loved her and his son. When he was dying. I agreed."