No, just keep going. Most important, get out!
And resist making a phone call to the fire department now. The phone might ignite the gas. Just keep going. Fast, fast.
Dizzier, dizzier.
Whatever happened, he was so very glad that Ruth wasn't home. Pure luck that she'd decided to stay in Connecticut after her business meetings.
Thank you for that, he thought to a generic god. Abe Benkoff hadn't been to temple in twenty years. A lapse that would end next Friday, he decided--if he got out of here.
Then into the hallway and staggering toward the front door. He stumbled once, dropped the phone, snagged it and began to crawl again. He'd get outside, slam the door, behind him. Hit the fire alarm, warning the other tenants, and dial 911.
Twenty feet, ten.
The fumes weren't so bad here in the front hallway of the apartment, some distance from the stove. Five feet to safety.
A man of words and numbers, a man at home in the rarefied world of offices, Benkoff now became a soldier, thinking only of survival. I'm going to make it. Goddamn it, I am.
CHAPTER 27
Lincoln Rhyme was awakened by his humming phone.
The clock: 6:17 a.m.
"Answer" was the groggy command to the unit. "Yes?" Directed to the caller.
"Rhyme, another one."
He asked Amelia Sachs, "Unsub Forty?"
"Right."
"What happened?"
"Murray Hill. Gas explosion. Looks like he sabotaged a stove--one of the products on the list Rodney found."
"And the vic was on the second list, the purchasers?"
"Right. Put a new kitchen in a couple of years ago. Purchase information was in the data."
Rhyme pressed his attendant button, to summ
on Thom.
Sachs continued, "Victim is Abe Benkoff, fifty-eight, advertising executive." She paused a moment. "Rhyme, he burned to death. Ron's pulling the vic's vitals. I'm going to get down there now, run the scene."
They disconnected. Rhyme called Mel Cooper, summoning him back to the town house in anticipation of analyzing what Sachs would find at Benkoff's.
Thom arrived for the morning routine and in ten minutes Rhyme was downstairs, in the parlor. He turned his chair at an oblique angle and eased toward the evidence charts, looking over the findings from the past crime scenes, concerned that there might have been something they'd missed--he'd missed--that could have let them anticipate this attack.
Murray Hill...
A fancy stove...
Gas explosion...
It was always a long shot, making an educated guess from the evidence in past crimes as to where the perp might strike in the future. In essence, doing so was dependent on the unsub's visiting scenes to plan a crime, accidentally picking up evidence there and then depositing it at another scene, where it was discovered. Most serial killers or multiple doers weren't so helpful.
But Unsub 40 had such a curious agenda and wielded such an odd weapon that it seemed he would have to do some homework a day or two or even more ahead of time to make sure he'd succeed with the murder.