The Burial Hour (Lincoln Rhyme 13)

Sachs ran to the twelve-foot-high chain link, the six uniforms behind her.

The gate was secured with a chain and an imposing padlock.

"An

ybody got a breaching tool, bolt cutters?"

But these were patrol officers. They stopped speeders, defused domestics, helped out motorists, restrained mad dogs, busted street buys. Breaching tools were not among their issue gear.

She stood with her hands on her hips, gazing at the factory complex.

EPA Superfund Site

Warning--Hazardous Materials

Present in Soil and Water

NO TRESPASSING

There was no question of waiting for Emergency Service; the victim was about to hang to death. The only issue was how to get inside.

Well, one way was obvious and it would have to do. She would gladly have sacrificed her Torino but the snout of the fifty-year-old muscle car was delicate. The squad cars were mounted with push bumpers--those black battering rams that you saw in high-speed-chase videos.

"Keys," she called to a young patrol officer standing nearby, a stout African American woman. She handed them over at once. People tended to respond quickly to an Amelia Sachs demand.

"Everybody, back."

"What're you...Oh, Detective, no, you aren't. I gotta write it up, you mess up my front end."

"I'll do the footnotes." Sachs dropped into the driver's seat, went for the belt. Backed up. She shouted out the window, "Follow me and spread out and search like hell. Remember, this guy's got minutes."

If he's still alive.

"Hey, Detective. Look!" Another officer was pointing into the complex. At the end of a two-story wing of the factory a haze of white and gray mist formed into liver-colored smoke and spiraled upward fast--pushed hard by the heat from a fire. Intense heat.

"Jesus."

The unsub had tipped to them and set fire to the room where, she guessed, he'd made the video, intent on destroying the evidence.

And that meant he'd set fire to Robert Ellis too, whether or not he'd already died from hanging.

A voice shouted, "I'm calling FD."

Sachs jammed the accelerator to the floor. The Ford Interceptors weren't the gutsiest wheels on the block--punching in at 365 horses--but the hundred-foot takeoff run propelled the bulky vehicle plenty fast enough to pop the chain link like plastic and send the two sides of the gate butterflying into the air.

She continued on, the six cylinders exhaling fiercely.

The other cars were directly behind her.

In less than a minute she was at the building that was burning. There was no indication of fire in the front; the smoke was billowing from the back, though it would also be filling the interior, which Sachs and the others now had to hurry through, if they wanted to save the victim.

They had no masks or oxygen but Sachs hardly thought about that. She grabbed a Maglite from the purloined car. Drawing her Glock, she nodded to two other officers--one a short, handsome Latino man, the other a blond woman, hair in a severe ponytail.

"We can't wait. You two, with me. We go in, smoke or no."

"Sure, Detective." The woman nodded.

Sachs, the de facto commander, turned to the others. "Alonzo and Wilkes're going up the middle with me. I want three of you around back, flanking the unsub. And somebody take wheels and circle the perimeter. He can't've gotten very far. Any vehicle, anybody, assume it's hostile."