The Broken Window (Lincoln Rhyme 8)

Halfway through she stopped abruptly.

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A noise.

She was sure it was the sound of metal against metal. A gun chambering a round? A knife opening?

She looked around quickly but saw only the dusk-blanketed cemetery. Amelia Sachs didn't believe in ghosts, and normally found resting grounds like this peaceful, even comforting. But now her teeth were clenched, her palms sweating in the latex gloves.

She'd just turned back to the body when she gasped, seeing a flash of light nearby.

Was it a streetlight through those bushes?

Or 522 moving closer, a knife in his hand?

Uncontrolled . . .

And she couldn't help but think he'd already tried once to kill her--the setup near DeLeon Williams's house with the federal agent--and failed. Maybe he was determined to finish what he'd started.

She returned to her task. But as she was nearly finished collecting evidence, she shivered. Movement again--this time on the far side of the lights, but still within the cemetery, which had been closed by patrol officers. She squinted through the glare. Had it been the breeze jostling a tree? An animal?

Her father, a lifer of a cop and a generous source of street wisdom, once told her, "Forget the dead bodies, Amie, they're not going to hurt you. Worry about the ones who made 'em dead."

Echoing Rhyme's admonition to "search carefully, but watch your back."

Amelia Sachs didn't believe in a sixth sense. Not in the way people think of the supernatural. To her, the whole natural world was so amazing and our senses and thought processes so complex and powerful that we didn't need superhuman skills to make the most perceptive of deductions.

She was sure somebody was there.

She stepped out of the crime-scene perimeter and strapped her Glock onto her hip. Tapped the grip a few times to orient her hand, in case she needed to draw fast. She went back to the grid, finished with the evidence and turned quickly in the direction where she'd seen the movement earlier.

The lights were blinding but she knew without doubt that a man was there, in the shadows of the building, studying her from the back of the crematorium. Maybe a worker but she wasn't taking any chances. Hand on her pistol, she strode forward twenty feet. Her white jumpsuit made a nice target in the failing light but she decided not to waste time stripping it off.

She drew her Glock and pushed fast through the bushes, starting a painful jog on arthritic legs toward the figure. But then Sachs stopped, grimacing, as she looked at the loading dock of the crematorium, where she'd seen the intruder. Her mouth tightened, angry at herself. The man, a silhouette against a streetlight outside the cemetery, was a cop; she could see the outline of the patrolman's hat and noted the slumped, bored posture of a man on guard duty. She called, "Officer? You see anybody over there?"

"No, Detective Sachs," he answered. "Sure haven't."

"Thanks."

She finished with the evidence, then released the scene to the medical examiner tour doctor.

Returning to her car, she opened the trunk and began stripping off the white jumpsuit. She was chatting with the other officers from the CS main headquarters in Queens. They too had changed out of their own overalls. One frowned and was looking around for something he'd misplaced.

"Lose something?" she asked.

The man frowned. "Yeah. It was right here. My hat."

Sachs froze. "What?"

"It's missing."

Shit. She tossed the jumpsuit into the trunk and jogged fast to the sergeant from the local precinct, who was the immediate supervisor here. "Did you have anybody secure the loading dock?" she asked breathlessly.

"Over there? Naw. I didn't bother. We had the whole area sealed and--"

Goddamnit.

Turning, she sprinted to the loading dock, her Glock in hand. She shouted to the officers nearby, "He was here! By the crematorium. Move!"