The Vanished Man (Lincoln Rhyme 5)

"Bad for her, the guy turned out to be Victor Ramos."

"The congressman." Lincoln Rhyme had virtually no interest in local government but he knew about Ramos: an opportunistic politico who'd abandoned his Latino constituents in Spanish Harlem until recently, now that the politically correct climate--and size of the electorate--meant he could push for Albany or a spot in Washington.

"Can they wash her out?"

"Come on, Linc, they can do what they fucking want. They're even talking suspension."

"She can fight it. She will fight it."

"And you know what happens to street cops who take on brass. Odds're, even if she wins, they'll send her to East New York. Hell, even worse, they'll send her to a desk in East New York."

"Fuck," the criminalist spat out.

Sellitto paced around the room, stepping over cables and glancing at the Conjurer case whiteboards. The detective dropped into a chair that creaked under his weight. He kneaded a roll of fat around his waistband; the Conjurer case had seriously sidetracked his diet. "One thing," he said softly, a whiff of conspiracy in his voice.

"Yeah?"

"There's this guy I know. He was the one cleaned up the Eighteen."

"When all that crack and smack kept disappearing from the evidence locker? A few years ago?"

"Yeah. That was it. He's got serious wire all over the Big Building. The commissioner'll listen to him and he'll listen to me. He owes me." Then he waved his arm toward the Conjurer case evidence boards. "And, fuck, lookit what we just did. We nailed one hell of a doer. Lemme give him a call. Pull some strings for her."

And Rhyme's eyes too took in the charts, then the equipment, the examining tables, books--all devoted to the science of analyzing the evidence that Sachs had teased or muscled out of crime scenes over the past few years they'd been together. "I don't know," he said.

"Whatsa problem?"

"If she made sergeant that way, well, she wouldn't be the one making it."

The detective replied, "You know what this promotion means to her, Linc."

Yeah, he did.

"Look, all we're doing is playing by Ramos's rules. He wants to take it down a notch we'll do the same. Make it a, you know, even playing field." Sellitto liked his idea. He added, "Amelia'll never find out. I'll tell my guy to keep the lid on it. He'll do it."

You know what this promotion means to her. . . .

"So what do you think?" the detective asked.

Rhyme said nothing for a moment, looking for the answer in the silent forensic equipment surrounding him and then in the green mist of spring buds crowning the trees in Central Park.

*

The scuffs on the woodwork had been scrubbed away and all traces of the fire in the bedroom had been "vanished," as Thom had put it, rather cleverly, Rhyme thought. A rich scent of smoke lingered but that reminded Lincoln Rhyme of good scotch and was therefore not a problem at all.

Now, midnight, the room dark, Rhyme lay in his Flexicair bed, staring out the window. Outside was a flutter of motion as a falcon, one of God's most fluid creatures, landed on the ledge. Depending on the light, and their degree of alertness, the birds seemed to shrink or grow in size. Tonight they seemed larger than in the daylight, their forms magnificent. Menacing too; they weren't pleased with the noises radiating from the Cirque Fantastique in Central Park.

Well, Rhyme wasn't very happy about them either. He'd dozed off ten minutes ago only to be awakened by a loud burst of applause from the tent.

"They should have a curfew on that," Rhyme grumbled to Sachs, lying beside him in bed.

"I could shoot out their generator," she replied, her voice clear. She apparently hadn't gotten to sleep at all. Her head was on the pillow next to his, lips against his neck, on which he could feel the faint tickle of her hair and the smooth cool plane of her skin. Also: her breasts against his chest, belly to hip, leg over leg. He knew this only by observation, of course; there was no sensate proof of the contact. He relished that closeness all the same.

Sachs always adhered to Rhyme's firm rule that those walking the grid not wear scent because they might miss olfactory evidence at crime scenes. But she was off duty at the moment and he detected on her skin a pleasant, complex smell, which he deduced to be jasmine, gardenia and synthetic motor oil.

They were alone in the apartment. They'd shipped Thom off to the movies with his friend Peter and had spent the night with some new CDs, two ounces of Sevruga caviar, Ritz crackers, and copious Moet, despite the inherent difficulties in drinking champagne through a straw. Now, in the darkness, he was thi

nking again about music, about how such a purely mechanical system of tones and pacing could consume you so completely. It fascinated him. The more he thought about it, the more he decided that the subject might not be as mysterious as it seemed. Music was, after all, firmly rooted in his world: science, logic and mathematics.