"What time is it?" she asked.
"Quarter to six, a little after. Get the newspaper. The church-services schedule."
Sachs found the paper, thumbed through it. Then looked up. "What're you thinking?"
"Eight twenty-three's obsessed with what's old. If he's after an old black church then he might not mean uptown. Philip Payton started the Afro-American Realty Company in Harlem in 1900. There were two other black settlements in the city. Downtown where the courthouses are now and San Juan Hill. They're mostly white now but . . . Oh, what the hell was I thinking of?"
"Where's San Juan Hill?"
"Just north of Hell's Kitchen. On the West Side. It was named in honor of all the black soldiers who fought in the Spanish-American War."
She read through the paper.
"Downtown churches," she said. "Well, in Battery Park there's the Seamen's Institute. A chapel there. They have services. Trinity. Saint Paul's."
"That wasn't the black area. Farther north and east."
"A Presbyterian church in Chinatown."
"Any Baptist. Evangelical?"
"No, nothing in that area at all. There's--Oh, hell." With resignation in her eyes she sighed. "Oh, no."
Rhyme understood. "Sunrise service!"
She was nodding. "Holy Tabernacle Baptist . . . Oh, Rhyme, there's a gospel service starting at six. Fifty-ninth and Eleventh Avenue."
"That's San Juan Hill! Call them!"
She grabbed the phone and dialed the number. She stood, head down, fiercely plucking an eyebrow and shaking her head. "Answer, answer . . . Hell. It's a recording. The minister must be out of his office." She said into the receiver, "This is the New York Police Department. We have reason to believe there's a firebomb in your church. Evacuate as fast as possible." She hung up, pulled her shoes on.
"Go, Sachs. You've got to get there. Now!"
"Me?"
"We're closer than the nearest precinct. You can be there in ten minutes."
She jogged toward the door, slinging her utility belt around her waist.
"I'll call the precinct," he yelled as she leapt down the stairs, hair a red cloud around her head. "And Sachs, if you ever wanted to drive fast, do it now."
The RRV wagon skidded into 81st Street, speeding west.
Sachs burst into the intersection at Broadway, skidded hard and whacked a New York Post vending machine, sending it through Zabar's window before she brought the wagon under control. She remembered all the crime scene equipment in the back. Rear-heavy vehicle, she thought; don't corner at fifty.
Then down Broadway. Brake at the intersections. Check left. Check right. Clear. Punch it!
She peeled off on Ninth Avenue at Lincoln Center and headed south. I'm only--
Oh, hell!
A mad stop on screaming tires.
The street was closed.
A row of blue sawhorses blocked Ninth for a street fair later that morning. A banner proclaimed, Crafts and Delicacies of all Nations. Hand in hand, we are all one.
Gaw . . . damn UN! She backed up a half block and got the wagon up to fifty before she slammed into the first sawhorse. Spreading portable aluminum tables and wooden display racks in her wake, she tore a swath through the deserted fair. Two blocks later the wagon broke through the southern barricade and she skidded west on Fifty-ninth, using far more of the sidewalk than she meant to.
There was the church, a hundred yards away.
Parishioners on the steps--parents, little girls in frilly white and pink dresses, young boys in dark suits and white shirts, their hair in gangsta knobs or fades.
And from a basement window, a small puff of gray smoke.
Sachs slammed the accelerator to the floor, the engine roaring.
Grabbing the radio. "RRV Two to Central, K?"
And in the instant it took her to glance down at the Motorola to make sure the volume was up, a big Mercedes slipped out of the alley directly into her path.
A fast glimpse of the family inside, eyes wide in horror, as the father slammed on the brakes.
Sachs instinctively spun the wheel hard to the left, putting the wagon into controlled skid. Come on, she was begging the tires, grip, grip, grip! But the oily asphalt was loose from the heat of the past few days and covered with dew. The wagon danced over the road like a hydrofoil.
The rear end met the Merc's front flat-on at fifty miles an hour. With an explosive boom the 560 sheared off the rear right side of the wagon. The black CS suitcases flew into the air, breaking open and strewing their contents along the street. Church-goers dove for cover from the splinters of glass and plastic and sheet metal.
The air bag popped and deflated, stunning Sachs. She covered her face as the wagon tumbled over a row of cars and through a newsstand then skidded to a stop upside down. Newspapers and plastic evidence bags floated to the ground like tiny paratroopers.
Held upside down by the harness, blinded by her hair, Sachs wiped blood from her torn forehead and lip and tried to pop the belt release. It held tight. Hot gasoline flowed into the car and trickled along her arm. She pulled a switchblade from her back pocket, flicked the knife open and cut the seat belt. Falling, she nearly skewered herself on the knife and lay, gasping, choking on the gas fumes.
Come on, girl, get out. Out!
The doors were jammed closed and there was no escape through the crushed rear end of the wagon. Sachs began kicking the windows. The glass wouldn't break. She drew her foot back and slammed it hard into the cracked windshield. No effect, except that she nearly sprained her ankle.
Her gun!
She slapped her hip; the gun had been torn from the holster and tossed somewhere inside the car. Feeling the hot drizzle of gasoline on her arm and shoulder, she searched frantically through the papers and CS equipment littering the ceiling of the station wagon.
Then she saw the clunky Glock near the dome light. She swept it up and aimed at the side window.
Go ahead. Backdrop's clear, no spectators yet.
Then she hesitated. Would the muzzle flash ignite the gas?
She held the gun as far away from her soaked uniform blouse as she could, debating. Then squeezed the trigger.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Five shots, a star pattern, and even then the honest General Motors glass held firm.
Three more blasts, deafening her in the confines of the wagon. But at least the gas didn't explode.
She began to kick again. Finally the window burst outward in a cascade of blue-green ice. Just as she rolled out the interior of the wagon exploded with a breathless woosh.
Stripping down to her T-shirt, she flung away her gas-soaked uniform blouse and bulletproof vest and tossed aside the headset mike. Felt her ankle wobble but sprinted to the front door of the church, past the fleeing churchgoers and choir. The ground floor was filled with bubbling smoke. Nearby, a section of the floor rippled and steamed and then burst into flames.
The minister appeared suddenly, choking, tears streaming down his face. He was dragging an unconscious woman behind him. Sachs helped him get her to the door.
"Where's the basement?" she asked.
He coughed hard, shook his head.
"Where?" she cried, thinking of Carole Ganz and her little daughter. "The basement?"
"There. But . . ."
On the other side of the patch of burning floor.
Sachs could barely see it, the smoke was so thick. A wall collapsed in front of them, the old joists and posts behind it snapping and firing sparks and jets of hot gas, which hissed into the cloudy room. She hesitated, then started for the basement door.
The minister took her arm. "Wait." He opened a closet and grabbed a fire extinguisher, yanked the arming pin. "Let's go."
Sachs shook her head. "Not you. Keep checking up here. Tell the fire department there's a police officer and another victim in the basement."
Sachs was sprinting now.
When you move . . .
She jumped over the fiery patch of floor. But
because of the smoke she misjudged the distance to the wall; it was closer than she'd thought and she slammed into the wood paneling then fell backwards, rolling as her hair brushed the fire, some strands igniting. Gagging on the stink, she crushed the flames out and started to push herself to her feet. The floor, weakened by the flames beneath, broke under her weight and her face crashed into the oak. She felt the blaze in the basement lick her hands and arms as she yanked her hands back.
Rolling away from the edge she climbed to her feet and reached for the knob to the basement door. She stopped suddenly.
Come on, girl, think better! Feel a door before opening it. If it's too hot and you let oxygen into a superheated room it'll ignite and the backdraft'll fry your ass good. She touched the wood. It was scorching hot.
Then thought: But what the hell else can I do?
Spitting on her hand, she gripped the knob fast, twisting it open and releasing it just before the burn seared her palm.
The door burst open and a cloud of smoke and sparks shot outward.
"Anybody down there?" she called and started down.
The lower stairs were burning. She blasted them with a short burst of carbon dioxide and leapt into the murky basement. She broke through the second-to-last step, pitching forward. The extinguisher clattered to the floor as she grabbed the railing just in time to save her leg from snapping.
Pulling herself out of the broken step, Sachs squinted through the haze. The smoke wasn't as bad down here--it was rising--but the flames were raging all around her. The extinguisher had rolled under a burning table. Forget it! She ran through the smoke.
"Hello?" she shouted.
No answer.
Then remembered that Unsub 823 used duct tape; he liked his vics silent.
She kicked in a small doorway and looked inside the boiler room. There was a door leading outside but burning debris blocked it completely. Beside it stood the fuel tank, which was now surrounded by flames.
It won't explode, Sachs remembered from the academy--the lecture on arson. Fuel oil doesn't explode. Kick aside the debris and push the door open. Clear your escape route. Then go look for the woman and the girl.
She hesitated, watching the flames roll over the side of the oil tank.
It won't explode, it won't explode.
She started forward, edging toward the door.
It won't--
The tank suddenly puffed out like a heated soda can and split down the middle. The oil squirted into the air, igniting in a huge orange spume. A fiery pool formed on the floor and flowed toward Sachs.
Won't explode. Okay. But it burns pretty fucking well. She leapt back through the door, slammed it shut. So much for her escape route.
Backing toward the stairs, choking now, keeping low, looking for any signs of Carole and Pammy. Could 823 have changed the rules? Could he have given up on basements and put these vics in the church attic?
Crack.
A fast look upward. She saw a large oak beam, rippling with flames, start to fall.
With a scream Sachs leapt aside, but tripped and landed hard on her back, staring at the huge falling bar of wood streaking directly at her face and chest. Instinctively she held her hands up.
A huge bang as the beam landed on a child's Sunday-school chair. It stopped inches from Sachs's head. She crawled out from underneath and rolled to her feet.
Looking around the room, peering through the darkening smoke.
Hell no, she thought suddenly. I'm not losing another one. Choking, Sachs turned back to the fire and staggered toward the one corner she hadn't checked.
As she jogged forward a leg shot out from behind a file cabinet and tripped her.
Hands flying outward, Sachs landed face down inches from a pool of burning oil. She rolled to her side, drawing her weapon and swinging it into the panicked face of a blond woman struggling to sit up.
Sachs pulled the gag off her mouth and the woman spit black mucus. She gagged for a moment, a deep, dying sound.
"Carole Ganz?"
She nodded.
"Your daughter?" Sachs cried.
"Not . . . here. My hands! The cuffs."
"No time. Come on." Sachs cut Carole's ankles free with her switchblade.
It was then that she saw, against the wall by the window, a melting plastic bag.
The planted clues! The ones that told where the little girl would be. She stepped toward it. But with a deafening bang the door to the boiler room cracked in half, spewing a six-inch tidal wave of burning oil over the floor, surrounding the bag, which disintegrated instantly.
Sachs stared for a moment and then heard the woman's scream. All the stairs were blazing now. Sachs knocked the fire extinguisher out from under the smoldering table. The handle and nozzle had melted away and the metal canister was too hot to grasp. With her knife she cut a patch off her uniform blouse and lifted the crackling extinguisher by its neck, flung it to the top of the burning stairs. It staggered for a moment, like an uncertain bowling pin, and then started down.
Sachs drew her Glock and when the red cylinder was halfway down, fired one round.
The extinguisher erupted in a huge booming explosion; pieces of red shrapnel from the casing hissed over their heads. The mushroom cloud of carbon dioxide and powder settled over the stairs and momentarily dampened most of the flames.
"Now, move!" Sachs shouted.
Together they took the steps two at a time, Sachs carrying her own weight and half the woman's, and pushed through the doorway into the inferno on the first floor. They hugged the wall as they stumbled toward the exit, while above them stained-glass windows burst and rained hot shards--the colorful bodies of Jesus and Matthew and Mary and God Himself--down upon the bent backs of the escaping women.
TWENTY-NINE
Forty minutes later, Sachs had been salved and bandaged and stitched and had sucked so much pure oxygen she felt like she was tripping. She sat beside Carole Ganz. They stared at what was left of the church. Which was virtually nothing. Only two walls remained and, curiously, a portion of the third floor, jutting into space above a lunar landscape of ash and debris piled in the basement.
"Pammy, Pammy . . ." Carole moaned, then retched and spit. She took her own oxygen mask to her face, leaned back, weary and in pain.
Sachs examined another alcohol-soaked rag with which she was wiping the blood from her face. The rags had started out brown and were now merely pink. The wounds weren't serious--a cut on her forehead, swatches of second-degree burns on her arm and hand. Her lips were no longer flawless, however; the lower one had been cut deeply in the crash, the tear requiring three stitches.
Carole was suffering from smoke inhalation and a broken wrist. An impromptu cast covered her left wrist and she cradled it, head down, speaking through clenched teeth. Every breath was an alarming wheeze. "That son of a bitch." Coughing. "Why . . . Pammy? Why on earth? A three-year-old child!" She wiped angry tears with the back of her uninjured arm.
"Maybe he doesn't want to hurt her. So he just brought you to the church."
"No," she spat out angrily. "He doesn't care about her. He's sick! I saw the way he looked at her. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to fucking kill him." The harsh words dissolved into a harsher bout of coughing.
Sachs winced in pain. She'd unconsciously dug a nail into a burned fingertip. She pulled out her watchbook. "Can you tell me what happened?"
Between bouts of sobbing and throaty coughs, Carole told her the story of the kidnapping.
"You want me to call anybody?" Sachs asked. "Your husband?"
Carole didn't answer. She drew her knees up to her chin, hugged herself, wheezing roughly.
With her scalded right hand Sachs squeezed the woman's biceps and repeated the question.
"My husband . . ." She stared at Sachs with an eerie look. "My husband's dead."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
Carole was getting groggy from the sedative and a woman medic helped her into the ambulance to rest.
Sachs looked up and saw Lon Sellitto and Jerry Banks running toward her from the burned-out church.
"Jesus, officer." Sellitto was surveying the carnage in the street. "What about the girl?"
Sachs nodded. "He's still got her."
Banks said, "You okay?"
"Nothing serious." Sachs glanced toward the ambulance. "The vic, Carole, she doesn't have any money, no place to stay. She's in town to work for the UN. Think you could make some calls, detective? See if they could set her up for a while?"
"Sure," Sellitto said.
"And the planted clues?" Banks asked. He winced as he touched a bandage over his right eyebrow.
"Gone," Sachs said. "I saw them. In the basement. Couldn't get to them in time. Burned up and buried."
"Oh, man," Banks muttered. "What's going to happen to the little girl?"
What does he think's going to happen to her?
She walked back toward the wreck of the IRD wagon, found the headset. She pulled it on and was about to call in a patch request to Rhyme but hesitated then lifted off the mike. What could he tell her anyway? She looked at the church. How can you work a crime scene when there is no scene?
She was standing with her hands on her hips, staring out onto the smoldering hulk of the building, when she heard a sound she couldn't place. A whining, mechanical sound. She paid no attention to it until she was aware of Lon Sellitto pausing as he dusted ash off his wrinkled shirt. He said, "I don't believe it."
She turned toward the street.
A large black van was parked a block away. A hydraulic ramp was protruding off the side and something sat on it. She squinted. One of those bomb squad robots, it seemed. The ramp lowered to the sidewalk and the robot rolled off.
Then she laughed out loud.
The contraption turned toward them and started to move. The wheelchair reminded her of a Pontiac Firebird, candy-apple red. It was one of those electric models, small rear wheels, a large battery and motor mounted underneath.
Thom walked along beside it but Lincoln Rhyme himself was driving--in control, she observed wryly--via a straw that he held in his mouth. His movements were oddly graceful. Rhyme pulled up to her and stopped.
"All right, I lied," he said abruptly.
She exhaled a sigh. "About your back? When you said you couldn't use a wheelchair."
"I'm confessing I lied. You're going to be mad, Amelia. So be mad and get it over with."
The Bone Collector Page 30
