Page 155 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

The aide appeared, phone in hand, not asking questions, dialing.

Rhyme called, “He’s going for Amelia.”

Thom started for the front door.

“Stop! You’ll get shot too!”

The aide paused, talking to Dispatch, as Rhyme accelerated fast and slapped the automatic door opener. But before he could call out to her, Douglass stepped to the front of the car and fired a half-dozen rounds, point blank, through the windshield. The bullets easily penetrated the glass.

“No!” Rhyme cried.

Douglass turned and, as Rhyme reversed backward quickly, fired several shots his way. They were wide and hit the brownstone, digging out bits of shrapnel. One stung his cheek.

The gunman started toward Rhyme but then sirens were audible. He hesitated and sprinted south, out of sight.

A moment later Rhyme heard more shots. The police weren’t that close yet. It couldn’t be them. Douglass would be firing into the air to stop a vehicle and carjack it. Or perhaps simply to shoot a driver in cold blood, dump the body and steal the car.

His eyes turned back to the Torino.

Rhyme believed he could see an arm extended—perhaps beckoning for help or struggling to open the door or rising into the air as a last living gesture.

The limb remained extended for a moment and then dropped out of sight.

85

Wearing Tyvek overalls, the medical examiner was trudging forward slowly. He was not a young man, like most of the tour docs were.

If you wanted to rise to the top, the line ME work was seen generally as a stepping-stone to better medical careers—like assistant prosecutors aiming for Wall Street law firms. Rhyme knew Dr. Jonny Christen well. They’d worked together when Rhyme was a Crime Scene man and then head of the Crime Scene Unit. He and Christen would often arrive at a scene together—even when Rhyme was brass and had no reason to walk the grid, other than he loved to do so.

Christen was a legend in the ME’s office. He’d officiated at the deaths of hundreds of celebrities, politicians and sports figures.

The deaths of cops too.

Which is what he was doing now.

He always seemed more respectful when examining the body of a fallen police officer than the others.

The rotund man with a white mustache now glanced down at thebody that lay faceup on the sidewalk, the chest and face covered with a sheet. A shaft of sun happened to hit the gold shield on the belt and reflected outward, a sparkling starburst.

Rhyme nodded. He was looking at the bloodstained sheet. It was one that Amelia Sachs had picked out, dark gray, a color that pleased him, though you could make the argument that it wasn’t a color at all, of course, but a blend of black and white. To be precise.

There was an argument to be made—Lincoln Rhyme knew this better than anybody—that the sheet might contaminate the crime scene. That was true in theory, but here, on this busy urban thoroughfare, there had been plenty of eyewitnesses and so forensics, while necessary, would be—in a very non-Rhyme linguistic construction—lessnecessary than under other circumstances.

Christen pulled up the sheet. “Three to the chest, one to the neck.”

Footsteps behind him.

It was Ron Pulaski. “Lincoln, you okay?”

“Obviously I’m okay, Rookie. Don’t contaminate the scene any more than it is.”

Crime Scene evidence collection techs were already walking the grid.

The young officer stared at the body.

He was looking down when he heard the woman’s voice. “How bad will it be?”

Rhyme turned to see Amelia Sachs walking up beside him. He answered her question with the phrase he’d just thought: “Pretty bad.”

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