Page 42 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

She cocked her head and made out the faint notes tinkling from the second bedroom.

It was Brahms’s “Lullaby,” and the tune was coming from the mobile above the baby crib.

Lullaby and good night,

You’re your mother’s delight,

Shining angels beside

My darling abide.

Son of a bitch, she thought. Now more angry than scared. She ran into the kitchen for a weapon and stared at the countertop.

The butcher block knife holder was there.

All of the knives were gone.

Glancing at the second bedroom, she noted that the door was open—it had been closed when she went to bed.Thatshe remembered clearly.

Jesus, he was in there now, with the knives!

It was then that she remembered the toolbox, which rested in the bottom of the bathroom closet. No knives inside but there was a hammer. It was the only weapon she could think of so it would haveto do. She turned and stepped into the bathroom fast, closing and locking the door.

Thinking, fat lot of good that’ll do. If he got through a four-hundred-and-fifty-dollar deadbolt, how long would the knob lock stop him?

As she flung the closet door open and dropped to her knees to dig for the tool kit, she paused and looked up.

The shower curtain, which she’d left open last night, was drawn closed.

Soft and warm is your bed,

Close your eyes, rest your head …

22

Amelia Sachs finished walking the grid at the crime scene, Apartment 4C, 501 East 97th Street.

She’d done the Bechtel Building, the Locksmith’s entry and exit routes into and out of Carrie Noelle’s building and had just completed her apartment itself.

Wearing white Tyvek overalls and other standard crime-scene gear, she carried a dozen paper and plastic bags out into the hallway, and handed off to an evidence collection tech—a young, talented Latina, whom Sachs had wanted to recruit to work regularly with her and Rhyme—a plan put on hold now that her husband had been summarily fired.

She tried to quash the anger she felt at the brass’s foolishness. No, that was too mild. Theiridiocy.

This she was not able to do.

Politics …

“Terrible,” Sonja Montez said, somber faced, as she looked at alarge plastic bag containing a baby’s rotating mobile of angels. She had a four- and a six-year-old at home.

“Do the CoCs and get them into the bus.”

“Sure, Detective.” She put the bags, from which chain-of-custody cards dangled, into a large plastic tub and walked to the elevator.

Sachs spent another fifteen minutes in the apartment, then she too left and descended to the main floor. Outside, she noted the large crowd, staring at the police activities.

Reporters too. As always, the press hovered, and …pressed.

“Is this the Locksmith?” one called.

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