Page 152 of The Watchmaker's Hand

Another hour passed. Sachs radioed for the third time, “Stay alert.”

The more likely danger in stakeouts is not gunplay but falling asleep and letting your subject waltz off to freedom.

She was scanning once more when she was startled by a series of shots and a ragged cry. They were coming from just outside the cemetery. “Help! Help me! Ambulance!” A man’s voice.

“Bullshit,” Pulaski said. “It’s her. A diversion.”

Sachs grabbed the radio and nearly shouted, “No one move! Stay in position!”

Damn. Too late. One of the ESU officers had risen and stepped from the brush. She dropped to cover quickly.

Instinct—and who could blame her? But the woman had, perhaps, given away the whole game.

“Ron, call the local house. They’ve probably got somebody on the way, but make sure they check it out. And have the respondings call us with what they find.”

As he made the call, Sachs lifted a pair of powerful Nikon binoculars and scanned the opposite side of the cemetery, looking for lens flare, in case Woman X was using her own pair to surveil them.

Nothing.

But of course Sachs had been careful to make sure her binoculars were shaded; why wouldn’t X do the same?

Into the radio: “Detective Five Eight Eight Five to ESU team leader. You seeanybodynear the gravesite?”

“Negative, Detective,” the captain radioed back. “There was a groundskeeper and an elderly couple. Nowhere near the grave. And they took off when they heard the shots.”

“K.”

Pulaski said, “Not a soul in sight. And this is probably the only stakeout in history wheresoulmakes sense.”

She gave a faint smile and continued to scan. “Okay, Charles … Talk to me.” A whisper. Maybe the others heard, maybe not. “What’s your girlfriend up to?”

A call from the local precinct on her mobile. “Yes?”

“Five Eight Eight Five?” A man’s voice, Bronx-inflected.

“Go ahead.”

“Just heard from respondings. We’ve got him, Detective. Get this. Somebody, a woman, paid this homeless guy ten K, yeah, that’s right,ten, to fire a gun into the dirt outside the cemetery and scream for help. We found him a couple blocks away. He was just sitting on the curb drinking a malt. No resistance. Seemed pretty fucking happy.”

“He told you about her?”

“Yeah. He didn’t want us to think he’d used the piece to hurt anybody. He just needed the money. Handed the weapon over. It’s cold. No number on it.”

She sighed. “Hair in braids? Blond? Thirties?”

“That’s right. Except it was brown. Her hair.”

So Miss Clairol had paid a visit.

“And what was she wearing?”

“Something dark. That’s all he remembered.”

“The money?”

“Said he gave it to a church.”

“Yeah, right. We’ll never see it.” Sachs continued to scan the grounds. No sign of human movement.

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