From one of the black suitcases Sachs extracted a zippered clear plastic case. She opened it and pulled out a white Tyvek jumpsuit. Donning it, she pulled the hood over her head. Then gloves. The outfit was standard issue now for all forensics techs at the NYPD; it prevented substances--trace, hair, epithelial skin cells and foreign matter--from sloughing off her body and contaminating the scene. The suit had booties but she still did what Rhyme always insisted on--put rubber bands on her feet to distinguish her prints from the victim's and the perp's.
Mounting the earphones on her head and adjusting the stalk mike, she hooked up her Motorola. She called in a landline patch and a moment later a complex arrangement of communications systems brought the low voice of Lincoln Rhyme into her ear.
"Sachs, you there?"
"Yep. It was just like you said--they had him cornered and he disappeared."
He chuckled. "And now they want us to find him. Do we have to clean up for everybody's mistakes? Hold on a minute. Command, volume lower . . . lower." Music in the background diminished.
The tech who'd accompanied Sachs down the gloomy corridor returned with tall lamps on tripods. She set them up in the lobby and clicked the switch.
There's a lot of debate about the proper way to process a scene. Generally investigators agree that less is more, though most departments still use teams of CS searchers. Before his accident Lincoln Rhyme, however, had run most scenes alone and he insisted that Amelia Sachs do the same. With other searchers around, you tend to be distracted and are often less vigilant because you feel--even if only subconsciously--that your partner will find what you miss.
But there was another reason for solitary searching. Rhyme recognized that there's a macabre intimacy about criminal violation. A crime scene searcher working alone is better able to forge a
mental relationship with the victim and the perpetrator, gather better insights into what is the relevant evidence and where it might be found.
It was into this difficult state of mind that Amelia Sachs now slipped as she gazed at the body of the young woman, lying on the floor, next to a fiberboard table.
Near the body were a spilled cup of coffee, sheet music, a music case and a piece of the woman's silver flute, which she'd apparently been in the act of assembling when the killer flipped the rope around her neck. In her death grip she clutched another cylinder of the instrument. Had she intended to use it as a weapon?
Or did the desperate young woman just want to feel something familiar and comforting in her fingers as she died?
"I'm at the body, Rhyme," she said as she snapped digital pictures of the corpse.
"Go ahead."
"She's on her back--but the respondings found her on her abdomen. They turned her over to give her CPR. Injuries consistent with strangulation." Sachs now delicately rolled the woman back onto her belly. "Hands're in some kind of old-fashioned cuffs. I don't recognize them. Her watch is broken. Stopped at exactly eight A.M. Doesn't look accidental." She closed her gloved hand around the woman's narrow wrist. It was shattered. "Yep, Rhyme, he stomped on it. And it's nice. A Seiko. Why break it? Why not steal it?"
"Good question, Sachs. . . . Might be a clue, might be nothing."
Which was as good a slogan for forensic science as any, she reflected.
"One of the respondings cut the rope around her neck. She missed the knot." Officers should never cut through the knot to remove a cord from a strangulation victim; it can reveal a great deal of information about the person who tied it.
Sachs then used a tape roller to collect trace evidence--recent forensic thinking was that a portable vacuum cleaner, which resembled a Dustbuster, picked up too much trace. Most CS teams were switching to rollers similar to dog-hair removers. She bagged the trace and used a vic kit to take hair combings and nail scraping samples from the woman's body.
Sachs said, "I'm going to walk the grid."
The phrase--of Lincoln Rhyme's own creation--came from his preference for searching a crime scene. The grid pattern is the most comprehensive method: back and forth in one direction, then turning perpendicular and covering the same ground again, always remembering to examine the ceiling and walls as well as the ground or floor.
She began the search now, looking for discarded or dropped objects, rolling for trace, taking electrostatic prints of shoeprints and digital photos. The photo team would make a comprehensive still and video record of the scene but getting those images took time and Rhyme always insisted on having some photographic record available instantly.
"Officer?" Sellitto called.
She glanced back.
"Just wondering. . . . Since we don't know where this asshole got to, you want some backup in there?"
"Nope," she said, silently thanking him for reminding her that there was a missing murderer last seen nearby. Another of Lincoln Rhyme's crime scene aphorisms: search well but watch your back. She tapped the butt of her Glock to remind herself exactly where it was in case she needed to draw fast--the holster rode slightly higher when she wore the Tyvek jumpsuit--and continued the search.
"Okay, got something," she told Rhyme a moment later. "In the lobby. About ten feet away from the victim. Piece of black cloth. Silk. I mean, it appears to be silk. It's on top of a part of the vic's flute so it has to be his or hers."
"Interesting," Rhyme mused. "Wonder what that's about."
The lobby yielded nothing else and she entered the performance space itself, her hand continuing to stray to the butt of her Glock. She relaxed momentarily, seeing that there was in fact absolutely no hiding place where a perp could be, no secret doorways or exits. But as she started on the grid here she felt a growing sense of discomfort.
Spooky . . .