The life of the soldier is the sound of metal on metal. Slipping the long rounds of rifle ammo, fragrant with oil, into the clips, loading and locking the Colts, vehicle door latches, fueler's belt buckles and vests clinking. The ring of a slug from an AK-47, dancing off a Bradley or Humvee.
The noise again, click, click.
Then silence.
She felt chill air, as if a window was open. Where? The bedroom, she decided. Half naked, she walked to the bedroom doorway and glanced in. Yes, the window was open. But when she'd glanced in earlier, hearing the ticking, hadn't it been closed? She wasn't sure.
The Lucy commanded: Don't be so damn paranoid, soldier. Getting pretty tired of this. There're no IED's, no suicide bombers here, no bitter fog.
Get a grip.
One arm covering her breasts--there were apartments across the alley--she closed and locked the window. Looked down into the alley. Saw nothing.
It was then that somebody began pounding on the front door. Lucy spun around, gasping. She pulled on a bathrobe and hurried to the dark foyer. "Who's there?"
There was a pause, then a man's voice called, "I'm a police officer. Are you all right?"
She called, "What's wrong?"
"It's an emergency. Please open the door. Are you okay?"
Alarmed, she pulled the robe belt tight and undid the deadbolts, thinking of the bedroom window and wondering if somebody'd been trying to break it. She unhooked the chain.
Lucy twisted the lock, reflecting only after the door began to push open toward her that she probably should've asked to see an ID or a badge before she unhooked the chain. She'd been caught up in a very different world for so long that she'd forgotten there were still plenty of bad people stateside.
Amelia Sachs and Lon Sellitto arrived at the old apartment building in Greenwich Village, nestled on quaint Barrow Street.
"That's it?"
"Uh-huh," Sellitto said. His fingers were blue. His ears, red.
They looked into the alley beside the building. Sachs surveyed it carefully.
"What's her name?" she asked.
"Richter. Lucy I think's her first name."
"Which window's hers?"
"Third floor."
r /> She glanced up at the fire escape.
They continued on to the front stairs of the apartment building. A crowd of people were watching. Sachs scanned their faces, still convinced that the Watchmaker had swept up at the first scene because he intended to return. Which meant he might have remained here too. But she saw no one that resembled him or his partner.
"We're sure it was the Watchmaker?" Sachs asked Frank Rettig and Nancy Simpson, cold and huddling next to the Crime Scene rapid response van, parked cockeyed in the middle of Barrow.
"Yep, he left one of those clocks," Rettig explained. "With the moon faces."
Sachs and Sellitto started up the stairs.
"One thing," Nancy Simpson said.
The detectives stopped and turned.
The officer nodded at the building, grimacing. "It won't be pretty."
Chapter 24