"That's right."
"And he didn't hear anything, not a name, nothing?"
"Afraid not."
McDaniel said distractedly, "Well, thanks, Fred. You did what you could." As if he hadn't expected to learn anything helpful anyway.
A pause. "Sure."
They disconnected. Rhyme and Sellitto both were aware of McDaniel's sour expression.
"Fred's a good man," the detective said.
"He is a good man," the ASAC replied quickly. Too quickly.
But the subject of Fred Dellray and McDaniel's opinion of him vanished as everyone in the town house, except Thom, got a cell call, all within five seconds of each other.
Different sources, but the news was the same.
Although the deadline was still seven minutes away, Ray Galt had struck again, once more killing innocents in Manhattan.
It was Sellitto's caller who gave them the details. Through speakerphone the NYPD patrolman, sounding young and distracted, started to give an account of the attack--a Midtown office building elevator car in which four passengers were riding. "It was . . . it was pretty bad." Then the officer choked, his voice dissolved in coughing--maybe from smoke created by the attack. Or maybe it was simply to cover up his emotion.
The officer excused himself and said he'd call back in a few minutes.
He never did.
Chapter 50
THAT SMELL AGAIN.
Could Amelia Sachs ever escape it?
And even if she scrubbed and scrubbed and threw her clothes out, could she ever forget it? Apparently the sleeve and hair of one of the victims had caught fire in the elevator car. The flames hadn't been bad but the smoke was thick and the smell was repulsive.
Sachs and Ron Pulaski were suiting up in their overalls. She asked one of the Emergency Service officers, "DCDS?" Gesturing toward the hazy car.
Deceased, confirmed dead at scene.
"That's right."
"Where're the bodies?"
"Up the hall. I know we fucked up the scene in the elevator, Detective, but there was so much smoke, we didn't know what was going on. We had to clear it."
She told him that was all right. Checking on the conditions of victims is the first priority. Besides, nothing contaminates a crime scene like fire. A few emergency worker footprints would make little difference.
"How'd it work?" she asked the ESU officer.
"We aren't sure. The building supervisor said the car stopped just above the ground floor. Then smoke started. And the screams. By the time they got the car down to the main floor and the door opened, it was all over."
Sachs shivered at the thought. The molten metal disks were bad enough, but, being claustrophobic, she was even more troubled by the thought of those four people in a confined space filled with electricity . . . and one of them burning.
The ESU officer looked over his notes. "The vics were an editor of an arts magazine, a lawyer and an accountant on the eighth floor. A computer parts salesman from the sixth. If you're interested."
Sachs was always interested in anything that made the victims real. Partly this was to keep her heart about her, to make certain she didn't become callous because of what she encountered on the job. But partly it was because of what Rhyme had instilled in her. For a man who was pure scientist, a rationalist, Rhyme's talent as a forensic expert was also due to his uncanny ability to step into the mind of the perp.
Years ago, at the very first scene they'd worked, a terrible crime also involving death by a utility system--steam, in that case--Rhyme had whispered to her something that seated itself in her mind every time she walked the grid: "I want you to be him," he'd told her, speaking of the perp. "Just get into his head. You've been thinking the way we think. I want you to think the way he does."