Page 56 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

Sachs radioed Dispatch and reported, “Detective Five Eight Eight Five. I’m ten-twenty at Four Nine Nine East Nine Seven. K.”

“Roger, Five Eight Eight Five.”

Then she clicked her Motorola to mute; inopportune crackles had betrayed any number of officers.

The front double door, scrawled over with graffiti, was nailed shut, but one could gain entry from the lot—the route the Locksmith would have taken to get inside and surveil Carrie Noelle’s building.

She ducked under a large, rusty sign.

DANGER. NO TRESPASSING. DO NOT ENTER.

She made her way through the chain-link fence gate, in a contortionist’s maneuver that sent a pang through her arthritic bones. Some medical procedures had helped but certain maneuvers reminded painfully of the temperament of her joints.

Sachs was prepared to collect evidence if the Locksmith had returned, but she was not in Tyvek overalls. Hardly wise to wear a white outfit when there was a possibility her prey was still inside the dark rooms. Her concession to forensic propriety was the black latex gloves she wore, hair tucked up under a baseball cap and rubberbands around her boot soles—to differentiate her feet from the perp’s. If a long strand of red hair contaminated the evidence, it could be easily excluded. The same with a fiber from her jacket.

Once inside, she paused at a collapsed wall and a pile of rubble.

Listening.

A drip of water, a faint creak that she put down to settling structure.

No breathing, no footsteps.

She pulled her short Maglite from her jacket pocket and clicked it on, holding the black tube in her left hand, so her right was free to draw. The beam swept over the first-floor lobby. Nothing appeared to have come down since she’d been here a few hours ago. Making minimal noise, she returned to the window where the Locksmith had stood to view Carrie’s building.

A tile sign on an intact wall told her that the Bechtels had made home appliances a century ago. Now the structure was used for something quite different: Needles and crack pipes littered the floor, and some cardboard cartons had been broken down into homeless mattresses. Wads of filthy cloth were piled up against some of these. Empty malt liquor and booze bottles too. Vodka seemed to give the most kick for the buck.

But as she swung the light back and forth on the floor and around the large room, she spotted something that told her, yes, somebody had been here since her first search: a small candy wrapper, Jolly Rancher, in green apple flavor.

Had it been the Locksmith? Junkies might have a sweet tooth like anyone else but they would probably not crash a building with police tape around it.

The wrapper went into a bag. She collected trace from around where it had lain with an adhesive roller. She tore the sheet off and slipped it into a second bag.

She moved on, searching slowly, looking for prints of a size 11 running shoe. If he’d been observing the police activity, the front window would not do him much good, but the windows on the building’s west side would offer a good view of where she and the ECTs had staged.

She would check there, but first a thought occurred to her. Was it possible that the buildingdidhave some inhabitants——perhaps someone who’d gotten a look at the Locksmith?

Sachs started into the darker reaches of the building, leaving day-light behind and relying on her flashlight. She paused every so often to listen for the sound of footsteps, the sound of a breath, the sound of an unhappy board under shoes.

The sound of a pistol being cocked, or a knife flicking open.

29

Deep in the Bechtel Building, the man watched the flashlight beam swinging slowly back and forth.

He saw the woman pause and cock her head, listening. Moving on once more. She was cautious, as one would be in a place like this. Walking, pausing, walking on.

Lyle Spencer was a large man, six feet four inches tall and he weighed two hundred and forty pounds. He was sustained by the physical; he had been—throughout all phases of his life. Muscle, you could count on. Muscle worked.

His face was long and striking and stern, with dark eyes set off by pale skin. On his head was a dusting of close-cropped hair of gray-blond hue. His muscles were bulky, earned with old-fashioned weights on bars. He had a contempt for exercise machines but couldn’t say why. His hands were wide, fingers long. He had once broken a man’s wrist using only two of those fingers and a thumb.

Because he was here illegally and because of the clammy atmosphere inside the Bechtel Building he thought of an incident yearsago, involving another woman, one he’d shot to death with a carefully placed round in the back of her head. The second slug was accurately placed too, but he was sure the first had killed her.

Spencer’s eyes were now accustomed to the dark and he moved in a general direction around behind the woman. He studied the floor before each step.

Something in the southwest corner of the manufacturing space had caught her attention. Spencer wondered what it might have been. In any event this was good. If whatever she’d seen would hold her attention for a little bit longer, he could get behind her. He looked at the floor and noted a pipe, about eighteen inches long. He lifted it silently.

He now moved through the dim showroom where years ago solidly built ovens and refrigerators and dishwashers had sat, probably all white, though maybe pale green or pink, which he believed were popular colors for domestic devices in mid-century.