A Textbook Case Read Online Free PDF Page B

team storm into a brownstone. She stared; was this the site?
    They came out a few minutes later, shaking their heads.
    “Anything?” Rhyme asked her urgently.
    “No.”
    Sachs’s fingers disappeared into her mass of hair and dug obsessively into her scalp. Stop it, she told herself.
    Deal with the tension.
    She dug some more.
    The lead would only be helpful if it led to another crime in progress. If the trace led to Unsub 26’s apartment and the police knocked on the door, he might open it, smile and say, “No sir, I never heard of a Jane Levine. You have a nice night now.”
    Sachs looked past the flashing lights and saw Marko, in jeans and a dress shirt, running shows. He caught her eye, gave a brief nod of recognition and then turned back to the scene, as if studying it intently for future reference. He was holding a scene suit bag. Let’s hope he gets a chance to use it, she thought.
    Then her radio crackled, a woman’s voice. “Portable seven-six-six-three. I’ve got something.”
    “Go ahead,” Sachs said, identifying herself as a detective.
    The patrol officer explained she was at an address a block away, on West Tenth. “We’ve got an incendiary IED and victim nearby, immobilized. We need the Bomb Squad.”
    “I’m on my way,” Sachs told her and began to run. Then into her mouthpiece radio: “Got a hit, Rhyme,” she told him and, struggling to ignore the pain in her knees, sprinted faster. Marko was following, as were several other officers.
    “Tell me,” Rhyme said.
    “I’ll know soon,” she gasped, her feet thudding on the concrete.
    She was at the building in two minutes. Sellitto joined her. They met the patrol officer who’d called it in, a round Latina, on the stairs in front. The woman was visibly shaken.
    “Vic down in the laundry room. There’s gas fumes all over the place. I was going for her, but I was afraid I’d set off the device.”
    “What kind of gas?” Rhyme asked, having heard her through Sachs’s microphone.
    She repeated the question for the patrolwoman.
    “Gasoline. He—”
    “I’m going in,” Sachs said.
    “Sachs, wait—”
    “It could blow at any minute,” the patrolwoman said. “I’d wait for the Bomb Squad.”
    Sellitto said, “I’ve called them. They’ll be here in five minutes.” The squad was based in the Sixth Precinct.
    But five minutes was too long. Sachs said, “I’m taking off the headset, Rhyme. I don’t know if it could spark or not, but I’m not taking the chance.”
    “Sachs, wait—”
    “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
    “Amelia,” Sellitto began.
    She ignored him, too. She was debating the Tyvek suit. At the moment she had to assume the vic was still alive and could be burned to death at any minute. Forget the suit. There was no time to wait. She said to Sellitto, “If anything happens.” She glanced toward Marko, who was running toward the brownstone. “Have him run the scene. He’s good.”
    “Amelia,” Sellitto barked. “Let the Bomb Squad handle it.”
    “Can’t, Lon. We’re out of time.”
    Sachs looked down at her clothes. A wool jacket. Did that create more static sparks than any other cloth? Or less? She didn’t know but took it off anyway. “Where’s the vic?” she asked the Latina officer.
    “In the back there’s a stairway. The laundry room’s in the basement off the hallway to the right. But—”
    Sachs sprinted into the building, calling, “Everybody back fifty feet.”
    Then she was in the dim recesses of the old building and starting down the stairs, which, unlike those at the other scene, were relatively clean, though the bulbs in the stairwell overheads were broken as well.
    Her hand on her Glock, she surveyed the narrow corridor, off which were two doors: one, the laundry room where the victim was, and the other straight ahead, leading to a storeroom or the alley behind the building, Sachs guessed.
    Normally she would have cleared the entire basement first, but the smell of