“A hotel near our office in Midtown. We basically own one of the upper floors, so the staff doesn’t put any guests there without our okay. Right now it’s empty. You’ll be the only one there. I’ll be staying in the room across the hall, and another agent’ll be there through the night. It’s not the best hotel in the world, probably not what you’re used to, but not bad. In any case, it’s safer than you staying in your town house.”
“Maybe,” the widow said softly. “But I’m going back there as soon as I can.” She looked up and, in the rearview mirror, saw the agent’s dark face studying her. “Let’s hope everything’s resolved soon.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes. Then Norma asked, “How’s your arm?”
“It’s nothing, really.” The widow touched the bandage. Her wound still stung badly but she’d stopped taking the painkillers the doctor had prescribed for her.
“Why is the State Department interested in me? I don’t quite understand.”
“Well, your husband’s work overseas.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sensitive issues. You know.” She didn’t add anything more.
And Kitty thought: This is ridiculous. The last thing in the world she wanted was a bodyguard. She’d try to have the woman sent back to her office as soon as Peter Larkin and his wife arrived.
Kitty was thinking of Peter and his family when she became aware that Norma Sedgwick had stiffened. Her shoulders hunched and she kept glancing into the rearview mirror. “Mrs. Larkin, I think there’s a vehicle following us.”
“What?” Kitty turned around. “Impossible.”
“No, I’m pretty sure. I’ve been practicing evasive turns but he’s stayed with me the whole time.”
“That green Jeep?”
“That’s it, yes.”
“Who’s driving?”
“A man, I think. White. Seems to be alone.”
Kitty looked. Couldn’t see inside. The windows were tinted.
Norma picked up her cell phone and started to make a call.
This was crazy, Kitty thought. It made no sense for—
“Look out!” Norma cried.
In a burst of speed the Cherokee accelerated right toward them and then drove them off the street over the curb into the park.
“What’s he doing?” Norma barked.
“I can’t tell!”
Into her phone the agent said, “This is Sedgwick. We’ve got an assailant! Madison and Twenty-third. The park. He’s—”
The Jeep then backed up and accelerated directly toward them.
Kitty screamed, lowered her head and waited for the impact.
But Norma accelerated and drove the car farther onto the grass of the park, stopping just before slamming into a temporary chain-link fence around a construction site. The Jeep bounded over the curb and came to a stop nearby.
“Get out, get the hell out!” Norma shouted. “Move!” She jumped from the front seat and, gun in her hand, ripped the back door open.
Clutching her purse, Kitty scrabbled out of the car. Norma took her by the arm and virtually dragged her into a stand of bushes, while pedestrians and park sitters fled. The Jeep stopped. The door flew open and Kitty believed the driver slid out.
“Are you all right?” Holding her weapon, Norma looked her over carefully.
“Yes, yes!” Kitty shouted. “I’m fine. Watch him! He’s out of the car.”
The attacker, a solid white man in a dark suit and white shirt, moved quickly through the bushes toward them, then vanished behind a pile of construction material.
“Where is he?
Kitty glanced down at the gun in the woman’s hand. She held it steady and seemed to know what she was doing. But she’d driven them into a cul de sac. There was nowhere to run. Kitty looked back toward the car. Nothing.
Motion above them.
Norma barked a scream, and Kitty looked up to see a figure hanging over the fence, a gun in his hand.
But it wasn’t the attacker. They were looking at a uniformed NYPD officer. He saw the ID around Norma’s neck but he wasn’t taking chances. His gun was aimed directly toward the agent.
“Lower the weapon and identify yourself!”
“I’m State Department. Security.”
“Lower the weapon and show me.”
“Jesus Christ,” Kitty snapped. “She’s guarding me. There’s a man after us.”
Norma pointed her gun toward the ground and with her other hand held out her ID. He read it and nodded. “You should’ve called it in.”
“It just happened. Look, over there. Your two o’clock. White male, big guy. Drove us off the street. Probably armed.”
“What’s he after?”
“She’s a homicide witness.”
Then the officer frowned. “Is that him?” He was gazing at Norma’s car. Kitty saw a man crouching behind it.
“Yeah,” Norma said. Then to Kitty, “Get down!” And shoved her onto the asphalt walkway they were crouching on. Kitty was furious. She should’ve insisted they stay at the town house.
“You, wait!” the officer called, starting forward. “Police. Don’t move!”
But by then the attacker had realized that he was outnumbered. He raced back to his Jeep. He backed the vehicle over the curb and sped up Madison, leaving a trail of blue smoke in his wake.
Via the high-def video system, Lincoln Rhyme, in his lab, was watching Kitty Larkin talk to Sellitto and Sachs inside the black Town Car. The widow was giving them an account of the incident in a shaky voice.
Rhyme was thinking: This system is quite an invention. It was as if the people were right there in front of him.
“I couldn’t really say what happened,” Kitty said. “It was all so fast. I didn’t even see him clearly.”
Norma Sedgwick gave a similar account of the incident. They differed in the color of the Jeep’s shade of green, in the height of the assailant, in the color of his shirt.
Witnesses… Rhyme didn’t have much faith in them. Even honest ones get confused. They miss things. They misinterpret what they do see.
He was impatient. “Sachs?”
He saw the screen jump a little as she heard his voice.
“Excuse me,” she said to Kitty and Sellitto. The scene swiveled as she climbed out of the car and walked away.
“What, Rhyme?”
“We don’t need to worry about what they saw or didn’t see. I want the scene searched. Every inch.”
“Okay, Rhyme. I’ll get to work.”
Sachs walked the grid — Rhyme’s term for the most comprehensive, some would say compulsive, way of searching a crime scene — with her usual diligence. A lab tech from Queens processed the evidence in the back of the Crime Scene’s rapid response vehicle. But the only things relating to the Larkin killing were two more of the coir fibers like the one on the balcony. One of the fibers was pressed into a small black fleck, which might’ve come from an old leather-bound book; Rhyme remembered similar evidence from a case some years ago.
“Nothing else?” he asked, irritated.
“Nope.”
Rhyme sighed.
There is a well-known rule in forensics called Locard’s Principle. The Frenchman Edmond Locard, one of the
