he door opened and she heard the killer’s footsteps enter the stinking, claustrophobic room.

Amelia Sachs was in a crouch, her knees in agony, struggling to get to the handcuff key in her front pocket. But surrounded by the towering stacks of newspapers, she hadn’t been able to turn far enough to reach into her front pocket. She’d touched it through the cloth, felt its shape, tantalizing, but couldn’t slip her fingers into the slit.

She was racked with frustration.

More footsteps.

Where, where?

One more lunge for the key… Almost but not quite.

Then his steps moved closer. She gave up.

Okay, it was time to fight. Fine with her. She’d seen his eyes, the lust, the hunger. She knew he’d be coming for her at any moment. She didn’t know how she’d hurt him, with her hands cuffed behind her and the terrible pain in her shoulder and face from the fight earlier. But the bastard’d pay for every touch.

Only, where was he?

The footsteps had stopped.

Where? Sachs had no perspective on the room. The corridor he’d have to come through to get to her was a two-foot-wide path through the towers of moldy newspapers. She could see his desk and the piles of junk, the stacks of magazines.

Come on, come for me.

I’m ready. I’ll act scared, shy away. Rapists are all about control. He’ll be empowered—and careless—when he sees me cower. Then when he leans close, I’ll go for his throat with my teeth. Hold on and don’t let go, whatever happens. I’ll—

It was then that the building collapsed, a bomb detonated.

A massive crushing tide tumbled over her, slamming her to the floor and pinning her immobile.

She grunted in pain.

Only after a minute did Sachs realize what he’d done—maybe anticipating that she was going to fight, he’d simply pushed over stacks of the newspapers.

Legs and hands frozen, her chest, shoulders and head exposed, she was trapped by hundreds of pounds of stinking newspaper.

The claustrophobia grabbed her, the panic indescribable, and she barked a scream with staccato breath. She struggled to control the fear.

Peter Gordon appeared at the end of the tunnel. She saw in one of his hands the steel blade of a razor. In the other was a tape recorder. He studied her closely.

“Please,” she whimpered. The panic was only partly feigned.

“You’re lovely,” he whispered.

He began to say something else but the words were lost in the sound of a doorbell, which chimed in here as well as the main part of the town house.

Gordon paused.

Then the bell rang again.

He rose and walked to the desk, typed on the keyboard and studied the computer screen—probably a security camera showing the image of the visitor. He frowned.

The killer debated. He glanced at her and carefully folded the razor, then slipped it into his back pocket.

He walked to the closet door and stepped through it. She heard the click of the latch behind him. Once more her hand began to worm closer to her pocket and the tiny bit of metal inside.

“Lincoln.”

Bo Haumann’s voice was distant.

Rhyme whispered, “Tell me.”

“It wasn’t her.”

“What?”

“The hits—from that computer program—they were right. But it wasn’t Amelia.” He explained that she gave her friend, Pam Willoughby, her credit card to buy groceries in hopes they could have dinner that night and talk about some “personal stuff.” “That’s what the system read, I guess. She went to a store, did some window-shopping and then she stopped here—it’s a friend’s house. They were doing their homework.”

Rhyme’s eyes closed. “Okay, thanks, Bo. You can stand down. All we can do is wait.”

“I’m sorry, Lincoln,” Ron Pulaski said.

A nod.

His eyes strayed to the mantel, where sat a picture of Sachs wearing a black crash helmet, in the cage of a NASCAR Ford. Beside it was a photo of them together, Rhyme in his chair, Sachs hugging him.

He couldn’t look at it. His eyes strayed to the whiteboards.

UNSUB 522 PROFILE

• Male

• Probably nonsmoker

• Probably no wife/children

• Probably white or light-skinned ethnic

• Medium build

• Strong—able to strangle victims

• Access to voice-disguise equipment

• Computer literate; knows OurWorld. Other social-networking sites?

• Takes trophies from victims

• Eats snack food/hot sauce

• Wears size-11 Skechers work shoe

• Hoarder. Suffers from OCD

• Will have a “secret” life and a “façade” life

• Public personality will be opposite of his real self

• Residence: won’t rent, will have two separate living areas, one normal and one secret

• Windows will be covered or painted

• Will become violent when collecting or trove are threatened

NONPLANTED EVIDENCE

• Old cardboard

• Hair from doll, BASF B35 nylon 6

• Tobacco from Tareyton cigarette

• Old tobacco, not Tareyton, but brand unknown

• Evidence of Stachybotrys Chartarum mold

• Snack food/cayenne pepper

• Dust, from World Trade Center attack, possibly indicating residence/job downtown Manhattan

• Rope fiber containing:

• Cyclamate diet soda (old or foreign)

• Naphthalene (mothballs, old or foreign)

• Leopard lily plant leaves (interior plant)

• Trace from two different legal pads, yellow colored

• Treadmark from size-11 Skechers work shoe

• Houseplant leaves: ficus and Aglaonema—Chinese evergreen

• Coffee-mate

Where are you, Sachs? Where are you?

He stared at the charts, hypnotically, willing them to speak. But these scanty facts offered no more insights to Rhyme than had the innerCircle data to the SSD computer.!!!Sorry, no prediction can be made at this time…