ERE'S THE SITUATION," Lincoln Rhyme announced. "We've got a kidnap victim and a three p.m. deadline."

"No ransom demands" — Sellitto supplemented Rhyme's synopsis, then turned aside to answer his chirping phone. "Jerry," Rhyme said to Banks, "brief them about the scene this morning."

There were more people hovering in Lincoln Rhyme's dark room than in recent memory. Oh, after the accident friends had sometimes stopped by unannounced (the odds were pretty good that Rhyme'd be home of course) but he'd discouraged that. And he'd stopped returning phone calls too, growing more and more reclusive, drifting into solitude. He'd spend his hours writing his book and, when he was uninspired to write another one, reading. And when that grew tedious there were rental movies and pay-per-view and music. And then he'd given up TV and the stereo and spent hours staring at the art prints the aide had dutifully taped up on the wall opposite the bed. Finally they too had come down.

Solitude.

It was all he craved, and oh how he missed it now.

Pacing, looking tense, was compact Jim Polling. Lon Sellitto was the case officer but an incident like this needed a captain on board and Polling had volunteered for the job. The case was a time bomb and could nuke careers in a heartbeat so the chief and the dep coms were happy to have him intercept the flak. They'd be practicing the fine art of distancing and when the Beta-cams rolled their press conferences would be peppered with words like delegated and assigned and taking the advice of and they'd be fast to glance at Polling when it came time to field the hardball questions. Rhyme couldn't imagine why any cop in the world would volunteer to head up a case like this one.

Polling was an odd one. The little man had pummeled his way through Midtown North Precinct as one of the city's most successful, and notorious, homicide detectives. Known for his bad temper, he'd gotten into serious trouble when he'd killed an unarmed suspect. But he'd managed, amazingly, to pull his career together by getting a conviction in the Shepherd case — the cop-serial-killer case, the one in which Rhyme'd been injured. Promoted to captain after that very public collar, Polling went through one of those embarrassing midlife changes — giving up blue jeans and Sears suits for Brooks Brothers (today he wore navy-blue Calvin Klein casual) — and began his dogged climb toward a plush corner office high in One Police Plaza.

Another officer leaned against a nearby table. Crew-cut, rangy Bo Haumann was a captain and head of the Emergency Services Unit. NYPD's SWAT team.

Banks finished his synopsis just as Sellitto pushed disconnect and folded his phone. "The Hardy Boys."

"Anything more on the cab?" Polling asked.

"Nothing. They're still beating bushes."

"Any sign she was fucking somebody she shouldn't've been?" Polling asked. "Maybe a psycho boyfriend?"

"Naw, no boyfriends. Just dated a few guys casually. No stalkers, it looks like."

"And still no ransom calls?" Rhyme asked.

"No."

The doorbell rang. Thom went to answer it.

Rhyme looked toward the approaching voices.

A moment later the aide escorted a uniformed police officer up the stairs. She appeared very young from a distance but as she drew closer he could see she was probably thirty or so. She was tall and had that sullen, equine beauty of women gazing out from the pages of fashion magazines.

We see others as we see ourselves and since the accident Lincoln Rhyme rarely thought of people in terms of their bodies. He observed her height, trim hips, fiery red hair. Somebody else'd weigh those features and say, What a knockout. But for Rhyme that thought didn't occur to him. What did register was the look in her eyes.

Not the surprise — obviously, nobody'd warned he was a crip — but something else. An expression he'd never seen before. It was as if his condition was putting her at ease. The exact opposite of how most people reacted. As she walked into the room she was relaxing.

"Officer Sachs?" Rhyme asked.

"Yessir," she said, catching herself just as she was about to extend a hand. "Detective Rhyme."

Sellitto introduced her to Polling and Haumann. She'd know about the latter two, by reputation if nothing else, and now her eyes grew cautious once more.

She took in the room, the dust, the gloominess. Glanced at one of the art posters. It was partially unrolled, lying under a table. Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper. The lonely people in a diner late at night. That one had been the last to come down.

Rhyme briefly explained about the 3:00 p.m. deadline. Sachs nodded calmly but Rhyme could see the flicker of what? — fear? disgust? — in her eyes.

Jerry Banks, fingers encumbered by a class ring but not a wedding band, was attracted immediately by the lamp of her beauty and offered her a particular smile. But Sachs's single glance in response made clear that no matches were being made here. And probably never would be.

Polling said, "Maybe it's a trap. We find the place he's leading us to, walk in and there's a bomb."

"I doubt it," Sellitto said, shrugging, "why go to all this trouble? If you want to kill cops all you gotta do is find one and fucking shoot him."

Awkward silence for a moment as Polling looked quickly from Sellitto to Rhyme. The collective thought registered that it was on the Shepherd case that Rhyme had been injured.

But faux pas meant nothing to Lincoln Rhyme. He continued, "I agree with Lon. But I'd tell any Search and Surveillance or HRT teams to keep an eye out for ambush. Our boy seems to be writing his own rules."

Sachs looked again at the poster of the Hopper painting. Rhyme followed her gaze. Maybe the people in the diner really weren't lonely, he reflected. Come to think of it, they all looked pretty damn content.

"We've got two types of physical evidence here," Rhyme continued. "Standard PE. What the unsub didn't mean to leave behind. Hair, fibers, fingerprints, maybe blood, shoeprints. If we can find enough of it — and if we're lucky — that'll lead us to the primary crime scene. That's where he lives."

"Or his hidey-hole," Sellitto offered. "Something temporary."

"A safe house?" Rhyme mused, nodding. "Bet you're right, Lon. He needs someplace to operate out of." He continued, "Then there's the planted evidence. Apart from the scraps of paper — which tell us the time and date — we've got the bolt, the wad of asbestos and the sand."

"A fucking scavenger hunt," Haumann growled and ran a hand through his slick buzz cut. He looked just like the drill sergeant Rhyme recalled he'd been.

"So I can tell the brass there's a chance of getting the vic in time?" Polling asked.

"I think so, yes."

The captain made a call and wandered to the corner of the room as he talked. When he hung up he grunted, "The mayor. The chiefs with 'im. There's gonna be a press conference in an hour and I gotta be there to make sure their dicks're in their pants and their flies're zipped. Anything more I can tell the big boys?"

Sellitto glanced at Rhyme, who shook his head.

"Not yet," the detective said.

Polling gave Sellitto his cellular phone number and left, literally jogging out the door.

A moment later a skinny, balding man in his thirties ambled up the stairs. Mel Cooper was as goofy-looking as ever, the nerdy neighbor in a sitcom. He was followed by two younger cops carrying a steamer trunk and two suitcases that seemed to weigh a thousand pounds each. The officers deposited their heavy loads and left.

"Mel."

"Detective." Cooper walked up to Rhyme and gripped his useless right hand. The only physical contact today with any of his guests, Rhyme noted. He and Cooper had worked together for years. With degrees in organic chemistry, math and physics, Cooper was an expert both in identification — friction-ridge prints, DNA and forensic reconstruction — and in PE analysis.

"How's the world's foremost criminalist?" Cooper asked him.

Rhyme scoffed good-naturedly. The title had been bestowed on him by the press some years ago, after the surprising news that the FBI had selected him — a city cop — as adviser in putting together PERT, their Physical Evidence Response Team. Not satisfied with "forensic scientist" or "forensic specialist," reporters dubbed Rhyme a "criminalist."

The word had actually been around for years, first applied in the United States to the legendary Paul Leland Kirk, who ran the UC Berkeley School of Criminology. The school, the first in the country, had been founded by the even more legendary Chief August Vollmer. The handle had recently become chic, and when techs around the country sidled up to blondes at cocktail parties now they described themselves as criminalists, not forensic scientists.

"Everybody's nightmare," Cooper said, "you get into a cab and turns out there's a psycho behind the wheel. And the whole world's watching the Big Apple 'causa that conference. Wondered if they might not bring you out of retirement for this one."

"How's your mother?" Rhyme asked.

"Still complaining about every ache and pain. Still healthier than me."

Cooper lived with the elderly woman in the Queens bungalow where he'd been born. His passion was ballroom dancing — the tango his specialty. Cop gossip being what it is, there'd been speculation around IRD as to the man's sexual preference. Rhyme had had no interest in his employees' personal lives but had been as surprised as everyone else to finally meet Greta, Cooper's steady girlfriend, a stunning Scandinavian who taught advanced mathematics at Columbia.

Cooper opened the large trunk, which was padded with velvet. He lifted out parts for three large microscopes and began assembling them.

"Oh, house current." He glanced at the outlets, disappointed. He pushed his metal-rimmed glasses up on his nose.

"That's because it's a house, Mel."

"I assumed you lived in a lab. Wouldn't have been surprised."

Rhyme stared at the instruments, gray and black, battered. Similar to the ones he'd lived with for over fifteen years. A standard compound microscope, a phase-contrast 'scope, and a polarized-light model. Cooper opened the suitcases, which contained a Mr. Wizard assortment of bottles and jars and scientific instruments. In a flash, words came back to Rhyme, words that had once been part of his daily vocabulary. EDTA vacuum blood-collection tubes, acetic acid, orthotolidine, luminol reagent, Magna-Brush, Ruhemann's purple phenomenon...

The skinny man looked around the room. "Looks just like your office used to, Lincoln. How do you find anything? Say, I need some room here."

"Thom." Rhyme moved his head toward the least cluttered table. They moved aside magazines and papers and books, revealing a tabletop Rhyme had not seen in a year.

Sellitto gazed at the crime scene report. "Whatta we call the unsub? We don't have a case number yet."

Rhyme glanced at Banks. "Pick a number. Any number."

Banks suggested, "The page number. Well, the date, I mean."

"Unsub 823. Good as any."

Sellitto jotted this on the report.

"Uhm, excuse me? Detective Rhyme?"

It was the patrolwoman who'd spoken. Rhyme turned to her.

"I was supposed to be at the Big Building at noon." Coptalk for One Police Plaza.

"Officer Sachs..." He'd forgotten about her momentarily. "You were first officer this morning? At that homicide by the railroad tracks."

"That's right, I took the call." When she spoke, she spoke to Thom.

"I'm here, officer," Rhyme reminded sternly, barely controlling his temper. "Over here." It infuriated him when people talked to him through others, through healthy people.

Her head swiveled quickly and he saw the lesson had been learned. "Yessir," she said, a soft tone in her voice but ice in her eyes.

"I'm decommissioned. Just call me Lincoln."

"Would you just get it over with, please?"

"How's that?" he asked.

"The reason why you brought me here. I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking. If you want a written apology I'll do it. Only, I'm late for my new assignment and I haven't had a chance to call my commander."

"Apology?" Rhyme asked.

"The thing is, I didn't have any real crime scene experience. I was sort of flying by the seat of my pants."

"What are you talking about?"

"Stopping the trains and closing Eleventh Avenue. It was my fault the senator missed his speech in New Jersey and that some of the senior UN people didn't make it in from Newark Airport in time for their meetings."

Rhyme was chuckling. "Do you know who I am?"

"Well, I've heard of you of course. I thought you..."

"Were dead?" Rhyme asked.

"No. I didn't mean that." Though she had. She continued quickly, "We all used your book in the academy. But we don't hear about you. Personally, I mean..." She looked up at the wall and said stiffly, "In my judgment, as first officer, I thought it was best to stop the train and close the street to protect the scene. And that's what I did. Sir."

"Call me Lincoln. And you're..."

"I —"

"Your first name?"

"Amelia."

"Amelia. After the aviatrix?"

"Nosir. A family name."

"Amelia, I don't want an apology. You were right and Vince Peretti was wrong."

Sellitto stirred at this indiscretion but Lincoln Rhyme didn't care. He was, after all, one of the few people in the world who could stay flat on his ass when the president of the United States himself walked into the room. He continued, "Peretti worked the scene like the mayor was looking over his shoulder and that's the A-number-one way to screw it up. He had too many people, he was dead wrong to let the trains and traffic move and he should never have released the scene as early as he did. If we'd kept the tracks secure, who knows, we might've just found a credit card receipt with a name on it. Or a big beautiful thumbprint."

"That may be," Sellitto said delicately. "But let's just keep it to ourselves." Giving silent orders, his eyes swiveling toward Sachs and Cooper and young Jerry Banks.

Rhyme snorted an irreverent laugh. Then turned back to Sachs, whom he caught, like Banks that morning, staring at his legs and body under the apricot-colored blanket. He said to her, "I asked you here to work the next crime scene for us."

"What?" No speaking through interpreters this time.

"Work for us," he said shortly. "The next crime scene."

"But" — she laughed — "I'm not IRD. I'm Patrol. I've never done CS work."

"This is an unusual case. As Detective Sellitto himself'll tell you. It's real weird. Right, Lon? True, if it was a classic scene, I wouldn't want you. But we need a fresh pair of eyes on this one."

She glanced at Sellitto, who said nothing. "I just... I'd be no good at it. I'm sure."

"All right," Rhyme said patiently. "The truth?"

She nodded.

"I need somebody who's got the balls to stop a train in its tracks to protect a scene and to put up with the heat afterwards."

"Thank you for the opportunity, sir. Lincoln. But —"

Rhyme said shortly, "Lon."

"Officer," the detective grunted to Sachs, "you're not being given any options here. You've been assigned to this case to assist at the crime scene."

"Sir, I have to protest. I'm transferring out of Patrol. Today. I've got a medical transfer. Effective an hour ago."

"Medical?" Rhyme inquired.

She hesitated, glancing unwilling at his legs again. "I have arthritis."

"Do you?" Rhyme asked.

"Chronic arthritis."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

She continued quickly, "I only took that call this morning because someone was home sick. I didn't plan on it."

"Yes, well, I had other plans too," Lincoln Rhyme said. "Now, let's look at some evidence."