The Stone Monkey (41 page)

Then Amelia Sachs's voice interrupted. "I'll search it."

Rhyme said, "I'm talking about the ship itself, Sachs."

"I understand that."

"It's ninety feet underwater."

She bent down and said into the speakerphone, "Captain, I can be down in Battery Park in thirty minutes. Can you have a chopper get me out to your location?"

"Well, we can fly in this weather. But—"

"I'm open-water certified—PADI." Meaning she had been trained in scuba diving by the Professional Association of Diving Instructors. Rhyme knew that she and her former boyfriend Nick had taken the course together and gone on a number of dives. Not surprisingly, though, speed-lover Sachs had found cigarette boats and Jet Skiing more to her liking.

"But you haven't been diving for years, Sachs," he pointed out.

"Like riding a bike."

"Miss..."

"That'd be Officer Sachs, Captain," she said.

"Officer, there's a big difference between recreational dives and what it's like down there today. My people've been diving for years and I wouldn't feel real comfortable sending
them
into an unstable wreck under these conditions."

"Sachs," Rhyme said, "you can't. You're not trained for that."

"There're a million things they'd miss. You know that. They'd be the same as civilians. All respect, Captain."

"Understood, Officer. But my vote is it's too risky."

Sachs paused and then said, "Captain, you have children?"

"I'm sorry?"

"You have a family?"

"Well," he said, "yes, I do."

"This perp we're after is the man who sank that ship and killed most of the people inside. And right now he's trying to kill some immigrants who escaped—a family with two children and a baby. I'm not going to let that happen. There may be some evidence inside that ship that could tell us where he is. My expertise is finding clues—under all conditions."

Sellitto said, "Use our divers." Both the NYPD and the city's fire department had experienced scuba divers.

"They're not Crime Scene," Sachs argued. "They're just S and R too." She looked at Rhyme, who hesitated for a long moment. But then nodded, indicating that, yes, he'd back her up.

"Will you help us out here, Captain?" Rhyme asked. "She needs to be the one who goes down."

Through the wind the captain said, "Okay, Officer. But tell you what, we'll set the chopper down at the Hudson River helipad. That'll save some time. It's closer than Battery Park. You know it?"

"Sure," she said. Then added, "One thing, though, Captain?"

"Yes'm?"

"On a lot of those dives I did in the Caribbean?"

"Right."

"Afterward, when we were sailing home, the crew made rum punch for everybody—it was included in the cost of the dive. You have anything like that on Coast Guard cutters?"

"You know, Officer, I think we may be able to rustle something up for you."

"I'll be at the pad in fifteen minutes."

They hung up and Sachs glanced at Rhyme. "I'll call you with what I find."

There was so much he wanted to say to her and yet so little he was able to. He settled for "Search well—"

"—but watch my back."

She stroked his right hand—the one whose fingers couldn't feel any sensation whatsoever. Not yet, at any rate. Maybe after the surgery.

He glanced at the ceiling, toward his bedroom, where the god of detectives, Guan Di, presently sat with his evaporating cup of sweet wine. But Lincoln Rhyme, of course, restrained himself from sending a prayer to a folk deity wishing Sachs a safe journey and sent that message directly—though tacitly—to her.

Learning three things from one example...

Confucius, hm? I like that, thought Lincoln Rhyme. He said to his aide, "I need something from the basement."

"What?"

"A copy of my book."

"I'm not sure where they are," Thorn replied.

"Then you better start looking, don't you think?"

With a loud sigh, the aide vanished.

Rhyme was referring to a hardcover book that he'd written several years ago,
The Scenes of the Crime.
In it, he'd examined fifty-one old crime scenes in New York City, some solved, some not. The book included a cross section of the more notorious crimes in the city, ranging from mayhem in the Five Points section of town, considered in the mid-1800s one of the most dangerous places on earth, to architect Stanford White's love triangle murder in the original Madison Square Garden, to Joey Gallo's unfortunate last meal at a Little Italy clam house, to John Lennon's death. The illustrated book had been popular—though not popular enough to keep it from being remaindered; the surplus copies had been sloughed off to "bargain books" shelves in bookstores around the country for discounted sales.

Still, Rhyme was secretly proud of the book; it was his first tentative venture back into the real world after his accident, an emblem that, despite what had happened to him, he was capable of doing
something
beyond lying on his ass and bitching about his state.

Thorn returned ten minutes later, his shirt streaked with dirt and his handsome face dotted with sweat and dust. "They were in the farthest corner. Under a dozen cartons. I'm a mess."

"Well, I'd think if things were better organized down there, it might've taken less work," Rhyme muttered, eyes on the book.

"Maybe if you hadn't said to pack them away, you never wanted to see them again, you hated the quote fucking things, it might not have taken so much work either."

"Say, is the cover torn?"

"No, the cover's fine."

"Let me see," Rhyme ordered. "Hold it up."

The weary aide brushed some dirt off his slacks and then offered the book for inspection.

"It'll do," the criminalist said. He looked around the room uneasily. His temples were pounding, which meant his heart, which he couldn't feel, was pumping blood hard.

"What, Lincoln?"

"That touchpad. Do we still have it?"

A few months ago, Rhyme had ordered a touchpad attachment for the computer, like a mouse, thinking that he could use his extant finger—his left ring finger—to control the computer. He hadn't shared with Thorn or Sachs how important it had been for him to make the pad work. But he hadn't been able to. The range of motion for the digit was too limited to move the cursor in any helpful way, unlike the touchpad controller that operated his Storm Arrow, which was specifically made for people in his condition.

The failure had, for some reason, devastated him.

Thorn left the room for a moment and returned with the small gray unit. He hooked up the system and placed it under Rhyme's ring finger. "What are you going to do with it?" Thorn asked.

Rhyme grumbled, "Just hold it still."

"All right."

"Command, cursor down. Command, cursor stop. Command, double click." A drawing program popped up on the screen. "Command, line draw."

Surprised, Thom asked, "When did you learn that?"

"Quiet. I need to concentrate." Rhyme took a deep breath and then he started to move his finger on the pad. A shaky line appeared on the screen. Sweat popped out on his forehead from the tension.

Breathing hard, riddled with anxiety, as if he were dismantling a bomb, Rhyme said through clenched teeth, "Move the pad to the left, Thom. Carefully."

The aide did and Rhyme continued giving him directions.

Ten minutes of agony, ten minutes of exhausting effort... He gazed at the screen, finally satisfied with the result. He rested his head on the back of the chair. "Command, print."

Thorn walked to the printer. "You want to see your handiwork?"

"Of course I want to see it," Rhyme barked.

Thorn picked up the sheet and held it in front of Rhyme.

"I think that's the first thing you've written since the accident. In your actual handwriting."

"It's a goddamn schoolchild's scrawl," Rhyme muttered, feeling exhilarated at the accomplishment. "Hardly legible."

"You want me to paste that in the book?" Thorn asked.

"If you would, yes. Thank you," Rhyme said. "Then set it aside and we'll give it to Li when he gets back."

"I'll wrap it up," the aide said.

"I don't think we need to go
that
far," Rhyme snapped. "Now, let's get back to the evidence."

To my friend, Sonny Li
— 

From Lincoln    

Okay, I can do this.

Amelia Sachs stood on the rippled metal floor of the Coast Guard's Sikorsky HH-60J helicopter fifty feet above the whipping antenna of the cutter
Evan Brigant
and let the crewman fit the harness around her.

It had never occurred to her when she'd requested the helicopter ride out to the ship that the only way to get onto the ship would be by winching down to a bobbing deck.

Well, what did she expect, she now reflected, an escalator?

The chopper pitched in the fierce wind and beneath them, through the mist, she could see the gray water breaking around the cutter in ragged white ridges.

Encased in an orange vest and battered helmet, Sachs gripped the handhold near the open doorway and thought again, Okay, I can do this.

The crewman shouted something she didn't hear and she shouted back for him to repeat it—a request he apparently didn't hear, for he took her words to be an acknowledgment. Then a hook was attached to the harness and the rig double-checked. The crewman shouted something else. Sachs pointed to herself, then out the door and received a thumbs-up.

Okay...

I can do this.

Her essential fear was claustrophobia, not heights, but still...

Then out she went, holding the cable, even though she thought she'd been told not to. She swung wildly from the momentum of stepping out the door. In a moment the motion slowed and she started down, buffeted by the wind and the powerful downdraft from the rotor blades.

Down, down...

A shroud of fog suddenly enveloped her and she was disoriented. She found herself hanging in space, not able to see either the chopper above or the ship below. Rain spattered her face and she was blinded. Vertigo consumed her and she couldn't tell if she was swinging like an out-of-control pendulum or dropping toward the ship at a hundred miles an hour.

Oh, Rhyme...

But then the cutter grew visible beneath her.

The
Evan Brigant
bobbed up and down and rocked but whoever was at the helm held the vessel perfectly in position despite waves that were so huge that they seemed fake—something created by a special-effects team for a movie. Her feet touched the deck but just as she hit the quick-release button on the harness the ship dropped to the bottom of a wave and she fell four feet to the deck, hitting hard, her arthritic legs screaming in pain. As two seamen ran to help her up she reflected that this was probably what the crewman on the chopper had been warning her about.

Boating is not a sport for arthritics, Sachs recalled; she had to flex her knees continually for stability as she made her way to the bridge. She had an imaginary conversation with Dr. John Sung, reporting to him that Chinese medicine had yet to score serious points over Percoset and antiinflammatories.

On the bridge the improbably young-looking captain, Fred Ransom, greeted her with a smile and a handshake. He welcomed her to the ship and led her to the chart table. "Now, here's a picture of the vessel and where she's lying."

Sachs concentrated on the image of the ship. Ransom told her where the bridge was and where the cabins were located—on the same deck but down a lengthy corridor toward the stern.

"Now, one thing, Officer, just to warn you," he said delicately. "We understand there are about fifteen bodies inside and there'll be some sea-life activity regarding them. It could be pretty grim. Some of my crew have sort of a tough time..."

But his voice faded as he looked into her eyes.

Sachs said, "Appreciate the warning, Captain. But I do run crime scenes for a living."

"Sure, Officer, understood. All right, let's get you into your gear."

Another trek outside into the rain and wind. They made their way to the stern of the ship. In a small shed, open to the rear, she was introduced to two other officers, a man and a woman, both wearing yellow and black wet suits and boots. They were the chief dive officer on board the ship and his second in command.

"Understand you did PADI?" the man asked. "How many dives?"

"I'd guess twenty-five or so."

This relieved them somewhat.

"And the last time was?"

"Make it a few years."

This response had the opposite effect.

"Well, we're going to walk you through all the steps again," the male officer said, "like you're a novice."

"I was hoping you would."

"Your deepest?" the woman dive officer asked.

"Eighty feet."

"That's about the same as here. The only difference is that it'll be murkier. The currents're stirring up the bottom."

The water wasn't that cold, they explained, still retaining much of the summer's heat, but to be under for any length of time would deplete her body heat quickly and so she needed to wear a wetsuit, which insulated her not only with the rubber but, as the name suggested, a thin layer of water between her skin and the shell of the suit.

Behind a screen she stripped and then struggled to put the suit on.

"Are you sure this isn't a child's size?" she called, gasping from the effort of pulling the tight rubber over her hips and shoulders.

"We hear that a lot," the woman dive officer responded.

Then they suited her up with the rest of the equipment: weights, mask and the air tank attached to the BCD—buoyancy control device, a vest that you inflated or deflated with a control near your left hand, which made you rise or sink in the water.

Also attached to the air tank was a primary regulator—the one that she'd breathe through—and then a secondary one, nicknamed the octopus, that could be used by a fellow diver to breathe off her tank if the buddy's air supply was cut off. They also fitted a head-mounted spotlight to her hood.