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can see he’s wearing latex gloves.”
    “Ah, that’s good. For two reasons.” Rhyme’s voice had a professorial tone. He was testing her.
    Two? she wondered. One came immediately to mind: If they were able to recover the glove they could lift a print from inside the fingers (something else perps often forgot). But the second?
    She asked him.
    “Obvious. It means he’s probably got a record, so when we do find a print, AFIS’ll tell us who he is.”State-based automated fingerprint identification systems and the FBI’s Integrated AFIS were computer databases that could provide print matches in minutes, as opposed to days or even weeks with manual examinations.
    “Sure,” Sachs said, troubled that she’d blown the quiz.
    “What else rates the assessment ‘good’?”
    “They waxed the floor last night.”
    “And the attack happened early this morning. So you’ve got a good canvas for his footprints.”
    “Yep. There’re some distinct ones here.” Kneeling, she took an electrostatic image of the print of the man’s tread marks. She was sure they were his; she could clearly see the trail where he’d walked up to Geneva’s table, adjusted his stance to get a good grip on the club to strike her and then chased her down the hall. She’d also compared the prints with those of the only other man who’d been here this morning: those of Ron Pulaski, whose mirror-shined issue shoes left a very different impression.
    She explained about the girl’s using the mannequin to distract the killer and escape. He chuckled at her ingenuity. She added, “Rhyme, he hit her—well, the mannequin—really hard. A blunt object. So hard he cracked the plastic through her stocking cap. Then he must’ve been mad she fooled him. He smashed the microfiche reader too.”
    “Blunt object,” Rhyme repeated. “Can you lift an impression?”
    When he was head of the Crime Scene Unit at the NYPD, before his accident, Rhyme had compiled a number of database files to help identify evidence and impressions found at scenes. The blunt object file contained hundreds of pictures of impact marks left on skin and inanimate surfaces by various typesof objects—from tire irons to human bones to ice. But after carefully examining both the mannequin and the smashed microfiche reader, Sachs said, “No, Rhyme. I don’t see any. The cap Geneva put on the mannequin—”
    “Geneva?”
    “That’s her name.”
    “Oh. Go on.”
    She was momentarily irritated—as she often was—that he hadn’t expressed any interest in knowing anything about the girl or her state of mind. It often troubled her that Rhyme was so detached about the crime and the victims. This, he said, was how a criminalist needed to be. You didn’t want pilots so awed by a beautiful sunset or so terrified of a thunderstorm that they flew into a mountain, the same was true with cops. She saw his point but to Amelia Sachs victims were human beings, and crimes were not scientific exercises; they were horrific events. Especially when the victim was a sixteen-year-old girl.
    She continued, “The cap she put on the mannequin dispersed the force of the blow. And the microfiche reader’s shattered too.”
    Rhyme said, “Well, bring back some of the pieces of what he hit. There might be some transfer there.”
    “Sure.”
    There were some voices in the background at Rhyme’s. He said in an odd, troubled tone, “Finish up and get back here soon, Sachs.”
    “I’m almost done,” she told him. “I’m going to walk the grid at the escape route . . . . Rhyme, what’s the matter?”
    Silence. When he spoke next he sounded even more bothered. “I have to go, Sachs. It seems I have some visitors.”
    “Who—?”
    But he’d already disconnected.
    *   *   *
    The woman in white, the pro, had disappeared from the window of the library.
    But Thompson Boyd wasn’t interested in her anymore. From his perch sixty feet above the street he was now watching an older cop,