His parents, Jenny, his brother, had all been there to support him and help with the rehab. They also encouraged him to get back into his uniform.

Which he couldn’t do.

He wasn’t afraid. Like the old adage about getting back up on the horse after a fall. That meant you’d been hurt once and were worried about getting hurt again. He couldn’t even remember the attack, let alone any pain he’d suffered.

What troubled him: He was worried about endangering a partner, a bystander.

Worried about hesitating when he had to act.

Worried about not unpacking a situation properly and making the right decisions.

And so he avoided the risk altogether. Though it killed him to give up his beloved street patrol, he chose to hide. He sat at home, he walked, he drank coffee and watched games. He wrestled with taking other lines of work. Maybe programming on a computer in the NYPD’s statistics department. That was important, he told himself. You needed accurate figures when it was budget time.

Then came Lincoln Rhyme.

And with his trademark bluster and impatience, he told Ron what everyone else was tiptoeing around: Get over it.

“Everybody’s got something wrong with them, Rookie. Hm?” And didn’t bother to glance down at his useless legs.

Two months later, the day after his last head injury rehab session, Ron donned the uniform once more.

Now, looking over his tiny backyard, Ron said to Lyle Spencer, “This’s a hit job.”

“Why?”

“Burdick was contaminating my crime scene. We could’ve had a private conversation, but he was grandstanding in front of the press. I threatened him with obstruction. Nearly cuffed him.”

“So he sent Garner after you.” He shook his head. “Personal vendetta? Man, that’s low... And, I’ve gotta say, it took a lot of effort. He must really have it in for you. And those medical records of yours. They’re going to be a problem. Hell, they might even change them. Make it seem worse. Maybe say something like there’s permanent damage.”

Medical records, Ron Pulaski was thinking.

Medical records...

“Listen, thanks, Lyle.”

“Anytime. I’ve got zero patience for bullshit. Especially when it’s coming from our team.”

He walked the man around the house to his car. He said, “And, you know, anything you want to talk about.”

Spencer nodded, understanding Ron was not speaking of Burdick’s setup. “Same goes for you.”

They shook hands and Spencer got into his unmarked, the Dodge listing to the left under his weight.

Standing on his trim lawn, which he so enjoyed tending, Ron stared down the street, watching the detective’s car disappear.

He was again thinking, Medical reports.

And then thinking one more thing, which he now just couldn’t get out of his mind.

Personal vendetta? Man, that’s low... And a lot of work.

54

“I could smell it, Rhyme.”

Amelia Sachs walked into the town house carrying the oddest bit of evidence he’d ever seen: a metal door, sealed in cellophane wrap. Where the hinges had been were nothing but clusters of bullet holes.

The gloves, he noted too, were not standard latex. They were black. Neoprene probably, which told Rhyme precisely what smell she was referring to.

“The construction trailer? After we breached the door, I could smell it. I aborted and backed out. He had a trap — charges on a couple of drums of HF. The place is gone.”

“Injuries?”

“No, the teams’re good.”

She’d explained that Hale had fooled them yet again. The heat signature “proving” that he was inside was only a lantern or heat lamp set at about 98 degrees, placed on a Roomba.

“A what?”

“Vacuum cleaner you can program to move on its own.”

Such a thing existed?

“At least the charges were small. If there had been a half ki of C4, and it blew the canisters, that would’ve made things awkward.”

Amelia Sachs tended toward understatement on the topic of risk to her person.

“And that?” he said, pointing at the door she carried.

“I wanted something,” she grumbled. “Got my mask on and emptied two mags into the hinges and ripped it off just before I had to dodge the acid.” She added an exasperated, “I’m pretty pissed. I’ll need to do an FDR. They won’t waive it. I checked.”

Any time an officer’s weapon was fired, even accidentally, he or she had to fill out a Firearms Discharge Report. They were lengthy. The city took guns seriously and firing them even more so.

She handed the tech the door. “Mel. Here.”

Cooper stepped from the sterile portion of the parlor, and in his own neoprenes took the thing from her.

Rhyme said, “The knob.”

She was nodding. “I’m betting he didn’t wear gloves all the time, and he was probably pretty sure that if there was a breach, the acid’d not only kill the intruder but would melt the knob into sludge, along with any trace he’d left there.”