Long Way Down, continued from chapter one.

Author's Note: To Maple Street, for everything. Thank you for making this the one of the best summers I've ever had. I :wub: all of you.

By the fifth flight of stairs, Samantha was out of breath and not happy about it.
"How is it that a college with a forty thousand dollar tuition can't afford working elevators?"

Jack gave her a sideways glance, trying to conceal an amused smirk and not quite succeeding.
"Forty thousand?" He pondered aloud as they turned to the final flight of stairs.

"I'm ball parking," she muttered. "Private, all-girls school..what do you think?"

He gave a thoughtful shrug, holding the door to the sixth floor hallway open and allowing her to pass through.

"After you, Spade."

This time his mouth lifted in a full grin, which only grew wider as she turned and affixed him with a glare.

" 'Spade'? Oh no. Last names aren't going to work, Jack," Samantha warned as they started down the narrow hallway.

"Why not? It's kind of cute," he teased gently, slowing to a stop in front of a wooden door marked 617.

"For them, yeah, it's adorable. For us?" She shook her head, unable to keep the slightly exasperated smile from crossing her face as she knocked on the door.

After a moment, it opened, revealing a tall, pale blonde young woman who didn't look surprised to see them standing in her doorway.

"Erin Spencer?"

The girl nodded in the affirmative, and Samantha continued.


"I'm Samantha Spade, and this is Jack Malone. We're from the FBI, and we need to ask you a few questions about Kerry."

Wordlessly, Erin pushed the door open wider, retreating back into the dorm. Samantha and Jack followed, stepping into what appeared to be a typical college dorm room; relatively small, unwelcoming, and cluttered. Two beds sat on opposite ends of the room, and a single window allowed a stream of brilliant sunlight inside.

Erin perched on the edge of one of the beds, silently observing, until Jack took a seat across from her, leaning forward and flipping open a notebook.

"What can you tell us about last night?"

"We were both back here by around ten." Erin's tone suggested she had been through this before."I was doing research for a paper, and Kerry was reading, or something. Her phone rang a little while later, and she was on for about fifteen minutes. She sounded pretty pissed off when she hung up, but she didn't really tell me anything, only that it had been her parents on the phone." A shrug from Erin. "They always have pretty explosive conversations, from what I've heard. Anyway, that's when she decided to go for a run. Said she needed to clear her head. She did that once or twice a week, and it was always pretty late. After ten-thirty, at least."

As Erin spoke, Samantha had been looking around the room, unsure of what, exactly, she was searching for. A photograph thrown haphazardly on what Samantha assumed was Kerry's desk caught her eye. The woman in it had long, honey-blonde hair and a soft, youthful face, but it was her eyes that demanded Samantha's attention.

Deep sea green, they held a world of pain and knowledge not quite masked by the surprised smile on her otherwise innocent face, and Samantha wondered what kind of horror had caused the devastation so evident in the photograph.

"Do you remember what the conversation was about?" Jack was asking Erin Spencer, and Samantha listened intently to the answer.

Erin bit her lip thoughtfully.

"Something about classes, this time. Kerry's majoring in English and minoring in education, but she loves art." Erin pointed to a sketchbook thrown on the opposite bed. "She's good, too. Anyway, I think she wanted to take some art class off campus. From her end, it sounded like they were really against it; refusing to pay and everything." A slight eye roll from the blonde. "Not like they can't afford it. Kerry said she'd pay, though. She's got a job at some restaurant.." Erin trailed off, a look of consideration etched across her features. "It was weird, though..like this was the first they heard she was working. Kerry got all defensive after she told them, too." She shrugged. "Control freaks, I think."

"What's the name of the restaurant Kerry works at?"

"Marabella's," Erin responded.


"Erin, did you call Kerry in missing?" Samantha spoke for the first time since they had entered the room.

The other girl nodded. "I fell asleep around eleven last night. Her alarm woke me up at six, and I realized she hadn't come back."

"Can you describe what Kerry was wearing?"

Erin's forehead wrinkled in concentration.

"White t-shirt, green shorts and sneakers. Oh, and she had a silver CD player. Never runs without it." Her voice was suddenly thick with unshed tears.
"I don't know Kerry that well yet. It might help to talk to the people she works with. She spends a lot of time there."

Jack nodded before continuing. "Do you know if Kerry was dating anyone? Any boyfriend or ex-boyfriend that you know of?"

"I don't think so. School and work took up most of her time, and she never mentioned anything," Erin replied.

Samantha made her way over to Erin, holding the photograph out for the other girl to see, and asked the question even though she already knew the answer.

"Is this Kerry?"

A nod from Erin, and Samantha touched her shoulder lightly.

"Thank you."

Another mute nod from Erin Spencer, who then led the agents to the door.

After they had retreated into the hallway, Samantha handed the photo to Jack. He studied it for a long moment before giving it back to her.

"Nice-looking kid," he commented as they began their descent.

"She's in pain," Samantha responded quietly, glancing at the picture again.

Jack looked first to the picture, and then his eyes met Samantha's with a resigned acceptance.

"She is," he agreed.


Sometimes it was hard for him. Hard to wait at the edge while she searched and uncovered and delved into the scene that was right there, but would always be just out of his reach.

Sometimes it was hard, but allowing Amelia Sachs to be his legs and arms and eyes had given him back a piece of his life he'd thought gone forever.

Lincoln Rhyme now watched intently from his chair as she studied the exit closest to the emergency call box. It wasn't much of an exit; a gravel path like the one that stretched around the entire campus, just wide enough for a single car and bordered by a thin trees on both sides. At the end sat a metal gate that opened to a back road.

Sachs was making her way slowly down the path toward the gate, carefully examining both the ground and the trees surrounding her, making sure to look up at the higher branches as well.

'Good, Sachs.' The concept of three-dimensional crime scenes was one that Rhyme had drilled into Amelia Sachs from the day they met.

She stopped, and her voice suddenly sounded through his headset.

"Rhyme, if she was taken this way..the perp probably wasn't walking down the middle of the path." Her tone was colored with self-disgust. "He would have stayed out of sight, probably not on the path at all."

She was right, Rhyme realized. "That's it, Sachs. Get inside of him."

He was her anchor, keeping her steady and allowing her to slip just far enough into the criminal's persona that she could see the scene through the perpetrator's eyes.

It was both a gift and a nightmare, and he stayed with her as she reluctantly crossed to that dark, cold side of her mind.

Amelia Sachs had reached the end of the path and moved just out of Rhyme's view, into the line of trees to the left of the metal gate.

"It's dark even now," she was whispering into her own headset. "I can see the call box from here, and the path..I'd know if anyone was approaching. I can follow these trees until I'm practically right next to her."

Sachs was moving slowly forward, branches grazing her hair and face as she examined the area surrounding her.

"How're you feeling?" Rhyme was pushing hard and he knew it, but he needed her to dig deeper.

"I'm..confident. I can see her but she can't see me. I'm close, I'm ready."

"Okay." Rhyme deliberately kept his voice low, soothing, allowing Sachs to leave herself behind and dissolve into the elusive mind of a criminal they knew next to nothing about.
Sachs stopped just before she reached the edge of the trees, which opened onto the short path leading to the silver call box.

"I'm going back, Rhyme," she spoke into the headset. "This looks like it would be the quickest way to get off campus without being seen."

"Go ahead. Remember, you've got her with you now."

With a slight nod, Amelia turned and started toward the metal gate again, occasionally turning to look over her shoulder.

"She's probably fighting," Sachs continued, speaking both to herself and Lincoln. "I'm nervous now. She's fighting and I could get caught..Oh shit, Rhyme."

"What is it?" Rhyme's voice was taut.

"Looks like a piece of cloth. It's stuck on a sharp tree branch. It's weird."

"Weird? What's weird, Sachs? The color? The texture? Weird doesn't tell me anything." Impatience made Rhyme caustic.

"It looks almost like silk. Navy blue, I think. Kind of twisted on the branch, like whoever was wearing it turned sharply and it got caught." Amelia Sachs had learned to ignore Rhyme's sarcastic badgering.

"Photograph and bag it. Don't move the cloth; break the branch off a few inches down. There could be trace trapped in the cloth."

He could visualize her face, etched in concentration, as she carefully snapped the branch from the tree and deposited it in the bag.

"Got something else, Rhyme. A yellow hair tie on the ground."

Ignoring the screaming protest from her arthritic knees, Amelia bent to the grass and, using a pair of slender tweezers, picked up the thin hair band.

After searching the area a few minutes longer, a slightly dissatisfied Amelia Sachs pronounced herself, for the moment, finished.

"Okay, Sachs. We've got to collect samples of dirt from the exits and the main scene, then head back and process the evidence."

"Right." Sachs ducked under a low-hanging branch and made her way over to his chair. "I've got them from this exit."

"We'll need a map of the school, as well."

"Taken care of." She grinned down at him as he raised an eyebrow in mock surprise.

"Good thinking."

"Good teacher," she responded, and Rhyme didn't miss the tone of affection in her voice.

Her hand fell absently to his shoulder as they continued to make their way around the campus, long slender fingers tracing an idle, familiar pattern on one of the few places he could still feel.

In so many ways, Amelia Sachs had given Lincoln Rhyme back the life he'd almost lost.

In so many ways, he'd done the same for her.

TBC…