The Bone Collector

by Jeffery Deaver

  He dragged them into the basement and pushed the woman down hard on the floor, her daughter beside her. Tied their cuffs to the wall with clothesline. Then returned upstairs.

  He lifted her yellow knapsack from the back of the cab, the suitcases from the trunk, and pushed through a bolt-studded wooden door into the main room of the building. He was about to toss them into a corner but found that, for some reason, he was curious about these particular captives. He sat down in front of one of the murals--a painting of a butcher, placidly holding a knife in one hand, a slab of beef in the other.

  He examined the luggage tag. Carole Ganz. Carole with an E. Why the extra letter? he wondered. The suitcase contained nothing but clothes. He started through the knapsack. He found the cash right away. There must have been four or five thousand. He put it back in the zippered compartment.

  There were a dozen child's toys: a doll, a tin of water-colors, a package of modeling clay, a Mr. Potato Head kit. There were also an expensive Discman, a half-dozen CDs and a Sony travel clock radio.

  He looked through some pictures. Photos of Carole and her girl. In most of the pictures the woman seemed very somber. In a few others, she seemed happier. There were no photos of Carole and her husband even though she wore a wedding ring. Many were of the mother and daughter with a couple--a heavyset woman wearing one of those old granny dresses and a bearded, balding man in a flannel shirt.

  For a long time the bone collector gazed at a portrait of the little girl.

  The fate of poor Maggie O'Connor, the young slip of a girl, merely eight years of age, was particularly sad. It was her misfortune, the police speculate, that she stumbled across the path of James Schneider as he was disposing of one of his victims.

  The girl, a resident of the notorious "Hell's Kitchen," had gone out to pluck horsehairs from one of the many dead animals found in that impoverished part of the city. It was the custom of youngsters to wind tail-hairs into bracelets and rings--the only trinkets such urchins might have to adorn themselves with.

  Skin and bone, skin and bone.

  He propped the photo on the mantelpiece, beside the small pile of bones he'd been working on that morning and some that he'd stolen from the store where he'd found the snake.

  It is surmised that Schneider found young Maggie near his lair, witnessing the macabre spectacle of his murdering one of his victims. Whether he dispatched her quickly or slowly we cannot guess. But unlike his other victims, whose remains were ultimately discovered,--of frail, be-curled Maggie O'Connor, nought was ever found.

  The bone collector walked downstairs.

  He ripped the tape off the mother's mouth and the woman gasped for air, eyed him with cold fury. "What do you want?" she rasped. "What?"

  She wasn't as thin as Esther but, thank God, she was nothing at all like fat Hanna Goldschmidt. He could see so much of her soul. The narrow mandible, the clavicle. And, through the thin blue skirt, the hint of the innominate bone--a fusion of the ilium, the ischium, the pubis. Names like Roman gods'.

  The little girl squirmed. He leaned forward and placed his hand on her head. Skulls don't grow from a single piece of bone but from eight separate ones, and the crown rises up like the triangular slabs of the Astrodome roof. He touched the girl's occipital bone, the parietal bones of the cap of the skull. And two of his favorites, the sensuous bones around the eye sockets--the sphenoid and the ethmoid.

  "Stop it!" Carole shook her head, furious. "Keep away from her."

  "Shhhh," he said, holding his gloved finger to his lips. He looked at the little girl, who cried and pressed close to her mother.

  "Maggie O'Connor," he cooed, looking at the shape of the girl's face. "My little Maggie."

  The woman glared at him.

  "You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, child. What did you see me do?"

  Young in the bone.

  "What are you talking about?" Carole whispered. He turned his attention to her.

  The bone collector had always wondered about Maggie O'Connor's mother.

  "Where's your husband?"

  "He's dead," she spat out. Then glanced at the little girl and said more softly, "He was killed two years ago. Look, just let my daughter go. She can't tell them anything about you. Are you . . . listening to me? What are you doing?"

  He gripped Carole's hands and lifted them.

  He fondled the metacarpals of the wrists. The phalanges--the tiny fingers. Squeezing the bones.

  "No, don't do that. I don't like that. Please!" Her voice crackled with panic.

  He felt out of control and didn't like the sensation one bit. If he was going to succeed here, with the victims, with his plans, he had to fight down the encroaching lust--the madness was driving him further and further into the past, confusing the now with the then.

  Before and after . . .

  He needed all of his intelligence and craftiness to finish what he'd started.

  Andyet. . .yet. . .

  She was so thin, she was so taut. He closed his eyes and imagined how a knife blade scraping over her tibia would sing like the bowing of an old violin.

  His breathing was fast, he was sweating rivers.

  When finally he opened his eyes he found he was looking at her sandals. He didn't have many foot bones in good condition. The homeless people he'd been preying on in the past months . . . well, they'd suffered from rickets and osteoporosis, their toes were impacted by badly fitting shoes.

  "I'll make a deal with you," he heard himself saying.

  She looked down at her daughter. Wriggled closer to her.

  "I'll make a deal. I'll let you go if you let me do something."

  "What?" Carole whispered.

  "Let me take your skin off."

  She blinked.

  He whispered, "Let me. Please? A foot. Just one of your feet. If you do that I'll let you go."

  "What . . . ?"

  "Down to the bone."

  She gazed at him with horror. Swallowed.

  What would it matter? he thought. She was so nearly there anyway, so thin, so angular. Yes, there was something different about her--different from the other victims.

  He put the pistol away and took the knife out of his pocket. Opened it with a startling click.

  She didn't move, her eyes slid to the little girl. Back to him.

  "You'll let us go?"

  He nodded. "You haven't seen my face. You don't know where this place is."

  A long moment. She stared around her at the basement. She muttered a word. A name, he thought. Ron or Rob.

  And with her eyes firmly on his, she extended her legs and pushed her feet toward him. He slipped her shoe off the right foot.

  He took her toes. Kneaded the fragile twigs.

  She leaned back, the cables of her tendons rising beautifully from her neck. Her eyes squeezed shut. He caressed her skin with the blade.

  A firm grip on the knife.

  She closed her eyes, inhaled and gave a faint whimper. "Go ahead," she whispered. And turned the girl's face away. Hugged her tightly.

  The bone collector imagined her in a Victorian outfit, crinoline and black lace. He saw the three of them, sitting together at Delmonico's or strolling down Fifth Avenue. He saw little Maggie with them, dressed in frothy lace, rolling a hoop with a stick as they walked over the Canal bridge.

  Then and now . . .

  He nestled the stained blade in the arch of her foot.

  "Mommy!" the girl screamed.

  Something popped within him. For a moment he was overwhelmed with revulsion at what he was doing. At himself.

  No! He couldn't do it. Not to her. Esther or Hanna, yes. Or the next one. But not her.

  The bone collector shook his head sadly and touched her cheekbone with the back of his hand. He slapped the tape over Carole's mouth again and cut the cord binding her feet.

  "Come on," he muttered.

  She struggled fiercely but he gripped her head hard and pinched her nostrils till she passed out. Then he
hefted her over his shoulder and started up the stairs, carefully lifting the bag that sat nearby. Very carefully. It was not the sort of thing he wanted to drop. Up the stairs. Pausing only once, to look at young, curly-haired Maggie O'Connor, sitting in the dirt, looking hopelessly up at him.

  TWENTY-THREE

  He snagged them both in front of Rhyme's townhouse.

  Quick as the coiled snake that Jerry Banks was carrying at his side like a souvenir from Santa Fe.

  Dellray and two agents stepped from an alley. He announced casually, "Got some news, honey dear. You're under arrest for the theft of evidence under custodial care of the U.S. government."

  Lincoln Rhyme had been wrong. Dellray hadn't made it to the federal building after all. He'd been staking out Rhyme's digs.

  Banks rolled his eyes. "Chill out, Dellray. We saved the vic."

  "And a mighty good thing you did, sonny. If you hadn't we were gonna bring you up on homicide."

  "But we saved 'im," Sachs said. "And you didn't."

  "Thanks for that snappy recap, officer. Hold your wrists out."

  "This is bullshit."

  "Cuff this young lady," the Chameleon said dramatically to a burly agent beside him.

  She began, "We found more clues, Agent Dellray. He's got another one. And I don't know how much time we have."

  "Oh, and invite that thayre boy to ouah party too." Dellray nodded to Banks, who turned to the woman FBI agent approaching him and seemed to be thinking of decking her.

  Dellray said a cheerful, "No, no, no. You don' wanna."

  Banks reluctantly held out his hands.

  Sachs, angry, offered the agent a cold smile. "How was your trip to Morningside Heights?"

  "He still killed that cabbie. Our PERT boys're crawling over that house now like beetles on dung."

  "And that's all they're going to find," Sachs said. "This unsub knows crime scenes better than you and I do."

  "Downtown," Dellray announced, nodding at Sachs, who winced as the cuffs ratcheted tight around her wrists.

  "We can save the next one too. If you--"

  "You know what you got, Officer Sachs? Take a guess. You gotchaself the right to re-main silent. You got--"

  "All right," the voice called from behind them. Sachs looked around and saw Jim Polling striding along the sidewalk. His slacks and dark sports shirt were rumpled. It looked as if he'd napped in them, though his bleary face suggested he hadn't slept in days. You could see a day's growth of beard and his sandy hair was an unruly mess.

  Dellray blinked uneasily though it wasn't the cop he was troubled by but the tall physique of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District behind Polling. And bringing up the rear, SAC Perkins.

  "Okay, Fred. Let 'em go." From the U.S. attorney.

  In the modulated baritone of an FM disk jockey the Chameleon said, "She stole evidence, sir. She--"

  "I just expedited some forensic analysis," Sachs said.

  "Listen--" Dellray began.

  "Nope," Polling said, completely in control now. No temper tantrums. "No, we're not listening." He turned to Sachs and barked, "But don't you try to be funny."

  "Nosir. Sorry, sir."

  The U.S. attorney said to Dellray. "Fred, you made a judgment call and it went south. Facts of life."

  "It was a good lead," Dellray said.

  "Well, we're changing the direction of the investigation," the U.S. attorney continued.

  SAC Perkins said, "We've been conferencing with the director and with Behavioral. We've decided that Detectives Rhyme and Sellitto's positioning is the approach to pursue."

  "But my snitch was clear that something was going down at the airport. That's not the sorta thing he'd be wishy about."

  "It comes down to this, Fred," the U.S. attorney said bluntly. "Whatever the fucker's up to, it was Rhyme's team that saved the vics."

  Dellray's lengthy fingers folded into an uncertain fist, opened again. "I appreciate that fact, sir. But--"

  "Agent Dellray, this's a decision that has already been made."

  The glossy black face--so energized at the federal building when he was marshaling his troops--was now somber, reserved. For the moment, the hipster was gone. "Yessir."

  "This most recent hostage would've died if Detective Sachs here hadn't intervened," the U.S. attorney said.

  "That'd be Officer Sachs," she corrected. "And it was mostly Lincoln Rhyme. I was his legman. So to speak."

  "The case is going back to the city," the U.S. attorney announced. "The Bureau's A-T is to continue to handle terrorist-informant liaison but with reduced manpower. Anything they learn should be conveyed to Detectives Sellitto and Rhyme. Dellray, you're gonna put bodies at their disposal for any search-and-surveillance or hostage-rescue effort. Or anything else they might need. Got that?"

  "Yessir."

  "Good. You want to remove those handcuffs from these officers now?"

  Dellray placidly unlocked the cuffs and slipped them into his pocket. He walked to a large van parked nearby. As Sachs picked up the evidence bag she saw him standing by himself at the edge of a pool of streetlight, his index finger lifted, stroking the cigarette behind his car. She wasted a moment's sympathy on the feebie then turned and ran up the stairs, two at a time, after Jerry Banks and his rattlesnake.

  *

  "I have it figured out. Well, almost."

  Sachs had just walked into Rhyme's room when he made this pronouncement. He was quite pleased with himself.

  "Everything except the rattler and the glop."

  She delivered the new evidence to Mel Cooper. The room had been transformed yet again and the tables were covered with new vials and beakers and pillboxes and lab equipment and boxes. It wasn't much compared to the feds' headquarters but, to Amelia Sachs, it felt oddly like home.

  "Tell me," she said.

  "Tomorrow's Sunday . . . pardon me--today's Sunday. He's going to burn down a church."

  "How do you figure?"

  "The date."

  "On the scrap of paper? What's it mean?"

  "You ever hear of the anarchists?"

  "Little Russians in trench coats carrying around those bombs that look like bowling balls?" Banks said.

  "From the man who reads picture books," Rhyme commented dryly. "Your Saturday-morning-cartoon roots are showing, Banks. Anarchism was an old social movement calling for the abolition of government. One anarchist, Enrico Malatesta--his shtick was 'propaganda by deed.' Translated that means murder and mayhem. One of his followers, an American named Eugene Lockworthy, lived in New York. One Sunday morning he bolted the doors of a church on the Upper East Side just after the service began and set the place on fire. Killed eighteen parishioners."

  "And that happened on May 20, 1906?" Sachs asked.

  "Yep."

  "I'm not going to ask how you figured that out."

  Rhyme shrugged. "Obvious. Our unsub likes history, right? He gave us some matches so he's telling us he's planning arson. I just thought back to the city's famous fires--the Triangle Shirt-waist, Crystal Palace, the General Slocum excursion boat . . . I checked the dates--May twentieth was the First Methodist Church fire."

  Sachs asked, "But where? Same location as that church?"

  "Doubt it," Sellitto said. "There's a commercial high-rise there now. Eight twenty-three doesn't like new places. I've got a couple men on it just in case but we're sure he's going for a church."

  "And we think," Rhyme added, "that he's going to wait till a service starts."

  "Why?"

  "For one thing, that's what Lockworthy did," Sellitto continued. "Also, we were thinking 'bout what Terry Dobyns was telling us--upping the ante. Going for multiple vics."

  "So we've got a little more time. Until the service starts."

  Rhyme looked up at the ceiling. "Now, how many churches are there in Manhattan?"

  "Hundreds."

  "That was rhetorical, Banks. I mean--let's keep looking over the clues. He'll have to narrow it down some."

/>   Footsteps on the stair.

  It was the twins once again.

  "We passed Fred Dellray outside."

  "He wasn't the least bit cordial."

  "Or happy."

  "Whoa, look at that." Saul--Rhyme believed it was Saul; he'd forgotten who had the freckles--nodded at the snake. "I've seen more of those in one night than I ever want to again."

  "Snakes?" Rhyme asked.

  "We were at Metamorphosis. It's a--"

  "--very spooky place. Met the owner there. Weird guy. As you may've guessed."

  "Long, long beard. Wish we hadn't gone at night," Bedding continued.

  "They sell taxidermied bats and insects. You wouldn't believe some of the insects--"

  "Five inches long."

  "--and critters like that one." Saul nodded at the snake.

  "Scorpions, a lot of scorpions."

  "Anyway, they had a breakin a month ago and guess what got took? A rattler's skeleton."

  "Reported?" Rhyme asked.

  "Yep."

  "But total value of the perped merch was only a hundred bucks or so. So Larceny wasn't like all-hands-on-board, you know."

  "But tell them."

  Saul nodded. "The snake wasn't the only thing missing. Whoever broke in took a couple dozen bones."

  "Human bones?" Rhyme asked.

  "Yep. That's what the owner thought was funny. Some of those insects--"

  "Forget five inches, some of 'em were eight. Easy."

  "--are worth three or four hundred. But all the perp boosted was the snake and some bones."

  "Any particular ones?" Rhyme asked.

  "An assortment. Like your Whitman's Sampler."

  "His words, not ours."

  "Mostly little ones. Hand and foot. And a rib, maybe two."

  "The guy wasn't sure."

  "Any CS report?"

  "For 'jacked bones? Noooope."

  The Hardy Boys departed once more, heading downtown to the last scene to start canvassing the neighborhood.

  Rhyme wondered about the snake. Was it giving them a location? Did it relate to the First Methodist fire? If rattlers had been indigenous to Manhattan, urban development had long ago played Saint Patrick and purged the island of them. Was he making a play on the word snake or rattler?

  Then Rhyme suddenly believed he understood. "The snake's for us."

  "Us?" Banks laughed.

  "It's a slap in the face."

  "Whose face?"

  "Everybody who's looking for him. I think it's a practical joke."

  "I wasn't laughing very hard," Sachs said.