The Bone Collector

by Jeffery Deaver

  "Your expression was pretty funny." Banks grinned.

  "I think we're better than he expected and he's not happy about it. He's mad and he's taking it out on us. Thom, add that to our profile, if you would. He's mocking us."

  Sellitto's phone rang. He opened it and answered. "Emma darlin'. Whatcha got?" He nodded as he jotted notes. Then looked up and announced, "Rental-car thefts. Two Avises disappeared from their location in the Bronx in the past week, one in Midtown. They're out 'cause the colors're wrong: red, green and white. No Nationals. Four Hertz were 'jacked. Three in Manhattan--one from their downtown East Side location, from Midtown and from the Upper West Side. There were two green and--this could be it--one tan. But a silver Ford got boosted from White Plains. That's my vote."

  "Agree," Rhyme announced. "White Plains."

  "How do you know?" Sachs asked. "Monelle said it could've been either beige or silver."

  "Because our boy's in the city," Rhyme explained, "and if he's going to boost something as obvious as a car he'll do it as far away from his safe house as he can. It's a Ford, you said?"

  Sellitto asked Emma the question, then looked up. "Taurus. This year's model. Dark-gray interior. Tag's irrelevant."

  Rhyme nodded. "The first thing he changed, the plates. Thank her and tell her to get some sleep. But not to wander too far from the phone."

  "Got something here, Lincoln," Mel Cooper called.

  "What's that?"

  "The glop. I'm running it through the database of brand names now." He stared at the screen. "Cross-referencing . . . Let's see, the most likely match is Kink-Away. It's a retail hair straightener."

  "Politically incorrect but helpful. That puts us up in Harlem, wouldn't you think? Narrows down the churches considerably." Banks was looking through the religious-service directories of all three metro newspapers. "I count twenty-two."

  "When's the earliest service?"

  "Three have services at eight. Six at nine. One at nine-thirty. The rest at ten or eleven."

  "He'll go for one of the first services. He's already giving us hours to find the place."

  Sellitto said, "I've got Haumann getting the ESU boys together again."

  "How 'bout Dellray?" Sachs said. She pictured the forlorn agent by himself on the street corner outside.

  "What about him?" Sellitto muttered.

  "Aw, let's cut him in. He wants a piece of this guy bad."

  "Perkins said he was supposed to help," Banks offered.

  "You really want him?" Sellitto asked, frowning.

  Sachs was nodding. "Sure."

  Rhyme agreed. "Okay, he can run the fed S&S teams. I want a team on each church right away. All entrances. But they should stay way back. I don't want to spook him. Maybe we can nail him in the act."

  Sellitto took a phone call. He looked up, eyes closed. "Jesus."

  "Oh, no," Rhyme muttered.

  The detective wiped his sweating face and nodded. "Central got a 9-1-1 from the night manager at this place? The Midtown Residence Hotel? Woman and her little girl called him from La Guardia, said they were just about to get a cab. That was a while ago; they never showed up. With all the news about the 'nappings he thought he should call. Her name's Carole Ganz. From Chicago."

  "Hell," Banks muttered. "A little girl, too? Oughta just pull all the cabs off the streets till we nail his butt."

  Rhyme was drenched with weariness. His head raged. He remembered working a crime scene at a bomb factory. Nitroglycerin had bled out of some dynamite and seeped into an armchair Rhyme had to search for trace. Nitro gave you blinding headaches.

  The screen of Cooper's computer flickered. "E-mail," he announced and called up the message. He read the fine type.

  "They've polarized all the samples of cello that ESU collected. They think the scrap we found in the bone at the Pearl Street scene was from a ShopRite grocery store. It's closest to the cello they use."

  "Good," Rhyme called. He nodded at the poster. "Cross off all the grocery stores but the ShopRites. What locations do we have?"

  He watched Thom ink through the stores, leaving four.

  B'way & 82nd

  Greenwich & Bank

  8th Ave. & 24th

  Houston & Lafayette

  "That leaves us with the Upper West Side, West Village, Chelsea and the Lower East Side."

  "But he could have gone anywhere to buy them."

  "Oh, sure he could've, Sachs. He could've bought them in White Plains when he was stealing the car. Or in Cleveland visiting his mother. But see, there's a point when unsubs feel comfortable in their deception and they stop bothering to cover their tracks. The stupid--or lazy--ones toss the smoking gun in the Dumpster behind their building and go on their merry way. The smarter ones drop it in a bucket of Spackle and pitch it into Hell Gate. The brilliant ones sneak into a refinery and vaporize it in a five-thousand-degree-centigrade furnace. Our unsub's smart, sure. But he's like every other perp in the history of the world. He's got limits. I'm betting he thinks we won't have the time or inclination to look for him or his safe house because we'll be concentrating on the planted clues. And of course he's dead wrong. This is exactly how we'll find him. Now, let's see if we can't get a little closer to his lair. Mel, anything in the vic's clothes from the last scene?"

  But the tidal water had washed away virtually everything from William Everett's clothing.

  "You say they fought, Sachs? The unsub and this Everett?"

  "Wasn't much of a fight. Everett grabbed his shirt."

  Rhyme clicked his tongue. "I must be getting tired. If I'd thought about it I would have had you scrape under his nails. Even if he was underwater that's one place--"

  "Here you go," she said, holding up two small plastic bags.

  "You scraped?"

  She nodded.

  "But why're there two bags?"

  Holding up one bag then the other she said, "Left hand, right hand."

  Mel Cooper broke into a laugh. "Even you never thought about separate bags for scraping, Lincoln. It's a great idea."

  Rhyme grunted. "Differentiating the hands might have some marginal forensic value."

  "Whoa," Cooper said, laughing still. "That means he thinks it's a brilliant idea and he's sorry he didn't think of it first."

  The tech examined the scrapings. "Got some brick here."

  "There was no brick anywhere around the drainpipe or the field," Sachs said.

  "It's fragments. But there's something attached to it. I can't tell what."

  Banks asked, "Could it've come from the stockyard tunnel? There was a lotta brick there, right?"

  "All that came from Annie Oakley here," Rhyme said, nodding ruefully at Sachs. "No, remember, the unsub'd left before she pulled out her six-gun." Then he frowned, found himself straining forward. "Mel, I want to see that brick. In the 'scope. Is there any way?"

  Cooper looked over Rhyme's computer. "I think we can rig something up." He ran a cable from the video-output port on the compound 'scope to his own computer and then dug into a large suitcase. He pulled out a long, thick gray wire. "This's a serial cable." He connected the two computers and transferred some software to Rhyme's Compaq. In five minutes, Rhyme, delighted, was seeing exactly what Cooper was looking at through the eyepiece.

  The criminalist's eyes scanned the chunk of brick--hugely magnified. He laughed out loud. "He outfoxed himself. See those white blobs attached to the brick?"

  "What are they?" Sellitto asked.

  "Looks like glue," Cooper offered.

  "Exactly. From a pet-hair roller. Perps who're real cautious use them to clean trace off themselves. But it backfired. Some bits of adhesive must've come off the roller and stuck to his clothes. So we know it's from his safe house. Held the brick in place until Everett picked it up under his fingernails."

  "Does the brick tell us anything?" Sachs asked.

  "It's old. And it's expensive--cheap brick was very porous because they mixed in filler. I'd guess his place is either institutio
nal or built by someone wealthy. At least a hundred years old. Maybe older."

  "Ah, here we go," Cooper said. "Another bit of glove, it looks like. If the damn things keep disintegrating we'll be down to his friction ridges before too long."

  Rhyme's screen flashed and a moment later what he recognized as a tiny fleck of leather came on the screen. "Something's funny here," Cooper said.

  "It's not red," Rhyme observed. "Like the other particle. This fleck's black. Run it through the microspectrophotometer."

  Cooper ran the test and then tapped his computer screen. "It's leather. But the dye is different. Maybe it's stained or faded."

  Rhyme was leaning forward, straining, looking closely at the fleck on the screen when he realized he was in trouble. Serious trouble.

  "Hey, you okay?" It was Sachs who'd spoken.

  Rhyme didn't answer. His neck and jaw began to shiver violently. A feeling like panic rose from the crest of his shattered spine and moved up into his scalp. Then, as if a thermostat had clicked on, the chills and goose bumps vanished and he began to sweat. Perspiration poured from his face and tickled frantically.

  "Thom!" he whispered. "Thom, it's happening."

  Then he gasped as the headache seared through his face and spread along the walls of his skull. He jammed his teeth together, swayed his head, anything to stop the unbearable agony. But nothing worked. The light in the room flickered. The pain was so bad his reaction was to flee from it, to run flat-out on legs that hadn't moved in years.

  "Lincoln!" Sellitto was shouting.

  "His face," Sachs gasped, "it's bright red."

  And his hands were pale as ivory. All of his body below the magic latitude at C4 was turning white. Rhyme's blood, on its phony, desperate mission to get to where it thought it was needed, surged into the tiny capillaries of his brain, expanding them, threatening to burst the delicate filaments.

  As the attack grew worse Rhyme was aware of Thom over him, ripping the blankets off the Clinitron. He was aware of Sachs stepping forward, her radiant blue eyes narrowed in concern. The last thing he saw before the blackness was the falcon pushing off the ledge on his huge wings, startled by the sudden flurry of activity in the room, seeking easy oblivion in the hot air over the empty streets of the city.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  When Rhyme passed out, Sellitto got to the phone first.

  "Call 911 for EMS," Thom instructed. "Then hit that number there. Speed dial. It's Pete Taylor, our spinal cord specialist."

  Sellitto made the calls.

  Thom was shouting, "I'll need some help here. Somebody!"

  Sachs was closest. She nodded, stepped up to Rhyme. The aide had grabbed the unconscious man under the arms and pulled him higher up in bed. He ripped open the shirt and prodded the pale chest, saying, "Everybody else, if you could just leave us."

  Sellitto, Banks and Cooper hesitated for a moment then stepped through the doorway. Sellitto closed the door behind them.

  A beige box appeared in the aide's hands. It had switches and dials on the top and sprouted a wire ending in a flat disk, which he placed over Rhyme's chest and taped down.

  "Phrenic nerve stimulator. It'll keep him breathing." He clicked on the machine.

  Thom slipped a blood-pressure cuff onto Rhyme's alabaster-white arm. Sachs realized with a start that his body was virtually wrinkle-free. He was in his forties but his body was that of a twenty-five-year-old.

  "Why's his face so red? It looks like he's going to explode."

  "He is," Thom said matter-of-factly, yanking a doctor's kit from underneath the bedside table. He opened it then he continued to take the pressure. "Dysreflexia . . . All the stress today. Mental and physical. He's not used to it."

  "He kept saying he was tired."

  "I know. And I wasn't paying careful enough attention. Shhhh. I have to listen." He plugged the stethoscope into his ears, inflated the cuff and let the air out slowly. Staring at his watch. His hands were rock-steady. "Shit. Diastolic's one twenty-five. Shit."

  Father in heaven, Sachs thought. He's going to stroke out.

  Thom nodded at the black bag. "Find the bottle of nifedipine. And open up one of those syringes." As she searched, Thom yanked down Rhyme's pajamas and grabbed a catheter from beside the bed, tore open its plastic wrapper too. He smeared the end with K-Y jelly and lifted Rhyme's pale penis, inserting the catheter gently but quickly into the tip.

  "This's part of the problem. Bowel and urinary pressure can trigger an attack. He's been drinking way more than he should today."

  She opened the hypodermic but said, "I don't know how to do the needle."

  "I'll do it." He looked up at her. "Could I ask . . . would you mind doing this? I don't want the tube to get a kink in it."

  "Okay. Sure."

  "You want gloves?"

  She pulled on a pair and carefully took Rhyme's penis in her left hand. She held the tube in her right. It had been a long, long time since she'd held a man here. The skin was soft and she thought how strange it was that this center of a man's being is, most of the time, as delicate as silk.

  Thom expertly injected the drug.

  "Come on, Lincoln . . ."

  A siren sounded in the distance.

  "They're almost here," she said glancing out the window.

  "If we don't bring him back now there's nothing they can do."

  "How long does it take the drug to work?"

  Thom stared at the unresponsive Rhyme, said, "It should've by now. But too high a dose and he goes into shock." The aide bent down and lifted an eyelid. The blue pupil was glazed, unfocused.

  "This isn't good." He took the pressure again. "One fifty. Christ."

  "It'll kill him," she said.

  "Oh. That's not the problem."

  "What?" a shocked Amelia Sachs whispered.

  "He doesn't mind dying." He looked at her briefly as if surprised she hadn't figured this out. "He just doesn't want to be any more paralyzed than he already is." He prepared another injection. "He may already've had one. A stroke, I mean. That's what terrifies him."

  Thom leaned forward and injected more of the drug.

  The siren was closer now. Honking too. Cars would be blocking the ambulance's way, in no hurry to pull aside--one of the things that infuriated Sachs about the city.

  "You can take the catheter out now."

  She carefully extracted the tube. "Should I . . ." Nodding toward the urine bag.

  Thom managed a weak smile. "That's my job."

  Several minutes passed. The ambulance seemed to make no progress then a voice crackled over a speaker and gradually the siren grew closer.

  Suddenly Rhyme stirred. His head shook slightly. Then it lolled back and forth, pressed into the pillow. His skin lost some of its florid tone.

  "Lincoln, can you hear me?"

  He moaned, "Thom . . ."

  Rhyme was shivering violently. Thom covered him with a sheet.

  Sachs found herself smoothing Rhyme's mussed hair. She took a tissue and wiped his forehead.

  Footsteps pounded on the stairs and two burly EMS medics appeared, radios crackling. They hurried into the room, took Rhyme's blood pressure and checked the nerve stimulator. A moment later Dr. Peter Taylor burst into the room.

  "Peter," Thom said. "Dysreflexia."

  "Pressure?"

  "It's down. But it was bad. Crested at one fifty."

  The doctor winced.

  Thom introduced Taylor to the EMS techs. They seemed pleased an expert was there and stepped back as Taylor walked over to the bedside.

  "Doctor," Rhyme said groggily.

  "Let's look at those eyes." Taylor shone a light into Rhyme's pupils. Sachs scanned the doctor's face for a reaction and was troubled by his frown.

  "Don't need the nerve stimulator," Rhyme whispered.

  "You and your lungs, right?" the doctor asked wryly. "Well, let's keep it going for a little while, why don't we? Just till we see what exactly's going on here." He glanced at Sachs. "May
be you could wait downstairs."

  Taylor leaned close and Rhyme noticed the beads of sweat dotting the doctor's scalp under his thin hair.

  The man's deft hands lifted a lid and gazed again into one pupil, then the next. He rigged up the sphygmomanometer and took Rhyme's blood pressure, his eyes distant with that concentration of medicos lost in their minute, vital tasks.

  "Approaching normal," he announced. "How's the urine?"

  "Eleven hundred ccs," Thom said.

  Taylor glowered. "Been neglecting things? Or just drinking to excess?"

  Rhyme glowered right back. "We were distracted, doctor. It's been a busy night."

  Taylor followed Rhyme's nod and glanced around the room, surprised, as if someone had just sneaked the equipment in when he wasn't looking. "What's all this?"

  "They hauled me out of retirement."

  Taylor's perplexed frown grew into a smile. "About time. I've been after you for months to do something with your life. Now, what's the bowel situation?"

  Thom said, "Probably twelve hours, fourteen."

  "Careless of you," Taylor chided.

  "It wasn't his fault," Rhyme snapped. "I've had a roomful of people here all day."

  "I don't want to hear excuses," the doctor shot back. This was Pete Taylor, who never spoke through anyone when he talked to Rhyme and never let his bullying patient bully him.

  "We better take care of things." He pulled on surgical gloves, leaned over Rhyme's torso. His fingers began manipulating the abdomen to trick the numb intestines into doing their work. Thom lifted the blankets and got the disposable diapers.

  A moment later the job was done and Thom cleaned his boss.

  Taylor said suddenly, "So you've given up that nonsense, I hope?" Studying Ryhme closely.

  That nonsense . . .

  He'd meant the suicide. With a glance at Thom, Rhyme said, "Haven't thought about that for a while."

  "Good." Taylor looked over the instruments on the table. "This is what you ought to be doing. Maybe the department'll put you back on the payroll."

  "Don't think I could pass the physical."

  "How's the head?"

  " 'A dozen sledgehammers' comes close to describing it. My neck too. Had two bad cramps so far today."

  Taylor walked behind the Clinitron, pressed his fingers on either side of Rhyme's spine, where--Rhyme supposed, though he'd never seen the spot of course--there were prominent incision scars from the operations he'd had over the years. Taylor gave Rhyme an expert massage, digging deep into the taut straps of muscle in his shoulders and neck. The pain slowly vanished.