The Bone Collector Read online

  And wanted me? Rhyme wondered. This was curious. Rhyme hadn't had any contact with Polling over the past few years--not since the cop-killer case in which Rhyme had been hurt. It had been Polling who'd run the case and eventually collared Dan Shepherd.

  "You seem surprised," Sellitto said.

  "That he asked for me? I am. We weren't on the best of terms. Didn't used to be anyway."

  "Why's that?"

  "I 14-43'd him."

  An NYPD complaint form.

  "Five, six years ago, when he was a lieutenant, I found him interrogating a suspect right in the middle of a secure scene. Contaminated it. I blew my stack. Put in a report and it got cited at one of his IA reviews--the one where he popped the unarmed suspect."

  "Well, I guess all's forgiven, 'cause he wanted you bad."

  "Lon, make a phone call for me, would you?"

  "Sure."

  "No," Thom said, lifting the phone out of the detective's hand. "Make him do it himself."

  "I didn't have time to learn how it works," Rhyme said, nodding toward the dialing ECU Thom had hooked up earlier.

  "You didn't spend the time. Big difference. Who're you calling?"

  "Berger."

  "No, you're not," Thom said. "It's late."

  "I've been reading clocks for a while now," Rhyme replied coolly. "Call him. He's staying at the Plaza."

  "No."

  "I asked you to call him."

  "Here." The aide slapped a slip of paper down on the far edge of the table but Rhyme read it easily. God may have taken much from Lincoln Rhyme but He'd given him the eyesight of a young man. He went through the process of dialing with his cheek on the control stalk. It was easier than he'd thought but he purposely took a long time and muttered as he did it. Infuriatingly, Thom ignored him and went downstairs.

  Berger wasn't in his hotel room. Rhyme disconnected, mad that he wasn't able to slam the phone down.

  "Problem?" Sellitto asked.

  "No," Rhyme grumbled.

  Where is he? Rhyme thought testily. It was late. Berger ought to be at his hotel room by now. Rhyme was stabbed with an odd feeling--jealousy that his death doctor was out helping someone else die.

  Sellitto suddenly chuckled softly. Rhyme looked up. The cop was eating a candy bar. He'd forgotten that junk food'd been the staple of the big man's diet when they were working together. "I was thinking. Remember Bennie Ponzo?"

  "The OC Task Force ten, twelve years ago?"

  "Yeah."

  Rhyme had enjoyed organized-crime work. The perps were pros. The crime scenes challenging. And the vics were rarely innocent.

  "Who was that?" Mel Cooper asked.

  "Hitman outa Bay Ridge," Sellitto said. "Remember after we booked him, the candy sandwich?"

  Rhyme laughed, nodding.

  "What's the story?" Cooper asked.

  Sellitto said, "Okay, we're down at Central Booking, Lincoln and me and a couple other guys. And Bennie, remember, he was a big guy, he was sitting all hunched over, feeling his stomach. All of a sudden he goes, 'Yo, I'm hungry, I wanna candy sandwich.' And we're like looking at each other and I go, 'What's a candy sandwich?' And he looks at me like I'm from Mars and goes, 'What the fuck you think it is? Ya take a Hershey bar, ya put it between two slices of bread and ya eat it. That's a fucking candy sandwich.' "

  They laughed. Sellitto held out the bar to Cooper, who shook his head, then to Rhyme, who felt a sudden impulse to take a bite. It'd been over a year since he'd had chocolate. He avoided food like that--sugar, candy. Troublesome food. The little things about life were the biggest burdens, the ones that saddened and exhausted you the most. Okay, you'll never scuba-dive or hike the Alps. So what? A lot of people don't. But everybody brushes their teeth. And goes to the dentist, gets a filling, takes the train home. Everybody picks a hunk of peanut from out behind a molar when nobody's looking.

  Everybody except Lincoln Rhyme.

  He shook his head to Sellitto and drank a long swallow of Scotch. His eyes slid back to the computer screen, recalling the goodbye letter to Blaine he'd been composing when Sellitto and Banks had interrupted him that morning. There were some other letters he wanted to write as well.

  The one he was putting off writing was to Pete Taylor, the spinal cord trauma specialist. Most of the time Taylor and Rhyme had talked not about the patient's condition but about death. The doctor was an ardent opponent of euthanasia. Rhyme felt he owed him a letter to explain why he'd decided to go ahead with the suicide.

  And Amelia Sachs?

  The Portable's Daughter would get a note too, he decided.

  Crips are generous, crips are kind, crips are iron . . .

  Crips are nothing if not forgiving.

  Dear Amelia:

  My Dear Amelia:

  Amelia:

  Dear Officer Sachs:

  Inasmuch as we have had the pleasure of working together, I would like to take this opportunity to state that although I consider you a betraying Judas, I've forgiven you. Furthermore I wish you well in your future career as a kisser of the media's ass. . . .

  "What's her story, Lon? Sachs."

  "Aside from the fact she's got a ball-buster temper I didn't know about?"

  "She married?"

  "Naw. A face and bod like that, you'da thought some good-lookin' hunk woulda snagged her by now. But she doesn't even date. We heard she was going with somebody a few years ago but she never talks about it." He lowered his voice. "Lipstick lesbos's what the rumor is. But I don't know from that--my social life's picking up women at the laundromat on Saturday night. Hey, it works. What can I say?"

  You'll have to learn to give up the dead. . . .

  Rhyme was thinking about the look on her face when he'd said that to her. What was that all about? Then he grew angry with himself for spending any time thinking about her. And took a good slug of Scotch.

  The doorbell rang, then footsteps on the stairs. Rhyme and Sellitto glanced toward the doorway. The sound was from the boots of a tall man, wearing city-issue jodhpurs and a blue helmet. One of NYPD's elite mounted police. He handed a bulky envelope to Sellitto and returned down the stairs.

  The detective opened it. "Lookit what we got here." He poured the contents onto the table. Rhyme glanced up with irritation. Three or four dozen plastic evidence bags, all labeled. Each contained a patch of cellophane from the packages of veal shanks they'd sent ESU to buy.

  "A note from Haumann." He read: " 'To: L. Rhyme. L. Sellitto. From: B. Haumann, TSRF.' "

  "What's 'at?" Cooper asked. The police department is a nest of initials and acronyms. RMP--remote mobile patrol--is a squad car. IED--improvised explosive device--is a bomb. But TSRF was a new one. Rhyme shrugged.

  Sellitto continued to read, chuckling. " 'Tactical Supermarket Response Force. Re: Veal shanks. Citywide search discovered forty-six subjects, all of which were apprehended and neutralized with minimal force. We read them their rights and have transported same to detention facility in the kitchen of Officer T. P. Giancarlo's mother. Upon completion of interrogation, a half-dozen suspects will be transferred to your custody. Heat at 350 for thirty minutes.' "

  Rhyme laughed. Then sipped more Scotch, savoring the flavor. This was one thing he'd miss, the smoky breath of the liquor. (Though in the peace of senseless sleep, how could you miss anything? Just like evidence, take away the baseline standard and you have nothing to judge the loss against; you're safe for all eternity.)

  Cooper fanned out some of the samples. "Forty-six samples of the cello. One from each chain and the major independents."

  Rhyme gazed at the samples. The odds were good for class identification. Individuation of cellophane'd be a bitch--the scrap found on the veal bone clue wouldn't of course exactly match one of these. But, because parent companies buy identical supplies for all their stores, you might learn in which chain 823 bought the veal and narrow down the neighborhoods he might live in. Maybe he should call the Bureau's physical-evidence team and--

  No,
no. Remember: it's their fucking case now.

  Rhyme commanded Cooper, "Bundle them up and ship them to our federal brethren."

  Rhyme tried shutting down his computer and hit the wrong button with his sometimes ornery ring finger. The speakerphone came on with a loud wail of squelch.

  "Shit," Rhyme muttered darkly. "Fucking machinery."

  Uneasy with Rhyme's sudden anger, Sellitto glanced at his glass and joked, "Hell, Linc, Scotch this good's supposed to make you mellow."

  "Got news," Thom replied sourly. "He is mellow."

  He parked close to the huge drainpipe.

  Climbing from the cab he could smell the fetid water, slimy and ripe. They were in a cul-de-sac leading to the wide runoff pipe that ran from the West Side Highway down to the Hudson River. No one could see them here.

  The bone collector walked to the back of the cab, enjoying the sight of his elderly captive. Just like he'd enjoyed staring at the girl he'd tied in front of the steam pipe. And the wiggling hand by the railroad tracks early this morning.

  Gazing at the frightened eyes. The man was thinner than he'd thought. Grayer. Hair disheveled.

  Old in the flesh but young in the bone . . .

  The man cowered away from him, arms folded defensively across his narrow chest.

  Opening the door, the bone collector pressed his pistol against the man's breastbone.

  "Please," his captive whispered, his voice quavering. "I don't have much money but you can have it all. We can go to an ATM. I'll--"

  "Get out."

  "Please don't hurt me."

  The bone collector gestured with his head. The frail man looked around miserably then scooted forward. He stood beside the car, cowering, his arms still crossed, shivering despite the relentless heat.

  "Why are you doing this?"

  The bone collector stepped back and fished the cuffs from his pocket. Because he wore the thick gloves it took a few seconds to find the chrome links. As he dug them out he thought he saw a four-rigger tacking up the Hudson. The opposing current here wasn't as strong as in the East River, where sailing ships had a hell of a time making their way from the East, Montgomery and Out Ward wharves north. He squinted. No, wait--it wasn't a sailboat, it was just a cabin cruiser, Yuppies lounging on the long front deck.

  As he reached forward with the cuffs, the man grabbed his captor's shirt, gripped it hard. "Please. I was going to the hospital. That's why I flagged you down. I've been having chest pains."

  "Shut up."

  And the man suddenly reached for the bone collector's face, the liver-spotted hands gripping his neck and shoulder and squeezing hard. A jolt of pain radiated from the spot where the yellow nails dug into him. With a burst of temper, he pulled his victim's hands off and cuffed him roughly.

  Slapping a piece of tape on the man's mouth, the bone collector dragged him down the gravel embankment toward the mouth of the pipe, four feet in diameter. He stopped, examined the old man.

  It'd be so easy to take you down to the bone.

  The bone . . . Touching it. Hearing it.

  He lifted the man's hand. The terrified eyes gazed back, his lips trembling. The bone collector caressed the man's fingers, squeezed the phalanges between his own (wished he could take his glove off but didn't dare). Then he lifted the man's palm and pressed it hard against his own ear.

  "What?--"

  His left hand curled around his mystified captive's little finger and slowly pulled until he heard the deep thonk of brittle bone snapping. A satisfying sound. The man screamed, a muted cry stuttering through the tape. And slumped to the ground.

  The bone collector pulled him upright and led the stumbling man into the mouth of the pipe. He prodded the man forward.

  They emerged underneath the old, rotting pier. It was a disgusting place, strewn with the decomposed bodies of animals and fish, trash on the wet rocks, a gray-green sludge of kelp. A mound of seaweed rose and fell in the water, humping like a fat lover. Despite the evening heat in the rest of the city, down here it was cold as a March day.

  Senor Ortega . . .

  He lowered the man into the river, cuffed him to a pier post, ratcheting the bracelet tight around his wrist again. The captive's grayish face was about three feet above the surface of the water. The bone collector walked carefully over the slick rocks to the drainpipe. He turned and paused for a moment, watching, watching. He hadn't cared much whether the constables found the others or not. Hanna, the woman in the taxi. But this one . . . The bone collector hoped they didn't find him in time. Indeed, that they didn't find him at all. So he could come back in a month or two and see if the clever river had scrubbed the skeleton clean.

  Back on the gravel drive he pulled the mask off and left the clues to the next scene not far from where he'd parked. He was angry, furious at the constables, and so this time he hid the clues. And he also included a special surprise. Something he'd been saving for them. The bone collector returned to the taxi.

  The breeze was gentle, carrying the fragrance of the sour river with it. And the rustle of grass and, as always in the city, the shushhhh of traffic.

  Like emery paper on bone.

  He stopped and listened to this sound, head cocked as he looked out over the billion lights of the buildings, stretching to the north like an oblong galaxy. It was then that a woman, running fast, emerged on a jogging path beside the drainpipe and nearly collided with him.

  In purple shorts and top, the thin brunette danced out of his way. Gasping, she stopped, flicked sweat from her face. In good shape--taut muscles--but not pretty. A hook of a nose, broad lips, blotchy skin.

  But beneath that . . .

  "You're not supposed . . . You shouldn't park here. This's a jogging path. . . ."

  Her words fading and fear rising into her eyes, which flicked from his face to the taxi to the wad of ski mask in his hand.

  She knew who he was. He smiled, noting her remarkably pronounced clavicle.

  Her right ankle shifted slightly, ready to take her weight when she sprinted away. But he got her first. He ducked low, to tackle her, and when she gave a fast scream and dropped her arms to block him the bone collector straightened up fast from his feint and swung his elbow into her temple. There was a crack like a snapping belt.

  She went down on the gravel, hard, and lay still. Horrified, the bone collector dropped to his knees and cradled her head. He moaned, "No, no, no . . ." Furious with himself for striking so hard, sick at heart that he might've broken what seemed to be a perfect skull beneath the tentacles of stringy hair and the unremarkable face.

  Amelia Sachs finished another COC card and took a break. She paused, found a vending machine and bought a paper cup of vile coffee. She returned to the windowless office, looked over the evidence she'd gathered.

  She felt a curious fondness for the macabre collection. Maybe because of what she'd gone through to collect it--her fiery joints ached and she still shuddered when she thought of the buried body at the first scene this morning, the bloody branch of a hand, and of T.J. Colfax's dangling flesh. Until today physical evidence hadn't meant anything to her. PE was boring lectures on drowsy spring afternoons at the academy. PE was math, it was charts and graphs, it was science. It was dead.

  No, Amie Sachs was going to be a people cop. Walking beats, dissing back the dissers, outing druggies. Spreading respect for the law--like her father. Or pounding it into them. Like handsome Nick Carelli, a five-year vet, the star of Street Crimes, grinning at the world with his yo-you-gotta-problem? smile.

  That's just who she was going to be.

  She looked at the crisp brown leaf she'd found in the stockyard tunnel. One of the clues 823 had left for them. And here was the underwear too. She remembered that the feebies had snagged the PE before Cooper'd finished the test on the . . . what was that machine? The chromatograph? She wondered what the liquid soaking the cotton was.

  But these thoughts led to Lincoln Rhyme and he was the one person she didn't want to think about
just now.

  She began to voucher the rest of the PE. Each COC card had a series of blank lines that would list the custodians of the evidence, in sequence, from the initial discovery at the scene all the way to trial. Sachs had transported evidence several times and her name had appeared on COC cards. But this was the first time A. Sachs, NYPD 5885 had occupied the first slot.

  Once again she lifted the plastic bag containing the leaf.

  He'd actually touched it. Him. The man who'd killed T.J. Colfax. Who'd held Monelle Gerger's pudgy arm and cut deep into it. Who was out searching for another vic right now--if he hadn't already snatched one.

  Who'd buried that poor man this morning, waving for mercy he never got.

  She thought of Locard's Exchange Principle. People coming into contact, each transferring something to the other. Something big, something small. Most likely they didn't even know what.

  Had something of 823 come off on this leaf? A cell of skin? A dot of sweat? It was a stunning thought. She felt a trill of excitement, of fear, as if the killer were right here in this tiny airless room with her.

  Back to the COC cards. For ten minutes she filled them out and was just finishing the last one when the door burst open, startling her. She spun around.

  Fred Dellray stood in the doorway, his green jacket abandoned, his starched shirt rumpled. Fingers pinching the cigarette behind his ear. "Step inside a minute'r two, officer. It's payoff time. Thought you might wanna be there."

  Sachs followed him down the short corridor, two steps behind his lope.

  "The AFIS results're comin' in," Dellray said.

  The war room was even busier than before. Jacketless agents hovered over desks. They were armed with their on-duty weapons--the big Sig-Sauer and Smith & Wesson automatics, 10mm and .45s. A half-dozen agents were clustered around the computer terminal beside the Opti-Scan.

  Sachs hadn't liked the way Dellray'd taken the case away from them, but she had to admit that beneath the slick-talking hipster Dellray was one hell of a good cop. Agents--young and old--would come up to him with questions and he'd patiently answer them. He'd yank a phone from the cradle and cajole or berate whoever was on the other end to get him what he needed. Sometimes, he'd look up across the bustling room and roar, "We gonna nail this prick-dick? Yep, you betcha we are." And the straight-arrows'd look at him uneasily but with the obvious thought in mind that if anybody could nail him it'd be Dellray.