The Bone Collector

by Jeffery Deaver

  "All I'll say is," the detective muttered, "I just talked to Polling. Peretti's fucking outa joint about being flanked and if--no, I'll say when--the brass finds out somebody from Patrol's walking the grid at the scene, there'll be fucking trouble."

  "Probably," Rhyme said softly, gazing at the profile poster, "but I have a feeling that's going to be the least of our trouble today."

  And let his weary head ease back into the thick down pillow.

  SEVEN

  The station wagon raced toward the dark, sooty canyons of Wall Street, downtown New York.

  Amelia Sachs's fingers danced lightly on the steering wheel as she tried to imagine where T.J. Colfax might be held captive. Finding her seemed hopeless. The approaching financial district had never looked so enormous, so full of alleys, so filled with manholes and doorways and buildings peppered with black windows.

  So many places to hide a hostage.

  In her mind she saw the hand sticking out of the grave beside the railroad tracks. The diamond ring sitting on the bloody bone of a finger. Sachs recognized the type of jewelry. She called them consolation rings--the sort lonely rich girls bought themselves. The sort she'd be wearing if she were rich.

  Speeding south, dodging bicycle messengers and cabs.

  Even on this glaring afternoon, under a choked sun, this was a spooky part of town. The buildings cast grim shadows and were coated with grime dark as dried blood.

  Sachs took a turn at forty, skidding on the spongy asphalt, and punched the pedal to bring the station wagon back up to sixty.

  Excellent engine, she thought. And decided to see how well the wagon handled at seventy.

  Years before, while her old man slept--he worked the three-to-eleven watch usually--teenage Amie Sachs would palm the keys to his Camaro and tell her mother Rose she was going shopping, did she want anything from the Fort Hamilton pork store? And before her mother could say, "No, but you take the train, you're not driving," the girl would disappear out the door, fire up the car and race west.

  Coming home three hours later, pork-less, Amie would sneak up the stairs to be confronted by a mother frantic and angry, who--to her daughter's amusement--would lecture her about the risks of getting pregnant and how that would ruin her chances to use her beautiful face to make a million dollars at modeling. And when finally the woman learned that her daughter wasn't sleeping around but was merely driving a hundred mph on Long Island highways, she grew frantic and angry and would lecture the girl about smashing up her beautiful face and ruining her chances to make a million dollars at modeling.

  Things grew even worse when she got her driver's license.

  Sachs now sliced between two double-parked trucks, hoping that neither a passenger nor a driver would open his door. In a Doppler whisper she was past them.

  When you move they can't getcha. . . .

  Lon Sellitto kneaded his rotund face with blunt fingertips and paid no attention to the Indy 500 driving. He talked with his partner about the case like an accountant discussing a balance sheet. As for Banks, though, he was no longer stealing infatuated glances at Sachs's eyes and lips and had taken to checking the speedometer every minute or so.

  They skidded in a frantic turn past the Brooklyn Bridge. She thought again of the woman captive, picturing T.J.'s long, elegant nails, while she tapped her own picked fingers on the wheel. She saw again in her mind the image that refused to go away: the white birch branch of a hand, sticking up out of the moist grave. The single bloody bone.

  "He's kind of loony," she blurted suddenly, to change the direction of her thoughts.

  "Who?" Sellitto asked.

  "Rhyme."

  Banks added, "Ask me, he looks like Howard Hughes's kid brother."

  "Yeah, well, that surprised me," the older detective admitted. "Wasn't looking too good. Used to be a handsome guy. But, well, you know. After what he's been through. How come if you drive like this, Sachs, you're a portable?"

  "Where I got assigned. They didn't ask, they told me." Just like you did, she reflected. "Was he really as good as that?"

  "Rhyme? Better. Most CSU guys in New York handle two hundred bodies a year. Tops. Rhyme did double that. Even when he was running IRD. Take Peretti, he's a good man but he gets out once every two weeks or so and only on media cases. You're not hearing this from me, officer."

  "Nosir."

  "But Rhyme'd run the scenes himself. And when he wasn't running scenes he'd be out walking around."

  "Doing what?"

  "Just walking around. Looking at stuff. He walked miles. All over the city. Buying things, picking up things, collecting things."

  "What kinds of things?"

  "Evidence standards. Dirt, food, magazines, hubcaps, shoes, medical books, drugs, plants . . . You name it, he'd find it and catalog it. You know--so when some PE came in he'd have a better idea where the perp might've been or what he'd been doing. You'd page him and he'd be in Harlem or the Lower East Side or Hell's Kitchen."

  "Police in his blood?"

  "Naw. Father was some kind of scientist at a national laboratory or something."

  "Is that what Rhyme studied? Science?"

  "Yeah. Went to school at Champaign-Urbana, got a coupla fancy degrees. Chemistry and history. Which I have no idea why. His folks're gone since I knew him, that'd be, hell, coming on fifteen years now. And he doesn't have any brothers or sisters. He grew up in Illinois. That's why the name, Lincoln."

  She wanted to ask if he was, or had been, married but didn't. She settled for: "Is he really that much of a . . ."

  "You can say it, officer."

  "A shit?"

  Banks laughed.

  Sellitto said, "My ma had this expression. She said somebody was 'of a mind.' Well, that describes Rhyme. He's of a mind. One time this dumb-ass tech sprayed luminol--that's a blood reagent--on a fingerprint, instead of ninhydrin. Ruined the print. Rhyme fired him on the spot. Another time a cop took a leak at a scene and flushed the toilet. Man, Rhyme went ballistic, told him to get his ass down to the basement and bring back whatever was in the sewer trap." Sellitto laughed. "The cop, he had rank, he said, 'I'm not doing that, I'm a lieutenant.' And Rhyme said, 'Got news. You're a plumber now.' I could go on and on. Fuck, officer, you doing eighty?"

  They streaked past the Big Building and she thought, achingly, That's where I oughta be right now. Meeting fellow information officers, sitting through the training session, soaking up the air-conditioning.

  She steered expertly around a taxi that was oozing through a red light.

  Jesus, this is hot. Dust hot, stink hot, gas hot. The ugly hours of the city. Tempers spurted like gray water shooting from hydrants up in Harlem. Two Christmases ago, she and her boyfriend had an abbreviated holiday celebration--from 11:00 p.m. to midnight, the only mutual free time their watches allowed--in the four-degree night. She and Nick, sitting at Rockefeller Center, outside, near the skating rink, drinking coffee and brandy. They'd agreed they'd rather have a week of cold than a single hot August day.

  Finally, streaking down Pearl she spotted Haumann's command post. Leaving eight-foot skid marks, Sachs put the RRV into a slot between his car and an EMS bus.

  "Damn, you drive good." Sellitto climbed out. For some reason Sachs was delighted to notice Jerry Banks's sweaty fingerprints remained prominently on the window when he pushed the rear door open.

  EMS officers and Patrol uniforms were everywhere, fifty or sixty of them. And more were on their way. It seemed as if the entire attention of Police Plaza was focused on downtown New York. Sachs found herself thinking idly that if anybody wanted to try an assassination or to take over Gracie Mansion or a consulate, this'd be the time to do it.

  Haumann trotted up to the station wagon. He said to Sellitto, "We're doing door-to-door, seeing about construction along Pearl. Nobody knows anything about asbestos work and nobody's heard any calls for help."

  Sachs started to climb out but Haumann said, "No, officer. Your orders're to stay here with the CS ve
hicle."

  She got out anyway.

  "Yessir. Who exactly said that?"

  "Detective Rhyme. I just talked to him. You're supposed to call in to Central when you're at the CP."

  Haumann was walking away. Sellitto and Banks hurried toward the command post.

  "Detective Sellitto," Sachs called.

  He turned. She said, "Excuse me, detective. The thing is, who's my watch commander? Who'm I reporting to?"

  He said shortly, "You're reporting to Rhyme."

  She laughed. "But I can't be reporting to him."

  Sellitto gazed at her blankly.

  "I mean, aren't there liability issues or something? Jurisdiction? He's a civilian. I need somebody, a shield, to report to."

  Sellitto said evenly, "Officer, listen up. We're all reporting to Lincoln Rhyme. I don't care whether he's a civilian or he's the chief or he's the fucking Caped Crusader. Got that?"

  "But--"

  "You wanna complain, do it in writing and do it tomorrow."

  And he was gone. Sachs stared after him for a moment then returned to the front seat of the wagon and called in to Central that she was 10-84 at the scene. Awaiting instructions.

  She laughed grimly as the woman reported, "Ten-four, Portable 5885. Be advised. Detective Rhyme will be in touch shortly, K."

  Detective Rhyme.

  "Ten-four, K," Sachs responded and looked in the back of the wagon, wondering idly what was in the black suitcases.

  Two-forty p.m.

  The phone rang in Rhyme's townhouse. Thom answered. "It's a dispatcher from headquarters."

  "Put 'em through."

  The speakerphone burst to life. "Detective Rhyme, you don't remember me but I worked at IRD when you were there. Civilian. Did phone detail then. Emma Rollins."

  "Of course. How're the youngsters, Emma?" Rhyme had a memory of a large, cheerful black woman, supporting five children with two jobs. He recalled her blunt finger stabbing buttons so hard she once actually broke one of the government-issue phones.

  "Jeremy's starting college in a couple weeks and Dora's still acting, or she thinks she is. The little ones're doing just fine."

  "Lon Sellitto recruited you, did he?"

  "Nosir. I heard you were working on the case and I booted some child back to 911. Emma's taking this job, I told her."

  "What've you got for us?"

  "We're working out of a directory of companies making bolts. And a book that lists places wholesaling them. Here's what we found. It was the letters did it. The ones stamped on the bolt. The CE. They're made special for Con Ed."

  Hell. Of course.

  "They're marked that way because they're a different size than most bolts this company sells--fifteen-sixteenths of an inch, and a lot more threads than most other bolts. That'd be Michigan Tool and Die in Detroit. They use 'em in old pipes only in New York. Ones made sixty, seventy years ago. The way the parts of the pipe fit together they have to be real close seals. Fit closer'n a bride and groom on their wedding night's what the man told me. Trying to make me blush."

  "Emma, I love you. You stay on call, will you?"

  "You bet I will."

  "Thom!" Rhyme shouted. "This phone isn't going to work. I need to make calls myself. That voice-activation thing in the computer. Can I use it?"

  "You never ordered it."

  "I didn't?"

  "No."

  "Well, I need it."

  "Well, we don't have it."

  "Do something. I want to be able to make calls."

  "I think there's a manual ECU somewhere." Thom dug through a box against the wall. He found a small electronic console and plugged one end into the phone and the other into a stalk control that mounted next to Rhyme's cheek.

  "That's too awkward!"

  "Well, it's all we've got. If we'd hooked up the infrared above your eyebrow like I suggested, you could've been making phonesex calls for the past two years."

  "Too many fucking wires," Rhyme spat out.

  His neck spasmed suddenly and knocked the controller out of reach. "Fuck."

  Suddenly this minute task--not to mention their mission--seemed impossible to Lincoln Rhyme. He was exhausted, his neck hurt, his head. His eyes particularly. They stung and--this was more painful to him--he felt a chip of urge to rub the backs of his fingers across his closed lids. A tiny gesture of relief, something the rest of the world did every day.

  Thom replaced the joystick. Rhyme summoned patience from somewhere and asked his aide, "How does it work?"

  "There's the screen. See it on the controller? Just move the stick till it's on a number, wait one second and it's programmed in. Then do the next number the same way. When you've got all seven, push the stick here to dial."

  He snapped, "It's not working."

  "Just practice."

  "We don't have time!"

  Thom snarled, "I've been answering the phone for you way too long."

  "All right," Rhyme said, lowering his voice--his way of apology. "I'll practice later. Could you please get me Con Ed? And I need to speak to a supervisor."

  The rope hurt and the cuffs hurt but it was the noise that scared her the most.

  Tammie Jean Colfax felt all the sweat in her body run down her face and chest and arms as she struggled to saw the handcuff links back and forth on the rusty bolt. Her wrists were numb but it seemed to her that she was wearing through some of the chain.

  She paused, exhausted, and twitched her arms this way and that to keep a cramp at bay. She listened again. It was, she thought, the sound of workmen tightening bolts and hammering parts into place. Final taps of hammers. She imagined they were just finishing up their job on the pipe and thinking of going home.

  Don't go, she cried to herself. Don't leave me. As long as the men were there, working, she was safe.

  A final bang, then ringing silence.

  Git on outa thayr, girl. G'on.

  Mamma . . .

  T.J. cried for several minutes, thinking of her family back in Eastern Tennessee. Her nostrils clogged but as she began to choke she blew her nose violently, felt an explosion of tears and mucus. Then she was breathing again. It gave her confidence. Strength. She began to saw once more.

  "I appreciate the urgency, detective. But I don't know how I can help you. We use bolts all over the city. Oil lines, gas lines . . ."

  "All right," Rhyme said tersely and asked the Con Ed supervisor at the company's headquarters on Fourteenth Street, "Do you insulate wiring with asbestos?"

  A hesitation.

  "We've cleaned up ninety percent of that," the woman said defensively. "Ninety-five."

  People could be so irritating. "I understand that. I just need to know if there's still any asbestos used for insulation."

  "No," she said adamantly. "Well, never for electricity. Just the steam and that's the smallest percentage of our service."

  Steam!

  It was the least-known and the scariest of the city's utilities. Con Ed heated water to 1,000 degrees then shot it through a hundred-mile network of pipes running under Manhattan. The blistering steam itself was superheated--about 380 degrees--and rocketed through the city at seventy-five miles an hour.

  Rhyme now recalled an article in the paper. "Didn't you have a break in the line last week?"

  "Yessir. But there was no asbestos leak. That site had been cleaned years ago."

  "But there is asbestos around some of your pipes in the system downtown?"

  She hesitated. "Well . . ."

  "Where was the break?" Rhyme continued quickly.

  "Broadway. A block north of Chambers."

  "Wasn't there an article in the Times about it?"

  "I don't know. Maybe. Yes."

  "And did the article mention asbestos?"

  "It did," she admitted, "but it just said that in the past asbestos contamination'd been a problem."

  "The pipe that broke, was it . . . does it cross Pearl Street farther south?"

  "Well, let me see. Yes, it do
es. At Hanover Street. On the north side."

  He pictured T.J. Colfax, the woman with the thin fingers and long nails, about to die.

  "And the steam's going back on at three?"

  "That's right. Any minute now."

  "It can't!" Rhyme shouted. "Somebody's tampered with the line. You can't turn that steam back on!"

  Cooper looked up uneasily from his microscope.

  The supervisor said, "Well, I don't know . . ."

  Rhyme barked to Thom, "Call Lon, tell him she's in a basement at Hanover and Pearl. The north side." He told him about the steam. "Get the fire department there too. Heat-protective outfits."

  Rhyme shouted into the speakerphone. "Call the work crews! Now! They can't turn that steam back on. They can't!" He repeated the words absently, detesting his exquisite imagination, which showed, in an endless loop, the woman's flesh growing pink then red then splitting apart under the fierce clouds of sputtering white steam.

  In the station wagon the radio crackled. It was three minutes to three by Sachs's watch. She answered the call.

  "Portable 5885, K--"

  "Forget the officialese, Amelia," Rhyme said. "We don't have time."

  "I--"

  "We think we know where she is. Hanover and Pearl."

  She glanced over her shoulder and saw dozens of ESU officers running flat-out toward an old building.

  "Do you want me to--"

  "They'll look for her. You have to get ready to work the scene."

  "But I can help--"

  "No. I want you to go to the back of the station wagon. There's a suitcase in it labeled zero two. Take it with you. And in a small black case there's a PoliLight. You saw one in my room. Mel was using it. Take that too. In the suitcase marked zero three you'll find a headset and stalk mike. Plug it into your Motorola and get over to the building where the officers are. Call me back when you're rigged. Channel thirty-seven. I'll be on a landline but you'll be patched through to me."

  Channel thirty-seven. The special ops citywide frequency. The priority frequency.

  "What?--" she asked. But the dead radio did not respond.

  She had a long black halogen flashlight on her utility belt so she left the bulky twelve-volter in the back of the wagon and grabbed the PoliLight and the heavy suitcase. It must have weighed fifty pounds. Just what my damn joints need. She adjusted her grip and, teeth clamped together against the pain, hurried toward the intersection.