The Bone Collector

by Jeffery Deaver

  Rhyme asked, "Is that blood on the chain?"

  Sellitto said, "One of our boys. Cut himself pretty bad trying to break the lock off."

  "So it's contaminated." Rhyme scowled.

  "He was trying to save her," Sachs said to him.

  "I understand. That was good of him. It's still contaminated." Rhyme glanced back at the table beside Cooper. "Prints?"

  Cooper said he'd checked it and found only Sellitto's print on the links.

  "All right, the splinter of wood Amelia found. Check for prints."

  "I did," Sachs said quickly. "At the scene."

  P.D., Rhyme reflected. She didn't seem to be the nickname sort. Beautiful people rarely were.

  "Let's try the heavy guns, just to be sure," Rhyme said and instructed Cooper, "Use DFO or ninhydrin. Then hit it with the nit-yag."

  "The what?" Banks asked.

  "A neodymium:yttrium aluminum garnet laser."

  The tech spritzed the splinter with liquid from a plastic spray bottle and trained the laser beam on the wood. He slipped on tinted goggles and examined it carefully. "Nothing."

  He shut off the light and examined the splinter closely. It was about six inches long, dark wood. There were black smears on it, like tar, and it was impregnated with dirt. He held it with forceps.

  "I know Lincoln likes the chopstick approach," Cooper said, "but I always ask for a fork when I go to Ming Wa's."

  "You could be crushing the cells," the criminalist grumbled.

  "I could be but I'm not," Cooper responded.

  "What kind of wood?" Rhyme wondered. "Want to run a spodogram?"

  "No, it's oak. No question."

  "Saw or plane marks?" Rhyme leaned forward. Suddenly his neck spasmed and the cramp that bolted through the muscles was unbearable. He gasped, closed his eyes and twisted his neck, stretching. He felt Thom's strong hands massaging the muscles. The pain finally faded.

  "Lincoln?" Sellitto asked. "You okay?"

  Rhyme breathed deeply. "Fine. It's nothing."

  "Here." Cooper brought the piece of wood over to the bed, lowered the magnifying goggles over Rhyme's eyes.

  Rhyme examined the specimen. "Cut in the direction of the grain with a frame saw. There're big variations in the cuts. So I'd guess it was a post or beam milled over a hundred years ago. Steam saw probably. Hold it closer, Mel. I want to smell it."

  He held the splinter under Rhyme's nose.

  "Creosote--coal-tar distillation. Used for weatherproofing wood before lumber companies started pressure-treating. Piers, docks, railroad ties."

  "Maybe we've got a train buff here," Sellitto said. "Remember the tracks this morning."

  "Could be." Rhyme ordered, "Check for cellular compression, Mel."

  The tech examined the splinter under the compound microscope. "It's compressed all right. But with the grain. Not against it. Not a railroad tie. This is from a post or column. Weight-bearing."

  A bone . . . an old wooden post . . .

  "I see dirt embedded in the wood. That tell us anything?"

  Cooper set a large pad of newsprint on the table, tore the cover off. He held the splinter over the pad and brushed some dirt from cracks in the wood. He examined the speckles lying on the white paper--a reverse constellation.

  "You have enough for a density-gradient test?" Rhyme asked.

  In a D-G test, dirt is poured into a tube containing liquids of different specific gravities. The soil separates and each particle hangs suspended according to its own gravity. Rhyme had established a very extensive library of density-gradient profiles for dirt from all over the five boroughs. Unfortunately the test only worked with a fair amount of soil; Cooper didn't think they had enough. "We could try it but we'd have to use the entire sample. And if it didn't work we wouldn't have anything left for other tests."

  Rhyme instructed him to do a visual then analyze it in the GC-MS--the chromatograph-spectrometer.

  The technician brushed some dirt onto a slide. He gazed at it for a few minutes under the compound microscope. "This is strange, Lincoln. It's topsoil. With an unusually high level of vegetation in it. But it's in a curious form. Very deteriorated, very decomposed." He looked up and Rhyme noticed the dark lines under his eyes from the eyepieces. He remembered that after hours of lab work the marks were quite pronounced and that occasionally a forensic tech would emerge from the IRD lab only to be greeted by a chorus of Rocky Raccoon.

  "Burn it," Rhyme ordered.

  Cooper mounted a sample in the GC-MS unit. The machine rumbled to life and there was a hiss. "A minute or two."

  "While we're waiting," Rhyme said, "the bone . . . I keep wondering about the bone. 'Scope it, Mel."

  Cooper carefully set the bone onto the examination stage of the compound microscope. He went over it carefully. "Whoa, got something here."

  "What?"

  "Very small. Transparent. Hand me the hemostat," Cooper said to Sachs, nodding at a pair of gripper tweezers. She handed them to him and he carefully probed in the marrow of the bone. He lifted something out.

  "A tiny piece of regenerated cellulose," Cooper announced.

  "Cellophane," Rhyme said. "Tell me more."

  "Stretch and pinch marks. I'd say he didn't leave it intentionally; there are no cut edges. It's not inconsistent with heavy-duty cello," Cooper said.

  " 'Not inconsistent.' " Rhyme scowled. "I don't like his hedges."

  "We have to hedge, Lincoln," Cooper said cheerfully.

  " 'Associate with.' 'Suggest.' I particularly hate 'not inconsistent.' "

  "Very versatile," Cooper said. "The boldest I'll be is that it's probably commercial butcher or grocery store cellophane. Not Saran Wrap. Definitely not generic-brand wrap."

  Jerry Banks walked inside from the hallway. "Bad news. The Secure-Pro company doesn't keep any records on combinations. A machine sets them at random."

  "Ah."

  "But interesting . . . they said they get calls from the police all the time about their products and you're the first one who's ever thought of tracing a lock through the combination."

  "How 'interesting' can it be if it's a dead end?" Rhyme grumbled and turned to Mel Cooper, who was shaking his head as he stared at the GC-MS computer. "What?"

  "Got that soil sample result. But I'm afraid the machine might be on the fritz. The nitrogen's off the charts. We should run it again, use more sample this time."

  Rhyme instructed him to go ahead. His eyes turned back to the bone. "Mel, how recent was the kill?"

  He examined some scrapings under the electron microscope.

  "Minimal bacteria clusters. Bambi here was recently deceased, looks like. Or just out of the fridge about eight hours."

  "So our perp just bought it," Rhyme said.

  "Or a month ago and froze it," Sellitto suggested.

  "No," Cooper said. "It hasn't been frozen. There's no evidence of tissue damage from ice crystals. And it hasn't been refrigerated that long. It's not desiccated; modern refrigerators dehydrate food."

  "It's a good lead," Rhyme said. "Let's get to work on it."

  " 'Get to work'?" Sachs laughed. "Are you saying we call up all the grocery stores in the city and find out who sold veal bones yesterday?"

  "No," Rhyme countered. "In the past two days."

  "You want the Hardy Boys?"

  "Let them keep doing what they're doing. Call Emma, downtown, if she's still working. And if she isn't get her back to the office with the other dispatchers and put them on overtime. Get her a list of every grocery chain in town. I'll bet our boy isn't buying groceries for a family of four so have Emma limit the list to customers buying five items or less."

  "Warrants?" Banks asked.

  "Anybody balks, we'll get a warrant," Sellitto said. "But let's try without. Who knows? Some citizens might actually cooperate. I'm told it happens."

  "But how are the stores going to know who bought veal shanks?" Sachs asked. She was no longer as aloof as she had been. There was an edge in her voice.
Rhyme wondered if her frustration might be a symptom of what he himself had often felt--the burdensome weight of the evidence. The essential problem for the criminalist is not that there's too little evidence but that there's too much.

  "Checkout scanners," Rhyme said. "They record purchases on computer. For inventory and restocking. Go ahead, Banks. I see something just crossed your mind. Speak up. I won't send you to Siberia this time."

  "Well, only the chains have scanners, sir," the young detective offered. "There're hundreds of independents and butcher shops that don't."

  "Good point. But I think he wouldn't go to a small shop. Anonymity's important to him. He'll be doing his buying at big stores. Impersonal."

  Sellitto called Communications and explained to Emma what they needed.

  "Let's get a polarized shot of the cellophane," Rhyme said to Cooper.

  The technician put the minuscule fragment in a polarizing 'scope, then fitted the Polaroid camera to the eyepiece and took a shot. It was a colorful picture, a rainbow with gray streaks through it. Rhyme examined it. This pattern told them nothing by itself but it could be compared with other cello samples to see if they came from a common source.

  Rhyme had a thought. "Lon, get a dozen Emergency Service officers over here. On the double."

  "Here?" Sellitto asked.

  "We're going to put an operation together."

  "You're sure about that?" the detective asked.

  "Yes! I want them now."

  "All right." He nodded to Banks, who made the call to Haumann.

  "Now, what about the other planted clue--those hairs Amelia found?"

  Cooper poked through them with a probe then mounted several in the phase-contrast microscope. This instrument shot two light sources at a single subject, the second beam delayed slightly--out of phase--so the sample was both illuminated and set off by shadow.

  "It's not human," Cooper said. "I'll tell you that right now. And they're guard hairs, not down."

  Hairs from the animal's coat, he meant.

  "What kind? Dog?"

  "Veal calf?" Banks suggested, once again youthfully enthusiastic.

  "Check the scales," Rhyme ordered. Meaning the microscopic flakes that make up the outer sheath of a strand of hair.

  Cooper typed on his computer keyboard and a few seconds later thumbnail images of scaly rods popped onto the screen. "This is thanks to you, Lincoln. Remember the database?"

  At IRD Rhyme had compiled a huge collection of micrographs of different types of hair. "I do, yes, Mel. But they were in three-ring binders when I saw 'em last. How'd you get them on the computer?"

  "ScanMaster of course. JPEG compressed."

  Jay-peg? What was that? In a few years technology had soared beyond Rhyme. Amazing . . .

  And as Cooper examined the images, Lincoln Rhyme wondered again what he'd been wondering all day--the question that kept floating to the surface: Why the clues? The human creature is so astonishing but count on it before anything else to be just that--a creature. A laughing animal, a dangerous one, a clever one, a scared one, but always acting for a reason--a motive that will move the beast toward its desires. Scientist Lincoln Rhyme didn't believe in chance, or randomness, or frivolity. Even psychopaths had their own logic, twisted though it may have been, and he knew there was a reason Unsub 823 spoke to them only in this cryptic way.

  Cooper called, "Got it. Rodent. Probably a rat. And the hairs were shaved off."

  "That's a hell of a clue," Banks said. "There're a million rats in the city. That doesn't pin down anyplace. What's the point of telling us that?"

  Sellitto closed his eyes momentarily and muttered something under his breath. Sachs didn't notice the look. She glanced at Rhyme curiously. He was surprised that she hadn't figured out what the kidnapper's message was but he said nothing. He saw no reason to share this horrifying bit of knowledge with anyone else for the time being.

  James Schneider's seventh victim, or eighth, should you choose to number poor, angelic little Maggie O'Connor among them, was the wife of a hardworking immigrant, who had established the family's modest habitation near Hester Street on the Lower East Side of the City.

  It was thanks to the courage of this unfortunate woman that the constables and the police discovered the identity of the criminal. Hanna Goldschmidt was of German-Jewish extraction and was held in high esteem by the close-knit community in which she, her husband and their six children (one had died at birth) lived.

  The bone collector drove through the streets slowly, careful to remain under the speed limit though he knew perfectly well that the traffic cops in New York wouldn't stop you for something as minor as speeding.

  He paused at a light and glanced up at another UN billboard. His eyes took in the bland, smiling faces--like the eerie faces painted on the walls of the mansion--and then looked beyond it, at the city around him. He was, occasionally, surprised to look up and find the buildings so massive, the stone cornices so high aloft, the glass so smooth, the cars so sleek, the people so scrubbed. The city he knew was dark, low, smoky, smelling of sweat and mud. Horses would trample you, roving gangs of hoodlums--some as young as ten or eleven--would knock you on the head with a shillelagh or sap and make off with your pocket watch and billfold. . . . This was the bone collector's city.

  Sometimes, though, he found himself just like this--driving a spiffy silver Taurus XL along a smooth asphalt road, listening to WNYC and irritated, like all New Yorkers, when he missed a green light, wondering why the hell didn't the city let you make right turns on red.

  He cocked his head, heard several thumps from the trunk of the car. But there was so much ambient noise that no one would hear Hanna's protests.

  The light changed.

  It is, of course, exceptional even in these enlightened times for a woman to venture forth into the city streets in the evening, unaccompanied by a gentleman; and in those days it was more exceptional still. Yet on this unfortunate night Hanna had no choice but to quit her abode for a brief time. Her youngest had a fever, and, with her husband praying devoutly at a nearby synagogue, she issued forth into the night to secure a poultice for the child's fiery forehead. As she closed the door she said to her eldest daughter,--

  "Lock tight the bolt behind me. I shall return soon."

  But, alas, she would not be true to those words. For only moments later she chanced to encounter James Schneider.

  The bone collector looked around at the shabby streets here. This area--near where he'd buried the first victim--was Hell's Kitchen, on the West Side of the city, once the bastion of Irish gangs, now populated more and more with young professionals, ad agencies, photo studios and stylish restaurants.

  He smelled manure and wasn't the least surprised when suddenly a horse reared in front of him.

  Then he noticed that the animal wasn't an apparition from the 1800s but was being hitched to one of the hansom cabs that cruised Central Park charging very twentieth-century fees. Their stables were located here.

  He laughed to himself. Though it was a hollow sound.

  One can only speculate as to what occurred, for there were no witnesses. But we can picture the horror all too clearly. The villain drew the struggling woman into an alley and stabbed her with a dagger, his cruel intent not to kill but to subdue, as was his wont. But such was the strength in good Mrs. Goldschmidt's soul, thinking as she surely was of her fledglings back in the nest, that she surprised the monster by assaulting him ferociously:--she struck him repeatedly about the face and ripped hair from his head.

  She freed herself momentarily and from her mouth issued an horrendous scream. The cowardly Schneider struck her several times more and fled.

  The brave woman staggered to the sidewalk and collapsed, where she died in the arms of a constable who had responded to the alarm neighbors had raised.

  This story appeared in a book, which was with the bone collector now, resting in his hip pocket. Crime in Old New York. He couldn't explain his overwhelming attraction to
the slim volume. If he had to describe his relation to this book he would have to say he was addicted to it. Seventy-five years old and still in remarkable shape, a bookbinding jewel. It was his good-luck charm and his talisman. He'd found it at a small branch of the public library and committed one of the few larcenies of his life by slipping it into his raincoat one day and strolling out of the building.

  He'd read the chapter on Schneider a hundred times and virtually had it memorized.

  Driving slowly. They were almost there.

  When Hanna's poor, weeping husband huddled over her lifeless body, he looked upon her face:--one last time before she was taken to the funeral home (for in the Jewish faith it is dictated that the dead must be interred as quickly as possible). And he noticed upon her porcelain cheek a bruise in the shape of a curious emblem. It was a round symbol and appeared to be a crescent moon and a cluster of what might be taken to be stars hovering over the same.

  The constable exclaimed that this must have been an imprint made by the ring of the heinous butcher himself when he struck the poor victim. Detectives enlisted the aid of an artist and he sketched a picture of the impression. (The good reader is referred to plate XXII.) Rounds were made of jewelers in the city, and several names and addresses were secured of men who had bought such rings in the recent past. Two of the gentlemen purchasing these rings were beyond suspicion, being as they were a deacon of a church and another a learned professor at a fine university. Yet the third was a man of whom the constables had long harbored suspicion of nefarious activity. To wit:--one James Schneider.

  This gentleman had at one time been influential in several benevolent organizations in the city of Manhattan: the Consumptives' Assistance League and the Pensioners' Welfare Society, most notably. He had come under the eye of the constabulary when several elderly charges from said groups vanished not long after Schneider paid them calls. He was never charged with any offense but soon after the investigations, he dropped from sight.

  In the aftermath of Hanna Goldschmidt's heinous murder, a still search of the dubious haunts of the city revealed no abode where Schneider might be found. The constables posted broadsides throughout the downtown and River-front areas, setting forth the description of thevillain, but he could not be apprehended;--a true tragedy, to be sure, in light of the carnage that was soon to befall the city at his vile hands.