The Bone Collector

NINE

Saturday, 4:00 p.m., to Saturday, 10:15 p.m.

“I’VE GOT MYSELF INTO A SITUATION HERE, SIR.”

The man across the desk looked like a TV show’s idea of a big-city deputy police commissioner. Which happened to be his rank. White hair, a temperate jowl, gold-rimmed glasses, posture to die for.

“Now what’s the problem, officer?”

Dep Com Randolph C. Eckert looked down his long nose with a gaze that Sachs recognized immediately; his nod to equality was to be as stern with the female officers as with the male ones.

“I’ve got a complaint, sir,” she said stiffly. “You heard about that taxi kidnapping case?”

He nodded. “Ah, has that got the city in double dutch.”

She believed that was a schoolchild’s game of jump rope but wouldn’t presume to correct a deputy commissioner.

“That damn UN conference,” he continued, “and the whole world’s watching. It’s unfair. People don’t talk about crime in Washington. Or Detroit. Well, Detroit they do. Say, Chicago. Never. No, it’s New York that people thump on. Richmond, Virginia, had more murders per capita than we did last year. I looked it up. And I’d rather parachute unarmed into Central Harlem than drive windows-up through South East D.C. any day.”

“Yessir.”

“Understand they found that girl dead. It was on all the news. Those reporters.”

“Downtown. Just now.”

“Now that’s a pity.”

“Yessir.”

“They just killed her? Like that? No ransom demand or anything?”

“I didn’t hear about any ransom.”

“What’s this complaint?”

“I was first officer in a related homicide this morning.”

“You’re Patrol?” Eckert asked.

“I was Patrol. I was supposed to be transferring to Public Affairs today at noon. For a training session.” She lifted her hands, tipped with flesh-colored Band-Aids, and dropped them in her lap. “But they shanghaied me.”

“Who?”

“Detective Lon Sellitto, sir. And Captain Haumann. And Lincoln Rhyme.”

“Rhyme?”

“Yessir.”

“Not the fellow was in charge of IRD a few years ago?”

“Yessir. That’s him.”

“I thought he was dead.”

Egos like that will never die.

“Very much alive, sir.”

The dep com was looking out his window. “He’s not on the force anymore. What’s he doing involved in this?”

“Consultant, I guess. It’s Lon Sellitto’s case. Captain Polling’s overseeing it. I’ve been waiting for this reassignment for eight months. But they’ve got me working crime scene. I’ve never done crime scene. It doesn’t make any sense and frankly I resent being assigned to a job I’ve had no training for.”

“Crime scene?”

“Rhyme ordered me to run the whole scene. By myself.”

Eckert didn’t understand this. The words weren’t registering. “Why is a civilian ordering uniformed officers to do anything?”

“My point, sir.” She set the hook. “I mean, I’ll help up to a point. But I’m just not prepared to dismember victims…”

“What?”

She blinked as if surprised he hadn’t heard. She explained about the handcuffs.

“Lord in heaven, what the hell’re they thinking of? Pardon my French. Don’t they know the whole country’s watching? It’s been on CNN all day, this kidnapping. Cutting off her hands? Say, you’re Herman Sachs’s daughter.”

“That’s right.”

“Good officer. Excellent officer. I gave him one of his commendations. The man was what a beat cop ought to be. Midtown South, right?”

“Hell’s Kitchen. My beat.”

My former beat.

“Herman Sachs probably prevented more crime than the entire detective division solves in a year. Just calming everything down, you know.”

“That was Pop. Sure.”

“Her hands?” Eckert snorted. “The girl’s family’ll sue us. As soon as they find out about it. They sue us for everything. There’s a rapist suing us now ’cause he got shot in the leg coming at an officer with a knife. His lawyer’s got this theory he’s calling the ‘least deadly alternative.’ Instead of shooting, we’re supposed to taze them or use Mace. Or ask them politely, I don’t know. I better give the chief and the mayor a heads-up on this one. I’ll make some calls, officer.” He looked at a wall clock. It was a little after four. “Your watch over for the day?”

“I have to report back to Lincoln Rhyme’s house. That’s where we’re working out of.” She thought of the hacksaw. She said coolly, “His bedroom really. That’s our CP.”

“A civilian’s bedroom is your command post?”

“I’d appreciate anything you can do, sir. I’ve waited a long time for that transfer.”

“Cut her hands off. My good Lord.”

She stood and walked to the door and out into one of the corridors that would soon be her new assignment. The feeling of relief took only a little longer to arrive than she’d expected.

He stood at the bottle-glass window, watching a pack of wild dogs prowl though the lot across the street.

He was on the first floor of this old building, a marble-clad Federal dating to the early 1800s. Surrounded by vacant lots and tenements – some abandoned, some occupied by paying tenants though most by squatters – this old mansion had been empty for years.

The bone collector took the piece of emery paper in his hand once more and continued to rub. He looked down at his handiwork. Then out the window again.

His hands, in their circular motion, precise. The tiny scrap of sandpaper whispering, shhhhh, shhhhh… Like a mother hushing her child.

A decade ago, the days of promise in New York, some crazy artist had moved in here. He’d filled the dank, two-story place with broken and rusting antiques. Wrought-iron grilles, hunks of crown molding and framed squares of spidered stained glass, scabby columns. Some of the artist’s work remained on the walls. Frescoes on the old plaster: murals, never completed, of workers, children, angst-ridden lovers. Round, emotionless faces – the man’s motif – stared blankly, as if the souls had been nipped out of their smooth bodies.

The painter was never very successful, even after the most ironclad of marketing ideas – his own suicide – and the bank foreclosed on the building several years ago.

Shhhhh…

The bone collector had stumbled across the place last year and he’d known immediately that this was home. The desolation of the neighborhood was certainly important to him – it was obviously practical. But there was another appeal, more personal: the lot across the street. During some excavation several years ago a backhoe had unearthed a load of human bones. It turned out this had been one of the city’s old cemeteries. Newspaper articles about it suggested the graves might contain the remains not only of Federal and Colonial New Yorkers but Manate and Lenape Indians as well.

He now set aside what he’d been smoothing with the emery paper – a carpal, the delicate palm bone – and picked up the wrist, which he’d carefully detached from the radius and ulna last night just before leaving for Kennedy Airport to collect the first victims. It had been drying for over a week and most of the flesh was gone but it still took some effort to separate the elaborate cluster of bones. They snapped apart with faint plops, like fish breaking the surface of a lake.

Oh, the constables, they were a lot better than he’d anticipated. He’d been watching them search along Pearl Street, wondering if they’d ever figure out where he’d left the woman from the airport. Astonished when they suddenly ran toward the right building. He’d guessed it would take two or three victims until they got a feel for the clues. They hadn’t saved her of course. But they might have. A minute or two earlier would have made all the difference.

As with so much in life.

The navicular, the lunate, the hamate, the capitate… the bones, intertwined like a Greek puzzle ring, came apart under his strong fingers. He picked bits of flesh and tendon off them. He selected the greater multiangulum – at the base of where the thumb had once been – and began to sand once more.

Shhhhh, shhhhhhh.

The bone collector squinted as he looked outside and imagined he saw a man standing beside one of the old graves. It must have been his imagination because the man wore a bowler hat and was dressed in mustard-colored gabardine. He rested some dark roses beside the tombstone and then turned away from it, dodging the horses and carriages on his way to the elegantly arched bridge over the Collect Pond outlet at Canal Street. Who’d he been visiting? Parents? A brother? Family who’d died of consumption or in one of the terrible influenza epidemics that’d been ravaging the city recently -

Recently?

No, not recently of course. A hundred years ago – that’s what he meant.

He squinted and looked again. No sign of the carriages or the horses. Or the man with the bowler hat. Though they’d seemed as real as flesh and blood.

However real they are.

Shhhhh, shhhhhh.

It was intruding again, the past. He was seeing things that’d happened before, that had happened then, as if they were now. He could control it. He knew he could.

But as he gazed out the window he realized that of course there was no before or after. Not for him. He drifted back and forth through time, a day, five years, a hundred years or two, like a dried leaf on a windy day.

He looked at his watch. It was time to leave.

Setting the bone on the mantel, he washed his hands carefully – like a surgeon. Then for five minutes he ran a pet-hair roller over his clothes to pick up any bone dust or dirt or body hairs that might lead the constables to him.

He walked into the carriage house past the half-finished painting of a moon-faced butcher in a bloody white apron. The bone collector started to get into the taxi but then changed his mind. Unpredictability is the best defense. This time he’d take the carriage… the sedan, the Ford. He started it, he drove into the street, closed and locked the garage door behind him.

No before or after…

As he passed the cemetery the pack of dogs glanced up at the Ford then returned to scuffling through the brush, looking for rats and nosing madly for water in the unbearable heat.

No then or now…

He took the ski mask and gloves from his pocket, set them on the seat beside him as he sped out of the old neighborhood. The bone collector was going hunting.

TEN

SOMETHING HAD CHANGED ABOUT THE ROOM but she couldn’t quite decide what.

Lincoln Rhyme saw it in her eyes.

“We missed you, Amelia,” he said coyly. “Errands?”

She looked away from him. “Apparently nobody’d told my new commander I wouldn’t be showing up for work today. I thought somebody ought to.”

“Ah, yes.”

She was gazing at the wall, slowly figuring it out. In addition to the basic instruments that Mel Cooper had brought with him, there was now a scanning electron microscope fitted with the X-ray unit, notation and hot-stage ’scope setups for testing glass, a comparison microscope, a density-gradient tube for soil testing and a hundred beakers, jars and bottles of chemicals.

And in the middle of the room, Cooper’s pride – the computerized gas Chromatograph and mass spectrometer. Along with another computer, on-line with Cooper’s own terminal at the IRD lab.

Sachs stepped over the thick cables snaking downstairs – house current worked, yes, but the amperage was too taxed for the bedroom outlets alone. And in that slight sidestep, an elegant, practiced maneuver, Rhyme observed how truly beautiful she was. Certainly the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in the police department ranks.

For a brief instant he found her immeasurably appealing. People said that sex was all in the mind and Rhyme knew that this was true. Cutting the cord didn’t stop the urge. He remembered, still with a faint crunch of horror, a night six months after the accident. He and Blaine had tried. Just to see what happened, they’d disclaimed, trying to be casual. No big deal.

But it had been a big deal. Sex is a messy business to start with and when you add catheters and bags to the equation you need a lot of stamina and humor and a better foundation than they’d had. Mostly, though, what killed the moment, and killed it fast, was her face. He saw in Elaine Chapman Rhyme’s tough, game smile that she was doing it from pity and that stabbed him in the heart. He filed for divorce two weeks later. Elaine had protested but she signed the papers on the first go-round.

Sellitto and Banks had returned and were organizing the evidence Sachs had collected. She looked on, mildly interested.

Rhyme said to her, “The Latents Unit only found eight other recent partials and they belong to the two maintenance men in the building.”

“Oh.”

He nodded broadly. “Only eight!”

“He’s complimenting you,” Thom explained. “Enjoy it. That’s the most you’ll ever get out of him.”

“No translations needed, please and thank you, Thom.”

She responded, “I’m happy I could help.” Pleasant as could be.

Well, what was this? Rhyme had fully expected her to storm into his room and fling the evidence bags onto his bed. Maybe the saw itself or even the plastic bag containing the vic’s severed hands. He’d been looking forward to a real knock-down, drag-out; people rarely take the gloves off when they fight with a crip. He’d been thinking of that look in her eyes when she’d met him, perhaps evidence of some ambiguous kinship between them.

But no, he saw now he was wrong. Amelia Sachs was like everybody else – patting him on the head and looking for the nearest exit.

With a snap, his heart turned to ice. When he spoke it was to a cobweb high on the far wall. “We’ve been talking about the deadline for the next victim, officer. There doesn’t seem to be specific time.”

“What we think,” Sellitto continued, “whatever this prick’s got planned for the next one is something ongoing. He doesn’t know exactly when the time of death will be. Lincoln thought maybe he’s buried some poor SOB someplace where there’s not much air.”

Sachs’s eye narrowed slightly at this. Rhyme noticed it. Burial alive. If you’ve got to have a phobia, that’s as good as any.

They were interrupted by two men in gray suits who climbed the stairs and walked into the bedroom as if they lived here.

“We knocked,” one of them said.

“We rang the bell,” said the other.

“No answer.”

They were in their forties, one taller than the other but both with the same sandy-colored hair. They bore identical smiles and before the Brooklyn drawl destroyed the image Rhyme had thought: Hayseed farm boys. One had an honest-to-God dusting of freckles along the bridge of his pale nose.

“Gentlemen.”

Sellitto introduced the Hardy Boys: Detectives Bedding and Saul, the spadework team. Their skill was canvassing – interviewing people who live near a crime scene for wits and leads. It was a fine art but one that Rhyme had never learned, had no desire to. He was content to unearth hard facts and hand them off to officers like these, who, armed with the data, became living lie detectors who could shred perps’ best cover stories. Neither of them seemed to think it was the least bit weird to be reporting to a bedridden civilian.

Saul, the taller of them, the frecklee, said, “We’ve found thirty-six -”

“- eight, if you count a couple of crack-heads. Which he doesn’t. I do.”

“- subjects. Interviewed all of them. Haven’t had much luck.”

“Most of ’em blind, deaf, amnesiacs. You know, the usual.”

“No sign of the taxi. Combed the West Side. Zero. Zip.”

Bedding: “But tell them the good news.”

“We found a wit.”

“A witness?” Banks asked eagerly. “Fan-tastic.”

Rhyme, considerably less enthusiastic, said, “Go on.”

“ 'Round the TOD this morning at the train tracks.”

“He saw a man walk down Eleventh Avenue, turn -”

“ 'Suddenly,' he said,” added no-freckle Bedding.

“- and go through an alley that led to the train underpass. He just stood there for a while -”

“Looking down.”

Rhyme was troubled by this. “That doesn’t sound like our boy. He’s too smart to risk being seen like that.”

“But -” Saul continued, raising a finger and glancing at his partner.

“There was only one window in the whole ’hood you could see the place from.”

“Which is where our wit happened to be standing.”

“Up early, bless his heart.”

Before he remembered he was angry with her Rhyme asked, “Well, Amelia, how’s it feel?”

“I’m sorry?” Her attention returned from the window.

“To be right,” Rhyme said. “You pegged Eleventh Avenue. Not Thirty-seventh.”

She didn’t know how to respond but Rhyme turned immediately back to the twins. “Description?”

“Our wit couldn’t say much.”

“Was on the sauce. Already.”

“He said it was a smallish guy. No hair color. Race -”

“Probably white.”

“Wearing?” Rhyme asked.

“Something dark. Best he could say.”

“And doing what?” Sellitto asked.

“I quote. ‘He just like stood there, looking down. I thought he gonna jump. You know, in front of a train. Looked at his watch a couple times.’ ”

“And then finally left. Said he kept looking around. Like he didn’t want to be seen.”

What had he been doing? Rhyme wondered. Watching the victim die? Or was this before he planted the body, checking to see if the roadbed was deserted?

Sellitto asked, “Walked or drove?”

“Walked. We checked every parking lot -”

“And garage.”

“- in the neighborhood. But that’s near the convention center so you got parking coming out your ears. There’re so many lots the attendants stand in the street with orange flags and wave cars in.”

“And 'causa the expo half of them were full by seven. We got a list of about nine hundred tags.”

Sellitto shook his head. “Follow up on it -”

“It’s delegated,” said Bedding.

“- but I betcha this’s one unsub who ain’t putting cars in lots,” the detective continued. “Or getting parking tickets.”

Rhyme nodded his agreement and asked, “The building at Pearl Street?”

One, or both, of the twins said, “That’s next on our list. We’re on our way.”

Rhyme caught Sachs checking her watch, which sat on her white wrist near her ruddy fingers. He instructed Thom to add these new characteristics of the unsub to the profile chart.

“You want to interview that guy?” Banks asked. “The one by the railroad?”

“No. I don’t trust witnesses,” Rhyme said bombastically. “I want to get back to work.” He glanced at Mel Cooper. “Hairs, blood, bone, and a sliver of wood. The bone first,” Rhyme instructed.

Morgen…

Young Monelle Gerger opened her eyes and slowly sat up in the sagging bed. In her two years in east Greenwich Village she’d never gotten used to morning.

Her round, twenty-one-year-old body eased forward and she got a blast of unrelenting August sunlight in her bleary eyes. “Mein Gott…”

She’d left the club at five, home at six, made love with Brian until seven…

What time was it now?

Early morning, she was sure.

She squinted at the clock. Oh. Four-thirty in the afternoon.

Not so früh morgens after all.

Coffee or laundry?

It was around this time of day that she’d wander over to Dojo’s for a veggie-burger breakfast and three cups of their tough coffee. There she’d meet people she knew, clubbies like herself – downtown people.

But she’d let a lot of things go lately, the domestic things. And so now she pulled on two baggy T-shirts to hide her chubby figure and jeans, hung five or six chains around her neck and grabbed the laundry basket, tossed the Wisk onto it.

Monelle undid the three dead bolts barring the door. She hefted the laundry basket and walked down the dark staircase of the residence hall. At the basement level she paused.

Irgend was stimmt hier nicht.

Feeling uneasy, Monelle looked around the deserted stairway, the murky corridors.

What’s different?

The light, that’s it! The bulbs in the hall’re burned out. No – she looked closely – they were missing. Fucking kids’ll steal anything. She’d moved in here, the Deutsche Haus – because it was supposedly a haven for German artists and musicians. It turned out to be just another filthy, way-overpriced East Village walkup, like all the other tenements around here. The only difference was that she could bitch to the manager in her native tongue.

She continued through the basement door into the incinerator room, which was so dark she had to grope her way along the wall to make sure she didn’t trip over the junk on the floor.

Pushing open the door, she stepped into the corridor that led to the laundry room.

A shuffling. A skitter.

She turned quickly and saw nothing but motionless shadows. All she heard was the sound of traffic, the groans of an old, old building.

Through the dimness. Past stacks of boxes and discarded chairs and tables. Under wires caked with greasy dust. Monelle continued toward the laundry room. No bulbs here either. She was uneasy, recalling something that hadn’t occurred to her for years. Walking with her father down a narrow alley off Lange Strasse, near the Obermain Brücke, on their way to the zoo. She must have been five or six. Her father had suddenly gripped her by the shoulder and pointed to the bridge and told her matter-of-factly that a hungry troll lived underneath it. When they crossed it on their way home, he warned, they’d have to walk quickly. She now felt a ripple of panic rise up her spine to her crew-cut blond hair.

Stupid. Trolls…

She continued down the dank corridor, listening to the humming of some electrical equipment. Far off she heard a song by the feuding brothers in Oasis.

The laundry room was dark.

Well, if those bulbs were gone, that was it. She’d go upstairs, and pound on Herr Neischen’s door until he came running. She’d given him hell for the broken latches on the front and back doors and for the beer-guzzling kids he never kicked off the front stoop. She’d give him hell for the missing bulbs too.

She reached inside and flicked the switch.

Brilliant white light. Three large bulbs glowed like suns, revealing a room that was filthy but empty. Monelle strode up to the bank of four machines and dumped the whites in one, the colors in the next. She counted out quarters, dropped them into slots and shoved the levers forward.

Nothing.

Monelle jiggled the lever. Then hit the machine itself. No response.

“Shit. This gottverdammte building.”

Then she saw the power cord. Some idiot had unplugged the machines. She knew who. Neischen had a twelve-year-old son who was responsible for most of the carnage around the building. When she’d complained about something last year the little shit’d tried to kick her.

She picked up the cord and crouched, reaching behind the machine to find the outlet. She plugged it in.

And felt the man’s breath on her neck.

“Nein!”

He was sandwiched between the wall and the back of the washer. Barking a fast scream, she caught a glimpse of ski mask and dark clothes then his hand clamped down on her arm like an animal’s jaws. She was off balance and he easily jerked her forward. She tumbled to the floor, hitting her face on the rough concrete, and swallowed the scream forming in her throat.

He was on her in an instant, pinning her arms to the concrete, slapping a piece of thick gray tape over her mouth.

Hilfe!

Nein, bitte nicht.

Bitte nicht.

He wasn’t large but he was strong. He easily rolled her over onto her stomach and she heard the ratcheting of the handcuffs closing on her wrists.

Then he stood up. For a long moment, no sound but the drip of water, the rasp of Monelle’s breath, the click of a small motor somewhere in the basement.

Waiting for the hands to touch her body, to tear off her clothes. She heard him walk to the doorway to make sure they were alone.

Oh, he had complete privacy, she knew, furious with herself; she was one of the few residents who used the laundry room. Most of them avoided it because it was so deserted, so close to the back doors and windows, so far away from help.

He returned and rolled her over onto her back. Whispered something she couldn’t make out. Then: “Hanna.”

Hanna? It’s a mistake! He thinks I’m somebody else. She shook her head broadly, trying to make him understand this.

But then, looking at his eyes, she stopped. Even though he wore a ski mask, it was clear that something was wrong. He was upset. He scanned her body, shaking his head. He closed his gloved fingers around her big arms. Squeezed her thick shoulders, grabbed a pinch of fat. She shivered in pain.

That’s what she saw: disappointment. He’d caught her and now he wasn’t sure he wanted her after all.

He reached into his pocket and slowly withdrew his hand. The click of the knife opening was like an electric shock. It started a jag of sobbing.

Nein, nein, nein!

A hiss of breath escaped from his teeth like wind through winter trees. He crouched over her, debating.

“Hanna,” he whispered. “What am I going to do?”

Then, suddenly, he made a decision. He put the knife away and yanked her to her feet then led her out to the corridor and through the rear door – the one with the broken lock she’d been hounding Herr Neischen for weeks to fix.

ELEVEN

A CRIMINALIST IS A RENAISSANCE MAN.

He’s got to know botany, geology, ballistics, medicine, chemistry, literature, engineering. If he knows facts – that ash with a high strontium content probably came from a highway flare, that faca is Portuguese for “knife,” that Ethiopian diners use no utensils and eat with their right hands exclusively, that a slug with five land-and-groove rifling marks, right twist, could not have been fired by a Colt pistol – if he knows these things he may just make the connection that places an unsub at the crime scene.

One subject all criminalists know is anatomy. And this was certainly a specialty of Lincoln Rhyme’s, for he had spent the past three and a half years enmeshed in the quirky logic of bone and nerve.

He now glanced at the evidence bag from the steam room, dangling in Jerry Banks’s hand, and announced, “Leg bone. Not human. So it’s not from the next vic.”

It was a ring of bone about two inches around, sawn through evenly. There was blood in the tracks left by the saw blade.

“A medium-sized animal,” Rhyme continued. “Large dog, sheep, goat. It’d support, I’d guess, a hundred to a hundred fifty pounds of weight. Let’s make sure the blood’s from an animal though. Still could be the vic’s.”

Perps had been known to beat or stab people to death with bones. Rhyme himself had had three such cases; the weapons had been a beef knuckle bone, a deer’s leg bone, and in one disturbing case the victim’s own ulna.

Mel Cooper ran a gel-diffusion test for blood origin. “We’ll have to wait a bit for the results,” he explained apologetically.

UNSUB 823

Appearance

•Caucasian male, slight build

•Dark clothing

Residence

•Prob. has safe house

Vehicle

•Yellow Cab

Other

•knows CS proc.

•possibly has record

•knows FR prints

•gun =.32 Colt

“Amelia,” Rhyme said, “maybe you could help us here. Use the eye loupe and look the bone over carefully. Tell us what you see.”

“Not the microscope?” she asked. He thought she’d protest but she stepped forward to the bone, peered at it with curiosity.

“Too much magnification,” Rhyme explained.

She put on the goggles and bent over the white enamel tray. Cooper turned on a gooseneck lamp.

“The cutting marks,” Rhyme said. “Is it hacked up or are they even?”

“They’re pretty even.”

“A power saw.”

Rhyme wondered if the animal had been alive when he’d done this.

“See anything unusual?”

She pored over the bone for a moment, muttered, “I don’t know. I don’t think so. It just looks like a hunk of bone.”

It was then that Thom walked past and glanced at the tray. “That’s your clue? That’s funny.”

“Funny,” Rhyme said. “Funny?”

Sellitto asked, “You got a theory?”

“No theory.” He bent down and smelled it. “It’s osso bucco.”

“What?”

“Veal shank. I made it for you once, Lincoln. Osso bucco. Braised veal shank.” He looked at Sachs and grimaced. “He said it needed more salt.”

“Goddamn!” Sellitto cried. “He bought it at a grocery store!”

“If we’re lucky,” Rhyme said, “he bought it at his grocery store.”

Cooper confirmed that the precipitin test showed negative for human blood on the samples Sachs had collected. “Probably bovine,” he said.

“But what’s he trying to tell us?” Banks asked.

Rhyme had no idea. “Let’s keep going. Oh, anything on the chain and padlock?”

Cooper glanced at the hardware in a crisp plastic bag. “Nobody name-stamps chain anymore. So we’re out of luck there. The lock’s a Secure-Pro middle-of-the-line model. It isn’t very secure and definitely not professional. How long d’it take to break it?”

“Three whole seconds,” Sellitto said.

“See. No serial numbers and it’s sold in every hardware and variety store in the country.”

“Key or combination?” Rhyme asked.

“Combination.”

“Call the manufacturer. Ask them if we take it apart and reconstruct the combination from the tumblers, will that tell us which shipment it was in and where it went to?”

Banks whistled. “Man, that’s a long shot.”

Rhyme’s glare sent a ferocious blush across his face. “And the enthusiasm in your voice, detective, tells me you’re just the one to handle the job.”

“Yessir” – the young man held up his cellular phone defensively – “I’m on it.”

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 weather-proofing 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 down-town and River-front areas, setting forth the description of the villain, 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.

The streets were clear. The bone collector drove into the alley. He opened the warehouse door and drove down a wooden ramp into a long tunnel.

After making sure the place was deserted, he walked to the back of the car. He opened the trunk and pulled Hanna out. She was fleshy, fat, like a bag of limp mulch. He grew angry again and he carried her roughly down another wide tunnel. Traffic from the West Side Highway sped over them. He listened to her wheezing and was just reaching out to loosen the gag when he felt her shudder and go completely limp. Gasping for breath with the effort of carrying her, he rested her on the floor of the tunnel and eased the tape off her mouth. Air dribbled in weakly. Had she just fainted? He listened to her heart. It seemed to be beating fine.

He cut the clothesline binding her ankles, leaned forward and whispered, “Hanna, kommen Sie mit mir mit, Hanna Goldschmidt…”

“Nein,” she muttered, her voice trailing to silence.

He leaned closer, lightly slapped her face. “Hanna, you must come with me.”

And she screamed: “Mein Name ist nicht Hanna.” Then kicked him square in the jaw.

A burst of yellow light flashed through his head and he leapt sideways two or three feet, trying to keep his balance. Hanna sprang up, raced blindly down a dark corridor. But he was after her fast. He tackled her before she’d gotten ten yards away. She fell hard; he did too, grunting as he lost his breath.

He lay on his side for a minute, consumed with pain, struggling to breathe, gripping her T-shirts as she thrashed. Lying on her back, hands still cuffed, the girl used the only weapon she had – one of her feet, which she lifted in the air and brought down hard onto his hand. A spike of pain shot through him and his glove flew off. She lifted her strong leg again and only her bad aim saved him from her heel, which slammed so hard into the ground it would’ve broken bones if she’d connected.

“So nicht!” he growled madly and grabbed her by the throat with his bare hand and squeezed until she squirmed and whined and then stopped squirming and whining. She trembled several times and went still.

When he listened to her heart the beating was very faint. No tricks this time. He snatched up his glove, pulled it on and dragged her back through the tunnel to the post. Bound her feet once more and put a new piece of tape on her mouth. As she came to, his hand was straying over her body. She gasped at first and shrank away as he caressed the flesh behind her ear. Her elbow, her jaw. There weren’t many other places he wanted to touch her. She was so padded… it disgusted him.

Yet beneath the skin… He gripped her leg firmly. Her wide eyes stared as he fumbled in his pocket and the knife appeared. Without a moment’s hesitation he cut through her skin down to the yellow-white bone. She screamed through the tape, a manic wail, and kicked hard but he held her tight. Enjoying this, Hanna? The girl sobbed and groaned loudly. So he had to lower his ear to her leg to hear the delicious sound of the tip of the blade scraping back and forth on the bone. Skrisssss.

Then he took her arm.

They locked eyes for a moment and she shook her head pathetically, begging in silence. His gaze dropped to her pudgy forearm and again the cut was deep. Her whole body went rigid with the pain. Another wild, muted scream. Again he lowered his head like a musician, listening to the sound of the blade scraping the ulna. Back and forth. Skrisssss, skrisssss… It was some moments later that he realized she’d fainted.

Finally he pried himself away and returned to the car. He planted the next clues then took the broom from the trunk and carefully swept over their footsteps. He drove up the ramp, parked, left the engine running and climbed out once more, carefully sweeping away the tire tracks.

He paused and looked back down the tunnel. Staring at her, just staring. Suddenly a rare smile crossed the bone collector’s lips. He was surprised that the first of the guests had already shown up. A dozen pairs of tiny red eyes, two dozen, then three… It seemed they were gazing at Hanna’s bloody flesh with curiosity… and what might have been hunger. Though that could have been his imagination; Lord knew, it was vivid enough.

TWELVE

MEL, GO THROUGH THE COLFAX WOMAN’S CLOTHES. Amelia, would you help him?”

She offered him another pleasant nod, the sort meant for polite society. Rhyme realized he was really quite angry with her.

At the tech’s direction she pulled on latex gloves, gently opened the clothing and ran a horsehair brush through the garments, above large sheets of clean newsprint. Tiny flecks fell out. Cooper picked them up on tape and examined them through the compound ’scope.

“Not much,” he reported. “The steam took care of most of the trace. I see a little soil. Not enough to D-G. Wait… Excellent. I’ve got a couple of fibers. Look at these…”

Well, I can’t, Rhyme thought angrily.

“Navy blue, acrylic-and-wool blend, I’d guess. It isn’t coarse enough to be carpet and it’s not lobed. So it’s clothing.”

“In this heat he’s not going to be wearing thick socks or a sweater. Ski mask?”

“That’d be my bet,” Cooper said.

Rhyme reflected, “So he’s serious about giving us a chance to save them. If he was bent on killing, it wouldn’t matter if they saw him or not.”

Sellitto added, “Also means the asshole thinks he can get away. Doesn’t have suicide on his mind. Might just give us some bargaining power if he’s got hostages when we nail him.”

“I like that optimism of yours, Lon,” Rhyme said.

Thom answered the buzzer and a moment later Jim Polling climbed the stairs, looking disheveled and harried. Well, shuttling between press conferences, the mayor’s office and the federal building would do that to you.

“Too bad about the trout,” Sellitto called to him. Then explained to Rhyme, “Jimmy here’s one of those real fishermen. Ties his own flies and everything. Me, I go out on a party boat with a six-pack and I’m happy.”

“We’ll nail this fucker then worry about the fish,” Polling said, helping himself to the coffee Thom had left by the window. He looked outside and blinked in surprise to find two large birds staring at him. He turned back to Rhyme and explained that because of the kidnapping he’d had to postpone a fishing trip to Vermont. Rhyme had never fished – never had the time or inclination for any hobbies – but he found he envied Polling. The serenity of fishing appealed to him. It was a sport you could practice in solitude. Crip sports tended to be in-your-face athletics. Competitive. Proving things to the world… and to yourself. Wheelchair basketball, tennis, marathons. Rhyme decided if he had to have a sport it’d be fishing. Though casting a line with a single finger was probably beyond modern technology.

Polling said, “The press is calling him a serial kidnapper.”

If the bootie fits, Rhyme reflected.

“And the mayor’s going nuts. Wants to call in the feds. I talked the chief into sitting tight on that one. But we can’t lose another vic.”

“We’ll do our best,” Rhyme said caustically.

Polling sipped the black coffee and stepped close to the bed. “You okay, Lincoln?”

Rhyme said, “Fine.”

Polling appraised him for a moment longer then nodded to Sellitto. “Brief me. We got another press conference in a half hour. You see the last one? Hear what that reporter asked? What did we think the vic’s family felt about her being scalded to death?”

Banks shook his head. “Man.”

“I nearly decked the fucker,” Polling said.

Three and a half years ago, Rhyme recalled, during the cop-killer investigation, the captain had smashed a news crew’s videocam when the reporter wondered if Polling was being too aggressive in his investigations just because the suspect, Dan Shepherd, was a member of the force.

Polling and Sellitto retired to a corner of Rhyme’s room and the detective filled him in. When the captain descended the stairs this time, Rhyme noticed, he wasn’t half as buoyant as he had been.

“Okay,” Cooper announced. “We’ve got a hair. It was in her pocket.”

“The whole shaft?” Rhyme asked, without much hope, and was not surprised when Cooper sighed. “Sorry. No bulb.”

Without a bulb attached, hair isn’t individuated evidence; it’s merely class evidence. You can’t run a DNA test and link it to a specific person. Still, it has good probative value. The famous Canadian Mounties study a few years ago concluded that if a hair found at the scene matches a suspect’s hair the odds are around 4,500 to 1 that he’s the one who left it. The problem with hair, though, is that you can’t deduce much about the person it belonged to. Sex is almost impossible to determine, and race can’t be reliably established. Age can be estimated only with infant hair. Color is deceptive because of wide pigmentation variations and cosmetic dyes, and since everybody loses dozens of hairs every day you can’t even tell if the suspect is going bald.

“Check it against the vic’s. Do a scale count and medulla pigmentation comparison,” Rhyme ordered.

A moment later Cooper looked up from the ’scope. “It’s not hers, the Colfax woman’s.”

“Description?” asked Rhyme.

“Light brown. No kink so I’d say not Negroid. Pigmentation suggests it’s not Mongoloid.”

“So Caucasian,” Rhyme said, nodding at the chart on the wall. “Confirms what the wit said. Head or body hair?”

“There’s little diameter variation and a uniform pigment distribution. It’s head hair.”

“Length?”

“Three centimeters.”

Thom asked if he should add to the profile that the kidnapper had brown hair.

Rhyme said no. “We’ll wait for some corroboration. Just write down that we know he wears a ski mask, navy blue. Fingernail scrapings, Mel?”

Cooper examined the trace but found nothing useful.

“The print you found. The one on the wall. Let’s take a look at it. Could you show it to me, Amelia?”

Sachs hesitated then carried the Polaroid over to him.

“Your monster,” Rhyme said. It was a large deformed palm, indeed grotesque, not with the elegant swirls and bifurcations of friction ridges but a mottled pattern of tiny lines.

“It’s a wonderful picture – you’re a virtual Edward Weston, Amelia. But unfortunately it’s not a hand. Those aren’t ridges. It’s a glove. Leather. Old. Right, Mel?”

The technician nodded.

“Thom, write down that he has an old pair of gloves.” Rhyme said to the others, “We’re starting to get some ideas about him. He’s not leaving his FR prints at the scene. But he is leaving glove prints. If we find the glove in his possession we can still place him at the scene. He’s smart. But not brilliant.”

Sachs asked, “And what do brilliant criminals wear?”

“Cotton-lined suede,” Rhyme said. Then asked, “Where’s the filter? From the vacuum?”

The technician emptied the cone filter – like one from a coffee-maker – onto a sheet of white paper.

Trace evidence…

DAs and reporters and juries loved obvious clues. Bloody gloves, knives, recently fired guns, love letters, semen and fingerprints. But Lincoln Rhyme’s favorite evidence was trace – the dust and effluence at crime scenes, so easily overlooked by perps.

But the vacuum had captured nothing helpful.

“All right,” Rhyme said, “let’s move on. Let’s look at the handcuffs.”

Sachs stiffened as Cooper opened the plastic bag and slid the cuffs out onto a sheet of newsprint. There was, as Rhyme had predicted, minimal blood. The tour doctor from the medical examiner’s office had done the honors with the razor saw, after an NYPD lawyer had faxed a release to the ME.

Cooper examined the cuffs carefully. “Boyd & Keller. Bottom of the line. No serial number.” He sprayed the chrome with DFO and hit the PoliLight. “No prints, just a smudge from the glove.”

“Let’s open them up.”

Cooper used a generic cuff key to click them open. With a lens-cleaning air puffer he blew into the mechanism.

“You’re still mad at me, Amelia,” Rhyme said. “About the hands.”

The question caught her off guard. “I wasn’t mad,” she said after a moment. “I thought it was unprofessional. What you were suggesting.”

“Do you know who Edmond Locard was?”

She shook her head.

“A Frenchman. Born in 1877. He founded the University of Lyons ’ Institute of Criminalistics. He came up with the one rule I lived by when I ran IRD. Locard’s Exchange Principle. He thought that whenever two human beings come into contact, something from one is exchanged to the other, and vice versa. Maybe dust, blood, skin cells, dirt, fibers, metallic residue. It might be tough to find exactly what’s been exchanged, and even harder to figure out what it means. But an exchange does occur – and because of that we can catch our unsubs.”

This bit of history didn’t interest her in the least.

“You’re lucky,” Mel Cooper said to Sachs, not looking up. “He was going to have you and the medic do a spot autopsy and examine the contents of her stomach.”

“It would’ve been helpful,” Rhyme said, avoiding her eyes.

“I talked him out of it,” Cooper said.

“Autopsy,” Sachs said, sighing, as if nothing about Rhyme could surprise her.

Why, she isn’t even here, he thought angrily. Her mind’s a thousand miles away.

“Ah,” Cooper said. “Found something. I think it’s a bit of the glove.”

Cooper mounted a fleck on the compound microscope. Examined it.

“Leather. Reddish-colored. Polished on one side.”

“Red, that’s good,” Sellitto said. To Sachs he explained, “The wilder their clothes, the easier it is to find the perp. They don’t teach you that at the academy, bet. Sometime I’ll tell you ’bout the time we collared Jimmy Plaid, from the Gambino crew. You remember that, Jerry?”

“You could spot those pants a mile away,” the young detective said.

Cooper continued, “The leather’s desiccated. Not much oil in the grain. You were right too about them being old.”

“What kind of animal?”

“I’d say kidskin. High quality.”

“If they were new it might mean he was rich,” Rhyme grumbled. “But since they’re old he might’ve found them on the street or bought them secondhand. No snappy deductions from 823’s accessorizing, looks like. Okay. Thom, just add to the profile that the gloves are reddish kidskin. What else do we have?”

“He wears aftershave,” Sachs reminded him.

“Forgot that. Good. Maybe to cover up another scent. Unsubs do that sometimes. Write it down, Thom. What did it smell like again, Amelia? You described it.”

“Dry. Like gin.”

“What about the clothesline?” Rhyme asked.

Cooper examined it. “I’ve seen this before. Plastic. Several dozen interior filaments composed of six to ten different plastic types and one – no, two – metallic filaments.”

“I want a manufacturer and source.”

Cooper shook his head. “Impossible. Too generic.”

“Damn,” Rhyme muttered. “And the knot?”

“Now that’s unusual. Very efficient. See how it loops around twice? PVC is the hardest cord to tie and this knot ain’t going anywhere.”

“They have a knot file downtown?”

“No.”

Inexcusable, he thought.

“Sir?”

Rhyme turned to Banks.

“I do some sailing…”

“Out of Westport,” Rhyme said.

“Well, as a matter of fact, yeah. How’d you know?”

If there were a forensic test for location of origin Jerry Banks would turn up positive for Connecticut. “Lucky guess.”

“It isn’t nautical. I don’t recognize it.”

“That’s good to know. Hang it up there.” Rhyme nodded toward the wall, next to the Polaroid of the cellophane and the Monet poster. “We’ll get to it later.”

The doorbell rang and Thom disappeared to answer it. Rhyme had a bad moment thinking that perhaps it was Dr. Berger returning to tell him he was no longer interested in helping him with their “project.”

But the heavy thud of boots told Rhyme who had come a-calling.

The Emergency Services officers, all large, all somber, dressed in combat gear, entered the room politely and nodded to Sellitto and Banks. They were men of action and Rhyme bet that behind the twenty still eyes were ten very bad reactions to the sight of a man laid up forever on his back.

“Gentlemen, you’ve heard about the kidnapping last night and the death of the victim this afternoon.” He continued through the affirmative muttering, “Our unsub has another victim. We have a lead in the case and I need you to hit locations around the city and secure evidence. Immediately and simultaneously. One man, one location.”

“You mean,” one mustachioed officer asked uncertainly, “no backup.”

“You won’t need it.”

“All due respect, sir, I’m not inclined to go into any tactical situation without backup. A partner at least.”

“I don’t think there’ll be any firefights. The targets are the major chain grocery stores in town.”

“Grocery stores?”

“Not every store. Just one of every chain. J &G’s, ShopRite, Food Warehouse…”

“What exactly are we going to do?”

“Buy veal shanks.”

“What?”

“One package at each store. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to pay from your own pocket, gentlemen. But the city’ll reimburse you. Oh, and we need them ASAP.”

She lay on her side, immobile.

Her eyes had grown accustomed to the dimness of the old tunnel and she could see the little fuckers moving closer. One in particular she kept her eye on.

Monelle’s leg stung like a bitch but most of the pain was in her arm, from where he’d cut deep into her skin. Because it was cuffed behind her she couldn’t see the wound, didn’t know how much she’d bled. But it must have been a lot; she was very faint and could feel the sticky ooze all over her arms and side.

The sound of scratching – needlish claws on concrete. The gray-brown lumps rustling in the shadows. The rats continued to twitch their way toward her. There must have been a hundred of them.

She forced herself to stay completely still and kept her eyes on the big black one. Schwarzie, she called him. He was in the front, moving back and forth, studying her.

Monelle Gerger had been around the world twice by the time she was nineteen. She’d hitched through Sri Lanka and Cambodia and Pakistan. Through Nebraska, where women stared at her eyebrow rings and braless boobs with contempt. Through Iran, where men stared at her bare arms like dogs in heat. She’d slept in city parks in Guatemala City and spent three days with rebel forces in Nicaragua after getting lost on the way to a wildlife refuge.

But she’d never been so scared as now.

Mein Gott.

And what scared her the most was what she was about to do to herself.

One rat ran close, a small one, its brown body zipping forward, backing up, moving forward again a few inches. Rats were scary, she decided, because they were more like reptiles than rodents. “A snaky nose and snaky tail. And those fucking red eyes.

Behind him was Schwarzie, the size of a small cat. He rose up on his haunches and stared at what fascinated him. Watching. Waiting.

Then the little one attacked. Scurrying on his four needlish feet, ignoring her muffled scream, he darted fast and straight. Quick as a roach he tore a bite from her cut leg. The wound stung like fire. Monelle squealed – in pain, yes, but from anger too. I don’t fucking want you! She slammed her heel into his back with a dull crunch. He quivered once and lay still.

Another one raced up to her neck, ripped away a bite then leapt back, staring at her, twitching his nose as if he were running his tongue around his little rat mouth, savoring her flavor.

Dieser Schmerz…

She shivered as the searing burn radiated from the bite. Dieser Schmerz! The pain! Monelle forced herself to lie still again.

The tiny attacker poised for another run but suddenly he twitched and turned away. Monelle saw why. Schwarzie was finally easing to the front of the pack. He was coming after what he wanted.

Good, good.

He was the one she’d been waiting for. Because he hadn’t seemed interested in the blood or her flesh; he’d padded up close twenty minutes before, fascinated by the silver tape across her mouth.

The smaller rat scurried back into the swarming bodies as Schwarzie eased forward, on his obscenely tiny feet. Paused. Then advanced again. Six feet, five.

Then three.

She remained completely still. Breathing as shallowly as she dared, afraid the inhalation would scare him off.

Schwarzie paused. Padded forward again. Then stopped. Two feet away from her head.

Don’t move a muscle.

His back was humped high and his lips kept retracting over his brown and yellow teeth. He moved another foot closer and stopped, eyes darting. Sat up, rubbed his clawed paws together, eased forward again.

Monelle Gerger played dead.

Another six inches. Vorwärts!

Come on!

Then he was at her face. She smelled garbage and oil on his body, feces, rotten meat. He sniffed and she felt the unbearable tickle of whiskers on her nose as his tiny teeth emerged from his mouth and began to chew the tape.

For five minutes he gnawed around her mouth. Once another rat scooted in, sank his teeth into her ankle. She closed her eyes to the pain and tried to ignore it. Schwarzie chased him away then stood in the shadows studying her.

Vorwärts, Schwarzie! Come on!

Slowly he padded back to her. Tears running down her cheek, Monelle reluctantly lowered her mouth to him.

Chewing, chewing…

Come on!

She felt his vile, hot breath in her mouth as he broke through the tape and began to rip off larger chunks of the shiny plastic. He pulled the pieces from his mouth and squeezed them greedily in his front claws.

Big enough now? she wondered.

It would have to be. She couldn’t take any more.

Slowly she lifted her head up, one millimeter at a time. Schwarzie blinked and leaned forward, curiously.

Monelle spread her jaws and heard the wonderful sound of the ripping tape. She sucked air deep into her lungs. She could breathe again!

And she could shout for help.

“Bitte, helfen Sie mir! Please help me!”

Schwarzie backed away, startled by her ragged howl, dropping his precious silver tape. But he didn’t go very far. He stopped and turned back, rose on his pudgy haunches.

Ignoring his black, humped body she kicked the post she was tied to. Dust and dirt floated down like gray snow but the wood didn’t give a bit. She screamed until her throat burned.

“Bitte. Help me!”

The sticky rush of traffic swallowed the sound.

Stillness for a moment. Then Schwarzie started toward her again. He wasn’t alone this time. The slimy pack followed his lead. Twitching, nervous. But drawn steadily by the tempting smell of her blood.

Bone and wood, wood and bone.

“Mel, what do you have there?” Rhyme was nodding toward the computer attached to the chromatograph- spectrometer. Cooper had once more retested the dirt they’d found in the splinter of wood.

“It’s still nitrogen-rich. Off the charts.”

Three separate tests, the results all the same. A diagnostic check of the unit showed it was working fine. Cooper reflected and said, “That much nitrogen – maybe a firearms or ammunition manufacturer.”

“That’d be Connecticut, not Manhattan.” Rhyme looked at the clock. 6:30. How fast time had raced past today. How slowly it had moved for the past three and a half years. He felt as if he’d been awake for days and days.

The young detective pored over the map of Manhattan, moving aside the pale vertebra that had fallen to the floor earlier.

The disk had been left here by Rhyme’s SCI specialist, Peter Taylor. An early appointment with the man. The doctor had examined him expertly then sat back in the rustling rattan chair and pulled something out of his pocket.

“Show-and-tell time,” the doctor had said.

Rhyme had glanced at Taylor ’s open hand.

“This’s a fourth cervical vertebra. Just like the one in your neck. The one that broke. See the little tails on the end?” The doctor turned it over and over for a moment then asked, “What do you think of when you see it?”

Rhyme respected Taylor – who didn’t treat him like a child or a moron or a major inconvenience – but that day he hadn’t been in the mood to play the inspiration game. He hadn’t answered.

Taylor continued anyway, “Some of my patients think it looks like a stingray. Some say it’s a spaceship. Or an airplane. Or a truck. Whenever I ask that question people usually compare it to something big. Nobody ever says, ‘Oh, a hunk of calcium and magnesium.’ See, they don’t like the idea that something so insignificant has made their lives pure hell.”

Rhyme had glanced back at the doctor skeptically but the placid, gray-haired medico was an old hand at SCI patients and he said kindly, “Don’t tune me out, Lincoln.”

Taylor had held the disk up close to Rhyme’s face. “You’re thinking it’s unfair this little thing causing you so much grief. But forget that. Forget it. I want you to remember what it was like before the accident. The good and bad in your life. Happiness, sadness… You can feel that again.” The doctor’s face had grown still. “But frankly all I see now is somebody who’s given up.”

Taylor had left the vertebra on the bedside table. Accidentally, it seemed. But then Rhyme realized the act was calculated. Over the past months while Rhyme was trying to decide whether or not to kill himself he’d stared at the tiny disk. It became an emblem for Taylor ’s argument – the pro-living argument. But in the end that side lost; the doctor’s words, as valid as they might be, couldn’t overcome the burden of pain and heartache and exhaustion Lincoln Rhyme felt day after day after day.

He now looked away from the disk – to Amelia Sachs – and said, “I want you to think about the scene again.”

“I told you everything I saw.”

“Not saw, I want to know what you felt.”

Rhyme remembered the thousands of times he’d run crime scenes. Sometimes a miracle would happen. He’d be looking around and somehow ideas about the unsub would come to him. He couldn’t explain how. The behaviorists talked about profiling as if they’d invented it. But criminalists had been profiling for hundreds of years. Walk the grid, walk where he’s walked, find what he’s left behind, figure out what he’s taken with him – and you’ll come away from the scene with a profile as clear as a portrait.

“Tell me,” he prodded. “What did you feel?”

“Uneasy. Tense. Hot.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I really don’t. Sorry.”

If he’d been mobile Rhyme would have leapt from the bed, grabbed her shoulders and shaken her. Shouted: But you know what I’m talking about! I know you do. Why won’t you work with me?… Why are you ignoring me?

Then he understood something… That she was there, in the steamy basement. Hovering over T.J.’s ruined body. Smelling the vile smell. He saw it in the way her thumb flicked a bloody cuticle, he saw it in the way she maintained the no-man’s-land of politeness between the two of them. She detested being in that vile basement, and she hated him for reminding her that part of her was still there.

“You’re walking through the room,” he said.

“I really don’t think I can be any more help.”

“Play along,” he said, forcing his temper down. He smiled. “Tell me what you thought.”

Her face went still and she said, “It’s… just thoughts. Impressions everybody’d have.”

“But you were there. Everybody wasn’t. Tell us.”

“It was scary or something…” She seemed to regret the clumsy word.

Unprofessional.

“I felt -”

“Somebody watching you?” he asked.

This surprised her. “Yes. That’s exactly it.”

Rhyme had felt it himself. Many times. He’d felt it three and a half years ago, bending down over the decomposing body of the young policeman, picking a fiber off the uniform. He’d been positive that someone was nearby. But there was no one – just a large oak beam that chose that moment to groan and splinter and come crashing down on the fulcrum of Lincoln Rhyme’s fourth cervical vertebra with the weight of the earth.

“What else did you think, Amelia?”

She wasn’t resisting anymore. Her lips were relaxed, her eyes drifting over the curled Nighthawks poster – the diners, lonely or contentedly alone. She said, “Well, I remember saying to myself, ‘Man, this place is old.’ It was like those pictures you see of turn-of-the-century factories and things. And I -”

“Wait,” Rhyme barked. “Let’s think about that. Old…”

His eyes strayed to the Randel Survey map. He’d commented before on the unsub’s interest in historical New York. The building where T.J. Colfax had died was old too. And so was the tunnel for the railroad where they’d found the first body. The New York Central trains used to run aboveground. There’d been so many crossing fatalities that Eleventh Avenue had earned the name Death Avenue and the railroad had finally been forced to move the tracks belowground.

“And Pearl Street,” he mused to himself, “was a major byway in early New York. Why’s he so interested in old things?” He asked Sellitto, “Is Terry Dobyns still with us?”

“Oh, the shrink? Yeah. We worked a case last year. Come to think of it, he asked about you. Said he called you a couple times and you never -”

“Right, right, right,” Rhyme said. “Get him over here. I want his thoughts on 823’s patterns. Now, Amelia, what else did you think?”

She shrugged but far too nonchalantly. “Nothing.”

“No?”

And where did she keep her feelings? he wondered, recalling something Blaine had said once, seeing a gorgeous woman walking down Fifth Avenue: The more beautiful the package, the harder it is to unwrap.

“I don’t know… All right, I remember one thing I thought. But it doesn’t mean anything. It’s not, like a professional observation.”

Professional…

It’s a bitch when you set your own standards, ain’t it, Amelia?

“Let’s hear it,” he said to her.

“When you were having me pretend to be him? And I found where he stood to look back at her?”

“Keep going.”

“Well, I thought…” For a moment it seemed that tears threatened to fill her beautiful eyes. They were iridescent blue, he noticed. Instantly she controlled herself. “I wondered, did she have a dog. The Colfax woman.”

“A dog? Why’d you wonder that?”

She hesitated a moment then said, “This friend of mine… a few years ago. We were talking about getting a dog when, well, if we moved in together. I always wanted one. A collie. It was funny. That was the kind my friend wanted too. Even before we knew each other.”

“A dog.” Rhyme’s heart popped like beetles on a summer screen door. “And?”

“I thought that woman -”

“T.J.,” Rhyme said.

“T.J.,” Sachs continued. “I just thought how sad it was – if she had any pets she wouldn’t be coming home to them and playing with them anymore. I didn’t think about her boyfriends or husbands. I thought about pets.”

“But why that thought? Dogs, pets. Why?”

“I don’t know why.”

Silence.

Finally she said, “I suppose seeing her tied up there… And I was thinking how he stood to the side to watch her. Just standing between the oil tanks. It was like he was watching an animal in a pen.”

Rhyme glanced at the sine waves on the GC-MS computer screen.

Animals…

Nitrogen…

“Shit!” Rhyme blurted.

Heads turned toward him.

“It’s shit.” Staring at the screen.

“Yes, of course!” Cooper said, replastering his strands of hair. “All the nitrogen. It’s manure. And it’s old manure at that.”

Suddenly Lincoln Rhyme had one of those moments he’d reflected on earlier. The thought just burst into his mind. The image was of lambs.

Sellitto asked, “Lincoln, you okay?”

A lamb, sauntering down the street.

It was like he was watching an animal…

“Thom,” Sellitto was saying, “is he all right?”

… in a pen.

Rhyme could picture the carefree animal. A bell around its neck, a dozen others behind.

“ Lincoln,” Thom said urgently. “You’re sweating. Are you all right?”

“Shhhhh,” the criminalist ordered.

He felt the tickle running down his face. Inspiration and heart failure; the symptoms are oddly similar. Think, think…

Bones, wooden posts and manure…

“Yes!” he whispered. A Judas lamb, leading the flock to slaughter.

“Stockyards,” Rhyme announced to the room. “She’s being held in a stockyard.”

THIRTEEN

“THERE ARE NO STOCKYARDS IN MANHATTAN.”

“The past, Lon,” Rhyme reminded him. “Old things turn him on. Get his juices flowing. We should think of old stockyards. The older the better.”

In researching his book, Rhyme had read about a murder that gentleman mobster Owney Madden was accused of committing: gunning down a rival bootlegger outside his Hell’s Kitchen townhouse. Madden was never convicted – not for this particular murder, at any rate. He took the stand and, in his melodious British-accented voice, lectured the courtroom about betrayal. “This entire case has been trumped up by my rivals, who are speaking lies about me. Your honor, do you know what they remind me of? In my neighborhood, in Hell’s Kitchen, the flocks of lambs were led through the streets from the stockyards to the slaughterhouses on Forty-second Street. And you know who led them? Not a dog, not a man. But one of theirs. A Judas lamb with a bell around its neck. He’d lead the flock up that ramp. But then he’d stop and the rest of them would go on inside. I’m an innocent lamb and those witnesses against me, they’re the Judases.”

Rhyme continued. “Call the library, Banks. They must have a historian.”

The young detective flipped open his cellular phone and called. His voice dropped a tone or two as he spoke. After he explained what they needed he stopped speaking and gazed at the map of the city.

“Well?” Rhyme asked.

“They’re finding someone. They’ve got -” He lowered his head as someone answered and the young man repeated his request. He started nodding and announced to the room, “I’ve got two locations… no, three.”

UNSUB 823

Appearance

•Caucasian male, slight build

•Dark clothing•Old gloves, reddish kidskin

•Aftershave; to cover up other scent?

•Ski mask? Navy blue?

Residence

•Prob. has safe house

Vehicle

•Yellow Cab

Other

•knows CS proc.

•possibly has record

•knows FR prints

•gun =.32 Colt

•Ties vics w/ unusual knots

•“Old” appeals to him

“Who is it?” Rhyme barked. “Who’re you talking to?”

“The curator of the city archives… He says there’ve been three major stockyard areas in Manhattan. One on the West Side, around Sixtieth Street… One in Harlem in the 1930s or ’40s. And on the Lower East Side during the Revolution.”

“We need addresses, Banks. Addresses!”

Listening.

“He’s not sure.”

“Why can’t he look it up? Tell him to look it up!”

Banks responded, “He heard you, sir… He says, in what? Look them up in what? They didn’t have Yellow Pages back then. He’s looking at old -”

“Demographic maps of commercial neighborhoods without street names,” Rhyme groused. “Obviously. Have him guess.”

“That’s what he’s doing. He’s guessing.”

Rhyme called, “Well, we need him to guess fast.”

Banks listened, nodding.

“What, what, what, what?”

“Around Sixtieth Street and Tenth,” the young officer said. A moment later: “ Lexington near the Harlem River… And then… where the Delancey farm was. Is that near Delancey Street? -”

“Of course it is. From Little Italy all the way to the East River. Lots of territory. Miles. Can’t he narrow it down?”

“Around Catherine Street. Lafayette… Walker. He’s not sure.”

“Near the courthouses,” Sellitto said and told Banks, “Get Haumann’s teams moving. Divide ’ em up. Hit all three neighborhoods.”

The young detective made the call, then looked up. “What now?”

“We wait,” Rhyme said.

Sellitto muttered, “I fucking hate waiting.”

Sachs asked Rhyme, “Can I use your phone?”

Rhyme nodded toward the one on his bedside table.

She hesitated. “You have one in there?” She pointed to the hallway.

Rhyme nodded.

With perfect posture she walked out of the bedroom. In the hallway mirror he could see her, solemn, making the precious phone call. Who? he wondered. Boyfriend, husband? Day-care center? Why had she hesitated before mentioning her “friend” when she told them about the collie? There was a story behind that, Rhyme bet.

Whomever she was calling wasn’t there. He noticed her eyes turn to dark-blue pebbles when there was no answer. She looked up and caught Rhyme gazing at her in the dusty glass. She turned her back. The phone slipped to the cradle and she returned to his room.

There was silence for a full five minutes. Rhyme lacked the mechanism most people have for bleeding off tension. He’d been a manic pacer when he was mobile, drove the officers in IRD crazy. Now, his eyes energetically scanned the Randel map of the city as Sachs dug beneath her Patrol cap and scratched at her scalp. Invisible Mel Cooper cataloged evidence, calm as a surgeon.

All but one of the people in the room jumped inordinately when Sellitto’s phone brayed. He listened; his face broke into a grin.

“Got it!” One of Haumann’s squads is at Eleventh and Sixtieth. They can hear a woman’s screams coming from somewhere around there. They dunno where for sure. They’re doing a door-to-door.”

“Get your running shoes on,” Rhyme ordered Sachs.

He saw her face sag. She glanced at Rhyme’s phone, as if it might be ringing with a reprieve call from the governor at any minute. Then a look at Sellitto, who was poring over the ESU tactical map of the West Side.

“Amelia,” Rhyme said, “we lost one. That’s too bad. But we don’t have to lose any more.”

“If you saw her,” she whispered. “If you only saw what he did to her -”

“Oh, but I have, Amelia,” he said evenly, his eyes relentless and challenging. “I’ve seen what happened to T.J. I’ve seen what happens to bodies left in hot trunks for a month. I’ve seen what a pound of C4 does to arms and legs and faces. I worked the Happy Land social club fire. Over eighty people burned to death. We took Polaroids of the vics’ faces, or what was left of them, for their families to identify – because there’s no way in hell a human being could walk past those rows of bodies and stay sane. Except us. We didn’t have any choice.” He inhaled against the excruciating pain that swept through his neck. “See, if you’re going to get by in this business, Amelia… If you’re going to get by in life, you’re going to have to learn to give up the dead.”

One by one the others in the room had stopped what they were doing and were looking at the two of them.

No pleasantries now from Amelia Sachs. No polite smiles. She tried for a moment to make her gaze cryptic. But it was transparent as glass. Her fury at him – out of proportion to his comment – roiled through her; her long face folded under the dark energy. She swept aside a lock of lazy red hair and snatched the headset from the table. At the top of the stairs she paused and looked at him with a withering glance, reminding Rhyme that there was nothing colder than a beautiful woman’s cold smile.

And for some reason he found himself thinking: Welcome back, Amelia.

“Whatcha got? You got goodies, you got a story, you got pictures?”

The Scruff sat in a bar on the East Side of Manhattan, Third Avenue – which is to the city what strip malls are to the ’burbs. This was a dingy tavern, soon to be rockin’ with Yuppies on the make. But now it was the refuge of badly dressed locals, eating suppers of questionable fish and limp salads.

The lean man, skin like knotty ebony, wore a very white shirt and a very green suit. He leaned closer to the Scruff. “You got news, you got secret codes, you got letters? You got shit?”

“Man. Ha.”

“You’re not laughing when you say ha,” said Fred Dellray, really D’Ellret but that had been generations ago. He was six foot four, rarely smiled despite the Jabberwocky banter, and was a star special agent in the Manhattan office of the FBI.

“No, man. I’m not laughing.”

“So what’ve you got?” Dellray squeezed the end of a cigarette, which perched over his left ear.

“It takes time, man.” The Scruff, a short man, scratched his greasy hair.

“But you ain’t got time. Time is precious, time is fleeing, and time is one thing You. Ain’t. Got.”

Dellray put his huge hand under the table, on which sat two coffees, and squeezed the Scruff’s thigh until he whined.

Six months ago the skinny little guy had been caught trying to sell automatic M-16s to a couple of right-wing crazies, who – whether they actually were or not – also happened to be undercover BATF agents.

The feds hadn’t wanted the Scruff himself of course, the greasy little wild-eyed thing. They wanted whoever was supplying the guns. ATF swam upstream a ways but no great busts were forthcoming and so they gave him to Dellray, the Bureau’s Numero Uno snitch handler, to see if he might be some use. So far, though, he’d proved to be just an irritating, mousy little skel who didn’t, apparently, have news, secret codes or even shit for the feds.

“The only way we’re dropping down a charge, any charge, is you give us something beautiful and sticky. Are we all together on that?”

“I don’t have nothing for youse guys right now is what I’m saying. Just now.”

“Not true, not true. You gotchaself somethin’. I can see it in your face. You’re knowing something, mon.”

A bus pulled up outside, with a hiss of brake air. A crowd of Pakistanis climbed from the open door.

“Man, that fucking UN conference,” the Scruff muttered, “what the fuck they coming here for? This city’s too crowded already. All them foreigners.”

“ ‘Fucking conference.’ You little skel, you little turd,” Dellray snapped. “Whatcha got against world peace?”

“Nothin’.”

“Now, tell me something good.”

“I don’t know nothin’ good.”

“Who you talking to here?” Dellray grinning devilishly. “I’m the Chameleon. I can smile’n be happy or I can frown and play squeezie.”

“No, man, no,” the Scruff squealed. “Shit, that hurts. Cut it out.”

The bartender looked over at them and a short glance from Dellray sent him back to polishing polished glasses.

“All right, maybe I know one thing. But I need help. I need -”

“Squeezie time again.”

“Fuck you, man. Just fuck you!”

“Oh, that’s mighty smart dialogue,” Dellray shot back. “You sound like in those bad movies, you know, the bad guy and the good guy finally meet. Like Stallone and somebody. And all they can say to each other is, ‘Fuck you, man.’ ‘No, fuck you.’ ‘No, fuck you.’ Now, you’re gonna tell me something useful. Are we all together on that?”

And just stared at the Scruff until he gave up.

“Okay, here’s what it is. I’m trusting you, man. I’m -”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatcha got?”

“I was talking to Jackie, you know Jackie?”

“I know Jackie.”

“An’ he was telling me.”

“What was he telling you?”

“He was telling me he heard anything anybody got coming in or going out this week, don’t do it the airports.”

“So what was coming in or going out? More 16s?”

“I told you, man, there wasn’t nothing I had. I’m telling you what Jackie -”

“Told you.”

“Right, man. Just in general, you know?” The Scruff turned big brown eyes on Dellray. “Would I lie to you?”

“Don’t ever lose your dignity,” the agent warned solemnly, pointing a stern finger at the Scruff’s chest. “Now what’s this about airports. Which one? Kennedy, La Guardia?”

“I don’t know. All I know is word’s up that somebody was gonna be at a airport here. Somebody who was pretty bad.”

“Gimme a name.”

“Don’t got a name.”

“Where’s Jackie?”

“Dunno. South Africa, I think. Maybe Liberia.”

“What’s all this mean?” Dellray squeezed his cigarette again.

“I guess just there was a chance something was going down, you know, so nobody should be having shipments coming in then.”

“You guess.” The Scruff cringed but Dellray wasn’t thinking about tormenting the little man any longer. He was hearing alarm bells: Jackie – an arms broker both Bureaus had known about for a year – might have heard something from one of his clients, soldiers in Africa and Central Europe and militia cells in America, about some terrorist hit at the airports. Dellray normally wouldn’t’ve thought anything about this, except for that kidnapping at JFK last night. He hadn’t paid much attention to it – it was NYPD’s case. But now he was also thinking about that botched fragging at the UNESCO meeting in London the other day.

“Yo boy dint tell you anything more?”

“No, man. Nothing more. Hey, I’m hungry. Can we eat somethin’?”

“Remember what I told you about dignity? Quit moaning.” Dellray stood up. “I gotta make a call.”

The RRV skidded to a stop on Sixtieth Street.

Sachs snagged the crime-scene suitcase, the PoliLight and the big twelve-volt flashlight.

“Did you get her in time?” Sachs called to an ESU trooper. “Is she all right?”

No one answered at first. Then she heard the screams.

“What’s going on?” she muttered, running breathless up to the large door, which had been battered in by Emergency Services. It opened onto a wide driveway that descended underneath an abandoned brick building. “She’s still there?”

“That’s right.”

“Why?” demanded a shocked Amelia Sachs.

“They told us not to go in.”

“Not to go in? She’s screaming. Can’t you hear her?”

An ESU cop said, “They told us to wait for you.”

They. No, not they at all. Lincoln Rhyme. That son of a bitch.

“We were supposed to find her,” the officer said. “You’re supposed to go in.”

She clicked the headset on. “Rhyme!” she barked. “Are you there?”

No answer… You goddamn coward.

Give up the dead… Sonofabitch! As furious as she’d been storming down the stairs in his townhouse a few minutes ago, she was twice as angry now.

Sachs glanced behind her and noticed a medic standing beside an EMS bus.

“You, come with me.”

He took a step forward and saw her draw her weapon. He stopped.

“Whoa, time out,” the medic said. “I don’t have to go in until the area’s secure.”

“Now! Move!” She spun around and he must have seen more muzzle than he wanted. He grimaced and hurried after her.

From underground they heard: “Aiiiii! Hilfe!” Then sobbing.

Jesus. Sachs started to run toward the looming doorway, twelve feet high, smoky blackness inside.

She heard in her head: You’re him, Amelia. What are you thinking?

Go away, she said silently.

But Lincoln Rhyme didn’t go away.

You’re a killer and a kidnapper, Amelia. Where would you walk, what would you touch?

Forget it! I’m going to save her. Hell with the crime scene…

“Mein Gott! Fleece! Some-von, pleece help!”

Go, Sachs shouted to herself. Sprint! He’s not in here. You’re safe. Get her, go…

She picked up the pace, her utility belt clanking as she ran. Then, twenty feet down the tunnel, she pulled up. Debating. She didn’t like which side won.

“Oh, fuck,” she spat out. She set down the suitcase and opened it up. She blurted to the medic, “You, what’s your name?”

The uneasy young man answered, “Tad Walsh. I mean, what’s going on?” He glanced down into the murk.

“Oh… Bitte, helfen Sie mir!”

“Cover me,” Sachs whispered.

“Cover you? Wait a minute, I don’t do that.”

“Take the gun, all right?”

“What’m I supposed to cover you from?”

Thrusting the automatic into his hand, she dropped to her knees. “Safety’s off. Be careful.”

She grabbed two rubber bands and slipped them over her shoes. Taking the pistol back she ordered him to do the same.

With unsteady hands he slipped the bands on.

“I’m just thinking -”

“Quiet. He could still be here.”

“Wait a minute now, ma’am,” the medic whispered. “This ain’t in my job description.”

“It’s not in mine either. Hold the light.” She handed him the flashlight.

“But if he’s here he’s probably gonna shoot at the light. I mean, that’s what I’d shoot at.”

“Then hold it up high. Over my shoulder. I’ll go in front. If anybody gets shot it’ll be me.”

“Then whatta I do?” Tad sounded like a teenager.

“I myself’d run like hell,” Sachs muttered. “Now follow me. And keep that beam steady.”

Lugging the black CS suitcase in her left hand, holding her weapon in front of her, she gazed at the floor as they moved into the darkness. She saw the familiar broom marks again, just like at the other scene.

“Bitte nicht, bitte nicht, bitte…” There was a brief scream, then silence.

“What the hell’s going on down there?” Tad whispered.

“Shhhh,” Sachs hissed.

They walked slowly. Sachs blew on her fingers gripping the Glock – to dry the slick sweat – and carefully eyed the random targets of wooden pillars, shadows and discarded machinery picked out by the flashlight held unsteadily in Tad’s hand.

She found no footprints.

Of course not. He’s smart.

But we’re smart too, she heard Lincoln Rhyme say in her thoughts. And she told him to shut up.

Slower now.

Five more feet. A pause. Then moving slowly forward. Trying to ignore the girl’s moans. She felt it again – that sensation of being watched, the slippery crawl of the iron sights tracking you. The body armor, she reflected, wouldn’t stop a full-metal jacket. Half the bad guys used Black Talons anyway – so a leg or arm shot would kill you just as efficiently as a chest hit. And a lot more painfully. Nick had told her how one of those bullets could open up a human body; one of his partners, hit by two of the vicious slugs, had died in his arms.

Above and behind…

Thinking of him, she remembered one night, lying against Nick’s solid chest, gazing at the silhouette of his handsome Italian face on her pillow as he told her about hostage-rescue entry – “Somebody inside wants to nail you when you go in they’ll do it from above and behind…”

“Shit.” She dropped to a crouch, spinning around and aiming the Glock toward the ceiling, ready to empty the entire clip.

“What?” Tad whispered, cowering. “What?”

The emptiness gaped at her.

“Nothing.” And breathed deeply, stood up.

“Don’t do that.”

There was a gurgling noise ahead of them.

“Jesus,” came Tad’s high voice again. “I hate this.”

This guy’s a pussy, she thought. I know that ’cause he’s saying everything I want to.

She stopped. “Shine the light up there. Ahead.”

“Oh, my everloving…”

Sachs finally understood the hairs she’d found at the last scene. She remembered the look that had passed between Sellitto and Rhyme. He’d known then what the unsub had planned. He’d known this was what was happening to her – and still he’d told ESU to wait. She hated him that much more.

In front of them a pudgy girl lolled on the floor, in a pool of blood. She glanced toward the light with glazed eyes and passed out. Just as a huge black rat – big as a housecat – crawled up onto her belly and moved toward the girl’s fleshy throat. It bared its dingy teeth to take a bite from the girl’s chin.

Sachs smoothly lifted the chunky black Glock, her left palm circling under the butt for support. She aimed carefully.

Shooting is breathing.

Inhale, out. Squeeze.

Sachs fired her weapon for the first time in the line of duty. Four shots. The huge black rat standing on the girl’s chest exploded. She hit one more on the floor behind and another one that, panicking, raced toward Sachs and the medic. The others vanished silently, fast as water on sand.

“Jesus,” the medic said. “You could’ve hit the girl.”

“From thirty feet?” Sachs snorted. “Not hardly.”

The radio burst to life and Haumann asked if they were under fire.

“Negative,” Sachs replied. “Just shooing a few rats.”

“Roger, K.”

She took the flashlight from the medic and shining it low, started forward.

“It’s all right, miss,” Sachs called. “You’ll be all right.”

The girl’s eyes opened, head flipping from side to side.

“Bitte, bitte…”

She was very pale. Her blue eyes clung to Sachs, as if she was afraid to look away. “Bitte, bitte… Pleece…” Her voice rose to a wild keening and she began to sob and thrash in terror as the medic pressed bandages on her wounds.

Sachs cradled her bloody blond head, whispering, “You’ll be all right, honey, you’ll be all right, you’ll be all right…”

FOURTEEN

THE OFFICE, HIGH ABOVE DOWNTOWN MANHATTAN, looked out over Jersey. The crap in the air made the sunset absolutely beautiful.

“We gotta.”

“We can’t.”

“Gotta,” Fred Dellray repeated and sipped his coffee – even worse than in the restaurant where the Scruff and he’d been sitting not long before. “Take it away from ’em. They’ll live with it.”

“It’s a local case,” responded the FBI’s assistant special agent in charge of the Manhattan office. The ASAC was a meticulous man who could never work undercover – because when you saw him you thought, Oh, look, an FBI agent.

“It’s not local. They’re treating it local. But it’s a big case.”

“We’re down eighty men because of the UN thing.”

“And this’s related to it,” Dellray said. “I’m positive.”

“Then we’ll tell UN Security. Let everybody… Oh, don’t give me that look.”

“UN Security? UN Security? Say, you ever heara the words oxy-moron?… Billy, you see that picture? Of the scene this morning? The hand comin’ outa the dirt, and all the skin cut offa that finger? That’s a sick fuck out there.”

“NYPD’s keeping us informed,” the ASAC said smartly. “We’ve got Behavioral on call if they want.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ on the merry cross. ‘Behavioral on call’? We gotta catch this ripper, Billy. Catch him. Not figger out his tick-tocky workings.”

“Tell me what your snitch said again.”

Dellray knew a crack in a rock when he saw one. Wasn’t going to let it seal up again. Rapid fire now: about the Scruff and Jackie in Johannesburg or Monrovia and the hushed word throughout the illicit arms trade that something was going down at a New York airport this week so stay clear. “It’s him,” Dellray said. “Gotta be.”

“NYPD’s got a task force together.”

“Not Anti-Terror. I made calls. Nobody at A-T there knows zippo about it. To NYPD it’s dead tourists equal bad public relations.’ I want this case, Billy.” And Fred Dellray said the one word he’d never uttered in his eight years of undercover work. “Please.”

“What grounds’re you talking?”

“Oh-oh, bullshit question,” Dellray said, stroking his index finger like a scolding teacher. “Lessee. We got ourselves that spiffy new anti-terrorism bill. But that’s not enough for you, you want jurisdiction? I’ll give you jurisdiction. A Port Authority felony. Kidnapping. I can fucking argue that this prick’s driving a taxi so he’s affecting interstate commerce. We don’t want to play those games, do we, Billy?”

“You’re not listening, Dellray. I can recite the U.S. Code in my sleep, thank you. I want to know if we’re going to take over, what we tell people and make everybody happy. ’Cause remember, after this unsub’s bagged and tagged we’re going to have to keep working with NYPD. I’m not going to send my big brother to beat up their big brother even though I can. Anytime I want. Lon Sellitto’s running the case and he’s a good man.”

“A lieutenant?” Dellray snorted. He tugged the cigarette out from behind his ear and held it under his nostrils for a moment.

“Jim Polling’s in charge.”

Dellray reared back with mock horror. “Polling? Little Adolph? The ‘You- have- the- right- to- remain- silent- ’cause- I’ma- hit- you- upside- the- motherfuckin’- head’ Polling? Him?”

The ASAC had no response for that. He said, “Sellitto’s good. A real workhorse. I’ve been with him on two OC task forces.”

“That unsub’s grabbing bodies right and left and this here boy’s betting he’s going to work his way up.”

“Meaning?”

“We got senators in town. We got congressmen, we got heads of state. I think these folk he’s grabbing now’re just for practice.”

“You been talking to Behavioral and not telling me?”

“It’s what I smell.” Dellray couldn’t resist touching his lean nose.

The ASAC blew air from his clean-shaven federal agent cheeks. “Who’s the CI?”

Dellray had trouble thinking of the Scruff as a confidential informant, which sounded like something out of a Dashiell Hammett novel. Most CIs were skels, short for skeletons, meaning scrawny, disgusting little hustlers. Which fit the Scruff to a T.

“He’s a tick,” Dellray admitted. “But Jackie, this guy he heard it from’s solid.”

“I know you want it, Fred. I understand.” The ASAC said this with some sympathy. Because he knew exactly what was behind Dellray’s request.

Even as a boy in Brooklyn, Dellray had wanted to be a cop. It hadn’t mattered much to him what kind of cop as long as he could spend twenty-four hours a day doing it. But soon after joining the Bureau he found his calling – undercover work.

Teamed with his straight man and guardian angel Toby Dolittle, Dellray was responsible for sending a large number of perps away for a very long time – the sentences totaled close to a thousand years. (“They kin call us the Millennium Team, Toby-o,” he declared to his partner once.) The clue to Dellray’s success was his nickname: “the Chameleon.” Bestowed after – in the space of twenty-four hours – he played a brain-dead cluckhead in a Harlem crack house and a Haitian dignitary at a dinner in the Panamanian consulate, complete with diagonal red ribbon on his chest and impenetrable accent. The two of them were regularly loaned out to ATF or DEA and, occasionally, city police departments. Drugs and guns were their specialty though they had a minor in ’jacked merchandise.

The irony of undercover work is that the better you are, the earlier the retirement. Word gets around and the big boys, the perps worth going after, become harder to fox. Dolittle and Dellray found themselves working less in the field and more as handlers of informants and other undercover agents. And while it wasn’t Dellray’s first choice – nothing excited him like the street – it still got him out of the office more often than most SAs in the Bureau. It had never occurred to him to request a transfer.

Until two years ago – a warm April morning in New York. Dellray was just about to leave the office to catch a plane at La Guardia when he got a phone call from the assistant director of the Bureau in Washington. The FBI is a nest of hierarchy and Dellray couldn’t imagine why the big man himself was calling. Until he heard the AD’s somber voice break the news that Toby Dolittle, along with an assistant U.S. attorney from Manhattan, had been on the ground floor of the Oklahoma City, federal building that morning, preparing for the deposition session that Dellray himself was just about to depart for.

Their bodies were being flown back to New York the next day.

Which was the same day that Dellray put in the first of his RFT-2230 forms, requesting a transfer to the Bureau’s Anti-Terror Division.

The bombing had been the crime of crimes to Fred Dellray, who, when no one was looking, devoured books on politics and philosophy. He believed there was nothing essentially un-American about greed or lust – hey, those qualities were encouraged everywhere from Wall Street to Capitol Hill. And if people making a business of greed or lust sometimes stepped over the border of legality, Dellray was pleased to track them down – but he never did so with personal animosity. But to murder people for their beliefs – hell, to murder children before they even knew what they believed – my God, that was a stab at the heart of the country. Sitting in his two-room, sparsely furnished Brooklyn apartment after Toby’s funeral, Dellray decided that this was the kind of crime he wanted a crack at.

But unfortunately the Chameleon’s reputation preceded him. The Bureau’s best undercover agent was now their best handler, running agents and CIs throughout the East Coast. His bosses simply couldn’t afford to let him go to one of the more quiescent departments of the FBI. Dellray was a minor legend, personally responsible for some of the Bureau’s greatest recent successes. So it was with considerable regret that his persistent requests were turned down.

The ASAC was well aware of this history and he now added a sincere, “I wish I could help out, Fred. I’m sorry.”

But all Dellray heard in these words was the rock cracking a little further. And so the Chameleon pulled a persona off the rack and stared down his boss. He wished he still had his fake gold tooth. Street man Dellray was a tough hombre with one mother-fucker of a mean stare. And in that look was the unmistakable message anybody on the street would know instinctively: I done for you, now you do for me.

Finally the smarmy ASAC said lamely, “It’s just that we need something.”

“Somethin’?”

“A hook,” the ASAC said. “We don’t have a hook.”

A reason to take the case away from NYPD, he meant.

Politics, politics, polifuckingtics.

Dellray lowered his head but the eyes, brown as polish, didn’t waver a millimeter from the ASAC. “He cut the skin off that vic’s finger this morning, Billy. Clean down to the bone. Then buried him alive.”

Two scrubbed, federal-agent hands met beneath a crisp jaw. The ASAC said slowly, “Here’s a thought. There’s a deputy commissioner at NYPD. Name’s Eckert. You know him? He’s a friend of mine.”

The girl lay on her back on a stretcher, eyes closed, conscious but groggy. Still pale. An IV of glucose ran into her arm. Now that she’d been rehydrated she was coherent and surprisingly calm, all things considered.

Sachs walked back to the gates of hell and stood looking down into the black doorway. She clicked on the radio and called Lincoln Rhyme. This time he answered.

“How’s the scene look?” Rhyme asked casually.

Her answer was a curt: “We got her out. If you’re interested.”

“Ah, good. How is she?”

“Not good.”

“But alive, right.”

“Barely.”

“You’re upset because of the rats, aren’t you, Amelia?”

She didn’t answer.

“Because I didn’t let Bo’s men get her right away. Are you there, Amelia?”

“I’m here.”

“There are five contaminants of crime scenes,” Rhyme explained. She noticed he’d gone into his low, seductive tone again. “The weather, the victim’s family, the suspect, souvenir hunters. The last is the worst. Guess what it is?”

“You tell me.”

“Other cops. If I’d let ESU in they could’ve destroyed all the trace. You know how to handle a scene now. And I’ll bet you preserved everything just fine.”

Sachs needed to say, “I don’t think she’ll ever be the same after this. The rats were all over her.”

“Yes, I imagine they were. That’s their nature.”

Their nature…

“But five minutes or ten wasn’t going to make any difference. She -”

Click.

She shut off the radio and walked to Walsh, the medic.

“I want to interview her. Is she too groggy?”

“Not yet. We gave her locals – to stitch the lacerations and the bites. She’ll want some Demerol in a half hour or so.”

Sachs smiled and crouched down beside her. “Hi, how you doing?”

The girl, fat but very pretty, nodded.

“Can I ask you some questions?”

“Yes, pleece. I want you get him.”

Sellitto arrived and ambled up to them. He smiled down at the girl, who gazed at him blankly. He proffered a badge she had no interest in and identified himself.

“You all right, miss?”

The girl shrugged.

Sweating fiercely in the muggy heat, Sellitto nodded Sachs aside. “Polling been here?”

“Haven’t seen him. Maybe he’s at Lincoln’s.”

“No, I just called there. He’s gotta get to City Hall pronto.”

“What’s the problem?”

Sellitto lowered his voice, his doughy face twisted up. “A fuckup – our transmissions’re supposed to be secure. But those fucking reporters, somebody’s got an unscrambler or something. They heard we didn’t go in right away to get her.” He nodded toward the girl.

“Well, we didn’t,” Sachs said harshly. “Rhyme told ESU to wait until I got here.”

The detective winced. “Man, I hope they don’t have that on tape. We need Polling for damage control.” He nodded to the girl. “Interviewed her yet?”

“No. Just about to.” With some regret Sachs clicked on the radio and heard Rhyme’s urgent voice.

“… you there? This goddamn thing doesn’t -”

“I’m here,” Sachs said coolly.

“What happened?”

“Interference, I guess. I’m with the vic.”

The girl blinked at the exchange and Sachs smiled. “I’m not talking to myself.” Gestured toward the mike. “Police headquarters. What’s your name?”

“Monelle. Monelle Gerger.” She looked at her bitten arm, pulled up a dressing and examined a wound.

“Interview her fast,” Rhyme instructed, “then work the scene.”

Hand covering the microphone stalk, Sachs whispered fiercely to Sellitto, “This man is a pain in the ass to work for. Sir.”

“Humor him, officer.”

“Amelia!” Rhyme barked. “Answer me!”

“We’re interviewing her, all right?” she snapped.

Sellitto asked, “Can you tell us what happened?”

Monelle began to talk, a disjointed story about being in the laundry room of a residence hall in the East Village. He’d been hiding, waiting for her.

“What residence hall?” Sellitto asked.

“The Deutsche Haus. It’s, you know, mostly German expatriates and students.”

“What happened then?” Sellitto continued. Sachs noted that although the big detective appeared gruffer, more ornery than Rhyme, he was really the more compassionate of the two.

“He threwed me in the trunk of car and drove here.”

“Did you get a look at him?”

The woman closed her eyes. Sachs repeated the question and Monelle said she hadn’t; he was, as Rhyme had guessed, wearing a navy-blue ski mask.

“Und gloves.”

“Describe them.”

They were dark. She didn’t remember what color.

“Any unusual characteristics? The kidnapper?”

“No. He was white. I could tell that.”

“Did you see the license plate of the taxi?” Sellitto asked.

“Was?” the girl asked, drifting into her native tongue.

“Did you see -”

Sachs jumped as Rhyme interrupted: “Das Nummernschild.”

Thinking: How the hell does he know all this? She repeated the word and the girl shook her head no then squinted. “What you mean, taxi?”

“Wasn’t he driving a Yellow Cab?”

“Taxicab? Nein. No. It was regular car.”

“Hear that, Lincoln?”

“Yup. Our boy’s got another set of wheels. And he put her in the trunk so it’s not a station wagon or hatchback.”

Sachs repeated this. The girl nodded. “Like a sedan.”

“Any idea of the make or color?” Sellitto continued.

Monelle answered, “Light, I think. Maybe silver or gray. Or that, you know, what is it? Light brown.”

“Beige?”

She nodded.

“Maybe beige,” Sachs added for Rhyme’s benefit.

Sellitto asked, “Was there anything in the trunk? Anything at all? Tools, clothes, suitcases?”

Monelle said there wasn’t. It was empty.

Rhyme had a question. “What did it smell like? The trunk.”

Sachs relayed the query.

“I don’t know.”

“Oil and grease?”

“No. It smelled… clean.”

“So maybe a new car,” Rhyme reflected.

Monelle dissolved into tears for a moment: Then shook her head. Sachs took her hand and, finally, she continued. “We drove for long time. Seemed like long time.”

“You’re doing fine, honey,” Sachs said.

Rhyme’s voice interrupted. “Tell her to strip.”

“What?”

“Take her clothes off.”

“I will not.”

“Have the medics give her a robe. We need her clothes, Amelia.”

“But,” Sachs whispered, “she’s crying.”

“Please,” Rhyme said urgently. “It’s important.”

Sellitto nodded and Sachs, tight-lipped, explained to the girl about the clothes and was surprised when Monelle nodded. She was, it turned out, eager to get out of the bloody garments anyway. Giving her privacy, Sellitto walked away, to confer with Bo Haumann. Monelle put on a gown the medic offered her and one of the plain-clothes detectives covered her with his sportscoat. Sachs bagged the jeans and T-shirts.

“Got them,” Sachs said into the radio.

“Now she’s got to walk the scene with you,” Rhyme said.

“What?”

“But make sure she’s behind you. So she doesn’t contaminate any PE.”

Sachs looked at the young woman, huddling on a gurney beside the two EMS buses.

“She’s in no shape to do that. He cut her. All the way to the bone. So she’d bleed and the rats’d get her.”

“Is she mobile?”

“Probably. But you know what she’s just been through?”

“She can give you the route they walked. She can tell you where he stood.”

“She’s going to the ER. She lost a lot of blood.”

A hesitation. He said pleasantly, “Just ask her.”

But his joviality was fake and Sachs heard just impatience. She could tell that Rhyme was a man who wasn’t used to coddling people, who didn’t have to. He was someone used to having his own way.

He persisted, “Just once around the grid.”

You can go fuck yourself, Lincoln Rhyme.

“It’s -”

“Important. I know.”

Nothing from the other end of the line.

She was looking at Monelle. Then she heard a voice, no, her voice say to the girl, “I’m going down there to look for evidence. Will you come with me?”

The girl’s eyes nailed Sachs deep in her heart. Tears burst. “No, no, no. I am not doing that. Bitte nicht, oh, bitte nicht…”

Sachs nodded, squeezed the woman’s arm. She began to speak into the mike, steeling herself for his reaction, but Rhyme surprised her by saying, “All right, Amelia. Let it go. Just ask her what happened when they arrived.”

The girl explained how she’d kicked him and escaped into an adjoining tunnel.

“I kick him again,” she said with some satisfaction. “Knock off his glove. Then he get all pissed and strangle me. He -”

“Without the glove on?” Rhyme blurted.

Sachs repeated the question and Monelle said, “Yes.”

“Prints, excellent!” Rhyme shouted, his voice distorting in the mike. “When did it happen? How long ago?”

Monelle guessed about an hour and a half.

“Hell,” Rhyme muttered. “Prints on skin last an hour, ninety minutes, tops. Can you print skin, Amelia?”

“I never have before.”

“Well, you’re about to. But fast. In the CS suitcase there’ll be a packet labeled Kromekote. Pull out a card.”

She found a stack of glossy five-by-seven cards, similar to photographic paper.

“Got it. Do I dust her neck?”

“No. Press the card, glossy side down, against her skin where she thinks he touched her. Press for about three seconds.”

Sachs did this, as Monelle stoically gazed at the sky. Then, as Rhyme instructed, she dusted the card with metallic powder, using a puffy Magna-Brush.

“Well?” Rhyme asked eagerly.

“It’s no good. A shape of a finger. But no visible ridges. Should I pitch it?”

“Never throw away anything at a crime scene, Sachs,” he lectured sternly. “Bring it back. I want to see it anyway.”

“One thing, I am thinking I forget,” said Monelle. “He touch me.”

“You mean he molested you?” Sachs asked gently. “Rape?”

“No, no. Not in a sex way. He touch my shoulder, face, behind my ear. Elbow. He squeezed me. I don’t know why.”

“You hear that, Lincoln? He touched her. But it didn’t seem like he was getting off on it.”

“Yes.”

“Und… And one thing I am forgetting,” Monelle said. “He spoke German. Not good. Like he only study it in school. And he call me Hanna.”

“Called her what?”

“Hanna,” Sachs repeated into the mike. “Do you know why?” she asked the girl.

“No. But that’s all he call me. He seemed to like saying the name.”

“Did you get that, Lincoln?”

“Yes, I did. Now do the scene. Time’s awasting.”

As Sachs stood, Monelle suddenly reached up and gripped her wrist.

“Miss… Sachs. You are German?”

She smiled and answered, “A long time ago. A couple generations.”

Monelle nodded. She pressed Sachs’s palm to her cheek. “Vielen Dank. Thank you, Miss Sachs. Danke schön.”

FIFTEEN

THE THREE ESU HALOGENS CLICKED TO LIGHT, bringing an eerie tide of white glare to the grim tunnel.

Alone now at the scene Sachs gazed at the floor for a moment. Something had changed. What?

She drew her weapon again, dropped into a crouch. “He’s here,” she whispered, stepping behind one of the posts.

“What?” Rhyme asked.

“He’s come back. There were some dead rats here. They’re gone.”

She heard Rhyme’s laughter.

“What’s so funny?”

“No, Amelia. Their friends took the bodies away.”

“Their friends?”

“Had a case up in Harlem once. Dismembered, decomposed body. A lot of the bones were hidden in a big circle around the torso. The skull was in an oil drum, toes underneath piles of leaves… Had the borough in an uproar. The press was talking about Satanists, serial killers. Guess who the perp turned out to be?”

“No idea,” she said stiffly.

“The vic himself. It was a suicide. Raccoons, rats and squirrels made off with the remains. Like trophies. Nobody knows why but they love their souvenirs. Now, where are you?”

“At the foot of the ramp.”

“What do you see?”

“A wide tunnel. Two side tunnels, narrower. Flat ceiling, supported by wooden posts. The posts’re all battered and nicked. The floor’s old concrete, covered with dirt.”

UNSUB 823 (page 1 of 2)

Appearance

•Caucasian male, slight build

•Dark clothing•Old gloves, reddish kidskin

•Aftershave; to cover up other scent?

Residence

•Prob. has safe house

Vehicle

•Yellow Cab

•Recent model sedan

Other

•knows CS proc.

•possibly has record

•knows FR prints

•gun =.32 Colt

UNSUB 823 (page 2 of 2)

Appearance

•Ski mask? Navy blue?

•Gloves are dark

Residence

Vehicle

•Lt. gray, silver, beige

Other

•Ties vics w/ unusual knots

•“Old” appeals to him

•Called one vic “Hanna”

•Knows basic German

“And manure?”

“Looks like it. In the center, right in front of me’s the post she was tied to.”

“Windows?”

“None. No doors either.” She looked over the wide tunnel, the floor disappearing into a black universe a thousand miles away. She felt the crawl of hopelessness. “It’s too big! There’s too much space to cover.”

“Amelia, relax.”

“I’ll never find anything here.”

“I know it seems overwhelming. But just keep in mind that there’re only three types of PE that we’re concerned about. Objects, body materials and impressions. That’s all. It’s less daunting if you think of it that way.”

Easy for you to say.

“And the scene isn’t as big as it looks. Just concentrate on the places they walked. Go to the post.”

Sachs walked the path. Staring down.

The ESU lights were brilliant but they also made the shadows starker, revealing a dozen places the kidnapper could hide. A chill trickled down her spine. Stay close, Lincoln, she thought reluctantly. I’m pissed, sure, but I wanna hear you. Breathe or something.

She paused, shone the PoliLight over the ground.

“Is it all swept?” he asked.

“Yes. Just like before.”

The body armor chafed her breasts despite the sports bra and undershirt and as hot as it was outside it was unbearable down here. Her skin prickled and she felt a ravenous desire to scratch under her vest.

“I’m at the post.”

“Vacuum the area for trace.”

Sachs ran the Dustbuster. Hating the noise. It covered up any sound of approaching footsteps, guns cocking, knives being drawn. Involuntarily she looked behind her once, twice. Nearly dropped the vacuum as her hand strayed to her gun.

Sachs looked at the impression in the dust of where Monelle’s body had lain. I’m him. I’m dragging her along. She kicks me. I stumble…

Monelle could have kicked in only one direction, away from the ramp. The unsub didn’t fall, she’d said. Which meant he must’ve landed on his feet. Sachs walked a yard or two into the gloom.

“Bingo!” Sachs shouted.

“What? Tell me?”

“Footprints. He missed a spot sweeping up.”

“Not hers?”

“No. She was wearing running shoes. These are smooth soles. Like dress shoes. Two good prints. We’ll know what size feet he’s got.”

“No, they won’t tell us that. Soles can be larger or smaller than the uppers. But it may tell us something. In the CS bag there’s an electrostatic printer. It’s a small box with a wand on it. There’ll be some sheets of acetate next to it. Separate the paper, lay the acetate on the print and run the wand over it.”

She found the device and made two images of the prints. Carefully slipped them into a paper envelope.

Sachs returned to the post. “And here’s a bit of straw from the broom.”

“From? -”

“Sorry,” Sachs said quickly. “We don’t know where it’s from. A bit of straw. I’m picking it up and bagging it.”

Getting good with these pencils. Hey, Lincoln, you son of a bitch, know what I’m doing to celebrate my permanent retirement from crime scene detail? I’m going out for Chinese.

The ESU halogens didn’t reach into the side tunnel where Monelle had run. Sachs paused at the day-night line then plunged forward into the shadows. The flashlight beam swept the floor in front of her.

“Talk to me, Amelia.”

“There isn’t much to see. He swept up here too. Jesus, he thinks of everything.”

“What do you see?”

“Just marks in the dust.”

I tackle her, I bring her down. I’m mad. Furious. I try to strangle her.

Sachs stared at the ground.

“Here’s something – knee prints! When he was strangling her he must have straddled her waist. He left knee prints and he missed them when he swept.”

“Electrostatic them.”

She did, quicker this time. Getting the hang of the equipment. She was slipping the print into the envelope when something caught her eye. Another mark in the dust.

What is that?

“ Lincoln… I’m looking at the spot where… it looks like the glove fell here. When they were struggling.”

She clicked on the PoliLight. And couldn’t believe what she saw.

“A print. I’ve got a fingerprint!”

“What?” Rhyme asked, incredulous. “It’s not hers?”

“Nope, couldn’t be. I can see the dust where she was lying. Her hands were cuffed the whole time. It’s where he picked up the glove. He probably thought he’d swept here but missed it. It’s a big, fat beautiful one!”

“Stain it, light it and shoot the son of a bitch on the one-to-one.”

It took her only two tries to get a crisp Polaroid. She felt like she’d found a hundred-dollar bill in the street.

“Vacuum the area and then go back to the post. Walk the grid,” he told her.

She slowly walked the floor, back and forth. One foot at a time.

“Don’t forget to look up,” he reminded her. “I once caught an unsub because of a single hair on the ceiling. He’d loaded a.357 round in a true.38 and the blowback pasted a hair from his hand on the crown molding.”

“I’m looking. It’s a tile ceiling. Dirty. Nothing else. Nowhere to stash anything. No ledges or doorways.”

“Where’re the staged clues?” he asked.

“I don’t see anything.”

Back and forth. Five minutes passed. Six, seven.

“Maybe he didn’t leave any this time,” Sachs suggested. “Maybe Monelle’s the last.”

“No,” Rhyme said with certainty.

Then behind one of the wooden pillars a flash caught her eye.

“Here’s something in the corner… Yep. Here they are.”

“Shoot it ’fore you touch it.”

She took a photograph and then picked up a wad of white cloth with the pencils. “Women’s underwear. Wet.”

“Semen?”

“I don’t know,” she said. Wondering if he was going to ask her to smell it.

Rhyme ordered, “Try the PoliLight. Proteins will fluoresce.”

She fetched the light, turned it on. It illuminated the cloth but the liquid didn’t glow. “No.”

“Bag it. In plastic. What else?” he asked eagerly.

“A leaf. Long, thin, pointed at one end.”

It had been cut sometime ago and was dry and turning brown.

She heard Rhyme sigh in frustration. “There’re about eight thousand varieties of deciduous vegetation in Manhattan,” he explained. “Not very helpful. What’s underneath the leaf?”

Why does he think there’s anything there?

But there was. A scrap of newsprint. Blank on one side, the other was printed with a drawing of the phases of the moon.

“The moon?” Rhyme mused. “Any prints? Spray it with ninhydrin and scan it fast with the light.”

A blast of the PoliLight revealed nothing.

“That’s all.”

Silence for a moment. “What’re the clues sitting on?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“You have to know.”

“Well, the ground,” she answered testily. “Dirt.” What else would they be sitting on?

“Is it like all the rest of the dirt around there?”

“Yes.” Then she looked closely. Hell, it was different. “Well, not exactly. It’s a different color.”

Was he always right?

Rhyme instructed, “Bag it. In paper.”

As she scooped up the grains he said, “Amelia?”

“Yeah?”

“He’s not there,” Rhyme said reassuringly.

“I guess.”

“I heard something in your voice.”

“I’m fine,” she said shortly. “I’m smelling the air. I smell blood. Mold and mildew. And the aftershave again.”

“The same as before?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s it coming from?”

Sniffing the air, Sachs walked in a spiral, the Maypole again, until she came to another wooden post.

“Here. It’s strongest right here.”

“What’s ‘here,’ Amelia? You’re my legs and my eyes, remember.”

“One of these wooden columns. Like the kind she was tied to. About fifteen feet away.”

“So he might have rested against it. Any prints?”

She sprayed it with ninhydrin and shone the light on it.

“No. But the smell’s very strong.”

“Sample a portion of the post where it’s the strongest. There’s a MotoTool in the case. Black. A portable drill. Take a sampling bit – it’s like a hollow drill bit – and mount it in the tool. There’s something called a chuck. It’s a -”

“I own a drill press,” she said tersely.

“Oh,” Rhyme said.

She drilled a piece of the post out, then flicked sweat from her forehead. “Bag it in plastic?” she asked. He told her yes. She felt faint, lowered her head and caught her breath. No fucking air in here.

“Anything else?” Rhyme asked.

“Nothing that I can see.”

“I’m proud of you, Amelia. Come on back and bring your treasures with you.”

SIXTEEN

CAREFUL,” RHYME BARKED.

“I’m an expert at this.”

“Is it new or old?”

“Shhh,” Thom said.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. The blade, is it old or new?”

“Don’t breathe… Ah, there we go. Smooth as a baby’s butt.”

The procedure was not forensic but cosmetic.

Thom was giving Rhyme his first shave in a week. He had also washed his hair and combed it straight back.

A half hour before, waiting for Sachs and the evidence to arrive, Rhyme had sent Cooper out of the room while Thom slicked up a catheter with K-Y and wielded the tube. After that business had been completed Thom had looked at him and said, “You look like shit. You realize that?”

“I don’t care. Why would I care?”

Realizing suddenly that he did.

“How ’bout a shave?” the young man had asked.

“We don’t have time.”

Rhyme’s real concern was that if Dr. Berger saw him groomed he’d be less inclined to go ahead with the suicide. A disheveled patient is a despondent patient.

“And a wash.”

“No.”

“We’ve got company now, Lincoln,”

Finally Rhyme had grumbled, “All right.”

“And let’s lose those pajamas, what do you say?”

“There’s nothing wrong with them.”

But that meant all right too.

Now, scrubbed and shaved, dressed in jeans and a white shirt, Rhyme ignored the mirror his aide held in front of him.

“Take that away.”

“Remarkable improvement.”

Lincoln Rhyme snorted derisively. “I’m going for a walk until they get back,” he announced and settled his head back into the pillow. Mel Cooper turned to him with a perplexed expression.

“In his head,” Thom explained.

“Your head?”

“I imagine it,” Rhyme continued.

“That’s quite a trick,” Cooper said.

“I can walk through any neighborhood I want and never get mugged. Hike in the mountains and never get tired. Climb a mountain if I want. Go window-shopping on Fifth Avenue. Of course the things I see aren’t necessarily there. But so what? Neither are the stars.”

“How’s that?” Cooper asked.

“The starlight we see is thousands or millions of years old. By the time it gets to Earth the stars themselves’ve moved. They’re not where we see them.” Rhyme sighed as the exhaustion flooded over him. “I suppose some of them have already burned out and disappeared.” He closed his eyes.

“He’s making it harder.”

“Not necessarily,” Rhyme answered Lon Sellitto.

Sellitto, Banks and Sachs had just returned from the stockyard scene.

“Underwear, the moon and a plant,” cheerfully pessimistic Jerry Banks said. “That’s not exactly a road map.”

“Dirt too,” Rhyme reminded, ever appreciative of soil.

“Have any idea what they mean?” Sellitto asked.

“Not yet,” Rhyme said.

“Where’s Polling?” Sellitto muttered. “He still hasn’t answered his page.”

“Haven’t seen him,” Rhyme said.

A figure appeared in the doorway.

“As I live and breathe,” rumbled the stranger’s smooth baritone.

Rhyme nodded the lanky-man inside. He was somber-looking but his lean face suddenly cracked into a warm smile, as it tended to do at odd moments. Terry Dobyns was the sum total of the NYPD’s behavioral science department. He’d studied with the FBI behaviorists down at Quantico and had degrees in forensic science and psychology.

The psychologist loved opera and touch football and when Lincoln Rhyme had awakened in the hospital after the accident three and a half years ago Dobyns had been sitting beside him listening to Aïda on a Walkman. He’d then spent the next three hours conducting what turned out to be the first of many counseling sessions about Rhyme’s injury.

“Now what’s this I recall the textbooks sayin’ ’bout people who don’t return phone calls?”

“Analyze me later, Terry. You hear about our unsub?”

“A bit,” Dobyns said, looking Rhyme over. He wasn’t an M.D. but he knew physiology. “You all right, Lincoln? Looking a little peaked.”

“I’m getting a bit of a workout today,” Rhyme admitted. “And I could use a nap. You know what a lazy SOB I am.”

“Yeah, right. You’re the man’d call me at three in the morning with some question about a perp and couldn’t understand why I was in the sack. So what’s up? You fishin’ for a profile?”

“Whatever you can tell us’ll help.”

Sellitto briefed Dobyns, who – as Rhyme recalled from the days they worked together – never took notes but managed to retain everything he heard inside a head crowned with dark-red hair.

The psychologist paced in front of the wall chart, glancing up at it occasionally as he listened to the detective’s rumbling voice.

He held up a finger, interrupting Sellitto. “The victims, the victims… They’ve all been found underground. Buried, in a basement, in the stockyard tunnel.”

“Right,” Rhyme confirmed.

“Go on.”

Sellitto continued, explaining about the rescue of Monelle Gerger.

“Fine, all right,” Dobyns said absently. Then braked to a halt and turned to the wall again. He spread his legs and, hands on hips, gazed at the sparse facts about Unsub 823. “Tell me more about this idea of yours, Lincoln. That he likes old things.”

“I don’t know what to make of it. So far his clues have something to do with historical New York. Building materials from the turn of the century, the stockyards, the steam system.”

Dobyns stepped forward suddenly and tapped the profile. “Hanna. Tell me about Hanna.”

“Amelia?” Rhyme asked.

She told Dobyns how the unsub had referred to Monelle Gerger as Hanna for no apparent reason. “She said he seemed to like saying the name. And speaking to her in German.”

“And he took a bit of a chance to ’nap her, didn’t he?” Dobyns noted. “The cab, at the airport – that was safe for him. But hiding in a laundry room… He must’ve been real motivated to snatch somebody German.”

Dobyns twined some ruddy hair around a lengthy finger and flopped down in one of the squeaky rattan chairs, stretched his feet out in front of him.

“Okay, try this on for size. The underground… that’s the key. It tells me he’s somebody who’s hiding something and when I hear that I start thinking hysteria.”

“He’s not acting hysterical,” Sellitto said. “He’s pretty damn calm and calculating.”

“Not hysteria in that sense. It’s a category of mental disorders. The condition manifests when something traumatic happens in a patient’s life and the subconscious converts that trauma into something else. It’s an attempt to protect the patient. With traditional conversion hysteria you see physical symptoms – nausea, pain, paralysis. But I think here we’re dealing with a related problem. Dissociation – that’s what we call it when the reaction to the trauma affects the mind, not the physical body. Hysterical amnesia, fugue states. And multiple personalities.”

“Jekyll and Hyde?” Mel-Cooper played straight man this time, beating Banks to the punch.

“Well, I don’t think he’s got true multiple personalities,” Dobyns continued. “That’s a very rare diagnosis and the classic mult pers is young and has a lower IQ than your boy.” He nodded at the profile chart. “He’s slick and he’s smart. Clearly an organized offender.” Dobyns stared out the window for a moment. “This is interesting, Lincoln. I think your unsub pulls on his other personality when it suits him – when he wants to kill – and that’s important.”

“Why?”

“Two reasons. First, it tells us something about his main personality. He’s someone who’s been trained – maybe at his job, maybe his upbringing – to help people, not hurt them. A priest, a counselor, politician, social worker. And, two, I think it means he’s found himself a blueprint. If you can find out what it is, maybe you can get a lead to him.”

“What kind of blueprint?”

“He may have wanted to kill for a long time. But he didn’t act until he found himself a role model. Maybe from a book or movie. Or somebody he actually knows. It’s someone he can identify with, someone whose own crimes in effect give him permission to kill. Now, I’m going out on a limb here -”

“Climb,” Rhyme said. “Climb.”

“His obsession with history tells me that his personality is a character from the past.”

“Real life?”

“That I couldn’t say. Maybe fictional, maybe not. Hanna, whoever she is, figures in the story somewhere. Germany too. Or German Americans.”

“Any idea what might’ve set him off?”

“Freud felt it was caused by – what else? – sexual conflict at the Oedipal stage. Nowadays, the consensus is that developmental glitches’re only one cause – any trauma can trigger it. And it doesn’t have to be a single event. It could be a personality flaw, a long series of personal or professional disappointments. Hard to say.” His eyes glowed as they gazed at the profile. “But I sure hope you bag him alive, Lincoln. I’d love the chance to get him on the couch for a few hours.”

“Thom, are you writing this down?”

“Yes, bwana.”

“But one question,” Rhyme began.

Dobyns whirled around. “I’d say it’s the question, Lincoln: Why is he leaving the clues? Right?”

“Yep. Why the clues?”

“Think about what he’s done… He’s talking to you. Not rambling incoherently like Son of Sam or the Zodiac killer. He’s not schizophrenic. He’s communicating – in your language. The language of forensics. Why?” More pacing, eyes flipping over the chart. “All I can think of is that he wants to share the guilt. See, it’s hard for him to kill. It becomes easier if he makes us accomplices. If we don’t save the vics in time their deaths are partly our fault.”

“But that’s good, isn’t it?” Rhyme asked. “It means he’ll keep giving us clues that are solvable. Otherwise, if the puzzle’s too hard, he’s not sharing the burden.”

“Well, that’s true,” Dobyns said, smiling no longer. “But there’s another factor at work too.”

Sellitto supplied the answer. “Serial activity escalates.”

“Right,” Dobyns confirmed.

“How can he strike more often?” Banks muttered. “Every three hours isn’t fast enough?”

“Oh, he’ll find a way,” the psychologist continued. “Most likely, he’ll start targeting multiple victims.” The psychologist’s eyes narrowed. “Say, you all right, Lincoln?”

There were beads of sweat on the criminalist’s forehead and he’d been squinting his eyes hard. “Just tired. A lot of excitement for an old crip.”

“One last thing. The profile of the victims’s vital in serial crimes. But here we’ve got different sexes, ages and economic classes. All white but he’s been preying in a predominantly white pool so that’s not statistically significant. With what we know so far we can’t figure out why he’s taken these particular people. If you can, you might just get ahead of him.”

“Thanks, Terry,” Rhyme said. “Stick around for a while.”

“Sure, Lincoln. If you’d like.”

Then Rhyme ordered, “Let’s look at the PE from the stockyard scene. What’ve we got? The underwear?”

Mel Cooper assembled the bags that Sachs had brought back from the scene. He glanced at the one containing the underwear. “Katrina Fashion’s D’Amore line,” he announced. “One hundred percent cotton, elastic band. Cloth made in the U.S. They were cut and sewn in Taiwan.”

“You can tell that just by looking at them?” Sachs asked, incredulous.

“Naw, I was reading,” he answered, pointing at the label.

“Oh.”

The cops laughed.

“He’s telling us he’s got another woman then?” Sachs asked.

“Probably,” Rhyme said.

Cooper opened the bag. “Don’t know what the liquid is. I’ll do a Chromatograph.”

Rhyme asked Thom to hold up the scrap of paper with the phases of the moon on it. He studied it closely. A scrap like this was wonderful individuated evidence. You could fit it to the sheet it’d been torn from and link the two as closely as fingerprints. The problem here of course was that they had no original piece of paper. He wondered if they’d ever find it. The unsub might have destroyed it once he’d torn this bit out. Yet Lincoln Rhyme preferred to think not. He liked to picture it somewhere. Just waiting to be found. The way he always pictured source evidence: the automobile the paint chip had scraped off of, the finger that had lost the nail, the gun barrel that had discharged the rifled slug found in the victim’s body. These sources – always close to the unsub – took on personalities of their own in Rhyme’s mind. They could be imperious or cruel.

Or mysterious.

Phases of the moon.

Rhyme asked Dobyns if their unsub could be driven to act cyclically.

“No. The moon isn’t in a major phase right now. We’re four days past new.”

“So the moons mean something else.”

“If they’re even moons in the first place,” Sachs said. Pleased with herself, and rightly so, Rhyme thought. He said, “Good point, Amelia. Maybe he’s talking about circles. About ink. About paper. About geometry. The planetarium…”

Rhyme realized that she was staring at him. Maybe just realizing now that he’d shaved and his hair was combed, his clothes changed.

And what was her mood now? he wondered. Angry at him, or disengaged? He couldn’t tell. At the moment Amelia Sachs was as cryptic as Unsub 823.

The beeping of the fax machine sounded in the hallway. Thom went to get it and returned a moment later with two sheets of paper.

“It’s from Emma Rollins,” he announced. He held the sheets up for Rhyme to see.

“Our grocery scanner survey. Eleven stores in Manhattan sold veal shanks to customers buying fewer than five items in the last two days.” He started to write on the poster then glanced at Rhyme. “The names of the stores?”

“Of course. We’ll need them for cross-referencing later.”

Thom wrote them down on the profile chart.

B’way & 82nd,

ShopRite

B’way & 96th,

Anderson Foods

Greenwich & Bank,

ShopRite

2nd Ave., 72nd-73rd,

Grocery World

Battery Park City,

J &G’s Emporium

1709 2nd Ave.,

Anderson Foods

34th & Lex.,

Food Warehouse

8th Ave. & 24th,

ShopRite

Houston & Lafayette,

ShopRite

6th Ave. & Houston,

J &G’s Emporium

Greenwich & Franklin,

Grocery World

“That narrows it down,” Sachs said, “to the entire city.”

“Patience,” said restless Lincoln Rhyme.

Mel Cooper was examining the straw that Sachs had found. “Nothing unique here.” He tossed it aside.

“Is it new?” Rhyme asked. If it was they might cross-reference stores that had sold brooms and veal shanks on the same day.

But Cooper said, “Thought of that. It’s six months old or older.” He began shaking the trace evidence in the German girl’s clothing out over a piece of newsprint.

“Several things here,” he said, poring over the sheet. “Dirt.”

“Enough for a density-gradient?”

“Nope. Just dust really. Probably from the scene.”

Cooper looked over the rest of the effluence he’d brushed off the bloodstained clothing.

“Brick dust. Why’s there so much brick?”

“From the rats I shot. The wall was brick.”

“You shot them? At the scene?” Rhyme winced.

Sachs said defensively, “Well, yes. They were all over her.”

He was angry but he let it go. Adding just, “All kinds of contaminants from gunfire. Lead, arsenic, carbon, silver.”

“And here… another bit of reddish leather. From the glove. And… We’ve got another fiber. A different one.”

Criminalists love fibers. This was a tiny gray tuft barely visible to the naked eye.

“Excellent,” Rhyme announced. “And what else?”

“And here’s the photo of the scene,” Sachs said, “and the fingerprints. The one from her throat and from where he picked up the glove.” She held them up.

“Good,” Rhyme said, looking them over carefully.

There was a sheen of reluctant triumph on her face – the rush of winning, which is the flip side of hating yourself for being unprofessional.

Rhyme was studying the Polaroids of the prints when he heard footsteps on the stairs and Jim Polling arrived. He entered the room, did a double-take at the spiffed-up Lincoln Rhyme and strode to Sellitto.

“I was just at the scene,” he said. “You saved the vic. Great job, guys.” He nodded toward Sachs to show the noun included her too. “But the prick’s ’napped another one?”

“Or’s about to,” Rhyme muttered, gazing at the prints.

“We’re working on the clues right now,” Banks said.

“Jim, I’ve been trying to track you down,” Sellitto said. “I tried the mayor’s office.”

“I was with the chief. Had to fucking beg for some extra searchers. Got another fifty men pulled off UN security detail.”

“Captain, there’s something we got to talk about. We gotta problem. Something happened at the last scene…”

A voice as yet unheard from boomed through the room, “Problem? Who got a problem? We don’t got no problems here, do we? None ay-tall.”

Rhyme looked up at the tall, thin man in the doorway. He was jet black and wore a ridiculous green suit and shoes that shone like brown mirrors. Rhyme’s heart plummeted. “Dellray.”

“Lincoln Rhyme. New York’s own Ironside. Hey, Lon. And Jim Polling, how’s it hangin’, buddy?”

Behind Dellray were a half-dozen other men and a woman. Rhyme knew in a heartbeat why the federal agents were here. Dellray scanned the officers in the room, his attention alighting momentarily on Sachs then flying away.

“What do you want?” Polling asked.

Dellray said, “Haven’t you guessed, gemmuns. You’re outa business. We closin’ you up. Yessir. Just like a bookie.”

SEVENTEEN

ONE OF US.

That’s how Dellray was looking at Lincoln Rhyme as he walked around the bed. Some people did this. Paralysis was a club and they crashed the party with jokes, nods, winks. You know I love you, man, ’cause I’m makin’ funna you.

Lincoln Rhyme had learned that this attitude got tiring very, very quickly.

“Lookit that,” Dellray said, poking at the Clinitron, “That’s something outa Star Trek. Commander Riker, get your ass in the shuttle.”

“Go away, Dellray,” Polling said. “It’s our case.”

“And how’s dis here patient doing, Dr. Crusher?”

The captain was stepping forward, a rooster the lanky FBI agent towered over. “Dellray, you listening? Go away.”

“Man, I’ma get me one of those, Rhyme. Lay my ass down in it, watcha game. Seriously, Lincoln, how you doin’? Been a few years.”

“Did they knock?” Rhyme asked Thom.

“No, they didn’t knock.”

“You didn’t knock,” Rhyme said. “So may I suggest that you leave?”

“Gotta warrant,” Dellray murmured, flicking papers in his breast pocket.

Amelia Sachs’s right index fingernail worried her thumb, which was on the verge of bleeding.

Dellray looked around the room. He was clearly impressed at their impromptu lab but strangled the feeling fast. “We’re taking over. Sorry.”

In twenty years of policing, Rhyme had never seen a peremptory takeover like this.

UNSUB 823 (page 1 of 3)

Appearance

•Caucasian male, slight build

•Dark clothing

Residence

•Prob. has safe house

•Located near: B’way & 82nd,

Anderson Foods Greenwich & Bank, 34th & Lex,

Vehicle

•Yellow Cab

Other

•knows CS proc.

•possibly has record

•knows FR prints

•gun =.32 Colt

UNSUB 823 (page 2 of 3)

Appearance

•Old gloves, reddish kidskin

•Ski mask? Navy blue?

Residence

ShopRite 2nd Ave.or 72nd-73^rd or B’way & 96^th,

• Grocery World Battery Park City,

•J &G’s Emporium 1709 2nd Ave.,

•Food Warehouse 8th Ave. & 24th,

Vehicle

•Recent model sedan

Other

•Ties vics w/ unusual knots

•“Old” appeals to him

•Called one vic “Hanna”

•Knows basic German

UNSUB 823 (page 3 of 3)

Appearance

•Gloves are dark

Residence

•ShopRite Houston & Lafayette or 6th Ave. & Houston,

•J &G’s Emporium Greenwich & Franklin

Vehicle

•Lt. gray, silver, beige

Other

•Underground appeals to him

•Dual personalities

•Maybe priest, soc. worker, counselor

“Fuck this, Dellray,” Sellitto began, “you passed on the case.”

The agent swiveled his glossy black face around until he was looking down at the detective.

“Passed? Passed? I never got no ring-a-ling about it. D’jou call me?”

“No.”

“Then who dropped the dime?”

“Well…” Sellitto, surprised, glanced at Polling, who said, “You got an advisory. That’s all we’ve gotta send you.” On the defensive now too.

“An advisory. Yeah. And, hey, how ’xactly was that delivered? Would that have been by Pony Ex-press? Book-rate mail? Tell me, Jim, what’s the good of an overnight advisory when there’s an ongoing operation?”

Polling said, “We didn’t see the need.”

“We?” Dellray asked quickly. Like a surgeon spotting a microscopic tumor.

“I didn’t see the need,” Polling snapped. “I told the mayor to keep it a local operation. We’ve got it under control. Now fuck off, Dellray.”

“And you thought you could wrap it up in time for the eleven o’clock news.”

Rhyme was startled when Polling shouted, “What we thought was none of your goddamn business. It’s our fucking case.” He knew about the captain’s legendary temper but he’d never seen it in action.

“Ac-tu-ally, it’s ou-ur fuck-ing case now.” Dellray strolled past the table that held Cooper’s equipment.

Rhyme said, “Don’t do this, Fred. We’re getting a handle on this guy. Work with us but don’t take it away. This unsub isn’t like anything you’ve ever seen.”

Dellray smiled. “Let’s see, what’s the latest I hear about this ‘fuck-ing’ case? That you’ve got a civvy doin’ the ’rensics.” The agent forewent a glance at the Clinitron bed. “You got a portable doing crime scene. You got soldiers out buying groceries.”

“Evidence standards, Frederick,” Rhyme reminded stridently. “That’s SOP.”

Dellray looked disappointed. “But ESU, Lincoln? All those taxpayer dollars. Then there’s cutting up people like Texas Chainsaw…”

How had that news got out? Everyone was sworn to secrecy on the dismemberment issue.

“And whatsis I hear ’bout Haumann’s boys found the vic but dint go in and save her right away? Channel Five had a Big Ear mike on it. Got her screaming for a good five minutes ’fore you sent somebody in.” He glanced at Sellitto with a wry grin. “Lon, my man, would that’ve been the problem you were just talking about?”

They’d come so far, Rhyme was thinking. They were getting a feel for him, starting to learn the unsub’s language. Starting to see him. With a burst of surprise he understood that he was once again doing what he loved. After all these years. And now somebody was going to take it away from him. Anger rippled inside him.

“Take the case, Fred,” Rhyme grumbled. “But don’t cut us out. Don’t do it.”

“You lost two vics,” Dellray reminded.

“We lost one,” Sellitto corrected, looking uneasily at Polling, who was still fuming. “Nothing we coulda done about the first. He was a calling card.”

Dobyns, arms crossed, merely observed the argument. But Jerry Banks leapt in. “We’ve got his routine down now. We aren’t going to lose any more.”

“You are if ESU’s gonna sit around listenin’ to vics scream their heads off.”

Sellitto said, “It was my -”

“My decision,” Rhyme sang out. “Mine.”

“But you’re civvy, Lincoln. So it couldn’t have been your decision. It mighta been your suggestion. It mighta been your recommendation. But I don’t think it was your decision.”

Dellray’s attention had turned to Sachs again. His eyes on her, he said to Rhyme, “You told Peretti not to run the scene? That’s mighty curious, Lincoln. Why’d you go and do something like that?”

Rhyme said, “I’m better than he is.”

“Peretti’s not a happy boy scout. Nosir. He and I had a chin wag with Eckert.”

Eckert? The Dep Com? How was he involved?

And with one glance at Sachs, at the evasive blue eyes, framed by strands of mussed red hair, he knew how.

Rhyme nailed her with a look, which she promptly avoided, and he said to Dellray, “Let’s see… Peretti? Wasn’t he the one opened up traffic on the spot where the unsub’d stood to watch the first vic? Wasn’t he the one released the scene before we’d had a chance to pick up any serious trace? The scene my own Sachs here had the foresight to seal off. My Sachs had it right and Vince Peretti and everybody else had it wrong. Yes, she did.”

She was gazing at her thumb, a look that bespoke seeing a familiar sight, and slipped a Kleenex from her pocket, wrapped it around the bloody digit.

Dellray summarized, “You shoulda called us at the beginning.”

“Just get out,” Polling muttered. Something snapped in his eyes and his voice rose. “Get the hell out!” he screamed.

Even cool Dellray blinked and eased back as the spittle flew from the captain’s mouth.

Rhyme frowned at Polling. There was a chance they might salvage something of the case but not if Polling had a tantrum. “Jim…”

The captain ignored him. “Out!” he shouted again. “You are not taking over our case!” And startling everyone in the room, Polling leapt forward, grabbed the agent by his green lapels and shoved him against the wall. After a moment of stunned silence Dellray simply pushed the captain back with his fingertips and took out a cellular phone. He offered it to Polling.

“Call the mayor. Or Chief Wilson.”

Polling eased instinctively away from Dellray – a short man putting some distance between himself and a tall one. “You want the case, you fucking got it.” The captain strode to the stairs and then down them. The front door slammed.

“Jesus, Fred,” Sellitto said, “work with us. We can nail this scumbag.”

“We need the Bureau’s A-T,” said Dellray, now sounding like reason itself. “You’re not set up for the terrorist angle.”

“What terrorist angle?” Rhyme asked.

“The UN peace conference. Snitch o’ mine said word was up that something was gonna go down at the airport. Where he snatched the vics.”

“I wouldn’t profile him as a terrorist,” Dobyns said. “Whatever’s going on inside him’s psychologically motivated. It’s not ideological.”

“Well, fact is, Quantico and us’re pegging him one way. ’Preciate that you feel different. But this’s how we’re handling it.”

Rhyme gave up. Fatigue was spiriting him away. He wished Sellitto and his scar-faced assistant had never shown up this morning. He wished he’d never met Amelia Sachs. Wished he wasn’t wearing the ridiculous crisp white shirt, which felt stiff at his neck and felt like nothing below it.

He realized that Dellray was speaking to him.

“I’m sorry?” Rhyme cocked a muscular eyebrow.

Dellray asked, “I mean, couldn’t politics be a motive too?”

“Motive doesn’t interest me,” Rhyme said. “Evidence interests me.”

Dellray glanced again at Cooper’s table. “So. The case’s ours. We all together on that?”

“What’re our options?” Sellitto asked.

“You back us up with searchers. Or you can drop out altogether. That’s about all that’s left. We’ll take the PE now, you don’t mind.”

Banks hesitated.

“Give ’em it,” Sellitto ordered.

The young cop picked up the evidence bags from the most recent scene, slipped them into a large plastic bag. Dellray held his hands out. Banks glanced at the lean fingers and tossed the bag onto the table, walking back to the far side of the room – the cop side. Lincoln Rhyme was a demilitarized zone between them and Amelia Sachs stood riveted at the foot of Rhyme’s bed.

Dellray said to her, “Officer Sachs?”

After a pause, her eyes on Rhyme, she responded, “Yes?”

“Commissioner Eckert wants ya t’come with us for debriefing ’bout the crime scenes. He said something about starting your new assignment on Monday.”

She nodded.

Dellray turned to Rhyme and said sincerely, “Don’tcha worry, Lincoln. We’re gonna git him. Next you hear, his head gonna be on a stake at the gates to the city.”

He nodded to his fellow agents, who packed up the evidence and headed downstairs. From the hallway Dellray called to Sachs, “You coming, officer?”

She stood with her hands together, like a schoolgirl at a party she regretted she’d come to.

“In a minute.”

Dellray vanished down the stairs.

“Those pricks,” Banks muttered, flinging his watchbook onto the table. “Can you believe that?”

Sachs rocked on her heels.

“Better get going, Amelia,” Rhyme said. “Your carriage awaits.”

“Lincoln.” Walking closer to the bed.

“It’s all right,” he said. “You did what you had to do.”

“I have no business doing CS work,” she blurted. “I never wanted to.”

“And you won’t be doing it anymore. That works out well, doesn’t it?”

She started to walk to the door then turned and blurted, “You don’t care about anything but the evidence, do you?”

Sellitto and Banks stirred but she ignored them.

“Say, Thom, could you show Amelia out?”

Sachs continued, “This is all just a game to you, isn’t it? Monelle -”

“Who?”

Her eyes flared, “There! See? You don’t even remember her name. Monelle Gerger. The girl in the tunnel… she was just a part of the puzzle to you. There were rats crawling all over her and you said, ‘That’s their nature’? That’s their nature? She’s never going to be the same again and all you cared about was your precious evidence.”

“In living victims,” he droned, lecturing, “rodent wounds are always superficial. As soon as the first li’l critter drooled on her she needed rabies vaccine. What did a few more bites matter?”

“Why don’t we ask her opinion?” Sachs’s smile was different now. It had turned pernicious, like those of the nurses and therapy aides who hated crips. They walked around rehab wards with smiles like this. Well, he hadn’t been happy with the polite Amelia Sachs; he’d wanted the feisty one…

“Answer me something, Rhyme. Why did you really want me?”

“Thom, our guest has overstayed her welcome. Would you -?”

“Lincoln,” the aide began.

“Thom,” Rhyme snapped, “believe I asked you to do something.”

“Because I don’t know shit,” Sachs blurted. “That’s why! You didn’t want a real CS tech because then you wouldn’t be in charge. But me… you can send me here, send me there. I’ll do exactly what you want, and I won’t bitch and moan.”

“Ah, the troops mutiny…” Rhyme said, lifting his eyes to the ceiling.

“But I’m not one of the troops. I never wanted this in the first place.”

“I didn’t want it either. But here we are. In bed together. Well, one of us.” And he knew his cold smile was far, far icier than any she could muster.

“Why, you’re just a spoiled brat, Rhyme.”

“Hey, officer, time out here,” Sellitto barked.

But she kept going. “You can’t walk your crime scenes anymore and I’m sorry about that. But you’re risking an investigation just to massage your ego and I say fuck that.” She grabbed her Patrol hat and stormed out of the room.

He expected to hear a slamming door from downstairs, maybe breaking glass. But there was a faint click and then silence.

As Jerry Banks retrieved his watchbook and thumbed through it with more concentration than was needed, Sellitto said, “Lincoln, I’m sorry. I -”

“Nothing to it,” Rhyme said, yawning excessively in the false hope that it would calm his stinging heart. “Nothing at all.”

The cops stood beside the half-empty table for a few moments, difficult silence, then Cooper said, “Better get packed up.” He hefted a black ’scope case onto the table and began to unscrew an eyepiece with the loving care of a musician disassembling his saxophone.

“Well, Thom,” Rhyme said, “it’s after sunset. You know what that tells me? Bar’s open.”

Their war room was impressive. It beat Lincoln Rhyme’s bedroom hands down.

Half a floor at the federal building, three dozen agents, computers and electronic panels out of some Tom Clancy movie. The agents looked like lawyers or investment bankers. White shirts, ties. Crisp was the word that came to mind. And Amelia Sachs in the center, conspicuous in her navy-blue uniform, soiled with rat blood, dust and grainy shit from cattle dead a hundred years.

She was no longer shaking from her blowup with Rhyme and though her mind kept reeling with a hundred things she wanted to say, wished she had said, she forced herself to concentrate on what was happening around her.

A tall agent in an immaculate gray suit was conferring with Dellray – two large men, heads down, solemn. She believed he was the special agent in charge of the Manhattan office, Thomas Perkins, but she didn’t know for certain; a Patrol officer has as much contact with the FBI as a dry cleaner or insurance salesman does. He seemed humorless, efficient, and kept glancing at a large map of Manhattan pinned to the wall. Perkins nodded several times as Dellray briefed him then he stepped up to a fiberboard table filled with manila folders, looked over the agents and began to speak.

“If I could have your attention… I’ve just been in communication with the director and the AG in Washington. You’ve all heard about the Kennedy Airport unsub by now. It’s an unusual profile. Kidnapping, absent a sexual element, is rarely the basis for serial activity. In fact this’s the first unsub of the sort we’ve had in the Southern District. In light of the possible connection with the events at the UN this week we’re coordinating with headquarters, Quantico and the secretary-general’s office. We’ve been told to be completely proactive on this case. It’s getting prioritization at the highest level.”

The SAC glanced at Dellray, who said, “We’ve taken over the case from the NYPD but we’ll be using them for backup and person power. We have the crime scene officer here to brief us on the scenes.” Dellray sounded completely different here. Not a shred of Superfly.

“Have you vouchered the PE?” Perkins asked Sachs.

Sachs admitted that she hadn’t. “We were working on saving the vics.”

The SAC was troubled by this. At trial, otherwise solid cases tanked regularly because of slipups in recording the chain of custody of the physical evidence. It was the first thing the perps’ defense lawyers wailed on.

“Make sure you do that before you leave.”

“Yessir.”

What a look on Rhyme’s face when he guessed I bitched to Eckert and got them shut down. What a look…

My Sachs figured it out, my Sachs preserved the scene.

She worried a nail again. Stop it, she told herself, as she always did, and continued to dig into the flesh. The pain felt good. That’s what the therapists never understood.

The SAC said, “Agent Dellray? Could you brief the room as regards the approach we’ll be taking.”

Dellray looked from the SAC to the other agents and continued, “At this moment we have field agents hitting every major terrorist cell in the city and pursuing whatever leads we can find that’ll get us to the unsub’s residence. All CIs, all undercover agents. It’ll mean compromising some existing operations but we’ve decided it’s worth the risk.

“Our job here is to be rapid response. You’ll break out into groups of six agents each and be ready to move on any lead. You’ll have complete hostage-rescue and barricade-entry support.”

“Sir,” Sachs said.

Perkins looked up, frowning. Apparently one didn’t interrupt briefings until the approved Q &A break. “Yes, what is it, officer?”

“Well, I’m just wondering, sir. What about the victim?”

“Who, that German girl? You think we should interview her again?”

“No, sir. I meant the next victim.”

Perkins responded, “Oh, we’ll certainly stay cognizant of the fact that there may be other targets.”

Sachs continued, “He’s got one now.”

“He does?” The SAC glanced at Dellray, who shrugged. Perkins asked Sachs, “How do you know?”

“Well, I don’t exactly know, sir. But he left clues at the last scene and he wouldn’t’ve done that if he didn’t have another vic. Or was just about to snatch one.”

“Noted, officer,” the SAC continued. “We’re going to mobilize as fast as we can to make sure nothing happens to them.”

Dellray said to her, “We think it’s best to focus on the beast himself.”

“Detective Sachs -” Perkins began.

“I’m not a detective, sir. I’m assigned to Patrol.”

“Yes, well,” the SAC continued, looking at the stacks of files. “If you could just give us some of your bullet points, that would be helpful.”

Thirty agents watching her. Two women among them.

“Just tell us whatcha saw,” Dellray said, gripping an unlit cigarette between prominent teeth.

She gave them a synopsis of her searches of the crime scenes and the conclusions Rhyme and Terry Dobyns had come to. Most of the agents were troubled by the unsub’s curious MO.

“Like a goddamn game,” an agent muttered.

One asked if the clues had any political messages they could decipher.

“Well, sir, we really don’t think he’s a terrorist,” Sachs persisted.

Perkins turned his high-powered attention toward her. “Let me ask you, officer, you concede he’s smart, this unsub?”

“Very smart.”

“Couldn’t he be double-bluffing?”

“How do you mean?”

“You… I should say the NYPD’s thinking is that he’s just a nutcase. I mean, a criminal personality. But isn’t it possible he’s smart enough to make you think that. When something else’s going on.”

“Like what?”

“Take those clues he left. Couldn’t they be diversions?”

“No, sir, they’re directions,” Sachs said. “Leading us to the vics.”

“I understand that,” quick Thomas Perkins said. “But by doing that he’s also leading us away from other targets, right?”

She hadn’t considered that. “I suppose it’s possible.”

“And Chief Wilson’s been pulling men off UN security detail right and left to work the kidnapping. This unsub might be keeping everyone distracted, which leaves him free for his real mission.”

Sachs remembered that she’d had a similar thought herself earlier in the day, watching all the searchers along Pearl Street. “And that’d be the UN?”

“We think so,” Dellray said. “The perps behind the UNESCO bombing attempt in London might want to try again.”

Meaning Rhyme was going off in the completely wrong direction. It eased the weight of her guilt somewhat.

“Now, officer, could you itemize the evidence for us?” Perkins asked.

Dellray gave her an inventory sheet of everything she’d found and she went through it item by item. As she spoke Sachs was aware of bustling activity around her – some agents taking calls, some standing and whispering to other agents, some taking notes. But when, glancing down at the sheet, she added, “Then I picked up this fingerprint of his at the last scene,” she realized that the room had fallen utterly silent. She looked up. Every face in the office was staring at her in what could pass for shock – if federal agents were capable of that.

She glanced helplessly at Dellray, who cocked his head, “You saying you gotchaself a print?”

“Well, yes. His glove fell off in a struggle with the last vic and when he picked it up he brushed against the floor.”

“Where is it?” Dellray asked quickly.

“Jesus,” one agent called. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Well, I -”

“Find it, find it!” somebody else called.

A murmur ran through the room.

Her hands shaking, Sachs dug through the evidence bags and handed Dellray the Polaroid of the fingerprint. He held it up, looked carefully. Showed it to someone who, she guessed, was a friction-ridge expert. “Good,” the agent offered. “It’s definitely A-grade.”

Sachs knew that prints were rated A, B and C, the lower category being unacceptable to most law enforcement agencies. But whatever pride she felt in her evidence-gathering skills was crushed by their collective dismay that she hadn’t mentioned it before this.

Then everything started to happen at once. Dellray handed off to an agent who jogged to an elaborate computer in the corner of the office and rested the Polaroid on a large, curved bed of something called an Opti-Scan. Another agent turned on the computer and started typing in commands as Dellray snatched up the phone. He tapped his foot impatiently and then lowered his head as, somewhere, the call was answered.

“Ginnie, s’Dellray. This’s gonna be a true-blue pain but I needya to shut down all AFIS Northeast Region requests and give the one I’m sending priority… I got Perkins here. He’ll okay it and if that ain’t enough I’ll call the man in Washington himself… It’s the UN thing.”

Sachs knew the Bureau’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System was used by police departments throughout the country. That’s what Dellray would be braking to a halt at the moment.

The agent at the computer said, “It’s scanned. We’re transmitting now.”

“How long’s it gonna take?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes.”

Dellray pressed his dusty fingers together. “Please, please, please.”

All around her was a cyclone of activity. Sachs heard voices talking about weapons, helicopters, vehicles, anti-terror negotiators. Phone calls, clattering keyboards, maps unrolling, pistols being checked.

Perkins was on the phone, talking to the hostage-rescue people, or the director, or the mayor. Maybe the president. Who knew? Sachs said to Dellray, “I didn’t know the print was that big a deal.”

“S’always a big deal. Least, with AFIS now it is. Used to be you dusted for prints mostly for show. Let the vics and the press know you were doing something.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Naw, not a bit. Take New York City. You do a cold search – that’s when you don’t have any suspects – you do a cold search manually, it’d take a tech fifty years to go through all the print cards. No foolin’. An automated search? Fifteen minutes. Used to be you’d ID a suspect maybe two, three percent of the time. Now we’re running close to twenty, twenty-two percent. Oh, yup, prints’re golden. Dincha tell Rhyme about it?”

“He knew, sure.”

“And he didn’t get all hands on board? My oh my, the man’s slipping.”

“Say, officer,” SAC Perkins called, holding his hand over the phone, “I’ll ask you to complete those chain-of-custody cards now. I want to get the PE off to PERT.”

The Physical Evidence Response Team. Sachs remembered that Lincoln Rhyme had been the one the feds hired to help put it together.

“I’ll do that. Sure.”

“Mallory, Kemple, take that PE to an office and get our guest some COC cards. You have a pen, officer?”

“Yes, I do.”

She followed the two men into a small office, clicking her ballpoint nervously while they hunted down and returned with a pack of federal-issue chain-of-custody cards. She sat down and broke the package open.

The voice behind her was the hip Dellray, the persona that seemed the eagerest to break out. In the car on the way here someone had referred to him as the Chameleon and she was beginning to see why.

“We call Perkins the Big Dict. Nyup – not ‘dick’ like you’re thinking. ‘Dict’ like dictionary. But don’ worry over him. He’s smarter’n an agent sandwich. And better’n that he’s pulled strings all the way to D.C., which is where strings gotta be pulled in cases like this.” Dellray ran his cigarette beneath his nose as if it were a fine cigar. “You know, officer, you’re foxy smart doing whatch’re doing.”

“Which is?”

“Getting out of Major Crimes. You don’t want it.” The lean black face, glossy and wrinkled only about the eyes, seemed sincere for the first time since she’d met him. “Best thing you ever did, going into Public Affairs. You’ll do some good there and it won’t turn you to dust. That’s what happens, you bet. This job turns you to dust.”

One of the last victims of James Schneider’s mad compulsion, a young man named Ortega, had come to Manhattan from Mexico City, where political unrest (the much-heralded populist uprising, which had begun the year before) had made commerce difficult at best. Yet the ambitious entrepreneur had been in the city no more than one week when he vanished from sight. It was learned that he was last seen in front of a West Side tavern and authorities immediately suspected that he was yet another victim of Schneider’s. Sadly, this was discovered to be the case.

The bone collector cruised the streets for fifteen minutes around NYU, Washington Square. Plenty of people hanging out. But kids mostly. Students in summer school. Skateboarders. It was festive, weird. Singers, jugglers, acrobats. It reminded him of the “museums,” down on the Bowery, popular in the 1800s. They weren’t museums at all of course but arcades, teeming with burlesque shows, exhibits of freaks and daredevils, and vendors selling everything from French postcards to splinters of the True Cross.

He slowed once or twice but nobody wanted a cab, or could afford one. He turned south.

Schneider tied bricks to Señor Ortega’s feet and rolled him under a pier into the Hudson River so the foul water and the fish might reduce his body to mere bone. The corpse was found two weeks after he had vanished and so it was never known whether or not the unfortunate victim was alive or had full use of his senses when he was thrown into the drink. Yet it is suspected that this was so. For Schneider cruelly shortened the rope so that Señor Ortega’s face was inches below the surface of Davy Jones’s locker; – his hands undoubtedly thrashed madly about as he gazed upward at the air that would have been his salvation.

The bone collector saw a sickly young man standing by the curb. AIDS, he thought. But your bones are healthy – and so prominent. Your bones’ll last forever… The man didn’t want a cab and the taxi cruised past, the bone collector hungrily gazing at his thin frame in the rearview mirror.

He looked back to the street just in time to swerve around an elderly man who’d stepped off the curb, his thin arm raised to flag down the cab. The man leapt back, as best he could, and the cab skidded to a stop just past him.

The man opened the back door and leaned inside. “You should look where you’re going.” He said this instructionally. Not with anger.

“Sorry,” the bone collector muttered contritely.

The elderly man hesitated for a moment, looked up the street but saw no other taxis. He climbed in.

The door slammed shut.

Thinking: Old and thin. The skin would ride on his bones like silk.

“So, where to?” he called.

“East Side.”

“You got it,” he said as he pulled on the ski mask and spun the wheel sharply right. The cab sped west.