The Bone Collector (23 page)

“What?—”

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

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

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

Señor Ortega . . .

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

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

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

Like emery paper on bone.

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

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

But beneath that . . .

“You’re not supposed . . . You shouldn’t park here. This’s a jogging path. . . .”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s just who
she
was going to be.

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

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

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

Once again she lifted the plastic bag containing the leaf.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The AFIS results’re comin’ in,” Dellray said.

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

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

“Here, it’s coming in now,” an agent called.

Dellray barked, “I want open lines to New York, Jersey and Connecticut DMVs. And Corrections and Parole. INS too. Tell ’em to stand by for an incoming ID request. Put everything else on hold.”

Agents peeled off and began making phone calls.

The computer screen filled.

She couldn’t believe that Dellray actually crossed his stickish fingers.

Utter silence throughout the room.

“Got him!” the agent at the keyboard shouted.

“Ain’t no unsub anymore,” Dellray sang melodically, bending over the screen. “Listen up, people. We gotta name: Victor Pietrs. Born here, 1948. His parents were from Belgrade. So, we got a Serbian connection. ID brought to us courtesy of New York D of C. Convictions for drugs, assault, one with a deadly. Two sentences served. Okay, listen to this—psychiatric history, committed three times on involuntary orders. Intake at Bellevue and Manhattan Psychiatric. Last release date three years ago. LKA Washington Heights.”

He looked up. “Who’s got the phone companies?”

Several agents raised their hands.

“Make the calls,” Dellray ordered.

An interminable five minutes.

“Not there. No current New York Telephone listing.”

“Nothing in Jersey,” another agent echoed.

“Negative, Connecticut.”

“Fuck-all,” Dellray muttered. “Mix the names up. Try variations. An’ lookit phone-service accounts canceled in the past year for nonpayment.”

For several minutes voices rose and fell like the tide.

Dellray paced manically and Sachs understood why his frame was so scrawny.

Suddenly an agent shouted, “Found him!”

Everyone turned to look.

“I’m on with NY DMV,” another agent called. “They’ve got him. It’s coming through now. . . . He’s a cabbie. Got a hack license.”

“Why don’ that s’prise me,” Dellray muttered. “Shoulda thoughta that. Where’s home sweet home?”

“Morningside Heights. A block from the river.” The agent wrote down the address and held it aloft as Dellray swept past and took it. “Know the neighborhood. Pretty deserted. Lotta druggies.”

Another agent typed the address into his computer
terminal. “Okay, checking deeds . . . Property’s an old house. A bank’s got title. He must be renting.”

“You want HRT?” one agent called across the bustling room. “I got Quantico on the line.”

“No time,” Dellray announced. “Use the field office SWAT. Get ’em suited up.”

Sachs asked, “And what about the next victim?”

“What next victim?”

“He’s already taken somebody. He knows we’ve had the clues for an hour or two. He’d’ve planted the vic awhile ago. He had to.”

“No reports of anybody missing,” the agent said. “And if he did snatch ’em they’re probably at his house.”

“No, they wouldn’t be.”

“Why not?”

“They’d pick up too much PE,” she said. “Lincoln Rhyme said he has a safe house.”

“Well, then we’ll get him to tell us where they are.”

Another agent said, “We can be real persuasive.”

“Let’s move it,” Dellray called. “Yo, ever’body, let’s thank Officer Amelia Sachs here. She’s the one found that print and lifted it.”

She was blushing. Could feel it, hated it. But she couldn’t help herself. As she glanced down she noticed strange lines on her shoes. Squinting, she realized she was still wearing the rubber bands.

When she looked up she saw a room full of unsmiling federal agents checking weapons and heading for the door as they glanced at her. The same way, she thought, lumberjacks look at logs.

I
n 1911 a tragedy of massive dimension befell our fair city.

On March 25, hundreds of industrious young women were hard at work in a garment factory, one of the many, known notoriously as “sweat-shops”, in Greenwich Village in down-town Manhattan.

So enamored of profits were the owners of this company that they denied the poor girls in their employ even the rudimentary facilities that slaves might enjoy. They believed the laborers could not be trusted to make expeditious visits to the rest-room facilities and so kept the doors to the cutting and sewing rooms under lock and key.

The bone collector was driving back to his building. He passed a squad car but he kept his eyes forward and the constables never noticed him.

On the day in question a fire started on the eighth floor of the building and within minutes swept through the factory, from which the young employees tried to flee. They were unable to escape, however, owing to the chained state of the door. Many died on the spot and many more, some horribly afire, leapt into the air a hundred feet above the cobblestones and died from the collision with unyielding Mother Earth.

There numbered 146 victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. The police, however, were confounded by the inability to locate one of the victims, a young woman, Esther Weinraub, whom several witnesses had seen leap in desperation from the eighth floor window. None of the other girls who similarly leapt survived the fall. Was it possible that she, miraculously, had? For when the bodies were laid out in the street for bereaved family member to identify, poor Miss Weinraub’s was not to be found.

Reports began to circulate of a ghoul, a man seen carting off a large bundle from the scene of the fire. So incensed were the constables that someone might violate the sacred remains of an innocent young woman that they put on a still search for the man.

After several weeks, their diligent efforts bore fruit. Two residents of Greenwich Village reported seeing a man leaving the scene of the fire and carrying a heavy bundle “like a carpet” over his shoulder. The constables picked up his trail and tracked him to the West Side of the city, where they interviewed neighbors and learned that the man fit the description of James Schneider, who was still at large.

They narrowed their search to a decrepit abode in an alley in Hell’s Kitchen, not far from the 60th Street stockyards. As they entered the alleyway they were greeted with a revolting stench. . . .

He was now driving past the very site of the Triangle fire itself—maybe he’d even been subconsciously prompted to come here. The Asch Building—the ironic name of the structure that had housed the doomed factory—was gone and the site was now a part of NYU.
Then and now
 . . . The bone collector would not have been surprised to see white-bloused working girls, trailing sparks and faint smoke, tumbling gracefully to their deaths, falling around him like snow.

Upon breaking into Schneider’s habitation, the authorities found a sight that sent even the most seasoned of them reeling with horror. The body of wretched Esther Weinraub—(or what remained of it)—was found in the basement. Schneider was bent on completing the work of the tragic fire and was slowly removing the woman’s flesh through means too shocking to recount here.

A search of this loathsome place revealed a secret room, off the basement, filled with bones that had been stripped clean of flesh.

Beneath Schneider’s bed, a constable found a diary, in which the madman chronicled his history of evil. “Bone”—(Schneider wrote)—“is the ultimate core of a human being. It alters not, deceives not, yields not. Once the facade of our intemperate ways of the flesh, the flaws
of the lesser Races, and the weaker gender, are burnt or boiled away, we are—all of us—noble bone. Bone does not lie. It is immortal.”

The lunatic writings set forth a chronicle of gruesome experimentation as he sought to ascertain the most effective way of cleansing his victims of their flesh. He tried boiling the bodies, burning them, rendering with lye, staking them out for animals, and immersing them in water.

But one method above all he favored for this macabre sport. “It is best, I have concluded”—(his diary continues)—“simply to bury the body in rich earth and let Nature do the tedious work. This is the most time-consuming method but the least likely to arouse suspicion as the odors are kept to a minimum. I prefer to inter the individuals while still alive, though why that might be I cannot say with any certainty.”

In his heretofore secret room three more bodies were discovered in this very condition. The splayed hands and agog faces of the poor victims attest that they were indeed alive when Schneider piled the last shovelful of dirt upon their tormented crowns.

It was these dark designs that prompted the journalists of the day to christen Schneider with the name by which he was forever after known:—“The Bone Collector.”

He drove on, his mind returning to the woman in the trunk, Esther Weinraub. Her thin elbow, her collarbone delicate as a bird’s wing. He sped the cab forward, even risked running two red lights. He couldn’t wait much longer.

“I’m not tired,” Rhyme snapped.

“Tired or not, you need to rest.”

“No, I need another drink.”

Black suitcases lined the wall, awaiting the help of officers from the Twentieth Precinct to transport them back to the IRD lab. Mel Cooper was carting a microscope case downstairs. Lon Sellitto was still sitting in the rattan chair but he wasn’t saying much. Just coming to the obvious conclusion that Lincoln Rhyme was not a mellow drunk at all.

Thom said, “I’m sure your blood pressure’s up. You need rest.”

“I need a drink.”

Goddamn you, Amelia Sachs, Rhyme thought. And didn’t know why.

“You should give it up. Drinking’s never been any good for you.”

Well, I
am
giving it up, Rhyme responded silently. For good. Monday. And no twelve-step plan for me; it’s a one-stepper.

“Pour me another drink,” he ordered.

Not really wanting one.

“No.”

“Pour me a drink
now!
” Rhyme snapped.

“No way.”

“Lon, would you please pour me another drink?”

“I—”

Thom said, “He doesn’t get any more. When he’s in a mood like this he’s insufferable and we’re not going to put up with him.”

“You’re going to withhold something from me? I could fire you.”

“Fire away.”

“Crip abuse! I’ll get you indicted. Arrest him, Lon.”

“Lincoln,” Sellitto said placatingly.

“Arrest him!”

The detective was taken aback by the viciousness of Rhyme’s words.

“Hey, buddy, maybe you should go a little light,” Sellitto said.

“Oh, Christ,” Rhyme groaned. He started to moan loudly.

Sellitto blurted, “What is it?” Thom was silent, looking on cautiously.

“My liver.” Rhyme’s face broke into a cruel grin. “Cirrhosis probably.”

Thom swung around, furious. “I will
not
put up with this crap. Okay?”

“No, It’s not oh-kay—”

A woman’s voice, from the doorway: “We don’t have much time.”

“—at all.”

Amelia Sachs walked into the room, glanced at the empty tables. Rhyme felt spittle on his lip. He was overwhelmed with fury. Because she saw the drool. Because he wore a crisp white shirt he’d changed into just for her. And because he wanted desperately to be alone, forever, alone in the dark of motionless peace—where he was king. Not king for a day. But king for eternity.

The spit tickled. He cramped his already sore neck muscles trying to wipe his lip dry. Thom deftly swiped a Kleenex from a box and dried his boss’s mouth and chin.

“Officer Sachs,” Thom said. “Welcome. A shining example of maturity. We aren’t seeing much of
that
right at the moment.”

She wasn’t wearing her hat and her navy blouse was open at the collar. Her long red hair tumbled to her shoulders. Nobody’d have any trouble differentiating
that
hair under a comparison ’scope.

“Mel let me in,” she said, nodding toward the stairs.

“Isn’t it past your bedtime, Sachs?”

Thom tapped a shoulder.
Behave yourself,
the gesture meant.

“I was just at the federal building,” she said to Sellitto.

“How are our tax dollars doing?”

“They’ve caught him.”

“What?”
Sellitto asked. “Just like that? Jesus. They know about it downtown?”

“Perkins called the mayor. The guy’s a cabbie. He was born here but his father’s Serbian. So they’re thinking he’s trying to get even with the UN, or something. Got a yellow sheet. Oh, and a history of mental problems too. Dellray and feebie SWAT’re on their way there right now.”

“How’d they do it?” Rhyme asked. “Betcha it was the fingerprint.”

She nodded.

“I suspected that would figure prominently. And, tell me, how concerned were they about the next victim?”

“They’re concerned,” she said evenly. “But mostly they want to nail the unsub.”

“Well, that’s
their
nature. And let me guess. They’re
figuring they’ll sweat the location of the vic out of him after they take him down.”

“You got it.”

“That may take some doing,” Rhyme said. “I’ll venture that opinion without the benefit of our Dr. Dobyns and the Behavioral mavens. So, a change of heart, Amelia? Why’d you come back?”

“Because whether Dellray collars him or not I don’t think we have time to wait. To save the next vic, I mean.”

“Oh, but we’re dismantled, haven’t you heard? Shut down, done gone outa business.” Rhyme was looking in the dark computer screen, trying to see if his hair had stayed combed.

“You giving up?” she asked.

“Officer,” Sellitto began, “even if we wanted to do somethin’ we don’t have any of the PE. That’s the only link—”

“I’ve got it.”

“What?”

“All of it. It’s downstairs in the RRV.”

The detective glanced out the window.

Sachs continued, “From the last scene. From all the scenes.”

“You have it?” Rhyme asked. “How?”

But Sellitto was laughing. “She ’jacked it, Lincoln. Gawdamn!”

“Dellray doesn’t need it,” Sachs pointed out. “Except for the trial. They’ve got the unsub, we’ll save the victim. Works out nice, hm?”

“But Mel Cooper just left.”

“Naw, he’s downstairs. I asked him to wait.” Sachs crossed her arms. She glanced at the clock. After eleven. “We don’t have much time,” she repeated.

His eyes too were on the clock. Lord, he was tired. Thom was right; he’d been awake longer than in years. But, he was surprised—no,
shocked
—to find, that, while he might have been furious or embarrassed or stabbed with heartless frustration today, the passing minutes had not lain like hot, unbearable weights on his soul. As they had for the past three and a half years.

“Well, church mice in heaven.” Rhyme barked a laugh. “Thom?
Thom!
We need coffee. On the double. Sachs, get those cello samples to the lab along with the Polaroid of the bit Mel lifted from the veal bone. I want a polarization-comparison report in an hour. And none of this ‘most probably’ crap. I want an answer—
which
grocery chain did our unsub buy the veal bone at. And get that little shadow of yours back here, Lon. The one named after the baseball player.”

The black vans sped through side streets.

This was a more circuitous route to the perp’s location but Dellray knew what he was doing; anti-terror operations were supposed to avoid major city streets, which were often monitored by accomplices. Dellray, in the back of the lead van, tightened the Velcro strap on the body armor. They were less than ten minutes away.

He looked at the failing apartments, the trash-filled lots as they sped along. The last time he’d been in this decrepit neighborhood he’d been Rastafarian Peter Haile Thomas from Queens. He’d bought 137 pounds of cocaine from a shriveled little Puerto Rican, who decided at the last minute to ’jack his buyer. He took Dellray’s buy-and-bust money and aimed a gun at Dellray’s groin, pulling the trigger as calmly as if he were picking vegetables at the A&P. Click, click, click. Misfire. Toby Dolittle and the backup team took the fucker and his minders down before the scumbag found his other piece, leaving one shook-up Dellray to reflect on the irony of nearly getting killed because the perp truly bought the agent’s performance—that he was a dealer not a cop.

“ETA, four minutes,” the driver called.

For some reason Dellray’s thoughts flipped to Lincoln Rhyme. He regretted he’d been such a shit when he took over the case. But there hadn’t been much choice. Sellitto was a bulldog and Polling was a psycho—though Dellray could handle them. Rhyme was the one who made him uneasy. Sharp as a razor (hell, it
had
been his team that found Pietrs’s print, even if they didn’t jump on it as fast as they should’ve). In the old days, before
his accident, you couldn’t beat Rhyme if he didn’t want to get beat. And you couldn’t fool him either.