The Bone Collector (29 page)

“I—”

“Lincoln,” a voice said. She turned to see a man in the doorway. He looked around the room curiously, taking in all the equipment.

“Been some excitement around here, looks like.”

“Doctor,” Rhyme said. His face blossoming into a smile. “Please come in.”

He stepped into the room. “I got Thom’s message. Emergency, he said?”

“Dr. William Berger, this is Amelia Sachs.”

But Sachs could see she’d already ceased to exist in Lincoln Rhyme’s universe. Whatever else was left to be said—and she felt there were some things, maybe many things—would have to wait. She walked through the door. Thom, who stood in the large hallway outside, closed the door behind her and, ever proper, paused, nodding for her to precede him.

As Sachs walked out into the steamy night she heard a voice from nearby. “Excuse me.”

She turned and found Dr. Peter Taylor standing by himself under a ginkgo tree. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Sachs followed Taylor up the sidewalk a few doors.

“Yes?” she asked. He leaned against a stone wall and gave another self-conscious swipe at his hair. Sachs recalled how many times she’d intimidated men with a single word or glance. She thought, as she often did: What a useless power beauty is.

“You’re his friend, right?” the doctor asked her. “I mean, you work with him but you’re a friend too.”

“Sure. I guess I am.”

“That man who just went inside. Do you know who he is?”

“Berger, I think. He’s a doctor.”

“Did he say where he was from?”

“No.”

Taylor looked up at Rhyme’s bedroom window for a moment. He asked, “You know the Lethe Society?”

“No, oh, wait . . . It’s a euthanasia group, right?”

Taylor nodded. “I know all of Lincoln’s doctors. And I’ve never heard of Berger. I was just thinking maybe he’s with them.”

“What?”

Is he still talking to them . . .

So
that’s
what the conversation was about.

She felt weightless from the shock. “Has he . . . has he talked seriously about this before?”

“Oh, yes.” Taylor sighed, gazed into the smoky night sky. “Oh, yes.” Then glanced at her name badge. “Officer Sachs, I’ve spent hours trying to talk him out of it. Days. But I’ve also worked with quads for years and I know how stubborn they are. Maybe he’d listen to you. Just a few words. I was thinking . . . Could you?—”

“Oh, goddamn it, Rhyme,” she muttered and started down the sidewalk at a run, leaving the doctor in midsentence.

She got to the front door of the townhouse just as Thom was closing it. She pushed past him. “Forgot my watchbook.”

“Your?—”

“Be right back.”

“You can’t go up there. He’s with his doctor.”

“I’ll just be a second.”

She was at the landing before Thom started after her.

He must have known it was a scam because he took the stairs two at a time. But she had a good lead and had shoved open Rhyme’s door before the aide got to the top of the stairs.

She pushed in, startling both Rhyme and the doctor, who was leaning against the table, arms crossed. She closed the door and locked it. Thom began pounding. Berger turned toward her with a frown of curiosity on his face.

“Sachs,” Rhyme blurted.

“I have to talk to you.”

“What about?”

“About you.”

“Later.”

“How much later, Rhyme?” she asked sarcastically. “Tomorrow? Next week?”

“What do you mean?”

“You want me to schedule a meeting for, maybe, a week from Wednesday? Will you be able to make it then? Will you be
around?
”

“Sachs—”

“I want to talk to you. Alone.”

“No.”

“Then we’ll do it the hard way.” She stepped up to Berger. “You’re under arrest. The charge is attempted assisted suicide.” And the handcuffs flashed, click, click, snapping onto his wrists in a silver blur.

She guessed the building was a church.

Carole Ganz lay in the basement, on the floor. A single shaft of cold, oblique light fell on the wall, illuminating a shabby picture of Jesus and a stack of mildewy Golden Book Bible stories. A half-dozen tiny chairs—for Sunday-school students, she guessed—were nested in the middle of the room.

The cuffs were still on and so was the gag. He’d also tied her to a pipe near the wall with a four-foot-long piece of clothesline.

On a tall table nearby she could see the top of a large glass jug.

If she could knock it off she might use a piece of glass to cut the clothesline. The table seemed out of reach but she rolled over onto her side and started to squirm, like a caterpillar, toward it.

This reminded her of Pammy when she was an infant, rolling on the bed between herself and Ron; she thought of her baby, alone in that horrible basement, and started to cry.

Pammy, Pooh, purse.

For a moment, for a brief moment, she weakened. Wished she’d never left Chicago.

No, stop thinking that way! Quit feeling sorry for yourself! This was the absolute right thing to do. You did it for Ron. And for yourself too. He’d be proud of you. Kate had told her that a thousand times, and she believed it.

Struggling once more. She moved a foot closer to the table.

Groggy, couldn’t think straight.

Her throat stung from the terrible thirst. And the mold and mildew in the air.

She crawled a little farther then lay on her side, catching her breath, staring up at the table. It seemed hopeless. What’s the use? she thought.

Wondering what was going through Pammy’s mind.

You fucker! thought Carole. I’ll
kill
you for this!

She squirmed, trying to move farther along the floor. But instead, she lost her balance and rolled onto her back. She gasped, knowing what was coming. No! With a loud pop, her wrist snapped. She screamed through the gag. Blacked out. When she came to a moment later she was overwhelmed with nausea.

No, no, no . . . If she vomited she’d die. With the gag on, that would be it.

Fight it down! Fight it. Come on. You can do it. Here I go. . . . She retched once. Then again.

No! Control it.

Rising in her throat.

Control . . .

Control it. . . .

And she did. Breathing through her nose, concentrating on Kate and Eddie and Pammy, on the yellow knapsack containing all her precious possessions. Seeing it, picturing it from every angle. Her whole life was in there. Her
new
life.

Ron, I don’t want to blow it. I came here for you, honey . . .

She closed her eyes. Thought: Breathe deep. In, out.

Finally, the nausea subsided. And a moment later she was feeling better and, though she was crying in pain from the snapped wrist, she managed to continue to caterpillar her way toward the table, one foot. Two.

She felt a thump as her head collided with the table leg. She’d just managed to connect with it and couldn’t move any farther. She swung her head back and forth and jostled the table hard. She heard the bottle slosh as it shifted on the tabletop. She looked up.

A bit of the jug was showing beyond the edge of the table. Carole drew back her head and hit the table leg one last time.

No! She’d knocked the leg out of reach. The jug teetered for a moment but stayed upright. Carole strained to get more slack from the clothesline but couldn’t.

Damn. Oh, damn! As she gazed hopelessly up at the filthy bottle she realized it was filled with a liquid and something floated inside. What
is
that?

She scrunched her way back toward the wall a foot or two and looked up.

It seemed like a lightbulb inside. No, not a whole bulb, just the filament and the base, screwed into a socket. A wire ran from the socket out of the jug to one of those timers that turn the lights on and off when you’re away on vacation. It looked like—

A bomb! Now she recognized the faintest whiff of gasoline.

No,no. . .

Carole began to squirm away from the table as fast as she could, sobbing in desperation. There was a filing cabinet by the wall. It’d give her some protection. She drew her legs up then felt a chill of panic and unwound them furiously. The motion knocked her off balance. She realized, to her horror, that she was rolling onto her back once more. Oh, stop. Don’t . . . She stayed poised, perfectly still, for a long moment, quivering as she tried to shift her weight forward. But then she continued to roll, collapsing onto her cuffed hand, her shattered wrist taking the weight of her body. There was a moment of incredible pain and, mercifully, she fainted once more.

N
o way, Rhyme. You can’t do it.”

Berger looked on uneasily. Rhyme supposed that in this line of work he’d seen all sorts of hysterical scenarios played out at moments like this. The biggest problem Berger’d have wasn’t those wanting to die but those who wanted everyone else to live.

Thom pounded on the door.

“Thom,” Rhyme called. “It’s all right. You can leave us.” Then to Sachs: “We’ve said our farewells. You and me. It’s bad form to ruin a perfect exit.”

“You can’t do this.”

Who’d blown the whistle? Pete Taylor maybe. The doctor must’ve guessed that he and Thom were lying.

Rhyme saw her eyes slip to the three items on the table. The gifts of the Magi: the brandy, the pills and the plastic bag. Also a rubber band, similar to the ones Sachs still wore on her shoes. (How many times had he come home from a crime scene to find Blaine staring at the bands on his shoes, horrified? “Everybody’ll think my husband can’t afford new shoes. He’s keeping the soles on with rubber bands. Honestly, Lincoln!”)

“Sachs, take the cuffs off the good doctor here. I’ll have to ask you to leave one last time.”

She barked a fast laugh. “Excuse me. This’s a crime in New York. The DA could bootstrap it into murder, he wanted to.”

Berger said, “I’m just having a conversation with a patient.”

“That’s why the charge’s only attempt. So far. Maybe we should run your name and prints through NCIC. See what we come up with.”

“Lincoln,” Berger said quickly, alarmed. “I can’t—”

“We’ll get it worked out,” Rhyme said. “Sachs, please.”

Feet apart, hands on trim hips, her gorgeous face imperious. “Let’s go,” she barked to the doctor.

“Sachs, you have no idea how important this is.”

“I won’t let you kill yourself.”

“Let me?” Rhyme snapped. “
Let
me? And why exactly do I need your permission?”

Berger said, “Miss . . . Officer Sachs, it’s his decision and it’s completely consensual. Lincoln’s more informed than most of the patients I deal with.”

“Patients? Victims, you mean.”

“Sachs!” Rhyme blurted, trying to keep the desperation from his voice. “It’s taken me a year to find someone to help me.”

“Maybe because it’s wrong. Ever consider
that?
Why now, Rhyme? Right in the middle of the case?”

“If I have another attack and a stroke, I might lose all ability to communicate. I could be conscious for forty years and completely unable to move. And if I’m not brain-dead, nobody in the universe is going to pull the plug. At least now I’m still able to communicate my decisions.”

“But why?” she blurted.

“Why not?” Rhyme answered. “Tell me. Why not?”

“Well . . .” It seemed as if the arguments against suicide were so obvious she was having trouble articulating them. “Because . . .”

“Because
why,
Sachs?”

“For one thing, it’s cowardly.”

Rhyme laughed. “Do you want to debate it, Sachs?
Do
you? Fair enough. ‘Cowardly,’ you say. That leads us to Sir Thomas Browne: ‘When life is more terrible than death, it’s the truest valor to live.’ Courage in the face of insurmountable adversity . . . A classic argument in favor of living. But if that’s true then why anesthetize patients before surgery? Why sell aspirin? Why fix broken arms? Why is Prozac the most prescribed medicine in America? Sorry, but there’s nothing intrinsically good about pain.”

“But you’re not in pain.”

“And how do you define pain, Sachs? Maybe the absence of all feeling can be pain too.”

“You can contribute so much. Look at all you know. All the forensics, all the history.”

“The social-contribution argument. That’s a popular one.” He glanced at Berger but the medico remained silent. Rhyme saw his interest dip to the bone sitting on the table—the pale disk of spinal column. He picked it up, kneaded it in his cuffed hands. He was a former orthopedics man, Rhyme recalled.

He continued to Sachs, “But who says we should contribute anything to life? Besides, the corollary is I might contribute something bad. I might cause some harm too. To myself or someone else.”

“That’s what life is.”

Rhyme smiled. “But I’m choosing death, not life.”

Sachs looked uneasy as she thought hard. “It’s just . . . death isn’t natural. Life is.”

“No? Freud’d disagree with you. He gave up on the pleasure principle and came to feel that there was another force—a non-erotic primary aggression, he called it. Working to unbind the connections we build in life. Our own destruction’s a perfectly natural force. Everything dies; what’s more natural than that?”

Again she worried a portion of her scalp.

“All right,” she said. “Life’s more of a challenge to you than most people. But I thought . . . everything I’ve seen about you tells me you’re somebody who likes challenges.”

“Challenges? Let me tell you about challenges. I was on a ventilator for a year. See the tracheostomy scar on my neck? Well, through positive-pressure breathing exercises—and the greatest willpower I could muster—I managed to get off the machine. In fact I’ve got lungs like nobody’s business. They’re as strong as yours. In a C4 quad that’s one for the books, Sachs. It consumed my life for eight months. Do you understand what I’m saying? Eight months just to handle a basic animal function. I’m not talking about painting the Sistine Chapel or playing the violin. I’m talking about fucking
breathing.
”

“But you could get better. Next year, they might find a cure.”

“No. Not next year. Not in ten years.”

“You don’t know that. They must be doing research—”

“Sure they are. Want to know what? I’m an expert. Transplanting embryonic nerve tissue onto damaged tissue to promote axonal regeneration.” These words tripped easily from his handsome lips. “No significant effect. Some doctors are chemically treating the affected areas to create an environment where cells can regenerate. No significant effect—not in advanced species. Lower forms of life show pretty good success. If I were a frog I’d be walking again. Well, hopping.”

“So there
are
people working on it?” Sachs asked.

“Sure. But no one expects any breakthroughs for twenty, thirty years.”

“If they were expected,” she shot back, “then they wouldn’t be breakthroughs, now would they?”

Rhyme laughed. She was good.

Sachs tossed the veil of red hair from her eyes and said, “Your career was law enforcement, remember. Suicide’s illegal.”

“It’s a sin too,” he responded. “The Dakota Indians believed that the ghosts of those who committed suicide had to drag around the tree they’d hanged themselves from for all eternity. Did that stop suicide? Nope. They just used small trees.”

“Tell you what, Rhyme. Here’s my last argument.” She nodded at Berger, grabbed the cuff chain. “I’m taking him in and booking him. Refute
that
one.”

“Lincoln,” Berger said uneasily, panic in his eyes.

Sachs took the doctor by the shoulder and led him to the door. “No,” he said. “Please. Don’t do this.”

As Sachs opened the door Rhyme called out, “Sachs, before you do that, answer me something.”

She paused. One hand on the knob.

“One question.”

She looked back.

“Have you ever wanted to? Kill yourself?”

She unlocked the door with a loud snap.

He said, “Answer me!”

Sachs didn’t open the door. She stood with her back to him. “No. Never.”

“Are you happy with your life?”

“As much as anybody.”

“You’re never depressed?”

“I didn’t say that. I said I’ve never wanted to kill myself.”

“You like to drive, you were telling me. People who like to drive like to drive fast. You do, don’t you?”

“Yes. Sometimes.”

“What’s the fastest you’ve done?”

“I don’t know.”

“Over eighty?”

A dismissing smile. “Yes.”

“Over a hundred?”

She gestured upward with her thumb.

“One ten? One twenty?” he asked, smiling in astonishment.

“Clocked at 168.”

“My, Sachs, you
are
impressive. Well, driving that fast, didn’t you think that maybe, just maybe, something might happen. A rod or axle or something would break, a tire would blow, a spot of oil on the road?”

“It was pretty safe. I’m not crazy.”

“
Pretty
safe. But driving as fast as a small plane, well, that’s not
completely
safe, now, is it?”

“You’re leading the witness.”

“No, I’m not. Stay with me. You drive that fast, you have to accept that you could have an accident and die, right?”

“Maybe,” she conceded.

Berger, cuffed hands in front of him, looked on nervously, as he kneaded the pale yellow disk of spinal column.

“So you’ve moved close to that line, right? Ah, you know what I’m talking about. I know you do—the line between the
risk
of dying and the
certainty
of dying. See, Sachs, if you carry the dead around with you it’s a very short step over that line. A short step to joining them.”

She lowered her head and her face went completely still, as the curtain of hair obscured her eyes.

“Giving up the dead,” he whispered, praying she wouldn’t leave with Berger, knowing he was so very close to pushing her over the edge. “I touched a nerve there. How much of you wants to follow the dead? More than a little, Sachs. Oh, much more than a little.”

She was hesitating. He knew he was near her heart.

She turned angrily to Berger, gripped him by the cuffs. “Come on.” Pushed through the door.

Rhyme called, “You know what I’m saying, don’t you?”

Again she stopped.

“Sometimes . . . things happen, Sachs. Sometimes you just can’t be what you ought to be, you can’t have what you ought to have. And life changes. Maybe just a little, maybe a lot. And at some point it just isn’t worth the fight to try to fix what went wrong.”

He watched them standing, motionless, in the doorway. The room was utterly silent. She turned and looked back at him.

“Death cures loneliness,” Rhyme continued. “It cures tension. It cures the itch.” Just like she’d glanced at his legs earlier he now gave a fast look at her torn fingers.

She released Berger’s cuffs and walked to the window. Tears glistened on her cheeks in the yellow radiance from the streetlights outside.

“Sachs, I’m tired,” he said earnestly. “I can’t tell you how tired I am. You know how hard life is to start with. Pile on a whole mountainful of . . . burdens. Washing, eating, crapping, making phone calls, buttoning shirts, scratching your nose . . . Then pile on a thousand more. And more after that.”

He fell silent. After a long moment she said, “I’ll make a deal with you.”

“What’s that?”

She nodded toward the poster. “Eight twenty-three’s got that mother and her little girl . . . Help us save them. Just them. If you do that I’ll give him an hour alone with you.” She glanced at Berger. “Provided he gets the hell out of town afterwards.”

Rhyme shook his head. “Sachs, if I have a stroke, if I can’t communicate . . .”

“If that happens,” she said evenly, “even if you can’t say a word, the deal still holds. I’ll make sure you have one hour together.” She crossed her arms, spread her feet again, in what was now Rhyme’s favorite image of Amelia Sachs. He wished he could’ve seen her on the railroad tracks that morning, stopping the train. She said, “That’s the best I’ll do.”

A moment passed. Rhyme nodded. “Okay. It’s a deal.” To Berger he said, “Monday?”

“Okay, Lincoln. Fair enough.” Berger, still shaken, watched Sachs cautiously as she unlocked the cuffs. Afraid, it seemed, that she might change her mind. When he was free he walked quickly to the door. He realized he was still holding the vertebra and returned, set it—almost reverently—next to Rhyme on the crime scene report for the first murder that morning.

“Happier’n hogs in red Virginia mud,” Sachs remarked, slouching in the squeaky rattan chair. Meaning Sellitto and Polling, after she’d told them that Rhyme had agreed to remain on the case for another day.

“Polling particularly,” she said. “I thought the little guy was going to hug me. Don’t tell him I called him that. How are you feeling? You look better.” She sipped some Scotch and set the glass back on the bedside table, beside Rhyme’s tumbler.

“Not bad.”

Thom was changing the bedclothes. “You were sweating like a fountain,” he said.

“But only above my neck,” Rhyme pointed out. “Sweating, I mean.”

“That right?” Sachs asked.

“Yep. That’s how it works. Thermostat’s busted below that. I never need any axial deodorant.”

“Axial?”

“Pit,” Rhyme snorted. “
Armpit.
My first aide never said armpit. He’d say, ‘I’m going to elevate you by your axials, Lincoln.’ Oh, and: ‘If you feel like regurgitating go right ahead, Lincoln.’ He called himself a ‘caregiver.’
The word was actually on his résumé. I have no idea why I hired him. We’re very superstitious, Sachs. We think calling something by a different name is going to change it. Unsub. Perpetrator. But that aide, he was just a nurse who was up to his own armpits in piss ’n’ puke. Right, Thom? Nothing to be ashamed of. It’s an honorable profession. Messy but honorable.”