The Bone Collector (11 page)

S
omething 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, flotation 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 Blaine 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. Blaine 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.

Irgendwas 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.