The Bone Collector (9 page)

Tammie Jean Colfax felt all the sweat in her body run down her face and chest and arms as she struggled to saw the handcuff links back and forth on the rusty bolt. Her wrists were numb but it seemed to her that she was wearing through some of the chain.

She paused, exhausted, and twitched her arms this way and that to keep a cramp at bay. She listened again. It was, she thought, the sound of workmen tightening bolts and hammering parts into place. Final taps of hammers. She imagined they were just finishing up their job on the pipe and thinking of going home.

Don’t go, she cried to herself. Don’t leave me. As long as the men were there, working, she was safe.

A final bang, then ringing silence.

Git on outa thayr, girl. G’on.

Mamma . . .

T.J. cried for several minutes, thinking of her family back in Eastern Tennessee. Her nostrils clogged but as she began to choke she blew her nose violently, felt an explosion of tears and mucus. Then she was breathing again. It gave her confidence. Strength. She began to saw once more.

“I appreciate the urgency, detective. But I don’t know how I can help you. We use bolts all over the city. Oil lines, gas lines . . .”

“All right,” Rhyme said tersely and asked the Con Ed supervisor at the company’s headquarters on Fourteenth Street, “Do you insulate wiring with asbestos?”

A hesitation.

“We’ve cleaned up ninety percent of that,” the woman said defensively. “Ninety-
five.
”

People could be so irritating. “I understand that. I just need to know if there’s still any asbestos used for insulation.”

“No,” she said adamantly. “Well, never for electricity. Just the steam and that’s the smallest percentage of our service.”

Steam!

It was the least-known and the scariest of the city’s utilities. Con Ed heated water to 1,000 degrees then shot it through a hundred-mile network of pipes running under Manhattan. The blistering steam itself was superheated—about 380 degrees—and rocketed through the city at seventy-five miles an hour.

Rhyme now recalled an article in the paper. “Didn’t you have a break in the line last week?”

“Yessir. But there was no asbestos leak. That site had been cleaned years ago.”

“But there
is
asbestos around some of your pipes in the system downtown?”

She hesitated. “Well . . .”

“Where was the break?” Rhyme continued quickly.

“Broadway. A block north of Chambers.”

“Wasn’t there an article in the
Times
about it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Yes.”

“And did the article mention asbestos?”

“It did,” she admitted, “but it just said that in the past asbestos contamination’d been a problem.”

“The pipe that broke, was it . . . does it cross Pearl Street farther south?”

“Well, let me see. Yes, it does. At Hanover Street. On the north side.”

He pictured T.J. Colfax, the woman with the thin fingers and long nails, about to die.

“And the steam’s going back on at three?”

“That’s right. Any minute now.”

“It can’t!” Rhyme shouted. “Somebody’s tampered with the line. You can’t turn that steam back on!”

Cooper looked up uneasily from his microscope.

The supervisor said, “Well, I don’t know . . .”

Rhyme barked to Thom, “Call Lon, tell him she’s in a basement at Hanover and Pearl. The north side.” He told him about the steam. “Get the fire department there too. Heat-protective outfits.”

Rhyme shouted into the speakerphone. “Call the work
crews! Now! They can’t turn that steam back on. They
can’t!
” He repeated the words absently, detesting his exquisite imagination, which showed, in an endless loop, the woman’s flesh growing pink then red then splitting apart under the fierce clouds of sputtering white steam.

In the station wagon the radio crackled. It was three minutes to three by Sachs’s watch. She answered the call.

“Portable 5885, K—”

“Forget the officialese, Amelia,” Rhyme said. “We don’t have time.”

“I—”

“We think we know where she is. Hanover and Pearl.”

She glanced over her shoulder and saw dozens of ESU officers running flat-out toward an old building.

“Do you want me to—”

“They’ll look for her. You have to get ready to work the scene.”

“But I can help—”

“No. I want you to go to the back of the station wagon. There’s a suitcase in it labeled zero two. Take it with you. And in a small black case there’s a PoliLight. You saw one in my room. Mel was using it. Take that too. In the suitcase marked zero three you’ll find a headset and stalk mike. Plug it into your Motorola and get over to the building where the officers are. Call me back when you’re rigged. Channel thirty-seven. I’ll be on a landline but you’ll be patched through to me.”

Channel thirty-seven. The special ops citywide frequency. The priority frequency.

“What?—” she asked. But the dead radio did not respond.

She had a long black halogen flashlight on her utility belt so she left the bulky twelve-volter in the back of the wagon and grabbed the PoliLight and the heavy suitcase. It must have weighed fifty pounds. Just what my damn joints need. She adjusted her grip and, teeth clamped together against the pain, hurried toward the intersection.

Sellitto, breathless, ran to the building. Banks joined them.

“You hear?” the older detective asked. Sachs nodded.

“This is it?” she asked.

Sellitto nodded toward the alley. “He had to take her in this way. The lobby’s got a guard station.” They now trotted down the shadowy, cobblestoned canyon, steaming hot, smelling of piss and garbage. Battered blue Dumpsters sat nearby.

“There,” Sellitto shouted. “Those doors.”

The cops fanned out, running. Three of the four doors were locked tight from the inside.

The fourth had been jimmied open and was now chained shut. The chain and lock were new.

“This’s it!” Sellitto reached for the door, hesitated. Thinking probably about fingerprints. Then he grabbed the handle and yanked. It opened a few inches but the chain held tight. He sent three of the uniforms around to the front to get into the basement from the inside. One cop worked a cobblestone loose from the alley floor and began pounding on the door handle. A half-dozen blows, a dozen. He winced as his hand struck the door; blood gushed from a torn finger.

A fireman ran up with a Halligan tool—a combination pickax and crowbar. He rammed the end into the chain and ripped the padlock open. Sellitto looked at Sachs expectantly. She gazed back.

“Well, go, officer!” he barked.

“What?”

“Didn’t he tell you?”

“Who?”

“Rhyme.”

Hell, she’d forgotten to plug in the headset. She fumbled it, finally got it plugged in. Heard: “Amelia, where—”

“I’m here.”

“Are you at the building?”

“Yes.”

“Go inside. They shut the steam off but I don’t know if it was in time. Take a medic and one ESU trooper. Go to the boiler room. You’ll probably see her right
away, the Colfax woman. Walk to her but not directly, not in a straight line from the door to her. I don’t want you to disturb any footprints he might’ve left. Understand?”

“Yes.” She nodded emphatically, not thinking that he couldn’t see her. Gesturing the medic and an Emergency Services trooper after her, Sachs stepped forward into the murky corridor, shadows everywhere, the groan of machinery, dripping water.

“Amelia,” Rhyme said.

“Yes.”

“We were talking about ambush before. From what I know about him now I don’t think that’s the case. He’s not there, Amelia. That would be illogical. But keep your shooting hand free.”

Illogical.

“Okay.”

“Now go! Fast.”

A
murky cavern. Hot, black, damp.

The three of them moved quickly down the filthy hallway toward the only doorway Sachs could see. A sign said
BOILER ROOM
. She was behind the ESU officer, who wore full body armor and helmet. The medic was in the rear.

Her right knuckles and shoulder throbbed from the weight of the suitcase. She shifted it to her left hand, nearly dropped it and readjusted her grip. They continued to the door.

There, the SWAT officer pushed inside and swung his machine gun around the dimly lit room. A flashlight was attached to the barrel and it cast a line of pale light in the shreds of steam. Sachs smelled moisture, mold. And another scent, loathsome.

Click.
“Amelia?” The staticky burst of Rhyme’s voice scared the absolute hell out of her. “Where are you, Amelia?”

With a shaking hand she turned down the volume.

“Inside,” she gasped.

“Is she alive?”

Sachs rocked on her feet, staring at the sight. She squinted, not sure at first what she was seeing. Then she understood.

“Oh, no.” Whispering. Feeling the nausea.

The sickening boiled-meat smell wafted around her. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Neither was the sight of the woman’s skin, bright red, almost orange, peeling off in huge scales. The face completely stripped of skin. No, what brought the dread home was the angle of T.J. Colfax’s body, the impossible twisting of her limbs and torso
as she’d tried to get away from the spray of ravaging heat.

He hoped the vic was dead. For his sake. . . .

“Is she alive?” Rhyme repeated.

“No,” Sachs whispered. “I don’t see how . . . No.”

“Is the room secure?”

Sachs glanced at the officer, who’d heard the transmission and nodded.

“Scene secure.”

Rhyme told her, “I want the ESU trooper out then you and the medic go check on her.”

Sachs gagged once on the smell and forced herself to control the reflex. She and the medic walked in an oblique path to the pipe. He bent unemotionally forward and felt the woman’s neck. He shook his head.

“Amelia?” Rhyme asked.

Her second body in the line of duty. Both in one day.

The medic said, “DCDS.”

Sachs nodded, said formally into the mike, “We have a deceased, confirmed dead at the scene.”

“Scalded to death?” Rhyme asked.

“Looks like it.”

“Tied to the wall?”

“A pipe. Handcuffed, hands behind. Feet tied with clothesline. Duct-tape gag. He opened the steam pipe. She was only a couple of feet from it. God.”

Rhyme continued, “Back the medic out the way you came. To the door. Watch where you put your feet.”

She did this, staring at the body. How could the skin be so red? Like a boiled crab shell.

“All right, Amelia. You’re going to work the scene. Open the suitcase.”

She said nothing. Kept staring.

“Amelia, are you at the door? . . . Amelia?”

“
What?
” she shouted.

“Are you at the door?”

His voice was so fucking calm. So different from the snide, demanding voice of the man she remembered in the bedroom. Calm . . . and something else. She didn’t know what.

“Yes, I’m at the door. You know, this is crazy.”

“Utterly insane,” Rhyme agreed, almost cheerfully. “Is the suitcase open?”

She flipped up the lid and glanced inside. Pliers and forceps, a flex mirror on a handle, cotton balls, eyedroppers, pinking sheers, pipettes, spatulas, scalpels . . .

What
is
all this?

. . . a Dustbuster, cheesecloth, envelopes, sifting screens, brushes, scissors, plastic and paper bags, metal cans, bottles—5 percent nitric acid, ninhydrin, silicone, iodide, friction-ridge-printing supplies.

Impossible. Into the mike she said, “I don’t think you believed me, detective. I really
don’t
know anything about CS work.”

Eyes on the woman’s ruined body. Water dripped off her peeled nose. A bit of white—bone—showed through the cheek. And her face was drawn into an anguished grin. Just like the vic that morning.

“I believed you, Amelia,” he said dismissively. “Now, the case is open?” He was calm and he sounded . . . what? Yes,
that
was the tone. Seductive. He sounds like a lover.

I hate him, she thought. It’s wrong to hate a cripple. But I fucking hate him.

“You’re in the basement, right?”

“Yessir.”

“Listen, you’ve got to call me Lincoln. We’re going to know each other very well by the time this is over.”

Which is gonna be about sixty minutes, tops.

“You’ll find some rubber bands in the suitcase, if I’m not mistaken.”

“I see some.”

“Put them around your shoes. Where the ball of your foot is. If there’s any confusion as to footprints you’ll know which ones are yours.”

“Okay, done.”

“Take some evidence bags and envelopes. Put a dozen of each in your pocket. Can you use chopsticks?”

“What did you say?”

“You live in the city, right? You ever go to Mott Street? For General Tsao’s chicken? Cold noodles with sesame paste?”

Her gorge rose at the talk of food. She refused to glance at the woman dangling in front of her.

“I can use chopsticks,” she said icily.

“Look in the suitcase. I’m not sure you’ll find them. They kept them there when I was running scenes.”

“I don’t see any.”

“Well, you’ll find some pencils. Put those in your pocket. Now you’re going to walk a grid. Cover every inch. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“First tell me what you see.”

“One big room. Maybe twenty by thirty. Full of rusted pipes. Cracked concrete floor. Walls’re brick. Mold.”

“Any boxes? Anything on the floor?”

“No, it’s empty. Except for the pipes, oil tanks, the boiler. There’s the sand—the shells, a pile of it spilling out of a crack in the wall. And there’s some gray stuff too—”

“ ‘Stuff’?” he jumped. “I don’t recognize that word. What’s ‘
stuff
’?”

A burst of anger tore through her. She calmed and said, “It’s the asbestos but not wadded up like this morning. It’s in crumbling sheets.”

“Good. Now, the first sweep. You’re looking for footprints and any staged clues that he’s left for us.”

“You think he left more?”

“Oh, I’ll betcha,” Rhyme said. “Put on the goggles and use the PoliLight. Keep it low. Grid the room. Every inch. Get going. You know how to walk a grid?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

She bristled. “I don’t need to be tested.”

“Ah, humor me. How?”

“Back and forth in one direction, then back and forth in the perpendicular direction.”

“Each step, no more than one foot in length.”

She hadn’t known that. “I know,” she said.

“Go ahead.”

The PoliLight flashed on with an eerie, otherworldy glow. She knew it was something called an ALS—alternative light source—and that it made fingerprints and
semen and blood and some shoeprints fluoresce. The brilliant bile-green light made shadows dance and jump and more than once she nearly drew down on a dark form that turned out to be a mere phantom of darkness.

“Amelia?” Rhyme’s voice was sharp. She jumped again.

“Yes? What?”

“Do you see any footprints?”

She continued to stare at the floor. “I, uh, no. I see streaks in the dust. Or something.” She cringed at the careless word. But Rhyme, unlike Peretti that morning, paid no attention. He said, “So. He swept up afterwards.”

She was surprised. “Yeah, that’s it! Broom marks. How’d you know?”

Rhyme laughed—a jarring sound to Sachs in this rank tomb—and he said, “He was smart enough to cover his tracks this morning; no reason to stop now. Oh, he’s good, this boy is. But we’re good too. Keep going.”

Sachs bent over, her joints on fire, and began the search. She covered every square foot of the floor. “Nothing here. Nothing at all.”

He picked up on the note of finality in her voice. “You’ve only just started, Amelia. Crime scenes are three-dimensional. Remember that. What you mean is there’s nothing on the floor. Now search the walls. Start with the spot farthest away from the steam and cover every inch.”

She slowly circled the horrible marionette in the center of the room. She thought of a Maypole game she’d played at some Brooklyn street feast when she was six or seven, as her father proudly took home movies. Circling slowly. It was an empty room and yet there were a thousand different places to search.

Hopeless . . . Impossible.

But it wasn’t. On a ledge, about six feet above the floor, she found the next set of clues. She barked a fast laugh. “Got something here.”

“In a cluster?”

“Yes. A big splinter of dark wood.”

“Chopsticks.”

“What?” she asked.

“The pencils. Use them to pick it up. Is it wet?”

“Everything in here’s wet.”

“Sure, it would be. The steam. Put it in a paper evidence bag. Plastic keeps the moisture in and in this heat bacteria’ll destroy the trace evidence. What else is there?” he asked eagerly.

“It’s, I don’t know, hairs, I think. Short, trimmed. A little pile of them.”

“Loose or attached to skin?”

“Loose.”

“There’s a role of two-inch tape in the suitcase. 3M. Pick them up with that.”

Sachs lifted most of the hairs, placed them in a paper envelope. She studied the ledge around the hairs. “I see some stains. Looks like rust or blood.” She thought to hit the spot with the PoliLight. “They’re fluorescing.”

“Can you do a presumptive blood test?”

“No.”

“Let’s just assume it’s blood. Could it be the victim’s?”

“Doesn’t seem to be. It’s too far away and there’s no trail to her body.”

“Does it lead anywhere?”

“Looks like it. To a brick in the wall. It’s loose. No prints on it. I’m going to move it aside. I—oh, Jesus!” Sachs gasped and stumbled back a foot or two, nearly fell.

“What?” Rhyme asked.

She eased forward, staring in disbelief.

“Amelia. Talk to me.”

“It’s a bone. A bloody bone.”

“Human?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “How would I . . . ? I don’t know.”

“Recent kill?”

“Looks like it. About two inches long and two in diameter. There’s blood and flesh on it. It’s been sawn off. Jesus. Who the fuck’d do something—”

“Don’t get rattled.”

“What if he got it from another victim?”

“Then we better find ’im pretty damn soon, Amelia. Bag it. Plastic for the bone.”

As she did this, he asked, “Any other staged clues?” He sounded concerned.

“No.”

“That’s all? Hairs, a bone and a splinter of wood. He’s not making it very easy, is he?”

“Should I bring it back to your . . . office?”

Rhyme was laughing. “He’d like us to call it quits. But no. We’re not through yet. Let’s find out a little more about Unsub 823.”

“But there’s nothing here.”

“Oh, yes there is, Amelia. There’s his address and his phone number and his description and his hopes and aspirations. They’re all around you.”

She was furious at his professor’s tone and remained silent.

“You have the flashlight?”

“I’ve got my issue halogen—”

“No,” he grumbled. “Issue lights are too narrow. You need the twelve-volt broad beam.”

“Well, I didn’t bring it,” she snapped. “Should I go back and get it?”

“No time. Check out the pipes.”

She searched for ten minutes, climbing up to the ceiling, and with the powerful light she illuminated spots that perhaps hadn’t been lit in fifty years. “No, I don’t see a thing.”

“Go back to the door. Hurry.”

She hesitated and returned.

“Okay, I’m here.”

“Now. Close your eyes. What do you smell?”

“Smell? Did you say smell?” Was he crazy?

“Always smell the air at a crime scene. It can tell you a hundred things.”

She kept her eyes wide and breathed in. She said, “Well, I don’t
know
what I smell.”

“That’s not an acceptable answer.”

She exhaled in exasperation and hoped the hiss was coming through his telephone loud and clear. She jammed her lids closed, inhaled, fought the nausea again.
“Mold, mustiness. The smell of hot water from the steam.”

“You don’t know where it’s from. Just describe it.”

“Hot water. The woman’s perfume.”