Jeffery Deaver - The Bone Collector

Jerry Banks was back too and his pale-blue eyes were on Rhyme’s; the bed and its control panel no longer interested him.

Sellitto frowned. “But what story’s the unsub tryin’ to sell us?”

At crime scenes, especially homicides, perps often monkeyed with PE to lead investigators astray. Some were clever about it but most weren’t. Like the husband who beat his wife to death then tried to make it look like a robbery – though he only thought to steal her jewelry, leaving his gold bracelets and diamond pinkie ring on his dresser.

“That’s what’s so interesting,” Rhyme continued. “It’s not about what happened, Lon. It’s what’s going to happen.”

Sellitto the skeptic asked, “What makes you think so?”

“The scraps of paper. They mean three o’clock today.”

“Today?”

“Look!” Nodding toward the report, an impatient jerk of his head.

“That one scrap says three p.m.,” Banks pointed out. “But the other’s a page number. Why do you think it means today?”

“It’s not a page number.” Rhyme lifted an eyebrow. They still didn’t get it. “Logic! The only reason to leave clues was to tell us something. If that’s the case then 823 has to be something more than just a page number because there’s no clue as to what book it’s from. Well, if it’s not a page number what is it?”

Silence.

Exasperated, Rhyme snapped, “It’s a date! Eight twenty-three. August twenty-third. Something’s going to happen at three p.m. today. Now, the ball of fiber? It’s asbestos.”

“Asbestos?” Sellitto asked.

“In the report? The formula? It’s hornblende. Silicon dioxide. That is asbestos. Why Peretti sent it to the FBI is beyond me. So. We have asbestos on a railbed where there shouldn’t be any. And we’ve got an iron bolt with decaying oxidation on the head but none on the threads. That means it’s been bolted someplace for a long time and just recently removed.”

“Maybe it was overturned in the dirt,” Banks offered. “When he was digging the grave?”

Rhyme said, “No. In Midtown the bedrock’s close to the surface, which means so are the aquifers. All the soil from Thirty-fourth Street up to Harlem contains enough moisture to oxidize iron within a few days. It’d be completely rusted, not just the head, if it’d been buried. No, it was unbolted from someplace, carried to the scene and left there. And that sand… Come on, what’s white sand doing on a train roadbed in Midtown Manhattan? The soil composition there is loam, silt, granite, hardpan and soft clay.”

Banks started to speak but Rhyme cut him off abruptly. “And what were these things doing all clustered together? Oh, he’s telling us something, our unsub. You bet he is. Banks, what about the access door?”

“You were right,” the young man said. “They found one about a hundred feet north of the grave. Broken open from the inside. You were also right about the prints. Zip. And no tire tracks or trace evidence either.”

A lock of dirty asbestos, a bolt, a torn newspaper…

“The scene?” Rhyme asked. “Intact?”

“Released.”

Lincoln Rhyme, the crip with the killer lungs, exhaled a loud hiss of air, disgusted. “Who made that mistake?”

“I don’t know,” Sellitto said lamely. “Watch commander probably.”

It was Peretti, Rhyme understood. “Then you’re stuck with what you’ve got.”

Whatever clues as to who the kidnapper was and what he had in mind were either in the report or gone forever, trampled under the feet of cops and spectators and railroad workers. Spadework – canvassing the neighborhood around the scene, interviewing witnesses, cultivating leads, traditional detective work – was done leisurely. But crime scenes themselves had to be worked “like mad lightning,” Rhyme would command his officers in IRD. And he’d fired more than a few CSU techs who hadn’t moved fast enough for his taste.

“Peretti ran the scene himself?” he asked.

“Peretti and a full complement.”

“Full complement?” Rhyme asked wryly. “What’s a full complement?”

Sellitto looked at Banks, who said, “Four techs from Photo, four from Latents. Eight searchers. ME tour doctor.”

“ Eight crime scene searchers?”

There’s a bell curve in processing a crime scene. Two officers are considered the most efficient for a single homicide. By yourself you can miss things; three and up you tend to miss more things. Lincoln Rhyme had always searched scenes alone. He let the Latents people do the print work and Photo do the snap-shooting and videoing. But he always walked the grid by himself.

Peretti. Rhyme had hired the young man, son of a wealthy politico, six, seven years ago and he’d proved a good, by-the-book CS detective. Crime Scene is considered a plum and there’s always a long waiting list to get into the unit. Rhyme took perverse pleasure in thinning the ranks of applicants by offering them a look at the family album – a collection of particularly gruesome crime-scene photos. Some officers would blanch, some would snicker. Some handed the book back, eyebrows raised, as if asking, So what? And those were the ones that Lincoln Rhyme would hire. Peretti’d been one of them.

Sellitto had asked a question. Rhyme found the detective looking at him. He repeated, “You’ll work with us on this, won’t you, Lincoln?”

“Work with you?” He coughed a laugh. “I can’t, Lon. No. I’m just spitting out a few ideas for you. You’ve got it. Run with it. Thom, get me Berger.” He was now regretting the decision to postpone his tête-à-tête with the death doctor. Maybe it wasn’t too late. He couldn’t bear the thought of waiting another day or two for his passing . And Monday… He didn’t want to die on Monday. It seemed common.

“Say please.”

“Thom!”

“All right,” the young aide said, hands raised in surrender.

Rhyme glanced at the spot on his bedside table where the bottle, the pills and the plastic bag had sat – so very close, but like everything else in this life wholly out of Lincoln Rhyme’s reach.

Sellitto made a phone call, cocked his head as the call was answered. He identified himself. The clock on the wall clicked to twelve-thirty.

“Yessir.” The detective’s voice sank into a respectful whisper. The mayor, Rhyme guessed. “About the kidnapping at Kennedy. I’ve been talking to Lincoln Rhyme… Yessir, he has some thoughts on it.” The detective wandered to the window, staring blankly at the falcon and trying to explain the inexplicable to the man running the most mysterious city on earth. He hung up and turned to Rhyme.

“He and the chief both want you, Linc. They asked specifically. Wilson himself.”

Rhyme laughed. “Lon, look around the room. Look at me! Does it seem like I could run a case?”

“Not a normal case, no. But this isn’t a very normal one now, is it?”

“I’m sorry. I just don’t have time. That doctor. The treatment. Thom, did you call him?”

“Haven’t yet. Will in just a minute.”

“Now! Do it now!”

Thom looked at Sellitto. Walked to the door, stepped outside. Rhyme knew he wasn’t going to call. Bugger the world.

Banks touched a dot of razor scar and blurted, “Just give us some thoughts. Please. This unsub, you said he -”

Sellitto waved him silent. He kept his eyes on Rhyme.

Oh, you prick, Rhyme thought. The old silence. How we hate it and hurry to fill it. How many witnesses and suspects had caved under hot, thick silences just like this. Well, he and Sellitto had been a good team. Rhyme knew evidence and Lon Sellitto knew people.

The two musketeers. And if there was a third it was the purity of unsmiling science.