Jeffery Deaver - The Bone Collector

She shrugged but far too nonchalantly. “Nothing.”

“No?”

And where did she keep her feelings? he wondered, recalling something Blaine had said once, seeing a gorgeous woman walking down Fifth Avenue: The more beautiful the package , the harder it is to unwrap .

“I don’t know… All right, I remember one thing I thought. But it doesn’t mean anything. It’s not, like a professional observation.”

Professional …

It’s a bitch when you set your own standards, ain’t it, Amelia?

“Let’s hear it,” he said to her.

“When you were having me pretend to be him? And I found where he stood to look back at her?”

“Keep going.”

“Well, I thought…” For a moment it seemed that tears threatened to fill her beautiful eyes. They were iridescent blue, he noticed. Instantly she controlled herself. “I wondered, did she have a dog. The Colfax woman.”

“A dog? Why’d you wonder that?”

She hesitated a moment then said, “This friend of mine… a few years ago. We were talking about getting a dog when, well, if we moved in together. I always wanted one. A collie. It was funny. That was the kind my friend wanted too. Even before we knew each other.”

“A dog.” Rhyme’s heart popped like beetles on a summer screen door. “And?”

“I thought that woman -”

“T.J.,” Rhyme said.

“T.J.,” Sachs continued. “I just thought how sad it was – if she had any pets she wouldn’t be coming home to them and playing with them anymore. I didn’t think about her boyfriends or husbands. I thought about pets.”

“But why that thought? Dogs, pets. Why?”

“I don’t know why.”

Silence.

Finally she said, “I suppose seeing her tied up there… And I was thinking how he stood to the side to watch her. Just standing between the oil tanks. It was like he was watching an animal in a pen.”

Rhyme glanced at the sine waves on the GC-MS computer screen.

Animals…

Nitrogen…

“Shit!” Rhyme blurted.

Heads turned toward him.

“It’s shit.” Staring at the screen.

“Yes, of course!” Cooper said, replastering his strands of hair. “All the nitrogen. It’s manure. And it’s old manure at that.”

Suddenly Lincoln Rhyme had one of those moments he’d reflected on earlier. The thought just burst into his mind. The image was of lambs.

Sellitto asked, “Lincoln, you okay?”

A lamb, sauntering down the street.

It was like he was watching an animal …

“Thom,” Sellitto was saying, “is he all right?”

… in a pen .

Rhyme could picture the carefree animal. A bell around its neck, a dozen others behind.

“ Lincoln,” Thom said urgently. “You’re sweating. Are you all right?”

“Shhhhh,” the criminalist ordered.

He felt the tickle running down his face. Inspiration and heart failure; the symptoms are oddly similar. Think, think…

Bones, wooden posts and manure…

“Yes!” he whispered. A Judas lamb, leading the flock to slaughter.

“Stockyards,” Rhyme announced to the room. “She’s being held in a stockyard.”

“THERE ARE NO STOCKYARDS IN MANHATTAN.”

“The past , Lon,” Rhyme reminded him. “Old things turn him on. Get his juices flowing. We should think of old stockyards. The older the better.”

In researching his book, Rhyme had read about a murder that gentleman mobster Owney Madden was accused of committing: gunning down a rival bootlegger outside his Hell’s Kitchen townhouse. Madden was never convicted – not for this particular murder, at any rate. He took the stand and, in his melodious British-accented voice, lectured the courtroom about betrayal. “This entire case has been trumped up by my rivals, who are speaking lies about me. Your honor, do you know what they remind me of? In my neighborhood, in Hell’s Kitchen, the flocks of lambs were led through the streets from the stockyards to the slaughterhouses on Forty-second Street. And you know who led them? Not a dog, not a man. But one of theirs. A Judas lamb with a bell around its neck. He’d lead the flock up that ramp. But then he’d stop and the rest of them would go on inside. I’m an innocent lamb and those witnesses against me, they’re the Judases.”

Rhyme continued. “Call the library, Banks. They must have a historian.”

The young detective flipped open his cellular phone and called. His voice dropped a tone or two as he spoke. After he explained what they needed he stopped speaking and gazed at the map of the city.

“Well?” Rhyme asked.

“They’re finding someone. They’ve got -” He lowered his head as someone answered and the young man repeated his request. He started nodding and announced to the room, “I’ve got two locations… no, three.”

UNSUB 823

Appearance

•Caucasian male, slight build

•Dark clothing•Old gloves, reddish kidskin

•Aftershave; to cover up other scent?

•Ski mask? Navy blue?

Residence

•Prob. has safe house

Vehicle

•Yellow Cab

Other

•knows CS proc.

•possibly has record

•knows FR prints

•gun =.32 Colt

•Ties vics w/ unusual knots

•“Old” appeals to him

“Who is it?” Rhyme barked. “Who’re you talking to?”

“The curator of the city archives… He says there’ve been three major stockyard areas in Manhattan. One on the West Side, around Sixtieth Street… One in Harlem in the 1930s or ’40s. And on the Lower East Side during the Revolution.”

“We need addresses, Banks. Addresses!”

Listening.

“He’s not sure.”

“Why can’t he look it up? Tell him to look it up!”

Banks responded, “He heard you, sir… He says, in what? Look them up in what? They didn’t have Yellow Pages back then. He’s looking at old -”

“Demographic maps of commercial neighborhoods without street names,” Rhyme groused. “Obviously. Have him guess .”

“That’s what he’s doing. He’s guessing.”

Rhyme called, “Well, we need him to guess fast .”

Banks listened, nodding.

“What, what, what, what?”

“Around Sixtieth Street and Tenth,” the young officer said. A moment later: “ Lexington near the Harlem River… And then… where the Delancey farm was. Is that near Delancey Street? -”

“Of course it is. From Little Italy all the way to the East River. Lots of territory. Miles . Can’t he narrow it down?”

“Around Catherine Street. Lafayette… Walker. He’s not sure.”

“Near the courthouses,” Sellitto said and told Banks, “Get Haumann’s teams moving. Divide ’ em up. Hit all three neighborhoods.”

The young detective made the call, then looked up. “What now?”

“We wait,” Rhyme said.

Sellitto muttered, “I fucking hate waiting.”

Sachs asked Rhyme, “Can I use your phone?”

Rhyme nodded toward the one on his bedside table.

She hesitated. “You have one in there?” She pointed to the hallway.

Rhyme nodded.

With perfect posture she walked out of the bedroom. In the hallway mirror he could see her, solemn, making the precious phone call. Who? he wondered. Boyfriend, husband? Day-care center? Why had she hesitated before mentioning her “friend” when she told them about the collie? There was a story behind that, Rhyme bet.

Whomever she was calling wasn’t there. He noticed her eyes turn to dark-blue pebbles when there was no answer. She looked up and caught Rhyme gazing at her in the dusty glass. She turned her back. The phone slipped to the cradle and she returned to his room.