Jeffery Deaver - The Bone Collector

Sachs continued, “This is all just a game to you, isn’t it? Monelle -”

“Who?”

Her eyes flared, “There! See? You don’t even remember her name. Monelle Gerger. The girl in the tunnel… she was just a part of the puzzle to you. There were rats crawling all over her and you said, ‘That’s their nature’? That’s their nature? She’s never going to be the same again and all you cared about was your precious evidence.”

“In living victims,” he droned, lecturing, “rodent wounds are always superficial. As soon as the first li’l critter drooled on her she needed rabies vaccine. What did a few more bites matter?”

“Why don’t we ask her opinion?” Sachs’s smile was different now. It had turned pernicious, like those of the nurses and therapy aides who hated crips. They walked around rehab wards with smiles like this. Well, he hadn’t been happy with the polite Amelia Sachs; he’d wanted the feisty one…

“Answer me something, Rhyme. Why did you really want me?”

“Thom, our guest has overstayed her welcome. Would you -?”

“Lincoln,” the aide began.

“Thom,” Rhyme snapped, “believe I asked you to do something.”

“Because I don’t know shit,” Sachs blurted. “That’s why! You didn’t want a real CS tech because then you wouldn’t be in charge. But me… you can send me here, send me there. I’ll do exactly what you want, and I won’t bitch and moan.”

“Ah, the troops mutiny…” Rhyme said, lifting his eyes to the ceiling.

“But I’m not one of the troops. I never wanted this in the first place.”

“I didn’t want it either. But here we are. In bed together. Well, one of us.” And he knew his cold smile was far, far icier than any she could muster.

“Why, you’re just a spoiled brat, Rhyme.”

“Hey, officer, time out here,” Sellitto barked.

But she kept going. “You can’t walk your crime scenes anymore and I’m sorry about that. But you’re risking an investigation just to massage your ego and I say fuck that.” She grabbed her Patrol hat and stormed out of the room.

He expected to hear a slamming door from downstairs, maybe breaking glass. But there was a faint click and then silence.

As Jerry Banks retrieved his watchbook and thumbed through it with more concentration than was needed, Sellitto said, “Lincoln, I’m sorry. I -”

“Nothing to it,” Rhyme said, yawning excessively in the false hope that it would calm his stinging heart. “Nothing at all.”

The cops stood beside the half-empty table for a few moments, difficult silence, then Cooper said, “Better get packed up.” He hefted a black ’scope case onto the table and began to unscrew an eyepiece with the loving care of a musician disassembling his saxophone.

“Well, Thom,” Rhyme said, “it’s after sunset. You know what that tells me? Bar’s open.”

Their war room was impressive. It beat Lincoln Rhyme’s bedroom hands down.

Half a floor at the federal building, three dozen agents, computers and electronic panels out of some Tom Clancy movie. The agents looked like lawyers or investment bankers. White shirts, ties. Crisp was the word that came to mind. And Amelia Sachs in the center, conspicuous in her navy-blue uniform, soiled with rat blood, dust and grainy shit from cattle dead a hundred years.

She was no longer shaking from her blowup with Rhyme and though her mind kept reeling with a hundred things she wanted to say, wished she had said, she forced herself to concentrate on what was happening around her.

A tall agent in an immaculate gray suit was conferring with Dellray – two large men, heads down, solemn. She believed he was the special agent in charge of the Manhattan office, Thomas Perkins, but she didn’t know for certain; a Patrol officer has as much contact with the FBI as a dry cleaner or insurance salesman does. He seemed humorless, efficient, and kept glancing at a large map of Manhattan pinned to the wall. Perkins nodded several times as Dellray briefed him then he stepped up to a fiberboard table filled with manila folders, looked over the agents and began to speak.

“If I could have your attention… I’ve just been in communication with the director and the AG in Washington. You’ve all heard about the Kennedy Airport unsub by now. It’s an unusual profile. Kidnapping, absent a sexual element, is rarely the basis for serial activity. In fact this’s the first unsub of the sort we’ve had in the Southern District. In light of the possible connection with the events at the UN this week we’re coordinating with headquarters, Quantico and the secretary-general’s office. We’ve been told to be completely proactive on this case. It’s getting prioritization at the highest level.”

The SAC glanced at Dellray, who said, “We’ve taken over the case from the NYPD but we’ll be using them for backup and person power. We have the crime scene officer here to brief us on the scenes.” Dellray sounded completely different here. Not a shred of Superfly.

“Have you vouchered the PE?” Perkins asked Sachs.

Sachs admitted that she hadn’t. “We were working on saving the vics.”

The SAC was troubled by this. At trial, otherwise solid cases tanked regularly because of slipups in recording the chain of custody of the physical evidence. It was the first thing the perps’ defense lawyers wailed on.

“Make sure you do that before you leave.”

“Yessir.”

What a look on Rhyme’s face when he guessed I bitched to Eckert and got them shut down. What a look…

My Sachs figured it out, my Sachs preserved the scene.

She worried a nail again. Stop it, she told herself, as she always did, and continued to dig into the flesh. The pain felt good. That’s what the therapists never understood.

The SAC said, “Agent Dellray? Could you brief the room as regards the approach we’ll be taking.”

Dellray looked from the SAC to the other agents and continued, “At this moment we have field agents hitting every major terrorist cell in the city and pursuing whatever leads we can find that’ll get us to the unsub’s residence. All CIs, all undercover agents. It’ll mean compromising some existing operations but we’ve decided it’s worth the risk.

“Our job here is to be rapid response. You’ll break out into groups of six agents each and be ready to move on any lead. You’ll have complete hostage-rescue and barricade-entry support.”

“Sir,” Sachs said.

Perkins looked up, frowning. Apparently one didn’t interrupt briefings until the approved Q &A break. “Yes, what is it, officer?”

“Well, I’m just wondering, sir. What about the victim?”

“Who, that German girl? You think we should interview her again?”

“No, sir. I meant the next victim.”

Perkins responded, “Oh, we’ll certainly stay cognizant of the fact that there may be other targets.”

Sachs continued, “He’s got one now.”

“He does?” The SAC glanced at Dellray, who shrugged. Perkins asked Sachs, “How do you know?”

“Well, I don’t exactly know, sir. But he left clues at the last scene and he wouldn’t’ve done that if he didn’t have another vic. Or was just about to snatch one.”

“Noted, officer,” the SAC continued. “We’re going to mobilize as fast as we can to make sure nothing happens to them.”

Dellray said to her, “We think it’s best to focus on the beast himself.”

“Detective Sachs -” Perkins began.

“I’m not a detective, sir. I’m assigned to Patrol.”

“Yes, well,” the SAC continued, looking at the stacks of files. “If you could just give us some of your bullet points, that would be helpful.”