Jeffery Deaver - The Bone Collector

“What? -”

His left hand curled around his mystified captive’s little finger and slowly pulled until he heard the deep thonk of brittle bone snapping. A satisfying sound. The man screamed, a muted cry stuttering through the tape. And slumped to the ground.

The bone collector pulled him upright and led the stumbling man into the mouth of the pipe. He prodded the man forward.

They emerged underneath the old, rotting pier. It was a disgusting place, strewn with the decomposed bodies of animals and fish, trash on the wet rocks, a gray-green sludge of kelp. A mound of seaweed rose and fell in the water, humping like a fat lover. Despite the evening heat in the rest of the city, down here it was cold as a March day.

Señor Ortega…

He lowered the man into the river, cuffed him to a pier post, ratcheting the bracelet tight around his wrist again. The captive’s grayish face was about three feet above the surface of the water. The bone collector walked carefully over the slick rocks to the drainpipe. He turned and paused for a moment, watching, watching. He hadn’t cared much whether the constables found the others or not. Hanna, the woman in the taxi. But this one… The bone collector hoped they didn’t find him in time. Indeed, that they didn’t find him at all. So he could come back in a month or two and see if the clever river had scrubbed the skeleton clean.

Back on the gravel drive he pulled the mask off and left the clues to the next scene not far from where he’d parked. He was angry, furious at the constables, and so this time he hid the clues. And he also included a special surprise. Something he’d been saving for them. The bone collector returned to the taxi.

The breeze was gentle, carrying the fragrance of the sour river with it. And the rustle of grass and, as always in the city, the shushhhh of traffic.

Like emery paper on bone.

He stopped and listened to this sound, head cocked as he looked out over the billion lights of the buildings, stretching to the north like an oblong galaxy. It was then that a woman, running fast, emerged on a jogging path beside the drainpipe and nearly collided with him.

In purple shorts and top, the thin brunette danced out of his way. Gasping, she stopped, flicked sweat from her face. In good shape – taut muscles – but not pretty. A hook of a nose, broad lips, blotchy skin.

But beneath that…

“You’re not supposed… You shouldn’t park here. This’s a jogging path…”

Her words fading and fear rising into her eyes, which flicked from his face to the taxi to the wad of ski mask in his hand.

She knew who he was. He smiled, noting her remarkably pronounced clavicle.

Her right ankle shifted slightly, ready to take her weight when she sprinted away. But he got her first. He ducked low, to tackle her, and when she gave a fast scream and dropped her arms to block him the bone collector straightened up fast from his feint and swung his elbow into her temple. There was a crack like a snapping belt.

She went down on the gravel, hard, and lay still. Horrified, the bone collector dropped to his knees and cradled her head. He moaned, “No, no, no…” Furious with himself for striking so hard, sick at heart that he might’ve broken what seemed to be a perfect skull beneath the tentacles of stringy hair and the unremarkable face.

Amelia Sachs finished another COC card and took a break. She paused, found a vending machine and bought a paper cup of vile coffee. She returned to the windowless office, looked over the evidence she’d gathered.

She felt a curious fondness for the macabre collection. Maybe because of what she’d gone through to collect it – her fiery joints ached and she still shuddered when she thought of the buried body at the first scene this morning, the bloody branch of a hand, and of T.J. Colfax’s dangling flesh. Until today physical evidence hadn’t meant anything to her. PE was boring lectures on drowsy spring afternoons at the academy. PE was math, it was charts and graphs, it was science. It was dead.

No, Amie Sachs was going to be a people cop. Walking beats, dissing back the dissers, outing druggies. Spreading respect for the law – like her father. Or pounding it into them. Like handsome Nick Carelli, a five-year vet, the star of Street Crimes, grinning at the world with his yo-you-gotta-problem? smile.

That’s just who she was going to be.

She looked at the crisp brown leaf she’d found in the stockyard tunnel. One of the clues 823 had left for them. And here was the underwear too. She remembered that I the feebies had snagged the PE before Cooper’d finished the test on the… what was that machine? The Chromatograph? She wondered what the liquid soaking the cotton was.

But these thoughts led to Lincoln Rhyme and he was the one person she didn’t want to think about just now.

She began to voucher the rest of the PE. Each COC card had a series of blank lines that would list the custodians of the evidence, in sequence, from the initial discovery at the scene all the way to trial. Sachs had transported evidence several times and her name had appeared on COC cards. But this was the first time A. Sachs, NYPD 5885 had occupied the first slot.

Once again she lifted the plastic bag containing the leaf.

He’d actually touched it. Him . The man who’d killed T.J. Colfax. Who’d held Monelle Gerger’s pudgy arm and cut deep into it. Who was out searching for another vic right now – if he hadn’t already snatched one.

Who’d buried that poor man this morning, waving for mercy he never got.

She thought of Locard’s Exchange Principle. People coming into contact, each transferring something to the other. Something big, something small. Most likely they didn’t even know what.

Had something of 823 come off on this leaf? A cell of skin? A dot of sweat? It was a stunning thought. She felt a trill of excitement, of fear, as if the killer were right here in this tiny airless room with her.

Back to the COC cards. For ten minutes she filled them out and was just finishing the last one when the door burst open, startling her. She spun around.

Fred Dellray stood in the doorway, his green jacket abandoned, his starched shirt rumpled. Fingers pinching the cigarette behind his ear. “Step inside a minute’r two, officer. It’s payoff time. Thought you might wanna be there.”

Sachs followed him down the short corridor, two steps behind his lope.

“The AFIS results’re comin’ in,” Dellray said.

The war room was even busier than before. Jacketless agents hovered over desks. They were armed with their on-duty weapons – the big Sig-Sauer and Smith & Wesson automatics, 10mm and.45s. A half-dozen agents were clustered around the computer terminal beside the Opti-Scan.

Sachs hadn’t liked the way Dellray’d taken the case away from them, but she had to admit that beneath the slick-talking hipster Dellray was one hell of a good cop. Agents – young and old – would come up to him with questions and he’d patiently answer them. He’d yank a phone from the cradle and cajole or berate whoever was on the other end to get him what he needed. Sometimes, he’d look up across the bustling room and roar, “We gonna nail this prick-dick? Yep, you betcha we are.” And the straight-arrows’d look at him uneasily but with the obvious thought in mind that if anybody could nail him it’d be Dellray.

“Here, it’s coming in now,” an agent called.

Dellray barked, “I want open lines to New York, Jersey and Connecticut DMVs. And Corrections and Parole. INS too. Tell ’em to stand by for an incoming ID request. Put everything else on hold.”

Agents peeled off and began making phone calls.