Jeffery Deaver - The Bone Collector

Afluke of wave slapped his sagging head.

William Everett opened his eyes and snorted the shivery water from his nose. It was icy cold and he felt his questionable heart stutter as it struggled to send warming blood through his body.

He almost fainted again, like when the son of a bitch’d broken his finger. Then he floated back to waking, his thoughts on his late wife – and for some reason, on their travels. They’d been to Giza. And to Guatemala. Nepal. Teheran (one week before the embassy takeover).

Their Southeast China Airlines plane had lost one of two engines an hour out of Beijing and Evelyn had lowered her head, the crash position, preparing to die and staring at an article in the in-flight magazine. It warned that drinking hot tea right after a meal was dangerous for you. She told him about it afterwards, at the Raffles bar in Singapore, and they’d laughed hysterically until tears came to their eyes.

Thinking of the kidnapper’s cold eyes. His teeth, the bulky gloves.

Now, in this horrid wet tomb the unbearable pain rolled up his arm and into his jaw.

Broken finger or heart attack? he wondered.

Maybe a little of both.

Everett closed his eyes until the pain subsided. He looked around him. The chamber where he was handcuffed was beneath a rotting pier. A lip of wood dipped from the edge toward the churning water, which was about six inches below the bottom of the rim. Lights from boats on the river and the industrial sites of Jersey reflected through the narrow slit. The water was up to his neck now and although the roof of the pier was several feet above his head the cuffs were extended as far as they’d go.

The pain swept up from his finger again and Everett’s head roared with the agony and dipped toward the water as he passed out. A noseful of water and the racking cough that followed revived him.

Then the moon tugged the plane of water slightly higher and with a sodden gulp the chamber was sealed off from the river outside. The room went dark. He was aware of the sounds of groaning waves and his own moaning from the pain.

He knew he was dead, knew he couldn’t keep his head above the greasy surface for more than a few minutes. He closed his eyes, pressed his face against the slick, black column.

“ALL THE WAY DOWNTOWN, SACHS,” Rhyme’s voice clattered from the radio.

She punched the accelerator of the RRV, red lights flashing, as they screamed downtown along the West Side Highway. Ice-cool, she goosed the wagon up to eighty.

“Okay, whoa,” said Jerry Banks.

Counting down. Twenty-third Street, Twentieth, the skidding jog at the Fourteenth Street garbage-barge dock. As they roared through the Village, the meatpacking district, a semi pulled out of a side street directly into her path. Instead of braking she nudged the wagon over the center curb like a steeple-chaser, drawing breathless oaths from Banks and a wail from the air horn of the big White, which jackknifed spectacularly.

“Oops,” said Amelia Sachs and swung back into the southbound lane. To Rhyme she added, “Say again. Missed that.”

Rhyme’s tinny voice popped through her earphones. “Downtown is all I can tell you. Until we figure out what the leaf means.”

“We’re coming up on Battery Park City.”

“Twenty-five minutes to high tide,” Banks called.

Maybe Dellray’s team could get the exact location out of him. They could drag Mr. 823 into an alley somewhere with a bag of apples. Nick had told her that was the way they talked perps into “cooperating.” Whack ’em in the gut with a bag of fruit. Really painful. No marks. When she was growing up she wouldn’t have thought cops did that. Now she knew different.

Banks tapped her shoulder. “There. A bunch of old piers.”

UNSUB 823 (page 1 of 4)

Appearance

Caucasian male, slight build

•Dark clothing

•Old gloves, reddish kidskin

Residence

•Prob. has safe house

•Located near:B’way & 82nd,

•ShopRite B’way &96th,

• Anderson Foods

Vehicle

•Yellow Cab

Other

•knows CS proc.

•possibly has record

•knows FR prints

•gun =.32 Colt

UNSUB 823 (page 2 of 4)

Appearance

•Aftershave; to cover up other scent?

•Ski mask? Navy blue?

•Gloves are dark

Residence

• Greenwich & Bank,

•ShopRite 2nd Ave., 72nd-73rd,

• Grocery World Battery Park City,

•J &G’s Emporium 1709 2nd Ave.,

Vehicle

•Recent model sedan

Other

•Ties vics w/ unusual knots

•“Old” appeals to him

•Called one vic “Hanna”

UNSUB 823 (page 3 of 4)

Appearance

•Aftershave = Brut

•Hair color not brown

Residence

• Anderson Foods 34th & Lex.,

•Food Warehouse 8th Ave. & 24th,

•ShopRite Houston & Lafayette,

•ShopRite 6th Ave. & Houston,

Vehicle

•Lt. gray, silver, beige

Other

•Knows basic German

•Underground appeals to him

•Dual personalities

UNSUB 823 (page 4 of 4)

Appearance

•Deep scar, index finger

•Casual clothes

Residence

•J &G’s Emporium Greenwich & Franklin,

•Grocery World

•Old building, pink marble

Vehicle

•Rental car;

prob. stolen

Other

•Maybe priest, soc. worker, counselor

•Unusual wear on shoes, reads a lot?

Rotten wood, filthy? Spooky places.

They skidded to a stop and climbed out, running toward the water.

“You there, Rhyme?”

“Talk to me, Sachs. Where are you?”

“A pier just north of Battery Park City.”

“I just heard from Lon, on the East Side. He hasn’t found anything.”

“It’s hopeless,” she said. “There’re a dozen piers. Then the whole promenade… And the fireboat house and ferry docks and the pier at Battery Park… We need ESU.”

“We don’t have ESU, Sachs. They’re not on our side anymore.”

Twenty minutes to high tide.

Her eyes darted along the waterfront. Her shoulders sagged with helplessness. Hand on her weapon, she sprinted to the river, Jerry Banks not far behind.

“Get me something on that leaf, Mel. A guess, anything . Wing it.”

Fidgeting, Cooper looked from the microscope to the computer screen.

Eight thousand varieties of leafy plants in Manhattan.

“It doesn’t fit the cell structure of anything .”

“It’s old,” Rhyme said. “How old?”

Cooper looked at the leaf again. “Mummified. I’d put it at a hundred years, little less maybe.”

“What’s gone extinct in the last hundred years?”

“Plants don’t go extinct in an ecosystem like Manhattan. They always show up again.”

A ping in Rhyme’s mind. He was close to remembering something. He both loved and hated this feeling. He might grab the thought like a slow pop-up fly. Or it might vanish completely, leaving him with only the sting of lost inspiration.

Sixteen minutes to high tide.

What was the thought? He grappled with it, closed his eyes…

Pier, he was thinking. The vic’s under a pier.

What about it? Think!

Pier… ships… unloading… cargo.

Unloading cargo!

His eyes snapped open. “Mel, is it a crop?”

“Oh, hell. I’ve been looking at general-horticulture pages, not cultivated crops.” He typed for what seemed like hours.