Jeffery Deaver - The Bone Collector

Rhyme smiled faintly. “I did. Yes. But not with Blaine, my wife.” And that was all he wanted to say on the subject. “How’d you meet?” he asked.

“The assignments lectures at the academy. Where somebody gets up and they tell you a little about what their division does. Nick was lecturing on undercover work. He asked me out on the spot. Our first date was at Rodman’s Neck.”

“The gun range?”

She nodded, sniffing. “Afterwards, we went to his mom’s in Brooklyn and had pasta and a bottle of Chianti. She pinched me hard and said I was too skinny to have babies. Made me eat two cannoli. We went back to my place and he stayed over that night. Quite a first date, huh? From then on we saw each other all the time. It was gonna work, Rhyme. I felt it. It was gonna work just fine.”

Rhyme said, “What happened?”

“He was…”

Another bolstering hit of old liquor. “He was on the take is what happened. The whole time I knew him.”

“He was?”

“Crooked. Oh, way crooked. I never had a clue. Not a single goddamn clue. He socked it away in banks around the city. He dusted close to two hundred thousand.”

Lincoln was silent a moment. “I’m sorry, Sachs. Drugs?”

“No. Merch, mostly. Appliances, TVs. ’Jackings. They called it the Brooklyn Connection. The papers did.”

Rhyme was nodding. “That’s why I remember it. There were a dozen of them in the ring, right? All cops?”

“Mostly. A few ICC people too.”

“What happened to him? Nick?”

“You know what happens when cops bust cops. They beat the crap out of him. Said he resisted but I know he didn’t. Broke three ribs, a couple fingers, smashed his face all up. Pleaded guilty but he still got twenty to thirty.”

“For hijacking?” Rhyme was astonished.

“He worked a couple of the jobs himself. Pistol-whipped one driver, took a shot at another one. Just to scare him. I know it was just to scare him. But the judge threw him away.” She closed her eyes, pressed her lips together hard.

“When he got collared, Internal Affairs went after him like they were in heat. They checked pen registers. We were real careful about calling each other. He said perps sometimes tapped his line. But there were some calls to my place. IA came after me too. So Nick just cut me off. I mean, he had to. Otherwise I would’ve gone down with him. You know IA – it’s always a goddamn witch-hunt.”

“What happened?”

“To convince them that I wasn’t anything to him… Well, he said some things about me.” She swallowed, her eyes fixed on the floor. “At the IA inquest they wanted to know about me. Nick said, ‘Oh, P.D. Sachs? I just fucked her a few times. Turned out she was lousy. So I dumped her.’ ” She tilted her head back and mopped tears with her sleeve. “The nickname? P.D.”

“Lon told me.”

She frowned. “Did he tell you what it means?”

“The Portable’s Daughter. After your father.”

She smiled wanly. “That’s how it started. But that’s not how it ended up. At the inquest Nick said I was such a lousy fuck it really stood for ‘Pussy Diver’ ’cause I probably liked girls better. Guess how fast that went through the department.”

“It’s a low common denominator out there, Sachs.”

She took a deep breath. “I saw him in court toward the end of the inquest. He looked at me once and… I can’t even describe what was in his eyes. Just pure heartbreak. Oh, he did it to protect me. But still… You were right, you know. About the lonely stuff.”

“I didn’t mean -”

“No,” she said, unsmiling. “I hit you, you hit me. That was fair. And you were right. I hate being alone. I want to go out, I want to meet somebody. But after Nick I lost my taste for sex.” Sachs gave a sour laugh. “Everybody thinks looking like me’s wonderful. I could have my pick of guys, right? Bullshit. The only ones with the balls to ask me out’re the ones who want to screw all the time. So I just gave up. It’s easier by myself. I hate it, but it’s easier.”

At last Rhyme understood her reaction at seeing him for the first time. She was at ease with him because here was a man who was no threat to her. No sexual come-ons. Someone she wouldn’t have to fend off. And perhaps a certain camaraderie too – as if they were both missing the same, crucial gene.

“You know,” he joked, “you and me, we ought to get together and not have an affair.”

She laughed. “So tell me about your wife. How long were you married?”

“Seven years. Six before the accident, one after.”

“And she left you?”

“Nope. I left her. I didn’t want her to feel guilty about it.”

“Good of you.”

“I’d have driven her out eventually. I’m a prick. You’ve only seen my good side.” After a moment he asked, “This thing with Nick… it have anything to do with why you’re leaving Patrol?”

“No. Well, yes.”

“Gunshy?”

Finally she nodded. “Life on the street’s different now. That’s what did it to Nick, you know. What turned him. It’s not like it was when Pop was walking his beat. Things were better then.”

“You mean it’s not like the stories your dad told you.”

“Maybe,” she conceded. Sachs slumped the chair. “The arthritis? That’s true but it’s not as serious as I pretend it is.”

“I know,” Rhyme said.

“You know? How?”

“I just looked at the evidence and drew some conclusions.”

“Is that why you’ve been on my case all day? You knew I was faking?”

“I’ve been on your case,” he said, “because you’re better than you think you are.”

She gave him a screwy look.

“Ah, Sachs, you remind me of me.”

“I do?”

“Let me tell you a story. I’d been on crime scene detail maybe a year when we got a call from Homicide there was a guy found dead in an alley in Greenwich Village. All the sergeants were out and so I got elected to run the scene. I was twenty-six years old, remember. I go up there and check it out and it turns out the dead guy’s the head of the City Health and Human Services. Now, what’s he got all around him but a load of Polaroids? You should’ve seen some of those snaps – he’d been to one of those S &M clubs off Washington Street. Oh, and I forgot to mention, when they found him he was dressed in a stunning little black minidress and fishnet stockings.

“So, I secure the scene. All of a sudden a captain shows up and starts to cross the tape. I know he’s planning to have those pictures disappear on the way to the evidence room but I was so naive I didn’t care much about the pictures – I was just worried about somebody walking through the scene.”

“P is for Protect the crime scene.”

Rhyme chuckled. “So I didn’t let him in. While he was standing at the tape screaming at me a dep com tried an end run. I told him no. He started screaming at me. The scene stays virgin till IRD’s through with it, I told them. Guess who finally showed up?”

“The mayor?”

“Well, deputy mayor.”

“And you held ’em all off?”

“Nobody got into that scene except Latents and Photography. Of course my payback was spending six months printing floaters. But we nailed the perp with some trace and a print off one of those Polaroids – happened to be the same snap the Post used on page one, as a matter of fact. Just like what you did yesterday morning, Sachs. Closing off the tracks and Eleventh Avenue.”

“I didn’t think about it,” she said. “I just did it. Why’re you looking at me that way?”

“Come on, Sachs. You know where you ought to be. On the street. Patrol, Major Crimes, IRD, doesn’t matter… But Public Affairs? You’ll rot there. It’s a good job for some people but not you. Don’t give up so fast.”