Jeffery Deaver - The Bone Collector

Rhyme glanced at the list of grocery stores – the locations of the ShopRites that sold veal shanks. “Chelsea’s out. No tanning there. Harlem too – no ShopRites there. So, it’s the West Village, Lower East Side or Midtown West Side – Hell’s Kitchen again. Which he seems to like.”

Only about ten square miles, Rhyme estimated cynically. He’d figured out on his first day on the job that it was easier to hide in Manhattan than in the North Woods.

“Let’s keep going. What about the stone in Carole’s clothes?”

Cooper was bent over the microscope. “Okay. Got it.”

“Patch it in to me, Mel.”

Rhyme’s computer screen burst to life and he watched the flecks of stone and crystal, like brilliant asteroids.

“Move it around,” Rhyme instructed. Three substances were bonded together.

“The one on the left is marble, pinkish,” Cooper said. “Like what we found before. And in between, that gray stuff…”

“It’s mortar. And the other is brownstone,” Rhyme announced. “It’s from a Federal-style building, like the 1812 City Hall. Only the front facade was marble; the rest was brownstone. They did it to save money. Well, they did it so the money appropriated for marble could find its way into various pockets. Now, what else do we have? The ash. Let’s find the arson accelerant.”

Cooper ran the ash sample through the GC-MS. He stared at the curve that appeared on the screen.

Newly refined gasoline, containing its manufacturer’s dyes and additives, was unique and could be traced back to a single source, as long as different batches of gas weren’t mixed together at the service station where the perp bought it. Cooper announced that the gasoline matched perfectly the brand sold by the Gas Exchange service stations.

Banks grabbed the Yellow Pages and flipped them open. “We’ve got six stations in Manhattan. Three downtown. One at Sixth Avenue and Houston. One on Delancey, 503 East. And one at Nineteenth and Eighth.”

“Nineteenth’s too far north,” Rhyme said. He stared at the profile chart. “East Side or West. Which is it?”

Grocery stores, gasoline…

A lanky figure suddenly filled the doorway.

“I still invited to this here party?” Frederick Dellray asked.

“Depends,” Rhyme countered. “You bearing gifts?”

“Ah got presents galore,” the agent said, waving a folder emblazoned with the familiar disk of the FBI emblem.

“You ever knock, Dellray?” Sellitto asked.

“Got outa the habit, you know.”

“Come on in,” Rhyme said. “What’ve you got?”

“Dunno for sure. Doesn’t make any sense to this boy. But then, whatta I know?”

Dellray read from the report for a moment then said, “We had Tony Farco at PERT – said ‘Hey’ to you by the way, Lincoln – analyze that bit of PE you found. Turns out it’s gold leaf. Probably sixty to eighty years old. He found a few cellulose fibers attached so he thinks it’s from a book.”

“Of course! Gold topstain from a page,” Rhyme said.

“Now he also found some particles of ink on it. He said, I’m quotin’ the boy now: ‘It’s not inconsistent with the type of ink the New York Public Library uses to stamp the ends of their books.’ Don’t he talk funny?”

“A library book,” Rhyme mused.

Amelia Sachs said, “A red-leather-bound library book.”

Rhyme stared at her. “Right!” he shouted. “ That’s what the bits of red leather’re from. Not the glove. It’s a book he carries around with him. Could be his bible.”

“Bible?” Dellray asked. “You thinkin’ he’s some kinda religious nutzo?”

“Not the Bible, Fred. Call the library again, Banks. Maybe that’s how he wore down his shoes – in the reading room. I know, it’s a long shot. But we don’t have a lot of options here. I want a list of all the antiquarian books stolen from Manhattan locations in the past year.”

“Will do.” The young man rubbed a shaving scar as he called the mayor at home and bluntly asked hizzoner to contact the director of the public library and tell them what they needed.

A half hour later the fax machine buzzed and spewed out two pages. Thom ripped the transmission out of the machine. “Whoa, readers sure have sticky fingers in this city,” he said as he brought it to Rhyme.

Eighty-four books fifty years old or older had disappeared from the public library branches in the past twelve months, thirty-five of them in Manhattan.

Rhyme scanned the list. Dickens, Austen, Hemingway, Dreiser… Books about music, philosophy, wine, literary criticism, fairy tales. Their value was surprisingly low. Twenty, thirty dollars. He supposed that none of them were first editions but perhaps the thieves hadn’t known that.

He continued to scan the list.

Nothing, nothing. Maybe -

And then he saw it.

Crime in Old New York , by Richard Wille Stephans, published by Bountiful Press in 1919. Its value was listed at sixty-five dollars, and it had been stolen from the Delancey Street branch of the New York Public Library nine months earlier. It was described as five by seven inches in size, bound in red kidskin, with marbleized endpapers, gilded edges.

“I want a copy of it. I don’t care how. Get somebody to the Library of Congress if you have to.”

Dellray said, “I’ll take care of that one.”

Grocery stores, gasoline, the library…

Rhyme had to make a decision. There were three hundred searchers available – cops and state troopers and federal agents – but they’d be spread microscopically thin if they had to search both the West and East sides of downtown New York.

Gazing at the profile chart.

Is your house in the West Village? Rhyme silently asked 823. Did you buy the gas and steal the book on the East Side to fox us? Or is that your real neighborhood? How clever are you? No, no, the question’s not how clever you are but how clever you think you are. How confident were you that we’d never find those minuscule bits of yourself that M. Locard assures us you’d leave behind?

Finally Rhyme ordered, “Go with the Lower East. Forget the Village. Get everybody down there. All of Bo’s troops, all of yours, Fred. Here’s what you’re looking for: A large Federal-style building, close to two hundred years old, rose-colored marble front, brownstone sides and back. May have been a mansion or a public building at one time. With a garage or carriage house attached. A Taurus sedan and a Yellow Cab coming and going for the past few weeks. More often in the last few days.”

Rhyme glanced at Sachs.

Giving up the dead…

Sellitto and Dellray made their calls.

Sachs said to Rhyme, “I’m going too.”

“I hadn’t expected anything else.”

When the door had closed downstairs he whispered, “Godspeed, Sachs. Godspeed.”

THREE SQUAD CARS CRUISED SLOWLY through the streets of the Lower East Side. Two constables in each. Eyes searching.

And a moment later two black broughams appeared… two sedans , he meant. Unmarked, but their telltale searchlights next to the left side-view mirrors left no doubt who they were.

He’d known they were narrowing the search, of course, and that it was only a matter of time until they found his house. But he was shocked that they were this close. And he was particularly upset to see the cops get out and examine a silver Taurus parked on Canal Street.

How the hell had they found out about his carriage? He’d known that stealing a car was a huge risk but he thought it would take Hertz days to notice the missing vehicle. And even if they did he was sure the constables would never connect him with the theft. Oh, they were good.