“Mel let me in,” she said, nodding toward the stairs.
“Isn’t it past your bedtime, Sachs?”
Thom tapped a shoulder. Behave yourself, the gesture meant.
“I was just at the federal building,” she said to Sellitto.
“How are our tax dollars doing?”
“They’ve caught him.”
“What?” Sellitto asked. “Just like that? Jesus. They know about it downtown?”
“Perkins called the mayor. The guy’s a cabbie. He was born here but his father’s Serbian. So they’re thinking he’s trying to get even with the UN, or something. Got a yellow sheet. Oh, and a history of mental problems too. Dellray and feebie SWAT’re on their way there right now.”
“How’d they do it?” Rhyme asked. “Betcha it was the fingerprint.”
She nodded.
“I suspected that would figure prominently. And, tell me, how concerned were they about the next victim?”
“They’re concerned,” she said evenly. “But mostly they want to nail the unsub.”
“Well, that’s their nature. And let me guess. They’re figuring they’ll sweat the location of the vic out of him after they take him down.”
“You got it.”
“That may take some doing,” Rhyme said. “I’ll venture that opinion without the benefit of our Dr. Dobyns and the Behavioral mavens. So, a change of heart, Amelia? Why’d you come back?”
“Because whether Dellray collars him or not I don’t think we have time to wait. To save the next vic, I mean.”
“Oh, but we’re dismantled, haven’t you heard? Shut down, done gone outa business.” Rhyme was looking in the dark computer screen, trying to see if his hair had stayed combed.
“You giving up?” she asked.
“Officer,” Sellitto began, “even if we wanted to do somethin’ we don’t have any of the PE. That’s the only link -”
“I’ve got it.”
“What?”
“All of it. It’s downstairs in the RRV.”
The detective glanced out the window.
Sachs continued, “From the last scene. From all the scenes.”
“You have it?” Rhyme asked. “How?”
But Sellitto was laughing. “She ’jacked it, Lincoln. Gawdamn!”
“Dellray doesn’t need it,” Sachs pointed out. “Except for the trial. They’ve got the unsub, we’ll save the victim. Works out nice, hm?”
“But Mel Cooper just left.”
“Naw, he’s downstairs. I asked him to wait.” Sachs crossed her arms. She glanced at the clock. After eleven. “We don’t have much time,” she repeated.
His eyes too were on the clock. Lord, he was tired. Thom was right; he’d been awake longer than in years. But, he was surprised – no, shocked – to find, that, while he might have been furious or embarrassed or stabbed with heartless frustration today, the passing minutes had not lain like hot, unbearable weights on his soul. As they had for the past three and a half years.
“Well, church mice in heaven.” Rhyme barked a laugh. “Thom? Thom! We need coffee. On the double. Sachs, get those cello samples to the lab along with the Polaroid of the bit Mel lifted from the veal bone. I want a polarization-comparison report in an hour. And none of this ‘most probably’ crap. I want an answer – which grocery chain did our unsub buy the veal bone at. And get that little shadow of yours back here, Lon. The one named after the baseball player.”
The black vans sped through side streets.
This was a more circuitous route to the perp’s location but Dellray knew what he was doing; anti-terror operations were supposed to avoid major city streets, which were often monitored by accomplices. Dellray, in the back of the lead van, tightened the Velcro strap on the body armor. They were less than ten minutes away.
He looked at the failing apartments, the trash-filled lots as they sped along. The last time he’d been in this decrepit neighborhood he’d been Rastafarian Peter Haile Thomas from Queens. He’d bought 137 pounds of cocaine from a shriveled little Puerto Rican, who decided at the last minute to ’jack his buyer. He took Dellray’s buy-and-bust money and aimed a gun at Dellray’s groin, pulling the trigger as calmly as if he were picking vegetables at the A &P. Click, click, click. Misfire. Toby Dolittle and the backup team took the fucker and his minders down before the scumbag found his other piece, leaving one shook-up Dellray to reflect on the irony of nearly getting killed because the perp truly bought the agent’s performance – that he was a dealer not a cop.
“ETA, four minutes,” the driver called.
For some reason Dellray’s thoughts flipped to Lincoln Rhyme. He regretted he’d been such a shit when he took over the case. But there hadn’t been much choice. Sellitto was a bulldog and Polling was a psycho – though Dellray could handle them. Rhyme was the one who made him uneasy. Sharp as a razor (hell, it had been his team that found Pietrs’s print, even if they didn’t jump on it as fast as they should’ve). In the old days, before his accident, you couldn’t beat Rhyme if he didn’t want to get beat. And you couldn’t fool him either.
Now, Rhyme was a busted toy. It was a sad thing what could happen to a man, how you could die and still be alive. Dellray had walked into his room – his bedroom, no less – and hit him hard. Harder than he needed to.
Maybe he’d call. He could -
“Show time,” the driver called, and Dellray forgot all about Lincoln Rhyme.
The vans turned onto the street where Pietrs lived. Most of the other streets they’d passed had been filled with sweating residents, clutching beer bottles and cigarettes, hoping for a breath or two of cool air. But this one was dark, empty.
The vans cruised slowly to a stop. Two dozen agents climbed out, in black tactical outfits, carrying their H &Ks equipped with muzzle lights and laser sights. Two homeless men stared at them; one quickly hid his bottle of Colt 44 malt liquor under his shirt.
Dellray gazed at a window in Pietrs’s building; it gave off a faint yellow glow.
The driver backed the first van into a shadowy parking space and whispered to Dellray, “It’s Perkins.” Tapping his headset. “He’s got the director on the horn. They want to know who’s leading the assault.”
“I am,” snapped the Chameleon. He turned to his team. “I want surveillance across the street and in the alleys. Snipers, there, there and there. An’ I want ever’body in place fi’ minutes ago. Are we all together on that?”
Down the stairs, the old wood creaking.
His arm around her, he guided the woman, half-conscious from the blow to her head, into the basement. At the foot of the stairs, he shoved her to the dirt floor and gazed down at her.
Esther…
Her eyes rose to meet his. Hopeless, begging. He didn’t notice. All he saw was her body. He began to remove her clothing, the purple jogging outfit. It was unthinkable that a woman would actually go outside in this day and age wearing what was no more than, well, undergarments. He hadn’t thought that Esther Weinraub was a whore. She’d been a working girl, stitching shirts, five for a penny.
The bone collector observed how her collarbone showed at her throat. And where some other man might glance over her breasts and dark areolae he stared at the indentation at the manubrium and the ribs blossoming from it like spider’s legs.
“What’re you doing?” she asked, groggy from the blow to her head.
The bone collector looked her over carefully but what he saw wasn’t a young, anorectic woman, nose too broad, lips too full, with skin like dirty sand. He saw beneath those imperfections the perfect beauty of her structure.
He caressed her temple, stroked it gently. Don’t let it be cracked, please…
She coughed and her nostrils flared – the fumes were very strong down here though he hardly noticed them anymore.
“Don’t hurt me again,” she whispered, her head lolling. “Just don’t hurt me. Please.”