The Bone Collector (Lincoln Rhyme 1)

"We need to call every bolt manufacturer and jobber in the Northeast. No, in the country. Ask if they make a model like this and who they sell to. Fax a description and picture of the bolt to our dispatchers at Communications."

"Hell, there could be a million of them," Banks said. "Every Ace Hardware and Sears in the country."

"I don't think so," Rhyme responded. "It's got to be a viable clue. He wouldn't have left it if it was useless. There's a limited source of these bolts. I bet you."

Sellitto made a call and looked up a few minutes later. "I've got you dispatchers, Lincoln. Four of them. Where do we get a list of manufacturers?"

"Get a patrolman down to Forty-second Street," Rhyme replied. "Public Library. They have corporate directories there. Until we get one, have the dispatchers start working through the Business-to-Business Yellow Pages."

Sellitto repeated this into the phone.

Rhyme glanced at the clock. It was one-thirty.

"Now, the asbestos."

For an instant, the word glowed in his mind. He felt a jolt--in places where no jolts could be felt. What was familiar about asbestos? Something he'd read or heard about--recently, it seemed, though Lincoln Rhyme no longer trusted his sense of time. When you lie on your back frozen in place month after month after month, time slows to near-death. He might be thinking of something he'd read two years ago.

"What do we know about asbestos?" he mused. No one answered but that didn't matter; he answered himself. As he preferred to do anyway. Asbestos was a complex molecule, silicate polymer. It doesn't burn because, like glass, it's already oxidized.

When he'd run crime scenes of old murders--working with forensic anthropologists and odontologists--Rhyme often found himself in asbestos-insulated buildings. He remembered the peculiar taste of the face masks they'd had to wear during the excavation. In fact, he now recalled, it'd been during an asbestos-removal cleanup at the City Hall subway stop three and a half years ago that crews found the body of one of the policemen murdered by Dan Shepherd dumped in a generator room. As Rhyme had bent down over it slowly to lift a fiber from the officer's light-blue blouse, he'd heard the crack and groan of the oak beam. The mask had probably saved him from choking to death on the dust and dirt that caved in around him.

"Maybe he's got her at a cleanup site," Sellitto said.

"Could be," Rhyme agreed.

Sellitto ordered his young assistant, "Call EPA and city Environmental. Find out if there're any sites where cleanup's going on right now."

The detective made the call.

"Bo," Rhyme asked Haumann, "you have teams to deploy?"

"Ready to roll," the ESU commander confirmed. "Though I gotta tell you, we've got over half the force tied up with this UN thing. They're on loan to the Secret Service and UN security."

"Got some EPA info here." Banks gestured to Haumann and they retired to a corner of the room. They moved aside several stacks of books. As Haumann unfurled one of ESU's tactical maps of New York something clattered to the floor.

Banks jumped. "Jesus."

From the angle where he lay, Rhyme couldn't see what had fallen. Haumann hesitated then bent down and retrieved the bleached piece of spinal column and replaced it on the table.

Rhyme felt several pairs of eyes on him but he said nothing about the bone. Haumann leaned over the map, as Banks, on the phone, fed him information about asbestos-cleanup sites. The commander marked them in grease pencil. There appeared to be a lot of them, scattered all over the five boroughs of the city. It was discouraging.

"We have to narrow it down more. Let's see, the sand," Rhyme said to Cooper. "'Scope it. Tell me what you think."

Sellitto handed the evidence envelope to the tech, who poured the contents out onto an enamel examination tray. The glistening powder left a small cloud of dust. There was also a stone, worn smooth, which slid into the center of the pile.

Lincoln Rhyme's throat caught. Not at what he saw--he didn't yet know what he was looking at--but at the flawed nerve impulse that shot from his brain and died halfway to his useless right arm, urging it to grab a pencil and to probe. The first time in a year or so he'd felt that urge. It nearly brought tears into his eyes and his only solace was the memory of the tiny bottle of Seconal and the plastic bag that Dr. Berger carried with him--images that hovered like a saving angel over the room.

He cleared his throat. "Print it!"

"What?" Cooper asked.

"The stone."

Sellitto looked at him inquiringly.

"The rock doesn't belong there," Rhyme said. "Apples and oranges. I want to know why. Print it."

Using porcelain-tipped forceps, Cooper picked up the stone and examined it. He slipped on goggles and hit the rock with a beam from a PoliLight--a power pack the size of a car battery with a light wand attached.