A half hour before, waiting for Sachs and the evidence to arrive, Rhyme had sent Cooper out of the room while Thom slicked up a catheter with K-Y and wielded the tube. After that business had been completed Thom had looked at him and said, "You look like shit. You realize that?"
"I don't care. Why would I care?"
Realizing suddenly that he did.
"How 'bout a shave?" the young man had asked.
"We don't have time."
Rhyme's real concern was that if Dr. Berger saw him groomed he'd be less inclined to go ahead with the suicide. A disheveled patient is a despondent patient.
"And a wash."
"No."
"We've got company now, Lincoln."
Finally Rhyme had grumbled, "All right."
"And let's lose those pajamas, what do you say?"
"There's nothing wrong with them."
But that meant all right too.
Now, scrubbed and shaved, dressed in jeans and a white shirt, Rhyme ignored the mirror his aide held in front of him.
"Take that away."
"Remarkable improvement."
Lincoln Rhyme snorted derisively. "I'm going for a walk until they get back," he announced and settled his head back into the pillow. Mel Cooper turned to him with a perplexed expression.
"In his head," Thom explained.
"Your head?"
"I imagine it," Rhyme continued.
"That's quite a trick," Cooper said.
"I can walk through any neighborhood I want and never get mugged. Hike in the mountains and never get tired. Climb a mountain if I want. Go window-shopping on Fifth Avenue. Of course the things I see aren't necessarily there. But so what? Neither are the stars."
"How's that?" Cooper asked.
"The starlight we see is thousands or millions of years old. By the time it gets to Earth the stars themselves've moved. They're not where we see them." Rhyme sighed as the exhaustion flooded over him. "I suppose some of them have already burned out and disappeared." He closed his eyes.
"He's making it harder."
"Not necessarily," Rhyme answered Lon Sellitto.
Sellitto, Banks and Sachs had just returned from the stockyard scene.
"Underwear, the moon and a plant," cheerfully pessimistic Jerry Banks said. "That's not exactly a road map."
"Dirt too," Rhyme reminded, ever appreciative of soil.
"Have any idea what they mean?" Sellitto asked.