The Bone Collector (Lincoln Rhyme 1)

"I asked you to call him."

"Here." The aide slapped a slip of paper down on the far edge of the table but Rhyme read it easily. God may have taken much from Lincoln Rhyme but He'd given him the eyesight of a young man. He went through the process of dialing with his cheek on the control stalk. It was easier than he'd thought but he purposely took a long time and muttered as he did it. Infuriatingly, Thom ignored him and went downstairs.

Berger wasn't in his hotel room. Rhyme disconnected, mad that he wasn't able to slam the phone down.

"Problem?" Sellitto asked.

"No," Rhyme grumbled.

Where is he? Rhyme thought testily. It was late. Berger ought to be at his hotel room by now. Rhyme was stabbed with an odd feeling--jealousy that his death doctor was out helping someone else die.

Sellitto suddenly chuckled softly. Rhyme looked up. The cop was eating a candy bar. He'd forgotten that junk food'd been the staple of the big man's diet when they were working together. "I was thinking. Remember Bennie Ponzo?"

"The OC Task Force ten, twelve years ago?"

"Yeah."

Rhyme had enjoyed organized-crime work. The perps were pros. The crime scenes challenging. And the vics were rarely innocent.

"Who was that?" Mel Cooper asked.

"Hitman outa Bay Ridge," Sellitto said. "Remember after we booked him, the candy sandwich?"

Rhyme laughed, nodding.

"What's the story?" Cooper asked.

Sellitto said, "Okay, we're down at Central Booking, Lincoln and me and a couple other guys. And Bennie, remember, he was a big guy, he was sitting all hunched over, feeling his stomach. All of a sudden he goes, 'Yo, I'm hungry, I wanna candy sandwich.' And we're like looking at each other and I go, 'What's a candy sandwich?' And he looks at me like I'm from Mars and goes, 'What the fuck you think it is? Ya take a Hershey bar, ya put it between two slices of bread and ya eat it. That's a fucking candy sandwich.' "

They laughed. Sellitto held out the bar to Cooper, who shook his head, then to Rhyme, who felt a sudden impulse to take a bite. It'd been over a year since he'd had chocolate. He avoided food like that--sugar, candy. Troublesome food. The little things about life were the biggest burdens, the ones that saddened and exhausted you the most. Okay, you'll never scuba-dive or hike the Alps. So what? A lot of people don't. But everybody brushes their teeth. And goes to the dentist, gets a filling, takes the train home. Everybody picks a hunk of peanut from out behind a molar when nobody's looking.

Everybody except Lincoln Rhyme.

He shook his head to Sellitto and drank a long swallow of Scotch. His eyes slid back to the computer screen, recalling the goodbye letter to Blaine he'd been composing when Sellitto and Banks had interrupted him that morning. There were some other letters he wanted to write as well.

The one he was putting off writing was to Pete Taylor, the spinal cord trauma specialist. Most of the time Taylor and Rhyme had talked not about the patient's condition but about death. The doctor was an ardent opponent of euthanasia. Rhyme felt he owed him a letter to explain why he'd decided to go ahead with the suicide.

And Amelia Sachs?

The Portable's Daughter would get a note too, he decided.

Crips are generous, crips are kind, crips are iron . . .

Crips are nothing if not forgiving.

Dear Amelia:

My Dear Amelia:

Amelia:

Dear Officer Sachs:

Inasmuch as we have had the pleasure of working together, I would like to take this opportunity to state that although I consider you a betraying Judas, I've forgiven you. Furthermore I wish you well in your future career as a kisser of the media's ass. . . .

"What's her story, Lon? Sachs."

"Aside from the fact she's got a ball-buster temper I didn't know about?"