The Bone Collector (Lincoln Rhyme 1)

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."

THIRTY-ONE

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.

One of the mean-eyed cops happened to glance at his cab.

Staring forward, the bone collector turned slowly onto Houston Street, lost himself in a crowd of other cabs. A half hour later, he'd ditched the taxi and the Hertz Taurus and had returned on foot to the mansion.

Young Maggie looked up at him.

She was scared, yes, but she'd stopped crying. He wondered if he should just keep her. Take himself a daughter. Raise her. The idea glowed within him for a moment or two then it faded.

No, there'd be too many questions. Also, there was something eerie about the way the girl was looking at him. She seemed older than her years. She'd always remember what he'd done. Oh, for a while she might think it had been a dream. But then someday the truth would come out. It always did. Repress what you will, someday the truth comes out.

No, he couldn't trust her any more than he trusted anyone else. Every human soul would let you down in the end. You could trust hate. You could trust bone. Everything else was betrayal.

He crouched beside Maggie and eased the tape off her mouth.

"Mommy!" she howled. "I want my mommy!"

He said nothing, just stood and looked down at her. At her delicate skull. At her twigs of arms.

She screamed like a siren.

He took off his glove. His fingers hovered over her for a moment. Then he caressed the soft hair on her head. ("Fingerprints can be lifted from flesh, if taken within 90 minutes of contact [SeeKROMEKOTE ] but no one has as yet successfully lifted and reconstructed friction-ridge prints from human hair." Lincoln Rhyme, Physical Evidence, 4th ed. [New York: Forensic Press, 1994].)

The bone collector slowly rose and walked upstairs, into the large living room of the building, past the paintings on the walls--the workers, the staring women and children. He cocked his head at a faint noise outside. Then louder--a clatter of metal. He grabbed his weapon and hurried to the back of the building. Unbolting the door he pushed it open suddenly, dropping into a two-handed shooting stance.

The pack of wild dogs glanced at him. They returned quickly to the trash can they'd knocked over. He slipped the gun into his pocket and returned to the living room.

He found himself next to the bottle-glass window again, looking out at the old graveyard. Oh, yes. There! There was the man again, wearing black, standing in the cemetery. In the distance the sky was spiked by the black masts of clipper ships and sloops docked in the East River along the Out Ward's shore.

The bone collector felt an overwhelming sense of sorrow. He wondered if some tragedy had just occurred. Maybe the Great Fire of 1776 had just destroyed most of the buildings along Broadway. Or the yellow fever epidemic of 1795 had decimated the Irish community. Or the General Slocum excursion-boat fire in 1904 had killed over a thousand women and children, destroying the Lower East Side's German neighborhood.

Or maybe he was sensing tragedies soon to occur.

After a few minutes Maggie's screams grew quiet, replaced by the sounds of the old city, the roar of steam engines, the clang of bells, the pops of black-powder gunshots, the clop of hooves on resonant cobblestones.

He continued to stare, forgetting the constables who pursued him, forgetting Maggie, just watching the ghostly form stroll down the street.

Then and now.

His eyes remained focused out the window for a long moment, lost in a different time. And so he didn't notice the wild dogs, who'd pushed through the back door he'd left ajar. They looked at him through the doorway of the living room and paused only momentarily before turning around and loping quietly into the back of the building.