The Bone Collector (Lincoln Rhyme 1)

"I'm rolling."

Through the speakerphone he heard a squeal of tires, then the siren cut in.

"I've called Lon and Haumann," he added. "They're on their way over now."

"Rhyme," her urgent voice crackled. "I'll get her out."

Ah, you've got a cop's good heart, Amelia, a professional heart, Rhyme thought. But you're still just a rookie. "Sachs?" he said.

"Yes?"

"I've been reading this book. Eight twenty-three's picked a bad one for this role model of his. Really bad."

She said nothing.

"What I'm saying is," he continued, "whether the girl's there or not, if you find him and he so much as flinches, you nail him."

"But we get him alive, he can lead us to her. We can--"

"No, Sachs. Listen to me. You take him out. Any sign he's going for a weapon, anything . . . you take him out."

Static clattered. Then he heard her steady voice, "I'm at Van Brevoort, Rhyme. You were right. Looks like his place."

Eighteen unmarkeds, two ESU vans and Amelia Sachs's RRV were clustered near a short, deserted street on the Lower East Side.

East Van Brevoort looked like it was in Sarajevo. The buildings were abandoned--two of them burned to the ground. On the east side of the street was a dilapidated hospital of some kind, its roof caved in. Next to it was a large hole in the ground, roped off, with a No Trespassing sign emblazoned with the County Court seal--the archaeologic dig Rhyme had mentioned. A scrawny dog had died and lay in the gutter, its corpse picked over by rats.

In the middle of the other side of the street was a marble-fronted townhouse, faintly pink, with an attached carriage house, marginally nicer than the other decrepit tenements along Van Brevoort.

Sellitto, Banks and Haumann stood beside the ESU van, as a dozen officers suited up in Kevlar and racked their M-16s. Sachs joined them and, without asking, tucked her hair under a helmet and started to vest up.

Sellitto said, "Sachs, you're not tactical."

Slapping the Velcro strap down, she stared at the detective, eyebrow lifted high, until he relented and said, "Okay. But you're rear guard. That's an order."

Haumann said, "You'll be Team Two."

"Yessir. I can live with that."

One ESU cop offered her an MP-5 machine gun. She thought about Nick--their date on the range at Rodman's Neck. They'd spent two hours practicing with automatic weapons, firing Z-patterns through doors, flip-reloading with taped banana clips and field-stripping M-16s to clear the sand jams that plagued the Colts. Nick loved the staccato clutter but Sachs didn't much like the messy firepower of the big weapons. She'd suggested a match between them with Glocks and had whupped him thr

ee straight at fifty feet. He laughed and kissed her hard as the last of her empty casings spun, ringing, onto the firing range.

"I'll just use my sidearm," she told the ESU officer.

The Hardy Boys ran up, crouching as if they were mindful of snipers.

"Here's what we've got. There's nobody around. Block is--"

"Completely empty."

"The windows of his building're all barred. A back entrance--"

"Leading into the alley. The door's open."

"Open?" Haumann asked, glancing at several of his officers.

Saul confirmed, "Not just unlocked but open."