"Mrs. Ganz?" A young man walked into the room, carrying her suitcase and yellow knapsack. "I'm Detective Banks. We've got your things here."
"Oh, thank God."
"Is anything missing?" he asked her.
She looked through the knapsack carefully. It was all there. The money, Pammy's doll, the package of clay, the Mr. Potato Head, the CDs, the clock radio . . . He hadn't taken anything. Wait . . . "You know, I think there's a picture missing. I'm not sure. I thought I had more than these. But everything important's here."
The detective gave her a receipt to sign.
A young resident stepped into the room. He joked with Pammy about her Pooh bear as he took her blood pressure.
Carole asked him, "When can she leave?"
"Well, we'd like to keep her in for a few days. Just to make sure--"
"A few days? But she's fine."
"She's got a bit of bronchitis I want to keep an eye on. And . . ." He lowered his voice. "We're also going to bring in an abuse specialist. Just to make sure."
"But she was going to go with me tomorrow. To the UN ceremonies. I promised her."
The policewoman added, "It's easier to keep her guarded here. We don't know where the unsub--the kidnapper--is. We'll have an officer babysitting you too."
"Well, I guess. Can I stay with her for a while?"
"You bet," the resident said. "You can stay the night. We'll have a cot brought in."
Then Carole was alone with her daughter once more. She sat down on the bed and put her arm around the child's narrow shoulders. She had a bad moment remembering how he, that crazy man, had touched Pammy. How his eyes had looked when he'd asked if he could cut her own skin off . . . Carole shivered and began to cry.
It was Pammy who brought her back. "Mommy, tell me a story. . . . No, no, sing me something. Sing me the friend song. Pleeeeease?"
Calming down, Carole asked, "You want to hear that one, hm?"
"Yes!"
Carole hoisted the girl onto her lap and, in a reedy voice, started to sing "You've Got a Friend." Pammy sang snatches of it along with her.
It had been one of Ron's favorites and, in the past couple years, after he was gone, she hadn't been able to listen to more than a few bars without breaking into tears.
Today, she and Pammy finished it together, pretty much on key, dry-eyed and laughing.
THIRTY-THREE
Amelia Sachs finally went home to her apartment in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.
Exactly six blocks from her parents' house, where her mother still lived. As soon as she walked in she hit the first speed-dial button on the kitchen phone.
"Mom. Me. I'm taking you to brunch at the Plaza. Wednesday. That's my day off."
"What for? To celebrate your new assignment? How is Public Affairs? You didn't call."
A fast laugh. Sachs realized her mother had no idea what she'd been doing for the past day and a half.
"You been following the news, Mom?"
"Me? I'm Brokaw's secret admirer, you know that."
"You hear about this kidnapper the last few days?"
"Who hasn't? . . . What're you telling me, honey?"
"I've got the inside scoop."
And she told her astonished mother the story--about saving the vics and about Lincoln Rhyme and, with some editing, about the crime scenes.
"Amie, your father'd be so proud."
"So, call in sick on Wednesday. The Plaza. OK?"
"Forget it, sweetheart. Save your money. I've got waffles and Bob Evans in the freezer. You can come here."
"It's not that expensive, Mom."
"Not that much? It's a fortune."
"Well, hey," Sachs said, trying to sound spontaneous, "you like the Pink Teacup, don't you?"
A little place in the West Village that served up platters of the best pancakes and eggs on the East Coast for next to nothing.
A pause.
"That might be nice."
This was a strategy Sachs had used successfully over the years.
"I've gotta get some rest, Mom. I'll call tomorrow."
"You work too hard. Amie, this case of yours . . . it wasn't dangerous, was it?"
"I was just doing the technical stuff, Mom. Crime scene. It doesn't get any safer than that."
"And they asked for you especially!" the woman said. Then repeated, "Your father'd be so proud."
They hung up and Sachs wandered into the bedroom, flopped down on the bed.
After she'd left Pammy's room Sachs had paid visits to the other two surviving victims of Unsub 823. Monelle Gerger, dotted with bandages and pumped full of anti-rabies serum, had been released and was returning to her family in Frankfurt "but just for rest of summer," she explained adamantly. "Not, you know, for good." And she'd pointed to her stereo and CD collection in the decrepit apartment in the Deutsche Haus by way of proving that no New World psycho was driving her permanently out of town.
William Everett was still in the hospital. The shattered finger was not a serious problem of course but his heart had been acting up again. Sachs was astonished to find that he'd owned a shop in Hell's Kitchen years ago and thought he might have known her father. "I knew all the beat cops," he said. She showed him her wallet picture of the man in his dress uniform. "I think so. Not sure. But I think so."
The calls had been social but Sachs had gone armed with her watchbook. Neither of the vics, though, had been able to tell her anything more about Unsub 823.
In her apartment now Sachs glanced out her window. She saw the ginkgoes and maples shiver in the sharp wind. She stripped off her uniform, scratched under her boobs--where it always itched like mad from being squooshed under the body armor. She pulled on a bathrobe.
Unsub 823 hadn't had much warning but it had been enough. The safe house on Van Brevoort had been hosed completely. Even though the landlord said he'd moved in a long time ago--last January (with a phony ID, no one was very surprised to learn)--823 had left with everything he'd brought, trash included. After Sachs had worked the scene, NYPD Latents had descended and was dusting every surface in the place. So far the preliminary reports weren't encouraging.
"Looks like he even wore gloves when he crapped," young Banks had reported to her.
A Mobile unit had found the taxi and the sedan. Unsub 823'd cleverly parked them near Avenue D and Ninth Street. Sellitto guessed it probably took a local gang seven or eight minutes to strip them down to their chassis. Any physical evidence the vehicles might've yielded was now in a dozen chop shops around the city.
Sachs turned on the tube and found the news. Nothing about the kidnappings. All the stories were about the opening ceremonies of the UN peace conference.
She stared at Bryant Gumbel, stared at the UN secretary-general, stared at some ambassador from the Middle East, stared far more intently than her interest warranted. She even studied the ads as if she were memorizing them.
Because there was something she definitely didn't want to think about: her bargain with Lincoln Rhyme.
The deal was clear. Now that Carole and Pammy were safe, it was her turn to come through. To let him have his hour alone with Dr. Berger.
Now him, Berger . . . She hadn't liked the look of the doctor at all. You could see one big fucking ego in his compact, athletic frame, his evasive eyes. His black hair perfectly combed. Expensive clothes. Why couldn't Rhyme have found someone like Kevorkian? He may have been quirky but at least seemed like a wise old grandfather.
Her lids closed.
Giving up the dead . . .
A bargain was a bargain. But goddammit, Rhyme . . .
Well, she couldn't let him go without one last try. He'd caught her off guard in his bedroom. She was flustered. Hadn't thought of any really good arguments. Monday. She had until tomorrow to try to convince him not to do it. Or at least to wait awhile. A month. Hell, a day.
What could she say to him? She'd jot down her arguments. Write a little speech.
Opening her eyes, she climbed out of bed to
find a pen and some paper. I could--
Sachs froze, her breath whistling into her lungs like the wind outside.
He wore dark clothes, the ski mask and gloves black as oil.
Unsub 823 stood in the middle of her bedroom.
Her hand instinctively went toward the bedside table--her Glock and knife. But he was ready. The shovel swung fast and caught her on the side of her head. A yellow light exploded in her eyes.
She was on her hands and knees when the foot slammed into her rib cage and she collapsed to her stomach, struggling for breath. She felt her hands being cuffed behind her, a strip of duct tape slapped onto her mouth. Moving fast, efficiently. He rolled her onto her back; her robe fell open.
Kicking furiously, struggling madly to pull the cuffs apart.
Another blow to her stomach. She gagged and fell still as he reached for her. Gripped her at the armpits, dragged her out the back door and into the large private garden behind the apartment.
His eyes remained on her face, not even looking at her tits, her flat belly, her mound with its few red curls. She could easily have given that up to him if it would have saved her life.
But, no, Rhyme's diagnosis was right. It wasn't lust that drove 823. He had something else in mind. He dropped her willowy figure, face up, into a patch of black-eyed Susans and pachysandra, out of sight of the neighbors. He looked around, catching his breath. He picked up the shovel and plunged the blade into the dirt.
Amelia Sachs began to cry.
*
Rubbing the back of his head into the pillow.
Compulsive, a doctor had once told him after observing this behavior--an opinion Rhyme hadn't asked for. Or wanted. His nestling, Rhyme reflected, was just a variation on Amelia Sachs's tearing her flesh with her own nails.
He stretched his neck muscles, rolling his head around, as he stared at the profile chart on the wall. Rhyme believed that the full story of the man's madness was here in front of him. In the black, swoopy handwriting--and the gaps between the words. But he couldn't see the story's ending. Not yet.
He looked over the clues again. There were only a few left unexplained.
The scar on the finger.
The knot.
The aftershave.
The scar was useless to them unless they had a suspect whose fingers they could examine. And there'd been no luck in identifying the knot--only preppy Banks's opinion that it wasn't nautical.
What about the cheap aftershave? Assuming that most unsubs wouldn't spritz themselves to go on a kidnapping spree, why had he worn it? Rhyme could only conclude again that he was trying to obscure another, a telltale scent. He ran through the possibilities: Food, liquor, chemicals, tobacco . . .
He felt eyes on him and looked to his right.
The black dots of the bony rattlesnake's eye sockets gazed toward the Clinitron. This was the one clue that was out of place. It had no purpose, except to taunt them.
Something occurred to him. Using the painstaking turning frame Rhyme slowly flipped back through Crime in Old New York. To the chapter on James Schneider. He found the paragraphs he'd remembered.
It has been suggested by a well-known physician of the mind (a practitioner of the discipline of "psyche-logy," which has been much in the news of late) that James Schneider's ultimate intent had little to do withharming his victims. Rather--this learned doctor has suggested--the villain was seeking revenge against those that did him what he perceived to be harm: the city's constabulary, if not Society as a whole.
Who can say where the source of this hate lay? Perhaps, like the Nile of old, its wellsprings were hidden to the world;--and possibly even to the villain himself. Yet one reason may be found in a little-known fact: Young James Schneider, at the tender age of ten, saw his father dragged away by constables only to die in prison for a robbery which, it was later ascertained, he did not commit. Following this unfortunate arrest, the boy's mother fell into life on the street and abandoned her son, who grew up a ward of the state.
Did the madman perchance commit these crimes to fling derision into the face of the very constabulary which had inadvertently destroyed his family?
We will undoubtedly never know.
Yet what does seem clear is that by mocking the ineffectualness of the protectors of its citizenry, James Schneider--the "bone collector"--was wreaking his vengeance upon the city itself as much as upon his innocent victims.
Lincoln Rhyme lay back in his pillow and looked at the profile chart again.
Dirt is heavier than anything.
It's the earth itself, the dust of an iron core, and it doesn't kill by strangling the air from the lungs but by compressing the cells until they die from the panic of immobility.
Sachs wished that she had died. She prayed that she would. Fast. From fear or a heart attack. Before the first shovelful hit her face. She prayed for this harder than Lincoln Rhyme had prayed for his pills and liquor.
Lying in the grave the unsub had dug in her own backyard Sachs felt the progress of the rich earth, dense and wormy, moving along her body.
Sadistically, he was burying her slowly, casting only a shallow scoop at a time, scattering it carefully around her. He'd started with her feet. He was now up to her chest, the dirt slipping into her robe and around her breasts like a lover's fingers.
Heavier and heavier, compressing, binding her lungs; she could suck only an ounce or two of air at a time. He paused once or twice to look at her then continued.
He likes to watch . . .
Hands beneath her, neck straining to keep her head above the tide.
Then her chest was buried completely. Her shoulders, her throat. The cold earth rose to the hot skin of her face, packing around her head so she couldn't move. Finally he bent down and ripped the tape off her mouth. As Sachs tried to scream he spilled a handful of dirt into her face. She shivered, choked on the black earth. Ears ringing, hearing for some reason an old song from her infancy--"The Green Leaves of Summer," a song her father played over and over again on the hi-fi. Sorrowful, haunting. She closed her eyes. Everything was going black. Opened her mouth once and got another cup's worth of soil.
Giving up the dead . . .
And then she was under.
Completely quiet. Not choking or gasping--the earth was a perfect seal. She had no air in her lungs, couldn't make any sounds. Silence, except for the haunting melody and the growing roar in her ears.
Then the pressure on her face ceased as her body went numb, as numb as Lincoln Rhyme's. Her mind began to shut down.
Blackness, blackness. No words from her father. Nothing from Nick . . . No dreams of downshifting from five to four to goose the speedometer into three digits.
Blackness.
Giving up the . . .
The mass sinking down onto her, pushing, pushing. Seeing only one image: The hand rising out of the grave yesterday morning, waving for mercy. When no mercy would be given.
Waving for her to follow.
Rhyme, I'll miss you.
Giving up . . .
THIRTY-FOUR
Something struck her forehead. Hard. She felt the thump but no pain.
What, what? His shovel? A brick? Maybe in an instant of compassion 823'd decided that this slow death was more than anyone could bear and was striking for her throat to sever her veins.
Another blow, and another. She couldn't open her eyes, but she was aware of light growing around her. Colors. And air. She forced the mass of dirt from her mouth and sucked in tiny breaths, all she could manage. Began coughing in a loud bray, retching, spitting.
Her lids sprang open and through tearing eyes she found herself looking up at the muddy vision of Lon Sellitto, kneeling over her, beside two EMS medics, one of whom dug into her mouth with latex-clad fingers and pulled out more gunk, while the other readied an oxygen mask and green tank.
Sellitto and Banks continued to uncover her body, shoving the dirt away with their muscular hands. They pulled her up, leaving the robe behind l
ike a shed skin. Sellitto, old divorce that he was, looked chastely away from her body as he put his jacket around her shoulders. Young Jerry Banks did look of course but she loved him anyway.
"Did . . . you. . . ?" she wheezed, then surrendered to a racking cough.
Sellitto glanced expectantly at Banks, who was the more breathless of the two. He must've done the most running after the unsub. The young detective shook his head. "Got away."
Sitting up, she inhaled oxygen for a moment.
"How?" she wheezed. "How'd you know?"
"Rhyme," he answered. "Don't ask me how. He called in 10-13s for everybody on the team. When he heard we were okay he sent us over here ASAP."
Then the numbness left, snap, in a flash. And for the first time she realized what had nearly happened. She dropped the oxygen mask, backed away in panic, tears streaming, her panicky keening growing louder and louder. "No, no, no . . ."
Slapping her arms and thighs, frantic, trying to shake off the horror clinging to her like a teeming swarm of bees.
"Oh God oh God . . . No . . ."
"Sachs?" Banks asked, alarmed. "Hey, Sachs?"
The older detective waved his partner away. "It's okay." He kept his arm around her shoulders as she dropped to all fours and vomited violently, sobbing, sobbing, gripping the dirt desperately between her fingers as if she wanted to strangle it.
Finally Sachs calmed and sat back on her naked haunches. She began laughing, softly at first then louder and louder, hysterical, astonished to find that the skies had opened and it had been raining--huge hot summer drops--and she hadn't even realized it.
Arm around his shoulders. Face pressed against his. They stayed that way for a long moment.
"Sachs . . . Oh, Sachs."
She stepped away from the Clinitron and scooted an old armchair from the corner of the room. Sachs--wearing navy sweatpants and a Hunter College T-shirt--flopped down into the chair and dangled her exquisite legs over the arm like a schoolgirl.
"Why us, Rhyme? Why'd he come after us?" Her voice was a raspy whisper from the dirt she'd swallowed.
"Because the people he kidnapped aren't the real victims. We are."
"Who's we?" she asked.
"I'm not sure. Society maybe. Or the city. Or the UN. Cops. I went back and reread his bible--the chapter on James Schneider. Remember Terry's theory about why the unsub'd been leaving the clues?"