The Bone Collector

  THIRTY-SIX

  In two long steps Taylor was beside the bed. He grabbed the ECU controller from beneath Rhyme's finger, flung it across the room.

  Rhyme took a breath to shout. But the doctor said, "He's dead too. The constable." Nodding toward the door, meaning the bodyguard downstairs. Taylor stared with fascination as Polling thrashed like a spine-cracked animal, spraying his blood on the floor and walls.

  "Jim!" Rhyme cried. "No, oh, no . . ."

  The captain's hands curled over his ruined chest. A repugnant gurgling from his throat filled the room, accompanied by the mad thudding of his shoes on the floor as he died. Finally he quivered once violently and lay still. His glazed eyes, dotted with blood, stared at the ceiling.

  Turning to the bed he kept his eyes on Lincoln Rhyme as he walked around it. Slowly circling, the knife in his hand. His breathing was hard.

  "Who are you?" Rhyme gasped.

  Silently Taylor stepped forward, put his fingers around Rhyme's arm, squeezed the bone several times, perhaps hard, perhaps not. His hand strayed to Rhyme's left ring finger. He lifted it off the ECU and caressed it with the dripping blade of the knife. Slipped the sharp point up under the nail.

  Rhyme felt faint pain, a queasy sensation. Then harder. He gasped.

  Then Taylor noticed something and froze. He gasped. Leaned forward. Staring at the copy of Crime in Old New York on the turning frame.

  "That's how . . . You actually found it. . . . Oh, the constables should be proud to have you in their ranks, Lincoln Rhyme. I thought it'd be days before you got to the house. I thought Maggie'd be stripped down by the dogs by then."

  "Why're you doing this?" Rhyme asked.

  But Taylor didn't answer; he was examining Rhyme carefully, muttering, half to himself, "You didn't used to be this good, you know. In the old days. You missed a lot back then, didn't you? In the old days."

  The old days . . . What did he mean?

  He shook his balding head, gray hair--not brown--and glanced at a copy of Rhyme's forensic textbook. There was recognition in his eyes and slowly Rhyme began to understand.

  "You read my book," the criminalist said. "You studied it. At the library, right? The public library branch near you?"

  Eight twenty-three was, after all, a reader.

  So he knew Rhyme's CS procedures. That's why he'd swept up so carefully, why he'd worn gloves touching even surfaces most criminals wouldn't've thought would retain prints, why he'd sprayed the aftershave at the scene--he'd known exactly what Sachs would be looking for.

  And of course the manual wasn't the only book he'd read.

  Scenes of the Crime too. That's what had given him the idea for the planted clues--Old New York clues. Clues that only Lincoln Rhyme would be able to figure out.

  Taylor picked up the disk of spinal column he'd given to Rhyme eight months ago. He kneaded it absently between his fingers. And Rhyme saw the gift, so touching back then, for the horrific preface that it was.

  His eyes were unfocused, distant. Rhyme recalled he'd seen this before--when Taylor'd examined him over the past months. He'd put it down to a doctor's concentration but now knew it was madness. The control he'd been struggling to maintain was disappearing.

  "Tell me," Rhyme asked. "Why?"

  "Why?" Taylor whispered, moving his hand along Rhyme's leg, probing once more, knee, shin, ankle. "Because you were something remarkable, Rhyme. Unique. You were invulnerable."

  "What do you mean?"

  "How can you punish a man who wants to die? If you kill him you've done what he wants. So I had to make you want to live."

  And the answer came to Rhyme finally.

  The old days . . .

  "It was fake, wasn't it?" he whispered. "That obituary from the Albany coroner. You wrote it yourself."

  Colin Stanton. Dr. Taylor was Colin Stanton.

  The man whose family had been butchered in front of him on the streets of Chinatown. The man who stood paralyzed in front of the bodies of his wife and two children as they bled to death, and could not make the obscene choice about which of them to save.

  You missed things. In the old days.

  Now, too late, the final pieces fell into place.

  His watching the victims: T.J. Colfax and Monelle and Carole Ganz. He'd risked capture to stand and stare at them--just as Stanton had stood over his family, watching as they died. He wanted revenge but he was a doctor, sworn never to take a life, and so in order to kill he had to become his spiritual ancestor--the bone collector, James Schneider, a nineteenth-century madman whose family had been destroyed by the police.

  "After I got out of the mental hospital I came back to Manhattan. I read the inquest report about how you missed the killer at the crime scene, how he got out of the apartment. I knew I had to kill you. But I couldn't. I don't know why. . . . I kept waiting and waiting for something to happen. And then I found the book. James Schneider . . . He'd been through exactly what I had. He'd done it; I could too."

  I took them down to the bone.

  "The obituary," Rhyme said.

  "Right. I wrote it myself on my computer. Faxed it to NYPD so they wouldn't suspect me. Then I became someone else. Dr. Peter Taylor. I didn't realize until later why I picked that name. Can you figure it out?" Stanton's eyes strayed to the chart. "The answer's there."

  Rhyme scanned the profile.

  Knows basic German

  "Schneider," Rhyme said, sighing, "It's German for 'tailor.' "

  Stanton nodded. "I spent weeks at the library reading up on spinal cord trauma and then called you, claimed I'd been referred by Columbia SCI. I planned to kill you during the first appointment, cut your flesh off a strip at a time, let you bleed to death. It might've taken hours. Even days. But what happened?" His eyes grew wide. "I found out you wanted to kill yourself."

  He leaned close to Rhyme. "Jesus, I still remember the first time I saw you. You son of a bitch. You were dead. And I knew what I had to do--I had to make you want to live. I had to give you purpose once more."

  So it didn't matter whom he kidnapped. Anyone would do. "You didn't even care whether the victims lived or died."

  "Of course not. All I wanted was to force you to try to save them."

  "The knot," Rhyme asked, noticing the loop of clothesline hanging beside the poster. "It was a surgical suture?"

  He nodded.

  "Of course. And the scar on your finger?"

  "My finger?" He frowned. "How did you . . . Her neck! You printed her neck, Hanna's. I knew that was possible. I didn't think about it." Angry with himself. "I broke a glass in the mental hospital library," Stanton continued. "To cut my wrist. I squeezed it till it broke." He madly traced the scar with his left index finger.

  "The deaths," Rhyme said evenly, "your wife and children. It was an accident. A terrible accident, horrible. But it didn't happen on purpose. It was a mistake. I'm so sorry for you and for them."

  In a sing-songy voice, Stanton chided, "Remember what you wrote? . . . in the preface of your textbook?" He recited perfectly, " 'The criminalist knows that for every action there's a consequence. The presence of a perpetrator alters every crime scene, however subtly. It is because of this that we can identify and locate criminals and achieve justice.' " Stanton grabbed Rhyme's hair and tugged his head forward. They were inches apart. Rhyme could smell the madman's breath, see the lenses of sweat on the gray skin. "Well, I'm the consequence of your actions."

  "What'll you accomplish? You kill me and I'm no worse off than I would've been."

  "Oh, but I'm not going to kill you. Not yet."

  Stanton released Rhyme's hair, backed away.

  "You want to know what I'm gong to do?" he whispered. "I'm going to kill your doctor, Berger. But not the way he's used to killing. Oh, no sleeping pills for him, no booze. We'll see how he likes death the old-fashioned way. Then your friend Sellitto. And Officer Sachs? Her too. She was lucky once. But I'll get her the next time. Another burial for her. And Thom too of course. He
'll die right here in front of you. Work him down to the bone . . . Nice and slow." Stanton's breathing was fast. "Maybe we'll take care of him today. When's he due back?"

  "I made the mistakes. It's my--" Rhyme suddenly coughed deeply. He cleared his throat, caught his breath. "It's my fault. Do whatever you want with me."

  "No, it's all of you. It's--"

  "Please. You can't--" Rhyme began to cough again. It turned into a violent racking. He managed to control it.

  Stanton glanced at him.

  "You can't hurt them. I'll do whatever--" Rhyme's voice seized. His head flew back, his eyes bulged.

  And Lincoln Rhyme's breath stopped completely. His head thrashed, his shoulders shivered violently. The tendons in his neck tightened like steel cords.

  "Rhyme!" Stanton cried.

  Sputtering, saliva shooting from his lips, Rhyme trembled once, twice, an earthquake seemed to ripple through his entire limp body. His head fell back, blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

  "No!" Stanton shouted. Slamming his hands into Rhyme's chest. "You can't die!"

  The doctor lifted Rhyme's lids, revealing only whites.

  Stanton tore open Thom's medicine box and prepared a blood-pressure hypodermic, injected the drug. He yanked the pillow off the bed and pulled Rhyme flat. He tilted back Rhyme's lolling head, wiped the lips and placed his mouth on Rhyme's, breathing hard into the unresponsive lungs.

  "No!" Stanton raged. "I won't let you die! You can't!"

  No response.

  Again. He checked the unmoving eyes.

  "Come on! Come on!"

  Another breath. Pounding on the still chest.

  Then he backed up, frozen with panic and shock, staring, staring, watching the man die in front of him.

  Finally he bent forward and one last time exhaled deeply into Rhyme's mouth.

  And it was when Stanton turned his head and lowered his ear to listen for the faint sound of breath, any faint exhalation, that Rhyme's head shot forward like a striking snake. He closed his teeth on Stanton's neck, tearing through the carotid artery and gripping a portion of the man's own spine.

  Down to . . .

  Stanton screamed and scrabbled backwards, sliding Rhyme off the bed on top of him. Together they fell in a pile on the floor. The hot coppery blood gushed and gushed, filling Rhyme's mouth.

  . . . the bone.

  His lungs, his killer lungs, had already gone for a minute without air but he refused to loosen his grip now to gasp for breath, ignoring the searing pain from inside his cheek where he'd bit into the tender skin, bloodying it to give credence to his sham attack of dysreflexia. He growled in rage--seeing Amelia Sachs buried in dirt, seeing the steam spew over T.J. Colfax's body--and he shook his head, feeling the snap of bone and cartilage.

  Pummeling Rhyme's chest, Stanton screamed again, kicking to get away from the monster that had socketed itself to him.

  But Rhyme's grip was unbreakable. It was as if the spirits of all the dead muscles throughout his body had risen into his jaw.

  Stanton clawed his way to the bedside table and managed to grab his knife. He jabbed it into Rhyme. Once, twice. But the only places he could reach were the criminalist's legs and arms. It's pain that incapacitates and pain was one thing to which Lincoln Rhyme was immune.

  The vise of his jaws closed harder and Stanton's scream was cut off as his windpipe went. He plunged the knife deep into Rhyme's arm. It stopped when it hit bone. He started to draw it out to strike again but the madman's body froze then spasmed violently once, then again, and suddenly went completely limp.

  Stanton collapsed to the floor, pulling Rhyme after him. The criminalist's head slammed onto the oak with a loud crack. Yet Rhyme wouldn't let go. He held tight and continued to crush the man's neck, shaking, tearing the flesh like a hungry lion crazed by blood and by the immeasurable satisfaction of a lust fulfilled.

  V

  WHEN YOU MOVE

  THEY CAN'T

  GETCHA

  "A physician's duty is not just to extend life, it is to end suffering."

  --DR. JACK KEVORKIAN

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Monday, 7:15 p.m., to Monday, 10:00 p.m.

  It was nearly sunset when Amelia Sachs walked through his doorway.

  She was no longer in sweats. Or uniform. She wore jeans and a forest-green blouse. Her beautiful face sported several scratches Rhyme didn't recognize, though given the events of the past three days he guessed the wounds weren't self-inflicted.

  "Yuck," she said, walking around the portion of the floor where Stanton and Polling had died. It had been mopped with bleach--with the perp body-bagged, forensics became moot--but the pink island of stain was huge.

  Rhyme watched Sachs pause and nod a cold greeting to Dr. William Berger, who stood by the falcon window with his infamous briefcase at his side.

  "So you got him, did you?" she asked, nodding at the bloodstain.

  "Yeah," Rhyme said. "He's got."

  "All by yourself?"

  "It was hardly a fair fight," he offered. "I forced myself to hold back."

  Outside, the liquid, ruddy light of the low sun ignited treetops and the marching line of elegant buildings along Fifth Avenue across the park.

  Sachs glanced at Berger, who said, "Lincoln and I were just having a little talk."

  "Were you?"

  There was a long pause.

  "Amelia," he began. "I'm going to go through with it. I've decided."

  "I see." Her gorgeous lips, marred by the black lines of tiny stitches, tightened slightly. It was her only visible reaction. "You know, I hate it when you use my first name. I goddamn hate it."

  How could he explain to her that she was largely the reason he was going ahead with his death? Waking that morning, with her beside him, he realized with a piquant sorrow that she would soon climb from the bed and dress and walk out the door--to her own life, to a normal life. Why, they were as doomed as lovers could be--if he dared even to think of them as lovers. It was only a matter of time until she met another Nick and fell in love. The 823 case was over, and without that binding them together, their lives would have to drift apart. Inevitable.

  Oh, Stanton was smarter than he could've guessed. Rhyme had been drawn to the brink of the real world once again and, yes, he'd moved far over it.

  Sachs, I lied. Sometimes you can't give up the dead. Sometimes you just have to go with them. . . .

  Hands clenched, she walked to the window. "I tried to come up with a ballbuster of an argument to talk you out of it. You know, something real slick. But I couldn't. All I can say is, I just don't want you to do it."

  "A deal's a deal, Sachs."

  She looked at Berger. "Shit, Rhyme." Walking over to the bed, crouching down. She put her hand on his shoulder, brushed his hair off his forehead. "But will you do one thing for me?"

  "What?"

  "Give me a few hours."

  "I'm not changing my mind."

  "I understand. Just two hours. There's something you have to do first."

  Rhyme looked at Berger, who said, "I can't stay much longer, Lincoln. My plane . . . If you want to wait a week I can come back. . . ."

  "That's okay, doctor," Sachs said. "I'll help him do it."

  "You?" the doctor asked cautiously.

  Reluctantly she nodded. "Yes."

  This wasn't her nature. Rhyme could see that clearly. But he glanced into her blue eyes, which though tearful were remarkably clear.

  She said, "When I was . . . when he was burying me, Rhyme, I couldn't move. Not an inch. For an instant I was desperate to die. Not to live, just to have it over with. I understood how you feel."

  Rhyme nodded slowly then said to Berger, "It's all right, doctor. Could you just leave the--what's the euphemism of the day?"

  "How's 'paraphernalia'?" Berger suggested.

  "Could you just leave them there, on the table?"

  "You're sure?" he asked Sachs.

  She nodded again.

  T
he doctor set the pills, brandy and plastic bag on the bedside table. Then he rummaged through his briefcase. "I don't have any rubber bands, I'm afraid. For the bag."

  "That's all right," Sachs said, glancing down at her shoes. "I've got some."

  Then Berger stepped close to the bed, put his arm on Rhyme's shoulder. "I wish you a peaceful self-deliverance," he said.

  "Self-deliverance," Rhyme said wryly as Berger left. Then, to Sachs: "Now. What's this I have to do?"

  She took the turn at fifty, skidded hard, and slipped smoothly up into fourth gear.

  The wind blasted through the open windows and tossed their hair behind them. The gusts were brutal but Amelia Sachs wouldn't hear of driving with the windows up.

  "That'd be un-American," she announced, and broke the 100-mph mark.

  When you move . . .

  Rhyme had suggested it might be wiser to take their spin on the NYPD training course but he wasn't surprised when Sachs declared that that was a pussy run; she'd disposed of it the first week at the academy. So they were out on Long Island, their cover stories for the Nassau County police ready, rehearsed and marginally credible.

  "The thing about five-speeds is, top gear isn't the fastest. That's a mileage gear, I don't give a shit about mileage." Then she took his left hand and placed it on the round black knob, encircled it with hers, downshifted.

  The engine screamed and they shot up to 120, as trees and houses streaked past and the uneasy horses grazing in the fields stared at the black streak of Chevrolet.

  "Isn't this the best, Rhyme?" she shouted. "Man, better than sex. Better than anything."

  "I can feel the vibrations," he said. "I think I can. In my finger."

  She smiled and he believed she squeezed his hand beneath hers. Finally, they ran out of deserted road, population loomed, and Sachs reluctantly slowed, turned around and pointed the nose of the car toward the hazy crescent of moon as it rose above the distant city, nearly invisible in the stew of hot August air.

  "Let's try for one-fifty," she proposed. Lincoln Rhyme closed his eyes and lost himself in the sensation of wind and the perfume of freshly cut grass and the speed.

  The night was the hottest of the month.

  From Lincoln's Rhyme's new vantage point he could look down into the park and see the weirdos on the benches, the exhausted joggers, the families reclining around the smoke of dwindling barbecue fires like the survivors of a medieval battle. A few dog walkers unable to wait for the night's fever to break made their obligatory rounds, Baggies in hand.