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As Capt. Rhyme put it: “Often the only thing that will stop a vicious killer is a microscopic bit of dust, a hair, a fiber, a sloughed-off skin cell, a coffee stain. If you’re lazy or stupid and miss that cell or fiber, well, how’re you going to explain that to the family of the next victim?”
Capt. Rhyme insisted on employees’ total devotion to their job, and once fired an officer for using the toilet beside the bedroom where a murder had occurred.
Still, he rewarded hard work and loyalty. A former protégé reported that on more than one occasion, Capt. Rhyme would berate senior police officials to secure raises or promotions for his people. Or he would adamantly, and loudly, defend his team’s judgments about handling cases.
In several instances Capt. Rhyme himself ordered senior police officials, reporters, and even a deputy mayor arrested when their presence threatened to contaminate or interfere with a crime scene
In addition to gathering and analyzing evidence, Capt. Rhyme enjoyed testifying in court against those whose arrests he had participated in.
Bernard Rothstein, a well-known criminal-defense lawyer who has represented many organized-crime figures, recalled several cases in which Capt. Rhyme testified. “If I saw that Rhyme had done the forensic work in a case against one of my clients, I’d think, brother, I am not looking forward to that cross-examination. You can punch holes in the testimony of most crime scene cops when they get up on the stand. But Lincoln Rhyme? He’d punch holes in you.”
After his accident at the subway crime scene, Rhyme converted a parlor in his Central Park West town house into a forensic lab, one that was as well equipped as those in many small cities.
Det. Melvin Cooper, an NYPD crime scene officer who often worked with Capt. Rhyme and did much of his laboratory work for him, recalled one of the first cases run out of his town house. “It was a big homicide, and we had a bunch of evidence. We cranked up the gas chromatograph, the sca
Despite his injury, Capt. Rhyme was not active in disability rights organizations. He once told a reporter, “I’m a white male who lives in New York City, is six feet tall, weighs 182 pounds, has dark hair, and is disabled. Those are all conditions that have, to a greater or lesser degree, affected my career as a criminalist. I don’t focus on any of them. My purpose in life is to find the truth behind crimes. Everything else is secondary. In other words, I’m a criminalist who, by the way, happens to be disabled.”
Ironically, largely because of this attitude, Capt. Rhyme has been held out by many advocates as an example of the new disabled movement, in which individuals are given neither to self-pity nor to exploiting or obsessing over their condition.
“Lincoln Rhyme stood for the proposition that the disabled are human beings first, with the same talents and passions-and shortcomings-as everyone else,” said Sonja Wente, director of the Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Center. “He avoided both the pedestal and the soapbox.”
Capt. Rhyme himself observed in a recent interview, “The line between the disabled and the nondisabled is shrinking. Computers, video cameras, high-definition monitors, biometric devices, and voice-recognition software have moved my life closer to that of somebody who’s fully able-bodied, while the same technology is creating a more sedentary, housebound life for those who have no disability whatsoever. From what I’ve read, I lead a more active life than a lot of people nowadays.”
Nonetheless, Capt. Rhyme did not simply accept his disability; he fought hard to maintain his ability to live as normal a life as he could and, in fact, to improve his condition.
“Lincoln engaged in a daily regimen of exercises on various machinery, including a stationary bike and a treadmill,” said Thom Reston, his personal aide and caregiver for a number of years. “I was always saying slow down, take it easy, watch your blood pressure.” The aide added, laughing, “He ignored me.”
In fact, in recent years, Reston said, the exercise paid off, and Capt. Rhyme was able to regain some use of his extremities and some sensation, a feat that spinal-cord doctors described as a rare achievement.
Capt. Rhyme was not only a practicing criminalist; throughout his tenure at the NYPD, he was in demand as a teacher and lecturer. After his accident, when traveling became more difficult, he continued to lecture on occasion at John Jay School of Criminal Justice and Fordham University in New York City. He wrote about forensic issues, and his articles have appeared in, among others, Forensic Science Review, The New Scotland Yard Forensic Investigation A
He authored two books: a text on forensic science used by thousands of police departments and law-enforcement agencies around the world, and a popular nonfiction book, The Scenes of the Crime, about sites in New York City where unsolved murders occurred. The book is still in print.
Capt. Rhyme was himself the subject of a series of bestselling popular novels, which recounted some of his better-known cases, including The Bone Collector, about a serial kidnapper; The Stone Monkey, recounting the hunt for a Chinese “snakehead,” or human smuggler; and The Twelfth Card, in which he and Det. Amelia Sachs, who worked with him often, investigated a crime that occurred just after the Civil War.
Publicly dismissive of the novels, he stated in interviews that he thought the books merely trivial “entertainments,” good for reading on airplanes or at the beach, but little else.
Privately, though, he was delighted to be the subject of the series, keeping an autographed set on his shelves. Visitors reported that he would often make them sit silently and listen to passages he particularly liked on CD.
“ Lincoln and his ego were never far apart,” joked Mr. Reston.
Capt. Rhyme was divorced from his wife, Blaine Chapman Rhyme, twelve years ago. They had no children. He is survived by his partner, Det. Sachs; his aunt, Jeanette Hanson; and four cousins, Arthur Rhyme, Marie Rhyme-Sloane, Richard Hanson, and Margaret Hanson.
A memorial service for Capt. Rhyme will be held at 7:00 p.m., Monday, at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, 2 West 64th Street, at Central Park West, New York, NY. Det. Sachs has asked that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to a charitable organization for the benefit of children with spinal-cord injuries or disease.
The first floor of the town house on Central Park West was quiet, dark. The lights were off, and little of the dusk light from outside penetrated the curtains in the east-facing room.
What had once been a quaint Victorian parlor was now filled with laboratory equipment, shelves, cabinets, office chairs, electronic devices. On examining tables were plastic and paper bags, and tubes and boxes containing evidence. They were in no particular order.
The atmosphere here was of a workplace whose otherwise busy pulse had been stopped cold.