The Bone Collector

Let’s do it.

She waded into the sea of cars and trucks and stopped the northbound lanes cold. Several drivers tried end runs and she had to issue two citations and finally drag trash cans out into the middle of the street as a barricade to make sure the good residents did their civic duty.

Sachs had finally remembered the next of the first officer’s ADAPT rules.

P is for Protect the crime scene.

The sound of angry horns began to fill the hazy morning sky, soon supplemented by the drivers’ angrier shouts. A short time later she heard the sirens join the cacophony as the first of the emergency vehicles arrived.

Forty minutes later, the scene was swarming with uniforms and investigators, dozens of them – a lot more than a hit in Hell’s Kitchen, however gruesome the cause of death, seemed to warrant. But, Sachs learned from another cop, this was a hot case, a media groper – the vic was one of two passengers who’d arrived at JFK last night, gotten into a cab and headed for the city. They’d never arrived at their homes.

“CNN’s watching,” the uniform whispered.

So Amelia Sachs wasn’t surprised to see blond Vince Peretti, chief of the Central Investigation and Resource Division, which oversaw the-crime scene unit, climb over the top of the embankment and pause as he brushed dust from his thousand-dollar suit.

She was, however, surprised to see him notice her and gesture her over, a faint smile on his clean-cut face. It occurred to her she was about to receive a nod of gratitude for her Cliffhanger routine. Saved the fingerprints on that ladder, boys. Maybe even a commendation. In the last hour of the last day of Patrol. Going out in a blaze of glory.

He looked her up and down. “Patrolwoman, you’re no rookie, are you? I’m safe in making that assumption.”

“I’m sorry, sir?”

“You’re not a rookie, I assume.”

She wasn’t, not technically, though she had only three years’ service under her belt, unlike most of the other Patrol officers her age; they had nine or ten years in. Sachs had foundered for a few years before attending the academy. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

He looked exasperated and the smile vanished. “You were first officer?”

“Yessir.”

“Why’d you close down Eleventh Avenue? What were you thinking of?”

She looked along the broad street, which was still blocked by her trash-can barricade. She’d gotten used to the honking but realized now it was really quite loud; the line of cars extended for miles.

“Sir, the first officer’s job is to arrest a perp, detain any witnesses, protect -”

“I know the ADAPT rule, officer. You closed the street to protect the crime scene?”

“Yessir. I didn’t think the perp would park on the cross street. He could be seen too easily from those apartments. See, there? Eleventh seemed like a better choice.”

“Well, it was a wrong choice. There were no footprints on that side of the tracks, and two sets going to the ladder that leads up to Thirty-seven.”

“I closed Thirty-seven too.”

“That’s my point. That’s all that needed to be closed. And the train?” he asked. “Why’d you stop that?”

“Well, sir. I thought that a train going through the scene might disturb evidence. Or something.”

“Or something, officer?”

“I didn’t express myself very well, sir. I meant -”

“What about Newark Airport?”

“Yessir.” She looked around for help. There were officers nearby but they were busily ignoring the dressing-down. “What exactly about Newark?”

“Why didn’t you shut that down too?”

Oh, wonderful. A schoolmarm. Her Julia Roberts lips grew taut but she said reasonably, “Sir, in my judgment, it seemed likely that -”

“The New York Thruway would’ve been a good choice too. And the Jersey Pike and Long Island Expressway. I-70, all the way to St. Louis. Those are likely means of escape.”

She lowered her head slightly and stared back at Peretti. The two of them were exactly the same height, though his heels were higher.

“I’ve gotten calls from the commissioner,” he continued, “the head of the Port Authority, the UN secretary-general’s office, the head of that expo -”. He nodded toward the Javits Center. “We’ve fucked up the conference schedule, a U.S. senator’s speech and traffic on the entire West Side. The train tracks were fifty feet from the vic and the street you closed was a good two hundred feet away and thirty above. I mean, even Hurricane Eva didn’t fuck up Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor like this.”

“I just thought -”

Peretti smiled. Because Sachs was a beautiful woman – her “foundering” before attending the academy had involved steady assignments for the Chantelle Modeling Agency on Madison Avenue – the cop chose to forgive her.

“Patrolwoman Sachs” – he glanced at the name tag on her chest, flattened chastely by the American Body Armor vest – “an object lesson. Crime scene work is a balance. It’d be nice if we could cordon off the whole city after every homicide and detain about three million people. But we can’t do that. I say this constructively. For your edification.”

“Actually, sir,” she said brusquely, “I’m transferring out of Patrol. Effective as of noon today.”

He nodded, smiled cheerfully. “Then, enough said. But for the record, it was your decision to stop the train and close the street.”

“Yessir, it was,” she said smartly. “No mistake about that.”

He jotted this into a black watchbook with slashing strokes of his sweaty pen.

Oh, please…

“Now, remove those garbage cans. You direct traffic until the street’s clear again. You hear me?”

Without a yessir or nosir or any other acknowledgment she wandered to Eleventh Avenue and slowly began removing the garbage cans. Every single driver who passed her scowled or muttered something. Sachs glanced at her watch.

An hour to go.

I can live with it.

TWO

WITH A TERSE FLUTTER OF WINGS the peregrine dropped onto the window ledge. The light outside, mid-morning, was brilliant and the air looked fiercely hot.

“There you are,” the man whispered. Then cocked his head at the sound of the buzzer of the door downstairs.

“Is that him?” he shouted toward the stairs. “Is it?”

Lincoln Rhyme heard nothing in response and turned back to the window. The bird’s head swiveled, a fast, jerky movement that the falcon nevertheless made elegant. Rhyme observed that its talons were bloody. A piece of yellow flesh dangled from the black nutshell beak. It extended a short neck and eased to the nest in movements reminiscent not of a bird’s but a snake’s. The falcon dropped the meat into the upturned mouth of the fuzzy blue hatchling. I’m looking, Rhyme thought, at the only living creature in New York City with no predator. Except maybe God Himself.

He heard the footsteps come up the stairs slowly.

“Was that him?” he asked Thom.

The young man answered, “No.”

“Who was it? The doorbell rang, didn’t it?”

Thom’s eyes went to the window. “The bird’s back. Look, bloodstains on your windowsill. Can you see them?”

The female falcon inched into view. Blue-gray like a fish, iridescent. Her head sca

“They’re always together. Do they mate for life?” Thom wondered aloud. “Like geese?”

Rhyme’s eyes returned to Thom, who was bent forward at his trim, youthful waist, gazing at the nest through the spattered window.

“Who was it?” Rhyme repeated. The young man was stalling now and it irritated Rhyme.

“A visitor.”

“A visitor? Ha.” Rhyme snorted. He tried to recall when his last visitor had been here. It must have been three months ago. Who’d it been? That reporter maybe or some distant cousin. Well, Peter Taylor, one of Rhyme’s spinal cord specialists. And Blaine had been here several times. But she of course was not a vis-i-tor.