The Bone Collector

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 GETHCHA

“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.

The 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 a

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.