The Bone Collector, Page 23

  Rhyme stretched back into his pillow. How much time would they have? An hour? Two?

  The moon. Dirt. Brine . . .

  He glanced at Sachs who was standing by herself in the corner. Her head was down and her long red hair fell dramatically toward the floor. She was looking into an evidence bag, a frown on her face, lost in concentration. How many times had Rhyme himself stood in the same pose, trying to--

  "A newspaper!" she cried, looking up. "Where's a newspaper?" Her eyes were frantic as she looked from table to table. "Today's paper?"

  "What is it, Sachs?" Rhyme asked.

  She grabbed The New York Times from Jerry Banks and leafed quickly through it.

  "That liquid . . . in the underwear," she said to Rhyme. "Could it be salt water?"

  "Salt water?" Cooper pored over the GC-MS chart. "Of course! Water and sodium and other minerals. And the oil, phosphates. It's polluted seawater."

  Her eyes met Rhyme's and they said simultaneously, "High tide!"

  She held up the paper, open to the weather map. It contained a phases-of-the-moon diagram identical to the one found at the scene. Below it was a tidal chart. "High tide's in forty minutes."

  Rhyme's face curled in disgust. He was never angrier than when he was angry with himself. "He's going to drown the vic. They're under a pier downtown." He looked hopelessly at the map of Manhattan, with its miles of shoreline. "Sachs, time to play race-car driver again. You and Banks go west. Lon, why don't you take the East Side? Around the South Street Seaport. And Mel, figure out what the hell that leaf is!"

  A fluke of wave slapped his sagging head.

  William Everett opened his eyes and snorted the shivery water from his nose. It was icy cold and he felt his questionable heart stutter as it struggled to send warming blood through his body.

  He almost fainted again, like when the son of a bitch'd broken his finger. Then he floated back to waking, his thoughts on his late wife--and for some reason, on their travels. They'd been to Giza. And to Guatemala. Nepal. Teheran (one week before the embassy takeover).

  Their Southeast China Airlines plane had lost one of two engines an hour out of Beijing and Evelyn had lowered her head, the crash position, preparing to die and staring at an article in the in-flight magazine. It warned that drinking hot tea right after a meal was dangerous for you. She told him about it afterwards, at the Raffles bar in Singapore, and they'd laughed hysterically until tears came to their eyes.

  Thinking of the kidnapper's cold eyes. His teeth, the bulky gloves.

  Now, in this horrid wet tomb the unbearable pain rolled up his arm and into his jaw.

  Broken finger or heart attack? he wondered.

  Maybe a little of both.

  Everett closed his eyes until the pain subsided. He looked around him. The chamber where he was handcuffed was beneath a rotting pier. A lip of wood dipped from the edge toward the churning water, which was about six inches below the bottom of the rim. Lights from boats on the river and the industrial sites of Jersey reflected through the narrow slit. The water was up to his neck now and although the roof of the pier was several feet above his head the cuffs were extended as far as they'd go.

  The pain swept up from his finger again and Everett's head roared with the agony and dipped toward the water as he passed out. A noseful of water and the racking cough that followed revived him.

  Then the moon tugged the plane of water slightly higher and with a sodden gulp the chamber was sealed off from the river outside. The room went dark. He was aware of the sounds of groaning waves and his own moaning from the pain.

  He knew he was dead, knew he couldn't keep his head above the greasy surface for more than a few minutes. He closed his eyes, pressed his face against the slick, black column.

  TWENTY-ONE

  All the way downtown, Sachs," Rhyme's voice clattered from the radio.

  She punched the accelerator of the RRV, red lights flashing, as they screamed downtown along the West Side Highway. Ice-cool, she goosed the wagon up to eighty.

  "Okay, whoa," said Jerry Banks.

  Counting down. Twenty-third Street, Twentieth, the skidding jog at the Fourteenth Street garbage-barge dock. As they roared through the Village, the meatpacking district, a semi pulled out of a side street directly into her path. Instead of braking she nudged the wagon over the center curb like a steeple-chaser, drawing breathless oaths from Banks and a wail from the air horn of the big White, which jackknifed spectacularly.

  "Oops," said Amelia Sachs and swung back into the southbound lane. To Rhyme she added, "Say again. Missed that."

  Rhyme's tinny voice popped through her earphones. "Downtown is all I can tell you. Until we figure out what the leaf means."

  "We're coming up on Battery Park City."

  "Twenty-five minutes to high tide," Banks called.

  Maybe Dellray's team could get the exact location out of him. They could drag Mr. 823 into an alley somewhere with a bag of apples. Nick had told her that was the way they talked perps into "cooperating." Whack 'em in the gut with a bag of fruit. Really painful. No marks. When she was growing up she wouldn't have thought cops did that. Now she knew different.

  Banks tapped her shoulder. "There. A bunch of old piers."

  Rotten wood, filthy. Spooky places.

  They skidded to a stop and climbed out, running toward the water.

  "You there, Rhyme?"

  "Talk to me, Sachs. Where are you?"

  "A pier just north of Battery Park City."

  "I just heard from Lon, on the East Side. He hasn't found anything."

  "It's hopeless," she said. "There're a dozen piers. Then the whole promenade . . . And the fireboat house and ferry docks and the pier at Battery Park . . . We need ESU."

  "We don't have ESU, Sachs. They're not on our side anymore."

  Twenty minutes to high tide.

  Her eyes darted along the waterfront. Her shoulders sagged with helplessness. Hand on her weapon, she sprinted to the river, Jerry Banks not far behind.

  "Get me something on that leaf, Mel. A guess, anything. Wing it."

  Fidgeting, Cooper looked from the microscope to the computer screen.

  Eight thousand varieties of leafy plants in Manhattan.

  "It doesn't fit the cell structure of anything."

  "It's old," Rhyme said. "How old?"

  Cooper looked at the leaf again. "Mummified. I'd put it at a hundred years, little less maybe."

  "What's gone extinct in the last hundred years?"

  "Plants don't go extinct in an ecosystem like Manhattan. They always show up again."

  A ping in Rhyme's mind. He was close to remembering something. He both loved and hated this feeling. He might grab the thought like a slow pop-up fly. Or it might vanish completely, leaving him with only the sting of lost inspiration.

  Sixteen minutes to high tide.

  What was the thought? He grappled with it, closed his eyes . . .

  Pier, he was thinking. The vic's under a pier.

  What about it? Think!

  Pier . . . ships . . . unloading . . . cargo.

  Unloading cargo!

  His eyes snapped open. "Mel, is it a crop?"

  "Oh, hell. I've been looking at general-horticulture pages, not cultivated crops." He typed for what seemed like hours.

  "Well?"

  "Hold on, hold on. Here's a list of the encoded binaries." He scanned it. "Alfalfa, barley, beets, corn, oats, tobacco . . ."

  "Tobacco! Try that."

  Cooper double clicked his mouse and the image slowly unfurled on the screen.

  "That's it!"

  "The World Trade Towers," Rhyme announced. "The land from there north used to be tobacco plantations. Thom, the research for my book--I want the map from the 1740s. And that modern map Bo Haumann was using for the asbestos-cleanup sites. Put them up there on the wall, next to each other."

  The aide found the old map in Rhyme's files. He taped them both onto the wall near his bed. Crudely drawn, the older
map showed the northern part of the settled city--a cluster on the lower portion of the isle--covered with plantations. There were three commercial wharves along the river, which was then called not the Hudson but the West River. Rhyme glanced at the recent map of the city. The farmland was gone of course, as were the original wharves, but the contemporary map showed an abandoned wharf in the exact location of one of the tobacco exporter's old piers.

  Rhyme strained forward, struggling to see the street name it was near. He was about to shout for Thom to come hold the map closer when, from downstairs, he heard a loud snap and the door crashed inward. Glass shattered.

  Thom started down the stairs.

  "I want to see him." The terse voice filled the hallway.

  "Just a--" the aide began.

  "No. Not inaminute, not in a hour. But right. Fucking. Now."

  "Mel," Rhyme whispered, "ditch the evidence, shut the systems down."

  "But--"

  "Do it!"

  Rhyme shook his head violently, dislodging the headset microphone. It fell onto the side of the Clinitron. Footsteps pounded up the stairs.

  Thom did the best he could to stall but the visitors were three federal agents and two of the three were holding large guns. Slowly they backed him up the stairs.

  Bless him, Mel Cooper pulled apart a compound microscope in five seconds flat and was calmly replacing the components with meticulous care as the FBI crested the stairs and stormed into Rhyme's room. The evidence bags were stuffed under a table and covered with National Geographics.

  "Ah, Dellray," Rhyme asked. "Find our unsub, did you?"

  "Why didn't you tell us?"

  "Tell you what?"

  "That the fingerprint was bogus."

  "No one asked me."

  "Bogus?" Cooper asked, mystified.

  "Well, it was a real print," Rhyme said, as if it were obvious. "But it wasn't the unsub's. Our boy needed a taxi to catch his fish with. So he met--what was his name?"

  "Victor Pietrs," Dellray muttered and gave the cabbie's history.

  "Nice touch," Rhyme said with some genuine admiration.

  "Picked a Serb with a rap sheet and mental problems. Wonder how long he looked for a candidate. Anyway, 823 killed poor Mr. Pietrs and stole his cab. Cut off his finger. He kept it and figured if we were getting too close he'd leave a nice obvious print at a scene to throw us off. I guess it worked."

  Rhyme glanced at the clock. Fourteen minutes left.

  "How'd you know?" Dellray glanced at the maps on Rhyme's wall but, thank God, wasn't interested in them.

  "The print showed signs of dehydration and shriveling. Bet the body was a mess. And you found it in the basement? Am I right? Where our boy likes to stow his victims."

  Dellray ignored him and nosed around the room like a giant terrier. "Where you hidin' our evidence?"

  "Evidence? I don't know what you're talking about. Say, did you break my door? Last time you walked in without knocking. Now you just kicked it in."

  "You know, Lincoln, I was thinking of apologizing to you for before--"

  "That's big of you, Fred."

  "But now I'm a inch away from collaring your ass."

  Rhyme glanced down at the microphone headset, dangling on the floor. He imagined Sachs's voice bleating from the earphones.

  "Gimme that evidence, Rhyme. You don't realize what kind of pissy-bad trouble you're in."

  "Thom," Rhyme asked slowly, "Agent Dellray startled me and I dropped my Walkman headset. Could you hook it on the bedframe?"

  The aide didn't miss a beat. He rested the mike next to Rhyme's head, out of Dellray's sight.

  "Thank you," Rhyme said to Thom. Then added, "You know, I haven't had my bath yet. I think it's about time, wouldn't you say?"

  "I've been wondering when you were going to ask," said Thom, with the ability of a natural-born actor.

  "Come in, Rhyme. For Christ's sake. Where are you?"

  Then she heard a voice in her headset. Thom's. It sounded stilted, exaggerated. Something was wrong.

  "I've got the new sponge," the voice said.

  "Looks like a good one," Rhyme answered.

  "Rhyme?" Sachs blurted. "What the hell's going on?"

  "Cost seventeen dollars. It ought to be good. I'm going to turn you over."

  More voices sounded through the earphone but she couldn't make them out.

  Sachs and Banks were jogging along the waterfront, peering over the wharves into the gray-brown water of the Hudson. She motioned to Banks to stop, leaned away from the cramp below her breastbone, spit into the river. Tried to catch her breath.

  Through the headset she heard: ". . . won't take long. You'll have to excuse us, gentlemen."

  ". . . we'll just wait, you don't mind."

  "I do mind," Rhyme said. "Can't I get a little privacy here?"

  "Rhyme, can you hear me?" Sachs called desperately. What the hell was he doing?

  "Nup. No privacy for them that steal evidence."

  Dellray! He was in Rhyme's room. Well, that's the end of it. The vic's as good as dead.

  "I want that evidence," the agent barked.

  "Well, what you're going to get is a panoramic view of a man taking a sponge bath, Dellray."

  Banks started to speak but she waved him quiet.

  Some muttered words she couldn't hear.

  The agent's angry shout.

  Then Rhyme's calm voice again. ". . . You know, Dellray, I used to be a swimmer. Swam every day."

  "We've got less than ten minutes," Sachs whispered. The water lapped calmly. Two placid boats cruised past.

  Dellray muttered something.

  "I'd go down to the Hudson River and swim. It was a lot cleaner then. The water, I mean."

  A garbled transmission. He was breaking up.

  ". . . old pier. My favorite one's gone now. Used to be the home of the Hudson Dusters. That gang, you ever hear of them? In the 1890s. North of where Battery Park City is now. You look bored. Tired of looking at a crip's flabby ass? No? Suit yourself. That pier was between North Moore and Chambers. I'd dive in, swim around the piers . . ."

  "North Moore and Chambers!" Sachs shouted. Spinning around. They'd missed it because they'd gone too far south. It was a quarter mile from where they were. She could see the brown scabby wood, a large drainpipe backing up with tidal water. How much time was left? Hardly any. There was no way they could save him.

  She ripped the headset off and started sprinting to the car, Banks close behind.

  "Can you swim?" she asked.

  "Me? A lap or two at the Health and Racquet Club."

  They'd never make it.

  Sachs stopped suddenly, spun around in a fast circle, gazing at the deserted streets.

  The water was nearly to his nose.

  A small wave washed over William Everett's face just as he inhaled and the foul, salty liquid streamed into his throat. He began to choke, a deep, horrible sound. Racking. The water filled his lungs. He lost his grip on the pier piling and sank under the surface, stiffened and rose once more, then sank again.

  No, Lord, no . . . please don't let--

  He shook the cuffs, kicked hard, trying to get some play. As if some miracle might happen and his puny muscles could bend the huge bolt he was cuffed to.

  Snorting water from his nose, swiping his head back and forth in panic. He cleared his lungs momentarily. Neck muscles on fire--as painful as his shattered finger--from bending his head back to find the faint layer of air just above his face.

  He had a moment's respite.

  Then another wave, slightly higher.

  And that was it.

  He couldn't fight anymore. Surrender. Join Evelyn, say goodbye . . .

  And William Everett let go. He floated beneath the surface into the drecky water, full of junk and tendrils of seaweed.

  Then jerked back in horror. No, no . . .

  He was here. The kidnapper! He'd come back.

  Everett kicked to the surface, sneezing more wa
ter, trying desperately to get away. The man shone a brilliant light into Everett's eyes and reached toward him with a knife.

  No,no. . .

  It wasn't enough to drown him, he had to slash him to death. Without thinking Everett kicked out toward him. But the kidnapper vanished under the water . . . and then, snap, Everett's hands were free.

  The old man forgot his placid goodbyes and kicked like hell to the surface, sucking sour air through his nose and ripping the tape from his mouth. Gasping, spitting the foul water. His head banged solidly into the underside of the oak pier and he laughed out loud. "Oh, God, God, God . . ."

  Then another face appeared . . . Also hooded, with another blindingly bright lamp attached, and Everett could just make out the NYPD emblem on the man's wetsuit. They weren't knives the men held but metal cutters. One of them thrust a bitter rubber mouthpiece between Everett's lips and he inhaled a dazzling breath of oxygen.

  The diver slipped his arm around him and together they swam to the lip of the pier.

  "Take a deep breath, we'll be out in a minute."

  He filled his narrow lungs to bursting and, eyes closed, sailed with the diver deep into the water, lit eerily by the man's yellow light. It was a short but harrowing trip, straight down then up again through cloudy, flecked water. Once he slipped out of the diver's hands and they separated momentarily. But William Everett took the glitch in stride. After this evening, a solo swim in the choppy Hudson River was a piece of cake.

  She hadn't planned on taking a cab. The airport bus would've been fine.

  But Pammy was wired from too little sleep--they'd both been up since five that morning--and she was getting restless. The little girl needed to be in bed soon, tucked away with her blanket and her bottle of Hawaiian Punch. Besides, Carole herself couldn't wait to get to Manhattan--she was just a skinny Midwest gal who'd never been farther east than Ohio in all her forty-one years, and she was dying for her first look at the Big Apple.

  Carole collected her luggage and they started toward the exit. She checked to make sure she had everything they'd left Kate and Eddie's house with that afternoon.

  Pammy, Pooh, purse, blanket, suitcase, yellow knapsack.

  Everything accounted for.

  Her friends had warned her about the city. "They'll hustle you," Eddie'd said. "Purse snatchers, pickpockets."

  "And don't play those card games on the street," maternal Kate had added.

  "I don't play cards in my living room," Carole reminded her, laughing. "Why'm I going to start playing on the streets of Manhattan?"