The Bone Collector, Page 27

  He felt the doctor's thumbs pause at what he guessed was the shattered vertebra.

  The spaceship, the stingray . . .

  "Someday they'll fix this," Taylor said. "Someday, it'll be no worse than breaking your leg. You listen to me. I predict it."

  Fifteen minutes later Peter Taylor came down the stairs and joined the cops on the sidewalk.

  "Is he all right?" Amelia Sachs asked anxiously.

  "The pressure's down. He needs rest mostly."

  The doctor, a plain-looking man, suddenly realized he was talking to a very beautiful woman. He smoothed his thinning gray hair and cast a discreet glance at her willowy figure. His eyes then went to the squad cars in front of the townhouse and he asked, "What's the case he's helping you with?"

  Sellitto demurred, as all detectives will in the face of that question from civilians. But Sachs had guessed Taylor and Rhyme were close so she said, "The kidnappings? Have you heard about them?"

  "The taxi-driver case? It's on all the news. Good for him. Work is the best thing that could happen to him. He needs friends and he needs purpose."

  Thom appeared at the top of the stairs. "He said thanks, Pete. Well, he didn't actually say thanks. But he meant it. You know how he is."

  "Level with me," Taylor asked, voice lower now, conspiratorial. "Is he still planning on talking to them?"

  And when Thom said, "No, he's not," something in his tone told Sachs that he was lying. She didn't know about what or what significance it might have. But it rankled.

  Planning on talking to them?

  In any case Taylor seemed not to pick up on the aide's deceit. He said, "I'll come back tomorrow, see how he's doing."

  Thom said he'd appreciate it and Taylor slung his bag over his shoulder and started up the sidewalk. The aide gestured to Sellitto. "He'd like to talk to you for a minute." The detective climbed the stairs quickly. He disappeared into the room and a few minutes later he and Thom walked outside. Sellitto, solemn himself now, glanced at her. "Your turn." And nodded toward the stairs.

  Rhyme lay in the massive bed, hair mussed, face no longer red, hands no longer ivory. The room smelled ripe, visceral. There were clean sheets on the bed and his clothes had been changed again. This time the pajamas were as green as Dellray's suit.

  "Those are the ugliest PJs I've ever seen," she said. "Your ex gave them to you, didn't she?"

  "How'd you guess? An anniversary present . . . Sorry for the scare," he said, looking away from her. He seemed suddenly timid and that upset her. She thought of her father in the pre-op room at Sloan-Kettering before they took him down to the exploratory surgery he never awoke from.

  "Sorry?" she asked ominously. "No more of that shit, Rhyme."

  He appraised her for a minute then said, "You two'll do fine."

  "We two?"

  "You and Lon. Mel too of course. And Jim Polling."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I'm retiring."

  "You're what?"

  "Too taxing for the old system, I'm afraid."

  "But you can't quit." She waved at the Monet poster. "Look at everything we've found about 823. We're so close."

  "So you don't need me. All you need is a little luck."

  "Luck? It took years to get Bundy. And what about the Zodiac killer? And the Werewolf?"

  "We've got good information here. Hard information. You'll come up with some good leads. You'll nail him, Sachs. Your swan song before they lap you up into Public Affairs. I've got a feeling Unsub 823's getting cocky; they might even collar him at the church."

  "You look fine," she said after a moment. Though he didn't.

  Rhyme laughed. Then the smile faded. "I'm very tired. And I hurt. Hell, I think I hurt in places the docs'll say I can't hurt."

  "Do what I do. Take a nap."

  He tried to snort a derisive laugh but he sounded weak. She hated seeing him this way. He coughed briefly, glanced down at the nerve stimulator, and grimaced, as if he was embarrassed that he depended on the machine. "Sachs . . . I don't suppose we'll be working together again. I just wanted to say that you've got a good career ahead of you, you make the right choices."

  "Well, I'll come back and see you after we snag his bad ass."

  "I'd like that. I'm glad you were first officer yesterday morning. There's nobody else I'd rather've walked the grid with."

  "I--"

  "Lincoln," a voice said. She turned to see a man in the doorway. He looked around the room curiously, taking in all the equipment.

  "Been some excitement around here, looks like."

  "Doctor," Rhyme said. His face blossoming into a smile. "Please come in."

  He stepped into the room. "I got Thom's message. Emergency, he said?"

  "Dr. William Berger, this is Amelia Sachs."

  But Sachs could see she'd already ceased to exist in Lincoln Rhyme's universe. Whatever else was left to be said--and she felt there were some things, maybe many things--would have to wait. She walked through the door. Thom, who stood in the large hallway outside, closed the door behind her and, ever proper, paused, nodding for her to precede him.

  As Sachs walked out into the steamy night she heard a voice from nearby. "Excuse me."

  She turned and found Dr. Peter Taylor standing by himself under a ginkgo tree. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

  Sachs followed Taylor up the sidewalk a few doors.

  "Yes?" she asked. He leaned against a stone wall and gave another self-conscious swipe at his hair. Sachs recalled how many times she'd intimidated men with a single word or glance. She thought, as she often did: What a useless power beauty is.

  "You're his friend, right?" the doctor asked her. "I mean, you work with him but you're a friend too."

  "Sure. I guess I am."

  "That man who just went inside. Do you know who he is?"

  "Berger, I think. He's a doctor."

  "Did he say where he was from?"

  "No."

  Taylor looked up at Rhyme's bedroom window for a moment. He asked, "You know the Lethe Society?"

  "No, oh, wait . . . It's a euthanasia group, right?"

  Taylor nodded. "I know all of Lincoln's doctors. And I've never heard of Berger. I was just thinking maybe he's with them."

  "What?"

  Is he still talking to them . . .

  So that's what the conversation was about.

  She felt weightless from the shock. "Has he . . . has he talked seriously about this before?"

  "Oh, yes." Taylor sighed, gazed into the smoky night sky. "Oh, yes." Then glanced at her name badge. "Officer Sachs, I've spent hours trying to talk him out of it. Days. But I've also worked with quads for years and I know how stubborn they are. Maybe he'd listen to you. Just a few words. I was thinking . . . Could you?--"

  "Oh, goddamn it, Rhyme," she muttered and started down the sidewalk at a run, leaving the doctor in midsentence.

  She got to the front door of the townhouse just as Thom was closing it. She pushed past him. "Forgot my watchbook."

  "Your?--"

  "Be right back."

  "You can't go up there. He's with his doctor."

  "I'll just be a second."

  She was at the landing before Thom started after her.

  He must have known it was a scam because he took the stairs two at a time. But she had a good lead and had shoved open Rhyme's door before the aide got to the top of the stairs.

  She pushed in, startling both Rhyme and the doctor, who was leaning against the table, arms crossed. She closed the door and locked it. Thom began pounding. Berger turned toward her with a frown of curiosity on his face.

  "Sachs," Rhyme blurted.

  "I have to talk to you."

  "What about?"

  "About you."

  "Later."

  "How much later, Rhyme?" she asked sarcastically. "Tomorrow? Next week?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You want me to schedule a meeting for, maybe, a week from Wednesday? Will you be able to make i
t then? Will you be around?"

  "Sachs--"

  "I want to talk to you. Alone."

  "No."

  "Then we'll do it the hard way." She stepped up to Berger. "You're under arrest. The charge is attempted assisted suicide." And the handcuffs flashed, click, click, snapping onto his wrists in a silver blur.

  She guessed the building was a church.

  Carole Ganz lay in the basement, on the floor. A single shaft of cold, oblique light fell on the wall, illuminating a shabby picture of Jesus and a stack of mildewy Golden Book Bible stories. A half-dozen tiny chairs--for Sunday-school students, she guessed--were nested in the middle of the room.

  The cuffs were still on and so was the gag. He'd also tied her to a pipe near the wall with a four-foot-long piece of clothesline.

  On a tall table nearby she could see the top of a large glass jug.

  If she could knock it off she might use a piece of glass to cut the clothesline. The table seemed out of reach but she rolled over onto her side and started to squirm, like a caterpillar, toward it.

  This reminded her of Pammy when she was an infant, rolling on the bed between herself and Ron; she thought of her baby, alone in that horrible basement, and started to cry.

  Pammy, Pooh, purse.

  For a moment, for a brief moment, she weakened. Wished she'd never left Chicago.

  No, stop thinking that way! Quit feeling sorry for yourself! This was the absolute right thing to do. You did it for Ron. And for yourself too. He'd be proud of you. Kate had told her that a thousand times, and she believed it.

  Struggling once more. She moved a foot closer to the table.

  Groggy, couldn't think straight.

  Her throat stung from the terrible thirst. And the mold and mildew in the air.

  She crawled a little farther then lay on her side, catching her breath, staring up at the table. It seemed hopeless. What's the use? she thought.

  Wondering what was going through Pammy's mind.

  You fucker! thought Carole. I'll kill you for this!

  She squirmed, trying to move farther along the floor. But instead, she lost her balance and rolled onto her back. She gasped, knowing what was coming. No! With a loud pop, her wrist snapped. She screamed through the gag. Blacked out. When she came to a moment later she was overwhelmed with nausea.

  No, no, no . . . If she vomited she'd die. With the gag on, that would be it.

  Fight it down! Fight it. Come on. You can do it. Here I go. . . . She retched once. Then again.

  No! Control it.

  Rising in her throat.

  Control . . .

  Control it. . . .

  And she did. Breathing through her nose, concentrating on Kate and Eddie and Pammy, on the yellow knapsack containing all her precious possessions. Seeing it, picturing it from every angle. Her whole life was in there. Her new life.

  Ron, I don't want to blow it. I came here for you, honey . . .

  She closed her eyes. Thought: Breathe deep. In, out.

  Finally, the nausea subsided. And a moment later she was feeling better and, though she was crying in pain from the snapped wrist, she managed to continue to caterpillar her way toward the table, one foot. Two.

  She felt a thump as her head collided with the table leg. She'd just managed to connect with it and couldn't move any farther. She swung her head back and forth and jostled the table hard. She heard the bottle slosh as it shifted on the tabletop. She looked up.

  A bit of the jug was showing beyond the edge of the table. Carole drew back her head and hit the table leg one last time.

  No! She'd knocked the leg out of reach. The jug teetered for a moment but stayed upright. Carole strained to get more slack from the clothesline but couldn't.

  Damn. Oh, damn! As she gazed hopelessly up at the filthy bottle she realized it was filled with a liquid and something floated inside. What is that?

  She scrunched her way back toward the wall a foot or two and looked up.

  It seemed like a lightbulb inside. No, not a whole bulb, just the filament and the base, screwed into a socket. A wire ran from the socket out of the jug to one of those timers that turn the lights on and off when you're away on vacation. It looked like--

  A bomb! Now she recognized the faintest whiff of gasoline.

  No,no. . .

  Carole began to squirm away from the table as fast as she could, sobbing in desperation. There was a filing cabinet by the wall. It'd give her some protection. She drew her legs up then felt a chill of panic and unwound them furiously. The motion knocked her off balance. She realized, to her horror, that she was rolling onto her back once more. Oh, stop. Don't . . . She stayed poised, perfectly still, for a long moment, quivering as she tried to shift her weight forward. But then she continued to roll, collapsing onto her cuffed hand, her shattered wrist taking the weight of her body. There was a moment of incredible pain and, mercifully, she fainted once more.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  No way, Rhyme. You can't do it."

  Berger looked on uneasily. Rhyme supposed that in this line of work he'd seen all sorts of hysterical scenarios played out at moments like this. The biggest problem Berger'd have wasn't those wanting to die but those who wanted everyone else to live.

  Thom pounded on the door.

  "Thom," Rhyme called. "It's all right. You can leave us." Then to Sachs: "We've said our farewells. You and me. It's bad form to ruin a perfect exit."

  "You can't do this."

  Who'd blown the whistle? Pete Taylor maybe. The doctor must've guessed that he and Thom were lying.

  Rhyme saw her eyes slip to the three items on the table. The gifts of the Magi: the brandy, the pills and the plastic bag. Also a rubber band, similar to the ones Sachs still wore on her shoes. (How many times had he come home from a crime scene to find Blaine staring at the bands on his shoes, horrified? "Everybody'll think my husband can't afford new shoes. He's keeping the soles on with rubber bands. Honestly, Lincoln!")

  "Sachs, take the cuffs off the good doctor here. I'll have to ask you to leave one last time."

  She barked a fast laugh. "Excuse me. This's a crime in New York. The DA could bootstrap it into murder, he wanted to."

  Berger said, "I'm just having a conversation with a patient."

  "That's why the charge's only attempt. So far. Maybe we should run your name and prints through NCIC. See what we come up with."

  "Lincoln," Berger said quickly, alarmed. "I can't--"

  "We'll get it worked out," Rhyme said. "Sachs, please."

  Feet apart, hands on trim hips, her gorgeous face imperious. "Let's go," she barked to the doctor.

  "Sachs, you have no idea how important this is."

  "I won't let you kill yourself."

  "Let me?" Rhyme snapped. "Let me? And why exactly do I need your permission?"

  Berger said, "Miss . . . Officer Sachs, it's his decision and it's completely consensual. Lincoln's more informed than most of the patients I deal with."

  "Patients? Victims, you mean."

  "Sachs!" Rhyme blurted, trying to keep the desperation from his voice. "It's taken me a year to find someone to help me."

  "Maybe because it's wrong. Ever consider that? Why now, Rhyme? Right in the middle of the case?"

  "If I have another attack and a stroke, I might lose all ability to communicate. I could be conscious for forty years and completely unable to move. And if I'm not brain-dead, nobody in the universe is going to pull the plug. At least now I'm still able to communicate my decisions."

  "But why?" she blurted.

  "Why not?" Rhyme answered. "Tell me. Why not?"

  "Well . . ." It seemed as if the arguments against suicide were so obvious she was having trouble articulating them. "Because . . ."

  "Because why, Sachs?"

  "For one thing, it's cowardly."

  Rhyme laughed. "Do you want to debate it, Sachs? Do you? Fair enough. 'Cowardly,' you say. That leads us to Sir Thomas Browne: 'When life is more terrible than death,
it's the truest valor to live.' Courage in the face of insurmountable adversity . . . A classic argument in favor of living. But if that's true then why anesthetize patients before surgery? Why sell aspirin? Why fix broken arms? Why is Prozac the most prescribed medicine in America? Sorry, but there's nothing intrinsically good about pain."

  "But you're not in pain."

  "And how do you define pain, Sachs? Maybe the absence of all feeling can be pain too."

  "You can contribute so much. Look at all you know. All the forensics, all the history."

  "The social-contribution argument. That's a popular one." He glanced at Berger but the medico remained silent. Rhyme saw his interest dip to the bone sitting on the table--the pale disk of spinal column. He picked it up, kneaded it in his cuffed hands. He was a former orthopedics man, Rhyme recalled.

  He continued to Sachs, "But who says we should contribute anything to life? Besides, the corollary is I might contribute something bad. I might cause some harm too. To myself or someone else."

  "That's what life is."

  Rhyme smiled. "But I'm choosing death, not life."

  Sachs looked uneasy as she thought hard. "It's just . . . death isn't natural. Life is."

  "No? Freud'd disagree with you. He gave up on the pleasure principle and came to feel that there was another force--a non-erotic primary aggression, he called it. Working to unbind the connections we build in life. Our own destruction's a perfectly natural force. Everything dies; what's more natural than that?"

  Again she worried a portion of her scalp.

  "All right," she said. "Life's more of a challenge to you than most people. But I thought . . . everything I've seen about you tells me you're somebody who likes challenges."

  "Challenges? Let me tell you about challenges. I was on a ventilator for a year. See the tracheostomy scar on my neck? Well, through positive-pressure breathing exercises--and the greatest willpower I could muster--I managed to get off the machine. In fact I've got lungs like nobody's business. They're as strong as yours. In a C4 quad that's one for the books, Sachs. It consumed my life for eight months. Do you understand what I'm saying? Eight months just to handle a basic animal function. I'm not talking about painting the Sistine Chapel or playing the violin. I'm talking about fucking breathing."

  "But you could get better. Next year, they might find a cure."

  "No. Not next year. Not in ten years."

  "You don't know that. They must be doing research--"

  "Sure they are. Want to know what? I'm an expert. Transplanting embryonic nerve tissue onto damaged tissue to promote axonal regeneration." These words tripped easily from his handsome lips. "No significant effect. Some doctors are chemically treating the affected areas to create an environment where cells can regenerate. No significant effect--not in advanced species. Lower forms of life show pretty good success. If I were a frog I'd be walking again. Well, hopping."